Tim Ferriss - Transcripts of His Conversations

Chase Jarvis
Sam Harris
Neil Strauss
James Altucher
Kevin Kelly
Tracy DiNunzio
Maria Popova
Andrew Zimmern
Nick Ganju
Peter Attia
Ed Cooke
Jessica Richman
Pavel Tsatsouline
Peter Diamandis
Alex Blumberg
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Matt Mullenweg
Glitch Mob
Mark Hart, Raoul Pal
James Fadiman
Amanda Palmer
Glenn Beck
Jon Favreau
Triple H
THE B ES T OF
RAW TRANSCRIPTS
COPYRIGHT 20072014 TIM FERRISS.THE 4-HOUR IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF TIM FERRISS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EPISODE 8:
CHASE JARVIS
Audio available on iTunes
under Tim Ferriss Show
Show notes and links at
www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog
Tim:
So, Mr. Jarvis?
Chase:
Yes, sir.
Tim:
The tables have been turned.
Chase:
They have been. Ill cross my legs like you have crossed yours.
Tim:
Yeah, Im not sure what to do. This is a new scenario. For you people that cant
actually see what were doing, this is an experiment with the Tim Ferriss podcast,
also brought to you in moving pictures.
Chase:
Yes. Normally you dont videotape it, right?
Tim:
I normally, meaning the first two episodes, did not videotape it. Im trying to sit
somewhat like the host from Masterpiece Theater. I feel like thats appropriate
giving the professional setting.
Why dont you tell us where we are?
Chase:
We are in a studio called CreativeLive, which is a start-up based here in San

Francisco and in Seattle. Im the co-founder with my good friend Craig Swanson,
whos not here. It is an education platform that connects the worlds top experts
in creative fields with a global audience, all over the world. Thats what global
means.
Tim:
I was always wondering what that meant. We first met how? Actually, I was trying
to think of it today, and I couldnt piece it together.
Chase:
I dont know.
Tim:
It had to be a good number of years ago.
Chase:
Several.
Tim:
Weve had a lot of adventures.
Chase:
We have had some good adventures.
Tim:
Spent a lot of time OTK, lots of travel, always bumping into each other at airports.
What Id love you to, perhaps, do first is just give people the Chase overview.
Whats Chase? Who is Chase Jarvis? Give us a little bit of background. I can
obviously pontificate, but I want to give people an intro.
Chase:
Please, Ill give you an opportunity to pontificate later. No, I was born... Im just
kidding. I have spent my whole life as an artist. The career as a photographer
is really the only career Ive ever had until co-founding CreativeLive with Craig
about three years ago now, three years and change, in a little grimy warehouse
in south Seattle.
We launched in April to rapid growth and success. About a year later, we nailed
some venture funding, and we just closed out Series B. Now there are about 100
people here at CreativeLive. Theres this transition for myself from photographer,
artist, traveling all over the world shooting for the top brands. I sort of scratched
my own itch because I bailed on medical school and dropped out of a PhD in
Philosophy to pursue my dream of becoming a photographer.
There was nowhere to get any damn good education. I didnt want to go back
to school-school. It was a very closed world ten years ago. There wasnt a lot of
access to information. I said, Man, if Im ever in a position to change this, this
sucks. Im going to change it. By collaborating with my friend Craig some ten
years later, we did exactly that. Its working.
Tim:
Shazaam.
Chase:
Shazaam.
Tim:
Im glad you started with the artist bit because I wanted to delve into that. The
first few guests weve had have ranged from investors to chess competitors.
Chase:
Wow, people are going to be so disappointed with this third podcast.
Tim:
We can really lower their expectations by having you on this time. The fact that
you went from being an artist... Getting to that point I want to delve into a little
bit. Obviously, getting to the point where youre doing shoots with huge brands
and flying octocoptors before that was a thing, and so on and so forth. You dont
just jump into that as your first gig I have to assume. Moving from that to ending
up in a more management position; I want to talk about how thats felt.
Chase:
Did you just call me manager?
Tim:
Youre a middle manager. Really, when it comes down to it... Youve seen Dilbert,
right?
Chase:
Perfect, yes, I love Dilbert.
Tim:
Pointy-haired bosses.
Chase:
I had that little part in Office Space. That was cool.
Tim:
Given how professional I want to keep this, I also want you to start gestating
on a question, which is related to a concept Im going to borrow. Its from Aisha
Tyler, and its called self-inflicted wounds. At the end of out talk, I want you to
think of some ridiculous story. It could be laughable, catastrophic, often times,
it could be involving alcohol. Something where youve just made a complete ass
of yourself. I know you have a pretty good selection to go through.
Chase:
Ive got a long list. I just went [makes noise]. Ive got a whole memory bank full
of that. My ram is full.
Tim:
Photography, how did you first get into photography and how did you get to
yourwhat was your first paying gig?
Chase:
My first paying gig was-
Tim:
Lets backtrack.
Chase:
Howd I get into photography? Im going to try and relate the artist mentality to
whatever audience is watching. I feel like the artist mentality is actually, if we
take one step back, its a creative mentality. I also believe that creativity is the
new literacy.
Creativity, a lot of the investments you do are highly creative, your approach
to them and what the founders of making of those companies. Whether youre
taking pictures, building a business, managing a hedge fund, theres a ton of
creativity involved. Art is but of a subset of creativity. I think that its a theme
thats going to continue. Im forecasting the future of our conversation today.
Thats a theme that Im going to continue.
Tim:
Youre already time traveling.
Chase:
Im going to continue to bring us back to that because I think thats a really

important core. My personal experience, growing up I was a very creative kid
and yet, being an artist as a kid was always like, That kids really creative.
Tim:
Where did you grow up?
Chase:
I grew up in Seattle. Im an only child because I was a little bastard. Im not sure
if I can say bastard.
Tim:
Scared them off. Coming from Long Island, I was hoping to drop F-bombs, but
Im feeling self-conscious here with all these professional cameras.
Chase:
My childhood was a very creative childhood. My parents would give me a block

of wood and Id go play in the back yard for hours. I sat at the adult table because
there was no kids table.
Tim:
What did your parents do?
Chase:
My dad was cop and my mom was an executive assistant at a big biotech
company called... Actually they did Cialis. They founded Cialis. I came from a very
middle class background. There was a good work ethic, but the whole creative
artist thing... I felt very creative, but I was also sort of in a jocks body, so I was
good at sports. I could never reconcile those things.
Tim:
What did you play?
Chase:
Soccer and football.
Tim:
Which one were you better at?
Chase:
I had opportunities to play either in college... I ended up playing soccer at San

Diego State, which was a Top 10 D-1 school. It was a good way to go to college.
I had a hard time reconciling artist and jock. It didnt go together, at least in my
high school. You had to be one or the other. I took the jock half because it could
lead to school. At least at that time, it was safer. It was really, sort of the punk,
skate punk, surf scene in Southern California where I moved to go to college
that I was able to understand that those two things could coexist. Actually, it
was a powerful combination.
Tim:
Thats interesting. I never really thought... I mean the surf culture is so pervasive
there.
Chase:
Surf, skate, and there was sort of a DIY ethic, hacker mentality. That was
something that I definitely took away from Southern California after going to
school down there. Photography was something that I had grown up being on
the other side of the camera. At my college, I was guy who would get interviewed
at the soccer games because I was reasonably well associated with cameras.
Tim:
You were going to say handsome, werent you?
Chase:
Im dashing. If you could only smell...
Tim:
It smells really good.
Chase:
Photography was a really low barrier way. I had grown up around pictures. I
remember a particular picture, a muddy soccer game, that made me realize,
Oh my god, thats a moment. Its never going to go away. Now that I have it
sort of locked in the picture maybe I can do that over and over again. Then that
reality voice kicked in... Part of the reason that CreativeLive exists is because
culturally theres this bias against, I dont want my kid to grow up to be an artist
because hes going to be homeless or a drug addict or hes going to play music.
Tim:
Staving artist. Those two go together.
Chase:
They do, they do.
Tim:
Im not saying in reality, but in mass perception.
Chase:
Yeah, culturally. I, again, recoiled from that thought.
Tim:
Your first act of photography was in college?
Chase:
Immediately after college. My grandfather died two days before my college

graduation, which was a terrible, terrible thing. He dropped dead of a heart
attack. The silver lining in that was I got his cameras. I was gifted his cameras.
It was this permission to go explore the world. I threw them in a backpack and
walked the Earth for seven months with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kate, who
you know.
Tim:
After graduating.
Chase:
Yeah, and we just took, literally... My grandfather passed away, I got his cameras
and said, Look, lets just go explore the world and I want to learn to take pictures
because I want to get in touch with this side that Ive sort of been repressing. I
taught myself how to use a camera and came back with a ski bum in Steamboat,
CO, started taking pictures there. That was my very first sold picture.
Taking pictures of what I was passionate about, which was hiking, climbing, flyfishing, extreme sports, skate, surfthat whole world that Id grown up in. I was
very passionate about it so it was easy to make connections in that community.

I had good pictures of fancy people that started being sold for lots of money.
Tim:
Wait, hold on. I find it... Part of the fun for me, and the reason I wanted to start
the podcast, is because weve spent years hanging out... I dont know this stuff
and I want to dig into it because its fun, but if I sit down and like, Let me ask
you 70 questions for two hours, its just weird. Its like a CIA interrogation.
Chase:
There was that one time.
Tim:
There was that one time. Sorry about the sodium pentothal. Do you remember
the first sale?
Chase:
I do.
Tim:
I remember when I had my first real business anything in college, teaching this
accelerated learning seminar. I felt richer than Id ever felt in my life because I
was making $8.00 an hour in the college library. Tell me about your first sale or
few sales. How did those come about?
Chase:
The first sale came about because I grew up skiing and snowboarding and I was
very familiar with the subject. I got in with a good crowd and had photographs of
people on next years equipment because I knew the manufacturers and reps. If
you have the right pictures of the right people on the right equipment, then the
manufacturers come knocking for next years stuff. The manufacturers saw my
work, got in touch, and said, We like this picture, this picture, and this picture.
I ended up licensing, not selling outright, but licensing an image for $500 and a
pair of skis.
Tim:
Nice. Thats a big first sale.
Chase:
I think I was probably, literally making $10.00 an hour at the time. I was like,
Wait a minute. I just sold that for $500 from going skiing for a couple of days
with my buddies. Id like to replicate that, so what did I do, what worked, what
didnt? Then I sat out on a Tim Ferriss learning experiment about how I can
replicate this. Just started doing that over and over, and upping the ante every
time.
Tim:
What were you doing for $10.00 an hour?
Chase:
I was tuning skis at the local ski shop. Right at the base of the mountain in
Steamboat, Colorado. When Kate and I got back from Europe we were totally
broke, so we threw everything in a car and drove to Colorado. We were just
deferring education and life a little bit and ended up having the time of our lives.
Ironically, you know very well, better than most, about adventure and how that
propels ones life.
Tim:
You have some... If people want to get a taste... What are your favorite videos?
Obviously, the stuff with octocopter did really well, which you can look for on
YouTube or anywhere else. People want to get a taste of the international man
of mystery who is Chase Jarvis.
Chase:
I have a pretty good YouTube channel. Its just Youtube.com/ChaseJarvis. I think
there are a couple hundred videos, several of them with more than a million
views. Mostly, theyre adventures all over the world on pretty much every
continent except for Antarctica.
Tim:
You got to do something with your life, man. When are you going to vacation in
Antarctica?
Chase:
I know. My dad just stuck a stake in the ground and said, Im going to beat you
to Antarctica. Ive got to find a way to get there in the next 12 months. Theres a
lot of adventure, and you can go to my YouTube channel or my website and see
it.
Tim:
I think a lot people listening or watching hear this and they go, My god, thats a
dream scenario. He got to travel the world. Probably had brands or clients pay
for most or all of it.
Chase:
I get paid very well on top of all that stuff.
Tim:
You get paid very well on top of it.
Chase:
Helicopters and yachts, its really ridiculous. It didnt start that way, I promise.
Tim:
Of course not. A lot of people enter the creative funnel, right. I would like to try
to be a photographer, or I want to be a photographer, or fill in the blank. Painter,
dancer
Chase:
Writer.
Tim:
writer. Then you have all these...
Chase:
Youre blocking my shot there with your hand.
Tim:
Oh no, Im doing that on purpose. I dont want the awesomeness of your face to
overwhelm people. I know what Im doing.
Chase:
I know. Youre a professional. Its like...
Tim:
See if I can get my big, Danish head right in the way. Where was I? How did you
end up... What were the milestones, or inflection points, or chance encounters
that lead you to the point where youre flying around in helicopters with top
athletes, paid by the top brands. I can point to a handful of things, right, with
a four-hour work week, like, 2007 South by Southwest was one of the tipping
points. I can identify these points. What were some of those points for you?
Chase:
A couple of the key ones. Actually, taking the camera that my grandfather passed
to me when he died and actually teaching myself the art in a very unencumbered
sort of way. There was a lot of freedom for you to make mistakes, freedom
for you to learn, and a reliance on yourself. To me, thats a great way to learn.
To learn from others, not dissimilar to CreativeLive, how the worlds best... I
would meet up with people all over the world and connect with them around
photography.
The learning phase, there was a lot of opportunity for exploration and making
mistakes. There wasnt a lot of stakes early on, but as soon as I decided that I
wanted to do that, I threw myself into a lot of stakes. I know I want to do this
professionally, how can I do it? Move to Steamboat, meet the right people, and
there was instantly stakes. I know thats a big thing for you with increasing the
stakes. It can accelerate learning.

The camera, and having a little freedom to explore and play, basically. Get
familiar where theres not pressure. Then I put myself in a little bit of a pressure
cooker by saying, and I didnt really declare it, I declared it to myself, but not
overtly, Im going to try and do this. Being in a community, putting yourself at
the heart of where that stuff is happening. If you want to do a start-up, its much
easier in Silicon Valley than it is in Detroit, for example. I did the equivalent of
move... I wanted to shoot skiing and snowboarding so I went to a hardcore ski
town. That was a big catapult.
Another inflection point was when I was setting my prices. Not so much for the
very first sale or the second sale, but when I realized that, wait a minute, once
you are good at your craft, everything else is vision and the ability to execute.
Lets put execute and craft in the same bucket. Everything else is vision.
I think whether were talking about how to hack the system from within a big
company or how to hack the system from an entrepreneurial standpoint or an
artist standpoint, the way that I hacked the system was my first hired, day-rate
gig was at several thousand dollars a day. I pushed myself to a level that was
incredibly uncomfortable and required myself to deliver at the highest level. I
charged accordingly because I had done the work, done the research, and knew
what the top guys and gals were getting. I put myself in that caliber right away.
Tim:
Did they accept it right off the bat, or did you have to negotiate? Did you have
some guy who was like, Wait a second, kid? I know that so-and-so, the Michael
Jordan of ski photography is charging X, but with all due respect, this your
first big gig or second big gig. How did youor did you just ask and you were
surprised they said yes?
Chase:
I had a body of work that I hadnt actually done a lot with commercially, so I
felt like the quality... I was comparing my work to the work that I saw in the
marketplace honestly. I was getting peer-reviews and whatnot. I knew that I had
talent, but it really came to the boldness of where do I want to put myself in the
marketplace? Id rather have my first sale be here and not have anything down
there, because if youre the $400 dude...
Tim:
You have to claw your way.
Chase:
That whole idea that when, When we get some more budget, well call you if
you just do it for 400 bucks. No, they dont call a $400 dude, they call a $4,000
dude when they have a $4,000 budget. I wasnt bluffing. I knew that I could do
the work, but I set it at $2,000 to $2,500 bucks a day.
Tim:
They said, Okay, well its a six-day shoot. In my head, Im shitting myself. Doing
the math, and its more than I made last year but Im going to make it next week.
They said, Okay, that sounds fine. We may need to add an extra day.
Let me check my schedule.
Chase:
Ill get back to you on that. Im going to go throw up in the bathroom. There
were some stakes there. I knew that I could do the job, but I also feel like I had
an understanding of the marketplace. It was an indicator of where I wanted
to go. I knew I wanted to be a top price point, wanted to do less work, and do
high-end stuff. I dont want to pretend I didnt do a shit load. This is like a tenyear, overnight success program. I was working in the trenches day in and day
out. I was eating, breathing, sleeping photography. When I was able to start to
monetize my craft, I did so at a very high price point. Little note, if someone ever
says yes that quickly, you didnt ask for enough.
Tim:
Of course, thats why the good negotiators, even if they want to say yes quickly,
theyll push a little bit so that you feel better about the deal when its done.
Chase:
I did some iteration of that, and I took a day to get back to them. I knew that
because she said yes so quickly that the next time, if I was dealing with someone
who was at a commensurate level of experience across the table from me that...
If I can do a great job on this job that I could ask for more.
Tim:
You talking about your wife or photography?
Chase:
You just leave Kate out of this. I will flip you like a cheese omelet. Youre lifting.
I can see youve been working on the biceps there. Tim Ferriss experiment has
got you working on them.
Tim:
Two ostriches a day. Thats my quota, at least. You know I love Kate. Shes an
amazing woman. Youre a very lucky guy.
Chase:
I think theres a way to extrapolate that to every profession. Weve talked to

Ramit about this. Hes the man for negotiating. He actually came on my podcast,
Chase Jarvis Live, and talked a lot about this. Youre prizing yourself. That is a
learned thing.
Tim:
Its totally learned. I think its such a huge misconception. I always see so much
resistance to negotiation. You memorize a couple of lines and try them out.
Youre going to want to puke in the bathroom, like you said. Then you get
through it, and then youre like, Okay, Im kind of smelly now, but that was
pretty awesome. Didnt get an extra 50%; got an extra 20%, and its just role
playing and rehearsal.
Chase:
It is practicing and showing up and be sweaty. I dont have to tell you or your
listeners. They are familiar with your work. Put yourself in some low or not too
serious stakes and negotiate against...
Tim:
Go to the state fair or something. Go to the Alameda Fair that they have every
couple of weeks and negotiate stuff that you dont actually, really want or a hell
of a lot. Dont be a jerk about it, but buy some low stakes stuff.
Chase:
It also helps with some confidence. You repeat that thing, you get a little more
confidence. In a weird way, it also helped me understand the seriousness of the
work. Not in that the photography of skiers and snowboarders or skateboarders
or surfers was serious, but in that the people at the other end of this transaction,
they are betting their ass on you. If this doesnt turn out, they are fired.
Tim:
Theyre done.
Chase:
It started off small, but then as the budgets got to be $50,000, $100,000, half
million, its big productions. People that are betting...
Tim:
If it goes sideways, theyre done.
Chase:
Yeah, yeah, in photo and video, you dont get too many. You cant be a dick
because if word gets around too quickly that youre not pleasant to work with...
You cant blow it because people are making big bets.
Tim:
I would imagine at that level, too, there are probably only a half-dozen to a
dozen people theyre considering. Its a small community.
Chase:
Super-super tight.
Tim:
What are the most consistent mistakes that you see? We can stick with, because
you know photography community so well, youve interacted with so many
photographers. This can, I sure, be extrapolated to creatives in general, which is
pretty much everyone.
Chase:
Right, and thats the point I was trying to make.
Tim:
What are the most common mistakes that you see, just like the repetitive
problems that you see?
Chase:
Theres a handful and I think it does apply, like you just prefaced, across every
discipline. Being great at your craft is a requirement. I wouldnt suggest that you
dont try and get work or hustle or do all those other things while youre coming
up. Thats a part of the game. You know Gary V. is a big advocate for hustling.
Youve got to hustle your whole way.
Being great at your craft actually matters. The camera is like an extension of my
arm. You think about it, Ive used the pro golf analogy. I dont know why, Im not
crazy about golf, but those guys and women have to stand up on the tee and
hit the ball down the middle because thats what theyre paid to do. It doesnt
matter if its rainy, sunny, windy, if theres ten people watching or 10 million,
theyre paid to hit the ball down the middle. As an artist, youre paid to make.
As an entrepreneur, youre paid to deliver the ROI to the shareholders. As a
wrestler, youre paid to win. Whatever your thing is, you have to be great at your
craft in order to achieve.
Theres this is 10,000 hours, hardcore, the folks that I think are great. Whether
theyre hacking the system and doing it in ten hours or 10,000, that is, I think,
people want to skip that step.
Tim:
For every email that I get about the craft of writing, I get a 1,000 about how to
market books. Im just like, Hold on, the ratios all wrong. I would agree with
that.
Chase:
That gets overlooked. I just want to be this awesome fashion photographer and
hand out with awesome, beautiful people, and crazy locations. Its like, dude,
you got to actually pick up a camera and be good at that shit first, and then you
might be able to do the second part. I think thats a common mistake.

The second one is that the... I think theres a belief that people who are successful,
either they can sell themselves really well and theyre natural at it. I was a natural
hard worker but not a gifted positioner and seller. That was all learned in the
same way that some of the stuff that we talked about earlier was learned, the
art of negotiation, the art of positioning yourself in the marketplace, of telling
your story. That is notat least it wasnt innate for me. I had to learn that.
Theres another belief that if you have talent then you just are successful, which
is a total sack of horseshit. Its total bullshit. Ryan Holiday talks a lot about this.
Tim:
Its someone elses quote, but its, Theres nothing more common the
unsuccessful man with talent.
Chase:
Theyre tired, for sure, because there are so many of them. That idea of once you
make something, that if its great it will just be discovered, is totally fiction. The
people that I know that are successful say its the making part, then its about
packaging. Frankly, the narrative, being a good storyteller, is mission critical to
having your idea, project, plan, work, vision, company, whatever, spread. Being
able to tell a good story is another thing that people overlook.
Being great at your craft, actually working hard to sell and position, the art of
story telling as a mechanism to get your stuff out there, those are huge things.
Both of which people want to skip or people think that, I dont have that gift;
therefore, I cant do it, or, That guys a jackass because hes not a real talent,
hes actually just great at selling himself. What actually matters is that person
over there is doing the shit that youre not doing. Theyre a New York Times best
selling author. Tim got up, sat down at his computer, wrote every day until he
had an 8,000-page book, and then narrowed it down to 400 pages. Then sold
the million copies.
Tim:
Ive got to stop that 8,000-page stuff. My God.
Chase:
You had a backpack full of... Are those actual pages in there.
Tim:
On those two points, then, aside from, obviously, this tool that youve helped
create, which is CreativeLive. You guys just, particularly in photography and lot
of those areas...
Chase:
Photo design.
Tim:
...just dominate.
Chase:
Were killing it in audio right now.
Tim:
Its been fun to watch as, obviously an adviser and investor with the company,
just from the nascent stages to see this thing explode, its been really fun. Aside
from that tool, obviously which exists now, what books, resources, helped you
become you better at photography and then also helped you get better at
positioning, storytelling?
Chase:
Sure, wow.
Tim:
Dont have to be books, but just tools that people might be able to use.
Chase:
Tools... This is going to be a date. Date myself idea here.
Tim:
Its already a date.
Chase:
Its a two-hour man date. A mandate, not as in something you have to do, but...
Tim:
Just two men getting together.
Chase:
At first it was the library literally it was books like how to negotiate photography.
Even the idea of licensing an image to maintain intellectual property instead of
selling it. There was some early stuff way back in the 90s. As soon as I realized
that I was good at the craft, and that was developed primarily through repetition
and feedback loops that I cultivated and created on my own, it was learning
about the business side of it. I think theres a weird... You have to know your
industry for sure; thats very, very beneficial.
All the big hacks, the leaps, leap frog things that I did in my career came from
outside my industry. Instead of learning from other photographers... Well, I have
a huge respect for the masters that have paved the way before me, but I took a
lot of cues from Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Rauschenberg,
the artists in New York in the 50s, 60s, and 70s because they were hackers.
They where finding out how to hack the system. They were making art about
making art. They where sort of reinventing the game while they were playing it.
I was always motivated to try and apply that to my work. Not so literally in the
way of taking a picture of a picture, which would be to literalthe meta thing was
fineIm talking about how do you differentiate yourself from the marketplace.
If I look across and everyone else is doing this, how do you zig when everyone
else is zagging.
Tim:
As opposed to trying to get better at zigging.
Chase:
Yeah, be different, not better. Again, weve already agreed the work has to be
good. You have to be a good writer before you sell a million books; thats just
fact. At least a decent writer. The same is true in the way that I approach it, and I
learned that basically from the artists in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in New York. Ive
read a lot of artist biographies of people who have actually lead amazing lives,
done amazing things.
Tim:
Andy Warhol, what where the names again?
Chase:
Jean-Michel Basquiat. He took graffiti off the street and brought it into the
gallery. Robert Rauschenberg, large-scale guy, crazy mixed media. They where
just people that where hacking art scene in that era in New York. They applied
non-traditional techniques, to getting noticed, to making art, to they where
zigging when everyone else was zagging, basically. The way that I zigged when
everyone else was zagging in photography was I chronicled my exploits of
learning my craft.
Tim:
Thats smart.
Chase:
It ten years before it was cool to be transparent, and I was actually vilified for
sharing trade secrets. I would go out and try something. It was before YouTube...
Tim:
Traitor to the guild.
Chase:
Literally. I sort of saw the future that information was going to be free. You
couldnt keep secrets. The art industry in generalphotography specifically
was very closed. So the way I approached it was, Heres how Im going to be
different. Im going to share everything. In doing so, made a couple haters, but
slowly, there was a rather large audience that would show up, not literally to
the shoots, but to the behind the... Theres no such thing as behind the scenes
videos. Before YouTube was Google Video or Yahoo Video, these terrible, terrible
things.
I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that if there was more people looking
at my work, and if I could come across as someone that did good work and had
a passion for life and whatever it is their doing, thats a contagious, infectious
thing
That was generally the life I was living, so I figured, Well, Ill just point a camera
at me. Ultimately that was responsible for an increased trajectory in my career,
because then your like, Have your heard this guy whos sharing... Fancy Nike
shoots, stupid little logo shoots, the full gamut. In doing so, youve already
referenced a couple videos on my YouTube channel. In doing so, created a large
following. It was in a large part that following which helped unlock so many
other things for me.
As we seen even in the last five years, people are nowas artists, we are no
longer require permission from anyone to share our work at scale. There are
no more gatekeepers, gallerists, magazine, and my personal social following
and the blog that I write at Chase Jarvis is larger than a lot of the media outlets
that hire me. When that transformed, that became an added value and key
differentiator.
What started off by sharing my experiences ultimately hacked the system.

Hacking the system gave me a lot of opportunity. To go back to your question,
what books, what tools, was literally analyzing pop culture. Business books, like
4-Hour Work Week was very inspirational a long time ago because youre about
110 years old now, right?
Tim:
Yeah, Ive been taking all of the 275 pills a day. Keeps my skin very supple.
Chase:
Yes, you look great. Again, taking inspiration, ideas from other genres. Instead
of reading, How To Be a Better Photographer, it was digital new media books.
It was business books from guys like Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss. Literally,
hacker books and avant-garde artists books that talked about not getting
attention for the sake of attention, but how to create transformative art. What
do you do, where you do go, what do you think about, what kind of permissions
do you get for yourself?
Tim:
I think that looking outside of the usual suspects in ones own industry is so
undervalued. Its so easy. Its incredible how many things Ive been able to
personally pull from, sayId read a biography or business history of Absolut, the
brand. I also read about Skyy. I dont really drink either, but I was so fascinated
by how, in a crowded market, these two mega successes had been produced.
Similarly, a single SKU company is really fascinating to me. There are more
than one now, but Red Bull, how do you license something from a company in
Thailand and turn it into a multi-billion dollar company that now is becoming a
media production behemoth.
Chase:
As an example, I was the first photographer within the USA to license images to
Red Bull.
Tim:
No kidding.
Chase:
There was a couple of Austrians that had very thick accents.
Tim:
How far back was this?
Chase:
This was 90s.
Tim:
Its not that long ago, you know, all things considered.
Chase:
Yeah, to have a multi-billion dollar brand now. It was the 90s. It was at Squaw
Valley. There was a guy who had this Red Bull jersey on. I happened to have
great photographs of him. It was a qualifier for one of the early, early X-Games.
These guys approached me like, We see you taking pictures of this guy. Heres
my card.
That was pretty good. Very Arnie.
Tim:
Chase:

[Imitates Arnold Schwarzenegger] California.

He gave me his card and I had great pictures. I started licensing stuff. I was like,
Theres this brand. It wasnt available any where in the US. Lo and behold, I
ended up doing a lot of work for those guys through their cultural stuff, with hiphop. I shot large swaths of the top break-dancers in the world for them, some of
the best graffiti artists.
Tim:
Really? I didnt know that. I became obsessed with their BC One break dancing
competition, back in the day.
Chase:
Lords of the Floor was the first one they did. That was a gathering of the group
of break-dancers that were never together before then and will never be
together since. Ive got some pretty amazing photographs. Thats an example
of no one was actually interested in licensing images to a company that no
one had ever heard of, but going outside your industry, Im not just looking for
Outside magazine and REI. Im looking for, Wow, heres this Austrian beverage
company that has this crazy history. Then I start to see it in the US. So grabbing
those coat tails and grabbing at threads that no one else was sensing, that was
helpful, for sure.
Do you know we just leaned together and did that at the same time? Should we
do it one more time?

Tim:
We were going to Lady and the Tramp for a moment. That was very romantic. I
got a little palpitation. Neither of us has shaved; its too much.
The two books that really helped me, or continue to help me, to think of being
different, good and different, right... Necessary, but not sufficient. There are two
that are on the older side, one thats relatively newThe 22 Immutable Laws of
Marketing, really short read...
Chase:
Super short, that books like that big.
Tim:
Super short and just gives fantastic examples of how, say, Amstel Light becomes
the only light imported beer. Boom, it defines and category, and owns it. The
second, Blue Ocean Strategy, really interesting book. Third, which is a little techcentric, but I still think a lot is to be gained from it, is Business Model Generation.
Its a compilation of different business and revenue models.
Chase:
Just a list?
Tim:
Theres like 100 different profiles of companies with different models, rather
its distribution, manufacturing, customer segmentation. There are two or three
pages in that book that are checklists that allow you to go through and identify
opportunities that you might not have seen or even thought of up to that point.
You can take the same product and sell it at higher market. You can take the
same product and sell it at lower market. You can take the same product and
distribute it differently. Direct versus retail versus distributors, whatever. Those
three I found really, really helpful for brainstorming.
Chase:
I want to talk more about books. I havent really dropped any real books.
Tim:
I know. Its like bleeding a stone here.
Chase:
Im having this weird... Lets talk a little more current instead of way historic.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is a classic. Thats way back. I feel heavily
influenced by, and we have a similar circle of friends, books that you have
written, books that Gary V. has written, Ryan Holiday with Trust Me Im Lying:
How to Understand the Media. Garys been pounding his chest for a long time
about all this stuff he pounds his chest on, besides the Jets.
Tim:
For those of you who dont know Gary V., thats Vaynerchuk.
Chase:
Vaynerchuk. I have his most recent book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Guys like
Austin Kleon wrote books like, Steal Like An Artist. His most recent one that just
came out, Share Your Work.
Tim:
I havent seen that one. Steal Like An Artist is a fast read, good book.
Chase:
Super small, fast read, and the premise on that book is basically, if you steal
from one person, thats stealing. If I take your idea, the four-hour bike ride, or
whatever, its not really that original.
Tim:
Get in line. Thats 100 Facebook ads.
Chase:
Ive seen your Facebook.
Tim:
The day of reckoning will come, I assure you.
Chase:
Drawing something from all of the people that you respect, appreciate, and
admire, thats called research. Picassos, Good artist borrow, great artists
steal. There are a million quotes out there. Its just a book about inspiration. It
gives you some courage to hack the system, to remix and reuse. Everything out
theres been done, and its just how can we undone or redo whats already out
there. Chunk it up into new pieces.
Those are some more contemporary ones. Again, very much outside photography.
I feel like Ive nailed my craft. Reading books in photography, I do for pleasure. I
respect and admire Leibovitz, Mapplethorpe, and a dozen other greats, but my
inspiration comes from outside. A lot of artists biographies, too.
Tim:
How about Charlies new book? Can we talk about that for a second? I just
hijacked that. Im curious to know, what was your favorite day last week, and
why?
Chase:
Favorite day last week? I was in Miami photographing Serena Williams for
the upcoming Wilson campaign. I got to shoot Serena, Roger Federer, Vika
Azarenka...
Tim:
Vika could kick my ass, right? She looks like she could totally decapitate me.
Chase:
Youre done. I dont have a bad thing to say about any of those. Five or ten of the
people I shot are the top 20 tennis players, not just now, but ever in the history
of tennis. Federer is just legendary. The guy speaks five languages, looks like a
GQ model, never been injured, never opted out of a match before due to injury.
He has 300 matches more than these super athletes, basically. To get to spend
legitimate, real time with these people on the court and make great pictures of
them like theyve never had made before. That was a great day last week.
Tim:
Thats sounds like a good day.
Chase:
It was a good day. I will say, to change it to CreativeLive for a second, I am more
enamored and more fired up on the power of creativity to change the world
more than ever before. Im spending a huge and completely inordinate amount
of time learning from the people that are in the start-up world. Ive learned a lot
from you. Im doing some angel investing, but focusing very specifically on the
creative space. Its a really interesting... Do you know Mark Ecko? Ecko Clothing?
Marks a friend.
Tim:
Yeah, he did a guest post on my blog. Hes a good guy.
Chase:
He left his book, right? What Mark thinks about start-ups is something I have
just hopped on his coat tails. These companies, theyre called founders, but the
companies arent found; theyre made, theyre created. This idea of creators
and artists discovering, unlocking, or creating the next productwhatever
it is, whether its the next Facebook, Instagram, or give us any number of
companiesthat to me, this vision of creator artists making things and these
things being businesses and non-profits. Thats a beautiful picture of the future,
I think. Thats one of the reasons Im out there advocating for creativity.
My shoot with Serena, Roger Federer, and Azarenka is actually very related
to having an authentic understanding to what it takes to make, be, do, build
businesses, and shoot ad campaigns. Theyre not all that dissimilar.
Tim:
No, I dont think they are at all. In a way, I think its really exciting to see the return
of the polymath. Back in the day, you had people like Benjamin Franklin or fillin-the-blank... It would be amateur scientists, politicians, and printers, and they
would have these five or six different buckets of activities. They could become
world-class in each of them. Then we moved into this period, which was pretty
extended, of this hyper specialists. Youre not going to make the radio, youre
going to screw this one screw.
Chase:
Thats the factory mentality, which is sadly the same mechanism that our
education system is based on. What is a factory good at? Its making a bunch of
things that are the same. Youre good at one thing. Youre good at screwing this
screw in, and thats what you do. Out pops the radio at the end. It started with
a bunch of raw material, then you got the radio, but schools shouldnt be like
that. People arent like that. The goal is not to turn out a bunch of people that...
People dont learn at the same rate, the same stuff. Sorry. Soapbox. Its a bullshit
system.
Tim:
Its also just a societal norm, right? I think theyre intertwined. You have Isaac
Asimov, the science fiction writer, who said, Specialization is for insects. Any
man should be able to captain a ship, gut a pig, and theres a long list. Its pretty
awesome. Its great to see with Kickstarter, Indiegogo, YouTube, and blogs,
much of which is free. You can certainly use WordPress.
Chase:
I do.
Tim:
Its incredible how its now permissible to become the equivalent of what Ben
Franklin...
Chase:
I was told my whole career, you have to specialize, specialize. I specialized in

pursuing the things that interest me. I talked a lot about action sports, but then I
also talked about fashion, break dancing, and all kinds of different cultural stuff.
Ive made TV shows, shot commercials, done ad campaigns, created start-ups,
and did the first iPhone app that shared images to social networks. I historically
would have been called a dilettante, but to be able to touch all of these things
and to find out that they ultimately inform one another. They made at least my
contribution to CreativeLive possible.
Tim:
I think the disconnect, it seems is that back in the day, lets the call it the 80s...
Chase:
Back in the 80s, back when we all had mullets and were happy about it. I was
more of a rattail man myself. I was handsome. It was a dashing look.
Tim:
Braided? Did you braid it?
Chase:
No, no, no. I didnt braid it. I just went ruffian. Rough neck.
Tim:
Okay.
Chase:
Townie. I was a townie, man.
Tim:
I know.
Chase:
Youve got to work with what youve got.
Tim:
What I was going to say is historically, people have thought of specialization

as a necessary evil because if you spread yourself too thin and do six different
things, each of those requires four years of internship, however many years of
schooling because the information wasnt freely available. All these were closed
silos, like photography was not too long ago.
Chase:
Just a decade ago.
Tim:
You were able to become very well known very quickly by being open with your
knowledge. I think whats underestimated is how quickly you can actually delve
into a subject. If you have some modicum of intelligence and diligence, you can
become, if you have any predisposition towards it, if you choose your sources
good, you can become pretty damn good very quickly. If you want to learn how
to run a non-profit, if it were 30 years ago, where you going to go? How you
going to figure it out? Now, you can do a live Facebook Q&A with Scott Harrison,
the CEO of Donors Choose.
I think that its possible that the dilettante or jack-of-all-trades
Chase:
Rise up!
Tim:
is an outdated notion if people take advantage of the tools at their disposal.
Chase:
You have been instrumental in unlocking that for a lot of people. I think that is
one of my passions and gifts, is to be able to learn quickly. It wasnt necessarily
a gift that I was born with, but just threw myself into something and not being
afraid to make mistakes. I think those two things help. Youre doing a great job.
Nice job, man.
Tim:
Thank you.
Chase:
Literally unlocking it.
Tim:
Thank you. It is a sentiment that I am continually bombarded with people asking

questions about how to... I end up being more of a career counselor. I think you
probably do too.
Chase:
It happens a lot. Its following your passions. Steve Jobs said it, You cant connect
the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.
Knowing my career as an artist and being involved with the iPhone app allowed
me to see scale-able technology. Millions of users really quickly. Im like, Oh my
god, it took me five years to build an audience of a million people, and then I
did it in five weeks. All of that feeds into CreativeLive. Those are very disparate
things.
Tim:
How did you navigate the transition from, for lack of a better term, solo printer.
Youre a die-hard, talented creator whos hustled, made it happen, figured out
a niche, making pretty good money, to building out a company and delegating.
Not getting into all the micro-bits yourself, because I think it seems to me that
one of the biggest challenges that people faceand I face, quite frankly, in a lot
of waysis working on the business, not in the business.
Obviously, you still have the time to do your creative work, which is very unique.
A lot of people are like, Ah, I used to be in the trenches. It was fun to code,
but now Im a management guy. Ah, well, thats just the way it goes. Youve
managed to do both. How did you navigate that? What kind of decisions did you
make? What kind of epiphanies did you have? Maybe you could talk about that
a bit.
Chase:
Sure. I think intention plays a really big role in all of the scenarios you carved out.
That ad hoc thing you were about, Just do this and this and this.
Tim:
I was just waving my hands.
Chase:
Yeah, it was good.
Tim:
Just fucking word vomiting on you.
Chase:
Yeah, you made some good noises. You grunted a little bit; it was good. I hear
what youre saying.
IntentionI feel like its a little bit of a fantasy life. What do you want to do? It
doesnt matter what youve heard. This is not possible. You cant be both this
and this. You cant work four hours and get to travel the world and live like the
new rich [in Tim Ferriss province] My version of that was I want to be able to
make my living making things. I realized that artists as individuals were not that
scalable. Dr. Dre made more from Beats, selling his headphone company, than
he did from his music, in a year. Just boom.
When I was thinking of an artist and making things, you want to always continue
making things, but you start to look at making and creating as not just the thing
of pushing the shutter, saying action, directing the commercial, or whatever.
Making something thats maybe more scalable and following your passion.
That was, again, something I was told was not possible. Its really looking to
inspiration. Aspiring to the work that other people have done before you and
thinking, Oh my god, I thought it was not possible, and now I see this is possible.
Go back to Bo Jackson playing football and baseball. No one had ever done that
before. Thats mind blowing, but why not? These are the best athletes in the
world. Of course theyre probably good at a lot of things.
You talk about the rebirth of the polymath. That was inspirational to me, and it
helped me unlock a lot of that stuff. I did so very intentionally. What does a life
look like where I get to do this and this and this? If you just walk in the woods,
youre likely to just bump into some trees. If you have a plan...
Tim:
Well said.
Chase:
Sophisticated podcast youve got here, Tim.
Tim:
Best and the brightest.
Chase:
Third and final guest is Chase Jarvis, and the podcast is pulled. Go figure. The
life that has some sort of intention, without being a militant planner. Thats not
my... I think I have a nice balance... I know where I want to go... I want to set some
goals. I have plenty of failure built in there. I think intention is a really overlooked
thing. You have to decide where you want to go if you want to get there.
Tim:
How did that affect what you said no to, like the before and after? You decide
this is what I want. What did you start saying no to?
Chase:
Things that didnt ladder up to the things that I wanted to do. Theres not always
a direct... If I want to be a rock-climbing photographer, then I should say no
to climbing trees. Well, theres still climbing involved so that might help my
climbing skills. That was a terrible analogy, but you get... Theres a connection
there, right? Its not always like, Oh, I only take rock climbing gigs.
Tim:
Do you remember any gigs or clients that you said no to or fired that were
milestones? Not necessarily by name, but...
Chase:
I wont name them, but two things or maybe three takeaways if I can remember
them. Sometimes when I say three things, I can only remember two. Later. You
can sub it in later.
Tim:
Cool.
Chase:
One is saying no has a strong effect on the person whos trying to buy something
from me. I absolutely frown on being a dick. Theres no reason to be a dick.
Almost ever in the world, theres no reason to be a dick. If Im turning down work
its like, Thank you so much for thinking of me. Its just not in line with the work
Im doing right now, or The budgets arent quite in line, or My schedules...
Make a relationship be cordial, but theres this beautiful thing of if you are able
to say nousually for a budgetary reasons-when they get more money, if youve
turned them down before, they remember that you were that prize that they
couldnt get. When they do have more money, they are more likely to call you
back if they liked your work.
Being able to say no, mean it. Its a little bit of a luxury, so this is not day one
of photography start saying no to everybody. Youve got to hustle. Once you
are able to be choosy and think on principle, Is this going to move my goals
forward, saying no will often make them come back. I already forgot thing two
and thing three.
Tim:
Wow, we didnt even get to two.
Chase:
Let me try it, let me try it.
Tim:
Any particular clients youve fired. Maybe you had to...
Chase:
Plenty of those. Trying to be cordial. If the scope changes, if the...
Tim:
Dear John, your role in my life has been made redundant.
Chase:
To steal Paretos law, at the end of every year, I think can be said for a lot of
customer or client relationships, you make 80% of your money from 20% of your
clients. Start looking at what does that 20% look like, and how can you find more
people or customers or more X like that.
When someone is a pain in the ass... When they call and theyre a pain in the
ass or the last job they were a pain in the ass, you basically fire them. Not in the
middle of that job, because you wouldnt want to harm your reputation. You do
a kick ass job, you finish all the way through, then the next time they call you are
miraculously busy forever.
Tim:
Indefinitely.
Chase:
Indefinitely busy. You can control it with price. My prices have gotten out of hand
because theres a high demand. There like, What are they? Then you drop, and
theyll say, Well, okay, we can... If you put a price tag out there that was totally
absurd, then you might be willing to take a couple of gut punches to make that.
Understanding where your bread is buttered and what clients are ones you
enjoy working for. Again, keeping in mind that all of these things should ladder
up to the big goals that we were talking about earlier. What do you want to be,
do? Where do you want to go, or do you just want to walk in the woods? Thats
two or three.
Tim:
I dont want to walk in the woods because, as you said, Id just walk into trees.
Chase:
Bump into trees.
Tim:
What are some of your goals currently?
Chase:
I have huge aspirations.
Tim:
Personal, or otherwise.
Chase:
Ill go straight to CreativeLive. I have huge aspirations to CreativeLive. Weve

already educated millions of people in every country around the world. The hope
is that by creating free education, we can make the world a more creative and
a better place. It just so happens that theres a great business model behind it,
which is a freemium one that anyone in the world can watch for free while the
content is being created live.
Tim:
Im smirking just because I have to cut in because I remember, I was so curious

at one point. Obviously, Ive been along for the ride for a while.
Chase:
You launched The Four Hour Chef on CreativeLive.
Tim:
I did, indeed. I think the quality, just the back-end you have on production and
the people you have hired bring a level of professionalism to the production that
is broadcast quality, with multiple cameras. Youve got dollies, stuff on lines.
Chase:
You were going to record this with an iPhone.
Tim:
I was going to record this with an 8-track. Im glad you vetoed me. I think theres
always a market for quality. I was just talking to some entrepreneurs today. Im
digressing for a second. I was talking to some entrepreneurs today and their
like, All right, were going to compete on price against company X. Im like, If
company X has a lot of money or simply doesnt know how to do math properly,
and they want to bleed you, they can compete on price, and they can hurt you
for a long time. But theres always a market for highest quality.
Chase:
Huge kudos to the team that produces this podcast, for one, but all the work.
Theres a passion for quality here for sure, and a passion for education. I have
big goals there.
Tim:
What I was smirking about, if I could just tell you a part of the story.
Chase:
Please keep smirking. Keep telling your story.
Tim:
I remember when you were first telling me about CreativeLive, then I heard
you telling somebody else. Generally youd be like, It doesnt matter if youre a
techie in San Francisco or if youre that 12-year-old boy in Malaysia. I heard that
a couple of times and Im like, I want to meet this 12 year old in Malaysia. He is
a go-getter. That man is on it.
Chase:
A couple of times here more recently, Whether youre in Nebraska or Nairobi. I

dont know where that came from.
Tim:
I like the alliteration. Its true. Just explain the model, briefly. A lot of people
havent had exposure to it.
Chase:
Sure, we bring world-class people in photography, filmmaking, design, any

of the arts, audio engineering, music, the maker movement, crafting, and
entrepreneurship.
Tim:
Business too?
Chase:
Yeah. Start-up week. Guy Kawasaki, Reed Hoffman, yourself, Louis Howell, Ramit
Sethithere are all kinds of really great courses. We bring those people on and
film in super high quality HD, usually between four and eight cameras, and
broadcast live while were making this workshop. Instead of a TED Talk thats like
15 or 18 minutes, this is one, two, or three days with that same quality person.
You go really deep on something. If you tune in while its live, its completely free.
Anyone can watch it. If you do decide that you want to own the thing and watch
it over and over obsessively, live people do with your Tim Ferriss show, then you
have to buy it.
For the people that dont have the abilitythey dont have moneythey can get
all of the same benefits. If you do have money and you prefer convenience, you
just press buy. Its a beautiful business model that cultivates creativity, access,
and community, some of our key values. Its working, too.
Tim:
It is working. On the personal side, what are some of your goals, priorities, and
resolutions?
Chase:
Charlies book, lets get back to that. Play Away Your Anxiety.
Tim:
Play It Away.
Chase:
I dont necessarily suffer from anxiety of the classic, like Im going to seize up
when I get on camera. I keep a lot of balls in the air. Ive got a brain thats whizzing
at three in the morning. The idea of taking care of yourself and finding a way to
play. Charlies example is the home run derby.
Tim:
This is Charlie Hoehn, H-O-E-H-N.
Chase:
This is a refill? Do you get this on the random show.
Tim:
Im going to have to switch to Ginger and Jack. It looks pretty good.
Chase:
How about it? Thats a big Ginger and Jack, with no rocks. The idea of introducing
play, because we work very, very hard at CreativeLive. As a creative professional,
long hours, lot of stuff, lot of balls in the air. Weve got investors. Your ass is on
the line, so to speak. Just taking 30 minutes or an hour to try and find some way
to play, to be active in a day is just incredibly helpful for me. Kudos to Charlie,
wherever you are out there.
Tim:
What have you been doing? What have you built in?
Chase:
Horseshoes. Theres a horseshoe park by my house in the Green Lake area of

Seattle. Its lit, so you can have a really intense work session and then after work
or at midnight, you can go play horseshoes.
Tim:
When you go, do the meth heads come and congregate and try to catch the
horseshoes? What happens?
Chase:
No, no. Its a totally random thing. Im not like a big horseshoe guy.
Tim:
I was thinking, That guy looks like he throws a mean horseshoe.
Chase:
You know Kelly Starrett? Good friend of ours, Ill say. He recommended
Dave Warner, whos an athletic trainer, former Navy SEAL, in Seattle. Ive got
terrible shoulders from a couple of blowouts with football and soccer. Ive had
reconstructive surgery and theyve never really quite been the same. Kelly,
from his knowledge base, and Dave Warner up in Seattle, they have an amazing
approach to physical therapy. Theyre bad-asses. Theyre mobility experts. Im
working from the ground up on rebuilding the small muscles in my shoulders,
instead of just doing the big stuff, so that I can surf again.
Surfing is a big passion of mine for a long time, and I cant really paddle out. The
swimming video you sent to me, Total Immersion. My shoulders have been so
bad, so Im being really physically active, going to see those guys, Dave, at least
twice a week, sometimes three times a week, so that I can enable some of these
passions of mine, like surfing.
Tim:
Cool. You should get some [Inaudible 01:03:22] angles for your shoulders. We
can talk about that.
Chase:
Please.
Tim:
Really helpful for knees and shoulders.
Chase:
Isnt that the guy who rolled the boulder up the hill?
Tim:
Thats [inaudible 01:03:38]
Chase:
Its all laughs, all the time on the Tim Ferriss Podcast.
Tim:
I could have line of supplements thats all named after Greek tragedies. Wow. If
people didnt think I was pompous already, that would really do it.
Chase:
Its that Princeton in you, my friend.
Tim:
I know. It comes out.
Chase:
You can take the kid out of Princeton.
Tim:
Wait. Cant take the mullet off the Long Islander. Sorry. Mixing up my metaphors.
Cool, man. At this point, obviously, youve done a lot.
Chase:
[Whispers] Weve done a lot today.
Tim:
I wont keep you too much longer.
Chase:
Dude, Im happy.
Tim:
Speaking of happy, I wanted to ask you.
Chase:
Speaking of happy.
Tim:
What do you feel have become your top priorities in feeling happy or fulfilled?
What are the things, as you become wiser, that you have learned to prize more
or prize less?
Chase:
Health. Having a Jim Morrison type career where you explode at 28 in a fiery ball
is not cool. The Kurt Cobains, the artist that... We all know the magic, what it is,
28 or 29, whatever that evil year is thats taken so many amazing artists from
us. Thats not cool. Health and longevity, being able to enjoy it, is fundamental.
Until its taken away, until youve had a couple of surgeries, you break yourself a
little bit. Its not to say Im encouraging people to push themselves athletically.
Im not saying go get hurt. Ones health and being active is incredibly valuable.
I feel like an old person saying this next one, which is sleep. I have lived on
four to six hours of sleep for the last ten years. I go really hard, and then I will
nosedive for 18 hours.
Tim:
This is why you can only remember one thing on your list of three.
Chase:
I know. There you go. Ive found a new passion for sleep. I cant evernot never
but I rarely get the eight, nine, ten, but if I get seven, eight, I have a complete
different experience of life.
Tim:
What have you shifted? Has it simply been a matter of scheduling? How are you
making...
Chase:
Its an intention. Should I go out and have one more cocktail with my buddies?
Im going to be more fresh if I go to sleep.
Tim:
Eat some Yoplait, watch some Golden Girls, and call it a night.
Chase:
Thats right. Boom. High-five, Im out. Just prioritizing sleep.
Tim:
Definitely.
Chase:
The third one is meditation. Meditation has been
Tim:
We havent talked about this in a while.
Chase:
You were on it for a good bit, then you said you fell off the wire.
Tim:
I was. I fell off the wagon. You were one of the few people that I credit with kicking
me in the ass to take it seriously. Specifically TM, transcendental meditation, for
those who dont know. Or trademark. I have my issues with almost every form of
meditation. They have pros and cons. Weve talked about them before. Tell me
about your meditation practice.
Chase:
My meditation practice is not perfect, and none are. I just sit down between 15
and 20 minutes, twice a day. Sometimes I only get one time a day. Sometimes
those are a little compressed. Shit happens or youre on an airplane and the
captain comes on and pulls you out of it. Whatever. I make a conscious effort to
just observe my thoughts and practice TM in the morning and in the evening,
before dinner. The analogy that I can most simply put here on your show, its
when youre in the zone, say playing sports or music, and things just seem
effortless. Its called a flow state, Steven Cutlers new book, which is a good
book, The Rise of Superman, check that out, a little plug for his book about
creativity and flow states.
That sense of flow is when things sort of happen in slow motion. Youre not
literally talking in slow motion, but you have the same clarity as if youre going
through life and everythings going in slow motion. Instead of that, Im hypercaffeinated. My boss...
Tim:
Reactive, dodging bullets.
Chase:
Instead your just like, Im driving the bus and were going to go here, and then
Im going to do this. Theres a certain clarity that... Its like magic. Its really
weird.
Another thing, I dont know if you felt this, Tim, but it aggregates. You get good
benefit from one, two, three, four. Then when youre on a good roll, theres this
exponential overdrive. I feel like Im going just floating.
Tim:
I cant explain it either, but for me, and just for those people that might be
thinking like I did for my entire life
Chase:
Like, Bullshit. Bullshit.
Tim:
I dont want people ohm-ing me. And the chakras. Im not into it. Especially
living in San Francisco, Ive developed an allergy to sanctimonious burner types
who want to lecture me about chakras. Im like, Honestly, please, I cant handle
another minute of this. Ive had this aversion to meditation, but when its very
non-dogmatic. When youre not trying to control anything, just think of a candle
flame, just observe your thoughts and be okay with them. Sit with good posture
for this period of time, thats it.

Even if you think its a shitty job and youre running through your to-do list or
things on the stock market, thats okay. Just make it part of your routine. What
Ive found wasand some well-known people who do TM, like Paul McCartney,
Arianna Huffington, David Lynch, Im blanking on his name for some reason, but
Bridgewater Capital, largest hedge-fund if not the world, the United States,
$100 million...
Chase:
Russell Simmons.
Tim:
One hundred billion plus. Ray Dalio, thats it. Russell Simmons. Howard Stern.
Seinfeld. The physiological or psychological effects are so fascinating, like you
said, because youll do it for a couple of days and youre like, whatever. Then you
hit this sort of inflection point where you just drop from 200 RPMs to 150. Youre
like, Whoa. Okay. This is different. The whole week, youre kind of zenned out.
After a four-week period, and I did my first retreat a few months ago before I
volunteered for the masochism that is television production.
Chase:
I could just hit you with a stick for a couple of weeks.
Tim:
If you could put a nail through it first, thatd be great. It really had this tremendous
effect on me that, oddly enough, and maybe this is getting too out there for
some people, but very similar to my experiences post-relatively-high-dosehallucinogens. Its like this extended period of calm and ease in decision-making.
Uncluttered, like you closed every browser on your computer and shut off the
anti-virus, and rebooted the whole thing. That type of feeling. I did fall off the
train. Question for you, because I find the morning session, I usually find pretty
easy. Afternoon...
Chase:
Afternoon is hard. Right now Im thinking, Okay, Ive got to go from here to the
thing to the thing, when will I get my thing in. Like, Oh, shit.
Tim:
Sometimes Ill try to do it in the car, like Uber or whatever. But when do you
typically do it in the afternoon? Im curious.
Chase:
I try and do it before dinner sometime, between work and dinner. Were
entrepreneurs, we work crazy long hours. Ill take it whenever I can get it. Its
usually a little bit less gracious than my morning. Like you said, morning is your
time, you carve out 20 minutes. My afternoon one is often a little more piecemeal,
but its the act. I try not to judge the practice. The practice is the practice.
Tim:
When you meditate, are you sitting cross-legged? Are you sitting with your feet
on the floor?
Chase:
I try and sit in a comfortable chair, flat on the floor, hands on my lap. Theres
a mantra that if you learn TM, youre given a mantra. Say that word over and
over, and if some thoughts come in, Oh, theres those thoughts, bye. They go
away and you just keep doing it over again. Sometimes Im like, Oh my god,
that was 25 minutes. Sometimes its like, Oh my god, that was one minute,
and it felt like a week. Like a week. Not judging that. Lets not continue to talk
about it because its getting weird, because were talking about it so much. Its
a powerful tool that is so simple.
Tim:
Im just mind melding while youre talking.
Chase:
For the listening people, Tim is staring into space. Hes not listening to us.
Tim:
That is, I think, a huge takeaway. It doesnt have to be TM. It could be just about
anything. Building in a pause, which is like a warm bath for your brain. Even
if its for ten minutes a day so that your not in a reactive mode. Its really a
game changer. Physiologically, it had a lot of effects for me as well. When my
cortisol level dropped, I was able to lose body fat more easily in my abdomen,
for instance.
I became very sensitive to alcohol and caffeine. I dropped them both significantly.
Not because I was getting judgmental about it. I was over-sensitized to it. Id
grown immune to the effects, so I could have six cups of coffee a day and be like,
Eh. Then, I did TM for four or five weeks, and I had one cup and was like, Wow.
I didnt realize what my baseline was.
Chase:
It makes you a cheap date too, by the way.
Tim:
Ive always been a cheap date. For those people that might be wondering, Well,
Chase, you started back in this period when YouTube wasnt even YouTube
and you had this opportunity to be the first to be transparent. I could never do
that because now its too crowded and now the world is different. If you were
starting now, starting over, knowing what you know now, as a photographer
well use that as an examplehow would you think about going about it? What
would your process be?
Chase:
I would go straight to... Again, assuming you get good at your craft. You get
good at your craft through imitation, practice, hacking the system, and taking it
from 10,000 hours down to four. Or whatever the system is. Lets just take it for
granted youre good at your craft. In the process of developing skills at the craft,
I feel that the answers are actually in here.
What it is that were all trying to do as entrepreneurs and artists, I think, not all of
us, I dont want to speak for everyoneone of the differentiating characteristics
the zig instead of the zag. How do you stand out in the loud, noisy world? The
answers are in here, and trying to take pictures that no one else in the world can
take. Trying to make things that no one else in the world can make. You are the
product of a unique sort of life and trajectory.
I said it earlier in the podcast that everything is a remix, but what is your version
of the remix? Say I have a relationship with a bunch of celebrities so I might be
able to get a photograph of them in a way that no one else could because they
were on my couch playing PlayStation, or something in a way that youre not
going to see that person.
Thats a terrible example. You get a lot of terrible examples with us here, but the
point is thinking about, What is the unique mojo that I bring, and how can I try
and amplify that? Amplify your strengths rather than fix your weaknesses.
Tim:
Just something that came to mind. If youre not, perhaps, the best person at
capturing something visually, but youre a good storyteller, you have your visual
art then you have an incredible narrative to go with it. When you go into art
galleriesand I dont have the budget for it, but Im a classical type guyyoull
see stuff on the wall, $10 million, you cant figure out what it is. You read the
plaque next to it and youre like, Thats a damn good story. I see how theyre
selling these things.
Chase:
That there is a narrative, and thats is a compelling one. Both of those things
are true for anything that youre positioning, selling, or creating. I want to know
the backstory. I feel that its an underappreciated art to be able to tell a good
story. Thats another weird background thing on me, is I was in a PhD program
in Philosophy of Art. I learned to talk really critically about art. Then you think of
the learned skill of being able to talk about why I shot it like this. That is a part
of peoples experience when they have hired be as an artist in the past. Theres
a value add there that being able to tell a story and talk about what it is that
youre making is valuable.
Rewind a little bit to go back, what would you do? I would focus on doing things
that I know that Im passionate about, that I can do differently, better, or more
uniquely based on whats in here, not necessarily on whats out there. Youve got
to learn from out here, imitate, hack, and steal and all those things that we do.
As soon as you can, start applying it to very personal vulnerabilities.
[Renee] Brown is going to be on my show on April 9th. Darren [Greatly], were

dropping a lot of good books now. I remembered Mark Eckos book is How to
Sell You Without Selling Out. These are other good titles. Vulnerability, what
is a place that you can come from that when youre vulnerable youre actually
showing strength?
Tim:
I remember, I think it was Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite writers, or maybe it was
someone else. When youre writing and you start to feel really uncomfortable,
thats when you know youre starting to get it right. Id imagine that applies to
photography. It applies to everything.
Chase:
I feel it with CreativeLive. The stakes start getting high. Like, Wow. This is going
to be a big deal. Now youre poking some hot spots. I think thats an important
takeaway. There are probably others.
Tim:
Solid, man. Well have everything in the show notes for people to check out.
Obviously, CreativeLive.com. Maybe we could just close on one of my favorite
quotes. Actually its off a commencement speech that everybody should check
out by Neil Gaiman.
Chase:
I was going to reference it earlier.
Tim:
Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Got divorced? Wife ran away with
the pool boy? Make good art. Make good art. That is the bedrock.
Chase:
You dont want to end the podcast quite yet because you said you were going
to come back to a horrifying story that I had experienced.
Tim:
Oh my god. Youre totally right. Im glad you saved me from that embarrassing
call-out.
Chase:
You asked me to save you in your text message to me. I said, What do I need to
do for prep? You said, Nothing, just save me if I need saving.

Tim:
I said, Be your charming and unshaven self and, secondly, if I fuck up the
conversation, you need to save it, so thank you.
Chase:
No problem. Professional saver.
Tim:
Catastrophic, self-inflicted injury. Lets hear it.
Chase:
Im sort of young. I dont remember quite the exact age. Im at a wedding. Im an

only child, so Im just cruising, looking from some otherlets say Im tentenyear-old girl to dance with or something. Just cruising the wedding in my little
tuxedo. Theres this commotion over on the dance floor. Im probably eyeing the
cake or something. Theres a commotion on the dance floor and Im like, Whats
going on over there? I see theres this group of women and then theres the
bride at the front.
She has these flowers and shes doing this thing. Its a gigantic wedding, and
Im in the wings. See if you can follow me in here. Im like, Oh, shes going to
throw that flower. Then Im just banking around the corner, full speed sprint.
Sure enough, she throws the flowers end over end. You have to see this in slow
motion. Full, laid-out swan dive, grabbed the flowers in front of 50 outstretched
arms. Pull it in and come sliding to a stop on dance floor, hand in the air with the
bouquet. Silence, 250 people. And she had to do it again. It was so terrible.
Tim:
Retake. That is so amazing. I think thats the essence of Chase right there.
Chase:
Record scratch. There are so many. Ive got lots of embarrassing moments. I like
being ten; maybe I was eight. I dont know if thats too old to know. Like I should
have known what was going on. I dont know what age I was.
Tim:
You were just overflowing with amazing Pele-like soccer abilities and didnt know
what to do with it at a wedding. Well have a round two. Well have more stories.
Chase:
Thank you.
Tim:
Thank you for coming on the show.
Chase:
My pleasure. I will pimp it. I will share it far and wide, as much I can. Whove you
had so far, and whos next? I feel like I might have jinxed who is next because
you dont know who is next.
Tim:
No, I do.
Chase:
Oh, this is good.
Tim:
Weve had a couple of friends. Actually, everybodys been a friend of mine up

to this point. We had Kevin Rose. Then we had incredible investor, product guy,
entrepreneur Josh Waitzkin, who is the author of The Art of Learning. He was
the basis for Searching for Bobby Fisher, an amazing, amazing world-class
chess player. Hes also taken that framework that he uses for learning chess
and mastering chess to master jiu-jitsu, tai chi push hands, world champion in
the last black-belt in BJJ under Marcelo Garcia. We had a conversation about
learning yourself, talking about the arts, business, making the transition,
common mistakes, all of that.
There are a couple of folks up in the air, but I think that Kelly, in fact, is going to
be our next... The supple leopard himself.
Chase:
Hes been super helpful. I love his book.
Tim:
A special guest along with Kelly. Im going to try a little threesome action.
Chase:
How about that?
Tim:
Its San Francisco. Its in the air here.
Chase:
Sweet. Good luck, man. I will be paying attention. Thanks so much.
Tim:
Ill see you soon. Ciao.
Chase:
Bye everybody. Thanks for staying late.
Tim:
Arigato gozaimasu.
Chase:
Arigato gozaimasu.
EPISODE 14:
SAM HARRIS
Tim Ferriss:
Ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and this is another edition of the Tim
Farris show. Im going to start off with one of my favorite quotes, and I might do
more of this if you like it, each episode leading with one of my favorite quotes.
And this quote is from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, often abbreviated to Seneca.
And it is anger is an asset that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is
stored than to anything on which it is poured. Very, very true, and very fortune
cookie-like. But Seneca was imminently quotable for that and very criticized by
his contemporaries in some cases because of it.
My guest this episode is Sam Harriss. People often ask me what blogs do I read
regularly, and what people do I admire as writers, and one of them is certainly
Sam Harriss. His blog is incredible. You can visit him online at samharriss.org.
He has a PhD in neuroscience, and hes also a very well-known writer. He has
authored several New York Times bestsellers including The End of Faith. He
has written shorter books like Lying, which is a short treatise on lying and the
implications of lying, how to get around it, which I was proofreader for and very
honored to be a proofreader for.
And he is a very controversial fellow. I find many of his views not to be as

controversial as they are when misunderstood, but in this episode we talk about
everything from psychedelics to drug use to religion to spirituality, everything
in between. There are many topics that we would like to discuss in an Episode
2 or continuation of this. So please let me know, let Sam know at samharrissorg
on Twitter, if you like this, and we will do more of it. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for
listening.
Male Speaker:
Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my
hands start shaking.
Male Speaker:
Can I ask you a personal question?
Female Speaker:
No, this isnt an appropriate time.
Male Speaker:
What if I [inaudible] [00:01:57]?
Male Speaker:
Im a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal [inaudible].
Tim Ferriss:
Sam Harriss, my good man. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
Sam Harriss:
Thanks for having me. Congratulations on the podcast.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you. Thank you very much. I was trying to turn back the clock and figure
out how we first met or connected, and I couldnt figure it out. I was actually
hoping that you could tell me. Do you recall offhand how that came to be?
Sam Harriss:
I think we met in a bathroom at the Ted Conference.
Tim Ferriss:
My God, thats right.
Sam Harriss:
Yes, one of those awkward moments where you both leave the urinal and then
you have to introduce each other.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh my God, Id totally forgotten about that. Yeah, that is that is a memory
how did I forget that? That makes me worry about my sort of cognitive health.
Sam Harriss:
The decision of whether you shake hands or not at that point.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, it was extremely awkward, yet at the same time exciting, which is not
the appropriate emotion to have in the mens room, because Id been a fan of
your work for so long. And I was at this extremely surreal, semi-select dinner
where I was clearly not the celebrity, in the same restaurant. And the desserts
I remember this is part of the reason I could have been off were brownies
that were loaded with all sorts of substances that were not supplied by the
restaurant itself.
Sam Harriss:
I missed that dinner.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, right. It may have been the dinner you were meant to attend. Well lets
Ill try to get this train back on the rails. For those people who may not be
familiar with your work, and of course I will provide a lot in the show notes, but
Id love to know how you currently answer the question, What do you do? If
you get that question at a cocktail party or elsewhere, what do you say? Is it
writer? Or is it something else?
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, mostly a writer. My background is in neuroscience and philosophy, and I

still have a toe in the water of doing research in neuroscience. Im doing a Im
collaborating on a FMRI study with a friend at USC right now, which is actually
a follow-up on work I did for my PhD on belief formation. So depending on the
context, Im a scientist, but most I think of myself as a writer. My interest in
neuroscience has always been, from the get-go, was always philosophical and
always purposed toward writing and thinking about the human mind.
And so it was never clear to me that I wanted to be a fulltime research scientist.

It was always my motive to just be able to understand and interpret the work of
the 30,000 plus neuroscientists who are working at this moment, and use that to
change our thinking about the nature of human subjectivity and all of the ways
in which those changes would affect public policy and how we conceive of a
good life and how we think we should be living and what sort of institutions we
create, etc. So its certainly author first in terms of how I show up most of the
time.
Tim Ferriss:
And these are very big topics of course and very controversial in some cases,
and were going to touch on a lot in this conversation. Weve had some great
dinners. Well talk about free will, well talk about spiritual experience, what
that means, especially in the context of science. Well talk about guns, which
just to add, if you didnt have enough controversy already, just to add that to
the mix. But lets talk about the FMRI. Ive spent a little bit of time at the
Sandler Neuroscience Lab in the last six months or so with the Ghazali team, the
Adam Ghazali team, looking at FMRI. What are you looking at in this current or
upcoming study? Whats the subject?
Sam Harriss:
Well, the first work I did with FMRI, and this was part of my dissertation
Tim Ferriss:
Maybe you could explain to people what FMRI is also. That might be helpful.
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, well its the same scanner you go into to get an MRI, a structural scan of
any part of your body. So the scanners the same. But then there are pulse
sequences that allow you to track blood flow changes in the brain with the same
scanner. So you get an anatomical image of the sort you would get of your brain
if they were looking for some evidence of brain injury or disease. But then you
can get a statistical map of blood flow changes in more or less real time. And
blood flow changes track to a first approximation of changes in neuronal firing.

So where neurons get more active, that real estate calls for more blood, and
theres a bit of a time lag. But this method of observing changes in neuronal
activity in the brains of healthy thinking people is pretty well validated at this
point, and it gives you a clear picture of whats going on in the brain than a
similar method of functional tracking, like EEG, that people are probably familiar
with, where youre just getting electrical changes at the surface of the scalp.
Thats very hard to use to localize whats actually going on inside the brain in
various structures.
So FMRI and PET are really the best ways to get a good local picture of changes
in blood flow. And so I did, for my PhD work at UCLA, I studied belief and
disbelief and uncertainty, and looked at what was different about a brain that
believed a proposition, like 2 plus 2 equals 4, versus a brain that disbelieved a
proposition like 2 plus 2 equals 5, and then compared both of those states to
frank uncertainty, you know, you give someone an equation they cant solve,
and they know they cant solve it, and they just dont know whether its true or
false.
And I did that across many different domains of thinking. It wasnt just math. It
was ethics, it was a persons autobiography, it was geography. I think we had
eight categories. And then we did a follow-up study, where we looked at, where
we had selected our subject pools to be atheists or devout Christians, and we
looked at religious belief versus ordinary beliefs. And we found that religious
belief was very much like any belief. So to believe that youre sitting on a chair
or that youre in San Francisco, it had something important in common with the
belief that Jesus was born of a virgin, etc.
Which was really my hypothesis going in, that we have this one mode of
representing reality in our thoughts, and we do truth testing on those linguistic
propositions. And it requires very different kinds of processing to judge whether
a mathematical statement is true versus an ethical statement like, you know,
torturing kids is wrong. Obviously 2 plus 2 equals 4, to parse that and to parse
the statement about torture, those are very different operations upstream in
the brain, but theres a kind of downstream area where they get accepted or
rejected as true or false.
And we found this to be in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, midline, in the

front of the brain. And so we did so now were doing a follow-up study on
belief where we try to change peoples beliefs in real time and look at which is
what it is to actually have your belief successfully changed, and what it is to fight
that evidence and argument, and hold your beliefs, despite counterevidence.
And so that were in process on that.
Tim Ferriss:
So youre looking at the sort of physiological markers of someone being

persuaded or not persuaded and the resistance involved.
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, and were doing it with beliefs for which we would think they would have
no real strong commitment and beliefs that we know theyre going to hold to
tenaciously. So well look at both sides of that.
Tim Ferriss:
Have you and I would imagine that you might have but have you looked at
the methods used to beat polygraphs, and traditional, if you want to look at it
that way, lie detector tests?
Sam Harriss:
Yeah. Well the problem with traditional lie detectors is that they just were not
valid science. I mean theyre not based on theyre not tracking deception.
Theyre tracking anxiety, and then physiological arousal in a very peripheral
sense. Theyre not even were not talking about brain imaging. Were talking
about whether somebodys palms are sweaty. And so there are many tricks to
beating traditional polygraphs. But the fundamental problem is that they just
were going to be beaten by happenstance anyway. Youre going to have truth
tellers who were
Tim Ferriss:
Nervous.
Sam Harriss:
going to be found to be liars, and liars who were found to be truth-tellers, just
because the methodology isnt valid. And the National Science Foundation, at
some point about ten years ago I think, came out and just said this is phrenology.
This is not science and no important decisions should turn on this. But I think
we are ultimately going to have lie detectors that we judge to be valid. I think
theres no special problem in figuring that out. And if you had a belief detector,
which to some extent we already do, simply based on the work I did for my PhD,
you do have a de facto lie detector.
Because if you can tell what somebodys believing, you can tell whether theyre
representing their beliefs honestly. But there are problems with neuro-imaging
based lie detection, and certainly FMRIs incredibly sensitive to motion. So if you
didnt want to cooperate with the process, you would just have to move a little
too much and youd screw up the data completely. So its a work in progress.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you have any opinion of course you and I have talked about lying quite a
bit, given that you wrote a book called Lying, and I read an early draft of that.
Its a fantastic short read. And Im wondering if you have any opinion on microexpressions or analysts who are paid very, very large sums of money to watch,
for instance, earnings announcements of public companies to determine what
is true, what is not, what might be an exaggeration or not. Do you have any
thoughts on that subject?
Sam Harriss:
Thats interesting. I didnt know people were doing that. I didnt know analysts
were
Tim Ferriss:
Entire companies dedicated
Sam Harriss:
or VPs were subjected to that kind of scrutiny. But yeah, thats based on
Paul Ekmans work on micro-expressions. Its very interesting. I dont know
that anyone gets reliably good enough at it to be relied upon by others. I think
I remember Paul Ekman was saying the people who we think are good at
detecting lies are basically at 60 percent or whatever, and most people are just
at chance. And I think there are a few exceptions, but in terms of what micro-
expressions can get you, I dont think I think were going to do much better
with technology. And even just facial recognition technology, I bet, computers
beat people now.

Thats just a hunch. I havent actually followed that work. But if theyre not
beating people now, theyre eventually going to beat people, I would expect.
But what you really want more than the facial display of emotion, is you want to
understand the neurophysiology of deception and just positional knowledge,
what someone knows and what theyre representing, and when those two
diverge. And we have that to some degree. So theres a graduate student in the
same lab I did my PhD work in, who just grabbed my data a couple years after I
acquired it, and did a more sophisticated analysis on it, whats called a machine
learning analysis, where they could look at the single trial level.
So what happens with FMRI work is youre looking at aggregated data, you
know, many, many trials and over many, many people. But if you have the right
statistical tools, you can look at a single question and a single person and see
whether you can differentiate belief from disbelief for instance. And this woman,
Pamela Douglas found that she, with something like 95 percent accuracy, could
tell whether a subject believed or disbelieved a proposition in my paradigm.
And my paradigm wasnt even set up to make that particularly easy to do. But
those machine learning techniques allow us to do that.
And I think thats only going to get stronger, that effect. And at a certain point,
we will all know that we have mind-reading machines in some basic sense. There
may be ways to foil them, but its just if youre thinking about a blue house,
you know, I say blue house, and you have to think about it, you kind of helplessly
think about it on some level. Just the mere understanding of the phrase blue
house has gotten something into your head. Despite your best effort, you cant
pretend you havent understood these words.
And that is reflected in areas of your brain that are going to be I mean theyre
reasonably easy to discriminate now, but at a certain point, I am quite confident
well have a machine which will youll be able to say, What phrase did he just
hear? and its going to kick out blue house, and its going to kick it out for you,
and its going to kick it out for me, and thats my [inaudible] [00:16:31].
Tim Ferriss:
Thats amazing. That could have some incredible just as a language learning
fanatic, that could have some incredible applications for communication, let
alone thought detection. Lets I want to take a step back. I love talking about
this stuff, but theres so many subject areas that the neuroscience touches upon
that the science or the scientific method touches upon but taking it down
to even more a sort of fundamental level, what Id love because you and I
both have the experience of being misquoted rampantly in the media, or having
the game of telephone where someone quotes you out of context and then
something takes on a life of its own.
What are the beliefs that you do hold, that are the most controversial, lets just
say in the last several years? Just so people coming into this, who may be
familiar with reading about you second-hand or third-hand can get a baseline
on some of the things that you believe, that are very hotly debated?
Sam Harriss:
Right. So this is across the board in all my work. Were not talking about
neuroscience per se, right?

Tim Ferriss:
No. This is across the board.
Sam Harriss:
Because I have touched many different topics which, though there are
connections, I see them more or less all of a piece that they can seem quite
unrelated.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats totally fine.
Sam Harriss:
Ive written about gun control. Ive written a lot about the problem of organized
religion and the conflict between religion and science. So Ill just list the
most controversial points. One that keeps coming up is my criticism of Islam,
especially worried about Islam, more so than other religions. And Ive given
my reasons for this ad nauseum. The problem in the current environment is
that any focus on Islam is easily not easily, but it seems to be everywhere
attacked as synonymous with bigotry, and bizarrely, synonymous with racism.
So it has no the Muslim were being a member of a race.
So the thing to tease out here is that the reason why everyones confused on
this point is that we have one word, religion, which covers this wide range of
preoccupations, and its not a very useful word. Its a word like sports. So sports
covers Thai boxing and it covers shuffleboard or curling or something that has
basically no implication to violence or even physical fitness. And not to disparage
curlers everywhere, but what do Thai boxers and curlers have in common, apart
from breathing? Not a whole hell of a lot. Yet theyre both sports.
And so if you want to get at what people are actually doing and the kinds of risks
theyre running and why theyre running these risks and what sort of attributes
you need to succeed at these various athletic tasks, you dont get very far just
talking about sports. The same is true with religion. And so we have the religion
of Islam, and we have a religion like Jainism, which is an Indian religion. It doesnt
have that many subscribers, but theres almost nothing in common between
these except the fact that they both rely on faith in a way that I would argue is
totally unjustified, to make claims about the nature of reality.
But the claims they make are quite different, and the moral attitudes they form
on the basis of these claims are completely different. So the Jains, for instance,
are truly non-violent. This is the prototypical religion of peace, where the more
extreme you get as a Jain, the less violent you become. So you cant even kill
insects, you worry about killing bacteria. Theres the super-extreme Jains who
wear cheesecloth over their mouths so they dont inhale a bug. They look at the
ground continuously when they walk so they dont step on ants. I mean theyre
obviously vegetarian, and theyre just deranged by their commitment not to
harm anything, no matter what.
Now those people are not going to become suicide bombers. No matter how
we mistreat the Jains, theyre not going to start flying planes into our buildings,
and theyre not going to form a death cult that worships martyrs. Its just not
going to happen. You cant make sense of it in light of their core belief.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, its antithetical to the core doctrine.
Sam Harriss:
Yeah. And with Islam, by comparison, you have a doctrine of Jihad, with really
is a doctrine of holy war. You have a doctrine of martyrdom, which says that
the only certain and swift way to get directly into paradise and be with Allah is
to be martyred. And its incumbent upon every Muslim to defend the faith with
violence when the faith is attacked. And its not an accident that people think
that cartoonists and novelists should be murdered for blaspheming, and that
apostates should be killed. Because the penalty for apostasy under Islam really
is death.
So you know, if I convert to Islam today, and tomorrow I say, You know, I just
took another look at the Koran and its just total bullshit. Im deconverting right
now, the penalty for that is death, and theres no one who can tell you that it
isnt except those who are ignorant or are lying about the faith. So its totally
rational to be concerned about Islam at this moment, in a way that one isnt
concerned about Jainism or Buddhism or Mormonism or any other religion.
And given the level of white guilt in this world, and our understandable
commitment to pluralism and multiculturalism and our guilt over the crimes
of or the errors we have made in our own foreign policy, and the previous
crimes of colonialism, its so easy for people to claim that a criticism of Islam
is tantamount to bigotry or racism. And they get away with it in every liberal
newspaper on earth at the moment. Theyve almost successfully made it
impossible to parse this issue, and its a huge problem. So thats the first thing
thats hugely controversial in my bio.
And then wrapped up in that are lies about positions Ive taken. So for instance
in my first book, The End of Faith, I talk about essentially the game theoretic
problem of nuclear proliferation and the possibility of nuclear war, and its very
brief. Its like two paragraphs I talk about how we had this doctrine of mutually
assured destruction with the Soviet Union, and that worked because no one,
no significant number of people on either side were eager to die and get to
paradise.
And I said that were not going to be able to have a doctrine of mutually assured
destruction with a regime that has long-range nuclear weapons that can reach
the major cities of the United States and Europe, that is peopled by essentially
the Taliban or Al Qaeda or the psychological equivalent of the 19 Hijackers. If we
are in the presence of people who we are sure are really ready to be martyred,
and they love death as much as we love life, and we believe that thats who
were in the presence of, and they now have this technology, then the first use
of nuclear weapons becomes a matter of life and death.
And its just an obscene situation for us to wander into, and we have to anticipate
it. Now that all got summarized by some very unscrupulous people as I call for
an immediate first strike on the entire Muslim world, and Im eager to kill 500
million people. And theres some people, real journalists, like Chris Hedges or
people who used to be real journalists, who have gone around telling people that
I have called for a nuclear first strike on the Muslim world, which is absolutely
untrue.
But I dont think theres a common thread on me anywhere that doesnt have
somebody in it saying, This guy wants to drop nuclear bombs on 100 countries.
So in any case
Tim Ferriss:
No, its frustrating in cases, as someone who feels that they know you and at
least have spent time with you, I feel like one of your gifts is being able to, in
many cases, dispassionately and rationally judge the facts or the circumstances,
and then come to conclusions that you might describe, whether or not they
are popular. And this makes you a target. And obviously if it bleeds, it leads
type of journalism will lead to mischaracterization, which is really unfortunate.
And there are many things that are sort of artfully omitted, like your this was
something I heard in the Jerogen podcast episode that I guess maybe one of
several youve done, but your thoughts on Malala.
So I mean Id be curious to hear you just elaborate on that because its so often
sort of omitted. I mean correct me if Im wrong, but I mean she was your pick
for the Nobel Peace Prize. Am I right in saying that? Or would have been?
Sam Harriss:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, she deserved it more than almost anyone I could think
of. But I think its also a very good thing she didnt get it because her security
concerns would be even worse as a result. Its amazing. I mean these are things
that people dont want to really reflect on. But when she was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize, her popularity in Pakistan went way down, and the Taliban
has kept asserting that theyre going to kill her and she would be even more of
a target had she won it. But no, I said she was the best thing to come out of the
Muslim world in 1,000 years.
I think she is just an absolute hero, and someone who deserves all of the
celebration shes received. Its just this is a thing that reveals whats so crazy
about this whole Islam-ophobia, this idea that criticism of Islam is tantamount
to some kind of bigotry or an animus against Muslims as people. Everything I
say about Islam, Im saying about the doctrine of Islam and its consequences on
the behavior of people and their thinking. But this has nothing to do with being
bigoted against Muslims as people, and certainly not bigoted against darkskinned people or Arab people. And one of my main concerns about Islam is
the amount of suffering visited upon Muslim women throughout the developing
world.
So people like Malala, you know, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman
for the crime of going to school. And what scares me about that situation so
much is that in most circumstances, youd think, well any guy who could do that
must be a psychopath. He must be some guy like James Holmes or Adam Lanza,
or one of these spree killers we have here who represents nothing other than
his own psychopathology. But thats not true. You know, I dont know anything
specific about this Taliban gunman, but what I know is that its statistically
impossible that all jihadists are psychopaths.
And we know enough about the biographies of many of these men to know that
these are not low-functioning, depressed, suicidal people who have nothing to
live for. These are functionally the quarterback of the football team decides hes
got lots of opportunity in life, and he may have a degree as an engineer, but then
he also decides that dying in defense of the faith and getting to paradise is the
best use of his life, and oppressing women who should be who essentially have
no other purpose in life but to reflect well on the honor of their men, oppressing
them is a totally rational thing to do and a necessary thing to do.
And so yeah, I think Malala is a great symbol and deserves all the praise shes
gotten. The reason why she is celebrated to the degree she is, however, apart
from her obvious virtues as a speaker and a person, is that she has not repudiated
Islam. She is Muslim and a believer, and still just a kid in many respects. But
someone whos very much like her, who is often vilified on the political left, is my
friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali whos a Somali woman who emigrated to Holland, fleeing
a forced marriage when she was 20, and very quickly learned Dutch and got a
degree in political science and became a member of the Dutch parliament.
And there in parliament fought for the rights of Muslim women living in Holland,
who were living with men who had imported all of these same practices of female
genital mutilation and other forms of coercion. And her collaborator on a film,
Theo Van Gogh, was killed, and a note, [inaudible] [00:30:00] murder was pinned
to his chest with a knife. And she has ever since lived in essentially perpetual
flight from Theocrats who want to kill her, and also under the perpetual shadow
of criticism from liberals who attack her as a bigot because she says, very much
in the same terms Im expressing here, that there is a unique problem with Islam
at this moment in history.
That Islam is not just like every other religion. It is certainly not a religion of
peace, and all of the oppression we see of women in the Muslim world is not an
accident. It actually has a very strong scriptural foundation. For the crime of
saying those things, as a woman who came from Somalia, who suffered herself
female genital mutilation and has been running from bearded men who want
to kill her, she still doesnt have the right to say that you might have noticed
that she was just invited and then disinvited by Brandeis University. She was
offered an honorary degree, and then there was protest by a handful of Muslim
organizations, and they disinvited her and removed the honorary degree.
Our liberal institutions are getting bullied by Theocrats under the guise of
political correctness and multiculturalism, and its really, its depressing.
Tim Ferriss:
So if you take this I mean Ive observed this, particularly for lack of a better
description, I mean its sort of the people who are most worried of being labeled
racist themselves, sort of liberal white males, are the first to dogpile on people
almost in a new form of like McCarthyism, to label others racist. Which is sort
of the ultimate cop-out in terms of character assassination in a lot of ways. And
what is the if we take that behavior, which is becoming very, very common,
and it then becomes this horrible sort of self-perpetuating phenomenon where
people are more and more disinclined to speak out against things they think to
be wrong, for fear of being labeled racist or whatnot.
If this sort of trend continues unabated, where does that take us? I mean
where do you think thats going to end up, where its like, all right, you cant no
cartoons, no this, no teddy bears. When you sort of extrapolate this out, if there
are people who intervene to try to correct this sort of madness on some level,
what happens? I mean where do we end up?
Sam Harriss:
Well, to some degree, weve slid halfway there, I think. I think we have and
I argued this at one point on my blog, in a piece I think the title was The
Freedom to Offend an Imaginary God, who got a fair amount of play at some
point when it came out. Something had happened in the news I now forget
what and I wrote about it there. And the point I made is we actually have
already forfeited our free speech on this topic voluntarily. I mean weve just
given it away with both hands. We technically have free speech, but just think
about an example I gave in this piece, is just think about a play of the Book of
Mormon, and imagine trying to stage a play, a similar play about Islam.

What would have happened? So what happened with the Book of Mormon is that
the Mormon Church wasnt happy with it. And the way they protested is they
took out ads in Play Bill for the Mormon faith. Right? Which is a totally cute, good
natured maneuver, to try to trump the virtues of their religious bamboozlement,
in the context of its criticism in this play. But no one can seriously argue that we
could stage you know, Trey Parker and Matt Stone could have staged a play
about Islam when they put Mohammed on their cartoon, South Park, they put
him hidden in a bear suit.
There was a bear I dont know if you remember this, but that a bear that was
supposed to be Mohammed in a bear suit. Even that had to get taken off the air
because of the security concerns raised at Comedy Central. So we have been
successfully bullied into self-censorship on this topic. And it has a huge cost. I
mean when the Danish cartoons were published, there was not a magazine in
the United States who would publish them, except for one, The Free Inquiry,
which is this tiny atheist magazine. And even that was removed from the stands
at every I think it was borders at the time in the country.
And television stations wouldnt show these cartoons. No one could see how
benign these cartoons were because in all the controversy about them, we
wouldnt show the cartoons to ourselves because we were so afraid of the
consequences. And yet, they were genuinely newsworthy because the thing to
have recognized about those cartoons is they were totally benign. I mean these
were the most boring cartoons anyones ever seen, and yet people were being
killed in dozens of countries over them. There were literally riots and embassy
burnings.
And we have this crazy double standard where we have politicians saying no,
no, this has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is really a religion of peace. And
yet the same politicians, at the same moment, are beefing up security on their
embassies and closing embassies and taking heroic measures not to be the
object of violence that they know is coming because of how fanatical millions
upon millions of Muslims are in dozens, scores really of countries. And this
self-censorship is not just happening in the developing world or in Europe, that
arguably has a more radicalized Muslim population, its happening in the States.
And its just a huge so I have security concerns. Theyre nothing like someone
like my friend Ayaans or Malalas. But people see what a hassle it is to deal
with the consequences of making sense on this issue, and the hassle ranges
from real security concerns, where you have to take steps not to get injured
or killed, to just the hassle of being criticized as a racist by people who just
havent thought this through, or people who are just cynically using that angle
to defame you.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. No, that makes sense. I want to shift gears just a little bit because a
lot of these are very inter-related. Theres the sort of anti-religion [inaudible]
[00:37:06] work that you have, which youre very well known for. But and
correct me if this quote isnt correct, but theres a quote here that is, Theres
nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many
religions. Compassion, awe, devotion, feelings of oneness are surely among the
most valuable experiences a person can have.

Assuming thats true, and you and I of course talked about altered states and
youve written about altered states, Id love to just dig into that expression or
that quote rather, and look at the alternate approaches that youve perhaps
explored or researched related to achieving some of these valuable states.
Sam Harriss:
Mm-hm. Yeah, yeah. So in the beginning of my career, as you point out, I spent
a lot of time criticizing religion and criticizing it for its obvious harms. But one
of its harms thats not so obvious is that it keeps us talking about this positive
end of human experience, the self-transcendence and highly normative states
of consciousness in first century or seventh century terms. And most people
most of the time think that the only way to capture spiritual experience and
ones interest in it and the ways in which one would explore it, is to some degree
indulge the myth intoxicated language of the Iron Age.
Theres just no way to talk about it otherwise. Science hasnt given us the tools
to talk about it. Secular culture doesnt give us the tools to talk about it. And so
were left talking about being Christians and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists,
and organize our lives around those really incompatible the incompatible
truth claims and doctrines that you find in those religions. And people, very
smart people who are secular in every other way think theres just no alternative
to that. And so one of my main interests now is in articulating an alternative.
Because clearly, there are extraordinary experiences that people have, and
many of these experiences do lie at the core of many of our religions.
And so Im going to take Jesus as an obvious example. Who knows who Jesus
actually was? And what is historically true in the New Testament? But lets just
say for arguments sake that there really was a guy who loved his neighbor as
himself and had this extraordinarily charismatic effect on the people around
him, and bore witness to this possibility of kind of radical self-transcendence.
Well clearly that whatevers true there is deeper than Christianity, and its not
reducible to Christianity. In fact, Christianity has to be a distortion of that truth.
And we know this because Jesus isnt the only person thats had that experience.
Theres the Buddha and countless [inaudible] [00:40:08] through the ages can
attest to this experience of, for lack of a better phrase, unconditional love. And
that has some relationship to what I would call self-transcendence, which I think
is even more important. And so theres this phenomenon thats clearly deeper
than any of our provincial ways of talking about it in the context of religion. And
so theres a deeper truth of human psychology and the nature of consciousness.
And I think we need to explore it in terms that dont require that we lie to
ourselves or to our children about the nature of reality, and that we dont
indulge this divisive language of picking teams in the contest among religions.
So yeah, my next book thats coming out in the fall is called Waking Up A
Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. And its about the phenomenon of selftranscendence and the ways in which people can explore it without believing
anything on insufficient evidence. And one of the principal ways is through
various techniques of meditation, mindfulness being I think the most useful one
to adopt first.
Theres also the use of psychedelic drugs, which is not quite the same as
meditation, but it does, if nothing else, reveals that the human nervous system
is plastic in a very important way, which means your experience of the world
can be radically transformed. You are tending to be who you were yesterday by
virtue of various habit patterns and physiological homeostasis and other things
that are keeping you very recognizable to yourself. But its possible to have a
very different experience, and its possible to do that through pharmacology. Its
possible to do that through some kind of crisis, or its possible to do it through
a deliberate form of training like meditation.
I think its crucial to do because we all want to be as happy and as fulfilled

and as free of pointless suffering as we can possibly be, and theres all of
our suffering and all of our unhappiness is a product of how our minds are at
every moment. And so if theres a way to use the mind itself to improve ones
capacity for moment-to-moment well-being, which Im convinced there is, then
this should be potentially of interest to everybody.
Tim Ferriss:
So a couple of quick questions on all the subjects. The first Id like to touch on,
meditation, and I think we can probably touch on this briefly, is something weve
discussed before, you along with many other people who are high performers
in their respective fields, have recommended meditation. So I have been
meditating, partially in thanks to your influence, for some time now. Is it safe
to say that the meditation that you most frequently recommend to novices is
Posner meditation? Or is that
Sam Harriss:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, got it. Why is that? I mean Ive experimented with a number of different
types, transcendental meditation, the Posner of course, and have taken a
number of courses. Why that selection? Why that choice?
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, it has a few obvious strengths that are actually not shared by any other
technique I know of. The first is that it doesnt it neednt presuppose any
belief about anything. I mean you dont have to develop a fondness for the
iconography of Buddhism. You dont have to care about the Buddha. You dont
have to believe in rebirth or karma or none of the doctrine of Buddhism need be
adopted in order to get the practice off the ground. And never need be adopted
if it never makes any sense, which much of it doesnt. You dont have to become
a Buddhist to do this. And you dont have to add anything strategically to your
experience as a mechanism by which to meditate.
So youre not adding a mantra. Youre not visualizing something that isnt there.
You dont have to look at a candle flame or do anything to your environment
by way of artifice to create the circumstance of meditation. All youre doing
is paying exquisitely close and non-judgmental attention to whatever youre
experiencing anyway. So and the first technique you use to be able to train that
capacity is to focus on your breath, which you always have with you and its just
an easy object to focus on. But it doesnt even have to be the breath. I mean
mindfulness is just that quality of mind which allows you to pay attention to
sights and sounds and sensations and even thoughts themselves without being
lost in thought and without grasping at what is pleasant and pushing what is
unpleasant away.
Its just being wide open to the next sensory or emotional experience that comes
careening into consciousness. That is mindfulness. And so in some sense, its
not even a practice. It is just the state of not being distracted and being aware.
And it feels like a practice in the beginning because its hard to do. Were so
deeply conditioned to be lost in thought and to be having this conversation with
ourselves from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, its just
chatter in the mind, and its so captivating that were not even aware of it.
We are essentially in a dream state. And its through this veil of thought that
we go about our day and perceive our environments. But we are just talking
to ourselves nonstop. And until you can break that spell and begin to notice
thoughts themselves as objects of consciousness, just arising and passing
away, you cant even pay attention to your breath or to anything else with any
kind of clarity. And so initially you have to develop some concentration and
get mindfulness tuned up so that you can pay attention. But once you can pay
attention, it doesnt matter what you pay attention to.
Theres nothing in principle that is outside the meditation practice. Theres

nothing thats in principle of distraction. You dont need a quiet environment.
You can have loud construction noises going across the street, and its just as
good a circumstance for meditation as anything else. And so those are the
main reasons why I think its the in terms of being designed for export outside
of Buddhist culture or religious culture generally and becoming a tool for our
intellectual lives in a secular, scientific context, I think theres nothing like it.
Tim Ferriss:
What resources would you suggest for someone who wants to try to educate
themselves or dive in as a novice, in terms of books, resources, websites, for
mindfulness and meditation?
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, well I gave a few on my blog. I wrote an article a couple of years ago
entitled How to Meditate, and if people Google that, theyll see I link to a few
books and I tell people where they can go on retreats, and I briefly describe the
practice. I also have given a couple of guided mindfulness meditations I have
put on Sound Cloud, which are on my website as well. So people can and there
are other guided meditations out there that people can use. In the beginning,
people find that very helpful to have somebodys voice essentially reminding
them to not be lost in thought every few seconds.
Its because what happens in the beginning for people and this happened
to me in my practice for at least a year I think it was a year before I went on
intensive silent retreat. I was just sitting for an hour a day or so, just on my
own since I was 20 or so. And essentially I was just sitting cross-legged and
thinking. You know, its so hard to notice that youre lost in thought, that by
tendency, youre just not going to notice it. And so in the beginning, people
think theyre meditating, and theyre really just lost in thought. And it wasnt
until I did my first ten-day Posner retreat, where I broke through and connected
with the practice in a way that I realized, wow, all of that that has preceded this
was really my thinking I was meditating and not meditating.
And there are other landmarks along my journey that are like that, where it
was a shift where I realized wow, what I thought was happening, really was not
happening as I thought it was. And thats a very common experience. So in the
beginning, using a guided meditation can help cut through the chatter in a way
that many people cant summon on their own.
Tim Ferriss:
Related to cutting through the chatter, people ask me well let me take a side
step, which is people ask me what blogs do you read. And there really arent many
blogs that I read consistently, aside from a handful. And partially I read your blog
and the posts you put up because theyre like feature magazine articles in many
cases. And theres one you wrote in 2011 called Drugs and the Meaning of Life.
And youve written about this subject before. I have found certain hallucinogens
in particular to be very therapeutically valuable for cutting through the chatter
and sort of turning that off and brining present state awareness to you in a very
high definition way, when used responsibly.
And of course, as you point out in this piece, its not to say that everyone should
take psychedelics. But Id be curious to know, you know, one of the lines here
and it needs to be read in context, of course. But I have a daughter who will
one day take drugs. Of course Ill do everything in my power to see that she
chooses her drugs wisely, but a life without drugs is neither foreseeable nor I
think desirable. And then you obviously go through the sort of how you might
guide her to view these different subjects.
And one of the closing lines in this paragraph is, but if she does not try a
psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that
she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being
can experience. And I agree with this. Id be curious to hear sort of what particular
drugs or psychedelic substances you found most therapeutically valuable in
your own life, and how you suggest people think about this. Obviously there are
you have to put the potential legal ramifications in perspective also, but what
have you personally found most valuable and how so?
Sam Harriss:
Yeah. Well again, you found another paragraph where I was happy to court
controversy, by saying that Ill be disappointed if my daughter doesnt drop acid.
But the caveat here, and the caveat comes out several times in that piece, is
that
Tim Ferriss:
Which everybody should read it in full. Im not trying to pull anything out of
context. I just dont want to read to the whole thing to them now.
Sam Harriss:
I stand by every word. But there are a lot of words in there. And the caveat really
is that, you know, I have an increasingly healthy respect for what can go wrong
on psychedelics. And wrong in a way that I think has lasting consequences
for people. And so theres a lot that can right with psychedelics. And to some
degree, I think theyre still indispensable for a lot of people. They certainly seem
to be indispensable for me. I dont think I ever would have discovered meditation
without having taken, in particularly, MDMA, but MDMA and mushrooms and
LSD, all played a role for me in unveiling an inner landscape that was worth
exploring.
But for that pharmacological advantage, I think I was just my consciousness

was such that I looked inside, I saw nothing of interest, and thats sort of the
end of the conversation. You tell me that theres something profound to witness
about the nature of my own mind. I dont see it. I just want to get on with
the next thing in the world that seems fun to do or seems likely to lead to my
success. I just was, you know, a skin-encapsulated ego who was just trying to
get on with life and succeed, and thought he was very clever, and didnt have
the contemplative tools to see much of anything when he paid attention.

And so thats the situation that many people are in, and many smart people
are in that position. So Im constantly meeting scientists and philosophers and
highly articulate people who spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of the
human mind. And when I talk to them about meditation or really any of these
philosophical issues for which an ability to pay attention to the nature of your
own consciousness is an advantage. So something like free will or the nature of
the self or the possibility of self-transcendence, Im meeting people who have,
as far as I can tell, no ability to notice their inner lives.
Its people who, some of them seem simply not to have inner lives, but theyre
the people who are very much the way I was when I was 18 and before I had any
experience with any of this. It was just youre lost in thought and you dont know
it, and that phrase lost in thought means nothing to you, and you dont have the
tools by which to do anything with it, even if it meant something to you. Youre
cognitively closed to the data. And the data are there to be found, the most
important point of which is the self you think you are is an illusion.
The sense of being a self, riding around in your head, this feeling of I, this feeling
that everyone calls I, is an illusion that can be disconfirmed in a variety of ways.
It can be its boundaries can be transformed in ways, or it can be completely
cut through and vanished for a moment or a minute or potentially for the rest
of ones life. So its vulnerable to inquiry, and that inquiry can take many forms.
But the unique power of psychedelics is that, whether or not they and this is
theres a unique power, theres a unique liability. The unique power and liability
is that they are guaranteed to work in some way.
And this is a point that Terence McKenna always made. Terence McKenna was
a huge booster of psychedelics and a very articulate one, and he pooh-poohed
any other spiritual methodology, meditation and chanting and yoga, anything
else that people brought to him, saying, Well you cant you kind of get the
same benefit without drugs? And his point was, well, if you teach someone to
meditate, teach them yoga, theres no guarantee whatever that somethings
going to happen. They could spend a week doing it. They could spend a year
doing it. Who knows whats going to happen?
They may just get bored and theyre going to wander away from this thing, not
knowing that there was a there there. If I give you 5 grams of mushrooms or
300 micrograms of LSD and tell you to sit on that couch for an hour, you are
guaranteed to have a radical transformation in your experience. It doesnt matter
who you are, this freight train of significance is going to come bearing down on
you, and we just have to watch the clock and know its going to happen. And
thats a fact. So thats the advantage because youre guaranteed to realize at
the end of that episode that it is possible to have a radically different experience
than you tend to have.
And if you have a good experience, youre going to realize that human life can be
just unutterably sublime, that its possible to feel at home in the universe in a way
that you couldnt have previously imagined. But if you have a bad experience,
and the bad experiences are every bit as bad as the good experiences are
good, you will have just this harrowing encounter with madness. And its as
pathological as any lunatic whos wandering the streets, raving to himself and
completely cut off from others. You can have that experience, and hopefully it
goes away, and in virtually every case, it does go away.

But its still rough, and it still has consequences for people. Some of the
consequences are good. I happen to think that it gives you a basis for
compassion, in particular for people who are suffering mental illness, that you
couldnt otherwise have. But its not an experience that Im eager to have again.
So I havent my healthy respect for the power of psychedelics has led me to not
take many for many years. Its been years since Ive taken anything, and my use
tapered off in my 20s when I got into meditation and was spending more time
on retreat and beginning to feel that I was getting kind of hitting the center
of the bulls eye with meditation in a way that I was certainly not guaranteed to
with psychedelics, that I basically stopped using everything, and just practiced
meditation.
But theres no question that I wouldnt have become sufficiently interested in

meditation but for the experiences I had on LSD and MDMA in particular.
Tim Ferriss:
Have you had any experience with DMT or Iowaska?
Sam Harriss:
I havent. I havent. Ive always DMT is the one thing now that would be
tempting because I havent done it and it has such a short half-life, even the
whole trip is something like ten minutes long.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, if not shorter. Yeah, five to ten minutes.
Sam Harriss:
So in terms of - yeah, yeah, it would be tempting, but I havent done it. What
about you? Have you done either?
Tim Ferriss:
I have tried DMT, which I believe is dimethyltryptamine, which is sometimes, if Im

not mistaken, referred to as the spirit molecule. Its become an area of research,
although some of it might not qualify as what you would consider research. Im
very fascinated by DMT. My experience with it was unique, not terrifying. And
Id like to actually come back to the fear component. It was a very manageable
experience, complete physical and psychological disassociation, where there
was just, for me at least, pure white. So it was just pure white and extremely
acute hearing. Now what element of that hearing was actually external stimuli
and what component of that was a hallucination, I cant say.
It was a good experience. I dont feel compelled to repeat it. And Im sure youve
had those experiences. Iowaska and the more extended sort of ceremonial
context is something that I do have plans to experience. And Ill report back
when I have more to report, but I found that, at least for me, the form factor
of the substance of course has an impact on your experience. And that can
be related to the ritual or the process of consuming it. But it can also be
pharmacological, in so much as I drink Yerba Mate tea very often, and became
a huge fan when I lived in Argentina. But I dont typically consume say the cold,
ready-to-drink Yerba Mates or the pre-bagged Yerba Mate that you steep as
you would a normal cup of tea.
I really I go through the process of putting the chippings, if you want to call
them that, into the gourd, with the sticks and everything, and I sip it over a
period of hours. And I feel like the biochemical effect is very different from
say mainlining it by chugging 16 ounces. And I felt like the DMT was the kind
of crack cocaine version of the Iowaska experience. And so Ive noticed for
myself at least that a slightly longer period of time using say a higher dose, you
know, 5 to 9 grams, and thats a very personal thing obviously Im not a doctor.
Dont [inaudible] [01:01:36] on the Internet, but is a reset. Psilocybin has a huge
persistent therapeutic effect for a period of months in some cases.

And Im hoping to get that from Iowaska in a way that I did not with the five to
ten-minute DMT experience. So thats where I currently stand. But Id be curious
to know if you have any opinions on how someone can decrease the likelihood
of having a horrifying negatively life-impacting experience with hallucinogens. I
mean Ive been of the thought for a while now that lucid dreaming could provide
some degree of rehearsal and practice with separating reality from irreality, or
sort of objective truth from that which youre creating in your own mind, to give
you a slightly greater degree of comfort when you go into a psychedelic state.
Whether or not thats true is, of course, up to debate.
But do you have any thoughts on what characterizes the people aside from
some type of latent psychosis or split personality disorder, what can someone
do, or what should they do prior to a psychedelic experience to minimize the
likelihood of having a hugely negative experience.
Sam Harriss:
Its something I really dont have an answer for that Im confident in. I would just
be parroting the standard advice about set and setting, and your mental set
going in, and your physical setting, and your social setting, obviously do a lot to
set the trajectory of any experience. But theres a lot of uncertainty in there. You
know, Ive had experiences where my set and setting seemed perfect, and I just
got catapulted into hell for reasons that I never understood. And theres no way
to go back and understand them. And Ive had absolutely blissful experiences
under conditions that were more or less identical.
What I did find though is once I started having negative experiences, I continued
to have them. Its like the door to hell had been left ajar. Whereas previously, it
just hadnt existed. I distinctly recall what it was like to hear about bad trips on
LSD, and to have no idea what that could possibly mean. I had done LSD maybe
seven or ten times at that point, and this is again, in my early 20s. I approached
this very I was a very committed, serious psychonaut, someone whos really
doing this not recreationally, but really doing it to discover something about
the nature of my own mind, and to get free of suffering that I couldnt really see
otherwise getting free of.
And so at one point I was taking acid, I think once a month. I was an undergraduate
at Stanford, and was on the side basically reinventing the 60s for myself. And
reading about Eastern philosophy and had just started learning to meditate.
I hadnt yet gone on my first extended retreat. And I was taking I used an
isolation tank once, and I was really trying to I had virtually no guidance apart
from books, and I was just trying to explore all of this. And I would say for my first
ten trips on LSD, there was not even the subtlest intimation of the possibility of
feeling bad on this drug.
I mean I just got launched into an experience of just the most diaphanous and
gorgeous profundity, where the world was it was just this shimmering reality,
bathed in energy, and I was a part of that energy. And all of the language of
traditional mysticism made sense in a good way, without any of the dark night
of the soul stuff coming in. But then the first time so you picture it, going
into each subsequent trip, you would think, well now my set and setting have
to be perfect because my expectation is that Im going to just recapitulate this
perfectly sublime and happy experience.

Im taking the same batch of LSD. Ive now got this down to a science in terms
of where I want to be and who I want to be with while I do this. So Im in beautiful
nature, Im in near woods or Im just alone in my apartment listening to good
music or whatever it is. But Im safe and theres nothing sketchy thats going
to set me off, and Ive never had a bad trip. But there was some first trip that
went haywire, and then subsequently, no matter how good the highs were in my
subsequent trips, there was always something where I saw, wow, it could have
just gone sideways there, or did go sideways for some period of time.
And then the cost began to seem potentially too high for me, and the upside,
I felt like I had already gotten the benefit of essentially having advertised to
this possibility of being much wiser and happier than I tend to be. So then I
just decided I would go at it through another door of meditation. But like you,
I felt that the half-life of the positive effect of these good experiences was on
the order of weeks and months. But I also felt that the half-life of the negative
effects was just as long. So I had one bad trip and I felt three months later,
I was still dealing with the neurophysiological consequences of that, and the
interpersonal consequences.
Tim Ferriss:
Was that LSD? Or what was the substance?
Sam Harriss:
That was LSD. Yeah, so it seemed like it really seemed like a crap shoot. It
just seemed like you were going to spin the wheel and see whether youre going
to be a saint or a madman for the next ten hours. And obviously you had a
preference for which it would be, but not much control over which it would be.
And the other issue for me with psychedelics is that what now I consider to
be the crucial insight that is the center of the bulls eye for what I would call a
spirituality that is coincident with a 21st century psychology and secular science,
the center of the bulls eye insight comes to this point of the nature of the self
and whether or not its an illusion, and whether one can cut through that illusion
at will.
If, when you look for yourself, you fail to find it in a way that is clear and compelling
and frees you from the tyranny of your own thoughts and the suffering you
were experiencing a moment ago, thats the center of the bulls eye for me.
And the ability to do that is available through the practice of meditation. And
psychedelics dont address that issue in a precise way. I mean you can be hurled
past any self-problem on the right drug, and experience this glorious freedom
from self. But one thing that you get with that is that you get this understanding,
which I think is salacious understanding, that somehow freedom is dependent
upon altered states of consciousness.
Unless youre seeing everything in technicolor or its at the peak of the fireworks
show, youre not going to be experiencing the most profound spiritual experience
you can have. And certainly you are not going to experience it once you come
back down and everything is normal again. But the insight into selflessness that
you get through meditation is that ordinary waking consciousness, precisely the
consciousness in which we are having this conversation and which I can see my
phone, and if you tell me to turn up the volume, I can do that. You know, I can
get my keys and I can get in the car and I can drive safely.

Ordinary consciousness is already completely free of self, and that can be

recognized. The place you want to be able to run that experiment is in ordinary
waking consciousness. You dont need to be experiencing synesthesia for the
first time on Iowaska and seeing, as Terence McKenna often described, seeing
peoples meaning visually beheld, and have a complete transformation of your
sensory apparatus in order to experience the relevant loss of self. And thats
the other reason why Im more focused on meditation than psychedelics at the
moment.
Tim Ferriss:
Well that is a topic I would love to expand upon maybe in a Round 2. I always
enjoy our conversations. I want to let you get back to everything that you
need to get back to. What Id encourage everyone to do is read Sams material
directly. Listen to some of the debates or watch some of the debates. Go to
samharriss.org. The post that I referenced earlier, Drugs and the Meaning of
Life is one of many different articles that I would suggest checking out. Another
one is the Riddle of the Gun, which maybe well get into next time we chat. But
this is always fun for me, Sam. We need to hang out more.
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, yeah, likewise.
Tim Ferriss:
And lets have Round 2 sometime. No huge rush, but it would be fun to grab a
glass of wine sometime in the near future as well.
Sam Harriss:
That would be great. I look forward to it.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, Sam. Well thank you very much, and Ill talk to you soon.
Sam Harriss:
Yeah, take care, bro.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, bye-bye.
EPISODE 15:
NEIL STRAUSS
Tim:
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode
of the The Tim Ferriss Show. And, holy guacamole, do I have a treat for you. I
had so much fun with this interview. The guest is none other than Neil Strauss,
a close friend of mine, seven-time, I think, New York Times Best Selling Author.
He has written many books, including The Game, for which hes best-known,
perhaps. Emergency, for which I was a proofreader and, theres a hilarious
story behind that that we get into. And, many, many others.
He has written what many consider The Definitive Rock Memoir or Biography
which was The Dirt about Motley Crew. He has written with people, including
Marilyn Manson, Jenna Jameson on, and on, and on Rules of The Game. The
guy is prolific. He is also and has been Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone,
Staff Writer for The New York Times.
Why am I listing off all of these credentials? Because the conversation that I
have with Neil is about the creative process. How do you become a creative
powerhouse? What are the methods that he uses? What are the tricks that he
has up his sleeves when times get tough; when hes on deadline; when he wants
to create the next best-selling book; when he wants to write a book that can
become a movie; when he wants to create a business and hes built some very,
very profitable businesses which is something not many people know.
So, this entire conversation, I hope you enjoy. If you want a Part Two; if youd
like the hear a Part Two please let Neil and I know on Twitter. And, two other
things: No.1 This episode is brought to you by you guys. Im not going to
browbeat you with advertisers. I want to avoid that. But, this thing has to be
self-sustaining. The podcast takes time, and does take money to put together.
So, please visit the Tim Ferriss Book Club. Go to fourhourworkweek.com/books.
Ill give you a second to write that down.
This is a book club kind of like Oprahs book club. Every month or two I promote
a book that has changed my life that really never made it into the limelight a
book that never got the attention it deserved. And, this ranges from books on
investing, to learning, to travel, to philosophy. Theyre super fun, so check them
out: fourhourworkweek.com/books. Please take a look. That would help the
show.
Last, for show notes, all of the links, urls, book recommendations, and so on all
you have to do is go to fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, no numbers
fourhourworkweek.com/podcast for all of the goodies.
And, without further ado, Id like to introduce you to Neil. I hope you enjoy the
show. And, thank you for listening.
Tim:
Neil, my good man. Welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show. Thanks for making the
time.
Neil:
Cool. Thanks for having me. And, congrats on the podcast, by the way.
Tim:
Thanks. I am selfishly bringing you into the fold, in part because I want to pick
your brain on creative process and interviewing but well get to that. For
people who may not be familiar with your work, how many New York Times Best
Sellers do you have now? Six, seven, 12, 20?
Neil:
Yes. Seven.
Tim:
Thats incredible. Id like a number seven. Three of them just about killed me.
Im not sure I have more books in me. But, you didnt start off writing books, as
I understand it.
Neil: Right.
Tim:
What was the path that you took to get to writing your first book?
Neil:
You know, whats funny is I recently had my family send everything Id ever
written all of my old grade school stuff. I thought I had written my first book
later in life than I actually did. It turned out when I was in second grade I wrote
a book, and I tried to get it maybe it might have been a little later. Maybe,
fourth grade however old you are when youre 11. But, I actually wrote a
book and tried to get it published. I sent it out to publishers and agents with a
note saying, Hey, I wrote a book...
Not only did it get rejected, but I never got a single response back from a single
agent or publisher. So, it really veneered me to rejection. Which is cruel. Who
would not send a letter back to some poor kid?
Tim:
It makes me have even less sympathy for the traditional publishing world than
I already do, perhaps. But, you really cut your teeth as a journalist at The New
York Times, and other places?
Neil:
Yeah, I worked for The New York Times for about ten years, and Rolling Stone
forever.
Tim:
Speaking of rejection, you have a letter from Phil Collins framed on your wall.
Neil:
Yeah. I had reviewed a Phil Collins concert, and it wasnt that good. I was really
trying to be gentle in the review, but I guess he got upset. I got this two-page
handwritten screed in the mail, and the last words are: Well, Neal, fuck you.
Phil Collins.
Tim:
Wasnt it on hotel stationary?
Neil:
Yeah. Its on The Peninsula Hotel. So, I called his publicist just to make sure it
wasnt a fake, and that he was staying there at the Peninsula Hotel. And, I think,
later on TV in some interview he said that he regretted writing this letter. Its
funny because I did a book about interviews called, Everyone Loves You When
Youre Dead and, it just really goes to show you that everybody out there
whos succeeding on a high level in this culture has this persecution thing going
on.
No one Ive interviewed doesnt feel if you really get down to it feel like
theyre not respected by their peers; theyre not respected by the press; nobody
understands them; no one understands what theyre doing. And, were talking
even beyond Phil Collins level. Were talking Chuck Berry level who invented
Rock and Roll. It seem that as long as youre living depending on what you
pay attention to you will always be criticized for doing great things. And, the
greater they get, the greater the criticism becomes.

Tim:
How is your approach? Id love to dig into the nuts and bolts of how you approach
the creative process. How has your writing changed, if at all, from when you
were on deadline, writing pieces for The New York Times writing pieces on
the shorter side and book writing? One thing thats always struck me and,
its given me a lot of insecurity is that I do feel like I get writers block. It can
last for extended periods of time. But, when I talk to my friends who are trained
journalists, theyve just seemingly eradicated the concept of writers block from
their mind: I dont have a choice. I have to have this in by 5:00 p.m. I dont have
the luxury of thinking about writers block.
How has your process changed, and what are your recommendations to people
who are trying to really write something substantive for the first time.
Neil:
I will say something which is: Writers block does not actually exist. Ill tell you
how I know. I was speaking to a group, and I thought, Im going to have them
do an exercise. And, I had them write something really challenging. The first
sentence I had them write the most interesting first sentence you can possibly
write. Something interesting has to be the second sentence. I took them
through five sentences. This one, I want you to write something that makes
somebody feel something emotionally. Now I want you to tie this in.
I made it really challenging. I gave them just a few minutes for each sentence.
Everybody completed the exercise everybody in the room People who are
not writers; people who are professional writers; people who are screenwriters;
people who think that theyre not writers. And, it proved to me that theres
no such thing as writers block. Writers block is almost like the equivalent of
impotence. Its performance pressure you put on yourself that keeps you from
doing something you naturally should be able to do.
Tim:
Interesting. Okay.
Neil:
So, writers block: The reason you dont get writers block as a writer is because
you have a deadline; it has to be in; you have no choice. But, if you sit there,
and you think, This piece has to be the ultimate article; the ultimate book ever
written; my entire selfish being is wrapped up in this; and, this is me. The
more, and the bigger of a story you make up about what you are doing, the
bigger the block will get. Because, it has nothing to do with the talent of writing
or the skill of writing. Its all completely performance anxiety.
Tim:
I read a quote recently, which I thought was very applicable to me, because I
have a tendency to put the weight of the world on my shoulders when Im trying
to write things, which doesnt help
Neil: Right.
Tim:
And, the quote was: The essence of creativity is fucking around. I think
theres some truth to that. But, when youre writing to avoid some of that
pressure I know weve talked about this before, but for people who havent
heard this because it was a long time ago you do a number of different drafts,
or revisions. And, theyre for different people. Could you just expand on that?
Neil:
Yeah. I would say that if I can give one tip to anyone that will help get their
things done its: When you start writing, write to the end. Just write to the
end. When I start writing something, I try to get a nice couple of first pages or
first paragraphs because its a nice little balance, or a nice sort of weight to
drop the rest or my book or project on. So, you can spend some time on that,
but when youre done, just write to the end. Just get it all done. Get the story
out there. Because the truth is that its not really until you get to the end of
what youre writing that you really even know what it is sometimes; or where its
going; or what its going to become.
So, you just write to get to the end. And, your first draft is only for you. No one
is ever going to see it, so you dont have to worry about it. Youre not going to
turn it in. Youre not going to show it to friends to evaluate because its only for
you. And, the fun part about that first draft is when youre done, somewhere in
that mess of words you just wrote the entire book. The entire book is in there.
And, you dont have to deal with anything else. Youre done with your notes
because you put them all in there. All of your thoughts are in there. Somewhere
in that mess is your book. Now you just have to carve it and shape it into the
actual book.
So, my first draft is always for me. Thats the easy part, by the way. The easy
part is the first draft. The tough part is the second draft because the second
draft is for the reader.
...Is this what you wanted me to talk about?
Tim:
Yeah. This is exactly what I wanted you to mention.
Neil:
Yeah. So, the second draft is for the reader. So, heres the thing: Your life may
be really fascinating to you, but most of it is really boring to somebody else.
Your ideas may be really fascinating to you, and maybe youve worked really
hard to get to those ideas, or youve suffered, and agonized, and this thing is
going to change everything. But, some of it is just boring to other people. Its
interesting to you, but its boring to other people. You have to have a filter
on that says: This is whats interesting. This is whats boring. This is whats
repetitive. This is whats new.
So, the second draft is where the real pain comes in. Literally, in the book Im
writing, I just cut out a 125 page chunk that took me months of research, and
months of writing. It had to go, and its a better book for it.
Tim:
Now the 125 that you cut what is the total page count now?
Neil:
The total page count right now is 675 pages.
Tim:
Holy shit. Okay.
Neil:
Thats less than a book, but thats how much it is on a computer screen.
Tim:
Got it. All right, so you cut out a good, say, fourth or third of the book at this
point which was my experience with The Four Hour Chef. I mean, I cut 250
pages from The Four Hour Chef, and it was still a monster.
Neil:
And, that was just a discrete chunk. There were other parts I cut too. So, I
probably cut out 500 or 600 pages in this case. Its usually not that brutal. And,
I had it right there. Heres the crazy thing and just tell me if Im getting too
esoteric because I love talking about the creative process in writing but, this
is the crazy thing, okay? And, I hope that I can say this in a way that people will
understand, and will change what theyre doing: The book is smarter than you.
In other words, Ill sit down to write a book with the intention to write a book
about a certain topic. Ill sit down, and Ill start writing it, and then Ill read it. And
you know what? When I write the truth down on paper, and I look at that, I get
a clean perspective. So, Ill sit down with the intention to write that book, but I
have to let that book become something else sometimes. And, thats the right
book.
Tim:
Definitely. Ive been looking at screenwriting a lot recently, and I heard a quote
which is not always true, of course. But I found it very insightful as sort of a
fortune cookie concept, which was: You dont know the first sentence of your
book until youve written the last sentence.
Neil:
So true.
Tim:
Let me drill into one of the things you said which is: The second draft is for your
reader. Are you actually taking the first draft and allowing other people to read
it, or are you putting on your hat of the reader, and pretending to be the reader,
with their eyes, as you read what youve done?
Neil:
Yeah. No one will ever see the first draft, and I hope if someone saw it I think
it would be unpublishable, and embarrassing, and I would never... The first draft
nobody sees.
Tim: Okay.
Neil:
And, the second draft is I mean, heres the other thing: I think the art of
succeeding in anything in life is the art of empathy. And, this is your empathizing
with whatever your general idea of the reader is. My reader is never somebody
who is a writer/reader. My reader is me, as a reader, probably. I can be reading
a book and thinking, Oh, my god, will this guy just get on with it? If youre
reading a book and thinking, You know what? This guy is not even living up to
what hes writing and saying that hes doing. Hes a total hypocrite. Whatever
Im thinking when Im reading. So, my reader is just me the way I would read a
book critically.
Tim:
Got it. And, whats the next revision?
Neil:
So, yeah. Thats a tough draft. Thats when all those phrases like kill your babies
and let go of these. Thats the art of writing. Everything is in the revisions, for
me.
Tim: Definitely.
Neil:
Then Im done. I have a book, and I feel like its a great story. The third draft
is for the haters. The idea with the third draft is: Okay. Ive written a story.
The story is really interesting, but there are going to be people who have an
opposite viewpoint. There are going to be critics and press reading it. Im never
going to cater to them. Im not going to change my point of view. Im not going
to change my ideas. Im not going to change what I stand for. Im not going to
sensor myself, ever.

But, what I will do is do my best to make it immune to criticism in the sense of:
Im going to make sure that my facts are iron-tight. Ill always hire one, or two,
or three fact checkers because if somebody can just find one weakness, you
know thats it. They can dump the baby with the bathwater: He was wrong
about that. He knows nothing.
But, the second, more important thing is and, I always use Eminem as an
example. You cant really criticize Eminem because hes already in his songs
he already, sort of, impersonates the critics, and then answers them. So,
theres nothing that many people have said about him that arent really already
answered in a book, or accomplished in some self-aware way. So, I really want
to answer the critics; their questions; their critiques in a way that is still fun
and entertaining. So, thats sort of the idea of hater-proofing it. You always get
haters, but you want your haters to be wrong.
Tim:
Right. You have to have a fortified defense against criticism warranted and
unwarranted, right? Reasonable and unreasonable criticism. Can you give an
example from one of your books? I know how fucking secretive you are, so
youre probably not going to dig into the details of the new book, but maybe an
historical example.
Neil:
Yeah. Ill give you a simple example. When writing The Game which is the
book of where I spent two years in this secret sub-culture of pickup artists
and, obviously, Im writing the book for the book that I would have needed in
college and high school, and the book that maybe would have made me feel a
little less lonely growing up. And, Im also trying to make it fun and entertaining,
and mythological, and all of that kind of stuff mythological in a sense that in all
of my books I try to have an underpinning thats a great story arc.
Then I read it. I want to read it from the point of view of somebody whos not my
own, in a sense of a woman whos found something in her husbands drawer;
or her boyfriends closet; or maybe writing for Jezebel, or one of those blogs
and to think, Okay. If they actually read the book, can I write it in such a way
that they really dont find fault with the book itself? They can find fault with the
characters, but not the book itself.
So, I went through, and anytime a woman was referred to in a way that I thought
was objectifying, you know, we just made sure that there was nothing that felt,
you know the woman was not rated by fate of numbers; or every time you
describe them youre not describing a certain body part. Its actually just smart.
Because nobody wants to read that.
Tim:
Right. Definitely.
Neil:
So, that was one way of going through, and just saying, Let me read this so...
So, the first book, you write from your perspective, but the second you write
from your perspective as a reader even more so than your ideal reader, I think.
Because if its you its just going to be interesting to nobody. You put on
different hats. Whats a feminist reading when reading The Game? Another
example is I wished there was a female character in this book, but its based
on my life, and I wasnt really in that community. There wasnt really a strong
female character I had a relationship with, outside of the woman I ended up
dating in the end.

So, I could see that it needs a female point of view, but before each section I put
a culture point quote from a feminist thinker, just to say, Hey, theres another
point of view, and this is what it is. So, in that last draft, youre putting on your
different hats of people who are not your audience, and how are they going to
read the book.
Tim:
That makes perfect sense. I take a similar approach. I often try to address as
many of these points as possible in my introductions or prefaces.
Neil: Right.
Tim:
For instances, in The Four Hour Chef Ill say: Many of my conclusions are based
on the following assumptions, and the following process. And then, at least for
that type of book, to say: Its very likely almost certain that not everything
in this book is 100 percent accurate. So, this will evolve as the book evolves,
and reaches more people, again, to deflect the criticism that it hasnt been 100
percent verified. Because, in some cases, there are theories or speculation.
But, addressing that early because realistically, if people start reading the book,
where are they going to start? Typically, in the beginning, right?
Neil:
And, just to clarify something which is when Tim is doing this, or I am doing
this what youre doing is: A book is like a little world. Its like a software
program. Youre debugging it. Its not like were saying, Oh, no. We dont want
to get criticism. We get a lot of it. Some is deserved; some is not deserved.
But, what were trying to do is create a program that doesnt have bugs in it.
Because, at least in the old book model, you didnt get to do a Version 2. Now
you can do that with Kindle and stuff. But, were trying to create a completely
self-contained world that has no bugs.
Tim:
Definitely. Just like software if you want everyone to be your fan, no ones
going to be your fan.
Neil:
So true.
Tim:
Because, youll have to dilute it to the point that if no one is going to have a
negative response to your book, its very unlikely that anyone will have a strong
positive response. You have to defend against that, and make sure youre
focusing on how many people get it and not how many people dont get it.
But, to that point: How do you currently incorporate feedback from other readers,
say writers and people who are proofreading? The reason I ask and people
might find this amusing is I remember proofreading parts of Emergency, and
the length that you went to with me. Now, granted, weve known each other for
a long time now, and I just remember going to this hotel. I dont know why you
were working out of a hotel. We can talk about that. And, the only reason that
you gave me parts of the book was because you wouldnt tell me what the book
was about.
But I threw out a Hail-Mary and said, Whats the book about? Something
related to Five Flags? And, that freaked you out. You were like, Wait, wait. Did
somebody tell you? Then you would give me something like 40 to 50 printed
pages at a time, in a FedEx folder. And, I would have to bring those back before
I could have the second set of 50 pages. So, how are you currently doing that?
And, by the way, I agree and, maybe you can expand on this that memes get
release accidentally, and you have to be very careful about that. Because books
take so goddamn long to make, right?
Neil: Exactly.
Tim:
You dont want to prematurely release this idea virus so that you cant harness
it later. But, how to you have other people proofread your stuff and provide
feedback?
Neil:
Its a funny thing because Im doing it right now. They come over to the house,
and they read as much as they can tolerate. And, then they come over the
house another day. And, the second reason for that is the books havent had
the legal read yet. So, a lot of them are true life stories. And, when Im writing
from life, I really use the real names when I am writing a first draft and the real
identifying details and characteristics before the lawyers get their hands on it.
So, I dont want it to float around because Im doing a big thing right now, so
hopefully no one whos in my book listens to this So, my great cop-out is when
Im writing about somebody, I usually say, Oh, dont worry. You were comped
as a character. I used pieces of you, and pieces of someone else. So, when
they read it they can say, Those good parts must be me, and the bad parts are
obviously the other person.
But, I write it all down with real peoples names, and identifying details. I dont
want that to get out because Im either respecting their privacy, or I dont want
them to sue me.
Tim:
Got it. The people who come over and read as much as they can tolerate I
remember doing something very similar for one of your books. It might have
been your last book.
Neil: Right.
Tim:
How are you choosing the people you have proofread your stuff? You dont have
to use names, but what types of people do you ask to read your stuff? Whats
your process?
Neil:
So, the truth is that it doesnt matter. It doesnt have to be someone like yourself
whos an accomplished author, and whos been on the Best Seller List. Im just
trying to get as many different people to read it as possible, who are willing to
read it. So, a lot of people think, you know, Ive never hired I think the hardest
thing to find, other than a good writer, is to find a good editor.
Tim: Yeah.
Neil:
So, I really just have as many people read it as possible. I have a process, and Ill
share this with you because I think its good not just for writing, but for getting
any kind of feedback and criticism in life; not just about a project youre doing,
but about yourself. This is just the best metaphor for it. Im trying to remember
who told it to me. I think it was a guy named Brent. He had this basic concept
which is: Its a catchers mitt. So, when someone gives you feedback, you
catch it in your catchers mitt, and you look at it.

One of three things are possible. If its true, then I put it in my head. The secret
to life is not to take it personally. Criticism is criticism on your technique not
on you. People personalize stuff. You catch it, and before you take it in, you look
at it. If its true, you insert it. If its not true, you throw it away.
And, if its a maybe, and youre not sure, you just show it to a couple other
people: Hey, Tim. What do you think of this? Then you reevaluate and decide
yes or no. But, heres the best stuff: You get a piece of feedback. You read the
book. You tell me something, and I dont think thats true. Then my wife reads
it: You know, I think shes wrong. Then I get it from one or two other people.
Then, instead of throwing it away, I look at it again.
And, thats when you get the real truth. So, the more people you can have give
you feedback, and if theres a piece of feedback you reject that keeps coming
back to you, its time to reevaluate that. Then you can get a real epiphany that
changes you. Thats where growth is.
Tim:
How many people do you typically have proofread a given chapter in a book
before you get to the book being locked and done as a manuscript?
Neil:
Its so fun. People think, Ive written a book to the end. Its done. Youre really
only about a quarter done at that point. But, it feels good. You can have a small
celebration. And, by the way, when youre done, dont take too much time off of
it. You have to get right back to it, right away, because otherwise youre going to
forget. Doing a book, or a screenplay, or a big project its a lot of information
to hold in your head.
[Crosstalk]
Tim:
Yeah. Its a lot of connective tissue that you forget, that isnt in the book, but you
need as glue to kind of hold it all in your head.
Neil:
Exactly. And, if you go away for three weeks, it will take you a week or two to
get those connections going again. Lets talk about time management later,
because every time youre interrupted when youre doing something creative,
it takes you 20 minutes to get back to the state before that phone rang, or that
person asked you that question.
So, back to the [00:24:26] [inaudible]. So, there are two stages. One is the early
stage when Im still in the second variation the reader variation I have a
couple of people just read it through, so I can see if its engaging, and not boring.
Or, maybe theres a part Im not sure about, or it feels too long. So, I have two
or three people come in to read it. But, then when I feel like Im all done, and
its being edited at Harper Collins, in my case and, its being edited, then Ill
print it out fully, and have some people read it from front to back. And, really as
many people as will tolerate, to get as many comments, and as much feedback
and criticism as I can.

There are a few people, like yourself, and a couple of other people who I will
always give it to as people whose opinions I take a lot more seriously than my
cable repairman. If hell read it, Ill give it to him. And, you know, if it works for
him, its maybe more important than if it works for you or another author.
Tim:
Definitely, because its tough for a lot of authors to take off their editor/bookwriting hat. They go into the weeds right from the outset, as opposed to just
reading the book as a reader if that make sense. One approach that I took
with the last two books, that seemed to work pretty well I do think The Four
Hour Chef tried to do too much. I think it could have been four or five books,
very easily, and it would have made the positioning of each of them a lot easier.
Neil:
Right. Thats my thing. Im still upset that you didnt take my feedback on it.
It was too hard. You were too invested in it. You were too far along in it. But, I
always think, I really feel...
Tim:
It should have been multiple books. Who knows? Maybe theyll get split up at
some point in the future because they could be. But, where I was going to
go is: I typically give proofreaders three to five chapters. My chapters tend
to be pretty short, and theyre modular, so that will usually suffice. And, then
Ill always ask, What was your favorite chapter? If you had to pick just one to
stay in the book, which one would it be and why? If you had to get rid of one,
which would it be, and why? What I found really helpful is that if anyone loves
a chapter it stays in. End of story. If someone dislikes a chapter, I then need
a consensus to justify taking it out, unless I feel the same way. Does that make
sense?
Yeah. I always do that, too. Its so good because youre looking for criticism.
I also say, Mark what really moved you, or you thought was funny. You want
it underlined. And then, Ill be careful about throwing that out. Thats a great
point. Its true also with Everyone Loves You When Youre Dead which was
an anthology of all of my favorite moments from my favorite interviews. And,
with that, I probably had about 1,000 interviews that I had to cut down. Id have
people come over, and have them do a rating system. Id have a whole pile, and
Id see what rated the highest.
Tim:
And, heres the thing that people often dont get and, tell me if this is true
for you, as well. You often talk about testing a title on Facebook or Google AdWords back when that made more sense. Tell me if Im wrong here, but this is
how I do it, which is thats just one variable. It doesnt mean, Oh, this tested the
best. Im going to do this. Its one input; there was testing. There is your own
intuition. There is what other experts think. Theres what friends think. You put
that all into the mix, versus saying, This just tested well this one only. But, it
must be right, so Im sticking with that no matter what.
Tim:
Definitely. And, I think because the testing was unique at the time that started
spreading around as a story about The Four Hour Work Week I think that
people missed the context, which is: I only tested titles that I could live with
from the outset. So, you shouldnt test like a cyborg, and end up with a title that
you hate, and then use that, because that will ultimately affect the success of
the book, and secondly, most books fail. You could do everything right, and the
book could fail. Can you live with a title you hate even if the book might fail?
And, the answer is: You shouldnt have to.

So, you need to first pick sort of a subset before you test of titles, or content,
or chapters that you can live with and then you do the testing.
On the time management like you said its not a question of: Do you have the
time to do something like run to FedEx, and mail something off? The question
is: Can you afford the interruption? Theres a great article by Paul Graham. I
think its The Makers Versus the Managers Schedule. For a Maker whether
its a programmer, or a writer, or musician if youre in the flow and you get
interrupted, it might take you 20 to 60 to 90 minutes just to get back to the place
where everything thats spread out around you makes sense again. Theres a
huge cost interruption. You go, pretty much, completely off the grid.
Neil: Right.
Tim:
You have some retreat spots. I remember when you were working on your last
book, and I was working on The Four Hour Chef, we had some retreats which
were really helpful.
On the interview stuff because Im trying to get better at interviewing
Neil:
Can I mention a couple of things for time management, because there are a
couple of things that are so good?
Tim:
Yes. Yeah.
Neil:
And, I have no vested interest in this, but there is this one computer program
thats probably saved my life. Its been the best investment Ive ever made at
$10.00, or whatever it costs. I dont know if you have it. Do you have Freedom
on your computer?
Tim:
Freedom. I use something called Rescue Time, and few others, but Freedom is
a fantastic app, absolutely.
Neil:
Its so simple. Its my favorite program in the world. The great thing is it says:
How many minutes of freedom do you want? You put in whatever it is 120
minutes of freedom. And then, you are completely locked off your internet no
matter what, for that amount of time. So, as soon as I sit down to write, the first
thing I do is I put on Freedom because if youre writing or you want to research
something, you research something, and then you get stuck in the click beats
you know rapid rabbit hole. And, what you can do is save all of the things you
want to research, and just research them when that time expires, and youll find
it so much more efficient.
And, now I go a little more hardcore because Im under a real deadline which
is Intego Family Protector. Theyre those children monitoring things. My wife
put in the password, and I can only get on line from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. every
day and from 11:00 p.m. to midnight. Thats the only time I can get on line,
period. It is great. Youll never answer emails faster and more efficiently, and
productively when you know you only have an hour to do it.
Thats amazing. What is it? Intego Family Protector.
Tim:
Neil:
Yes. Intego Family Protector. And again, I dont know the password, so if there
was an emergency that comes up like if we were doing this on Skype I would
have to have her go type in the password. I dont know it.
Tim:
I was wondering why you didnt want to do this on Skype. Thats hilarious. That
makes a lot more sense.
Neil:
So, the bigger problem is not other people interrupting you; its you. You are the
enemy youre fighting. As soon as something gets challenging, the first thing
we want to do is go do something else. And, if you stay there, you can work
through it, but as soon as something gets tough, the first thing we do is find
something else thats not as big, or not as important because we just dont want
to were trying to conserve our energy. Thats the way we are.
Tim:
I was looking at a book on non-fiction writing by Ayn Rand. I think one of the
chapters was called The White Tennis Shoes. Basically the point was writers
will do anything to avoid writing. She said if there are white tennis shoes within
your visual field that have one blemish on them, you will find a way to rationalize
cleaning those white tennis shoes, instead of doing the writing youre supposed
to write.
Neil: Yeah.
Tim:
So, you have to build systems to protect against your lesser self.
Neil:
Right. You have to find where your weaknesses are. So, whatever your white
tennis shoes are you have to make sure theyre nowhere in your eyesight, in
that space in which you write. You have to have the sacred space; that cave
you go to. This is your sacred space. At some points, and when I can afford
it, I dont even let anyone in that room. I dont want anyones energy in that
room. No ones even allowed in there. Whatever it may be, you have to create
your sacred space. There are no clocks in your sacred space, because there is
no time in your sacred space. No one is allowed in there. If there is something
really important, they can slip a note, and you can answer it when you want.
Tim:
So, on the subject of productivity
Neil:
No ones going to want to write when were done.
Tim:
I get contacted by a lot of would-be writers who are actually good writers in
shorter form, often times. And, this is where I know things are headed for
problems. Theyll ask me about all of the marketing stuff first, and then theyll
tell me that theyre going to write a book part-time in three to four months. I
try to discourage everyone from doing a book unless they can allocate at least
a year to it, assuming full-time, Monday to Friday. Id be curious to hear your
thoughts because I think a mediocre book is more of a liability than no book at
all.
Neil:
I agree 100 percent. I think that the greatest distraction people have and, Im
glad you keyed into that is when you start talking about the marketing while
youre still writing. I never think about the marketing, or promotion, or any of
that stuff until the book is actually created. Thats just a distraction for creativity,
and it will hurt your creativity because thats when you start getting writers
block, because youre thinking too much about the audience; the reception;
and, is it going to succeed.

I was always inspired when I was working with Judith Reagan at Harper Collins.
Theres a writer she had that did a book about some famous court case about
ten years ago. I dont remember what the court case is, but Im sure 1,000
listeners know what it is. Anyway, it was a horrible court case where somebody
was famous for five minutes, and she had to get the book out. I think of the
model. So, the writer wrote it in a week. This challenged me. He just typed it
out as she was talking. Then he edited it. He got it on The New York Times Best
Seller List. So, it inspired me to think, How fast can I write a memoir?
So, Joel Stein from Time Magazine was writing that Sarah Palin book. He called
me up, and said, I want you to write my memoir in the quickest amount of time
possible. I said, Awesome. Were going to do this in half a day. Come over for
a couple of hours. Ill write as you talk. Im going to send it to my editors. Well
have the cover, the book, and the design of the book by the end of the day.
So, Ill give you link, but we put this in Time, and they put the link on there. Its a
short, 25 page book. But, its actually pretty funny, and not bad. So, the answer
is: Its focus time. You can still write something great, but you have to sit down,
really focus, and really want to write something great, versus saying, I just want
a book to help my brand, or whatever.
Tim:
There are so many bad reasons for writing a book. But, on the subject of
writing, with most of your books, and certainly all of my books, the books start
with personal experience, and a lot of interviews or interacting with experts of
various types. What have you learned as any interviewer? Obviously, you did it
for The Rolling Stone. First of all, you should mention some of the people youve
interviewed some of the better-known folks, because the list is super long.
And, what have you learned about interviewing that I might be able to use on
this podcast, or other people might be able to use for their various projects?
Neil:
Sure. I love interviewing. Ive basically done any kind of Rolling Stone cover story.
Ive basically covered any musician, and most actors Ive probably interviewed
them at some point. So, its interesting: A Rolling Stone, or an article, or a book
interview is different because you have time to play with. So, thats the waiting
game, and I can talk about the details of that. And, you can choose what you
want to talk about. But then, I got a show a Sirius Radio, and I just did the show
as an experiment or challenge to think, Can I get what I get with someone in
a Rolling Stone interview in just a one hour amount of time that that interview
takes?
So, I created a bunch of techniques for the live interview that helped me get to
that core really quickly. Do you want to talk about live interview?
Tim:
Yeah. Lets talk about the live interview because I think it will translate. I think
the principles are probably quite flexible. So, why dont you talk about the live
interview and some of the techniques that you developed, and are using.
Neil:
Well, lets start with preparation and, this is for any interview. Its tough to
do a really, really great interview. You and I have an awesome rapport, and we
can talk about this, and talk about anything. But, when Im preparing for an
interview with somebody, I will go research everything theyve ever done. Ill try
to read any books on them. If theyre musicians, Ill listen to everything theyve
ever done. Ill try to watch every interview because I just want to make myself
an expert in them. Then Ill write down as many questions as I can think of.

Maybe Ill write hundreds of questions, literally. Then, Ill study them like Im
studying for an exam. Ill mark the ones I really want to make sure I ask. Then, I
get to meet them. Ill take those questions. Ill fold them up, and put them in my
back pocket, and Ill never have to look at them again. And, then Ill let it flow,
but Ill know where I need to go. Heres what theyve said. What have they never
said? What about them is a side of them thats never been seen by anybody
else? The conversation will never hit a dead point. It will feel completely natural
to them, but Ill know where Im shaping and structuring it.
So, every now and then I have a tough one. I had to interview Taylor Lautner
for Rolling Stone who was like the werewolf kid in Twilight. And, I actually
thought it was an assignment for someone else. I didnt realize who it was until
afterward when I got it. So, my goal as a writer is just to be interesting. If you
bore someone, youve committed the cardinal sin of writing. So, I would walk
him into a place where I knew I had a series of five or ten questions that would
lead him somewhere fun, or funny, or entertaining, or interesting. So, the little
segments are almost like if youre a lawyer, and walking someone down a chain
thats going to end up with a unique revelation.
Tim:
Give me an example, or examples of some of these questions. So, you can

answer this a couple of different ways. Give me that, or just questions that
are not person-specific, like, that tell us about this incident; that are good canopeners for getting people to tell you something interesting.
Neil:
Its funny. Everyone thought of making a list like that. Someone wrote: Right
or wrong, no one wants to interview Bob Dylan. And, he once asked Bob Dylan,
Who tells you when youre wrong? Bob Dylan got upset and left the interview.
I think thats a good question. I use that question a lot. But, if I was going to
try to do those canned questions like those cards you get in a game that are
fun. Theyre always good questions but, what I always think about is not what
I want to know, or what the audience wants to know its the art of empathy. I
want to think about, How is life lived from their perspective? How can I get
inside of them? What are the things that they wrestle with, or struggle with?
Like the conversation were having as writers is because you can empathize. Its
useful for me to talk about it. Youre hitting a nerve with me because these are
the things I talk about. If you wanted to talk to me about, Is The Game good or
bad? it would be a horrible interview because maybe Im interpreting that as
judgment, and its just sort of a stock answer, and Im already on the defensive,
so now its going to be boring. But, the questions youre asking are the things
that I wrestle with; the things I think about; the things I probably talked about
today, and yesterday.
If Im interviewing a celebrity, and theres a scandal, or you want to find out if

theyre dating somebody Im not going to say, Are you dating that person? Im
going to say, Whats it like for you when everyone is always trying to speculate
about who youre dating, when you have your own private life that you want to
keep? So, Im empathizing with how they see their reality, not how TMZ sees
their reality.
Tim:
Right. At the same time youre softballing the topic in if they want to hit it. If
they want to swing for it, they can go for it.
Neil:
The real trick for celebrity interviewing types of things, is that the topic that
you really want, but you know that they dont really want to share you wait for
them to bring it up. Once theyve mentioned it, theyve opened the door to it if
you want to get. Its like anything. Its like The Game. Its like getting funding.
Its like dating. If theres something you want from someone, theyre not going
to want to give it to you. So, the idea is that you wait for them to bring up the
elephant in the room.
Tim:
Are there any ways to leave the gingerbread trail to get them closer to it? Are
there any particular examples that come to mind? I know one thing that a lot of
journalists do, which sometimes drives me nuts, but I recognize why they do it
is theyll deliberately give false facts to try to get a correction. So, the rumor
is that youre dating Taylor Swift. And, you hope that theyll come back and say,
Actually thats completely bullshit. Im dating so-and-so. Okay. Gotcha. Now
we can go down that trail.
Neil:
Right. But, thats weak because
Tim:
It is weak.
Neil:
because youve shown: A: Its too tricky; B: youve shown your ignorance about
them; C: youre trying to catch them. So, you might get that one answer, but
youll have a shitty interview.
Tim:
Exactly. But, it is a common technique that journalists use, right?
Neil: Yeah.
Tim:
Very common. The other one that makes me kind of crazy and I had to learn
how to defend against it because its so easy to be misquoted in print So, I
guess what youre saying is... Fill in the blank. And, all of sudden youre quoted
as saying this. You think, Hey. Whatever. I guess its pretty close. Then, all of
a sudden youre quoted.
Neil:
And, thats kind of the equivalent of when youre sitting down to write a book,
and not letting the book tell the story; its you trying to force your story on the
book. Its you trying to force your story on the subject. So, yeah, Im sure thats
a way to get but, its a short-term gain for a long-term loss which is untruthful
journalism. And then, not having a good reputation because of it.
Tim:
In the case of Taylor, where you want it to be interesting, and have a series of
questions that will lead somewhere interesting for the piece itself, how do you
go about doing that?
Neil:
Theres a technique like creating a Yes Ladder. Its kind of a persuasion

technique, which is ask them something safe, and its, Yes. And, ask them
something safer, and its, Yes. You know, as an example which is not far off is,
You seem like a healthy guy. Youre not a smoker, right? No, you dont smoke?
No, no. I dont smoke. Then you obviously never smoked pot, right? Then
you start getting something interesting. Then we got down to traffic tickets.
Then we had this fun game of me trying to find something hes done wrong, or
illegal, like hes never even double-parked, or whatever. So, youre walking
them in a natural way thats fun for them, versus: I want something from you.
Im going to try to get it. Im going to hold it, and keep it from you.

Another secret for interviews is the idea of fractionation, right? Fractionation

and hypnosis is if you are hypnotizing someone and you bring them out of
trance, and then you put them back in trance, they go in deeper the second
time. So, whenever Im interviewing somebody especially for Rolling Stone,
or anything I always try to break it into a couple of little pieces. We do a little
bit of interview. Then we go have lunch or dinner. And, that second interview is
always better.
Tim:
Thats interesting. Thats very fascinating.
Neil:
So, this is something for people with podcasts or radio shows and, I dont know
how relevant this is to everybody. I love this stuff. I love the art of trying to get
someone to be themselves. I think that is really the goal. Because, people go
into interview mode to try to show you how they want to be perceived, not who
they are. So, with my radio show, we first prerecorded, and the first ten minutes
were a complete throw-away. We do the first ten minutes, then go to a break.
But, thats a throw-away. It allows them to get their promotional message out.
They feel like theyve said their message. Beyond their message is a person. I
get rid of their message and get to the person.
Tim:
Thats hilarious. Do they end up being able to plug the stuff that they wanted to
plug by coming on the show?
Neil:
Oh, yeah. Ill plug for you. Ill always tell somebody, and this is true: When youre
going on, and youre trying to promote your business, or your brand, or your
book, or movie whatever youre promoting it goes back to that philosophy.
Whenever you want somebody to do something, and the more desperate you
are, the more they dont want to do it.
Tim: Yeah.
Neil:
Youre selling yourself. If they like you, theyll like what you have to offer. Youre
not selling your book. Youre representing it by who you are.
Tim: Absolutely.
Neil:
So, my thought is its your job, or the hosts job to do the promotions for you.
Your job is to be the most awesome version of you that you can be.
Tim:
Yeah. Definitely. Getting them to trust the messenger, not the message, first
and foremost.
Neil:
Right. If youre somewhere, and they keep mentioning, We do some of those

interviews. And, they keep mentioning their website, and putting a www in
front of it, or whatever it is youre just like, I dont even want to go to your
stupid website. Right? If someone is interested in me, I dont even mention
my book. I dont mention where they find them. I dont mention my website
because my name is on the podcast, and there are search engines that will lead
them there without me having to say it.
Tim: Definitely.
Neil:
And, thats for anybody. Dont go on to sell; go on to represent.
Tim:
Thats excellent advice. I want to be cognizant of your time, obviously. I wanted

to just ask a couple of questions. Obviously, we talk all the time, so we could
just keep talking about this for hours. But, the first is: What books, if any, do
you gift to other people the most? Besides your own books? Are there any
books, resources things that you give to people in the written format?
Neil:
So, its probably one you give away a lot, and youve given it away on your blog.
Tim:
Oh, it could be anything. Seneca?
Neil:
Yes. Im a shortness of life. I have a stack of those that little Penguin edition,
I think it is. So, I give that away a lot. There were other ones I tend to buy a lot
for people. I have a friend right now whom Im encouraging to read fiction. Hes
a voracious non-fiction reader. And, Im a big fan of reading fiction because
especially your audience, and to a degree my audience a lot of people feel like
we have to read self-help books because thats knowledge, and we dont want
to waste any time, and we want to be efficient.
Tim: Right.
Neil:
People learn through metaphor. Thats how the first stories were told. Thats
what the bible is. Metaphor and story-telling are how the brain actually learns
information. If you just get it as data, thats good for computers. Its not good
for human learning. So, I really encourage people to read great works of fiction
and literature A: Because its art; and, B: because Ive learned more about life
from fiction. So, the book I told him to start with was its kind of a deeper one
because hes an artist.
So, I thought that Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 Years of Solitude I just think is a
good book to appreciate. Literature is story-telling in a magic world that can be
weaved through fiction. So, I give that away. Theres a dark, dark book by Jerzy
Kosinski called The Painted Bird. Its really dark, but its un-put-down-able. I
tend to give that away a lot.
Tim:
The Painted Bird.
Neil:
Yeah. By Jerzy Kosinski. Its disturbing though, so. Just know
Tim:
It might be for a plane ride, and not before bed.
Neil:
Yeah. But, its about you know what? Im not going to
Tim: Yeah.
Neil:
But, you learn about human nature through that book. For artists, theres a
book by Milan Kundera that I give away a lot. Its called Life is Elsewhere. And,
this is my interpretation of it, which is probably wrong. Its been a few years.
But, theres someone whos born. And, hes born to be a great artist. Hes going
to become a great poet, but his mother issues, and sort of politics, and peer
pressures of the time turn him into a total hack. And, I think its an analogy for
that choice we all have in life: Are you going to fulfill your potential? Or, are you
just going to give into the peer pressure of the moment, and become nothing?

I was talking with this billionaire friend of mine, and I was saying, Id really like
to write a book about the way your mind works. And, he was saying that the
difference between someone who is a billionaire and a billionaire its so stupid
to even talk about this, but its so is that the people who really think big he
said, The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time.
Tim:
I love it.
Neil:
By not accepting norms is where you innovate, whether its with technology,
with books, with anything. So, not accepting the norm is the secret to really big
success, and changing the world.
Tim:
Thats a fantastic way to warp-up this episode, I think. So, Neil, Im going to ask.
You dont have to say, because people can just use Google and other tools, but
where can people learn more about your work; find more of your stuff? Where
would you like people to find you?
Neil:
After that big speech it would be completely hypocritical to say to say anything.
They can find me in their various ways. On the blog on the fourhourworkweek.
com.
Tim:
I appreciate you not throwing the www in there. All right, man. Many
conversations to be had. To be continued. Thanks for making the time, and I will
hope to have some wine with you soon. Thank you, Sir.
Neil:
Talk soon. Always enjoyable to talk to you.
Tim:
All right, buddy. Bye-bye.
EPISODE 18:
JAMES ALTUCHER
Tim Ferriss:
This is Tim Ferriss and this is the Tim Ferriss Show. To start off, maybe Ill teach
you some Japanese. Theres an expression in Japanese, Saisho de Saigo. Saisho
de Saigo is something you can say when you do something once, you try it,
and you dislike it. There are other usages, but it literally means, First time and
last time. Saisho de, like at the same time, Saigo, the last time. You could say,
Saisho de saigo da. Soria Saisho de saigo da. Or something like that. Saisho
de saigo. Hope you enjoy it. Have fun using it. You can confuse people at your
will. Good to use at the bar.
The episode that you are about to listen to is a fun one. It is with none other than
James Altucher. James is a friend of mine. Weve been friends for a number of
years. He has an extremely eclectic resume. Hes been a hedge fund manager,
an entrepreneur. He has started multiple companies. By some statistics that
Ive heard, 17 out of the 20 failed. Of those that succeeded, hes made tens of
millions of dollars, mostly in tech. Hes published very widely, and is a frequent
contributor to publications, often in finance. The Financial Times, the Street,
Seeking Alpha, and so on.
In this conversation, we talk about a number of things, focusing on saying no.

How do you say no to the things in life you dont want, so that you can get the
things you do want? How do you say no to those invitations that come in? How
do you say no to the wedding invitations? How do you say yes to the big things,
by saying no to all the little things, for instance? We focus on that.
We talk about his business background. We talk about the economy at large.
This is currently July of 2014. Because he sits on the board of several public
companies, he watches employment information very, very carefully. Well get
into that. It is a meandering, joyful discovery of who James is, what he believes,
many of his failures, many of his failings, perhaps, or weaknesses. We all have
them. How do you manage to get around them, and multiply your strengths,
focus on that output as opposed to constantly addressing your weaknesses?
It is a philosophical romp that I hope you enjoy. As always, you can find all show
notes, links, transcripts to these episodes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.
Spell it all out: fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. If you are enjoying these episodes or enjoy this episode, would love your support to keep this thing going,
by going to fourhourworkweek.com/books.
That is the Tim Ferriss Book Club, where I showcase roughly a book a month
that has changed my life and really helped direct me. There are only four or five
up currently, but you can go check them all out. Click through; it will take you to
Amazon or Audible. That helps to keep the show running and allows me to seek
out the best guests possible, and travel to do so, if needed.
Its a labor of love. I enjoy doing it. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Tim Ferriss:
Welcome to another edition of The Tim Ferriss Show, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for listening, as always. Im so excited to have my friend, James Altucher on the show. James, how are you, sir?
James Altucher:
Tim, its great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show, its really exciting.
Youre like being like a rocket ship is blasted into this podcasting world. I just
want to know first when we start, are you having fun doing it? Do you like all
these podcast that youre doing?
Tim Ferriss:
I am. I am having a good time and its really become ... It start off as a labor of
love, a passion project, just an experiment like many others that I do but Im having a really good time with it. I was always curious to see if I would enjoy being
on the interviewer side of the table as opposed to the interviewee and it turns
out that as long as its just a conversation like this will end up being, Im sure I
find I find it really fun.
Theres so many things that I want to know for instance, about you but its not
so often that we get to sit down and I get to grill you like a Charlie Rose or
someone like that. It creates a format that allows me to dig deeper with people
that I might already know or people that I dont know at all. Im really enjoying it.
Youre on the other side of the planet at the moment though, I just want to point
that out.
James Altucher:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
It might not be obvious to this people listening. Why are you in Thailand at the
moment?
James Altucher:
Basically, if you drill the hole right now through the center of the Earth, Im on
the other side so Im in Thailand right now. Basically, Claudia my wife is doing
advanced yoga training and theres a specific place here in Thailand that she
likes to go to and I just tag along and hang out.
Tim Ferriss:
How are you managing the heat over there?
James Altucher:
Its not good, Tim. Ill tell you, its a big problem. I dont know. Youre a traveler so
youre like the type of guy ... If you go to Thailand, Im sure you pick up on Muay
Thai, kick boxing or whatever its called and become the world champion of it. I
go to Thailand and like if its a degree over 90, Im like I got to stay inside, I cannot go outside. Its basically stay inside. Its like a chauffeur, twice a day, calls
me for Pad Thai where I just stuck myself. Ive given up this little carb diet while
Im here because when in Thailand, you have to eat Pad Thai. Its my one role.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. The go-carb diet.
James Altucher:
Yeah. Exactly. Its the go-carb diet. I read while Im here so thats it. I went to the
beach once and Im 10 feet from the beach right now.
Tim Ferriss:
I want to give people some contacts on who you are and I hardly know where
to begin because youve had your successes, youve had your ups and downs
in many different worlds including of course, tech community, you have background in computer science, in investing, in building your own companies.

Maybe we could start with ... and Im sure well talk about some of the outtakes,
not just the highlights but what are the successes that come to mind in business or investing that you could share with people?
James Altucher:
Sure. Like you said, a lot of its been sort of ups and downs but I had a company in the 90s, it was a software/web services company that I built up and sold.
We did the websites for every entertainment company and in particular, every
gangster rap label, we did the websites for them because if anyone saw my picture right now, they could tell Im totally gangster rap.
I sold that when my ... I saw my little sister who was in junior high school at that
time, was studying how to make a website and I figured thats the end of this industry and its true. That entire industry died or transformed within a year after
that and then I was a venture capitalist for a while.
I started hedge funds, I started a fund of hedge funds then I created another
business called stockpicker.com which I sold that business to the street.com.
Then Id been an angel investor for quite a bit. Ive invested in about 30 different
companies. Im on the boards of both private and public companies. Ive written
a bunch of books but also along the way Ive been really, really stupid.
Ive been like a drunken rock star on steroids. I would think to myself, Okay,
thats it. Im done as a human. My goal as a human is finished, now I can do
whatever I want. Im finished being a good guy and I can do whatever I want and
always, I would immediately go broke like total ...
After making millions of dollars like enough money to save a planet, I would then
immediately go so broke, it was like I could have easily check in to a homeless
shelter and nobody would have questioned it. Fortunately, Ive been able to take
some inventory, I guess you would call that. Thats sounds a little 12-stepish but
of course, Ive been able to figure out what was going on with my life and get
things together. Now for quite some time, things had been going very well so
Im happy.
Tim Ferriss:
Youve made millions and lost millions and made it again, and lost it again, and
made it again, and lost it again. Of course its very common to talk about or
write about ways to make money but I find studying the losses is really fascinating. What exactly is going on here? Are there recurring patterns? Are there
any particular symptoms that youre about to lose? The money youve made ... If
you go back and do an autopsy on this up and down roller coaster, what are the
take-aways? What lead to the losses? Are they the same elements recurring or
theyre different things?
James Altucher:
I think its the same elements recurring and I write about this a little bit. I think
essentially, I lose track of my health and I dont necessarily mean like Oh, I stop
going to the gym and then I lose millions of dollars. I mean all types of health. I
start eating poorly, I start drinking or doing whatever. I start emotionally, I start
not spending time with people who are necessarily good for me.

I mean, I do everything thats like almost clich bad behavior and then ... and
just also, I give up on trying to come up with new ideas. We try to innovate ... so
all the things that I did while I was successful like its almost like youre training
for the Olympics and then you decide, Okay, Im just going to completely let
everything go no. Im just going to do this until I die like just being a pig.
I was a pig in every way so I stop being creative and Id stop being grateful for
what I had. I would automatically assume, Oh, I made a little bit of money so I
must be a genius. Instead of being really grateful and respectful, this money I
made and this luck that Ive had and you know, just letting it all go to hell.
The way I reverse it and this took ... I would broke enough that its like statistically significant that I could analyze it. I basically said, Okay, Ive got to get ...
and Ive talked about this with people before but I had to get physically healthy,
emotionally healthy, be around people I love and respect. Theyre just saying
Youre the average of the five people around you. I had to make sure it was a
good five people. I had to keep being creative and innovative so every day, I try
to create and I try to share even in the smallest of ways.
Every day, I try to be grateful for what I have for gratitude and abundance I realized is the same thing. They seem like theyre opposites almost but when youre
abundant in something, its also good to be grateful for that same thing or else,
theres a good change you could take that abundance for granted and lose it.
What would happen is I would take my abundance, were not even talking about
just money or anything but any sort of abundance like relationships or money or
whatever. I would take that abundance for granted and I would start taking risks
with it that Ive never taken before.
Im not a good risk taker, you would think an entrepreneur is a good risk taker but the key to entrepreneurship and really the key to success is to reduce
risks because life itself is risky. Every day we wake up, its amazing we made it
through the night like being born is like a drag. We went through that tunnel and
we survive a bloody mess and were hit by a doctor and then were alive. After
that, everything is risk.
The key to success is mitigating that risk so you can rise above the competition
and enjoy the fruits of not taking risks.
Tim Ferriss:
No, I agree and its always fascinating for me to hear how people define risk
because if you look at say, the covers of most business magazines, you see
profiles of whether itd be Zuckerberg or other titans of industry and theyre so
often praised for being risk takers or throwing caution to the wind and throwing a hail Mary with everything they have. While those make-for-good-stories, I
feel the vast majority of top performers that I know in Silicon Valley for instance
despite any out word profiles claiming that theyre these rash and brush risk
takers are actually very, very expert at mitigating risk.

Like you said, theyre really good at quantifying the knowns and trying to quantify the unknowns even if it means theyre vaguely correct and not precisely
wrong which I think is one of the issues with Wall Street on some level.
For you personally, the idea of a question about one of the companies that youre
in the board of in a second but speaking from my own personal experience, you
have all these external risks and you can address those in various ways as a
writer. Youre a very prolific writer, from my work flow, for me to be productive,
for me to enjoy the work that Im doing, I need to apply constrains and find rituals and routines that work for me and when I stray from that and find myself
improvising on a daily basis, its usually when I have a downward spiral of some
type.
When youre operating at your best, how do you structure your days or your
weeks? What are the rituals or routines that help you to create your best self
and best performance?
James Altucher:
Well, its interesting because routine is a way to mitigate risk like if every day
you say to yourself, Im going to do something totally wild and different today
and at the end of the day, Im going to write about it. You might not do anything
fun during the day or interesting and then you might not be able to write at all,
because suddenly, your mind is going out in a million different directions.
If youre trying to get something done, of course you dont want to be boring
and do the same thing every day. You dont want to be like me necessarily not
go to the beach today but what I do is I always make sure I sleep at least eight
hours a day. Its one third of your life. Sleep is so important for rejuvenating the
brain, for rejuvenating your whole body, for releasing all these Endorphins and
Oxytocin in the body, and generally make you a happy person and able to make
decisions correctly.
I always sleep very well and then, I read. Before I write, I love to read and get
inspired by four or five different writers who I considered to be great writers. Im
reading different writers all the time by each. Theyll diversify a little, three, four
or five different writers and then I start writing.
Then once Im finished writing after two or three hours, then my day is more free
like then, I could feel like Okay, I did the main thing I wanted to do today. I might
do some business. I might have fun but thats essentially the main routine of
the day that I have. Then after that, I try to figure out other ways to be creative
or improve or whatever.
I sort of feel like, I try to get this mindset I want to improve one percent a week.
It seems like a small amount but if you do that, it results in enormous improve-
ments over the course of the year. Id really seen that. By the doing the strategy
and keeping healthy in a way I described earlier, I feel my life has changed 100%
every six months since I started this approach.

Its amazing the change that have happened. Ive been really grateful for all of
these changes but there hasnt been a six month period where my life hasnt
completely changed.
Tim Ferriss:
Just to dig in to these specifics for instance today or yesterday, what were the
writers that you read to inspire you prior to going into your own writing?
James Altucher:
Well, I read a little bit of Nassim Talebs Antifragile which is a very good book.
Tim Ferriss:
Great book.
James Altucher:
I read ... I dont know how to pronounce his name correctly but Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, these are excellent novels.
I read a book called Brain Rules by John Medina whos kind of discusses how
to keep your brain healthy. Im very into game so I always read chess books or
chess strategy just to keep fit with that. I reread The Power of No. Actually, Im
preparing for this podcast because I wrote it a while ago.
Do you ever had that feeling when you wrote one of your books and then its
published and people are asking you questions about it? Youre like Did I write
that? I cant even remember, I had that book in a year ago. I dont remember
what I wrote.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
James Altucher:
I reread that a little bit as well and it was pretty good, I like it.
Tim Ferriss:
Much better than any other possible response. Im going to comeback obviously, I wouldnt talk about The Power of No because theres just the hilarity of all
synchronicities that came together when we were exchanging emails, I think
its amusing. When you are reading these various books, you mention four or
five books, are you waking up and then immediately reading a little bit of these
books or do you read one per day?
Im trying to figure out what the recipe is of your general routine as it applies
to ingesting this information except I find that how people manage ingestion of
information is very ... Its very telling I think about how they manage other things
and in some cases, I think that its very highly individualized also. Theres some
people for instance, I know venture capitalists dont read it all. I mean, all they
read is business plans or decks, investment decks then there are the opposite,
then you have hedge fund managers who read a book every two or three days
but its one book at a time, never more than one.
Then you have people who juggle many, many different books. Im just curious
how you typically go about it prior to writing each day?
James Altucher:
Its very interesting you use the word ingest because I really do think you are
what you eat. A lot of people read the news for instance and so, I think the news
is the worst form of junk food you could possibly ingest like its commentary
an event that are almost certainly not important and will have no effect on any
decisions youre make in your life. Its hastily put together by mediocre writers
who are basically ...
Ive worked in the newspaper, so I know what happens in the news zone. Youre
basically told Find the thing thats going to scare people the most and write
about it in a scary passion as possible. Its like every day its Halloween at the
newspaper. I avoid newspapers, I avoid web surfing. Theres a few bloggers I
read. I go to your blog for instance. Im not just staying in that but theres your
blog, a few other blogs.
Tim Ferriss:
What are the other blogs? Just to name those. Id love to hear your short list.
James Altucher:
I like Seth Godins blog just for his ... hes gotten in shorter and shorter in the
post, but hes always a smart guy. You could see the intelligence come through.
I like the Bloggess, its funny. I like humor-type of writing. David Thorne, he used
to blog, he doesnt blog as much since his books have come out but he had a
humorous blog.
Mostly, I dont even really read that much blogs. I really like to read books that
have been ... Theyre the heavily curated thoughts of good writers. Because as
you know, a book is not just a blog post, its like a blog post thats been rewritten a thousand times combined with a hundred other blog post. This isnt even
a poor description of a book but a book is just heavily curated and edited and
thought out.
I like to start off with fiction because these are the best writers. I make decision
between lets say, literary fiction and like genre fiction. In literally fiction, I like fiction thats so good, you almost wonder to yourself, Is this non-fiction? Did this
happen to the author? Because the style that I write, its essentially non-fiction but people wonder whether its fiction like its so outrageous, they wonder
whether its fiction.
Tim Ferriss:
Like the Yasser Arafat story?
James Altucher:
Yeah. Everybody was convinced I was lying except for some people who are then
make Jihad threats against me. Most people were convinced I was lying, which
I wasnt at all. Ive never lied in any posts. Theres a certain class of authors who
write largely either first person or so close to non-fiction that you cant tell the
difference.
Classic example is like a ... and this is an older example but its like Ernest Hemingway, writes in this sort of almost non-fiction style. More recent examples
or short story writers like Raymond Carver or Denis Johnson or Amy Hempel.
Theres a lot of writers like one of these folks Im reading right now, The Kite
Runner is almost in that genre or James Gray is in that genre.
I always start off with some fiction. The reason fiction also, as opposed non-fiction; with non-fiction, you usually get a writer who is very good at what they
did so lets say someone was a very good physicist. Hes a great physicist not
necessarily the best writer so youll read his book for the physics but not for the
writing.
I always start up with somebody Im reading for the writing and then Ill start
reading interesting non-fiction. Then a class of writers lets say, Nassim Taleb I
mentioned earlier, Stephen Dubner who was on your podcast who wrote Freakonomics with your four hour books, Malcolm Gladwell, these are writers who
have ... It seems like they both studied writing and what theyve done.
Dubner has written a bunch of very good books even before Freakonomics and
then he teamed up with Steven Levitt, the economist and they wrote these
great books together. Nassim Taleb, you could see his first book nobodys read,
its called Dynamic Hedging, its about options trading. Its very, very technical
hard to read book, impossible to read book. Then you could see Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan, hes like Oh, this writing thing is interesting. You
could see his process, how he got better as a writer and now Antifragile is a very
well written book.
Same with Malcolm Gladwell, hes latest books are always ... like I really love Outliers for instance. Its a very well written book. So I focus on non-fiction, where
the writing itself also stands out. Then thats basically what I ingest and usually
at some point, Ill start to get an idea for a post while Im reading and Ill get up
and start writing when I have this kind of ... I always get inspired at some point
while Im reading and I take notes while Im reading on things, on ideas that I
have and usually I write down like 10 to 15 ideas and then I get up and start
writing.
Tim Ferriss:
When you write it, I really enjoy your writing and I think part of the reason I enjoy
it is its so ... youre very good at the lead, number one and I think that having
heard that youre reading fiction in some ways to prime the pump makes perfect sense now in retrospect. Because you always have very powerful openers,
youre really good at grabbing attention but then, youre very vulnerable in your
writing and I think much more so than I am.
Id love to ask you, number one, why do you think your writing has grown so
quickly or the blog lets just say in popularity and Ill just mention a couple of
things, what are the reasons that its taken off in a way that it has which I congratulate you on, I think its very well-deserved. Then the second piece and this
is maybe psycho-analyzing me a bit but one of my most successful posts in the
last year was called Productivity Hacks for the Manic-Depressive, Neurotic and
Crazy and then in parenthesis, like me.

I very rarely do that type of post because I feel like if Im not prescriptive enough,
its sort of a self-indulgent ... it could become a self-indulgent exercise where Im
sort of airing my concerns and worries and frustrations but without handing
people a next action. How do you think about that? How are you able to be vulnerable while helpful at the same time?
Maybe thats a silly questions but its something that I struggle with because
I want to be vulnerable. I dont want people to put me up on a pedestal, some
type of super hero but I worry about what Ive seen in some writers succumb
to which is really just airing their frustrations or problems without helping their
readership. Im not putting you in that category but how do you think about
these things as youre writing or thinking of writing appears?
James Altucher:
Well, I think about that a lot because I think the goal should be ... for any writing, yours, mine, anybodys, both a combination of entertainment so this is how
you keep the reader interested and educational so you have to provide some
value. When I become vulnerable first off, two things happen, one is everyones
interested from an entertainment perspective because when Im vulnerable, its
not like Im saying Oh, my kitchen sink didnt work today so its such a drag. Im
saying, I lost a lot of money then my dad died and I couldnt and help him.
Im saying something thats really something thats been personally emotional and sad for me but also something thats a lot of people at some level, can
relate to. Not necessarily the amounts or the type but everybodys gone to a
period where theyve done it on the floor where theyve been depressed, where
theyve been lonely where theyve been like Oh my gosh, this just didnt work
out. If I failed again, how am I going to be able to face everybody who expected
that I will succeed?
I try to make the vulnerability ... I try to really go a layer deeper which is find
these areas where I have been hurt where Im pretty sure other people have
been hurt in the same way whether its financial or emotional like when you ...
For instance, a common thing is we all have problems in relationships so I had
... everybodys had ... Lets all write about that or family relationships or how do
you deal with a boss or colleagues that are just horrible to work with.
I always try to find stories inside myself that had been really difficult for me to
deal with like super difficult, not just I didnt know how to play basketball so I
took lessons and then I got great at it. I try to find things that were super pain
points for me that I still remember as painful because then Im sure, other people will remember their pain points.
We all have like lets say two or three dozen massive pain points in our lives that
everyone can relate to. I try to basically write about those and then I try to write
about how I attempted to recover from it. I never give advice but I say what I did
and what works for me and maybe that can work for others and I find that over
time from my readership, I can see its work for others so thats made me happy.

I believe in every article, I try to believe but then I try to cover up the bleeding
and show how I did it.
Tim Ferriss:
Its a very uncommon combination of experiences and some literary style for
me, reading your stuff because you have a lot of investment jobs, youve been
an entrepreneur, you built companies and sold companies. Youre on the board
of a billion dollar revenue employment agency, well come back to that yet at the
same time, youre able to be vulnerable and it helps you as opposed to hinders
your career so to speak which I think is awesome.
James Altucher:
Everybody thought it was going to destroy my career like how can you say that?
They would say ... people would Tweet, This is like watching a train wreck in
slow motion. The exact same person would write to me and say, Dont tell anybody but that happen to me also. That happen across the board and everybody
was How can you do this? No ones ever going to talk to you again.
I found since Ive started writing in this style, Ive had more opportunities than I
could have imagined. Every day now, I have to say no to opportunities because
its too many. I just like what Im writing. Its been great, some of the opportunities that Ive said yes to have had helped me out a lot and Ive been able to help
others.
I always make sure like Are you sure you want to do this? Ive also messed up
pretty badly in some cases and they said, Its exactly why we want your advice
or to bring you on the board or you as an investor or whatever. Ive started a lot
of different companies. Weve talked about some of these successes but I failed
that many more so its giving me the full range of experiences and fortunately,
Im one of the only guys whos been totally honest about it. People know Im
unique. Ive got the full range of experiences.
Most other people grow up, lets say, write about entrepreneurship, write about
their successes like Oh, how I made a billion dollar company and Okay, well,
if I have to start, I dont necessarily need the advice of someone who doubt the
ability of our company. I need to know someone whos failed at building 20 other
companies and he overcame that and then build those successful company.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
James Altucher:
Again, people related and became ... theyre like Oh, I feel like I know this guy
so that somebody comfortable like you talk to about their own problems.
Tim Ferriss:
No. I definitely mean ... I think that everyone has failures, stated their unstated
and everyone has skeletons in the closet so if they at least know which skeletons theyre dealing with and youve been transparent about it, Id imagine that
lens a lot of credibility and they trust it.
Now you mention one thing, thats a good segway and that is saying no. This
is something that everyone struggles with at a certain point or at many points.
Its something that Ive struggled with and hilarity of hilaritys the irony of the
four hour work week is that when the book came out and it had an initial print
run of 12,000 copies, no one expected it to take off. It takes off has become this
massive success and its made it all the more important than I actually follow the
rules and techniques and principles in the book including artfully saying no.
James Altucher:
Let me ask you a question about that because when people meet you and lets
say youre working pretty hard that week, do they say, Oh, youre working a 60
hour a week, youre not working four hours this week.
Tim Ferriss:
The four hour jokes are never going to end. I think the most common misconception of course and the reason that people in finance use the book, the reason that people ... I use some of the top BCs and hedge man managers and
others use it is not because they want to work four hours a week but because
the objective of the book first and foremost is to provide a toolkit that allows
people to maximize their per hour output.
If they decide to lets just say get 40 hours worth of work and four hours or do
the same 40 or do 80 just at a higher level of confidence where they can be more
effective in competing against others for instance then, its up to them. I will get
four hour jokes until the day that I die and thats just the tax that Im going to
pay.
James Altucher:
Thats funny.
Tim Ferriss:
What I found for myself and when you mention that youd written this book with
your wife called The Power of No and you explain the premise, I was shocked
and amused because as I mention, I had been and has been collecting notes for
about a year here and there on saying no and how other people say no and how
to say no because I think its such a critical skill and its only becoming more and
more necessary and important with instant access in social media and all these
different channels through which people can get to you or anyone for that matter.
What lead you to write this book? Because of course I was like Oh well, thats
fantastic. If I would anyone to write it, I mean, I think you would be at the very
top of the list.
James Altucher:
We should have interviewed you before we started writing. You had all the notes,
youre the guy ...
Tim Ferriss:
What lead you to write this book? Because I mean, I have a lot of question, well
get to these questions but how did you decide to write a book about no and The
Power of No?
James Altucher:
Well, its interesting you said that you had a hard time saying no then suddenly
the next thing you said was So then, youre going to write a book about saying
no. Its the same thing like your four hour work week, you mentioned in the
book how youre working 80 hours and it was driving you insane then, you figure
it out and you write the book, the four hour work week. Its in the valley of failure
that we sow our seeds of success.
If I was always good at saying no all my life or if you had always work the four
hour work week, youd never would have thought to write a book about it because you wouldnt have understood any other way. Its like I tell people. Im
not going to buy a book on how to pick up girls from Brad Pitt because its not
going to apply to me. Its like a blind man seeing the color red, hes not going to
understand what I have been through.
For me also, it was very difficult all my life saying no. People are pleased and I
was always afraid and still afraid to disappoint people like I want to say yes and
help people. A lot of people are more giving rather than taking and not that Im
such a nice person but its always been hard for me to disappoint people.
Typically what I would do is if I didnt want to do something, someone asked me

if I will disappear. I just would never contact them again and I would never talk
to that person again. It might be like my best friend in the world, literally it just
happen. My best friend asked me to his wedding and I didnt know how to say
no to him. I didnt want to go to it and I have never talked to him since then. Its
really horrible.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
James Altucher:
It was affecting our relationships like in inability to say no. I had to really figure
this out and like you, I was taking notes and Claudia also, my wife, were both
coming at it from different angles because were very similar in this respect
and gradually figured all these different ways. We categorize all these different
types of no that we are unable to say and it was very interesting.
We wrote the book according to those categories like friends whos not say no,
to things you dont want to do. Thats kind of like the basic no, like not being not
assertive enough. It reached all the way towards not being able to say no to the
myths that our parents or society or colleagues put on us like You know, Im
not a big believer and that people should go to college. This is a big myth that
society that you have to go to college and then you have to get the nine to five
job in order to be successful and happy.
How do you identify all these societal myths and say no to them? Then finally, theres things like we talked about saying no to all the messages that are
thrown at you all day long that there are the articles of news, the 10,000 marketing messages and so on so that you can find ... Saying no to these things so you
can have a little piece of quite in your mind. Because ultimately what no does,
its the same thing as the four hour work week, it allows you to conserve your
energy for the things you care about.

If you could say no properly to the people who ask you things that you dont
want to do, then that will conserve your energy so you can do the things. You
have time to do the things and say yes to the things that you do want to do. I
didnt want to be an actor in anybody elses story, I just want to be me.
When you start saying yes to other people that you dont want to, you start to
resent yourself, you start to resent them, you get angry, it will cost your relationship and most importantly, you lose time. I always use the wedding as an
example. Lets say you go to a wedding you didnt want to go to. I know now for
a fact if I lose a hundred dollars, Ill always be able to make that hundred dollars
back. If I lose five minutes or a weekend or a week, Ill never ever get those five
minutes back.
People say time is money, time is not money. Time is much more valuable than
money, an infinite times more valuable than money and no gets you time. Its so
important in life to know how to say no and this is why I had to learn how to do
it and then that gave me the material to write the book along with Claudia, my
wife.
Tim Ferriss:
What would be for instance, lets take a generic e-mail that comes in and its not
from a close friend, its from an acquaintance, maybe someone you knew many
years ago and its a generic Hey, its been so long. Wed love to get together
and catch up like when can you grab coffee? How about Tuesday at 1 pm?
What if you found effective ways to decline that and does it matter if they get
pissed or not? I think theyre very closely related.
James Altucher:
Yeah. You mention its someone you knew so obviously if its someone you dont
know who wants to grab coffee with you, you just simply dont have to respond.
Particularly, what I encourage people to do, a lot of people say ,Well, how can I
get a mentor? What I encourage people to do is first, provide a lot of value to
people and dont just say, Hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee? Because chances
are he doesnt need a cup of coffee from you.
If someone said ... Tim, if someone said to you for instance, I have ten ideas for
how you could sell a billion more coffees of the four hour chef, you might say,
Okay. Lets say you actually writes those ideas down for you, he gives them to
you for free, you might say, Oh, how can I at least write this person back and
say thank you?
Then lets say, he writes ten ideas for you for Ive gotten podcast guest lined up
for you and I think youd like to talk to, let me know. This person, then you might
decide yourself, Okay, maybe Im going to start ... This person might not waste
my time. Im going to start to say yes so then if they ask for a cup of coffee so
okay, thats the person you dont know.
The person you do know where its an old friend or someone you havent seen in
a while but you didnt use to say no to them and they write to you, heres what
I do, I just write back and I say I cant. Now it used to be I would write I cant because I am out of town that day, I might lie or I cant because Im out of town that
day and Im telling the truth so I use to give explanations.

Why do I have to give an explanation? It should be the case like my time is very
valuable to me, maybe not necessarily to anybody else. People always say Oh,
it doesnt hurt to ask but it actually does potentially hurt both sides of the
equation to ask. It just as much hurts them as it hurts me when they ask. I have
to say no and their relationship with me might change because they ask something that was inappropriate like they didnt respect my time enough.
I dont give explanations anymore and I tell them ... I catch myself when I start
giving explanations like Oh, Im sorry, I cant make it. I have a doctors appointment that day, Im really sick. I broke my leg over the weekend or something.
I just say, I cant do it. I hope everything is well. By the way, even when I say
I hope everything is well? I dont lie there either. If I dont legitimately hope
everything is well, I dont say that but usually I hope everything is well with the
other person.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Hope everything is not terrible.
James Altucher:
Yeah. Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Yours truly.
James Altucher:
Hope you live another day and ...
Tim Ferriss:
Theres sort of a two ... I think a common source of overwhelm for people is the
inbox and how to contend with everything that comes into the inbox. If you happen to get what you hope for which is probably success as defined subjectively
in some capacity, chances are youre going to have more inbound requests or
pitches than you can handle. Theres the question of how you say no, theres
also the question of what you say no to so Id love to hear for you for instance
when you look at your e-mail, how are you currently deciding what to say no to
and what to ignore versus respond to in some positive passion?
James Altucher:
Well, its an interesting thing because just like I dont like to read news, I normally dont like to read e-mails. I like to read only good books and so, I have actually
outsourced most of my e-mail reading to India. The reason India by the way is
because lets say someone writes me a really personal letter, its not like theyre
going to ... some random person in Kolkata is going to know me enough and
figure, Oh, Ive got some juicy gossip on James.
I basically have trained a group of people, what type of e-mails to send to me

and what type of e-mails to ignore and they dont even tell me their numbers
and I dont look. Im sure they ignore hundreds of e-mails. Theyll send to me
something like if somebody wants me to speak at an event or if somebody

wants to talk about a company Im involved with or if its from a group of friends
and they know who to respond to. In general ... and they might make mistakes.
I dont know, but in general, I dont read my e-mail.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you provide those rules to them as just to a Word document? How often
do you refine those? What is in the categorically ignore group of e-mail at the
moment? Im curious what kind of stuff you view as currently not worthy of this
non-renewable resource which is time?
James Altucher:
Well, the most important being is can you advice by my start up? I dont respond
to any of those because Im not interested anymore. Im already an advisor in a
lot of startups and Im an investor in a lot of startups and I really love what I do.
I love writing and I love podcasting and being creative. Im just not interested in
business stuff anymore and I ignore almost all of those.
Again, if its somebody from a company that Im already involved with, that will
get forwarded to me. If its somebody who appears to know me and you can
usually tell that in an e-mail, theyll forward that on. If its a family member, they
ignore it and they dont send it to me.
Tim Ferriss:
Are you serious?
James Altucher:
Yeah. Unless its my daughters or buddy, I dont really talk to ... Here is the one
problem with being vulnerable and Ill tell you, Ive never really said this before.
This is the one problem of being vulnerable is that ... and Im assuming most of
my families are not going to listen to this podcast because they avoid anything
Im involved in.
They really or embarrassed that I was admitting all of these stuff that I was failing at like everybody in my family got really embarrassed about me. Its not like
... Ive talked to all of them like I send out thanksgiving invitations to all of them
but nobody responds to me in my family only because of my blog. Ive never
done anything to anybody but because of my blog, basically, my daughters talk
to me and Claudia talks to me and thats about it. Even my daughters once had
a problem with me and I had to really make-up for it.
Tim Ferriss:
If you dont mind me asking, what was the problem? It was caused by the blog?
James Altucher:
Yes. I start off all my blog posts as Facebook posts, because its a way to test
out if a blog post might have legs. I wrote about one of my daughters and feel
like saying, one of my daughters farting so loudly, I asked her if she had sharted. The other daughter writes me, 1 in the morning and shes like Daddy, you
have to take that post down like the other daughters crying about it. The other
daughters like ... so lets say, I dont know what I could say about it, I dont trust
you anymore. I said, I promise, I will never say anything embarrassing about
you ever again.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you tag her on Facebook? Did you name her when you talked about the ...?
James Altucher:
No. Shes so young, shes not allowed on Facebook yet.
Tim Ferriss:
All right.
James Altucher:
She was really horrified because she really does read my stuff like its so sweet,
Id see it in her night stand like shes got choose yourself, shes got a gallery of
The Power of No, shes go the choose yourself stories which I have not really
market it or anything. I just kind of true out there.
Shes got a lot of my books, she reads my stuff but she got really worried. Theres
one case, maybe the parent of one of her friends who would see it so she was
upset and I didnt think she would mind. I took it down immediately and normally when a family members asked me to stuff down, I take it out immediately
and I try never to say anything bad about anybody. Its actually the stuff Ive said
bad about myself that has embarrassed family members like My relatives is
morons, Ill never going to talk them again.
Tim Ferriss:
Im curious about the focus that you have on writing because theres really ... Its
hard to verbalize the joy that one feels when they actually hit the zone in writing
and I generally find writing very difficult. In those rare moments of flow, its just
such an incredible feeling when you really put something down on paper and
maybe its just a paragraph out of five pages that its just gold. You know its
going to resonate and youre happy with it.
Its such an incredible feeling but given that you have business experience, you
therefore have relationships and skills and now you have an even larger platform that you could use hypothetically to generate more income in various ways
and kind of a business capacity, how do you prevent yourself ... What is the selftalk or the way that you keep your self-grounded, realizing I am happiest when
Im writing as opposed to advising the next ten companies?
How do you prevent that fear of missing out that is so pronounced in Silicon
Valley for instance, also in New York like Oh my god, how could I possibly stop
responding to startup e-mails? Because what if its the next Uber? What if its
the next Google? What if ...? I had to keep this treadmill going. How do you prevent that type of position, economics dynamic where you have people building
businesses around you that therefore lead you to full away from what you know
will makes you happy which it sounds like is your writing?
You obviously engaged in business a lot and Im sure that there were financial
drivers for that. How do you prevent yourself from reverting to that person?
James Altucher:
Yeah. Its very difficult because sometimes some things seem so appealing that
youre like How can I say no to this? At the same time, I know that if I just stick
to what makes me healthy and so being creative is ... like you say, its getting
into that flow appeal, that flow is real physically like its Endorphins that rush
into your brain and make you healthier, its like runners high.

I know that money is a side effect of being very healthy, being creative, being
innovative, being around good people so I know that all those things lead to
abundance, lead to money, lead to wealth. I know if I just focus on whats important to me today, the rest will follow.
I dont have to plan out ten years from now whether or not I could ... I might be
dead ten years from now, who knows? I know today, Im going to enjoy if I write
and spend time with Claudia and do the things that I enjoy doing. Now what if
the next Uber ends up in my inbox and its not forwarded onto me which is not
going to be missed out of it?
Ive missed out a ton of opportunities. Ill tell you, when I was a venture capitalist,
there was a company called ... and was at that time, its called Oingo. Theyre
going bankrupt, I could have probably bought 50% of the company for a million
or two million dollars, my venture capital fund was much greater than that and
we decided not to.
They were kind of the search engine business, where they would help rank, how
people are using keywords like what are the most popular keywords. Anyway,
they change their name to Applied Semantics, they got bought by Google for
1% of Google, they became AdSense so they became what is 99% of Googles
revenues and would have been a one million, wouldve turn into 500 million.
We all have examples like that, I have dozen examples where Ive missed out
on huge opportunities. At the same time, Im happy with the opportunities I did
take and the things that Im working out now, so I do have businesses Im involved with now. Thats it, now Id say no to everything else.
I really enjoy trying to figure how I can be creative today and Ive outsourced my
investing. We both have a mutual friend, Kamal Ravikant, and he is well connected in Silicon Valley so I said, Here, you find me the next Uber. Youre better at it
than me. Thats where I left it.
Tim Ferriss:
Speaking of just looking hindsight, being 20-20 at say the Applied Semantics
and that deal, Ive missed some tremendous deals of course as we all have. Do
you know ... and we both have spent time with very wealthy people. Do you know
anyone who was unhappy, made a bunch of money and then became happy or
do you find that people who cant find happiness without the money generally
cannot find happiness when they have the money? If that even happens.
In my mind, I wonder, would you James be happier have that deal happened?
Im not convinced that it would make that much of a difference, I know it sounds
ridiculous probably to a lot of people hearing this on the podcast but Id love to
hear your thoughts on this type of thing.
James Altucher:
Yeah. I think some money makes a big difference. You want to be able to pay
your bills and you want to have some sense of freedom but everybody defines
that in a different way. A great example, Mark Cuban seems like a great happy
guy, I interviewed him on my podcast. For him I think freedom is the ability to
buy the Dallas Mavericks and a plane and do also some fun things.
It seems to me that guy has a really fun life and he seems to be enjoying it and
he work really hard for it. As he said to me on my podcast, he had a passion to
be rich and he got there and I never judge. For me, I have different passions and
having ... Its like here I am in Thailand and it seems like its such a stupid thing
but again, I wasnt even exaggerating, Im literally 10 feet from the ocean. Id
been here, four or five days now, I havent put my toes in the ocean once.
Maybe some me people are going to like Oh, I got to go say hello to the ocean
as soon as they get to a beach. Im just not like that. I like to read, write, talk
to people sometimes. I know that if I had infinitely more money, I know for a
fact when I had more money or its hard to say more but at times when I wasnt
healthy with myself, having more money only made me want to have more money.
I always felt envious of the next level and getting healthy made me realize, you
know what? This is good, Im in a really good spot and Im going to focus on the
things I love because again, I could die tomorrow, I have to do the things I enjoy
today.
Ill tell you one quick story, I was having breakfast with someone who also was
incredibly wealthy but he was telling me about the breakfast he had the day
before with the guy who is worth about two billion. Lets call this guy ... The guy
is worth two billion, lets call him Mike.
Tim Ferriss:
Scrooge McDuck.
James Altucher:
No, Mike. Okay, Mike. Were going to go with Mike. Mike was a very famous guy
who is worth about two billion, runs a huge private equity fund, very well-known.
This guy was telling me, the whole breakfast he was complaining and what he
was complaining about? How is this kid, Larry Page worth 18 billion and Im only
worth two billion? He was complaining the whole breakfast. What a waste of
... all of that hard work and energy to make two billion just to use it to complain
about a guy who made 18 billion.
Money tends to ... Some people say money magnifies your bad qualities, it
doesnt necessarily magnify your bad qualities, it magnifies all of your qualities.
Good qualities, bad qualities and so on. The key is we all have bad qualities and
good qualities, they key for me is to keep working on the good qualities and
trying to start the bad qualities. Because I have that tendency, I have a very addictive personality, I have that tendency like Oh my gosh, Ive got to meet more.
Ive got to please people more. Ive got to impress people more.
A lot of times Ill equate self-worth with net worth until I have to start that quality
in myself and again, focus on the things that make me healthy and happy and
peaceful. Happy is a bad word because happy is related to the word happenstance which is some outcome, outside of yourself. I prefer to become and
peaceful even rather than happy.
Tim Ferriss:
Of course a big part of navigating those waters and sort of steering the ship
towards things you want to do as opposed to things you want to do or a way
from things you feel obligated to that you prefer not to do is saying no. What
are some exercises that you would recommend to help people with no or to get
them started practicing saying no either?
James Altucher:
Its a good word that you use which is practice because it doesnt happen overnight. If someone calls you up and say, Oh, can you ... We havent seen each
other in five years, can you really help me out and lend me a thousand dollars?
Its hard to say just hang up the phone or say no and thats it. I think people go
through waves where first, you can say Let me think about it and then you can
ask other people for help, What should I do here?
At this point like I said, you surround in yourselves ... Youre the average of the
five people youve surrounded yourself with, so you go to these five people and
say Oh, so and so ask me for something, my gut is telling me no but it dont
quite know how to say it. You ask for help from others and one thing we say in
this book is that Well, no is the most important word, help is the second most
important word and not being afraid to ask for help or ask for advice and how
to deal with situations which is important.
You can always feel like people and say, Let me think about this and why you
ask for help. Then you could do no with an explanation Im not going to do this
but I can help you in these other ways or I can recommend you to other people
or you could say ... This requires practice, you could just say, No, I dont think
this is appropriate at this time but that requires practice.
The important thing is theres no quick and easy answer where all of a sudden
Im going to be able to say no. The real key is understanding when you need to
say no and that again, this function of help and also, learning not only compassion for others but compassion for yourself.
A lot of people dont live what I would call lets say a gentle life. They are very
hard on themselves. Theyll be very kind to other people but theyre very hard
on themselves. Thats why they open up every e-mail and theyll return every
e-mail. They want to be nice to everybody and they feel if theyre mean ... Ive
been like this so thats why Im able to say this.
They feel if theyre whats called mean or difficult to one person then thats going to reflect poorly on them and one persons going to hate me and that will
be bad for me. What youre really practicing is not necessarily saying no, but
practicing that you have to be kind to yourself. You have to build up discernment
through all these aspects of health like physical, emotional, mental, spiritually,
you have to use ...

This will teach you discernment of Boy, this person is wasting my time or invading my boundaries. This is a situation where I need to say no. You learn the
situations where you need to say no before you actually learn how to say no and
then it just becomes practice. You practice until you get to the point where you
say no without an explanation.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Thats a pattern that Ive noticed as well. I know Seth Godin does this. A lot
of folks, I think the higher they get, the less explanation they provide partially
because ... and Im sure youve experienced this. When you provide an explanation if more often than not, the other party thinking that persistence will be rewarded will try to overcome that objection or that reason. Its like Oh, you break
your leg? No problem, we can do coffee in two weeks Oh, do you have time on
Tuesday? No problem, I can do Wednesday.
It turns into this pen-pal type of Ping-Pong which can be extremely exhausting.
The less justification, the less labor youre going to have to contend with when
you say no.
James Altucher:
Also important to realize, lets take the basic example, someone says, Tim, I
need a thousand dollars, Im in a bad situation. Can you lend it to me and I promise Ill pay you back? If you say yes to that person then which ... Im not saying
you should say yes or no because it all depends on the situation but lets say you
do say yes to that person, suddenly youve just inherited all of their problems.
They had some problems that lead them to the point where they had to ask
you, Can you lend me a thousand dollars? Now those problems are your problems once you say yes to them. You have to decide What problems do I want
to have? Most of the time I dont want to have other peoples problems so its
not like I say no to everyone, I say yes to my friends a lot and I say yes to opportunities when they seem interesting, particularly related to the things that Im
interested in.
I always make sure that Im not inheriting problems that are too big for me.
Tim Ferriss:
When is it a good time to say yes? Let me qualify that by saying that I was very
affected by advice that I would read in books for instance, I think it was in Losing
My Virginity by Richard Branson. There are many others who say yes to everything. Say yes to everything and that will open the doors for you; that will create
the opportunities for you, say yes to everything.
Id say generally speaking, I feel that it might be true in the very early days when
you dont have a lot of inbound request for your time but then, it becomes ...
Theres this pendulum that swings over to the other side where you go from
a high percentage of saying yes to a lower and lower and lower percentage of
saying yes to continue crafting a life that you want.
I just love to get your thoughts on when it make sense to say yes and that could
be when in someones life, when in someones career or just when in general.
James Altucher:
Yeah. Id been through this where for instance, I had a policy. Always say yes
whenever a TV channel would ask me to come on because I wanted to go on TV.
CNBC would always ask me to go on even at a moments notice and I would put
on a sports coat and say, Okay, Ill be right there. I dont think it ever really did
anything for me or my career or anything and it was never fun. They always ... I
dont have to talk about CNBC in particular but TV news in general.
It was never fun for me to go on but I would always feel like Okay, if more people see me out there then this is a good thing. Much better for me would have
been to say no and lets say start a business or write a book or do something
that actually was creative instead of just a talking head on TV.
Ive been through that where youre supposed to always say yes to get opportunities. The reality is theres a huge opportunity cost to saying yes. I dont know
how Richard Branson did it, I dont quite believe he always said yes to things, I
dont know but theres a huge opportunity cost to saying yes.
Lets say, you go on a date and like the girl but youre not sure but you end up
in a relationship because you kept saying yes. Well now, the opportunity cost is
you might miss out a meeting the love of your life if you had just stayed at home
that night instead of going out on that second date. This is probably happened
to me as well.
Now fortunately, I learned to say no and I think I did meet the love of my life or
I got married again. Im previously divorced but I think theres a big danger to
saying yes simply because of the opportunity class of time. Every yes has to be
treated with a lot more attention even than no. You cant make it easy for yourself to say yes because youll lose too much time, too much opportunity cost.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Absolutely.
James Altucher:
I dont believe in that lastly. Even at any point in your career, you should always
focus on your own health today. Every tomorrow is determined by what you do
today, so saying yes to something you dont want to do will only give you a bad
tomorrow. As long as Im not harming anybody, I only say yes to things that are
good for me today because I know then that Ill have a good tomorrow.
I dont say this in a careless way like if somebody needs help, I dont say no
because I always say no to people but I make sure nobodys dying or nobodys
suffering then I decide I use my own discernment to say, Is this good for me? Is
this fun for me or will this really help me along and if it doesnt, then I definitely
dont say yes to it. Some people dont know what to say, they dont know that
TV is no good for that in some cases like for me, I didnt know so I would say
yes to it. You have to build discernment too and we discussed that in the book
a little bit how you do that.
Tim Ferriss:
I want to shift gears a little bit. Just a handful, more questions Ive love to ask.
One that comes to mind is given that a lot of people listening all no doubt, are
in the stock market or otherwise investing in different vehicles, different asset
classes, youre in the board of a publicly treated employment agency, this is
CRRS on NASDAQ. Id love to get your thoughts, I think youre much more macro
than I am about whats going on the world, where you see the economy headed.
Obviously, this is not professional investment advice or anything like that, but it
sounds like you have a birds eye view of employment before the government
does. Of course, employment is a huge trigger for a lot of behaviors, a lot of the
elephants, the hedge funds and so on, move based on employment. What are
you seeing these days and how might people interpret that?
James Altucher:
Right. Ill qualify that what Im saying has nothing to do with the company Im on
the board of because their informations private but just what Im seeing in general is that ... and this is all from publicly available information about this company and similar ones is that essentially the middle class is slowly being fired
or demoted from their jobs and its a horrible thing. We kind of went through a
hundred years of not capitalism but corporatism.
This idea that the corporation is going to take us from cradle to grave from the
time we leave high school or college to the time we retire, the corporation will
take care of us. Then in 2008, the tide came in and we saw that this was simply
wasnt true like the corporations started firing everybody.
They went into a panic, there was no loyalty at all, corporations simply just fired
everybody they could and everybody else had to work extra hours. You would
think, Okay. Well, its gotten a little better since then. Hasnt it? Unemployment has gone down and the stock market has at an all-time high, so most have
gotten better and the answer is yes and no. Innovation is still happening in the
economy. There are tech companies that are growing, the gate keepers are
going away and by gate keepers, I mean you can sell, publish a book or you can
get a car ride without losing a taxi by using Uber.
There are all sorts of ways in which the internet is improving the quality of our
lives. At the same time the reason that stock market is at a high is because everybody got fired, so companies became enormously more profitable and the
stock market is ruled by profits and dividend streams. If youre paid $200,000
and youre fired or do paid $40,000 and youre fired, company has an extra
$40,000. They actually have more than that because they dont have to pay your
insurance, they dont have to pay your computer, your desk space. All these
things that they taken to your salary.
What happens is ... so why is the unemployment rate then going down, is that
all of these people are getting not quite fired anymore but demoted. Theyre
getting outsourced to employment agencies. Youll see, you go to a manpower
or Kelly services or even CRRS, the company Im on the board of and again, this
is public information.
If you look at the rise and their revenues and compare that to the rise and revenues of other companies in the stock market, theres no comparison. These
companies are going up over the past five years, 300-400% in revenues because
its not just people outsourcing secretaries. Its companies like the major accounting firms, law firms, businesses, outsourcing, vice president level employees to tempt agencies because they dont want to deal anymore with having
employees because whether its too much risk if the economy goes down or too
much risk with changing regulations.
Nobody wants to deal with that anymore and once these guys are outsourced
with employment agency, theyre salaries are going to go down. Their benefits
are going to go down. Were still in this period where it hasnt been quite totally
unveiled whats happening, but I think actually its a bad trend in employment,
where you have to recreate yourself in a Four Hour Work Week sort of way.
You have to find your own way to build a business along the line to the four hour
work week in order to survive in the coming decades because the big corporations will not hire you anymore.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Its an unfortunate illusion of security that leaves people often times without the resources to be self-sufficient.
James Altucher:
Im sure youve seen it a lot like with the feedback you get from all your books
but particularly the four hour work week. People now ... I think about first people
wanted that lifestyle, now people have to learn that lifestyle.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Its a set of survival tools almost. I remember one reader reached out to
me and said that she bought the book, it was Planning on Taking the Leap into
Entrepreneurship and was criticized by her dad until after I think it was 40 or 50
years of employment, he was fired by a company that had been his life-long employer. He did not know what the next step for him could possibly be because he
havent developed a safety net in the form of a set of skills that he could adapt
into being self-sufficient whether thats in a moon lighting or being a full-time
entrepreneur.
James Altucher:
I have to tell you, this is one of the reasons I had to outsource my e-mail is I was
getting ... and Im sure you get dozens of e-mails like that a day and it was nothing I can do. I would feel bad for these people and I wouldnt want to write huge
e-mails, responding what I would do because I like to write for a large audience
and not just one person. I couldnt look at these e-mails anymore but I was getting a lot of them. This is whats happening across the economy.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. I know, its very challenging. Lets do this, I would love to ask a couple of
rapid fire questions and then well find out where we can learn more about the
book and of course find you online but let me just lob a few fast questions at you
and then we can come to a close. The first is whos the first person that comes
to mind or who comes to mind when you hear the word successful and why?
James Altucher:
Nobody comes to mind. I dont like the word success because success sort of
implies, like people said, How do you be successful? It sort of implies that at
some point they werent successful and then at some point in the future, theyre
going to be if they apply some method.
I dont like to outsource my success to the future like right now is where ... When
I think of success, I think of me, because right now, Im exactly where I want to
be. There cant be any other success other than that, because tomorrow who
knows? Today, this moment Im successful. so me, Im the first person when it
comes to mind.
Tim Ferriss:
Good answer. What is the book or what are the books that you have given most
often as a gift?
James Altucher:
Okay. Other than my own books because that would be ... Ive given my own
books as gifts pretty much but I really like this one collection of short stories by
this guy Dennis Johnson, its called Jesus Son. There was a movie about it and
its a beautiful collection of short stories about this total drug addict and I would
say ... First off, I would say I probably read it 300 times, this collection of short
stories.
Then I was reading an interview with Chuck Palahniuk, I think you say his last
name, he wrote Fight Club and he said that the one book hes read 300 times is
this collection of short stories.
Tim Ferriss:
Its called Jesus Son, S-O-N?
James Altucher:
Yeah. Hes real name is never mentioned in the book. Its all interconnected
short stories about this one drug addict and how he deals with it. The writing
is so beautiful and amazing and its a very thin book. I remember when the
book came out, the day the book came out. It was in the early 90s like 92 or 93
and I was so excited because I have read the books. I read the stories and like
obscure literary magazines and now, theyre coming together as a collection. I
didnt read it today but I read from it yesterday.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, great. Ill check it out.
James Altucher:
I guarantee you, if you even read a chapter to that story to that book, youll feel
inspired to write something about yourself.
Tim Ferriss:
Great. Ill check it out. You walk into a bar, what do you order from the bar tender?
James Altucher:
Water. I dont drink at all and if I do drink ... I was an alcoholic so I dont drink at
all.
Tim Ferriss:
Yes. Okay. Thats a good policy. What do you listen to while youre working if
anything? Do you listen to music? If so, what? Most commonly or currently?
James Altucher:
Yeah. I dont listen to any music while Im writing for the simpler reason that I
dont think its possible or its difficult for me at least to multi-task in any way.
When Im listening to music, I really like to listen to it and when Im writing, I really like to write. I really like almost every form of music, from classic rock to heavy
metal to rap. I like all forms of rap.
I was just over at my buddys. I see his house, doing a podcast with him. I like all
forms of rap from classic rap to rap that came out yesterday.
Tim Ferriss:
Any particular favorites? If you were to look at your iPhone or your computer at
the most played list, what would be up at the top?
James Altucher:
This sounds kind of corny but probably Led Zeppelin, probably the Wu Tang
Clan which is like rap in the 90s, Eminem, Ice-T, I like a lot of his stuff because
he combines sort of metal and rap. All classic rock, a lot of stuff in the 70s but
pretty much anything. I really like all forms of music. Ill listen to country, Ill listen
to gospel. I like gospel that has like a beat to it. I listen to anything.
Tim Ferriss:
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
James Altucher:
I wish I had as much trouble as Brad Pitt writing a book called How to Pick Up
Girls. Honestly, its a simple thing, right? I just wish I look better.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Do you have a favorite documentary or favorite documentaries?
James Altucher:
These are all from the 90s also. HBO used to these really good documentaries.
Theres this one called High on Crack Street, the producer is Jon Alpert, very
beautiful about ... It makes it seem like all I do is read and watch something
about drug addicts but it was very beautiful. Then I like Hoop Dreams which is
the basketball, follow these two kids up in their basketball dreams.
I dont watch documentaries as much. I like Comedian, the Jerry Seinfeld documentary, when he went back on the road doing stand-up after hes run at Seinfeld. I really love that documentary, those are great.
Tim Ferriss:
This will be the last rapid fire. Favorite people to follow on Twitter or online in
general?
James Altucher:
Thats a hard question because I dont really use Twitter because I dont read
news. Twitter is a great place to curate news so if I did read news, I would use
Twitter and follow the people who I trusted to show me good news items. I dont
really use Twitter or anything. Like I said, I follow your blog, I follow Maria Popovas blog, brainpickings.org.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, Brain Pickings. Yeah. Great site.
James Altucher:
Then its just sort of random after then, theres not that many ... If Tucker ... we
have a regional friend, Tucker Max, he writes a new article, I know its always
going to be crazy so Ill read that. Not much online I read.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Since that question was not very well pointed.
James Altucher:
I really bored out
Tim Ferriss:
No, its all right. Thats why I have to bob and weave. If you have to name where
you had the best meal of your life or one of the best meals of your life, what is
the first thing that comes to mind?
James Altucher:
Oh my god, I might be my launch today because I had Pad Thai in Thailand so ...
Tim Ferriss:
No, thats personal.
James Altucher:
This is like a bucket list item. I loved Pad Thai all my life and then I stopped it
because of you, because I went on the slow carb diet. I cant have Pad Thai anymore. In Thailand, they make it just right. I promise you, you dont even have that
many carbs in it here. Its like they do it just perfect.
Tim Ferriss:
Lets say, when in Thailand, do as the Thai do.
James Altucher:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Certainly, Im not going to fault you for having Pad Thai. Well, Im so happy that
you took the time to chat with me today and where can people ...
James Altucher:
Thank you Tim and I want to tell you one story which was ... it was real difficult
for me to reach out and say, Hey. We should ... in both cases, because you have
been on my podcast, Id been in your podcast, its really difficult for me to ask
things. You have been like an experiment for me actually, asking you to come to
my podcast and then asking me Hey, Ill go on your podcast as well. Youll read
about that in my next book after the Power of No.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, I cant wait. I always have fun batting around ideas with you and I think other people should if they havent check out your work and of course, take a look
at the new book as well. Where can people best find you online and learn more
about what youre up to?
James Altucher:
Sure, jamesaltucher.com is where I blog, and @jaltucher on Twitter. I do a Q&A

every Thursday from 3:30 to 4:30, eastern standard time where hundreds of
people ask me any question they want and I answer. Ive been doing that for
four years, Ive answered probably 10,000 questions.
The Power of No is coming out July 15th. If you pre-order it, go to powerofno.us
and Claudia and I are giving three free gifts out so I encourage you to get those
gifts before July 15th or thats after July 15th. I dont know actually when this
podcast is coming out so ... Power of No is a book I would highly recommend
and Choose Yourself, my last book is a book I would highly recommend so thats
where ... and my podcast, The James Altucher Show where you could find my
interview with the one and only Tim Ferriss and I have a daily podcast called Ask
Altucher.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome. Perfect. Well probably meet you on and people need a place to start,
I would ... I think some of your stories are really hilarious and theyre all the more
hilarious and instructive when you know that they are true so check out some of
the most popular posts on James blog and thanks everybody for listening. Until
next time.
James Altucher:
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
Have a great one.
EPISODES 25, 26, 27:
KEVIN KELLY
Tim Ferriss:
Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. And to start off, as I often do, with a quote. This
is from one of my favorite writers of all-time, Kurt Vonnegut, and it goes as follows: Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule, do not use semicolons. They
are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is
show that youve been to college. I have the habit of using dashes in the same
way, so I like to read this to remind me not to use that crutch. Also pretty, the
adverb, I overuse that. In any case, Kurt Vonnegut, lots of lessons, lots of amazing books. If you need one to start with, go with Cats Cradle.
Todays guest is Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly is one of the most interesting human
beings I have ever met. Hes a dear friend. As for the bio, Kevin Kelly is senior
maverick at Wired Magazine which he co-founded in 1993. He also co-founded
the All Species Foundation, a non-profit aimed at cataloging and identifying every living species on Earth. In all his spare time, he writes best-selling books, he
co-founded the Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of all documented
human languages, and he serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation,
which Ive been honored to join as a speaker on one occasion. As part of the
Long Now Foundation, hes looking into, among other things, how to revive and
restore endangered or extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. Im not
making this stuff up, Kevin is amazing.
This is going to be a multi-part episode, so therell be a number of different

podcast episodes, because we went quite long. I hope you enjoy it. You can find
all links, show notes, and so on, once we complete the entire series, at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. You can also find all previous episodes Ive done in this
podcast. Fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out. Without further ado,
please enjoy, and thank you for listening.
Kevin, thank you so much for being on the show.
Kevin Kelly:
Its my honor.
Tim Ferriss:
I am endlessly fascinated by all of the varied projects that you constantly have
going on. But that leads me to the first question, which is, when you meet someone who is not familiar with your background and they ask you the age-old
what do you do? question, how do you even begin to answer that? What is
your stock answer to that?
Kevin Kelly:
These days, my stock answer is that I package ideas into books and magazines
and websites, and I make ideas interesting and pretty.
Tim Ferriss:
Ooh, I like the pretty. Well come back to the aesthetic aspect, I think thats a
really neglected piece of the entire puzzle.
You do have, of course, a background ... a lot of people are familiar with your
background with Wired, but perhaps you could give folks a bit of background on
yourself. Is it true that you dropped out of college after one year?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, Im a college drop-out. Actually, my one regret in life is that one year that
I came. (laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, no kidding?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, I wish I had just even skipped that. But I do understand how college can
be useful to people. My own children have gone through ... But for me, it was
just not the right thing, and I went to Asia instead. I like to tell myself that I gave
my own self a PhD in East Asian studies, by traveling around and photographing
very remote parts of Asia at a time when it was in a transition from the ancient
world to the modern world. I did many other things as well, and for me, it was a
very formative time, because I did enough things that when I finally got my first
real job at the age of 35 ...
Tim Ferriss:
(laughs) Wow. Which job was that?
Kevin Kelly:
I worked for a non-profit at 10 dollars an hour, which was the Whole Earth Catalog. Which had been a life-long dream. I said if Im going to have a job, that was
the job I want. It took me a long time to get it. But in between that, I did many
things, including starting businesses and selling businesses, and doing other
kinds of things, more adventures. And I highly recommend it. I got involved in
starting Wired and running Wired for a while, and hired a lot of people who
were coming right out of college. They were internists and they would do the
intern thing, and then they were good and we would hire them. Which meant
that, basically, after 10 years, whatever it was ... this was their first and only job,
and I kept telling them, Why are you here? What are you doing? You should be
fooling around, wasting time, trying something crazy. Why are you working a
real job? I dont understand it. I just really recommend slack. Im a big believer
in this thing of kind of doing something thats not productive. Productive is for
your middle ages. When youre young, you want to be prolific and make and do
things, but you dont want to measure them in terms of productivity. You want
to measure them in terms of extreme performance, you want to measure them
in extreme satisfaction. Its a time to try stuff, and I think ...
Tim Ferriss:
Explore the extremes.
Kevin Kelly:
Exactly. Explore the possibilities, and there are so many possibilities, and theres
more every day. You dont want- its called premature optimization. You really
want to use this time to continue to do things. And by the way, premature optimization is a problem of success, too. Its not just the problem of the young, its
the problem of the successful more than even of the young. But well get to that.
Thats a long answer, too. (laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
That might turn into a therapy session for me at this precise moment in time, in
fact.
Kevin Kelly:
(laughs) Yes, exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
But when you are exploring that slack, I would imagine many people feel pressure, whether its internal pressure or societal, familial pressure, to get a real
job, to support themselves. A lot of the decisions are made out of fear. They
worry about being out on the streets, or its a nebulous, terror, anxiety. How did
you support yourself, for instance, while you were traveling through Asia when
you left school?
Kevin Kelly:
I totally understand this anxiety and fear and stuff. But heres the thing, I think
one of the many life skills that you want to actually learn at a fairly young age is
the skill of being, like, ultra-thrifty, minimal, kind of this little wisp thats traveling through time ... in the sense of learning how little you actually need to live,
not just in a survival mode, but in a contented mode. I learned that pretty early,
by backpacking and doing other things, especially in Asia ... was I could be very
happy with very, very little. You can go onto websites and stuff, and look at the
minimum amount of stuff- food, say, that you need to live, your basic protein,
carbohydrates, and vitamins, and actually, if you bought them in bulk, how much
it would cost. I mean, you build your own house, live in a shelter, a tiny house.
You dont need very much.
I think trying that out, building your house on the pond, like Thoreau, who was a
hero of mine in high school, is not just a simple exercise, its a profound exercise,
because it allows you to get over the anxiety. Even if you arent living like that,
you know that if the worse came to worst, you could keep going at a very low
rate and be content. That gives you the confidence to take a risk, because you
say, Whats the worst that can happen? Well, the worst that can happen is that
Id have a backpack and a sleeping bag, and Id be eating oatmeal. And Id be
fine. I think if you do that once or twice ... you dont necessarily have to live like
that, but knowing that you can be content is tremendously empowering.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Kevin Kelly:
Thats what I did, thats basically what I did. Was living in Asia where the people
around me had less than I did and they were pretty content. You realize, Oh my
gosh, I dont really need very much to be happy.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you save up money beforehand with odd jobs, or did you do odd jobs while
on the road? A bit of both?
Kevin Kelly:
I did odd jobs before I left. I was traveling in Asia at a time when the price differential was so great, that it actually made sense for me to fly back on a charter
flight to the US, and work for four or five months. I worked, basically, odd jobs.
I worked from working at a warehouse packaging athletic shoes, working in a
technical sense of a ... its really just hard to describe, but it was a photography-related job where were reducing printed circuit boards down to little sizes
to be shipped off to be printed ... and driving cars, to whatever else I could find.
That, at that time, made more money- I could live off of- I could live probably two
years from those couple months of work.
I didnt really work while I was traveling until I got to Iran in the late 70s, and
there was a very high-paying job which was teaching English to the Iranian pilots who worked for the Shah. But I had sworn I was never going to teach English, so I actually got a job in Bell Helicopter, who was teaching English to the
pilots. But my job was running a little newsletter for the American community
there. I worked there until I was thrown out by the coup. That was another story.
Tim Ferriss:
Now, just a couple of comments. Number one, for those people listening who
are saying to themselves, already perhaps creating reasons why they cant do
what you did now, due to different economic climate or whatnot ... it is entirely
possible to replicate what you did. You just have to choose your locations wisely,
for that type of
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Ferriss:
I should also just mention to people that part of the reason Im so attracted to
stoic philosophy, whether that be Seneca or Marcus Aurelius, is exactly because
of the practice of poverty. Not because you want to be poor, but so that you
recognize not only that you can subsist, but then you can potentially be content
or even, in some cases, be more content with a bare minimum. For people who
are more interested in that, I highly recommend a lot of the stoic writings, and
you can search for those on my blog and elsewhere. But-
Kevin Kelly:
Let me just add to that. Theres actually a new-age version of that that was sort
of popular a generation ago, and the search term there is volunteer simplicity.
Tim Ferriss:
Volunteer simplicity?
Kevin Kelly:
Right. The idea is, poverty is terrible when its mandatory, when you have no
choice, but the voluntary version of that is very, very powerful. I think attaching names sometimes to things makes it more legitimate, but imagine yourself
practicing voluntary simplicity. That, I think, is part of that stoic philosophy, but
theres a whole movement ... a lot of the hippie drop-outs were kind of practicing a similar thing, and there was a whole best practices that resolved around
that. You can make up your own. But I think its, to me, an essential life skill that
people should acquire. I mean, when you go backpacking and stuff like that,
thats part of it. Thats the beginnings of trying to understand what it is that you
need to live as a being, and you can fill that out in any way you want, but thats
a good way to experiment.
Tim Ferriss:
Now, you have become certainly a world-class packager of ideas, but also at
synthesizing and expressing these ideas. I love your writing, Ive consumed vast
quantities of it. (laughs) In fact, Im here right now on Long Island where I grew
up, and I used to sneak into my parents shed to read old editions of the Whole
Earth Catalog for inspiration. It was, I suppose, the equivalent of my internet at
the time. (laughs) And from that, all the way to 1000 True Fans, which of course
you know I shout from the rooftops for people to read. How did you develop that
skill of writing and communicating? A lot of people associate that with school-
ing, but it doesnt appear to be the source for you.

Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. In high school, I would call myself a very late bloomer. I dont recall myself having a lot of ideas. There were a lot of other people and kids in my high
school that I was very impressed with, because they seemed to know what they
thought and were very glib and articulate, and I wasnt. I was a little bit more
visual in that sense. I was trying to decide whether to go to art school or to MIT,
because I was really interested in science.
I set off to Asia as a photographer, so it was basically no words at all, it was just
images. And as I was traveling and seeing these amazing things ... I mean, again,
I want to emphasize that this was sort of a ... for me, I grew up in New Jersey, I
had never left New Jersey, we never took vacations. Its hard to describe how
parochial New Jersey was back in the 1960s. I never ate Chinese food, I never had ... I mean, I never saw Chinese. It was a different world. And then I was
thrown into Asia and it was like, Oh my gosh, everything I knew was wrong.
So that education was extremely, extremely powerful. I think that that gave me
something to say, and I started writing letters home, trying to describe what I
was seeing. I had a reason to try to communicate. That was the beginning of it,
but even then, I dont think I really had much to say.
It wasnt really until the internet came along, and I had a chance to go onto one
of the first online communities in the early 80s, and for some reason ...
Tim Ferriss:
The early 80s? That is definitely ... early days.
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, it was in 1981. These were private, it wasnt the wide-open internet. These
were little experiment- in fact, it was New Jersey Institute of Technology in Rutgers that had this experimental online community that I got invited on ... We
can talk about how that happened, but it was just luck and a friend. And I found
that there was something about the direct attempt to just communicate with
someone else in real time, just sending them a message or something, that
crystallized my thinking. What it turned out, is-
Tim Ferriss:
How did it crystallize your thinking? Not to interrupt, but was it the immediate
feedback loop?
Kevin Kelly:
It was the idea that ... teachers have since done a lot of studies where they had
kids write an essay on something, an assignment, and then they would also be
instructed to write some e-mail to a friend or something. Then they would grade
both of the compositions, and they would find that, inevitably, the e-mail that
the kids were writing was much better writing. Because when youre trying to
write a composition, we have all these attitudes, or expectations, or theres kind
of this writer-ly sense. Theres all this other garbage and luggage and baggage
on top of that. But when were just trying to send an e-mail, were just directly
trying to communicate something. Were not fooling around, were not trying to
make it ...
Tim Ferriss:
Literary.
Kevin Kelly:
Literary, all that. Just direct stuff. So the writing there was always much more
direct and concrete. Thats the usual thing that happens when youre trying to
write, is youre not concrete enough. But when you e-mail, its all concrete.
So it was getting out of the whole writer-ly stuff and just pure, concrete communication, that really made it for me. What I discovered, which is what many
writers discover, is that I write in order to think. It was like, I think I have an
idea, but when I begin to write it, I realize, I have no idea, and I dont actually
know what I think until I try and write it. Writing is a way for me to find out what
I think. Its like, I dont have any ideas, its true, but when I write, I get the ideas.
That was the revelation.
So by being forced to communicate online, there was none of this expectation.

It was just like, OK, just write an e-mail. I can do that. I dont have to write an essay, I dont have to write something nice. Im just going to write 140 characters. I
can do that. But while I was doing that, I had an idea that I didnt have before. It
was like, Oh my gosh, this is an idea-generation machine, its by writing. Its not
that I have these ideas and Im going to write them down. No, no. I dont even
have them until I write them.
Tim Ferriss:
Im so glad you brought that up, because I was just recently- a few things related to that. I was reading an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, whos one of my
favorite authors. For people who arent familiar, check out Cats Cradle perhaps,
as a starting point. Hilarious guy, and he, at various points in his career, taught
writing to make ends meet. And he would, number one, not look for good writers, he would look for people who are passionate about specific things.
Kevin Kelly:
Yep, right.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats something I want to reiterate to people who dont feel writer-ly, is that
... go out and have the experiences and find the subjects, the things that excite
you. As long as youre true to your voice, which is related to the e-mail point ... I
threw out my first two drafts of, Id say, a third of the four-hour work week, because they were either too pompous and ivy-league-sounding ...
Kevin Kelly:
(laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
Way, way, way too much. I mean, horrible. Or too slapstick, because I felt like
I had to go to the other extreme. And then I sat down and I wrote as if I were
composing an e-mail to a friend after two glasses of wine, and thats how I found
my voice so to speak.
As a side note, why - and I think this might be related - but why did you promise
yourself not to teach English? Im so curious. Because that can be very lucrative,
its readily available ... when you were traveling, why did you commit to yourself
not to teach English?

Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, its a good question, because there was lots of opportunities all around
the world. By the way, I recommend it as a way for people to travel cheaply, if
you want to support yourself, because it is a very desirable skill, we call it, for
the moment.
I think the reason why was I felt that ... I didnt feel like I was a very good teacher,
and I also felt that it was maybe a little easy? But I think the main reason was
that I was having trouble imagining myself enjoying it. I just felt that I would
rather try to find something else. Now, I think I did, one time in Taiwan - which
as you know, has a whole cram school system - I think I substituted for a friend
once. And I think that maybe confirmed my idea (laughter), that while there was
sort of ... you know, all I have to do is just talk, I mean, there was really not much
skill involved at all. It was fun, but I didnt feel like I was ... I dont know, I didnt
feel like I was maybe adding value or something. I came away thinking, You
know, I guess I could do this for money, but Im not going to be happy.
I think it was just a personality thing. I dont think of myself as a teacher, I dont
do many workshops or classes. I think a different person might thoroughly enjoy
it and I know they do and they have a great time doing it. For me, it was just ...
not for me.
Tim Ferriss:
Mm-hmm, got it.
Kevin Kelly:
No big deal. I think this is an important thing, is that it takes a long time to figure
out what youre good for. Part of where Im at right now and where I got eventually, was really trying to spend time on doing things that only I can do. Even
when I can do something well but someone else could do it, I would try and let
that go. Thats a discipline that Im still working on, which is not just things that
Im good at, but things that only Im good at. That was something I was sort of
trying to start early on, which is like, You know, a lot of other people can do this,
and theyre happy doing it. So I want to go somewhere where it requires more
of me to do, and then Ill be happier and theyll be happier.
Tim Ferriss:
I am currently having - and I seem to have these periodically - a crisis-of-meaning phase.
Kevin Kelly:
(laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
Im wrestling with this exact issue. Trying to figure out what to abandon, what
to say no to, to refine my focus, so I can really focus on the intersection of my
unique capability or capabilities, whatever that is, and a need of some type.
How did you figure that out ... and maybe we could approach it from a different
direction. What do you feel is your skill set or your unique skill, and how did you
figure that out?
Kevin Kelly:
Well, let me tell you the story of how this realization actually came to me in a
very concrete way, was while I was editing Wired Magazine. Part of what Wired
Magazine is about is that we would come up with ideas and make assignments
to writers. Now, some of the articles in Wired would come from the writers
themselves, they would approach us if they have an idea. But a lot of the articles would be assigned from editors. Wed have editorial meetings where wed
imagine this great article, and then wed go and try and find someone to write
it. And in that conversation of trying to persuade writers to write an idea that
I had ... it would go through a very typical sequence, where I would have this
great idea, and then I would try to persuade, like, one writer, two writers, three
writers, and they just didnt think it was a very good idea. They didnt like it, they
didnt want to do it, whatever it was. Id kind of forget about it, but then, like, six
months later it would come back and Id say, Oh, that was such a great idea, I
really think we should do that. And I would go again for another round of trying
to persuade people, and then Id get no takers. And then I kind of- Oh, forget
about that, it must have been a bad idea. But then, like, six months later or a
year later, it might come back, You know, thats still a great idea. Nobody has
done that. Then I would realize, Oh my gosh, I need to do that! (laughter) It
was like, Im the only one who can see this. Ive tried to give it away, Ive tried
really hard to give it away, Ive tried to kill it ...
Tim Ferriss:
(laughs) It just keeps on coming back!
Kevin Kelly:
Keeps coming back! And then I would do it and it would be one of my best pieces. So I became really an important proponent of trying to give things away first.
Tell everybody what youre doing ... basically you try to give these ideas away,
and people are happy because they love great ideas. You can- Hey, do it, its a
great idea. You should do it. Id try to give everything away first, and then Id try
to kill everything, like, No, thats a bad idea, and then its the ones that keep
coming back that I cant kill and I cant give away, that I think, Hmm, maybe
thats the one Im supposed to do. Because no one else is going to do it. I mean,
Ive been actively trying to get ... and then of course, if someone else is doing
it, you see someone else competing or trying to do it, it was like, Oh yeah, go
ahead, do it. Im not going to race against you. Thats crazy because theres two
of us. No, you do it. So that generosity is actually part of this thing-
Tim Ferriss:
Your vetting process.
Kevin Kelly:
Exactly. Thats when I kind of realized it.
But that doesnt answer the question of, Well, how do you find out what it is?
All I can say is ... and I dont want to fib, but all I can say is, its going to take all
your life to figure that out. That is fact. Heres what it is - figuring out is what
your life is about. (laughter) I mean, thats what life is for. Life is to figure it out, so
every part of your life, every day, is actually this attempt to figure this out. Youll
have different answers as you go along, and sometimes there may be directions
in that. But thats basically what it is.
You were very transparent about confessing this, but I have to tell you that even
from hanging around a lot of very accomplished people, a lot of successful people, that we would be on the covers of magazines ... they also go through exactly
the same questioning. No matter how big of a billion-dollar company they have,
they come up to the same thing - whats my role in all this? Why am I here, what
am I useful- what am I doing that nobody else can? Its a continuous ... In fact, as
well come back to, being successful makes that even more difficult.
Tim Ferriss:
Why is that?
Kevin Kelly:
Because of what I call the creators dilemma, which is very much the same
thing as the innovators dilemma. Its a true dilemma, in the sense that theres
no right answer. But the question is: is it better to optimize your strengths or to
invest into the unknown, into places where youre weak?
Tim Ferriss:
Or places you havent explored.
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. Any accountant in any business would tell you that it absolutely makes
more sense to take your dollar ... Youll get a higher return by investing into
what youre good at already, whatever it is. This is pursuit of excellence, this is
Tom Peters and the whole entire movement, which is you move uphill, you keep
optimizing what you know. That, by far, is the sanest, the most reasonable, the
smartest thing to do.
But when you have a very fast-changing landscape like we live in right now, you
get stuck on a local optima, you get stuck. The problem is, is that the only way
you can get to a higher, more fit place, is you actually have to go down. You actually have to head into a place where you are less optimal, you have no expertise, theres very low margins, theres low profits, youll look foolish, therell be
failures. And if youve been following a line of success, that is very, very difficult
to do. Its very difficult for an organization- its literally almost impossible for an
organization whos been excellent and successful to do, it really is.
Tim Ferriss:
Which presents a lot of opportunity for the ... the start-ups.
Kevin Kelly:
Thats why the start-ups all start there. The reason why start-ups start is because
theyre operating in an environment that no sane, big corporation would want
to be in. Its a market with low margins, low profitability, unproven, high-failure. I
mean, its like, who wants to operate there? Nobody! The only reason why startups operate is they have no choice!
Tim Ferriss:
Right. (laughs) Yeah, thats the gift of few options, right?
Kevin Kelly:
Right, exactly. So in terms of success biting, I think you have to be unsuccessful.

Who is successful, wants to be unsuccessful? Its very, very hard to let go of that
success. Thats one of the things that works against someone really continuing
on this life journey of finding out what theyre really good at it. Because heres
the thing - successful companies and successful people generally try to solve
problems with money. You buy solutions. And we all know that money is not the
full answer for innovation. Basically, if you could purchase innovations, all the big
companies would just purchase them. Its the fact that these innovations often
have to be found out without money, through other means. Again, thats the
advantage to the start-up, and its a disadvantage to the successful companies
because they got money and they just want to buy solutions. But most of these
solutions you cant buy, you have to kind of engineer in this very difficult environment of low margins, low success, low profits, that no one really wants to be
in, but the start-ups are forced to be in.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats also an advantage, I would think, for beginners or novices compared to

experts.
Kevin Kelly:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
They have less vested identify, less inertia, to have to reverse.
Kevin Kelly:
And thats back to my suggestion in the beginning, of why slack and fooling
around when youre young is so important. Because a lot of these innovations
and things are found not by trying to solve a problem that can be monetized. Its
in exploring this area without money. I mean, money is so overrated. It really ...
Tim Ferriss:
Could you elaborate on that? Because I feel like this is a sermon I need to receive on some level.
Kevin Kelly:
(laughs) Theres several things to say about. One is, obviously, if youre struggling to pay bills and mortgages and stuff ... theres a certain amount thats
needed. But heres the thing, accumulating enough money to do things is really
a by-product of other things. Its kind of a lubricant in a certain sense rather
than a goal.
Great wealth, extreme wealth, is definitely overrated. Ive had meals with a dozen billionaires, and theyre no diff- I mean, their lives, lifestyles are no different.
You dont want to have a billion dollars, let me put it that way. You really dont.
Theres nothing that you can really do with it that you cant do with a lot of less
money. Well set that aside.
Even just wealth itself, in this world where there is more and more abundance ...
even the money for, say, middle class is less significant in a certain sense, in the
sense that ... maybe their status, which is really not needed, but ... The things
that you want to do, the things that will make you content, the things that will
satisfy you, the things that will bring you meaning ... can usually- got better than
having money. I mean, if you have a lot of time or a lot of money, its always better to have a lot of time to do something. If you have a choice between having a
lot of friends or a lot of money, you definitely want to have a lot of friends.
I think theres a way even in which the technological progress that were having
is actually diminishing the role of money. And I want to be clear that Im talking
about money beyond the amount that you need to survive, but even that reflects back to what we were saying earlier, which is probably less than you think
it is, to survive.

So in a certain sense, most people see money as a means to get these other
things, but there are other routes to these other things that are deeper and
more constant and more durable and more powerful. Money is a very small,
one-dimensional thing, that if you focus on that, it kind of comes and goes.
And if you ... whatever it is that youre trying to attain, you go to it more directly
through other means, youll probably wind up with a more powerful experience
or whatever it is that youre after. And itll be deeper, more renewable, than coming at it with money.
Travel is one of the great examples. Many, many people who are working very
hard, trying to save their money to retire so they can travel. Well, I decided to
flip it around and travel when I was really young, when I had zero money. And I
had experiences that basically even a billion dollars couldnt have bought. And
its not an uncommon sight, let me tell you, for young travelers who have very
little money to be hanging out, doing something, and then therell be some very
wealthy people on their one-week organized tour, looking at these young travelers, just saying, I wish I had more time. (laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, I see it almost every time I go traveling. It reminds me of conversations

Ive had with Rolf Potts and also his book, Vagabonding, which I just absolutely
love. It was that book and Walden that I took with me traveling when I had my
own two-year or so walkabout. He points out, in the beginning of Vagabonding,
that many people subscribe to the belief along the lines of Charlie Sheens in
the movie Wall Street, when hes asked what hes going to do when he makes
his millions and he says, Im going to get a motorcycle and ride across China.
(laughter) Rolf of course points out that you could clean toilets in the US and
save enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. (laughs)
Kevin Kelly:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Let me ask you, this is maybe tangentially related, but you mentioned earlier
that your middle age ... your middle ages- middle ages maybe sounds odd, but
in your middle age, thats when you optimize. And I find that horrifying on some
level because I am so tired ... I just turned 37 last week, and Im really tired of
certain types of optimizing, and the incremental slogging of making trains run
slightly more efficiently on time. Even though, like you said, from a strictly financial standpoint, the advice that I would receive from many people and have received when Ive asked for advice is, Here are one or two core areas you should
focus on to optimize for income. And on the flip side, Im tempted to approach
a kind of ... not scorched earth but burned bridges approach, where I somehow use creative destruction to force me into another direction, to have these
new experiences that I crave so much.
And you, just for people who arent aware, I want to give ... I remember going to
the first ever quantified self meet-up, youre part of the Long Now Foundation.
Youve experimented in so many different arenas, and have looked so far into
the future, and thought on such grand a scale, I aspire to do more of that ... What
would be your advice to someone? I know I have dozens of friends in the same
position. Theyre, say, in their early- or mid-30s, in my particular peer group, and
they want to explore but theyre feeling pressured to optimize this thing that
theyve suddenly found their footing with, whatever it is. Maybe theyre a venture capitalist, maybe theyre in start-up, they feel they should start a new startup, and they want to step out of that slipstream. What would be your advice to
those people?
Kevin Kelly:
Well, first of all, I have to commend your honesty for this, and I will repeat that
it is very, very difficult to do. I mean, I think the realization comes to people in
middle age and they realize, Oh my gosh, theres a little bit of a routine here
and Im not really happy with that. I think that scorched earth, that kind of, you
know, Well just set fire to it and well walk away, I actually have ... I think we
probably have a mutual friend, I wont use his name because I dont know how
public this is, but one of his solutions was the most radical one Ive ever heard,
to force himself, was that he gave up US citizenship.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, wow. Yeah, thatll do it. (laughs)
Kevin Kelly:
He was saying, I just feel so- I was like, Oh my gosh, that is so radical. He was
telling me about what is involved in that, and it wasnt for tax purposes, because
actually before you can do it, the US actually requires that you square-up on all
taxes. But that was so radical, and I dont recommend that. (laughter) Thats all
Im saying. I mean, hes doing fine, but Im just saying thats unnecessary.
I think the advice is ... Im probably taking a page from yourself. I dont think its
necessary to ... I think you can experiment your way through this, you can do this
incrementally. You can take small steps and do something, and then evaluate it,
test how its going, whether youre getting what you want out of it, whether its
working, and then you continue in that direction. Thats sort of the pattern of
people who have second careers or reinvent themselves, you hear that a lot.
And you can do that in a disciplined, Tim Ferriss way. I dont think that it requires
you to walk out and leave a burning pile behind. I think its something that youre
going to ... Im a big believer in doing things deliberately, and I think that you
begin by looking at those areas that you get satisfaction out of, and those areas
where ... I often find that people kind of retreat back to the things that they did
as kids and really, really miss, whether its art or other things. The truth is, youre
not really going to be able to escape all the other things you have going. And
thats a good thing because that is part of you and part of what you do well. So
youll probably just bend in a certain direction.
I think the one bit of advice is that you cant ... its not going to happen overnight.
It took you 37 years to get where you are, it may take you another 30 years to
get where you want to go. I dont think you should feel impatient, maybe thats
the word Im saying, is that I dont think you should imagine that youll have another hat on with a new label next year.
Tim Ferriss:
Just to maybe redirect that - and this may or may not be accurate - but in the
process of researching for this conversation, which is an odd exercise in and of
itself, given how much time weve spent together. (laughs) But I came across,
in Wikipedia, mention of your experience in Jerusalem and deciding to live as
though you only had six months left. I want to touch on that, but one of the
questions that came to my mind when I turned 37 last week is, If I knew I were
going to die at age 40, what would I do to have the greatest impact on the
greatest number of people? So I find that constraint helpful and I worry that if
I aim at not being impatient in that way, that I wont - because I could get hit by
a bus - that I wont do what Im capable of doing. Maybe you could talk about
... and I had no idea, Im not sure if you would self-describe yourself as a devout Christian, but thats certainly written here. Maybe you could talk a little bit
about that experience.
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. One thing I would of course warn people is that, not everything on Wikipedia is correct. (laughs)
Tim Ferriss:
No, thats why Im bringing it up. (laughs)
Kevin Kelly:
But it is true that I got this assignment in Jerusalem, which, by the way, if you
want to hear the full version of it, listen to one of the very first This American
Life, which Ira Glass and I told the story for the very first time. Its a story about
how I got this assignment to live as if I was going to die in six months, even
though I was perfect healthy and I knew that it was very improbable. But I decided to take the assignment seriously and thats what I did.
My answer kind of surprised me, because I thought that I would have this sort
of mad, high-risk fling, do all these things, but actually what I wanted to do was
to visit my brothers and sisters, go back to my parents, help out. My mom was
not well at the time. But that lasted for three months before I decided I needed
to do something big. So I actually road my bicycle across the US, from San Francisco to New Jersey, where I was going to basically die. I kept a journal of that.
And that question was something that I keep asking myself now. I actually have
a countdown clock that Matt Groening at Futurama was inspired and they did
a little episode of Futurama about. What I did was, I took the actuarial tables
for the estimated age of my death, for someone born when I was born, and I
worked back the number of days. I have that showing on my computer, how
many days. I tell you, nothing concentrates your time like knowing how many
days you have left. Now, of course, Im likely, again, to live more than that. Im in
good health, etcetera. But nonetheless, theres something that really ... I have
6,000 something days, its not very many days to do all the things I want to do.
So I think your exercise is really fantastic and commendable, and theres two
questions - what would you do if you had six months to live, and what would you
do if you had a billion dollars? And interestingly (laughs), its the convergence of
those two questions. Because it turns out that you probably dont need a billion
dollars to do whatever it is that youre going to do in six months. So I think youre
asking the right question. The way I answer it is, you want to keep asking your-
self that question every six months and really try to answer it. I try to do that on
a day-by-day basis.

I learned something from my friend, Stewart Brand, who organized his remaining days around five-year increments. He says any great idea thats significant,
thats worth doing, for him, will last about five years, from the time he thinks of
it, to the time he stops thinking about it. And if you think of it in terms of fiveyear projects, you can count those off on a couple hands, even if youre young.
So the sense of mortality, of understanding that its not just old people who
dont have very many ... if youre 20 years old, you dont have that many five-year
projects to do.
So I think it is ... thats maybe part of the philosophy of thinking about our time
and whether ... even if you believe in the extension of life, longevity, living to
120, you still have to think in these terms of, what are you going to do if you because you dont know if youll live to be 120 - what are you doing to do if you
have a year, and what would you do with a billion dollars? And whats the intersection of those two?
Tim Ferriss:
Does religion play a large part in your life right now?
Kevin Kelly:
In a certain sense, not in a ritualistic sense. I just wrote a book called
What Technology Wants.
Tim Ferriss:
Excellent book, I highly recommend it.
Kevin Kelly:
It was a theory of technology and I was trying to put technology in the context
of the cosmos. I think what religion gives me is permission to think about cosmic questions. Im right in the middle of finishing a Kickstarter-funded graphic
novel thats about angels and robots. The intention there was to fictionalize the
idea that robots would someday have souls, but these souls would be coming
from angels and so that there was this intersection of these two possible worlds
of conscious robots who were en-souled by angels.
The reason why this was interesting was that the idea was that the angels that
in soul-less had been trained. They had been given moral guidance, but if you
dont give the spirit some kind of moral guidance then they can wreak havoc.
It was this idea that when we make robots were also going to have to train them
to be ethical. We just cant make a free being and not train it. It was a way to
rehearse and think about some of the consequences of technology today.
I think my religion gives me permission to ask those questions without embarrassment to say, Well, what is the general direction of the arc of evolution? Is it
pointed somewhere? How does technology fit into the greater cosmos? What
does it mean? What drives it? Why is there more of it? Is this a good thing? I
consider this and other views so I have another view. Im sympathetic to other
world views. I dont necessarily have to believe all the other world views, but I
get the idea that if you have another world view that can be very helpful in seeing other worldviews.
People have a world view even though they dont know it, but I have a world
view and I know that I have a world view. Really, everybody has a religious or
a spiritual orientation; even if theyre atheists, they still have one. There are
some assumptions that are at the basis of it and I like to question assumptions,
including my own assumptions.
Tim Ferriss:
Two things I cant resist asking and we can spend as much or as little time
on this as youd like, but recently grappling with a lot of these issues that Ive
been grappling with, some of which are existential, some of which are related to
death, limited time on the planet, I have become deeply fascinating by indigenous use of plant medicine. Ive had some very transformative experiences that
are difficult to put into words because they make you sound like a complete crazy person. Yeah, theres a something-ness that is very difficult to communicate
without sounding like you should be institutionalized.
What do you think the role for people who aspire to do the greatest good in the
world, what is the role of that type of direct experience? Is it possible to benefit
from that type of, for lack of a better descriptor spiritual experience without a
religious framework around it?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, yeah, no. Its a really good question. My little personal story there, of
course, is I was basically a hippy. I worked for the hippy catalog, of the
Whole Earth Catalog, which was about hippies living in San Francisco. All my
friends were drug-taking hippies, but I for some reason never did. I just had
no appetite or inclination at all for ever taking any drugs or smoking pot or
anything. When I was 50-years-old I decided that I would like to take LSD sacramentally on of my 50th birthday and I did. I arranged with, I had a guide and
I had an appropriate setting and I had some acid that came from a source that
was extremely reliable and it was a sacrament. It was a very profound sacrament.
I think, Yeah, you can use the drugs recreationally and for entertainment, and
I think that can go somewhere, but I think theres another powerful use for it
which is kind of what youre talking about in which is to elevate one outside of
yourself, to lose yourself, to be in contact with other things beyond your ego.
I think it can be done and I think unfortunately, because of the legal status that
weve had for a long time, the rituals and the practice around that have not had
a chance to be developed or communicated. Actually, trying to find this information was extremely hard. There was one book that I did find eventually from
a guy who was doing LSD experiments while they were still legal and was able
to accumulate enough wisdom about it that that would be the one place

I would point people to.
I think that it is important that the context and expectations and the setting they
call it that revolves around it is very important and I do believe that these can
be extremely profound and powerful experiences for good. They can remain
long after and most people who understand this and dont abuse it understand
that in fact that experience was not in the pill, it was not in the chemical. It was
a real experience. Unfortunately, theres so much other stuff circulating around
the use of these drugs and the misuse of them that that kind of information is
often very, very difficult to find.
But I do think maybe were seeing a moment now in the US where the second
prohibition is being undone and at least pot will become legal and maybe we
can return to revitalizing the traditions and the necessary settings around that.
An expectation that not just pot or LSD, but even other synthetic drugs can be
extremely powerful in removing the ordinary guards that we have. We have an
ego for our purpose. We have all these things to keep us sane on a day-to-day
functional, exactly. If you remove it completely, you can become dysfunctional,
but if you remove it deliberately and with great care you can be opened up.
I think its that. I think theres an expertise there. I think theres a lot of other
things that that if we have the freedom and the wisdom to not abuse it I think it
can be extremely powerful.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you recall the title of the book?
Kevin Kelly:
This is
Tim Ferriss:
Or how people might search for it?
Kevin Kelly:
Yes. This is one of the many resources that I recommend in my book
Cool Tools. Cool Tools is a big catalog of the possibilities. It has about 1500
different items. A lot of them are like hantels, pliers and the great cordless drill,
but its much more than that. I include things like, What if you wanted to have
a psychedelic experience that was transformative? What do you do? I would
recommend this book or theres lots of other things in it. I dont actually have
the book right in front of me. I should. I think its called I dont remember.
Tim Ferriss:
Its OK.
Kevin Kelly:
In the show notes we will list it as the right one and theres also a little, tiny book
that came from England. It was a cartoon guide. They gave a street, an unjudgmental view of all the different drugs there were and what each one did and
didnt and what the plus and minuses are without recommending or forbidding
them. It was just saying, This is what it is. That information also believe it or
not, is really in short supply. Its like, What do you do with this and how does it
work and tell me the facts. I dont need to hear a lecture. Either way like, Wow,
this is great or this is terrible, but just tell me whats going on As you know that
kind of information sometimes is in extremely short supply.
Tim Ferriss:
Its very difficult to find information that isnt politicized, inaccurate or like you
said, so shrouded in either fear or irrational optimism that its almost intelligible
and certainly, generally useless. Well put those books in the show notes for
people. I want to come back to one of the things you said far, far earlier and that
was related to the pieces that you tried to give away that eventually wouldnt
die and came back. Were there any common threads, any patterns in those
pieces that you can pick out as being a uniquely, Kevin Kelly theme, for lack of a
better term?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah, one of the things that I discovered in my six months of trying to live as if
I was going to die in six months because as I was coming close to that date,
which happened to be Halloween, October 31st, it was I kept cutting off my
future. I may be like you. I tend to live in the future much more than the past.
Im always imagining. Im saving this for someday when Im going to do this. Im
looking forward. Im going to do this here. I was very much in the future and
then suddenly that future was being cut down day by day. I was thinking, Why
am I taking pictures? Im not taking photographs because Im not going to be
here in another two months.
There was all these things that Im cutting out and as I was cutting them out,
I had this realization, which was the thing I took away from this thing, which is
that I was becoming less human. That to be fully human we have to have a future. We have to look forward to the future. That is part of us is looking into the
future. After I came out of the, I embraced that. Im saying, Well, that future
forward facing thats what I do. Thats what I want to do and thats what
I write about it. In thinking about the future, one of the things that Its very
hard because the paradox about the future is that there are lots of impossible
things that happen all the time.
If someone from 100 years from now would come back and tell us things, theres
a lot of stuff we just not going to believe. Its just like thats crazy. Just like if
we went back 100 years and told them what was going on now they would say,
Thats just not going to happen. We could even go back 20 years. I could go
back 20 years and say, Were going to have Google Street Views of all the cities of the world and were going to have encyclopedias for free thats edited by
anybody. They would say, Theres no way. I would tell them, Most of its for
free. They were saying, There is no economic model in the world that would
allow for that, and there isnt, but here it is.
The dilemma is, is that any true forecast about the future is going to be dismissed. Any future that is believable now is going to be wrong and so youre
stuck in this thing of if people believe it, its wrong and if they dont believe it,
where does it get you? Youre dismissed. There is this very fine line between
saying something that is right on the edge of plausibility and at the same time,
right on the edge of having a chance of being true. What I discovered that was
helpful in trying to get away from the kind of assumptions that bind us to just
extrapolate was to think laterally, was to go sideways. One thing just take whatever it was that everybody knew and say, Well, what if that wasnt true?
Tim Ferriss:
What would be a good example of that or an example?
Kevin Kelly:
Everyone says, Moores law will continue. What if Moores law didnt continue?
What would that mean? What would happen?
Tim Ferriss:
Maybe I could say for the audience, but Ill just say even to remind me, Moores
law is What is it? Every 18 months the size and cost of technology will decrease by 50%, something along those lines?
Kevin Kelly:
Lets say even more simply.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh no, theres speed involved as well.
Kevin Kelly:
Right. Moore law it does say that, but lets say something right now we live in
a world where every year the technology is better and cheaper. What if that
wasnt true?
Tim Ferriss:
Right, got it.
Kevin Kelly:
What if every year starting a couple years from now stuff was better, but more
expensive? Thats a completely different world. Everyone assumes that things
are going to get better and cheaper, but what if that wasnt true? You can take
assumption, again thats something thats no ones really examining like one
of the things I write about is the fact that were going to have a population implosion globally. That the global population will drastically reduce in 100 years
from now well have population, far, far less than we have right now.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, I have to bite at that. I thought a lot about this in what they call the
Malthusian dilemmas. Is that going to be you think pandemic-related, nuclear
weapon related, all of the above?
Kevin Kelly:
None of those.
Tim Ferriss:
None of those?
Kevin Kelly:
No.
Tim Ferriss:
AI coming into the rise of the machines, no?
Kevin Kelly:
No. Its just pure demographics. If you look at the current trends in fertility
rates in all the developed countries everywhere, except for the US, they are
already either below replacement level. Replacement level means that you are
just sustaining the population just replaces itself. If its below it means that
there is getting less and less so Japan, Europe, theyre all below replacement.
The US is an exception because of only because of immigration. We need more
people coming. Otherwise, we would be there and this would not be any news
to anybody.
The real news is that people would point to developing world, but Mexico is now
aging faster than the US. China is aging faster because of their one child policy.
Of course, Japan is completely They are way under water completely. Even
the one exception is Sub-Sahara Africa and theres debate right now about how
fast or whether theyre slowing down, but generally around the world, South
America, the rest of Asia, the rate of fertility continues to drop and heres the
thing is that the demographic transition that is happening everywhere where
people become urban.
Every forecast shows the urbanity, the citification of the population continuing
and I cant think of any counter force to stop this huge migration at the scale
that were seeing into the city and as that happens, the birth rates drop down.
Even in places like Singapore or other places where they have taken very, very
active countermeasures of cash for having kids, day care forever, bonuses, none
of these work in terms of actually trying to raise fertility levels.
You have to understand that to go above replacement level the average woman
has to have 2.1 kids. Well, that means there has to be tons and tons of women
who have three or four kids to make up for those. How many people do you
know with that many kids living in cities? Theres not enough of them. This is
a projection. Some of these are UN projections. They have three. They have
a low, high and medium. The low one is not good news because theres not a
large cultural counterforce for women to have three. A lot, a very high percentage of the population to have three or four kids in a modern world and thats
why the population continues to decrease every year.
Tim Ferriss:
This is perhaps a tangent, but one of the big debates in my head right now is to
marry or not to marry, to have kids or not to have kids. I never thought those
would even be questions in my mind and yet, here I am and now they are. What
are your thoughts on having children? What type of people This is very broad,
but should have children or shouldnt have children, whichever way of answering
is easier or how do you even think about that question?
Kevin Kelly:
I think people who are privileged of which you are, should have children because
you can bestow so many privileges and opportunities to your children and if the
world is to be populated, why not populate it with children who have as many
opportunities as possible? I also say from my own experience of growing up one
of many kids and having Well, I have three kids. One of my other regrets in life
is not having a fourth, but we just started a little bit too late and we were unable
to have a fourth, but all my kids wished that we had had a fourth, too. I would
say that its a gift to your kids to have more than one. I know that from hanging
out in China where so many kids grew up only children and really, really missed
that. There is a total gift of the siblings, the brothers to each other, that is really
very profound.
There is also I know from my friends who have had lots of kids that there is a
fair amount of teaching from the older to the younger and thats a lot of what
they learn and that the curve of the amount of energy that you have to expend
actually after three doesnt really matter in terms of the parents. I have one
friend who has nine kids and I have another friend who has seven and basically,
how do they do that? The older kids were helping to parent the younger kids.
Thats the only way that it really works, but that is actually, basically they have
five parents instead of having two parents.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Its very traditional in a way, traditional meaning reaching back thousands or tens of thousands of years.
Kevin Kelly:
It is. Of course, in that the old days you may have had 12 born, but they rarely
had 12 kids survive so that actually is a very recent I mean its like the 1800s
onward. I hang out with the Amish a lot and they still have these very large families and they all survived so they have in some senses an unnatural expansion.
One of my predictions, again going back to the assumptions, one of my predictions is that in America in 100 years from now there will be The complete
countryside is run by the Amish.
The Amish take over the entire countryside because they never sell land. They
have eight kids and then theres all these people living in the city and its like
everybodys happy. You drive out to the Amish lands and its just fantastic. They
are very happy doing their thing and running the farms. I have been predicting
for years that the Amish would come and start buying upstate New York and
thats exactly what theyre doing right now.
Tim Ferriss:
Why do you spend so much time with the Amish? This is news to me, but very
interesting and how long has that been going on?
Kevin Kelly:
For a while. By the way
Tim Ferriss:
Does your beard have anything, is there any relation to the Amish?
Kevin Kelly:
I had the beard before my interest in the Amish. Im going to show you some
pictures when I was 19-years-old. I have an Amish beard, which means I have a
beard without a mustache. The reason why the Amish dont have mustaches is
that it was at the time that they were adopting their dress code, the mustache
was all military men had mustaches and so they were very anti-military. They
refused to serve in armies. They dont even vote. It was their rejection of the
military by shaving off their mustache.
I hang out with the Amish because their adoption of technology seems to us
totally crazy because first of all, theyre not Lettites. Theyre complete hackers.
They love hacking technology. They have something called Amish electricity,
which is basically pneumatics. A lot of these farms had a big diesel They dont
have electricity, but they have a big diesel generator in the barn that pumps up
this compressor that sends high-pressure air tubes down tubing into their barn
into their homes and so they have converted their sewing machine, washing
machine to nomadic.
Tim Ferriss:
Seems like a bit of a side-step of the word of God?
Kevin Kelly:
Exactly. Theyll have horse-drawn buggies and horse-drawn farm implements

and the horses will be pulling this diesel-generated combine and youre thinking, What are they doing? In fact, if you look at our own lives and I have done
this many times, I can ask you Tim or you can ask me, there will be some weird
thing like, We dont have TV in our house, but Ive got Internet. Its like, What
is that about? We all have these things, but heres the difference is that the
Amish do it collectively. They are very selective. They are selecting their technology collectively as a group and secondly, because theyre doing it collectively
they have to articulate what the criteria is.
A lot of us are adopting, We try this, we try that. We dont have any logic or
reason or theory or framework for why were doing this stuff. Its just a parade
of stuff, but the Amish have very particular criteria and their criterion is there
are two things that theyre looking for. The main thing they want to do, the main
reason why they have all these restrictions like horse and buggy and all of this
stuff is that they want to have these communities, very strong communities.
They noticed that if you have a car that youll drive out and shop somewhere
out of the community or you go to church somewhere out of the community,
but if you have a horse and buggy you can go only 15 miles and so everything
has to happen Your entire life, you have to support the community. You have
the community within 15 miles. You have to visit the sick and you have to shop
locally so youre shopping with your neighbors.
When a new technology comes along they say, Will this strengthen our local
community or send us out? The second thing that theyre looking at is with
families. The goal of the typical Amish man or woman is to have every single
meal with their children for every meal of their lives until they leave home.
They have breakfast and they have lunch and they have dinner so breakfast and
lunch is they go to a one room schoolhouse and they pedal back for lunch that
their parents had with them. That means that the business is ideally in their
backyard. They have a lot of shops and stuff. If theyre not a farmer and they
have a backyard shop, which actually has to be cleanish because it is in their
backyard. Well, it is in their backyard, so they really want to ensure that Many
of them have metalworking shops which they really try to keep non-toxic and
work because its in their backyard. That means that they can come home for
lunch. They have breakfast and lunch so theyre on the premise and they have
every single meal with their children until they leave.
They say, Will this technology allow us to do that? Will it help us do that or will it
work against that? Right now, they have been deciding whether to accept cell
phones or not, even though they dont have land line phones. Basically, some of
them are going to accept cell phones and they do that by theres always some
early Amish adopter whos trying things and they say, OK Ivan. Bishop says you
can He has to get permission. He says, You can try this, but were watching
you. Were going to see what effect this has on your family, on your community. You have to be ready to give it up at any time we say that its not working,
and they do this on a parish by parish. Its very de-centralized. They try it out.
Always trying out new technologies and theyre always looking to see, Does
this strengthen the families? Does this strengthen the communities? If not, we
dont want it.
Tim Ferriss:
I have two questions. The first is since youre normally as I understand it based
on the West Coast in Northern California, how do you get out to the Amish or is
there a separate community closer by? Secondly, what have you incorporated
into your own life or your own family that originated from the Amish?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. I dont get to see them as often as I want it actually, when I go east I have
some contacts that I will exercise and I try to get to stay overnight and go to
church in a buggy or something.
Tim Ferriss:
This is Pennsylvania?
Kevin Kelly:
Actually, Pennsylvania is the heart of it, but actually there are more communities
in Ohio, where my brother lives, Iowa, theres a lot more happening in New York.
The Pennsylvania are the Ground Zero, but in fact there are bigger, more extensive communities outside of Pennsylvania.
Tim Ferriss:
I didnt realize that. The Amish Diaspora.
Kevin Kelly:
It is. Im saying they literally are just buying up farmland. Theyre expanding.
Theyre constantly expanding. They have a very small attrition rate, very large
families. They all are buying. Basically, theyre buying farms and stuff for their
children and they never sell. They also dont even move into areas as a ...
They have a minimum number of families that need to move in at once. What
did I learn from them? One of the things that weve had, particularly when we
had younger kids was technological sabbaticals or Sabbaths I should say. Ive
now seen other families who arent even religious adopt that same thing which
is once a week you take a break from either you can define it however you want,
the screen or the keyboard or connectivity or something and you step back.
You do that not because its terrible or poison, but because its so good.
Theres lots of people who are like theyre going to drop out from Twitter. Theyre
kind of like, This is like a toxin. I need to detox. I think thats entirely long way
to think about it is you want to take breaks from this not because theyre toxic,
but because they are so good. Its like you want to step back so that you can
re-enter it and with a renewed perspective, with a renewed appreciation, with
having spent time looking at it in a different way. I think that kind of rhythm of
having Sabbaths and then yearly vacations, retreats.
Then every seven years you take a true sabbatical, I think that kind of rhythmic
disconnection or Sabbath I think is very powerful, something that works very

well and was something that we had in our family.
Tim Ferriss:
I take Saturdays off as it turns out as my screen-less day. I really try to make
that a weekly occurrence and its incredible the effect that it has, this galvanizing effect of just a mere 24 hours, not even that if you just consider the waking
hours. Every seven years a vacation or sabbatical of how long in your case or
your familys case?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. Partly because my wife actually is granted a sabbatical from the company
she works for which is Genentech. It was one of the few companies that actually
have an official sabbatical for all their researchers at least and its very meager.
Its six weeks. Of course, a six weeks sabbatical is basically a European annual
vacation. For an American
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Its three years.
Kevin Kelly:
Thats a big thing. Were doing something different. This year were taking one
and were going to camp in national parks for one month of it and then the other
two weeks well go to Asia, but we havent been to a lot of the national parks.
Im going to do a different kind of project that I havent done before and well do
some car camping. We havent really done a big road trip like that so its all new
for us.
Tim Ferriss:
What is the longest in the last few years that youve gone without checking
email?
Kevin Kelly:
Oh, probably two weeks and in China.
Tim Ferriss:
How do you manage that?
Kevin Kelly:
Well, it was not very easy. I was unable to pick it up because China was blocking
Google.
Tim Ferriss:
Makes it more challenging.
Kevin Kelly:
I was in some remote places and so even the connection was hard, but it was
like they werent letting me get it. Im not a mobile person. My first smartphone
was the iPhone 5 and Im still not using it properly. I use it for phone calls.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. I dont use my iPhone as an input device either. It drives me nuts.
Kevin Kelly:
I cant type. When I travel I like to leave everything. I spend a lot of my time
sitting in front of a computer. Im like the Zen: walk-walk, sit-sit, dont wobble.
Im here. Im really online. Then when I leave this studio I dont want to be connected at all and I wont be and Im not checking email. Im not checking this
other stuff and I can go days, typically Ill go days without checking even in the
US if Im traveling. If Im overseas I will go probably three or four days before
I get the email. Thats pretty typical.
Tim Ferriss:
Let me shift gears just a little bit. Im looking at LongNow.org. I recommend everybody take a look at it, Long Now Foundation. Humans are generally I would
say pretty bad at thinking long-term, certainly when it comes to habit change,
very, very high failure rate with long-term incentives. Youre going to get diabetes in 20 years, for instance, as opposed to Youll have more sex if you have
a six-pack when it comes to diet.
At the Long Now Foundation I just want to read a few things on this website for
people. The Long Now Foundation is established in 1996, written as 01996,
To creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of

the next 10,000 years ago. Then you have 10,000 year clock, which is a monument scale, multi-millennial all mechanical clock. Its an icon to long-term thinking; The Rosetta project, building an archive of all documented human languages; Long bets, featured bet is here, Warren Buffett, Protg Partners, LLC.
Public arena for enjoyable, competitive predictions of interest to society with
philanthropic money at stake, and then Revive and Restore, which is bringing
extinct species back to life. There is a lot here.
Can you explain to people because I have greatly enjoyed many of the seminars
and speeches of the Long Now Foundation. Im a supporter. I suppose Ive even
spoken there on stage and love the email synopses that Stewart sends out.
What is the function of the Long Now Foundation and what is the value?
Kevin Kelly:
The Long Now Foundation is reactive. Its reacting to the very inherent, shortterm bias that our society, particularly this technological society, particularly
say the Silicon Valley exhibits, which is often a focus on the next quarter, the
next two quarters, the next year, results needing to be immediate, instant satisfaction, if something is not on Netflix streaming, we dont even wait for the DVD.
Its this fairly very fast-paced, short term thinking and also, somewhat blinded
by the fact that we dont have a lot of sense of history either that were ignorant
about whats happened in the past.
The term The Long Now came from Brian Eno who noticed that we have a very
short now, which is the next five minutes and the last five minutes. The Long
Now is an attempt to expand that so that we, as a society and as individuals,
would try to think about things at a generational or civilizational scale. How
about working on something that might take longer than your own lifetime to
accomplish? You start something now that maybe make it so that it might take
Like the cathedrals of old, what if we were trying to make something that
might need 25 years to accomplish? How can we do that?
Were trying to encourage people to think in that perspective, to take that perspective and then to maybe move in that direction. Were not necessarily saying
we have to have the Asimov Foundation where we have to have a master plan
for the next 100 years and were going to plan out the future.
No, were agnostic about what it is that people make or do. Were just saying
that it would benefit thinking about the long-term. Ive often heard some people who advised to counseling to individuals about thinking about the long-term
in your own life, even though you might want to act locally and be spontaneous,
but you do want to keep in mind the fact that youll be around for a while, whether its putting some savings away or working on a skill that might take some
time, more than the six months or a year to acquire or whatever it is that you can
have both perspectives.
Were not attempting to get rid of the need for people to survive, the need for
companies to have a profit this year. Were saying there can be additional perspectives in addition to that where we say we commit to a program, a science
research where its pure science and the results of this say in mathematics is
one of the most profound things that we can invest in, even though most of the
things in the beginning seem to be non-utilitarian. They dont have any purpose, but we know from our own history that in 20 years theyll pay off in some
way or other. Being able to construct a society so that we can allow the rewards
of long-term investment, long-term thinking, long-term perspective that would
make us a better civilization.
Tim Ferriss:
I love the Long Now Foundation. I encourage everybody to check it out, LongNow.org.
Tim Ferriss:
Id love to perhaps jump into some rapid fire questions, and they dont have to
even be rapid.
Kevin Kelly:
Just some fire questions.
Tim Ferriss:
Just some fire questions. The questions will be rapid. The answers can be as
short or as long as youd like. What book or books do you gift or have gifted the
most to other people outside of your own books?
Kevin Kelly:
There is a short graphic novel by Daniel Pink called Bunko, and its career counsel advice. Its aimed at young people. Its a graphic novel. Its a cartoon, basically, and its aimed at young people as trying to teach them how to become
indispensable. Ive given that away to young people because its, for me, the
best summary of ... Again, its not how to become successful; its how to become
indispensable, too.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats right. Its Adventures of Johnny Bunko, or something like that. I have that
in my bookshelf back in San Francisco, in fact.
Kevin Kelly:
If you know a young person who is just starting out, hand them that book. Its
very easy for them to read. Again, its graphic novel. Its not threatening. Its fun.
Itll give this five great principles for starting out and helping them go orient
themselves as they start working, in the working life.
Tim Ferriss:
For someone whos facing a lot of the same questions lets just say, you have
graduates asking the what should I do? Why am I here? What am I good at? If
we fast forward to say, for the sake of argument, mid-30s, people in middle age
hitting that particular point, are there any books that you would recommend
they read?
Kevin Kelly:
There is a book that Im recommending by Cal Newport. Its called So Good They
Cant Ignore You. This changed my mind because I bought into the New Age
California dogma of follow your bliss, one will follow. He makes a really good
argument and convinced me thats actually not very good advice, that what you
really want to do is to master something and to use your mastering of something as a way to get to your passion. If you start with just passion, its paralyzing because ... and I know this from my own kids. Theyre 18. They literally dont
know what theyre passionate about.
Some people are lucky enough to know, and a lot of people arent. This is a book
for people who dont really know what theyre really excellent at, dont really
know what theyre passionate about.
His premise is that you master something, almost anything at all, just something
you master, and you use that mastery to move you into a place where you can
begin to have passion, and that you keep recycling that the way you find your
passion is through mastery rather than the other way around, which is people
think that theyre going to get their mastery through passion.
I believe that former ... that passion would lead to mastery, but after thinking
about it, looking at his examples and his argument, Im pretty sure that, at least,
for most people, you can get to your passion through mastery.
Tim Ferriss:
That would also give you a currency or a lever to use in getting to that point.
Do you have a favorite fiction book?
Kevin Kelly:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
I usually dont get one answer. This is great.
Kevin Kelly:
Shantaram. It might take me a while to explain this, but its author who wrote
one book because this is very autobiographical. The premise of the book and
the authors life seems completely incredulous and almost Hollywood-ish, but
what you get from it and where its set, its set in India, its set in the slums of India, and you get an incredibly vivid, immersive, deep, and in some ways uplifting
view of India and the underworld in India, into that part of Asia.
The main protagonist is this very interesting Zen criminal. Hes sort of a Coyote
trickster blend of someone who is ... He does bad things, but at the same time,
hes sorry about it, and he has a cosmic perspective. Its very, very unusual, but
its a long book.
I actually recommend that if people are going to try this, you actually to get the
Audible version and listen to. It runs on and on, but itd be one of those books
that you wish will never end. Ill just tell you the beginning of it, which is that, and
this is the true part, which is that the guy, the author became a bank robber in
New Zealand. He was hooked on drugs, started robbing banks, was eventually
caught, and escaped from prison. He made his way to the slums of India, where
because he had a medical kit, he was treated as a doctor.
Got involved and hooked on drugs in India; got involved with the Mafia; was put
to prison, tortured, left, abandoned. Nobody knew he was even in there. Started
writing a book. Hereafter, he wrote his book, they ripped it up, destroyed it. He
was recruited, found a guru, an Afghani, was recruited in was fighting there
because entire company was wiped out. Thats just the beginning. Thats like
the first day.
Tim Ferriss:
Its really interesting that you would bring up Shantaram for those people who
havent heard Josh Waitzkin. I also had him on this podcast. Josh was the basis
for Searching for Bobby Fisher, the book and the movie. World class chess player. Also very deep, soulful guy, and this is one of his favorite books as well. You
would love Josh. Sometime, I will have to put you guys in touch, but any favorite
documentaries?
Kevin Kelly:
Now youve asked the wrong question because I have a cycle of true films, for
the past 10 years. I have reviewed the best documentaries, and I actually have
a book called True Films, which is the 200 best documentaries that you should
see before you die.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh my God! No kidding. You have no idea how timely this is. Its T-R-U-E Films?
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. True Films. There are a couple of films that I would say have served univer-
sal appreciation. They may have a rating of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes or something. The one documentary that I think everybody I know have seen has love is
Man on Wire.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats such a good movie. Oh my God! Yeah.
Kevin Kelly:
Its just transcendent. Its just a beautiful movie. Its based on fact that this guy
basically hes going to walk the Twin Towers. The moment was he was a 14-year
old kid in France, was at a dentists office looking at a magazine, and hes hold ...
There were had the plans to build this Twin Tower New York. He saw those two
Twin Towers, and he said, I need to walk between them. He didnt know how to
tight walk. The towers had not been built. He was already planning this thing. He
was filming himself the whole way. He does it, and how he does it is amazing.
Another great documentary that I love because its very unusual among documentaries and that it films the villain side of the whole thing as well, which is
King of Kong.
Tim Ferriss:
This has been recommended to me. I still have not seen this movie.
Kevin Kelly:
King of Kong is about a guy who becomes the video game, arcade game King
of Kong. He becomes the champion, but he is basically competing against this
cabal of people who are trying to subvert him and are doing all kinds of really
terrible things to stop him, which was all on film. Heres this really Midwestern,
really lovable guy, and youre rooting for him all the time while these really sleazy guys are trying to take him down. Its just fantastic.
Tim Ferriss:
I have to watch that.
Kevin Kelly:
Thats the second one. The third one is when but its called State of Mind. Its
about the spectacles in North Korea, which these two filmmakers had access
to. They followed several different young athletes who were practicing for this
spectacle, and these spectacles, of course, where theres these people are pixels.
They have this huge stadium size things, and theyre like little robots. Theyre
cogs in this machine, which is perfect. You can imagine a picture thats made up
of pixels, but every pixel is actually a little boy or girl holding up a card, colored
cards in sequence so these things move, which means that theres not a pixel
missing. It means that nobodys sick. Youre not allowed to be sick. You cant
make a mistake at all, and its getting inside of North Korea, which turns out to
be a nationwide cult.
I think that in 50 years when theyre gone, nobody will believe that, that was impossible, and this documentary will be here saying like, No, no, no. There really
was a nationwide cult, and they really did believe this. It really is amazing just
to see whats going on there.
Tim Ferriss:
I know what Im doing for the next few days, next few evenings.
Kevin Kelly:
I cant go on unfortunately because I have a lot of them, but go to the True Films.
Tim Ferriss:
True Films.
Kevin Kelly:
I only review ones that are great, so I dont do ... Im just saying these are fantastic.
Tim Ferriss:
Man, Ive been looking for this. I cannot believe that Im only learning this now.
Im embarrassed about that.
When you think of the word or hear the word successful, whos the first person
who comes to mind?
Kevin Kelly:
Jesus.
Tim Ferriss:
Why would you say that?
Kevin Kelly:
There arent that many people whove left their mark on as many people in the
world as he has. I think what he was up to, what he was doing is vastly been
twisted, misunderstood, whatever word you want, but nonetheless, whats remarkable is ... and heres a guy who didnt write anything.
I think success is also overrated.
Tim Ferriss:
Id love for you to elaborate on that.
Kevin Kelly:
Greatness is overrated. I mentioned big numbers, but its more of the impact
that they had on peoples lives. I think we tend to have an image of success
thats so much been skewed by our current media, just like our sense of beauty
of women. In terms of all possibilities, its in a very small, narrow, define ... ritualistic in a certain sense. I think our idea of success is often today it means youre
somebody who has a lot of money, or who has a lot of fame, or who has some of
these other trappings, which we had assigned, but I think can be successful by
being true to, and being the most you that you could possibly be.
I think that whats I think of as when you think of Jesus, whether you take him
as a historical character or anything beyond, was about ... He certainly wasnt
imitating anybody, let me put it that way. I think thats the great temptation
that people have is they want to be someone else, which is basically they want
to be in someone elses movie. They want to be the best rock star, and theres
so many of those already that you can only wind up imitating somebody in that
slot.
I think to me the success is like you make your own slot. You have a new slot that
didnt exist before. I think thats of course what Jesus and many others were doing, but they were making a new slot. Thats really hard to do, but I think thats
what I chalk up as success is you made a new slot.
Tim Ferriss:
What is your new slot? You knew that was coming.
Kevin Kelly:
Who says Im successful?
Tim Ferriss:
Im not. Im trying to not make any assumptions here. Or what would be your
slot?
Kevin Kelly:
My slot would be Kevin Kelly. Thats the whole thing. Its not going to be a career
or you would really ideally be something that would ... you had no imitators. You
would be who you are, and that is success actually in some sense is you didnt
imitate anybody, no one else imitated you afterwards.
In a certain sense you have, if you become an adjective, thats a good sign,
right?
Tim Ferriss:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kevin Kelly:
I think success is actually you make your own path. If theyre calling you a successful entrepreneur, then to me thats not the best kind of success.
Tim Ferriss:
Because youre being confined to that category.
Kevin Kelly:
Youre in a category.
Tim Ferriss:
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Kevin Kelly:
I could sing.
Tim Ferriss:
Aha! Youd like to sing.
Kevin Kelly:
Yeah. I seem to be unable to carry a tune. I cant remember when my wife can
hear something once, she can just sing it back later. I can hear the same song
or have heard the same song and I couldnt tell you three notes of it. Im sure
because Im a Tim Ferriss fan, Im sure I could train myself to that. I know I
could, but I guess I havent, and it would be something that I have to really work
at and I havent, but I have trouble carrying a tune, staying in tune, remembering
a tune.
I love music, and that I appreciate it, but in terms of actually singing and/or play
... I dont play an instrument, so maybe I would say if it was a little easier for me,
that would be something nice.
Tim Ferriss:
Have you take lessons or attempted to take lessons?
Kevin Kelly:
No.
Tim Ferriss:
I got it. Just in the spirit of trade. Ive recently started exploring hand drumming
with Jim bass and different types of drums. If anyone out there can get me a pen
art hang, I would really love to hear from you. Those of you that ... wont mean
nothing to most people who are hearing this, the research that has peaked my
curiosity most recently, and, of course, you dont want to run out and just start
swallowing these things, but theres a common anti-epilepsy drug called the
Valproate, which apparently has some implications for opening a window for
achieving perfect pitch in mature adults. Very fascinating stuff. If I do any experiments with that, I will certainly report back.
Kevin Kelly:
Now that youve talked about it, not the drug part, but I did, I remember I did
take one class ... You mentioned drums. I took a one class at an adult summer
camp, which I highly recommended. If your kids go to camp, you should go with
them, and that was a steel drum course. I loved that. Like you, I think if I did
take up an instrument, it would be drums of some sort because that, I seem to
respond to it, and I did pretty good for the intro course on steel drumming.
Tim Ferriss:
I find percussion to be so primal. It just satisfied some type of need that probably predates verbal communication even. Certainly written notes.
Kevin Kelly:
I think its your inner cave man thats responding.
Tim Ferriss:
Are there any particular, lets just say in the first two hours of your day, any particular morning rituals or habits you have that when performed consistently, you
find produce better days for you. Im leaving better days undefined on purpose,
but I love studying mornings and/or what people do when they wake up. What
time do you wake up? Are there any particular habitual rituals that you find contribute to better days?
Kevin Kelly:
Im a very good sleeper. I dont sleep a lot. These days, I get up at 7:30 and I have
some rituals, but I dont vary them enough maybe to know whether they are ...
Im not morning person to begin with.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre not a morning person. The fact that you dont vary them is perfect.
Kevin Kelly:
I know, but I dont necessarily optimize it in any way, or I cant tell which is better,
but for better or worse, one of the first things I do is I read the paper version of
the New York Times. Its what I call a guilty pleasure. I dont know whether that
makes me better at anything else I do, but I dont drink coffee or anything. Its a
ritual, and when Im not here, I dont read it, so its like I dont miss it. Im curious,
but if Im here, its like I got to do it. Its weird.
Tim Ferriss:
Is that immediately after waking you read the paper, or is there anything you
do?
Kevin Kelly:
Just about. In my pajamas, I walk out to the front gate, and I pick it up, and I read
it. I dont read all of it. I just go through, and I usually dont even read the news
part. I read the slower stuff. Im not sure why. Now that youre asking, and thats
it. Thats the entire ritual. I dont have the same thing for breakfast or anything
like that. Its just that morning hit.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you do anything throughout your day, regularly? Maybe its before bed or
anything else that most other people probably dont do.
Kevin Kelly:
Thats a good question. No.
Tim Ferriss:
Really?
Kevin Kelly:
I have no special sauce.
Tim Ferriss:
But youre very consistent. Your days seem to be ... dont vary very well. At least
that, in and of itself, might be something that a lot of people dont.
Kevin Kelly:
Lets pick up two different things. While Im here in the studio, have a lot of control over my time. What I do during the day is greatly varied though. I do a lot
of things for short amount of times. Ill go into my workshop. Ill read, actually
read books, sit down and read books during the middle of the day. Ill go out. Ill
do a hike and bring my camera almost every day. Maybe that is something that
most people dont do is probably they probably arent taking pictures with their
camera every day.
Tim Ferriss:
More reading books in the middle of the day for them I think
Kevin Kelly:
Maybe thats true, I guess.
Tim Ferriss:
How do you choose your books? Thats a paradox of choice problem for a lot of
people.
Kevin Kelly:
It is. Its like, what are you going to listen to next in music. The music becomes
free, and everybody has all the music in the world, but deciding what youre going to listen to becomes the thing you pay for. Thats been my prediction about
Amazon is they will soon going to have any book you want for free. Amazon
Prime, digital version of it. You can have it whenever you want, but youll pay for
us for the recommendations
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a great point.
Kevin Kelly:
I have a network of friends, and I listen to lots of podcasts. I get it from all over
the place. Like probably you are at this point, I long ago decided that in terms of
the greater scheme of things, the cost of books are really cheap, and if I wanted
a book, I would buy it.
The result is that Im right now speaking in a two-story high library of books that
I have. I dont do the same with digital books because I finally figured out that if I
purchase it, a book before Im reading it, its not going anywhere. Its just sitting
there. I shouldnt really purchase a digital book until five seconds before Im going to read it.
Tim Ferriss:
I have exactly the opposite habit.
Kevin Kelly:
Its just there. The whole point of Kindle is that you dont have to have it until you
need it. On the digital books, I dont buy anything until Im seconds away from
reading it, then Ill get it, but the paper books, I was near to the point of actually
digitizing and getting rid of all my paper books.
I was that close about five years ago, but then I had an epiphany. I went to private library, and I realized that books were never as cheap as they are today.
They never will be as cheap, and that theres some power about having these
things in paper always available, no batteries, never obsolete, and that if you
made a library now, you would never be able to make some of these libraries in
50 years, so I decided to keep and to cultivate this paper library as something
that was going to be powerful in the future.
Tim Ferriss:
I like that. Or at least I can use it as justification for keeping a lot of paper books
around.
Kevin Kelly:
I get tips for books from podcasts, from blogs, from friends, from Amazon recommendations, anywhere, and whenever I hear someone recommend a book,
Ill go and check it out, and then Im fairly free in buying it, but which means I
read a lot of really mediocre books.
Tim Ferriss:
What?
Kevin Kelly:
Thats part of my job in Cool Tools. The book that we were just talking about,
which is this catalog of possibility for the self-published that has, oh I dont
know, 15 hundred. Maybe theres couple hundred books that are recommended, but I probably read thousands and thousands and thousands of books in
order to select those.
I see part of my job reading through, and I read a lot of how-to books. Most of
the books Im reading is nonfiction. A lot of the easy, instructional stuff on how
to build a stonewall, how to do origami, how to send a cell, microcell to space,
whatever it is, it doesnt matter. Ill look at it, and Ive seen tens of thousands of
them, 50 thousand how-to books over my lifetime. I can spot a really good one,
but still Ill read through the other ones so that someone else doesnt have to
and I can recommend the same, This is the best book on building a tiny house
if you want to build a tiny house.
Tim Ferriss:
When you read these books on origami or stonewall, do you follow through and
attempt these projects, or are you evaluating it purely based on your amassed
experience of reading lots of these types of instructional books?
Kevin Kelly:
No. Actually, maybe one of the other things that I dont do every day, but one of
the things I do in general that maybe everyone else is not doing is that I have
thousand hobbies. I dabble in things. I have built stonewalls, more than one. I
have done origami. I have made beer. I have made wine. Whatever it is, Ive tried
to do these things in my life, and I continue to try and do that. I have homeschooled my son.
As much as possible, this is ... I was telling you before about my day. Its irregular
in the sense that Im here and I have things, but Im doing new things, and Im
reading new things all the time. When Im outside, Ill make a go-kart or a wall;
do something that I havent done before. Thats the basis for helping decide
about these books. I dont have to be an expert in them, but I can know enough
to tell whether or not the information theyre telling me is useful.
Tim Ferriss:
What odd project over the last year has been the most fun? Lets start there, for
you.
Kevin Kelly:
Just the last couple of months, I finally built myself a real workshop. I wish I
could show it to you because one of the cool things that I did was if you go on to
U Line or somewhere, this container, they have these racks of bins. Ive filled an
entire wall of hundreds and hundreds of bins so I can organize stuff.
Im a big fan of Adam Savage. He has a principle for his workshops called First
Order Access, which basically means that you dont want to store things behind
anything. Everything has to be at the first level so you can look and see it. It has
to be within reach. He says you have to be able to see everything that you have
and its accessible. You dont want things hidden behind other things.
Thats part of what I was doing with this workshop is this first order access. Its
tremendously powerful. The few days or the weeks Ive had working, and it just
transforms everything.
I had the same problem with my books for many, many years. I had books like
multiple different bookshelves in the house. I had them in boxes. I had them this
and that. Moving everything to one location, to a library where there was two
stories, I could see all my books, just transformed them and made it really useful
because I could find them. Just really go and reach for them. The same thing
was Im finally bringing that to my tools, which is that you want to have things
plugged in, ready to go, labeled, organized, first order access, and it can make
simple jobs really simple instead of the hours of looking for something. Also-
Tim Ferriss:
Like gathering all the tools.
Kevin Kelly:
Gathering all the tools and also-
Tim Ferriss:
Just like cooking. Its just like cooking. Its like having a manual, random access
memory, right?
Kevin Kelly:
Right.
Tim Ferriss:
You have your mise-en-place right in front of you.
Kevin Kelly:
You know the tools are.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats very cool. If there were one object, manual project, building something,
do you think every human should have the experience of doing, what would that
be?
Kevin Kelly:
Thats very easy. You need to build your own house, your own shelter. Its not
that hard to do, believe me. Actually, I built my own house.
Tim Ferriss:
Your house is amazing.
Kevin Kelly:
Not this house. I built one from cutting down the logs, cutting down the trees
in upstate New York, and doing the stone hearth. Unfortunately, I dont recommend this, maybe like 2 by 4s from trees. You dont want to do that because its
a pain. Standard lumber is very good. If those things are off a little quarter of an
inch as they are with rough sewn lumbers, its a mess.
Nonetheless, a large portion of people in the world have made their own homes,
adobe, rammed earth, bamboo, whatever it is. Going back to what we originally
started off with, even if you dont wind up living in it, its empowering to know
that you can do it, and if you do wind up living in it, I have a friend, Lloyd Conn,
who built his magnificent place in Balinese that he built with salvaged material
from scratch over the many years. It gives you the power to alter it.
I believe that your house should be an extension of you, that really is another
projection. Its another way of, and also, going back to what were talking about,
is just another way to discover who you are and discover what youre good at
because a well-designed house should really reflect you. What Ive discovered,
lot of people designed houses, and they have this imaginary fantasy idea about
themselves and what theyre going to do. Whatever it is, theyre going to have a
swimming pool. Theyre never going to use a swimming pool. Whatever it is.
Very few people actually have a very good sense of who they are and what
theyre going to use something for, but if you really study yourself and really are
honest and designed something that space can help you become successful in
the sense of making a slot for you, making your own slot.
Its both a by-product of who you are, and also can help you become who you
are. It works both ways.
Tim Ferriss:
I like that. Youre not just finding yourself; youre creating yourself.
Kevin Kelly:
This is a larger philosophical question, but this is something I talk about a lot. In
a very high dimensional space, which means space of many pending possibilities, the act of finding and the act of creating are identical. Theres no difference
between discovering something and inventing something. We could say that
philosophically, Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. We could say that Christopher Columbus invented America. We could say that discovery and invention
are the same, so that discovering yourself and inventing yourself is really the
same things that bring about that process. You have to do both at once.
Tim Ferriss:
I really enjoyed that. Last question. If you could give your ... lets say, you can
pick the age, either 15 or 20-year old self, one or a few pieces of advice, what
would they be?
Kevin Kelly:
You dont have to do everything yourself. You can hire people to do stuff. I wish I
had known that when I was younger. I wish that I had, when I was 20 working for
Whole Earth catalog, I wish I had known that I could have hired a programmer to
do something. I could have hired someone. It took me a long time to understand
that.
Then recently, Id been really big on it, hiring people through Elance. Because I
came from a little bit of a do-it-yourself ... I made a nature museum when I was
12. I had a chemistry lab that I built myself, building that stuff. I could buy any
glassware, but I had a whole chemistry lab. I had nature museums. I did all the
stuff, and I did it myself, and then of course moving into the Whole Earth catalog, which is a do-it-yourself thing, I really was ... I just talked about building my
own house.
Now, I will hire professionals to work. It just took me a long time to realize that
theres something about ... Being able to pay professionals to do what they do
really well is not a weakness. It helps them. Im happy. Theyre happy. Were all
happy. I can do a lot more. Theres certainly a pleasure in doing things yourself
and dabbling in it, but theres also this other thing, which I didnt realize, which
is theres this leverage that you get by hiring people who are really good, paying
them fairly, working with them to amplify what it is that you want to do. I wish I
knew that when I was younger.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a fantastic answer. You have, if I remember correctly, an assistant and a

researcher. Is that still true?
Kevin Kelly:
Yes, one and the same person.
Tim Ferriss:
They are the same. I thought that at one point, you had believed that you needed those people to be two separate people but you-
Kevin Kelly:
Heres what I was saying was that its very unusual to find one person who can
do both of those tasks. Both of those tasks are often not found on the same
person because theres the hunting, the researching. Theres a hunter aspect
to research thats often found in a certain personality, and then theyre the kind
the admin. Its more nurturing, kind of making sure things, gardening a little bit.
Its often rare to find someone who can do both, but its possible.
Tim Ferriss:
Was it luck that you happened upon this particular individual that you work with
now? Or did you have a method for ... ? Was there a particular approach
Kevin Kelly:
I found that the place where I found over the 14 years, Ive had two, the place
where I found that theyre more likely than not to have a combination was librarians.
Tim Ferriss:
I love it.
Kevin Kelly:
We put out notices on the librarian mailing list and stuff.
Tim Ferriss:
I said last question. This will be the last question. Is there any other thoughts
or advice youd like to leave with the listeners, and then where would you like
people to find more from you, your writing, anywhere else.
Kevin Kelly:
I would say congratulations to the people who have listened to the podcast. I
think podcast are these fantastic new medium. Im spending a lot of time there.
I think its this really great. Were in the early days of where this will go. Im really impressed by the power of this medium to teach and to inform; sometimes
to entertain. Again, Im thankful to you, Tim, for having me on and having the
chance to gab here, but to the people who are listening, I think keep going. Listen to more podcasts. Try to go wide. I know Tim mentions them here and there.
Take a chance. Listen to some more.
Thats one thing I would say as far as finding out more about me, I lucked out
with a very easy website. Its my initials, KK. KK.org. I have very public email for
the past 25 years. You can find it very easily on my website if you want email
directly. I have not outsourced that unlike other people that I know. My writings
and books and whatnot are www.KK.org.
Cool Tools is a book that I really believe that each of you out there should have.
Its on paper. Its the best of the website, Cool Tools, which is me going on for
11 years now where we review every day, one great tool. Theyre only positive
reviews. Why waste your time on anything but the best? Tools in the broadest
sense of the word of things that are useful, whether its Elance, or a book on
how to do psychedelics, or a book on how to build a workshop, or how to build
a house, or how to hitchhike around the world.
I and others recommend the best here with some great contexts. Its printed
on paper, available on Amazon. Not so easily found in bookstores because its
huge. Its like 5 pounds weighs. Its really, really big. If you dont find 500 things
you didnt know about but you wished you know about, like last year, Ill give you
your money back. Enjoy that. That said, Cool Tools or Cool Tools in Amazon.
Tim Ferriss:
Kevin, this has been a blast. It always is. Every time we chat, I feel like we should
chat more. Hopefully, well get a chance to spend some more time together
soon back in Nor Cal or somewhere else?

Kevin Kelly:
Nor Cal? In China.
Tim Ferriss:
Or in China. Its been a long time. I could get back.
Kevin Kelly:
Im heading back to Japan again, and I know that you have lots of roots in Asia,
but I go there to renew my sense of the future because they are ... Theyre bulldozing the past as fast as they can and headed, racing into the future. I want to
see what Asia has in store for us because mathematically, we dont count anymore. 1.3 billion, whatever, the 3 billion Asians and 300 million Americans. What
can you say?
Tim Ferriss:
Study up, folks. Specialization is for insects. I think that was a hind line.
Kevin Kelly:
Hind line.
Tim Ferriss:
Enjoy your time on this planet and look broadly like Kevin said. Kevin, thank you
so much. I will talk to you soon, and have a wonderful day. I will talk to you soon.
Kevin Kelly:
Thanks for having me, Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
Buh-bye.
Kevin Kelly:
Bye-bye.
EPISODES 30, 31, 32:
TRACY DINUNZIO
Tim Ferriss:
Hello ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode
of The Tim Ferris Show. Thank you for listening. Im going to start off with some
Japanese trivia since a number of you, quite a many of you have asked for more
Japanese tidbits given that I lived there in high school. It was in fact my first extended overseas experience, going from Long Island to Tokyo, Japan for a year.
I was the only American student in a high school of roughly 5,000 students so I
thought I would give you two recommendations. The first is a song and you may
think its cheesy, everyone in the country of Japan was in love with this song
when I was in high school and its called Shima-uta.
Shima-uta is by The Boom, the name of the band and Shima-uta literally means
Island song. Shima-uta is, more generally speaking, a genre of songs thought
to originate from the Amami Island.
There are two versions of Shima-uta, Shima-uta by The Boom. There are two
different versions. The first is in Japanese, what we know is Japanese. Its actually hyojungo, so hyojungo is basically Edo dialect, Japanese, in the same way
that Mandarin, what people think of as Chinese, is also just a dominant dialect
of Chinese. Thats why its called Hanyu.
Hanyu is the language of the Han people, thats what many Chinese would describe Chinese or how they would identify it. You have hyojungo version of Shima-uta, regular Japanese and then you have an island dialect. I always thought
it was Okinawa-ben but I could be wrong, but it sounds nothing like normal Japanese. Absolutely nothing. You can listen to both versions, its very, very cool.
Thats the first, Shima-uta.
The second bit of trivia or recommendation that Ill make for those Japan fans
out there is a comic book. I learned to read and write and speak Japanese
through a few different avenues. The first was Bukatsu, so I was in a Judo club
and I could be Tarzan while still picking up bits and pieces here and there.
Primarily during the classes that I couldnt understand, I would read comic
books, manga. Specifically, I read a comic book series called Rokudenashi Blues.
Rokudenashi Blues is Rokudenashi Blues and that literally means, roughly translated Good-for-nothing blues.
Rokudenashi is good-for-nothing blues and it is a series basically based on high

school gangs and martial arts and it has incredible artwork. In my mind, very
reminiscent of some of the early Jim Lee work and its spectacular. I havent
read it in a very long time but I was obsessed with this particular series and you
can go online and search Rokudenashi Blues, R-O-K-U-D-E-N-A-S-H-I. Roku also
means six, just like the device that you can use to watch Netflix and so, Roku six.
Rokudenashi Blues ... and you can look it up and look at the images on Google
just for instance and I think youll be very impressed. It was a huge hit in Shonen
Jump, the Weekly Shonen Jump for a very, very long time.
Now, all of that having been said, this episode is very exciting to me, extremely
exciting. I hope you guys love it as much as I did. It is with Tracy DiNunzio and
Tracy is the CEO and founder of Tradesy. Tradesy, T-R-A-D-E-S-Y.com is a startup that I am involved with and I invested through syndicate that I created on
Angelist.
If you want to see other deals that Im involved with or will be involved with in
the start-up world and how I select them and so on, you can go to angel.co. This
is, angel.co/tim and check it out.
I ended up investing in Tradesy along with a number of people you might recognize, Sir Richard Branson, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins. Hes legendary in the
world of venture capital. He joined their board. Now, the reason that I think Tracy
is very, very interesting to talk to right now, among other reasons, is that she is
in the trenches right now.
Unlike some of the people Ive interviewed on this podcast who are just megastars, theyve sold 60 million plus albums, theyve sold millions of books, theyve
accomplished these incredible things that some of you have said, Its hard to
identify with.
You find it inspiring but from a tactical standpoint, its intimidating. Youre not
sure if you could ever get to that point because you get the picture from A and
then you get Z but perhaps some of the steps in between are missing.
Tracy is currently building a huge company. Theyre growing extremely quickly.

Theyre facing all of the challenges that a bootstrap or a venture-backed company would face. In many instances, both sets of problems. She is not technically trained from the outset so she does not have a computer science background
or anything like that and had to scrap really hard and hustle and train herself as
an autodidact to develop the skills to become a very competent, high velocity
CEO and founder.
Shes right in the middle of this right now, so Im catching her we are catching
her at an inflection point. I really think that Tradesy could turn into a huge company so to have an eye on the ball, to look through that window now, I think is a
very unique opportunity. That is part of the reason that Im so excited that youll
get to listen to this interview, which went a little long. Its going to be broken up
into multiple parts.
This is part one and I did decide to have some wine. I dont think it affected my
judgement and my ability to speak as much it did with Kevin Rose, for instance,
but I think youll really enjoy it. The last thing Ill say as always is this podcast is
brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book Club.
To support the podcast, if you want to see a handful of books that have had a
huge impact on my life, you could listen to at least one of them for free, typically
by trying Audible so you can go to audible.com/timsbooks. Go to audible.com/
timsbooks and you can hear samples of all of them. You can get one for free if
you try Audible or you can just download them as audio books and enjoy.

Without further ado, heres Tracy and thank you for listening.
Hello ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode
of the Tim Ferris show. Im very excited to have Tracy DiNunzio with me. Tracy,
how are you this evening?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Im doing well. Thank you. How are you?
Tim Ferriss:
I am great and this is an exciting occasion for me and its been a while since I
have had wine on the podcast. Im not going to overdo it like I did with Kevin
Rose, where I got to a fairly disgusting level of intoxication.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Come on, overdo it.
Tim Ferriss:
I am going to celebrate and people always want to know what type of wine, so
Im having a Kay Brothers, K-A-Y, Amery Vineyard Block 6 Shiraz, vintage 2010,
which is delicious. The reason that this episode is exciting to me, and Im hoping
to everyone listening, is that oftentimes on this show, I interview people who
are perhaps 5, 10, even 15 years out of the trenches. Meaning that they hit their
apex of professional or creative careers at a point well in the past.
In hindsight, they can give a lot of technical advice but sometimes, its very, very
high level and listeners have trouble identifying with those folks or feel that its
so out of reach that they could never experience and replicate the successes of
those people.
Tracy is the CEO and founder of Tradesy. No relation. Just kidding, I have to
make that crack.
Tracy DiNunzio:
It was not on purpose.
Tim Ferriss:
T-R-A-D-E-S-Y.com. This is a company that Ive invested in, a company that is

doing fantastically well. Tracy is absolutely in the trenches right now, doing a
really fantastic job in my opinion and well dig into all the back-story specifics. I
wanted to have the chance to really talk with someone whos on the front lines
and someone who in my opinion and of course, time will only tell but I think that
Tracy, you are at a major inflection point in your life and its a rare opportunity
that I would get to chat with you in this particular window in your development
and growth.
Its also fun for me because in many of the interviews that Ive done, these are
people who have been exposed to the media and the public for a very long time,
decades in some cases and its hard to uncover stories that people have not
heard before. I think we have a lot of fertile ground to cover.
Thank you very much for taking the time. I know you are a very busy founder
and its probably at the tail end of a very full day but I appreciate you making the
time, first of all.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Of course. Of course, Im excited.
Tim Ferriss:
I thought just for people who may not be familiar with you and your story, we
could start close to the beginning and you could just give people a snap shot of
where youre from, where you grew up and some of the exploration or adventures that you had prior to Tradesy.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Sure. A short version of that is going to miss out on a lot of the fun but I grew up
on Long Island, suburbs of New York, like deep suburbia. Ran away the minute I
turned 18 and went to school in Manhattan for fine arts. I have a bachelors degree from the School of Visual Arts in fine arts and then, after I graduated from
college, I was doing some painting exhibits in Manhattan and because I was
young, I decided to run away to Mexico and get a masters degree in Mexico.
I also have an MFA in painting from a university in Mexico which is definitely not
the typical CEO and founder kind of resume. For about 10 years like most of
my 20s, I was a painter and I traveled all over South America and Europe with a
backpack on my back and a bunch of canvasses rolled up in a suit case and sold
my work and lived that way.
As I got to be kind of closer to 30, I thought about doing something that had a
little more stability than painting. There are very few things that have less stability than painting so I started up even though theyre kind of notoriously risky.
It actually felt like a really secure path for me.
Tim Ferriss:
At that point, when you decided to phase shift and start a start-up, what type of
business did you start at that point?
Tracy DiNunzio:
It was in ... lets see, 2009 that I launched a peer-to-peer market place for everything wedding related. Primarily, wedding dresses and then decorations, and
accessories, etc. It had the same exact business model that Tradesy now has.
Tradesy is a peer-to-peer market place for fashion, kind of like eBay but easier,
safer, simpler, faster to use. Tradesy was really an outgrowth of that first company, which was called Recycled Bride, and kind of lived at my dining room table
for a few years.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you make, just even mentally, the leap from the travelling artist to entrepreneur? Peer-to-peer is a term that even now, many people wouldnt be able
to define if theyre not immersed in business or text. What type of education or
self-education did you embark on before deciding to start such a company?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Its interesting because peer-to-peer isnt really a laymans term and I dont
even know if I knew that term in 2009 but I had been living this kind of like bar-
ter lifestyle as an artist for such a long time. I always sold the stuff that I wasnt
using or wearing to make money to continue on and get new stuff and have new
experiences.

I think in that way, the transition was very natural because I was just kind of
thinking about my own lifestyle, imagining that some other folks might be interested in living similarly and built a web platform around that content.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Its really at that time, maybe in the minds eye, being viewed as a market
place?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you bootstrap that or how did you finance that?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Painfully. Investors, traditional investors, arent really lining up to give painters

with no track record a whole bunch of money. I started with some credit cards
and a couple of thousand dollars of my own money that I made from selling off
the last of my paintings and some of my nicer clothes.
It was a true bootstrapping situation like I hired back-end developers but I

thought myself how to do everything else from design, and marketing, and customer acquisition, to even a little bit of front-end code and writing some crude
scripts for functionality of the site.
I was really in a learning process and I was bartering the hallway through. At one
point, I had a web developer living in my underground storage unit in exchange
for work. Thats how scrappy it got.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you find that particular developer? Do you remember?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Believe it or not, he was a roommate who couldnt pay his rent and so, I said,
Well, I got to get a roommate who can pay rent but youre welcome to go down
to the storage unit if you can continue working on the project. That was for
about a year or so and then in early 2010, I heard about this new website called
Airbnb and at the time, the concept of renting out your home to strangers was
kind of foreign to a lot of people but I thought like Great, thats right up my alley.
I did have another roommate at the time and I decided I was going to sleep on
my couch and rent out my bedroom in order to continue funding the company.
I got really lucky because the very first guest that I had back in September of
2010 is now my husband.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Id like to know that part of the story.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah. We were Airbnbs first marriage and were probably Airbnbs first funded
company too, I would imagine.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats incredible. You bring up a really fascinating point and I should ask you before I get to what I think is a very fascinating point. Of course, I suppose, I have
an elevated opinion of my own opinions, especially when Im drinking wine, but
could you define for the audience what you mean by front-end and back-end?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah. Of course.
Tim Ferriss:
A lot of techies are listening, but I want to make this understandable to people
who are looking at your journey and realizing you went from having no familiarity with these terms to now, obviously being very comfortable with them. What
does that refer to?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Really simply put, the back-end technology is like deeper technology and in the
case of the platform that I was building where were using a number of different languages to create different functions. It wouldve taken me a long time to
catch up and learn how to handle back-end coding. its just more not simple I
guess you could say.
Front-end coding has more to do with like the UI functionality and is often layered into the design that gets handed off to back-end developers. Front end
development is most just HTML and CSS, two pretty basic languages, not that
theyre easy to learn and I never mastered them. I was able to play with the
code enough and watch it and make changes by switching from browser tab to
browser tab, to learn where I could plug in different color codes and different
basic tags to change and update what was there.
Tim Ferriss:
I appreciate that. I should just say and UI, user interface for people wondering
and front-end, back-end, another way to potentially think about it and Ive spent
some time with for instance, Derek Severs whos just a brilliant awesome guy.
He was the founder of CD Baby and became very well-known as a PHP developer, then also got into many discussions about Ruby on Rails. He sat down to
describe databases and sequel to me at one point and did it in one page. Hes a
brilliant guy and even better teacher.
Another way for folks to think of front-end and back-end is almost if you were in
construction of a house and the piping, the electricity, the structural engineering involved in the architecture could be thought of as the back-end and all the
stuff that makes the house work. Then the front end, this is not entirely a fair
comparison but would be then, all of the interior, exterior, interior design that is
the look and feel of the site.
Theres definitely a functional component and theres a lot of science and art
but thats another way to think off, absolutely.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Thats great analogy. Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. The division of labor. Theres the form versus function, it would be another
way to look at it although, again, I dont want to short-change the front-end developers who have to think about how a user or a customer interacts with every
element.
Now, at that point, you have this company Recycled Bride and where does that
company go? What is your goal with that company when you started?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Gosh. I didnt know when I started that company about this whole sort of startup world. I didnt know what a VC was, I didnt know how to use Excel and create
a forecast for our financials. My goal at that time was to have a business and,
shockingly enough in the start-up world, I just thought that a business made
more money than its meant and so, that was my goal.
Tim Ferriss:
Shocking. Shocking observation.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah. Its really focused on driving a revenue, which was something that was
impossible in the first year or so as we were growing and then I was building
in the future to allow us to monetize and side talk to profitability after about a
year and a half and profitability, just meaning that I was earning more money
per month than I was spending on maintenance and improvements.
My goals were really shifted as I went so it feels like along this whole journey,
every horizon that we finally cross, suddenly you realized once youve crossed it
that theres another bigger, much more exciting horizon ahead.
I never dreamed of an IPO. I never even dreamed of a company the size of Tradesy today, but those dreams just started shifting with a grinning milestone
ahead.
Tim Ferriss:
While you were keeping this company afloat for a year and a half, just to clarify,
when you say that you didnt have much in terms of revenue because were focusing on growing, what were you growing in lieu of revenue at that time?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Traffic and members. In the first year, the day that the site launched, I kind of
sat down and went What the heck have I done? How am I going to get anyone
to visit this thing? At the time in 2009, I literally Googled how to get free traffic
to your website and started to understand that there was organic search and
there were social media and that those could be two very promising channels
for getting people to come to the site.
I started blogging on the site and promoting it via social media. I became a
Twitter ninja and I also wrote a very crude script for search engine optimization
and it took about a year for all of those things to really start bearing fruit and for
numbers to get big enough where I thought Okay, if we put some paid features
into this, experienced people might just be willing to give us their credit card
number.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Right. At that point, you can hit a critical mass for the revenues in meaningful number and the profit hopefully also a meaningful number. When you
were starting from scratch, I guess two things, number one, how did you keep
the company afloat financially during that period where youre not generating
profit?
Then secondly, how on earth did you go about learning how to develop scripts
and these technical skills that you had in your back ground and what books or
resources did you find most useful?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I kept the company afloat just barely, thats how. Meaning, Im scrambling to pay
rent every month. I borrowed the same $8,000 from my parents like four times
over that year. It was a true bootstrap effort and in a way that whole kind of
market place or peer-to-peer company really came into play for me and my life.
I live in a large building. I had a lot of really interesting neighbors and friends and
I would solicit their support or their help, whether it was Can you bring me food
for a week and Ill help you figure out your social media?, because I didnt have
money for food sometimes, or just asking people to teach me things and trying
to do favors or give them big smiles in return.
Tim Ferriss:
You continued to use Airbnb, as well, as a source of revenue during that time?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I started using Airbnb about a year into it.
Tim Ferriss:
I see. Okay.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Later on, when we started turning a profit, but of course the moment you start
turning a profit you see that theres so much more room to turn more of a profit that you need to invest probably more than youre making. That was where
Airbnb came in. I was able to fund some of the features that let us monetize with
Airbnb.
After my first guest, who Im now married to, he stayed. My roommate moved
out and we ended up renting our spare bedroom out and over a hundred guests
over the following year.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. The point I was going to mention earlier is that Im so encouraged and
excited by the fact that within the sharing economy, and I was the first adviser
to TaskRabbit, I think that in some ways, ahead of the curve and theyve done
some really amazing things.
Then in terms of what people refer to as collaborative consumption, picking up

this sort of excess capacity of cars, in the case that we refer for instance, excess capacity in the case of housing, Airbnb that to start a start-up or to found
a company, because I dont want to imply that everyone should get venture
capital, which well talk about.
If youre starting a company, you can use other start-ups to get the money to
start your company and I think thats just so incredible and there are many,
many instances where Ive been say, taking an Uber home late at night and I always talk to the drivers. In some cases, there are students who are earning their
entire tuition by driving at night for Uber, for instance.
It really opens so many possibilities for people who dont or cant take on new
full-time employment, because it wont leave them any space for starting a
company, that with the flexibility of turning your rentals on and off via Airbnb,
or working any hours that you want via a ride sharing company like Uber, that
you can extensively fund at least the prototyping and testing of a company just
through a few avenues like that, in any case.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah. One of the core values at Tradesy is that you already have everything you
need. If you think of ... Do you remember that guy who turned a paperclip into a
hours by constantly trading up?
Tim Ferriss:
I do. The red paperclip. Absolutely.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah. The red paperclip, one red paperclip. Thats one of my favorite stories
because I think in a way that idea that you already have everything you need
becomes more and more true, no matter what you actually do have as a philosophy, as all of these platforms proliferate and we get these new and exciting
ways to connect with people.
Share, I think is a misnomer because its not sharing, its really buying and selling
in that kind of non-corporate paradigm. I see people now even using Tradesy in
that same way that I use Airbnb and its like the most heart-warming thing in the
world.
We have two women who are launching an alternative modeling agency in Chicago, so models who dont look like your typical idea of a model but who are
rather interesting or unique or specially athletic. Theyre selling a lot of their
closets and I think some stuff that theyre picking up at estate sales and all of
that on Tradesy to help finance their dream.
I really like the idea of spreading the idea that you dont need all these things to
start what you want to do. You just kind of start and piece it together from what
you have and there are always great platforms around that let us do that.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Could not agree more. I just think its never been easier to start a
company. Its also, on the flip side, never been harder in a way to develop a
critical mass of customers. Some people would dispute this but the reason I
say that is that because of the low barrier to entry, whether its through people
acquiring start-up funds through Airbnb, Uber, etc. or just the ubiquitous access
to infrastructure-on-demand like Amazon, web services, Heroku, etc. You have
more players, you have more participants in promising markets. Right?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
You have to develop an unfair competitive advantage with say, SEO or messaging, or branding, or whatever your secret sauce might be. Im curious to know
with that business, what were some of the key lessons you learned and you
dont have to give away the secret toolkit obviously, but what were some of the
ah-ha! moments or lessons you learned that you then carried into Tradesy?
Tracy DiNunzio:
First, I couldnt agree more. It is noisy and crowded out there on the internet.
That low barrier to entry is a beautiful thing but it means that theres more competition, more smart people throwing their hats in the ring. Heres an interesting
lesson that I learned from starting then, so I was able to leverage social media
back in 2009, 2010 to build a really nice following and driving decent amount of
traffic to Recycled Bride.
In the year since then, Ive seen this sort of ... Im now fairish on social media
as an acquisition channel for e-commerce companies because Ive seen that in
2009 or 2010, if you were a brand talking to customers on Facebook, that was
like revolutionary. That was surprising. It was shockingly warm to receive a message in your Facebook newsfeed from a company or an organization whereas
now, its very common place and more often than not, monetized.
Between the kind of noisiness and the crowdedness of all consumer-phasing

spaces and most B-to-B spaces, paired with the monetization of most of our social platforms, its become more expensive, more time-consuming and ultimately, not always a great return in investment to put time and energy and money
into social media channels as acquisition channels.
I think if I were starting over today and I knew what I know now, I would skip
right over social media, which sounds a little radical and counter intuitive, but
thats what the numbers say, at least in our sector and for the companies that I
advise.
In terms of a kind of secret sauce that was really impactful, social media was
for us in the beginning, as well as the SEO. Without revealing kind of the secret
sauce, although I think were at the stage now where probably it doesnt matter.
I saw a huge opportunity in search engine optimization because we have user-generated content, meaning that all of the products that are for sale on our
site, theyre not products that we have there and it was true for Recycled Bride
and of Tradesy. Theyre products that individual people have in their homes and
are posting online for sale.
We have zero cost of inventory. We dont pay to have listings but if those listings
describe the product in a way thats very accurate and also, it mirrors the way
that people who are searching would describe that product, then you have this
incredible volume of content that people can find when theyre searching on the
internet.

Simplest way to explain that is if youre searching for a Kate Spade black alligator bag and Tradesy has one or ten, chances are we have it at the best price. We
have a really interesting description thats unique and when you accumulate all
of that content, it becomes easier and easier for Google to recognize your site
as a valuable result for searchers.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. I should also point out, just to folks who are listening that just because you chose that avenue, does not mean that someone else should use
that avenue. I think that there are few observations or assumptions that at least
I keep in mind when working with companies or working on my own projects.
The first is that you have, in effect, goals, strategies, tactics, and then tools in
that particular order work together very well. If you try it in the reverse, i.e. you
choose the tools, you say, Oh my god, everyone is using Pinterest. I need to use
Pinterest and then determine your tactics for improving Pinterest subscribers
and then trying to figure out your business strategy and then sort of reverse
engineer what your goals are based on what youve now selected ad hoc.
The outcome usually is not very good and thats in direct proportion to the persistence or the likelihood of those things changing. Your goals can remain very,
very constant if you choose them well. Lets say, week on week growth, or any
number of things. The toolkit however, whether its crayons, or markers, or oil
paints, or whatever it might be, just using as an artistic metaphor will constantly change and evolve. The underlying skill set and the goals will not change as
much
The reason I raise that is I think that positioning is often under-emphasized in

terms of importance. People use the term Branding which can get very confusing and its overused to the point of almost being meaningless and there a
lot of agencies that will take advantage of start-ups to charge an arm and a leg
for branding.
Really, what were talking about is differentiation and positioning. How did you
make the jump and why from Recycled Bride to Tradesy? If that was a straight
jump, maybe there are things in between and ... well, well just start with that
and then we can revisit the positioning if that seems relevant. What was the
evolution or jump from one company to the next and why did it happen?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Like everything, it was actually a slow and painful jump so thats kind of like the
first rule too.
Tim Ferriss:
More of a hobble and a drag, less than a jump.
Tracy DiNunzio:
It was a crawl. It was not a jump, it was a crawl. I would say that when I was a
little over a year into Recycled Bride and the system, the kind of business model
foundation of the peer-to-peer economy that had been iterating on really started to work.

I thought Goodness, why am I just doing this for weddings? when there are
two and a half million weddings a year in the US and every year, you lose your
customers and you have to get out and get new ones because people usually
dont get married twice or at least, they dont get two big white wedding dresses.
I had my eye on the fashion space for probably two years before moving into
actually launching Tradesy. In those two years, I spent a lot of time improving
myself, really, improving my own skills. I though Gosh, I want to move into this
much bigger market. Weve got instead of two and a half million weddings,
there are 50 million women in the US alone in our target market for a fashion
market place and thats a much bigger and more exciting opportunity for this
peer-to-peer market place system thats already showing that it works.
I started asking some people I knew, What do you think? How would I make this
leap? and met with some investors early on who probably were just horrified
at how green I was. Eventually, I applied to Launchpad LA which is an incubator
accelerator here in Los Angeles. It was a blind application, I didnt know anybody
involved with the program. They gave me kind of like a mercy interview and took
me as what they would now call like their biggest risk ever because I was a single founder. I didnt have a tech team and Tradesy wasnt launched yet and that
was the opportunity that they were really interested in.
As part of getting into that program and moving towards making the value
proposition more attractive to investors, I thought Im going to put it all back
on the table and include Recycled Bride in the overall entity that also includes
the future website, Tradesy.com, so that we have the ability to either run both
or merge them together and the investors that Im approaching already get a
valuable asset included in this deal.
After two and a half years of bootstrapping to a point where I can finally pay my
rent, I said Okay. Well, why not throw it all back in and take another big risk?
During the four months I was in Launchpad, I met a slew of early-stage investors, embraced our first financing of $1.5 million, that was in the summer of
2012, and started hiring a team and building Tradesy.
Tim Ferriss:
The jump to Launchpad, I want to visit that for a second. Launchpad implies of
course, that youre going to be taking on investment, probably choosing the
venture-backed start-up game as your game. Why did you choose that as opposed to trying to bootstrap your way into this larger market?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I had developed an appetite for something bigger at that point and there was
already competition in the market but even if there hadnt been competition at
that point, the market was just so big that the bootstrapping efforts would have
taken so long that if the opportunity was as big and as timely as I believed it to
be, someone else was going raise a bunch of money and beat me to it.
I really believe that like the scrappy bootstrapper can be bloated with funding
big start-ups in some cases. When youre looking at a market thats huge and
an opportunity that feels like its up for grabs at any moment, having fuel in the
tank is kind of necessary. A VC once told me something thats just so true. Its
crazy true.
The only reason that a business ever fails is because it runs out of money. I had
kind of integrated that idea and realize that this kind of month-to-month, paycheck to paycheck thing wasnt going to give me the breadth of opportunity
that we needed to move quickly.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. I know. That makes sense. What were the influences, people, books, articles, anything, that inspired you to make that leap into the venture-backed
world and to apply to Launchpad?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Gosh. I wish I had a really impressive sounding list of mentors and influences
but I was really kind of flying blind at the time and effort and concentration that
it took to learn all the things I needed to know in that couple of years of bootstrapping and to get the business off the ground and run it and play every role
within the company.
I probably didnt do enough exploring of what it really meant to take venture

capital, so in a way, I backed into it. I just thought I need funding. Who has funding? Looks like people called VCs so Ill go talk to them. I didnt know and I didnt
understand all the trade-offs that come with venture capital at the time.
Tim Ferriss:
What are some of these trade-offs? Id love you to elaborate. Obviously, Im not
asking you to ... I think these are going to be within tighten its inside baseball
community, very well known, but for a lot of people who might end up in your
position whether youre considering different avenues, they might not realize so
it would just be helpful for you to elucidate that.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Sure. The biggest trade-off is the dilution. You start off owning 100% of your
entity and then as you take on the investment capital, people own a few pieces
of the company and you own smaller pieces of the company. Thats a trade-off,
although its not something that I ever really saw as a negative trade-off. I saw
this as a really positive trade-off because the amounts of money ... like I think in
the VC world and in that sector, people get a little bit cynical about the actual
amounts of capital were talking about.
The first time that I saw $1.5 million dollars hit our bank account, it was so overwhelming and shocking and its a tremendous amount of money for someone to
trust you with and put in your hands to make something out of nothing. When I
say trade-off, I want to kind of couch in ... its a decision you make.
Every decision you make in life is a trade-off. Im really happy with the trade-offs
that weve made so far in terms of both dilution and partnership. Then the other
trade-off is some people would call it control or at least influence over the direction of your company but again in our case, I feel like the investors weve worked
with have brought us nothing but good input and really impactful help.

Both of those trade-offs have been very, very good ones for us. Its not always
that way and thats why everyone tells you to be really careful about choosing
your VC partner, which I always found funny because for many years, I wasnt in
a position to choose, it wasnt like they were lining up.
I think like people find alike people and Ive been really lucky to find investors
who share the same values and vision that myself and my team do for the company. I dont even actually know the exact percentage of the company that I
still own today because I dont care about the percentage. If its a billion dollar
company and I own 5%, right on.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Youve assembled an incredible handful of investors and I think we will get
into that but before we do, what were some of the mistakes that you made at
Recycled Bride that you vowed not to make again with Tradesy?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Too many to count but that one that stands out is that once upon a time, there
was also a website called Recycled Tyke and it was a disaster. Six months into
Recycled Bride, I decided that I needed two websites, not one and so, first rule
or lesson there is like if you dont own the market in the area that you initially
focused on and set out to build within, then expanding into another market and
spreading your research is even thinner, doesnt usually work out in your favor.
I launch this Recycled Tyke, which was the same concept of the peer-to-peer
market place, but for baby and kid stuff. I think, one, the loss of focus was a
huge mistake but even more importantly, I didnt listen to the customer.
I had probably 10 or 15 girlfriends who were moms and I talked to them about
the idea and at first blush, they were all like Oh, that would be great. Thats
something I would use but as the conversations went deeper, they all told me
what a lot of the potential issues would be and I didnt listen because I was so
excited about the idea of two websites, like two is better than one.
I launched it, I put a lot of time and effort into it. It definitely slowed down the
growth of Recycled Bride to some degree. It didnt take off the way that Recycled Bride did and so, in the two-ish years since we launched Tradesy, my
co-founder, I have two co-founders who came on when we were starting Tradesy, my co-founder, Sash Catanzarite who is our chief product officer was always
the great sort of focus police and anytime I would come in and say, Hey guys,
I have this idea. We should be producing a line of handbags. He just shuts it
down and says, Remember, we havent accomplished our first bill yet.
I think thats a really important mistake that I made and a big lesson that lets me
listen to Sash now and realize that hes right.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a valuable sounding-board to have. I like a few things that you said, I think
that our important to underscore that the first is no matter what you do, there
are trade-offs, youre making compromise. Just because you choose to boot-
strap doesnt mean you havent made sacrifices in certain areas like you pointed
out and thats always been just a fascinating fork in the road to help different
people navigate or to watch different people navigate.

Because if youre ... lets say for many, many businesses, I just spoke to a journalist at the Wall Street Journal about this and I fear that this person will omit some
of my caveats related to venture capital.
Tracy DiNunzio:
That never happened.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Never. Pro tip for people, if you can ever ... if its going to be a print interview, try to answer questions via e-mail so you have proof of what you also said.
Tracy DiNunzio:
I second that.
Tim Ferriss:
Also, advice from Mike Shinoda in one of his songs with Fort Minor but thats a
separate point. The point is that many companies, especially if theyre not in a
winner-take-all market could go to Kickstarter and, if theyre really good at what
they do and the product actually has demand, raise a few million dollars and be
in great shape.
If the goal is to create, in effect, a lifestyle business, all that means, were a very
profitable business. This doesnt have to be maligned as a lifestyle business,
something that generates a lot of free cash flow that puts money in a bank account that you can use without the objective of being acquired or having an IPO
- an exit event.
If youre in a market like you said where theres competition, its going to be very
tightly vied for with resources coming to bear on the situation from outside investors, then you kind of have to go big or go home. Thats an observation and
a recommendation Id like to make to folks is a very short book I recommended
before called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Of course, all rules are
made to be broken but these are pretty good rules for most people to at least
start with. One of them is choose a market where you can be number one or
number two.
Ideally, number one and if you cant be number one, you need to thinly slice it a
bit further. In the case of Paypal for instance, they didnt start off trying to boil
the ocean, they started off trying to dominate the beanie baby eBay power-seller space.
You have to define your market finely enough so that you can dominate it and
just as importantly, acquire customers in a very targeted and affordable way,
whereas saying I want every mother in the US, even if you were to attempt
that, which I wouldnt recommend, would require doing massive advertising
spending that a start-up cant afford nor should you be able to try to afford.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Why did you choose an accelerator as opposed to going directly to venture

capitalists? The reason I asked is I dont know how Launchpad is formatted but
typically with these accelerators, and maybe this is public, if it isnt, please talk
about it.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Sure.
Tim Ferriss:
They will give you fifty grand or maybe in some cases less for, say, 5 or 10% of
the company. Is that how Launchpad works?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes. At the time, it was fifty grand for 6%. I think, its a little bit different now.
I think, its actually a hundred grand for new companies. It was the best fifty
grand I ever got and the best 6% I ever spent. I think, it would be easy to look
back and at our current valuation and say, Oh, goodness, I gave away 6% of the
company for $50,000 and it wasnt that long ago. I dont feel that way at all.
The tools that I learned while in the Launchpad and the exposure that I got to
such a wide variety of investors and mentors, I couldnt have continued on the
journey without that. As for why I chose to go that route, again, I really wish that
I had a more impressive answer. It was in my Facebook News Feed. Somebody
posted something that said, Launchpad now offering $50,000 to all incoming
companies.
I, at the time, that day had decided that I needed $50,000 to launch Tradesy,
which was wrong. It was dead wrong. I needed a way, way more than that but at
the time, that was what I thought. I thought new platform, some new technology, I could handle the rest, and so I saw that number and just blind applied.
In retrospect, I could definitely invent a good answer for why one might go the
accelerator route. I do think its extremely valuable because, for me, its one reason only. Theres mentorship and theres learning and theres community and all
that can be valuable but Im a little bit of a weirdo introvert in certain ways. I like
to learn on my own by reading stuff.
While all that was valuable, I think, the most important thing is that for four
months I sat in a shared office space with the other Launchpad companies. Every day, three to five investors came there. If I had to reach out to those investors or try to plow my network for introductions, that would have literally take
in that whole four months and youre pre-vetted once youre in the incubator so
the investors are more likely to give you more time and see your prospects as
better.
For that alone, if youre like I was and youre getting started, you see a big opportunity but youre not hyper-connected to these network of investors, that
alone makes it more than worth the trade-off.
Tim Ferriss:
What are the skills that you alluded to just a moment ago that you acquired or
developed while at the incubator? Aside from the obvious access to investors
which I do think, at least in some cases, is one of the benefits of an accelerator.
What were the skills that you developed that ended up being crucial over that
period of time?
Tracy DiNunzio:
There were two. One was pitching, which I was miserable at.
Tim Ferriss:
Pitching investors.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Pitching investors. It ties into the investor thing but its a sales skill that you
need for a number of different things. It helps with doing press. It helps with
selling candidates on joining your company at a certain point when youre ready
for that kind of a thing.
The art of pitching investors, there are a lot of different aspects to it but the one
that was most valuable to me and that I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggling
with is that its very hard to tell your own story succinctly, and in a way, that people can digest easily when youre in it.
When youre on the inside, youve got all these data and all these numbers and
all these ideas forming that whole bucketsful of stuff into a coherent, clear story
thats inspiring and exciting is probably one of the biggest challenges. Sorry, I
had a little background noise there. Its probably one of the biggest challenge-
Tim Ferriss:
Thats okay. Thats a very tech-appropriate noise. Its okay.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, exactly. That was what I spent a lot of time learning at Launchpad and failing at miserably. If anybody listening is going to go out and pitch investors, my
advice is to make your first ten meetings with investors that you dont really
want funding from because youre probably going to suck in the beginning. I
sucked for a really long time.
The other thing that I learned there was forecasting and financial modeling. I
started Launchpad in January 2012 and I had never used Excel. The investors
who ended up leading our seed round, venture partners, there was a guy
named Jim Andelman whos now on our board and led our first round, who was
involved in Launchpad and he would come in every week, meet with me and say,
Well, you know, you need a financial model and I put something together and
hed show me what I did wrong and Id go back and try again and try to act cool
like I didnt stay up all night trying to make all those numbers fit together.
Two things happened there. I learned how to forecast and how to use Excel,
which was a really necessary skill. More importantly, I saw how thoughtful investors approach an entrepreneur at the early stages when so much is uncertain.
I looked back on that and I see that to have a really quality investor come in and
really be your partner, you do have to build a relationship that progresses. Its always good to start that relationship early and to go back to every meeting with
them, having made some progress on the very specific things that you talked
about last time. I learned how to model and I also learned how to prove myself
to investors through that process.

Tim Ferriss:
In the pitch itself, the Tradesy pitch or the presentation depending on how we
look at it, what were your biggest mistakes that you made? I agree definitely
with the fact and, I think, it is fact that pitches fail from too much information,
not too little information. Thats true for writing and teaching also. Aside from
just concision, if thats the right word, conciseness, I have no idea. Im no writer
or anything.
Tracy DiNunzio:
One of those.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, one of those. Brevity, there we go. Pull a porky pig substitute. Aside from
that, just really tightening the valves and making it more concise. Aside from
that, what were the biggest mistakes that you made in your pitches before all
the practice?
Tracy DiNunzio:
That brevity thing is number one. I wont belabor the point but it reminds me
of a quote thats often mis-attributed to Mark Twain, I would have written you
a shorter letter but I didnt have the time, which just alludes to the amount of
laboring it takes to take your very big, wonderful, long idea and shorten it down
into something adjustable.
I think, the other big mistake that I made was two things. One, I obsessed over
metrics that are impossible to derive. I probably spent three weeks trying to figure out the size of our target market. Realistically, its just ... It sounds so simple
but I see entrepreneurs doing this all the time because you get really stuck on
that uncertain, very big number that seems very far away.
I just had this idea that everything in my deck had to be so defensible that I
would fall down rabbit holes and waste time, researching things that didnt really matter. I think, dont make that mistake. Rather, keep the focus on telling the
story because the story is really what ... If you overestimated your size of market
by 20%, nobody else has to find that number anyway so it doesnt matter. You
could just as well say its huge as long as it is and everyone understands. Thats
a small thing.
In the actual pitches, I just had no confidence. It was early, it was all-new, I was
just getting my feet wet and I was really eager to share a lot but I didnt know
how to play it cool and surface the headlines and sit back and wait for the investor to demonstrate interest in certain areas so I could expound.
I would just dive in and try to tell them everything I knew about every little point
because I wanted to prove that I was knowledgeable. If youve gotten the meeting, youre probably knowledgeable enough. Its better to go in with the baseline
expectation that everybody assumes everybody else is qualified to be here and
not overdo it which, I think, does reveal lack of confidence.
Tim Ferriss:
Which, by the way, for people listening is also true and I hate this term but will
use it for lack of a better substitute. In any type of in-person networking and Ill
just call it socializing that might become professional, the eagerness and - not
to stereotype - but guys usually have trouble with this more than women, not
always, is this desire to prove that they are the smartest person in the room
by just brain vomiting information at people. It is not endearing and it does not
help.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Its not impressive.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Tracy DiNunzio:
By the way, its also true in dating. The same dynamics apply. The eagerness, I
think, thats relatable for a lot of people because a lot of people who might have
figured out how to deal with dating but havent figured out how to deal with entrepreneurship, you wouldnt go on a first date and run up to someone and be
like, Listen, I have all these great qualities and Im going to be a great dad.
If you wouldnt do that, the same applies to an investor there. They are a human
being. They want to feel theres other interests out there like youre not falling
all over yourself, youre not desperate. Because if you have a quality business,
youll feel desperate at times but you dont let it show.
Tim Ferriss:
How to date a venture capitalists, thats a headline that somebody could use.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Good.
Tim Ferriss:
Terrible but also incredible click bait.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
You mentioned the importance of story, telling the story. What are some of the
aspects of your story that resonated most with investors? You can give me the
exact verbiage if it helps. I mean, it might be a little past that point in your development. What are the pieces of the story that really struck people and got
attention?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Sure. I think, everyone told me that I needed to focus on a story and so I thought
of it as something linear. I would start my pitches by telling people where I started and how this all started.
Tim Ferriss:
Like Dr. Evil style, so use of chronological array.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Exactly and that was a misinterpretation on my part of what story really means
and I had a big breakthrough when I surfaced the vision to the front of the pitch
and the vision being, what if everybody in the world could instantly access the
resell value of anything they own via their phone or their desktop or whatever
other devices were using. How might that change our concept of ownership
and the way that we interact with commerce and the durable goods and products that we consume in a capitalist society?

When you start to pitch like that with a clear vision of the future even if its a
question, I always pose it as a question because I dont know the answer. I just
think it would be really exciting to find out but that really tends to capture everybodys attention because if theres one thing that VCs love its the potential
for something huge and transformative in society, in culture and commerce.
Leading with that vision, all the other pieces of the story fell into place because
then I could walk the investors through. How do we get from here to there? The
whole thing took shape.
Just like SEO wont be everybodys golden ticket and lots of other things that I
did arent the exact things that will work for everybody but, I think, that in many
cases if there is an underlying vision that feels transformative, that can be really
exciting to lead with.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. A couple of very closely-related thoughts, the first is to learn how

to pitch a start-up is the same as learning how to pitch anything. At the end of
the day, pitching a start-up is persuading. You are persuading someone to do
something, whatever that next action is. That could be talk to me after the presentation. That could be click my headline to read an article. I think, Seth Godin
is one of the pre-eminent masters of short form content and his headlines, its
unbelievable.
I mean, everything he puts out gets a few hundred shares on every platform. Its
incredible. You can learn a lot about headlines, opening slides in a deck, or questions by looking at what Seth writes. Another way to do that, and this is going
to get a couple of laughs Im sure, but look at a homepage like Yahoo. I actually
look at the homepage of yahoo.com almost every day just to see how theyre
testing headlines because I find it so fascinating.
Then, lastly, I would say watch Ted Talks that have amassed more than three to
five million views. Why three to five million? Because there are a lot of people out
there who recognized that a good Ted Talks could be the meal ticket to a book
deal or whatever so they manufacture one million views even if they have to pay
for it, which is disgusting but its true.
Look at people whove had three to five million. That outstrips most peoples
budgets and what youll notice is that theyre selling an idea. Its not a company
but theyre selling an idea and the process is the same. This would be just a few
thoughts on that.
Now, you get this funding then what? What happens? What are the most important decisions in retrospect that you made with that money?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Im going back again to July 2012 with the 1.5 million appearing in the bank
account. At that time, I had already brought on my first co-founder, our Chief
Technology Officer John Hall.

Tim Ferriss:
How did you find John?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Craigslist.
Tim Ferriss:
Really?
Tracy DiNunzio:
No joke.
Tim Ferriss:
Wait a second. Did you just click on Los Angeles and then do looking for a job
and boom, there he was?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I posted a listing seeking a CTO and-
Tim Ferriss:
That was the headline, seeking CTO.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Something along those lines, yeah. It was a creatively written listing and he responded. Of all the people who responded, he was virtually the only qualified
one.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you know that he was qualified? What did he put in that response that
made you know hes qualified?
Tracy DiNunzio:
He was at the time the West Coast director of technology for Cars.com and before that, he had been a director of technology at Shopzilla. Just based on his
resume and the fact that both of those companies are market places of sorts,
I knew that he had the chops. I was not qualified to interview a CTO because I
didnt understand enough about back-end technology at the time to even really
vet his skills.
I did something funny. I was still using my outsource DefShop here in LA to do

all of our technology work and I just brought him in to meet the guys that had
been helping me with Recycled Bride for a few years and they helped me vet
him. I hired him in the first meeting really. The vetting came after and more than
anything I got incredibly lucky because I really didnt know how to go through
a proper hiring process but its worked out beautifully and were happily ever
after.
That was the first very important thing but that did happen pre-funding because a lot of the investors that I was meeting with and even Launchpad at the
time, they were concerned that I didnt have a tech team and I didnt have-
Tim Ferriss:
I can understand the concern.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes. They were like, Well, how are you going to build this billion dollar company
using that DefShop? I had made an agreement with Sam Teller the director of
Launchpad when I signed on. Its actually a funny story because, initially, after
our first meeting, I could tell that he had some doubts and I knew that his biggest doubt was the fact that I didnt have a technical co-founder, which was a
prerequisite of Launchpad.
That night I stayed up late and I made him a mini-deck called No Technical
Co-Founder, No Problem and just outlined how I would go about finding one as
soon as I was into Launchpad and how the Launchpad credentials would help
me attract a better partner.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats genius. I love it.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, it was good. Im glad I did that.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, a very good move on your part.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Its a night well spent. Bringing him on was the first feat that helped actually get
the money in the door and then once we raised, we were operating out of my
living room. I would say the most important decisions, its all about people and
so those first five or six hires are all still with us and make up the core, heart
and soul of Tradesy. They all came on between July 2012 and our launch in late
October 2012 and those were all the most important decisions by far.
I think, a few other strategic decisions that we made when we saw how much
competition there was in the market, were also important. For example, we
have the lowest commission of any of the resell market places and we did that
for two reasons. We wanted to be competitive but I also had a bunch of data
from Recycled Bride that suggested that a higher commission led to sellers engaging in negative behaviors.
They would either try to transact off platform to avoid the fee or they would
inflate their pricing, which destroys the beautiful, fair market value integrity
of a market place in order to compensate for those platform phase. We made
some radical decisions around our business model in the early days that were
all based on how we saw the market shaping up and those ended up becoming
our key factors in our positioning.
You were talking about positioning before and, I think, that we made positioning
decisions in those early days very aggressively that really worked for us.
Tim Ferriss:
A few follow-up questions, no big surprise coming from me. The first is you
mentioned your Craigslist post for your technical co-founder. It was creatively
written. Could you please elaborate and give perhaps an example?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Gosh, I wish I remember more but it was something along the lines of like, Do
you have a taste for adventure and an appetite for risk? Come on a crazy jour-
ney with a Launchpad LA backed company. Youll be the second person on the
team and well take it all the way.
Tim Ferriss:
Cool. I dig it. I think, its Shackleton who was recruiting for his ... God, Im going
to mangle this but Antarctica expedition and his classified ad went something
like, Return uncertain, glory guaranteed, seeking rough men, ready for danger
and high risk.
Tracy DiNunzio:
I just was reading something about how the army is now doing much better at
recruiting or maybe its firefighters. Gosh, I dont remember but one of those
two has been doing really well at recruiting people because theyve changed
their positioning and their ads are now all about how hard it is and how noble it
is. Its like, Can you handle this?
Tim Ferriss:
Thats awesome, yeah.
Tracy DiNunzio:
It seems to be really working and their rates of application are going up.
Tim Ferriss:
Not only that but theyre going to get more qualified people, right?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Theyre going to do less vetting after the fact which is, yeah, huge savings. Yeah,
I cant let the cat out of the bag yet but Ill be launching something soon. Itll
have all of Shackleton-like caveats for people who signed up for it. Something
Im excited about though.
Tracy DiNunzio:
The suspense.
Tim Ferriss:
The suspense, oh, the suspense. You take this money, you start building. Now,
as a side note, do you think that as far as accelerators go, Im sure it goes without saying that not all accelerators are created equal.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Thats true.
Tim Ferriss:
You have very hot debate at the moment, at least among technologists, Peter
Thiel being certainly one of the extremes on one end about the value of a college education. I think, this applies strongly to many people with developed
computer science abilities or a predisposition in that direction. A lot of people
would argue that college is worth it, other people would argue that college is
not worth it.
Then theres a contingent that would argue its not worth going to college unless you can go to say the top twenty or thirty-five because they give you a certain mark of credibility that gives you a whole pass which is ridiculous but it is
what it is where everyone assumes that youre smart based on this association.
Do you think that also holds true for accelerators where if you cant get into the
top three or five accelerators that you should not go to an accelerator?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I dont know. I think that on the college thing Im absolutely on the radical side
where at least on this sector, I think, that the college education has become virtually obsolete even if its a top twenty school. The day you graduate everything
you learned is already obsolete. Things move so quickly. However, I think, with
accelerators that can be, I dont know. I dont know if thats true with accelerators because the number one thing that I would look for to get out of an accelerator would be the connections to early stage investors.
Ive noticed that even though not all of the accelerators here in LA are ranked
high - they dont make the top ten list, etcetera, at Launchpad does but some of
the others dont - the people running those incubators still have great connections and the VCs who come to town still stop in.
I also know that when youre as early stage as companies that are applying to
accelerators, the accelerators have a really hard time figuring out whos going
to be successful so you might have a great thing and not get into one of the top
tier accelerators and I dont think that necessarily means that you should just
scrap the whole idea because everything is just one foot in front of the other.
Something is better than nothing. As long as the deal youre getting feels fair
and you think its going to be a stepping stone, why not?
Tim Ferriss:
This is difficult perhaps in some cases to objectively assess but what would
Launchpad consider their most successful companies to date that have come
out of their classes? You dont have to speak for them. You could say what do
you expect someone at Launchpad might say about their most successful companies today.
Tracy DiNunzio:
I hope I dont butcher this. I know that were one of them now which is nice and
there was a company in our class called Chromatik thats doing quite well. There
was another company in our class called Big Frame that recently had a healthy
acquisition and another called ChowNow thats really thriving. That was just in
my class.
I cant remember some of the better companies that came before us and the
two classes before but I know that there were a few and Sam Teller will be sad
that I dont remember all the names of them.
Tim Ferriss:
He can leave some intelligent yet angry comments on my-
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, angry comments.
Tim Ferriss:
On my blog that relates to this. I just noticed Im looking at the website that one
of the companies was Listen in the Spring 2013 class and I love that company.
That was actually started, in this case, female founder who read the 4-Hour
Workweek so Ive had a lot of interaction with her.

On that note, I just have to ... Lets slay the pink elephant in the room because I
want to get it out of the way since a lot of people will be wondering. This relates
to what is it like to be a female founder question. I just have to vent for a second
about this because Ive supported a number of female founders and Ive been
told on multiple occasions its really good that you support female founders.
That rankles me and it pisses me off because I really could not give less of a
fuck about the genitalia that someone has. I only invest in people who are good
founders, period. I have non-profit activities, but investing in start-ups is not one
of them. I dont do charity investing.
Id love to and you can expound on this in any way that youd like but what are
your thoughts on being a female founder of a tech company?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, its funny. Were like the mystical unicorns of the tech world and everybody always asks me and my first response is I have no idea because Ive never
been a male CEO and I dont have any data. I dont have any basis for comparison. I cant say whether Ive had a harder time fundraising because Im a woman
because I would have to go and do the same pitch with a penis in order to really
know.
The negative response is and there were plenty of them if they were at all related to the fact that Im a woman. I will say my views on this have softened a lot so
the whole women in tech conversation is ... Its always a headline. Its good click
bait and people are interested and for a long time, I said its irrelevant because
in my experience it has felt irrelevant.
At this point, I have met enough female founders and also women who are working on the technical side of start-ups and who have experienced things that
while nobody can ever say definitively that it wouldnt have happened if they
were a man. You get the impression that theres something going on.
I dont want to disparage or belittle my sisters in arms by saying like, Hey, its no
big deal. Although if Im being honest about my experience, I cant say that Ive
encountered anything thats felt improprieties or negative. In some ways, there
are benefits too because youre certainly along the journey. I got some invites to
some dinners last minutes where I knew that it was just because they looked at
the guest list and went, Holy shit, there are no women coming. Lets get it. Who
do we know thats female? I got to go some cool events because of that.
I think, theres an effort. I guess that the one thing I would say is that I think that
theres a real difference between overt sexism, which I dont believe exists that
much in the tech sector, and subtle behavioral discriminatory stuff, which I do
think does exist even if it doesnt exist in my world.
Its a difficult beast to battle because its not obvious and its not always clear.
Im on the fence about the whole thing. I guess one other thing I can say is that
until recently our team was actually very guy heavy. It was like we have a female
CEO, two other women and all men on the team for a little time. Now, its much
more balanced.

I think that as a female-led company, we attract really evolved men both as

investors and as team members. I have to say that for the men that are in my
world and maybe theres-
Tim Ferriss:
Wow, Ive never been called the evolved before. Im very excited about this.
Tracy DiNunzio:
I think youre evolved, I mean, its amazing. The more I talk to various investors,
many of them have daughters, many of them have wives who are powerhouses
in their own right. Our team, most of the guys who have families, they seemed
to have a very healthy respect for the women in their lives.
We get a lot of guys going home and asking their girlfriends and their wives for
feedback about what were building and taking their opinions very seriously.
Our world is good for women. The Tradesy world is a good place for a woman to
be and I hope that the rest of the tech sector evolves to a place where thats the
way all women feel about their workplace.
Tim Ferriss:
I should point out also that Stephanie Tilenius whos the one who introduced
us and shes, of course, involved with the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one
of the more notable Silicon Valley based venture capital firms, also shes on the
board of Coach, if Im not mistaken.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
Shes just a killer in her own right. Yeah, shes awesome. I dont want to beat a
dead horse here but I think its worth exploring a little bit. The composition of
your team, for instance, you said was guy heavy. How much of that, if any, do
you think is attributable to the fact that a lot, at least, lets just say for the last
15 years and this could change but it seems to me when I talked to guys who
are extremely adept at computer science that they were socially awkward in
high school, spend a lot of time alone and as guys they were less physically
developed than females, less emotionally developed than females, generally
speaking.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Either decided they wanted to create video games because they spent a lot of
time alone playing video games or Dungeons and Dragons which I hate to say
that that was my choice and it seems to be the wrong path and hard to monetize the 20-sided dice-throwing ability it turns out. It seems to be a supply chain
issue on some level when youre looking for technical hires.
Im wondering how do you think thats going to change and how important is
it that it changes? I know thats touchy way to phrase it but I worry that some-
times people are either asking the wrong questions or two, getting so emotionally loaded that they take positions that they dont reason themselves into.

If they take positions that they dont reason themselves into, its impossible to
reason them out of those positions. Thats a bit of a long self-indulgent question.
Tracy DiNunzio:
No, but I get what youre getting at.
Tim Ferriss:
Because I imagine youve had more conversations about this than I have, how
do you think about these things and how do you feel about these things?
Tracy DiNunzio:
When we were eighteen people, and were fifty now, myself and two other women who were both in junior positions and the rest of the team was all guys. That
is 100% directly attributable to a pipeline issue. Meaning, that at the time we
were hiring a lot of developers, a lot of product people, and the applicants for
those positions were overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, male.
We were a fast growing start-up, super time-crunched and really I shouldnt

even have to say that we have always hired the best person for the position regardless of gender. I think that that is the best way to approach this whole issue
in general because nobody wants to be a charity hire and it does a disservice
to women too, if you hire women just to be able to publish your diversity in numbers.
The pipeline issue goes all the way back to how do little girls perceive their abilities and their interests and is it nature or nurture that drives more women into
creative fields and more men into technical and engineering type fields? I dont
know the answer. Nobody knows the answer definitively. I mean, Im 36 so Im
old now. I dont know that my growing up even applies to-
Tim Ferriss:
Old?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Old-ish.
Tim Ferriss:
Come on.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Old-er than I was yesterday. I know that as a young woman, I reached a certain
point because I was a terrible studier but I was good in school anyway, but I
reached a point where I felt like being a woman and being smart, it was being
a neurosurgeon in a marathon. Its nice to have but its not really applicable to
what youre supposed to be doing. That may also speak to also where I grew
up and etcetera but I definitely got messages that being a super smart woman
was not the best thing you could do with your womanhood had that being like
attractive and cool might be-
Tim Ferriss:
You mean, for mating purposes? That sounds weird but for finding a mate or for
professional purposes or both?

Tracy DiNunzio:
Even before finding a mate, it was a thing on my radar just as a young girl. Just
for life purposes, it didnt feel like ... I see it with them, with kids today too a little
bit. You just tend to look at a young girl and say, Oh, shes so cute and praised
for being tough or smart. Thats just definitely something we do.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats because little boys are not cute.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Theyre not, I think, no. I think, that the pipeline problem definitely has to do with
some societal and cultural influences on young women as theyre developing
their interests. You can just imagine if youre an eleven-year-old girl and you like
to sit in front of your computer and hack away all day. Its not going to make you
popular. Its not going to make people respond to you as well as if you were in
training for your debutante ball or whatever people do.
I think that thats a larger cultural and societal ship but I see a lot of really amazing people of my generation raising young ladies to be incredibly technical and
renaissance women and I think well continue to do that and move in the right
direction.
Tim Ferriss:
What was the trigger for you to become so analytics and data-driven? See, I
would never have imagined in a million years that you came from sort of a play
with dolls, act dumber than you are to be popular. Im putting words in your
mouth, so correct me if Im wrong.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, its
Tim Ferriss:
But I never would have imagined that coming from you because you have a
tighter hold and more masterful grasp of analytics than the vast majority of
CEOs Ive ever dealt with, regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of fucking whatever, doesnt matter. The fucking was courtesy of wine.
Tracy DiNunzio:
The wine, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
But Im also from Strong Island so I should just point out.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Lets put on our accents.
Tim Ferriss:
God no. God, Ive spent so long trying to beat it out of me. I used to have rat tail.
My accent was ... Yeah, anyway thats a whole separate story.
Tracy DiNunzio:
That is cool.
Tim Ferriss:
Rat tails were pretty rad back in the day.
Tracy DiNunzio:
They were very cool.
Tim Ferriss:
If there was a particular shift, how did you become so data comfortable to put it
one way? Is that something that your parents instilled in you? Is that something
that came much later? How did that develop?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Well, I think that in general any kind of obstacle or hardship and everybody has
them in their life and along their journey, youre forced to learn things and like
acquire new tools. I had a crazy kind of healthy problem that I was born with and
very early on realized that doctors didnt have all the answers, believe it or not.
Even from the time I was a teenager, I was doing a lot of medical research about
things related to my own condition and a lot of that research was really data
driven because I was looking through medical journals at the library before the
internet and then later on online. Reading a bunch of stuff that wasnt my field
and trying to assimilate it and then put it to practical use, which is just the same
exact sort of pattern of starting a business in a field that you dont know anything about. You collect a lot of information and data. You try to retain the things
that are important and apply them to a practical usage.
I think its a big clich to say that your hardship is your greatest gift. Everyone
says that but I think its so true. I didnt know it at the time when I was afraid
that I wouldnt be healthy and I needed to learn this stuff that the methodology
would actually carry through for the rest of my life and be useful.
Tim Ferriss:
I know the answer but I have to ask on behalf of everyone whos listening and
going, Youre killing me, just tell me what it is. Are you comfortable describing
or just mentioning what that condition is?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah sure. I was born with spina bifida, which is a congenital birth defect where
your vertebrate dont form around your spinal cord, so that cord that hangs
down the middle of your spine thats full of all these really sensitive nerves that
control all the functions of your body and help you walk and do all the great
things that humans can do. Its left exposed and usually theres some damage
to the spinal cord at birth because of that.
I was really lucky I was born by cesarean section, not because they knew that
I had this but just because I wouldnt come out apparently, which meant that
I didnt have so much damage at birth and I was able to, through a very long
series of surgeries and more surgeries and different therapies, be mobile and
health throughout my life in a way that most people who are born with spina
bifida are not able too.
The reason that I was born with spina bifida is likely attributed to my dads exposure to Agent Orange when he was in Vietnam. Agent Orange is a chemical
defoliant that our country sprayed in order to kill the brush in the jungle in Vietnam because the Vietcong knew their way around and our troops didnt, so they
needed to clear the way so that everyone was on equal footing. Those chemicals ended up being very toxic and theyre still in the soil and the water supply
in Vietnam and causing these kinds of birth defects in a fifth generation now.

I started off looking for ways to improve my own health. Then I got really interested in learning about why I had this thing and how I might be able to contribute to helping other people not be born with this thing. Also, while I was painter,
spent some time, I dont know if youd call it as an activist, but I did a lot of
artwork that was based on my fathers photographs from Vietnam. I did a lot of
painting series when I was recovering from surgeries, so I had to use interesting
techniques, like crawling on the floor to make the painting because I couldnt
stand up. There was so much research that went into all of that. Yeah thats the
story.
Tim Ferriss:
God, youre beast, in the most complimentary way possible.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, took it.
Tim Ferriss:
Im very impressed with how little you complain. I dont know if Ive ever heard
you complain explicitly about anything. I feel like that is such an undervalued
skill or attribute because complaining does not fix the problem and
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, so its a skill. Its not an attribute, its a skill. I used to complain like crazy.
Tim Ferriss:
Really, okay, I want to hear you talk about this.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Tim Ferriss:
I want to hear you talk about this because I was reading recently about Hell
Week within buds, so thats the part of the Navy Seal qualification and training. They go many days without sleep. Theyre exposed to freezing cold water. Theyre just basically tortured and put through hell to force them to give
up, which they do by ringing a bell among other things. One of the general tenets of Hell Week is keep your suffering to yourself. Meaning, like dont bitch
and moan about your pain because its contagious and it will affect the morale and success rate of the other people. If youre suffering, if your legs are
tired, if youre fucking cold, if you havent slept in two days, keep it to yourself.
Im not saying thats always the best policy, but I feel like complaining has become a national pastime of the United States and people are very eager to be
offended because it gives them a reason to spout off, instead of doing whatever
the fuck they should be doing. I would love to hear how you trained yourself
because you have what I think everyone would consider legitimate reasons to
complain, to be bitter, to not proactively do all the incredible things that youve
done. How have you trained yourself not to do that?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, I tried like complaining and being bitter. It didnt work. It was just terrible and I
was definitely bitter. I definitely went through my ups and downs. Okay, so Stephen
Hawking actually has the best quote on this and also the best like legitimate story
of, you know, has the right to complain probably more than anybody. He says that
when you complain nobody wants to help you and its like the simplest thing and so
plainly spoken. Only he could really say that brutal honest truth, but its true, right?
If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong and then thats
what you express and you projection to people you know, you dont become
a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws like more destructiveness. I think that because that was how
it felt for me when I was thinking about how I was in pain and talking about
how I was in pain, it started a momentum that went in a negative direction
in my life. At one point, I would say, I dont know, probably in like 2006-2007,
I just decided to, its kind of like Tim Ferriss challenge, but I didnt know you
then. But, I put myself on like almost a complaining diet, where I said like,
Not only am I not going to say anything negative about the situation Im in,
but Im not going to let myself think anything negative about it. This coincided with, I had lost feeling in my feet because of the surgeries, so I dont
have any feeling in my feet, so I have to keep my eyes open when I walk.
At the time, I was reading about how plastic the brain is when it comes to filling in the gaps where youre losing information and starting to understand
just scientifically how plastic the brain is, I thought, Well, I refuse to have
negative thought and I only let myself have a positive thought, eventually thats going to change my brain, I dont know how long its going to take
thought. It took a long time and I wasnt perfect at it, but I definitely feel like
Not only did replacing those thoughts helped me start moving my life in a
better direction, where I wasnt obsessing about what was wrong and I was
just thinking about what was right, it also made me not feel physical pain as
much, which is very liberating and kind of necessary if you want to do anything because if youre in pain, its really hard to do anything else but feel it.
You know probably more about this than I do the way that the body processes
pain and how pain is in a way just a thought. Yeah, I did this experiment where
I tried to control my thoughts for some time. It just started things in the right
direction. It doesnt mean that everything is always good. I definitely have days
where I am still like, This sucks, I wish I just had like normal feet and could go,
run around and not think about all the little things that I have to think about. But
for the most part, I just dont think about it anymore.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, no, its just taking me a second for it all to soak in for me. First of all, I owe
you a thanks for a very extensive email that you wrote to me subsequent to my
contracting Lyme disease, which I really appreciated.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Of course
Tim Ferriss:
Its been impressive to me how methodically youve deconstructed, not only

your condition, but the symptoms and how to address all of them. Thats
coming from someone whos made somewhat of a career of doing weird
experiments on himself. For those people interested in the no complaining challenge, there is a post that I wrote at one point called the 21-Day No
Complaint Experiment, which is something I borrow for a pastor actually, which I would encourage everyone to check out. But, I think youre very
good and Im astonished, we still havent hung out in person, but I didnt
meet my first full-time executive assistant for four years. Hopefully, it wont
take that long in our case, but I feel like youre very good at inspiring people.
To flash forward from your round of funding that you explained not too long
ago, you ended up with a $13 million Series B investment led by Kleiner Perkins,
John Doerr, who is of course one of the most famous venture capitalists of all
time joining your board. Stephanie, who we mentioned earlier, joining as well.
Richard Branson ended up investing and then a bunch of previous investors and
then little old me ended up investing as well, which I was very excited about.
How the hell did that happen? I mean its an incredible roster of investors, excluding me, but
Tracy DiNunzio:
Including you.
Tim Ferriss:
I would love to know what happened in between those two funding rounds that
enabled you to make that quantum leap forward. Im not saying the previous
investors werent incredible, but you added a lot of really I think global MVPs is
what they would be considered by a lot of people in the startup game. How did
that happen? What were the things that happened in between those two periods and what enabled you to close that type of round of investing?
Tracy DiNunzio:
It was wild. We closed that round in May and I still kind of cant believe it. Its
really cool. Ill tell you actually the slightly longer version of the story because I
think that theres a good lesson there.
Tim Ferriss:
Ive got half bottle of a wine left and Im in no rush, so please continue.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Tradesy grew quite a bit in its first year. Flash back to about a year ago, September of 2013, we were growing at a healthy clip. We were growing at between 10% and 15% month-over-month and we were running out of funding. It was time to go back out on the campaign trail and raise more money.
I spent last fall up in the Valley and in New York, talking to a bunch of VCs.
We were trying to raise $6 million. It wasnt an easy fundraise. We werent getting a lot of momentum because that 10% to 15% a month, its very solid, but
it doesnt blow anyones hair back. It doesnt make them say, Oh gosh, this
rocket ship is taking off and weve got it get on this. Theres so much competition and noise in our market that it just wasnt enough to really differentiate us.
I had given initially all of the VCs we were talking to a deadline of Thanksgiving
and said, We need to know if youre in by Thanksgiving. We had three funds
that were still interested, but not ready to make a decision. I extended the deadline to Christmas and on Christmas Eve day, all three passed and we only had
Tim Ferriss:
Sorry, Im only laughing because that interested but not ready to make a decision shit is so just like textbook VC, it makes me insane. Please continue, sorry.
Tracy DiNunzio:
It was so painful, but in all honesty I think that those funds were excited and
interested and I dont blame them for being on the fence at that moment because there was a leap of faith component at that moment. I was predicting a
huge uptick in the beginning in 2014 based on a lot of the metrics we were seeing that were indicative that we were poised to have a huge have step function
growth period. But, its very hard to believe like one person who has a vested
interest in raising this money, saying were about to blow up and so
Tim Ferriss:
You have a bit of a bias.
Tracy DiNunzio:
They all passed and I spent most of Christmas in bed. I might have shed a tear and I
just thought what we had about 18, 20 employees at the time and I thought, What
am I going to do, we only had about two months of runway. I me to deal with our
existing investors, venture partners and ventures where if we hit our goals of
20% month-over-month growth in the first quarter, they would give us another
million dollars that would let us go out and raise the next round and keep us afloat.
We had this goal of 20% month over month growth in Q1, but we still didnt have
enough money to make it through Q1. I rounded up the six members of our senior team and I said, Hey guys, we make up more than half of payroll and we
either need to all take a salary cut or one in half of us needs to get fired and I
dont think we can do this without all of us here, so go home, talk to your wives
and girlfriends, come back on Monday and tell me if you can do a salary cut.
Immediately that same day, every single one of them came back to me and offered to take a bigger salary cut than what I was proposing.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats amazing. Now, just I hate to pause it because youre on a roll, but what do
you attribute that to?
Tracy DiNunzio:
We believe very heartily in our mission and in our vision and we love working together and we dont want it to end. I think that part of it was a sense
of like team and duty to do that and then part of it was like, Hey if this thing
goes away, were going to have to go back to working at other companies.
Nobody wants that. It was our Hail Mary and we all said that we can do this.
I had a really carefully articulated plan for making that money stretch out
through Q1 and starting January 1st, as predicted we hit this huge growth spurt
and we started growing first 30%, then 40%, then more month-over-month.
Not only was our cash flow actually really good because we are a revenue generating business, so we had more runway than we thought, but, right at the end of
January, I said, We werent going to raise yet, but this is it, this is the moment to go
do it, Im going to go back to the Valley, Im not coming back without a term sheet.
After about a week up there, talking to some new investors, targeting a larger
raise, we started to get some momentum and the mechanics of the Valley machine started to kick in and we became a hot deal.
Tim Ferriss:
The irrational hysteria you mean. Im kidding, Im kidding, not irrational. Its not
irrational in this case. Question I have for you is why did you predict a massive
uptick in January, February, March in Q1? What would cause that because you
think of the gift giving season, the buying season, lets just say in publishing, it
makes sense that you would have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, October, November and even December is large shopping months, but why would your Q1 pop
in the way that it did?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Its kind of boring and technical and its multifaceted, which is why
Tim Ferriss:
My favorite, all around.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Its not like a neat story, which is also why it was hard to convince investors
because I was a little bit of mad scientist. I was like, Look, look at this number,
its indicating that this could happen next. There were just a number of components. I think probably the headline thats like easiest to understand is that
Tradesy isnt the ideal place to shop for gifts because not everybody feels comfortable giving something pre-owned as a gift and its
Tim Ferriss:
Wait a second, but its the ideal place to get rid of your gifts that you dont want.
Tracy DiNunzio:
It sure is.
Tim Ferriss:
I love it.
Tracy DiNunzio:
We were seeing that we were achieving some much better rankings on search
but that they werent paying off in traffic yet because of that probably seasonal factor and what people were searching for when they were in gift-giving
mode versus come January, its back to, What am I going to wear? Theres
some differentiation there and a lot of what was happening with our retention
numbers. We had a much smaller user base, but we had started doing some
retention marketing initiatives that were paying off in spades and all we need to
do is increase the size of our user base to really see that have long term effect.
It was those two things that are the headlines, but there were all these other
smaller things that contributed as well.
Tim Ferriss:
The hit list, the listing of big names, John Doerr, Richard Branson, holy shit, lions
mane and everything, what were some of the tipping points or moments where
you snagged these folks? What made them say yes?
Tracy DiNunzio:
A few things happened with Kleiner in particular. We had four term sheets and
we liked all of the investors
Tim Ferriss:
Term sheets, for those who dont know, is just a formal offer for investment with
specifics.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, yes, so we had these four different funds that we were willing to invest and
lead around of anywhere from 10 to 15 million. It varied based on the fund and the
term sheet. I had known some of the folks at Kleiner. I had never met John Doerr
and we connection with him kind of late in the process. They invited us to partner meeting and it was our last meeting of the raise. We were prepared to make
a decision. We were happy with the four term sheets we had and we went to the
Kleiner meeting because we were still interested in hearing what they had to say.
But we thought it might be too late for them to be able to move quickly. Honestly,
I was just so excited to go sit in a room with Mary Meeker and John Doerr and Ran-
dy Komisar. Its like the Mount Rushmore of venture capital. It was a fun moment.
I didnt know if they would be interested in the investment either, theyre not
necessarily known for investing in fashion e-companies. Part of what was great
about that was that we walked in with four term sheets in our pocket, so it was
easy to do a great pitch.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, you have nothing to lose.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, we were very secure and then in that meeting, I dont know if we had
a preconceived notion of Kleiner, but I definitely didnt expect them to be
as warm or as thoughtful as they were. Having met with tons of VCs, there
were plenty that would play with their phone in the meeting or ask questions that seemed not like the most intelligent questions. The Kleiner team
just asked the smartest questions in that meeting. They were so thoughtful. They were so impressive and my cofounder and I left saying like, Wow,
theyre every bit as awesome as theyre cranked up to be, if not more.
They came back very quickly and offered us a term sheet and we had 24 hours to
make a decision. We took a bit of a risk because we didnt know them as well as
we knew the other funds, but of course we knew their reputation and John Doerrs reputation kind of precedes him. He was signing up to be on our board and
thats a once in a lifetime opportunity. We took it. I negotiated the term sheet
with John Doerr, which was all under time pressure, which was actually probably
the most intense and bizarre wild experience of the whole thing. Yeah, we signed.
They actually facilitated the introduction to Richard Branson shortly thereafter.
I got to go meet and hang out with him, even have a few drinks with and pitch
him. He was awesome and agreed to invest and was excited about the vision.
I think more than anything what got them so excited, of course the numbers
were going up quickly and thank goodness, knock on wood, they still are but I
think it was the larger vision that we were talking about earlier that really excited them. John Doerr said to me when he called and offered to invest, he said,
We really believe that youre building a category, not just a company and we
want to be part that.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats high praise from the priest himself.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Surreal moment
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a big statement. Randy Komisar, I have to just mention that when I was
graduating from school Randy Komisar knew a professor of mine named Ed
Zschau Z-S-C-H-A-U, who was a congressman for one or two terms in Silicon
Valley, competitive figure skater, also took a couple of companies public, I mean
really my kind of guy. I sat in on Ed Zschaus last class at Harvard Business
School, where he also taught. Randy Komisar was a guest speaker. I ended up
with a copy of The Monk and The Riddle by Randy, which had a huge impact
on me. That was, I have to say, it came out probably between 97 and 2000,
at a very frothy point in the Valleys activity, not unlike where things are now.
Just as a side to it, I would like to recommend to start-ups that your ability to
raise funding is directly inversely proportional to your need to raise money. You
should raise money when you do not need it. You need it dig your wells before
theyre dry, sort of account for the worst case scenario, which I think a lot of
people are bad at doing. You raise this round with a bunch of iconic folks, again
excluding me. Ive got a lot to prove before I get there, but with a bunch of really
just incredible brand name folks, so you mentioned earlier that 1.5 million hits
your bank account, holy shit 1.5 million. Now, you have, how much was it, 13, 15?
Tracy DiNunzio:
13.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, so now you have 13 million hit your bank account, how do you use that
money and how do you not succumb to the temptation to rapidly misspend that
money, which I think is a common issue with a lots of startups, where they have
limited resources, limited cash, limited headcount and they have to evaluate every decision very carefully. They get a bunch of money and then they misspend
it very quickly because they feel like theyre in land grab with competitors and
they just flash a ton of money down the toilet.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Totally.
Tim Ferriss:
Bam, $13 million hits the bank account, what now?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Well, we spend it and we spend it fast, but not stupidly. I think that where a
lot of companies misstep and overspend is in their marketing budget because if you dump a lot of cash into customer acquisition and those customers dont convert and create long-term value, then youve thrown
that money away. Google and Facebook are the only ones who win.
A big part of how we avoided that pitfall is really just built into our business
model, where the majority of our customer acquisition is organic and well
Tim Ferriss:
Organic meaning search traffic?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Search traffic and other sources that dont cost money, so referrals etc. Because
thats kind of built into our model and its self-perpetuating, the more products
we have, the more organic traffic we get, the more customers we have, they list
more products and we get more traffic. Its this flywheel of growth that was always
built into the model. We were never a company that thought that we would pay
to play. Even now that we spend what would probably be considered a modest
amount, but a lot for us on marketing every month, where we match it very carefully
to how our growth is going on the organic or free side, so that our overall pool of
customers still ends up being worth a lot more than what we spent on marketing.
For people who are in the industry, its like we keep our blended CPA really low,
but look it goes fast. I mean the first 1.5 million went shockingly fast. This 13
million goes shockingly fast. Luckily, were seeing returns for it, which means
that it wont be a problem to raise more. But, its certainly a challenge to not
overspend and I also tend to be very liberal when it comes to compensation
packages for our team. I think that all of our best people, which is really all of our
people, theyre all doing the work of three people. We keep a very very high bar
for performance and we compensate our people accordingly. Much more of our
funding is actually going towards people and paying people salaries and perks
and bonuses, than to us marketing, which I think is the real kind of black hole of
where you have a risk of not getting enough value out of the spend.
Tim Ferriss:
Absolutely, yeah 100% agreed. If you focus on recruitment and retention of top
talent, your ability to create an impressive number on a revenue or profit per
employee basis is really a very very high. I read a biography of Ryan Air at one
point; this was probably five to seven years ago, very very impressive on those
types of metrics. What positions are you currently looking for and where can
qualified folks learn more about these positions?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Weve got a jobs page, Tradesy.com/jobs and we have ...
Tim Ferriss:
Is it a backslash or a forward slash, I hate to be a jerk about it?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Gosh, I think its a backslash, pretty sure its a backslash, but that kind of rocked
my world. Now, Im not sure. Try both, its the first test to see how interested
people are in working for Tradesy if you can figure out the front or the back
slash. Its part of the hazing process. Right now, what would make my life so nice
would be a killer retention marketing manager. I met someone who runs mostly
our email marketing, helps us to target and segment our lists better and really
digs into the business intelligence around our existing customers to see how
we can serve them better. That is like killer marker, growth hacker, if you will.
Were definitely on the hunt for someone like that and were never turning away
a good Full Stack engineer. Were hiring lots of those.
Tim Ferriss:
Whats the jobs page again, one more time?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Tradesy.com/jobs.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome, Im extremely bullish on you guys, not surprisingly and I do want to

ask you a bunch of questions, are still okay on time?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Im good.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay cool, youre three hours behind, so Im willing to burn the midnight oil.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Tim Ferriss:
This is where the witching hour gets really interesting, my Lord. I apologize to
the world at large for any stupidity that comes out of me from this point forward.
I would love to ask you million questions, but I wont ask you million, but I would
start with your recommendations for people who are, lets just assume that
theyre smart, theyre willing to do their own homework, theyre hard-working,
lets just assume those things. What resources or books or anything else would
you recommend they consume before starting their startup? That doesnt mean
venture-backed necessarily, it could be in that but if there were two to three
books, two to three sites, two to three article, whatever it might be.
Tracy DiNunzio:
My dog has some strong opinions about that.
Tim Ferriss:
No, I know, your dog rightly so. Thats okay, what kind of dog do you have?
Tracy DiNunzio:
She is a little mutt that we adopted about a year ago. Shes also the team Tradesy resident dog.
Tim Ferriss:
I love it. I have huge dog envy, so Im going to be getting a rescue in the next a
couple of months, which I have been saying for a while, but I need to get there.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Our office has anywhere from 6 to 10 canines every day.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh my God, I need to come visit.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Were extremely dog friendly, so yeah if you need a dog fix, were definitely the
place to stop in.
Tim Ferriss:
Totally need a dog fix. Half the reason I live in San Francisco is because there are
more dogs than kids, so I can always get my dog fixed. Resources, books, if you
were giving a commencement speech and had to recommend to the small army
of would be entrepreneurs a few resources, what would you recommend?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Theres like the classic Good to Great, which I think, most people cite it as their
favorite business book and I read it almost begrudgingly because of that and I
have to say
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Collins.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, its too good. Thats definitely a must read. I just finished the book about
Amazon, The Everything Store.
Tim Ferriss:
Ive heard great things about it.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Oh, wow, you know why I think its a great book and especially for people starting out, so in the beginning of the book, Jeff Bezos says to the author, How
are you going to avoid the narrative fallacy? Meaning when you tell a story of
something that became a great success, you have all this information about
what happened along the way and you just lean towards piecing together the
bits that sound like it was inevitable and you kind of leave out the parts where
everyone stumbles and falls or things just get murky for like a really long time. I
think the book does an incredible job of avoiding the narrative fallacy. Its a great
read for anyone whos in the internet business. It might not be if youre not in
that business because its a pretty detailed granular tale of, Then we did these
10 things and this one was okay and that one was great, now these two sucked.
It doesnt glorify or glamorize the process of building a huge company and I really appreciate that because I think a lot of books about this do. People like to
think, looking back, like a lot of people tell me now, I knew that you were going
to take it really far. Its like nobody knows, its all just primordial soup in the early
stages and it continues to be. If it doesnt feel like youre on a magic carpet ride
to inevitable success that doesnt mean youre not. It doesnt really feel like that.
I dont think, so I love the Amazon book for how it details two steps forward, one
step back process of building something. I definitely think thats a new must read.
Then, just for like online resources, for me early on, I leaned a lot on the stuff
that the guys from AngelList published, so now Im
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, are you talking about Venture Hacks, are you talking about Angel List itself?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, yes, Venture Hacks, yup, like that was how I learned what the terminology
and the lingo were. That was my lay of the land. I think I paid $7 for a download
and it was like a great $7 at a time where $7 mattered. I definitely recommend
that for getting your feet wet about what it means to take investment capital
and how to think about your plans for that. I am not good at the resources thing
because Ive done a lot of things in a bubble and I dont think thats necessarily
the right way. I get a little bit obsessive about what Im working on and building
the stuff Im working on and dont take enough time to get the advice of people
whove been there. Im trying to work on that.
Tim Ferriss:
Im not convinced its a bad thing. I think that oftentimes on one hand you could
say that what you dont know you dont know is what hurts you, but same time
there are many examples of people whove done this supposedly impossible
because they didnt know it was impossible in the first place. I think theres no
argument to be made both ways and the Venture Hacks tip I would definitely
endorse, has nothing to do with the fact that Im in adviser to AngelList because theyre entirely separate. But really they had some unpleasant experiences in the world of venture capital and realized it was very opaque world
for the most part and really strove to present a transparent interpretation and
list of suggestions for how to optimize in that venture-backed environment.
What would your advice be to those sitting down, late at night, realizing they
dont like their current job, theyre considering a change that could be a change
of job, it could be starting their own gig, theyre not sure, what would your advice be to those people?
Tracy DiNunzio:
I think the worst thing is to be static. Not everybody who quits their job and
takes a risk is going to be financially successful, just not true. A lot of people are
like, Hey, chase your dreams and it was always works out and youll get there.
Well, a finite number of people can actually get there, whatever there means,
but I think the journey is a lot more exciting when there is some risk and when
you can be a master of your own destiny to some degree. I think theres like a
lot of fallacy around the idea that youre going to do it after you have this or
that after you have a certain amount of money or a certain amount of knowledge because anything that you acquire in the pre-planning stages is going
to go faster or be less relevant than you think. The only way to do it is to do it.
Its harder when you have more at stake. I didnt have a whole lot at stake. I had
like a stalling art career, 2008, nobody was buying paintings. I think that you
hit it on the head when you said, When you dont know what youre risking or
what the odds are against you, it can be sometimes easier. But you can make a
choice to be ignorant about those things and just do it if you feel a real calling to
it. But its not easier necessarily and its not always its all cracked up to be. Its a
decision to be on a journey and have an adventure, not necessarily a decision to
move towards an outcome because the outcome is uncertain no matter what.
Tim Ferriss:
Very sage advice for a young woman. No thats great advice, advices I could also
incorporate myself more so in a lot of things. How can people learn more about
Tradesy and help Tradesy?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Well, you could
Tim Ferriss:
Can I, as a male, go on your site and sell a couple things that I have been dying
to sell like a gorgeous Dainese black and red leather motorcycle jacket?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Heres the funny thing. We dont have a mens section yet, we will in 2015,
but if you go on Tradesy and you look in certain categories such as outerwear, like youve got or watches, weve got this insane amazing collection of
mens stuff thats probably in our womens category. Clearly, there is some
supply out there and I think some demand, so we are going to have an official sanctioned mens category soon. But in the meantime if you want a list
it in the womens category, I think a lot of women are shopping for men. I
bought my husband a really amazing Moncler blazer on Tradesy the other day.
I think that there are so many women on Tradesy that have husbands and brothers and boyfriends that are shopping that were receiving mens inventory move.
You have my permission to list in an unsanctioned womens category until we
have the mens category.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, Im on it and how can people most help Tradesy or find out about Tradesy?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Come visit us at Tradesy.com or download the app. Were on the iTunes Store
and well soon be on Android and just start using it. I mean the average woman
has only worn about 20% of whats in her closet in the last year. I think even if
that particular statistic doesnt apply to you, everyones got something theyre
never going to wear again and nobody I think doesnt need a few extra dollars.
If youre so inclined , list an item for sale, tell your friends and spread the word.
Tim Ferriss:
Indeed, yeah, I just recently moved into a new place and I have so much crap it
is unbelievable. I mean the number of boxes that Ive unpacked that really dont
deserve to be unpacked because I havent needed them for five months is incredible. Folks out there, no
Tracy DiNunzio:
Theres another thing kind of when we went through our branding exercise,
which we finally did, theres this sense of unencumbered living, like stuff freaks
me out, I dont like accumulating stuff. It makes me feel like I cant go where I
want to go and do what I want to do because I have all this responsibility. Its a
very sharing economy kind of thing, like get what you want when you need it,
use it for time and then dont have the burden of ownership. But I feel liberated
having a heavy small closet, having few belongings. I live in a tiny apartment
with my husband. We dont keep a lot of stuff and its really refreshing. Id say
even more than coming to Tradesy and using Tradesy, being part of that kind of
movement toward more light weight living is something makes us happy.
Tim Ferriss:
Absolutely and its not a San Franciscos limited Burning Man/mushroom-infused euphoria that leads to people to scuttle a lot of that excess nonsense. Its
really liberating process that almost anyone can engage in and I think that this
documentary, its not the very professionally made thing but it is an entertaining
film called Tiny about tiny home living that I think elucidates lot of these issues.
For those out there interested in simplifying, check out Tradesy.com T-R-A-DE-S-Y.com. Tracy, any parting comments before I let you get back to your fine
evening?
Tracy DiNunzio:
No, I thank you so much for the time. This was so much fun and thats it. Its been
really a pleasure.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome, well this has been great. I think I shall do more of these, very tactical,
very deep in the weeds in a good way and hopefully helpful for folks. Are you
personally on Twitter, Facebook, where people can tell you how they feel about
this episode, anything like that?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, Im on Twitter, Im Tracy DiNunzio on Twitter. Im on Facebook, I have
Tim Ferriss:
Thats with a D-I
Tracy DiNunzio:
D-I-N-U-N-Z-I-O, its a whole lot of name.
Tim Ferriss:
@TracyDiNunzio?
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yeah, Im on Facebook and we have a Tradesy Facebook page where we welcome all kinds of feedback. Im pretty easy to find.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome, Tracy, youre a trooper. You, I think are going to do great things, so
for everyone involved and that includes most of the planets, I think, if you fulfill
the vision of the company. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me this
evening, so thank you very much.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Thank you so much Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, guys, all of the relevant links and what not will be available on the blog
in the show notes, so visit if you would like to find links at fourhourworkweek.
com/podcast. Tracy, we shall be talking, so thank you so much for the time and
we need to meet in person, so I can get intoxicated in a more civil fashion.
Tracy DiNunzio:
Yes, Im sure.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, thanks for listening guys, talk to you soon.
EPISODE 39:
MARIA POPOVA
Tim Ferriss:
This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by 99Designs and
ExOfficio. 99Designs is the worlds largest online marketplace of graphic
designers, and I have used 99Designs for years including to get cover concepts
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I have used it. I have mentioned it before including in The 4-Hour Workweek as
a resource. Check it out, 99designs.com/tim, and if you use that link, youll be
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for free which will get you more designs, more submissions. So, check it out.
ExOfficio, boy, where do I begin? Ive a long history with ExOfficio. ExOfficio
makes clothing, and as far back as 2007, 2008, I had a hit video that went viral
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ExOfficio underwear is lightweight ultra-lightweight, quick-drying, and antimicrobial. Why is his important? Well, Ive gone through 20 plus countries with
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[Music]
Tim Ferriss:
Hello, ladies and gents. This is Tim Ferriss, yet again, running out the door to a
flight. I have such an exciting episode, I can barely contain myself. I might just
wee myself on my way across the country, but I digress; probably, TMI.
Let me answer just a couple of questions. What is this podcast about? You, longterm listeners, might know long-term, long time. That its about dissecting
excellence. Trying to tease apart what makes world-class performers so good
at what they do. Finding the tools and tactics that you can apply.
This episode features Maria Popova. Im about to explain who she is. If you
dont know who she is, or if you are intimately familiar with who she is, youre in
for a treat. First, Ill answer a question that a lot of people ask me and that is,
what are you reading? Well, what Im reading right now is two books comprise
of two books.

The first is, William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Goldman is the
screenwriter behind such movies as The Princess Bride one of my favorites of
all time and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The second book is John
Muir, Wilderness Essays. So, very different, both very, very good and highly
recommended. The Adventures in the Screen Trade is a little outdated with
some of the contents because its related to film and it was written in the 80s,
but there are a lot of timeless principles and Goldman is just hilarious.
But moving on; the guest, Maria Popova, oh, my goodness. Where to start? She
would describe herself as a reader, writer, interestingness hunter, gatherer, and
curious mind at large. What does that mean? Itll all make sense in just a few
seconds.
While shes written for all sorts of amazing outlets like The Atlantic and The New
York Times. I find her most amazing project to be brainpickings.org, and Im
not alone in this. Founded in 2006 as a weekly email that she sent out to seven
friends, co-workers, really, very informal. Brain Pickings was eventually brought
online, and, now, it gets more than 5 million readers per month. It is massive.
Many of you ask, what logs do you read often? What do you do online? Where
do you spend most of your time? The answer is that I read very few sites
consistently. I dont have that type of loyalty, but Brain Pickings is one of the
few. It is a treasure trove. It is Marias one-woman labor of love, her subjective
lens on what matters. Its also an inquiry into how to live and what it means to
lead a good life.
This is what hooks me, of course, because shell pull from excerpt and reading
from the Stoics; my favorite, Seneca to Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and everyone
in between. Maria is good at finding hidden gems to share. The amount of
information this woman consumes and compressed down to the finest detail of
what will help you now blows my mind. She makes me look like the laziest son
of a bitch ever.
Of course, immediately, my questions are, how? How does she do that? How
on earth does she do that? And we dig into this in this interview. Really, I try
to unearth hidden gems in her life, her workflow. It takes me a few minutes to
warm up as it often does, but once we get going, we geek out like crazy. And we
talk about almost every aspect of her life, her site, her business, her workouts,
her writing, her workflow, her tools, her workarounds, all of it.
I love doing this interview. I hope you love listening to it. For bonus credit,
for those of you who are super curious, might have a little lack of extra time
to do some detective work at one point, she mentions that her Facebook
fan page went from a few hundred thousand people to over 2 million people
without explanation. So, if you are able to figure out why that happened, what
contributed to that, please, let me know on Twitter @tferriss, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.
Im dying of curiosity.
Always or as always, I should say, the show notes all the links that we mentioned,
the tools, et cetera. All of that can be found on the blog at fourhourworkweek.
com/podcast, all spelled out. So, you dont need to scribble away furiously with
notes. Although, you can. I will have pretty much everything that you will need
right there in the show notes.

So, without further ado, please meet, Maria Popova.
[Sound effects]
Tim Ferriss:
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode
of the Tim Ferriss Show. I am extremely excited to have a fellow geek-in-arms,
Maria Popova, on the line with me. Maria, how are you today?
Maria Popova:
Very well, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Tim Ferriss:
And I appreciate your coaching on the last name. I wasnt sure if it was Popova
or Popova. I have friends who for instance, Novel Rabika is a friend. Its
actually Novel, but Americans cant really pull that off. So, he goes for Novel.
So, I appreciate the coaching and I
Maria Popova:
Yes, as a country of immigrants, we have a surprisingly hard time getting

peoples original names right, right?
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, absolutely. Its just the Anglo-sizing of such a cresol, like a melting pot of
different cultures. At the same time, I think its a reflection of where I spent a lot
of time which is reading. There are so many words. Ive embarrassed myself on
many occasions. That Ive read dozens or even hundreds of times, especially, in
scientific literature that Ive never heard pronounced.
Maria Popova:
Oh, yeah. I call this reader syndrome. Its somebody who spends the majority
of her waking hours reading. You run into that a lot, especially with cultural
icons last names, first names that are spelled differently than very differently
than their pronounced. Its tragic-comic when you actually find out how theyre
pronounced.
Tim Ferriss:
No, exactly; or it can be a real revelation. I remember when I was a young kid. I
couldnt hit, lets say, democracy or aristocracy. I could only say because I had
also read it demo-cracy, aristo-cracy. For whatever reason, I couldnt get the
emphasis right.
But going back to the reading and someone who spends most of their waking
hours reading, if someone asks you and Im sure, occasionally, it happens
what do you do? For those people listening who may not be familiar with you,
well start with the cocktail question. When someone asks you, what do you do?
How do you answer that?
Maria Popova:
Well, Ive answered it differently over the years in part because, I think, inhabiting
our own identity is a perpetual process that, right now, I would say, I read and I
write, in that order. And in between, I do some thinking. And I think about, how
to live a meaningful life, basically.
Tim Ferriss:
If someone, then, where to go online to find your work, end up at Brain Pickings,
and theyre like, oh, this is quite interesting. And they look over their shoulder
because they happen to be doing it on their iPhone at the party. And theyre
like, what is Brain Pickings? How do you typically describe that?

Maria Popova:
Its just a record of that thinking; my personal subjective, private thinking that
takes place between my reading and the writing, and takes form in writing.
Tim Ferriss:
A collection of very interesting things; sometimes, how I simply put it to folks.

Brain Pickings for those people wondering is one of the very few sites that
I end up on constantly. When people ask me, what blogs do you read? Im
embarrassed. In some cases, kind of humiliated to answer that I dont go, really,
to many blogs consistently. I think part of the reason is, so many of them feel
compelled to put out very, very timely, of-the-moment material that expires
within a few hours. I dont like the feeling of keeping up with the Joneses when
the Joneses are just churning out content.
I remember Cathys here at one point, told me that you should focus on just in
time information, not just in case information which I thought was very astute
and really so profound. There are two sites that come to mind that I end up
on quite a lot; Brain Pickings is one and Sam Harris blog is another. I saw your
review of his latest book, Waking Up.
Maria Popova:
Well, not a review.
Tim Ferriss:
Not a review.
Maria Popova:
I dont review books ever.
Tim Ferriss:
I apologize. Okay, no, so this is
Maria Popova:
An annotated reading, if you will.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, so an annotated reading of and I definitely want to dig into that. An

annotated reading of Waking Up which I found really impactful for me in a lot of
ways. It put words to a lot of vague feelings or observations that I had for a very
long time.
Talking about reviews; so, I polled a number of my friends and my readers about
different questions they would love to ask you. A close of mine, Chris Saka,
he came back with, what percentage of New York Times Bestsellers can be
attributed to your coverage?
And Id be curious to hear you answer that. Then, theres a follow up. Youve
built this incredible powerhouse of an outlet for your whether its creative
musings or observations, and it has a huge influence on what people read. So,
if you were to think of that, how would you answer that question?
Maria Popova:
Well, first of all, youre very kind to put it that way as is Chris. I think one big
caveat to all of that is that the majority of books that I read and write about
are very old, out of print, things that are not competing for New York Times
Bestseller. In fact, I wont even know if I ever really I mean, perhaps. I dont
know if the books that I read have any overlap and the Venn diagram of things
with the New York Times Bestsellers.
I suspect that the reason Chris asked that question is actually that I met him
through his wife who collaborated with Wendy MacNaughton, the illustrator
whose work I love and I love Wendy on a book about wine
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Maria Popova:
And I wrote about it because its lovely, and profound, and challenge our
existing ideas about sensory experience. I like things that take something very
superficial and find something deeper and something unusual in it.
But in any case, so I wrote about that book. In that particular piece on Brain
Pickings that seem to do pretty well. I think, perhaps, that warped Chris idea
of how much contemporary books Im interested in, but I would say thats a
minority.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. And for those people wondering, its The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide
to Becoming a Wine Expert which is written along with and the illustrations are
wonderful. Richard Betts is the sommelier whos part of that.
At one point, I met with him because I wanted to try to deconstruct the master
sommelier test, and he said, I can show you how to do it. It was just the paireddown hacked, if you will versions. Still, passing the master sommelier test was
so intimidating that I put it on ice indefinitely. But at some point, Richard, we will
talk again and form a game plan.
So, the opposite, of course, of putting out this material that expires as soon as
its out on the vine, is putting out what, I think, you do very often, and that is
timely and timeless Ive heard you call it material where youre pulling from
old sources or older sources, doing pattern recognition to pull from other areas
to talk about, say, a theme or something that still affects people.
I was doing research for this interview. Weve met briefly in New York at an
event. Ive been a long-time fan of your work. So, I thought to myself, how
much digging do I really need to do? And good God, you have such an absolute
cannon of work out there. It is astonishing. I mean, it is really
Maria Popova:
Youre very kind. Its just the volume of time, really. Ive been doing this for eight
years coming up. Actually exactly a month from today it will be eight years.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, really?
Maria Popova:
So, its just the accumulation.
Tim Ferriss:
So, Im fascinated by routine and schedule, and reading from, of course from
not the always accurate, but generally a good place to start Wikipedia. It says
that Brain Pickings takes 400 plus hours of work per month, 100s of pieces of
content per day, 12 to 15 books per week that youre reading. I know Im asking
a handful of questions that youve been asked before. Sometimes the answer
has changed and evolved
Maria Popova:
They always do. Which is why I actually dont do interviews very frequently
because I find they sort of tend to cast this as the static thing that just stays
there; some sort of reference point while were really just the fluid process and
were constantly evolving. But in any case, go on.

Tim Ferriss:
No, definitely
Maria Popova:
The answers too tame.
Tim Ferriss:
So, the question that youve, Im sure, been asked many times, but Ill ask again
is, how do you find/choose the books that you read? This is a huge problem for
me because my appetite for reading outstrips the time that I have. So, I end
up actually, unfortunately, sometimes finding myself anxious because of the
number of books Ive taken on at any given point and time. So, Id be curious
how you sort of vet the books that you read.
Maria Popova:
Well, I guess, it goes back to that question of well, let me backtrack and just
say that I write about a very wide array of disciplines, and eras, and sensibilities
because thats what I think about.
So, anything from art and science to philosophy, psychology, history, design,
poetry; you name it. The common denominator for me is just this very simple
question of, does this illuminate some aspect big or small of that grand
question that I think we all [inaudible] [00:17:57] every day which is how to live
well. How to live a good meaningful, fulfilling life? Whether thats Aristotles
views on happiness and government, or beautiful art from 12th-century Japan,
or Sam Harris new book, anything.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Ive read you citing Kurt Vonnegut before. Kurt Vonneguts one of my
favorite writers of all time.
Maria Popova:
I know. I heard your semicolon quote. I think it was either the interview you did
with Kevin Kelly or with Sam. I actually have a counterpoint to the semicolon
question
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, no, no
Maria Popova:
But go on.
Tim Ferriss:
I brought up the semicolon quote partially as a wink, wink, nod, ribbing to a

friend of mine named John Romanelo who has a tattoo of a semicolon on his I
think its his forearm.
Maria Popova:
Got to love type nerds.
Tim Ferriss:
He loves semicolons. He also has a molecule of testosterone on the other arm.

Hes a fascinating guy. The quote that I heard you cite that I wanted to dig into
a bit was, the Kurt Vonnegut saying, write to please just one person. So, my
question to you is, when you write, is that still the case? And if so, who is that
person that you are writing for?
Maria Popova:
It is very much the case. I still write for an audience of one, and that is myself.
Its like I said, its just a record of my thought process, my way of just trying to
navigate my way through the world and understand my place in it, understand
how we relate to one another, how different pieces of the world relate to each
other and create a pattern of meaning out of seemingly unrelated, meaningless
information, and the intersection or transmutation of information into wisdom,

really, which what learning to live is. Its about wisdom.

Its interesting, too, because when I started Brain Pickings like I said almost
eight years ago, it started very much as a private record of my own curiosity
and I shared it with seven co-workers that I had at the time just as an email
newsletter thing. Now, to think that there are about 7 million people strangers
reading it every month
Tim Ferriss:
Thats amazing.
Maria Popova:
Its kind of surreal
Tim Ferriss:
Congratulations, by the way.
Maria Popova:
Thank you, and Im not sort of number-dropping for scale or anything, but I just
to try to articulate how surreal it feel so me that I still feel like Im writing for one
person, one very inward person. Theres also, now, the awareness that there are
people looking on, and interpreting, and just relating to this pretty private act.
Its a strange thing to live with. In no way a bad thing; Im not complaining about
it, obviously, but its just interesting to observe how one relates to oneself when
being looked on by a few million people.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. And, oh, theres so many, so many questions I wanna ask you. We
might have to do a Part 2 at some point because I know we have some time
constraints. Where do you even begin? This is where I start fraying at the ends
as an interviewer.
So, the first question would be related to that. Theres so much temptation to
dumb things down or to go after the tried and true BuzzFeed type headlines.
Do you ever contend with that temptation? And if so, how do you resist it? This
is part of the, how do you respond to the expectations of the crowd or the 7
million people looking on.
I feel this personally sometimes because I have a blog that has certainly, by no
means the number of monthly readers that you have. Im somewhere between
1 and 2 million units a month usually.
Maria Popova:
Oh, congratulations.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you. But even at that scale, there are times where I put out something
that I feel is very important, but on the dense side. Sometimes, it takes off, but
sometimes it doesnt. And theres a lot of temptation when for instance, I
know you use social media quite a bit. Well get to that. Where I look at, say, the
retweets, the favorites on something thats dense, and then Im like, oh, God.
I should just do like the seven tricks you can actually teach your cat and get
500,000 retweets.
Is that something that ever crosses your mind? And do you ever feel that
temptation?
Maria Popova:
Well, its interesting because, I think, anybody who thinks in public which is
what writing is, which even what art is. Its some sort of putting a piece of
oneself out into the world. Anybody who does that struggles with this really
irreconcilable tug of war between wanting to really stay true to ones experience
and being aware that as soon as its out in the world, there is this notion of the
other audience.

Oscar Wilde, he very memorably said that a true artists takes no notice whatever
of the public and that the public are, to him, non-existent. Its very easy to say
especially for somebody as Wilde who was very prolific, very public, almost
performative in his public presence its very easy to call this out as a hypocrisy
and say, well, you cant possibly not care about the audience given you make
your living through it and perform to it, right?
I think thats a pretty cynical interpretation. I think, rather than hypocrisy, its
just this very human struggle to be seen and to be understood which is why
all art comes to be because one human being wants to put something into the
world, and to be understood for what he or she stands for, and who he or she is.
So, with that lens, I do think its hard to say, well, I dont care about what happens
to it out there. Even though I write for myself and think for myself, the awareness
of the other really does change things.
I think, perhaps, Werner Herzog put it best. I just finished reading this 600page interview with him, essentially. Its a conversation a journalist named Paul
Krugman had with him over the course of 30 years. In one passage, Herzog
says something like, its always been important for me to have my films reach
an audience. I dont necessarily need to hear what those audience reactions
are just as long as theyre out there. That the films are touching people in some
way.
I feel very similarly. So, with that in mind, I guess, to answer your question rather
surreptitiously, I dont feel, quote/unquote, tempted to make listicles or to make
anything that I think I feel compromises my experience of what I stand for. In
part, I think, the beauty of the web is that its a self-perfecting organism.
For as long as its an ad-supported medium, the motive will be to perfect the
commercial interest. So, perfect the art of the BuzzFeed listicle, the endless
slideshow, the infinitely paginated article, and not to perfect the human spirit of
the reader or the writer which is really what Im interested in.
Tim Ferriss:
I think its a very virtuous goal. I really admire your site and, obviously, the
newsletter, and all these other aspects of it for a lot of reasons. I feel a very
kindred spirit with a lot of the decisions, it seems, you have made. So, for
instance, I mean, not doing the slide shows to rack up page views for some
type of CPM advertising. That stuff drives me insane. So, if it drives me insane,
I assume it drives my readers insane. So, Im not gonna do it or like you said
Maria Popova:
Thats so wonderful that you do that because, I think, so much of the cultural
crap that is out there not just in the internet, just in general comes from
people who fail to understand that they should be making the kind of stuff they
want to exist.
So, if youre a writer, write the things you wanna read. If youre an artist, paint the
things you wanna see painted. I think the commercial aspect of really warping
that one thing I really admire about your work in all of its permutations from
your books to this podcast, to say everything is that theres just this sort of
sense that you just want this to exist. It doesnt exist for any other reason than
you want it to exist. I think thats wonderful.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you, that means a lot to me. Coming back to the, write to please just
one person, I think that its related to that. So, in a way, its put the things out
in the world that you would want to consume yourself or experience yourself,
No. 1. Secondly, just for those people who havent heard this anecdote, when I
was writing The 4-Hour Workweek as my first book, I still, to this day, find writing
very challenging. I wish I could say its gone easier overtime, but for whatever
reason, it seems not to have.
In the case of The 4-Hour Workweek, I came out of undergrad at Princeton and
that was many years past, obviously. But when I wrote the first few chapters, it
was really stilted and pompous, and kind of Ivy League where I was trying to use
$10-words where 10 cent-words would suffice and be a lot cleaner.
So, I threw out the first few chapters that I drafted, and this was a major panic
attack moment. I was on a deadline. I remember I was in Argentina at the time.
Then, I went the other way. I said, no, no, no. I should be loose. I have to be
funny. So, I wrote a few chapters that were completely slapstick ridiculous. I
mean, it sounded like Three Stooges put on paper.
So, I had to throw out those few chapters. Of course, Im doubling down on my
anxiety at this point, and decided, at one point, that I was just going to have
a little bit of [inaudible] [00:29:03], two glasses of wine, and no more than two
glasses of Malbec, and sit down and start to write.
Maria Popova:
What is that?
Tim Ferriss:
Malbec is just this wonderful varietal in South America, best known in Argentina,
but theyre actually some really nice Malbec wines in Chile. As I understand it,
it was viewed almost as a garbage grape in Europe, but it was brought by the
Italians to Buenos Aires and has developed this worldwide fame because of its
cultivation in Argentina. So, theres a lot of metaphor there that I also like.
Drank two glasses of wine, sat down, and literally opened up an email client
and started typing The 4-Hour Workweek as if I were writing it to two of my
closest friends. One was an investment banker trapped in his own job and he
felt like he couldnt leave because his lifestyle was swelling to meet his income.
And then, the other was an entrepreneur also trapped in a company of his own
making. So, these two very specific guys in mind, I started to write with just
enough alcohol to take the edge off. I was writing, in that case, to please just
two people. Thats the only way I can make it work.
Your schedule, so Ive read of your schedule, but Id love to hear the current
iteration of that. It seems like you have a fairly regimented schedule which
would make sense if youre putting the number of hours into reading and writing
that you do. So, what is your current day look like?
Maria Popova:
Well, Ill answer this with a caveat. The one thing I have struggled with or tried
to solve for myself in the last few years a couple of years, maybe is this really
delicate balance between productivity and presence, especially in a culture that

seems to measure our worth, or our merit, or our value through our efficiency,
and our earnings, and our ability to perform certain tasks as opposed to just the
fulfillment we feel in our lives and the presence that we take in the day to day.
Thats something thats become more and more apparent to me.

So, Im a little bit reluctant to discuss routine as some holy grail of creative
process because its just really its a crutch. I mean, routines and rituals help us
not feel this overwhelming massive mess of just day to day life would consume
us. Its a control mechanism, but thats not all there is. And if anything, it should
be in the service of something greater which is being present with ones own
life.
So, with that in mind, my day is very predictable. I get up in the morning. I
meditate for between 15 to 25 minutes before I do anything else.
Tim Ferriss:
What time do you wake up, typically?
Maria Popova:
Exactly eight hours after Ive gone to bed. So it varies.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay.
Maria Popova:
Im a huge proponent of sleep. When I write or when I try to think, what I do is,
essentially, make associations between seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts.
In order for that to happen, those associate of change need to be firing. When
I am sleep-deprived, I feel like I dont have full access to my own brain which is
certainly, Im not unique in that in any way. Theres research showing that our
reflexes are severely hindered by lack of sleep. Were almost as drunk if we
sleep less half the amount of time we normally need to function.
I think, ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep
as a kind of badge of honor that speaks work ethic, or toughness, or whatever
it is, but really, its a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect. And
I try to enact that in my own life by being very disciplined about my sleep. At
least, as disciplined as I am about my work because the latter is a product of the
capacities cultivated by the former.
So, in any case, I get up eight hours after I have gone to bed. I meditate. I go
to the gym where I do most of my longer form reading. I get back home. I have
breakfast and I start writing. I usually write between 2 and 3 articles a day, and
one of them tends to be longer.
When I write I need uninterrupted time. So, I try to get the longer one done
earlier on in the day when I feel much more alert so I dont look at email or
anything, really, external to the material Im dealing with which does require
quite a bit of research usually. So, its not like I can cut myself off from the
internet or from other books, but I dont have people disruptions, I guess; so,
anything social.
Then, I take a short break. Im a believer in pacing, creating a rhythm where

you do very intense focused work for an extended period, then you take a short
break, and then cycle back. I deal with admin stuff like emails and just taking
care of errands or whatnot. I resume writing, and I write my other article or
articles.

Through the evening, I try to have some private time just later in the day either
with friends, or with my partner, or just time that is unburdened by deliberate
thoughts. Although, you can never unburden yourself from thought, in general.
Then, usually, later at night I either do some more reading or some more writing
or a combination of the two.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. So, a number of follow up questions. What type of meditation do you
practice currently?
Maria Popova:
Just guided vipassana, very basic. Theres a woman named Tara Brach who,
shes a mindfulness practitioner.
Tim Ferriss:
How do you spell her last name?
Maria Popova:
B-R-A-C-H.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Maria Popova:
Shes based out of D.C. and she was trained as a cognitive psychologist, then
the decades of Buddhist training, and live in [inaudible] [00:35:46]. Now, she
teacher mindfulness, but with a very secular lens. So, she records her classes
and she has a podcast which is how I came to know her. Every week, she does
the one-hour lecture and the philosophies, and the cognitive behavioral wisdom
of the ages. Then, she does a guided meditation.
So, I use her meditations and she has changed my life, perhaps, more profoundly
than anybody in my life.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow.
Maria Popova:
So, I highly recommend her.
Tim Ferriss:
Tara Brach.
Maria Popova:
Brach, yes. And all her podcasts is free. She has two books out, too. Shes really
wonderful, very generous person.
Tim Ferriss:
I will have to check that out. Youre listening to audio while you meditate?
Maria Popova:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Maria Popova:
And its interestingly, I mean, she puts one out every week, but Ive been using
the exact same one from the summer of 2010. Its just one that I like and feel
familiar with. It helps me get into the rhythm. So, every day, I listen to the exact
same
Tim Ferriss:
Summer 2010, how would people recognize it? How does the audio sound?
Maria Popova:
It sounds cheesy, but it is not cheesy. I think its called, Smile Meditation. Im
sure she has repeated it in various forms through the years in other recording.
It just happens to be the one that I have on on my broken 3G iPhone without any
internet or cell service which I just use as an iPod. Thats on it.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome. Thats great answer. God, I love digging into the specifics. So, when
you go to the gym, then, to workout, are you still using an elliptical for that?
Maria Popova:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
You are? Okay.
Maria Popova:
I do sprints, high intensive on the elliptical. I go for cardio, and I do a lot of body
weight stuff, too.
Tim Ferriss:
You do? All right, but when youre reading, is that on the elliptical?
Maria Popova:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
And what type of device, if any, are you using for that reading?
Maria Popova:
Well, I prefer electronics. So, I use the Kindle app of iPad or any PDF viewer
because I read a lot of archival stuff. The challenge, of course, is because I read
so many older books that are out of print, let alone having digital versions, thats
not always possible; in cases, rarely possible unless Im writing about something
fairly new. So, in that case, I just go there with my big [inaudible] [00:38:24] and
my sticky notes, and pens, and sharpies, and various annotation, and analogue
devices, and I just do that.
Tim Ferriss:
Cool. So, that lead perfectly into the next question which is, what does your
note-taking writing system look like? How do you take notes? So, for instance,
youre really good at using excerpts or quotations poll quotes. And I found
myself asking as I was reading this. Like, how are you gathering all this so that
you can use it later? What is your note-taking system look like in the case of
digital and in the case of a hard copy?
Maria Popova:
Hmm, so with digital, its very simple. I just highlight passages, and I write myself
little notes underneath each that have acronyms that I use frequently for certain
topics or shorthand that I have developed by myself. Understanding, really,
which is what reading should be a conduit to, is a form of pattern recognition.
So, when you read a whole book, you walk away with certain takeaways that are
thematically linked. They dont usually occur sequentially. So, its not like, you
walk away with one is like from the first chapter, one is taken from the second
chapter. It just those pattern of the writers thoughts that permeate the entire
narrative of the book.
Especially, if you read as a writer, so somebody who not only needs to walk away
with that, but ideally wants to record what those patterns and themes are, that
sort of reading is very different. So, what I end up doing with analogue books
in particular, that sort of hacked some systems of doing it electronically, but
theyre imperfect is on the very last page of each book which is blank, usually,
right before the end cover, I create an alternate index.
So, I basically list out, as Im reading, the topics and ideas that seem to be
important in recurring in that volume, and then next to each of them, I start
listing out the pages numbers where they occur. And on those pages, I obviously
highlighted the respective passage and I have a little sticky tab on the side so
I can find it, but its basically an index based not on keywords which is what a
standard book index is based on, but based on key ideas. And I use that, then,
to synthesize what those ideas are once Im ready to write about the book.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay. I have to geek out on this because Im so excited now. So, as it turns out,
with analogue books, I do exactly literally exactly the same thing. I usually
start with the front inside cover, but I create my own index. Of course, they
dont have to be in order. So, you can list them in my particular case in any
order. I also will have a couple of lines dedicated to PH, and PH just refers to
phrasing. So, if I find a turn of phrase or wording that I find really
Maria Popova:
Oh, I do that, too.
Tim Ferriss:
Really.
Maria Popova:
But I [inaudible] with BL for beautiful language.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, thats so cool. Okay, so theres that. Then, I have a Q if theyre quotes. So,
for instance, many books will have quotes attributed to other people or just
header quotes, in some cases. So, Ill have quotes. Ill just write that out, and
then colon. Ill list all the page numbers for that particular category that Im
collecting, in the case of quotes.
So, when youre gathering, as you mention, acronyms and shorthand, so besides
beautiful language, what are some of the other acronyms that you use?
Maria Popova:
Oh, they wouldnt make sense. Theyre just very private. Its like too long to get
into what they stand for; basically, my own system.
Tim Ferriss:
Is there one other example? If you can just indulge me.
Maria Popova:
One, I guess, that is not so much about the contents of that passage as about
its purpose is LJ which is I have a little sort of labor of love side project called
Literary Jukebox, right.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure, Ive seen it. Its awesome.
Maria Popova:
Thank you, but yes, so I do these parings of passages with literature with
thematically matched song. Sometimes, as Im reading a book, I would come
across a passage that I think would be great for that and, maybe, a song comes
to mind, and so I would put LJ next to it.
But I wanna go back to what you said about the external quotes, I guess, after
quoting another work. I think those are actually really important and that goes
back to your question about how I find what to read. I mark those types of
things. For the annotations that are specific to that particular book, all of my
sticky tab notes are on the side of the pages. But when theres an external
quote, something referencing another work, I put a tab at the very top with the
letter which stands for find if I am not familiar with the work or just no letter if I
just want to apply the quote to something else that I know of.
I think thats actually very important because the phenomenon itself not my
annotations of it because literature is really and I say this all the time it
is the original internet. So, all of those reference and citations, and allusions
even, theyre essentially hyperlinks that that author placed to another work.
That way, if you follow those, you go to this magnificent radical where you start
out with something that youre already enjoying and liking, but follow these
tangential references to other works that, perhaps, you would not have come
across directly.
In a way, its a way to push ones self out of the filter bubble in a very incremental
way. Ive often found amazing older books that were five or six hyperlink
references removed from something I was reading which led me to something
else, which led me to something else, which led me to this great other thing. So,
I think thats a beautiful practice.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, the serendipity of it is so beautiful when it works out. Ill give a confession.
This is really embarrassing, but since no one is listening. I came across Seneca
so, Seneca, the younger whos had probably more impact on my life than any
other writer originally because I was bruising a number of anthologies on
minimalism and simplicity.
Seneca kept on popping up. Quote, Seneca. Quote, Seneca. And because
it was always one word like Madonna or and this is really gonna be really
embarrassing or like Sitting Bull. I assumed that Seneca was a Native American
elder of some type for probably a good
Maria Popova:
Thats so lovely, actually.
Tim Ferriss:
I assumed he was a Native American elder for probably a good year or two
before I realized he was a Roman. I was like, man, you got to do your homework,
pal. Got to dig in. And then, at that point, is when I really jumped off the cliff into
a lot of his writings which I still, to this day, revisit on an almost month to month
Maria Popova:
I just revisited his, On the Shortness of Life.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, so good. So good.
Maria Popova:
Which is perhaps the best manifesto and I had hate this modern word, sort
of buzz word, but I use it intentionally. So, the best manifesto for our current
struggle with the very notion of productivity versus presence. How much are
we really mistaking the doing for the being? And its amazing that somebody
wrote this millennia ago, before there was internet, before there was the things
we call distractions today, and yet, he writes about the exact same things just in
a different form, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
The exact same things. If Im trying to use Seneca as a gateway drug into
philosophy, I wont use the P word, first of all, with most people because I think
it calls to mind for a lot of people the haughty pompous college student in
Goodwill Hunting, in the bar scene. He was like reciting Shakespeare without
giving any type of
Maria Popova:
See, I completely disagree.
Tim Ferriss:
No, no
Maria Popova:
I agree with the notion that those are its connotation today, and people have a
resistance, but I think thats all the more reason to use it heavily, and to use it
intelligently, and to reclaim it, and to get people to understand that philosophy
whatever form it takes is the only way to figure out how to live.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, yeah.
Maria Popova:
Everything else that we take away from anything, is a set of philosophy,

essentially.
Tim Ferriss:
I agree. No, I totally agree. But usually, if Im gonna lead people there, I try to
Maria Popova:
Lure them?
Tim Ferriss:
Lure them in with Seneca because I think hes very easy to read compared
to a lot of, say, at least the Stoics or thats not even fair; compared to a lot
of philosophers who have been translated from Greek. Most of his writing, I
believe, is translated from Latin which tends to be just an easier jump from
English. So, its very easy to read.
What I tell people is, start off with some of his letters and youll find that you
could just as easily replace these Roman names like Lucilius and so on with
like Bob and Jane, or pick your contemporary name of choice and theyre all as
relevant know as they were then.
So, Im gonna come back to the performance versus presence which I think of,
oftentimes, as the achievement versus appreciation split or balance or maybe,
neither. Before we get there, I want to put a bow on the note-taking with your
electronic note-taking.
So, youre using the Kindle app. Youre taking highlights. Where do you go from
there? What is the workflow look like from there? And are there any particular
types of software or apps, or anything like that, that you use often?
Maria Popova:
Honestly, I feel that problem has not been solved at all in any kind of practical way.
So, the way that I do it is basically a bunch of hacks using existing technologies.
Perhaps, Im just unaware, but I dont think theres anybody designing tools
today for people who do serious heavy reading. There just isnt anything that I
know.
So, what I do is I highlight in the Kindle app in the iPad, and then Amazon has
this function that you can, basically, see your Kindle notes and highlights on the
desktop or on your computer. I go to those. I copy them from that page, and I
paste them into an Evernote file to have all of my notes in a specific book in one
place.
Sometimes, I would also take a screen grab of a specific iPad Kindle page with
my highlighted passage, and then email that screen grab into my Evernote
email because Evernote has, as you know, optical character recognition. So,
when I search within it, its also gonna search the text in that image. I dont have
to wait until I finish the book and explore all my notes.

Also, the formatting is kind of shitty on the Kindle notes on the desktop where
you can see all your notes. So, if you copy them, they paste them to Evernote
with this really weird formatting. So, it tabulates each next notes indented to
the right. So, its cascading, the long cascading thing that shifts more and more
to the right of the page and move down.
Tim Ferriss:
Its horrible. Its like an email thread.
Maria Popova:
Its awful. Its like an email thread except theres no actual hierarchy. So, when
I go fix it, you have to do it manually within Evernote. On the Werner Herzog
book, for example, which is 600 pages, I have 1000s of notes. So, imagine 1000s
of tabulations until the last one is narrow and long. Its just unreadable. So,
hence, my point about there is no viable solutions that I know.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. This may or may not help. For me, it was a huge shift in how I manage
Evernote. Im looking at these list of questions and Im not reading entirely
on script, but I have a collection of questions in Evernote right now. And one
of the things I realized about formatting and transposing things from, say, the
My Kindle Page if you log in to your Amazon account through kindle.amazon.
com or copying/pasting from many different places is going to I dont know
if youve tried this, but edit and either paste and match style or paste as plain
text, and it tends to remove all of that headache, lets say, 9 times out of 10.
Maria Popova:
Yeah, the problem with that I did try that once, but when you remove the style,
it makes all the metadata look the same as the text. So, on every highlighted
passage, I also have my own notes.
Tim Ferriss:
I see, got it.
Maria Popova:
Plus, Amazon Zone thing that says, add note. Read. Read at this location. Delete
note. And so it all merges. It becomes just hideous.
Tim Ferriss:
Interesting.
Maria Popova:
Theyre just impossible to read.
Tim Ferriss:
God, I wonder what to do there. Yeah, I use to take notes and drop them into
TextWrangler which is used for coding a lot just to remove the formatting, and
then put it into Evernote.
Maria Popova:
Yeah, I do that with code, though.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, its true, though.
Maria Popova:
But theres got to be a solution. The thing is, Evernote, I love Evernote. Ive
been using it for many years, and I could, probably, not get through my day
without it. But it has an API which means, somebody can build this.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats true.
Maria Popova:
You got to wait until like I was, at one point, so desperate and so frustrated
which I think is the duo that causes all innovation desperation and frustration
I thought, maybe, I should just save up some money and offer like a scholar or
like a grand for a hackathon for somebody to solve this for me.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a great idea.
Maria Popova:
I mean, Im still contemplating that.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, well talk about that separately. I think thats something that we could
absolutely explore. And for all of you, programmers/coders, out there, please
take a look. This is actually not as rare an issue as you might expect.
One question for you on the Kindle highlights because Ive run into this. You
mentioned the Werner Herzog book and having 1000s of highlights. Have you
run into instances where youre reading an entire book? Youre super impressed
or not, but regardless, you have 100s of highlights. You go to look at those
highlights and youre restricted to only seeing the first
Maria Popova:
Oh, yeah. It said, like 200 highlight, 81 available or something like that.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. So, how often does that happen to you? Because thats happened to
me where Ive taken so much time to meticulously highlight stuff, and then Im
only able to see 25 percent, and its so infuriating. I think its a limitation that is
determined by the publisher.
Maria Popova:
Yes, it is. So, Ill tell you why it hasnt happened to me much. It happens to me
occasionally, but thats a DRM thing, for your listeners who dont like acronyms
digital rights management thing that is fairly new. So, that is the case with
more recently published books. If you read the digitized version of, say, Alan
Watts that was published originally 40 years ago, theres no such problem unless
the publisher now is reclaiming rights and doing a whole new thing.
Because I read so much less out of newly published material, I dont run into it
often. There is a way to very laboriously deal with it which is you can still open
that passage in your Kindle app on desktop so Kindle for Mac, for me and it
will let you highlight and copy those passages, paste them into your Evernote in
between the missing parts, but its obviously completely not conducive.
Tim Ferriss:
I have done that and its so horrible.
Maria Popova:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Because you also get the excerpted from da, duh, duh, like three lines for
everyone. So, just publishers, if youre listening to this, you are making it harder
for people like Maria who have 7 million units per month to share your stuff. So,
please, up your threshold.
Do you have anybody helping you with Brain Pickings? Or is it just you?
Maria Popova:
The actual reading and writing, obviously, its just me, but as of about 10 months
ago, I have an assistant, Lisa, whos actually wonderful and she just helps me
with admin stuff that has to do with my travel, or email, or scheduling things that
I feel is weighing me down so much.

I operate so much out of a sense of guilt for letting people down, and as you
know, Im sure, when you get to a point where the demand are just incomparable
with what you can even look at, then you need to have help in order not to either
go insane or live with a constant guilt over not addressing things.
Tim Ferriss:
And was there a particular
Maria Popova:
Oh, and I also have a copy editor. This wonderful older lady I hired to do my
proofreading, shes great. Thats all I can say. I think proofreading is really,
really important. And Im constantly embarrassed if I have a typo which as you
know as a writer, you cannot proof your own work. Your brain just does not see
the errors that we made in the first place or the majority of them.
And people are merciless. They think somehow that a typo makes you lazy
or I dont even know. Theres no compassion for the humanity that produces
something as human as a typo, right? Despite how mechanical the term itself
seem which is ironic. But in any case, so yes, I have my assistant for admin and
my copy editor for just proofing.
Tim Ferriss:
And what platform is Brain Pickings on at the moment? Whats the technology?
Ive heard you mention WordPress before. Is it still on WordPress?
Maria Popova:
It is on WordPress. So, I was gonna make a joke about how the technology is
called corpus callosum, but the actual technology is yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
That was a very Sam Harris friendly joke. So, when youre working with, say,
your copy editor, do you give your copy editor admin access to WordPress? And
shell go in, proofread it, and then schedule or publish? Whats the process?
Maria Popova:
No, again, its sort of hacked together process which is every night, I email her
the articles from the preview page on WordPress. So, I just copy that and paste
it into a body email, and I sent it to her, and then she sends me the corrections
via email.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Maria Popova:
I mean, like I said, shes not very I would say tech-savvy. I mean, Im sure
shes a wonderful learner. So, Im sure she would totally learn how to do it if I
gave her admin access, but between that and the fact that I write in HTML, so
I really dont like the WYSIWYG. I hate it, actually. I think its just easier to do it
via email because, then, she can like highlight the word.
Sometimes, she would make suggestions that are more stylistic, and I would
like to have the final say in those because, very often, I wanna keep it the way
that I have it because thats my voice. So, I find email works just fine.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Okay, no, Im always fascinated. Well, when I was hosting WordPress
elsewhere Im also on WordPress I would use the share a draft plugin to
share drafts with people. Im now on WordPress VIP, it has a sharing function
where people can leave feedback in a sidebar that runs alongside the article
itself which is pretty cool.
Maria Popova:
Oh, thats cool. I should look into that. I think thats what I have, too, the
WordPress VIP, the WordPress [inaudible] [01:00:04].
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Maria Popova:
I dont even know what that function is. For somebody who writes on the web,
I sometimes only learn about things through friends.
Tim Ferriss:
I think, yeah, thats how I learned about a lot of this stuff. The other option
that Ive used quite a lot is as much as I hate Word and I really do I love the
track changes feature, and I just find it more user-friendly for a lot of folks than
having them use something thats cloud-based like Google Docs, just because I
operate so much offline to try to get anything done.
Maria Popova:
Yeah, thats what a lot of people suggest and what, Cai, my proofreader actually
asked originally, but I do not own Microsoft products on principle. Im just not
gonna [inaudible] with it.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, no, that makes sense. And your assistant, what was the defining moment,
the straw that broke the camels back when you were like, you know what?
What was the day where you were just like, fucking enough of this? Like I need
to get somebody stat. When did you actually make the decision?
Maria Popova:
It wasnt so much that I made the decision as the decision was very strongly
lovingly, but strongly pushed on me by my partner who, one day, said, you
are using so much time on things that are just so menial and you should not
because I was really stressing to a point of just driving myself crazy.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ive always been very independent.
I moved away from my parents house when I was 18, paid my way through
school. Lived always by myself, and I just have this Emerson-like sense of selfsufficiency and self-reliance to a point of pathology where it was to my own
detriment. The notion about sourcing felt to me, on some level, almost like an
admission of weakness.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure, yeah.
Maria Popova:
Its ridiculous to feel that. [Inaudible]
Tim Ferriss:
I think thats true for a lot of people, yeah.
Maria Popova:
I know. The strange thing, the disorienting thing is, I think, we intellectually know
thats not the case. That its actually a lot of strength to be able to delegate and
to diddly-up control according to a hierarchy of priorities. On some psychoemotional level, it is just death to consider that you cannot do something on
your own anymore.
Its interesting, in terms of how Brain Pickings evolved which has always been
very organic. So, the eight-year thing that has happened; it went from being
a little newsletter that contained five links, no text; like five links to five things
that I found very interesting. And then, it went to five links with little paragraphs
about why this thing is interesting and important. And then, it was not a little
paragraph, but a little one-page piece. And then, it because not five things
every Friday, but three things every day of the week, pretty long form, in the
1000s of words.

I foolishly and naively thought that I could just have the same operational
framework despite the enormous swelling of just the volume of the writing, and
thats unreasonable. Its completely unreasonable. So, at one point, last fall, as
the 7th birthday of Brain Pickings was approaching, my partner was just like,
please, consider. Yeah, I
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, Im sorry, I didnt mean to cut you off. Im always curious to ask, how did you
find the assistant that you ended up with?
Maria Popova:
Well, shes wonderful. Shes a professional personal assistant thats had this
type of job for about 20 years. She just a wonderfully warm and just generous
person, but also has such doggedness about things. And just work ethics, its
unbelievable. You always have the sense that shes looking out for your best
interest in the most magnanimous kind of way towards you, but also the most
warmly no bullshit way outwardly towards the world demanding things from
you. Having this buffer, its really great, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you track her down? How did the two of you get connected?
Maria Popova:
Just through a recommendation. Shes been working for somebody whos a

very trusted dear person for a long time. So, now, she works with both of us.
Tim Ferriss:
And did that person reach out to you? Did you reach out to her? Im always
curious about the specifics because the way that I found one of my first assistants
and we worked together for many years was anytime I had a really fantastic
interaction with someones assistant, I would say, hey, I know this is off-topic,
but youve been awesome to deal with. Do you have a twin brother/twin sister,
somebody who does what you do as well as you do it that you could recommend
because I need some help?
And I just did that over and over again, and eventually, one of them said, well,
actually I work for multiple clients. So, we could talk about it. And thats how we
ended up working together. But what was the
Maria Popova:
Oh, the introduction was made by the person. So, I had met her. Lisa, my
assistant, I had met her just socially many times before. So, eventually, when
the time came for me to consider, we set up a meeting. We talked and she
was really into it. She had been reading Brain Pickings. I asked to make sure it
wouldnt be too much on her plate.
I mean, shes a superwoman. Lisa is superwoman. She is the mother of two

kids. One of whom is, now, in her first year high school and the other one, his
first year in college. So, she has that on her plate, too, but shes very like I said
very dogged, very dedicated, and she was like, I can do it and Id like to do it.
I was like, great, lets roll.
Tim Ferriss:
Onwards. So, with your assistant, if you were to do an 80/20 analysis, the 20
percent of tasks that take up 80 percent of her time, what would those look like?
What is the vast majority of her time spent on?
Maria Popova:
So, a lot of it is coordinating travel and things. I have this new-ish commitment
to really not do any speaking at commercial conference anymore, but just speak
to students because I think its important. What it takes out of me which is
a lot speaking takes out a lot of me because Im a writer. I also dont really
recycle talks. I like to write something original.
When its a commercial conference, it just doesnt add up for me what I get out
of it because I usually donate my commissions to the local public or whatnot.
With students, it is worth my time. If I dissuade even one journalism student
from going into buzz-worthy land after graduation, thats worth it to me.
So, even though Ive scaled back on the speaking, speaking. Im now getting
all these college requests. So, that takes so much time, especially coordinating
because a lot of them are organized by students volunteers, and theyre still
learning what it means to schedule, and deadlines, and advance notice. So, Lisa
is rambling that.
I should also mention that the evolution of what Ive been able to delegate has
organically happened. Originally, I just really didnt know what to give her. I felt
like I had to do all of it because I didnt know how to explain it to her to do. Shes
a great learner and Im learning to delegate more.
Another thing, because my site runs on donations, I should make an effort to

send handwritten thank you cards to just, at this point, randomly picked donors
every month. So, I have her export those names and emails for me, and just give
me prepared envelopes and all those types of things that I could not spend too
much time on the actual admin of the mailing.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you communicate exclusively via email?

software?
Maria Popova:
Oh, email. Email and text.
Tim Ferriss:
Email and text. So, no project management software at this point? No Basecamp
or Asana, or anything like that? Which is fine.
Maria Popova:
No, that would make me feel like I have some sort of commercial organization.
I still have so much resistance to the fact that I even have to deal with these
things. Back to the Oscar Wilde hypocrisy about audience. So, theres some
[inaudible] [01:09:20], I guess, the pretention.
Tim Ferriss:
A couple of quick ones. So, the first is when you lift, do you tend to have the
same workout? Or what does your weightlifting look like?
Maria Popova:
Its changed a lot. In the last year and half, Ive prioritize bodyweights stuff
heavily. No pun intended. That was actually total inadvertent. Thats how we
think in language. Thats so funny. But have bodyweight stuff, and so I do pullups, push-ups, and that sort of things.
It also depend on where I do my workout. My building has a sort of gym, like

one of those residential gyms. I also have a membership at a larger, probably, I
think, the best gym in New York. I love it, but Im only there a few days a week.
Or do you use other types of
So, it just depends on where I do it and what I do.

Tim Ferriss:
Besides the elliptical, if you were to pick one bodyweight exercise to hold
you over lets say youre travelling for a few months. You can only pick one
bodyweight exercise, what would it be?
Maria Popova:
Well, it would be pull-up, but you cant always find a place to do it. So, I just
do, usually, elevated push-ups. So, my feet on a bench or bed, or like a step or
something and just push up.
Tim Ferriss:
Cool, a great little hack for pulling motions while traveling is putting your feet on
a chair and going underneath the table to do, basically, inverted bent rolls with
that. You know whats actually very helpful for traveling? Is
Maria Popova:
Plyometrics?
Tim Ferriss:
Plyometrics and TRX is actually quite handy. Theres a system
Maria Popova:
For some reason, its just not my thing.
Tim Ferriss:
Cant get into it? Yeah, I
Maria Popova:
Yeah, heres the thing. So, if I am forced by circumstances to do a workout that

is not my preference, I very much like to be able to do something else while
doing it such as listening to podcasts which is what I do while I do weights in the
gym anyway. Theres certain types of movements that its just a hassle to have
the headphones. Its not great.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats true.
Maria Popova:
So, I actually carry a weighted jump rope with me when I travel in case theres
nowhere to do sprints which is my Plan B for cardio, and then Plan C is just
jumping, skipping rope, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre intense. I love it. This is so silly, but I was so obsessed with Bulgarian
Olympic weightlifters for a very long that whenever I meet Bulgarians or people
who, at any point, have lived in Bulgaria, I wanna talk about weightlifting, but its
not [inaudible]
Maria Popova:
I know nothing about them.
Tim Ferriss:
Exactly.
Maria Popova:
I dont even do the weight stuff when I was living in Bulgaria.
Tim Ferriss:
No, exactly, its like, oh, youre from Switzerland. Let me talk to you about the
guys in the Ricola commercial. Theyre like, no, we dont talk about that stuff.
Maria Popova:
[Inaudible] [01:12:10] is that guy your cousin?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, right. Right, you must know. Like, no, I actually dont. I know I went to X,
Y, and Z College, but there are 5,000 people per year. It doesnt always work out.
You mentioned the donations. I wanna talk about the site. So, I dug around a
bit, but it appears that you have no comments or dates on your posts. Is that
accurate?
Maria Popova:
I dont have comments. I do have dates. Theyre in the URL. So, the date stamp
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, theyre in the URL, but theyre not in the posts. Theyre in the URL structure,
but theyre not in the displayed posts itself.
Maria Popova:
Yes. So, the reason for that is because I do think we live in an enormously news
fetishistic culture. The reason I do what I do is precisely to decondition that
because we think that if something is not news and its not at the top of the
search results or the top of the feed because all feeds are reversed chronology.
Theres an implicit hierarchy of importance to that. We think if its not at the top,
its not important.
And you would understand. Writing about Seneca, it really doesnt matter what
the date stamp on it is.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Maria Popova:
But I think this culture conditions us so much, people, when they see a date
stamp, they think, oh, this was like two years old. Its really 2,000 years old.
Because a lot of academics actually use Brain Pickings to reference, so I
constantly get things this is another thing that Lisa deals with like request
from textbooks or citations, or whatnot. And those people actually need the
dates. So, Ive made it so that if you actually look, its easy to see or I can just tell
them when they write and ask me what the date is, look in the URL, but its not
just one of those immediate things that slaps you over the head like newspaper
front page.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely, I actually have done the same thing for quite a few years. If you go
to any permalinks, if you get linked to any of my posts directly on the blog,
the date is there in the URL, but also at the very bottom of the post, after the
related links, for the same reason. Because theres so much bias against older
materials. I think some of my older stuff I mean, it depends on the person,
obviously, in the context, but its an easy way to have a high abandonment rate
is to timestamp.
The comments, did you ever have comments? Or have you never had comments?
Maria Popova:
I did, originally. And then, I was, you know what? I feel like Herzog does. I dont
really care to hear. I do write for me. Im very gladdened by people who are, in
any way, moved or touched. Ive been fortunate enough not to really get trolling
or anything like that, but they were kind of vacant or people trying to plug their
own thing, or spam. It was taking more of my time that was worth.
So, instead, Ive made my contact information very easily accessible. So, if
someone has something of substance and urgency to say which is, I think, the
two things that compel people to reach out theyll do it via email, behind their
own name and not anonymously. I do get a lot, a lot of emails from readers, and
those are valuable, but I dont really care for comments.
Now the flipside of that is that, now that I have the Facebook page something
mysterious happened with Brain Pickings Facebook page last fall. It just started
growing so fast. Ive no idea why.
Tim Ferriss:
I was gonna ask you about that because if you look at, say, that your Twitter
follower growth versus your Facebook growth, the Facebook just kind of took
off
Maria Popova:
Yeah, it was in about October of last year, and it went from 250,000 to, now, I
think I dont know
Tim Ferriss:
2 point something million.
Maria Popova:
Close to 3, maybe. So, more than tenfold in less than a year. Ive no idea why.
Ive done nothing differently. I dont really enjoy Facebook. I do it reluctantly
because I get a lot of emails from readers elsewhere in the world who actually
use Facebook as their primary thing, and there are such sweet notes. People
who just are stimulated and inspired, in moved in a way that, perhaps, they
wouldnt be if they hadnt read that piece about some random thing that I read
and wrote about. I think it would be selfish of me to just disable Facebook
because I hate it.
The point of it is that you cant you have comments on there. Lisa, my assistant,
actually, thats something I delegated her a few months ago just to completely
deal with them. I cant deal with them. And not for any other reason that I have
complete allergy to people pronouncing their so-called opinions about having
actually digested or even engaged with the thing.
So, people would comment on the basis of a thumbnail image or the title; make
really outrageously inaccurate comments, clearly not having read the piece.
This kind of snap reaction thing that I think social media, to a large extent,
perpetuate, I cant deal with it. Its like psyche drain. I cant even explain. I cant.
So, anyway.
Tim Ferriss:
So, that would explain, that would answer one of my questions which is, in your
header picture on Facebook, you have, this should be a cardinal rule of the
internet and of being human. If you dont have the patience to read something,
dont have the hubris to comment on it.
Maria Popova:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
I was gonna
Maria Popova:
I dont care if it sounds like bitchy or anything. Its interesting. I think a lot
about criticism and the notion of criticism, and why its so hard for anybody. I
dont think that people have a hard time with criticism because another person
disagrees with or dislikes what theyre saying. They really have a hard time
when they feel misunderstood. Like the other person does not understand who
they are or what they stand for in the world.
You actually touch on this in your conversation with Sam Harris where you say
that his ideas are not as controversial as people think when they dont actually
understand what they are.

Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Maria Popova:
The main source of anguish is not being seen for who you are, not being
understood. This reactive culture where people comment without taking the
care to understand what youre expressing, who you are, and what you stand
for, it is so toxic. It is so toxic to readers, to writers, to us as a culture. I just
dont know how to get around it other than just having instructed Lisa to be
just merciless about banning people and deleting comments that are just not
theres no humanity. Theres no patience. Theres no thinking in them.
Anybody who writes online, I think, feel similarly that this is my home, and if
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Maria Popova:
People come and be idiots in it, then theyre not welcome there.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, no, I actually use the exact same analogy, especially all my blogs. I view
the comments as my living room. If you come into my house for the first time
and get raging drunk, and put your feet up my table with your shoes on, youre
not gonna be invited back. Youre gone.
Is your assistants job, as it relates to Facebook, then, primarily, culling the herd
and just removing the idiots? Or what are other instructions, if any? Are there
things that she passes to you? Are there things that she responds to?
Maria Popova:
No. I dont really care what people say. Again, to the point, that if people have
something of substance and urgency, they will reach out, and Im, then, very
happy to hear from actual humans and engage in a human dialogue which I do. I
really care about the comments on Facebook. I just dont want them depressing
me when I go on the page because Ive put my own thing down there.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure.
Maria Popova:
Lisa doesnt put the actual postings. I also dont want them creating a culture
that is antithetical to the very reason why I do what I do which is a faith in the
human spirit. Thats where I come from. I am a cautious one sometimes, but
an optimist about the so-called human condition. Anybody who craps on that
without having even given a chance to the thoughts that speak to those ideals
which is what my articles are a record of then, I will want them gone.
So, her instructions are just ban people who are offensive to others in a vicious
way as opposed to just having rational discourse of disagreements. Ban people
who are ignorant, and have not read the thing, and have some very scandalous
or not even scandalous.
Tim Ferriss:
Sensationalist.
Maria Popova:
Contrarians, sensationalist take on it, clearly not understanding the nuance. I

mean, the culture of [inaudible] [01:21:27] is, Id say, often, a culture without
nuance. Yeah, so thats basically it.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Maria Popova:
Help me stay sane when I look at them. Thats her task. Just not make me lose
my mind over just exasperation on people, losing patience.
Tim Ferriss:
No, and I really respect that because another reason that I read Brain Pickings
as opposed to other sites and I feel comfortable going there is that I feel it is a
stronghold of positivity and optimism in a lot of respects. So, kudos.
Maria Popova:
Thank you.
Tim Ferriss:
The email actually, before we get to email. Ive read that you schedule your
Twitter and Facebook which would make sense because youre prolific. If thats
still the case, what do you use to schedule that social media?
Maria Popova:
I use Buffer for Twitter and I use just my hands for Facebook. Again, this goes
back to the same inner struggle of, I do want to be reading and writing for
myself. So, why do I have the compulsion to put so much of it out there? And
I self-flagellate over that because, on some level, it does seem like a form of
hypocrisy, but then, I do think about the people that email me from India, and
Pakistan, and South Africa, and Korea, and wherever that actually thats how
they connect.
I think, if Im putting in the amount of time that I do into what I do even if I

do it for myself I might as well just harness that time anyway if it benefits
somebody elses journey. So, I do it because of that, mostly.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely, and I think that while its fine to write for yourself if you keep the
value of what your write to yourself when it could benefit a lot of other people,
then I think thats actually it could be viewed as a selfish act, right?
Maria Popova:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Particularly, when youre curating in the way that you do and youre saving
people 1000s of hours of searching by distilling a lot of these concepts.
Maria Popova:
Well, I would argue that the benefit, the value is not even I mean, what I do is
the antithesis of search. Its a discovery of things that, ideally, one would not
have come across within the usual parameters of ones filter bubble, right? So,
sort of, a lot of that I hear from.
For example, to use the Seneca example. Actually, just this week, I heard from
this guy who was an IT person, trained as a physicist, ended up doing IT, and said,
the Seneca, On The Shortness of Life piece really put everything in perspective.
Ive never really read philosophy, never been interested in it, never looked for it,
but it just cut in the middle of what Im struggling with in my own life. It gives
you pause to hear that from people.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Agreed. On email, if you go to your contact page, you recommend

emailcharter.org. Im very curious to hear if people actually follow the email
charter. In terms of the email that you receive, do people actually pay attention
to that and follow the rules?
Maria Popova:
Yeah, yeah, they do and Im so grateful. The majority of them do. Some people
who reach out with the intention of self-promoting theres usually, laziness to
people who self-promote for the sake thereof. So, they dont. They dont usually
follow. But people who actually care to have a conversation and to engage are
very courteous and very mindful of what Ive asked except for publicists who
are never.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, right. I supposed if their flying on autopilot and just blasting out a template,
Dear Blogger.
Maria Popova:
Oh, yeah, I love it, the Dear Blogger, yeah. What I get very often which I think is
actually hilarious, people who dont even bother to read the name of the site.
So, they address me, Dear Brian. [Inaudible] [01:25:59].
The pinnacle of this was when, last year, at one point, I opened my physical
mailbox in my building, my home, and I found this bundle from the USPS with an
elastic band around it of mail for somebody named Brian Pickens who leaves in
Long Beach, Pa. or used to, I guess. And somehow that stuff got forwarded to
me because, I guess, the guy either moved and the USPS like, somehow, looked
things up. I dont even know.
It was such a mystery and metaphor for what I deal with online. I was like, oh,
USPS [inaudible], how can you ask a publicist not to?
Tim Ferriss:
So, I used to have a company ages ago called Brain Quicken. I got a telemarketing
call one evening, I remember. This guy goes, hi, sorry, if Im interrupting. Is this
Brian? And I go, excuse me? And he goes Brian? Brian Chicken? And Im like,
Im Brian Chicken.
Maria Popova:
Brian Chicken?
Tim Ferriss:
I was like, no, and take me off your list. Goodbye.
Oh, God. On the email and pitching side of things or just on the pitching side
of things, how on earth do you deal with not just the cold inquiries but how
do you deal with writer-friends or acquaintances who are writers that you dont
want to be rude to who want you to read their books? How do you politely
decline that stuff?
And maybe, you dont get a lot of it. I get a ton of it. The fact of the matter
is, like not everyone is able to put the time or effort into writing a good book.
So, inevitably, if I get 10 books from decent or good friends, some of them are
gonna be terrible. I dont have the time, necessarily, or the inclination to read
them all. How do you deal with that type of situation?
Maria Popova:
Well, I guess, you deal, first and foremost, by controlling not the outcome, but
the cause which is your circle of friends and acquaintances. Im very selective
about the people I surround myself with, and Im Id like to think friendly to
pretty much everybody that I meet, but my circle of actual friends is really close
and really tight, and people who are just, when the sky crumbles, theyre gonna
be there. And were there for each other.
So, with that in mind, I think, there is a certain boundary they have to put up
beforehand to, I guess, manage social expectations, in a way. For those people,
my friend friends, in large part, I should mention that the majority of my close
friends including my partner, too, are people that I have met just through what I
do. So, theres already the self-selection of sensibility and ideals.

I think, we become a centripetal force. Were the kinds of people we wanna

be and surround ourselves with those types of people. William Gibson has a
wonderful word for it. He calls it, personal micro-culture. And even when you
said early on, the kinship of spirit, I think thats so important.
So, which is the long way to say that when and if those inner circle people put a
book out, its a guarantee that I will like it because of who they are. And so, then,
Im more than happy to support it. The book that we started with, The Scratch
and Sniff Guide to Wine, Wendy, the illustrator, is precisely that type of person;
somebody who I met through what each of us does, and shes, now, one of my
closest human beings.
So, of course, Im gonna support her work, but not because Im being nepotistic
about it, but because thats the pre-requirement that I am moved by her work,
and respect it, and love it. And thats how we became friends.
Outside of that inner circle, I think acquaintances know that theres no such
expectation. When I do get such requests, its a matter of, well, did the person
do their homework in knowing what I actually think and write about? Because
very often Im sure you that, too. You get pitched things that are just so outside
of what you do. In which case, I dont feel compelled to respond. Because if
they didnt put in the time to understand what Im interested in, why should I put
the time to explain to them this is not a fit.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, thats a great way to put it. I need to embrace that more. I think thats an
area where I carry a lot of guilt.
Maria Popova:
Guilt, yeah. Guilt, its interesting because guilt is the flipside of prestige and
their both horrible reasons to do things. So, often, we would agree as humans,
not just you and me, just anybody would agree to do things because they sound
prestigious in some way and equally avoid things because of the guilt thing or
do things because of the guilt thing.
The whole Buddhist thing about avoidance and a virgin, and making decisions
based out of either fear which is what guilt is, the fear of disappointing somebody,
and then feeling disappointed in yourself; or out of grasping for approval or a
claim which is what doing things for prestige is. I think either of those are really
bad reasons to do things and yet they motivate us a lot or at least they sort of
lurk in the back of the mind constantly. It is a real practice to try and decondition
that.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. No, I like what you said about why put in the effort to explain why its
not a fit if they havent done the homework to determine if it is a fit. I think thats
a great way to put it.
I know we dont have too much time left, so hopefully some time, some day, we
can do a follow up Part 2. I think that would be a blast.
Maria Popova:
[Inaudible].
Tim Ferriss:
Ill bring some Malbec if you actually wanna take wine. So, yeah, I can introduce
you to it firsthand. The donations, Im very fascinated by the ad-free donation
approach. Just to keep it simple, if you had to choose, say, 20 percent of the
options youre currently offering, which would you choose and why? In other
words, you have people who
Maria Popova:
What do you mean by the options?
Tim Ferriss:
No, no. So, Ill explain or two or three. So, people can make one-time offer.
They can make a one-time, single contribution. Let me simplify that question.
Or they can become a member and donate 7, 3, 10, or $25 a month.
What Im trying to ask without being improprietous or making you feel

uncomfortable is, what is working best? When youre asking people for donations,
assuming that its working, if someone were to offer one or two options instead
of four options per month, or the single contribution versus the membership, or
the membership versus the single contribution; what would your advice be to
people?
Maria Popova:
Well, I will preface this with a caveat that I use PayPal for donations. I cant, for
the life of me, figure out how to actually look at the data and get any sort of
real reason. All of it is so antiquated; their export tool and such. Im not that
interested. I would [inaudible] [01:33:26] days into it looking into it. So, I can tell
you my intuitive interpretation of it?
Tim Ferriss:
Sure, great.
Maria Popova:
By the way, the only reason these options are as they are its also the reason
why I dont have an ad-supported site which is, I just ask myself, what would
I like to read as a reader? Well, I like an ad-free site. And how would I like to
support that? Well Id like to have a few options. I dont wanna be confined to
something. So, I just pulled it out of a hat, basically, with these peers. And Ive
just left them on since Ive put them on. They seem to work, whatever.
Originally, my sense was that the one-time donations accounted for much more,
but Id never actually analyzed it. I see the alerts that come from PayPal, and
sometimes, people would send really large one-time donations. Like things that
are totally humbling and enormously generous. I think you kind of weigh them
somehow as more than the cumulative sum of the smaller donations.
So, I thought, the one-timers were much more. Im pretty sure that must have
been the case early on, but and Ive had the recurring ones. Ive had the onetime donations for as long as I can remember. As long as I, basically, needed to
start making money for the site because, by the way, running the site cost me
several times my rent. All the cost associated with it, its like crazy.
So, at one point, I got to a point where I had to make money. I said, I dont
wanna do ads. I dont believe in that. Ill have just donations and I didnt think
of recurring ones, at the time. That was years ago. Then, my friend, Max Linsky
who runs longform.org, we were having tea and he said, well, why didnt you like
push the recurring ones more because its working really great for us.
At that point, I had the option, but it was buried somewhere in my donation
about page or something. And so, Im like, okay. So, I put it in the sidebar. That
was, I wanna say, maybe, 2011. It started occurring slowly.
So, this past year, when I did my taxes, I very reluctantly went to deal with all
the PayPal tools to get the data out, basically. I actually had Lisa pull the Excels
and whatnot. And then I did the tally to see, and to my surprise, the recurring
ones which were very small individual amounts actually were 2 to 1 ratio to the
one-time donations.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow.
Maria Popova:
And I dont know at what point it tipped over, but I think because of the scale,
and just how many people have these tiny, tiny donations that they contributed
every month. I mean, thats such an active commitment and its so generous
that they add up. My guess is that, as time goes on because the recurring
ones have only been available for the last two and a half to three years, whatever
they would become, by far, the larger financial support compared to the single
ones.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure. No, that made sense. Of course, this is hypothetical, if you had to choose
two of the amounts to leave in the drop down so, youve $7 a month, $3, $10,
25 if you had to choose two of those to leave up, which would you choose?
Maria Popova:
Oh, I have no idea. Probably, just the mathematical logical choice the two middle.
Whats it? The 3 and 10.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, cool. No, just very curious about this kind of thing. I think youve
approached the blog in a very authentic way with the content. I cant emphasize
strongly enough what you just said which is, youve based what you do on what
you would like or dislike as a reader. In the case of text, it doesnt have to be
super complicated. It doesnt have to be doing tons of analytics for months
before you make a decision. Just ask yourself, would this annoy the shit out of
me? If so, dont do it. Would I love this? If so, try it out.
Maria Popova:
Every decision, too, has been that way. And actually, in the last couple of years,
Ive been getting really annoyed I mean, Brain Pickings is a pretty sort of low-fi
site. As you can see, its just very simple, basic. But Ive been getting annoyed
that it doesnt load very well on my iPhone when I wanna look at something or
pull something up to reference or iPad.
My friend, Cog Belski who runs [inaudible] [01:37:59], hes a great guy and hes
been a very generous donor, just supporting. One time, he pulls me aside. That
was, I think, in February or March. Hes like, you know how much I love Brain
Pickings, but like the site sucks. Like he didnt say it in that way, but he was
super sweet about it.
He offered to connect me with this guy that he knew that I could hire to
do responsive design. And I always have this resistance to making these
technological improvement because, then, I feel like, I dont wanna be a media
company. Like I dont wanna be a BuzzFeed, but at the end of the day, I, as a
reader, and as an engager with that experience was being annoyed by it myself.
So, now, Im in the middle of releasing like a simple responsive site that is actually
easy to read on your phone, and so, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Its so worth it.
Maria Popova:
Despair and frustration prevail again in innovation.
Tim Ferriss:
Its so worth it. It took me, lets see, it only took me three oh, God, seven years
to get a mobile version of the site ready to go which I just launched a month or
two ago. So, better late than never, I suppose.
Well, Maria, this has been a blast. I really appreciate you taking the time. If
someone were to want to explore Brain Pickings, what are the few articles that
you might suggest that they start with? Or few posts?
Maria Popova:
Well, since we talked about it so much, the Seneca piece about the shortness
of life, fairly a short piece. Theres a piece I did a couple of years ago it was not
about a specific book, just things that Ive been thinking about for a long time;
this disconnect between purpose and prestige, and why we do things. I forget
what its called. I think its called, how to do what you love or some other How
to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love. It was an assemblage of thoughts
on that from various sources as well as my own.
Perhaps, most of all, a piece that I wrote last fall on the 7th birthday, really, of
the site which was about 7 Things I Learned in 7 Years of Reading, Writing, and
Living.
Tim Ferriss:
Which is a great article, and I didnt want to replicate everything in here. So, I
sort of bobbed and weaved around some of this subjects a little bit. Just you,
reiterate something that you mention, and thats doing nothing for prestige, or
status, or money, or approval on. I just wanna quote Paul Graham here which
you included which is, Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your
beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work, not on what you like, but
what youd like to like. So, I think its so astute.
In closing, is there any
Maria Popova:
And also, I should just interject and say, any Allen Watts piece. Not because my
writing about it is so great or its not coming from a place of check me out. Its
coming from a place of, check him out. Allan Watts has changed my life. I had
written about him quite a bit. So, I highly recommend any of his articles.
Tim Ferriss:
Cool. All right, brainpickings.org is the site, guys. Check it out. Maria, any
parting advice for this episode, this portion of our conversation before we check
out? Any advice to the people listening out there; thoughts, parting comments?
Maria Popova:
No advice per se, just, I guess, a comment and a hope which is that, thank you so
much not just for having me, but for having this show and for doing everything
that you do. I really hope we have more people who operates out of such a
place of just I guess, a lack of a better word idealism and conviction. Yeah,
thank you for setting an example that way.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, that means a lot coming from you. I think youre a tremendous force for
good out there in the world. So, I hope people check out your work. I hope you
continue to do what youre doing. I hope you continue to add repetitions to your
pull-ups and we will talk again soon. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Maria Popova:
Thank you, Tim.
[Music]
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you for supporting the sponsors of his show, 99Designs which is your
one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. Go to 99designs.com/tim
to see the projects that Ive put up including the mockups and drafts of the
book cover for The 4-Hour Body.
ExOfficio. ExOfficio and I go way back. exofficio.com/tim, you can see that
clothing that Ive used for traveling to 20 plus countries including the underwear.
By the way, thats about half of my underwear drawer right now. exofficio.com/
tim, you can also see the viral video that I put out which shows you How to Travel
the World with 10 Pounds or Less.
As always, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and you can find all
of the links and resources from this episode as well as every other episode
by going to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, spell it all out; or you can go to
fourhourworkweek.com and just click on podcast.
Feedback. If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts. Anything at all,
who youd like to see on this show, ping me on Twitter, @tferriss. Thats twitter.
com/tferriss or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss with two Rs and two Ss.
And until next time, thank you for listening.
EPISODE 40:
ANDREW ZIMMERN
Tim Ferriss:
Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas day Oh! I
didnt see you there. Hi everybody! This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another
episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I have the holiday spirit in me, and its not even
anywhere close, but you know what? Its never too early for Christmas music.
For all those people out there who disagreejolly up! Really. Get along with it. In
any case
I have a really fun episode for you guys. At least I had a blast doing it, and I hope
you do as well. But first, I do get asked about tea. I said assed, as if its A-S-SE-D, which I havent really said before. Might be getting late. Maybe I need some
more caffeine. But yes, I was assed about my tea preferences, and one of my
favorites, which is a little tougher to get but its fun to look for, is from Taiwan.
Or at least its mailed from Taiwan.
It is from Living Tea, which is a really interesting organization. You can check
them out at livingtea.net. It is a 1960s hui an sheng puerh. The word sheng, by
the way, means uncooked or raw or fresh. It is the same character that is the
__________ (4:32) in Japanese. It is also the sei of sensei. So if you have sensei
(like teacher in Japanese), it literally means born before. So before born is the
sei of sheng, okay?
Coincidentally, there are words in Japanese that use the same characters that
you find in Chinese, but they mean very different things. So sensei is __________
(4:56) or mister, like Mr. Cheng in Chinese. Pretty funny stuff. The perhaps most
amusing example is __________ (5:05), which in Japanese is letter. You write
someone a letter, a love letter. That is __________ (5:11), but that is __________
(5:13) in Mandarin Chinese, and that is toilet paper. Too bad. Lost in translation.
What are you gonna do? When you dont have a writing system, and you need
to borrow/steal someone elses, well, sometimes those things happen. Anyway,
I digress.
The guest for this episode is none other than (you guessed it) Andrew Zimmern.
Andrew Zimmern is a fantastic fellow. Hes also a world-class chef, television
host and producer, food writer, and at the end of the day, an incredible teacher.
Youve probably seen his show Bizarre Foods or Dining with Death. In 2010
and 2013, he was awarded the James Beard Foundation Award, which in the
culinary/cuisine world is the equivalent of winning the Best Actor Oscar twice in
four years. Hes an impressive dude.
What a lot of people dont know is that in the earlier chapters of his life, he was
at the lowest of the low. At one point, he was sleeping on the streets, stealing
purses, and shooting heroin. In our conversation, he shares all of this. We delve
into every nook and cranny of his background and his ascension to success,
including his culinary tricks, how he developed his hit TV show, his influences,
key turning points in his life, and much more. This was a very fun interview to do.
Andrew is a pro. Hes really good at this type of interview or conversation. Hes
an enthusiastic guy, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further
ado, please meet Andrew Zimmern.
Tim Ferriss:
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode
of The Tim Ferriss Show. Im very excited to have Andrew Zimmern with us.
Andrew, it is so nice to have you on the phone.
Andrew Zimmern: Thank you very much, Tim. Good to talk to you.
Tim:
Yeah. Its been, I think, a long time coming for me. I remember being interviewed
on your podcast, what seems like ages ago, and maybe thats because you sort
of acted as my ad hoc therapist while I was experimenting on television, where
Andrew:
I dont think with you anyone acts as your ad hoc anything. I mean, theres a
beautiful unintentional-intentional rhythm to the things you do. I mean, over
the last couple of years, weve become friends, and its what people do for each
other. I like to think I always remain teachable and thats the core of your stuff,
thats what I take from it in its broadest possible sense. So I think its doubly
charming that you actually practice what you preach.
Tim:
Well, I appreciate it. I have to say, I dont think I would have made it through even
the preparatory stages with television, let alone the grueling filming schedule
and editing schedule had it not been for our sessions. So thank you very much
for that. I dont know how you do what you do. Thats part of what I want to
explore today.
Andrew:
Sure.
Tim:
You are the hardest working man in show business, as they might say. I am just
astonished by how many projects you have going on, whether thats sort of
sequentially or in parallel. Maybe we could start with just a couple a rapid-fire
questions. Then I want to dig into some of your background.
Andrew:
Sure, and lets not assume that the way Im doing it is actually successful. I
mean, the therapy session can work both ways. I often wake up in the middle
of the night and wonder to myself if the number of balls Im juggling is actually
in inverse proportion to my ability to make some of those balls bigger. Visualize
that.
Tim:
Yeah, no I was thinking of that and then the plate spinning. I think both of them
are very probative. But youve had some huge successes, and of course there
is a lot behind the scenes that people dont see. I guess just to start off, and
these are in no particular order, when you were starting to conceive of Bizarre
Foods, what shows did you look to as inspiration or from which you wanted to
pull elements? What were the models you had in mind, if any? What were you
looking to draw from?
Andrew:
Oh no, no, no I definitely did. You know, I grew up watching Great Chefs of
Europe on PBS. It was the first Great Chef series. I loved the intensity of that and
the attention to detail and the focus on the food. I morphed a little bit into, at
one point in my TV watching as I was sort of looking at things that I wanted to
pay attention to, sort of the smartness of what Michael Palin was doing.
Tim:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Andrew:
You know, Im from New York, so when someone says, What do you like? I
answer that by saying, Well, Ill tell you what I dont like. And what I didnt like
was the sort of old-school, late 80s, Rick Steves, Celtic canned music, watching
him walk across the cliffs of Dover getting bigger and bigger and bigger in
the frame, and then breathing, sighing, and looking out over the ocean, and
then saying something to the effect of, A lovely days walk; and nowon to the
village!

It just seemed to me that I wanted the smartness of Michael Palin. I wanted

the attention to detail of some of those early food shows like Great Chefs, and I
wanted to make sure that whatever I was doing was within my unique ability to
deliver. Obviously Rick Steves is an expert on travel and has been everywhere.
Hes a legend in the business and pioneered. And without folks like him, folks
like me dont have a job. Theres probably not even a Travel Channel, actually.
But at the end of the day, I thought that anybody couldve stood there and said
what he said. You know, you couldve paid an actor to deliver those lines and
nobody wouldve been the wiser. I wanted to do things that were more what we
now call docu-follow. I put all of those sort of things together.
There was a bit of a Trojan horse involved in my show pitching. I wanted to

make a show that allowed me a platform to talk about patience, tolerance,
and understanding in the world. I wanted to change the tone of our national
conversation away from the things that we dont have in common toward the
things that we do have in common. I wanted to make a show that railed against
the vile human frailty of contempt prior to investigation.
So if you go and pitch that and then sort of launch into this travel-food idea,
everyone shows you the door. So I basically tried to sell a food-culture show with
the hook: stories from the fringe. It ended up being called Bizarre. The original
title for it was Chew on This, but Eric Schlosser, in one of the childrens version
of one of his books, was called that.
I very much snuck a show in the door knowing that if it was successful, I would
get leverage. I would be able to sort of morph the show into what it sort of is
today. It has taken me 200 shows and 8-9 seasons, but I think the last couple
of years we have really done a fantastic job of representing cultural storytelling
through food in the right way.
Tim:
Im looking at some notes I took down after one of our first therapy sessions in
my direction, and I found a lot of it so helpful. One of the recommendations was
(Im paraphrasing, of course) that the most important thing is to be you, not your
inner actor. Be yourself and keep it within your area of expertise. The line that
really stuck with me was how episode 1 is how youre going to have to be, so
Andrew:
Episode 1, moment 1. You can never take that back. There were a whole bunch
of things involved in there, and to tell people sort of the larger part of the story
and have it make sense to them was that after a gazillion successes in many
different areas, you know, you had the opportunity to expand your brand in
major cable. Its a whole different skill set. Its a whole different set of muscles.
You and I have talked many times, sometimes late at night from continents far,
far away, about how to approach this kind of work and help to make it successful.
I think I told you the story of episode 1, show 1. It actually was the pilot. I went
to the Asadachi, which is a restaurant in Tokyo that the translation for the name
means morning erections. True. Its a getemono bar. The kind of place where
businessmen close deals and drink a lot. They are tiny little izakaya where the
food is very, very strange and is meant to, If you eat snake bile, Ill eat snake
bile, and then the deal will be done sort of thing. Its a place where guys get
drunk and eat crazy food and then go off whoring for the rest of the day and
have their #2 sign the contract.

So we go to this place, and the very first thing they had me do was a standup
outside the building and then walk in the door. There was a part of me that had
all the funniest lines about making fun of their name.
Tim:
What do you mean by standup?
Andrew:
The little walk-and-talk. The camera catches me walking down the street. This
is very 1999 TV. The camera is walking down the street. The talent stops, looks
towards the camera, delivers a couple of lines to set up with the audience is
going to see, and then walks in the door. The camera stays on the door. The
door swings shut behind them, and the camera tilts up and catches the name of
the establishment.
Tim:
Got it.
Andrew:
Right?
Tim:
Yep.
Andrew:
We no longer make our show that way, but thats the way everyone did it in
1999-2000, when we were contemplating the pilot and then ended up shooting
it right before September 11. It was the first pilot.
Tim:
Sorry to interrupt. So you were thinking of all these lines to deliver related to the
name of the place.
Andrew:
Yeah. You know, you can make fun of these people. Its the easy go-to. You see
people do it all the time on TV. A little voice inside my head said, Dont do it,
because if you do that, youre going to have to come up with those lines all the
time. Youre going to be someone youre not. All you wanted to do your whole
life was And quite frankly, the person that I am is very respectful of other
cultures. Dont do it. Dont give into the fast, easy, cheap temptation, which we
always do. Its the easiest way.
Tim:
The cheap applause.
Andrew:
Yeah. All I did was I sort of walked up and turned and said some benign line and
walked in the door. The moral of the story being that I didnt have to make fun
of the people, make fun of their food, make fun of the name. And it has turned
out to be the best decision I ever made because not only does the show stand
(and my brands) for You know, people always talk about the respect that I pay
to other people within the show, which pleases me, and I think its an important
thing for all of us when we are travelers, but it is so much less work just to be
yourself. You dont have to change that.
There are lots of people who have hosted shows on Travel Channel, Food
Network, etc., who are not experts in their field. They do a soul-food cooking
show, but if you ask them what johnnycakes are, they couldnt tell youunless
they did script and the researchers had filled them in the day before. Its a very,
very strange world on television. Some people are just presenters. You, on the
other hand, me, Tony, Alton Brown There are a handful of people out there.
These are folks who have been doing their content for years before the TV
camera came on. We just get to be ourselves.
Tim:
One of the aspects of your work that Ive always appreciated is how genuinely
interested you seem because you are genuinely interested.
Andrew:
Yeah. Thats me.
Tim:
Just as a side note I have a buddy who runs a bunch of restaurants and a few
of his companies do a lot of catering. At one point, they had one of the most
famous Italian chef personalities on TV hosting an event. They called this chefs
assistant and asked for her meatball recipe. They said, What meatball recipe?
It was such an eye-opening, sort of jaw-dropping experience for this guy. So yes,
certainly, what you see is not always what you get.
On the cooking side of things, just to throw in some randomness to this, if you
had to choose (I was going to say for the rest of your life) for the next year,
three herbs or spices to cook with, to experiment with (and you can modify the
question), what would you choose?
Andrew:
I cant exist without hot chilies, shallots, and citruslemon. Ill pick lemon.
Tim:
Citrus lemon. Hmm
Andrew:
You know, the world of herbs and spices is great, but before that, there are some
other building blocks that I would prefer to have in my kitchen or my desert
island. Im going to assume on my island that youve stranded me on that I have
access to, that I can walk down to the ocean and grab some seaweed or fish
or throw rocks at birds, and get something over a fire. So the first three things
I would want to have with me are hot chilies, shallots or some kind of onion
(I happen to prefer shallots of all the Allium), and citrus (I generically choose
lemon above the others). With those things, I can do everything.
Sure, I can pick cumin or cilantro or basil or things like that, but they have fairly
limited use. With the lemon, chilies, and an Allium or shallot, I can do anything.
I can do ceaseless variations on them. The variety of flavor combinations and
techniques that I can use with those give me the most variety so I wouldnt be
so bored. Maybe I am overthinking the question, but thats my gut instinct to go
with those.
Tim:
No, youre not overthinking it at all. I love asking this question because I still
consider myself a novice cook, certainly, but in doing research for the 4-Hour
Chef, the citrus really blew my mind. I think I either read or had someone say to
me, I use citrus the way a lot of people use salt. I was like, Huh. Thats a really
interesting way to think about it.
Andrew:
Absolutely. Well, salt is an acid and citrus is an acid, and there is an incredible
amount of acid in all the Alliums. There is an incredible amount of acid in all of the
chilies. Its no secret as to why those things are food-changing, food-altering,
technique- inspiring ingredients to use. Much more versatile in the kitchen than
basil or thyme or something like that.
When I talk to young cooks about balancing a dish, its texture contrast, its
temperature contrast, and the way you build flavor contrast and create a more
symphonic taste experience is by experimenting with acids and fats, so by its
very nature, chilies and shallots and lemons and salt and sugar are the kinds of
things we use in different forms, but they are very acidic and they provide much
more flavor when were cooking than most people give them credit for.
Tim:
Oh, definitely. These are such simple things, but game changers for me as
someone who sort of viewed cooking through the lens of a microwave and that
was about it for many, many years. Just the ability to take something like chilies
A friend of mine gave me some Thai chilies that she was growing in her garden
and just sort of sauting them in cooking oil for a few minutes before using that
oil for something else totally changes the dish. Its really so much fun to
Andrew:
Its so funny you used that example. I was about to talk about lemon juice the
same way. Sometimes with my wifes roast chicken She stuffs her cavity with
lemon and herbs and garlic, and that lemon roasts and it starts to break down,
and it boils and perfumes the inside of that dish. Some of that lemon juice goes
down onto the bottom of the pan and caramelizes and gives a tartness and a
wonderful bitterness to the olive-oil-based pan sauce that she makes for that
dish. It seasons the roast vegetables that she puts in them.
But then when it comes to the table, that lemon flavor, because heat has been
applied to it and sort of kicks down the impact of the citrus, she then will finish
the dish with a little bit of fresh citrus and olive oil. We do that a lot in our
family. You then have two or three or four (depending on what bite you take)
different variations on that same ingredient lemon in that dish. It creates a
layered experience, which is much more sensual and a deeper flavor. Its more
fully realized.
Thats the difference between the kind of roast chicken that You know, everyone
says, Why is Jonathan Waxmans chicken at Barbuto so frickin awesome? Its
because even though it just looks like roast chicken with a little bit of sea salt
and salsa verde drizzled over some of the pieces, there is so much difference
seasoning at different times in that dish that you are taking in a much broader
symphonic taste experience than the looks of the dish would tell you exist. Its
profound. I think thats the beauty of food. Its like art.
I remember sitting in my Northern European painting class as a freshman at

Vassar College, trying to focus on the first day of school instead of the girls
backside sitting in the desk in front of me. The professor put a picture up on
the wall. It was some 16th-century Northern European portrait painter. It was a
woman standing at a window. There was a table in front of her with a bowl of
fruit. It was a sunny day outside through the window. She said, Everyone write
down what you see and know about this painting.
Everyone wrote down the same 10 things that were in there. There was a dog.
She was wearing a blue dress. There was a bowl of fruit on the table. Then my
professor spent the next 45 minutes detailing what Flemish life was like in the
late 16th century based only on what she saw in the painting, because, you
know, there was a banana in the bowl of fruit and a pineapple, but those dont
grow in Holland so these people were wealthy. They were traders.
There was symbolism, but there were also She approached it like Sherlock
Holmes. I learned that day, because I was also cooking a lot at the time It
reminded me of what a lot of chefs were saying and what my dad would tell
me when I was eight years old in a little sleepy brasserie in Les Halles in Paris
picking bigorneau with a big silver metal toothpick.
I began to realize I could tell stories about life through food. I now describe it as
being able to talk and tell about the history of a people and a culture by staring
into a bowl of soup. But it really is the same thing. You can deduce so much
about food and in its preparation and in talking it through with people about
where concerns are.
Just the way we are sort of geekishly talking about lemon, I think it underlines
and underscores the fact that today in America we fetishize food in a way that is
greater and deeper and probably has a lot of negative impact as well as positive,
but we fetishize it in a way that has never been done before in the history of the
world about any sort of cultural meme. I cant think of a one.
Tim:
No, I agree. I want to explore that a bit, but before we doshallots. All right. So
I am a big fan of shallots. Ive met quite a few chefs who are also big fans of
shallots. Is it possible for a novice chef to use shallots well without having very
good knife skills?
Andrew:
Yes.
Tim:
It is? Okay. I would love for you to elaborate because that always has been for
me, and I consider my knife skills pretty decent, but it has still been challenging
for me.
Andrew:
How so? In a recipe that requires them to be minced or sliced thin?
Tim:
Exactly, which most of the recipes Ive come across seem to require that, so I
would love for you to I can do it, but its not my favorite prep work to do.
Andrew:
Well, there are two issues at hand. One is how you use a shallot and whats
required of it, despite what a certain recipe will tell you. The other one is your
knife skills in particular.
Tim:
Right.
Andrew:
You are no different than any other person who loves to cook and wants to get
better. If you loved golf and you were playing golf all the time and you told your
friends, My putting just isnt great, they would look at you and say, How do
you do on the putting green? And youd say, I dont go to the putting green.
They would laugh at you.
Tim:
Right.
Andrew:
I always tell people when theyre cooking if you love to cook, buy big bags of
carrots, onions, and celery, and every day, mince them, cut them into batons,
dice them (when youre sitting around listening to the radio for 10 minutes) and
practice your knife skills. If you do that for two weeks, you will improve the
amount time And gosh dont I know how you love saving time
Tim:
I do.
Andrew:
That investment in yourself, a front-side investment in time, a lifetime of

time saving. My wife always marvels. She says, It takes you half the time to
make a recipe. Ive been cooking a lot longer than she has, but the more she
practices knife skills, the faster it becomes for her because thats the sort of
mundane Stop simmering a pot, watching it. You can do other things. You can
multitask. I think at the end of the day, its assembling your ingredients and your
__________ (29:14), so some of that is knife skills and some of that is how you
organize your kitchen. There are a lot of things that you can do to speed things
up, but practice is something that helps.
The second thing might be equipment. Im just going to assume with as many
food geek friends as you have that you have the right knife for yourself. But I
use a short chefs knife. Its usually about eight inches as my handy sort of go-to
knife. I use a thin-bladed one so I can use the front of it choking up to cut small
things and I can rock it and chop it using the back three quarters of it if need
be. I can even choke up and tourne a mushroom if I need to. But I can do almost
everything with that one knife.
Then the third issue for this really becomes the mythology of food and why we
believe certain people when they tell us we have to do a certain thing. To a large
degree, you do a lot of myth busting and you find out in reading all your stuff
that theres always something that is perceived to be a truth that it turns out
once you investigate it and talk about it with other experts, it turns out you dont
need to go from A to B to C to D to get to point E. Sometimes you do. Oftentimes
you can just go A to B, and if you do B really well or do B differently, you dont
need C and D at all. You arrive at E.
I dont think theres anything wrong with people using a Benriner or a mandolin,
some of those vegetable slicers, where you put the blade on it thin setting, and
you can shave that shallot into tiny little pieces. Theres nothing wrong with
using that. Stack up those slices and then rock your knife across it a couple of
times, and you will have a micro dice that would rival anything that Masaharu
Morimoto can create.
My wife reads recipes, and Ill see her doing something. Ill say, Why are you
cutting the shallot that way? Why are you cutting the carrot that way? Shell
say, Oh, it says so. And I read the recipe, and Im like, Well, theres no need.
You can just peel them and leave them whole in the oven. If you slice them into
little coins, theyre just going to disappear in the pan.
You know, a lot of recipes, except from the very small handful of culinarians, are
not as exacting as they should be, and when they are exacting, theyre giving
you unnecessary information that I think creates a lot of unnecessary busywork.
Tim:
Oh, definitely. One thing that blew me away (this just blew my mind) is how
poorly most recipes perform when you have half a dozen people recipe testing
them.
Andrew:
Oh, yes.
Tim:
I could not believe and how poorly almost every recipe performed. Because I
had for the 4-Hour Chef, people at high altitude/low humidity in Aspen versus
people in Georgia or Florida because I wanted to see how that would affect
things, and you would find out that in many cases, somebody would go to a
famous restaurant, a writer (certainly not faulting them for that), take a recipe
that is designed for 200 covers, massive quantities of food, and then simply use
division to take it down to a serving for two or four people. Man, a lot of it just
didnt make any sense at all. Its nice to hear you say that.
Also, as a piece of trivia, Im not sure if the brand talks about it, but the Benriner
(the Bendy) means convenient in Japanese. Thats why its called that. Its a hell
of a device, but you have to watch your fingers.
Andrew:
Well, you do, but you also learn to leave the tails on your shallot and hold onto
that, and then at the very end Youre not handling rock cocaine. I mean, you
know, its a shallot. That last little quarter-inch, just throw it away.
Tim:
Right.
Andrew:
Its amazing to me that a lot of people (not Martha Stewart) knock magazine
recipes whether its Rachael Rays or even Food and Wine, the magazine I write
for. The biggest folks in the business usually write the most exacting recipes
because their audience is very quick to turn on them if things dont work out.
When I look at recipes and suggest them for my wife Shell say, Oh, its a great
recipe for pound cake. We go on the Internet, and there are 20 recipes for pound
cake. I go with the one that even describes to a quarter of an inch the size of the
pan. Because if someone is describing that level of detail, you know they have
gone through it. The person who writes a recipe that says, Grease the cake
pan, you know, they havent made it. Its a tip off right away that something is
wrong.
Tim:
Definitely. It reminds me a lot of the David Lee Roth anecdote about the brown
M&Ms. He wanted to have all the brown M&Ms removed from the M&Ms that
would be in the trailer waiting for him, because (I mean, hes a crazy person, but
aside from that) it was anecdotally to ensure that the people managing the tour
would read that level of detail in the contract, and if they didnt catch that, there
would be other more substantial things (equipment related, setup related) that
they would also miss, and therefore, that was the litmus test to see if they would
catch that type of detail. I agree with you. Like, Get a medium-sized sauce pan.
What does that mean to a novice?
Andrew:
Exactly.
Tim:
To shift gears just a little bit, you went to a great school (Vassar). You traveled, it
sounds like, as a child or a young man, to Paris.
Andrew:
Yeah, my dad was in the international advertising business, so when I was six
years old, I started going to Europe three or four times a year, mostly with him.
Sometimes just for three or four days at a time. I am a paler version of him. He
loves to eat and travel and drink and told stories in the day when you needed
to command a dining room table with great storytelling if you were that kind of
person who took up space the way my dad did. I mean, he was a great takerupper of space wherever he was. You knew he was there.
Tim:
I think it might paint a picture for people who arent familiar with all of your
background that you had a hockey-stick like career, very few bumps in the road
from start to finish, just this straight ascension to the TV star that you are today.
But one thing that I noticed, and Im embarrassed I didnt know this earlier, is it
seems like you were homeless for a period of time. I was hoping that you could
comment
Andrew:
Oh, I was a f***ing mess. You know, I grew up in a very idyllic surrounding. I had
every opportunity and every advantage that a kid could have. I grew up in New
York in the 60s. My dad ran a big ad agency. It was a privileged lifestyle. We had
more than one home. We had more than one car. I went to a hoity-toity private
school. I went to two months of summer camp in Maine.
But at the same time, my parents divorced. My dad and mom separated; there
was a lot of curiosity as to why because there wasnt any fighting our house. It
wasnt anything unusual. My dad was coming to grips with his own sexuality and
sexual preferences, and thank God, he was true to himself and found love with
my stepfather, and they were together as partners for 46 years and married
for the last year in the state of Maine where they finally passed the Marriage
Equality Act.
But it was a big struggle, and it was really impactful for a six-year-old in 1967. It
was a different world than it is today. My mom had an operation in a hospital to
get an appendix scar removed in 74 when the bikini lines went down. They gave
her the wrong anesthesia in surgery. She was in a coma for a year, hospitals for
three or four years. She was never the same when she got out of them.
I was sort of raised in an empty house by a bunch of handlers who made sure I
got to school in the morning. I saw my dad on weekends and my step dad; they
were together by that point. I was sort of the ultimate latchkey kid. I didnt have
a lot of direction, and I was really pretty miserable and didnt know it.
I found drugs and alcohol at a very young age (13), and the moment I got high
for the first time, I felt like a raindrop entering the river. I felt like I had just
unlocked the mystery to life. The first time in my limited number of years on the
planet, I felt comfortable in my own skin. I had a really horrible disease called
more, so by the time I got to college, I was a daily heroin addict.
In my first week of college, I was hospitalized with alcohol poisoning and arrested
for narcotics possession. The school that I was at did an intake on me. They paid
for a chemical dependency evaluation. I registered chronic on the Jellinek scale.
The counselor told me at that time, Youre going to die. Addicts and alcoholics
of your variety wind up in jails, institutions, or dead. Youve already done jail
time. Which I had. Youve already been institutionalized. Which at that point I
had. So theres really nowhere else for you to go.
You tell that to an 18-year-old kid, and they just laugh at you. I laughed at him.
I didnt sober up until I was 31, and things got progressively worse. Alcoholism
and drug addiction is a progressive illness. It got worse every single day of my
life from that point forward. And I went from a place where in that meeting, I told
the guy, No, I dont have a problem, to when I finally had my last intervention
that started the sobriety almost 23 years ago, I just told them I didnt care.

That was a horrible spot. Those last three or four years of my using, I was in that
I-dont-care spot. I wanted to die. I lost my apartment. The sheriff of New York
evicted me. I was sleeping in an abandoned building on a pile of old clothes that
I tossed a bottle of Comet cleanser around every night before I went to bed to
keep the rats and roaches off of me when I passed out.
I stole purses on streets. I was a mess. Its really sad. Most people just see the
face of the addiction as that person. You know, I was living in an abandoned
building. I didnt shower for a year. I was disgusting. I took meals in shelters. I
got clothes at the Salvation Army. I mean, I was a garden-variety street person
in New York, the type that you cross the block to avoid. I wasnt pushing a
shopping cart, but I was filthy and stank and was wearing rags.
Ultimately, I went into a hotel to try to drink myself to death. It didnt work. I
had a moment of clarity for the first time in a 15-year period and called a friend
and asked for help. Two days later, I tried to talk him out of that help, of course,
once he gave it to me, like any alcoholic. I asked for someone to throw me a life
preserver, and then I tossed it back at him because I didnt like the color orange.
I immediately was sent to a beautiful Center City, Minnesota to a treatment
center called Hazelden, which is how I ended up in Minnesota.
Tim:
I was wondering.
Andrew:
I was a born-and-bred New Yorker. You know, I had a couple of friends who had
come through Why am I lying to you? Half of my high school went through
Hazelden. We all went right from Studio 54 together to treatment together. My
friends told me, You have nothing to go home for. Youve never been able to
make your life really work.
I had been successful in the restaurant business in New York, and I had done a
lot in a career because I was talented. You know, I was the guy who could put out
500 plates of poached eggs at brunch in a busy Central Park West restaurant.
I could stand there and sling it on the line in a three-star Michelin restaurant in
New York. In those days, they did not have a Michelin Guide there, but you get
the drift. I worked in those kinds of places with those kinds of chefs.
It was that skill set that kept me employed, but ultimately, my alcoholism and
drug addiction stuck me in Minnesota. So I kept thinking I would go back. I
worked for year and a half for Thomas Keller at Rakel, and Id worked for Anne
Rosenzweig at Arcadia and great chefs in New York City, many of whom fired me
after a day of working because they caught onto my s***. A lot of them didnt.
But I wanted to come back to New York and give it another try, but my friends
said, Dont do it. Stay in Minnesota. Do something different. So I started here and
ended up opening up a restaurant that became very successful. I left that. I got
into the media business because I felt like there was an opportunity there that if
I didnt seize it, the door would kind of shut forever on that kind of opportunity,
just because I saw the popularity of food and media in that intersection, and I
wanted to be a part of it early on.
Tim:
How old were you at that point?
Andrew:
Oh gosh 14 years ago I stopped. I was in the restaurant business here in

Minneapolis the first seven years that I lived here.Then I spent a couple of years
consulting, and at that time I was working for free for a local radio station doing
a food show, a TV station where I was a morning chef on one of those wacky
local morning shows. It was the best job I ever had.
I learned how to read, write, and think critically when it came to doing television.
I learned how to edit. I learned what a cameraman had to do. I learned how
to produce a segment. I learned how to behave on camera and not be selfconscious. It was the best training I ever had for the job that I do now.
I worked at a magazine doing restaurant writing and essay writing about food. I
did five or six little blurbs and columns as part of a three-person dining section
staff for our local glossy monthly here in Minneapolis St. Paul magazine. I had
a great editor who taught me how to write again. I was the luckiest guy in the
whole world.
Tim:
That is an incredible story, and it gives me a lot to think on. One of the questions
that immediately jumped to mind for me was if you had the opportunity to
interact with someone who was exactly where you were at age 18 or 20, is
there a way to persuade that person to avoid that descent into despair and
destitution? Because
Andrew:
You know the answer to that question is no.
Tim:
Yeah, well, thats why Im asking.
Andrew:
No, no. I have that opportunity all the time. I mean, I am very active in a 12-step
group, and I believe in carrying forward the message that was carried to me
that there is another way of living, that there is a solution to the problems that
alcoholics and addicts have.
The question that you pose is that alcohol and drug addiction has a major
component. In fact, the defining component of those diseases (and it is a disease,
despite what Gene Simmons say, is that it sends your brain a message that tells
you you do not have a disease. You know, if someone tells you you have cancer
and theres a chance youre going to die from it unless you do something, not
only do people jump to help you, but you jump to help yourself.
Yes, there is a handful I have had friends/parents who have gotten bad news
at the end of their life and said, You know something, Im not going to pursue
wellness. Ive had two hip replacements. Im done. Im 90 years old. Lets pursue
a different way. But for the most part, people seek help.
With alcoholism and drug addiction, the first time somebody tells you, Hey
dude, youve got a problem, you cant stop. Its a compulsion. Its an allergy. It is
defined by its strange mental blind spots that tell you you dont have a problem.
Thats the tough thing.
I wish all it took was a good conversation and then nodding realization, but I cant
tell you how many people sat at the end of my bed, metaphorically speaking,
told me what my problem was, told me there was a solution, you know, Be
abstinent. Go to meetings. Get help. Do the opposite of the things your brain
is telling you. Every version of that conversation, I nodded my head every time
and said, Absolutely. Im going to do that. Then I could do it for a day, two days,
three days, and then I would be right back out there. Sometimes I would be right
back out there five minutes later.

I got arrested once, and the judge was giving me a big lecture, and I looked up at
the judge, and I said F*** you, your honor, and I started screaming at him. The
reason was I didnt want to hear what he was saying. But the real reason I was
doing it was I knew he was going to slam his gavel and throw me back inside of
the county jail, which was on the other side of the courthouse, and inside that
county jail were people with dope and booze and all the things I wanted to get
away from me, to quiet the voice in my head and to not be feeling what I was
feeling.
That is sad and tawdry, but its the truth. I just wanted to get high more than I
wanted to sit there and listen to his lecture. No one can tell someone they should
quit, which is the horror of the disease. Life, however, has a way of humbling
you. For me, at a certain point My parents thought I was dead. I had lost every
job. I was physically ill and disgusting. You can list all the things. I couldnt hold a
job. I couldnt do anything. I couldnt function. I was dying, and I wanted to die.
At the end of the day, for the first time ever in my life, I put the cork in the bottle
because the last people that in my heart I loved and wanted to respect me
walked out the door. At the end of the day, it was their tough love and realizing
I had no more relationships and that I had really lost everything that got me to
maybe take someones advice.
And I did it for like 10 minutes. Thats all it took. But the very next person I spoke
to said something to me that essentially said, You dont know the answer to
everything. You can walk up the door and get hit via bus, or you could by the
winning lottery ticket. You dont know. You dont know what life has to offer. For
some reason, that made sense to me at that point and got me one more day.
Then one more day and one more day. And now I have been sober for 23 years.
Tim:
Well this is something I would love to explore more. I know you have some time
constraints today, but well have to do a part two at some point.
Andrew:
I would love that.
Tim:
I hope, at the very least, and Ill ask one or two very fast closing questions, that
people listening to this realize there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Ive
talked about some of my dark moments before, but I have had some extended
periods of some pretty terrifying darkness and thoughts not very different from
those that youve had. Its easy to believe that thats all theres going to be
indefinitely. So hopefully
Andrew:
The truth of the matter is I paint a horrible and disturbing picture of it where
there is no help, and nothing can convince the alcoholic or the drug addict that
there is another way except that millions of people have gotten sober and solved
that problem. No one is terminally unique, so while all the things I said are true,
its also true that there is a solution. Part of that begins by picking up the phone
and taking advice from someone else.

To bring it around, and Im not trying to minimize the impact of these things,
remaining teachable, as I said at the top of our conversation, to me, is one of the
great things to achieve in life. So when you pick up the phone and very humbly
said By the way, if someone is brilliant and everyone puts on a pedestal as
being one of the great, noble thinkers of our time and people intersect with your
books and your other materials have a profound respect for you, and rightfully
so, but youre still humble enough to pick up the phone and call, at the time, an
acquaintance, and say, Im having a problem with this thing, and I think youve
done this before. What advice would you give me? Thats how we started our
friendship.
For people out there who are struggling or have a family member who is
struggling, there is a solution. You know, on our website andrewzimmern.com,
we have some links to different treatment centers to AAs general service
number. You can call a local hospital. You can stop a policeman in the street and
say, Help me.
It is a world built out there for us to get out of ourselves and raise the white flag.
Thats the very, very first step. Its saying, I give up. I have a problem. I need to
talk to someone about it. It doesnt mean you need to get sober that day either,
but you do have to start to think about the problem you have and about who to
talk to about it.
Tim:
Andrew, you are a mensch. I appreciate the kind words, obviously. I think its
extremely important advice, and Im glad that we opened up the backstory. I
had no idea. I know you have to run. I always appreciate your time.
Andrew:
No problem. You should email Jen, and lets try to do a part two in the short
future so you can air them back to back or do something with it. Whatever you
want to do.
Tim: I
would love to do that. For those people listening to this interview, part one,
where should I find more about you? Where can they learn more about you?
Andrew:
everything is on andrewzimmern.com.
Tim:
Perfect.
Andrew:
Its a really fun website too.
Tim:
It is.
Andrew:
Lots of great information. Great interviews with people.You know, you can scroll
back and listen to us having a conversation about you.
Tim:
Back in the day. All the good things. Well, Andrew, I really enjoyed this. I think a
lot of people will benefit from it, so until next time, thank you very, very much. I
really appreciate it.
Andrew:
Take it easy, brother.
Tim:
All right, man. Thank you.
Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show, 99Designs, which is your
one-stop shop for all things graphic design related. Go to 99designs.com/tim to
see the projects Ive put up, including the mockups and drafts of the book cover
for the 4-Hour Body.
ExOfficio. ExOfficio and I go way back. Go to exofficio.com/tim and you can

see the clothing Ive used for traveling through 20-plus countries, including
underwear. By the way, thats about half of my underwear drawer right now.
You can also see the viral video that I put out which shows you how to travel the
world with 10 pounds or less.
As always, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and you can find all of
the links and resources from this episode as well as every other episode, by
going to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.
Feedback If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts. Anything at all.
Who you would like to see on this show. Ping me on Twitter @tferriss or on
Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss.
Until next time, thank you for listening.
EPISODE 45:
NICK GANJU
Tim:
Hello, everybody, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode and edition of
The Tim Ferriss Show. Today is a rare treat, because I have an old friend of mine
who has all sorts of dirt on me and knows all of the skeletons in the closet, Nick
Ganju. Nick, how are you?
Nick Ganju:
Im great. How are you doing?
Tim:
Im doing very well. Youre in New York City at the moment?
Nick:
Yeah, thats right. Im in Manhattan.
Tim:
The beginning, I suppose, goes back some ways. We initially met in 2000, is that
right?
Nick:
Yeah, I think so. You were looking for an apartment, and I had an extra bedroom
I was renting out.
Tim:
If I remember correctly, I didnt make the cut. This was at the height of the
dot-com boom. It was right at the top of the roller coaster in a lot of ways, and
housing was next to impossible, not unlike what its like right now. It must have
been Craigslist casual encounters Im kidding. The rental section. We met up
and didnt end up becoming roommates but ended up becoming friends and
playing a lot of pool. It was amusing to me to read your official bio for the first
time yesterday to try to get some additional context. You ended up being the
Bay Area billiards champion. Is this right?
Nick:
Yeah, it was one of those leagues you join, and I ended up being the champion
that year. I played a lot of pool in college, and since we were both just out of
college I had still retained all that skill. If you played me right now, Id probably
be really rusty.
Tim:
Were going to dig into some of the other varied, eclectic, sort of Dos Equis skills
you seem to have, like table tennis, and sort of deconstruct why that is, and also
get into the music, but for those people who arent familiar with you We can
certainly get into the professional stuff, but where did you grow up? What did
your parents do? Maybe you can give us some background.
Nick:
Sure, sure. I grew up in the west suburbs of Chicago. My parents were both
doctors, so nice comfortable upbringing. I was very fortunate in that way. I went
to undergrad, majored in computer science, finished in 1998. I worked in Austin,
Texas, at a company called Trilogy for a year, but then decided the dot-com
boom of the time was way too hot for me to be working at a larger company,
so like all the gold hunters of history, I moved out west to California for the gold
rush of 1999, I guess you could call it, and tried my luck at a couple start-ups
there.
Tim:
You ended up then, bringing us to the current day, cofounding ZocDoc. What is
the current state of ZocDoc? How many employees do you have? Maybe you can
give us some stats.
Nick:
Yeah, sure. We are currently about 500 to 600 employees, and over 6 million
people visit ZocDoc each month to search for a doctor. To give a little background,
ZocDoc is a site where you can come and search for a doctor, and you can see
reviews, you can see photos, and you can book an appointment right online. In
the way you can book everything else online these days, were trying to bring
doctor appointment booking online.
Tim:
Now for those people who havent used the site, would it be fair, as an imperfect
analogy, to say its a more refined OpenTable, plus a bunch of other extra benefits
for doctors, that it has that sort of ease of use or more?
Nick:
Yeah, certainly it has that OpenTable aspect, where you can book appointments
online. Of course, it also has the Yelp aspect, where you can see reviews and
photos, and you can also now check in, which means you can fill out your medical
history forms online before you get to the doctors office so that medical form
is now prefilled, and as you visit subsequent doctors you dont have to refill the
medical form. So were slowly adding more and more features that make that
process as painless as possible.
Tim:
One of the topics I wanted to talk about comes to mind when I call to my memory
the first visit to the ZocDoc offices. Weve spent a lot of time together. Weve
had plenty of work together, played a lot of pool together, and Ive always been
fascinated by your ability to not just test assumptions but also cut through a
lot of the fuzzy thinking to hard numbers and analytics. The displays you had
at ZocDoc, the real-time displays of numbers and metrics, I think were a great
external representation for me of your mind.
Many people probably do not know that one of the reasons I chose to go to
Princeton undergrad, which, by the way, for those people who are listening who
might be applying to colleges, I was told by my guidance counselor I would not
get into. Talk about encouragement. I think this is actually going to be relevant
to our conversation later. You have to look at incentives, because economics
ultimately is the study of incentives and how people respond to them.
What guidance counselors, even at very good schools, want to be able to say
is, Ninety percent of my students got into their first choice. The easiest way to
do that is to make sure their first choices are mediocre. But one of the draws for
Princeton was it was one of the few schools in the top group I was considering
that did not have a math requirement.
I had a horrible experience in tenth grade with a math teacher. This might seem
strange to folks, but she was a female math teacher who I think had just been
really put through the wringer to get to where she was, and she was really,
really belligerent toward a handful of boys in the class. It turned me off to math
completely from that point forward. In contrast, my brother had the exact
opposite experience in tenth grade, had a wonderful teacher, and he went on to
major in math and pursue a PhD in statistics.
So Id be curious to hear the origins of your interest in computer science and

also your general thinking on these types of skills. I know thats broad, but a lot
of people, like myself, fear that its something innate. Its completely innate. You
either have it or you dont. So maybe you could sort of rewind the clock and talk
about your experience with getting comfortable with this type of thing.
Nick:
Yeah, sure. In terms of the computer science, I started the way many computer
nerds start, which is I started programming at an early age, like 9 or 10 years

old, on my Apple IIc and just trying to make games. You know, we had the Atari
2600, and I had some simple games on my Apple, and I was like, I want to try to
do this. So I bought a book on BASIC programming and tried to make a couple
of games.

I tried to reproduce the game from WarGames with Matt Broderick. I tried to
reconstruct that game. The game in that movie is called Global Thermonuclear
War, so its a pretty violent game. I tried to recreate it with my 9-year-old brain,
trying to deconstruct where to deploy nuclear missiles. I was actually working on
it at school in grade school, and my principal walked into the computer lab, and I
got into big trouble because I was making a game called Global Thermonuclear
War in fourth grade.
But that was the genesis of my interest. Then in high school we had these
programmable calculators, and I started writing games on the calculator and
giving it to all my friends. In the way that misguided nerds are, at age 15 I
thought I would get a lot of girls this way. It turns out that writing Tetris on your
calculator does not actually win you the cheerleaders, but that was my best
strategy at that time. Suffice it to say, I was single for high school.
My guidance counselor saw these kinds of things too and recommended to me

that I go and major in computer engineering or computer science. That was
something that was not even really apparent to me, that that was a whole major
and stuff. Of course, this was in the 90s and you couldnt just Google things.
So it was almost like a revelation to me that you could go and do this as a

profession and theres actually formal training, like you can actually go to a fouryear college and get a computer science degree. So that was great. I went to
University of Illinois, which is sort of a top-five computer science school. It kind
of flirts in and out of there. Some years its number four and some years its
number seven or whatever.
Tim:
Didnt Marc Andreessen develop Mosaic there?
Nick:
Yeah, Andreessen is from there. Max Levchin from PayPal is from there. A bunch
of illustrious current Silicon Valley moguls are from there, so its a good school. I
certainly really fell in love with computer science when I did those four years and
knew thats what I wanted to do as a profession.
Tim:
What made you fall in love with it there, and what do you think makes it a top-five
program, aside from maybe the selection bias and having really good applicants
over time start to select it?
Nick:
Yeah, and certainly every school has that sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. You gain
traction, and all the best kids want to go to your school. But I think they are very
vigilant about keeping the computer science curriculum current. I had a couple
of friends who had gone to different schools at that time and also majored in
computer science.
I was learning Java at the time, which was the hot new thing. This was like 1996
or something. We already had courses in Java, and my friends were still learning
stuff in C. I think the best schools are very diligent about keeping the curriculum
up to date, especially in computer science. As we all know, the industry and the
technologies change so quickly.
Tim:
In a world where thats changing so quickly I think this is part of whats so

intimidating to a lot of folks, whether theyre just trying to get by and want to
be employable or they are hoping to invest in technology companies, which is
a very dangerous game to play for a lot of reasons. How much past a certain
point
For instance, its easy for me to look at learning natural languages, which I
assumed I was bad at learning up until 15 or 16, and I can destroy a lot of myths
and old wives tales about that. When someone says to me, Im too old to learn
a language. It would take me my entire lifetime. It takes decades to become
fluent, blah, blah, blah, I can very easily dismantle those and get people excited
about learning a language, even if theyre 30 or 40 or whatever it might be.
With computer science and math, I have a lot of insecurities. I can do very basic
stuff, but never to calculus. I got up to pre-cal. How coachable are these things,
and how valuable is it to try to become more comfortable with the quantified
side of life at a later point? I just turned 37. Its one of these things that dogs me
as an insecurity, much in the way that not being able to swim dogged me until I
was 30. Maybe you could comment on that.
Nick:
Sure. I think there are certain fields of math that are extremely important and
become more and more relevant every day, like the big data I hate to use
buzzwords, but that sort of trend that has come into favor in the last few years,
which is a very real thing, despite the buzzwords. Theres a lot of information to
be gleaned and improvements in our society to be had from statistical analysis.
So probability and statistics are things that are just going to become bigger
and bigger parts of our world. In terms of calculus, if anything, calculus is sort
of diminishing, because that field of math was more applicable when you didnt
have a giant computer on every desktop (giant in terms of processing power) to
crunch the crap out of numbers.
A lot of things that were closed-form solutions, which means they got solved
through these complex equations that you see with a lot of weird symbols in
them, now computers can brute force crank out the answers to them, and in
a better way too, because you can more closely mirror reality with a computer
than you can with a closed-form solution like a calculus equation. So its not a
big deal if most people dont know calculus, but there are fields of math which
are certainly helpful in understanding.
Tim:
What would those areas be? I suppose just to jump right into it, if you were
This conversation is inspired, for those people listening, partially because we sat
down at the ZocDoc offices to talk about encryption. I remember I had become
really fascinated by encryption and ciphers and code-breaking because of a
science fiction book called Cryptonomicon.
So we started talking about encryption, and you got up and walked me through
the basic principles of encryption as it applies in a lot of computer science.
Then we went out to dinner that night and sat down with a bunch of really
impressive CTOs and guys who have been VPs of engineering, and we talked
about encryption, and it just blew my mind that something I felt so utterly out
of my depth with a few hours earlier I was able to actually cogently listen to
discourse about in a few hours.

That really encouraged me, but it has been hard for me to determine how I walk
out I know youre a good friend of mine, but youre also busy, so its like I dont
want you to be my pro bono mental model mentor. So how should somebody
in a fun or interesting way develop some of these skills? This is such a simple
thing, but it kind of blew my mind. If we look at probabilities, humans are so bad,
sort of intrinsically it seems, at working with probabilities.
If you have a big party and people bump into each other and they have the
same birthday date, theyre sort of astonished. Theyre like, Oh my god, what
are the chances? Its like one in a million. Im just looking at the description
on Wikipedia of the birthday problem or the birthday paradox. The probability
obviously reaches 100 when the number of people reaches 367, because we
extrapolate from 365 days of the year, but you get to 50 percent probability with
just 23 people. Its so hard for people to grasp that.
Nick:
Well, let me refine it a little bit. To state it really precisely, its not that one of
those 23 people could go and ask the other 22 and odds are would find the
same birthday. Its that any two of those 23 people have the same birthday. Does
that make sense? Its a little bit different. I think thats where the misconception
comes in. You know, you can kind of take from it, Wow, if I walked around and
asked 22 people, theres a 50 percent chance Id have the same birthday as one
of them, which is not the right way to think about it.
Tim:
Right, and the devil is in the details with those subtleties. I mean, massive
miscalculations, even by very smart experienced people You look at something
like long-term capital management. They build this massively sophisticated
system that doesnt take into account that somebody else could have a similar
machine that would then trigger this crazy back and forth that would end in
catastrophe.
So if somebody feels, as I do, that they want to be more comfortable with this
type of thing but theyre not, are there any particular approaches or books or
anything like that that you would recommend?
Nick:
I think people get intimidated because they look online Wikipedia especially
does this. You go and youre like, What is expected value? or something, and
Wikipedia immediately gives you these Greek symbols. Everyone has seen that,
right? Like the first paragraph
Tim:
Its in the first line of the birthday problem.
Nick:
Yeah, exactly. That even intimidates me, and I think I know a fair bit about math.
You know, the best way to do it is to start really simple, and then work your way
up slowly. When you want to talk about probability Lets play a game where we
roll a six-sided die. If the number is 6, I pay you a dollar. If the number is 1-5, you
pay me a dollar. Would you play that game?
Tim:
No, I would not play that game.
Nick:
Right. You wouldnt play that game. Its intuition. Now lets change the game and
say that if a 6 comes up I pay you $1,000, and if 1-5 each comes up you have to
pay me $1.
Tim:
Yes, Ill play that game.
Nick:
So youll play that game. Now the question isAt what point should you play or
not play it? Would you play it at $3? If I paid you $3 when a 6 showed up, would
you play that game?
Tim:
Probably not. I have to start doing calculations here.
Nick:
Sure, but thats the genesis of it, right? The genesis of all math is you starting
from these common sense or these real-world problems and saying, Okay, well,
how do I understand this problem? My intuition says I wouldnt play it if I only
won $1 when I hit 6 and I would play it if I won $1,000 when I played 6. Would I do
it at $10? Would I do it at $3? So start from there.
We can walk through this problem. A simple way to think about this problem is
lets assume in six rolls you get one of each. Lets say we roll it six times and you
get one 1, one 2, one 3, one 4, one 5, and one 6. So for the $3, you would lose $5
for each 1-5, and then you would win $3 when you rolled a 6, so you would make
$3 and lose $5, so youd be at negative $2.
You can start to see at which point you would break even, which is $5. At $5 you
would break even exactly. If I paid you $5 every time a 6 showed up, you would
lose $5 for each of the other rolls, and then you would win $5 when you got the
6.
Tim:
Im tracking you so far. Im not as dumb as I look. Actually Im a bit dumber than
I look, but thats a different story.
Nick:
But thats the genesis of it, right? So now lets roll two dice. What are the odds
of getting two 6s? Each die has a one-in-six chance of getting a 6. You multiply
those together, and the odds of getting two 6s are one in thirty-six. So now you
can do the game again. How much should I pay you if you get two 6s? It just
goes from there. It just gets more and more complex.
Blackjack is just more of the same thing. Its just a more complex version of the
same thing. So if you start simple and understand the conceptual underpinnings,
and then work your way up from there I think every field of math can be broken
down that way, if you just start simple and not get intimidated by all these Greek
symbols.
Tim:
Now one of the things that sparked my interest in exploring some of this was
my experience in television. I was filming The Tim Ferriss Experiment, the future
of which is TBD, for those people listening and wondering. The entire division at
Turner that produced it was fired, basically shut down, and its sitting on a shelf,
so Ive been battling to try to rescue that for months. Suffice it to say, keep an
eye out. I may need some public support to get that done.
The episodes included, at one point, going to Vegas and being trained by a
really fascinating guy named Phil Gordon, who has a CS background, who has
taken home millions of dollars in winnings as a professional poker player. He

had a week to train me to go heads up, one-on-one against professional poker
players. So you can imagine that week was a lot of this type of conversation.
He would ask me these very, very basic probability questions, and I would have
this stoned Labrador retriever response with no words coming out of my face,
and hed be like, Youre kidding me, right? But it worked up to the point where
he was able to give me matrices for deciding in a very binary way, Do you fold
or do you raise? I started memorizing these sets of rules, and it made it fun. It
gave it a context so that I wasnt grappling with some of these questions in a
vacuum.
I know one of the books you recommended to me was How to Measure Anything.
Some of it I found very interesting. Of course, when we were not too long ago
hanging out at the pool and brainstorming stuff like this and talking about
investing, you were able to throw an extra element into the conversation, which
was if you have a 30-percent probability of doing X or a 70-percent probability of
doing Y If the person giving you that information only tells the truth 60 percent
of the time, then what? How does that affect the outcomes?

Are there any other books or even just games or methods for making this a fun
process for people? Because the idea that I could spend a week learning poker
and be able to play, without getting my total face ripped off, with probably 70
percent of the recreational players out there pretty easily is a huge ROI, right?
Thats massive. What else comes to mind? What other books or resources would
you recommend to people?
Nick:
Yeah, I love poker as well. I think poker is a great example of a combination of

math and emotional intelligence also coming into play. Poker is a great reflection
of all the stuff weve been talking about. I recently read a great book, which is
called How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. This book by
a guy named Jordan Ellenberg is exactly what were talking about.
Its written for an audience of people who have historically been intimidated by
math or just thought, Gee, Im not good at math and introduces things in a
very simple way, and then works up to more complex concepts, in the way we
just broke down probability with this dice game. So thats a great book, and I
hope it does well, and I hope it alleviates some of that intimidation people have.
Tim:
I know we also chatted at one point about your classes. There might be a better
term for them, but internally at ZocDoc, trying to help poor liberal arts majors
like me become better at goal setting and things along those lines. I know youre
a fan of what is often referred to as SMART goals. Would you mind talking about
how you set goals or how you suggest people set goals and common mistakes
people make?
Nick:
Yeah, sure. SMART goals means specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and
timely. Its sort of a framework to help you pick goals that you can objectively
hit or miss. Measurable means Im going to lose exactly 10 pounds or at least 10
pounds in the next two months or three months, and then you can objectively
decide at the end whether or not youve lost 10 pounds, as opposed to saying,
Im just going to lose weight, and then you dont really know what kind of goal
It doesnt work psychologically. Youre just like, Oh, Im vaguely losing weight.
Writing down that goal and literally putting it on your wall actually gives you
something to strive toward. So the first problem is just setting objective goals.
Instead of saying, Lets try to accomplish X; lets try to get more people using
ZocDoc, as opposed to Lets get 10 million more people to use ZocDoc
Theyre different goals, psychologically speaking. Then at review time its easy
to see whether you did it or not.
Then the next problem after that is that people say, Yeah, that sounds like a
good number. Lets get a million more people to use it, or whatever, but theres
no basis in how theyre going to get to that million. The analogy I like to use is
when they tried to put the first man in space or the first man on the moon, they
didnt just say, Okay, lets get in the rocket and burn the rocket as hard as we
can, and maybe well get into space. They did all the math behind it.
They were like, Gravity pulls us this much, and we have to take this much
weight up, so then we lose this much fuel, but this much fuel then adds this
much weight to the rocket, so that causes its own set of problems. Then theres
wind resistance and everything. They did all the math to figure out how to get
themselves into space, but I feel like in business and in life people just say, Im
going to add this much or Im going to create X percent more of whatever is
going to happen, and they havent really done the underlying math.
Tim:
Yeah, I think Im guilty of that too, because youre constantly told as a nonquant-comfortable person, You have to think big, and people are like, Okay,
great. Im going to build a billion-dollar company.
Nick:
Thats a good example. If you want to build a billion-dollar company, what do

you need to do? What kind of revenue or earnings do you need to justify being a
billion dollars, and then what sort of markets or opportunities are available that
would create that much earnings, and then how are you going to get there? You
cant just say, Lets just build a billion-dollar company. I mean, its good to have
that goal, but then you need a plan to execute as well.
One of the big improvements weve done operationally is what I call business
cases, and its the math of how youre going to get there. The example I use,
which is just a fun example, is Monsters, Inc. Monsters is a recurring theme
at ZocDoc. Like the monsters from Monsters, Inc., Sulley and Mike Wazowski
Any team member who crushes it that week, we give them one of the stuffed
animals, and theyre the monster of the week and stuff, so its this sort of
recurring theme.
My example I used was they have these doors to childrens bedrooms, and
they used to scare them, but now they make them laugh, and that generates
electricity for the city they live in, Monstropolis. Lets say one day theyre short on
electricity, so the CEO of Monsters Inc. is like, Lets generate more electricity.
A bad way to do it would be, Lets just try to generate more. A good way to do
it would be like, Lets generate one gigawatt more. Then its like, Okay one
gigawatt. Great. How do we get there?
Well, okay, each door you manufacture to a new childs bedroom generates 1
megawatt, so you need to generate 1,000 more doors. You need to manufacture
1,000 more doors to get this 1 gigawatt. So how do you make 1,000 more doors?
Well, you need 100 door manufacturers who each make 10. You try to do that,
but then you realize theres like a 10-percent defect rate.

Its sort of building up from there and understanding the math behind it, and
then understanding if thats realistic. Can I have 100 door makers? Is it realistic
to hire that many that quickly in one month? Really breaking down the plan and
multiplying these numbers through to get to the goal is really the difference
between success and failure.
Its not complicated math. Its just, I need 1,000 doors, so I need 100 door
manufacturers who can each make 10 doors in a month, and then Ill have 1,000
doors. None of its calculus or any of this other stuff, but it is rigorous in terms of
you have to be able to When you break it down to the individual components,
those have to be executable. Can I actually get 100 door makers, and does each
of them actually make 10 doors a month? Etcetera.
Tim:
How do you then translate that to, say, weekly or monthly check-ins? How
do people who do this case study, who have set a quantifiable, objectively
measurable goal, then ensure that they are on track or at least check in to
see if theyre on track or not? How frequently is that done, and how do people
improve the odds of hitting those goals once theyve set it down on paper and
have accepted and agreed that, Yes, we need to understand the different
numbers that underpin this goal and the assumptions were making? How do
you encourage them to keep on track? How often are they checking in or having
someone else check in on them? How does that work?
Nick:
The goals are set quarterly. So every three months they set this goal. Going back
to this Monsters Inc. example, a three-month goal would be, Were going to
generate one extra gigawatt of power. Then each week theyre going to follow
the numbers that were the breakdown of this plan. So they ask how many door
manufacturers they actually hired this week and how many doors they actually
manufactured this week.
Then you start to get confidence around those numbers. You start to see, Oh
crap, I cant hire 100 door makers in a month. Its actually going to take me two
or three months to hire 100, but I can hire 30 in the first month, and theyre each
going to contribute 10 doors, so Ill at least have 300 doors in the first month.
And you learn something new. You learn that, Oh, 10 percent of the doors are
defective, so its actually not 300 doors generated in the first month; its 270
doors generated in the first month.
So then you add a new line in your business case here that is going to subtract
10 percent from your finished product of doors. Over time, you generate a really
solid understanding of that game, of whichever initiative it is youre planning, as
you add lines and as you refine the numbers for each line. So basically you start
to fill in the actuals, and you look at their deviation from your projections when
you started.
Tim:
Yeah, from your base assumptions, which is something Im constantly

astonished I do this in a very Fred Flintstone, knuckle-dragging kind of way,
but if I look at just as a group, for instance, angel investors or people who are
doing early-stage investments They form a thesis. They go out and raise a
bunch of money, and then they never modify.
Its kind of like the parody of George W. Bush that Stephen Colbert did at
one point. He gave an address at like the Republican National Convention or
something. This is a paraphrase, obviously, but he was like, I stand behind a
president who no matter what happens on Wednesday, he still holds the same
belief on Thursday that he did on Tuesday.
Nick:
Yeah, he was making fun of Because they branded John Kerry as a flip-flopper.
Thats what it was. Its sort of the mark of intelligence to learn from your mistakes
and change your attitudes of things. So Colbert was ribbing Bush for branding
Kerry as a flip-flopper.
Tim:
Yeah, Im not sure that worked out exactly as they expected. So when you were
a kid Actually, before I go there, do you have all of your employees trained on
Excel? Is that what that means, when theyre inputting these values so things
automatically update?
Nick:
Yeah, this is done in Excel. Each column is a month, so you can see time
progressing going to the right, and then each row will be one of these things.
Like with Monsters Inc., its How many door manufacturers do I have? How
many do they make in a month? Whats the defect rate? Etcetera. Then, as
a month turns into reality, you overwrite the projected assumptions with the
actuals.
What Im saying sounds really simple, but people dont do it in general in a lot
of companies Ive visited or, like you said, smaller start-ups I help out with in an
advisory role. They just dont do these things. If you think about the number of
projects that fail in business and the amount of research or forethought that
goes into them, in general, thats way, way off.
To go back to probability, even if you think theres a 90-percent chance of
something succeeding and a 10-percent chance of failing, then its worth it to
spend 10 percent of the time ahead of time to see if its going to work. What
that means is if youre starting a 10-week project, you spend a week to research
it. People dont do that. People spend two hours thinking about it, and they go,
That would be a great idea. Then they hop off and do it for 10 weeks.
Tim:
To put that into perspective, that means if its a 10-year project, you could justify
a year in doing due diligence, which is totally entirely not the case, obviously, in
the vast majority of instances.
Nick:
Or budget. If its a $100 million project, you should spend $10 million just
researching it if you think theres a 10-percent chance its going to fail. More
than 10 percent of projects actually fail. So if you think theres a 25-percent
chance that it fails, you spend $25 million researching a $100 million project.
This is assuming the research project is going to take this positive success to
100 percent.
You know, its not a perfect world and nobody knows these exact numbers, but
certainly the amount of forethought or research thats done in general is way,
way under what even a ballpark estimate would say the amount of forethought
should go into it.
Tim:
Do you hire people who have preexisting Excel experience? I do not, for
instance. I can read an Excel document, but if I have to create macros and so on,
I couldnt create an Excel spreadsheet that functions to save my life. How do you
train someone? Do you do it all internally or do you have a certain course you
recommend, anything like that?
Nick:
Yeah, we do it all internally. Again, macros are way, way ahead of anything were
doing. Just getting a standard Excel sheet working, you know, 10 rows and 10
columns, is fine, and you can build up from there as you learn more and as you
get more comfortable. This is going back to attitude again, saying, I cant do
macros, and I cant do VLookups, and I cant do pivot tables, but basic Excel is
none of that.
Basic Excel is just that. I have 100 door manufacturers, and Im making 10 doors.
You multiply those two cells together and get 1,000. Thats how you should
start. Lets start with just the one row of Im going to make 1,000 doors. Its just
literally one cell that says 1,000. Then you ask, Okay, whats the math behind
that?
Then you say, Okay, well, I need 100 manufacturers who are each going to make
10 doors. So you make two new cells, and you put 100 in one cell and 10 in
the other cell, and then the third cell that used to just say 1,000 you change to
be the product of those other two cells. So you say that third cell equals the first
cell times the second cell. Now if you change the number of door manufacturers
you have, the 1,000 will automatically shift.
Then you say, Okay, why do I have this many door manufacturers? Why do I
think I have 100 door manufacturers? And its like, Oh, because Im going to
hire 50 this month and 50 next month. So now that 100, instead of just being
100, is the sum of two other cells that each say 50. So you just work backwards
from there.
You just take each cell and break it down into its subcomponents, and pretty
soon you have a working Excel document. It doesnt need to be more complex
than that. Thats a great start. Youll do that for a while, and then youll be
comfortable with that, and then youll be like, What is this pivot table nonsense
everyone is talking about, and is it actually useful? Then youll go into pivot
tables.
But nobody in the history of Excel, no matter what kind of computer genius they
were, started day one and was like, How do I make macros work? or How do
I make pivot tables work? They all started this way. Thats like the big secret
of mathematicians in general. Everybody started from 1 + 1 = 2 and built their
way up. Each step is not a big step once you understand the previous step.
Tim:
Yeah, theres a gentleman by the name of Keith Devlin out of Stanford whos
very good at speaking to this topic. I always find myself nodding and agreeing
with him after every essay I read or interview I hear, and then once I look at the
possibility of delving into numbers I get cold sweats, which I need to get over.
Let me change gears just a little bit and sort of fill in the picture of who Nick
Ganju is. First, do you have a favorite book or a book youve given most as a gift?
Nick:
Yeah, it depends on which context.
Tim:
You could give a couple.
Nick:
Sure. For my software engineers, I love a book called Dont Make Me Think,
which is a book about usability and making software and user interfaces that
are friendly to people. Often you see these software engineers where they kind
of scoff Everyone has encountered this guy. Its an IT guy or software engineer
who scoffs at the novice user.
They say, Ha-ha, this guy doesnt know how to use this thing. This guy doesnt
know how to use Photoshop; hes so dumb, or He doesnt know how to connect
his computer to the network; hes so dumb. That attitude is something that
needs to vanish. If you look at successful companies like Apple, where things
just work, none of the engineers have that attitude.
A bad software company has the attitude of, If somebody doesnt know how
to use something, its their fault because that user is dumb. A good software
company has the attitude of, If they dont know how to use something, its our
fault because we did not make the software intuitive enough, and we didnt
make it simple enough for people to use.
Apple is a shining example of that, where they really go out of their way and do
extra work The engineers do immense amounts of extra work to make it easy
and simple for the user, and theyre rewarded in the market. The book I love,
which helps reinforce that user-friendly culture here at ZocDoc, is a book called
Dont Make Me Think, which is a book on usability. Its sort of a simple book. Its
like 100 to 150 pages with a lot of illustrations about good user interfaces and
bad user interfaces.
Its an easy read, but it is a treatise on why we should make usable interfaces.
Not just how we should make them, like what sort of user interface patterns
work or dont work, but also why we should do that, and this is the reason. Think
about ZocDoc. People discovering us for the first time go to the home page, and
if its complicated theyre just going to leave. If its simple, theyre going to stay
and book an appointment.
Its all very well and nice of us to scoff about Ha-ha, that user didnt know how
to use our home page, and we can be haughty and scoff about it, but we just
didnt get that appointment. Its our job to get people to book appointments.
Theres no room for being haughty about that. We need to make it accessible to
everybody.
Tim:
As a side note, just to choose something people are also often afraid of, learning
languages One of the best language teachers Ive ever encountered His name
is Michel Thomas, an amazing guy. If you can get the original recordings of the
classes he did, theyre just amazing. What he would say to the students right off
the bat was, Dont worry. Dont be nervous. Dont try hard, because if you dont
learn its my fault, not yours. Its the job of the teacher to make sure you learn.
So he sort of took the exact same approach with language learning and
unburdened the student to make it the responsibility of the teacher to make it
easy, which I think is partially why he was so spectacularly successful. It just goes
to show. He could get people up to basic speaking in all the romance languages
in about eight hours of class time. It was really amazing. So what other books
outside of Dont Make Me Think do you give most as a gift or recommend most?
Nick:
Then How to Measure Anything, which is what we talked about before, which is
about being outcome-based and getting these measurable outcomes, saying,
Im going to lose 10 pounds, as opposed to just saying, Oh, Im going to try to
lose weight. This is a great book, because people often complain that they cant
measure something. Like, How many people like our site? Do people really like
our website? How do you measure that?
Well, its measurable. You can do a survey. You can ask people. You can just look
at conversion rates, how many people actually do something on your website as
opposed to just look at it and run away. So this book I found is quite informative
on how to think about measuring things you might have thought were intangible
historically.
It also goes into these ideas about why its valuable to measure something, going
back to what I was saying about if theres a 10-percent chance of something
failing, then you should spend 10 percent of your time before doing it deciding
if its going to fail or not. Really getting that discipline about doing enough
forethought and reflection up front is another big theme of this book.
Tim:
I thought the confidence interval aspect was really fascinating as well, not
something Ive thought enough about. If youre 90 percent confident that
something is going to happen or that something is correct, what does that
actually mean? People throw that around. How certain are you? Im 75 percent
certain. How should that be reflected in your actions and preparation and so
on? I thought it was really fascinating. What is your favorite documentary or
movie? These dont have to be highbrow. It could be Legally Blonde.
Nick:
Oh, I dont know. I really like Forrest Gump a lot. Thats a common one or a
cheesy one.
Tim:
What do you like about it?
Nick:
Well, its sort of obvious symbolism, but in the beginning theres a feather floating
around, and at the end theres a feather floating around, and he kind of floats
around. Theres a football field, and he runs through it because hes fleeing from
something, and he runs faster than everybody, so then theyre like, Oh my god,
we have to get that guy to play football.
Then he plays football, and then he goes to college because he plays football. At
the end of college, some army recruiter hands him a flyer at random and says,
You should join the army, and hes like, Okay, Ill join the army. So hes just
kind of floating around on the wind there, and I think its a good lesson, where
you dont take yourself too seriously.
Things are going to happen, and the more you stress out about, Life is not going
exactly the way I planned, the more unhappy youre going to make yourself,
which is not to say you shouldnt try to do things. You should certainly try to
shape your life and all this, but dont take it too seriously or dont stress out too
much when things dont go exactly how you planned.
Tim:
I would love to hear maybe a concrete example from your life, because from all
outward indications, youve done exceptionally well with ZocDoc and elsewhere.
How do you choose how much to plan versus allow to bend to serendipity?
Because you do a bunch of other things we havent gotten into yet. The music
you take very seriously. Were going to talk about Ping-Pong, now that you
mention Forrest Gump. Lets use Ping-Pong as an example. Maybe you can
explain the Ping-Pong phenomenon, your experience with Ping-Pong.
Nick:
Sure. This goes back to what you were saying about older people wanting to
learn something. I play guitar, and people say, I wish I had started guitar when I
was a kid so I could play, and I say, Well, I started it when I was 28. Still young,
but I wasnt like a 10-year-old. Ping-Pong I learned when I was 36, and Im 38
now.
Its another interesting thing. I think people limit themselves as to what they
think they can learn, or its almost like an excuse to not have to try to learn
something. Oh, Im 36. I cant learn Ping-Pong now. Im too old. Its easy to not
try to double down and actually learn something, because you can just cast it
off and say, Oh, Im too old to learn new things.
The story of the Ping-Pong was that we purchased two or three Ping-Pong
tables for my office two years ago, and I was the worst player. I had played
like five times in my whole life, and I was the worst player out of everybody.
Everybody was laughing, and they were like, Ha-ha, because its always fun to
screw with the boss. The boss sucks at Ping-Pong. Ha-ha, were all beating the
boss at Ping-Pong. So I got motivated. Lets say I got motivated.
Tim:
Thats a good adjective.
Nick:
I threw down the gauntlet, and I said, Okay, Im going to beat everybody at this
company in 30 days.
Tim:
Okay, so you proclaimed this.
Nick:
I proclaimed it out loud, and I Photoshopped I dont know if you remember that
movie Highlander.
Tim:
Of course. There can be only one.
Nick:
Theres a photo of him with the sword in the air and the lightning is striking
the sword, and I replaced the sword with a Ping-Pong paddle. The lightning is
striking the Ping-Pong paddle, and I wrote, There can be only one. I practiced
and practiced, and in 30 days I had beaten all but two people at the company.
At the end of the bell curve there are going to be people who are exceptionally
good.
Tim:
Its like Facebook in Peter Thiels portfolio, right? Theres sort of like a power law.
Nick:
Yeah, exactly.
Tim:
The last two people are going to be monsters.
Nick:
Yeah, but then in another 30 days I beat those two people. I said in 30 days Id
beat everybody. I beat everybody but two people in 30 days, and then in 60 days
I beat everybody.
Tim:
How did you go about learning it? When you sat down and you were like, Okay,
now I run the risk of humiliating myself if I dont make this happen When you
sat down to plan it out, how did you do it?
Nick:
Thats an interesting way to put it. It never occurred to me to say, Oh, Im

humiliating myself if I didnt do this. Maybe thats illustrative of the mentality.
Until you said that now, two years later, it never crossed my mind the humiliation
of defeat or how humiliating that would be. Its more constructive to focus on
the positive of when youre going to win and not fret about the downside.
Tim:
So when you were fantasizing about gloating over the employees in the company,
how did you sit down to plan it out? What was the method? Because I actually
want to get good at Ping-Pong.
Nick:
The first thing and by far the most important thing was I went to the Ping-Pong
parlor by my house and took lessons. I was taking lessons once a week from
there, and that, of course, catapulted me in my skill level. What would happen
was in the third or fourth week, one of my coworkers came into that Ping-Pong
parlor and saw me taking lessons and spilled to the entire company that I had
been taking lessons, which I thought was another interesting reflection on life,
which is people are like, Oh, you didnt say you were going to do that thing. I
was like, I didnt say what I was going to do or what I wasnt going to do.
Tim:
Other than beat all your asses.
Nick:
Yeah, I said I was going to beat everybody. When we started ZocDoc, people said
the same thing. Theres practice management software that exists out there,
and they said, Youll never be able to integrate to these third-party practice
management systems, because theyre too antiquated. Theyre not going to
release a new version, and some of the companies are not even developing
those things anymore.
We just went and reverse engineered some of the existing ones by literally
getting copies of the software and deconstructing the file structure and really
reverse engineering it. We got it working, and all of a sudden ZocDoc started
working. All this antiquated software was effectively communicating with us.
Then those naysayers were like, Oh, you didnt say you were going to do that.
We thought you had to strike up partnerships with all these software companies.
You didnt say you were just going to get the software and reverse engineer it.
Its like, I didnt say I was or I wasnt. If youre thinking so inside the box, when
somebody thinks outside the box and gets something done, you should learn
from it.
You should be like, Oh, thats slick. You shouldnt be like, Oh, you didnt say
you were going to do that. Thats not fair. Thats another illustration of positive
attitudes versus negative attitudes. So I took these Ping-Pong lessons, and
then they go, Oh, you didnt say you were going to do that. Then they started
saying, Only you can afford lessons. The guy who came and found me in the
Ping-Pong place ran into me at the bar. Theres a bar in this Ping-Pong parlor.
He said, Yeah, not everyone can afford the lessons. I was like, How much did
you spend on these drinks? He had bought a round of drinks for four or five of
his friends, and he was like, This is $40. I was like, The Ping-Pong lesson I just
took is $35, and I havent bought any drinks, so Im going to come out of this
Ping-Pong place spending less than you have. So the first thing I did was that
and started with the proper form, and then practiced a lot when people werent
around.
Tim:
How did you practice when people werent around? Im just going to cheat here,
I guess. What are some of the most common mistakes people make playing
Ping-Pong, like the randos who have a couple beers and grab a Ping-Pong
table. When you watch it, what makes you cringe? What are you like, Oh, if they
only knew the basics, they should do this and not do that?
Nick:
Number one is the grip. A lot of people hold the Ping-Pong paddle in whatever
way theyre first inclined to do it. There are a couple schools of holding it, but
the general way youre supposed to do it is called the handshake. You sort of
extend your hand like youre about to shake somebodys hand, and then you put
the handle in that way. Its sort of hard to explain in audio.
Tim:
I think I get it. So your four fingers, not your thumb, then, are extended kind of
diagonally across the back, the flat portion, as opposed to the handle of one of
the paddles?
Nick:
Yeah, I mean you dont want to cover a large portion of the paddle with your hand,
because then your backhand will Itll hit your fingers. But thats essentially the
right idea.
Tim:
Okay, people can Google it, though. The handshake.
Nick:
Yeah, the handshake grip. The other thing is people dont have any conception
of how big a role spin is in the game. Its a very light ball, and spin has immense
effect on the ball. Your normal looping forehand is supposed to have a lot of top
spin on it. Every ball should have spin on it, and depending on what youre trying
to do, if youre trying to slice it, if youre trying to side spin, if youre trying to top
spin
If youre just hitting it flat, then youre forsaking an opportunity to do something

tricky with it that would screw up your opponent. Learning how to hit the ball
with spin is Id say the second biggest thing.
Tim:
Cool. Do you have any morning or evening rituals? Like what does the first hour
of your day look like?
Nick:
Thats an interesting question. I suppose I dont really have any rituals. I just get
up and get ready and go to work.
Tim:
You do brush your teeth, though, every morning?
Nick:
I do brush my teeth. On the days I remember I brush my teeth. No, I think Im

very fortunate in that every day has a different set of challenges. The whole
company is part of the stuff Im concerned with.
Tim:
Let me rephrase, then. Im going to push a little. I bet you do have patterns at
least, whether its weekly or daily, and Im just curious what of those patterns
contribute to your effectiveness or just output or lower your stress. Music is part
of your life, but are there things you do like one day a week or twice a week or
whatever it might be that you think allow you to be a high-functioning person
without having to be put in a mental institution every once in a while to destress.
Nick:
Yeah, certainly. Ive never really thought about it in those terms.
Tim:
Im such a negative person.
Nick:
No, its like an illustration that Im maybe not self-aware that Today I should do
something to de-stress, because my stress levels are high. There certainly are
days when the stress levels are high, and I dont think Im self-aware enough to
have, Okay, today I should meditate, or whatever. I certainly read a lot. I think I
try to rid myself of cognitive biases. Thats something that is an extremely nerdy
thing to say.
Tim:
Yeah, could you explain to people, for those people who may not be familiar,
what that means, or give an example?
Nick:
Theres a huge slew of what psychologists would call cognitive biases that humans
have. What they are are things that make a human, for whatever evolutionary
reason, averse to something they shouldnt be averse to or irrationally evaluate
things. Ill give you an example. We can go back to gambling again. Lets use
the same example. If we rolled the die and each time it was 1-5 you lost $1 and
if it was 6 you won $10, then you would play that game, because over time you
would be positive.
Tim:
Assuming I have the bank roll.
Nick:
Yeah, assuming you have the bank roll. But lets say each time you rolled that die,
instead of 1-5 losing $1 and 6 gaining $10, lets say each 1-5 you lost $10,000,
and then with a 6 you won $100,000. Now would you play that game? It turns out
that most people wouldnt play that game, even though the numbers are the
same, because the fear of losing that much money is sort of insurmountable.
Even though you should play that game. A large business would play that game.
Even a rational actor would play that game. Thats a cognitive bias called loss
aversion. You feel more bad for losing $100 than you feel good when you win
$100.
Tim:
Yeah, the sunk cost fallacy is a close cousin. You have people who will hold on to
an investment just because it has gone down a certain amount.
Nick:
Yeah, my favorite story of sunk cost is theres this tennis club where the outdoor
courts are free, but the indoor courts you have to rent, and you have to rent
them ahead of time. You have to rent them like three weeks ahead of time, and
you have to pay like $50 for the court for an hour or whatever. This is a real case.
I forget where it was.
The outdoor courts are generally considered to be far more pleasurable,
because youre outside and its warm and sunny, and the indoor courts have
uncomfortable white lights or whatever. What happens is in April it will be a
beautiful sunny day, and the people will be playing on the indoor courts, and the
outdoor courts are empty. You say, Why are you playing on the indoor court?
You should go play outside. Theyre like, Well, weve already paid for the indoor
court. We paid for it last week, so now were going to go to the indoor court and
play.

Youre like, But the outdoor court is far nicer and its empty. Why dont you
go play there? They go, Well, no, because weve paid for this one. Its a sunk
cost fallacy, and this is a cognitive bias. You should play tennis on the most
pleasurable court then. It doesnt matter if you paid $50 a week ago for the less
pleasurable court. If the nicer court is open right now, you should play on the
nicer court.
Tim:
I should mention for folks, as imperfect as Wikipedia might be, if you search List
of cognitive biases Dont search Cognitive bias. Search List of cognitive
biases. Theres a long list of these types of cognitive biases, and there are also a
lot of books that explore this, like Think Twice. There are sort of two approaches
here or two ways you can minimize the damage of cognitive biases or extract
value from them.
The first is correcting those cognitive biases or at least becoming aware of them.
The second is harnessing your inherent cognitive biases for something positive.
For instance, there are cases where experiments have been done with, say, gym
memberships. Having someone pay on a monthly basis for a gym membership
is not nearly as effective as having them overpay in advance, and then giving
them a refund of X amount for each Y number of times they go to the gym,
and harnessing that type of prepayment and loss aversion and sunken cost to
incentivize somebody to do something positive they wouldnt otherwise do.
Anyway, this is also something I like to nerd out about. Whats a cognitive bias
that you overcame or something that youre currently working on? Anything in
particular?
Nick:
Yeah, all of these things are things that are very innate in everybody, so at some
point I did have sunk cost fallacy. At some point I did have loss aversion and
these kinds of things. I think another big one that everyone has is anchoring,
and I certainly had that before, which is in a negotiation when its not clear what
the price of something should be, you should just throw out a huge number.
Like if you wanted me to be your math mentor, what should an hourly rate be
between you and me? I have no idea. Ive never taught for a living. You and I
would have no idea. So in that silent moment, when you and I are like, What do
you think the price should be? Im going to blurt out, $1,000 an hour. Its not
because I think I deserve that. Its because now Ive anchored the conversation.
Saying a huge number like that has destroyed your brain. So now when we
settle on a final number, its going to be much higher than it would have been
otherwise. Thats just a cognitive bias. Like you said, you use these to your
advantage. This is a situation in which I can use that to my advantage.
Tim:
Especially because I suck at math on top of that.
Nick:
If I hadnt done that, the final price might have been $25 an hour, and since I
threw out that huge number, it has screwed up your brain now, and the final
price is instead going to be $40 an hour because Ive done the anchoring thing.
So thats a great one. For all you listeners out there, if youre about to go into a
negotiation, try this out.
It only works when theres not a preset reference point. If youre like, Im going
to sell you my used Toyota, and how much should it be? and a ballpark should
be five grand, I cant be like, A hundred grand. It just sounds stupid and rude.
It only works when theres not a good expectation from either party.
Tim:
That is a good point, though, that negotiating is a fantastic way. Thats probably
the most systematic way Ive tried to address my own self-defeating instincts,
would be another way to look at biases. Secrets of Power Negotiating is a great
book. The audio is even better. Getting Past No I think is a fantastic book, better
than Getting to Yes. Have you read any particular books on negotiating?
Nick:
Actually, yeah. The first book that came to mind for me was Getting to Yes. I love
Getting to Yes. A lot of important things people misunderstand, and Ive just
furthered that with the example I just said, is that not all negotiation is a zerosum game. I think Getting to Yes is a great exposition of that.
Tim:
I think youd enjoy Getting Past No. It was actually written after Getting to Yes by
one of the coauthors of Getting to Yes. When you think of the word successful or
hear the word successful, whos the first person who comes to mind and why?
Nick:
I think Id say Bill Gates. Maybe thats a clich, obvious answer.
Tim:
It depends on the reasons you give, I guess.
Nick:
Hes in tech. He is/was a computer nerd. Im a computer nerd. You know, he

built an immense and one of the greatest technology companies ever, and its
something I aspire to do. Not only that, but then in the second chapter of his life
he has now gone and done all this great philanthropy, and its something I would
love to follow in his footsteps on when retirement time comes for me, to go and
give back and do these philanthropic efforts.
Tim:
If you were to follow Bill Gates path in a lot of those respects that you just
mentioned, what are the things about Bill Gates that if you could opt out of
emulating you would opt out of?
Nick:
I dont know. This is a tough one. I guess he was very rough on his own
employees within Microsoft, and I think at a younger age I was also very abrupt
and susceptible to bouts of anger and whatever. I think Ive come a long way at
this company to be a lot nicer. I had a couple of start-ups in my twenties, and
I think I was very mercurial in those start-ups, but by the time I had started
ZocDoc I had sort of ironed all that out, and its much better to be a nice person
when youre managing things.
Tim:
I like mercurial. Thats a good adjective. It makes me think of a comedian named

Jim Gaffigan. I think he said at some point (Im paraphrasing), Yeah, you know,
if youre a Latin guy or woman and youre really angry, people say, Wow, its just
that Latin temper, and hes like, But if I behave that way, people just say, Wow,
that guy is a dick. But mercurial. I like that choice.
Nick:
Yeah, its just my Indian passion coming through.
Tim:
Right, exactly. I cant pull off Scandinavian passion. It doesnt usually get
accepted. So on the flip side, whats the first face that comes to mind when you
think punchable?
Nick:
Oh, I dont know.
Tim:
Oh, come on. It doesnt have to be a real person. Ill give you an out.
Nick:
I dont know. Maybe the Jersey Shore people, the people who are famous for
being famous, not the people who have actually contributed.
Tim:
Who built stuff.
Nick:
Yeah, and built stuff.
Tim:
What are the most frequently played albums or artists on your iPhone or
computer?
Nick:
Well, I love the Beatles a lot, and I think the more you listen to them, the more
complexity and stuff you discover as you listen to their stuff over and over,
which is great. A lot of pop songs are really simple, and the first time you heard
it youve heard everything there is to hear. The Beatles early stuff was like that.
It was really simple and about chasing girls and stuff. Then later on they got
really, really sophisticated, and theres a lot of lovely complexity to the music.
As you know, I play music myself, and I understand quite a bit about music
theory. Really understanding why things sound good and why this chord sounds
great here and this kind of stuff is all, once again, math. Not complicated math.
Its simple math. But I love music theory, and those guys were the kings of that.
Tim:
What would be two or three tracks that you would suggest people listen to to
explore that?
Nick:
I like Across the Universe a lot. Once you understand music theory, you can
even see which ones were written by whom. Like Paul McCartney always puts
the four minor in his songs. Thats a music theory term. Hes a big fan of putting
the four minor in his writing, so when you hear a four minor come up, youre
like, I bet this one was written by McCartney, and then you go look. I like
Across the Universe, which does have a four minor in it. I like Something by
George Harrison. Certainly the more psychedelic ones, like Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds is great. I Am the Walrus is great. Theres really no end to
Tim:
To the list?
Nick:
Yeah.
Tim:
If you had 1,000 people, non-musicians, people who have listened to music but
never played an instrument, and you wanted to get them hooked on learning
more about music and potentially playing music, what would you have them
read, watch, listen, buy, whether its an instrument or otherwise?

You are in large part responsible for getting me interested in hand drumming,
but Im not sure if thats the best gateway drug for people with music. What
would you have them listen to or buy or play with or do? If you had 1,000 people
and you had like $1 million on the line Im not sure what the minimal threshold
is for you to make it
Nick:
I would do a business case and say, I can train this many people No. I think
that probably the guitar is the easiest.
Tim:
Interesting. I wouldnt have guessed that. Why is that?
Nick:
Well, for a couple of reasons. Its probably not the easiest to play in terms of
Its kind of hard to hold a chord, and obviously with a piano you can just plunk
the keys. But the second you get over the hump of learning three or four chords
on guitar, youre off to the races, because you can play so many pop songs with
just three or four chords on guitar. Within a few weeks you can already start to
be playing simple songs.
Like Twist and Shout, for example, to go back to the Beatles, is just three easy
chords, so you can play Twist and Shout in a week or two really well. Then as
you learn each new song, pick a song with one extra chord in it. This next song
has the same three chords as Twist and Shout but has one minor chord in it,
so now youre learning that new song. Youre leveraging 75 percent you already
know because its the other three chords, and youre only picking up one new
chord.
Then as you pick new songs, just add one new chord each time, and your
repertoire of songs you know grows, and the repertoire of chords you know also
grows. So its really easy to get into that groove where its fun to play because
youre playing songs everybody likes, and it doesnt feel like work or rehearsal or
practice. Each one you just have to practice one new chord, and over the course
of a year youll learn a ton of songs.
Tim:
Now as a couple of resources for folks potentially One is just Googling Axis of
Awesome, who does an amazing example of showing with three or four chords
how you can play almost every pop song youve ever heard.
Nick:
That chord progression is called one, five, six, four.
Tim:
Well, there you go. People could just Google that. Chord progression one, five,
six, four.
Nick:
In the music theory notation it would be one, five, six, four. They play like a
hundred different songs, and its really hilarious.
Tim:
Yeah, theyre amazing. For someone to add one chord at a time without having
to manually figure it out themselves and kind of reinvent the wheel, is there
any particular approach you would suggest in doing that? Any way you would
Google for that to figure it out or a YouTube approach or teachers?
Nick:
Yeah, theres an extreme wealth of online diagrams and YouTube videos about
how to do these things.
Tim:
What would you search for to whittle it down? I think its a paradox of choice
challenge for a lot of people.
Nick:
I dont know, really. For the basic chords, anything will do. For example, a D
major chord is just three of your fingers, your index, middle, and fourth finger,
and then you have to put them on the bottom three strings of the guitar on the
second fret, third fret, and second fret. Its just that. Its not more complicated
than that.
Theres no specific form you have to do when you approach the guitar or
whatever. You just have to slam your three fingers down on those three frets, on
those three strings, and youll play a D chord. So at that level, you just need to
know which fingers to put on which strings, where, and its not an intense form
exercise or anything.
Tim:
Cool. Last question for now in this installment. If you could give your 20-year-old
self advice in retrospect, what would it be? It doesnt have to be one thing.
Nick:
Oh man.
Tim:
Or just 20-year-olds in general. It could be you yourself, but it could be in general.
Nick:
Sure. Id say certainly when youre young, do the entrepreneurial things, because
those are the things that will get you Youll learn the most by far. Like I said, I
did two start-ups in my twenties. Neither one was a great hit, but the amount I
learned in one year of doing a start-up was like seven years of working at a big
company.
When youre young and youve just finished college or whatever and you have
this freedom and youre not encumbered with a spouse and kids you have to
pay for and you can live on ramen noodles and all this stuff, thats the time to go
and take this entrepreneurial risk. Even if everything you do is a complete flop,
if you spend 5 years doing it, you will have learned like 35 years worth of career
progression and life skills in those 5 years of just risking and failing and risking
and failing. Even if its a total flop, the person you come out as at the end of it is
far ahead of if you had just gone and worked at a big company.
Tim:
On that point, for people who are graduating now or considering a shift, a career
change Im not sure if this is age dependent, but lets just say for the sake of
argument that theyre single or they just have a very low burn rate. How would
you suggest people choose their first gig or their next gig? I know its a highly
personal thing, but lets just say people graduating college in the near future,
for the sake of simplicity.
Nick:
Yeah, just figure out a market need, like anything you have in your day-to-day
world that sucks. Is it hard to find parking? Is the movie theater dirty? And just
try to solve that problem. I think thats a great way to get started. Youll learn a
lot. Youll create a website where it shows you which movie theaters are dirty,
and youll realize, Wow, theres no revenue from this website. I cant make any
money telling people what movie theaters are dirty.
But thats a learning by itself. You come away from that, and youre like, Okay,
I need to think about things with actual revenue opportunities. Youll do that
iterative process, and youll flop a bunch, but thats fine. Thats the learning
process. Its the school of hard knocks, and youre going to learn a ton just doing
that kind of stuff.
Tim:
Awesome. Well, Nick, I think this is a great place to stop for now. Im sure well
have a round two in person with some food and some wine.
Nick:
Sounds great. A lot of fun.
Tim:
Where can people learn more about you or ZocDoc? Where would you like people
to check what youre up to?
Nick:
Certainly Im on the About Us page of ZocDoc, but more importantly, if you need
a doctor, it really is the best place to find a doctor. So zocdoc.com. For myself, I
mean, I dont have a shrine to me on the web anywhere. I have a LinkedIn page.
You can find me on the LinkedIn page, I suppose. But ZocDoc is my pride and
joy, so go there.
Tim:
Awesome. Well, I am going to cut my teeth on some Ping-Pong. We may have to

have a showdown next time we get together, Balls of Fury style. Awesome, man.
Thanks very much, and I will talk to you soon.
Nick:
Awesome. Thanks a lot.
Tim:
All right, buddy. Bye-bye.
Nick:
Bye.
EPISODE 50:
PETER ATTIA
Tim Ferriss:
This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen and Main. Dont worry about the
spelling, all you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around
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me the only shirt that I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves
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no ironing, no steaming, no nothing, walk out, and you could probably wear this
thing for a week straight, or make it your only dress shirt and take it on trips
for weeks at a time, never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through
it. Youve got to check these things out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all
spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and if you order one of their dress
shirts in the next week, you will get a Henley shirt for free.
Thats worth about $60.00. So put them both in the cart, use the code TIM,
T-I-M, and you will get the Henley shirt for free. Check it out, fourhourworkweek.
com/shirts and youll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that
Ive been traveling with. The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99
Designs. 99 Designs is your one-stop shop for anything graphic design related.
You need a logo, you need a website, you need a business card or anything else,
you get an original design from designers around the world who submit drafts
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you want to give it a shot. Thats 99designs.com/Tim.
Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss and I am walking
in flip-flops down the sidewalk in San Francisco where the birds are singing. I
just passed by, kind of headficked and slalomed around. There appears to be
a homeless guy or startup founder doing slow-motion karate chops on a tree
either tripping his balls off or coming up with the next billion dollar company,
who knows. In any case, all is right with the world. This episode is a follow up
episode with Dr. Peter Attia. This is by popular demand. As soon as many of
you listen to Episode 50, which was the first episode with Peter, that was Dr.
Peter Attia on Life Extension, Drinking Jet Fuel, Ultra Endurance, Human and
More, immediately after that you asked for a round two. So many many of you
submitted hundreds of questions. Those were voted up, and he answers the
top 10 to 15 of those in this episode. Why does it always sound like Beirut
during wartime in San Francisco? God dammit people.
Anyway, this is a really really fun episode. Its hilariously awkward for Peter in
the first few minutes. Give him four to five minutes to really get into the flow and
I promise you this is well worth a listen. I learned so much about blood testing,
and I know a lot about it already. I learned so much about the supplements he
takes and why and the supplements he does not take and why, how he thinks
about long term ketosis, the value or lack of value in it, and on and on and on.
So please enjoy. You can always find show notes, links, all that good stuff at
fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, and without further ado, please have fun with
Peter Attia.
Dr. Peter Attia:
Im going to do something that feels incredibly awkward so I ask you to bear

with me, which is basically sit here and have a monolog with myself for the next
hour or so as I answer at least a subset of these questions. So hopefully this
isnt as awkward for you as it is for me. All right, so basically looking through a
list of a couple hundred questions that you have posed, and what Im going to
try to do is address about ten or 11 or so. So lets start. First question, which is
submitted by someone that says, Cinema. I dont know if thats the persons
name, but it says, What are the top five biological tests, blood work, hormones,
etc., everyone should get? this is a tough question, because I dont know the
answer to it in the sense that I think there are different, you know, the top five
for one person are probably different than the top five for the other. So Id have
to know a little bit more about the risks that a person faces, right? Meaning, are
they more at risk for cardiovascular disease? Are they more at risk for cancer?
Are they more at risk for neurodegenerative disease down the line? Or are
they dealing with an acute problem at the moment? You know, they have really
horrible energy or really poor sleep or excess amount of body fat or something.
And so you have to know a little bit about which of those things the person wants
to determine if you could only have five tests. Now with that said, let me take a
crack at it through my lens, which is a lens of preventing death. So these arent
necessarily the tests youd order if your goal is to make somebody feel better in
six weeks or six months even, but this is probably the five most important things
I would order to mitigate the long-term death, basically to extend longevity. So
the first thing Id want to know is Id want to know somebodys APOE genotype,
and the reason Id want to know that is though it doesnt determine your fate, it
certainly helps us understand out of the gate what diseases you may be more
or less at risk for. So the APOE gene codes for proteins that are involved in the
metabolism of cholesterol, but in particular they play a really important role in
the development of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimers disease. And so
knowing somebodys APOE status allows you to determine what you need to do
to mitigate those risks, both through nutrition, but also through pharmacology.
Theres nuance to this as well. Somebody with an APOE-4 4 or APOE-3 4,

which are variants on the wild type which is a 3 3, these are people I will always
want to make sure, for example, that they have desmosterol levels that are
maintained. Desmosterol is a cholesterol that we synthesize. Id also want
to be thoughtful before putting them on medication that could interrupt with
cholesterol synthesis in the brain and things like that. Okay, the next thing Id
want to know, and these two sort of go hand in hand is LDL particle number,
via NMR, and LP a particle number, also via NMR. So NMR is a technology that
can count the number of lip protein particles in the blood, and the LDL particle,
as its name suggests, counts all of the LDL particle. So an LDL particle is a
particle that is defined as a lipoprotein with an APOE-B 100 APOE lipoprotein on
it. These are the dominant particles that traffic cholesterol in the body, both to
and from the heart, by the way, and to and from the liver, but they sort of gain
their fame because these are the ones that traffic sterols into the subepithelial
space where it leads to atherosclerosis. And we know, I would say beyond any
shadow of a doubt, but some might dispute that. We know beyond any shadow
of a doubt that the higher the number of those particles, the greater you are at
risk for cardiovascular disease.
So I like to know that, and again, that tells me where to focus on reducing it.
Some people have that number elevated because of genetic reasons, and other
cases its very lifestyle driven. Now the subset of that is this thing called LP
a. So LP a is another LDL particle, but it also has another apolipoprotein on it
called apolipoprotein a. Now I know what youre thinking, which is, Could they
come up with worse names? And the answer is, Maybe. But nevertheless,
the LP a particle is perhaps the most atherogenic particle in the body, and while
its included in the total of LDL particle numbers, I definitely want to know if
somebody has an elevated LPL a particle number, because that in and of itself,
independent of the total LDL particle number, is an enormous predictor of risk,
and something weve got to act on, but we do so indirectly. In other words, diet,
drugs dont seem to have any effect on that number, so we pull the lever harder
on other things.
Lets see, thats one, two, three. Okay, the next thing I think its worth doing
on pretty much everybody, if youre trying to evaluate their risk of metabolic
disease or just figure out whats going on at the moment, is a very simple test
called an OGTT, an oral glucose tolerance test. And while simple in concept, its
sort of a pain to administer which is why most people dont get it done the way
I would like it done, which is a time zero, time one hour, and time two hour test
that looks at insulin and glucose. So out of the gate you have a glucose and
insulin level, you drink the 75 gram sort of nasty cola-like drink that contains 75
grams of glucose in it, and then one and two hours later you have this repeat
blood draw. And why I think this test is important, especially is what you see at
the one hour mark. A lot of people skip that and they just go straight to the two
hour mark, but that one hour one is where we see the early warning signs. So a
lot of people dont meet the criteria for diabetes, meaning they have a normal
hemoglobin A1C and they dont have a glucose over 200 in response to this test,
but when they start to get very elevated levels of insulin at that one hour mark,
and elevated is sort of a subjective term. I would define elevated as anything
over 40 to 50 on the insulin, and thats subject to the lab, thats based on the lab,
that I use.
I know that that person is hyper insulinemic even if not while fasting, and thats
a harbinger for sort of the metabolic problems that were trying to ward off.
Lets see, one more. I think it would be a toss-up for me. It really does depend
on what the person is at risk for. I like to see a persons IGF 1 level, insulin like
growth factor one. We know that this is a pretty strong driver of cancer, so if we
have a person who is at risk for cancer or who themselves is a survivor of cancer,
we really want to do everything we can through diet, both the type of food and
the amount of food that they consume, to keep IGF 1 levels low. So I guess that
would probably make my top five list. Okay, next question. This is by someone
named Bezo. It says, In the fitness community, it is widely accepted that carbs
after workouts help enable protein synthesis with the anabolic window, but
Ive seen studies disprove this. What have you seen and what do you know
in regards to this theory? So okay, so the question basically is should people
eat carbohydrates following weight training to promote anabolism within the
muscle? At least, thats the way Ill try to answer the question. So I think the short
answer is it depends what you are optimizing for. So if you are a body builder, or
if you are somebody whos primary objective is to increase hypertrophy, which is
just the technical term for muscle size, then yes, I think there almost assuredly
is a benefit from consuming carbohydrates and/or whey protein.
Remember, whey protein is going to spike insulin as well. Its an already

relatively simple form of amino acids thats quite insulogenic. And so Im not
Actually, thats not true. I am actually aware of a study that I believe tried to
compare carbohydrate versus a whey isolate, and unfortunately I cant recall
the difference between them if there was one. But the point is, theyre both
quite insulogenic. So yeah, if your goal in life is to sort of increase the size
of your muscles, then I think thats going to be a positive thing to do. Keep
in mind that for some time now body builders have used insulin, just straight
up insulin, as a performance enhancing drug. I say performance enhancing,
because really, I dont know what performance means in body building. But in
as much as theyll use anabolic steroids, theyll certainly use insulin in a building
phase, not a cutting phase. Because remember, insulin is anabolic to fat and
muscle. So unlike testosterone, which is of course anabolic only to muscle and
its catabolic to fat. So whats the flip side of that? The flip side of that is if
youre somebody like me, for example, who, I mean, could not care less about
the size of his muscles, then no, in fact, the answer is I dont do that.
In fact, Im at the point now, you didnt ask this question but I guess since Im on
the topic, I dont even consume whey protein post-workouts anymore. So when
I lift weights, which I do twice a week, I do it basically fasted, just drinking water,
and post-workout I consume nothing. Now what I acknowledge is I am missing
out on the opportunity to increase muscle size, muscle mass, potentially even
strength with the slight breakdown of muscle, but you see, I dont care about
that as much as I compare about a few long-term things Im tweaking that
involve some sort of caloric restriction that I like to do. So again, neither one
is right nor wrong, but its really a function of what youre optimizing for. Okay
next question. This is by someone named Hapax. It says, In the previous Tim
Ferriss interview, you mentioned discussing what supplements to take, but ran
out of time. What are your top 10 supplement recommendations, and do you
describe to periodization even for everyday supplements such as vitamin D? I
mean, Im certainly happy to answer what supplements I take. Im not sure how
relevant it is to the listener because theres few things that I believe just taking
out of the gate for everybody. In other words I sort of, with my patients at least,
take a very tailored approach to what they should or shouldnt take. So what do
I take? I take vitamin D, I take a baby aspirin, I take methyl folate, I take B-12,
I take EPA and DHA Omega 3 fatty acids, and I take berberine. I think thats all
I take, and you could argue baby aspirin is not really a supplement, but I count
it as one I guess. Okay, so why do I take those? What do I not take? I do not
take a multivitamin, I do not take vitamin A, I do not take vitamin C, I do not take
vitamin E, I do not take vitamin K, although I have flirted with vitamin K a little bit
and I have some interesting thoughts on that for certain people.
Oh, I also take a probiotic, which I do actually periodize, and I actually deliberately
cycle the dose of that throughout the week. So on the ones I do take, the reason
I take them is basically all Im managing to certain levels. So I have target levels
for vitamin D, and I cant get to them without supplementing, so I supplement.
I have an MTHFR mutation, which means, and these are not that uncommon by
the way, so its not like Im a two-headed freak, but that mutation means I dont
do a good job methylating folic acid, and so as a result, I take methylated folate
to get around that problem. I also cant seem to get my B12 levels to where I
want them to be. I can get them into the green zone, but I aspire to actually
have a slightly higher level, so I need a very low dose of that supplement. And
again, to the point about periodization, I do take my vitamin D every day. I
sometimes double up on days that I know are going to be brutally stressful. On
the methyl folate and the B12 and I also take B6 for another reason, I do actually
rotate those, but thats less because I believe that periodization is necessary
and more just to minimize the number of pills I take a day, and because I dont
need them every day I generally only take them twice a week.
And again, Im doing this to titrate to a very specific dose. So Im really using my
blood levels to determine how much or how little I need of these. I think the only
one I havent addressed is berberine and baby aspirin. So baby aspirin I take
because my aspirin works test lights up. What that means is, if Im not on a baby
aspirin, I pee into a cup, the lab does a test on that to determine how sticky my
platelets are, the answer is very sticky. So a baby aspirin, which is just a quarter
dose of an aspirin, actually inhibits the functionality of platelets in a way that
doesnt lead to massive bleeding if I get a cut, but takes the edge off that
feature. And actually what I will do there is I will increase that to a full aspirin,
meaning four baby aspirin, any day that Im doing a cross-country flight, which
is usually once or twice a week. So most days Im just taking a baby aspirin, any
day that Im flying, because I want to minimize even the smallest chance of a
blood clot, Ill take four of those.
Okay, so the last one is berberine. So berberine is a vegetable extract that

actually is kind of a natural mimicker of metformin on one hand, which is to
say it activates AMP kinase, and what the net effect of that is, and Im sorry Im
going a little quick. We could obviously spend an hour just talking about why
AMP kinase activation is important in health, but suffice it to say one of the net
outcomes is the suppression of hepatic glucose output, which maintains lower
levels of insulin and therefor lower levels of IGF 1, which is something I place a
huge premium on. The other thing that berberine does that metformin does not
do is it inhibits PSCK9. So PCSK9 plays a very important role in the metabolism
or breakdown or processing of lipoproteins, those LDL particles, and about 10
to 15 percent of the population if I have my numbers right, and I might be a
bit off, tend to over express PCSK9, and we have a genetic test for this that I
frankly dont do that often in people. I tend to just put them on berberine, and if
their LDL particle level drops on berberine by 10 to 20 percent, then I know that
theyre an over expressor of PCSK9. If they have no response, then I know that
theyre not, but they still may benefit from it from a glycemic and insulin level.
So anyway, thats where I am on the supplement front. Okay, next question.

This is from Gabbi in Toronto, my hometown no less. The evidence both pro
and anti keto seems conflicting. Should the ketogenic diet be seen as a shortterm intervention or a long-term lifestyle, and what can be done to minimize any
potential downside to keeping it long-term? Gabbi, this is a question, I think Im
selecting all the questions I dont know the answers to, because, well, okay. So
lets start with the hardest part of this. Is there evidence of any society that has
subsided, or any group of our ancestors or any culture, that has lived entirely on
a ketogenic diet in perpetuity? Now this is a controversial topic, and Im not an
expert in it, so I dont know the answer, right? But Ive read everything that I can
get my hands on, and I think Im comfortable saying I dont know.
Now historically, people have suggested that the Inuit lived perpetually in a
ketogenic state. Im not convinced that thats correct. I think they probably
spent part of their time in ketosis but may not have been in ketosis full time.
The other culture that often gets mentioned as a full time culture of ketosis are
the Maasai, though Ive never seen supporting evidence for that, and I have my
doubts because the Maasai, to the best of my understanding, bordered more
on carnivore than omnivore, and it would be, to my estimation, very difficult
for a pure carnivore to be in ketosis, because thats just too much protein
consumption and as you probably know, if youve experimented with ketosis,
youve got to really be, you have to titrate that protein level down quite low in
addition to the carbohydrate level. So basically, lets take that off the table as,
do I have any sort of natural experiment that I can point to that says, Being in
ketosis in perpetuity is the way to go? And I think the answer is I personally
dont. If somebody does, itd be great to post about it and post to some sort of
credible literature on it. So assuming the answer is no, that doesnt mean the
answer to your question is no, right?
So when we start with what are the pro and anti keto data, I guess the question
is theyre all surrogate data, right? In other words, nobodys done a longterm study that says, Were going to take a group of people, were going to
randomize them, half of them are going to go on a ketogenic diet, half of them
are going to go on a fill-in-the-blank diet, and lets see who lives longer. So
wed want to do that, and we havent done that. And even if we did that in
animals, by the way, its not clear it would be a particularly relevant experiment,
given especially mice, which we have a fondness for doing experiments in. Mice,
being natural herbivores, probably wouldnt be a great model for this. So when
people say this study is pro versus anti keto, theyre usually doing it based on
proxies. You know, body weight, cholesterol numbers, triglycerides, markers of
insulin sensitivity, etc. And youre right, I think the data are generally conflicting,
though I would always sort of, on any data, challenge people to make sure they
read more than the abstract. So Ive read probably a dozen studies that claim
to be ketogenic diet studies, and then you read the methods and you look at
the results and you realize no, actually these were studies that were putting
patients on a low-carbohydrate diet, and these people werent in ketosis.
Their beta-hydroxybutyrate levels didnt register high enough to really answer

the question youre asking. And so if they find no difference between the arms,
I dont know what conclusion we can draw from that. So, I mean, we could
obviously spend a lot more time just discussing the sort of literature on this. I
think others have already documented that pretty well, right? So there are a
lot of documented examples of ketogenic diets being very safe and effective
treatment at least over the short-term, by that I mean less than a year, for type II
diabetes and obesity. I dont really follow the keto literature that closely, so Ive
also seen sort of bio marker studies on this, but I dont think Ive seen anything
longer than a year. So what does this mean to you? Well, I spent two and a half
years in ketosis, and people ask me why am I not in ketosis today? So I havent
been in ketosis for a little over a year, at least not consistently.
I do get into ketosis at least once a week, just generally as a result of a fast
that Im doing, but long gone appear to be the days when, for just months and
months and months I would not get out of ketosis. I would just continue to
consume very very low amounts of carbohydrates, very very modest amounts
of protein, and high amounts of fat. I will say this; I actually felt at my best on a
ketogenic diet, and to this day I feel at my best when Im either consuming hypo
amounts of calories coupled with a ketogenic type of calorie, or not. But the
main reason I think for me to move away from it to basically a diet today, which
is sort of higher in carbohydrate than it has been historically but still lower in
carbohydrate than it would be to the general population, is basically one of just
a kind of craving Ive really had for more fruits and vegetables. So doing that,
its pretty hard to stay in a ketogenic diet, and I think that going forward, I would
probably stay in a diet that maybe cycles into and out of ketosis, but its less
about me believing that theres a long-term harm to being in ketosis, and more
about me sort of scratching other itches in terms of experiencing a broader
array of foods.
Thats not as crazy as it sounds, maybe having a bit of a reminder of what it

is I enjoy about that. So I apologize. I feel like I did a pretty crappy job on
this question. I dont think I answered your question about the downsides to
keeping it long-term, which I think is an important question. I guess the point is,
I dont know the answer to that at the population level, but at an individual level,
its pretty clear when a ketogenic diet doesnt work. And I guess I should make
that point as well. Ive probably put two dozen patients on ketogenic diets for
whom it became obvious to me within two months if not less that this was not a
good diet for this person. So when you put somebody on a ketogenic diet and
their CRP goes through the roof and they actually increase adiposity and their
homocysteine goes up and their uric acid goes up and their LDL particle number
goes up, I mean, Im having a hard time justifying why this person should be on
a ketogenic diet. And I think for some people thats just the case. I have some
hypotheses about why, but I dont know the answer.
And so if youre not in that camp, if everything is moving in the right direction,
if youre in the camp that I was in where my biomarkers are at their finest when
Im on a ketogenic diet, I guess Id ask whats the alternative? Is it going back
to a standard American diet? Is it cycling in and out? That probably gives you
your answer. Okay, next question. This is by I cant read it. Someone in New
York. In the previous talk, you mentioned you perform bloodwork on yourself
at home. Do you see this becoming possible for the average person? What
worthwhile test metrics are possible or on the horizon for average self-testing
people? Do I see this being possible for the average person? Probably not.
And just to be clear, its not like I have the lab inside my house. I just have the
centrifuges and all of the equipment, so any day that I want to draw my blood
I just have my wife draw my blood and I spin it and package it and send it to
my lab with my paperwork, and I guess because Im a doctor I can do that, so
I guess you would need a slip from your doctor if you wanted to do that in a
centrifuge and someone to draw your blood.
So in essence, yes. I think anybody who is obsessive enough could do what Im

doing if they had somebody who could draw their blood, they had a doctor who
was willing to give them an unlimited number of lab slips, and they had all of the
equipment to do this. That said, and I dont think thats that interesting, by the
way. I think what is interesting is stuff that a company like Theranos is doing. So
Theranos is a company in the Bay Area founded by a woman named Elizabeth
Holmes, who I dont know by the way, but shes sort of this young prodigy. And
basically what theyre doing is, at least to the best of my understanding, is
creating this sort of black box that allows you to use just a thimble, less than
a thimble, really the amount of blood you would use in a blood glucose meter.
But instead of just getting glucose or just getting ketones, which is pretty much
what we get on those tests today, to get just a much much broader array of
tests. And I think the question is, will those devices be the things that people
own?
I think not, but I think their goal is to have those things potentially at a CVS,
where you can go in and you can sort of put a finger prick of blood onto a
strip and you can get a wide array of things. So I think those things arent that
far away. I do wonder if one of the bigger hurdles to that is sort of the legal
stuff. Obviously if you see what the FDA and 23 and Me have gone through,
you could argue, Well okay, thats just because its genetic testing. Would the
government be as concerned if people are getting blood tests without their
physician acting as middle men or women? I dont know the answer to that
question. Its certainly beyond my pay grade. Now your second question is
what worthwhile tests or metrics are possible on the horizon for the average
person? Well, I think the sky is the limit here. Again, now I differentiate between
the average person versus me. I mean, I just think of this more broadly as whats
on the horizon? I mean, I think everything. I just read a paper a week ago that
showed pretty convincing data again, its epidemiologic data, or its cohortbased data rather, not epidemiologic suggesting that plasma levels of APOE
might be actually more indicative of the risk of neurodegenerative disease and
Alzheimers disease in APOE genotype. Thats amazing to me.
So the first thing I did when I read that paper was I sent it to the chief scientific
officer and lab director of Health Diagnostics Laboratory, to find out, Hey, do
you think youll be able to offer this test one day? And to my surprise, he
responded and said, Yes. We collect this data, we just didnt know anybody
cared about it. And so I find myself often surprised when I want something done
that somebody has already thought of it and theyre just waiting to know that
theres a demand for it. Okay, next question. This is from Craig in LA. Ive heard
from several well-respected people in biology and medicine that not drinking
alcohol at all may be the best bio-hack out there. Do you agree? I may cry.
You know Craig, I was just asked this question at a conference last week, and Ill
try to remember what I said, though Im sure I was funnier and more eloquent
then than I will be able to be now. Ill start with something that may be viewed
as controversial. I have never seen convincing evidence that the addition of
alcohol confers a health benefit. So I know what youre thinking. Oh, come on,
Ive heard that if you can drink two glasses of red wine a day, it reduces your risk
of heart disease, blah blah blah blah blah. And Im saying I dont buy those data.
I think that for some people, ethanol alcohol, up to reasonable doses, no harm.
And you have to determine what your toxicity level is. Obviously at some dose
everybody is harmed by it, and in that sense we come back to this model of what
I call the toxicity model. So let me explain that, and then Ill come back to what
the implication is for Craig and everybody else whos wondering if they should
drink. So in pharmacology theres this idea, and Ive blogged about this once,
but since I doubt anyones read it, Ill revisit it here. So in pharmacology, we
have this thing called an LD 50. LD stands for lethal dose, to 50 percent of the
population. So lets take a drug that everybody understands, like Tylenol. So
Tylenol has an LD 50. Now we dont know exactly what it is in humans, because
the only way you can find that out is to try and kill a whole bunch of people
with Tylenol and figure out what was the dose that killed half of them, but we
know exactly what it is in animals, and its been extrapolated that in humans,
its probably between 10 and 20 grams. So lets just for arguments sake say its
15 grams. What that means is, if you had a room of 1,000 people and you gave
everybody 30 extra strength Tylenol, in three days half of them would be dead.
And I say in three days, because thats about how long it takes to undergo liver
failure and death from an acute ingestion of Tylenol.
So okay, so thats interesting, but how does that pertain to our alcohol question?
Well, if you took that same group of 1,000 people and you gave everybody five
grams, you might actually knock off one person. You wouldnt probably in 1,000
because thats too small a sample, but play with me on this one, right? If you
gave six grams, you might knock off a few more. By the time you get up to 15
grams, remember, youve knocked off half the population, and if you crank that
up to 20 grams, maybe 2/3 of the people have died, and if you went up to 40
grams, maybe youll kill everybody except two people. So theres a distribution.
It is often not bell-shaped, by the way, but nevertheless there is a probability
distribution that basically says, Eventually youll kill everybody with anything,
and by the way, theres an LD 50 for water, theres an LD 50 for oxygen. Theres
nothing thats not toxic if given in high enough doses. So lets go back to the
ethanol question. So theres a pretty well-known LD 50 for alcohol, but thats for
what I call acute toxicity.
Thats not really what this question is about, but I want to just make sure I clear
this up, because this will be a confusing point. So the acute toxicity is, if we
have 1,000 people in a room and we make everybody drink 24 beers, assuming
they dont puke, or we could just say, Look, wed give it to them intravenously,
so we take that off the equation, yeah, youll kill some fraction of them. So
now lets take that off the table and say, No, no, were not talking about acute
toxicity. Were talking about chronic toxicity. So at a high enough level of
alcohol, everybody is going to get cirrhosis, right? But interestingly at a low
level of alcohol, long before people are getting drunk, there are a lot of people
who experience horrible side-effects. Now, the second point worth making here
is its not always due to the alcohol. So there are a non-trivial subset of the
population for whom the tannins within wine cause vasomotor effects, horrible
flushing, horrible GI effects, and basically anything over about a sip of wine and
theyre not doing well. And I dont mean, like, theyre ill, I just mean theyre
having basically an inflammatory response thats sub-optimal. And the same is
true for many people drinking beer. And so I guess, to answer your question,
Craig, the thing I always recommend to patients when they ask me this question
is do an elimination reintroduction test to find out whats true for you. Because
at the end of the day, youre asking this question probably not because you care
about it at the meta level, but probably because you want to know the answer
for you.
Should you be drinking alcohol? And if so, how much can you get away with?
And the best way to answer that is basically, knock it out of your system for
one month, make no other change, by the way, and then slowly reintroduce
it and take your alcohol of choice. So if youre a red wine guy, go zero wine
for a month, make no other change otherwise, and then reintroduce a glass a
day, and youll get a sense, Do I feel better, worse, or the same? And if the
answer is, I feel a little worse, then you think you know. And if you dont feel
any different, then youre probably okay. Okay, so anyway, I think Ive harped
on that enough. I think you get the point. Okay, next question is from Kirby in
Austin, Texas. You have mentioned passing a glucose test with flying colors
after being in ketosis. Matt Lalonde has stated long-term ketosis would induce
insulin resistance. Do you think your results are anomalous, and would you
discourage carb carbolysis? Okay, so yes, I did several types of tests while
in raging ketosis. First and foremost, I did what was called the gold standard,
which is either a euglycemic clamp or insulin suppression test.
I did the insulin suppression test at Stanford. It was administered by the team of
Gerry Reeven. Gerry Reeven is a fellow who basically coined the term syndrome
X, which later became described as metabolic syndrome. Hes perhaps one of
the most thoughtful people on insulin resistance. And I apologize if Im repeating
myself. I may have already talked about this on a podcast, but if not If I have,
skip the next three minutes. So the way that test works is you show up in the
morning, overnight fast, they hook you up to two huge IVs. So 14 or 16 gauge
IVs, one in each arm, and they give you insulin in one and glucose in the other.
And the dose of glucose and the dose of insulin is determined by your body
weight and your surface area. And theyve done this in thousands of patients
for about 35 years now, so they have this pretty well dialed in. And lets say
your starting glucose was 90, which I think mine was. What theyre going to do
is follow you for the next six hours with this constant infusion of glucose and
insulin, and they check you every 30 minutes, and where you end up when you
hit a steady state of glucose determines how good you are at glucose disposal,
which is really the best metric we have for insulin sensitivity.
So the higher your glucose at the end of that test, the less able you are to dispose
of glucose, the more insulin resistant you are. And they had just published a
series looking at 440 or so non-diabetic patients undergoing this test, and I
believe that the range of glucose levels at steady state varied between as low
as 75 to 80 and as high as 400. So obviously that person at 400 is basically
pre-diabetic, and that person at 75 is very insulin sensitive. So I had a very
bizarre experience there, which is my glucose started to go down very quickly.
So the post doc who was running my test quickly realized that I was very insulin
sensitive, or to be more specific, I was very able to dispose of glucose, and
so they actually broke protocol and lowered my insulin level. And my glucose
level kept falling, and by the way, so did my ketone levels. So I walked into the
test with a glucose of, I dont know, 90, and a ketone level of like two and a half
millimolar, and I very quickly started to go down in glucose, down in ketones,
and the test ended pretty badly. Basically at about 90 minutes, my glucose
was in the 40s, I was starting to become symptomatic, they stopped the insulin,
gave me more glucose, but then I really fell off a cliff.
My glucose got down to 32, ketones were near zero, now I was profoundly
symptomatic. Thats actually the closest Ive ever come to biting the big one
doing one of my goofy self-experiments. Because they had to bolus me with
pure dextrose, its called D50, the IV infiltrated, the whole thing was a total
disaster, but luckily in the end, they rescued me, and the punchline is I guess Im
the most insulin sensitive person theyd ever measured. As part of that, I also
did an oral glucose tolerance test a couple of weeks later, and the results there
were quite similar. So I started out at a glucose of, I dont know, 90, or maybe 89
I think, and an insulin level of maybe four and at one hour the glucose was up to
maybe 105 and the insulin was up to like 15, and at two hours glucose was in the
70s and insulin was maybe down to six. So again, that would be a great example
of gluco-disposal. Okay, so what is Matt Lalonde talking about? Well, what Matt
is talking about is there are many people, and I have a hypothesis why, for whom
thats not true. You put them in ketosis or you restrict carbohydrates and, in
fact, they appear to be insulin resistant.
And what we believe that is something called physiologic insulin resistance.

So when you restrict carbohydrates, your body, specifically your muscles, your
liver, and maybe even your adipose tissue, your fat tissue, although I dont know
the answer to that question, may actually get to a point where they say, Look,
were going to become really resistant to the effect of insulin because we want
to preserve any remaining amounts of glucose for the brain. So when you take
somebody whos been in that state, whose brain is getting about 60 percent
of their energy from glucose, 40 percent from ketones, the muscle basically
says, Im not going to use up any of this glucose. Im going to rely entirely
on ketonin free fatty acid. And then when you dump on that person a huge
degree of glucose, it just skyrockets. Because the brain isnt going to dispose
of that quickly. The rapid disposal of glucose is glycogen mediated. Its hepatic
glycogen and muscle glycogen. And to be honest with you, that is a much more
common response than the one Ive just described.
So Ill share with you another anecdote. So a friend of mine whos been on a very
low carbohydrate diet, not sure if hes quite ketogenic, but hes been on a very
low carbohydrate diet for about three years, called me in a panic about a month
and a half ago because his brother needed a kidney transplant and he was a
match for him, but went to do an OGTT and failed because his glucose didnt,
he had a horrible OGTT. His glucose went up. And they said, Im sorry, you
cannot give a kidney to your brother because we worry that youre basically prediabetic. And he calls me up and hes obviously distraught and said, How can
this be happening? And I said, Tell me a little bit about your diet. Okay, got it.
So I said, Look, repeat the test, but just make sure that in the three days prior,
you consume about 150 grams of good carbohydrates. Im not saying go out and
eat potato chips, but in the three days before, go out and have some rice, have
some potatoes, have the sort of things that are a high quality carbohydrate, and
what you need to do is basically let your muscles realize over three days, Hey,
by the way, glucose is on the horizon. You dont have to shut down. And he
sent me a very very kind note about a month later saying, Oh my god, Im just
getting out of the hospital now. The operation went well, implying obviously he
redid the test, he passed with flying colors, and he had just donated a kidney to
his brother. So a very happy ending for him, but of course it sort of pissed me
off to think that the doctors didnt know this in advance.
So now to the question why did I not have that experience? And Ive done so
many of these tests that its pretty consistently true. The only thing I can think
of is that because of the quantity and intensity of my exercise, I think I walk
around in a state of relative glycogen depletion, and as such, there must be a
certain threshold where below a certain amount of glycogen, your muscles are
just primed to take in glucose. And I suspect thats whats going on in me, and
the other few people Ive tested who are on very low carbohydrate or ketogenic
diets, who pass OGTTs with flying colors. So I hope that answers that question.
Okay, the next question is Ohedna, I think, in London, Youve mentioned before
that you eat a ketogenic diet because it works for you. How would someone
figure out if its a good or bad idea for them? What are the markers you check?
Okay, so I guess I kind of already answered this one in the question that Gabbi
asked. So how could I sort of synthesize that so I dont go on too much more?
So it works for me. I think the reasons why I described it works for me make
sense. How does this diet not work for you? Well, people who start to just
put on massive amounts of fat, which, I think it happens. I think there are just
people for whom you put them on a ketogenic diet, and they blow up. Thats
generally a bad sign, right? It just says that your body prefers the currency
of glycogen to that of fat, and absent doing something hypo caloric, maybe a
hypo caloric ketogenic diet, something is not going right. The other thing is,
biomarkers that really go to hell in a handbasket, and I always do worry when
someones LDL particle number goes through the roof on a ketogenic diet. I
will actually comment on that specific case on my blog shortly. Because thats,
in and of itself, an entire topic around troubleshooting the skyrocketing LDL
particle number on a ketogenic diet, which I feel like Im now becoming one of
the people who sees that a lot, and Im getting better at appreciating what some
of the nuance is there. But it is complicated, and it comes down to managing
levels of sterols. So understanding cholesterol synthesis versus cholesterol
reabsorption, and you can get clues about that.
There are also, and this is too soon for me to say because I dont think my N
is large enough, but I do think that there are certain APOE genotypes that do
more or less better on a high fat diet versus not. The thing I would wrap this
in, the bow I would wrap this all around, is be careful to distinguish between
hypo caloric and hyper caloric ketogenic diets. They dont have that much in
common, aside from their names. So physiologically, to put somebody on a
hypo caloric ketogenic diet, most people respond really well to that when they
have an acute metabolic issue youre trying to resolve. The u-caloric or isocaloric or even hyper-caloric ketogenic diet, meaning basically an ad libitum
ketogenic diet, which is like, Yeah, just stuff your face with ketogenic foods,
thats one where all best can be off. There are a lot of people that really dont do
well on that diet, and Ive sort of described what that phenotype looks like. And
conversely there are kind of people like me who got away with it.
I mean I just, I could mainline fat when I was on a ketogenic diet, and it just
didnt matter. But Im starting to believe that people with my phenotype are
actually in the minority. And by the way, there also appears to be a big gender
difference. I have noticed that on balance it is easier for me to succeed on
ketogenic diets than women. Its not an across the board rule, but its just sort
of a general theme. Okay, the next question by Christian in Montreal, Canada.
I love the Canadian contingency here. When Dr. Attia mentioned that cardio
isnt good for you, does he mean intense cardio, or even regular folks jogging?
How do I get a good VO2 max then? Okay, so theres really two questions here,
but theyre good ones. So no, I do not mean that exercise is bad and that you
shouldnt be out there walking or jogging or doing all these things. What Im
talking about is the type of cardio activity that puts an undue stress on the heart
in terms of cardiac output. So what does that mean? So, and again, apologizing
if Ive Ive already forgotten what we talked about on the last podcast, but
obviously we must have talked about this somewhat or this wouldnt be coming
up.
So at rest we have a cardiac output thats modest, right? So someone my size

might be four or five liters per minute. Meaning as I sit here, my heart is putting
three to five liters per minute of blood throughout my body. And it accomplishes
that by a certain rate, how many times it beats, and a certain stroke volume, how
much blood gets pumped with each beat. The product of those is your cardiac
output. When you exercise, when you really push the limits of what youre doing
aerobically, anaerobically, and the sweet spot, by the way, where youre going to
get maximum cardiac output is sort of at that threshold level, you are increasing
that cardiac output significantly. So a well-trained athlete could get to 30, even
more than 30 liters per minute. And you get part of that increase through an
increase in heart rate, but a lot of it comes through an increase in stroke volume,
which means that the heart has to expand.
It has to open much wider to accompany the blood volume to pump that blood.
And its that expansion, if sustained for long periods of time, that results in
deformation of the electrical system within the muscle of the heart, in particular
on the right side of the heart, because the right side of the heart is less muscular
than the left and more susceptible to this stretch injury. And what we then
see are electrical errors. Basically we see electrical failures, electrical system
failures of the heart down the line. So there was actually a prospective cohort,
so it wasnt a randomized assignment. Were never going to get an answer to
this question in humans on a random assignment. But there was a prospective
cohort study, the Copenhagen cohort, that looked at people running, and it
stratified them by duration and speed. Okay? So how far do you run a week
and at what pace? And it turned out to reproduce virtually all of the previous
literature on this, which is basically a U-shaped curve, an inverted U-shaped
curve. Sorry, let me be clear, an inverted U-shaped curve.
Which means that at very low levels of activity, the outcomes are not good,
right? People dont live as long. At medium levels of activity, and again I dont
exactly remember what medium was, it might have been something like 30 to
45 minutes a session four sessions a week I think might have been around the
sweet spot at a modest level of activity, coupled with other types of exercise,
you actually saw the longest or the best outcome, the most longevity. So thats
no surprise, right? Those people are doing better. What is surprising is that
at really high levels, so greater duration, greater intensity, we actually saw the
curve fall down. So whats the net effect of that? The net effect of that is its not
clear that you increase your longevity by exercising like a maniac. And I dont
know what else to say about that, so I think Ive answered that question. Now
to your question, How do I get a good VO2 max then? Now, thats kind of a
loaded question, and I dont know how to answer that without taking like ten
hours.
So the first question I would ask you is who cares what your VO2 max is, right?
So whats the purpose of the VO2 max? Well, and I say this as a guy who used
to be obsessed over his VO2 max. When I was in high school, I had a very high
VO2 max. Now that Im kind of an old guy its not as high, but it certainly used
to be something I cared about. The reality is, VO2 max is very sport specific. So
the number itself really shouldnt be something you care about. So my VO2 max
on a bicycle doesnt translate to running, right? If you put me head to head with
somebody who was a runner with their VO2 max and Im a cyclist with VO2 max,
that guy would blow me out of the water because I dont run at all. Similarly,
we know that VO2 max is only weakly correlated with performance, even in
endurance sports, and thats very counter intuitive. Now theres something
thats related to VO2 max thats highly correlated with performance, and thats
called either PVO2 max in cycling or VVO2 max in running.
So in running, the velocity that you run at your VO2 max, not your VO2 max, is
highly correlated with how you will perform, and similarly in cycling, the power,
the amount of watts you put out at VO2 max is much more important than
whatever your VO2 max is. Okay, so I wont go into that anymore, but I will say
this. Nothing that Ive said about the principles of training means you cant have
a high VO2 max. Remember, VO2 max is something How do you train for VO2
max? Like, if someone came along and said, Peter, lets see if you can get your
VO2 max back to 70. Im going to give you six weeks to get your VO2 max up
to 70 milliliters per kilogram per minute, I might actually still be able to do it if
I just trained very specifically for it. So the first thing I would do is I would lose
weight, right? I would probably drop three kilos. Out of the gate that helps you.
And then secondly, I would train very specifically to increase my VO2 max, which
is basically three to five minute intervals in the exact apparatus and position I
will plan to be tested in.
And frankly, thats just kind of an artificial thing to do. So I can train that energy
system naturally without any detriment to what were talking about, because
its a relatively short duration, or I can train it artificially just to get the higher
number on the test if I cared. So short answer is, you can still have a good VO2
max while adhering to the exercise principals of longevity. Okay. Oh, theres
another question about VO2 max. Im not going to address that. Oh, someone is
asking, When can we expect some results from the Energy Balance Consortium
and any other New Sea results? This is from Jeff in St. Louis. Jeff, the So
weve got a lot of feedback to that effect, and thats great feedback. So what
we are doing, were actually just launching a new website. In fact, it might even
be up right now. New Sea has a new website, and in the next couple of months
what we want to do is put up a whole bunch of updates on the site, operational
updates.
I mean for example, the EBC, the Energy Balance Consortium, the patients
completed enrollment at the end of the summer, the data have been all analyzed,
and the team is currently using that analysis to guide the design of the follow
up study. So the follow up study will be designed by probably May or June, and
the goal is to launch that at the end of the year. And the results of the EBC pilot
study, the one that just finished as a pilot study, those will probably be submitted
in the next month for an abstract, and then they will be submitted, and that will
be, I think that will be an abstract for The Obesity Society, which presents in
November, I believe. And then theyll also be submitted in manuscript form
to probably one or two journals. So Im not sure what the time lag is on that,
but my guess is the abstract will be the first thing that hits, and thatll be in
November. But this great feedback, and yes, we should absolutely be doing
this for all of our studies, just so people will know exactly what the You know,
science moves at a pretty slow pace, even though at New Sea I think it moves
as quick as it could possibly move.
All right, so NP from Seattle asks, Please talk about hormone issues in general
for men over 40. Regarding this, what are your thoughts on testosterone
supplementation? Well, I think in general, the hormone replacement topic is
generally complicated. Remember, there are basically four hormone axes in
the body. Theres the sort of insulin system, which is basically the one that
determines fuel partitioning. Theres the adrenal system which copes to your
response to stress, both acute and chronic, but of course it overlaps with the
fuel partitioning system. Right? Too much cortisol, youre going to partition
more towards fat. Theres the thyroid system, which is primarily responsible
for your metabolism, certainly your response to temperature, a bunch of things
that figure into mood and other things like that, and then theres the androgen
system, your sex hormones. And these behave quite differently in men and
women, and they behave differently as we age.
So youd asked a very specific question, so lets talk about men over the age of
40. So everyone is familiar with what menopause is, which is a condition that
women typically go through in their late 40s, early 50s, where basically there is
a loss of the two dominant androgens, estrogen and progesterone. And maybe
at some point I can share my thoughts on hormone replacement therapy in
women and the role of androgen in women and how you decide should you
be or should you not be on hormone replacement therapy. Hint, the answer is
super complicated, and unfortunately gets distilled down into overly simplistic
rhetoric. On the male side, its referred to typically as andropause, which is sort
of a play on menopause but referring to the androgen hormone.
Okay, so, boy, this is a loaded topic. Its a loaded topic because we live in a
society where somehow weve let morality get in the way of science. So we just,
we have this whole issue in our society about drugs and sports, and we somehow
view cheating in baseball as the greatest crime that can exist, and Im sure most
of you realize this, there have been more congressional hearings on drugs in
baseball or drugs in sports than there have been on virtually any important topic
that should matter to Congress. Why drugs in baseball even gets in front of
Congress is a mystery to me, let alone the number of times its happened. Well,
the net result of that is that basically theres a culture in medicine, sort of from
the top down, that I think really tends to view hormone replacement therapy in
men as a negative thing. And again, this is purely speculation, so I dont want
to be taken to the cleaners on this. Im literally just sharing an opinion, which
is when I read the literature, when I read the editorials and the commentaries,
what Im really seeing is, we have a bias against hormone replacement therapy
in men.
Part of it may be justified, because I think the pendulum, when I look at sort of all
the goofy testosterone commercials on TV, I think the pendulum swung too far.
But the problem is, weve completely lost the nuance of it. So I absolutely think
that testosterone replacement is a viable option for men in whom testosterone
levels are deficient and symptoms justify the use. Now, the problem is, we
have this belief that is not actually substantiated by rigorous science that, I
think, overstates the detriment of that, right? So theres a very famous JAMA
paper that came out six months ago, maybe a year ago, that was a pretty poor,
poor meta-analysis of a bunch of studies that suggested that testosterone
replacement in men increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Now it might,
but the data certainly dont suggest that. So the way they did their study, the
way they did their meta-analysis, they did a whole bunch of stuff.
This actually could be another topic in and of itself. We could probably just
do an entire segment on hormone replacement, but if hormone replacement
in men results in an increased risk of heart disease, its actually not clear from
the data. In fact, people are more willing to accept that hormone replacement
therapy in men, testosterone therapy specifically, actually reduces the risk of
prostate cancer, and when you get prostate cancer, you actually have a lower
grade of prostate cancer. So the problem with all hormone replacement, and
testosterone is no exception, is the numbers alone arent significant. Theyre
not sufficient to make the determination. So you have to treat patients based
on their symptoms, and I also think that the way we treat patients has to be
customized to them. So for example, its not that interesting to me what a
persons total testosterone level is, or even what their free testosterone level
is. If I dont know what their estrogen level is, what their sex hormone bindings
globulin level is, their DHEA and their DHT levels, I cant really determine
And Im assuming now were dealing with a patient who is symptomatic, who
clearly demonstrates the symptoms of low androgens. Ill probably have sort of
six different ways that I would treat somebody, depending on their objectives,
do they want to be on this for life? Is this a bridge? Do they want to maintain
the ability to have kids and all these sort of things, fertility issues? So I think Ive
answered the broad level question, which is I think testosterone replacement
therapy is a great tool in the tool kit, but like every tool, youd better know how
to use it, right? Its not just a hammer, its a much more complicated tool, and
unfortunately, there are probably just as many docs doing harm with this tool
as there are docs who are afraid to pick up the tool. All right, so I feel like Im
at an hour, so this is kind of the last one. I dont want to kill people on this. So
its from Mike in Brisbane. Youre very productive. Do you have a standing
weekly schedule for when you do each task? Do you have any unplanned nonproductive time?
Mike, yeah, I think I am a pretty productive person most of the time, though there
are times when I feel highly unproductive. I am a list guy, and this has been a
trait that Ive had since I was in high school, and its just more evolved now. Now
theres a book, I think its called Getting Things Done. I have not read it but I know
people who have read it who tell me I sort of do what the guy describes. So if
youre asking this question because youre personally interested in productivity,
it sounds like thats a good book to read. I think its called Getting Things Done,
and the aficionada refer to it as just GTD. But briefly Ill just tell you what I do
because its probably a subset of that. So the first thing is, Im maniacal about
lists. So I carry this little leather folder with me everywhere and it has cards in
it, like 3x5 inch cards. And I have a blue card, and the blue card is the top one in
the little thing, and it represents everything I have to do on a given day.
So I dont get to go to bed until everything on the blue card is crossed out. So
it sounds crazy, but I have a little box beside everything. So if I havent done
anything, theres no checkmark through the box. When Ive started the process
or made some progress, if its a two part thing, I put a hash through it, and then
when its completed, it gets the full X through it. And then beneath that I have
a pink card. The pink card is everything that has to be done by Friday of the
week. So I fill out a new pink card every Saturday morning, and thats my weekly
task. And again, thats work related. Then I have a white card, which is personal
tasks for the month. So like get my wifes birthday present, register the home
warranty, switch out our car insurance, like just dumb stuff that has to get done
that I dont want to forget about. And then I have a yellow card which is longterm work-related things. So these are things Im not putting on deadline, but
I find it very cathartic to be able to write stuff down, because it takes the stress
away from me.
Because I find that a lot of people get sort of paralyzed by not being able to do
stuff. They get overwhelmed with things. Im in the same boat. Im very prone
to this. Yet when I put stuff down on paper, and any day of the week, any time
of day, I can pull out my little cards and I can look at all the crap that has to get
done, it actually alleviates my stress. Right? Because its like, Yeah yeah, youre
not going to forget about it. Because I think most of our anxiety is worrying
that were going to forget stuff, not how much stuff we have to do. I think of
the two, the former is worse. And look, if you go through Meyers Briggs testing,
obviously Im a J on the P J axis, and Im probably an off the charts J. So I crave
structure, I crave organization, I crave order. So to your second question, Do
you have any unplanned, non-productive time, I mean, I do every week, and I
try to make that the time I spend with my kids. I try to basically, and I shouldnt
say that, because its still somewhat structured. Right? Like when I drive my
daughter to drum lessons. I mean, theres a structure to that in that we have to
leave at this time and were going to do X, Y, and Z. But its also a time when Im
sort of releasing my agenda. For example, and this is going to sound like Im a
psycho, but I dont schedule any phone calls during that drive. Like, I dont want
to be on the phone when shes in the car, because thats our time.
And you might say, Wow, what a martyr you are. What kind of sacrifice is that?
But thats how regimented my life is. Im generally always doing something.
I would probably benefit from more unstructured time. I think part of the
challenge is, many of you listening would probably appreciate this, is when
youre trying to run a couple of companies, when youve got kids, when youre
trying to maintain some level of fitness, everything tends to be quite structured.
I think sometimes I want to dip into a period of sort of, Lets do nothing for
a day. I have not done I typically dont do well in that setting. I get very
restless doing nothing. Im just trying to think. The last time I took a vacation,
did something unstructured. Well, Ill put it this way: its been long ago enough
that Im probably overdue for it. So anyway on that note, I will end this very
structured interaction of answering questions. I hope this was what people
found interesting. If it is, please let Tim know. Maybe we can do it again.
If not, please let me know why so I dont do it again. All right, thanks everyone.
Tim Ferriss:
spelling, all you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around
can take them out to nice dinners, whatever, but theyre made from athletic
or on your kitchen table like I did recently and then pull it out, throw it on with
thing for a week straight, or make it your only dress shirt and take it on trips
for weeks at a time, never wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through
it. Youve got to check these things out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all
spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and if you order one of their dress
shirts in the next week, you will get a Henley shirt for free.
Thats worth about $60.00. So put them both in the cart, use the code TIM,
T-I-M, and you will get the Henley shirt for free. Check it out, fourhourworkweek.
com/shirts and youll see some of my favorite gear, including the one shirt that
Ive been traveling with. The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99
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EPISODES 52, 53:
ED COOKE
Tim:
Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show: 99Designs, which is your
see the projects that Ive put up, including the mock-ups and drafts of the book
cover for The 4-Hour Body.
of the links and resources from this episode as well as every other episode
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Feedback. If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts, anything at all, who
youd like to see on this show, ping me on Twitter @tferriss. Thats twitter.com/
tferriss, or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss with two Rs and two Ss.
This episode is a conversation between yours truly, Tim Ferriss, and Ed Cooke.
Ed Cooke is a grandmaster of memory based in Great Britain; a good friend.
He has made a number of appearances in The 4-Hour Chef. He helped improve
my ability to memorize anything and everything. Hes also very well-known
for coaching a writer named Joshua Foer from nothing (i.e., ground zero) to
becoming US National Memory Champion in, I believe, a year or so of time; a
really astonishing feat. Well get into what grandmaster of memory means.
This is a two-part episode, so you have two separate parts. Theyre very, very
dense. Theyre hilarious. If you liked the Kevin Kelly episodes, the Josh Waitzkin
episodes, or any episodes that are similar to those, very in-depth, wide ranging,
youre going to love this episode. I hope you enjoy it, so without further ado,
here is Ed Cooke.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to a special
episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I have my dear friend, Ed Cooke, on the line.
I grabbed him last minute for reasons I shall explain. He is a grandmaster of
memory among many, many other things. At the ripe old age of 23 is when he
turned that corner. Ed, where are you at the moment and what are you up to?
Ed:
I am currently sitting in the office where I work, which is a converted Methodist

Chapel in Bethnal Green, London. Its Friday night at 10:15 p.m. So like while
people with adequate social lives are currently running around town and falling
in love. Yeah, Im here and Im talking to you, Tim. Im delighted to be here.
Tim:
I wanted to actually share with people what we just talked about, doing an audio
check before we began recording, where you gave the best answer Ive ever
heard to a very mundane question which is . . . tell me what you had for breakfast
or what did you have for breakfast? Feel free to improvise, but what was your
answer, roughly?
Ed:
It was a sound check so I was allowing myself a certain embellishment, but yeah,
I was just relating how I had a couple of partridges [SP], a few sausages, some
salmon . . .
Tim:
Kippers, I think there were.
Ed:
There were kippers. They were peat-smoked kippers, four boiled eggs and two
poached eggs, that kind of thing. I actually dont know the English king [SP], but
I have a friend who occasionally at breakfast, he just sort of chugged a lot of

cans of beer [SP]. Id be like, What are you talking about? Hed be like, Im just
thinking about what Henry VI had for breakfast every day.
Tim:
I should give some background for folks who may not realize that you and I
first connected several years ago. You were tremendously helpful with The
4-Hour Chef since that was a book about accelerated learning disguised as a
cookbook, which, surprise, surprise, ended up being very, very confusing to
almost everybody in the universe who came across it. There were aspects of it
including chapters focused on mnemonic devices and other types of memory
techniques where you were incredibly helpful. First of all, thank you very much
for that.
Ed:
My pleasure.
Tim:
I was having trouble piecing together how we first came in contact. How did we
first meet? I should also, just as context for folks, point out that Ed is in the UK.
Im drinking highly caffeinated tea; he is drinking wine. This is intended to be like
a pub conversation.
Ed:
Yeah, so please filter any interpretation or any remarks to the context of a ripe
old English pub. We came into contact through my dear friend, Greg [SP], with
whom I co-founded the company. Greg was then a PhD student at Princeton,
and I think you came to do a couple talks, he got to chatting with you. I think it
was through that, that we met.
Tim:
Thats right. For those who are not familiar, Ed is co-founder and the office
that he referred to is related to his company, Memrise, memrise.com, which
well come back to. The concept of being a grandmaster of memory . . . its not
really concept; the qualification. What is entailed in becoming a grandmaster of
memory?
Ed:
Ill explain that first, and then we can discuss a little bit just how stupid a term
it is, and what a marvelous device for either ending a conversation or beginning
one at a bus stop. A grandmaster of memory is a kind of title given out by the
World Memories Boards Foundation. Basically you have to be able to remember
a 1000-digit number in an hour, a pack of cards in under a couple of minutes,
and then 10 packs of shuffled cards in an hour. Its three parts of the World
Memory Championship which determine whether you can get this title. Its a
great title.
Tim:
Its a very compelling title.
Ed:
The number of times Ive been in a kind of losing situation in a night club,
you know, out danced . . . Im not a symmetrical person, Tim. Sometimes my
[inaudible 00:07:06] understates the value of conversation with me. Anyhow,
[inaudible 00:07:11] hes like, Whats your problem? I said, Im grandmaster of
memory. Hes like, Okay. Let me buy you some champagne and then we can
talk further about this important qualification. Yeah, its a very silly concept.
The cultural context from which it emerges, namely, people doing competitive
memory competitions, I think is awesome and fascinating.
In 1990, the world record for memorizing a shuffled deck of cards was 149
seconds, which if you could memorize a pack of cards in under 3 minutes and
show that to somebody, theyd be very astounded and would think you were
cheating. Its not obvious to anybody that the human mind would be capable
of that. I remember I was very proud 10 years ago when I first broke a minute,
I said, Oh my goodness. This is extraordinary. Anyway, the world record now
is 21 seconds for the memorization of a shuffled deck of 52 cards. Obviously
people presumably havent got like four times faster brains than they did only
24 years ago. The reason for it is, is that theres been this competitive culture in
which theres an objective measure of mnemonic speed, if you like.

Over the last 20 years, people have, on each year, done their best to outgun their
rivals in their memory, and then very openly and freely shared the techniques and
hacks theyve used to be able to optimize these fairly arbitrary but nonetheless
interesting processes of memorization. The result has been an absolutely
continuous linear increase in the amount of stuff people can remember across
a very wide range of disciplines in a particular amount of time. This is true of
names and faces, random strings of words, crazy abstractly generated images,
all the stuff people are being able to think up to test peoples memories with. As
a result of this community of competition and sharing, people have got almost
10 times faster now in the course of 24 years, memorizing things when it was
already very impressive in the first place. I think thats why its an interesting
thing.
Tim:
Is that a function of prize money, prestige, social media? Im very curious

about the dynamic that has produced that progress because if you look at
mixed martial arts for instance, UFC. You look at the first 10 UFCs, compare the
competitors to the competitors, say, 30 UFCs later. Compare those competitors
with those of today as the prize money has increased among other things. I
think its primarily the prize money. You see a very quick evolution in terms of
whether its selection bias or just a larger pool of competitors that has gone
from, say, top 20% of athletes in the United States to top 10 to top 2 and youre
just looking at mutants in many cases now; not to detract from their . . .
Ed:
[Inaudible 00:10:28] diminish.
Tim:
Yeah, right. Not to diminish their gentlemanly demeanor and technique in

training. But what are the contributing factors to the increases in speed and
capabilities?
Ed:
Of the options youve offered up there, you can . . .
Tim:
You can choose other ones, yeah.
Ed:
I was talking about social media. The total Twitter followers of competitors of
the World Memory Championship is 25 or something. Its not money. Theres no
real money on it.
I suppose that perhaps in 100 years time if people did still care, the current
state of memory sports would be considered still extraordinarily immature. Its
like cricket in the 19th century in England where people were kind of working
out the basics of technique. In that case historically I believe it was the invention
of the steam train which allowed cricket to get good, because teams from
further apart in the country could visit each other. The information and press
was delivered quicker. There was a sort of general increase in the talent pool
who were competing with each other. It was just possible to even travel and sort
of compete.

People from all over the world can do it. Its easy to hop on a plane, so thats
a contributing factor. I think fundamentally the motivation is its just so cool
winning or doing well in the World Memory Championships. Its purely a kind
of slightly comic form of status, I think, which drives it as well as the fact that
of course its phenomenally interesting to take something which every single
person there would never imagine they were capable of doing and push it and
push it and push it to see how well it can be done. It probably helps that its
quite precisely quantifiable, like the 100 meters or whatever else.
Tim:
I wanted to grab something you mentioned and come back to, which is what the
average person is capable of doing, or what most people are capable of doing.
Perhaps you could recount for folks the outcome of one of the experiments
that you and I did, also involving your team which was related to The 4-Hour
Chef. We wanted to incentivize people to try to memorize a shuffled deck of
cards. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that and the outcome. A
lot of people listening will probably assume like, A thousand digits, I could
never even remember a phone number. I couldnt remember 20 numbers. They
underestimate what theyre capable of doing, so I would love if you could just
perhaps recount the results of the experiment that we did related to the book
launch.
Ed:
Yes, that was a fun thing we did. At Memrise, we launched a competition with
you, Tim, at the same time as the launch of the book. It was a $10,000 prize, I
believe, munificently supplied by you, Tim.
Tim:
Yup, thats right.
Ed:
I know. I spent it on . . . anyhow, we started this thing. I had this great engineer
in the office called Tank, who built this amazing system which was basically a
standard memorize course where you would learn to associate with each card
in the deck a person. Id actually propose a group of 52 people where there
are ways of changing them to be people that you wanted to have in your set
of images. The basic technique underlying this is the cards are boring and
unmemorable, sequences are boring and unmemorable. How do you remember
them? Well, you turn the cards into images which are more memorable.
For instance, Tim, you are slightly more memorable than the 3 of hearts, say,
because you have characteristics, you have a personality. I can imagine you
in detail, I can imagine you interacting in situations, so youre inherently more
interesting to my brain than a mere card or figure or anything like that. This is
kind of an incredibly incoherent explanation, but Ill keep going.
Tim:
I think youre doing great. The assumption that I have: personality is a bit of a
stretch but besides that, youre doing fine.
Ed:
I didnt say that it was inadequate or admirable. Anyway, the basics of memory
techniques is that our minds love certain kinds of things, so were very, very good
at remembering spaces. Were very, very good at remembering things which
attract our interest. A rule of thumb Id like to use, and I think it should grab your
attention if you were wandering down the street, is the kind of thing which will
grab your attention and your memory. Will something grey and written in legal
language grab your attention if youre walking down the street? No. But will kind
of a small elephant being attacked by lemurs attract your attention? Yes. Will a
spectacular naked woman attract your attention? Perhaps. Will a bollard do so?
Probably not.

Its the same thing when we perceive within ourselves, which is to say when we
remember, the vivid interesting emotion grabbing things . . . again, Tim, Id like
to clarify [inaudible 00:16:08] vivid emotions particularly. I mean, Im just taking
these things up. Anyway, these things grab our attention.
The art of memory is basically transforming information which is not interesting

into forms of information which are interesting. For a pack of cards, the technique
which I use myself and which is very popular in the memory community, is to
take each card and then rote associate a person with it. If you go with person
association, you can do this very quickly. It takes like an afternoon for a normal
person to associate with 52 cards 52 people. Having got that code, which is a bit
like a language really; you think of it as a language. If I say, Hola, to you, youll
say, Hi, Ed. You just learn that arbitrary association between some letters,
hola, and a meaning, hi there. Its just like with the cards. Its like a very, very
small language, 52 words. When youre going through the cards, you imagine
the people youve associated with the cards instead of the cards. Already its
massively more interesting.
The second thing you do to tackle the sequence, which is difficult to remember
because its just a bland sequence, is that you string these people standing
in for cards into an amusing story. You might be getting in your doorstep and
theres Time Ferriss and hes desperately trying to impress the Queen and shes
not impressed. Slightly down the road, weve got the Pope and hes chatting
with Ed Stone [SP], and these people standing in for cards. Because Tim is trying
to impress the Queen, its kind of funny. Theres a kind of colonial perverse
humor vibe or whatever. Its just more interesting than 3 of hearts, 7 of spades.
Anyhow, thats the first technique.
Going back to your original question, we put together a course on Memrise

which helped people make these associations. People would play on that for an
hour, and they build up this vocabulary of ways thinking about cards so theyre
just more interesting, more vivid. It attracts more emotion and theyre just
generally more memorable. And then weve proposed a technique very famous
in the memory community which is to sort of imagine going around a space.
Actually for your blog, Tim, I remember embarrassing myself on my local street
in a snowstorm trying to wander around demonstrating how to place images in
space. I was like, Oh, look up there, theres...
Tim:
I remember that very closely. Yeah, some people did want to search for that, Ed
Cooke with an E on the blog to find that video.
Ed:
Anyhow, we did a competition so people learn the technique and they could
practice with this cool system on the website. What was astonishing was that
a few thousand people entered. Most people basically couldnt be bothered
and give up quite quickly. Basically anyone who did persevere and actually just
learned the images and then started practicing, many of them got really good
really fast. The girl who ended up winning it whose name is Irina Zayats, shes a
fabulous young lady, a programmer who lives in the Ukraine. I tried to recruit her
for Memrise actually. She was sort of only dimly interested.

Anyway, she did it in about four days. She just sat on a computer and practiced
the thing. Within four days, she basically nailed it and could do it under a second.
At the Memrise Christmas party that year, we piped her in live on Skype to prove
that she could actually do it and wasnt cheating. It was a party of about 200
people cramming into the church; scenes of unbelievable debauchery, Tim.
Tim:
Eyes Wide Shut, one of the . . .
Ed:
Well, yeah. It was that, but weve got a chat and better lighting. Anyhow, she just
nailed it again live on Skype under the pressure. We told her, I think, that that
was how she could actually win the prize. Thats just a nice example. It is very
doable. I had another interesting experience where I went to the US Memory
Championship, I think, in 2005 with my friend. This has been a sort of diversion
but Ill tell the anectdote.
Ive got this friend called Lucas. Hes from Austria, from Vienna, who is an
absolutely hilarious and wonderful fellow who . . . before wed done this, wed
been contacted by Channel 4 and they were like, Were so interested to hear
how memory athletes train. Ive always been a bit suspicious, to be honest,
with the concept of self-hacking. Ive never been quite clear whether thats
something I really want to do. Anyway, I said, We like to get to high altitude and
go into complete seclusion. I was kind of channeling an image of Ricky Hatton,
the boxer, going into the mountains and sort of going through some . . . anyway,
they were like, Awesome.
Anyway, Lucas and I were headed up into the mountains. We put on a sort of
comedy show and this can be found on YouTube, but a kind of image of what
a mental athletes training program would look like, lots of sort of press-ups
involving claps and competitive boxing style mutual recitation of binary numbers
and stuff. For the sort of 12 or 13 people in your listenership who think that . . .
Fuck it, Im going to an anecdote with [inaudible 00:21:47]. Okay, so we went to
America and we went to the US Memory Championships. It was quite hilarious.
At that point, non-American competitors were not really allowed to compete,

but we were allowed to compete. Anyway, we came first and second by a
margin of about times three because at that point the sport was not very welldeveloped in the US. There was a journalist there and he was like, Oh my god.
Youre a geek or a savant. I was like, No, mate. Were two young lads whove
got an enthusiasm for memory [inaudible 00:22:20]. He was like, But this is
impossible. I was like, No. Ill train you. I trained him for a year and he wound
up the next year . . . by the way, Im a pretty brutal coach. Its a way for me to
transcend my own insufficiencies is to criticize others.
I trained him up for a year. He wound up winning the American Memory

Championship. Yeah, it was pretty cool. He wrote a book about it.
Tim:
That was Joshua Foer, correct?
Ed:
Yeah, that was Joshua Foer whos super cool.
Tim:
Moonwalking With Einstein. Yeah, book did very, very well. It had a great piece
in Wired that introduced me to that as well. Sorry to interrupt; not my intention.
Ed:
No worries.
Tim:
I brought everything to a standstill.
Ed:
Im actually quite drunk now, by the way, Tim.
Tim:
Perfect. I was taking aback by your sudden silence, which I mistook for shyness,
but I think its just drunkenness.
Ed:
I was just sort of taking another slug [SP] on the [inaudible 00:23:31].
Tim:
Oh, nice. Ill have to get you a camel [inaudible 00:23:34] for our next podcast.
Just to put things in perspective for folks, it was Irina, the Ukrainian woman?
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
She learned to memorize a shuffled or randomized deck of cards in less than a

minute in four or five days. The previous US record, I guess, a few years ago had
been 147 seconds or something along those lines?
Yeah, it was...
Ed:
Tim:
She beat the US record with four to five days of training. Granted, it was an
older record but I think that that just highlights what is possible for people. The
question Id love to ask you is what are some . . . if people have an afternoon and
they are not going to necessarily focus on the pack of cards, is there something
else that they can do to prove to themselves that they have greater mental
athleticism or memorization potential than theyve ever thought possible? Is
there something else that they can do?
Ed:
They can make love to a beautiful woman in their imaginations without moving
a muscle.
Tim:
Okay. Why would you recommend that?
Ed:
Well, that was a joke, Tim.
Tim:
Okay, you got me. Youre so dry. Its this dry British humor. Were still dragging
our knuckles over here.
Ed:
That was a straight out not funny. I suppose the tinkle [SP] of a thought which
underlies every joke there is just . . . really imagination, and our capacity to form
images just while talking, just while communicating is already extraordinarily
potent. The thing which confuses people is like how can you possibly form an
image in a second which you then end up remembering five minutes later? The
example Id like to give is that thats what happens in conversation the entire
time. If I say to you . . . I might just describe my office to you, Tim. Well actually
test your memory. I know that youre sort of getting on a bit.
Tim:
Im getting a little long in tooth, yeah.
Ed:
A little bit sort of doddery. Yeah, Im going to describe the office. Weve got quite
a colorful office. Im going to begin where I am. In about 15 seconds, Im going to
describe to you the sequence of objects Im going to see and Im going to make
it a bit more vivid by imagining myself as an amusing character leaping around.
Lets say that I am . . . why dont you name the amusing character, Tim?
Tim:
Amusing... Mortimer.
Ed:
Mortimer. Okay, so Im Mortimer and Im yattering into a laptop. I take a bottle of

wine right by me and I fling it into the wall where theres a picture of 25 . . . I dont
know what they are but lets just say Yakuza in sort of jock straps and tattoos,
Japanese men. I have a picture on the wall. I jump around and then theres this
hammock. In the hammock, there are two lambs . . . this is not true by the way,
but anyway, two lambs eating cheese. You jump over the hammock and then
suddenly theres a grand piano and theres a young man playing Chopin. Hes
chopping away at the piano. I move over and now theres a swing. I go to the
piano to the swing, this Mortimer. The swing is covered in pink roses. If you kind
of trace up the swing up the rope, youll see at the very top there is a model of
a rhesus monkey just dangling from the top of the rope. Jumping back down,
you land on the kitchen table where four unfortunate Memrise employees are
just trying to sort of have a quiet evening in, reflecting on the vicissitudes of life.
There by the big AGA, the big metal oven and the metal oven is emitting heat.
On the AGA, there is a pot full of spoons.
Okay, so that was an incoherent narrative lasting about 45 seconds, Im guessing,

in which I mentioned Mortimers little adventure. The first thing Id say to your
listenership is that just merely by listening to that, you followed it, youve formed
the images at the speed of talk which is one or two images a second, and you
strung that into a coherent mental concept, or incoherent one. You know, Im
drunk [inaudible 00:28:12]. Anyway, you strung it into a coherent mental concept.
In a spectacularly small amount of seconds, its actually phenomenal if you think
that its even possible to follow that.
Anyhow, Tim, were now going to test you. Im on my laptop, Mortimer is there
and hes looking at the laptop. What happens next?
Tim:
He grabs a bottle of wine, which is right next to him. He throws it into a picture
on the wall which has 25 yakuza in jock straps, with tattoos. Im having a bit of
recency primacy here. After that, I want to say there are two lambs in a hammock.
Ed:
Thats correct, yeah.
Tim:
I dont recall if theyre eating.
Ed:
Eating.
Tim:
Eating, yeah. They were eating cheese, if I remember correctly.
Ed:
Very good.
Tim:
And then, jumping out of the hammock to a, I believe its piano after that.
Ed:
Very good.
Tim:
There was a gentleman playing Chopin, and chopping away at the keyboard,
which was very clever of you to use the C H twice, that helped. From there, we
get to a swing, which is covered in pink roses and oddly enough it has a model
of a rhesus monkey hanging at the very top of it.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
When Mortimer jumps off the swing, he lands on a kitchen table where there
were four Memrise employees just trying to go about their business and its very
disruptive quite obviously. Next to them . . . this is where I got tripped up a little
bit. The AGA [SP] on the stove top . . . I dont know what an AGA is. But there is a
pot on top of whatever an AGA is with spoons in it and then the curtain falls and
thats the end of the Mortimer Show as I remember it.
Ed:
Thats so well done, Tim. Yeah, just to sort of articulate what youve done there.
You go on laptop, bottle of wine, yakuza, 25 of them, jock straps so weve wrapped
about six items, hammock, lambs, cheese, piano, Chopin, chopping, swing, pink
roses, rhesus, jumping off, landing, kitchen table, Memrise employees, AGA even
though you didnt know what an AGA was. It is, by the way, this rather marvelous
kind of European oven which is basically a one-ton block of iron permanently
heated which acts as central heating and as a cooking mechanism. On top of
that, there was a pot with spoons.
Its 20 things youve correctly remembered in sequence there just really by a

dint of understanding human language, which you have successfully recounted
in order. For that, the narrative helps. It gives one an insight into how these
arent in the same way that for instance firing an arrow through a black bird
which is flying through the sky is like a skill you almost have to learn on the top
of basic motor skills, but you have to learn it very, very specifically. These sort of
memory techniques draw from quite fundamental cognitive capacities. Its quite
basic.
I did this other thing where I do these things called memory walks where you
just get a bunch of random pedestrians, gather them together and say, Okay
were going to learn whatever, the US presidents, the first pharaohs of Egypt
or what have you. You just wander around a town for about an hour. Imagine
George Washington there. I dont know who George Washington is, Im English,
but imagine Jaws the shark washing himself tons. You go, Okay, very good.
They imagine that in the window over there. Youre going to wander around and
with no prior training whatsoever, you can sort of... unlock is too strong a word.
You can just make use of the fairly phenomenal underlying cognitive capacities
that you have at your disposal all the time.
Its not a kind of elusive geek skill, fundamentally. Its basically just a kind of
cunning use of what the human brain does best, namely process real meaning,
imagine interesting things happening in space, and integrate narratives.
Tim:
I know. Its something that I feel like . . . this actually touches on sort of a deeper
inner conflict that Im hoping you can help me resolve. Im very indecisive about
my sexuality, no thats not it. I wanted to . . . sexually ambiguous, that has caused
me a lot of strife. No, thats also not it.
The question is related to utility of highly refining certain memory capabilities.

When I was in college, I read a number of books including, I think its called Your
Memory and How to Improve It, its like the most generic... I think thats at Higby
[SP]. Its like the most generic title imaginable for something that talks about
vivid imagery.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
I remember becoming very fascinated by memorizing numbers. I might be

getting terminology wrong, please correct if I am. The sort of number consonant
system where youre converting the numbers into consonants, you convert
those into words, images, and that allows you to memorize long strings of digits.
I would place these images around typically my surroundings. I think that might
have been a weakness in my method. I would always wherever I happen to be
as opposed to a pre-determined route. The only benefit to that method is that
when I would play this game with people and I would typically have them pull out
a 5, a single and a $20 bill. Id have them pull out bills of different denominations
and Id memorize the serial numbers on those different bills.
Ed:
Im sure youre the center of the party, Tim.
Tim:
Oh, yeah. I wasnt fast enough to make it really exciting. I was like, Okay, cool.
Give me five minutes. Theyre like, What? Okay, this is really boring, but what
was really fun about it is I would memorize these numbers. They would be like,
Oh, wow. Its amazing. Id do them backwards. Oh, my god. Thats amazing. It
only took really a week or two of practice to get to that point. Im so confident
that almost anyone can do that. What was fun about having the locations
dependent on where I was sitting at the time is that very often I could bump into
that person a week later and say, Hey, do you still have 5 or that single or that
20? I can give you the serial number and I could remember it because I had so
many distinct locations, which was kind of a fun trick. It took a decent amount
of effort to get good at that.
What Im wondering is do you find that there are any particular mental exercises
that have a high degree of carryover to other areas or that have more utility
than others? There are so many different party tricks that you could develop,
or competitive capabilities. If you had to pick one that you think people would
get the most out of, is that even possible? Is that a good question? But I think
about this because it does take time to maintain a high degree of proficiency
with these things.
Ed:
Right. I wouldnt necessarily recommend to anybody with a rounded social life to

get too deep into the number memorization stuff. For me, the interesting memory
technique emerges out of a much more general interesting consciousness and
sort of the curiosities of having a mind of the character that we have. To the
question what is the most generalizable useful concept, not maybe requiring
practice that one can draw out of the theory on sort of history of memory
techniques. I think I could give two answers.
The first is you remember things which ignite your imagination. We all know
this in our hearts. If youre really into soccer or football, as we call it here, you
might be a pathetic at school but you might be able to remember something
like if you actually added up 12,000 distinct football results, the equivalent of a
medical degree in terms of scale of information, its because youre interested

in it. I think a lot of people are kind of embarrassed about the characteristics of
their mind, about the things that they have a greater tendency to remember,
the things which they feel they need to do to really wrap their mind around a
topic. The first thing would just be the things which you find stimulating and
interesting, all the things you remember and dont censor yourself in finding
what those things are and allowing yourself to experience information in that
way. Ill try and make that concrete.

I think that a lot of people will be reading some non-fiction book about economics
and it will sort of ignite in the back of their mind the idea that this is actually a
bit like their friend, Al, and how he behaves with their mate, Dan, but its actually
officially about US-China relations. That metaphor, that way of comprehending
things, that very personal perhaps trivial manner of comprehending things
through the filter of ones own experience gets suppressed leading to boredom
and a lack of emotional engagement with the subject matter. To say it succinctly,
just back wherever your mind needs to go and endorse it. Ignite interest through
imagination; that would be one thing. Its a very un-succinct piece of advice.
The second thing is more succinct, which is just when two things are in the
same place either in your mind or on a diagram or in a semantic space, they
will get confused with each other. I think the genius of the spatial techniques is
the genius of having different context for different thoughts. You touched upon
this actually with your own adventures with $5 and $10 bills which is where
experiences and thoughts are separated. They stand alone, they dont interfere
and they can persist through time, but where they are spatially connected in
actual experience or spatially connected to within the mind where two concepts
just feel very, very similar. When youre thinking about them, youre kind of
thinking about them in the same way, they will tend to fuse with each other and
then fail to be distinct entities in their own rights.
Just literally separating stuff out in space is incredible, as a general cognitive

tip for brainstorming, for resolving arguments, for clarifying emotions in a
relationship, anything. Because of this, Ive discovered some quite interesting
thing about how to design house parties.
I used to have these moments where you have an incredible house party. You
talked to 25 really interesting people. It would be a super thing. At the time,
youre just flushed with happiness. The next day, the whole thing would be in
your mind. It would just be a kind of blur. Youd be like, Yeah, I recall being in a
kitchen and there were some people there. We chatted about stuff. But because
all those memories are on top of each other because of the spatial constraints
of a house party, you dont really remember all the things that happened. If you
can take a house party . . . this is true to any kind of experience. It could be true
of an evening out with friends. Its obviously true of road trips. It could be true
even of a friendship or a romance or anything else.
If things are kind of spread out through space, if each context or experience has
its own place, then they can all live by themselves and it gets a much richer level
of autobiographic memory. With house parties specifically I recommend always
having three or faces to a house party preferably with a different style, different
kind of music, a different fundamental focus spatially, and narrativize [SP] the
transitions between them. Rather than just being like, theres a splurge or a
house party and everyone is just getting drunk and trying to chat each other up,
instead you have a face where youre being quite posh and drinking champagne
and listening to French music. A bunch of people arrive and youre like, Were
now going to eat. Were going to eat on one leg. Then you have a bunch of time
hopping around chewing on reindeer or whatever it is. Up onto the rave, its a
rave.

By creating an artificial structure, you end up with a much richer experience.

That would be . . . [inaudible 00:41:55], Tim. Two pieces of advice: make stuff
vivid and personally interesting and dont censor yourself. And then if you are
relating to anything, it could be learning or even just personal experience, find
individual spaces for each thing because then theyll survive by themselves and
not just merge into the fog of similarity.
Tim:
Right, blending together into indistinguishability. Its funny when you start
to think of the basic programming that we have. That of course has a lot of
applications to dating as well. You did mention something in passing I wanted to
come back to, which was clarifying your feelings about a relationship. I wanted
to know how you think about that because this is a pain point for a lot of people
at different points in their lives, or at least the source of anxiety. How do you
try to, if this is even the objective, find objectivity when clarifying your feelings
about a relationship? Maybe its just getting a better understanding of your own
subjectivity. I wanted to kind of dissect . . .
Ed:
Am I in a challenge?
Tim:
I wanted to just unpack that a little bit. How do you think about clarifying feelings
in a relationship?
Ed:
Its actually quite funny because my girlfriend is called Clara, and your accent
on clarifying. I was like, [Inaudible 00:43:26] clarifying my relationship. My
relationship is with Clara. Im not sure theres much more I can do. Anyway, Im
not a relationship guru but Id be happy to freestyle on this because I think it
is fascinating and its a big source of pain. Its not just romantic relationships,
its also creative and personal relationships and relationships with friends. Ive
suddenly thought about this a bunch because one of the surprising features of
adult life alongside not being competent as you always assume youre going to
become competent or whatever, but you are actually going to become an adult.
Obviously when youre 18, its a pretty abstract thing. Aging is a kind of comic
encounter with something you can conceptually deny with certain futility.
Anyhow, relationships would be a thing where when youre looking at a person,

in some sense youre experiencing the entire or at least that person is the
undifferentiated focus of a whole incredibly complex tissue or fundamentally
distinct emotions and judgments and attitudes. You find yourself in an argument
and you come from an emotion. You come from an emotion which you probably
dont perceive yourself thinking like, I dont feel very happy about whats going
on, sort of thing. The tendency is to map that against basically whatever springs
into your mind or whatever the person is telling you or what the situation is. This
is why someones late to a restaurant and so you go absolutely mental about it.
Of course, its got nothing to do with being late to the restaurant; its part of a
whole load of other stuff which is not directly the same thing.
For instance, an argument that Ive had which turned out to be amazingly stupid
. . . now that I actually think about what this argument was about, Im not sure
your [inaudible 00:45:58].
Tim:
This is good. I want to hear about it.
Ed:
Youre going to have to cut this out of the final recording. Im just going to have
to pause and sort of . . . jumping to another topic, one of the fascinating things
about language is that when you begin a sentence, even if you sort of have
an intimation of how the sentence is going to end up, youve actually got no
knowledge of what the sentences particular formulation is going to be. As you
initiate a sentence, you have kind of like, Oh, theres something interesting to
be said with a particular kind of internal mental urge. The words begin to come
out and you kind of shepherd in a slightly chaotic fashion to the end of the piece
of meaning you had implicitly wanted to emit at the beginning of a sentence but
which is not like consciously before your eyes at the beginning. Its like a seed
which becomes a tree. The seed contains a tree but the seed doesnt look like
the tree or whatever.
Well, a similar thing with anecdotes, you think, This is a really good anecdote.
Its best to tell Tim about this anecdote. Actually the anecdote is not before
your eyes. I have to take a quick timeout just to see whether this anecdote is
actually good enough.
Tim:
No problem. If youd like a respite or a pause, I can ask a few other . . . I might
forget to come back to it, so we can also do that. I would like to come back to
it but I could hit you with a couple of rapid fire questions if that would take the
pressure off.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
Okay. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person that
comes to mind and why?
Ed:
I think of the German poet, Goethe, who . . . actually this is a good topic. Im
by the way very happy to return to the previous one because theyre both
interesting. Im quite suspicious of the concept of merit. It seems to be like
one of the guiding, if you would like, philosophical assumptions of . . . actually
especially like Western American Californian culture, that merit is the correct
thing to drive outcomes in humans lives. So if you try hard and work your balls
off and youre inherently really talented and youre not benefiting from inherited
wealth or whatever, then the success and happiness and whatever else which I
suppose are the emotions that is justified.
In fact, Tim, you write books in some sense and youre interested and you
develop the concept of improving as a person, of finding powers and talents
and possibilities within yourself. This is kind of inherently attractive idea. Its
very difficult on the face of it to say actually theres a problem with this. Im not
saying there is, but merit is a fundamental assumption of goodness.
Tim:
The merit is associated with effort? I guess I just want to define merit.
Ed:
I think the noble concept of merit is associated with effort. Its like if you do
something really incredible and you tried really hard, that success is something
you deserve. We think of that as morally justifiable, which is problematic for
sociological reasons but also problematic for a [inaudible 00:49:47] being some
people have the opportunity and situation to express their talents. Its also
problematic because you just dont choose your merits and so you might say,
Okay, I dont choose my merits, but actually I do choose them because I trained
really hard and I learned about how to improve myself and I express discipline.
Again, the underlying capacities which allowed you to find the time to train hard
and control your discipline, these arent things you choose. Almost all of our
culture of admiration for people who do really well is based on this implicit moral
idea that people determine their own outcomes. Once you kind of begin digging
into that, its not really clear they do.

The second part of that is what are the categories and concepts with which we
use to determine merit? Im always really struck by the fact that for instance
in our society there are people who have a level of genius for artistic expression
and are the things which arent commercially valued and therefore arent really
culturally valued except in extreme cases who are earning like 7 an hour working
at a cafe. They have a mental world and range of learning and sophistication of
perspective, which is enormously rich and obviously comparable and in many
cases like superior to, according to a different perspective, someone whos really
good at coding and commands $200,000 a year and has high status and so on
and so forth. In that case, theres a kind of capitalistic [SP] reason for ascribing
merit to one person over another. You change the perspective even slightly and
the merit flips completely. The whole concept of merit does depend on these
background thoughts about what is valuable which is often problematic.
Tim:
How would you flip the perspective with the artistic barista versus the [inaudible
00:52:05]?
Ed:
One different paradigm would be towards richness of experience. Which peoples

mental lows would make for a better novel? Im not sure if thats something
or whatever. You could say effect on the environment. Someone whos super
dynamic and successful [inaudible 00:52:31] will tend to fly around and create
capital and spend the capital and generally heat up the world economy which
will generally heat up the world. We have no way of tracking the externalities
of human action either in terms of karma, the emotions of people who are
surrounding and coming into contact with them, or in terms of environmental
impact. We cant track them and even if we could, we might not. These arent
metrics which we can tune into. Because theyre metrics we cant tune into, we
just assume they dont really exist and they have no real influence on A) changes
in behavior, but B) what as a society or culture we find easy to admire.
Tim:
How did Goethe make you think of merit?
Ed:
its just like, Jesus, man. Im just asking a simple question and you go yattering
on sort of a half-baked left-wing nonsense. Okay, Goethe was just like . . .
I know you hate Ayn Rand, its fine. What do you think of Goethe?
Tim:
Ed:
Goethe is really cool. As a teenager, hes sort of falling in love the entire time and
writing poetry [inaudible 00:53:55] and so on. At the age of 25, he writes a novel
which is extraordinarily brilliant about the troubles of young Goethe. Its this
wonderful story of a young man who falls in love and it doesnt really work out
so well. As in the side, Goethe wrote this book by locking himself in a hotel room
for three months, imagining his five best friends on different chairs and then
discussing with his imaginary friends different possibilities of plot and so on and
so forth, which is an example by the way of that spatial separation I was talking
about. In ones own mind when its somehow inherently boxed in and constricted
and by imagining in different spatial locations different perspectives and then
iterating an idea or novel, in this case, through perspectives he was able to give
himself five perspectives separated out and give himself a multidimensional
playground for creating a work of art, which by the way is an awesome technique.

Anyhow, he does that and then he starts writing the best poetries. Hes already
the best prose [inaudible 00:55:09] in the history of the German language.
Generally thats how [inaudible 00:55:14]. He got appointed at the Weimar
Republic as a kind of poet in residence but then just got really interested in
those other stuff. He started redirecting the construction of the canal system
and doing various other stuff, and doing lots of inventive things. Then he gets
into basically administering human affairs, and he becomes very good at that.
At the age of 39, he basically falls in love for the first time truly . . . maybe it
was something before. Anyhow, he just disappears one day. Hes got this very
prestigious, important position. Hes kind of like the mayor of Weimar effectively
and then he just pisses off to Italy just leaving a small note.
Basically he runs around, falls in love with lots of beautiful people, writes some of
the best sexual erotic poetry ever written. Meanwhile, hes becoming . . . comes
back, becomes incredibly interested in Newtons theory of physics which he
thinks is appalling and doesnt capture the mystery and beauty of color at all, so
he writes a theory of color, which is still an amazing fount of incredible goodness
for philosophers and stuff about the phenomenology of color perception and
how shade and context and meaning influenced the character of color.
Meanwhile, hes writing Faust, the famous play, his greatest work. He completes
that in his 50s but hasnt lost energy at all and goes through about three or four
totally different styles of poetry. By the time he dies at the age of 82-ish, he has
become really interested in Eastern culture.
Did I forget to mention that he has got this deep aesthetic vision of science
and our relationship to nature? He comes up with basically whats the theory of
evolution. He studies plants and human . . . theres this particular there which
at the time justification for humans differences from the animals which I think
was called the intermaxillary bone, some random bone in your jaw. Its amazing
how we try and distinguish ourselves; opposable thumbs, language, humor,
consciousness or intelligence. At that point, it was the intermaxillary bone and
he actually did some dissections of animals and young humans to show that
this bone was present in both. It fuses later in life, and therefore its not the
basis. Therefore it can be missed. But humans and animals are fundamentally
the same. He talks about plants and the similarity of plants, the efflorescence of
a flower with the way the human cranium bends around and links up with itself.
Hes just cool. Hes expressive. Hes incredibly independent. When Napoleon
invades, I think he was living in Frankfurt at the time. When Napoleon invades
Frankfurt, everyone else is sheltering in their houses and he was wandering the
fields looking for evidence about the color pink for his theory of colors. Hes
totally transcending the local context.
Anyway, he was interested in all this stuff. Hes passionate and intuitive. He is a
genius, which helps, but he produces a body of work and a set of perspectives
which are just fundamentally life affirming in a way which carries through the
ages. I actually got into Goethe...
I was travelling around, at the age of 18, the world which is what people in
England do between high school and University. In my coat I just had Goethes
aphorisms, his short little thoughts in my pocket. I read and reread this book.
Its actually had quite a fundamental perspective on my life because these are
his little snippets of wisdom on almost any imaginable topic, and all of them
are brilliant. There are things like the company of women is schooling in good
manners, or boldness has genius, power and magic. Ones you dont remember
in their precise form but which nonetheless acts as little micro filters for
interpreting reality.
Anyway, hes a big influence on me. One of his quotes actually is something
along the lines of, There is nothing so depressing as someone who is heroic
being praised by somebody who isnt, because when we praise people, we put
ourselves on a level with them. I was actually just trying to think of a quote
which related to this situation and so here I am praising Goethe.
Actually as Im describing Goethe, Im kind of channeling a bit his general

awesomeness and feeling a bit better about myself. By the way, just as a
general concept, that phenomenon of how a memory can influence perception
is the fundamental reason why I think its still worth knowing things even though
we can look them up. By looking everything up, we give away and divest of
the central flow of our consciousness, genuine richness. Its by being able to
recognize the difference between 20 different birds that you dont just perceive
a bird, you perceive a particular variety of bird and what on earth is it doing
around here at this time of year? It must be lost. Perhaps the migration pattern
has been fucked up by global warming. It turns pure data into connection with
the meaningful world, and thats what memory does. That will be my general
justification for remembering things.
Tim:
I like that. This is something that I also grapple with just as I strive to be the
master of this tool that is technology and not the tool of the master [inaudible
01:01:33] technology.
You mentioned two things about Goethe that I wanted to dig into a little bit.
You mentioned passion and intuition, and you can revise that, but those are two
of the characteristics of Goethe that you pulled out. One of the reasons that I
reached out to you very much at the 11th hour yesterday to see if you wanted
to chat and catch up and just record because I thought itd be fun for people to
listen to is that Ive been having a bit of a tough time with medical issues related
to Lyme disease and other things, and have felt a little down, in a bit of a slump.
I find that you always strike me as very . . . this could be an illusion, so feel free
to disabuse me of this notion. In a very excited, very passionate, very energized
...
Im wondering if that is something that you feel youve always had intrinsically
or if its something youve developed. If the latter, and maybe its a combination,
how do you strive to encourage that type of state? What are the things that
contribute to your better moments? There are a lot of fucking questions in one.
I dont have alcohol as an excuse.
Ed:
I do for my slurring [SP] nonsense of this end of this Skype call. First of all,
Im sorry to hear about the medical stuff and the dip of enthusiasm. Thats
undoubtedly tough. Second thing, no Im not always really happy about stuff.
Its funny, like doing a company has been an amazing journey, full of the highest
highs and the most execrable horrifying lows. I guess its just life really.
You start a company, everything starts like, This is going to be absolutely

incredible. Do something amazing. Everyones going to love it and its all going
to be beautiful. And then it turns out to be just like a much more complex human
process than that, and you have breakdowns in relationships with people you
love, and you have decisions you make where you subsequently realize that
they were the wrong decision and it caused a lot of people some pain. You have
successes which are wonderful, but which are compromised by the fact that
they werent where they should have been.
Anyway, of course like anybody else, I have access to the full range of goodness
and badness in the human experience obviously. I am quite keen on life though,
Tim. I do . . .
Tim:
I can sense that. So Im curiouis...
Ed:
I suppose also I get my energy from the world and other people rather than
internally. Im very uninterested generally in supposedly scientific assessments
of personality and so on and so forth. I think the reductive impulse is demeaning
to humans. Im also probably quite worried what Id discover if I were to look
into it. But I am an extrovert. I did read one thing in my studies of Cognitive
Science, which struck me as fascinating piece of self-knowledge which is that
introverted people tend to have a much higher internal level of energy, so that
proactive interaction with their environment isnt so necessary to keep them
rewarded and interested and... for richness. I am undoubtedly extroverted, so
I absolutely love and gain huge energy from interacting with people and so on
and so forth. Thats kind of a personality thing.
Regarding passion, this might connect with a few interesting issues, but I think
. . . I suppose Im a dick and so I hate doing things which bore me.
Tim:
Wait. Did you say youre a dick?
Ed:
Yeah. Almost everyone in life has to slop it up and just get on with things. I
have a quite visceral [SP] emotional reaction against being bored. That does
influence things. The other thing you touched upon there, which I think is such a
good subject is intuition. Because the process of rationally justifying to yourself
your action is incredibly slow. Full of grayness and complexity, and generally its
sort of 5% efficient process of moving forward in ones ideas and beliefs. Youre
like, Oh, we should really do this on Memrise, or, I think this girl is the person
I want to marry. If you allow rationality into this, you end up with a situation
where all the energy is going in the wrong place. Its like, But on the other hand,
is she really going to get along with me in old age? What kind of person am I
really looking to connect with?
You could double question yourself to death on most things. When life is really,
really good, one isnt pissing around going, Should I turn left or right out of
the door today? You end up as existential boredoms [SP] ass stuck between a
million possibilities and never really doing anything. Whereas when things are
going really well, youre just like, This feels right. It might be wrong. Dont give
a shit. Lets go. That is so energetic.
This is actually something . . . Ive really had a journey in this within Memrise
because my intention with it actually isnt at all with helping people remember
more effectively which is the kind of thing you might do to a computer chip. That
is an element in something much more interesting which is like helping people
feel like a genius or helping people love the world theyre learning about or
helping people just get pleasure out of their minds and the richness [SP] of their
consciousness in learning. I think its probably true in almost any profession. In
a startup, youve got this thing where youve got the push and shove between
what happens in one months time and what happens in 12 months time. A lot
of the time youre like, Yeah, this idea weve had would be absolutely incredible
and would make people feel like geniuses, but on the other hand, its not going
to move any metrics for two months. It sounds a bit irresponsible.
Tim:
Ed:
In the early days, for instance, I had this idea of what we should . . . were
fundamentally like a language learning site. I had this idea that we should all get
on a bus like a converted double decker bus and just go around Europe, a lot
of coders, designers, the whole team, and just go on a fucking road trip around
Europe. It would just be incredible. I just made the best idea ever or something.
Wed have learned so much about language and it would have been incredibly
fun, diverse, interesting experience. It would have been a wonderful way of
getting PR and the rest of it, but on the other hand, and this is where rationality
came in, what the hell are you doing? Youre supposed to be doing your startup.
Youre in a bus. Youre driving around Europe. Where are you going to sleep?
Exactly what function does this have for the product? There are a million other
things come in and youre like . . . that was an example of where intuition was
thwarted by kind of banal self-incriminating rationality resulting in, Im almost
certain, a less interesting product and less fun.
You bring up a really interesting set of questions. This is something that at times
I do better with, at times I do more poorly with. Ive tried to, at various points in
my life, increase the speed with which I make decisions. If a decision is reversible
and non-fatal, then I find my life is generally much better when I just do exactly
what you mentioned which is left/right, who gives a fuck? Im going right, itll be
fine. If its not, Ill figure it out later. Making these types of reversible decisions
as quickly as possible so that you dont have a lot of cognitive burden and youre
not so stuck up your own ass all the time.
In the case of the bus and the business, lets just say, how do you balance the
intuition which at times can be an irrational exuberance with the prefrontal
cortex calculation?
That is the question . . .
Recording:
What youre about to hear is part two of a two-part conversation with Ed Cooke,
Grandmaster of Memory and much more than that. He is a hilarious dude, you
will love him. If you didnt catch the first part however you might want to do that
before venturing in. But this is really a conversation that jumps around and we
answer a lot of different questions and different topics. So if you dont mind your
story as more of a jigsaw puzzle then by all means keep on listening. So without
further ado please enjoy part two of the Tim Ferris Show with Ed Cooke.
Ed:
That was an example of where intuition was thwarted by kind of binaural kind of
self-recriminating rationality resulting in, Im almost certain, like a less interesting
product and less fun.
Tim:
Now you bring up a really interesting... you bring up a really interesting set of
questions and this is something that at times I do better with, at times I do more
poorly with. But Ive tried to, at various points in my life, increase the speed with
which I make decisions. So if a decision is reversible and non-fatal then I find my
life is generally much better when I just do exactly what you mentioned. Which is
like, Left, right, who gives a fuck? Im going right. Itll be fine. If its not, Ill figure
it out later. Making these types of reversible decisions as quickly as possible
so that you dont have a lot of cognitive burden and youre not so stuck up your
own ass all the time. In the case of the bus and the business, lets just say, or
how do you balance the intuition which at times can be an irrational exuberance
with the sort of prefrontal cortex calculation.
Ed:
Yeah, yeah. Well thats the question. That is the question and its not a question
I have an answer to.
Tim:
Right.
Ed:
But I assume its something to do with the...
Tim:
Goddammit, Ed, why did I do this interview? Im just kidding.
Ed:
Yeah, its pathetic, isnt it? By the way, before I suppose were quite far into this.
There are two things, by the way, we must come back to. One of which is how
you think about merit. How you think about merit and the other one of which is
Burning Man, because I went to that this year and its the most perfect example of
any institution Ive ever seen. Its also a sublime exemplar of memory techniques
put into the outside world. So anyway, so those are two little thoughts which we
must come back to. But where were we?
We were, yeah, and so Ive got no idea about the intuition thing, but I think,
and Im basically learning from my girlfriend who is a more spiritual-connected,
intuitive person than I am by account of disposition and native structure, so to
speak, who can come to a discussion, and this might get back to our kind of
point about relationships. Fundamentally were like calm. Where normally your
mind is like [makes noise]. Thats normally mine.
Tim:
Thats actually the best description of my mind Ive ever heard. Right there.
Ed:
Yeah, and its kind of rubbish isnt it? You know, well, one wants to become a
didgeridoo, like the [makes noise]. But unfortunately youre just like, Oh, fuck.
Oh, maybe Im a loser. Oh, no. I should really, you know?
But by the way, so one thing I quite enjoy about our friendship, Tim, is that
youre quite good at coming up to rational conclusions and implementing them,
and Im not. Earlier this week I was like, Jesus Christ, I smoke the whole time,
I drink lots of wine, I should [Inaudible 00:04:30] out. Im going to start doing
yoga. Even yogas even something which I find fascinating and interesting, rich.
I think its like a fundamentally profound system of thought which connects
autonomous rhythms with the bodys capacity of movement and the mind. I
dont have enough good things to say about yoga, but I never fucking do it. So
I was like, Okay, Jesus. I was like, Jesus. Ive got to go do something, Ive got
to, I need to be healthy. I said, I think Ill do some yoga.
So I went down to the yoga thing and then I paid, they had this big, great deal
-- Twenty-five pounds for 10 days of consecutive sessions. I was like, Genius.
This time Im going to do 10 days of consecutive sessions. Went to the first one
because I was there and did it. It was great, and felt fantastic, super pepped up
and the rest of it. That was five days ago. Im just inept. I dont know what kind of
consistency or perspective is required to actually implement worthy plans like
that.
Actually thats why I enjoy chatting and just generally brainstorming with you,
because you seem to have a capacity to sort of come up to a conclusion like
that. Oh yeah, yoga. Really good. I should do some more yoga. Then actually
do it. A capacity which I find mysterious and suspicious.
Tim:
Well, you know, it all comes down to black magic. You have to get a dead cat,
preferably black. Swing it counter-clockwise over your head before midnight.
Ed:
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim:
No, honestly, I find it endlessly amusing how, particularly in some media pieces,
Im played up to be this sort of stalwart of self-discipline and systems thinking,
and I function like Bishop from Aliens. I just have this incredible ability to
execute, execute, execute. And at the end of the day, Im just good at setting
up incentives for myself that punish me and flog me if I dont do things. So the
way that I would conquer the yoga has nothing to do with convincing yourself
or rationalizing. I would take extremely unflattering photos of yourself in tightywhities, front and center, give those to a friend who can keep an agreement, but
who will also show no mercy, and just say, If I dont prove to you as my judge,
that Ive gone to yoga for 10 days straight, these are going to go on the home
page as a pop-up for the... Or something like that, or on Facebook.
Ed:
Yeah, you know what this connects with? This is a bit like Gerter [SP] and his
friends in the room. Its like externalizing beyond yourself the sources of the
things you need for yourself.
Tim:
Yeah.
Ed:
A bit.
Tim:
Yeah, definitely.
Ed:
I mean [Inaudible 00:07:08] what Im saying obviously but...
Tim:
No, but I think, I think self-discipline is so overrated. If you break it down, you
know, self-discipline is actually, its kind of a poor label. Its poorly-defined, at
least. Its overused to the extent that its really lost any type of clarity and its
meaning.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
So for me, self-discipline its like no, were like rats in a lab. Put us in a Skinner
box, which is life, and we respond to inputs that are punishment and reward,
and we adjust our behavior accordingly. So its like all right, great, make that
external. Youre not going to punish or reward yourself typically, its usually not
enough, and its too easily reneged. So you can externalize it. You can also put
some money on the line, thats also very useful for people.
But how the hell did we get this far? So were going to talk about Burning Man.
Were going to come back to your discussion with your girlfriend which we left
long ago, but well come back to that. Then merit. Im still struggling with this,
and Im a bit of a semantic pain in the ass. Is merit close to, in your mind, sort of
the Roman, Arte, like this virtue? Or can it be boiled down to sort of deservedly
winning? Is that...?
Ed:
Yes, so I think virtue, of which I have none, but virtue is like I think is the correct,
is how we should think about merit. In some sense, the humanities [inaudible
00:08:50] have had this nailed for like 2,000 years what the fundamental
tendencies of a good human being are: empathy, temperance, generosity,
kind of non-egotism. We sort of know what good human beings have done for
thousands of years, but thats not what we celebrate or immediately associate
with merit, right?
So we tend to associate merit with tangible outcomes in life-path, which might

include getting a Harvard Law degree or being Bill Gates or whatever. So the
concept of improving ones self is obviously an excellent concept, regardless
of how socially you perceive human action and existence. Because to improve
yourself is to improve the world, its to improve your interactions with others. Its
not a lonely activity.
But at the same time, if you look at like Silicon Valley start-ups, which are, in
some sense, the great drivers of human culture at the moment, besides like ISIS
and whatever.
But anyway, the natural tendency in that way of thinking is to become personally
more efficient. So its to store files more effectively, get things done better, be
quicker, optimize ones self, and this is a kind of merit thing in its way. But its
quite a selfish one. Goodness knows, for lots of subtle reasons, were all selfish
but you can imagine an alternative culture of creativity and power of the kind that
Silicon Valley has which would all be focused on making communities better and
institutions better, and hacking not ones self but the situations which comprise
the world.
A great example about this, is you go to San Francisco, unbelievably cool town
full of just the most magical people, so intellectually vibrant, open, fun, awesome,
beautiful, and so rich. And theres fucking like homeless people everywhere.
Shit, like seriously guys, thats Twitter HQ there. Its a $15 billion company or
whatever. Everyone inside is being paid more than $100,000 a year and this
happens on their doorstep? Do they have no conception, no like basic grasp
over what happy existence is? Because your existence would be happier if you
didnt have to, at a purely selfish level, walk past all these people who are clearly
in a state of distress and maybe hassling you and whatever. Anyway, so I think
thats one of the most interesting things about San Francisco.

And its, to me, emblematic of a tendency of thought which looks to optimize

the individual over the situations [inaudible 00:12:20] your like external stuff
influencing the self, rather than the self-influencing the self, rather than external
situations which are the things which actually make us happy, like the ability to
play chess on the street, and giving people things and whatever other...
Tim:
Yep. No, I agree. I think that just to, not to take us down too much of a political
rat hole, but I think that the part of what makes San Francisco very fascinating,
and the Bay Area in general, is there are many divergent opinions on many
different subjects. Some people think Bitcoin is a fraud, other people think its
the future, and theres everything in between for every conceivable subject.
Some people believe in long-term monogamous relationships and then you
have the whole poly-amorous community and theres everything in between.
Simultaneously, for instance, I think that San Francisco could learn a lot as it
relates to homeless people and other aspects of rejuvenating a city from New
York City. I think Giuliani and Bloomberg have done just a phenomenal job with
converting Manhattan into a pleasant place to walk.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
That was not, it wasnt in the distant past that it was terrifying to walk in areas
that are now very popular. The challenge, I think, is that in San Francisco, among
many other, there are many reasons for this, but one of the challenges is that
Im sure, well maybe youve heard the expression, A liberal is someone who
doesnt know to take his own side in a fight, that in San Francisco, theres such
a divergence of opinions, no one can agree on fucking anything. That makes it
very challenging to deal with systemic issues that involve a lot of people. But
yeah, I agree with you.
Ed:
I wonder if thats really right, Tim. Theres lots of consensus in San Francisco
in certain regions of life, right? So the whole entrepreneurial ecosystem is so
fluid and dynamic, because everyone agrees how it should work. Either youve
got venture capitalists, the entrepreneurs, the talented young guys, the angel
investors, and theres very clear, shared sets of concepts about, and also a lot
of generosity and consensus. Everyone is always helping everyone. Theres no
overt selfishness at all, really.
That was what I would describe as almost a perfect harmonious community,

where people are doing amazing things, trying as hard as they can. But...
[inaudible 00:15:01] sites to memorize in some sense, is a site called Quizlet.
Im incredibly good mates with the CEO of Quizlet, this guy called Andrew
Sutherland. Hes a terrific character. Its so striking on meeting him. We see each
other, we have a wonderful time together, we brainstorm together, and he helps
me wherever he can. Theres a sense of shared journey which defies any notion
of normal competition.
Thats the kind of thing which is going on in the entrepreneurial community,

and yet there are these quite radical divisions between that and for instance, I
dont understand the history of the homeless people, but it is striking that there
are so many of them and that these two worlds coexist spatially, but have zero
social or emotional or conceptual connection in a way.
Tim:
No, I agree. I think that its very easy to succumb to the belief that SF is tech
or that the Bay Area is tech, when in fact that perception is because of the
prominence, in the media and otherwise, of outliers. The sort of sexiness and
romance of building multi-billion-dollar companies in short periods of time has
created a misperception, I think, of how much of the population benefits from
being employed at tech companies.
But I think it brings up an interesting question, maybe we wont get into it right
now, I want to talk about Burning Man a bit, but that there are a lot of people in
Silicon Valley and in New York City and all over the world who struggle with the
question of, Should I give back now? Should I try to create positive karma in the
world and benefit others now? Or Should I be completely selfish now so that I
can be completely selfless later?
So for instance, there are people I know, and this is going to sound crazy, who
say, who would argue that Mother Theresa is a media hound, and she should
not be looked at as a saint and that it would be better to look at someone
like Bill Gates who is not exactly the nicest kid on the block when it came to
competition and ruthless capitalism for a long period of time, but who now,
with the stroke of a pen, can ostensibly wipe out malaria or polio. That we live
in a culture where the former has been romanticized because its easier, and
perhaps this comes back to general mental functioning, its easier for us to take
this archetypal image of a saint in our mind, as opposed to the more complex
narrative of somebody, like a Jobs for instance, who was kind of a son of a bitch
if we really look at it objectively, who is now being deified. How do you...?
Ed:
Yeah, its tricky, isnt it? I mean, sorry to interrupt your question, but I think Gates
is a really [Inaudible 00:18:29]...
Tim:
If that was a question that was the longest question of all time. I think it was just
a rant, so go ahead.
Ed:
I assume since its probably past 3:00 PM in San Francisco that youve moved on
to the gin and tonics and thats But I think Gates is a good example, because
Gates is deified, is considered a heroic figure because of this generosity after the
fact of wealth accumulation. I had a quite big argument with some close friends
about this, because theres one perspective which says, A, Gates, through
personal merit accrued $60 billion and so deserves to be able to spend it. And
B, hes this hyper-competent character whos much better than some inept,
internally strife-ridden charitable institution who arent going to get anything
done. This guy has got the competence and the rest of it to go and solve the
worlds problems unilaterally. Hell get it done really efficiently. I can see the
merit in that type of perspective.
But heres another perspective which would be... so Gates exploited, probably
pretty illegally, monopolistic practices to accrue from the population of
the world, immense undeserved wealth at the expense of their computing
experience. Now as a unilateral actor, he now has the opportunity to spend it

on whatever he feels is right, where in fact, it shouldnt be Bill Gatess decision
what humanitys wealth gets spent on to sort our problems. That should be a
democratic process.

That old phrase, Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I
think is fundamentally, psychologically real. Thats kind of an aside, but I would
like to see, as an alternative history of 1980 to 2010, Id have liked to have seen
Gates become very rich in the course of the 80s, and spend $50 million on his
local community, and a thousand people around the world or everyone around
the world would have a much better computing experience. And a thousand or
a million people around the world have the opportunity to divert their fraction of
the great sum he has at his disposal, to the situations in their local communities
or in the broader world which they judge to be meritorious, to merit this sort of
spending.
The extreme way of saying that is Gates is basically the last person on Earth
you want spending these kinds of resources, because he is, all right, I think hes
quite a likable character, but because nobody should be spending $60 billion.
There should be 60 million people spending $1000.
Theres something fundamentally wrong with our institutional structure. Until

the objection that its just not as efficient as when youve got like a big head
honcho just calling the shots... thats probably true. But efficiency on both sides
of the equation, either the charitable side and the wealth accumulation side,
seems to be a very ambiguous good. Right? Being more efficient.
Tim:
Well, yeah. I dont want to beat the dead horse too long, but one of the ways
my thinking has flipped in the last few years is related to judging, prioritizing
intentions or outcomes. So what I mean by that is, as relevant to this conversation,
is would you rather have someone who in their heart of hearts is pure, I was going
to say, As pure as gold. But thats not really, doesnt make much sense. But you
get the idea, someone who is truly altruistic who has the greater good in mind
with $1 million, or someone who is at their core, Scrooge, but who out of guilt,
to absolve themselves of guilt, is going to behave as if they are altruistic with
a $100 million? Which would you prefer if theyre of equal intellectual capacity,
right? So their ability to problem-solve is equal. Now I think I would probably
opt, if Im just focused on outcomes, fixing aspects of the educational system,
fixing health care, global literacy, whatever it might be, Im happy to take the
extrinsically motivated rich guy as opposed to the intrinsically-motivated lessrich guy.
Ed:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, thats a good point.
Tim:
You know what I mean? If Im just looking for outcomes, because I used to,
and that doesnt mean dont give back, I think there are many arguments that
could be made, and I wrote a blog post for people interested called the Karmic
Capitalist about my thinking on this. But let me ask you just to take us in a
related but slightly different direction. Because Im probably more, Im not a
Randian, exactly...
Ed:
By the way, this is the moment to bring in Burning Man, by the way.
Tim:
Okay, bring it in. Bring it in. Can I ask you one other question and if its going to
be a long answer, we can come back to it?
Ed:
Yeah, yeah.
Tim:
But I want to know what is financial security to you? Where does money fit into
your life?
Ed:
Well I think its very difficult to starve in Northern Europe.
Tim:
Meaning its unpleasant when you starve, or its difficult to end up starving?
Ed:
No, its just like, By 2014, people of the opinion that starving in Northern Europe
was actually quite unpleasant, whereas in 2007, starving was great fun. No, I
mean that, I suppose that we are blessed a bit with what the low bar is in terms
of life outcomes. Starving doesnt really happen in Western countries, although
of course theres lots of tricky kinds of situations which get close to that. But its
funny actually, because I actually am not sure if I have a totally honest internal
perspective on this, Tim.
Tim:
All right, elaborate.
Ed:
Part of me is like, to be honest, Id be perfectly happy just schlepping around

Europe chatting to people, having the odd espresso and just generally
experiencing the world. But what I actually care about is conscious experience,
understanding, and [makes noise]. But at the same time, I do enjoy a good party.
I [Inaudible 00:26:08] and I also quite enjoy like sitting, in front of One of my
dreams, its funny, dreams, you have dreams all the time in your life, and when I
was five, I wanted to be a carpenter. When I was six, I wanted to be Beethoven,
whatever. Some of them stick with you. One of the ones thats just stuck with me
is a mixture of exactly this blend between like, I dont give a crap about money,
and I basically want to live in the kind of Utopian situation which can only be
sustained by enormous private wealth.
This dream, and Ive had it since the age of 15 and it wont go away, it was just
that my idea for what I really want to do in my life is to have a philosophical
academy in Greece. Basically what Im saying is like Mediterranean sunshine,
beautiful people in white robes, people playing guitar on the beach, a network of
pavilions. Youd sit in one for a while just contemplating the meaning of the color
green for like six weeks, and then you kind of wander up the arcade of columns
by the swimming pool with all of the beautiful people, and have scintillating
intellectual conversation. Youd somehow be apart from the world of ambition
and trying to sustain progress, and youd be sitting back and contemplating the
concepts which normally drive our intentions. Youd just basically be having a
good old think about what the meaning of it all is. But also youd be surrounded
by beautiful people in great luxury and sunshine.
So its like right here is a conflict. So certainly, I hold in contempt the idea of
counting score in life through wealth. Theres fairly small evidence to me, in fact,
I just go with the accepted evidence that up to a certain point, its great to have
some resources, because it allows a certain level of relaxation, comfort, and
sustainable existence in the world. But beyond that, its vanity and stupidity to
pursue worldly resources.

But funny enough, random thing, Aristotle is really funny as a moral philosopher,
and one of the reasons hes funny is that he doesnt really believe you can be
happy if youre not beautiful, which is kind of probably true, but we dont dwell
on it. Anyway, hes also got...
Tim:
Not a popular advertising campaign.
Ed:
Yeah, exactly. Hes also got a virtue which is only available to the rich. His virtue
system is about poles. Like for every virtue, theres an extreme exaggeration
of that virtue which becomes a sin or a vice, and theres a thing in the opposite
direction, so [Inaudible 00:29:07].
One of his virtues only available to rich people is magnificence. So he thinks

that the correct use of the energy that is wealth, is to be magnificent, which is
to say to throw amazing festivals, build awesome buildings, and foster great
artists, and do this kind of thing. Then that could go in its extreme form to
ostentation and vanity, like the kinds of characters I think who are, you know,
who occur wherever theres extreme wealth. Russian Oligarch being the classic
contemporary example, or towards miserliness, where you have all of this wealth
and youre not organizing any parties, what the fuck?
Its probably orthogonal but its probably a quite good way of thinking about
wealth, which is that there is a responsibility to create joy... and theres nothing
inherently sinful about being wealthy.
But anyway, going back to this academy, to which by the way, Tim, youre going
to be hugely welcome. I hope youre going to hang out there very often. I think
its going to be really cool. Were just going to sort of just hang about and chat
about stuff.
Tim:
Yeah, green is also my favorite color, so I have a lot to ponder there.
Ed:
Okay, very good. Yeah, interrogate yourself about that. You know, favorite...
Tim:
I think the rich, the use of riches is an interesting segue to Burning Man, because
theres a lot of this discussion about this, of course. But tell me your impression
of Burning Man. Ill leave it wide open since you wanted to, you brought it up.
Ed:
Yeah, I did bring it up. I love parties and I wanted to go to the Burning Man for a
while. My best friend Al is often at Burning Man and I said, Well, we should go
there together. We went to the Burning Man.
Burning Man is an absolute ordeal to get to, especially if youre coming from
the U.K. So youve got to get to San Francisco, then theres all of this like youve
got to purchase lots of objects and water and snacks and costumes and all of
this stuff. Then youve got to do an eight-hour road trip. About four hours into
the road trip, youre like, Wow, this is getting pretty much into the middle of
nowhere. Then you just keep on schlepping on, and you get there. Then you
spend four hours in a queue in a dust storm or whatever, get to the gate, and
then some like slightly sort of annoyingly kind of enlightened-looking character
says like, Welcome home. Youre like, Fuck off mate, I live in Hackney. Ive
come to a music festival.

In between that and leaving Burning Man, something happens where as youre
leaving youre like, well he was right, this was my home. So whats happened
in between? Whats interesting is that I was not indoctrinated into the quite
sophisticated kind of moral conceptual framework around Burning Man, all their
principles and so on. I was just sort of going on for a good party.
But heres like my quick-fry theory about why Burning Man is the most brilliant
institution Ive encountered, and is the first evidence Ive seen, not the first or
whatever, but is a compelling case for why Silicon Valley is actually a culturally
important place on a par with, say, the renaissance in Florence or something.
Where if you look at the buildings in Silicon Valley, youre like, Jesus, these guys
may build good software companies but they sure dont know how to live. Its
like the car park.
Anyway, so why is Burning Man so good? So theres no money which cuts out
one fundamental aspect of your social relationship to the world. Theres basically
no time, because no ones got a watch on them and no one would care if they
did. Although there is time, but its a different quality of time. Its basically the
rhythm of sun and night. Then theres no mobile phones, so no one is basically
able to connect with their normal, unbelievably banal set of preoccupations.
As a result, people are stripped down. So youve got no money, no ambition,

no obsession with what youre supposed to be doing, and theres basically no
agenda whatsoever as regards what happens. Its long enough, about a week,
that unlike a U.K. Festival, of which there were many great ones including things
like the Secret Garden Party. At the Secret Garden Party on a Saturday, youre
aware that on Sunday, youre going to have to pack up and go home. But at
Burning Man the temporal horizon is just long enough that basically it might as
well be infinite. Youre just like, I am here.
Thats the first thing. Its like youre stripped away of a lot of the tendencies of
interaction which normally make you basically a fucking boring person. Then the
second thing is that you bounce around Burning Man, and it operates, as far as I
can tell, at four scales which interweave in this fractal way. So youve got camps.
So youll be in a Wild West Camp and youre there, and at one point, I found
myself playing a piano naked in a Wild West Bar surrounded by Frenchmen
singing the French National Anthem. This is basically a quite undistinguished
way to be spending 20 minutes of your life. But anyway, youre in the Wild West
and youre feeling like in the Wild West. And then, an [art 00:34:45] car goes
past. You wander out and you get in the [art] car, and the art car buzzes you off
somewhere else.
So the art car is kind of the second order of [inaudible 00:34:50]. Youre in the
Wild West, it feels like the Wild West. Youre open because youre not thinking
about money or time or what youre supposed to be doing or your career or how
you really want to achieve this by next year, but unfortunately this is getting out
of order. All of thats cleared out.
I did get on the art car and art car is one order of magnitude, scale-wise, down
and the art car may be like a fish or a boat or whatever. You get on the boat
and then youre living on a boat. The whole vibe is boat-ist, so youve entered
a different world. Then you talk to a person on the boat, sort of third scale of
spatial organization down, and the person does not have an agenda, because
they have basically completely forgotten about all of the things which preoccupy
them normally. And so you get further in about five minutes of conversation
than you do with a flat mate in about a year because youre just like, Oh, how
are you feeling? Its like, Oh, not so good because of, the sort of thing which
no one would ever tell you, I dont think.

Where are you from? Then because youre really open, because youre not
thinking about your money, your time, or the things you have to do, youre
like, Oh, well actually, the fact that youre from Wisconsin and a little farm is
interesting in a way which it wouldnt be according to my normal filters. Of
course none of this is rational, its just a kind of intuitive flow.
You have very rich... and so people have their own worlds which you dive into. So
youve had the camp, where youre like in a world, and then youve got the art
car, which are basically like floating night clubs. But anyway, you get on an art
car and thats kind of a world, then a person is the world.
Then its got this gift economy where the gifts are themselves their own world.
So sometimes its like a little object which expresses some profound story about
this persons life, or about the world or anything else. One person, and I should
add since were on record that I didnt indulge, was like, This, my friend, is one
of only 10 DMT inhalers in the entire world. So that would have been a world to
dive into as a gift.
Anyway, because of the lack of temporal horizon, you bounce between these
spatial levels. Youre in a camp, youre talking to a person, youre like on an art
car, or youre [makes noises]. You cease to kind of track how they relate to each
other. So the whole thing becomes, has the character of an external hallucination
where one fascinating piece of the world will pop up and dissolve into the next
fascinating bit of the world. And theres no attachment and theres no nothing
kind of thing. Youre just bouncing around this extraordinary experience.
As a result of that, quite fundamental concepts change. Like your relationship to

the distinction between a night club and a piece of art dissolves. Your concept of
what a friend is and what someone you dont know is blurs, because everyones
kind of a friend. Of course, this all sounds quite pompous, but youre also having
a terribly good time. This is really striking because I was not indoctrinated before
going there.
Tim:
Right.
Ed:
Within two days, I was living in this magical invented thing where what was so
striking was that it was all based on giving, generosity, openness, and transient
creativity.
The structure of the party, if thats what Burning Man is, is just of unbelievable
genius. I was staggered. I love parties and I study them. I once tried to write a
book about house parties, and it wasnt very good and I never completed it. But
I love parties and Id never imagined a party could be a dance in the brain of a
philosopher or something like that.
Its a party which gives you insights into totally different ways of relating to
yourself and the world. And I love the fact that its transient. Because A, it means
that only through the proactive participation of the people who are involved will
it ever exist, but B, it means that the meaning has to go outside into the world in
a way. So you dont go to Burning Man and then you have your isolated kingdom,
like my philosophical academy in Greece for instance, where youre denying the
world and then living your own private dream in an onanistic nonsense.
Its actually just like an opportunity to re-conceive stuff, and then go back
to the world. Then think, Oh, fuck. Well just like Burning Man, the world is a
consequence of the actions of everybody whos in it. Just like Burning Man, any
form of relationship is possible.
Its fundamentally a mind-expanding thing and then, although I have no

knowledge of this whatsoever, it seems to me to be intuitively very plausible that
the kind of genius of Silicon Valley, the fact that its creating experiences and
possibilities of life, which genuinely touch upon the transformation of humanity
in subtle ways at the moment, and bit by bit and [inaudible 00:40:26] of course,
I can only assume they are somehow connected.
Tim:
I have a challenge for you. Well the first is a recommendation. I think youd
really enjoy a book called Spectacle by David Rockwell and Bruce Mau, M-A-U.
Its basically a visual compilation, essays and photographs that look at the
phenomenon and history of massive public performances or events around the
world, which is really just a phenomenal tome.
The challenge is, this is something Ive thought about because I get I wouldnt
say agoraphobic, but because Im intrinsically quite introverted, Ive been to
Burning Man twice, I enjoyed it, but I end up spending a lot of time in my own
camp, partially just to recharge. If you were tasked with creating as much of the
benefits that you derived from Burning Man with a group of 20 people on your
own, so youre creating your own experience to provide many of the benefits of
Burning Man for 20 people, what would you do? How would you do that?
Ed:
Thats a super question, okay. So of course, in some sense, Im just going to

make up whatever I say.
Tim:
Yeah, yeah, and no budgetary constraints.
Ed:
But lets just sort of do it with my little theory there about why Burning Man is so
good. Lets just apply that to 20 people. So a massive hero narrative road trip to
get wherever youre going. So youre like spatially and experientially separated
from your boring life. No phones. No money. No motivation to talk about your
intentions in the world, but more just sort of everything. A shared creative
project where you, somehow spontaneously, democratically, come up with a
cool way of making everyone else happy, perhaps collaboratively in this other
space. Then enough time to not be worried that its going to end tomorrow.
So just like riffing on this, just like thinking of it, you know what we should
do, what we might do, is collect the crew. With 20 people, itd be good if they
were some unknown to each other, but it was a mixture of groups of friends or
whatever. Agree on some random distant point, Okay, were going to go to a
Hebridean island for a week. Ill see you there on the third of January next year.
Whatever.
Tim:
Right.
Ed:
Its miles away or what have you, and then yeah, just go there minus mobile
phone, blah, blah, blah, and just rejoice, I guess, in the fact that people are so
cool. Which Id oddly rather forgotten before Burning Man. Its just that, People
are so annoying. Theyre always in the queue in front of me while waiting for the
bus, and etc. But of course, this blends quite easily into cults.
Tim:
Right, right.
Ed:
Which is why having a participatory, not driven by concepts experience is quite

important. I suppose one of the powers of the Burning Man is that it is driven by
concepts in a sense, like this concept of radical self-sufficiency and generosity
and so on. But yeah, Ive got a party in mind. You can hardly fail to have a good
experience if youre with 20 generous, open people with loads of time away from
your life and youre feeling great about yourself because youre in the middle of a
hero narrative because you actually successfully got there. This could probably
be done with two people, as well.
Tim:
So Ive thought about this. Ive thought about doing it in a wilderness setting.
Primarily in my own head, sort of recreating the elements of...
Ed:
Your heads not a wilderness, Tim.
Tim:
Yeah, of Burning Man. Theres a project you might find interesting or people
listening might find interesting called, well, the guy, Station to Station and
theres a guy named Doug Aitken, A-I-T-K-E-N and he basically packed this, I
think its 11 cars, Im making up the numbers a bit, but 11 cars of a train full of
musicians, artists, and all sorts of craziness. Think about it as sort of Burning Man
on a train. It went from city to city doing these massive pop-up performance, or
pop-up performances where they would take these abandoned buildings or old
train stations and turn them into concerts for one night, then pack up and move
on their way, which were called nomadic happenings. Pretty cool stuff.
But how do you take the experience of Burning Man and create more of those
peak experiences, if you want to call them that? What are other ways of pulling
your head out of the mundane bullshit and doldrums that constitute the vast
majority of most peoples waking existences?
Ed:
Great question, and not one Ive really successfully answered for myself, but Im
more than happy to advice about it. I think it is a fundamental question, and I
think that many of our kind of inherited cultural tendencies, are like this a bit.
Like one of the best parties I ever went to was like a moon celebration. And it
was on a cliff and the sea was formidable and raging beneath, and it was all
night. It was a full moon and the tide over the course of the night came up, and
there were crazy, ritual dances to celebrate it. It was pretty eccentric. But I tell
you what I came out of that with was I was kind of like, Oh, fuck. The moon and
the tide are connected. Of course Id learned that as a five-year-old school boy
and not understood it in the interesting way. The interesting way to understand
it is to perceive the moon and perceive its pull on the sea in real-time, to actually
like in your bones the connection between these two things.

Anyway, so that was a really cool thing, and I guess it gets back to our commonality,
I guess, commonality between people, which is that being yourself is quite a fun
thing. But its not quite as nice as noticing that you are an instance of humanity,
and that everyone else is basically the same, and actually so are the animals,
and in fact its all matter, and whatever. Its kind of a paradoxical thing, but when
you perceive in your bones your own insignificance, you feel better.
Tim:
Yeah, thats a really good way, thats an astute way to put it. Thats very true.
When youre less concerned with all of the, just the minutia and bullshit in your
life that is really at the end of the day very trivial in the span of history and the
scale of the world, you feel a lot better about it.
Ed:
Its the weirdest thing, isnt it? Actually I had this, when I was at school, like
occasionally I would, I dont know, I would lose a debating competition or discover
that I was a loser in a more general sense. And I had a, what I call in a way like a
mind hack, which Id be sitting on the loo or something and Id just think about
like, Oh, everything feels terrible and awful. Its all gone to shit. Then Id be like,
But if you think about it, the stars are really far away, then you try to imagine
the world from the stars. And then you sort of zoom in and youd be like, Oh,
theres this is tiny little character there for a fragment of time worrying about
Its just like... just take a chill pill.
To your question, about how to put that into your life, I dont really know. Its really
tricky. But I guess another thing is to, to try and draw this back, is to segment
a little bit. To make sure theres one day a week where your mobile phones off,
and to make sure that with your best friends you find a time, whatever, once
every three months to update them on just how stupid reality is, and to share
that. If youre in a relationship where the struggle of existence is occluding the
parallel magic of what could be happening there, you, at least, occasionally
find the time to do that. Of course, theres, I suppose, the more fundamental
suggestion would be to like stop trying so much.
Tim:
Right. Right.
Ed:
Which, you know, I mean is tricky. You know?
Tim:
Yeah.
Ed:
Because ones got such an interesting project! You know?
But Ive got this wonderful friend called Paul, hes one of the most intelligent
people Ive ever met. So when I was talking to him about the academy, the Greek
idea of my imaginary possible future existence, he was like, Well, why does it
need to be in one place? I was like, Oh, its true, it could just be in the world.
Hes like, Why does it need to be with the same group of people? I was like,
Oh, thats true. Im thinking of people as quite good fun. And then he was like,
And why does it have to be in sunshine? Why cant it be in a mixture of things?
I was like, Thats true. Like rainstorms and Nordic climates and so on. Then he
almost went further, just like, Why does it even need to be outside of your life
at all?
He lives a life which is very humble in a way, but quite profound in another, where
he travels. He works absolutely a minimal amount. Hes so clever that he can do
five hours of translation a week and survive. He learns languages, and he falls
in love with people. He watches amazing music, and he has the most incredible
network of friends. I feel hes one of my best friends, and he probably feels Im
one of about a hundred, because he spends 10 hours a day on friendship. Well in
the middle of that conversation, I was like, Oh, Jesus Christ, Im just so guilty of
grandiose fantasy, where the life Im desiring through these concepts is actually
just, its right there. Its something which I could be living if I would only cease
working 12 hours a day in a start-up.
Tim:
Yeah. Its very hard, that balance. I even hesitate to use the word balance.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
Its challenging to balance the appreciation of the present moment with the drive
to build things, because the people who tend to spend, and this I mean quite
apart from that, we could debate the value of building different things, but the
people who build the most very often have the least present state appreciation.
And the people who have, are entirely in the present moment, dont build very
much. So you could argue very strongly for both ends of the spectrum. But
trying to borrow the best practices from both is challenging. Maybe the answer
is that you oscillate between the two, I dont know.
Ed:
Yeah. Its interesting. I think the question you alluded to is a very interesting one.
Which is like In some sense, both you and I are enthusiasts for building. So Ive
devoted the last five years of my life obsessively to memorize, and you know
you produced a wonderful collection of books. Im using rich perspectives which
youve shared with other people, and youve enriched a lot of peoples lives, no
doubt. That seems inherently meritorious, right? It seems like thats got to be a
good thing to be doing, to be trying to do something, right?
But on the other hand... if nobody was trying to do things, would that be so bad?
Or if everyone tried to do a quarter as much Theres a great book by Bertrand
Russell called In Praise of Idleness.
Tim:
Oh, thats a great essay. Yeah.
Ed:
Yeah hes got this great quote in there which is like, Work is of two kinds.
Moving objects at or near the Earths surface or telling other people to do
so. The first is ill-paid and unpleasant, and the second is great fun and rather
well-remunerated. Anyway, that kind of concept of moving objects at or near
the Earths surface, youd have to update to the present day to like moving
information at or near the Earths surface.
Tim:
Yeah.
Ed:
Anyway, in that essay, hes like, a kind of classic economic insight, I guess, which
is, We can make stuff twice as efficient and work half as much or we can make
stuff twice as efficient and work the same amount and make... Its not clear to
me that making stuff twice as efficient and then working the same amount is
the correct response.
Tim:
Agreed, agreed. Well, Ed, Id love to ask you a couple of bite-sized questions.
I want to let you get to your proper Friday evening, since Ive kind of got you
under lock and key here in the office. Id like to unleash you upon the world, but
Id love to ask you a couple of fast questions, and you can feel free to elaborate,
but Id love to hit you with a couple of these before we come to a close.
The first is one I dont usually ask, but I have to ask because youve used the
words press-up which is push-up for you Yanks listening, and other things,
for instance. What is the one stereotypically British thing that Americans should
really appreciate or might get enjoyment of?
Ed:
Thats a good question. I think...
Tim:
I love the ka-ching was that a toaster?
Ed:
Oh, thats a new subscription to me.
Tim:
Oh, nice. All right, congratulations.
Ed:
Thanks, yeah. But yeah, its quite common in the office. I think, because Ive lived
a bunch in Boston when I did textiles there, and [inaudible 00:57:00] America,
and the thing which always really impresses and amazes me about Americans,
and which by contrast is different in the British people, is that British people
are like fundamentally embarrassed about the expression of intention. That its
almost like theres something like fundamentally vulgar in human, in British life.
I suppose human life is British life.
Its like America calling baseball the World Series. But anyway, theres something
fundamentally embarrassing about stating intentions. Whats so liberating about
going to America is that that embarrassment doesnt exist, but at the same time
going back to Britain, its a terribly beautiful thing. And I think its connected a
lot to British humor, which is this basic consciousness of the absurdity of trying,
combined with actually still trying.
Tim:
What is a good gateway drug for British comedy? For real dyed-in-the-wool
Americans who perhaps... because Ive seen some British humor I have a lot of
trouble with. I just cant quite figure it out. Then theres other British humor, or
British-ish humor, like Shaun of the Dead which I find completely hilarious. So
what is a good gateway drug if you had to pick one entry point?
Ed:
Gateway. Why are you asking me about a gateway? Cant you just ask me what
I think is pure genius?
Tim:
Sure. Okay. All right, all right, all right. Ill let you upgrade my question. What is
pure genius? I just dont want it to be pearls before swine. I want it to educate
and Im throwing myself in that same group.
Ed:
Does the thick of it exist in America, sort of an American version of it? Well,
my favorite comedian is a guy called Armando Iannucci. So Armando, and then
Iannucci is I-A-N-N-U-C-C-I. He had this show called the Armando Iannucci Show
which I think was a failure even on British TV. So this man would be brilliant
for a [inaudible 00:59:32]. I think part of the reason for that is personally hes
not a terribly charismatic performer. Hes just an absolutely brilliant writer and
conceiver of comedy. But the Armando Iannucci Show had a brief appearance
on British TV and somehow captured both a wicked love of life and an absolute
horror at everything which is going on, through a completely and coherently
absurdist humor.

So for instance, Im trying to think of a good example. But for instance theres
this one sketch which involves a guy driving his car really fast where a very, very
specific miles per hour, about 157 miles an hour, he enters into a flawless state
of perfect meditative perfection where he doesnt have to make any decisions.
He just avoids all pedestrians and just disappears. But then has to get back
down to zero miles an hour without killing people.
Another one begins with a cityscape, where you see all the lights coming on in
the morning, and with each light you hear the audio of the person screaming
about the futility of their existence as the narrator says, This man designs
bacon packaging for a living. This person is in charge of Bedfords Water Supply.
Oh, god! This is the manager of Bewitched. Bastards, I hate it! You know, this
is...
Tim:
Yeah, its very like Kierkegaard.
Ed:
Yeah, thats such a poor advertisement for a genius filmmaker.
Tim:
Yeah, yeah. No, no.
Ed:
Yeah. But its always a victory. But I would recommend, to your original question,
Whats a good gateway? I think Monty Pythons a great gateway still, because
you cant help but be delighted by their cheeky enthusiasm even as youre just
tuning in to the humor. Then in contemporary things, theres a thing called Alan
Partridge which is sort of written by Armando Iannucci as well, which is the
story of a radio DJ from Norfolk who is actually it has shadows of David Brent
from The Office, but in a kind of richer more amusing fashion. Its his trials and
tribulations. So Alan Partridge would be my gateway drug.
Tim:
Perfect.
Ed:
You were looking at me, you were really looking for a one-line answer there,
werent you?
Tim:
No, no. I love it, you have one of the most colorful vocabularies and cadences of
anyone I know. I loved your emails. I was going to actually read the sequence of
emails that you had recently where you introduced me to one of your friends,
now a mutual friend. Where most people are like, Joe meet John, John meet
Joe. Take it from here, you create these wonderfully, Im not going to say, theyre
not antiquated, thats not the word that Im looking for, but they read like a Civil
War love letter or something. Theyre so eloquent and Im like, Goddamn, this
guy... I wonder if the amount of effort you expend on that is the amount of effort
that I would have to expend to create such a thing, because youre very prosaic,
and very entertaining in that way.
What did your parents do? If you dont mind me asking, professionally.
Ed:
So my dad was a coder, actually. He refused to teach me to code by the way
because he thought I should play in the garden, which I still vaguely resent, but
you know, I did enjoy playing in the garden. My mum was a teacher. I guess I
did have an interesting education, because I was in, we lived near Oxford and
I ended up going to a school which had lots of Oxford Academics children in it,
and I was part of a class, maybe I was quite good at my subjects, I was part of a
class where the other people at this class were these amazingly colorful bunch
of precociously intellectual characters. So I guess I did have a bit of... I still laugh
about the situation that represented, because it was in many respects quite
unhealthy.
Tim:
Why was that unhealthy?
Ed:
Well, I dont think its good to peak intellectually at the age of 13. I think that...
Tim:
Do you think a lot of them did, or do you think that it was...?
Ed:
Well, I think that they it was actually quite a magical time, and it was, and I
think that its quite rare
in life to be surrounded by people who challenge you and who like you.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
So its quite a great experience. Its a wonderful experience to have. But I think
a lot of the people who are in that situation in the school, then went off to other
schools, a variety of other schools, where that didnt exist, and so they ended up
being quite, all of us ended up in some sense being quite nostalgic at the age
of 14. So just to give you an example our favorite film as a group in our teenage
years was Withnail and I. I dont know if youve seen Withnail and I, but its a...

Tim:
Ed:
Tim:
What was it? Say that again?
Ed:
Have you seen the film Withnail and I?
Tim:
No. Withnail? With, space, N-A-I-L?
Ed:
No, its actually, its all one word. Withnail, its the name of a character in this
film. So this is your gateway drug to British humor.
Tim:
All right, all right.
Ed:
Watch Withnail and I. So its basically a film about some washed up actors, but
full of passion, struggling their way on a kind of comedy road trip in their late
20s.
Tim:
I feel like every, like Netflix description of British comedy just makes me want to
slit my wrists before I even get started. Its so bad. Oh my God. But yes, Withnail
and I.
Ed:
Withnail. Please watch Withnail and I, because its basically a film made out of
fragments of insanely quotable bits and bobs. Its intensely funny, incredibly
romantic, and like a profound narrative I guess, about what its like to have high
hopes for life, and then discover that its not quite as easy as you think, kind
of... Its so charming, and so anyway its about friendship and life, so its a really
wonderful film. Anyway, but its also very nostalgic. Really, its not healthy at
the age of 14, its like, Oh, gosh. I remember when I was 13. Everything was so
good. We used to use words like portentous, but now we just say spoon.
Tim:
It sounds like you had an intellectually stimulating schooling experience at that

point. Can you think of a specific defining moment of your childhood? Is there
anything that stands out in terms of forming you into the person you are today?
Ed:
I cant think of something which I could honestly report as like a cause or factor,
but I do have a couple of favorite childhood memories.
Tim:
Okay.
Ed:
Well, one of which was... This memory is something which I would, if I was held
hostage and someone was about to delete this memory, I would pay, if I had
them, hundreds of thousands of dollars to not delete, because it was a moment
in my childhood, maybe I was five, in the garden looking out at some trees in the
distance. And for whatever reason with my dad, I was discussing basically visual
perception, but seeing.
He was saying, we must have been going, I must have been commenting on,
or I dont know how it began but he was saying, Oh, the light bounces off the
trees and goes into your eyes. I found this incredibly confusing, and I was like,
No, no, no. But my eyes go out and touch the trees. My vision goes out and
touches the trees. He was like, No, no, no. Your eye, either the photons bounce
at the trees or from the sun and they enter your eye and thats how you come
up with a picture. I was like, I remember just intensely the weirdness and the
confusion. I remember getting to a point where I was happy to accept that my
vision reached out to the halfway point to meet the light in between me and the
trees. But I just couldnt even conceive of how perception could be passive.
Anyway, I bumped into this thing years later when studying psychology where a
lecturer mentioned the theory of an Arabic psychologist and philosopher called,
oh my goodness, Im not sure I can remember his name, but Al Haseen I think his
name is. Al Haseen was a guy who in the 12th century or something disproved
the theory of exteroception, which apparently was really popular until like the
year 1200, the theory that your eye went out and met the world, rather than
your eye just sits there passively and receives information.
Then the second thing which amplified this memory, beyond the family connection
and just the preciousness of the virgin perspective on the world, was that when
I got intensely into the philosophy of perception as an undergraduate, I got
into this guy called Maurice Merleau-Ponty who is a kind of poetic, super-cool,
cigarette smoking French philosopher who writes beautiful prose.
He has this theory of perception where the activity is given back to perception,
not because vision goes out spatially, but because perception is this active,
probing, question-asking activity involving a profound resonance between
you and the world. It was just so far away from neuroscience, as its normally
thought of, where its all input, processing, representation, and experience.
This was really much more beautiful, and Ill come back to this in a second, but
much more true to experience theory of perception, which is that were in this
kind of dialogue or resonance with the world where our brains and the world
[inaudible 01:10:06] a resonance, which means that our brain changes and then
the meaning of the stuff in the world is altered, and its a bit like dancing with
somebody. Theres input, theres output, but its the pattern between you which
makes the most sense in the end, which is whats actually happening.

So to wheel that back... the core memory is incredible, because it describes a

naivety of perception which you can never get back. You can never perceive the
world with such a stupid idea of how perception works. But at the same time
you can never actually experience perception devoid of the concepts we have
for whats happening to it. The second thing is that its true. Thats what it feels
like to perceive, and we suppress that. So thats my favorite childhood memory.
I recall it actually became significant later on, but I love it.
Tim:
But let me touch on some of the aspects of perception that you brought up. I
think you and I, if youre not comfortable talking about this, let me know, but I
believe you and I were chatting when we had some wine many moons ago in
San Francisco about, effectively, augmented synesthesia, so using hardware, if
Im mixing people up let me know, but using hardware to see smells or have this
type of co-mingling of the senses and perception. Could you talk about that for
a second? I dont know where that went or where it was, but if you could explain
what you were doing, I think, people would find it very interesting.
Ed:
Well, yeah. Ill go... Ill be as quick as possible here, but I went to study under a
guy called Kevin ORegan in Paris. Kevin ORegan I had encountered when I was
right up to my final exams at university. I was in this intense period of study
partly because Id been drunk most of the rest of the time, and so I had to really
ram it in. So all of these kinds of ideas were new in my mind and they were
fusing together.
I discovered this paper by this guy Kevin ORegan, which was in Behavioral and
Brain Sciences and was called A Sensorimotor Theory of Visual Perception.
In it he quoted a series of the most wonderful, obscure experiments from
psychology. One of which was this tactile visual substitution device created by a
guy called Paul Bach-y-Rita. Bach like the composer, Y like and in Spanish,
Rita like Lovely Rita, Paul Bach-Y-Rita. He was building devices for the blind
to see through touch.
So the tactile visual stimulation system, TVSS, basically would take a camera
on your glasses and would transform that visual input into basically a highlypixelated sort of 100 by 100 array of vibrating pins to hold against your back,
your thigh, your leg, or wherever there was a nice surface on your body to touch.
The fascinating thing about this device is if someone else is holding the camera
and you have this, it just feels like random totally pattern-less scratching. When
you are wearing the glasses and you first touch it to your skin, it also feels
like that. But when you move around, you begin to track the correspondences
between movement and sensation, and to cut a long story short, eventually you
end up short-circuiting all the noise and you actually perceive through touch a
visual-like experience of space before you. So you feel looming objects. You see
things going past the side. You feel things approaching as you go to them, and
you have a feeling of space.
The feeling of space is based not on input which, is now like a totally different
form of input, but on the patterns and connections between your movement
and the sensations which arise. So this is like an incredibly profound thing about
the nature of consciousness, which is roughly speaking, Kevins theory, which
I basically roughly believe is that the quality of experience is like the pattern
of movements youre able to make, and the expected consequences of those
movements. So his metaphor was... if youre holding a bottle of wine in your
hand, as I am now by the way, and Ive nearly finished it. If youre holding a bottle
of wine, you have your eyes closed, youre only touching part of the bottle of
wine. But you kind of feel the rest of it even though youre not feeling it. You
know that if you move your hand upwards, its not like, it couldnt be a tube or
just like a little blocky sphere or something, even though the touch would be the
same. Your perceptual experience extends beyond the current input, and its
based on expectation.

Okay. Sorry, thats the preamble. As a result of that, I ended up doing a PhD,
trying to do a PhD in philosophy of perception, where the [alpha] that year was
to consider what the difference between color and smell is. To do that, I did
what that tactile vision substitution system, in a way describes the difference
between touch and vision because it says, Touch feels totally different. But
actually, if touch is given the same sensory motor patterns as vision, it begins
to feel like vision. So you can experience vision through touch by the patterns of
interaction.
So I tried to come up with a theory of how color and smell feel like they do, and
my God they feel mysterious. You smell cinnamon. What connection does that
have with reality? You see any color, and particularly a beautiful, rich color, the
azure blue of a morning sky or green whatever of a rainforest canopy, and it
feels inherently weird. Like what is the connection between your experience,
this rich, intangible emotion in a way, and reality? Its very easy with vision,
because youre like, Oh, the glass looks round. It is round. Its a very kind of
military connection.
But with color youre like, Wow, that orange. Im just looking at kind of the
blinking light of an orange computer here. Actually you tune into the orange and
its like, What the hell fucking relationship does that have to atoms bumping
around space? It seems like a totally different kind of [inaudible 1:17:29]. So
anyway, I couldnt tell [inaudible 01:17:30] any longer. Sorry, Tim. Sorry, listeners.
But if anyones still here, its been about seven hours... But anyway, so the...
Tim:
If anyone is still listening, Im just going to interrupt, this is something that Kevin
Rose, a buddy of mine, pulled on me. If anyone is still listening to this podcast,
please let us know what you think. Shoot me or Ed a note on Twitter and put
#EdEdGoodGood. This is an inside joke from a long time ago to let us know, but
Ed, please continue.
Ed:
@TedCooke on Twitter by the way.
Tim:
Yeah.
Ed:
So, and so the thought experiment I came up with, was like lets imagine you
see in black and white. So your basic vision is black and white. Then when you
look at what is in fact in reality a green object, you experience a particular
smell, say the smell of whatever, leaves. Then you look at what is a blue object
and you experience whatever, the smell of a fresh sea wind, or something like
that. So arbitrary connections particularly, but the first question was, Could
you experience those as qualities of the object? The answer I came up with
was basically, Well, of course you would. Because when I currently look at an
orange object, Im just spatially looking at it and then Im having the experience
of orange and I look away and I cease having the experience of orange. I look
back and I have the experience of orange.

So if that orange was being put into my head by an evil goblin who just gave me
the orange feeling every time I looked at the, in fact, orange [inaudible 01:19:10],
which Im seeing in black and white, but then I will experience that color as
being, which the color is just in fact a smell or a sound, it could be on the object.
So the connection between movement, I address with my perceptual organs. I

look at the hammock and suddenly its going Ching, ching, ching. Look away, it
ceases to do that. I look back at it, Ching, ching, ching. I look away it ceases to
do that. After like doing that a million times, you wouldnt think that the sound
was coming from any other place than the surface of the object.
Tim:
Right.
Ed:
Im still of the somewhat smug completely incoherent opinion that this is

actually quite a fundamental insight into the mystery of sensations. Which is
that we attribute to the cause of the sensation everything which comes with it,
emotionally and [makes noise] and we kind of project those, project is actually
a poor word, but its an easy one to relate to. We kind of project those onto the
surface of the object when in some sense they come from us. Its just that when
we look at the object, theyre there.
In a way this kind of goes back to the chats we were having earlier about our
relationships with other people, and even situations and aspects of ourselves.
Which is that when we think about a particular thing, if all the things that evokes
in us are only evoked by that thing, we think that is a characteristic of the thing,
not of our interaction with the thing or person.
Tim:
No, I love this. I want to ask you, have you experimented with removing different
types of sensory input? Going a period of time without sight. Going a period of
time without hearing. Anything like that?
Ed:
I have occasionally done, yeah, little games like that. Not to the heroic extent
of a mathematician called Seymour Papert, who trained himself to look through
mirrors so the world was up-down reversed for like months at a time.
Tim:
Oh, gosh.
Ed:
So that it kind of righted itself. But anyway I have had an experiment. I have
done experiments with friends where you walk around town blindfolded, led by
another person, and that is so cool. So you just get a good friend, someone you
trust, and say, Im going to be blindfolded or youre going to be blindfolded, and
Im just going to lead you around town. Thats magic, because you can have the
experience of perceiving the world, not visually, but just through sound, and its
fun in the obvious sense, but its also like, Oh, wow. I actually can perceive the
world through sound. And whats more, I perceive it in a different, but in many
ways, richer fashion.
Since occasionally youre citing some cool books, theres a book called Touching
the Rock, by... Im not sure if I quite remember the guys name, but by John
something or other, Holt perhaps, John Holt, but Touching the Rock, good lit.
Its the story of a guy who goes blind very, very gradually for 20 years and then
finally becomes completely blind. Many interesting things about it, one of which
is that he says that the difference between having a tiny crack of indeterminate
light and nothing was as big as the difference between indeterminate light and
full vision, because suddenly he was just in the abyss.
Tim:
Right.
Ed:
There was just no visual connection. But the second thing is that, hes a kind
of theologian, but he has these wonderful reflections on how he came to enjoy
the world being blind. And one go-to example is that rain is the best thing for
blind people, because you can hear the world in three dimensions. Because the
pattering of the rain drops on the roofs, the pavement, the lamp posts, and the
buildings, gives you because of the echo and because of the particular, it gives
you a sense of 3D space, where most of the time your 3D space only goes like
a couple of yards in front of you, and otherwise is just the void. Stuff like that
which are cool games for enjoying your senses generally.
Tim:
So fascinating. Yeah. Im sorry, go ahead.
Ed:
So I was just thinking that for anyone whos endured this long, that would be
kind of a valuable recommendation. Its like just drawing a few things together.
Next time theres due to be a rainstorm, rather than thinking like, Oh, no. Im
not going to be able to go to Santa Cruz and sun myself, or something, think
like, get one of your best friends, go out in the rain, blindfold them, and allow
them to perceive through the magic of hearing, the world in all its mysterious
awesomeness, via audition.
Tim:
Oh, thats a brilliant suggestion. I also wonder, at what point will we see, and
it could be done a couple of different ways technologically, but people using,
lets just say blind people using something like an Oculus Rift. Or it wouldnt
necessarily be an Oculus Rift, it could just be some type of device thats attached
where you can upload very accurate, to the centimeter mapping, 3D mapping of
the world around them, lets just say in a 10-mile radius. Or there could be some
device for sensing all of this that provides them with auditory feedback or other
types of feedback that tells them exactly where they are.
What this makes me think of, one of my favorite articles Ive read in the last 10
years is an article in Mens Journal. I just looked it up, people can Google The
blind man who taught himself to see, and its about Daniel Kish, K-I-S-H, and
hes been sightless since he was a year old.
He can mountain bike. He can navigate the wilderness alone. He can recognize
a building as far away as a thousand feet. Im just kind of reading the subtitle
here. But he does it through echolocation the same way that bats find their
way around. He has the ability to click in a very, very methodical, precise way to
determine exactly where things are and where he is. Ill just give people a teaser
with the first paragraph, because this entire piece blew my mind.
And the first paragraph is, The first thing Dan- This is the author speaking,
Michael Finkel, The first thing Daniel Kish does when I pull up to his tidy gray
bungalow in Long Beach, California is make fun of my driving. Youre going to

leave it that far from the curb? he asks. Hes standing on his stoop, a good 10
paces from my car. I glance behind me as I walk up. I am, indeed, parked about
a foot and a half from the curb. Its just so amazing.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
It also raises questions for me about when you just mentioned Touching the
Rock and the difference between having just a glimmer of light perception and
none, how much of a phase-shift it is, often for people who will use psychedelics,
for instance or mushrooms, the difference between the normal resolution at
which we view the world, and then the one-step-removed, moving upwards
where we have almost an enhanced HD perception of the world, and how
significantly that changes your perception of everything.
Youre seeing everything with new eyes, even though its really just one click of
the dial in terms of resolution. So fascinating. Well, we have a lot to talk about. I
want to let you get to your night. Youve been very generous with your time and
I always enjoy rapping with you.
Ed:
Yeah, its a pleasure, Tim. Really fun. On that point, by the way, just to sort of pile
up the reading list, Alan Watts, whos quite a cheerful, wide-ranging, and amusing
20th century philosopher hallucinogen-taker, but I think he described himself
as a spiritual entertainer. He wrote an essay called, The Joyous Cosmology,
which examines, in quite fascinating ways, a little bit, I guess what you call the
phenomenology of hallucination, where he talks about exactly that. Like how its
even possible that perception can become much higher-resolution, and what it
means that it is possible. I, for instance, as anyone else, I think, considers the
resolution of my perception to be a function of my perceptual organs and brain.
Its not an easily accessible idea that I could perceive at twice the resolution
basically by paying more attention.
So anyway hes quite magic on this subject, and he talks about hallucination as a
terrible term for the phenomenon, because hallucination implies distortion and
unreality, whereas this is hyper-reality as he describes it. Anyway, so thats well
worth the read, The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts.
Tim:
I love it. Ed, where can people find more about you, what youre up to, on the
internets or otherwise?
Ed:
Well, in Hackney, in the non-internet, I hang out. So come to Hackney and then
[inaudible 01:29:23]. But yeah, memrise.com is worth a look. We have a website
and an app and were trying to make learning joyful.
If youre really into the questions about phenomenology and stuff, about the
quality of experience, theres an article which can be found online called Is
Trilled Smell Possible?
Tim:
Ed:
Is what smell possible?

Trilled, in the sense of the musical note going [makes sounds].
Tim:
Right. Is Trilled Smell Possible?
Ed:
Which is definitely, like, its probably one of the worst, most incoherent pieces
ever published in a philosophy journal, but its quite good. Yeah, Im @TedCooke
on Twitter.
Tim:
That is Ed Cooke with an E at the end, for exceptional. Is that right?
Ed:
Thats exactly right. Although on Twitter Im TedCooke because some twat had
taken EdCooke.
Tim:
Youre @TedCooke? Really? With a T in the beginning?
Ed:
@TedCooke. Yeah. Tim, are you not following me? Jesus Christ.
Tim:
I know. I should be following you. I have all of this goodness.
Ed:
Yeah.
Tim:
Im in a bit of a social media malaise. I have a bit of digital fatigue, so Ive been
taking a break, of sorts, to the extent that I do. But Ed, I will let you get to your
evening and your weekend. Thanks so much for jumping on.
Ed:
Yeah, this has been a pleasure, Tim.
Tim:
Really fun, so we will grab some wine and get into some trouble next time youre
in San Francisco.
Ed:
Impeccable. See you soon, Tim.
Tim:
All right. Thanks, Ed. Bye.
EPISODE 54:
JESSICA RICHMAN
Tim Ferriss:
Hit record. Were gonna take just a couple seconds of silence and then well
jump into it.
Various voices:
Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands
start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question? Now [inaudible] [00:00:14].
Im a cybernetic organism, living tissue [inaudible].
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show, 99designs, which is your
see the projects that Ive put up, including the mockups and drafts of the book
cover for The 4-Hour Body. As always, you can subscribe to this podcast on
iTunes, and you can find all of the links and resources from this episode, as well
as every other episode, by going to 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. Spell it all
out, or you can go to 4hourworkweek.com and just click on podcast. Feedback?
If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts. Anything at all, who youd like
to see on this show. Ping me on Twitter at TFerriss. Thats Twitter.com/tferriss
or on Facebook at Facebook.com/Tim Ferriss, with two Rs and two Ss.
Hello, my clever little monkeys. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to the Tim
Ferriss show, where I dissect world-class performers, interview them (not
literally cut them apart and dissect them) to try to extract the tools and tips,
and to find the resources that you can apply in your daily lives whether those
people be billionaire investors, chess prodigies, famous CEOs, celebrity types,
or anybody in between. Its really a wide spectrum of expertise, and you find
commonalities.
In this episode we will be talking to two scientists/entrepreneurs specifically
about the microbiome. Many of you, literally hundreds of you have asked me to
elaborate on the microbiome and what that means, and how I try to manage or
improve my own microbiome. We have two people on this particular episode.
We have Jessica Richman, whos cofounder and CEO of uBiome, U-B-I-O-M-E.
com, startup backed by Y Combinator and Andreesson Horowitz, which uses
citizens science to understand the human microbiome. In full disclosure, I am
also involved with this company. I helped them long, long ago, and then ended
up, only recently, backing the company. We will talk a lot about that.
And then you have Jonathan Eisen, who is a full professor at the University of
California Davis with appointments in the School of Medicine and the College of
Biological Sciences. Dr. Eisens research focus on the evolution, ecology, and
function of community of microorganisms.
Both of these people are fascinating, very different personality types, and the
conversation was a blast. So, without further ado, please meet Jessica and
Jonathan.
Jessica and Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.
Jonathan Eisen:
Glad to be here.
Jessica Richman:
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Tim Ferriss:
This is a distributed pow wow. Im very excited about this, my first time doing
this. Jessica, you are here in San Francisco?
Jessica Richman:
Yes. Right in San Francisco.
Tim Ferriss:
Right down the street. Jonathan, you are in Vegas.
Jonathan Eisen:
I am in Vegas, thats right.
Tim Ferriss:
In Vegas to settle some old debts. To settle some old scores? No. What are you
doing in Vegas?
Jonathan Eisen:
Im doing a show no. Im going out to do fieldwork in Death Valley tomorrow.
Tim Ferriss:
All right. This leads us to the very exciting topic, and many topics Im sure that
well delve into. Ill start with a very boring question. It is perhaps the most
American of all questions. The what do you do question. Very specifically Ill
start with Jessica. If somebody asks you these days, I guess your answer might
be somewhat straightforward, but what do you do? How do you answer that at
a cocktail party, if they still have such things?
Jessica Richman:
I dont know if Im ever invited to a cocktail party, but when I go to conferences

people ask me that question. I have to back up a bit and start talking about
bacteria. Then either people get this really horrified look on their face or they
get this very excited look on their face. Most people are not neutral about
bacteria. I say, I run a company that where we sequence the microbiome.
Those are the trillions of bacteria that live on and in our bodies. Then I pause
and wait for the look of horror or excitement to cross over their face to see how
much more I should tell them about that. Then its a matter of time before we
get into the subject of poop
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
I was gonna I was just I knew you were gonna bring it up first. This is a very
Jessica Richman:
Yeah. Theres a mean time to poop for conversations.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre like, So, how much do you know about poop swabs? Thats the opener.
I find thats a pretty good pickup line, also.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah. Yeah. It works for me.
Tim Ferriss:
Jonathan, what about yourself when someone asks you what you do? What is
your answer?
Jonathan Eisen:
Im a professor, and I study and teach about and communicate about

microorganisms.
Tim Ferriss:
I want to define a couple of terms, partially because, in all honesty, and this
is embarrassing, but Ive never defined these terms very well for myself.
Microbiology youre currently a full professor at UC Davis, is that right?
Jonathan Eisen:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
At the UC Davis Genome Center. What is medical microbiology and what is
microbiology? Whats a good way to think about that?

Jonathan Eisen:
Microbiology is the study of organisms that we cant see without the aid of a
microscope, some device. They are organisms that are invisible to the naked
eye. Then, within that scope of microbiology theres lots of sub-disciplines
that people have defined. I kind of hate all of those sub-disciplines, but some
people environmental microbiology is the study of microorganisms out in the
environment. Medical microbiology is the study of microorganisms associated
with human health. Theres veterinary microbiology and plant microbiology and
blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you dislike those classifications because its kind of like saying breast cancer
versus pancreatic cancer versus such-and-such cancer, and youre like, We
should really be defining this by the type of microorganism not the location, so
to speak? Or is it something else that bothers you about it?
Jonathan Eisen:
In general, I hate rules and I hate stovepiping. I just think its not that useful to
isolate humans from other animals and to say that environmental microbiology
is somehow different than the microbiology inside people. Its arbitrary
boundaries that have no value.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay. I like this. This is a good start. Well certainly talk about it. You have a
very interesting blog. What are what is phylogenomics or phylogenome-ics?
I can never figure out
Jonathan Eisen:
Phylogenome-ics.
Tim Ferriss:
Genome-ics, there we go.
Jonathan Eisen:
Its both a good and a bad thing. I invented the word when I was a graduate
student to basically refer to evolution phylo is a sort of abbreviation for
evolution. And genomics the evolution of genomes, basically. I regret this
because I also write in my blog a lot about the proliferation of bad new genomics
words. But nevertheless, I invented the word and then I named everything, all
my blogs, all my lab sites, all my login accounts to various sites, they all have
something to do with phylogenomics, and Im kinda stuck with it.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, you own it. Thats good.
Jonathan Eisen:
That is true. I own it and dont like it.
Tim Ferriss:
The evolution to the microbiome, and Im wading very deep into my into the
pool of ignorance on my part when I get into the microbiome, but it became of
great personal interest to me because I contracted Lyme disease, went on very
long-term, from my perspective, long-term use of broad spectrum antibiotics
like doxycycline, and started to suffer from all sorts of health conditions that,
from my assessment, were not caused by Lyme disease, but were caused
by the long-term use of antibiotics. I started to have skin disruptions and all
sorts of issues that are associated with chronic illness. But I had not drawn the
connection between some of these supposed chronic illnesses and microbiome.
A friend of mine, who is sort of an amateur microbiologist for lack of a better

term, suggested that I start taking L. plantarum and a number of other types
of probiotics, and the symptoms I had this breakout on my feet pretty much
overnight, down by 50 percent in terms of symptoms and then proceeded from
there really quickly.
Id love to know what are the biggest misconceptions, and this is open maybe,
Jonathan, if you want to take a stab at this. What are the biggest misconceptions
about the microbiome because its become a hot topic. Obviously, the fecal
matter transplants are very exciting for the media. That would lead me to
assume that theres a lot of voodoo and nonsense, also, being spread, therefore.
But what are the biggest misconceptions about the microbiome?
Jonathan Eisen:
I think that the thing that I the reason that I am interested in this from a
research and a communication point of view is because theres enormous
promise from a medical and agricultural and environmental and evolutionary
point of view. Every plant and animal is covered in a cloud of microbes, and
they clearly influence the biology of these things that theyre living on. Theres
enormous promise, and thereve been a few papers in the last five to ten years
that have shown really big impacts of this cloud of microbes on the health of
various organisms.
But the part that is also interesting and challenging is, for whatever reason,
a lot of people have oversold or over-interpreted the what we know about
the microbiome and arent doing a good job of distinguishing what we think
might be going on from what we know is going on. I give out an oversellingthe-microbiome award on my blog, and its literally the easiest low-hanging fruit
blog material that exists in my life. Theres so much out there where people
make fundamental miscalculations as to how to interpret some scientific study
or some personal dietary change or other issues.
Jessica Richman:
I think Id like to add a couple of things to that. I think the first thing is that you
noticed anecdotally this change, Tim, right? You take all these antibiotics. You
develop this problem. You take probiotics and it goes away. Thats not data,
thats just an anecdote. But I think
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, and in fairness, I recognize that it could be correlation not causation. It

could be regression to the mean. I understand all that.
Jessica Richman:
But still, I dont call it an anecdote to minimize it, but to say that I think one of the
interesting things that were doing at uBiome, and I think is a general trend that
is interesting, is this crowdsourcing of science, to enable things like what you
experienced to be validated in new ways. I think I dont think it was my feeling,
but it probably was not, just regression to the mean if it happened immediately
afterwards. You can sort of see the effects in your own experience. But why
did that happen? And does it happen for everyone? How often can that be
replicated? All these kind of things are important questions to be answered.
Your anecdote is like the beginning of a hypothesis about how probiotics can
affect the human body, not just something to be dismissed, I think.
Tim Ferriss:
Absolutely. Id love to hear you elaborate a little bit on what you how you
would define or think of citizen science because I think were leading into that
pretty quickly.
Jessica Richman:
Citizen science is a term that was coined by the Cornell Ornithology Lab in the, I
think, in the 70s. It was basically the idea that citizens, people that are not Ph.D.
scientists working in a research lab can create interesting science by collaborating
with scientists. In the case of ornithology, its really interesting that there arent
enough bird watchers in the world there arent enough ornithologists in the
world to watch all the birds, so they use amateur birdwatchers to contribute
date very frequently.
Thats sort of grown into this idea that other types of scientists can include the
public in their research, whether its data collection or, even going further, its
generating hypotheses, funding science like we did at uBiome, open sourcing,
publication of blogs about their own experience, their own experiments. All
these things are sort of citizen scientists, crowd scientists, people who are
not employed in the job of science, contributing to science and adding a new
perspective that isnt there in mainstream science.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. I wanna come back to Jonathan, Im gonna ask Jessica a few more
questions, and then I wanna come back to you and ask you. You have so much
experience with research, Id love to ask you about what is wrong with the
current ways in which research is done or has to be done, and how you, in a
dream world, would fix that because I think its an interesting topic.
Jessica, Id love to ask you, just on the to give people a taste, and again,
understanding that the plural of anecdote is not data, although I do have some
issues with the over-use of that expression.
Jessica Richman:
I do, too. I do, too.
Tim Ferriss:
Id love for you to comment because weve talked about some of these things
before, obviously. Im involved with a backer of uBiome and believe in the
mission. I was a supporter long before I was ever involved in a formal capacity.
Could you talk about gut, mood, and behavior, maybe highlighting some of the
things that youve found most interesting in the last few years?
Jessica Richman:
Theres a lot of let me just back up for a second. The obvious things that you
think of when you think of the gut microbiome are health conditions that involve
the gut. You think about travelers diarrhea. You think about enteric dysfunction.
You think about irritable bowel or Crohns disease or all those sort of obvious
things that involve your gut. But what you dont often think about are other
health conditions that are much more systemic that relate to the microbiome.
Theres been some interesting research about, mostly, mice; about how you can
change a mouse mood by changing the mouse microbiome.
I know this sounds a little nuts, but there are measures for whether a mouse is
anxious or depressed or has autism, actually. Its an interesting study I was just
reading earlier today. By giving by taking germ-free mice or mice, these are
mice without any microbiome, and then by adding either an anxious microbiome
from an anxious mouse or from a not-anxious mouse, you can change the mood
of a mouse. This has been done in a number of different ways with other mood
disorders in mice, and there has been human research specifically. They notice
different microbiomes in different in humans have different mood conditions,
but theres no causal research there.
Thats a really interesting area. I think its interesting mostly because it points
to how complex the microbiome is and how complex its effects are. Its not just
the obvious. You have diarrhea, thats because you have a microbiome problem.
Its much more dispersed throughout the body and the effects the microbiome
has can be much more subtle.
Tim Ferriss:
This is this comes back to something that Jonathan said about distinguishing
between what we truly know and what we think we know. Theres often a very
large discrepancy between the two. For a long time it was thought that fat cells
were basically these inert storage devices without much function beyond that,
but a lot of endocrinologists have begun thinking of adipose tissue almost as
well, it is, basically, hormone-producing endocrine glands, in a way. Its very
active. Theres brown fat and different types of adipose tissues.
One of the things Ive heard from some scientists Ive chatted with about the
microbiome is that the gut can be thought of as the second brain. Where Ive lost
track of the argument is how the gut, if it does in fact produce neurotransmitters
like serotonin, or is it just that the composition of the microbiome in the gut then
affects brain function in such a way that it affects neurotransmitter production?
[Crosstalk]
Jonathan Eisen:
I think its all of those, right?
Jessica Richman:
Yeah. There are a few hypothesized mechanisms, and, Jonathan, maybe

you can expand this more than I can. To start off with, theres this idea that
inflammation, that microbes cause inflammation in the gut, and then your brain
misunderstands feels that youre kind of out of sorts and inflamed and then
thinks is anxious about that. You assign that to your work situation or your
romantic situation when really youre just irritated because your gut is irritated.
Thats one hypothesis.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jessica Richman:
Another one is that the microbes are actually making chemicals that induce
behavior in you. Theyre making you crave sugar because they want sugar, not
because you need sugar. Maybe even making you crave things that you cant
digest but that they can.
Tim Ferriss:
Interesting.
Jessica Richman:
Which is a matter of survival for the gut microbes. The only way theyre gonna
get fed is if you eat what they want you to eat. Thats another idea.
Tim Ferriss:
Theyre pulling a feed me, Seymour, sort of
[Crosstalk]
Jessica Richman:
Exactly.
Jonathan Eisen:
I wonder if we can take a step back for a second. Ive been and many other
people have been working on how host animals and plants depend upon single
bacteria, single mutualistic beneficial symbionts in a variety of ways. We know
from diverse studies of plants and animals that lots of insects need bacteria that
live in their gut to make amino acids and vitamins they dont get in their diet.
Lots of plants get nitrogen via bacteria that live inside their roots. Organisms
that digest cellulose, like termites, have microbes that are doing it. Theres just
hundreds, thousands, of examples where a microbe is providing some critical
function that the host is not doing for itself.

Theres also, of course, we know lots about the hundreds to thousands of

examples of pathogenic, dangerous organisms that cause some disease or
some problem where they manipulate the host biology in all sorts of bizarre,
interesting, and damaging ways. In that context, its almost obvious that the
microbes that live in our gut and in our mouth and on our skin and in our other
orifices and places have the potential to do all sorts of things to our biology.
Again, if you the way I think about it, Im actually an evolutionary biologist,
the way I think about it is animals have been evolving in this microbial world for
hundreds of millions of years. Our evolutionary processes are, in essence, based
upon expectations. The expectation for our gut and our immune system and
our behavior and everything is that were gonna encounter microbes because
we always do. Our systems are tuned towards predicting and responding and
dealing with microbes. In that context, its almost obvious that microbes that
are in and on us are fundamental parts of our lives.
Tim Ferriss:
To give Id love to do a quick fact check. Ive heard that Ive heard people say
that humans are really 10 percent human, meaning that by volume or number
of cells, 90 percent of us is comprised of bacteria. Is that
Jonathan Eisen:
There was a really good fact checking that someone finally did in, I think, in
the Boston Globe, where it turns out that number which had been quoted for
20 years or so is almost completely made up. Better estimates are probably
something on the order of 50 percent microbe.
I dont think it I dont think that the total number of cells is that interesting.
What I think is more interesting is that in our mouth there are probably, in each
individual person, there are probably something on the order of five hundred
species or a thousand different species of microbes. In our gut, there are a
thousand in each different compartment and theyre not always the same. The
things in the stomach are different than the things in the ilium or different than
the things in the colon. On our skin and in different parts of our skin we are
an ecosystem with an incredible diversity of types of organisms and functions.
Each person, its gonna vary how many they have, how many cells there are. Its
gonna vary over time. But we should view ourselves as a walking ecosystem,
not as an individual human.
Tim Ferriss:
If people wanted to learn more about the actually, let me take a step back. I
promised I would ask a question so I will ask that. That is, for researching the
microbiome or anything else, how is it currently done? How would you change
it? What are the issues with accelerating good research in this field or any other,
for that matter?
Jonathan Eisen:
I think the reason everybody is excited now, the reason that Jessica was able
to start her company, and the reason that theres a lot of stuff going on is that
the technology for studying microbial communities has gotten much better and
much cheaper in the last few years. Primarily, the way people do this is using
analysis of the DNA from a sample.

The reason we do that is most of the microbes in any particular environment
cant be grown in the lab. We cant identify them very well in a microscope. We
can crack them open and we can look inside of them. We can look in particular
at their genetic material, their DNA. That DNA contains a lot of information
about the microbes that are there. That helps you identify what kinds there are
and it helps you predict what their functional potential is.
In that context, Im like a kid in a candy shop. It is the golden age of microbial
ecology right now. I wouldnt say theres a ton, per se, I want to change. What
I really want to do more than anything else is engage the broader community
in thinking about microbes just like Jessicas trying to do. Were limited by the
number of samples we can get.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah.
Jonathan Eisen:
What we want is a hundred million samples, to be honest. I cant do that myself.

I need a million people to help me collect samples. Thats what I wanna get
people to think about.
Jessica Richman:
I agree with that. I would say I have a lot of thoughts on this because its
something we think about a lot, how to make research accessible to the public.
How to make it larger, more scalable, more actionable in peoples lives. I think
larger studies is a huge one. I think that you can have a very respectable study
in a major peer-reviewed scientific journal, Nature, Science, Cell, something
like that, and you can have 100 people in it. I think that thats going to seem
ridiculous ten years from now, 15 years from now, when its obvious that you can
source study participants more easily and that you can involve the public in your
study and have things move much more quickly.
Id love to see that happen. Id love to see studies be more scalable and flexible,
so that you can start off with a certain study design asking a certain question.
Then because you have your 10,000 participants or your 100,000 participants,
you can take a subset, say thats the interesting part and go forward with that
group. You can make the whole apparatus of creating scientific studies better,
larger, and more scalable.
Jonathan Eisen:
I was just gonna say I think that the one thing that maybe I would say we need
to do in the future that were not doing as much of now is that a lot of the work
that were doing is incredibly exciting and really interesting, where we can use
DNA as a fingerprint of whats going on in the community. But this is building, in
essence, some type of general profile of the world around us. We can compare
and contrast health and see states. We can compare people over time. We can
compare people before and after, like you, antibiotic treatment. We can do lots
to get a general idea as to whats going on.
But, of course, thats just the first step. Theres lots more really interesting
biological studies that can be done once you have this framework that comes
from characterizing the DNA of the communities. We can start to look at the
functions actually encoded in these genes. We can do experiments to test

those functions. We can look at where individual cells are located in particular
environments. A fecal sample doesnt tell us anywhere near as much as a full
microscopy staining of the entire gut. Things are floating around in the liquid.
Some are on the layers of cells. Some are inside cells. This is the first step in
characterizing this system.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Im sorry. I was just gonna ask quickly well, just a couple of observations for
people who listening who are from a lay audience, like I am. Im not a trained
scientist. I read just enough to be dangerous. Ive spent some time at UCSF
with a couple of the neuroscience labs. I think that I wanna come back just
briefly to the plural of anecdote isnt data. This is a term that is used a lot by
people who dont really understand the design of scientific studies. Its worth
pointing out a few things, and please, jump in and correct me or edit anything
that I say.
If you look at, for instance, the development of the smallpox vaccine, which was
introduced by Edward Jenner in 1798, he observed, and one could say this is
anecdotal, that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch
smallpox. The way he demonstrated this could be causal is he, as I understand
it, took cow pus and injected it into his family. Needless to say, pretty ballsy.
The point being that the observation helped him form the hypothesis and that
could be derided by this, the plural of anecdote is not data.
When theres a study, you brought up 100 subjects. Oftentimes, people from
a lay audience will say, There are only ten subjects. Thats a bullshit study.
There are a couple things you have to look at. You can look at the number
of, the N, you can look at the number of subjects, but you also have to look at
the amplitude of the change from the intervention if youre doing a control and
experimental group. If you have ten people but they all double their working
memory, okay, there might be something interesting there in terms of the P
value, right? And the likelihood that thats attributable to chance is rather low.
Jessica Richman:
Id say, Tim, I think thats true. I would say, The plural of anecdote is hypothesis
more than it is data. Thats the example that youre giving.
Jonathan Eisen:
My personal view on this is that many scientists, many of the supposed

cognoscenti just are assholes. Lets just be clear. They say things like that
because they want to put themselves up on a pedestal. I think that if you go
back to your question about the future of experiments and science in general, I
think what we need in the future is for much more of these observations, all the
way through to clinical trials, to be published, and to synthesize the collection of
knowledge from across the planet more than we need suppression of work that
people do simply because one person thinks it doesnt have enough statistical
sample size or something like that.
That is the ultimate and in fact, I spend half of my time working on scholarly
communication and open science, not on microbiology. I think that this is the
biggest issue that we have right now, trying to broaden scientific research and
not to suppress it. It drives me crazy. It makes me just go insane when I hear
anyone say anything like that quote. I hear this all the time in graduate student
committee meetings where one person will say, Thats not hypothesis-driven
research, thats discovery science. God! Just get out of science, for gods sake!
Tim Ferriss:
This brings up a follow up question Id love to ask you, which is if you had, lets
just say, five million dollars to use as you see fit in science, whether its for the
microbiome-specific stuff or the open science initiatives or both, how would you
spend that if you had carte blanche? Heres five million, assuming its not to run
off to Monaco and buy Lamborghinis. You can use this for almost anything you
want. How would you spend that?
Jonathan Eisen:
I would invest it in lots of small projects. I think that
Tim Ferriss:
What types of small projects?
Jonathan Eisen:
What I see is that creativity by researchers, by citizens, by graduate students, by

undergrads, by high school students, that the creativity that people have about
science, about microbiology once they learn about microbiology, is enormous.
What we need to support is ways that those people can leverage their creativity
to do a research project. What I would not do with the money is give one person
the five million dollars to do a big project. I dont think that thats we have
a lot of those projects, anyway. What I really think we need is to harness the
anecdotes, the observations that people have made. They may not all turn out
to be useful interpretations, but theres a lot of stuff out there that needs to be
studied. We need more people doing it.
Jessica Richman:
I think thats interesting. If I had five million dollars that someone handed me
to do this kind of research, I think youre right. I would break it down into small
chunks. I think that makes a lot of sense. You let a thousand flowers bloom so
you see what comes up.
But I think in terms of the microbiome whats most interesting is to accelerate
the process of taking these correlational studies that we have now, which
say, Oh, isnt this interesting. People with X health condition, whether thats
anything from Crohns disease to autism, people with that health condition are
different than people that dont have that health condition. I think thats the
state of a lot of the research. I would use that money to do a number of studies
that would move the research to the next phase, which is, Great. Wheres our
diagnostic and wheres our therapeutic based on that?
I think the real power of the microbiome and whats magical about it is that
these microorganisms are both bio-sensors that can tell us whats going on in
the microbiome. At the same time, theyre also drugs. Theyre organisms that,
when you put them in the ecosystem of our body, change the outcome from a
clinical perspective. Moving things from this associational stage to a specific,
I dont know, you could call it a product stage, but to a specific improvement
outcome. I think thats going to happen anyways because a lot of people do
have 5 million dollars and theyre spending it on that, which is a good thing.
I would also take my five million dollars, and knowing what I know now from
working on uBiome, I would put that to good use in those areas.
Tim Ferriss:
I think the micro-experiments are really undervalued because, for whatever
reason, it seems like the a lot of the scientific community undervalue the things
that cost very little money because of advances in technology. For instance, and
this might seem like a silly example, but the late Seth Roberts, very smart guy,
very good at crunching numbers and spotting methodological flaws, introduced
me to this very simple and there was a fair amount he did a fair amount of
literature review to try to figure it out, the combination of vinegar plus honey
in hot water before going to bed. I was able, in the span of about 48 hours, to
have several thousand readers test this, people who had insomnia to test it and
compare it, obviously, subjectively to qualitatively with other things they had
tried, like Lunesta or whatever.

It was astonishing how positively people responded, but I struggle with how to
gather that and codify it and present it in a way that can be graphed intelligently.
Jessica Richman:
Thats absolutely it. Right. Thats a valuable study. If you put a hypothesis in
the beginning and a publication at the end, theres some thats a scientific
study. You just have to structure it properly.
Tim Ferriss:
Exactly. Whats exciting to me, at least, is I have a captive audience of a million

plus people per month. You can make up you can compensate for a lot of
flaws in the data with large numbers, right, with the law of large numbers. If you
have enough people, you can smooth out a lot of the rough edges.
Let me dig into a slightly different question, and Jessica, Ill toss this to you
first. A lot of people think about probiotics. Theres obviously a huge industry
around probiotics. Some of it, even from my untrained standpoint, look pretty
nonsensical, or theyre pushing the claims really far. Or theyre using, for those
people out there who dont know the term, puffery. I dont know if you guys
have ever heard this expression. Theres a legal definition. Puffery is when you
make claims that are nonsensical, theyre non-falsifiable. If you buy a shampoo
that says, Betahydroxylizing hair-volumizing formula, thats puffery because
its all fucking bullshit. That kind of stuff is used all the time in supplements.
Increase your vitality and blah, blah, blah. Vitality? Puffery. Bullshit.
What I wanted to chat about because I had this planted in my head by a friend
whos hes an amateur scientist, but in the same way that Im not gonna say
Darwin, but people who ended up coming up with pretty fascinating things were
amateurs. He talked about the importance of, more so than probiotics, treating
your gut microbiome like a rain forest where you need to create an environment
in which plants can grow. You cant just stick plants into the sand and hope that
theyll take root. He has focused quite a lot on foods that have, whether its,
say, beans, lentils, things with fiber or prebiotics like baobab root and so on, to
help the body create an environment in which beneficial bacteria can thrive, as
opposed to swallowing a lot of pills with said bacteria within them.
Again, all of this might be BS. I dont know, but how do you guys think about
this? Jessica, Ill let you go first.
Jessica Richman:
Let me start with that one. This is a great topic. Im really glad you brought this
up because theres I have a lot of thoughts about this. The first thought is that
people have to use that language of puffery because for legal reasons. They
cant say This product is going to make you healthy in these specific ways.
They have to say, Increase vitality, which is total nonsense.
Tim Ferriss:
They can, but its expensive to get FDA clearance.
Jessica Richman:
Thats clear enough. It is expensive. I think people also use that puffery because
I hate to say it, but the current state of the probiotics industry is that if you
have a study that shows that your probiotic exists in the bottle and is taken by
the people that take it, and shows up somewhere in their stool after theyve
taken it, that is a gold standard, amazing study.
Tim Ferriss:
Wait. Thats like if its excreted, meaning the Olympic athletes having the most
expensive urine in the world kind of thing.
Jessica Richman:
Exactly. Its really I think this is I mean no fault to the probiotics industry
here. This kind of testing, to better understand the microbiome, is only possible
in the last few years, so this is why they havent done this yet. This is a overthirty-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Its a huge industry. Basically, the science
supporting it hasnt been there.
I was at this conference that was a nutrition business journal conference. There
were all these executives there from the nutritional supplements industry.
Theyre just starting to start to figure out how are we going to, in an age where
everyone can test things about themselves, the age of the quantified cell, and
in an age where DNA testing and bacteria can its pretty much [inaudible]
[00:39:24] and we charge $89 each. Thats really cheap. Everyone can test
themselves. How do we make sure how do they make sure that their products
are actually doing something and are actually valuable?
I think theres going to be this I think the probiotics that you see on the shelves
today in Whole Foods are going to be totally different ten years from now
because the public will demand better. Theyll say, Wait. I took this. Whats it
doing for me? And because the science itll be possible to do better. I think
theyll be way the probiotics industry is poised for this tremendous leap into
better products that actually do a lot more for you. And that can be tested
apples to apples with prebiotics, like you said.
Are prebiotics better? It probably depends on who you are, personally. It
depends on your health conditions. It depends on are the probiotics that are
written on the outside of the bottle actually in that bottle?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, theres that, too.
Jessica Richman:
It sound silly, but that is actually a huge factor. If theyre not theres currently
no sort of testing for whats live. I think theres gonna be a big change in that
industry as these new technologies work their way through and let people
develop better products going forward.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you buy an expensive bottle of dead sea monkeys?
Jessica Richman:
No.
Tim Ferriss:
Yes. Im sorry. Jonathan, go ahead.
Jonathan Eisen:
I was just gonna say that the growing appreciation of this cloud of microbes, the
microbiome, that its an ecosystem, or at least its complex like an ecosystem, is

there are ways that we should be thinking about this ecosystem that probably
the simple model of probiotics didnt take this into account. We need to think
about the dynamics of competition going on in the ecosystem, of the different
members competing with each other for food and for space. Theyre gonna
grow and reproduce at different rates within the system. But just like any other
ecosystem, theres going to be influx, that is new organisms coming into the
ecosystem. Theres going to efflux.
Theres two hundred years of ecological research on studying these things.
Probiotics are have the potential to impact the system because if you have
a massive influx of some individual species into an ecosystem, it can impact
it either on the short term or the long term. But its a very simple component
of the total picture of the ecosystem. A good example of this is if you take a
savannah, or a chunk of savannah, and you isolate it, and you introduce into
that savanna a thousand cattle, theyre gonna disappear pretty darn fast. But
if you introduce a thousand zebras, organisms that are roughly the same type
of organism but theyre adapted to living in that ecosystem, theyre gonna do
differently. If you introduce 50 species at a time that represents something akin
to what is naturally there in the ecosystem, thats going to be different than
introducing a billion of one kind of organism.
The more we think like ecologists, the more we think about the dynamics of the
ecosystem that is the gut or the mouth or the vagina or the skin or wherever
there are lots of microbes, the more were gonna be able to make sense out of
the puffery that is associated with the promotion of certain treatments, and the
more were gonna move into a system where it is useful.
Tim Ferriss:
No, definitely. The conversation brings to mind a past conversation I had with a
really, really fascinating guy named Steve Rinella, who is a hunter. Hes the one
who introduced me Im not, have never been a hunter, but was introduced to
it for researching my last book when I wanted to hunt and forage for all my food
for a period of time.
He was talking about the politicized response to reintroduction of, say, wolves,
and how, when you try to oversimplify it, just like carpet bombing your system
with 20,000 pills of fill-in-the-blank single type of probiotic or bacterium, you
could introduce, say wolves are dying at an alarming rate. They are nearly
extinct in this one place. Lets add 1,000 wolves. That doesnt really work very
well because it throws the entire system out of whack. Then you start then
you have a mass genocide of their primary prey.
What he pointed out also, and I think this is kind of interesting, is that the
microbiome people associate, I think, broadly with the gut. They think
microbiome, they think, I swallow pills, put them in my gut. Theyre reading
about fecal transplants and whatnot. Its a lot, and as you mentioned, Jonathan,
even in the GI tract, you have these vastly different populations in different
areas. What Steve pointed out, he said people are against hunting wolves, for
instance, because theyre thought of as very sparse. But the fact of the matter
is, theyre very, very, very overpopulated in very specific areas. Therefore, the
averages are misleading. You should hunt and cull in certain places. But Im
getting a little down the rabbit hole with this story.
Id be very interested to hear, Jonathan, you comment on the, from the

evolutionary standpoint, how do people go about figuring out what to aim
for when it comes to that ecology? In a natural environment, you can say,
Everythings going to hell in a hand basket. Something is wrong. Its perhaps
more obvious to pinpoint problems. Should we be looking to tribes in Tanzania
or Papua New Guinea or the untouched parts of the Amazon, if anything exists
like that, to try to where the children havent had antibiotics? How do you
determine the menagerie of bacteria and the balance to target or to aim for?
Jonathan Eisen:
Its actually a very complicated question, a complicated research topic. Certainly,

understanding where our microbiomes used to be in the past is a very helpful
component of answering your question. If we can get access to mummies and
bog people and the Ice Man and other ancient samples, microbial studies of
those samples are being done, and theyre very important for placing what we
see now in a evolutionary context. Other people are going out and looking at
populations of humans even just diverse sampling of the human population,
but looking at populations that have been less exposed to certain types of food
or certain types of drugs or certain types of environments. That is also providing
that context.
We in my research, in my lab, we work on the methods by which you would

compare to evolutionary relatives or to ancient samples to try and figure out
what the microbic community used to be like. The reason you want to know that
is two-fold. You want to know what the immune system and what the organs
and what the blood and what the rest of the body evolved to see, and you also
want to know how its changed. With humans, obviously, we want to know how
its changed in response to antibiotics and in response to changes in diet and in
response to globalization and other issues.
Now, that still doesnt tell us what the goal should be. We live in a world now
thats different than the world we lived in 20,000 years ago or 20 million years
ago. But it gives us that framework to help interpret when you then do a study,
say, of comparing people in Japan who live in Japan now to people from Japan
who moved to the United States. There have been a few microbiome studies
like that. It helps you figure out what the disturbance is and what that might
mean for our biology. But I dont think its obvious how to say we should have
a goal of making our microbiome like it used to be 20,000 years ago. We have
different diets. We live different life spans. We have different interactions with
other communities. Its pretty hard.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. It seems extremely hard. Jessica, what is what are some common
disrupters of the microbiome? Its certainly difficult to decide what the ideal
should be, but what are we aware of that can disrupt or cause problems with the
microbiome? Ive read certain, I wouldnt call them studies at this point, but that
things like Splenda, artificial sweeteners can cause issues with the microbiome.
What are other common disrupters of the microbiome?
Jessica Richman:
Thats such a good question. I want to stress with that point about there is no
ideal microbiome. I think thats important, there arent. People often ask, also,
about are there good bacteria or bad bacteria. From an ecological perspective,
you cant say a good bacteria in the wrong place is a bad bacteria or a good
bacteria at the wrong time. I think some of that exoticism about lets go back
to our ancestors is not a way to find the right to learn how to cultivate your
microbiome, I guess.

In terms of disrupters, lets start off with the number one elephant-in-the-room
disrupter which are antibiotics. We see this in the results of people taking our
tests. When you take antibiotics, a day later your microbiome there are whole
genuses of the microbiome that are just not there anymore. Presumably, they
come back as you test yours microbiome as your microbiome recovers from
the shock of the antibiotics, but its definitely very clear that taking antibiotics
kills whole swathes of the microbiome.
The study youre referring to about the artificial sweeteners was showing that
it can be that artificial sweeteners can affect the microbiome in the way that
sugar can. I dont know if its so much of a disrupter, but I think the big thing
is changes to the microbiome in terms of diet. Theres some really interesting
research about people what happens when people have celiac or people who
are gluten intolerant eat gluten and how that affects their microbiome, and
how it increases inflammation tremendously even after theyve stopped eating
gluten. Presumably there are mechanism of microbes that are still there from
when they ate gluten and theyre still causing inflammation.
Theres some interesting research about dairy that shows some similar things.
Its all the usual suspects in terms of what we think of as disturbing our gut is
also shown to have impact its immediate, some of that impact, through the
microbiome.
Jonathan Eisen:
Can I add theres another component that I view of as a really big disturbance,
and its more of a disturbance relative to what our bodies evolved to expect.
Thats early in development, caesarian sections, for example
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jessica Richman:
Thats a good one.
Jonathan Eisen:
or feeding formula instead of breast milk, or excessive cleanliness as a child,

theres a lot of epidemiological data and some microbiome data that shows that
all of those things that, in essence, change the colonization pathways for how a
young human being will get colonized can lead to longer-term problems. I view
that as a disturbance in the microbiome because vaginal birth can be viewed
as a delivery mechanism for microbes. As a component of it. Obviously, its not
the only thing. Breastfeeding is clearly intimately tied with development of the
microbial community.
Even playing in dirt and experiencing the microbial world in some normal setting
thats what we evolved in that type of environment. Whenever we disturb
that, whenever we deliver by C-section or have antibiotics or dont breast feed
or are excessively clean or have all of these things that are not the normal
developmental path its not that those are always bad. But they change the
way our system sees microbes. Some of the time, our systems response to that
is inflammation or problems with the immune system development or other
types of developmental abnormalities. I think that
Jessica Richman:
Theres a Im sorry. Go on, Jonathan.
Jonathan Eisen:
I was just gonna say I think that those should all be viewed as disturbances, too.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Jessica Richman:
Theres some interesting research about autoimmune disorders. The hypothesis

is that autoimmune disorders develop because the body doesnt have the the
hygiene hypothesis on steroids is that even autoimmune disorders are not
caused by current lack of microbes, could be caused by lack of microbes at a
specific point in human development. You take antibiotics in your first year. It
triggers something in certain individuals who have a genetic predisposition to
develop Crohns disease, for example. That part isnt proven, but I think its very
interesting because you want to look at microbial development on a timeline,
not just what happens to be present in your gut right now, but what was present
when certain events occurred.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a really fascinating way to look at it. Jessica, you introduced me to a

gastroenterologist that maybe we can name another time, but since Ill be
talking about our conversation, I wont name her right now, very, very bright.
She asked me quite a few questions. One of them was about my antibiotic use
when I was a child as opposed to adult, and how that could contribute or not to
immune function now, even though, perhaps, I had, as I did, for instance, chronic
sinus infections when I was a kid. Its really fascinating looking at the chronology
of your microbiome to follow the gingerbread trail to your current state, not
just looking at the snapshot of the current fingerprint of your microbiome is
interesting.
Jessica Richman:
What Id love to do is, I think and maybe its natural that I would think this, but
I think that it would make a ton of sense to take a fecal bank when at various
times in a persons life so that when, later, we have the technology to create
artificially that community of microbes, you can give it back to you.
Tim Ferriss:
Whoa. Thats a good idea.
Jessica Richman:
Wouldnt that be awesome? You take your gut right now when its relatively
good, if it is, or your gut throughout certain points in childhood. You bank that
sample, and then when we know how to recreate microbial communities better
than we do, you just say, I want the gut of a 20 I want the gut of myself at 25,
or I want the gut before I had an onset of Crohns disease. Okay, great. Well
give you well tell you exactly what was in it, and well give it back to you.
Tim Ferriss:
Heres a question. Jonathan, is that technologically feasible? If you had access

to the nitrogen and apparatus to freeze it like a sperm sample or a stem cells or
whatever, could you bank fecal matter or would it obliterate the
Jonathan Eisen:
No, no, no. First of all, people are doing exactly that. They are, for their children,
freezing fecal samples with the hope that either they will be characterized
in some way, like with DNA analysis, in the future, or that you could recover
the living organisms from those samples. You can, certainly, recover living
organisms from samples if theyre frozen in the correct way. Theres this stool
bank fecal transplant organization that was started by people from MIT that is
doing exactly that: trying to store fecal samples for fecal transplants.
For future, theres definitely the technology to do this, at least at some level. I
dont think we know how to identify which of the samples are the ideal sample,
and not everything survives that freezing. You cant necessarily recover the
entire microbial community. There are I know multiple researchers who are
doing exactly this, collecting samples weekly, monthly, or something to that
effect; storing them; characterizing them in some detail; and then anticipating,
as part of a research study, restoring some from the past if something goes
wrong.
Jessica Richman:
We do this is something we offer to people. If you sample your microbiome now,

even if theres nothing particularly interesting you find in your sample (although
thats unlikely, its possible), then you can youll still have it. Well know what
was in it. I think where the technology isnt there yet is in, like Jonathan said, in
bringing the microbes back to life. The Lazarus microbe is not doesnt exist
yet. Certainly, the characterization is there. Certainly, you can say heres what
it was like. When the technology gets to the point where you can actually then
recreate that community or infuse that community in the proper way, youll at
least know what was going on at that time.
Tim Ferriss:
It seems like, as Jonathan mentioned, the as we are able to identify and classify
more microbes, and of course were limited in terms of the big picture, the
complete picture, by what were able to identify, but, and Jonathan, maybe you
could talk to this, but it doesnt seem like from a usage of recombinant DNA and
replication of these bacterial strains like you could figure out the percentages
and have the synthetic poop made to order kind of thing
Jessica Richman:
Yep.
Tim Ferriss:
to implant at a later date in time. I dont know. Thats pretty exciting. I know
I interviewed a woman named Ph.D. Rhonda Patrick on the podcast not too
long ago. We were talking about banking stem cells and how parents can keep
the child teeth, the teeth that are lost by their children, for stem cell banking.
It seems to make a lot of sense. I can imagine after this podcast theres gonna
be some intelligent and proactive tech millionaire who decides to have a poop
cellar right next to his wine cellar with a gazillion samples. Unlike freezing eggs,
humans, at least most of them, seem to poop quite a lot so theres no shortage
of material.
Jessica Richman:
I just wanna say, thats something we promote to people, that you can have that
sample. The core thing thats interesting, also, about banking poop is that, lets
say, the analysis methods of today are not the right analysis methods. We do
16s sequencing. You can also do full metagenomic sequencing which is finding
everything thats in the sample. Lets say none of those work and we actually
need some totally other method. If you at least have the sample, you can go
back using the method of five years from now which is way better, and use that
to do whatever kind of analysis that you need.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Ive been since its just us, just us on the phone here
Jessica Richman:
And the million other people, literally.
Tim Ferriss:
and the million other people. Hi! I have been banking sperm on and off for the
last five or six years. One could argue, Youre 36, 37. Its already too late, pal.
Your sperm is definitely past its prime. Be that as it may, which I suspect it is,
we do not know what technologies or techniques may become available in the

future for rejuvenating or modifying those samples, also, right?
Jessica Richman:
Right.
Tim Ferriss:
So, from my perspective, its like, Look. If youre spending hundreds of dollars
a year on car insurance that you never use because you dont get in an accident,
whats the harm in spending an equivalent amount on storing biological material
that could prove, even in a 10 percent chance, to be very, very helpful and could
even save your life at some point, or something like that.
Jessica Richman:
Thats a really good example on an individual example level, and also on a

scientific level. I was talking to someone at in the UK about NIH not NIH
but NHS banked samples, and how, because its a national health service, they
bank all their hospital samples. They bank they have fecal samples and blood
samples going back to World War II. How interesting is that! From a personal
perspective, yes, of course you want to bank your own sample. But also, think
about being able to license the use of those samples, or just give that data to
a researcher thats studying something really important that your family could
benefit from, or a future sufferer or the possibilities are endless there, to be
able to take that date and make it valuable once you have it.
Tim Ferriss:
Let me ask a curve ball question. Its not too crazy. Its just unrelated to what we
were just talking about. The question is going to be what do your close friends
think you are world-class at? Jonathan, Id love to have you take a stab at that,
if you wouldnt mind.
Jonathan Eisen:
Social media. As far as I know, thats all they know about what I do.
Tim Ferriss:
And branding. Phylogenomics.
Jonathan Eisen:
Yeah, exactly.
Jessica Richman:
Making up words? That isnt
[Crosstalk]
Jonathan Eisen:
And studying weird microbes.
Tim Ferriss:
Within the world of studying weird microbes, what are you known for, would you
say? In response to what would someone say, Ah! Jonathans the guy you need
to call to talk about that.
Jonathan Eisen:
I think its using an evolutionary perspective in trying to study or design ways to

study individual microbes or communities of microbes. A lot of people, a lot of
researchers do great work on characterizing a particular microbe or a particular
system, but theyre focused on just that system with a lot of their work. What
I really am known for, I think, and what I specialize in is saying, Thats really
interesting. But on top of that, it can be really helpful to understand the history
behind that organism. That can tell you what direction its going, where it came
from, and allow you to make predictions about where things are going in the
future.
I think my whole career has been taking that one theme, adding an evolutionary
perspective, and applying it in a lot of different areas. Hopping between
genomics, thats phylogenomics, and microbial communities, and functions of
microbes, and how organisms survive in extreme environments, and what lives
in non-humans or on other organisms, and always saying, Oh, yeah? But what
about the history?
Tim Ferriss:
Right. What I really want to ask you a question, but before I do because I
suspect it might fit in this category, what are the most what are the questions
that you get asked from a evolutionary standpoint or evolutionary biological
standpoint that are most irritating to you?
Jonathan Eisen:
What is the most ancient microbe alive? All microbes are all equally ancient
right now. None of them are old. They all grow and replicate. That always drives
us that always drives us crazy. Another is why the classical intelligent design
questions. I guess I dont find those irritating. I get a lot of them, but I dont find
them that irritating because theyre so common. Another thing that I would say
completely drives me crazy, and I get this question a lot, is why study that in
microbes? Microbes are so simple.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a rather condescending way to put it.
Jonathan Eisen:
I know. It has so many layers of inappropriateness and condescension. I dont

even know how to respond sometimes.
Tim Ferriss:
You just side kick them. Thats usually I find that pretty appropriate. The
question I was gonna ask you is how did Adam and Eve ride to their wedding on
a dinosaur? Thats really what no, thats not my question. Im kidding.
Jonathan Eisen:
The microbes made them do it.
Tim Ferriss:
The microbes made them do it. Thats driving behavior. Those dinosaurs had a
lot of sugar. The question I wanted to ask you which is off-base but I get asked
this so often. I would love to have a more informed answer to it. And if this is
outside of your area of expertise, please feel free to dodge. What have how
should one answer the question let me rephrase it. What do you think of the
paleo diet or vegetarianism? Ill just throw those two out there.
Jonathan Eisen:
Vegetarianism and any I hate all rules, first of all, in all sorts of different
environments. Any time someone says, Im gonna apply some rule to my life
or to science or to something else, I get irritated by it. The paleo diet, I think,
is a great example of something that is interesting from a conversational point
of view, to think about how people used to live and what they used to eat. But
to apply it to our modern lifestyle as though its going to somehow be magically
perfect seems a stretch to me, lets put it that way.
Tim Ferriss:
Are you trying to tell me that cavemen did not eat coconut macaroons? Ill be
very disappointed. No, Im kidding.
Jonathan Eisen:
I think cavemen did a lot more than we appreciate, as they just discovered those
supposed etchings on a shell from 500,000 years ago. Were always finding new,
interesting behavioral patterns in Neanderthals and in cave people. I think we
under-appreciate what the ancient human lineages did. I certainly dont think
imitating everything they did is the right way to go.

Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. I dont have a particular dog in this fight. What about vegetarianism?
Jonathan Eisen:
From a health benefit point of view, I think its not necessarily its also it could
be good for some people, but not necessarily good for every person. Thats a
separate issue from the political point of view.
Tim Ferriss:
Of course.
Jonathan Eisen:
Very clearly, the current mode of production of meat on this planet has enormous
ecological and health problems associated with it. That doesnt mean going out
and raising your own cattle and hunting and other things wouldnt be relatively
not as damaging to the planet. But production cattle and chicken farms and
other things are causing enormous problems with global climate change and
with antibiotic resistance and with the origin and evolution of pathogens.
Theyre a nightmare. Vegetarianism, if youre doing it from a political point of
view, I can understand it. Im not one but I can understand it.
Tim Ferriss:
Just to underscore something for folks, if you avoid antibiotics but dont
discriminate your animal protein consumption, you probably are taking
antibiotics.
Jonathan Eisen:
You are. Not probably, you are.
Tim Ferriss:
Whats important to realize, I think, among many other things, its kind of a
haughty way to start a sentence, but Ill start it that way, anyway, is that people
say you are what you eat, but you should take it a step further. Think of it
as you are what you eat ate. Having factory-farmed salmon that was given
antibiotics may not be as good for you as eating locally grass-fed beef, for
instance. Nor is it necessarily better for the environment. Taking it looking at
these, the secondary and tertiary steps is important, or preceding steps.
You mentioned a distaste for rules. I wanna talk about this for a second because
how do you distinguish, and maybe you dislike both, this is a fine answer, but I
find it very for me to be maximally productive, I find applying constraints very
helpful, using different types of constraints. How do you personally distinguish
between rules that stifle versus constraints that enable?
Jonathan Eisen:
Its funny. I just had a two-hour conversation with someone about this yesterday.
I think that the difference is whether or not youre going to apply them blindly,
or whether or not youre gonna apply them with an open mind and intelligence.
The way I view rules is theyre applied blindly. The way I view constraints, like you
identified, is a slight difference in the probability that you would allow yourself
to not follow them.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Right. So, one is the I told you so because I told you so school of
thought versus a sort of hypothesis weakly held or a guideline weakly held. Very
interesting. What
Jonathan Eisen:
Then, just as an example, Im a type 1 diabetic. Been on insulin for 30-something

years. I have I tried many times to have rules about dont eat dessert or do this
type of diet or take insulin at this time. I found, certainly in my life, that I never
can follow those rules anyway. It became completely stifling to worry about
whether or not I was following those rules. Whereas, if I say, Have dessert when
you want it but dont have it too often and be careful about it, I view that as a
constraint and it works much better.
Tim Ferriss:
How did if you dont mind me asking. How old are you currently?
Jonathan Eisen:
Gosh, thats a good question. Should I know this? I am 46.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you have any hypothesis or maybe you know how you did you have type 1
diabetes prior to being 16 and it was just undiagnosed? Or did it have a sudden
onset?
Jonathan Eisen:
When I was almost 16, over a period of four or five months, I slowly started to
waste away to the point where I was had lost about 45 pounds and was probably
within a few hours of being dead when I finally went into the hospital. The sad,
funny, interesting part of all this is my dad worked at the NIH and was trained
as an endocrinologist. I had mentioned multiple times that somethings wrong.
Im really tired. Im thirsty a lot. He was blind to the he was a researcher, so
he didnt practice much anymore. I knew something was going on, but I didnt
quite know exactly what.
Its like the frog in the frying pan thing. For me, it happened over such a long
period of time that I by the end, it was ridiculous. I was going I was peeing
every five minutes and drinking forty liters of liquid a day to try and stop.
Tim Ferriss:
Holy shit.
Jonathan Eisen:
Completely ridiculous, right? It ended when I was on a backpacking trip, my first

one of my life. I was putting my face into puddles of mud to drink the water. At
that point, something finally clicked in my brain, like This is wrong, and insisted
on getting checked later that day when I was on the edge of diabetic acidosis.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. Thats terrifying.
Jonathan Eisen:
I was pretty messed up.
Tim Ferriss:
What inspired you to become a scientist, if thats how you would characterize
yourself? Obviously, you have a tremendous amount of scientific and research
background. What inspired you to take that path?
Jonathan Eisen:
Im from a family of dorks. In particular, my grandfather was a physicist, did

X-ray crystallography and other types of theoretical physics. He talked about
science all the time when I was a kid. If you go back to what Jessica was talking
about earlier, I was a birder. I participated in some of those citizen science
bird activities when I was a kid doing Christmas bird counts and Thanksgiving
bird counts. I got really interested in natural history because of that. I went
to college and was an East Asian studies major for a while, but I realized that I
was too interested in biology. I took a course with Steven J. Gould on evolution
and realized, I cant do East Asian studies. I just love science. I love biology
and I love natural history. Thats what I view Im still doing, natural history of
microbes instead of birds. Same general idea.
Tim Ferriss:
That was at Harvard?
Jonathan Eisen:
Yeah, I was an undergrad at Harvard. I was taking Japanese classes. I was

taking East Asian history courses. As a non-science major, you had to take
some science courses. One of the ones they offered was this course by Stephen
J. Gould. I had read a lot of his books, so I thought, Thats kinda cool. Within
half an hour of one of his lectures I knew thats what I wanted to do.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow! Talk about thats quite an inflection point. You and I definitely,
perhaps another time, have a lot to talk about. I was an East Asian studies
major undergrad myself, focus on Japanese. Planned on transferring to the
neuroscience department, specifically for a number of professors, Barry Jacobs
chief among them. Could not I think that animal testing is hugely important,
but I could not bring myself to pay the dues in the lab which involved I guess
they call it perfusing thirty to - bleeding to death, i.e. thirty to forty rats a day.
I was like, God, I cant do it.
Jonathan Eisen:
Thus you know why I work on microbes.
Tim Ferriss:
They dont make a lot of noise when you euthanize them. What about, Jessica,
what about yourself? How did you come to be to found uBiome? What sparked
that interest? How did that
Jessica Richman:
I came to this a lot later. I was always very interested in science. My dads a
chemist, and we used to talk physics and science and chemistry when I was a
kid. I came to I was very interested in science as a child, but I didnt my early
science courses was a lot of recreation of early experiments rather than doing
your own experiments. My passion was always for doing for learning new
things based on science. I went a totally different route. I studied economics
and computer science at Stamford. Then I got a fellowship to go to Oxford to
study at the Oxford Internet Institute and then in other departments in Oxford.
I took computer science and economics and put them together to be
computational social science, looking at the mathematics of social networks,
taking a different approach to quantifying human behavior. In economics, there
are very specific mathematical approaches that are often used. I was frustrated
with those. I thought, Lets do something different thats still quantitative and
is now called big-data or data science, but focusing on different computational
methods to understand social science data.
I was doing a Ph.D. in that, and I went I was part of a program called Startup
Chile, which was a program to go down to Chile, the country. They give you
$40,000 and a visa to Chile so you can become an entrepreneur and start your
company in Chile. I went down there to work on commercializing some of the
ideas that Id had about social networks when I was as part of my Ph.D. How
you can measure social networks better. How you can determine which ones
are more valuable than other ones. It was kinda interesting. Then I met my
cofounder, who was doing his Ph.D. at UCSF in biophysics.
Tim Ferriss:
This is Zack.
Jessica Richman:
This is Zack. Zack was doing his Ph.D. in biophysics at UCSF, working with
microbes, and doing some very similar types of mathematical techniques to
what I was using in social science. Just sort of a plug for social science. This is a
rare area where the methods are better in social science in a lot of ways because
there are many more data points. If youre looking at data from LinkedIn or
Facebook or something, you have millions of data points which is often hard to
get in a biological setting.

We started talking about this, and I thought, You know, I could take these same
skills and apply it to something like genomic data where you could have this
tremendous impact on human life. Its led, for me, into this passion for science
and public health that was always kind of nascent, but I didnt I dont know.
The academic structures didnt help me to apply it in a way that felt meaningful
to me.
Just the idea that you could take the same data science techniques that are
used to understand LinkedIn data, which are interesting there, and theres a
lot of value to be gained, but the microbiome is this whole other area of human
endeavor. Its a whole new organ in the human body that had never been
discovered before. Being able to take those same techniques and apply them
to something thats sure to yield some impact on humanity was what I had to
do.
Tim Ferriss:
How, and without, of course, disclosing the secret sauce and anything you do
not want to have public, where do you hope uBiome to be in three years? If you
could comment on that. Or you can no comment it, thats fine, too.
Jessica Richman:
We are pretty open about what our mission is and what we want to do. We
want to gather we want to involve the public in science by doing large scale
studies that involve the public, and take the products of that research and turn
them into useful things that people can use. We will probably not be the people
turning them into those things, so through partnerships with pharmaceutical
companies, consumer goods companies, other companies that can turn this
knowledge into something valuable. This isnt selling people data. This is taking
the insights we learn from the people who are giving us data, and then taking
those insights and turning them into something meaningful. Thats our focus.
This is a terrible example but I cant think of a better one. Its sort of like Shazam.
Use Shazam to figure out what a song is, and they take that data, and they dont
sell what songs you like to anyone. They sell what songs are trending, and what
songs should you be writing. Its something similar to that. We will figure out
what is going on in different populations over time through the cooperation with
the public, and then well be able to take these insights and say, This is clearly
useful in this way and helps, and give that information to someone who can
best make use of it.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. The reason I backed uBiome is specifically because Im waiting for
you guys to develop the Rock in a pill. You know the professional wrestler/
actor? I want to have his microbiome.
Jessica Richman:
[Inaudible] [01:21:40]
Tim Ferriss:
Since hes like 347 pounds of pure muscle. I assume that will be replicable.
Jessica Richman:
Its coming soon. Coming soon. I dont think well get the Rock in a pill, but
I think theres a ton of really interesting and useful things that can be made
from our understanding of the microbiome more quickly than in other realms.
If you wanna take a whole other approach to drug development for cancer, for
example, theres a tremendous amount of research and experimentation that
needs to happen. Were sort of these natural laboratories for microbes in terms
of us all having different ones that are doing different things. We can learn from
that much more quickly, thats at least our hypothesis, than you can take other
approaches to learning about to developing interesting products from the
microbiome.
Tim Ferriss:
No, definitely. I would love to ask a couple of odd questions of you guys. These
are a little bit of a shift in gears. These are what I usually call the rapid fire
questions. But that doesnt mean that the answers have to be rapid fire, but
we can try. The first question this usually isnt the first one that I ask, but
Jonathan, I just love the fire in your belly, so Im gonna ask this one. When you
think of the word punchable, whose face is the first one that comes to mind?
Jonathan Eisen:
Jim Watson.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Watson! Oh, my!
Jessica Richman:
Whoa. [Inaudible] that one.
Tim Ferriss:
No, this is amazing. Please elaborate.
Jonathan Eisen:
I dont know if you saw the whole thing about him selling off his Nobel Prize
medal recently because hes so impoverished now because the whole world
hates him after his racist and sexist commentaries that he made a few years
ago associated with the talk, and now he just has to sell that Nobel Prize to raise
some funds to buy a painting.
Tim Ferriss:
To buy a painting?
Jonathan Eisen:
Yeah, to buy a painting. That was one of the things he needed to sell the Nobel
Prize for. Watson did some interesting stuff for a while, but in all honesty, hes
kind of a deplorable character these days. I dont think theres anybody that
comes to mind quicker than him in terms of punchable.
Jessica Richman:
Wow.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats an ama thats a fantastic answer. The painting must be very have high
nutritional value. Or very thick, for shelter.
Jonathan Eisen:
Even more amazing, some Russian oligarch bought the medal and is giving it
back to him.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. Thats much more altruistic than I would usually assume Russian oligarchs
to be. Go figure. Jessica, Ill come to you in a second. Jonathan, what is the
book or the books that youve gifted most often to other people?
Jonathan Eisen:
I know the exact answer to this. I give it to tons of people. Its A Field Guide to
the Birds of North America by National Geographic. Its the only book I give to
people.
Tim Ferriss:
Man, you are these rapid fire questions are really working out here. Jessica,
what about you for books?
Jessica Richman:
Thats a good question. I guess this is kind of boring, but I give Hemingways
Short Stories to a lot of people. Im a big Hemingway fan.
Tim Ferriss:
Why are you a big Hemingway fan?
Jessica Richman:
Hes just so such an artisan of the story. His stories are so well-crafted. Its
one of those things where you look at a work of art and you cant exactly figure
out how they did it, but its perfect?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah. Im just I admire the craftsmanship so much.
Tim Ferriss:
Theres not a lot of bloat in Hemingways work.
Jessica Richman:
No. That is true.
Tim Ferriss:
If youre a Hemingway virgin, The Old Man and the Sea is a pretty good place
to start, I think. The Short Stories, also fantastic. Jonathan, do you have any
particular morning rituals? What is the first hour of you day or two hours of your
day look like? Is it pretty standardized?
Jonathan Eisen:
Its very standardized. My wife gets up first, and we have about an hour before
our kids get up. Usually, we make coffee on a stovetop coffee maker, and we
drink coffee, and we sometimes sit there and space out. Sometimes we talk
about the plan for the day. Usually, our cat comes over and hangs out with us.
Thats what we do for an hour.
Tim Ferriss:
When do you wake up?
Jonathan Eisen:
Her alarm goes off at 5:55 in the morning. Im sometimes up before that,
sometimes up after that. We have about an hour before the kids get up.
Tim Ferriss:
This is amazing. I may have a soul connection with your wife, which sounds
weird to say since we dont know each other that well. Why 5:55?
Jonathan Eisen:
I dont know. She really likes to have time to veg out and to think and to process
before dealing with the ritual of getting the kids fed and off to school. I dont
think an hour was enough, so an hour and five minutes is the bonus time.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. 5:55 I dont know if Ive talked about this publicly. I wont digress too far,
but 5:55 p.m. was the time that I finished editing a book I wrote called The 4-Hour
Body, which was a monster. It was almost 600 pages after cutting 250. It was
the exact time that I finished my last line of editing in the book and was ready to
mail off the final thing. I always take a screen shot on my iPhone whenever its
5:55. Its sort of my good luck omen. Anyway, thats amazing.
Jessica Richman:
Thats awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
Give a high five to your wife [inaudible] [01:27:44].
Jonathan Eisen:
I will take screen shots now when I get woken up by the alarm.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats gonna be a lot of screen shots.
Jonathan Eisen:
Im sure I wont be able to think well enough to take more than a couple.
Jessica Richman:
Not photos. Screen shots.
Tim Ferriss:
Coming from a family of scientists, how do you think about parenting differently
from your non-scientist friends, if at all?
Jonathan Eisen:
Im not sure at all. We went through, when our first kid was born, our daughter,
we went through the read a bunch of books, like theyre gonna tell you exactly
what youre supposed to do related to parenting. Most of it is something that
worked for one person and it didnt necessarily work for us. Again, it goes back
to that rule thing. If you follow those books as a rule, theyre horrible. If you
follow them as a constraint and guideline, theyre pretty good.
My wifes also a scientist. She hasnt been working in the lab recently. We say
shes a child developmental biologist. Were both scientists, and we have a lot
of scientists in our background. We try not to either force science onto our kids
or obsess about scientific approaches to everything. Were much more holistic
about how we deal with the kids. Holistic in the sense that we try to talk to
each other about things and think of common sense approaches, as opposed
to digging into every possible scientific study that could have been done.
Tim Ferriss:
It also brings up a good point, the books on parenting comment. This is a good
example of where media, I think, can get things totally ass backwards. They
might say, We looked at the data, and of 100 people who read parenting books
and 100 people who didnt, the people who read parenting books turned out
to be better parents. Therefore, parenting books make you better parents. It
could just be that the people who are proactive enough to actually go buy books
on parenting are going to end up being the better parents anyway because they
care more, and so on and so forth. That seems to be the feedback I get from a
lot of my friends who are parents. I am not yet, but Im certainly looking for the
Cliff Notes to the extent that I can.
One more question for you, Jonathan, and then Im gonna start raining questions
on Jessica for a bit. Is there a particular defining moment of your childhood that
you can think of? Or was there a defining moment in your childhood that helped
mold you into who you are?
Jonathan Eisen:
Weve already talked about one which was the being moments away from
going into a coma and dying from diabetes, which really had a massive impact
on lots of things. But I think unquestionably I can tell you one very specific
moment that had a huge impact on me as a child. When I was almost ten years
old or just ten years old, we went to Kenya to visit my uncle who was studying
baboons there for his Ph.D. in anthropology. He was doing fieldwork in Amboseli.
We went camping in the middle of the Maasai Mara and other parts of Kenya,
with lions wandering around outside.
One day, we were driving through the savannah, and my uncle said, Thats weird,
and pointed way off in the distance to this gazelle that was doing something
strange. We stopped the car and waited, and slowly over a period of maybe 15
minutes, a cheetah came from over where that gazelle was and walked about
five feet from our car. Then we watched it do the cheetah sprint. It didnt catch
the gazelle, but it did the full 60-mile-per-hour sprint. That moment was so
awe-inspiring and transformative to me, to just think more about the natural
world. I was kind of into birds then, but I wasnt really thinking about it. But
that seeing the dynamic system in the savannah and seeing this incredibly
beautiful, graceful predator coming out of nowhere that I still remember that
moment.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. That sounds incredible.
Jessica Richman:
Thats an amazing story, I just have to say.
Tim Ferriss:
What time of day was that?
Jonathan Eisen:
It was in the afternoon. I dont know exactly when, but
Tim Ferriss:
I was just painting the picture in my mind because thats just like wow.
Jonathan Eisen:
It was incredible. By the way, as an aside, were now looking into doing studies
of the cheetah microbiome because I have to return to my roots.
Tim Ferriss:
I was hoping you would say that you have adopted a cheetah and put a saddle
on it like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
Jonathan Eisen:
That, too, but I cant tell people about that.
Tim Ferriss:
Legal only in several states, not all. Jessica, when you think of the word
successful, whos the first person who comes to mind for you?
Jessica Richman:
Oh, wow. Thats a really good question. There are so many different ways to be
successful. I think no particular name comes to mind, but what I really admire
is when people have come a long distance from where they used to be to where
they are. I think sometimes the people who have done that havent come very
far on a global standard, but theyve come very far from where they used to
be. I love reading stories about people who were in prison and then totally
changed their lives. Or people who came from really modest circumstances and
did amazing things with them. For me, thinking about that distance that people
travel is what makes them successful.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay. Thats a good answer. I guess its what Hurricane Carter. There are a
lot of many people who are inspiring in that sense. Who do you aspire to be like
or to emulate as a founder or CEO?
Jessica Richman:
Thats a great question. Im not its confession, I suppose. Im not a big

worshipper of the canonical Silicon Valley CEOs, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison
and even Sergei [inaudible] [01:34:09] and Larry Page. A lot of these things are
Six Sigma events that happened in a particular place and particular time, and
slavishly saying, Steve Jobs did it so its a great idea for us, is not the best way
to go. The people that I try to emulate are people that are one step passed
where I am, not people that are ten steps passed where I am. Theyre probably
people that you wouldnt necessarily know. Theyve gone to the next stage
where I aspire to be, and then the next stage after that.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats fine. Any particular names? Wed love to hear some specifics.
Jessica Richman:
No names are coming to mind. I do a lot of reading and talking to people, but
no names are coming to mind. At least no one who would think it would be okay
for me to name them on a podcast.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats all right. How do you find those people?
Jessica Richman:
I find some of them through our investors. We find people that have been
funded at the next stage or who have done the things that we are trying to do.
I find them at conferences. Also, I find them by researching online and trying
to think who has done the thing that Im just about to try to do? Or maybe the
thing that comes right after that and try to talk to them. You were talking about
superpowers earlier. If I have any sort of superpower, its that figuring out who
is doing the next thing and being able to talk with them and learn what they
know.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a good superpower. What are the questions you like to ask such people?
Jessica Richman:
I love to ask how things were done. A lot of these things, especially when theyre
reported in the media, are like, So and so is an amazing CEO and they did this
crazy thing. But when you actually find out how it happened, its because their
college roommate was doing it also, or their professor told them how to do it,
or theres some trick that they know that nobody else knows. So, I like to ask
questions around what that trick is. How exactly did this happen? Where did
you first find out about it? What happened, specifically? I think thats how
questions are really important.
I also like to ask values questions because I think that leads to a lot of interesting
answers about what was fundamental to what happened as opposed to what
was merely incidental.
Tim Ferriss:
What would be an example of that?
Jessica Richman:
Theres a CEO that I sometimes talk to who has a company that has a strong
culture. I ask him a lot about what was really fundamental what choices did
they what things did they not do that they could have done, that they perhaps
even wanted to do but they didnt do, in order to have the culture that they
have. What things cost them? Where was there some sort of hard choice
Tim Ferriss:
What sacrifices did they make?
Jessica Richman:
Sacrifice, exactly. What sacrifices did they make sound a little bit clich. I
didnt go to the beach, or I didnt spend time with my cat. Or whatever. What
Im thinking about more in terms of sacrifice
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
It was a dog culture. You gotta choose sides.
Jessica Richman:
Exactly. Im thinking more about things like what decision did it hurt you to
make but youre glad you made it.
Tim Ferriss:
Can you give an example of any of the answers?
Jessica Richman:
Oh, yes. One particular answer is trusting the people around you in ways you
might not necessarily think of to do.
Tim Ferriss:
Like what?
Jessica Richman:
In terms of having a company culture thats very open and very trusting of the
people that you work with. For example, this is something that we try to do at
uBiome. We have a lead day scientist we hired. Hes a theoretical physicist. He
just got out of his post-doc. Hes never managed a team. Hes never written
code. Hes never done any of these things, but we have him doing all kinds of
stuff. Hes hiring people. Hes doing all kinds of things because he wants to and
he can. I think theres a profound respect for that I have and that I learned
through these conversations based on letting people do the things that they
want to do if they seem like they can do them.
Tim Ferriss:
We can dig into that maybe in a round two. Jonathan, do you have any favorite
documentaries or movies that come to mind?
Jonathan Eisen:
If you want non-fiction documentaries, in terms of movies Ive been watching

over and over Shackleton movie? It was a made-for-TV or cable movie about
Shackleton. Its incredible. Its the best thing out there that is about the
Shackleton story that currently exists right now.
Tim Ferriss:
What do you like about it, this particular coverage or story
[Crosstalk]
Jonathan Eisen:
The story itself is remarkable in so many ways. Im really interested in exploration.

The great stories of all the explorers over time I read a lot of, and I think the
Shackleton story, obviously, is pretty incredible because they were setting out
to do one particular thing. It didnt work out the way they wanted it. Despite
getting stranded on the ice and having a very high probability of death, they
all survived. Thats the amazing thing about the Shackleton story is they all
survived. They managed to navigate across horrible waters with very few tools
and traverse incredibly difficult circumstances. Over two years, even though
they fought with each other, they did mostly stick together. Its this amazing
story of human spirit and persistence and exploration.
I read a lot of these stories about Antarctica and Arctic exploration, and prior
to that, exploring the world around us. The Shackleton one is pretty incredible.
Jessica Richman:
This is weird because I have a soft spot for those kinds of explorations stories.
I havent watched the Shackleton documentary but I love the Beryl Markham
and Amelia Earhart and that whole early flight stories. Im kind of a geek about
those. I wanna throw out a plug for a movie. I dont know if youve seen this,
Tim. Have you seen the movie The Edge, with Anthony Hopkins?
Tim Ferriss:
No, I have not.
Jessica Richman:
This is a movie
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, wait a second. Is this about the Indian motorcycle speed tests?
Jessica Richman:
No.
Tim Ferriss:
No. Okay, then I havent
Jessica Richman:
This is about a Anthony Hopkins is this perfect character. Hes a billionaire

scientist whos exploring the Arctic. Its this kind of out there setup where hes
this billionaire scientist who doesnt spend enough time in the real world, and
he gets lost in the Arctic. Theres all sorts of interesting subplots. Basically, he
needs to find his way back to civilization and kill this bear thats trying to kill him.
Tim Ferriss:
I saw a pre I saw a trailer for this.
Jessica Richman:
Its so good. This is never this movie is not famous. I dont know why. It has
Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in it and Elle McPherson in it. Youd think it
would be something everyone had seen. No one has seen this movie. It is my
absolute favorite movie. It is this great story where not only does he survive by
his wits and defeat nature, in a way, he also his companions are not on his side.
Not to spoil it too much.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, no. Dont spoil it. Ill watch it tonight.
Jessica Richman:
They are theyre not on his side, and he manages to save them, too. So, theres
this altruism to it, as well. Its really good.
Tim Ferriss:
Ill probably watch that this evening. Jonathan, I wanted to Ive not seen the
documentary on Shackleton, but the one of my favorite things, maybe my
favorite thing, not knowing much about that story. One of my favorite things
about it is the classified ad. Im looking at a copy of it. The classified ad, this is
what Shackleton used to recruit people to help in this journey is headlined Men
wanted. The subhead is For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long
months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and
recognition in case of success. Then his name and address. So amazing.
I feel like most job descriptions should have disclaimers like that. The turnover
would be a lot lower.
Jonathan Eisen:
In the movie -
Jessica Richman:
Im sorry, I was just gonna say one of our investors, someone you know, Tim,
loves that ad and thinks we should put that in all of our job ads.
Tim Ferriss:
I totally agree. Jonathan, what were you gonna say?
Jonathan Eisen:
I was just gonna say, in the movie Kenneth Branagh is Shackleton, and theres
this great scene where someone is coming in with that advertisement to apply
for the job. Its completely its perfect.

Tim Ferriss:
I heard that he was inundated with applications. I dont know if thats true or
not.
Jonathan Eisen:
They were drowning. They had literally got they had to hire people to go
through the mail because they got so many applications.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats so awesome. Thats great. The great thing about that disclosure is
that they can always pull out the I told you so. You cant complain about the
darkness. I fucking told you in the classified. This wasnt hidden risk. Jonathan,
if you could change or improve one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Jonathan Eisen:
Better organization. Im not good at planning things or keeping everything

organized.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you think that the hatred of rules has is related to that? Or
Jessica Richman:
Lets psychoanalyze Jonathan.
Jonathan Eisen:
Should I lie down on the couch in my hotel room now?
Tim Ferriss:
Im not qualified.
Jonathan Eisen:
I think that theres a very strong correlation there. Whether its causal or not,
I dont know. I do a really good job with getting things to happen most of the
time, but I could definitely use much better much more effort on a personal
assistant or some type of planning.
Tim Ferriss:
Now, this is I dont let journalists follow me for what they want to be a typical
day ever because I find people expect me to be this paragon of efficiency, and
I run my life like Spock, and its this incredible
Jessica Richman:
You dont?
Tim Ferriss:
Swiss watch of productivity. If you came and watched me, you would ask
yourself all day, What the fuck is this guy doing? But despite all of my flaws,
I get a fair amount done. Its for reasons that I could speculate and talk about,
and I have talked about ad nauseam, so I wont do it now. You, Jonathan,
youve done a huge amount accomplished, a huge amount. What allows you to
compensate for this lack of organization and get a lot done?
Jonathan Eisen:
What allows me to compensate for it most of the time is that I maybe it is the
lack of the rules. I have a big picture of whats happening in my lab and in the
work I want to do and in the projects I wanna do. Im not always obsessing with
am I following the right path for a professor, or am I applying for the right jobs,
or am I submitting to the right journal? I do what I wanna do. Its worked out
really, really well for me.
I think that in research, I know a lot of colleagues who spend a lot of time worrying
about what theyre supposed to do as opposed to what they wanna do. I think
because I dont spend a lot of time thinking about what Im supposed to do, it
works out a lot of the time that I get a lot done because Im doing the things I
love and excited about, and I never worry about what Im supposed to do.

I confess, things slip through the cracks. [Inaudible] [001:46:14] a bad approach.
Most of the time it doesnt matter, but every once in a while it does.
Tim Ferriss:
I like this. This reminds me of something that I read by one of my favorite

writers, Neil Gaiman, whos a fiction writer. He gave a commencement speech.
I think it was simply called Make Good Art. He talks about, in this particular
commencement, the big picture of moving closer to or further away from the
mountain, which is this major goal he had of, I believe, it was being a full time
writer. A lot slipped through the cracks, but because he had that one North Star,
it sounds like as you do with the overarching goals of the lab or otherwise, hes
been able to create this incredible career, even though a lot has fallen through
the cracks.
Speaking of commencements, on a related note, and then Ill let us wrap up.
This has been a lot of fun and I wanna be respectful of both your evenings.
Jessica, if you were giving a few pieces of advice to your 20-year-old self, what
would the advice be? And, Jonathan, Ill ask you the same as well after this.
Jessica Richman:
My advice to my 20-year-old self would be about confidence. I think Ive learned

so much through working on my Ph.D., through starting this company, Ive gained
such a broader perspective. I think I just didnt have confidence in myself and
in what I could do, and in the level to which I could be pushed and still excel. I
would tell my 20-year-old self to not be so afraid of trying things. That would
thats the number one piece advice. The second thing would be to think very
broadly about whats possible. Thats kind of related, but not only think you can
do it but think about that there are many things possible in the world to do, that
I dont think I thought of when I was 20.
All the standard, buy this stock or
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Buy Apple.
Jessica Richman:
Exactly. Buy Apple.
Tim Ferriss:
What were you so why did you lack confidence? Why were you intimidated?
Jessica Richman:
Ive thought about this a lot. Some of this is the traditional female stuff, where I
see this all the time. When I see it in people, I always comment about it because
I make a point of it, knowing about it. I was just talking to someone today who
was like this is our director of operations. She was like, Well, you know, I dont
know if I can do that. Maybe I should just wait and ask them if its okay. Im like,
No, no, no. Women wait and ask. Men just go do it and apologize for it later.
Its true. Theres this very female Wait and youll be rewarded. Like that CEO
of Microsoft was saying, Why dont you just wait and not ask for raises? Karma
will give the money. They actually said that. I think were socialized to believe
that. I think thats a big part of it.
Another part of it was I dont know. I think another part of it may have been
socio-economic. Theres this upper middle class feeling of power that I learned
at Stamford that I didnt know before that. Theres a sense that you can get
close to see the power. I remember when I first came to Stamford, and I you
meet people that you read about in the news. I didnt know anyone before
whod ever met anyone whod been in the news. You go to a talk and its the
Secretary of Defense or something, or its Steven Pinker. Its somebody that
youve read their books.
The idea that these were actually real people who were not perfect and didnt
do everything perfectly as a child I imbibed this very my grandparents were
immigrants after the Holocaust, and my parents grew up in that milieu in New
York. There was always this idea that if youre perfect, if you work hard and
youre absolutely perfect, you, too, can succeed. When I met people who were
the most successful people in the world and they had lots of problems, and
were also very anxious about lots of things, I thought, Okay. I can be one of
those people.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre right. Youre like, Oh, okay.
Jessica Richman:
I can do that.
Tim Ferriss:
I get it. These are human problems not me problems.
Jessica Richman:
Exactly. I didnt know that growing up, so that was a big revelation for me.
Tim Ferriss:
I wanna underscore one thing you said. Its always a danger for me to say this
because I look like American history X, so its a sensitive subject. I was having
a conversation once with a very, very, very successful female executive. The
topic, this was a group conversation among friends, and the topic came up
about salary discrepancies. Her thought, and Im not saying this is the only,
certainly not the only perspective, but she was massi she makes millions and
millions of dollars a year. She said the reason women make less oftentimes is
because they dont ask for more.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah. Studies have shown that. Thats not just for
Tim Ferriss:
The asking for forgiveness rather than asking for permission, I think is a really
important one. Jonathan
Jessica Richman:
Tim Ferriss:
Im sorry, go ahead. I didnt mean to cut you off.
Jessica Richman:
I was just gonna say. This is very controversial, Sheryl Sandbergs point about
leaning in, but I think shes absolutely right. There are also structural inequalities
and other things all through. But being able to not stop yourself is at least a
first order a first that you can take for other people may stop you but at least
dont stop yourself.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Right. No. Absolutely. Jonathan, what advice would you give your
20-year-old self?
Jonathan Eisen:
I would tell myself to bank all my fecal samples.
Jessica Richman:
Microbiome, obviously.
Tim Ferriss:
Theyd be like, what, in an ice cube tray? How do I do that?
Jonathan Eisen:
So weird. Just like I dont plan things very well, I also am not very retrospective
in thinking. The thing that I wish I had done more of and that I think would be
really good, in general, is to trust good people and ask them advice. I have
asked people advice over the years. When theyre people that I really trust and
people that seem to be good human beings, that advice has actually been really
good a lot of the time. I dont think Ive done that enough. I think that a lot of
the time I try to work things out in my head through some logical flow chart or
because Im so damn smart, right? Asking for help from the right people is a
really good thing and I wish I had done that more.
Related to that, something I also wish I had done more, and I try to do much
more now, is to thank people who help you. Theres lots of people along the
way in life who do something small or something big who have helped me and
helped everybody else in a lot of ways. In science, we stand on the shoulders of
others. It doesnt hurt to thank those people.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats great advice. On that note, thank you both so much for taking this time.
This was a really enjoyable conversation for me, and I hope that thats true for
both of you as well. How can people learn more about what you are up to? Ill
let well go back to Jessica here. Jessica, where can people learn more about
everything that youre up to?
Jessica Richman:
As far as uBiome goes, you go to uBiome.com
Tim Ferriss:
Thats with a U.
Jessica Richman:
With a U, yes, I should spell it. U-B-I-O-M-E.com. Go to uBiome.com. Theres

interesting information about what were doing. A blog is there. You can also
purchase kits to better understand your own microbiome. All sorts of interesting
stuff is on there.
Tim Ferriss:
Just mailed one off myself, today. Back to you, yes.
Jessica Richman:
Thank you. We look forward to receiving your poop.
Tim Ferriss:
Are you on Twitter? Any other social media outlets?
Jessica Richman:
Im on Twitter @JessicaRichman. Thats my name, J-ES-S-I-C-A-R-I-C-H-M-A-N,

like a wealthy man. uBiome is also on Twitter @uBiome.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. And Jonathan?
Jonathan Eisen:
Everything associated with phylogenomics, thats my Twitter handle. My

personal blog is phylogenomics@blogspot. My lab website is a phylogenomics
WordPress site. The best way to find out about me is probably just Google
phylogenomics, P-H-Y-L-O-G-E-N-O-M-I-C-S. Most of the stuff that comes up is
something Ive done.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome. Guys, this was a blast. I really appreciate it. Have a wonderful
weekend. To be continued, hopefully.
Jessica Richman:
Yeah, you, too. Thank so much for having me on.
Jonathan Eisen:
Thank you very much.
Tim Ferriss:
Thanks, guys.
Jessica Richman:
Bye.
Tim Ferriss:
Bye bye.
Jonathan Eisen:
Okay. Bye.
Tim Ferriss:
This episode of the Tim Ferriss show is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs
is the worlds largest online marketplace of graphic designers. I have used
99designs for years, including to get cover concepts for The 4-Hour Body,
which went on to become number one New York Times, number one Wall Street
Journal. It was a huge hit.
Heres how it works. You can check everything out, including some of my
competitions. You can see these book covers and so on at 99designs.com/
tim. Whether you need a logo, a car wrap, a web design, an app, a thumbnail,
a t-shirt, whatever you go to 99design.com. You describe your project and
then within a week or less, you have tons of designers around the world who
compete for your business and submit different ideas in designs and drafts.
You have an original design that you love or you pay nothing. It is fantastic.
I have used it. I have mentioned it before, including in The 4-Hour Work Week as
a resource. Check it out. 99designs.com/tim, and if you use that link, youll be
able to see what Ive done on the platform. You will also get $99 as an upgrade
for free which will get you more designs, more submissions. Check it out. Until
next time, thank you for listening.
EPISODE 55:
PAVEL TSATSOULINE
Tim Ferriss:
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in.
This episode is a follow-up and an experimental episode. Each of these

interviews theyre typically interviews consists of me trying to deconstruct a
world-class performer, whether they be an investor, a chess prodigy, an athlete,
or otherwise, to pull out the tips and tricks that you can use.
A recent episode with Pavel Tsatsouline, who is an elite physical training instructor
hes been involved with training the Spetsnaz, the elite Soviet Special Forces
Units, also the Marine Corps, Secret Service, Navy Seals he did an episode that
ended up being a master class in strength training. And it was so popular that
we decided to do a Round 2.
And this Round 2 and both of these can be listened to independently consists
of the most popular 15 questions as voted up by hundreds of you. So hundreds
of you submitted questions, voted on them. The Top 15, which covered just
about everything you can imagine, are those that Pavel will be answering in this
episode.
One piece of housekeeping, if you are looking for business mentorship in 2015,
and you would like an all-expense paid trip to Necker Island thats Sir Richard
Bransons private island on a private jet to be mentored by yours truly, Sir
Richard Branson, and a handful of other folks, you can get all of the details and
they are very cool details at Shopify.com/Tim. Thats Shopify.com/Tim.
And if you missed the first interview with Pavel, you can search his name, P-AV-E-L, and my name, and it will be one of the first few results on Google, or go
to FourHourWorkWeek.com/Pavel, P-A-V-E-L, all spelled out, and you can find
everything, including all the links and resources mentioned in that episode.
Without further ado, here is Round 2, the Q&A by popular demand, with Pavel
Tsatsouline.
Pavel Tsatsouline:
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to be speaking to Tim Ferrisss audience

again. You have asked me a number of questions, excellent questions, and I will
answer some of them today.
Many of the questions had to do with nutrition. It is not my specialty, so I will not
be answering them, with one exception, the question by Carl from Indiana: On
the podcast, you asked Pavel if he had tricks regarding the challenges of eating
for hypertrophy, and he said he would mention them, but you guys never had
time to circle back.
Well, Carl, to put on muscle, its a very costly proposition for your body to put it
on and to keep it. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of plastic resources. And
the bodys very reluctant to add muscle, especially past a certain point. So you
must convince it that food is not only available, the food is abundant. The food
is overly abundant.
So the tactic used by a number of lifters, top lifters like Kirk Karwoski, to get
themselves past a sticking point and keep putting muscle on, was to add a
feeding in the middle of the night. Thats right. You just get some food, a salad
food or liquid food, high-protein food on your nightstand, something that you
wouldnt mind gagging down. And in the middle of the night, you just throw it
down the hatch. Nobody said it would be easy, and nobody said it would be
hard.

Mikey from Dublin is wondering, What is the optimal way to combine strength
training and hypertrophy training? Obviously, there are many ways of doing
that, but if we were to look for the minimalist approach, simply focusing most of
your energy on doing sets of five. When you do a set of five, as confirmed both
of research and experience in the trenches, gives you the best of both worlds,
delivers muscle and delivers strength, Part 2, Mikey, and muscle, too.
The next question is from and pardon me if Im not pronouncing the name
correctly Josu Ledesma from New York City. What would be the 80/20 training
method to build strength and overall fitness? The answer is, without any doubt,
correct kettlebell training.
When one tries to develop all fitness components, strength, endurance,

flexibility, power, using the same modality, usually, he ends up with a whole
lot of compromises. But the kettlebell, when used correctly, for some reason,
allows you to avoid this problem and develop all these components to a high
level.
We even have an expression in the kettlebell world, the what-the-hell effect.

Lets say that youre doing kettlebell exercises, and suddenly, you go out and
test yourself at something youve not been practicing, and it turns out you can
do more pull-ups, you can walk with a heavier weight much faster, you can lift a
heavier weight off the ground. Thats the what-the-hell effect.
And there are a number of Soviet studies in the 80s confirming that. And in the
last several years, there have been a number of studies done in the West, as
well, and you can find them on PubMed.
Now, speaking of specific training program, I recommend three highest-yield

exercises that also have the steepest learning curve. They are: the one-arm
swing, the get-up, and the goblet squat. Just do these three exercises that we
refer to as a program minimum every day, and I guarantee that youre gonna get
a great return on your investment.
The next question is from JDK from San Francisco: You mentioned in the
podcast that prior to strength training, you need proper alignment. I struggle
with this. One side is shorter than the other and weaker than the other. What
kind of doctor should I see, and what steps should I take?
First of all, find a sports doctor or chiropractor who is an athlete and a lifter and
who works with athletes and lifters. Its a very important step. My personal rule
is I would never go to a chiropractor who deadlifts less than I do.
And, after that, I suggest that you find yourself an FMS-certified specialist, FMS
or Functional Movement Screen. You can read about it in The 4-Hour Body.
Gray Cook is the author. And its a terrific system for assessing your symmetry
and helping you improve your performance.
Jeffrey John from Edmonton, Alberta, is writing: Any tips for developing
conditioning? I appreciate it. Lets start with efficiency. That means posture and
relaxation. If your head is sticking forward, your running speed and endurance
is gonna be compromised. The same thing can be said about your gas in the
ring. So work on your posture.
Relaxation: In the Soviet Union, it was a standard practice for all kids in grade
school to practice relaxation exercise. And its the same practice that stayed
with all the athletes all the way to the Olympics. So these exercises are very
simple. They pretty much mean shaking your muscles out. So start shaking
your arms, shaking your legs, vibrate them, and imagine that youre trying to
shake water off your limbs.
And practicing these exercises regularly between sets of your strength exercises
during your athletic practice is going to go a very long way towards making you
more enduring and making you faster, as well.
A particular type of running is going to help you with being more relaxed and
more enduring. Just go out on a run without looking at the clock and focus on
being as relaxed as possible and go as far as possible while being as relaxed as
possible. And, as you keep doing that, eventually, all youll have to do is just add
some gas, and youre going to run faster.
Next item would be strengthening your respiratory muscles or breathing

muscles. Research tells us that the metabolites from your respiratory muscles,
which means all the waste products from the muscles, makes the blood vessels
in your limbs get constricted. So think about it this way: You start sucking wind,
and then, as if it wasnt bad enough already, you get this extra punishment of
the plumbing in your legs starts shutting down.
So the same research tells us that strengthening your respiratory muscles is

going to increase your endurance by preventing this reflexive vessel constriction.
How do we do that? In our kettlebell practice, we do something called the

biomechanical breathing match. So, say were performing a set of swings, on
the way down, we sharply inhale into the abdomen through the nose, so youre
inhaling against the resistance of your muscles and against the resistance of
the weight. And, on the way up, youre forcefully exhaling, as if youre striking.
Thats called the biomechanical breathing match. So thats how we strengthen
our breathing muscles.
Then there is such a thing as the breathing discipline. A breathing ladder is a

very effective technique developed by one of my colleagues, Rob Lawrence.
Lets say that youre doing a set of swings, kettlebell swings, or a sprint, any
type of an exercise that makes you gassed. Decide that youre going to rest
from this set to the next according to a certain number of breaths. So lets say
you get to do five breaths until the next set. And this is going to discipline you
to slow your breathing down, slow your physiology down, stop panicking. Thats
also going to help with your endurance.
One more thing to say is you can develop mitochondria in your fast-twitch fibers,
which is going to enable them to be much more enduring, to be able to use
oxygen. In the podcast, I already mentioned building up slow fibers that already
come equipped with mitochondria. But you can also build these mitochondria,
oxygen-using mitochondria into the existing fast fibers.

So how do we do that? We do that by exerting the muscles very powerfully

for a very short period of time, typically ten, 15seconds, and after that, resting
actively for a very long time. So work-to-rest ratio may be as high as 1 to 5 or
even 1 to 6. That might mean that you would do ten-second effort followed
by 50 seconds of rest, seems quite easy, but until you realize that you have
to maintain that power output every time, very high, maximum power output.
And you have to do this up to, eventually, up to 40 sets. Thats another of the
protocols by Professor Suliano.
So rest actively between the sets, which means kind of move around, jog lightly,
shake your muscles out the way I told you to do this earlier, and you can do this
a couple times a week, or eventually, you can even do this possibly every day.
Tyler EHC from New Jersey is asking: You talk a bit in the interview with Tim
about how important it is in exercise, sports, in life, to be able to switch yourself
on and off. What are your favorite techniques for making this rapid, efficient,
and achievable by anyone?
Its true that most people exist between the on and the off switch. Theyre
unable to really turn on to put out high power. They are unable to really switch
off and enjoy some rest or just have some endurance. So there are several
things that you can do. One I already mentioned is those relaxation exercises,
fast and loose exercises. Just shake your limbs.
Another technique that you could use is its an old technique called Jacobsens
Progressive Relaxation Training. It pretty much means lying down and then
progressively tensing all your muscles and then relaxing them in a particular
order that makes you aware of the tension and then makes you release the
tension.
Throughout the day and during your training, you should be particularly aware
of your facial tension because that takes a lot of effort, and it does train you, so
be impassive. Meditation, breathing exercise from yoga, from Kata, and so on,
definitely very helpful.
When it comes to turning yourself on, the first thing you can do is do a proper
set of morning exercises. Soviet research decades ago established that, if you
do a pleasant non-exhausting series of exercises in the morning, just some kind
of calisthenics, joint rotations, arm swings, whatever, you will accelerate your
ability to perform at a high level by a couple hours.
So you will reach that peak of performance early in the morning, as opposed
to waiting for it later. And, later throughout the day, your ability to access that
performance is gonna be greater, as well.
Back to breathing practices, there are some special exercises in some oriental
practices, like Kata. There is the Ibuki breathing that helps you to turn yourself
on, get some more power, get some more aggression.
I strongly recommend one book to you. The book is called, Psych by Dr. Judd
Biasiotto. Dr. Judd Biasiotto, by his own admission, looked like an 11-year-old
stamp collector. And yet, he proceeded to become one of the most successful
power lifters in history. At the age of 44, after a back surgery, he squatted over
600 pounds at a body weight of 132, which is absolutely amazing.

And he achieved that ability largely through his mental training. Judd reached
the point where he would wait for his attempt as other lifters are waiting for
their attempt, Judd would be just sleeping. And then, just a couple of minutes
before the attempt, his coach would wake him up. He would get up. He would
work himself into a frenzy. He would go out, lift a record, and then just go back
to sleep.
Now, thats an amazing control of your on switch and your off switch. The title
of the book again is Psych by Dr. Judd Biasiotto, spelled B-I-A-S-O-T-T-O.
Josh Albas from Montreal is asking, Whats the quickest way to improve a strict
barbell military press from three-quarters of your body weight to body weight,
given that my grip and abs are already strong?
Russian weightlifters have a saying: To press a lot, you must press a lot. The
press responds exceptionally well to a high volume of training. What does it
mean? Typically, 20 to 50 reps per session, three times a week. Thats a lot of
presses. All these presses are done in low repetitions, 1 to 5. More typical is 3
and 4, but 1 to 5, thats the range.
And you never go to failure. So, typically you stay with 1/3 to 2/3 of your max
reps. What does it mean? It means that, if youre able to do ten reps with that
weight, you should really only be doing three to sixrepetitions. So one more
time: To press a lot, you must press a lot.
Could you elaborate on neurological strength, please? asks Reimagined Yes

from Miami, Florida. Think of your muscles as a six-cylinder engine, and right
now, you are firing only on three cylinders. You could get stronger by adding
several more cylinders, and that would be hypertrophy, or you could fix that
engine and learn how to take advantage of the cylinders you already do have.
Thats the essence of neurological strength training.
Pretty much what you do is you learn how to activate your muscles more
intensely. Its done by training with lower repetitions. Its done by training with
heavier weights. Its done by a perfect practice, approaching your training not
as a workout, but as a practice.
Nick M. from Erie, Pennsylvania, is asking, In the podcast, its mentioned that to
build strength, you shouldnt go to failure. How do you know when to add more
weight if youre not going to failure? And Kellen from Denver asked a similar
question.
You need to use your perceived rate of exertion. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, lets
say that your typical set takes you 8 units of effort, and youre staying with this
weight. And a couple of weeks from now, lifting the same weight takes 6 or 7
units of effort. You know that youve gotten stronger.
Kid from San Francisco is asking, What is the best way to gain strength as you
get older? Pavels book, Power to the People, espoused heavy lifts, but going
on 39 years old, Im finding that this routine is WAY all caps WAY too hard
on my joints. Step1, go get your joints checked by a doctor. Step 2, get your
head in the right place. My father is 77 years old, and he is deadlifting over 100
pounds without a belt, and he does not think himself as old.

Dylan from Los Angeles is wondering, When does the five-minute rest between
sets apply? When does it not? There are three types of rest intervals. There is
ordinary, stress, and stimulating.
An ordinary interval allows you to pretty much recover your performance level
by the time the next set rolls around, and thats roughly three to five minutes. A
stress interval accumulates fatigue, so the more sets you do, the more tired you
get. And, finally, a stimulating interval allows you to perform better in the next
step, and that may take 12 minutes or so. So, unless your training program says
otherwise, just go with an ordinary interval, about three to five minutes.
Trey from Denver, Colorado, is asking, The army still has sit-ups on the physical
fitness test. Any advice on training and maximizing the repetitions?
First, get your abs strong, really strong. That means three to five sets of three
to five reps with three to five minutes in between of an exercise that puts a lot
of tension on your abdominal muscles. That could be strict hanging-leg raises.
That can be the abdominal wheel. That can be strict weighted sit-ups. So,
once youve gotten that strength, then just do a very minimal practice of your
repetition sit-up test, and youll have no problem.
Swash from Columbus, Ohio, is asking, I know the deadlift is one of the best
exercises, but Ive gotten terrible back spasms from doing it. Is it my form? Can
I approximate the deadlifts effects with something else that doesnt possibly
injure me?
Step 1, see a doc, a lifting doc. Find out what your restrictions and limitations
are. Either you will learn that you can deadlift with proper form, possibly with
some corrective exercises, or you have to look for an alternative.
If the answer to the deadlift is yes, then find a coach, a good powerlifting coach,
and learn how to do it right. If the answer is no, ask your doctor for some other
suggestions. Ask your doc about the kettlebell swing. Very often, people who
are not able to lift heavy barbells are able to safely do the kettlebell swing.
HFVK from Norway, who appears to be a personal trainer, is asking, How would
you go about building the discipline required to be great in a client?
Stop treating people youre training as clients. Hair salons have clients. A client
is somebody whos passively receiving a service. You want them to think of
themselves as students, and you want to treat them as students.
Tim, thank you for having me on your show. Ladies and gentlemen, power to
you.
Tim Ferriss:
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EPISODE 56:
PETER DIAMANDIS
Tim:
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Tim:
Hello, my clever little monkeys. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of
The Tim Ferriss Show, where I interview world-class performers ranging from billionaire
investors to chess prodigies and everything in between to try to dissect how they do
what they do. The tools, the tricks, the resources that you can use. In this episode, Im
having a chat with my friend Peter Diamandis. Dr. Peter Diamandis has been named
one of the Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine. He has made a career
out of doing the seemingly impossible, and he is an expert in thinking big, huge, beyond
anything you could imagine. This entire episode is dedicated to helping you do exactly
that. So without further ado, please meet Peter Diamandis.
Tim:
Peter, welcome to the show.
Peter:
Tim, great to be here.
Tim:
The guest who was so nice, we had to do it twice. We, of course, had you on with Tony
Robbins, which was great fun, and Im thrilled to have you back. For those who perhaps
didnt catch Part 1, Id love to give them a little bit of context on who you are because
there are very few people I would actually put in the category of visionary because its
a very over-used term, but its so appropriate for you. Youve built something along
the lines, or helped built, 15 or so companies at this point, but Id love if you could give
people a little bit of context and certainly mention XPRIZE, Planetary Resources and
HLI.
Peter:
Yeah, sure, my pleasure, and thank you for having me back. I do appreciate it. I mean,
fundamentally Im a 9-year-old kid whos working on making my dreams come true. I
have started, as you said, about last count is 17 companies, most of them in the space
technology, space arena. Of late, its been about solving the worlds grand challenges.
So Im a medical doctor by training, molecular biologist and aerospace engineer. Since
the age of 9, I wanted to fly into space. Started two universities: the International
Space University and most recently and very proudly, Singularity University in Mountain
View, in Silicon Valley, that teaches graduates and executives around the world about
exponential technologies.
In the mid-90s, frustrated by NASA not taking me and my friends to space, I decided
to fund, raise money for a $10 million prize. Didnt know who was going to put up the
$10 million, so I called it the XPRIZE to replace by the name. Eventually, the Ansaris put
up the money the Ansari family so I called it the Ansari XPRIZE, but that $10 million
prize had 26 teams around the world who spent $100 million building spaceships to
try and win it. From there, started a company called Zero G that does weightless
parabolic flights. Weve flown 15,000 people, including Stephen Hawking, into zero-g.
A company called Space Adventures takes people to the space station privately.
Then most recently in the space arena, a company called Planetary Resources backed
by a group of a dozen billionaires, folks like Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Marc Andreesen,
Richard Branson. This is a company that is, as much as its science fiction, I am absolutely,
positively sure its gonna be successful and transformative. This is a company thats
identifying the asteroids that come close to Earth without hitting us and that are worth
the most in terms of resources: fuel and metals. Its the resource low-hanging fruit of
the solar system, so can we go out there and prospect them?
Then finally, Ill just mention Human Longevity, which started only a year ago, but its
skyrocketing. I co-founded with Craig Venter and Bob Hariri, and we are building the
largest genome sequencing facility on the planet. Were gonna be sequencing millions
of genomes and then mining that genomes for data along with stem-cell science, and
our mission is to add an extra 30 or 40 healthy years onto everybodys life. So.
Tim:
So. No, Im only laughing because were here to talk about being bold and thinking big,
and Im so excited to dive into it, but I have to point out that you make me feel like I
have to try, and should try, a thousand times harder. Thats a good thing. I sometimes
have readers approach me, and they I worry about them suffering from the sort of
hero-with-clay-feet problem where they meet me, and theyre like, Wow, that guys
actually really disorganized, because I feel its like sometimes you have a pet cat, and
it stares at the corner for like five hours. If they actually watched me for most of the
day, I think it would look very similar. But when I look at what youve accomplished, it
reminds me of a few things that are very timely. So one is
Peter:
I have to say, Tim, before that, I mean, you only work four hours a week. I mean, the
other 36 hours a week, youd be fine.
Tim:
Thats true, thats true, I know. I could put a little more effort into it. The first is I spent
some time at Thiel Capital recently, of course founded by Peter Thiel, and at least at
one point, the tagline for I think it was Founders Fund, was, We wanted flying cars.
Instead we got 140 characters.
Peter: Yeah.
Tim:
I wanna come back to that. I was also hiking recently with a friend of mine named
Bryan Johnson, who did very well as the founder of Braintree.
Peter:
A dear friend of mine as well.
Tim:
Hes a great guy, and hes started something called the OS Fund, so trying to improve
the fundamental operating systems of life and life as we know it on the planet. And we
were hiking, and I was asking him what my resolution should be, potentially, for 2015.
If he were in my shoes, what would he be thinking about? He responded with, What
can you do that would be remembered 200 to 300 years from now? Really trying to
shift the magnitude of my aspirations and thinking.
So I was hoping perhaps you could start with the idea of exponential, just to revisit
that because its something that people tend to use the wrong way, or they use it very
flippantly. Theyre like, Oh, my God, it was exponentially better than blah, blah, blah.
They dont really have a grasp on what that means, so perhaps you could just give
people a basic primer or some examples of what exponential really means.
Peter:
Yeah, happily, and I have a after that Id like to come back to the notion of being
remembered in 200, 300 years. So first of all, people need to understand that we are
fundamentally local and linear thinkers. We evolved in a world, as humans hundreds of
thousands, millions of years ago, that was local and linear. Everything that affected you
was within a days walk. It was a very local existence. If something happened on the
other side of the planet, you knew nothing about it. Things were linear in that the life
of your great-grandparents, your parents, you, your kids, their kids, nothing changed
generation to generation, millennium to millennium. It was pretty much constant.
Today the world is anything but that, right? Today the world is global and exponential.
What I mean by exponential here is fundamentally a simple doubling. If we look in
exponential, it would look like one, two, four, eight, 16, 32. When your progress is able
to double year-on-year-on-year, and the example I give Ill give two examples. If I
asked you to take 30 linear steps, and all of us are linear thinkers, you go, One two
three four five six seven, and in 30 steps, youre across the street. Youre 30 meters
away. If I said, Where will you be if you took 30 exponentials, 30 doublings? unless
youve got it memorized, very few realize that youll be a billion meters away.
If you double something ten times, its a thousand times bigger. If you double it 20
times, its a million times bigger. If you double it 30 times, its a billion times bigger.
That disconnect between Ill be 30 meters away across the street, or Ive been orbiting
the planet 26 times, a billion meters, is huge. If I said to you, Tim, take a guess. If you
took a piece of paper and you folded it. Its now twice as thick, and you folded that
again, its now four times as thick. If you were able to fold that piece of paper 50 times,
how thick would that piece of paper be, might be?
Tim:
Well, Ive been primed to exaggerate.
Peter: Aha.
Tim:
To the moon, I would say.
Peter:
Well, its actually all the way to the sun. Not 240
Tim:
Not even close.
Peter:
Yeah, not 240 thousand miles to the moon, but 93 million miles to the sun. Extraordinary.
Tim:
Thats amazing. When you talk about, of course, your last book Abundance, and its
certainly having spent time at Singularity U myself at NASA Ames, when we talked
about exponential, its often paired to different technologies, so robotics, synthetic
biology, AI
Peter:
So all of this is underpinned by the increase of computational power. What is typically

known as Moores Law. So this guy Gordon Moore starts Intel in the late 50s, and in
1964 he writes a paper, and he says, You know, at Intel, weve been noticing that the
number of transistors on an integrated circuit has been roughly doubling for the same
cost every 18 months. He goes, This is likely to continue. That became known as
Moores Law, and for the last 50 years, its held pretty constant. So every time you
go to Best Buy, every 18 months or so, the computer you buy has got twice as much
processing power as you did for $1,000.00 bucks 18 months earlier.
This is extraordinary, and if you look at a computer I happen to have these numbers
memorized that you had in 2010, 2011, way back then, right? That computer was
calculating at 100 billion calculations per second, more computational power than the
U.S. government had in the 60s and 70s. In 2023, some seven, eight years from now,
the total computational power of your $1,000.00 computer that you can go to Best
Buy and purchase if theyre still around, is now calculating at ten to the 16th cycles per
second, a one followed by 16 zeros, which is just a number unless you go speak to
someone who studies the brain, and they tell you thats the rate at which your brain
and my brain does pattern recognition, right?
So whats it like when you buy $1,000.00 computer that thinks at the rate of a human
mind, but it doesnt stop there, right? Because 25 years later, the average $1,000.00
computer is now thinking at the rate of the entire human race. Now it becomes really
interesting.
Tim:
Right, then we get to the fears, of course, that are getting a lot of play right now with
the rise of the machines and AI and so forth. Now for someone, even someones whos
in the center at least, of course, the people in Silicon Valley would like to think the
center of the universe, from the standpoint of tech development and so on, Im very
comfortable with angel investing and early-stage startups, but even I get somewhat
anxious about my lack of understanding related to these technologies. Robotics I
dont have a CS degree, I dont have a synthetic biological background of any type.
How can someone who is not a technologist play this game or think about changing
their thinking, and does it involve these technologies, or is it entirely separate from
that?
Peter:
Great questions. Im always asked the question over and over again, Listen, if Im not a
technologist, can I get involved in all the stuff youre speaking about in Abundance and
Bold? The answer is yes. The answer is without question yes. First of all, I should just
say riding on top of Moores Law on top of these faster and faster computers is a whole
set of what are either called exponential technologies or accelerated technologies, and
these things include like cloud computing, sensors and networks, 3D printing, right,
added to manufacturing.
Synthetic biology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and these are the technologies we
teach at Singularity University if you come as a graduate student or as an executive,
and we have amazing programs. Its just at singularityu.org if you wanna learn more.
The fact of the matter is I dont care if youre an artist, if youre a writer, or if youre
someone who never went to college, whats the single most important attribute that
you need to tap into these technologies is passion and curiosity.
What I wanna remind everybody is were in a hyperconnected world, and in this
hyperconnected world, there are a lot of really smart geeks out there who are the
worlds expert in machine learning and artificial intelligence and robotics. Some of
them absolutely wish they had your skills. They wish they were great writers, they wish
they could raise money, they wish they were good marketers, they wish they a good
business idea. They wish all kinds of things, and so what I realized, and I write about
this actually in the first part Bold is in three parts, and Part 1s about exponential
technologies.
I write about the concept that you can crowdsource, that if you have a passion or an
idea or come up with a really cool idea, you can go to the crowd, and you can find
someone who has the expertise that you need to team up with to make your idea
happen. I write about a number of examples. I wont go into them in detail now, but
where someone who had an idea and no skills was able to team up with the people who
did have the skills and get access to and build a business.
Tim:
So lets think of it, sorta just to work in parallel thinking of technology, there are
different types of technologies. If we think of or define technology as just a tool used
to solve a problem, so that could be a stick that a chimpanzee uses on an anthill, but
it could also be better questions that we ask ourselves. So the question that Bryan
asked me, for instance, What could you do to be remembered in 200, 300 years? Not
for vanity purposes, but just as a helpful question to ask.
Or Peter Thiel, whos also on this podcast. For those who may not be familiar, he was
co-founder of PayPal and then the first outside investor to Facebook. He asked me,
Why cant you accomplish your ten-year goal in six months? How would you try to
do it in six months? What are some questions that you ask that many other people do
not ask?
Peter:
Yeah, so one of the questions is really, Is there a grand challenge or a billion-person

problem that you can focus on? I am on a tear right now to try and get entrepreneurs
to stop working on another photo-sharing app or something thats just, literally, an app
and say, Hey, what are you most passionate about, and can you go and solve one of
the grand challenges? I remind people that from my mindset, the best way to become
a billionaire is to help a billion people. That in this hyperconnected world right now,
were going to be having three to five billion new people coming online. So one of the
questions is, What do they need? Right?
So let me back up a second. In 2010, we had just over 1.8 billion people connected on
the Internet. Today, its somewhere between 2.5, 2.8 billion. By 2020, the low estimate
is five billion connected online. If you go and you look at the projects that Mark
Zuckerberg has, that Larry Page has at Google, some of the recent announcements
that Elons had, there are at least three separate competing concepts for deploying
drones, balloons, satellites that would give a megabit connection to every human on
the planet. So lets think about that, right? Three to five billion new consumers are
coming online in the next six years. Holy cow, thats extraordinary. What do they need?
What would you provide for them because they represent tens of trillions of dollars
coming into the global economy, and they also represent an amazing resource of
innovation. So I think about that a lot, and I ask that. The other question I ask is, How
would you disrupt yourself? One of the most fundamental realizations is that every
entrepreneur, every business, every company will get disrupted. Its a matter of time,
and the rate of disruption is increasing. One measure of that is Richard Foster at Yale
studied companies on the S&P 500, and in the 1920s, if you started a company that got
on the S&P 500, Standard & Poors 500 companies, your average lifespan was 67 years.
Today the average lifespan of a company that goes on the S&P 500 is not 67 years, its
15 years.
Right, your MySpace is being disrupted by Facebook, by Google+, whatevers next,
so disruption is going to happen. Ive had the honor of talking with, kicking off Jeff
Immelt, the CEO of GE, his leadership team meetings. The same thing for Muhtar Kent
at Coca-Cola, Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, and for Sysco and for many companies.
I ask them, How will you disrupt yourself, and how are you trying to disrupt yourself?
If youre not, youre in for a real surprise.
Tim:
Right, so its almost like, what, Marc Goodman, who was also interviewed he was a
former FBI futurist. You may have met him, in fact.
Peter:
Well, Marc heads cybersecurity at Singularity University. Hes on our faculty.
Tim:
Oh, thats right. God, its such a small world, God.
Peter:
Thats actually how you met him.
Tim:
Oh, well, I actually first met him in San Diego no, I first bumped into him, youre totally
right, at Singularity. The concept of red teaming, sort of testing your own security
systems as if you were attacking your company or your person and taking the same
approach to how you obsolesce your own company.
Peter:
Yep, yep. I tell that to CEOs. I say, Listen, find the smartest 20-somethings in your
company. I dont care if theyre in the mailroom or where they are. Give them permission
to figure out how would they take down your company.
Tim:
Yeah, which is a cool assignment, too, for a 20-something.
Peter: Yeah.
Tim:
I wanna talk about a couple of the names that have come up. You mentioned Elon, Richard
Branson, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos. They all seem to have very different backgrounds.
What are some of the strategies that they have in common or psychological tools,
anything like that?
Peter:
Yeah, so let me start so I talk about Larry and Jeff and Richard and Elon in Bold. I have
a relationship with each of them as investors, business partners, board members, and
they represent for me extraordinary examples of people we should try and emulate. I
talk about them in detail, and I actually looked at what do they have in common and
basically found a number of key attributes that I think they have in common that I
believe are absolutely critical for other entrepreneurs to emulate as well. So one of the
things is the level of moonshots these people take, their willingness to dream really big
and to go ten times bigger than anybody else and not ten percent bigger. Thats really
important.
Larry Page, for example, was at the Singularity University founding conference.
Now, Larry is an investor in Planetary Resources, he is on my board at XPRIZE, hes a
benefactor and helped get Singularity University started, and he stood up at the SU
founding conference, and he said something which really set the DNA of Singularity
University and changed my mindset. He said, I have a simple measure right now for
people. Are you working on something that can change the world? Yes or no? He
said, 99.9999999 percent of the people on the planet, the answer is no. The fact of
the matter is we should be. I think thats a really important realization and something
that I try and talk about and push in this book, which is what you really should.
The other thing is Jeff Bezos talking about experimentation. We all talk about
experimentation and pivoting and so forth, but he goes on to say in detail, Our success
at Amazon is a function of the number of experiments we can do per year, per month,
per week, per day. When you do experiments, youre gonna fail. If you dont have a
thick skin, youre not going to be able to succeed. So I talk to CEOs all the time. I say,
Listen, the day before something is truly a breakthrough, its a crazy idea. If it wasnt
a crazy idea, its not a breakthrough, its an incremental improvement. So where inside
of your companies are you trying crazy ideas?
We dont do it in the government, right? I mean, when the government tries something
different and it fails, theres a congressional investigation. Like no government
employees ever gonna do that again. In large corporations, youre worried about your
stock price plummeting. So ultimately, its the entrepreneurs who are trying the crazy
ideas, and theyre willing to fail 99 times out of 100, and thats really where the true
breakthroughs come from.
Tim:
Maybe you can confirm or correct this, but I want to say that I also heard Larry Page
at one point say that The thing that people misunderstand about really huge goals is
that its very hard to fail completely. I feel like that was a Larry quote, but I didnt
Peter:
Its one of the an element of that is I interview Astro Teller for the book. Astro is the
head of Google X, Google Skunkworks.
Tim:
Yeah, great guy.
Peter:
Really a dear friend and a great guy. He says, When you go after a moonshot,
something thats ten times bigger, not 10 percent bigger. A number of things happen.
First of all, when youre going 10 percent bigger, youre competing against everybody.
Everybodys trying to go 10 percent bigger. When youre trying to go ten times bigger,
youre there by yourself. For me, its like asteroid mining. I dont have a lot of asteroid
mining competition out there or prospecting, or even human longevity. Trying to add
40 years in healthy lifespan. Theres not a lot of companies out there. Theres Calico at
Google, whos a collaborative company, but thats not really competition.
The second thing is when you are trying to go ten times bigger, you have to start with
a clean sheet of paper, and you approach the problem completely differently. So Ill
give you my favorite example. Its Tesla, right? How did Elon start Tesla and build from
scratch the safest, most extraordinary car not even in America, I think in the world? Its
by not having a legacy from the past to drag into the present. Thats important. The
third thing is when you try to go ten times bigger versus 10 percent bigger, its typically
not 100 times harder, but the reward is a 100 times more.
Tim:
Thats very interesting. No, I like that. How do you find people like the folks you
mentioned? You know, the Elons, the Bransons and so on. I dont know if theres
a clean answer to this, but how do they compensate for their weaknesses or cover
their weaknesses? Because I mean, in my experience, people with incredible strengths
usually have theyre like everybody else in the world. Theyre kinda like Swiss cheese;
they have their holes. How do they still go for these moonshots while sort of protecting
against the fatal flaws that they might have?
Peter:
I think we get to know them after theyre successful. Frankly, there are probably a lot
of Larry Pages and Elon Musks who almost were successful that we dont know about.
So I think ultimately when you reach that level of success, the public sort of ignores
your flaws to a large degree and is the adoring public. But they also build amazing
teams that make up for it, and then they are extraordinarily smart. These guys are
brilliant. They are absolutely brilliant, and some of them are almost not human.
Tim:
What would you say are some of the most pronounced differences between say, Elon
and Jeff Bezos?
Peter:
Im not sure youre gonna youre picking a pair thats kind of close. I mean, so I mean
oh, man, Im having a hard time comparing those two. I mean
Tim:
So what is Elons background? I actually dont know what his edu
Peter:
Elon was born in South Africa, moved to Canada, eventually ended up at Wharton. One
of the things that was interesting, and I write about his background in Bold. He started
programming at a very young age, right? He wrote his first video games while he was
in high school. He became convinced when he was in college that there were three big,
important things that he needed to think about for humanity. One was the Internet.
The next was energy, and the third was space.
Tim:
Wow. Talk about foresight, really.
Peter:
In addition, because he ended up trying to find a job, and hes reasonably introverted
as an individual. So Larrys an introvert to some degree as well. Elon is, but when Elon
warms up, hes a very social guy. He can be outgoing, but he went to try to get a job
at Netscape, and he actually waited in the lobby too scared to go up and actually try
and approach them for an interview. He never got that interview. He never worked
at Netscape. He had decided Netscape, back in the early mid-90s was the most
interesting company, and he ended up going and creating a company called Zip2 that
was acquired, was his first success. He went on to go and create X.com that merged
into PayPal, sold that and basically funded what would then become SpaceX, Tesla and
SolarCity.
One of the things that is most amazing most people dont know about Elon because
he deserves all the extraordinary success he has today, is in 2008, all three of those
companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. SpaceX had just had its third launch
failure of Falcon 1. He had budgeted as smartly I tried to talk Elon Ive known Elon
since 2000, and just before he had, or just as he was selling PayPal, and I was trying to
talk him out of doing a launch field company because it was such a trail of dead bodies,
and Im so happy he didnt listen to me. In 2008, the third failure of SpaceXs launch
vehicle he had budgeted for three failures, but when it failed again, it was like, Oh,
my God. Then at the same time, Teslas financing had gone down the tubes.
He actually went into debt to borrow money. He spent every single dollar he had to keep
those companies alive and went into debt and was living in a rented apartment, rented
house actually, to keep it going. But then, literally in the end of 2008, a number of things
changed. He got a contract from NASA, some financing capital came in through Tesla,
and SolarCity started growing, and today hes the father of four different billion-dollar
industry companies in four different industries, and its amazing. There are principles
that he uses to think about this, and I would say one of the most important ones that
all these guys have is this passion and purpose.
One of the quotes I love from him, he says, I did not go into the automotive business
and into the space business because I thought it was an easy way to make money.
He said, Im not insane. Im not going up against the industrial-military complex or
Detroit. I just thought they needed to be better-quality products, and they did not
exist. I felt driven by my purpose and passion to go and do these things. He gave
them a 30 percent chance, 40 percent chance of success. Ultimately, hes built tens of
billions of dollars in value in the last ten years.
Tim:
Now just to I love this story, and it contrasts, in my mind, with that of Bezos, right, who
came out of D.E. Shaw, had the opportunity to pitch Amazon to the higher-ups
Peter:
The CEO there.
Tim:
Exactly, which was declined.
Peter: Yep.
Tim:
Jeff, at least as far as I can tell, did not aim to start that business because he was
passionate about books. It was a very analytical approach.
Peter:
Exactly, he basically said, Listen, the Internets happening. Hes been watching the
doubling rate of the Internet, hes seeing this growth, and hes like, Oh, my God, there
is a tsunami coming. This thing is not stoppable, you dont see these kinds of growth
rates anyplace else. He said hes driving cross-country from East Coast up to Seattle,
and hes thinking about what is that would benefit from something like a he didnt call
it an everything store then but what is something thats a large number of things that
the Internet would allow me to actually search and find? Books was his first thought.
He actually borrows the money from his parents and starts the company in his family
garage, basically.
I love the story of when he put up the website, he hooks up a bell to the website so
every time a book is purchased, a bell would go off from his server. Its like they hear
the first bell ding like, Yay. They e-mail all their friends and so forth. Ten minutes
later, another ding. And then he talks about a few days later when the bell was like ding
ding ding ding ding ding, and they finally shut it off. They felt like it was so annoying.
Tim:
Hes a really fascinating guy in my mind, and as far as I know, he does not have a
technical, i.e. programming or computer science background, or does he? Am I off on
that?
Peter:
No, he was at Princeton, and he was not studying CS, I believe. I knew him from his
college years at Princeton because when I had started my very first organization ever
was a company called Students with Exploration and Development of Space, SEDS,
and I was started while I was at MIT. He started a chapter of SEDS while he was at
Princeton. He was, from his earliest days, a space cadet. Very passionate about space.
Hes running a company that hes funding called Blue Origin whose mission it is to go
into space, and every time Elon and I see him, were saying like, Dude, why are you
wasting your time with Amazon, for Gods sakes? Go and build your space company,
we gotta get off this rock.
Tim:
Jeff, baby, you gotta get bigger. Ill give you just one kind of I dont think Ive told
anybody about this. Its just a funny sidenote about
Peter:
And actually, to be clear, his degree was in Computer Science.
Tim:
Oh, it was?
Peter: Yeah.
Tim:
Okay, so he did have some technical chops. I was suggesting, along with Elon and a
few others, there arent that many folks just in the business sphere that Im sort of
longing to have a conversation with. These are two of them. I met Elon very briefly
on the zero-g flight that you invited me on. Thank you for that. Very briefly, but like
you said, hes a very introspect introverted guy, and I didnt wanna be disruptive to
his experience. I had a similar run-in with Jeff Bezos very randomly. I was staying at
a hotel in Tokyo, had just been reading about some of his background, walked out
of the hotel and literally almost bumped, forehead first, into him coming through the
revolving door with his kids.
I walked past, I was like, Holy shit, that was Jeff Bezos. But hes with his kids, it was
like 11:00 p.m., and hes trying to sorta shuttle them to the hotel room, and so I didnt
introduce myself. I didnt do it. Im not sure I regret not doing it. On one hand, Im like,
Yeah, God, I really wouldve loved to have talked to him, but he was with his family, and
I didnt feel like it was the right thing to do. Who do you, Peter, rely on to tell you when
youre wrong? So youre a very powerful guy, youre a dynamic personality, you have a
strong will. Its in some cases easy to end up with people sort of politely nodding with
whatever suggestions you might have or ideas you might have. Who do you rely on to
correct you or to point out flaws in your thinking?
Peter:
Well, I mean, I will say that theres no shortage of people who will do that. I think its
my business partners. I mean, every company Ive started, I have business partners,
individuals I work with to build the company. Im very clear that when Im doing that
with somebody, its Eric Anderson with Planetary Resources and Space Adventures,
its Craig Venter and Bob Hariri with Human Longevity, Inc., its Rob Nail, Ray Kurzweil
at Singularity University. Theres no question we have a lot of debate and deliberation
and dont always agree. The challenge is that if you listen to people, its really tough
to actually be revolutionary because the majority of people will take you back to the
mean, and thats just the wrong place to be.
At some point, youve gotta say, I fundamentally believe this is the right thing to do
and then go off and give it a try. Theres a great quote, Im just gonna read this to
you. I saw this the other day, and this comes from Scott Belsky, who was a founder of
Behance, and it says, When 99 percent of the people doubt your ideas, youre either
gravely wrong or about to make history.
Tim:
I like that, its very good.
Peter: Yeah.
Tim:
I always think well, there are two things that come to mind, of course. These are
sorta my constant companions in my head when Im trying to make difficult decisions
about experimentation, usually, in my case. The first is a quote from Mark Twain, which
is I start a lot of my presentations this way, which is, Whenever you find yourself on
the side of the majority, its time to pause and reflect. Which is quite along the lines
of being sort of reverted to the mean and trying to avoid that. The second is the story
of Dick Fosbury, who was the first high jumper to go over the high jump bar with a
backbend, backwards. Thered been sort of a scissor step and different approaches
up to that point.
Two things allowed him to do that. Secondly, it was just questioning the assumptions
and best practices of his sport. The second was they changed the landing material.
It had previously been some type of like hard-packed hay or straw, which was very
unforgiving. It was changed, the technology evolved to a softer surface, but people
didnt change their technique. So he went over backwards, and he was ridiculed
and laughed at until he won the gold medal, and now of course, everyone uses that
technique. So I wanted to talk about a few other things that youre very familiar with,
namely crowdfunding and incentive competitions, because these have really come to
the forefront in a lot of ways in the last few years, and I think thats going to continue
to be the case.
Ive had some very challenging experiences with publishing and television, for
instance. As crowdfunding, Kickstarter and other, Indiegogo and other platforms have
formed, Ive realized that with the audience Ive built, I could self-fund these previously
inconceivable projects, whether it be TV or feature film. Thats very exciting to me, but
I think Im still thinking too small. Thats exciting, it would be a big project, I think that
theres a lot that could be done there creatively, but what do you think the future of
crowdfunding and incentive competitions looks like?
Peter:
Sure. Lets take those each at a time. Im a huge fan of both, obviously. On the
crowdfunding side, the numbers are pretty spectacular. Its projected that in this year,
2015, therell be $15 billion of crowdfunding.
Tim:
Thats incredible.
Peter:
It is, it is. I mean, heres a brand new source, effectively, of capital for the entrepreneur,
for the person with a vision who wants to create a product, a service, whatever it might
be. That number becomes $100 billion by 2020. So its a sizeable amount of capital. Ive
run two crowdfunding campaigns, one for about $1.5 million for Planetary Resources
and one that was a Kickstarter, and the other one was on Indiegogo for XPRIZE for
about just shy of a $1 million for our Global Learning XPRIZE. I fundamentally believe
its something that every entrepreneur should be experimenting with. I mean, theres
very little downsize and great
Tim:
Thats not to interrupt you, Peter, Im very sorry, but this is such an important point.
It reminds me of a Branson quote, actually, which is hes always capping the downside
and deciding what the downside is before different business experiments or launches.
People think of Virgin Air as this huge risk, but he had such an incredible, I think it was
leasing arrangement with Boeing or something that was
Peter:
Yeah, he had the ability to return his 747 a year later if the airline wasnt working, so it
was zero downside for him to try Virgin Atlantic.
Tim:
Right, so its just such an important checkbox. I dont want to interrupt the flow, but its
just so important I wanted to underscore it for folks. So right, with the crowdfunding,
theres very little downside.
Peter:
So I mean, you can build a crowdfunding in fact, I know a lot of venture capitalists
who will only back companies who are doing product development if they have tried
crowdfunding first. Because you can have the assumption that, Man, this widget is
amazing, right? In black it looks great. It may not be the fact that anybody gives a shit
about your widget, or they want it in red, and crowdfunding not only allows you to get
the money in advance but it allows you to have the most honest vote ever of whether
the world wants your product or service, your book, your movie, your digital watch,
whatever it might be. Then you get to find out not only does the world want it, but in
fact what color, what size, what shape, and its the most honest vote you can, right?
Who cares what a Monkey Survey says? Its what people put their credit card down and
buy, vote with their wallet. Thats what really matters.
Tim:
Right. No, absolutely. The
Peter:
So actually, one of the things I did was spend time studying it. I went out and interviewed
the guys who did the top crowdfunding campaigns in the world and how did they do
it, and then I used that in my own. I have a whole chapter on crowdfunding, and its
labeled, No Bucks, No Buck Rogers in the how-to. It is very, very doable. I mean, not
all things should be crowdfunded, but those that can be, I really think its the new way
of an entrepreneur starting a business. Its zero dilution, you test your marketplace,
you get out in front, and importantly, you build a community. You know, Tim, better
than anybody how important a community is. A community can make you or break you.
Tim:
Absolutely. Its also just such a good litmus test not only for investors, but to prove to
yourself whether or not you have the diligence, the wherewithal, the responsiveness to
execute a business. If you cant execute a crowdfunding campaign, you might want to
time out and consider a different career path because thats a little hurdle compared
to many of the challenges that come later. I want to ask you a couple questions before
we move to the incentive competitions.
Peter: Sure.
Tim:
Id also say to people, of course Im going to include tons of links in the show notes to
everything that Peters talking about. Theres also a How to Hack Kickstarter case
study that is on the blog for people that are interested. Thats so they can search that
that has template e-mails and things like that. Are you an early riser? What time do
you typically get up in the morning?
Peter:
I have 3-year-olds, so ...
Tim:
I take that thats a yes.
Peter:
Yeah, its whatever time they get me up, so its typically 6:30 a.m., thats Pacific Time,
so thats dinner time in Europe, so thats yeah
Tim:
What are
Peter:
Sleep. Go ahead.
Tim:
Sleep is optional.
Peter:
Yeah, unfortunately.
Tim:
What morning routines do you have or have you had that youve used consistently?
Peter:
Its probably stretching, and its sort of a mindset that my purpose and mission in life
that I took away, actually, from Tony Robbins Date with Destiny, which is a program
I is a week long, his most transformative program Ive been to. Anybodys whos not
been to Date with Destiny, so its like I repeat my purpose in life, and I also repeat the
mindset of what I have for the day. I do that in the shower, and then Ill go through and
do a quick scan of my e-mails, and Ill go play with my kids right now for the first hour.
Tim:
So the stretching is in the shower, or its ?
Peter:
Yeah, the stretching is in the shower.
Tim:
What type of stretching?
Peter:
Its mostly my lower body, and then Ill go through a breathing exercise as well, and its
the affirmational mantra, if you would, is the important part of that.
Tim:
What is the breathing exercise?
Peter:
Its an accelerated deep breathing just to oxygenate and to stretch my lungs. Its
interesting because one of the there are two elements that tie very much to human
longevity. Its strange, and I wonder how theyre linked. One is those people who floss
and those people who have a higher VO2 max.
Tim:
Really? Higher V02 max is correlated with longer lifespan?
Peter:
Yes, absolutely.
Tim:
Thats very curious. So are you taking measures to try to improve your V02 max?
Peter:
In part, but we can talk about that another time.
Tim:
Okay, Ill do Part 3. Got it, all right. Were gonna come to the incentive competitions in
a second, but what do you look for in friends? What are the qualities or the criteria that
you use for friends these days?
Peter:
For me, it is passion and curiosity and purpose. The realization is, and I believe this, the
quality of your life is a function of who you go through life with.
Tim: Definitely.
Peter:
Right? So youve heard the stat, perhaps, and everybody listening, that youre the
average of the five people you hang out with most. So Im looking for people who are
gonna up my game who I love spending time with, who make me feel great, who make
me feel happy, who are not yes men or women, who I can dream with. Thats really
important.
Tim:
Have you had to break up with certain friends or associates or
Peter:
I think its not been dramatic but a drift away from, just spend less time with. There
are people who are just self-defeatist, right. Theyre brilliant, theyre smart, theyre
hardworking, but they just completely defeat themselves, and theyre negative in their
mindsets. Theyre like, Woe is me. Its like, Dude, just please. I will do my best, as a
friend, to give them the skills to think about that differently, but this goes back to Bryan
Johnson we spoke about earlier. Its all about your operating system. The challenge
is as humans, if you think about it, our brains are the sort of computer structure, the
wiring diagram of our brains and the wiring diagram of a computer are somewhat
similar. Theyre pretty much fixed by biology.
Then youve got the next layer is, for a computer its its operating system, right? For
us as humans, we have an operating system that comes online between birth and
typically the age of 5 to 7. We make things mean certain things. Then on top of that
operating system of a human, we have apps like math is an app, algebra, geography, if
you learn Spanish, if you learn history. All of these things are apps that you build on top
of your operating system, but very few times do we as humans ever go and look at our
operating system. We constantly look at our apps. Oh, I gotta go learn how to code,
I gotta learn how to do that. Those are all apps, but when do you actually go and look
at your operating system as a human?
There are very few things that actually allow us to do that. The two that Ive found
is the work that Tony does, Tony Robbins with Date with Destiny. The other one is
Landmark, Landmark Education, Landmark Forum. Have you ever done that, Tim?
Tim:
I havent done it. I have friends whove been involved with Landmark Forum, but I dont
know very much about it. How does Landmark differ from what Tony does?
Peter:
Its similar, and its a different approach. Its two and a half days. I dont wanna go into
the detail, I just offer those as two resources, but how often do any of us go back and
realize, Why do I think that way? Why do I react that way to this, or why do I have this
pessimistic mindset or this reactive or this self-defeatist mindset? What I was going
back to my friends who Ive sort of parted ways with over the years, its the reason that
when you were growing up, you made certain things mean certain things to you, and
you react that way to it. Thats part of your operating system.
Unless you change it, youre gonna be constantly falling into those same patterns over
and over and over again. Ive got them, weve all got them, but if you can become
aware of it, you can at least take control of it. So Im looking for friends who help me
up my game, I enjoy spending time with, who make me ask those questions like Bryan
Johnson did of you and who I can dream big dreams with.
Tim:
So speaking of dreaming big dreams, I think this is a good segue to incentive

competitions because I fantasize, I think a lot about this, but my thinking is undirected.
The XPRIZE has sparked my curiosity about incentive competitions and what I might do
in the world using incentive competitions. Maybe you could explain what that means,
first of all.
Peter:
Sure, and I will come back and ask you, Whats the Tim Ferriss XPRIZE? So again, I
went back and I mentioned the XPRIZE Foundation in that I wanted to travel to space
since I was a child, expected NASA was gonna get me there, got a medical degree, got
my pilots license, drank all the Tang I could get my hands on, and then after a while
realized my chances of becoming a NASA astronaut were like one in 5,000 and in fact,
it wasnt NASAs job to get the public into space.
I was like, Screw that, Im gonna get there independent of NASA and then read that
Lindbergh, in 1927, crossed the Atlantic to win a prize and said, Okay, thats what Im
gonna do. Im gonna create a prize for the first team who can build a private spaceship
that could carry me and my friends into space. Long story short, announced that prize
under the Arch in St. Louis in 1996, did not have the $10 million, didnt stop me. I teach
in Bold how do you give birth to a big, bold idea above the line of supercredibility? Id
love to come back because I think its an important lesson for everybody to learn
Tim: Supercredibility?
Peter:
Supercredibility, yeah. And announced the prize. Took me five years to find the Ansari
family who put up the $10 million, and that $10 million drove 26 teams around the
world to spend $100 million trying to win this $10 million prize by building and flying
a spaceship that could carry three adults up into space 100 kilometers, land and do
it again within two weeks. So the prize was won on October 4, 2004, by Burt Rutan
and Paul Allen, and it changed the regulations. Google changed the Google Doodle
that day to have a spaceship flying over the logo, I got invited up to the Googleplex to
talk about XPRIZE. Thats where I met Larry Page and invited him onto my board. He
agreed on the spot.
Now, were working on launching prizes, incentive prizes, for the worlds biggest
problems. Whats a problem that should be solved that hasnt been, all right? We think
about that, and we launch two or three major prizes a year. I fundamentally believe
that there is no problem we cannot solve. That the technologies that allow you and me
and everyone listening to do things are the technologies that were resonant only with
government and large corporations twenty years ago. You now have access to tens of
billions of crowdfunding. Its an amazing time to be an entrepreneur, and the number
of people solving problems is also exploding, so that gives me the greatest hope for
the future. So were constantly sourcing prize ideas.
Ill also mention, just for fun, and I talk about this in the book, that we created and spun
out a platform from XPRIZE called HeroX, you can go to herox.com, where you can go
and actually create, have the crowd help you design a prize, fund a prize and solve a
prize. So I wanna go one of my mantras is stop complaining about problems; go
solve them. Thats, I think, the world were living in today. You can stop complaining.
You can start solving.
Tim:
So one of those problems Id love to ask you about and then Id love to come back to
the supercredibility.
Peter: Sure.
Tim:
I liked the sound of that. That is related to climate change, so Ive spoken with a
number of climate scientists who are terrified that some people will embrace a sort of
techno-optimism that is too long-term and in the meantime, the planet will boil in the
next 30 years or whatnot. What is being done, or how would you suggest people think
about climate change and addressing the problems of that?
Peter:
Sure. So a couple of thoughts. One is that as humans, we typically see the problem
way before it hits us. Were really great at identifying problems because it was an
evolutionary advantage to be able to see the problem way out in the future. Typically,
by the time the problem hits us, theres been tremendous progress, and we now have
a whole new set of tools for addressing it. One example I write about in my last book
Abundance was that in the 1890s, one of the biggest environmental problems, the
equivalent of climate change, was horse manure. As people were moving out of the
countries into the cities, they were bringing their mode of force with them, the horse.
The number of horses and the amount of horseshit was building exponentially. They
literally would have a corner lot that was where all the horseshit got shoveled. When
it would rain, there was so much manure flowing down the streets that buildings were
designed with a raised stoop so you could step over the flowing manure. The disease
was building, and the articles written projected this crazy amount of horse manure.
Because clearly by 1940, the number of horses in the city wouldve exploded as the
population went up. But something else happened, right? Another technology came
along called the automobile that became the major mode of force and got rid of horses.
So the question is whats the example here? So were working on two XPRIZEs right
now to change the game. One is a battery XPRIZE, and that is to increase the energy
density by 300 percent. Can we go from your typical lithium ion at 250 watt-hours per
kilogram up to 500, 600, 700 watt-hours per kilogram? That would change everything,
right? You would fundamentally only have electric cars, youd have electric airplanes,
youd have electric everything. I wanna remind everybody that there is 5,000 times
more energy from the sun that hits the surface of the earth than we consume as a
species in a year. Its not that energys not abundant, its just not yet in a useable form.
If you look at the numbers, the amount of solar cells were manufacturing is on an
exponential growth curve. Its doubling every 30 months or so. Then the cost is
plummeting as an exponential, and if youre buying a new copy of Abundance, in the
back of the book its the hard copy, the soft copy now is theres a whole new set of
charts including those curves. The other XPRIZE were working on is a carbon capture
XPRIZE. Can you capture 80 percent of the carbon coming out a natural gas or coal
smokestack and turn it into a useable product that is worth more than the cost of
capturing it so that it becomes a profit center for these facilities? Ill mention one other
thing, if I could, Tim?
Tim:
Of course.
Peter:
Because people dont want to talk about this, but I dont see it. Lets say were too
late. Lets say we have hit a critical turning point. I mean, we do have the technology
to launch into space what would be from the Earth a postage-size shutter, if you would,
that could titrate the amount of solar flux hitting the Earth. Very easily. This is not a
complex structure.
Tim:
Can you explain that one more time, please?
Peter:
Well, so imagine if you would, a certain amount of energy hits the Earth every day.
Imagine if you could block out a tenth of 1 percent of that energy by putting up a
structure at a Lagrange Point in the Earth-Sun system that would just block a small
amount, and you could actually like a shutter would
Tim:
Use an aperture of some type.
Peter:
And to turn it sideways and start very slowly and increase it. You could, in fact, reduce
the amount of energy coming to the Earths surface, and you could measure it and
change it on a minute-by-minute basis. I mean, there are ways to do this that are fully
reversible and can be measured very carefully. Its very different from throwing iron
filings into the ocean and changing Co2 absorption. I mean, there are things we can do.
Ive had this conversation with Al Gore and Als like, No, were gonna screw it up even
worse. Listen, the fact of the matter is we are a smart species and while we should
be trying to reduce Co2 and going to an electric and solar economy, if were screwed, I
dont wanna sit here and boil. Id like to take some actions to reduce that, please?
Tim: Right.
Peter:
And there are actions we can take.
Tim:
I love this. No, I learn something interesting every time I chat with you, which is part of
the reason I like to harass you so much. You mentioned that if were screwed anyway.
It reminded me, God, I wish I could remember the attribution of this quote, but it was
something along the lines of, The person who says were screwed or theres nothing
we can do and the person who says, Everything is fine are the same because nothing
gets done in either case. Ive always remembered that. I wanted to come back to
supercredibility because its a catchy turn of phrase, of course, but what does that
refer to?
Peter:
Yeah, so I talk this in Bold, and I talk about this a lot because its something that I think
is important for every entrepreneur to learn this. So I wanna set the setting. Its May
18th of 1996. A few months earlier, I was raising money for the XPRIZE. I was trying to
raise $10 million. Im in St. Louis, Im trying to raise $10 million $25,000 at a time. I very
quickly raised about $0.5 million from amazing people like John McDonnell and Andy
Taylor and the Danforth family, some incredible city leaders in St. Louis, a guy named Al
Kerth, who was a patron saint. Hes passed away since but was helping me and taking
me around.
We reached a threshold. I raised $0.5 million, and we were stuck and made a decision
that we were gonna announce the $10 million prize anyway even though we didnt
have the money. Its kinda ballsy, I had three of my board members on the spot when
we decided to do that. I realized that how the world learned about the XPRIZE really
mattered. So it turns out that each of us, in our minds, have this line of credibility. If I
tell you, if I announce something to you below the line of credibility, you dismiss it out
of hand. If I said, This teenager next door is gonna build a spaceship and fly to Mars,
its like, Hes a nut. Forget it.
Then theres this line of credibility that if you announce a project above the line of
credibility, then maybe theyll do it. So if maybe I announced, Im planning to build
a spaceship to go to Mars, maybe people will say, Eh, interesting. Lets watch and
see what Peter does and depending on my actions, theyll either dismiss it a few
days, months or years later, or theyll increase in credibility. Then we all have this
line of supercredibility in our minds that if you announce something above the line of
supercredibility, its like, Oh, my God, thats amazing. When is it gonna happen? So if
I said to you, Listen, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and Larry Page all
just partnered, and they are building a private mission to Mars. Its like, Oh, my God,
thats amazing. Finally, right?
Tim: Right.
Peter:
So Im in May of 1996. I have half a million dollars. I decide to spend all of it on this
launch event, and we do it under the Arch of St. Louis. On the dais, I dont have one
astronaut, Ive got 20 astronauts standing on stage with me. Ive got the head of NASA,
the head of the FAA and the Lindbergh family with me onstage announcing this $10
million prize. Did I have any money? No. Did I have any teams registered to compete?
No. But around the world, it was front-page news this $10 million prize was going.
It was, for me, a huge risk, but I didnt lie about it. I didnt tell them, they just all assumed
I had the $10 million, but I wanted to give birth to this above the line of supercredibility
because I was so sure that it was gonna be pretty easy who wouldnt wanna pay the
$10 million after someone pulled it off? I just didnt expect to have 150 people tell me
no, and it just, anyway. It took five years to raise the capital.
Tim:
Who was the hardest person to convince to be on that stage with you?
Peter:
Oh, the head of NASA, for sure.
Tim:
What was the pitch? How did you convince them?
Peter:
Well, I mean, the pitch was, Listen, wouldnt you want entrepreneurs around the world
to be working on new technologies so that this is off your balance sheet? It turns out
the 20,000 employees or the number of employees at NASA, all of them are all there
because they wanna go, too.
And it was actually a friend, Alan Ladwig, who was the associate administrator at NASA
Ive known him for like 20 years who convinced Dan Goldin to take the risk and then
the astronauts who were there. You build credibility like that by first getting Byron
Lichtenburg, Byron was one of the early co-founders of XPRIZE, and he convinced Buzz
Aldrin and other shuttle astronauts, so we got 20 astronauts on stage, right, one at a
time. We got the associate administrator of the FAA. Its like, Damn, weve got the
FAA, weve got 20 astronauts. You build safety in numbers in that regard.
Tim: Definitely.
Peter:
Its a step-by-step process, but ultimately thats how anyone who knows the story of
Stone Soup do you know the story of Stone Soup, Tim?
Tim:
I dont think I do.
Peter:
Oh, my God, one of my favorite stories. Its a childs story, childrens story, that is the
best MBA degree you can read. So I write about Stone Soup. I wont give it away. Its
one of the most important stories. Between supercredibility and Stone Soup, its like,
Dude, if youre an entrepreneur in college or 60 years old building your 20th company,
Stone Soup is so critically important.
Tim:
Well wrap up in just a couple minutes. Have you had a point in your life where you
were pessimistic for more than a short period of time, where you were really kinda
pessimistic?
Peter:
Oh, yeah, of course, we all hit brick walls, right? In April 2001 along with every other
dot-commer, I was running a company called BlastOff! for Idealab, the incubator that
had given us eToys and NetZero and GoTo and all it started 40 companies. Bill Gross,
a brilliant guy, had just raised $1 billion in cash in 99
Tim: Wow.
Peter:
for his Internet incubator, and he calls me up. He says, Peter, Ive raised $1 billion
in cash. I wanna do a moon mission. I wanna do a private, robotic moon mission.
So I sold my house in a day, I moved to Pasadena from Washington, D.C., have an
amazing team of people, and we are building a robotic, private mission to the moon.
Its since that mission became the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which exists today. We had
built prototypes, we had bought an Athena II launch vehicle from Lockheed Martin,
a Star 37 Trans Lunar Injection engine from Martin Thyocall, and were building this
thing. Then the NASDAQ tanks, and we get shut down.
Of course, like many other people, like, Uch, this sucks, man. I was so close, so close
to getting us there. Went into a long-deserved depression for a day or two and came
out of it and started reworking on XPRIZE and zero-g and just refocused. For me, my
passion, my guiding star is, all of my life, has been opening up the space frontier, and
today that guiding star is also solving grand challenges. Whenever I get bummed
or pissed off, I refocus on my guiding star, and it reenergizes me. If youve got your
passion, its the No. 1 thing as you know, Tim, and have talked about, if you have that
passion, it is a bottomless pit of enthusiasm and energy.
Tim:
To get out of that two-day funk, what does the self-talk look like? I mean, what is the
ritual that you use?
Peter:
The self-talk, in all honesty, was probably more like two weeks than two days. Its a
going back to Why do I believe this is important? Its, Look how far Ive taken it so
far. Its a matter of reminding yourself what your purpose in life is, right? What youre
here for. If you havent connected with what your purpose and mission in life is, then
forget anything Ive said. That is the No. 1 thing you need to do is find out what you
need to be doing on this planet, why you were put here and what wakes you up in the
mornings. Yes, I am psyched. This is gonna happen.
Tim:
How do you suggest people try to identify that, or do they
Peter:
Two things, Im clear about this. The one thing is what did you wanna do when you
were a child, right, before anybody told you what you were supposed to do? What
was it you wanted to do? I dont care if you wanted to play video games, right? My
friend Richard Garriott, dear friend, XPRIZE trustee, Space Adventures board member,
investor in my companies, Richards dad was a Skylab and shuttle astronaut. Richard
never went to college, right? He was a video game gamer in high school, and basically
your dads a Ph.D. astronaut, the most button-down math, science geek on the planet
and youre like playing video games. He became so enamored with video games, he
started writing them.
He netted $100 million building video games and bought a ticket to go to the space
station and became the first second-generation astronaut because of his video game
addiction. So its like you can make a career out of anything these days. So what are
you passionate about as a kid, right? Thats the first thing. The second things is if
Peter Diamandis or Tim Ferriss gave you $1 billion, how would you spend it besides the
parties and the Ferraris and so forth. If I had to say to you, I want you to use this $1
billion to go and improve the world, to go solve a problem, what would go do with it?
That targeting information, what youd do with it, is a good place to go look for what
your passion is.
Tim:
Thats a fantastic question. Ive heard it phrased, If you had $1 billion, how would you
spend your time? but in a way, those are really well-paired. I like that. Thats a very
good question. So last question for you, Peter. If you could offer your younger self one
piece of advice, lets just say your 20-year-old self, what would it be?
Peter:
Oh, man. I spent four years in medical school to make my mom happy, to make my dad
happy because I thought I had to do it. It wouldve been to really believe in my inner
dream of opening up space and to go and focus in doing that. Now listen, a medical
degree and stuff is all great and maybe Human Longevity, which I hope will be my first
multi-hundred billion-dollar company and success maybe comes out of my medical
stuff, but I wasnt doing it for the right reason. I guess, the second thing wouldve been
to have bought Amazon and Google stock earlier.
Tim:
Well, Peter, if I couldve asked one person to write one particular, it wouldve been the
perfectly titled Bold, and I did not say that lightly. I really feel like theres so much
potential out there in the world and so much opportunity. Part of the reason that
Ive been opting out of a lot of the startup stuff recently, to be honest, is because
Im getting pitched so many incremental, derivative, 10 percent improvements from

people who have they have the capability to do something exponential if they would
only have that 10x type of target.
So I really hope that this book provides people with not only the inspiration but the
tools and the framework for going out and trying to put a huge dent in the universe.
Certainly, Im gonna put links to everything at fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out
fourhourworkweek.com/bold. Where can people give you their feedback or find you
online otherwise?
Peter:
Sure, I mean, very easily. If you go to boldbook.com is information about the book.
Its a chance to build a connection with me. Ive actually, were in a pre-launch phase
for the book, so if you actually order a copy of the book through there, youll get a few
additional bonuses. You get a digital copy of Abundance if you havent read Abundance,
please do, or give it to your friend. You get a chance to participate with an hour-long
Webinar with myself and my co-author, Steven Kotler, which well be doing in March, so
you can get a chance to read the book. You get an audio download of the first chapter.
Ive also done a number of training videos about the six Ds of exponentials, the sort of
exponential stages and how they allow you to sort of see into the future.
I talk more about billionaire thinking at scale and finding your naturally transformative
purpose. Those are three free video downloads that you get a chance to get if you go
to that website. Ultimately, part of my mission, Tim, and you know this, it comes back
to what Larry Page said that 99.99999 percent of people are not working at something
that can change the world. I want to inspire, through Singularity University, through
XPRIZE, through Bold, through all of these things people to realize that today, you can
do more than ever before. Youve got the technology, access to capital, access to
mindset, access to resources, experts, so Im trying to take the shackles off of peoples
dreaming abilities and to give them some tools to go and do big things because thats
the only way we create a world of abundance.
Thats the only way we really create this vibrant future that is before us, and so Im
excited about that mission.
Tim:
I agree. Hear, hear. Two quick questions. How the bonuses that you mentioned, and
I will link to those in the show notes, guys. How long are those available, until what
date?
Peter:
Theyre available the book goes on for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble when the
book comes out on February 3rd. These bonus offers are on the table through February
6th, and then Ill probably change the bonuses somewhat. Ultimately its about, for
me, I want people to think differently about what they can do. Anyway, through early
February for these bonuses, and the videos will be there for the training videos will
be there for probably through March.
Tim:
Wonderful, and can people find you on Twitter or Facebook? Do you use any of those?
Peter:
Yep, Im tweeting all the time, so its just @peterdiamandis, first name, last name. Thats
probably the best way to follow my work.
Tim:
Perfect. Well, Peter, its always a pleasure. I hope we get a chance to have some wine
or hang out in person again soon. Thanks so much for making the time.
Peter:
Thank you, I love who you are and what you do, and thank you, everybody, for being
part of this conversation. It is the most exciting time ever to be alive. For sure. Period.
And stop.
EPISODES 58, 59:
ALEX BLUMBERG
Tim Ferriss:
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show. What you are about
to hear is Part2 of a two-part conversation with Alex Blumberg, best known for
his work with This American Life as cohost of Planet Money and also cofounder
of Gimlet Media, which has produced two blockbuster podcasts at the time
this particular episode namely Startup and Reply All. He is a true master of
storytelling, crafting narrative, radio, interviewing and much more.
If you didnt catch the first part, you might wanna do that before venturing in,
but you can certainly listen to this independently. This second part is an excerpt
from a master class that he taught on creativelive.com. I think it costs about
$99.00, and it is phenomenal. Specifically, in this portion we are going to look
at the art of the interview and how to craft and find the perfect question. So, I
hope you enjoy it and without further ado, please enjoy Part2 of the Tim Ferriss
Show with Alex Blumberg.
Alex Blumberg:
What were gonna be talking about in this segment is the art of the interview.
And what Im gonna be covering today, what Im gonna be covering in this
section is first of all sort of the most basic question, which is what are you going
for when youre interviewing somebody? What are you trying to get out of it?
What does a good interview look like, right? What does it feel like when its
happening? And as part of that, Im gonna go through what to ask, how do you
come up with the questions to ask and Im gonna be talking a little bit about the
power of the right question and then Im also gonna be talking about nuts and
bolts.
So, thats coming up. So, what are you going for? So, the first thing that
youre going for is what we talked about in the last section, which is authentic
moments of authentic emotion, authentic realization, authentic moments of
humor, something that feels like a real emotion. Those are goals of moments in
an interview and thats one of the things that you absolutely wanna go for, and
we talked a little bit about that before and Im gonna talk about that a little bit
later.
But the thing that I wanna focus on now is the other thing that were talking
about is stories. I have a very specific meaning when I say what an actual story
is, but I think the first thing to do is to play you a little bit of what Im talking
about when Im talking about a story. So, Im gonna play you a little piece of
tape.
So, this is a story about This American Life a while ago, and the set up is that its
this actor Tate Donovan. Tate Donovan was sort of a character actor, hed been
on a couple different shows, but he didnt get recognized very much. And then
he had a stint on Friends and all of a sudden, he was starting to get recognized
and it was really exciting for him to be recognized because he finally got to be
the celebrity that he always wished that he could be, the celebrity that he would
have wanted to meet before he was famous.
So, when he got recognized and this story happens when one night he was at
this Broadway show and a lot of people were coming up to him, being like hey,
I saw you and he was able to talk to people and be very magnanimous and
say thank you so much, it really means a lot and he was posing for pictures for
people and it was at the show. It was happening over and over and over again.
I was exactly how I wanted to be. I was doing it. I was doing great, and then the
kid with the camera came along. This nervous kid, I dont know, he must have
been 16years old. He was in a rented tuxedo, unbelievably shy and awkward and
hes got acne and hes got a camera in his hand. And underneath the marquee
is his date, who is in literally like a prom dress and shes got a corsage and shes
really nervous and clutching her hands and he comes up to me and he mumbles
something about a picture.
I just feel for him so Im like absolutely, my gosh, sure, no problem, my God, you
poor thing, and I go up to his girlfriend, I wrap my arms around her and Im like,
Hey, where are you from? Fantastic, youre going to see the play, thats great.
And the guy is not taking the photograph very quickly. Hes just staring at me
and hes got his camera in his hands and its down by his chin and shes very stiff
and awkward and I dont know what to do so I just lean across and I kiss her on
the cheek. And Im like all right, come on, take the picture, hurry up.
You guys wanna find out what happens next? Thats a story. So, that is the power
of a good narrative. So, when I talk about it, Im talking about those two basic
things youre going for, emotion and narrative. We as humans are hardwired I
believe to listen to narrative, and its a very simple the mechanics of narrative
are very simple. Theres a sequence of actions and theres rising action and its
culminating in something, and you are in the middle of that sequence of actions
and you are about to get to the culmination and I stopped it and its frustrating
and you really wanna know what happens next.
And you would never, if you were listening this, have turned off that podcast or
that radio story at that moment. And that is a good story, and thats why you
want to operate in stories. Thats why when youre interviewing people you
wanna get their stories out of them, and you want to get them talking in stories
because stories are what we wanna hear. And so when youre working in an
audio format, you need to operate in stories.
The other thing we wanna hear, as we heard before, is emotion. So, those are
the two things youre going for in a good interview. So, moving on. Actually, do
you wanna hear what happens next? All right, Ill rewind it again and then well
have it play out.
You know I dont know what to do so I just lean across and I kiss her on the
cheek. And Im like all right, come on, take the picture, hurry up. And finally,
he snaps it. And Im like okay, it was really wonderful to meet you and he just
stammered over to me and was like, Could you take a picture of us? And the
whole time, he just wanted me to take a picture of him and girlfriend underneath
the awning of the play. He didnt want a picture of me. He had no idea who I
was. Oh, God.
Got a little emotion in there, too. Yeah, so that is what Im talking about when
a story so very simply. Were gonna be talking a lot more about what story is
in the next session, but very, very simply, it is that. He is a sequence of actions
that culminates and some sort of revelation, some sort of punch line, some sort
of joke, some sort of realization and more to the point, its something that you
dont wanna turn off, that you dont wanna stop listening to. And so that is the
thing that its in your mind when youre going out and doing an interview with
anybody. You want to ask questions of the interview subject that are gonna
elicit an honest emotional reaction or theyre gonna elicit them telling you a
story.

So, therere a lot of things that you can ask that will so, lets talk about that.
So, what to ask, right? So, first, if youre trying to ask questions that will elicit a
story, first of all you dont want ask ever yes or no questions. I mean you gotta
get some facts out of the way, but you dont wanna ask a yes or no question
because thats the end of a story, right? And so how you phrase the questions is
very, very important. I often say tell me about the time when, right, something,
you know, like you want them to tell you. You use words like tell me so theyre
automatically starting to talk to you in story language. Tell me about the time,
tell me about the day when you blah, blah, blah.
Tell me about the moment when you realized that this was what was gonna
happen. Tell me about the time in your life when you were going through this
thing. Another question that works really well, tell me the story of, just ask them
straight up, right, you know, tell me the story of this. How did this happen? Tell
me the story, and sometimes that works. Another thing that when youre on the
right track, you know when youre on the right track is when people are actually
talking to you in dialogue.
If somebody is saying, Well, first I said and then he said and then I said, you know
youre on the right track here. So, often I will tell people, you know, describe the
conversation where blah, blah, blah because if you get people telling you like he
said then she said then he said then she said, thats great. You know youre on
the right track, that somebody is telling you a story right then because theyre
quoting dialogue to you.
Often what youre going for is a moment of realization so a story has to culminate
in something. Often the thing its culminating in is a moment of realization. So,
you wanna say tell me about the day that you realized whatever it is that were
talking about here. Another thing that really works well is if people can sort
of talk through a process of, you know, therere often steps that led from one
situation to the other situation. What were the steps that got you from one
thing to another?
What were the steps that you got from your career in the army to your career
as a celebrity florist? Or whatever, right, so anybody here have that career
trajectory by the way? So, you wanna ask what were the steps? If you can get
people breaking it down into steps, and often each step is its own story, so often
Step 1 will be well, I had my career in the army and this one thing happened
when I was in the army or this day happened that made me wanna change, and
so theyll tell you that and thats a story. Each step can be its own story, but that
sequence of steps is also a story.
So, these are all questions that will elicit stories. You wanna have people back
up; you wanna do all that stuff. All right, so thats one whole set of questions.
And often when youre doing so, thats a whole set of questions. The other
set of questions so, what do you ask if theres a whole other set of questions
that are built around eliciting honest reflection and emotion. So, thats the other
stock and trade, thats the other thing that youre going for, right? Its pretty
simple, two things.
So, what do you ask when youre trying to get people to tell you how they feel?
One question is howd that make you feel? Its pretty straightforward. I often
joke that doing a good interview for audio and having a good sort of therapy
session look very similar because what you are trying to do is get people to
articulate their emotions in words. All you have in audio are words. Thats all
you have. You have peoples words.
And so if theyre feeling something, its like if something happens and youre
not shooting it, it didnt happen. If theyre feeling something and they dont
articulate it, it also didnt happen. So, you need them to articulate the way
theyre feeling, and so a lot of what youre doing is youre in the interview and
youre like I noticed the feeling in your voice or in your manner, and I want you to
articulate that feeling. So, thats one thing. And so thats like how did that make
you feel is a big one.
Often, you also want to encourage that kind of reflection. Some people just
arent very naturally reflective, but theyve gone through something momentous
and you want them getting the emotion in there. So, one good trick Ive known
is like if the old you could see the new you, what would the old you say? Because
often youre interviewing about something that has happened to them, theyve
gone through some sort of transition and you want them to be able to articulate
what that transition meant to them. And these are all tricks were gonna use by
the way on one of our audience members coming up.
So, were gonna do a live interview coming up in another section so take notes
because were gonna have to employ this, use this in action. So, a lot of what
emotion is around is around internal conflict so a lot of and this is one of the
things that I love about audio, which audio can do uniquely well is that it can
give voice to interior drama. You know on television, you can see people looking
pensively or you can get across an internal life, but stuff has to happen on tape,
you know, it has to be happening. And with audio, if you can get people to give
voice to the internal conflict, it has the power of any kind of real drama.
So, what I often say to people is, Ill often say, like so conflict, youre going
for conflict, but it can be conflict within a person. It can be a person feeling
conflicted about something, and so a big question that I use a lot which is if you
had to describe the debate in your head over this moment, over this act that
you took, what was one side saying, what was the other side saying, you know,
and its just getting people to sort of voice the feelings that theyre having. And
often, our feelings our contradictory, right? And thats great.
If people have a conflicted feeling when youre interviewing them, thats a

wonderful thing too. Thats what you want because thats a way of breaking out
of what you were talking about Anne, which is the canned thing. Part of what
being canned is is just having a very, very straightforward feeling about it that
you dont necessarily believe but you cant shake people out of. And so what
you want is to get at, you know, what was the conflict. Was there ever a point
where you didnt feel so confident about this? Was there ever a point where you
felt differently?
You know sort of like, you know, and sometimes it can be just as simple as you
seem very confident right now, was that always the case? And if they say no
then just zero in on that, zero in on the weakness, the emotion, right, thats what
your job is. Another question that often happens in an interview. Ill bet this will
happen to you as youre doing your interviews. Somebody will say something
and it feels very important to them. Theyve said something that you know is
meaningful. Like youre talking to a rail yard worker and theyll be like well, you
know, and then the boss gave us extra hours, and they say it like and youre
like wow, the boss gave you extra hours?

Youre saying it like its important and I have no idea what it means, but it means
something to you. Theres emotion in their voice, right, like what does that
mean? And so often you and I would always love this thing, I would know that
there was something that they were getting at, but they werent articulating it
to me. And then I use this question all the time, and its a really great question
and its super straightforward. Its just sort of like what do you make of that?
And so I say it all the time now because Im often, I just need them to tell me
the reason that theres emotion in the thing that they just said. So, what do you
make of that is a really important question.
The other thing that I think one of the most important things that, which is sort
of part of the what do you make of that question, again, you ask what do you
make of that, and its sort of a dumb question. You sort of feel like an idiot for
asking it. Its sort of basic and weird and its not a question that you actually ask
that often in normal conversation, and this gets to the point of are you having
a real conversation or are you having a staged conversation to elicit certain
things, and youre doing a little bit of both, right? And the what do you make of
that is very much like a staged sort of therapy conversation. You know what I
mean?
And so but really important is to then shut up. I cant get across enough the
importance of shutting up. Early on in my career, I would come back and I would
just be talking so much and people would start to be telling me interesting
things and I would be talking over them and it was all because I was nervous
and I was worried about making them feel uncomfortable. And you sort of want
them to feel uncomfortable a little bit, not totally uncomfortable so that theyre
not be talking to you. You want them to feel safe, but you want them to feel like
theyre saying something real, which is often uncomfortable.
So, you want it to be safe, youre not judgmental at all. You never wanna be
judgmental, but you want to be asking real questions. You want them to be
thinking really about it. So, another just good question that gets at this is the
why is this story meaningful to you.
Coming up, the power of the right question and how to craft it to get honest
responses, deep responses, including plenty of clips, but first, a short word from
our sponsors.
Tim Ferriss:
The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products
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You can also get a free $99.00 upgrade if you wanna give it a shot. Thats
99designs.com/tim. And now, back to the show.
Alex Blumberg:
So, just to get across the power of asking the right question, I wanna play a
couple clips of tape here. And this first one is a story that we did on so,
this first illustration of the power of asking the question and getting people
to reflect honestly, its a weird story. It was this really conceptual story that
we did at This American Life a while ago, and it was this reporter named Davy
Rothbart, and I was the producer on the story so I went out with him and asked
all these questions. And the conceptual story was this. Davy lived on this block
in Chicago. It was sort of a block in transition.
There were some yuppies moving in, but it had been like a poor there were
some gang problems there. It was a neighborhood in transition. And he lived on
this block and there was all these problems the neighborhood was having with
each other, like different neighbors were having different conflicts with each
other. And there was a neighbor in his building who was complaining about his
loud music and was constantly banging on the floor, and then there was another
neighbor that had thought that somebody else stole her dog and then there
was like, you know, so theres all these things.
The idea of the story was that Davy was gonna collect all these problems,
interview all the people in his neighborhood and then take the problems that
were happening in this neighborhood to an expert on neighbor relations.
Whoops, I set up the wrong piece of tape, sorry. Crap, oh, there it is right there
in my notes. I missed it. This is another piece of tape. This will be very quickly,
sorry, keep all that in your mind for a second, and therere two stories Im gonna
play.
Im gonna play the first one now in order. So, this is a different story. This is
one that I did on the housing crisis. This is a story from 2008, and it was one
of the more famous stories I did. It was called The Giant Pool of Money, and it
was about the housing meltdown basically. And back in 2008, there was all this
stuff happening with subprime mortgages and a lot of the coverage was about
whos at fault. Is it deadbeats taking out loans that they knew they couldnt pay
back and then ripping off the banks or were poor people being victimized by evil
banks that were now foreclosing on their homes?
And that was sort of the narrative, and neither narrative really ever made sense
to me and I kept on thinking theres something else going on here, something
bigger and more systemic thats going on than just either people ripping off
banks or banks ripping off people. And I wanted to get at the heart of it and there
was this question. So, we found this guy who was going through foreclosure and
he was telling the story of how he got this loan, this enormous loan. And in the
middle of this clip, youll hear the question that Im talking about, the question
that I felt like turned the whole thing and set up the entire show as a matter of
fact but got him talking in a very different way.

So, this guys name is Clarence. He had taken out a huge loan, over half a million
dollars. At the time of that loan, he had three not very reliable part-time jobs.
He was making about $45,000.00 a year and on the loan that he took out, they
didnt ask him anything about his income.
Call it 540 for round figures. You basically borrowed $540,000.00 from the
bank and they didnt check your income? Right, its a no-income verification
loan. They dont call me up and say, you know, how much money they dont
do that. I mean its almost like you pass a guy in the street and say you lend me
$540,000.00? He said well, what do you do? Hey, I got a job. Okay.
It seems as if its that casual even though there are a lot of papers that get
filled out and stuff flies all over with the faxes and the emails and all like that.
Essentially, thats the process. Would you have loaned you the money? I
wouldnt have loaned me the money, and nobody that I know would have loaned
me the money. I mean I know guys who are criminals that wouldnt lend me that
money and theyd break your kneecaps so, you know, yeah, I mean I dont know
why the bank did it. Im serious, I mean $540,000.00, a person with bad credit.
So, I love that piece of tape because it was the first time in my experience that
anybody first of all, Clarence is at the center of the problem, and Im asking him
how he feels about like that question enabled me to size up the whole whose
fault is it in a way, and it just got to a very honest reaction from him, which was
sort of like therere all sorts of other ways to phrase that question. Did you
deserve that money? Should the bank have given you that money? Blah, blah,
blah.
And all that would have led to a defensive answer. It would have led to not the
right answer, but then when I was in the middle of it, I remember thinking like
oh, thats the question. And when I asked him would you have loaned you the
money, it forced him to be honest. There was no way to not be honest about
answering that question, and it got a really wonderful, honest response that
then set up the entire hour basically. So, why were other people lending money
to people that those people themselves would not have lent to them, right, so
what was going on there? That question set up the entire thing.
All right, so I teased this next piece of tape mistakenly. So, going back, cast your
minds back to when I set this up before. So, anyway, Davy Rothbart, getting all
these questions from the people in his neighborhood and all the problems and
hes running it by an expert in neighbor relations.
You are the only one like you. Like you, my friend, I like you. Heres the bridge.
In the daytime Anybody know who this is? Mr. Rogers, yes, Mr. Rogers, whos
since passed away, Fred Rogers. So, I guess that it was a weird conceptual
story. Were taking these problems from this rough block of West Augusta in
Chicago and then bringing them in front of Mr.Rogers and asking him to sort of
pronounce judgment on what these neighbors should do. Its weird, theres a
back story that I wont even get into, but I bring it up all to talk about because this
was one of those moments where the question really brought us to a different
place.

So, one of the problems that Davy had identified Im gonna play one more
piece of tape and then well get to the tape with the question. So, one of the
problems that Davy had identified in his neighborhood was that there was this
fear, right? That was one of the big things. So, there was the people banging
on the floor and the music playing too loud, there was a guy whose neighbor
thought hed stole her dog, and then but mainly there was a lot of fear. There
was the fear of the yuppies moving into the neighborhood. Were afraid of the
kids who are in the gangs and so Davy talked about that. Youll hear Davy and
then youll hear a kid named The Mouth who hes interviewing.
Whos that guy your afraid of Id ask. They all answered the same way. The
gangbangers. The kids in the baggy jeans and the basketball jerseys who
cruise the neighborhood with their stereos bumping. The gangbangers they
said, those are the bad neighbors. I guess its no surprise. The Mouth had his
own idea about who the bad neighbors are, the ones who fear and distrust him.
There was a neighbor in the neighborhood that he didnt agree with what we
did so much so hed stand in his house with a video camera and record what
we were doing, try to bring it to the beat meetings, you know. They used to
follow us around with cameras, literally follow us around the neighborhood with
cameras, you know, and say Im gonna call the cops on you and, you know,
well, for what, we aint bothering you, you know. Thats what I think the worse
neighbor is, you know? Yeah. They come in here fearing us, saying that, you
know, maybe thinking that were gonna do this and do that, but well talk to you.
You know what Im saying bro? We aint, you know, we aint animals, bro. Were
normal people like you.
All right, so thats The Mouth and his friends who were sitting on the street
drinking Heinekens, and so we bring that to Mr.Rogers. And so Mr.Rogers is
a wonderful, lovely man. Meeting him was a thrill. Hes got this strange sort of
power when you meet him. It was crazy. When we went to meet him, we were
trying to set up the interview and his assistant was like, Well, Fred likes to be
nearby a piano. So, we had to meet him in his studio so that he could play piano
every once in a while.
He literally had the bag of puppets and he would bring them out sometimes
to make a point and start talking in the puppet voices while we were talking to
him. And yet somehow, it was moving and real, I dont know, he was an amazing
person, amazing. But he was giving us a little bit of canned answers like when
we were asking so what should this neighbor do? His answer was always sort of
the same like, you know, well, I hope I would be brave enough to go and talk to
them.
I would hope that I would be brave enough to visit. Its so easy to condemn
when we dont know. And if I would visit you and find out that you are a
reasonable person, I could tell you about my sensitivities and see if it would
make any difference to you. Its funny a lot of the things, like you know, you said
if you were in Davys neighbors situation, you said that you hoped you would
have enough courage to go down and visit. And a lot of what you were finding
when you were talking to people had to do with that same sort of notion, and
Im wondering like what is it that were afraid of do you think?
Perhaps we think that we wont find another human being inside that person.
Perhaps we think that oh, there maybe are people in this world who I cant ever
communicate with and so Ill just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think
that we would give up on any other creature whos just like us. So, what are
your thoughts about that? Id love to hear what was going on in your mind,
anybody? Yeah, Anne?
Anne:
That was Mr.Rogers?
Alex Blumberg:
Yeah.
Anne:
That was so powerful, and you could hear the flutter in his voice which was his
emotion rippling through his vocal cords and it was amazing. And it was such
an interesting contrast to think of Mr.Rogers, and he sounded like the Buddha,
wonderful.
Alex Blumberg:
Right, exactly, hes very Buddha-like in person, yeah. But that was the most
honest moment in that interview, and it came out of like there was this question
that was sort of hovering over it and he was giving slightly I hear this and I
wonder if you do too. Like in the beginning, he sounded more canned. And
then after I asked the question, right, you can hear it. All of a sudden, hes
actually pausing and hes actually thinking and hes actually trying to figure out
what is the emotion and hes trying to voice that emotion. And all of a sudden,
it becomes real and it becomes authentic and you connect to that moment.
Yeah?
Female Speaker 1: I think the fact that he is Mr.Rogers carries particular weight. And were used to
hearing him do those canned, simple solutions-oriented, just do this and itll all
be great. For me, that moment of real darkness when he identifies the greatest
fear is I will never be able to communicate with you. And as a listener, I can
extrapolate that out to the neighborhood. Its like I can see how that person
would think that about that person, and he just took me somewhere so hopeless
when hes usually someone whos all about hope and positivity and its gonna be
great. So, that juxtaposition of what I expect to hear from him and what I hear
from him is incredibly powerful.
Alex Blumberg:
Right, but I think thats a really great point because I think thats what youre
trying to do with it. Thats what an honest moment will do with anybody, whether
its Mr.Rogers or not. If you hear people talking, and the way we all talk, were all
sort of like, you know, going through by putting up fronts and lying to ourselves
in various ways as we go through our day and, you know, nobodys gonna notice
that I actually screwed up the order of my tapes for example. But, you know,
that when you break out of it even if youre not Mr.Rogers, thats what comes
through. Thats the thing that comes through. Yeah, go ahead.
Female Speaker 2: I was just gonna say that he really took something that maybe many of us could
not relate to like living in a project, and when he answered that when you
asked that question about fear, it made it so personally that I immediately was
thinking to myself, what am I fearing, and he took this kind of out there thing and
brought it deep. And so because it was personal then it was more important to
me like you said earlier in the day, right? And I engaged with that immediately.
Alex Blumberg:
Right, and he was identifying something. I mean, again, thats also sort of like
identifying, putting words to a feeling that we have that is sort of undiagnosed
or unexplained. That is sort of the definition of profundity, a little bit, you know
what I mean? When you can actually give voice to, but you know, put that in
words, the feeling that we share and thats what he did like oh, that is our fear,
that is the fear, right? Were afraid that we are going to encounter somebody
who we cant connect with as humans. Yeah?
Female Speaker 3: I think its also incredible because he uses his own language. He doesnt break
out of being Mr.Rogers, you know, he actually manages to remain himself and
still go to this really different place for him. And thats how, at least, I could tell
it was really honest was that he like you also get to know Mr.Rogers honestly
in his language.
Alex Blumberg:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and you can see why Mr.Rogers of all people would find that
an especially horrifying thing, you know, yeah, that there are bad people in the
world. Its just like such a, you know, its like its more poignant for Mr.Rogers
than any of us. Yeah, Morgan?
Morgan:
Just going off of that, at the end, he uses the word creature instead of another
human. Its like were all just
Female Speaker 3: Magical.

Morgan:
these beings and being connected with another being, its not, you know,
within our organism.
Tim Ferriss:
We have a few more coming in from the chat room. Jennifer says of all people,
coming from someone whos so genuinely and innocently sees the beauty in
people acknowledging that core fear is really powerful. And Claudia says, You
can feel how carefully hes thinking about the question and that makes it very
authentic.
Alex Blumberg:
Absolutely, absolutely. I think you can hear for the first time, he didnt have a
ready answer, and thats important too. And, again, I dont think that moment
would have happened, you know, I often feel like theres in every interview, or in
a lot of interviews, theres the question thats sort of hanging over the interview
that if you can just figure out what that question is, whats the one thats gonna
sort of like what are we talking around and can you figure out what that is and
present to people. It breaks through often. Again, the therapy language. You
have a breakthrough a little bit, you know, and thats what youre going for.
Yeah, Jeff?
Jeff:
Im wondering if both of those clips ended up in the final cut and whether or
not you like including that transition when you get the right question and that
person changing from their canned response to the more personal honest one?
Alex Blumberg:
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, because you have to no, those are both pulled
from the actual final version so thats why the music was there and everything.
I just downloaded the clip off of iTunes and put it in. Yeah, that was but was
that your answer or was that ?
Jeff:
Well, I was wondering if you had gotten the second answer first if that would
have satisfied you or if you like capturing that moment when you kind of break
someone?
Alex Blumberg:
Oh, thats interesting. Like did you need the drama of him giving a canned
answer first and then to break through? Theres something nice, I mean there
is something about that where its nice to like it was the same thing that
happened with the Dave Ramsey thing where somebody is not being totally
honest and then theres a question that sort of confronts them. I dont know.
Thats a good question. I think it helps I think because it also sort of tells a story.
I feel like its a chord resolving in music, when youre just waiting for the chord
and then finally the power chord comes and youre like ah. Thats how it feels
a little bit, you know, where somebody is wrestling with it, theyre not being
honest, theyre not being honest and then theres a question that breaks them
out of it and then they acknowledge. Theres a nice feeling to that as well, but
I think it could have worked either way like we all have, we often will muse the
answer without using the question and it often is just as powerful, you know,
you dont need to include the whole thing. Its just how it works.
Tim Ferriss:
Alex, we had a couple questions come in and I think tie in nicely to these clips
that we just heard so Id love to get your opinion on this. So, in that clip, you
were talking about getting that location, that street in Chicago so this ties into
a question that Braden had who says, When youre reporting on a town or a
location or with Mr.Rogers about a neighborhood, do you have a methodology
for getting to know that town or that place?
Alex Blumberg:
God, that is tricky. Do I have a methodology? No, I dont. And I think my

methodology is try to find somebody who knows it better than me. Its just sort
of go and find, ID the person who is the exemplar of whatever it is, like if theres
somebody, if its a town and theres somebody whos in that town who represents
sort of the mainstream view of the town and then identify the outsider, the Goth
kid or whatever who can have a more anthropological view of the town.
And if you get both of those people, generally, youre sort of circling around some
sort of authentic picture of it, but youre always thats the biggest difficulty of
being a journalist is sort of parachuting in someplace, trying to get as much as
you can about the place but you never know. You never know as much as you
wish you knew, and you never have time to figure it all out entirely. Generally,
when Im reporting on a topic, when I find that Im getting the same answers
from enough people then I feel like okay, well, Ive done enough reporting now
that Im getting similar answers.
Coming up, a sample from my episode with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one
and only coming soon, but Im gonna give you a preview, but first, just a short
word from our sponsors.
Tim Ferriss:
The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products
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99designs.com/tim. And now, back to the show.
Alex Blumberg:
In those days, there was no money in bodybuilding. And so when we didnt

have enough money, we literally had to go to work. And so Franco and I, since
Francos talent was to be a bricklayer and a very skilled bricklayer, had learned
that in Italy and in Germany, we were able to go and start thinking about
the idea of putting an ad in the LA Times, creating a company and calling it
European Bricklayers and Masonry Experts, marble experts, building chimneys
and fireplaces the European style.
And this was also a time where everything that was European was huge in America
so we benefited from that, you know, Swedish massages and everything had to
be kind of a foreign name. All the Japanese this and this and so Europe and
Japan and all these places, the names were used because for some reason, the
other people just thought that was better. And so we used that in the ad, and
we put the ad in the paper and literally a week later, we had the big earthquake
in LosAngeles. And I mean the chimneys fell off the apartment houses and all
this and the cracked walls and all this.
And so Franco and I, as a matter of fact, one of the friend of ours wife who was
very smart and she worked in a supermarket, she did the answering the phones
and calling people back and all this just to make sure that our English doesnt
get all screwed up talking over the phone and all this. And so she gave us then
the addresses and then we got to do the estimates, and I was kind of like set up
to be the math genius and then figures out the square footage and that Franco
would play the bad guy and I played the good guy.
And so we would go to someones house and then someone would say Well,
look at my patio. Its all cracked. Can you guys put a new patio in here? And I
would say yes and then I would run around with the tape measure, but it would
be a tape measure with centimeters. No one in those days could at all figure out
anything with centimeters and we would be measuring up and I say well, this
is, you know, 4meters and 82centimeters and they had no idea what we were
talking about and this is so much. And then I would be writing up formulas and
the dollars and amounts and square centimeters and square meters and all this
stuff.
And then I would go to the guy and I said, Well, its $5,000.00. And the guy
will be in a state of shock. And he says, Its $5,000.00? He said, This is
outrageous. And I say, Well, what did you expect it to be? He says, Well, I
thought maybe like $2,000.00 or $3,000.00, but $5,000.00? I said, Let me talk
to my guys because hes really masonry expert, I said, But I can beat him down
for you a little bit, let me soften the meat.

And then so I would go over to Franco and we would start arguing in German,
you know, [speaking German] and this would be going on and on and he was
screaming back at me in Italian and some stuff and then all of a sudden he calm
down and then I would go to the guy and say, Woo, okay, here it is, I could get
him as low as $3,800.00. I say, Can you go with that? And he says, Thank you
very much, he says, You know, I really think that youre a great man, blah, blah,
blah and all this stuff. I say, Okay, I say give us half down right now. We go right
away and get the cement and get the bricks and everything that we need for
here and we can start working as soon as Monday.
And the guy was ecstatic. He gave us the money. We immediately ran to the
bank, cashed the check to make sure that the money is in the bank account and
then we went out and got the cement and the wheelbarrow and all the stuff that
we needed and went to work. And so we worked like that for two years, I mean
very successfully. As a matter of fact and we had various different jobs where
we employed like 16different bodybuilders, all the laziest bastards that you can
ever hire but never good because they all were interested in working outdoor
and getting a tan at the same time for their bodybuilding competitions. Arnold
Schwarzenegger
Tim Ferriss:
If you enjoyed this episode, youre going to love what I have coming. All sorts
of crazy experiments, incredible guests and you can very easily not miss any of
it. Just subscribe on iTunes or you can check out all of my guests as well as my
blog that has one to two million readers per month at fourhourworkweek.com,
all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com. Thats where I chronicle all of my insane
self-experimentation and I would love to hear from you.
So, please reach out to me on Twitter, twitter.com/tferriss, T F E R R I

S S, or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss with two Rs and two Ss, of
course. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.
EPISODE 59:
ARNOLD
SCHWARZENEGGER
Tim:
So we are live and kind sir, I wanted to start with a thank you for welcoming
me to your house number one, but number two, Ive felt awkward all morning
because I dont know how I should address you and I wanted to ask you how I
should address you.
Arnold:
Well, you can address me any way you want. You can call me Governator,
Governor, schnitzel, Arnold, anything.
Tim:
Okay.
Arnold:
But I think Arnold will be right.
Tim:
Ill go with Arnold. I felt like my first year in Japan when I was fifteen because I
didnt know how to address anybody. So I figured we could start with a favorite
topic. Well, its become a favorite topic because Ive been thinking about this,
which is big balls and cow balls and bull testicles. So youve mailed sculptures
of bull testicles to people before, is that right?
Arnold:
Well, there was one incident in particular that was when I was Governor and
there was one of the legislative leaders, Darrell Steinberg, and I. We both had a
huge challenge. California was hit by an enormous economic decline and there
was a world-wide recession that was hitting us in 2008 and everyone was caught
by surprise by what effect it had. All of a sudden we had $20B less in revenues;
therefore, we had to make big cuts in education and in various different areas
that really hit the vulnerable citizens of California. When we did the budget, I
basically sent him up before we negotiated a set of balls with a note that said,
I hope you have that when we negotiate the budget because its what we both
need. Its what we all in this building need in order to get this budget done
because its not going to be a pretty budget because people will hate it. They
will hate us. They will be making those cut, but its all the money we have. He
didnt take it lightly.
Tim:
Did he take it well or did he take it seriously?
Arnold:
No, no, he took it seriously. What happened is, like you said, I have done it
before and these kind of things that I do, I do always in pranks to people and
jokes and stuff like that, but its always meant with a sense of humor.
Tim:
Right.
Arnold:
I always have a tendency when things get really intense and when people start
freaking out, I try to make a joke or something to lighten things up and just say,
Look, you know ten years from now were going to look at this day and laugh
about it. Right now its very serious and now we have to really concentrate on
this and we have to do something that we dont feel comfortable, whatever the
situation is. This was the situation. It was a terrible situation and I thought it
would loosen it up before the legislative leaders come down to my office and
we start negotiating. It just didnt go very well. I mean, he felt insulted and he
felt hurt and he felt how could I do this and all that other stuff. I said, Look, Im
sorry. I did not mean it that way. Dont take it so seriously. It was meant to be
a joke, thats all. Those things happen, you know.
Tim:
Youre no stranger to adversity, of course, when you grew up in a very small

village in Austria. You had, I think, the splash toilet, or what was the nickname
for it? Basically, a chamber pot.
Arnold:
A splotch toilet [cant tell what this is 3:40. Do a find/replace as it needs to

be corrected through out. ] Exactly. And basically its like an outhouse but it is
in the house. And you know you sit there and you hear maybe a second later
after You know, you go number two you hear splotch and thats why we call
it the splotch toilet. So that was a common thing in old buildings. Our building
was like two hundred and some years old and there was no flushing toilet and
there was also no running water in our house where I grew up. We had to get
basically the water from around a hundred to two hundred yards away from a
well that we had to pump in winter and summer. It didnt make any difference.
We had to carry the buckets of water to our house, to our kitchen, and then it
was used very sparingly. We drank from that water. We washed ourselves with
that water. There was no showers so we washed with a washcloth with soap
and everyone had their precision. My mother went first and washed herself and
then it was my fathers turn and then it was my brothers turn, and by the time I
washed myself, the louver or the vase that the water was in was pretty black, so
it was not pretty anymore. I maybe got more dirty from the water than I actually
cleaned myself.
Tim:
Good idea to drink first; make sure you sate your thirst first.
Arnold:
The interesting thing about it was, it was that other places had exactly the same
situation. We were not the only ones, so we didnt feel like, wow, we are really
growing up poor. As a matter of fact, I never felt when I was a kid that we were
poor. I always felt like we were like everyone else because we were surrounded
by farmers that had very little money. They had little farms. Or workers, the
working class where workers made actually less money than my dad and my dad
didnt make much money at all because he was a police officer and there was
much more of the benefits, the pension that you get, the healthcare and all that
stuff, but not much salary. Just enough that my mother could buy the groceries
and could buy some things and once a year could buy clothes at Christmas time
for us or to knit some clothes for us and stuff like that. But I mean there was like
the neighbors were living the same way and everyone when I went to school, all
the other kids were kind of in the same boat.
Tim:
Which brings up a question for me that Ive always wanted to ask you related to
confidence because I was looking at Of course, I think your name is almost
synonymous with confidence for a lot of people and people look to you to try to
borrow confidence and thats part of the appeal of a lot of your movies and your
successes. But I was looking at a very old photograph of, I think, your first major
bodybuilding competition in Stuttgart. I think it was the Junior Mr. Europe?
Arnold:
Uh-huh.
Tim:
And I looked at this photograph and what stuck out to me was if we had just
looked at the faces and not the bodies, it was so clear to me that you were going
to win and that you knew or believed you were going to win. Your face was
so confident compared to every other competitor. Where did that confidence
come from?
Arnold:
My confidence came from my vision because I am always a big believer that if

you have a very clear vision of where you want to go then the rest of it is much
easier. Because you always know why you are training five hours a day, you
always know why you are pushing and going through the pain barrier, and why
you have to eat more, and why you have to struggle more, and why you have
to be more disciplined. And all of those things become much more clear. Its
not like, Oh my God I have to do another, two hundred sit ups. Its more like,
I cant wait to do another two hundred sit ups because that will get me one
step closer to the abs that I need to win the Mr. Universe. Thats my goal. I see
myself clearly on that stage winning the Mr. Universe. I see myself very clearly
of getting the trophy, standing there with the trophy, raising it above my head,
and having hundreds of body builders around me, below me, on stage looking
up and idolizing me, including the thousands of people that are watching the
event. So that was always my clear vision and that always inspired me to go all
out. And so when I went for a competition, you have to understand that I went
to the Junior Mr. Universe during my time in the military. And so what it took for
me to go and to get on that train, Personensuche [8:31], which was the peoples
train, meaning was not the xxx, the fast train. It was the slow train that literally
stopped at every train station to let workers off and to bring new workers on
and thats what the train was. And so with that, you went all the way to Stuttgart
because it was the cheapest way of going because I didnt have much money.
Tim:
You didnt get hit by any Customs Officers or anything like that?
Arnold:
We got hit by them and we got through it. I didnt have my passport because
you have to give up the passport when you go into the military, right? So you
pass. I didnt have a passport. We got it afterwards after we were finished with
the military. So we got through and we got through to Germany, to Stuttgart.
There was this will there that no matter what it takes, and even if I have to
crawl to Germany, that I will be there at that event because that was my shot.
When I saw the ads about this Mr. Europe Junior competition, [9:36 something
in German, in German. That was my opportunity to really go and make my first
kind of entry into an international competition. And I felt that I could win it and
that was what I was there for. I wasnt there to compete. I was there to win.
And so thats why you saw that facial expression. There was a certain arrogance
there, there was a certain way I posed with the other competitors. I always felt
that during the pose off that I had my act together much more than the others
did and that Im going to kind of make them feel inferior, and I will win, and I will
look facially and physically to the judges that I am the champion.
Tim:
So you touched on something that I really want to dig into which is the
psychological warfare of bodybuilding, of life in general. I really feel, I mean it
as a compliment, youre a real master. If anyone has watched Pumping Iron or
anything, I think, comes away with that as a take away. How did you develop
that? And for instance, when you were, I guess, seventeen or eighteen, how did
you get inside the heads of those people at that point?
Arnold:
I think that it came about when I trained in the gym. I always felt that people
are really vulnerable in certain areas. So that someone that comes to the gym
and works out because he wants to have a better body that he most likely will
be vulnerable. Its during conversations like I discovered in Munich when I was
training in the gym, they were vulnerable when you said something like, Well,
youre fat. There was not even like there was a doubt in anyones mind if ten
people had looked at that guy or a hundred people, they all would have said that
this guy is fat, but he was outraged. He says, What? Do you really think Im
that fat that youre mentioning it? I said, Well youre in the gym. I go to the
doctors office and say I have a cough. I dont go and beat around the bush. I say
I have to tell him what the problem is and then he can give me the medication.
I said its the same thing in the gym, that you come here because youre fucking
fat. And so now lets solve the problem. And so theres no beating around the
bush there either. So I could see that they were kind of shriveling up and kind
of shocked. So I could see the vulnerability and then I tried different lines on
people and then I would talk about their hairline or I would talk about their hair
color turning grey. And they would just freak out about little things like that.
So it was natural that with all the experience I had gotten with being a trainer
and working with people and all this, that I learned about peoples psychology
and about their weaknesses and their strengths, and all this and how do you
build people up because my whole thing was lets first discover and talk about
the weakness and then lets go and rebuild everything. So that was the idea
to give this guy a six pack, to make him feel great, to declare victory by next
summer so that he can go to the beach and he can go and feel proud of himself
and feel great and continuing training. So that was the idea. By the time I
came to America and started competing over here, it was very clear when I
said to someone, Let me ask you something, do you have any knee injuries
or something like that? Then they would look at me and say, No, why? No. I
have no knee injury at all. No, my knees feel great. And they say, Why are you
asking? I said, Well because your thighs look a little slimmer to me. I thought
maybe you cant squat or maybe theres some problem with leg extension. He
says, Really? And then I saw them all for two hours in the gym always going
in front of the mirror and checking out their thighs; if their thighs still exist or
something like that. People are vulnerable about those things. Naturally now
when you have a competition, you use all this. And so you ask people were they
sick for a while, they look a little leaner, or did you take any salty foods lately and
they say, Why? and I say, Because it looks like you have water retention and it
looks like youre not as ripped as you looked a week or so ago. It throws people
off in an unbelievable way.
Tim:
And they get defensive.
Arnold:
They walk away like this didnt bother them at all, but then you can see, you
watch them as they walk around the pump up room, and when you warm up
for the competition, and you can see them kind of thinking to themselves, kind
of them going to the mirror and checking it out secretly and all that stuff. I
just slowly developed it because I always felt that sports are not just a physical
thing. As a matter of fact, I felt that the mentality and the mental strength in
sports and the psychology in sports is much more important than the physical
thing because, in reality, I see when I watch a Mr. Olympia competition or Mr.
Universe competition or any of those things, they all look pretty much the same,
the top five guys. But what makes one emerge is the way he acts. If he acts
like a winner, if he seems smiling, having a great time on stage and such. So I
felt one should use the psychology; one should use everything in as far as food
supplements are concerned, use your best posing trunks, try to use the sun
out there and workout in the sun so you get tanned all around, use the best
posing routine. When you give a 10 of everything then you have the best shot
of winning and psychology was definitely part of that.
Tim:
You developed this arsenal of intimidation through the bodybuilding. Did you use
that, for instance, in movies waiting in line to audition against other people who
were going in to audition or anything like that? Did it apply to show business?
Arnold:
I never auditioned. Never. I would never go out for the regular parts because
I was not a regular looking guy, so my idea always was everyone is going to
look the same and everyone is trying to be the blond guy in California, going
to Hollywood interviews and looking somewhat athletic and cute and all this.
Okay, how can I carve myself out a niche that only I have? And so I always felt
really strong about I have to get into the movie business, like Reg Park did or
Steve Reeves or Paul Wydham [cannot validate this name] or Larry Gordon and
all those guys that were in muscle movies in the 50s and 60s. Thats the way Im
going to get in there. Of course, the naysayers were right there and they said,
Well, you know this time has passed. It was twenty years ago. You look too big,
youre too monstrous, too muscular, you will never get in the movies. Thats what
producers said in the beginning in Hollywood. Thats also what agents said and
managers. I doubt youre going to be successful in that because todays idols,
I mean this is not the 70s Arnold. Todays idols are Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino,
Woody Allen, all little guys. Those are the sex symbols. Those are the hot stars.
Look at you. You weigh 250 lbs. or something like that. That time is over.
But I felt very strongly and had a very clear vision that the time would come
that someone would appreciate that, and sure enough, when people saw me
on talk shows, they got inspired. Directors like Bob Rafelson who then bought
the book of Stay Hungry and then had it written into a script and then did the
movie with me because he believed in me, that I had the personality, a certain
strength, and a certain kind of a look that would be great on the screen, that
the camera loves me, and so it worked. I did Stay Hungry and Pumping Iron the
documentary, the Streets of San Francisco, and worked with Ann-Margret and
Kirk Douglas in The Villain and then all of a sudden I got the contract for Conan
the Barbarian. Bang, there we were with a $20M movie which today would be
the equivalent of a $200M movie. Dino De Laurentiis producing and Universal
Studio and International Studio financing the movie and John Milius, a first class
director, directing it. So my whole plan worked and I was so right. Even John
Milius said after the movie that if we wouldnt have had Schwarzenegger, we
would have had to build one because of the body. When I did Terminator, Jim
Cameron said if we wouldnt have had Schwarzenegger, then we couldnt have
done the movie because only he sounded like a machine. It was so believable
that he actually played a machine. Thats where people bought in when he says,
Ill be back. Its totally different then when I say, Ill be back. Here was the
greatest compliment that the very things that the agents and the managers
and the studio executives said would be a total obstacle became an asset and
my career started taking off.
Tim:
So the not auditioning is really interesting to me. I knew you were very successful
in real estate but, correct me if Im wrong, you had basically become a millionaire
in real estate before your first movie. Is that right?
Arnold:
Not before the first movie; before my career took off.
Tim:
Got it.
Arnold:
I did not rely on my movie career to make a living. That was my intention because
I saw over the years the people that worked out in the gym and that I met in
the acting classes, they were all very vulnerable because they didnt have any
money and they had to take anything that was offered to them because that was
their living. I didnt want to get into that situation. I felt like if I am smart with
real estate and take my little money that I make in bodybuilding and in seminars
and selling my courses through the mail orders, I could save up enough money
to put down money for an apartment building. I realized in the 70s that the
inflation rate was very high and therefore an investment like that is unbeatable.
Buildings that I would buy for $500K within the year were $800K and I put only
maybe $100K down, so you made 300% on your money. You couldnt beat that.
I quickly developed and traded up my buildings and bought more apartment
buildings and office buildings on Main Street down in Santa Monica and so on.
The investments were very good and it was just one of those magic decades.
Today you couldnt do it in that same field. Theres another field in real estate
where you can do it, but in this particular field I dont think you will see those kind
of jumps ever again. I benefited from that and I became a millionaire from my
real estate investments. That was before my career took off in show business
and acting, which was after Conan the Barbarian. In 1982 that movie came out.
We shot it in 1981 and in 82 it came out. From that point on my career took off
because people saw that the movie was successful at the box office and then
I signed a contract to do Conan number 2 and then that led to a contract for
Terminator 1 and then Commando. The action genre was another fortunate
thing. Each of those decades offered something very fortunate that was a little
bit beyond my control, but I benefited from that. There was the action genre
that all of a sudden took off in the 80s with Stallone and Van Damme and all
those guys coming in really was terrific. My salary was like $1M for Terminator
2 and then all of a sudden by the end of the decade I made $20M.
Tim:
Thats incredible. I wanted to talk about the mail order for a second because
that was done with Franco Columbu?
Arnold:
Franco Columbu for those of you who dont know was an European champion
in power lifting and also a boxing champion, and then became a bodybuilding
champion and then I brought him over here with Joe Weiders help to train with
me here in America. But at that point, there was no money in bodybuilding.
Thats the key thing that everyone has to understand. Unlike today where the
top body champions make millions of dollars, in those days there was no money
in bodybuilding. When we didnt have enough money, we literally had to go to
work. Since Francos talent was to be a bricklayer, and a very skilled bricklayer,
and he learned that in Italy and Germany, we were able to go and start thinking
about putting together the idea of putting an ad in the LA Times, creating a
company and calling it European bricklayers and masonry experts, marble
experts, building chimneys and fireplaces the European style. This was also a
time where everything that was European was huge in America, so we benefited
from that. Swedish massages and everything had to be kind of a foreign name.
Japanese this and this. Europe and Japan and all these places; the names were
used because for some reason or another people thought that it was better. So
we used that in the ad and we put the ad in the paper and literally a week later
we had the big earthquake in Los Angeles. The chimneys fell off the apartment
houses and all that stuff and there were cracked walls and all this. One of the
friends of ours wife who was very smart and she worked in a supermarket, she
did answering the phones and calling people back and all this just to make sure
our English doesnt get all screwed up with talking over the phone. She gave us
the addresses and then we got to do the estimates and I was kind of like set up
to be the math genius that figures out the square footage. Franco would play
the bad guy and I played the good guy. We would go to someones house and
then someone would say, Well, look at my patio. Its all cracked. Can you guys
put a new patio in here? I would say yes and then we would run out and get
the tape measure, but it would be a tape measure with centimeters. No one
in those days could at all figure out anything with centimeters. We would be
measuring up and I would say 4 meters and 82 centimeters. They had no idea
what we were talking about. This is so much and we were writing up dollars
and amounts and square centimeters and square meters. Then I would go to
the guy and say, Its $5,000, and the guy would be in a state of shock. Hed
say, Its $5,000? This is outrageous. Id say, What did you expect? and hed
say, I expected like $2,000 or $3,000. Id say, Let me talk to my guy because
hes really the masonry expert, but I can beat him down for you a little bit. Let
me soften the meat. Then I would go to Franco and we would start arguing
in German. [25:40 Content in German.] This would be going on and on and he
was screaming back at me in Italian. Then all of a sudden he would calm down
and I would go to the guy and say, Okay, here it is. I could get him as low as
$3,800. Can you go with that? He says, Thank you very much. I really think
that youre a great man and blah, blah, blah and all this stuff. Id say, Give us
half down right now and well go right away and get the cement and the bricks
and everything we need for here and well start working on Monday. The guy
was ecstatic. He gave us the money and we immediately went to the bank and
cashed the check. We had to make sure the money was in the bank account and
then we went out and got the cement, the wheelbarrow, and all the stuff that we
needed and went to work. We worked like that for two years very successfully.
As a matter of fact, at the end, we had various different jobs where we employed
sixteen different bodybuilders; all the laziest bastards that you can ever hire.
They were all interested in working outdoors and getting a tan at the same time
for bodybuilding competitions. They werent interested in working. Anyway, we
all had a good time and we all made money. I actually did this until I started my
mail order business. Then that became the new source of extra income so we
could afford everything and then save some money.
Tim:
Ive followed you since I was a little kid. Also Franco though. I remember watching
the replay of The Worlds Strongest Man competition with the Refrigerator walk
[27:27, not sure] when his leg gave out. But I was always impressed by how
strong he was for his weight. I mean, I think he deadlifted more than 750 lbs. at
less than 190 or something like that.
Arnold:
Well, at 730 he did like 5 reps.
Tim:
Thats just amazing. What are the reasons the two of you have remained friends
for so long?
Arnold:
I think we both come from Europe. I think we both were struggling in the
beginning. I met Franco the day of the Mr. Europe Junior competition. That
same day he won the powerlifting championships in the lightweight category.
He was up there on the stage getting his trophy. I was up there on the stage
getting my trophy and then the category of bodybuilding championship of the
world, past eighteen years of age, which they called the senior division, but
it was not really senior what they consider now here, senior being over fortyfive or whatever it is. Then it was just someone older than eighteen. He was
up there, the winner on stage. So there was all three of us on stage and then
Franco worked out in Munich and I said to him I want to come to Munich after
the military is finished. Franco said, Im there if you ever want to come and
we can work out together. I told him that I admire powerlifting and that I do
powerlifting and weightlifting and bodybuilding and that I want to work out with
him and get stronger. So when I basically moved to Munich, Franco was one
of the first guys that I went to see and asked if he wanted to be my training
partner. Now Franco didnt train as much as I did at that time, so I used several
training partners, but Franco was one of them and we just developed a really
great friendship because he was a foreigner in Germany. He was what they
called a gast albeiter And I was considered a gast albeiter [its clear you know
this phrase], a kind of guest from the outside from Austria coming to Germany.
We developed a really close relationship. We trained for two years together. He
helped me with the powerlifting; I helped him with the bodybuilding. By 1968 I
moved to Californa and I convinced Joe Weider then to give him an airline ticket
over here and he would not regret it. Hes really what I am in bodybuilding,
except in the short man category, the champion. Hes like the ultimate. There
is no one better and hes a great strong man. He bends steel bars and blows up
hot water bottles and breaks wood and steel and everything and hes a crazy
guy. He has tremendous power. He has the sunshine here and the training
equipment and he food supplements. He would blow everyone out of the water.
He will be unbeatable. Thats exactly what happened. Franco came here in 1969
and we trained together and he won every championship after that. He won
Mr. Universe and Mr. World and eventually even Mr. Olympia after I retired. We
always worked out together; we always were very good friends, and we were
supportive. I am very proud of him because he spoke no English, unlike me who
spoke a little English. He spoke absolutely none. He went then and passed the
entrance examination to chiropractor college and went with me to take some
classes at the community college and got his English better and his command of
the language. He passed the entrance examination to the chiropractor college,
became a chiropractor, and then passed his board the first time. Not like some
of the guys I worked out with in the gym that tried it two or three times and
then finally passed it the third time. So I was really proud of him. He became
an expert in actual manipulation and working with the body. He had a special
talent for that. Thats why he had so many patients today.
Tim:
I remember watching his just catastrophic leg explosion on video and then
hes calmly lying on a stretcher and he says, Well, just by looking at my leg I
can tell its not broken. Its a dislocation and he went on. People thought he
was, doctors included as I understand it, that he would never walk again. Then
he came back and then after he retired in 80 or 81, thats when he won the
Olympia.
Arnold:
Thats right. It was one of those unfortunate things at Universal at the backlot
where they did the strongman act. There was a hole in the road, in the parking
lot. No one saw it. It was just one of those unfortunate things. Franco had
to pay for the mistake that the organizers made. But he came back. I think
Franco knew that I had a few years before a heavy knee injury in 72 when I hurt
my knee down in South Africa doing squats and posing. I came back from that
knee injury and my thighs were bigger and better and more cut in 1973 at the
Olympia and I won the Mr. Olympia. So he knew that you can come back, that if
you have a great surgeon and if you have great therapy after the surgery that
you can come back and be better than ever. Thats exactly what Franco did.
He went through the surgery. He went through the therapy. He was squatting
again with his 600 lbs. with great ease.

Tim:
So incredible. I want to talk about language for a second. When was the last
time you spoke German privately in a conversation?
Arnold:
I sometimes speak with a friend of mine, Ralf Mller who is German. We

sometimes speak German and sometimes I would say its a mish mash between
German and English because some words are more accurate in German and
some words are more accurate in English. Or its easier to use in English; you
find more specific words in English. We sometimes, like I said, do a mixture of
both. Franco also speaks German. Sometimes we will be talking in English and
then all of a sudden he will get into a German thing and then all of a sudden
we talk German. The same is also with my nephew who is now a prominent
entertainment attorney here. I brought him over when he was eighteen from
Austria and from Portugal. He speaks Portuguese and he speaks German and
French and now English very well since hes been here all these years. He also
sometimes slips into the German and then we talk in German and sometimes in
English. So every so often I get to speak German also.
Tim:
I enjoyed listening to on audio Total Recall, your book. You threw in gamitleschict
[37.40] and then kept on moving. I liked it because I lived in Berlin for a short
period of time and I really enjoyed it.
Arnold:
Also in the Escape Plan I used the German and we did this whole scene in German
going crazy in German. That was fun to do. The Austrians have a different
dialect. The Austrians are kind of like Southerners.
Tim:
Right.
Arnold:
Where people say, Huh? What did you say? People that have to hide German
and live more north speak more perfectly. When you go to Berlin, its like totally
the way you write it.
Tim:
Hochdeutsch.
Arnold:
Yes, Hochdeutsch, exactly.
Tim:
I was having a conversation not too long ago with Arianna Huffington and she
was telling me about a conversation she had with Henry Kissinger because she
was taking accent reduction classes. Kissinger said, No, no, no. You want to
keep your accent.
Arnold:
Thats right.
Tim:
So I wanted to ask you. Youve taken accent reduction classes before. Was
there a point at which you realized, wow, this is actually a strength. I dont want
to get rid of this?
Arnold:
The objective was not to get rid of the accent. When you take accent removal
and dialect classes and English classes, the whole combination is designed so
you speak so everyone understands you. Sometimes foreigners have a tendency
of pronouncing a word so wrong or with such wrong emphasis that people dont
know what theyre talking about and then when you correct them and they say
it the right way then they totally understand it perfectly fine. So the trick is
really to learn how to pronunciate and to speak the language really well and
how not to rush and throw words together that makes them almost impossible
to understand. So Henry Kissinger is right. Everyone will always remember
Henry Kissinger because of his accent and because of his brilliance. And I think
everyone will always remember Arianna Huffington for her accent and for being
this woman who set out this goal of creating this magazine and being highly
successful, being politically-oriented, and becoming a policy wonk. There are
many of those, but what separates her is the accent. The way she talks. Shes
Greek, so she ,of course, has a different accent then I have which makes it very
funny when we had the gubernatorial debates in Sacramento. She was whining
with the Greek accent and I was talking with my German accent. It was hilarious.
It showed just how far the world has come, how far California has come. All of a
sudden you have the two top candidates are all foreigners, with foreign accents
running for Governor.
Tim:
Ive been very fascinated to look at your film career and to hear the story of
your Twins. I was hoping maybe you could tell us the story of how Twins came
together and how you guys structured that deal because I didnt know anything
about that.
Arnold:
Twins came together because I felt very strongly that I had a side of me that is
a very humorous side and that if someone would be patient enough and willing
to work with me as a Director that they would be able to bring that humor out
of me. Its something that is very difficult because you can be humorous in
your private life but cannot pull it off in a movie. There are many actors that
have tried that and were not successful. So I felt that I should really talk to
Ivan Reitman because I really loved Ghostbusters. I said to myself, it was so
well directed. I just happened to run into him when I was in Aspen. We were
hanging out. There was Robin Williams and some other people and we were
all up there at Snowmass and we were skiing and then at night before dinner
we were all having a great time sitting by the fireplace and joking around. Ivan
Reitman would say to me, Arnold, I listened to you and I see a side of you that
has never really been on screen. I said to him that I would love to do a comedy;
I would love to bring that side out, the innocence of me of the naivety of me, or
the humor of me. Whatever it is, I would like to see that on the screen. I think
it could be good. I said to him that I want you to work with me and direct me
in a movie; lets figure out what it should be. He said, Okay, I would love to do
that. Im going to go home after Christmas, after this vacation, and Im going to
develop a bunch of ideas and then you and I will get together and you can pick
the one you like the best. He developed within a short period of time a bunch
of ideas. I think there were five ideas. The one that we both liked the most was
called The Experiment, which then became Twins. The Experiment we didnt
like because of my German/Austrian background so we thought that it would
be better to call it Twins. We developed that project. I came up with the idea of
Danny DeVito; that it shouldnt be someone who is acting totally opposite of the
way I am, but he should also physically look totally the opposite of the way I am.
Ivan loved that idea and then we went after Danny DeVito. Then I remember we
sat around at a restaurant and we made a deal on a napkin and wrote down this
is what we do. Were going to make the movie for free. We dont want to get
any salaries and we get a big backend. Ivan should take this deal to the studio.
Hell give it to Tom Pollack who was then running Universal Studios Tom Pollack
said this is great and we can make this movie for $16.5M if you guys dont take a
salary and you get a big backend. Were going to give you 37% or whatever for
Danny, Ivan, and me. We worked out the percentage of what our salaries are.
Whatever Danny got for a movie versus what I got for a movie versus what Ivan
got for directing, we worked out percentage wise and thats how we ended up
dividing up the pot amongst ourselves. Let me tell you, I made more money on
that movie than any other movie and the gift keeps on giving. Its just wonderful.
I remember Tom Pollack, after the movie came out he says, All I can tell you is
that this is what you guys did to me. Then he turned around and bent over and
pulled his pockets out. Youve fucked me and cleaned me out. It was very
funny. He said hed never make that deal again. Anyway, the movie was a huge
hit. It came out just before Christmas. Throughout Christmas and New Years it
made every day $3M-$4M which in todays term would be, of course, double or
triple. It was just huge and went up to $129M domestically and I think worldwide
it was $269M or something like that. So it was really, really successful. Like I
said, it ended up costing around $18M to make.
Tim:
So amazing. When I hear a story like that, I think of deal that George Lucas did
for Star Wars where the studio is like, Toys? Yeah, sure, whatever, you can have
the toys. They probably very much felt the same way. Wow, were not going to
make that mistake again.
You have a new film you have several, but now Maggie. Id love for you to tell
people about it, but Im also curious, maybe you can comment on this. In this
day and age, why dont you finance an entire film yourself or Crowd Source all
the financing yourself so youre the only, not necessarily the only producer, but
youre the sole owner of that film.
Arnold:
For some reason or the other I always felt that I should keep the two apart and
that I should not invest and put money into films. This is a whole other business
to be in, to finance movies. I think that my strength is to be a performer. I think
there are people out there who are very good in financing movies and raising
money for movies, or people that run studios and all this, and to let them do their
job what they are doing and I do my job what I am doing. This is why I just never
did that. Its something else if someone has a great idea to do a documentary
or something like this and says it costs $2M and can you help us with this and I
feel passionate about it. Like for instance, Brooklyn Castle. If someone would
have come to me and said, Hey, heres a documentary we want to do about
after school programs and inner city kids, Id say, Wait a minute, those are
two things Im very passionate about. I love playing chess, which is what its all
about, right, the documentary. How kids in the inner cities play chess and how
they become smart and how they stay off the streets and therefore not get into
trouble with teenage pregnancy and get into juvenile crime and all those things.
They have adult supervision and they get confidence. Those are kids that 70%
of them are below the poverty line. So thats a great story and it is something
that both of them, chess and inner city kids and after school programs, I feel
passionate about. So I would have put money into that. And I wouldnt have
been in it. I would have done it because I think its a story that ought to be told.
So things like that is something else, but in my own movies, I dont know. I never
felt comfortable with that idea.
Tim:
Keep them separate.
Arnold:
Thats right, yeah.
Tim:
Now that I think about it, I do a lot of investing in start ups and sometimes
people ask me why dont you start up your own start up and I basically give
them a very similar answer. Im already heavily concentrated. Id like to keep
the two separate. Im glad you brought up Brooklyn Castle. A friend of mine
was interviewed on this podcast, Josh Waitzkin. He was the basis for Searching
for Bobby Fischer, so very well known as a chess player. And Ive heard you
talk about 3-6 p.m. is the danger zone. And Im on the Advisory Board for
Donorschoose.org and a number of non-profits related to education. Why are
you so passionate about after school programs?
Arnold:
Because I felt that when I grew up, even though we were very poor, I had
someone there 24 hours a day for me to improve, to learn, to do sports, and
to get attention and to get the love and to get the discipline. It was a tough
upbringing, but it was a combination of great discipline and also love. I felt like
that having someone there with you 24 hours a day from the time in the morning
that you get up to the time in the morning that you go to school, there were the
teachers there, there were the coaches there, there was the school principal and
all of them. And then you go home and there was your mother there helping
you with your homework and then in the evening your dad comes home and
he goes and takes you to the soccer field and does sports with you and then in
the winter, ice curling and all those things. I just felt when I watch and go from
school to school, which I did when I was the President of the Council for Physical
Fitness and Sports, I traveled through all 50 states and visited one school after
the next and always at 3:00 I felt that the kids are going out there and then I
saw half of them standing around the school and then wandering around and
then the other half were getting picked up and I said what happens with those
kids out there? The teachers and the principal were always saying the problem
today is that so many parents are working; both of the parents are working and
they dont really have the ability to pick up their kids from school. What happens
is that a lot of those kids then get into trouble. So then I started looking into it,
the idea of after school programs. I saw that there were after school programs
around, but theyre not really well organized. So I stepped in and I started after
school programs here in Los Angeles. We very quickly then spread them all over
California and then all over the United States. Now we are in 13 or 14 cities all
over the United States, including Hawaii. They have been really beneficial and
we even passed an initiative in California in 2002, which was the After School
Education and Safety Act that provides an additional $500M for after school
programs in California. Because of that, which started to go into effect in 2006,
from that point on now every high school and middle school in California has
after school programs. And then also churches and other organizations that are
not connected with the schools can also get money for after school programs,
so they can have their after school programs. It really has become one of my
passions. Its just simply like I said, I had the upbringing, I had the attention 24
hours a day and it helped me to be who I am. And I felt bad for the kids when
they dont get an equal shot because the only way you can be successful is if
you really get this kind of attention and if you dont get into the kind of situation
where you float around on the streets. Then you get involved with gangs and
with drugs, with violence and, like I said, teenage pregnancy and juvenile crimes.
You end up in jail and it doesnt serve anybody and it costs the community a lot
of money. The way I got Republican support for that in California, had them
endorse my initiative, was because I showed to them that for every dollar that
we spend, we save $3 down the line. From a fiscal point of view, they endorsed it
even though they dont like the Nanny State thing and to have government step
in and do the job for parents. The Democrats endorsed it for that. They thought
that government is responsible and we ought to do something because it is the
new challenge that 70% of the kids come from homes where both of the parents
are working and they do not have time for the kids in the afternoon. Who is
helping these kids with homework? Who is helping these kids with tutoring
and with sports programs and adult supervision and giving the kid the love that
the kid needs and the confidence building that the kid needs? And for that, the
after school program is the number one answer to the problem. We have seen it
over and over with a great success rate we have had with after school programs
and hopefully the movement will grow and eventually every child would have an
opportunity to join an after school program if they dont have a parent at home
that can help them with all those things.
Tim:
For everybody listening, Ill obviously provide links to all of the organizations
that Arnolds involved with and I encourage you and implore you to consider
becoming involved, supporting, or becoming a mentor, or a Big Brother or Big
Sister of some type. I grew up on Long Island and I was a competitive athlete.
I was a wrestler for a very long time and that kept me out of trouble and both
my parents worked. Many of my friends there ended up overdosing on drugs,
becoming involved with drugs, because they had idol hands during that period
of time.
Arnold:
Right. The other thing you have to understand is that when you are a foreigner,
an immigrant, and you come over here and you enjoy the unbelievable
opportunities that America has to offer, it is natural that you feel like you want
to give something back. I felt like when I was the Chairman of the Presidents
Council and I was a trainer for the Special Olympics, and then with the after
school programs. It was my way also of giving back because people listened
to me because at that point I was a celebrity already and I had a tremendous
power of influence because of my movies and all that. I might as well use this
power of influence for something good and also give something back to the
country. Thats why I ran for Governor. I think it just feels good to do something
for people that need help. Thats what life is all about.
Tim:
Totally agreed. For those of you out there who have read my stuff, I get asked
by readers a lot, Whats the key to happiness? I think if youre not sure how to
make yourself happy, make someone else happy. Help someone else and the
payback is enormous. Arnold, when you hear the word successful, who is the
first person who comes to mind?
Arnold:
I think that people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, I mean
people like that, right? Because its the first thing that you do think of when you
hear about success. They are really worldwide known for their success. But
then there are other layers. For instance, you cannot avoid someone like Nelson
Mandela who showed to the world about forgiveness and showed to the world
about tolerance and inclusion. The job that he did in South Africa was not only
a great job for South Africa but was a great job for the whole world because
inspired everybody to be remotely like that in that no one can really be like that
because he was really very, very special. I was very fortunate to meet him twice
and to work with him on Special Olympics in South Africa and to be at his prison
cell, Robben Island, to have him show me around. I had time to talk with him
and spend time with him. I spent a day with him twice. So hes definitely one
of those guys. Mikhail Gorbachev, someone that grows up under Communism

and then when hes on the top realizes that the system doesnt work and then
dismantles it. I mean think about the chutzpah it takes to do that.
Tim:
Didnt need to mail him any bull testicles.
Arnold:
Thats right, unbelievable leadership and vision and all that. Or if in sports, you
think about Muhammad Ali. How can you not think about success and not think
about him because that guy was so successful, but also not only successful in
sports, but also in generosity. He gave everything away. He would go through
the airport and if he sees someone that has no money, he would give him a
$100 bill. He was an extraordinary athlete. So there are a lot of people like
that. I think when you go through history, also there is someone I just thought
of that I should mention that is Cincinnatus. He was a Roman Emperor in the
Roman Empire. Cincinnati, the city, by the way, is named after him because he
was a big idol of George Washington. The reason why he is a great example of
success is because he was asked reluctantly to step into power and become the
Emperor and to help because Rome was about to get annihilated by all the wars
and battles, so to step in there and to help them. He was a farmer. Powerful
guy. He went and took on the challenge, took over Rome, took over the army
and won the war. After they won the war, he has felt hes done his mission and
was asked to go and be the Emperor and he gave the ring back and went back
to farming. He didnt only do this once, he did it twice. They went back later on
to him once again. When they tried to overthrow the empire from within, they
asked him back and he came back, he cleaned up the mess through great, great
leadership, which he had. He had tremendous leadership quality in bringing
people together. And again he gave the ring back and went back to farming.
Tim:
Nice. Thats incredible.
Arnold:
As we all know, its very addictive to be powerful. I know how difficult it was
for me to let go of being Governor and then all of a sudden you are not sitting
there and making decisions about whats going to happen to the financial crisis,
whats going to happen to the greenhouse regulations, whats going to happen
to our high speed rail, whats happening with the University. Youre not there any
more making the decisions. Its very hard to let that go. So imagine someone
like that to let go to be the Emperor. Its a whole different thing. So thats very
admirable, so when I think about success, hes always somebody I would think
to put in that category.
Tim: I
ll have to do some more research on him.
Do we have time for just a few more questions?
Arnold:
Yes.
Tim:
Feel free to not answer this is you dont want to, but this is almost the opposite
of the last question. When you think of the word punchable, whats the first
face that comes to mind?
Arnold:
Punchable? Ive never even thought about that.
Tim:
Most people dont walk around thinking about that.
Arnold:
No. I dont think theres anyone that I can think of right now that would be
punchable.
Tim:
Okay. I was worried thinking about asking this that you might just reach across
and knock my front teeth into the back of my head.
Do you have a favorite book or book that youve given people as a gift the most?
Arnold:
Theres one book that Ive given that it was just Christmas, that Ive given away
a lot of copies. This is a book about Winston Churchill by Boris Johnson. I
dont know if youre familiar with him. Hes the Mayor of London and hes a real
interesting character. They think that he could eventually be Prime Minister
of England; a very talented guy, not a party servant, but a people servant. He
came up with the Boris Bike, the bicycles now all over London that anyone can
just take and ride around on the bikes. Now they have this all over Europe and
France and Paris, Vienna, and everywhere. They all took this idea that people
would drive less in the city if they just have the possibility of getting a bike from
a bike stand. Hes a very interesting guy. I did not even know that he is this
extraordinary writer at the same time, but I was in London for a promotion and I
saw on the bookshelf in my suite this book Winston Churchill. I admire Winston
Churchill. Hes one of those guys that I really love. So I took this book down
from the bookshelf and I looked and I said, Oh, Boris Johnson, the Mayor, he
wrote this. Ive got to get this. So I put it back and Daniel wrote down the title
and all the information and then we got it as a Christmas gift for a lot of people.
The other book that I have given hundreds of copies to is Free to Choose by
Milton Friedman. It kind of lays out why the private sector is really the answer
to a lot of problems that we have and not government. I think its a real great
philosophic kind of a book about how to approach our problems, if it is education,
if it is economic growth, all of those various kinds of different issues. He lays it
out. Its a very simple book to read, but it is very good and it makes an impact
on your when you read it. The other one I think is California by Kevin Starr. Kevin
Starr was our state librarian and he has written more books on California than
anyone. If anyone is at all interested in a book about California, what makes
California unique and special, and the history of it, the political history of it and
all the little details, thats a good book to have. Its a great gift, especially when
I was Governor and you give people gifts and you give it, of course, of California,
a book about California. Its the kind of reading I like and that I like to share with
other people.
Tim:
Wonderful. I have just one more question and then Id love to hear where we can
hear more about all of the projects youre up to. That is, Ive heard you mention
Transcendental Meditation in passing briefly. Do you meditate?
Arnold:
I dont meditate now, but I got heavily into it in the 70s. I remember there was
a time in my life where I felt like everything was just coming together and I did
not find a way, or couldnt find a way, of keeping the things separate. It was
always when I was thinking at the same time about my bodybuilding career,
I was thinking about my movie career, I was thinking about the documentary
Pumping Iron that we were shooting right now and the movie Stay Hungry that
we were just finished shooting, and my investment in the apartment building,
and do I get the financing from the bank. All this kind of stuff was always coming
together and at the same time I was training for the Mr. Olympia competition
in South Africa. I was training right here at Golds Gym and I remember there
was all the camera equipment around five hours a day in my face and then
someone in the middle of squatting was trying to change the battery pack on
my lifting belt. Eventually it felt like Ive got to do something about it because I
have such great opportunities here and everything is happening and everything
is going my way, but Im just clustering everything into one big problem rather
than separating it out and having calm and peace and being happy. A total
coincidence, I ran into this guy that Ive run into many times at the beach. A
very, very pleasant man who told me that he is a teacher in Transcendental
Meditation and I said, Its interesting that you mention it because I feel like I
should do something because I feel like Im just overly worried and anxieties
and all that stuff. I feel certain pressures that Ive never felt before. He says,
Oh, Arnold, it is not uncommon. It is very common. A lot of people go through
this. This is why people use Transcendental Meditation as one way of dealing
with the problem. He was very good in selling it because he didnt say that it
was the only answer. He said its just one of many. He says, Why dont you try
it? Im a teacher there up in Westwood. I would not be able to teach you since
we have friends. Theres another teacher that will give you a mantra and blah,
blah, teach you how to do it and then I can help you after that. Because I will be
teaching, why dont you come up on Thursday? I will be there. I will introduce
you to the folks up there. I went up there, took a class, and I went home after
that and tried it. I said to myself, Ive got to give it a shot. I did 20 minutes in
the morning and 20 minutes at night and I would say within 14 days, 3 weeks,
I got to the point where I could really disconnect my mind and stay and find
a few seconds of this connection and rejuvenate the mind and learn how to
focus more and to calm down. I saw the effect right away. I was much more
calm about all of the challenges that were facing me. I continued doing that
for a year. By that time I felt that I think I have mastered this. I think that now I
dont feel overwhelmed anymore. I really felt it was kind of one of those things
where Transcendental Meditation was anxiety and pressure meeting around
the corner tranquility. This is kind of what it felt. I was happy from that point
on. Even today, I still benefit from that because I dont merge and bring things
together and see everything as one big problem. I take them one challenge at a
time and when I go and I study my script for a movie, then that time of day when
I study my script, I dont let anything else interfere. I just concentrate on that.
The other thing that Ive learned is that there are many forms of meditation in
the world. Like when I study and work really hard where it takes the ultimate
amount of concentration, I can only do it for 45 minutes, maybe an hour. But then
I have to kind of run off and maybe play chess. I play chess for 15 minutes and
then I can go back and can have all the energy in the world again and jump right
back and then continue on with my work as if Ive not done it at all today. Right?
Its like Im fresh. Thats another way that I think of meditation. I also figured
out that I could use my workouts as a form of meditation because I concentrate
so much on the muscle and I have my mind inside the bicep when I do my curls.
I have my mind inside the pectoral muscles when I do my bench press. So Im
really inside and its like I gain a form of meditation because you have no chance
of thinking or concentrating on anything else at that time, but just that training
that you do. So theres many ways of meditation and I benefit from all of those
today Im much calmer because of that and much more organized and much
more tranquil because of that.
Tim:
This whole conversation makes me want to go tackle the world. I love it. I really
appreciate all of your time.
Where can people, and of course Ill link to all of these things in the show notes
for folks, where can people learn more about what youre up to? What would
you like to share with people?
Arnold:
I think that people, they know my ambitions in the movie business. They know
that I love doing movies, but I think because of my interest in public policy after
my Governorship, I have started the USC Schwarzenegger Institute that deals
with some of the issues that I have felt very passionate about during the time I
was Governor. And even beforehand, which was political reform. We were very
successful in doing redistricting reform in California and open primaries reform
and so on, which now brings the politicians much more to the center. But this is
not the only thing. There are many more things that need to be accomplished
in California and nationwide, so our institute deals with that. It also deals with
stem cell research, it deals with economic growth and opportunities, it deals
with education, after school programs and so on, and especially also with
environmental issues. I have an environmental organization on top of that which
is the R20, which deals with subnational governments because I feel always
very strongly that while we are striving towards a Quito II Treaty and all the
nations in the world come together, I hope that they are going to be successful
in Paris in December. At the same time I want subnational governments like
California and other states and other provinces and cities to set their own goals
and not to wait just for this treaty, but to have the top down approach which is
what the international treaty will be, but from the bottom up, grass roots level
approach from the bottom up because when those two meet we really create
critical mass. Thats what its all about. I want to continue pushing toward a
renewable energy future. It is my crusade. Its as much a crusade as my fitness
crusade was for the last 45 years and weve been pretty successful with that. So
I hope that were going to be successful with that, too. It does need everyone
to buy in and everyone to participate and thats why I go around the world and
give speeches on environmental issues and try to bring countries together and
make sure that this year it will be a huge success, but at the same time have
subnational governments set their own goals and do exactly what we did in
California. In California we didnt wait for Washington. We didnt wait for a U.N.
treaty or anything like this. We set the goal of reducing our greenhouse gases
by 20%, by 25% by the year 2020, and 85% by the year 2050. We created the
extra million solar roofs in California, we lowered the fuel standards here, we
set the goal to up the renewables from 25% to 48% by the year 2020. So these
are all things that we did. We didnt wait for Washington and so we want other
states to do the same thing. Luckily, California showed great leadership and
now we see other subnational governments doing the same thing.
Tim:
And thats Regions20.org?
Arnold:
That is R20. Yes, Regions20.
Tim:
And people can find you on Twitter @Schwarzenegger?
Arnold:
Thats right.
Tim:
Wonderful. All right, is there anything else that youd like to mention before we
close out?
Arnold:
Yes. Omaze. Were doing another fundraiser with Omaze. The last time we did
it for the after school programs which we talked about earlier. I do fundraisers
all the time because they always need money and for every dollar we can send
more kids to after school programs, so we are always raising money. The last
time we had a tank drive and destroyed things.
Tim:
Amazing.
Arnold:
Theres a model tank right there behind you
Tim:
Oh, yeah there is.
Arnold:
The big tank, the real tank, the M47 from my military days, its the real thing. So
whoever won the bid, you can come out and sit with me in the tank and then we
crush things together; pianos, toilet bowls, living rooms and everything that he
picked that we just destroyed. We raised over $1M from that which was really
great and we had a lot of fun at the same time. This time instead of destroying
things with a tank, we blow things up. So this will be the new fundraiser, which
we are going to start very soon. In February as a matter of fact. So thats the
other thing Im always doing, raising money for the after school programs.
Tim:
Is the link going to be the same as the last?
Voice:
Yes it will be omaze.com/arnold.
Tim:

omaze.com/arnold. Ill put that in the show notes as well.
Arnold:

Tim:
Thank you very much.
Arnold:
Thank you.
Tim:
Until next time, thank you for listening, folks.
Sir, thank you so much for the time.
This has been wonderful.
EPISODE 61:
MATT MULLENWEG
Interviewer:
Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of
the Tim Ferriss show, where I interview some of the worlds top performers,
whether that be in investing, sports, entrepreneurship or otherwise; film, art,
you name it to extract the tools and resources and habits and routines that you
can use. And in this episode, I have the pleasure, in beautiful San Francisco, to
interview and icon of tech. But you do not have to be involved in tech or even
understand tech to get a lot out of this conversation.
Matt Mullenweg is one of my close friends. Hes been named one of PC Worlds
top 50 on the web, Ink.coms 30 under 30, and Business Weeks 25 Most
Influential People on the Web. Why, you might ask, has he received all these
accolades? Well, hes a young guy but he is best known as a founding developer
of WordPress, the open-source software that powers more than 22 percent of
the entire web. Its huge. Hes also the CEO of Automattic, which is valued at
more than $1 billion and has a fully distributed team of hundreds of employees
around the world.
However, Matt started off as a barbecue shopping Texas boy. So how did this
all come together? It certainly was not the grand vision from day one at all.
And Matt is an incredible human being. Hes a gifted musician, he is able to eat
more than 100 chicken McNuggets in one sitting and well talk about why and
how he did that. And we really dig into the specifics of how he hires, what he
looks for in people. We get really, really nitty gritty into his favorite books, his
routines, music, habits, work style. Hes one of the most productive people Ive
ever met in my life.
I think youre really going to enjoy this episode. Be prepared to take notes. But
if you want all the links and resources and everything else, of course you can
find them as always in the show notes. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com/
podcast, or just go to 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and click on podcast.
That will take you to the show notes. So without further ado, please enjoy Matt
Mullenweg.
Matt, sir, welcome to the show.
Interviewee:
Howdy, howdy.
Interviewer:
Howdy, howdy. So lets explain the howdy, howdy. Because theres some
context missing. Of course we know each other. Wheres the howdy from?
Interviewee:
I was born and raised in Houston, Texas.
Interviewer:
Fine state. It is a fine state.
Interviewee:
The greatest country in the world.
Interviewer:
And youve taught me a great many things related to barbecue, related to

photography, so thank you for that. You got me very interested in photography.
And weve traveled a lot together. But for those people who dont know who you
are, when someone asks you: Matt, what do you do? How do you answer that,
these days?
Interviewee:
Im probably best known for once eating 104 chicken McNuggets in one sitting.
Interviewer:
Are you serious?
Interviewee: Yeah.
Interviewer:
Wow. I did not know how old were you? Was that like last week?
Interviewee:
Now you wont forget it. And then on the side, I work on an open-source
publishing platform called WordPress, which powers such amazing sites such
as the 4-Hour everything for Tim.
Interviewer:
Thats true. And others like
Interviewee:
New York Times, Wall Street Journal; about 23 percent of all websites now are
on WordPress.
Interviewer:
Thats amazing. How did WordPress start, for people who dont know the origin
story.
Interviewee:
Sure. Its an open-source project. And it actually started as a fork, or a

derivative of an already existing open-source project. So there was this thing
out there called B2, which I was using and blogging with myself. And the creator
disappeared so the development stopped. And myself and this guy in England
named Mike Little picked it up and kept working on it.
Interviewer:
How old were you at the time?
Interviewee: 19.
Interviewer:
19. And were you self taught from the standpoint of programming?
Interviewee:
Yeah. I had tried to take some classes in school and they were just all terrible.
Programming, especially open-source programming, the web was the best
place to learn it.
Interviewer:
What made the classes terrible? Im always curious. Why did they fail? Why did
they not appeal to you?
Interviewee:
Well, I didnt go to a great school to start with. I was at University of Houston.

I had an amazing high school experience. High School for the Performing and
Visual Arts, one of the best experiences of my life. But then I stayed in Houston.
U of H was all right, but the computer classes in particular, I think like 20 or
30 years ago Microsoft basically changed the curriculums or influenced the
curriculums of many of these colleges. So even though this was 2002, 2003 the
web had already happened. It was the thing.
But they were still teaching you like Microsoft visual basic, and like you were
building like buttons on Windows apps.
Interviewer:
Sounds really white knuckle stuff, exciting. And so you began working on this
fork. Could you explain what open-source means?
Interviewee: Sure.
Interviewer:
For people who arent familiar with it.
Interviewee:
Open-source is for me, the most important idea Ive been exposed to in my
lifetime, actually. So think of open-source like a bill of rights for software. And
I think this is incredibly important, now that more and more of our lives are
influenced or governed by software. It basically says that here are four freedoms
that are inalienable rights you have when you use open-source software. And
the license that WordPress is under, the GPL, says you have the freedom to use
the software for any purpose. So that means you can make a Matt has funny
hair blog if you want, or you can
Interviewer:
Oh, you found it.
Interviewee:
Or whatever you like. You can see how the software works. You can modify the
software. And then you can distribute those modifications to your friends. And
this sounds pretty basic and trivial, but a lot of what we use, it would be the
equivalent of if you opened the hood of your car and there was just a black box,
and you could be fined or go to jail for trying to modify things.
Interviewer:
For tampering with it, or trying to understand it.
Interviewee: Yeah.
Interviewer:
Lets so youre working on this fork. At what point does it become WordPress?
With a capital W and a capital P, for everyone wondering. I dont see Matt get
angry much, but if you want to really hit one of his pet peeves, its the lower case
P.
Interviewee:
The lowercase P. Actually, its not possible to write WordPress with an uppercase
W and a lowercase P on WordPress.
Interviewer:
As it should be.
Interviewee:
As it should be. It will autocorrect it.
Interviewer:
I also feel badly for every transcendental meditation teacher, and I brought up
I was like, Does it bother you when your TM always turns into a trademark
symbol? And theyre like, Oh, my God, how did you know? Well, they need
their own platform, evidently. So when did it become WordPress? When was it
christened WordPress?
Interviewee:
The name actually was one of the first things we came up with. A friend in
Houston named Christine had the idea for the name. And she checked, the dot
org was available and I registered it that day. And that really brought it together.
Because B2 slash caf log, if you have a slash in your name, theres something
wrong in the beginning. But WordPress, I just liked it from the moment I heard
it. I was like, Oh, this feels like something that has a little bit of gravitas but still
is pretty accessible. The focuses in the early days, which kind of distinguished
us from what we were forked from were focused on web standards. Cleaning up
the code, making sure that what we were outputting was really tight, and then
installation.
So we created something called the Famous Five Minute Installation.
Interviewer:
So the standards would be like and Im using maybe a sloppy metaphor, but
making sure that the grammar and everything is standard so that it can have
the widest adoption and tinkering possible?
Interviewee:
It was more, at the time, the web platforms. You would build a website for
Netscape and you would build a website for Internet Explorer. And youd use
different code for both, or sites would work with one and not the other. So web
standards would create a common platform between them. And the installation
ended up being the biggest thing. We called it the Famous Five Minute Installer,
even though it was neither famous
Interviewer:
It was famous to the two of you guys.
Interviewee:
Yeah. But it became a self fulfilling prophecy because people said: oh, its famous
and its only five minutes. And competitive software at the time would take 30
minutes, an hour to set up. And also thats how some of our contemporaries
like moveable type made their money in the beginning. Because you could
pay them to install it for you. So the economic incentive was not to make the
installation easier. So we just came in with that from the beginning and it was
really appealing to folks.
Interviewer:
So you were simplifying to get the its very interesting because you were opensource at the time; you did not have a profit motive.
Interviewee: Nope.
Interviewer:
And therefore, you were not incentivized to complicate the profit.
Interviewee:
There were no golden handcuffs. Nothing to lose.
Interviewer:
Which is true for a lot of industries professional training for instance is

very much like that. Very few trainers are incentivized to make themselves
unnecessary, right? To make themselves obsolete. So theyll have a rotating
schedule and different types of mesocycles and so on that keep you tethered to
an ongoing program of training.
Interviewee:
Whats a mesocycle?
Interviewer:
You can have different types of cycling. For instance, if youre leading up to a
power lifting competition or a wedding, a trainer could
Interviewee:
Basically the same thing.
Interviewer:
Very similar. You always want to look like a power lifter especially if youre
a lady for your wedding. You can cycle the type of training. So you might
have, lets just say arbitrarily, 70 percent of your one rep max. And you work
between 70 and 75 percent of your one rep max for a four to eight week period
or something like that. Then you go into a new cycle, which is Im making this
up again but like 90 percent of your one rep max, or between 85 and 90. That
has a place.
But I feel like just to bring it back to WordPress, is that I feel like the number
one priority of any one physical trainer or nutritionist should be to enable their
client with the knowhow and tools that make them, themselves obsolete. So
this complicate to profit is a real problem in a lot of industries.
Interviewee:
It actually so my favorite classes in college were the political science and

philosophy ones. Because you think about systems instead of necessarily
and incentives versus what works or what gets you to the next thing. So again,
kind of like what you said: a personal trainer is not going to be incented to
put themselves out of a job; can you create a system, something youve done
through your work, where people can self enable. And from the early days of
WordPress, we would always think: okay, if we do X today, what does that result
in tomorrow, a year from now, ten years from now?
And it was kind of silly to think about ten years from now, but its now 12 years
old.
Interviewer:
Did that long term vision develop what were the components that helped
you to develop that long term view? Because youre a young guy; you still are.
Despite the fact that you now have a three in front how old are you now?
Interviewee:
31 as of last week.
Interviewer:
I was so tired of the under 30 awards you were getting every year. I was like:
God, can this guy just turn 30 already? I feel badly about myself every year. Its
awards season; here we go. Mullenweg again. But what helped you develop
that long term view, besides maybe these poli sci classes?
Interviewee:
I think the political science really, really helps because
Interviewer:
Any particular aspect or figure?
Interviewee:
I really loved Thucydides. Its actually a classic. He wrote I think it was a book
about the Peloponnesian War. He was one of the first of what we see now as
historians. So he would go back, and writing about this series of events, would
kind of look at they why and what was the environment which created these
things. So rather than saying X, Y, Z happened; saying: this is what the world
was like and that caused X, Y, Z to happen.
But the metaphor I think of the most because its simple is just like the
dog chasing the car. Like what does the dog do if he catches the car? He
doesnt have a plan for it. So I find it just as often on the entrepreneurial side.
People dont plan for success, either. Like if we create a marketplace for plugins, what is the natural conclusion of that if its really, really successful? Well, if
its really, really successful, theres not that many free plug-ins. It looks more
like an app store on IOS or Android where everythings paid, because thats what
the incentives will be for the developers over the long term.
Interviewer:
Let me ask you this is somewhat of an oblique question, or unrelated, seemingly

are there any hedge fund managers that you really get along with? You dont
have to name them by name, but you could, certainly.
Interviewee:
Our investors.
Interviewer:
Okay. Who are some of your investors? And well talk about what theyve
invested in, since its
Interviewee:
Tiger Global. So theres an amazing guy, Lee Fixel, over there. He works on the
private side, not the public equity side. But its a hedge fund, at the end of the
day. Insights, True Ventures; we have some weve actually been blessed from
the very beginning with really great investors.
Interviewer:
I know of a handful of hedge fund managers very closely who are extremely
good a lot of them are macro they would describe themselves as sort of
macro guys, which Ill hope to go into another time. But the point being, they
are very good at looking at sort of primary effects, secondary effects, tertiary
effects, and trying to predict the various butterflies effect that can then inform
a trade that other people arent thinking of or a position that other people arent
thinking of.
I think youre very good at that. What if you had to call yourself world class at
something besides eating chicken McNuggets, what would you say that is?
Interviewee:
Hmm. It might be related to that because
Interviewer:
The McNuggets?
Interviewee:
The beginning of systems. And sort of environments and ecosystems and how
things sort of cascade. Because running an open-source project, the joking term
is BDFL, so benevolant dictator for life is technically my role within WordPress.

But its the most powerless dictatorship ever because well, obviously you dont
have an army, you dont have the ability to tax. But you dont really have a carrot
or a stick. Youre not paying people to do things and youre not punishing them
if they dont do things.

So you really are in a position where the things you do have control over, like
lets say the website or how the code works, or the license. You have to think of
the implications of that. And then its really just the power of a bully pulpit.
Interviewer:
In what sense?
Interviewee:
Like the State of the Union speech thats happening from Obama. Once a year
I give a state of the word speech, and try to
Interviewer:
Thats at word camp?
Interviewee:
At word camp, yeah. I try to think what are the things that have been influencing
me, and the things that wont happen naturally in the WordPress ecosystem
that might need another push, or might need to expose the community to
something that theyre not thinking about. So a lot of times at Word Camp San
Francisco, Ill bring in speakers like yourself or other folks who arent in the dayto-day WordPress hub-abub.
Interviewer:
Right, despite my best efforts to muck things up. I was very happy and very, very
pleased that our friend Nason was so kind at the barbecue world championships
Matt sponsors a do you still sponsor a team there?
Interviewee:
I didnt last year. It was the first year I havent been there in a couple years.
Interviewer:
All right. And Nason, whos a tremendous developer, helped to build a plug-in
called pervasion, which allows me to white list someone who leaves a good
comment that has aspects of questionable behavior, whether its too much
cursing, maybe attacking someone else, putting in too many links, which is
a hugely helpful feature so thank you, Nason. And that ability to customize
has always appealed to me about WordPress. What are other we can look
at it through a different lens. What are some of the mistakes that would-be
competitors to WordPress have made that prevented their wider spreaded
option?
Interviewee:
Most of our most contemporary competitors, so the wicks.coms, Squarespace,

etc., they focus more on it being a service rather than it being something thats
super extensible. So for example, that feature you just described will never be
in core WordPress.
Interviewer:
It will never be what?
Interviewee:
In core WordPress. You know, its a relatively small audience that is gonna want
that.
Interviewer:
Its an edge case, but useful for the edge case.
Interviewee:
Yeah. And to be honest, like other people who maybe have the same prominence
as your blog, it would be useful for. So there is an audience out there. But
its not the tens of millions that use WordPress. So if youre building a service
like WordPress.com, or like Squarespace or one of these others, because you
essentially have one code base that everyone runs, you have to sort of design
for the majority, or what you think the majority is gonna want or be. Where with
WordPress, with its sort of empanic sensibility of themes and plug-ins, there can
be a million niches. And in fact, with the way plug-ins are distributed for people
that run WordPress themselves, almost no two are alike.

When you think of the theme plus the plug-ins that each blog each one is its
own, unique, beautiful snowflake.
Interviewer:
Right, so youre not trying to decide what the average shoe size is in the world
and give everyone a nine.
Interviewee:
So our competitors will say its this checklist of features and were gonna do
these ten things WordPress does, and maybe well do this one better and
this one better. And honestly, like a smart team of a couple developers could
probably do that in a year. But to replicate the 35,000 plus plug-ins and themes,
its a huge moat. It would take lifetimes.
Interviewer:
At what point did you decide to create Automattic WordPress.com?
Interviewee:
Sure. I should say what Automattic is.
Interviewer:
You should.
Interviewee:
Automattic is the company where I work. I became CEO last year. And basically
its
Interviewer:
They had to wait until you had a 3 in front of your name.
Interviewee:
They had to wait until I was 30, yeah. So it was basically taking the idea that
there are some services for WordPress that arent appropriate for the opensource side, this distributed, nonprofit thing. And also that I wanted to create a
company that I wanted to work at. And so that became Automattic. What was
the question?
Interviewer:
How did you decide to create Automattic?
Interviewee:
Oh, you know what it was, is it was spam.
Interviewer:
Okay, tell me more.
Interviewee:
So you know, things on the web get spammed.
Interviewer:
Oh, yes. Im very well aware.
Interviewee:
Whether its your email, or contact form, spammers will
Interviewer:
I think I have more than 100,000 spam comments in my spam right now.
Interviewee:
Wow. So whats been protecting you is a plug-in called Akismet.
Interviewer: Correct.
Interviewee:
So Akismet is an anti-spam system. And what had happened was I kept writing
anti-spam plug-ins that were just plug-ins. So it was just code that would run on
your blog. And they would work for like an ever decreasing amount of time. So
like the first ones stopped spam for like a year. And the second one stopped it
for like six months. And then it got to the point where Id release a new version,
and like the next day, the spammers would work around it. I always had like an
idea of like a I apologize to anyone Russian named Ivan, but like this guy in
Russia just downloaded my plug-in and is like: ha ha, I can work around this so
easily.

And so I thought: huh, this is asymmetric warfare. Were never gonna beat the
spammers, because theyre like the bully on the playground, unless we team up.
And so Akismet is sort of a system
Interviewer:
A pack of wolves that tear the bullies apart.
Interviewee:
Wow, I like that. Or maybe its like circling the wagons. It kind of protects you
from
Interviewer:
Its visually less violent.
Interviewee:
And its able to adapt as quickly as the spammers were because its a centralized
service. I had built some centralized services before that were expensive to run
and costing me a lot out of my own pocket. So I wanted to make it a business
so it could be self sustainable. I didnt want this something sort of running on
my charity, or if I went away, this would stop. So thats why
Interviewer:
I assume you also need money for food and rent
Interviewee:
I dont need that much.
Interviewer:
Well talk more about that later. Got it. Not to interrupt. So Akismet, spam.
Interviewee:
That was the first product of Automattic. And it made perfect sense because it
was something that WordPresss software couldnt do. It was something that
was a service. It was something that I wanted to have a sustainable business
model. So that was actually the first thing I loved C-Net so I moved out to San
Francisco, got a job at C-Net, it was awesome. I was there for about a year. And
basically the weekend after I left, I just hacked like the whole time and released
the first version of Akismet.
Interviewer:
What year was that, roughly?
Interviewee:
I believe it was 2005.
Interviewer:
2005. And was that the period in which you were experimenting with polyphasic
sleep? Or was it before or after that?
Interviewee:
Thats a good question. No, I did the polyphasic sleep before then. So that was
when I was still in Houston.
Interviewer:
And for those people who dont know, polyphasic sleep is this very controversial
concept of taking what would normally require, say, eight hours sleeping,
monophasic meaning one block, and breaking it up into multiple fragments. I
wrote about this in the 4-Hour Body, and man, do people get excited about that,
either positively or negatively. So what was you were experimenting with, was
it Uber men?
Interviewee: Yes.
Interviewer:
So thats about what is it, between two and two and a half hours, something
like that?
Interviewee:
In a 24-hour cycle.
Interviewer:
In a 24-hour cycle. So youre
Interviewee:
So its four hours on, and then 20 or 30 minutes of sleep.
Interviewer:
What happens if you miss one of those naps?
Interviewee:
Youre wrecked. But this was probably one of the most productive periods of
my life. So I wrote WordPress in that time, and also something called BB Press.
Interviewer:
And I remember your answer, but Im curious if you remember what you told me.
Why did you stop polyphasic sleep? What happened?
Interviewee:
What did I tell you?
Interviewer:
You got a girlfriend.
Interviewee:
I know.
Interviewer:
Turns out, girlfriends dont like that sleep cycle.
Interviewee:
No one would have predicted it.
Interviewer:
The getting of the girlfriend?
Interviewee:
Yeah, the getting of the girlfriend. And maybe thats who I marry someday, you
know, someone who will also be on polyphasic sleep.
Interviewer:
It sounds like a really tense household.
Interviewee:
She has to type Dvorak and do polyphasic sleep.
Interviewer:
Oh, yes. You know what? All right, you brought it up. Why are you obsessed
with Dvorak?
Interviewee:
Oh, yeah. So Dvorak is an alternative keyboard layout. So instead of the letters

going ASDF, its AOEU, for example. And all of the letters except for A and M,
actually, are in different places.
Interviewer:
So it would be a competitor to QWERTY?
Interviewee:
Yes. And its more efficient. So I think I was 14 or 15 and I thought: well, Im
probably going to be typing the rest of my life. And so if theres a more efficient
way to do it, I should learn that. And it took about a month. Its kind of like
learning a new instrument, actually. And I just kind of went cold turkey and
learned to type Dvorak, and Ive been doing it yeah, over 15 years, now. Gosh,
Im old.
Interviewer:
And do you still offer rewards to employees who pick up Dvorak?
Interviewee:
Its more like public shaming and/or highlighting. We do little hints like
Interviewer:
Its a dictator with a little more teeth.
Interviewee:
Well you know, in our Christmas pack we send out like a Dvorak keyboard
cover for your laptop, or little a DVzine, which is a DVzine.org is actually a
great website that tells you all the benefits of Dvorak even better than I have.
Theres things like in a Im making up the numbers, but in a year of typing on
QWERTY, your fingers move like 18 miles. And in Dvorak, they move like two
miles. Like its almost an order of magnitude, more efficient.
Interviewer:
I never thought of it this way, but theres the speed benefit which Im very I
was very impatient with the Dvorak. I did play with it for awhile, and then I had
to switch laptops with people and I wasnt tech savvy enough to figure out
Interviewee: [Inaudible].
[Crosstalk]
Interviewer:
I was in Europe, I think, and I was just like having trouble with the settings and
I got very frustrated. But would you say theres an argument for Dvorak being
easier on your tendons and carpel tunnel and all that?
Interviewee:
I would say thats the most the biggest benefit. So again, I type for a living.
Ive never had any problem.
Interviewer:
What type of keyboard to you use?
Interviewee:
I just use the keyboard on my laptop mostly, now.
Interviewer:
You do?
Interviewee:
Oh, yeah.
Interviewer:
Now, you used to have this funky ergonomic keyboard that kept your palms
more vertical, is that right?
Interviewee:
Yeah, you emailed me about that the other day. What was it called?
Interviewer:
Oh, I have no idea. Thats why Im asking.
Interviewee:
I looked it up and I told you what it was. But yeah, it was where the keys were
actually sort of slanted and
Interviewer:
So its almost like youre holding joysticks, I mean in that hand position with your
fingers extended.
Interviewee:
And it is you know, that keyboard is very comfortable and I like it. But honestly,
just the Im not really limited when Im on my computer by the speed I can
type, unless I was transcribing something, like when youre talking. Im limited
by the
Interviewer:
Spend some extra dollars transcribing on task [inaudible].
Interviewee:
Every now and then. [Inaudible] speed I can think, which is much slower than
120 words per minute or whatever I can type. So really the comfort is what does
it for me. Its also kind of a cool security mechanism when someone sits down at
your laptop and like they cant do anything. But it is Dvorak is built into every
single modern day computer, Windows and Mac. Theres a setting if you go into
international keyboards and you can do it. And Id highly recommend. You have
a pretty hardcore set of listeners so
Interviewer:
Pretty hardcore habit of writing, too.
Interviewee:
Check out Dvorak. Theres also a slightly more efficient one called Colemak,
that if I was starting today, I might do Colemak.
Interviewer:
How do you spell Colemak?
Interviewee:
C-O-L-E-M-A-K. The difference between QWERTY and Dvorak is like lets call
that 50 percent. And between like Dvorak and Colemak is like 2 or 3 percent. So
I havent switched again just because its more marginal.
Interviewer: [Inaudible].
[Crosstalk]
Interviewee:
If youre coming from QWERTY, pick one of them.
Interviewer:
Huge. Cool. All right. We will link to all of that in the show notes. Automattic.
Is it coincidence that Automattic is spelled with an M-A-T-T in the middle?
Interviewee:
As a typical egotistical founder, I try to work my name into everything. You

should do that.
Interviewer:
I should? I could. Tim is short. I could stick it in the middle of a lot of stuff.
Automattic itself is its a unique company in a lot of ways. How is Automattic
different from the average tech startup out there?
Interviewee:
A lot of ways. The first and foremost is that everything we put out, were open
sourced to the core. So most technology companies, the IPE of their software
is one of the chief values of it. And we open-source released to the public the
vast majority of the IPE we create. So thats the first and foremost, and its really
the key to the philosophy of Automattic.
The second, which I think is the future of work and the future of all companies
is that were totally distributed. So were now over 300 people, in 37 countries,
and well over 200 cities. So most people work from home or in co-working
spaces, wherever they are. We have a headquarters here in San Francisco but
its only got about 20-ish people in it.
Interviewer:
Theres no one there. Every time Ive been to the headquarters, Im like: where
s everybody? Oh wait, there are tee shirts, I think. Fantastic. Ill get a new tee
shirt.
Interviewee:
We just need a place to get mail and subpoenas.
Interviewer:
Do you get a lot of subpoenas?
Interviewee:
Oh, yeah. Its like everyone who publishes its like if Bill Gates got take down
notices for people using Microsoft Word. We just get people contacting us for
everything.
Interviewer:
Every type of disagreeable content thats published on WordPress results in

some type of letter.
Interviewee: Yep.
Interviewer:
It sounds like fun.
Interviewee:
The more clueless the attorney, the more likely they are to contact us.
Interviewer:
Right. Focusing on the distributed aspect, how did you make that decision, and
how early on? What was the process like? Tell me the story of how you made
that decision.
Interviewee:
It was literally from day one. It was influenced by the fact that WordPress is an
open-source project before I created the company Automattic. So the first four
or five people on Automattic were all in different cities. We had Vermont, Texas,
I was in San Francisco. Actually, the very first guy was in Blarney, Ireland., Cork
County, which is like the Texas of Ireland.
Interviewer:
Is that where the Blarney Stone is?
Interviewee:
It is where the Blarney Stone is.
Interviewer:
What the hell is the Blarney Stone?
Interviewee:
So you climb to the top of this castle thing and you kind of hang off the side, and
youre kind of upside down and you kiss this stone.
Interviewer:
Jesus, that sounds dangerous.
Interviewee:
And theres an old guy that kind of holds you. Its probably not sanitary, but
yeah. I was very shy before I kissed it about ten years ago and now
Interviewer:
Now youre all boldness.
Interviewee:
now Im talking to you.
Interviewer:
Hold on. I want to talk about nervousness and boldness and shyness for a
second. We are gonna come back to the distributed nature of Automattic. This
is not, in fact, the first time that Ive interviewed you. Do you remember the very
first maybe you can tell people about the very first phone call that I made to
you.
Interviewee:
Was that an interview?
Interviewer:
No. I was calling you to ask if I could interview you.
Interviewee:
Yes. So Tim, this was pre 4-Hour Workweek, right?
Interviewer:
Yeah, I think it was 2006.
Interviewee:
So it was old school, like
Interviewer:
Yeah, or early, early 2007.
Interviewee:
That was my Tim bonafide, is that was it was like?
Interviewer:
Oh yeah, back in the day.
Interviewee:
And I got the my phone never rings, and I almost never answer it. But for
some reason I answer this and this weird guy who talked very fast did like a
monologue for like ten minutes. I dont know if it was actually ten minutes; it felt
like ten minutes.
Interviewer:
It was bad. It was really bad.
Interviewee:
But this was Timbo, Tim Ferriss, and he was telling me about something. I
dont know. I think it was like verbal shock and awe.
Interviewer:
I was trying to establish my credentials. And a mutual friend, M.J. Kem had
made the intro and I was worried you would hang up. Because I was aware
vaguely that you did not you werent really a phone guy.
Interviewee:
So you were trying to get in all the words before I hung up.
Interviewer:
Thats right, which is not the best policy in the world but we did end up
Interviewee:
It worked.
Interviewer:
getting to know each other. And I wanted that story to be told because its
easy for listeners or readers to assume that my pitches have always been great
and that I was born that way. No. Ive had thousands of horrible pitches, some
of them just by the luck of the day you happen to contact someone work, but its
despite your technique, not because of it. So distributed from day one. What
are the tools that you currently use to make that work?
Interviewee:
So open-source projects mostly work like this. And basically what they do is
they say you use things like well, back in the day. Im going to say some old
technologies and then well get to the new technologies. IRC, which is sort of
an old text chat or IM system. You collaborate using distributed source control.
So you use subversion, which a modern day equivalent would be something like
GitHub. So you basically have ways that you communicate: email, mailing lists,
forms, all the things that people do even when theyre in the same office. They
IM each other. You just make that the primary way you communicate.
So thats what we did from the very beginning. When Automattic started, we
literally it was boot strap at the beginning. We had no money. And I thought
I was in San Francisco, but why would I move all these people to the most
expensive place in America when we also have no money? And most investors
in fact, a lot of them said: oh yeah, when you raise money, you can finally
move everyone there. But Donaka in Ireland became ready to start a family.
And people are at different places for different reasons. And its true the Bay
Area has some amazing talent.
But you also have well, two things. You have some incredibly talented people
all over the world who for whatever reason dont want to live here, even though
its a pretty cool place. You also have, you know, some of the largest, most
successful companies in the world market caps of over a trillion dollars
combined competing for the same 20 or 30,000 engineers.
Interviewer:
In one place.
Interviewee:
In one place.
Interviewer:
Right, absolutely.
Interviewee:
So when you add up Cisco, Oracle, Apple, Google, just go down the list
Interviewer:
Not to mention all the startups.
Interviewee:
Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter, plus all startups. Theyre all fishing in this pond
which is a little bit over fished. Again, not to say theres not great people, but just
that perhaps back in the day when you had to go to one of these universities
like Stanford or MIT to learn the things to create a scalable web scale startup or
a service, it was important to be clustered there. But now you can learn all this
stuff on Hacker News and you can read Reddit and you can learn everything you
need to do to build the next WordPress from anywhere in the world, any place
you have an internet connection. So there are some super smart people all over.
So we just started to say: well, just like its silly to discriminate on the basis of
lets just say gender. Right, if we said were not going to hire men or women. Its
dumb because you just cut out half of the possible hiring pool. So by definition,
people you hire will be not as good as if you looked at 100 percent. We said
were going to look at the 99.9 percent of the world that doesnt live in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Interviewer:
So not only are you getting better talent because you have a larger pool to filter
from, what can you do with the cost savings of not having to build out a huge
infrastructure for a campus?
Interviewee:
I dont know if it was actually a cost savings. Because once you start flying people
around and things like that, it does add up. We give people an allowance, for
example, $250.00 per month co-working allowance. They can use it at Starbucks
or cafes, they can use it at a co-working space. So we invest in peoples space
because we want them to be productive. But I think what it really comes down
to is just allowing people freedom, autonomy, and something that was actually
inspired when I finally read your book is some lifestyle arbitrage.
I mean you can make a San Francisco salary and live in Argentina or Alabama or
wherever you want to.
Interviewer:
Because a lot goes very, very far.
Interviewee:
And thats kind of cool. Or like myself, like I travel most of the time.
Interviewer:
Where is the youre in 37 countries, you said? What are the most heavily
weighted countries, or represented countries?
Interviewee:
In order, its probably its English speaking countries in order. So United

States is about two thirds. So again, more than the majority. We love us some
Canadians. I love Canadia. UK, Australia; those are kind of the top four or five,
Ireland. So because were still although were totally distributed, were still
speak English. And so places where so thats like the top five. And then of
the other 32 countries, many of them we just have one person in them. We only
have one person in India. We have, I think, three or four people in Argentina, one
person in Brazil.
So it just kind of ends up being whoever the coolest, most I was going to say
bad butt I [inaudible] [00:36:34].
Interviewer:
For you who dont know Matt, he never curses. He has a lot of trouble. It would
be like forcing Mr. Rogers to say fuck on the air. It would just be the most
excruciatingly painful thing to watch. So yes, theyre bad butt engineers.
Interviewee:
Tim, now I cant send this to my mom.
Interviewer:
We can bleep the F.
Interviewee:
Its all right. I actually dont have a problem with cursing; I just dont do it myself.
Interviewer:
How long has that been? Has that always been the case?
Interviewee:
You know, I dont know.
Interviewer:
Youre from Texas!
Interviewee:
And again, I dont know I dont have a problem with it.
Interviewer:
Not that Im implying that all Texans curse a lot but Im from Long Island. Its like
you cant avoid it. Thats half of what we say.
Interviewee:
Theres actually a myth in the company that you cant curse around me or Ill get
mad. But its just not true at all. I have no personal problem with it.
Interviewer:
I feel like I would have picked up on that. So how long have you not been cursing?
Interviewee:
I feel like I must have read a book when I was younger, like a James Bond type
book or something, and I because I recall the sentence; I just dont remember
the context. And someones like you know, the English language has more
words in it than any other language in the world. And so you can find your way
to express yourself in some of these other hundreds of thousands of words.
Now, obviously words like the F word are so versatile, you can use them in a
million different ways. But theres a lot of other really good ones. So I try to
express myself in other ways.
Interviewer:
Thats something thats always struck me and I feel like such a coarse, unrefined,
sort of knuckle dragger with the amount that I curse, which is I enjoy being
around you and something weve talked about on the podcast before with other
folks is surrounding yourself with people you want to be the average of. And so
I like one of the reasons I enjoy being around you is you force me to become
very aware of how much I curse. Which oftentimes, I think, is reflective of lazy
thinking. Just in the way that if you overuse the word interesting, like: oh,
interesting. That is a garbage word. It means nothing. Like come up with a
better word.
Or my particular crutch was pretty. Oh, thats pretty good. Thats pretty
expensive. Thats pretty awesome. And I got so annoyed with it. The way
that I tried to fix it which worked very well, actually, for a period of time was
requiring that every time I say pretty, I add fucking after it. No matter who I
was with. So I was like, oh, thats pretty fucking expensive. Oh, thats pretty
fucking pretty, or whatever, which solved it. But the what are the current tools
that you use? So you had IRC and so on, but whats the state-of-the-art within
Automattic for managing keeping that machine running with the distributed
teams?
Interviewee:
So we actually ended up creating a tool called P2. So you can get it at P2theme.
com. And that is basically a replacement for email. So Automattic basically
sends no emails. All the email I get is from people outside the company. And
think of P2 almost like a Socialcast or a Yammer or kind of like an internal Twitter
or Facebook, but really work oriented. Where people can post short things,
long things, blog posts, embed You Tubes, rich media, mockups, images, audio,
anything. And its a threaded asynchronous discussion. But because its not
email, I honestly dont know why people use email so much in companies.
Because imagine that youre a company. Youre a team of ten people, and you
join that team. How do you catch up with the past two years of conversations?
Do you get people to forward you all the emails theyve been doing?
If someone leaves, like does everything in their inbox well, it does. Everything
in their inbox disappears and all that sort of locked in knowledge is gone. So
everything in Automattic is public by default. All of our stats, all of our everything.
Interviewer: Everything?
Interviewee:
Everything. Like
Interviewer:
Salaries? Equity?
Interviewee:
So were not Buffer, where we publish salaries and equity. But the
Interviewer:
So just for conducts for people who are not in this world of tech, Buffer app
is actually an app I use every day, very useful for scheduling. But Buffer app
allows you to schedule different types of Facebook posts, Twitter posts, etc.,
among many, many other things. But theyre extremely transparent with their
information.
Interviewee:
So they publish a formula, essentially.
Interviewer:
Yes. How they determine their
Interviewee:
Its like a base salary, like.
Interviewer:
salaries.
Interviewee:
50K for support plus a multiplier for experience plus you can get equity or more
salary or things like that. So in theory, the formula is public. I think some of that
stuff goes a little bit too far and it creates as many problems as it solves.
Interviewer:
How do you draw the line? Or how do you decide where to draw the line?
Interviewee:
Its really a judgment call, and also thinking about what is the logical conclusion
of this. So how does that system work when were 10,000 employees or 100,000
employees? And does it just sort of kick the can down the road? And so the
thing I think about the Buffer system isnt its not bad that their salaries are
public. In fact, government jobs salaries are public and many companies have
sort of stated titles and levels that have certain ranges. But then it just kind of
kicks the can down the road that why has this guy got an experience multiplier
of 1.3 and mine is 1.1? You still have the
Interviewer:
What does kicking the can down the road mean?
Interviewee:
If it purports to solve the idea of compensation and inequity, theres still

subjective measures that have a big impact on what the formula the output
of the formula, that doesnt really help. So is it what I think of is this going to
make the company either solve a problem that we cant solve otherwise, or is it
going to make it better overall? And so all of our communication being public
does. Its all searchable, its all indexed, its all tagged. I could look you up in our
system and see every meeting everyones ever had with you.
Interviewer:
I feel like wow, this guy really doesnt know how to use computers.
Interviewee:
Yeah. But going back, now, almost ten years we turn ten this year. So thats
pretty powerful to have that sort of record of everything. And its all searchable
and indexed. So thats I think makes sense. And were very trusting internally.
If were working on an acquisition, for example, and in my status updates that I
do weekly, Ill put that I worked on this acquisition. In theory, that could leak, it
could whatever but I find that when you trust people, they tend to do the right
thing. Versus if we try to really lock everything down, I feel like that wouldnt
engender a two way loyalty.
So P2, slack, I really love.
Interviewer:
Now Slack has come up a lot recently for me, including for very small teams.
Can you explain Slack?
Interviewee:
Sure, as I pour water all over this table.
Interviewer:
Thats all right. Its wood. I would assume the tree was exposed to water.
Hopefully itll be okay.
Interviewee:
So at some point so Slack is for us its a replacement for IRC. So imagine a

its a real time chat platform that actually has a lot of the benefits of P2. You can
embed media in it and things. But it just makes sense for IM. So we used Skype
before. But again, it didnt really scale for us. So if youre the 101st person to
join Automattic and we use Skype for all of our messaging each other, you have
to add 100 people to your contact list and be accepted by each one of them.
Rooms have limits for how many people they can have in them; just all these
arbitrary things thats not suited.
In Slack, you can DM anyone in the company. They also have a really great
search. Theres public channels anyone can join, theres private groups. Its
done by some of the folks behind Flickr Stuart Butterfield, Cal Anderson. And
its just really well done. Its pleasant to use.
Interviewer:
Love the name. Its positive association just in the name.
Interviewee:
Its an enterprise tool, although you can use it for Im on like four or five teams
now, including some that are just groups of friends. But its really pleasant to
use. Its consumer great. And I mean consumer great as a compliment.
Interviewer:
You mean the UI? Like the user experience is consumer friendly and user
friendly.
Interviewee:
It could compete with a Facebook or a Twitter for its usability. Versus where
most enterprise software just you know, is designed by someone who is very
unhappy.
Interviewer:
Why not use P2 for the IRC chat?
Interviewee:
Its not chat.
Interviewer:
Okay, got it.
Interviewee:
So P2 is threaded. It is real time, but you wouldnt use it like a chat client. Where
Slack is chronological, so theres no threading. And yeah, its instantaneous, it
comes to your phone. Its more like an IM application.
Interviewer:
Got it. And would you use P2 for project management type stuff as well?
Interviewee:
We do. We have bug trackers. Different teams use different things. Some use
Fabricator, some use GitHub, some use Track. We allow teams a lot of autonomy
in choosing their tools. But all the communication really happens on P2. So I
think P2 replacement for email, Slack a replacement for
Interviewer:
Skype, IM.
Interviewee:
Skype, IM. Between those two, you can take over the world.
Interviewer:
I love it. For those people who are not aware of who are not part of the tech
world I dont know. That was a coaster. That was a very metallic, Scandinavian
coaster that was stuck to the bottom of a glass. Thats the downside of these
coasters. Were sitting at my place chilling. We were going to do tequila sipping
[Crosstalk]
Interviewer:
I dont want to incriminate Matt, but I have to get on the road a little bit later
so I dont want to be swimming in Casa Dragones, which is my favorite sipping
tequila.
Interviewee:
Its my favorite, too. Its so good.
Interviewer:
It is good. And just to digress because this is worth digressing on I was

introduced to Casa Dragones the first time because I ended up doing some
military training with some active guys and some deployed guys when they were
back for a brief period. And they would do a full day of shooting exercises and
then they would dismantle their guns and clean their guns while slowly sipping
Casa Dragones. It was like the most manly session ever. No ammo around, very
safe. And I had never liked tequila. Id always disliked tequila and it had given
me a horrible hangover.
And Casa Dragones is not intended to be mixed with anything. Its just amazing.
Interviewee:
I think tequila is the most underrated alcohol, actually.
Interviewer:
And its very expensive. Its for special occasions, for sure.
Interviewee:
People have a bad impression of tequila because they drink a bunch of stuff and
then at the end of the night, they do a tequila shot. So they mix like 20 different
alcohols. Or they drink things like margaritas that are full of sugar, that are like
instant hangovers for me. But just like a yeah, I love Casa Dragones. I was
introduced to it by a friend in New York named Shantee and she was like: yeah,
check this out. I was like: come on, why am I gonna pay this much? I was like:
wow, this tequila is delicious!
Interviewer:
Yeah, its amazing. Its really amazing.
Interviewee:
I believe this. If you stick to just tequila, and its a good tequila like Don Julio
1942 is also pretty good. If you stick to a good tequila all night long obviously
with limits youre not hung over in the morning.
Interviewer:
No, I agree. So if youre looking for a hangover cure, guys, you could test
responsibly sipping tequila. Personal tools. Id love to talk about some tools
that you have, say, on your laptop. So one of them that you introduced me to
that I love is Momentum. Could you explain Momentum?
Interviewee:
Yeah. Momentum is an extension for Chrome that when you launch a new tab,
it shows you a beautiful picture, it says Hi Matt, or Hi Tim you put in your
name. I guess you could put in my name but
Interviewer:
[Inaudible] [00:48:07]
Interviewee:
and it asks you a question: what is your focus for today? It has a light to-do
thing I dont use. But really for me, it shows the time and just this beautiful
picture and often like a nice little quote at the bottom, weather in the corner.
Its kind of a clean, fun thing that when you launch a tab because by default on
Chrome, I feel like before it was like your most recently most frequently visited
sites, which is distraction central for me. So Id be launching a new tab and be
like: oh, let me click this tech [inaudible] oh, and then 20 minutes later: oh, what
am I doing?
Interviewer:
Not only that, but if you open a new tab I find it useful, personally I mean the
photos are just amazing. Theyre so gorgeous. It bugs me that the quotes have
no attribution.
Interviewee:
Thats a new feature. If you hover over the quote, it will tell you who its from.
Interviewer:
I feel like that should just be displayed.
Interviewee:
They removed it a little while ago. I dont know why. Now if you hover over the
quote, itll tell you who its from.
Interviewer:
But the photos are absolutely stunning, which catches your attention. And
the reason thats important is when you each day itll prompt you to type an
answer for what is your focus for today. And then it will display that every time
you open a new tab. And for me, if I open a tab to do something unimportant,
trivial, or just that is a pure distraction, Ill be like: oh. Oh, yeah. I should really
get back to that.
Interviewee:
The road to heck is paved with lots of new tabs.
Interviewer:
Tone down. Language! This is a family program, Matt. So what other tweaks or
tools do you have on your laptop that you find helpful?
Interviewee:
Definitely Im on constantly Simplenote. So thats actually I liked it so much

we acquired it. Its a company Automattic bought a few years ago. Its a very
simple notes app that synchronizes instantly basically across web, IOS, Android,
desktop. Theres a great desktop client for Mac so I pretty much live in that.
New additions, Ive started using Wunderlist.
Interviewer:
Wunderlist. Ive heard a lot of good things about Wunderlist.
Interviewee:
Its like W-U-N-D
Interviewer:
Yeah, Chad Fowler works there now.
Interviewee:
Oh, cool.
Interviewer:
Good guy.
Interviewee:
Really liked it. I just started doing that this year, actually. What else is on my
computer? Spotify, you know, standard stuff.
Interviewer:
What are some of your other most used apps on your smartphone?
Interviewee:
Obviously WordPress.
Interviewer:
Yeah, of course.
Interviewee:
Ill get the plugs out of the way in the beginning. So WordPress, Simplenote.
Interviewer:
Got it. Check.
Interviewee:
For messaging, Ive actually become really into Telegram.
Interviewer: Telegram?
Interviewee:
So Telegram.org is a free, fast, and encrypted optional really good encryption,

by the way messaging app that isnt Facebook, isnt Whatsapp, isnt anything
else and its super good. And they have a desktop client, as well. I like Whatsapp,
but Im on my computer the majority of the day so I need to be able to message
from there. And iMessage only works with iPhone other IOS devices, so its
pretty nice.
Interviewer:
So Telegram you can use on your phone and on your laptop?
Interviewee:
Yeah, which I love.
Interviewer:
My iMessage is broken. I wont pull you in for tech support but
Interviewee:
Ill do it after.
Interviewer:
I could use Telegram.
Interviewee:
Slack, so in terms of like making myself a better person, the row is the 7 minute
workout app, Calm dot com, which Im an investor in, and Kindle. Reading.
Interviewer:
Kindle is a meditation app.
Interviewee: No.
Interviewer:
No, that is not the meditation app. I need to do some more dual end back
training. My God, that was terrible. Calm is a meditation app.
Interviewee: Yes.
Interviewer:
How often do you meditate?
Interviewee:
Not enough.
Interviewer:
I feel like thats a dodge. Is that once a month, or whats not enough?
Interviewee:
So where I am in this new year is Im trying to do it for five minutes per day.
Interviewer:
Thats perfect.
Interviewee:
Thats just where Im starting out. Im actually inspired a lot by you talking and
telling me about how meditation has become a big part of your life. Id like to
work up to where its maybe a twice a day, more meaty session. But I struggle a
little bit even at five minutes so putting Calm on my home screen and just kind
of you know, you can do anything for five minutes. Theres really no excuses
for not doing five minutes a day. Kind of neat. For fitness, one of the things I did
awhile back was I would just try to do like it started with one, so just before I
got in the shower I would do one pushup.
And no matter how late youre running, no matter whats going on in the world,
you cant argue against doing one pushup. Come on. Theres no excuse. So I
often find I just need to get over that initial hump with something thats almost
embarrassingly small as a goal. And then that can become a habit.
Interviewer:
I think this illustrates a really important principle, which is rigging the game so
that you can win. People dont like to fail. And if you set the pass/fail mark too
high for an activity, for instance, a lot of people make New Years resolutions.
They decide theyre gonna go to the gym four times a week. Thats too much
for someone who doesnt go to the gym at all. And if thats the pass/fail mark
and you go three times a week, youre going to feel like a failure. Whereas if you
psychologically set the hurdle at one time per week, for instance, and you only
have to spend 15 minutes in the gym, then you can earn bonus credits by doing
what would have previously been viewed as a failure.
Interviewee:
Someone should write a book on that.
Interviewer:
Right. God. I cant do another 600-pager. The 4-Hour Body has another point
which I think is very important, which is the layering of behaviors or sequencing
of behaviors. So if someone has 100 pounds to lose, or 50 pounds to lose, and I
think exercise is the wrong place to start for a whole host of reasons.
Interviewee:
Would you say diet?
Interviewer:
Exercise is the wrong place to start. Diet is the right place to start. Because
exercise is an additive behavior. Its something they dont currently do; they
have to make time for. Whereas especially if theyre overweight, theyre
definitely eating. So they have set aside time to eat and theyre just substituting
in different default meals, which is very, very easy. I met my first slow carb
follower who has lost 200 pounds recently.
Interviewee: Wow.
Interviewer:
Yeah, thats a lot.
Interviewee:
Thats a lot of pounds.
Interviewer:
Thats a lot of pounds.
Interviewee:
Actually, that was a question I wanted to ask you, if its okay to turn this around.
Interviewer:
Yeah, sure.
Interviewee:
Ive been reading a little bit more about fasting intermittent fasting. If there
was a couple of tweets worth of advice you would give?
Interviewer:
For fasting?
Interviewee: Yeah.
Interviewer:
Definitely. All right. I think if you have incredible discipline, I think t he intermittent
fasting for instance, I think his name is Martin Berkhan, Leangains, I think he
does quite a bit here. He may or may not be a fan of my stuff. Hes not a fan of
a lot of people. But thats fine. Im okay with it. Because even if he doesnt like
me, I think hes a good resource for intermittent fasting. A lot of people who
sustain intermittent fasting and Im not saying Martin, Im saying a lot of other
people who are figureheads in that community consume massive amounts of
two things, on the male side. Caffeine: they consume a lot of stimulants.
And some of them consume anabolic like dianabol, which is an oral anabolic
androgenic steroid that inhibits appetite significantly. So you want to I would
encourage you to test intermittent fasting, see how you feel. But I personally
prefer and Ill be writing quite a bit about this to do a I did a seven day
distilled water fast. I think the longevity benefits, known and unknown, and
health benefits, known and unknown, of doing that are very significant.
Interviewee:
What happens if you dont distill the water?
Interviewer:
You know, that is a great question. The doctors who supervised me did not
want me to be consuming any supplemental minerals or electrolytes, which was
interesting because I thought it would be the opposite. In some cases when
people get very weak, theyll supplement with, say, bullion, broth, or something
like that. But they dont want you to be ingesting any type of supplemental
minerals, vitamins, etc. That was a tremendous experience. I actually want to
do that at least once a quarter and possibly do a 14-day.

Interviewee:
I just read where like after the third day of a water fast you start producing more
is it white blood cells? Your body starts resetting
Interviewer:
Oh, yeah. I mean that wouldnt surprise me at all. Id have to look at my labs. Of
course I did tons I did urinalysis every day and lab work
Interviewee:
Did you weigh your poo?
Interviewer:
I did not weigh my poo because I gotta tell you, theres not much poo when
youre not eating for seven days. But you have to be careful with the amount of
water that you drink because if youre not consuming any sources of salt, you
can develop you can over consume water, just like anything else. There have
been examples of people whove died as a result of, say, radio show competitions
where they have competitions to see who can drink the most water. Its a terrible
idea.
Interviewee:
Most things on radio are a terrible idea.
Interviewer:
I think its called hypo nutremia, I think it is, which is an extreme lack of sodium
and other things that interferes with your ability to conduct electricity in muscles
like the heart. But the intermittent fasting, it works for a lot of people very well.
But the vast majority of people I have seen who use it end up using crutches
of some type like stimulants. So you trade one problem for another. And in
fact, you can also end up losing fat not because of the intermittent fasting but
because youre consuming six cups of coffee a day.
Interviewee:
I still dont drink coffee.
Interviewer:
Whats that?
Interviewee:
I still dont drink coffee.
Interviewer:
Why not?
Interviewee:
You know, I figure I have enough vices in my life.
Interviewer:
Arent you an investor in a coffee company?
Interviewee:
Blue Bottle coffee. So I dont drink coffee, but when I do, Blue Bottle is the
Interviewer:
Okay, you dont have to answer this but Im curious. What are some of your
other, suitable for Mr. Rogers vices?
Interviewee:
Wine, women and song. It all goes back to the classics.
Interviewer:
Those are vices?
[Crosstalk]
Interviewee:
I feel like probably the thing I struggle with the most is because my work
and what I do is connected. You know, Im talking to people online, Im on my
computer. And especially since taking over as CEO the past year, what Ive really
had to do is un-schedule more of my life, create more space, read a lot more
than I used to. Because I find that when I dont have that space, when Im just in
the Im not gonna call it a flow when Im in sort of like the hedonistic treadmill
of pings and chats and tweets and not even necessarily being distracted by
Facebook or by Twitter, but even just work stuff; you dont take that step back
that allows you to have the creative inspiration or the ideas for the next big
thing. Your mind works through the problem in a different way.
Interviewer:
Right, the de-loading phase. Those blocks of time. What have you found helpful
for creating that space?
Interviewee:
Another interesting thing about Automattic is we have almost meetings.
Interviewer:
Lets talk about it.
Interviewee:
So I only have three standing meetings at Automattic.
Interviewer:
Standing meaning physically standing?
Interviewee:
Oh, no. Standing like its always standing on the calendar.
Interviewer:
I see. Not standing.
Interviewee:
So every other week.
Interviewer:
What makes those meetings worth doing?
Interviewee:
Theyre meetings with groups of people who are responsible for three areas at
Automattic. One for all of WordPress.com and everything related there. One for
Jetpack and all the plug-insurance we make. And then one we just call business.
Theyre called dot com, dot org, dot biz. So the commission, the organization,
and the biz group. And business is basically all the people who work on making
money at Automattic.
Interviewer:
Got it. So all the VIP guys.
Interviewee:
Yeah, VIP is on that team, ads, so the commercial side. Because to be honest,
the vast majority of automaticians dont think about revenue at all. There are
just a few of us that shoulder the burden for everyone else.
Interviewer:
Its probably a good thing. What do the other people primarily focus on?
Interviewee:
I dont know. Comics
Interviewer: Tequila.
Interviewee:
What theyre having for lunch. I mean you think about the user. You think about
the experience. You think about what is the thing the hardest thing is spending
the most time on the most important things, just in life in general, and especially
in building products. Its so easy. Theres a term in open-source called bike
shedding. And its this idea do you know it?
Interviewer:
I do but I want you to explain it. This is a great concept.
Interviewee:
Im gonna butcher the story, but someone brings a proposal for a nuclear plant
to a city council. And its this 200 page thing and they kind of flip through it. But
its like too much for people to comprehend and theyre not nuclear physicists
or activist anyway, so they just kind of rubber stamp it. And then the next
person up wants to build a bike shed off the main road. And everyone has
an opinion. Like what color the bike shed should be, should it accommodate
tandem bicycles, should it
Interviewer:
What color should it be
Interviewee:
Yeah. And so theres an amazing website called bikeshed.org and a cool feature
of it is that you can type in as a sub domain a color. So if you type green.
bikeshed.org, itll give you a green background and then the text of this original
meaningless post, which is like a BSD thing from like probably 13 or 14 years ago,
now, that tells the story and talks about how usually proportionately the more
trivial something is, the more likely it is that lots of people will have opinions and
feel like they can have an impact on it.
Interviewer:
Thats so true. And I want to talk about also your auditioning process. But first
were going to hear a few words from the fine sponsors who make this show
free for all of you. So please dont skip ahead. The things we have coming up
with Matt, were just getting started. Were going to talk about his auditioning
process, what he has in his carryon bag this man travels the world all the time.
Were going to talk about investing, Warren Buffet, music, his rituals around
productivity as it relates to music, and on and on and on. So please dont go
away, and here you go, our fine sponsors.
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now back to our show.
We have taken a potty break which gave us a chance to upgrade our beverage,
since Ive cancelled my driving plans this evening from T to tequila. So bear with
me one moment. Actually Matt, perhaps you could elucidate us, enlighten us
about some of your favorite music at the moment while I very geisha-like pour
us some lovely tequila.
Interviewee:
I will be monitoring your technique. I am so late to the game, but I just

discovered I was about to say Tila Tequila because but I did not just discover
I discovered Sam Smith, the opposite of Tila Tequila, who just his voice is super
haunting. Been enjoying Milky Chance lately. They have a cool song called
Interviewer:
Is that from Tila Tequila?
Interviewee:
No. They have a cool song called Stolen Dance.
Interviewer:
What type of music is that? What would you call that?
Interviewee:
Thats interesting. So they have kind of a reggae feel. But its like a guy with a
guitar who and sings, combined with a guy who kind of plays the laptop, like
more of like a beat, almost like a DJ.
Interviewer:
Very cool.
Interviewee:
And I saw them live in San Francisco, great show. Then other than that, I listen
to a lot of hip hop and a lot of jazz.
Interviewer:
And you play instruments, also.
Interviewee:
Yeah, primarily saxophone.
Interviewer:
When did you learn to play the saxophone?
Interviewee:
I started in second or third grade.
Interviewer: Really?
Interviewee:
Yeah, so I started pretty young. My dad played sax so I always wanted to do it.
And I had gotten kicked out of piano class.
Interviewer:
For doing what?
Interviewee:
I dont know. They said I had no musical talent so I wanted to prove them wrong.
Interviewer:
God, what is wrong with some teachers? Unbelievable. Cheers, by the way.
Interviewee: Cheers.
[Clink]
Interviewer:
And so the saxophone was your transition from piano. And is there anything
are there any skills that you developed through the sax that have translated to
coding or anything else you do?
Interviewee:
Almost everything. So from how to breathe and be on stage in front of people
Interviewer:
For speaking gigs and whatnot.
Interviewee:
Or just anything. You know, youre in front of a group of people. How to interact.
So in jazz, its all about listening and responding. Youre kind of co-composing
on the fly when youre improvising or in a quartet or something. How to learn
new things. So sometimes for different if I played in like a musical theater or
band, or something like that, I need to double on piccolo or flute or clarinet or
another instrument so Id have to learn that fairly quickly.
I would say most importantly, the concept of deliberate practice, which I know
youre a big fan of. I had a teacher once who told me if you only practice the
things where you sound good, youre never going to get better. You reach kind
of a local maximum. And that was a trap I think I had fallen into.
Interviewer:
Local maximum? I need to learn what this is because I just say a constrained
maximum?
Interviewee:
Yeah, you reach the best youre going to get within this sort of
Interviewer:
Limited sphere.
Interviewee:
limited sphere. Youre not moving on to the next sphere. Especially back
when I was young, I think I was more self conscious. So when I practice, whether
it be at school or at home, I want to sound good for whoever might walk by or
hear me or anything. And thats not how you get better. You get really good
at the ten things that youre practicing. But the people who practice the best
sound terrible. Theyre squawking and squeaking and doing long tones and
overtones.

They sound like theyre its funny. One of the best things you can do to sound
better on the saxophone is whats called long tones, which is just playing a single
note for a really long time and then going to the next note and playing that for
a really long time.
Interviewer:
Why does that make you better? Is it an endurance thing?
Interviewee:
It helps your embouchure and your tone.
Interviewer:
Your what?
Interviewee: Embouchure.
Interviewer:
What is that?
Interviewee:
So the embouchure is basically the position and firmness of your mouth around
the mouthpiece. Its basically the seal around the mouthpiece
Interviewer:
Ill try not to make any jokes.
Interviewee:
Or think of like a brass instrument. When they have the sort of circular mouthpiece
and they do that sort of thing inside of it. They use an embouchure to change
their pitch.
Interviewer:
Thats the position of the mouth.
Interviewee:
Yeah. Its also the position of your throat, the way the air is flowing, the position
of your tongue inside your mouth that determines where the air goes. Its
different for different instruments. But ultimately that and the breath support
is what determines your tone.
Interviewer:
You listen to a lot of music. Youre an avid consumer of music. Do you still listen
when you work to one track or a handful of tracks on repeat?
Interviewee:
I do.
Interviewer:
Explain what the last thing that you listened to in this way and why you do
that.
Interviewee:
Literally today the Sam Smith song, Im not the Only One, which is I actually
just blogged about it. Oh, I can plug my blog. M-A dot T-T.
Interviewer:
Which is a great domain name.
Interviewee:
Thank you.
Interviewer:
Where is TT? Trinidad and Tobago?
Interviewee:
Trinidad and Tobago. I actually just renewed it for another three years.
Interviewer:
Why only three years? Im curious.
Interviewee:
Its a really weird it was unregistered when I got it.
Interviewer:
So just luck of the draw?
Interviewee:
Yeah. I literally well, it wasnt luck of the draw; just no one went through the
junk you had to go through to register the domain Trinidad and Tobago.
Interviewer:
Oh, because its a pain in the ass in Trinidad and Tobago.
Interviewee:
I had to wire money to Trinidad. I was in the Bank of America on Third and
Brandon or something Fourth and Brandon and they were like, Sir, are you
sure about this? I was like, Yeah, yeah, its fine. I read it on the internet.
Interviewer:
Its fine. The internet said its okay.
Interviewee:
Someone contacted me; Im going to send them a couple grand. They were
very concerned about the money I was wiring to this Trinidadian bank. But you
have to I find that
Interviewer:
So on your blog you put a video of
Interviewee:
Just a You Tube of the music video for this song. Thats just because You Tube
is the easiest way to share music now. The nice thing about a song on repeat is
that I can really enjoy it, but something about it allows my brain to background
it, as well. I have a couple albums that I can do the entire album on repeat. But
what I cant do is something new or novel, so like a Pandora or Spotify radio. It
distracts me because Im like: oh, whats this? And next thing I know Im on the
artists page, and on their Wikipedia and really digging into it. So I really want
something Ive heard sometimes literally a thousand times before.
Interviewer:
What are some of the other songs that youve heard a thousand times?
Interviewee:
I really like John Mahers Who Says? Who says I cant get stoned? Which is
kind of funny because I dont. What is another one? Some Kanye songs, like
Gorgeous, Power. Just different whatever it is at the moment. Oh, Kendrick
Lamar is amazing, so Kendrick Lamar has a song, Rigamortis. Its actually kind
upbeat. Its a pretty intense song and his lyrics are fast and furious. He is, in my
opinion, the greatest lyricist of this generation.
Interviewer:
What was the name again? I dont even recognize the name. Im embarrassed
to say it.
Interviewee:
Kendrick Lamar.
Interviewer:
Kendrick Lamar.
Interviewee:
Oh, man. Yeah, he
Interviewer:
I remember when someone told me like a year ago who Taylor Swift was. Im
really out of the slipstream of pop culture.
Interviewee:
Kendrick Lamar is definitely in my top five favorite rappers right now. His music
actually has a lot of jazz influence on many things he does. And this song,
Rigamortis, samples a jazz track. A lot of these tracks are shorter so the Sam
Smith is like I think three and a half minutes. Who Says? Is like 2:56 or so.
Rigamortis is under three minutes. Just put them on the loop.
Interviewer:
So I borrowed that habit. I remember you told me about this and I thought it
was genius because I had used different albums for different books. And for
those people who havent heard this, because it does help some people a lot to
write, if your writing period is best at night and you feel very isolated, which I did
late at night I generally did my best synthesis not research, not interviewing
but synthesis from about 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. And I would be alone and it was
just very hermit-like, and I felt very isolated to be in the quiet and darkness by
myself.

So I would put in earphones, listen to music on repeat, and very often something
without vocals Pendulum, for instance. And I would then watch the same
movie over and over and over again. But it would just be in my peripheral vision
because the images of human beings would make me feel less isolated and it
was very comforting. So I had the Bourne Identity the first, and Shawn of the
Dead for the 4-Hour Workweek.
Interviewee:
Didnt you do one of the Bond movies, too?
Interviewer:
I did Casino Royale. Ive seen hundreds, probably thousands of times because I
would just leave it on repeat. So it might play five, six times a night if Im really
in a session. And then for the 4-Hour Chef, the funny edition was the first thing
that I clicked on Amazon Prime that was available on Amazon Prime, which
was Babe. So I ended up watching
Interviewee:
Oh, with the pig.
Interviewer:
With the pig.
Interviewee:
Oh, wow.
Interviewer:
And Farmer Hoggit. Its actually a really great movie. Its a brilliant movie.
Theres a lot hidden in that movie; there are a lot of subtle details. Just like Kung
Fu Panda is a genius movie.
Interviewee:
Now that I have not seen.
Interviewer:
Oh, its fantastic.
Interviewee:
I love when they made these movies for kids but they put cool stuff in there for
adults, too.
Interviewer:
Like Aladdin and many other movies. Really fantastic. So all right. So thats the
music trick, the repeat.
Interviewee:
I have a colleague who does the movie thing and
Interviewer:
Like I do. I put the movie on mute, though.
Interviewee:
Oh, really?
Interviewer:
Yeah, and I listen to the music.
Interviewee:
For him he does Big Labowski and a few others. The only variation Ive introduced
in the past few years is I like this electronic EDM-type group called the Jane
Does. Theyre also friends. And they do some mixes. And they have some I
guess its called trap music.
Interviewer: Trap?
Interviewee:
This is where Im getting out of my element a little bit. But I find that if Im
doing things like email where I need to be a little bit more higher energy and go
through a lot of things, thats really good for me.
Interviewer:
I love it. Auditions. Tell me about auditions. What are auditions, how do they
work in Automattic? Why auditions?
Interviewee:
So one thing thats really important when youre a distributed company is theres
no one looking over your shoulder. Theres no manager walking by. Theres no
one even who knows whether you started work or if you started work at all, or
what time you did. So you really need to hire people who are self motivated and
can manage themselves to some extent. A ton of automaticians were formerly
freelancers or CTOs at other companies or things like that because they really
need a lot of ability to self direct and have self management, which is a tough
skill. Its still something I work on every day of my life.
So what we found weve tried every hiring especially when we started, you
know? I was much younger and I thought: oh, we should do it like the other
companies do it. So we tried how many manhole covers are there in Manhattan
Interviewer:
The McKinsey and Google brainteasers.
Interviewee:
The brainteasers, although Google has stopped doing them. I think Microsoft
was most famous for them. So we did brainteasers, we did coding tests, we
did the thing where you ask a hard technical problem and have them write their
code on the whiteboard. We did it where 20 people would interview the person
not literally 20 but you know, like interview after interview and then you sort of
get a consensus. None had a great correlation with how productive and great
that person was in the company later. I also started to see no correlation I
think because I dropped out of college, I was very entranced by people with
masters or PhDs. Turns out it has no correlation with how effective they were in
an organization.
So what we started to do is we found I looked back to the first couple people.

And I said: well, I worked with these guys before. We worked together on the
open-source project. And so how can we sort of set up a hiring system where
you actually do the work that youre gonna do on the job, and thats all youre
judging them by. You dont care about anything else. And so we tried to make
the interview process as much like the actual work as possible.
So we dont do voice or video. Its all text chat, because thats how we primarily
communicate. It also prevents you from any subconscious bias
Interviewer:
Getting romanced by whatever voice or presentation the person might have.
Interviewee:
Yeah. Or maybe they have a funny accent or something like that. That doesnt
matter in our company, unless maybe theyre a sales person and their ability to
convince you of something, or have charisma is important for their job. Theres
really no benefit to these in person or even voice or video interactions. So we
have a pretty good system for this, now. We get a ton of applications. Im
actually over 1,000 applications behind now.
Interviewer:
How do you filter 1,000 applications?
Interviewee:
So I book in the process, now. So where weve evolved to is I review all the
incoming applications. I do a first pass on them. I pass them onto a team if they
seem promising or interesting.
Interviewer:
What do you look for?
Interviewee:
I cant tell you everything.
Interviewer:
What do you look for or disqualify against?
Interviewee:
I look for a passion, attention to detail, drive beyond the things that they need
to do. Im totally down with quirky.
Interviewer:
What questions do you ask to get an indication of those things?
Interviewee:
So at this point all Im doing is looking at emails. So literally theres no chat,

no anything. So its purely based on the care and effort that they put into this
email. And weve tried forms and things they fill out before, and weve gone
back to just a freeform email because I want to see what kind of attachment
they use. I want to see who their email client is. I want to see if you can tell
theyve copied and pasted things because different text and different font sizes.
All of those are indicators. And not any one of them.
Interviewer:
Paste just plain text. [Inaudible]. [01:18:04]
Interviewee:
Any one of those would not be a yea or a nay. But the combination, you get
a pretty good sense. And then I pass that onto a team. The team has for
example, for engineering they have a system where everyone again looks at it.
They kind of rate it. They choose a certain number of people who make it to
the next stage, which is like a very simple code test. It takes about half an hour.
Sometimes its called a fizz buzz test and programming.
Interviewer:
What does that mean?
Interviewee:
Its just a basic, super basic thing that anyone
Interviewer:
Fizz buzz? Does that stand for something?
Interviewee:
Yeah. You move some variables around that are fizz and buzz and you arrange
them in different ways, or you repeat them, or you sort an array or something
like that. But a basic thing that anyone can figure out. And that filters out a
surprising number of people even who make it through these first few screens.
Simple coding test. And then
Interviewer:
How do they screw that up?
Interviewee:
I dont know.
Interviewer:
Okay. All right, moving on. Fair enough. I had this application for this managing
editor position and I was astonished at how people would go through 75 percent
of the application this is a Wufoo form theyd get to a question that asked,
lets say, how you would get the Rock to be on the podcast. What would your
process look like. And they would say: now, on second thought Im not interested
in this job. And then they would go to the bottom and still hit submit.
Interviewee: Wow.
Interviewer:
I was very puzzled by that. Yeah, theres a lot of odd behavior in job applications.
Interviewee:
By the way, I dont know if you know but Im hiring a new executive assistant,
personal assistant and I referenced your managing editor hiring post. I think I
block quoted the section where you say why its terrible to work with you.
Interviewer:
Yeah, I think its important. Ive tried to not disguise that, but I havent been
super explicit about it in the past and I just need someone who finds that
Shackleton expedition type description appealing as opposed to off putting.

Someone who wants a perfectionist, someone who wants a person like me to
edit the hell out of their work. So Ive found that very important. So you have
them go through a simple coding test.
Interviewee:
I like that, by the way. I went to Antarctica last month, to the South Pole and
so Ive been reading the Shackleton I think its the Endurance book. Such a
fascinating story.
Interviewer:
Fascinating. For those people who dont know, the classified ad read something
like: Seeking men for dangerous journey, return uncertain, glory upon success.
Low pay.
Interviewee:
Harsh conditions. I had a friend who joked she should make that her Okay Cupid
listing.
Interviewer:
Right, the tinder description. Probably get a lot of responses. The code test
and then what happens?
Interviewee:
We do a trial project. So basically we dont actually were not trying to get

code out of people or anything like that. We just do something that looks like
the actual work. And were not just looking at the code they produce, but how
they communicate, how they commit.
Interviewer:
And thats a paid project?
Interviewee:
Yeah. So we put everyone on just a flat rate, $25.00 per hour contract. Most
people who apply have jobs already so its often a nights or weekends thing.
As long as the expectations are set, it doesnt matter. If you can only work one
hour a week, thats okay; just let us know. Some people actually take vacation
to do it. So theyll take time off from their job and kind of go at it full time. If
youre applying for a happiness engineer position, youll answer tickets or do
live chats. We try to replicate the real position as much as possible. And then
if they make it through all of this, they get sent back to me for a final chat. And
that Ill do on Slack, now. I used to do it on Skype. And I just go back and forth
with them, usually like three or four hours, actually.
Interviewer: Wow.
Interviewee:
Well, because youre typing so it takes a little longer. For that I try to determine
a cultural fit, really get to know the person. Because I have afterwards, I lets
say were hiring an engineer. Before I send the offer letter, I decide what team
they go on. So kind of like the whats the thing where you put on a hat in Harry
Potter and it decides which
Interviewer:
Oh, I dont know. I know what youre talking about. It decides which school
youre going to?
Interviewee:
Yeah. So by talking to them, Im partly determining like which team will they fit
best with because the other 300 people in the company Ive done this with. And
so I know what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their personalities
are, what time zones theyre in. So really putting a lot of variables into deciding
where someone goes.
Interviewer:
Are there any simple questions that give you a particular amount of depth into
someones personality?
Interviewee:
Yeah. Im constantly iterating the question list and Im happy to show it to you
after the podcast. But every interview is different. Almost every single one, I try
out something new, or vary it, or
Interviewer:
What is your spirit animal?
Interviewee:
What is your spirit animal? [Inaudible] [01:22:51]
[Crosstalk]
Interviewee:
It doesnt matter. And some questions I retire, and its totally different. Its not
like a pre-typed script or anything. Sometimes things go one direction and I
just go with it. But at the end of it, if I decide to make an offer, we talk about
compensation and then I send out the letter.
Interviewer:
What percentage of people fall out in that last chat with you?
Interviewee:
Falling out in the last chat is pretty rare, especially now that the systems before
it are so good. So the hiring teams have gotten quite, quite good at Automattic.
Its tough because hiring is not something that you get good at until youve
done it five or ten times and youve seen people work out and not work out.
So its really just something that you need experience. I tell people, like when
they go in this new role, Im like: in the beginning youre going to make some
mistakes and thats okay; well plan for that. But then you learn from that and
youll triangulate.
Interviewer:
Do you have an opinion of top grading? Do you know anything about top
grading?
Interviewee:
I find references completely useless. Including when you go outside what they
give you as references and you try to contact people. I havent found any it
takes a ton of time and I havent found any sort of correlation with the ultimate
quality of the person. I heard about top grading and tried it for a few months.
Wasnt worth it.
Interviewer:
Didnt work very well.
Interviewee:
I have an article we can put in the show notes
Interviewer:
Oh, Id love to.
Interviewee:
Harvard Business Review where I wrote kind of five or ten pages on this.
Interviewer:
Thats a great piece. I would love to include that. I actually have that printed out
because Im an old man and highlighted, which is a weird thing I do. Sometimes
Ill print something out, take notes, highlight and then rescan it back into
Evernote to be OCRd.
Interviewee: Cool.
Interviewer:
Yeah, which I like a lot because I think better tactically. Is that a real word? I
think so. What is the book that you have given as a gift most often, besides The
Year Without Pants, which you can feel free to mention.
Interviewee:
There is a book about Automattic and WordPress.com called The Year Without
Pants, written by a great author, Scott Berkun. It tells the story about how
we work. I give a lot of different books as gifts because everyones different.
So theres one by and I apologize now because I cant pronounce anything
because I I just read; I dont actually talk that much.
Interviewer:
Well, you were pronouncing crayons as crowns, earlier, which I thought was
amazing. I was like: crowns? What are crowns?
Interviewee:
Yeah, you draw with the crowns.
Interviewer:
The cute little thing that kids draw with. I was like; oh, crayons.
Interviewee:
Maybe its a Southern thing, I dont know. But for example, Ive given a few times
a book called How Pruse can change your Life, by Elaine Depatong. Field Guide
to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit is one Ive given.
Interviewer:
Thats cool. What is that about?
Interviewee:
I dont know if I can summarize that one, actually.
Interviewer:
Field Guide to Getting Lost. Is Rebecca Solnit why do I know that name?
Interviewee:
Shes local, actually.
Interviewer:
She is. Thats why I know that name.
Interviewee:
She writes for The New Yorker, a little bit of everything. The Effective Executive.
Interviewer:
Thats a great one. Thats Peter Drucker, right?
Interviewee:
Anything by Peter Drucker is gold.
Interviewer:
So good.
Interviewee:
And so I recommend that a lot in the company. Words that Work, by Frank
Luntz.
Interviewer:
I read that on your recommendation.
Interviewee:
Did you like it?
Interviewer:
I did. How would you describe that? Thats a former or current
Interviewee:
Hes like the linguistic head of the Republican Party.
Interviewer:
Right. So inheritance tax to death tax, or controlling the labels of the conversation
and understanding what language works well for certain purposes. Really
fascinating.
Interviewee:
And depending on how if someone likes that book, then I might point them to
George Lakoff, like he has a great Seminole work from the 70s called Women,
Fire, and Dangerous Things. Or just other books about framing and language.
Theres a book for every purpose and I find myself finding new ones. So for
example, last year I just started reading fiction again. I hadnt read fiction for
about 15 years.
Interviewer:
I did the same thing. Any favorites so far?
Interviewee: Really?
Interviewer:
Yeah, I didnt read fiction for probably 15 to 20 years.
Interviewee:
Theres one called the Hard-boiled Wonderland at the End of the Universe.
Interviewer: Murakami?
Interviewee:
Yeah. I really liked that.
Interviewer:
Thats a quirky one.
Interviewee:
He has a lot of jazz references and things I like. The Majus .
Interviewer:
I have not read that one.
Interviewee:
was a really good one. Im working through a few different ones now like
Chanteron and The Untethered Soul. Ive just been trying to carve out more
time for reading. The Kindle is the device that even if I dont use it for a month or
two, Ill still keep it in my pack just because its aspirational. But when I can get
in a good flow, Ill read a little bit every day, sometimes first thing in the morning.
My whole life is better.
Interviewer:
Youre the one who convinced me to get a Kindle. I dont know if you remember.
Weve gone on a number of trips together, Thelma and Louise style, and attended
word camps in Greece and Turkey. Vietnam was a trip for Room to Read, which
is a great organization. But I remember in Greece I had this backpack full of
14 books and it was just popping my disks in my spine lugging this damn thing
around. And you had your tiny little Kindle Touch and you were like: hows that
working out for you? I was like: its terrible.
Interviewee:
Although what you would do, while we were waiting, is you would actually lift it
like a weight.
Interviewer:
Thats true. I use my backpack I have a hemp backpack thats reinforced that
I can use for exercises and swings and stuff. I remember Kevin Rose once when
we were in we went to China on a trip for tea tasting. I would wake up in the
morning and I would do exercises. It was so hot there. I would do exercises with
this backpack in my tidy whities. They were like [inaudible] [01:28:29] underwear.
Kevin took a video of me doing a prayer rose in my underwear which I had to
confiscate and delete, thankfully. Although I dont think it would do anything
bad to my reputation because I dont have one to protect at this point.
Interviewee:
I think if you looked at a side by side, you have the backpack full of book muscles
and I have the Kindle muscles.
Interviewer:
Thats true. Although to your credit, you did get into physical fitness and kettle
bells and so on. Has that continued, or has that paused for the moment?
Interviewee:
It has continued pretty well, actually.
Interviewer:
You look leaner than the usual I shouldnt say the usual. Thats not fair. Than
puffy Matt. And theres a puffy Tim, too. But I havent seen you puffy in quite
awhile.
Interviewee:
So the thing that I started doing most recently, this most recent summer, was
running. And just kind of randomly. Like I was in Italy and it was really pretty
and I thought: oh, let me try going for a run. And it killed me, like I barely made
it like half a mile before I had to walk. It just kind of started building up. I think
my next run was like a month later. Like it wasnt like I was instantly attached.
Theres a guy in the company. He calls himself the crazy running guy.
Interviewer:
I think Ive met him. Whos this?
Interviewee:
Joe Boidstein. And he actually or Bodsten, sorry. Sorry, Joe. He started doing
this thing where hed land at the airport and then run to the word camp from the
airport. So 20, 30 for our grand meet up in Utah, he ran from Salt Lake City to
Park City. It was I think 50 or 60 miles.
Interviewer:
Thats insane.
Interviewee:
And so at our grand meet up this year which was in Park City, he ran little running
workshops every morning. So I went out with him. He was like, Hey, dont focus
on speed. Try to do 180 strides per minute. So smaller steps, even if you run
slower. Focus on your heart rate. Like all these sort of different things. And
it completely transformed me. Where before, my legs would always be really
sore, like my whole body would hurt after I ran even though I loved it, like I was
just in too much pain. I just slowed down and then started being able to go
much further.
Interviewer:
Theres a really interesting guy named Dr. Romanoff I dont know if youve
ever come across this name. he founded a method of running called the Pose
Method. He talks a lot about the forward lean and using gravity to assist your
money your money use gravity if I could figure that out, thatd be amazing
gravity to assist your running as opposed to heel striking and pushing. There
are some really fascinating videos of him running on ice, for instance, by using
that forward lean. Very, very cool stuff so you might enjoy
Interviewee:
I started with the virbams. I switched to just some super thin trail running shoes,
but I still run more on the front or the middle of my foot.
Interviewer:
Yeah, you have to be careful with the minimalist shoes. If you get too aggressive
in the beginning, particularly since the its not just the impact on the soft
tissues of the foot and the connective tissues. Most people who have walked
with an elevated heel even an inch for a long period of time have chronically
shortened Achilles tendon. So suddenly when you stand flat footed and youre
leaning forward on top of that, to run you can cause Achilles tendonitis or
tendonosis.
Interviewee:
Which is really painful.
Interviewer:
Really bad. Ive done that before.
Interviewee:
And its true. For awhile, my right Achilles was kind of sore. But I had a friend
we were training for a half marathon together and he ended up really injuring
his feet which is tough because hes a fireman. Hes my best friend in Houston,
Rene. You gotta be careful with this. I know youre not a huge fan of running. I
know its high impact and
Interviewer:
Its not that Im not a fan. Its that I choose my exercise based on my objectives.
And thus far I have not found running to stack up favorably compared to other
things.
Interviewee:
I can see that.
Interviewer:
I think that running is much easier to justify as a moving meditation and certainly
its fantastic for travel. But thats why I have my bag that I can use as a weight
also. I would like to get better at running due to the Lyme disease and everything
that Ive dealt with, I have partial tears in both ACLs, both elbows, and both hips.
So Im gonna have to work up to any type of impact. So Ill start with some of
the calisthenics that Im doing now and then graduate to low impact jumping
rope, to really condition the lower legs in particular. Im doing long walks also.
Im conditioning the feet. Ill do two to three hour walks very routinely and make
phone calls. Batch my phone calls.
Interviewee:
I love when Im in a new city and I can do a run. Its a great way to see the city.
Interviewer:
Oh, definitely.
Interviewer:
Because youre at just the right speed. I did one in Washington, D.C. a week
or two ago and it was just so cool. I felt like I was on an episode of House of
Cards. Im going past the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and
running around the mall. It was so cool.
Interviewer:
Thats what Bruce Lee used to do. Hed just travel with his running shoes. And
when he first landed, hed go for an orientation run. So one of the first things I
do in lieu of the jog or running is bike tours. So Ill do sort of cruiser bike tours in
any new city that I want to get acquainted with. I would love to ask a couple of
questions that came in through Twitter, specifically. Im @tferriss, two Rs, two
Ss. You are?
Interviewee:
@photomatt, P-H-O-T-O-M-A-T-T. Also a pun. Remember you used to get your

photos done at those.
Interviewer:
Oh, I never noticed that.
Interviewee:
Wow, you just realized that.
Interviewer:
I just noticed that. You are I forgot youre the pun master. And in Japanese
they call those [Speaking Japanese] which is Dad jokes, Dad gags. You do puns
all the time. You have as long as Ive known you. Okay. I should have known. All
right. Photomat. That makes perfect sense. Weve covered some of these. Joe
Palokowski asked about how you acquire developers. We already talked about
that. This is from Andy Vaughn. Would you still bootstrap versus taking angel
money, seed money, a software tool like WordPress if you were starting over in
2015? Why or why not?
Interviewee:
Thats an interesting question. Im not sure if he thinks were totally bootstrapped

or that weve raised money. Ill say what we did and then what I would do again.
We bootstrapped for the first few months and then I raised about a million
dollars.
Interviewer:
This was Automattic?
Interviewee:
This was Automattic. WordPress is a whole, separate entity. So for Automattic,

we raised about a million dollars in 2006. That was in hindsight, we didnt
need it but Im glad we did it because I felt responsible for these other lives, the
other people who were sort of betting on joining this company that was run by a
20-year-old. So I wanted to have some certainty. I wanted to have some money
in the bank that said even if things went to zero, we all have a job for at least a
year. So thats why we raised that first money.
2008 we had an acquisition offer for north of $200 million, even though we were
just I think 18 people at the time. So we used that to turn into a round. And
did about $12 million in our primary capital there. And then we didnt raise
money again until last year, 2014. So I was pretty anti-raising money, as you can
imagine for those six years that we didnt do it.
Interviewer:
How much did you is it public how much you raised last year?
Interviewee:
We raised $160 million.
Interviewer:
Thats a big number. Is the valuation public?
Interviewee:
It was over a billion dollars, yeah.
Interviewer:
Thats also a big number. Even bigger number. If you were starting over again
developing WordPress, would you make a for profit entity like WordPress.com
or Automattic sooner?
Interviewee:
So it wasnt a matter of nonprofit and for profit. It was just a matter not even
thinking about it, loose amalgamation of random people working together. And
then a for profit that came later. Nonprofits Im not as much of a fan of as I used
to be. WordPress does have a WordPress foundation. Just the rules around
them are mostly designed to prevent people from cheating on their taxes, which
we dont care about. And they were stripped, meaning
Interviewer:
Meaning you pay your taxes.
Interviewee:
Yeah. Meaning we pay yeah. Well pay taxes til the cows come home. So
those rules to prevent abuse end up constricting the good an organization can
do in a lot of ways. So I dont think I would start another nonprofit. In terms of
raising money, one of the things that became very clear to me once I became
CEO was the opportunity cost of being as lean and sort of break managing
the company to break even as we were. We couldnt do big acquisitions, we
couldnt invest in infrastructure, we couldnt do a lot of things that make a lot
of sense now. Like for example, since we raised money were building out 11
datacenters worldwide.
So for worldwide users of WordPress, its going to start getting a lot faster
because itll be closer to you physically. Acquisitions that we wouldnt have
considered before, were doing now. So I would if you can set expectations
correctly with investors and raise money on terms that allow you to stay true to
your principles and remain in control of the things you want to be in control of,
I think it can be I would highly recommend it. But those shared expectations
are really important.
Interviewer:
What would be an expectation thats important to you?
Interviewee:
An expectation that were not gonna IPO this year or next year or the year after
that. Thats not a priority of ours.
Interviewer:
Got it. Just agreeing on the timeline.
Interviewee:
An example for us would be that we dont monetize Jetpack.
Interviewer:
Can you explain for people what Jetpack is?
Interviewee:
Oh, sure. So Jetpack is a plug-in for WordPress. It gives you all the best of the
cloud services of WordPress.com, things that resize and optimize your images
for whatever client is visiting, whether on mobile or desktop. Things that auto
post your blog posts to Twitter or Facebook, Pinterest, Path, everywhere, stats.
This is all the things built into Jetpack. That, for us, is really about getting more
users of WordPress. Its not about charging for some of those features. Now,
Jetpack has huge amounts of uses. It reaches a very influential audience. An
investor looking at the company might say: if you charge a little bit of money for
this Jetpack thing, youd make hundreds of millions of dollars. But we need to
be on the same page that thats not something that were planning on.
Interviewer:
Nice to know you have the option, all the same.
Interviewee:
Its always good to have an option. But for me, the thing thats been best is just
being super transparent and super up front. I think thats true of relationships
of anything. If you can set your expectations with your investors, thats what
they appreciate. You invest in a lot of things, I invest in a lot of things.
Interviewer:
I do. Im an advisor to Automattic also, which Im honored to be. Its been really
fanstically fun so far.
Interviewee:
Theres an asymmetry to what you do. Because you will hear maybe hundreds
of pitches for every company that you have invested in. I find the smartest guys
in the world, and when you get to the very top echelon, they have perfect BS
detectors. Its much better to say I dont know than to try to make up an answer
to something you dont actually know. Which is kind of refreshing, actually, the
just honesty and transparency is actually even when youre raising north of a
billion dollars is the best policy.
Interviewer:
Such a fascinating landscape. This is a question from Chris Sakka. Ask Matt if
he will take you shopping for a bad ass suit. I guess I should say a bad butt suit.
Interviewee:
Its funny because I actually say bad ass. I just didnt because you did this whole
setup.
Interviewer:
I was trying to set expectations.
Interviewee:
You have some pretty good suits. Ive seen
Interviewer:
I do. I have some suits. I like suits because it removes all the decision making. I
dont like matching I dont like picking out outfits that will match, which is why
I like suits. So either tee shirt and jeans or suit. I do very little in between.
Interviewee:
If you are going to go for a suit, Tom Ford
Interviewer:
Tom Ford?
Interviewee:
is the way to go. Theyre pretty amazing.
Interviewer:
Any particular suit?
Interviewee:
No. Go into the store. Theyll set you up. Your body types different than mine.
Theyll find something that makes you look great. Their cut is much younger,
much slimmer, much more shaped in a way. I love Caton or Loro Piana or
different folks but they tend to be made for older men, to be honest. So I love
the materials but I end up tailoring them and re-cutting them.
Interviewer:
How did you get into clothing and fashion? Because it wasnt always this way.
Interviewee:
I have no idea. It might have been the influence of my good friend Om, Om
Malek. He appreciates the finer things in life and I think that for
Interviewer:
Who created GigaOM, for people who dont know.
Interviewee:
Yeah, GigaOM. Hes a journalist, now VC [inaudible] [01:41:26] and one of my

best friends. One of the first users of WordPress, too. Of course in anything,
like if were talking about tequilas, if were talking about class or if were talking
about microfilms, theres a spectrum. And you can go deep on any topic. I find
it fascinating when you meet someone. Thats one thing I always keep in mind.
Everyone is interesting. If youre ever bored in a conversation, the problems
with you, not with the other person.

Interviewer:
100 percent agreed. Thats what any good journalist will tell you, also.
Interviewee:
Yeah. Its just all about figuring out what someones really into or what theyre
passionate about. And then when you find those passions its just I find it
fascinating to go deep on chicken raising or whatever it is.
Interviewer:
On purchases, what is the last $100 or less purchase that you made that had a
very positive impact on your life?
Interviewee:
The first thing that comes to mind is quite embarrassing.
Interviewer:
The gimp suit? Just kidding.
Interviewee:
I used to make so much fun of Marin moms who wear Lululemon all day. But
since Ive started running and working out more, its just that Lululemon is
friggin awesome. They make really great stuff. Now, its kind of expensive. Its
definitely one of those its like shopping at Whole Foods where you walk out
and the check and like whoa, how did that happen? I bought like two tee shirts
and some sweat pants. But super high quality. I love how the tags tear out so
theres no tags. I love that the shirts are reversible. I found, especially as I travel
constantly, some of these sort of long sleeve material shirts will be super soft,
super warm, I can run in them, I can sleep in them, I can do whatever.
Interviewer:
Speaking of packing, I will link to this in the show notes but you recently put
up a post about what you have in your carryon bag. Matt is a genius carryon
bag I shouldnt say that maybe, since I havent seen the article, yet. But based
on previous experience, youre very methodical. Whats the one thing people
can do one or two things with carryon luggage that will make the biggest
difference, in your opinion?
Interviewee:
Its a post about my backpack. So its about the things that I brought my
backpack here. I carry my backpack almost constantly. Especially being
Interviewer:
What type of backpack is that? That is very Indiana Jones.
Interviewee:
Thank you. Its from a company called Hard Graft. I linked to it in the post.
Its leather. Its a little pricey but its really good. Ill keep that for the next
decade. So because I can work from anywhere, sometimes I have to work from
everywhere. Thats the downside. And you never know when an emergency
is going to pop up or anything. I tend to have within sort of a ten to 15 minute
radius the tools I need to be productive any place in the world, including if Im in
Antarctica, that might be a satellite phone. If Im in a different country, maybe
thats a local MiFi card.
And so Im just constantly bringing things in and out. I was hesitant to do a post
about it. You asked me to do a post about this years ago and I kept putting it
off because it kept changing. So every time Id start, Id take a picture of my bag
and then it would change by the time I wanted to email it.
Interviewer:
Do you still use I think its called I have one right here. Since I am packing.
This is Grid-it. Technology by Cocoon. Oh, wow, youve got the big boy.
Interviewee:
I still use it. Yeah. I use a big Grid-it.
Interviewer:
This is a company called Cocoon, for you people who cant see with clairvoyance
what were looking at. Its basically a sheet mine is about five inches by ten
inches.
Interviewee:
Mine is eight by ten, I think.
Interviewer:
Yeah, yours is eight by ten. Its perpendicular straps of elastic that you can
stick cables into, iPhones into, batteries into, chap stick into, as opposed to just
having a big mess of stuff in 15 pockets.
Interviewee:
I find my stuff always falls out. Like I just pulled it out and it was like half empty.
So things are constantly falling out of it. I dont know if its the way I walk or
whatever. But I always put it back in. so the key for me I used to lose things all
the time. In fact, at one point I would lose my keys so much I still have an old
car so it has a different door key and ignition key. So I made literally 15 copies of
my door key and I wrote Photomatt on it and then I gave it to all my friends, and
even like some random people Id meet. Like instead of a business card, I just
give them a key to my car. With the idea being when I lost my keys, someone
would have the ability or when I locked my keys in the car
Interviewer:
We need to teach you how to jimmy your door. We need to get you some
locksmith keys. Im not sure if thats legal. So within the boundaries of legality
in your state or jurisdiction.
Interviewee:
But yeah. So now I find that I have places where everything goes. So my mouse,
for example, always goes in the right front pocket of my backpack. And if
anytime somethings not there like I keep a bowl by my front door. The keys
always go in there.
Interviewer:
You keep a what?
Interviewee:
A bowl.
Interviewer:
Oh, a bowl. Right.
Interviewee:
By the front door. Anytime somethings not in that place and I see it, its a bug.
So I try to put it in that place as soon as possible because otherwise I know Ill
forget. And then Im coming over I have a meeting and I spend ten minutes
looking for my wallet because I just stuck it someplace. Its in the fridge or
something, I dont know. Im always losing something. Actually, I lost one of our
initial investment checks. It was a check for $400,000.
Interviewer:
Thats not good to lose.
Interviewee:
It was investor Phil Black, whos actually still on the board today. And he wrote a
paper check, like the kind you would use at the grocery store or like for normal
things. The most money Id ever seen in my life. I was 20 years old. I was like:
what is this? I expected it to be a check like a Publishers Clearing House, you
know? Like the size of a table.
Interviewer:
Right, that you could surf like a floating carpet from Aladdin down to the bank.
Interviewee:
So we raised luckily, the other investors wired their money because I misplaced
this check. And I was thinking, oh, my goodness. What do I do in this situation?
Because obviously, he could stop the check but then hes just entrusted me with
$400,000 and Ive lost it. Like whats the most irresponsible thing you can do?
Do I tell him? Do I not tell him? Is he going to notice at some point? And months
passed. Literally months passed. He doesnt say anything, I dont say anything.
Interviewer:
Because you didnt want to ask him.
Interviewee:
I didnt ask him. And Im going back to Houston for Thanksgiving, and I open the
book Im reading and I had used it as a bookmark. And it kind of fell out of the
book on the plane. I was like: oh, my goodness!
Interviewer:
Thats quite a find. Thats better than $20 in the p ants you just washed.
Interviewee:
So first thing I did when I landed, I went to the Bank of America also, I expected
it to be like when you hit jackpot on a slot machine. You deposit a 400 grand
check and bells should go off. They should like give you a glass of champagne or
something. But total non event at this local branch of Bank of America. Theyre
just like: here you go. I go: okay.
Interviewer: Goodbye.
Interviewee:
Its the most anticlimactic thing ever.
Interviewer:
Step aside, sir. You have people behind you.
Interviewee:
I told him like a year later. And he was like; oh, man, yeah. He just hadnt looked.
Interviewer:
So speaking of big numbers, how the hell did you end up eating 140 or whatever
chicken McNuggets? Why did that happen?
Interviewee: 104.
Interviewer: 104.
Interviewee:
I dont remember how long ago it was. Probably about ten years ago, at this
point 11 years ago. But the Super Bowl was in Houston, Texas. I lived like a
mile from the Reliant Stadium where they were doing the Super Bowl. And so I
was watching it. For the Super Bowl, all the McDonalds did a special where you
could get 20 McNuggets for like $4.00. And I was super broke at the time. So
I was like: man, Im just gonna stock up on these. Like the way you might get
cans, or things of Ramen or like cans of Campbells, which I would do when they
went on sale; Ill always buy a bunch of them.
So I just like got a bunch of McNuggets and then I I love McNuggets. And I had
to kind of like sweet talk the person so they gave me lots of extra of that sweet
and sour sauce.
Interviewer:
Oh, my God.
Interviewee:
And the McDonalds sweet and sour sauce is not like sweet and sour sauce
anywhere else in the world. Like all sweet and sour sauce is red. And for some
reason theirs is brown. I dont know why. You might.
Interviewer:
Its been genetically engineered to be as addictive as possible? I dont know.
Interviewee:
Its so good. So I just start popping them, and next thing I knew it was 104.
Interviewer:
So it wasnt even a bet or anything? You just rampaged through 104?
Interviewee:
While watching the Super Bowl.
Interviewer:
Thats incredible.
Interviewee:
It was the Super Bowl where Janet Jackson had the wardrobe malfunction.
Interviewer:
Yeah, the breast explosion. Sorry I missed that. How was it? Was it gratifying?
Interviewee:
I was watching it with my family and there was like this moment of silence
afterwards, we were like: what just happened? I was completely mortified. I
had a laptop and the internet and WiFi at the time. So I was like: Im gonna like
what just happened? Like Im gonna go on the internet and see. And it turns
out like what happened, happened. Like there was a wardrobe malfunction. A
good friend of mine was in the audience about 15 feet away from her and you
know, theres all the theories that it was planned.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee:
And she said she was so pissed off, like looked so angry, she has it was
absolutely not planned.
Interviewer:
Yeah, I would have bet that it was planned. This reminds me, your shocking
moment your mortified moment with your parents of when I went to the
movies with my entire family. I was sitting next to my brother and my parents
were sitting on the other side of my brother. We went to see The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo, which I had read. My brother hadnt read it. Those of you who
have read the book or seen the movie will know theres one particularly just
mortifying scene. A minute or two beforehand, I was like: excuse me, I have to
go to the bathroom. And I came back and my brothers like: you fucker. You
knew exactly what was gonna happen, didnt you? And I was like: yep, I did.
Sorry about that.
Interviewee:
My identical story was Titanic, which was much tamer. But for some reason I
went to see Titanic with my mom. I was like; oh, I think its about to happen.
That scene
Interviewer:
This is the car scene?
Interviewee:
The car scene, or where hes drawing her or something. I was like: Im just gonna
leave for a few minutes and I hope its over by the time I get back.
Interviewer:
To switch gears a little bit, when you think of the word successful, whos the
first person who comes to mind and why?
Interviewee:
Its funny because hes getting totally panned in the press right now but I think
of Jeff Bezos.
Interviewer:
Why Jeff Bezos? Why is he getting panned? This is how I get informed.
Interviewee:
The Fire phone was a complete flop. They were down hundreds of millions of
dollars of inventory. Obviously it didnt sell well. And articles have come out
since then saying he micro managed the whole process and things like that.
Im actually going to do a blog post about this. One of my favorite business
books is called The Halo Effect. And the case study they used is Cisco, in sort
of the 98 to 2002 time period. And sort of when they were on the rise and
one of the most valuable companies in the world, highest stock. Everyones
saying John Chambers is genius. They acquisition companies, they dont have
to vend everything, they can acquire dozens of companies and integrate them
and competitors just cant compete.
And then once they started crashing, again nothing changed about the
business but the stock goes down. Sometimes the same writers were saying:
oh, its a mish mash of end fighting; they have all of this technology that doesnt
integrate and they cant invent things so they have to acquire it. So literally the
same strategy is viewed in a totally different realm. And theres this halo effect.
And theres a case study going on right now with Amazon. So a few years ago
everyone said how Amazon makes these big bets. Theyre willing to lose money
for years and years on something like the Kindle and just ruthlessly iterate over
and over Amazon web services.

They go into places where no one says they should go. The Fire phone flopped
and now everyones saying: oh, these idiots. The attention to detail becomes
micro managing, everything. But ultimately what I admire in the long term is
Jeff Bezos has convictions around things. And hes gonna be wrong sometimes.
I dont expect him to be perfect. But I do expect him in my idolized mind to
continue making those big bets. And hes probably not taking enough risk if he
doesnt super mess it up every couple of years.
Interviewer:
Oh, I totally agree. Just the story basis I havent read the Everything Store, I
would like to. I dont know if you have.
Interviewee:
Excellent book, yeah.
Interviewer:
But it sounds like a good time to buy Amazon. This is not investment advice;
consult your regular attorney and professional wealth advisor. But when those
types of sort of capricious judgments are made based on a one-off event,
especially in well, sometimes its macro related, sometimes its just a single
launch related. God, its so funny how quickly people are to turn. Although, I will
tell you most of the time I dont believe the words as theyre written on the page.
I think theyre just journalists with a tough job which sometimes I think borders
on unethical, which is having to churn out a lot of content continually on an
unreasonable schedule, and to come up with insights that are with rare
exception very, very difficult to produce on demand as aha moments once
a day or five times a day or 12 times a day. So they end up regurgitating or
rewording things theyve written before.
Interviewee:
And the people with the most knowledge about a given topic dont necessarily
have any incentive to write about it.
Interviewer:
Absolutely not.
Interviewee:
Do you buy and sell individual stocks?
Interviewer:
I dont right now. My personality, my intestinal fortitude is not well suited to

public stocks. I dont like having the option on a daily basis to buy and sell. I
like doing a ton of due diligence, investing in, for instance, a startup and then
betting on a seven to nine year growth curve.
Interviewee:
Or longer.
Interviewer:
Or longer.
Interviewee:
You know Automattic is coming up on ten.
Interviewer:
Yeah. That doesnt concern me. It actually consoles me because it forces me to

do more homework on the front end.
Interviewee:
I agree. I use Wealthfront. Also an investor.
Interviewer:
I know were both an investor in Wealthfront.
Interviewee:
Sometimes I get individual stocks, like [inaudible] [01:55:34] bought and sold a
company called Stratasys so I ended up with a bunch of Stratasys stock. And

it was really annoying to have like this minute to minute number that moves.
Like thats the one thing I wouldnt look forward to with being a public company
is raising money is hard, as well. Because basically someone saying your lifes
work, this is what its worth. The quantifying it. I cant imagine what its like with
the minute to minute vagaries of the market, the public markets.
Interviewer:
Im so continually impressed by people like Nassim Taleb or many of the hedge

fund guys out there who are develop a hypothesis about a particular way to
approach a short sale or a short position. So theyre looking at the subprime
mortgage crisis and theyre trying to bet on that happening. Or the Sovereign
debt issues in Europe, for instance. And their ability to just bleed for extended
periods of time with these sophisticated option positions and function as normal
human beings and be okay with that.
Interviewee:
While losing money every day.
Interviewer:
While losing money every day. And having people tell you youre an idiot. I
cant fathom actually handling that well, personally. So oddly enough, the binary
nature of startups suits my psychology well because its applying a constraint
and removing decisions that I might otherwise botch emotionally. So I can be
very highly rational on the front end and make a specific type of investment that
precludes me from making stupid emotional decisions.
Interviewee:
And emotionally, you want to buy high and sell low. But thats
Interviewer:
Oh, definitely.
Interviewee:
if its dropping, youre like: oh, I gotta get out of this. If its rising, youre like:
oh, its great. Im gonna buy some more.
Interviewer:
Are there any particular books on investing or books that youve read that have
helped you think about investing?
Interviewee:
You said the man, Nassim Taleb.
Interviewer:
Youre the one who introduced me to the Black Swan, actually. That was in
Greece.
Interviewee:
I dont recommend that to everyone.
Interviewer:
I love the Black Swan.
Interviewee:
I love it. Fooled by randomness, anti-frugality. Is latest one, I love his book of
Aphorisms. Like his writing has been super influential on me, both in and of
itself and also in the works that hes pointed me towards. Because he makes a
ton of sometimes annoyingly so references to other things. He introduced
me to Emburdo Echo and other really fantastic authors. Hes great, and then
reading Warren Buffets letters. I know youre a big Warren Buffet friend fan.
Interviewer:
I wish I were a big Warren Buffet friend. I am a big Warren Buffet fan and I know
that name is bandied about a lot by of course millions of investors. But the
annual letters, getting it straight from the horses mouth as opposed to the
second or third hand interpretations is just phenomenal.
Interviewee:
You know something I can say, you asked about what we look for for candidates,
hiring. Clarity of writing. I think clarity of writing indicates clarity of thinking.
Writing is honestly one of the hardest things I do very day. Youve written a
couple of books, now. I have tried to write a book. I cant. I havent been able
to do it.
Interviewer:
Its a very masochistic process. I would not want to inflict on anyone unduly.
Interviewee:
But I love reading about writers and the process of writing. Like Bird by Bird,
Anne Lamott, or On Writing Well, William Zinsser. The Ernest Hemingway Im
reading, which I think I got from this podcast, actually.
Interviewer:
Yeah, thats a fun one.
Interviewee:
Because when you can write well, you can think well. Obviously in Warren
Buffets letters the thinking is so clear. And so thats something I look for in
these random emails we get, or cover letters or resumes: is it well written? If
someones a great writer, they tend to be a great programmer, more efficient or
something else. Again, its not everything but its a strong indicator.
Interviewer:
So just a few more questions. The first is from wow, Valour Thor. That is a
fantastic name, sir. What role will WordPress spelled correctly play in online
content outside of the browser? Example given: mobile apps, APIs, etc., in the
near future?
Interviewee:
Its inside baseball but a very good question. So theres been basically two
waves in WordPresss history. We started as just blogging. Literally it was just
a blog. And youd have the rest of your website doing something else and then
youd plug the blog in, your WordPress. We expanded to be a CMS. That was
the second wave of WordPress. And then it started powering your entire site.
And thats been really the past five or six years where we become almost like the
dial tone of the web. Like if youre starting a website, you start with WordPress
and then you plug other things into WordPress, whether thats ecommerce
management, CRM, whatever it is; its a plug-in for WordPress.
This third wave that were going through right now is WordPress as an
application platform. So people are using the primitives and the things afforded
by WordPresss infrastructure, the things that we wrote to write a blog in CMS,
to write other things.
Interviewer:
The primitives are the elements of the infrastructure that were used to create
those things in the first place?
Interviewee:
Yeah. So think of a primitive as a basic building block. So like a social primitive,

one that Kevin Rosen invented was like this embeddable button that lets you
vote on things, the dig it button which is now the Like button, the Tweet
button, etc. Thats a primitive, in some ways. So we have primitives around user
authentication, around content types, around caching, around URLs, around lots
of things that if youre building something from scratch, youve got to do all this
stuff.
So if you can start with WordPress, it saves you months. Not for everything, not
for everyone. But if you know WordPress, you start
Interviewer:
Im gonna ask a silly question because I like asking silly questions. As a non
programmer, how does and I know it differs significantly but how does that
differ from, say, a Ruby on Rails or Ruby on Rails ten?
Interviewee:
Very similar. People are using WordPress as a framework. Its a framework which
has a lot more things built out than a Ruby might. So think of it as the thing that
WordPress does. If what you want to build looks like that, so not a game, not a
chat application, not something like that. If it looks like content, weve already
managed more content than anyone else in the world at this point. Using our
data structures, using our APIs. Thats probably the best way to go about it.
Interviewer:
What are some of the big companies or publications that use your platform?
Interviewee:
Pretty much all of them at this point. Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New
York Times, international papers, new media so GigaOM, Tech Crunch, Recode,
all the tech blogs, basically. Yours. I mean its really
Interviewer:
Im very flattered that you put me in that group next to all those guys. I try.
Interviewee:
All these things if you look at Tech Meme, well typically power 50 to 70 percent
of all the sites that are on Tech Meme in a given day.
Interviewer:
Tech Meme, for those people that dont know, would you say its fair to say thats
a roundup of tech news from around the world?
Interviewee:
Its one of my vices. We talked about vices earlier. So T-E-C-H, M-E-M-E dot
com. Its algorithmic and human. Its the best tech newspaper in the world. And
it just links you to places. So almost like a Drudge Report but so much better.
You go to the primary sources, which sometimes might be not even news, like a
tech crunch or a verge, but the actual person; a you or me.
Interviewer:
Oh, interesting.
Interviewee:
Theyll link to the originals as well, which is really nice.
Interviewer:
If you had to point a 20-year-old entrepreneur whos looking to start a company

lets just say its tech, for the time being. What two or three books or resources
would you give to them or suggest to them?
Interviewee:
Im gonna repeat with the Effective Executive, or anything from Peter Drucker.
He actually has one I think its called The Art of Entrepreneurship. Its got
Entrepreneurship in the title. Super good. Again, these are old, now, like from
the 70s or 80s.
Interviewer:
Theyre so timeless, though.
Interviewee:
But theyre so good. Hes just one of the clearest thinkers about all of these
things; about management, about entrepreneurship. When I was getting
started, I actually really loved The Art of the Start, buy Guy Kawasaki.
Interviewer:
Thats a good book.
Interviewee:
I havent read it since then.
Interviewer:
It stands up pretty well.
Interviewee:
It really inspired me. Make sure you read the 4-Hour Workweek. Im gonna plug
Interviewer:
Thank you, sir.
Interviewee:
There you go. And a recent one, like a brand new one. Ill say two brand new
ones. Im sorry; you asked for three and youre getting about ten.
Interviewer:
No, you can keep going.
Interviewee:
The Hard Things About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. Pretty good. Entertaining
more than anything. Like I read that book, I was like: I would never work for this
guy. But entertaining and some good lessons. And then Peter Thiels Zero to
One. That was excellent.
Interviewer:
Zero to One is great and people should definitely, if they find that interesting
and they are going into tech, I think try to read the original class notes, as well.
Interviewee:
Yeah, by Blake Masters, I believe.
Interviewer:
Exactly. Theyre really just tremendous.
Interviewee:
All of these guys, I mean dont take them as Gospel. Like disagree with them.
Interpret it in your own way. There are some people who I admire quite a bit,
like, say Marc Andreessen. When we first pitched him, the whole meeting was
about how distributed companies were a terrible idea. And he was like: well
what do you know that every other tech company thats been big in history
doesnt? The Facebooks, the Googles, the Microsofts, the everything. And so
why should you do something different?
It turns out it was a good meeting. I thought it was a terrible meeting. I

thought it was the worst meeting of my entire career. Turns out thats his style.
He challenges you and sees how you respond. Sometimes going against the
Orthodox, doing the things that other people cant do. I think of it like business
judo. What can we do that Google makes tens or hundreds of billions of dollars
more than us. What can we do that we cant do? Well, they are set up best to
work in an office culture, and were set up best to work in a non office culture.
So we can get the smartest people in the world, who sometimes leave Google
because they want to live in Salt Lake City or Adelaide, Australia or someplace
else for whatever reason, it doesnt matter. Theyre just as good as anyone
inside the Mountain View offices but they just dont happen to be in Mountain
View.
Interviewer:
It makes me think of the book, The Starfish and the Spider. Particularly with the
open-source component. The open-source WordPress isnt going to die even if
Automattic were to cease operations.
Interviewee:
Even to this day we compete with people ten times our size and ten our 100
times our capitalization. In 2014, one of our competitors, Squarespace, spent
north of $45 million on advertising.
Interviewer:
They did Super Bowl advertising, didnt they?
Interviewee:
Yeah. Theyre going to do more this year.
Interviewer:
Thats expensive.
Interviewee:
They had to, you know? Thats the only way they can get customers. Because
we have this community, because we have these hundreds of thousands of
developers all over the world, because we have the sort of intrinsic I think
goodness of the software, we dont have to spend on advertising. In 2014, we
spent about $1 million on advertising, and that was mostly events.
Interviewer:
You do love events. I love your events, too. Theyre very well done.
Interviewee:
Thank you.
Interviewer:
Okay, two more questions. If you were sent to a desert island and you could
bring one album Ive asked a lot of book questions. Im trying to come up with
something else. One album, and two other items that were non survival related,
what would they be?
Interviewee:
The albums really tough. There are some really perfect albums out there. Like
I think Radioheads OK Computer. Its like just a perfect album. And it works as
an album. The individual songs dont work as well. Or like a Frank Oceans mixed
tape, ultra nostalgia. There are some of these that are just so good. Kendrick
Lamars Good Kid, Mad City. Youve got to check out Kendrick Lamar. I know
that youre not as into the hippity hop.
Interviewer:
Thats not true. If its break beats or danceable and I like the lyrics, Im all for it.
Like Eric B. & Rakim, that Ilk
Interviewee:
How old are you?
Interviewer: 67.
Interviewee:
Im just giving you a hard time. There are some new guys that are super cool,
too.
Interviewer:
There are some good guys. What I dont like is the homogeneity of a lot of the
beat structure that has been sort of commoditized for top 40. That stuff makes
me insane. But if it has some unique flavor to it, Im all for it.
Interviewee:
Yeah, youd like Kendrick Lamar. So probably one of those albums. And if I have
to pick one, Ill pick a jazz one. Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus. I could listen
to that album the rest of my life and learn something new every day. In terms
of other non essential items that arent books, Im not going to say a Kindle
or an encyclopedia or something. A 50 millimeter 1.4 prime lens is the lens I
would take to a deserted island. And I burn easily so probably an umbrella or
something.
Interviewer:
You and I bond over that. I thought I was the only human who didnt tan, but
alas. Hark. Matt Mullenweg. Last question. If you could give your 20-year-old
self a piece of advice one piece of advice what would it be?
Interviewee:
Slow down.
Interviewer:
Slow down. Why?
Interviewee:
We talked about it with running earlier. Like slow down to go further. I think a
lot of the mistakes of my youth were mistakes of ambition, not mistakes of
Interviewer: Sloth.
Interviewee:
Sloth. And I think building foundations, building things that last for the long term,
obviously some of thats happened but something I think I rushed through.
Education, I definitely kind of squandered, even when I was in high school. They
put great books in front of us like The Great Gatsby or [inaudible] [02:09:31] but
like others like Fitzgerald. I just kind of did the bare minimum to pass the class
or pass the test, when now I would kill for the luxury to just like really sit down
with one of those books and dive into it and discuss it.
And so just slowing down, whether thats meditating, whether thats taking time
for yourself away from screens, whether thats really focusing in on who youre
talking to or who youre with.
As Ive aged I know it sounds ridiculous.
[Crosstalk]
Interviewee:
Its interesting because
Interviewer:
I feel like youre living in dog years, though. The amount of experience you
compress into each year is unbelievable.
Interviewee:
I had a lot of success at a young age which is intimidating because you

sometimes think: am I ever going to top this, or did I peak at 20 or 21 when I
was doing polyphasic sleep and writing these new things, and everything since
then seems downhill? You wonder about impact on the world. But ultimately,
its funny that now what I care more about is a lot narrower. Its like the people
who you love and the people who love you. And you dont always choose either
of those. Its like you cant help who you fall in love with. Life would be so much
easier if you could.
Interviewer:
Thats true.
Interviewee:
And you dont always choose who falls in love with you. But theres a responsibility
in both and really focusing on those people I find has contributed more to my
happiness, and I wont say anything else.
Interviewer:
I think thats Zavers great place to end. Matt, where can people learn more
about you, find you on the internet?
Interviewee:
@ma.tt for my main blog on WordPress. Twitter Im @photomatt P-H-O-T-OM-A-T-T. And Im on pretty much every network. Follow me on Spotify. I share
some cool stuff on there.
Interviewer:
Awesome. All right, sir. Thank you so much and we shall polish this off with
another small glass of sipping tequila. Thanks everybody for listening and
thanks for coming over, Matt.
Interviewee: Cheers.
Interviewer:
Thanks so much for listening, everybody. To find links to Matts Spotify, to the
music, to the books, to everything that we talked about in this episode, just go
to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. Thats fourhourworkweek all spelled out,
F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R workweek.com/podcast. And if you liked this episode, there
are others that you can find there that I think you would enjoy, including, for
instance, Ed Catmull, who is president of Pixar. We had a fascinating conversation
about the power of storytelling and how they built that company. You could
also find an episode called How to Think Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, which
is an interview with Peter Diamandis, Chairman of the XPRIZE. This one was
massively, massively popular.
You can find all of that and much, much more at fourhourworkweek.com/
podcast. And as always, I try to put bonus content: videos from these guests
on Facebook, at Facebook.com/timferriss. T-I-M, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Until next time,
thanks so much for listening.
The Tim Ferriss show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products for
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EPISODE 62:
GLITCH MOB
Tim Ferriss:
Hello ladies and gents, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode. God
damn. Thats the usual intro music, but Id like you to hear a brand new version,
reimagined by none other than Justin Boreta of The Glitch Mob. This podcast
is brought to you by Mizzen and Main. Dont worry about the spelling. All you
need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around avoiding fancy
shirts, because you have to iron them, you sweat through them, they smell really
easily, theyre a pain in the ass. Mizzen and Main has given me the only shirt that
I need. And what I mean by that, and Kelly Starrett loves these shirts as well, is
that you can trick people. They look really fancy, so you can take them out to
nice dinners, whatever, but theyre made from athletic, sweat-wicking material.
So you can throw this thing into your luggage in a heap or on your kitchen table
like I did recently, and then pull it out, throw it on, with no ironing, no steaming,
no nothing, walk out, and you could probably wear this thing for a week straight,
or make it your only dress shirt, and take it on trips for weeks at a time, never
wash it, it will not smell, you will not sweat through it, youve got to check these
things out.
So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhouroworkweek.com/

shirts, and if you order one of their dress shirts in the next week you will get
a Henley shirt for free. Thats worth about $60.00. So put them both in the
cart, use the code Tim, T-I-M, and you will get the Henley shirt for free. Check
it out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and youll see some of my favorite gear,
including the one shirt that Ive been traveling with. 99 Designs, which is your
one stop shop for all things graphic design related. Go to 99designs.com/Tim to
see the projects that Ive put up, including the mock ups and drafts of the book
cover for The Four Hour Body. As always, you can subscribe to this podcast
on iTunes, and you can find all of the links and resources from this episode, as
well as every other episode, by going to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. Spell
it all out, or you can go to fourhourworkweek.com and just click on podcast.
Feedback, if you have feedback I would love your thoughts. Anything at all, who
youd like to see on this show, ping me on Twitter @TFerriss, thats twitter.com/
tferriss, or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferriss, with two Rs and two Ss.
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show,
where I deconstruct world class performers to find the tools, tricks, routines,
habits, that you can use. And of course those experts range from billionaire
investors to chess prodigies to Arnold Schwarzenegger to everyone in between.
And you do find commonalities. And in this particular episode, we delve into a
world that I know very little about, and that is the world of music. We have Justin
Boreta, who is a founding member of The Glitch Mob, and if you havent heard
that name or you dont recognize that name, you will definitely recognize some
of their music. And it could range from their trailers, or the trailers in which they
are featured, so you could list Sin City Two, Edge of Tomorrow, Captain America,
Spiderman, to their commercial work, so commercial for Fiat, Audi, and so on.
They also debuted their last album, Love, Death, Immortality, incredibly well on
Billboard. No. 1 electronic album, No. 1 indie labels, No. 4 overall digital albums,
and this is fascinating, because from an entrepreneurial standpoint, not only
are they indie, theyre not associated with a big label, theyre artist owned. And
we delve into all of this. How did they go from unknown to on top of the world,
playing to 90,000 people in Quebec with Dead Us, for instance? We get into the
war stories, the creative stories, the process, how that has been refined over
time, and you get to hear some never heard before early drafts of some of their
biggest hits, and Justin walks through exactly how those were refined over time
to become what millions of people now love and listen to all the time. Its a
fascinating discussion with an artist. Even if you feel like you have no interest in
music process, you will find things ranging from his schedule to his meditative
practice that you can use. Its a really fun interview. I hope you enjoy it. Without
further ado, here is Justin Boreta.
Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Boreta:
Hey, hows it going, Tim?
Tim Ferriss:
Its going well. I appreciate you making the time and, as a longtime fan, I
appreciate you making the music, first and foremost.
Justin Boreta:
Oh yeah, its my pleasure to be here. Im a huge fan of all of the Four Hour
empire as well, so its an honor to get to talk to you.
Tim Ferriss:
And I know we, I guess, initially connected via Twitter, I think it was, is how we
came in contact. Is that how the pieces came together?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, I think so. I think you had posted something on Sound tracking, which is
an app that we both use, and I sort of follow you on there, and then yeah, we just
kind of just started chatting from there. That had to be a year or two ago.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, yeah, it probably was, and then Ive continued as a consumer of music,
and now we finally have a chance to dig into the music. So the first question
I really wanted to ask you is what you are world class at, or what your closest
friends or associates or band members consider you world class at?
Justin Boreta:
Thats a good question. I think that were known to perform crazy, intense,
perform and produce, really crazy, intense cinematic music. Were kind of off
in our own category, and were also known for being a very DIY operation. We
do almost everything ourselves, and we own our own label, and we have a very
close relationship with our fans.
Tim Ferriss:
So how does the closeness with the fans manifest itself, and what has led to
that?
Justin Boreta:
Well, you know the funny thing about
Tim Ferriss:
Because your fans are die hard. I mean, really really die hard, which I appreciate.
So how did that happen? What do you think are the factors?
Justin Boreta:
I think one of the interesting things about building something thats very DIY is
its been a very very slow burn for us. Its been Weve been at this for a while.
You know, I think the very first Glitch Mob show, just the other day, and by the
way, I should mention, Glitch Mob is myself, two other guys, edIT and Ooah,
names Ed and Josh, who are also in the group, and we got our start Josh
found the very first mix tape from us in I think it was 2006 the other day when
he was cleaning out his house. So its been a long process for us, and right out
of the gates, we were interacting with our fans. I mean, this is going to date me,
but this was back in the days of Myspace. So on our mixtape it said myspace.
com/theglitchmob. But right away what we would do is we first started playing
shows, we would finish every show, and we would take a stack of CDs and hand
them out to people. And we continued that tradition, and in fact we still kind of
do that, so it was baked into our DNA from day one to have a very hand-to-hand,
face-to-face interaction with people.
And weve kind of continued that ethos through into the era of Twitter and
Snapchat, Instagram, and everything, where we have a very close personal
relationship. Theres people that weve known, and weve been touring for quite
a while now. So, and you know, we actually also have a group of very ultradie-hard fans that are in a sort of a forum called The Mob, and we meet up
with them before every show and after the show and we do fun projects and
stuff like that. So for us, we also get a lot of feedback back from them. When
w every first started doing this, it was us, we were making these more dance
force centric tracks, and I think the more we started to realize how much music
has the ability to affect people, and we started to get these stories back from
people about our music being a part of their lives in some way, we started to
take everything really very seriously. Because we have such a close relationship
with people, people, they have the logo tattooed on their body. Which, the first
time we saw that, we thought, Wow. This is someone who took the time to get
the logo tattooed on their body.
Which, we all have tattoos and our manager does too. So we take everything
very seriously, and we take the power of music to be very serious. Its something
thats very important to us.
Tim Ferriss:
And I mean one of the stories, of course, that really struck me was the Grant
Corgin story. After a snowmobile accident he was basically diagnosed as
potentially never walking again, and fast forward after listening to The Glitch
Mob in PT and interacting with you guys, planted a Glitch Mob flag at the South
Pole after traveling the majority of the way in a push sled and then walking
the last, whether it was 100 feet or 100 yards I dont recall. But just such an
incredible story. How did that change you guys? And of course Im going to
come back to the origin story and ask more questions, but how did that change,
if it did, your creative process or how you think about your craft after that type
of story comes to you?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, it absolutely did, and that was something that really, Id say, got into the
DNA of what we do. I think that when we really realized and when we So when
we first met Grant, actually, a friend of his had emailed us. And I think this is also
part of us being really tapped into what people say, is that, I mean, this email
could have gone away, but we pay attention to important emails like this. And
someone had emailed and said, Hey look, my friend got in a really bad accident
and hes never going to walk again, and he loves your music. Is there anything
you can do to cheer him up? And so we said, Obviously, so we had someone
on our team send him a bunch of stuff, just like we signed some drum sticks and
some CDs and everything. And then we just, we got a friendship going with him
from there, and then he showed up at one of our shows in Reno and he was on
crutches. And he said, Thank you guys for being there so much, and then he
came out to our show. We played at Red Rocks, and when he showed us the
picture of him at the South Pole, we all were actually moved to tears.
It was a fantastic moment, and I think that was something when we realized
that music really does have the power to transcend, or maybe it was I also feel
like its Grant is an amazing guy as is, and the fact that he could do that, the
fact that we even helped kind of nudge him along, and I think thats also along
with his friends and family and we played a part in that, it really made us take
everything very very seriously. Now, I think its easy to be cynical these days
about everything, and music in particular, but its a very serious thing to us.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, its a very powerful, powerful art form. And I was just having a conversation
with a friend of mine about just the inter-species differences and similarities
related to beat and music, and just try to determine, obviously outside of
music theory, but what itch does music scratch for human beings? Its such a
fascinating question for me.
Justin Boreta:
Its so fascinating. Have you read this book called, This Is Your Brain on Music?
Tim Ferriss:
I have not.
Justin Boreta:
I cant recommend that enough. Its by this guy named Daniel Levitan, and he
really digs into that whole question, and it gets deep into neuroscience. But it
is a really fascinating thing, and he goes into the evolutionary thinking behind
why music does what it does. Its almost too much for me to even get into here.
I cant say I fully understand a lot of the neuroscience, but its really interesting.
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome. No, and I wanted to just talk about or ask you about, really, what
makes The Glitch Mob unique and different? Because there are obviously so
many bands out there, theres so much noise, theres so many people and bands
clamoring for attention, but youve hit a point where, I was watching this video
of, correct me if Im wrong here, but I think it was 90,000 people in Quebec, and
what is it that Well number one, actually, Im bouncing around a little bit, but
what does it feel like to be on stage in front of 90,000 people? Is there anything
you can compare it to?
Justin Boreta:
You know, actually, its a really hard feeling to describe. And the only thing I can
liken it to is skydiving. Have you tried skydiving before?
Tim Ferriss:
I have.
Justin Boreta:
So you know the feeling with skydiving where you jump out of the airplane and
its so crazy, you almost arent even scared, its so fucking surreal, youre like,
Wow, okay, Im just experiencing this right now?
Tim Ferriss:
Yes, I do.
Justin Boreta:
Thats kind of the feeling of being on a stage like that is its so surreal and its so
Theres like a terminal velocity with the amount of people, that once it gets so
big it just feels like youre in a dream. Its very surreal, and its also actually very
Theres something really fascinating that happens in crowds that big, where
you can feel, even with that many people, you can feel the way that the energy
of the music can affect people. And as youre riding the ups and downs and
the waves of the crowd, theres some sort of primal interaction that happens.
And with that many people, its really intense. And its also, yeah, its also a very
meditative experience for me. Even that show in particular, when I was up there
playing, I remember thinking, almost getting a chance to listen to my music
and then see everyone experiencing the music and hear it along with them and
sort of getting a dose of my own medicine there. So its a very, kind of spiritual,
surreal experience to be up there.
Tim Ferriss:
Well it has to be some type of communion. I mean, having done some

experimentation in the, for lack of a better term, spiritual realm, which we could
get into the pharmacology of another time, but that energetic transmission,
that interaction, is, from my just empirical experience at least, absolutely real.
So I cannot even imagine being the focal point of 90,000 human beings. Thats
It just must be transcendental almost, on some level.
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss:
Now you did send me You sent me an email, and weve corresponded of course,
and you mentioned a few things, and you said that these are all interesting
because not only are we indie but were artist owned. And I wanted you to
elaborate on that, because Im not familiar with the music industry. Im an avid
listener of music, but what do those two terms mean? And just to provide some
context for people, and Im reading from Wikipedia here, but the sophomore
Glitch Mob album, Love, Death, Immortality, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard
Dance Electronic Songs chart. Now that sounds like a pretty big deal, and I
would imagine it is, right?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, I think, I mean, in a way it is and in a way its not. I guess to be quite honest
we dont pay too much attention to the charting and everything. I mean, its nice
to be recognized for what you do, and I think You know, its funny because
were kind of like the oddballs of the electronic music or EDM world. Which,
just a kind of side note, I dont totally use those terms interchangeably. And I
was actually, getting a chance to come on this podcast made me kind of think
about this. Because just for me personally, when I think of electronic music, its
just music, and EDM is music plus industry plus apps plus festivals and Spotify.
Everything into one. So I kind of consider them to be two separate things, but
that aside, the whole thing with, the difference between an independent and a
major and an artist on label. So when we first dropped our album and it did well,
it hit No. 1 on the electronic chart and it made it to No. 13 in the top 20, which is
pretty crazy actually, because when you look at a lot of those albums that were
the top 20 in that point in time, it was people like Katy Perry or Eric Church, who
is this country guy, and a lot of these people are on major labels.
And so those are the equivalent of big, massive companies. You know these
labels are, theyre huge. Theyre something like Interscope is a very big company.
So then you have an independent label, which is a much smaller company,
potentially, that is owned, and not backed by this effective huge corporation.
And then you have an artist owned label, which means that we actually do
everything. So we provide all of these things together. So its a very in-house
operation.
Tim Ferriss:
So you have, your operations are not, at least the performances, are real
productions. I mean, this is not So I would imagine you have had to wear, you
guys have all had to wear a lot of hats. What does your team currently look like?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, absolutely. Weve had, and I think thats also part of our ethos and
everything that has gotten us to where we are today is, actually, the wearing
of multiple hats. And we all have our own specific things that were good at.
There was a point in time when we very first got this thing going where we
actually built our own light show. Josh and I went to Home Depot and we were
hammering and sawing lights outside of Eds house while he was inside mixing
down some audio. And we were very very DIY. We schlepped this thing in a
U-Haul trailer around the country. And the fact, today, that we actually have a
team of people around us that can help, and actually people that are better than
us at what we do, that was a big moment for us, because we actually would
We mix and master our own music. Actually, the last albums weve had other
people do the mastering.
But we produce, we record, we do all the music stuff ourselves. We had actually
built the stage show ourselves, we programmed it, we programmed the lights,
we bought the lights, so we kind of did everything. And so fast forward to now,
we have a team of people that are really experts at what they do. So for instance,
for the live show, theres a guy named Martin Phillips. And Martin Phillips is a
specific stage show designer. Thats just, thats what he does. So he meets
with an artist, and hes kind of like a creative director type guy where he can
hear the music and then we collaborate with him with a bunch of other people
to basically create the stage show, which was called The Blade. So theres a guy
named Matt, Matt Davis, who is the programmer. So hes an expert level stage
design programmer. I mean this guy is, hes one of our dearest friends. Hes the
best. And he basically programs all of the under the hood stuff that makes The
Blade tick. So when we go on tour, theres about 14 to 15 people total to make
the show happen.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And how many of those people are full time with you guys or are, is the
core Are the core three of you the only full time?
Justin Boreta:
So the only full time people so yeah, so theres us, obviously. We have a manager,
Kevin Wolff, who has been with us since day one, and our booking agent who
takes care all the live shows named Steve, and hes also been with us since day
one. And then theres a tour manager who manages everything that happens
out on the road to make everything else happen. So those are the main full time
people, and then we have someone who does all of the social media strategy
and stuff. And we actually do all of the posting and Tweeting and Instagramming
ourselves, but theres someone who deals with all of the nuts and bolts of the
internet side of things.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Got it. And Id love to hear a little bit, this is going to be very nitty gritty,
but I just know there are going to be people who are very curious about this.
When youre in the studio, as it sounds like you are now, what is the software
that you use on a daily or weekly basis? What are the tools that you guys use?
Justin Boreta:
So right now we base everything on this program called Ableton. And its a very
ubiquitous program these days. I think most people are starting to produce on
it, and weve actually been around the block on everything. I mean weve used,
for the audio nerds out there, I mean, we started with Pro Tools and then we
moved to Q Base and then weve done Logic, so weve tried everything, and Ed
used to have tons of outboard gear. So
Tim Ferriss:
What is outboard gear?
Justin Boreta:
So right now the term is called, In the box, which means everything is done on
the computer. Like our studio, its just a monitor, keyboard, and an actual piano
keyboard for playing notes. And then some studios have tons of gear that lives
on the outside of the computer. So theres compressors and EQs and a lot of
tools that are these custom boxes that cost thousands of dollars that are really
high end stuff, that now that the technology is getting more and more powerful,
we actually sold everything out board and moved in the box so that we could
actually travel. And its arguable. I mean, theres the whole, its funny because
the analog digital argument permeates music in all sorts of different ways, and
even in sort of those people who are vinyl purists or people who like to listen to
Spotify because its easier. Its the same thing in their production side. Theres
some people that think that analog is the way to get the best quality sound,
and were not really arguing that, but its a lot easier because also we have a
distributed studio.
So our toolbox is Ableton, a handful of plugins, and then everything is synced on

Dropbox, so that way we can have sessions open in all different machines. And
then we use these plugins called Universal Audio, that actually emulate all the
outboard gear that you could buy.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. And on the road, does that change at all, or is Aside from the actual
Blade and so on, does the actual music production side of things change much
when youre performing, or are you still working off of primarily laptops with
Ableton?
Justin Boreta:
So it does change entirely actually. But the Ableton software stays the same,
and thats the benefit of the way that Ableton is put together is that its actually
a production and a performance suite all in one. So we write everything in
Ableton, and then because were all basically synced up and everything is very
modular, then our So theres a system that drives The Blade, and thats the
thing that Matt has programmed, and we call it Lil Kim, and its this
Tim Ferriss:
Why do you call it Lil Kim?
Justin Boreta:
Because we just needed a name for it, and its this big, just gnarly pile of
computers and boxes and wires and Ed just said, Lets call it Lil Kim. So its a
Mac Pro, and then it has two Mac Minis in there, and the Mac Minis actually do all
the midi writing for The Blade, and then theres another laptop which is a backup
system. So if the Mac Pro dies, we have a button, theres a big red button, that
will switch, because when youre playing these huge crowds, you have to have
layers of redundancy. So we have many many different layers of redundancy.
But yeah, Lil Kim, its still based on Ableton, but we moved the entire thing to
a more beefy and robust system, and then theres a lot of audio that comes
out. And this is actually something that does separate us from, I would say, 99
percent of other electronic artists out there, is that we split out our audio, like a
typical band. And what that means is, lets say you go see a rock band play.
Theres a guy playing bass, theres a guy playing drums and vocals, and then
theres someone whos at the front of house, which is the sound booth up front,
whos mixing all this together to fit the sound of the room and get the optimal
sound. Now when you go see most DJs play, theyre playing music thats already
been mixed together. So its just one track, and theres not a whole lot you can
do. So we are actually a hybrid of the live rock world and then the electronic
world in that we actually send out kick, snare, and all the different elements of
the sound come out so that our sound engineer can really tweak and get the
most optimal sound for each room we play in.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats very cool. And the kick is the bass drum.
Justin Boreta:
Exactly, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And just to rewind for a second, what is mastering, exactly?
Justin Boreta:
So mastering, so lets say we finish our album. Ill give you a real world example.
We finished writing Love, Death, and Immortality after two years of writing it,
and mastering is a process of taking it from being an unfinished product to,
basically, a finished listening product that you would buy on a CD or something.
And theres stuff that happens. A lot of it has to do with evening out levels or
changing the quality of the sound. Theres certain things that have to happen to
have it be on a recorded medium. And it changes depending on what music it
is. But its really just the finishing process, the last final thing that makes music
all sound consistent. Or for instance, lets say like one song is quieter than the
other. Well the mastering engineer, who is not us, would go through and tweak
everything just a little bit so that it gets to be a consistent listen, and the bass
and the treble and everything is matched throughout the record.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And I know Im bouncing around here, with Ableton. So Ableton has come
up a few times for me recently, and one of the contexts, which I was surprised
by, not that I have any right to be surprised because I know nothing about this
stuff, but Ira Glass of This American Life uses Ableton for his performances,
when he does speeches and wants to layer in audio and so on. If you were to
create a podcast yourself, would you use Ableton for that? Or would that be
overkill?
Justin Boreta:
No, I would. I would use Ableton. I guess its hard to not be biased, because I
use it all day every day. But I actually think that you can do You can do some
really complex and interesting stuff with it, or you can do really really basic stuff.
I mean actually, Ableton is a program that comes up a lot. Because the learning
curve is not too bad, for instance, a friend of mine just had his girlfriends 12 or
13 year old little brother wanted to learn to DJ and produce. So you would give
a beginner, give them Ableton.
Tim Ferriss:
Really?
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss:
So its easier than Pro Tools, for instance?
Justin Boreta:
100 percent. Its really, its not too hard to learn in the grand scheme of things.
Tim Ferriss:
Interesting. So Im at a point where Im interested in audio. Not that I plan on

doing everything myself, but Id like to have a fundamental set of audio editing
skills because I find it interesting. If Im starting from scratch, and Im trying
to choose from Garage Band, Audacity, Pro Tools, Ableton, and Im starting
from ground zero, so I have no training in any of them, Ableton would be your
recommendation?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah I would say so. Also because Ableton is so robust and is used so widely,
you get the benefit of people like us hammering on it. So for instance, Ableton
has a very reliable crash feature. So if the program crashes, it saves your undo
history. So that means that it will pick up, so you wont lose a whole lot if it
crashes. And other programs have that, but because its a very living, breathing
piece of software and its used so much by the community, I think that its really
the right way to go. And the stuff that theyre doing with it over the next couple
of years, I think its going to be really crazy. And its worth the time to figure it
out. And also, you can do all sorts of other crazy stuff with it, but even for the
really basic things, I mean yeah even, for instances, its arguable, some people
will tell you that Pro Tools and Logic are more robust and powerful in what they
can do, and that might be true. However, I would say that Ableton, you get the
most bang for your buck. I mean, we didnt choose it because its the absolute
best and most complex Swiss army knife. Its actually the fastest way to get
things done.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay cool. Okay, say no more. Thats a great way to convince me. Sold. I
wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about the commercial success that
youve had, because I find it so fascinating and encouraging that you are artist
owned, very DIY, yet your music shows up all over the place. I mean, I remember
you sent me a number of links, some of which I had seen before, whether its Sin
City 2, Edge of Tomorrow, Captain America, Spiderman, and the list just goes on
and on and on and on and on. How did you, as this artist owned upstart, and I
should, I suppose, ask, have you always been artist owned? So maybe you can
answer that too. But how have you ended up getting into these massive motion
pictures, for instance?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah. Well, we have always been artist owned, absolutely. You know, just to
jump around one little bit here, I think that part of our whole genesis was really
just out of the love of music. When we first started in 2006 and 2007, when we
started doing this, you would never say, Im going to be a producer because I
want to be rich or famous or even cool. In fact, at that point in time electronic
music was relegated to raves and, I dont know, it just wasnt even anywhere
fucking close to mainstream culture, which now it is. So it was funny, I even
remember doing interviews when we were very first getting some traction,
people saying, What do you make? Were kind of like, Oh, you know, electronic
music. Because, you know, it was rock and hip hop was really the thing. So we
almost had to love it, because it felt like thats just what we were doing. We
were just kind of the oddballs of music and thats cool, because we just like to
do what we do and we are fascinated with Theres a really interesting merger
between technology and artistry, which is part of the whole thing. It was sort of
like were tech guys and tech fans and at the same time, we also like the art of
music. So for us it was really a passion project.
None of us ever decided to, You know what? Lets make a band were going
to call The Glitch Mob and were going to do this. It just kind of happened. So
that said, thats always how weve done things, and when we wrote our first
full-length album, Drink the Sea, before that we were making, I would say, more
dance floor tracks that had a more hip-hop, swag kind of It was just like more
cut up hip-hop style stuff, where it was just more dance floor music. And so
when we made Drink the Sea, people expected us to do that, and we took a
left turn, and we all were having a, we had a difficult moment in life, and Drink
the Sea for us became, it was funny, we all collectively were having a sad about
something, you know, like breakups and heartbreak. So we said, You know
what? Fuck what people expect us to do. Were just going to make this thing,
that was very cathartic record for us, and it was a very personal record.
And we didnt play that for anybody. We didnt play it for our managers, we
didnt play it for our friends, we just basically disappeared for a year.
Tim Ferriss:
And when was that?
Justin Boreta:
That was 2009 or 2010, I think, is when it came out. And I think it was 2010 Drink
the Sea came out. So that said, we had no particular intention with that, about
how we would be received or anything. It was very like a diary piece for us, a very
introspective record. And the interesting thing is that the commercial success
or the superhero movies that started to glom onto it just happened naturally.
We never intended for that to happen. I think we didnt even understand why.
We said, Oh wow, this is really cool, and we also just happened to like superhero
movies, so it was a really cool thing.
Tim Ferriss:
Were you a comic book nerd growing up, or no?
Justin Boreta:
No I wasnt a comic book nerd, but I was definitely into Transformers.
Tim Ferriss:
And I dont say that in a derogatory way, since I was a major comic book nerd.
Justin Boreta:
No, I had the Ren and Stimpy comic. That was the only one I really had. I loved
Ren and Stimpy. I was really into horror movies and Stephen King. I read a lot
of Stephen King books growing up and stuff like that. But yeah, I guess we
never really just intended for that to happen. I actually didnt understand why
these movies were choosing our music to use. And I think theres something
inherently cinematic about our music that I learned later in time, was that it was
about the dramatic changes in tonality that happens. Which is something that
we did naturally. So one of our songs will start off with an emotion, and well say,
Okay, now this feels eerie and ethereal, and then boom, it switches to zombie
attack mode, and then it becomes really violent, and then back. So we kind
of go, we play with emotions texturally like that. And that was just more of an
explorative phase for us.
Tim Ferriss:
Are there any particular songs or tracks that exemplify that that people should
listen to?
Justin Boreta:
You know, I can actually play you something right here.
Tim Ferriss:
Thatd be great.
Justin Boreta:
Okay, so Im going to play, this is a track called Animus Fox, off our very first
album. [Music plays] There you go, see? You can kind of get the idea there,
something felt very tense and you didnt really know what was going to happen,
and then it goes and switches right there.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. No, I mean, thats Its kind of, and I mean this in the most positive way,
it sort of screams movie preview. Right?
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss:
Because you need that sort of tension build up, shock, curiosity, and then go see
the movie, right? Now tell me, Id love for you to tell me a story of the first movie
that you considered a real movie to reach out to you guys. Like how did that
happen? What was the email? What was the phone call? Did you guys believe
it? Tell me a story of one of those.
Justin Boreta:
Ill tell you one that sticks out, and that was actually the Sin City 2 trailer. And
that one was special, because I love Sin City. And the funny thing was that we
were talking about making a video for Cant Kill Us, and thats the song thats in
that video. So we made, we had a visual
Tim Ferriss:
So they were like, Hey, no problem. Well make a $20 million trailer for you.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, exactly. And apparently Robert Rodriguez, who Im a huge fan of, I love
Machete and I love his whole thing in Grindhouse, and so when he said, Hey,
we want to use this song for the trailer, I was like, Well, we dont have to make
a music video, its just the most badass thing possible. And a lot of the times,
they will, the people who cut movie trailers who are actually, in general, the
people who make movie trailers are a separate, and Im not an expert on this by
any means, but this is from what I understand is the people who make movie
trailers are different from the people who make the movie, especially in these
big companies. But its different with Robert Rodriguez. So he actually does
everything himself. Hes kind of like us. So he actually chose the song, he found
it, and then he stuck it in there. And I think that song, Cant Kill Us, it was, for
us, it was just pure, distilled badassery, and the fact that that ended up in that
movie, I was like, Really? Are you actually Is that going to happen?
Tim Ferriss:
Doesnt hurt having Jessica Alba in there either.
Justin Boreta:
No, that moment did not suck.
Tim Ferriss:
So did Robert Rodriguez just email, like, info@theglitchmob.com? Or give me

some details here.
Justin Boreta:
So theres a company that basically serves as an agent for licensing and

everything like that. So theyre called Zync and theyre from Los Angeles, and
they basically have our music and they have relationships with people in the
film and TV world who I actually dont, you know, I dont know a whole lot about
that aside from just making the music and my minimal access to that. So then
I think the way it works is that the people in the licensing world have, so if you
are Robert Rodriguez and you are cutting a trailer, you put a call out and maybe
your producer will get basically demos or a bunch of different companies will
submit ideas for what this might be, and theyll put what they call a temp track,
which is something that has a general feel of what you might want. And every
now and again, that doesnt happen like that actually. Sometimes therell be
a director who, I mean, and I dont know. He might have heard the album and
just said, Oh, thats it. I actually dont even really know. But when we got that
email, I kind of lost my shit.
Tim Ferriss:
And how does someone like Robert Rodriguez find, Im looking at your website
right now, theglitchmob.com, how does someone find Zync, for instance? Do
they go to some music specific IMDB and then search for your band and find
the contact info for Zync? Or how does someone And I ask partially because
not too long ago, and I love your timeline, by the way, for your band, because
if you look at your 2006, 2007, and then you have 2010 for the first album, it
matches my first book and second book. And I remember doing a trailer for The
Four Hour Body, and I just wanted, from the very beginning, in my head, I had
Splinter, this track from Sevendust in my head, and I wanted to license it with
a larger label. Now suffice to say, I was like, Cool. Just reach out to the band.
Get the okay, no problem. And it was the most complicated quagmire of an
experience. Its like, Oh wait, no, theres 17 people. This isnt true with splinter,
but you look at some songs, and its like, No, there are 17 people who own it,
but then theres 17 people who wrote it, and then theres 17 more people who
you need to get permissions from.
And I was like, Oh my god, this is really complicated. So it would be really nice
to just reach out to, for instance, an agency, or figure out It was hard just for
me to figure out who owned what. So how does someone find the Zync agency
and then reach out to them about your music, for instance?
Justin Boreta:
Well, the interesting thing, and this kind of actually goes back to being artist
owned, is that were a very small and nimble organization. Because theres not
Thats part of the thing, that cluster fuck experience you had getting
Tim Ferriss:
Thats exactly what it was, yeah.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, its like
Tim Ferriss:
Now in fairness, just because I dont want to I want to give them full credit,
the Sevendust guys are total sweethearts and were awesome. It had nothing to
do with them not wanting it to happen, and it did end up happening, which was
very generous of them. But it was just on the label side. So not to interrupt, but
I wanted to make sure I said that.
Justin Boreta:
Of course. No, I think thats important to say. And a lot of the times bands
on labels dont know what their managers are doing to represent them, or
sometimes its hard to get ahold of them. And I just think that actually, and I
know people that work at labels. Theres a lot of super brilliant, amazing people
that work at labels. But I think institutionally, its a difficult way to get things
done when you have to telephone anything through 17 people to get a yes or
no. Its just complex. For us, yeah, I mean, our manager, Kevin, for instance, I
mean, a way a lot of this stuff comes in will go straight through him. And hes
really the fourth member. We call him a manager, but hes just one of our best
friends, and hes like the fourth member of the band. And so a lot of the stuff
comes in that, and I think because I mean, I cant speak for other people, but
yeah, I mean, we are, Is say, he reads most emails that come in. And sometimes
people will Tweet us, and I actually read all of the Twitter posts and so do the
other guys, and so between all that, we keep our ear to the ground as far as
whats going on.
But you can also check out Zync. Its like Zync Music.
Tim Ferriss:
Cool. No, Im just so fascinated by the inner workings of all this, because LA and
music in general, its just like one big labyrinth thing, if thats the right word. Its
just this huge mystery to me in so many ways.
Justin Boreta:
It is, you know what, I will say it is to me too. And I have to say to take everything
I say with a grain of salt, because I actually dont think that I know that much
about the music industry. Because were so strange, I actually dont I think
that Im really, Glitch Mob is kind of the edge case here.
Tim Ferriss:
No, thats what this podcast is all about though, studying the edge cases. No, I
am so Thats part of the reason I really wanted to chat with you guys. And so
just to rewind to Sin City 2 for a second, was that the lead domino that trigger
the other movies? Well let me ask you maybe a slightly different question, and
I apologize, Im blanking. Your managers name, the fourth member?
Justin Boreta:
Kevin.
Tim Ferriss:
Kevin. What is Kevins superpower? What is he world class at?
Justin Boreta:
Kevin, its funny, we joke about him, but we call him The Buddha. And he is
someone that in a world that is, its, I think, a complex, can be a very stressful,
very last-minute, high demand world, Kevin as So what he does, and Ive got
to say that a huge portion of Glitch Mobs success comes back to Kevin. And
obviously its a team effort, because the music is really first and foremost, but
something that hes always pushed us to do, is just to do us. And theres been
times where hes never asked to hear our music, or hes never pushed us in a
certain direction, because he just wants to foster whats been our natural voice
this whole time. And some managers say, Okay, maybe this thing is cool right
now. You should do that, or, Maybe that thing is cool. You should do that, and
hes always allowed us to just, and really helped us just do us, and I think that
part of that whole process is that he helps navigate and insulate us from a lot of
the bullshit that can happen.
Because ultimately, the creative process for us can be long, it can be fragile, it
can be difficult, and he basically is there to let us do what we need to do to focus
on music and just write good songs. Because, like you said, the music industry
is a really complex, crazy place, but when you really boil it down, aside from the
industry side of things, Im just here to make music and we are here for that
primal connection we were talking about that music provides between people.
So he helps to create that dynamic.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. And maybe you could tell me about an internal debate. You dont
have to name names, but Im really curious to know, youve had this success,
which I hope will continue on an upward trajectory, that creative process. In
the beginning, you, its just you and a couple of guys in a room making music,
right? Its all the things in your head that you are bouncing back and forth. At a
point, theres a lot of inbound. Theres a lot of feedback from fans, theres a lot
of feedback from a host of just multitudes of people. How do you guys resolve
the external pressures with the sort of silence and void necessary to do good
creative work?
Justin Boreta:
I think that, well, its definitely having, being so plugged in is a double edged
sword. Because I think if you are plugged in to a certain extent, youre going
to internalize some of the stuff that comes your way, no matter what. I think
ultimately for us the Having three of us helps, for one thing. The fact that we
have three of us to check each other, and its a very ping pong style creative
process that by the time it bounces off all three of us, the average of our own
creative worlds is just kind of is Glitch Mob. You know, and I think we have a
very small, trusted committee of people, and to be quite honest, I dont actually
think we take anyone elses feedback, even the very small committee of people.
We really just listen to ourselves. And even if someone who we really trust is
saying, You know, I dont like this, or, I dont like that, then we still just have to
follow what has gotten us to this point, and that is our own intuition and our own
creative sensibility. And really telling our own story, but what that might be in
a particular moment, and whatever that might be, we have ended up being the
type of artists that can kind of go many different directions.
You know, I think some artists make similar albums and say the same thing. Not
the same thing, but I guess texturally speaking, actually some of my favorite
artists, for instance, I dont know if youve heard this group called Boards of
Canada.
Tim Ferriss:
I have not. Boards B-O-A-R-D-S?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah. Its very droney, beautiful music, and their albums, for me, are Its almost
like a familiar old friend that I can revisit over and over again. And they have this
sort of one world they put you in, and weve ended up being Thats just kind
of their DNA. And for us, we like to keep it exciting for ourselves and change
things up, and thats just really, thats really part of our process. And following
that intuition, I think, has kept everything true, and really not listening to what
people say or what might be cool. And thats kind of also how we end up being
the oddballs of the current electronic music industry, is we dont really pay a
whole lot of attention to what our peers and contemporaries are doing.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, you know, when youre chasing whats cool, its already too late. You know
what I mean?
Justin Boreta:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre going to paddle like hell and youre going to be 20 feet behind the wave.
But, Im curious to talk a little bit more about this committee, because I dont ask
I ask for input, but Im very selective about the type of input that I let through
into the process. And Im curious to hear how you solicit feedback, what you
ask for, because for example in my writing, before I ask anyone to tell me what
they like or dont like, I ask them to read through a draft and just indicate what
is unclear or what is confusing. And that depersonalizes it. It makes it You get
more of a consensus also. If I have five people read it and they all flag a couple
of areas as unclear, it means those need to change. I wont debate that, thats
a poor job on my part. What type of feedback, or how do you solicit feedback?
Justin Boreta:
So this is an interesting process. I think theres something about music that is

about intuition, right? Its like, its about getting your brain out of the way. And
so a funny thing happens where Ill play it, lets say, for my mom, or for a friend
who doesnt happen to be a musician, and a lot of times Ill value that sort of
feedback tremendously in a sense because people will both say something like,
You know, Im not a producer, but this song to me feels like X, Y, or Z, and for
me its a more pure response. And I just want to hear how it makes people feel,
or what the very first thought that comes to them, versus someone whos a
producer or a friend of ours who might be there who is going to zoom in on the
details. So Im really looking for just a general feeling of, What does this song
elicit in you? What sort of images does this bring up? And I wouldnt say were
really prone to changing stuff too much, although with the last record we had
recorded all these vocals, and we actually wrote all of the lyrics and all of the
melodies.
So there was a point where we thought this record was just about done, and
we had said, You know what? Were going to do this because we want to try
our hand at it. And there was just something not right about it. Its hard to
put your finger on when you listen to a song. Its such an interesting mixture
between technical and intuitive, but then when we played these songs, there
was just something that wasnt quite right. And I think at that point, thats when
you go play it to someone else to almost confirm or deny what it is that I feel.
Like, Yeah, you know, I wouldnt say, Does this sound bad to you? I would just
play it for someone, and theyre like, Yeah, I dont know, it kind of sucks. And
its like, Okay, great. So we actually had an entirely different record done. We
had vocals that we wrote and recorded, and we deleted everything, and thats
why some of these songs ended up having 200, 300 revisions. So we had a tour
booked in September of 2013, and we had all the stuff pending on that, and
then we cancelled all of that because we said, You know what? The albums not
good enough.
And then what we ended up doing, and all the songs you hear now, were done in
an entirely different process, which was that we gave the song to a professional
vocalist and lyricist who thats what they do, and we just let them run with it and
be themselves, and we realized that at this point in time that writing lyrics and
melodies is not our forte. So all the lyrics you hear now were done in this way.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And when youre in the studio and you dont have a semi-finished product,
right? Youre starting from scratch, what does a day in the studio look like when
you are trying to work on a track that is nothing?
Justin Boreta:
So the way were working, and our process changes so much. Ill speak to whats
happening right now. Were actually in the studio at the moment. Ill be heading
over there after we hop off this call. But what weve done is, we take some time
in our solo studios and we write what we call sketches. So we have a very basic
pallet of instruments. Its almost as if you were painting and you just had three
colors, or even just a pencil. Like, what can you do with this? So its focusing on
the structure, the feeling, the overall picture of the song. So Ed and Josh and I
all went to our own studios and wrote about five sketches each over the course
of a week.
Tim Ferriss:
And by sketches, you mean you were all independently DJs before the band was
formed, is that right?
Justin Boreta:
Correct, yeah. And were all producers, DJs on our own.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. So youre creating that, and again, Im not from the music world, but
in the same way that, say, The Neptunes might create a beat that someone
would listen to to lay their music on top of, you guys are all creating that type of
framework of sounds, and thats the sketch?
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So its something so, like, and we would all
be in our own individual studios and create a sketch thats just a really basic
And the reason its a sketch is that its just, when you have instruments that
dont sound glossy and super completist, just like a basic piano patch, very very
basic drums, you can really focusing on, look at the song writing itself, and so
its just, it almost sounds like a demo from Garageband or something. Like, its
really crappy. If you heard our sketches, youd think, Wow, really? Thats what
this song started as?
Tim Ferriss:
Oh man. We might have to get that as a podcast bonus. A sketch versus finished
product would be amazing.
Justin Boreta:
Actually, I have some of those loaded up.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh do you? Oh my god, I would love Could we listen to a sketch and then the
finished product for something?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, you know, lets do it actually. While were here, we should jump in really
quick. This is funny, so no one else has ever heard these before outside of The
Glitch Mob, so I thought this would be actually a perfect opportunity to illustrate
the difference between both of them. So this is a song on our new record called
Our Demons, and this is about two years of, and about 300 revisions, in between
these two. So heres the first one that we wrote out, and we moved to Joshua
Tree in the desert and we lived there for a month to write music, and this is the
very first one, version six. [Music plays]. So thats a sketch, and then heres the
completed version, version 394. [Music plays]
Tim Ferriss:
Thats version 394.
Justin Boreta:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
God, its like my blog posts. No, I love that though, because, and Ive interviewed
so many people on the podcast, and if you look at the top performers, and correct
me if this isnt the case, but theres a very significant degree of just obsessive
perfectionism required to get to the point where you create something that has
any degree of sort of pop and longevity.
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely. And it doesnt necessarily have to be that way for us. But the
attention to detail is really, its just microscopic, and I think that really, it goes
back to caring about And the funny thing is that its not for anyone else either.
Its like, you just have to know that every punctuation point is there and that
everything is just right.
Tim Ferriss:
Do the And I dont know if I should call them songs or tracks. My vocabulary
for music is off. What do you prefer to call Songs?
Justin Boreta:
Actually I kind of use them interchangeably.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, so what are your most, the songs that have had the widest appeal,
that have ended up most popular, what do they have in common, if anything?
Whether thats the actual end product or in the process that goes into it or
otherwise?
Justin Boreta:
Theres two kind of points to that that are really interesting. So I would say one
of our most popular songs, and Ive thought about this a lot, and one of our most
popular songs is Fortune Days. And the interesting thing that happens with
this, this is a funny side note because actually I have the sketch loaded up right
here if we want to
Tim Ferriss:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Justin Boreta:
Ill play it for you right after this. So when we work on songs, we have working
titles. So when we make a sketch, we just write something to some whatever
is kind of on our mind at the time. And there were really funny working titles
for all these songs. So Fortune Days used to be called Somethings About to
Happen. Because it feels like, if theres something, its just tense. I dont know,
somethings about to happen to those songs. Theres another one called Yacht
Sex or Super Banging Track. Its like kind of just ridiculous funny stuff. So
Fortune Day, Somethings About to Happen, when we wrote that song, which
ended up being one of our biggest tracks, and its the same with our other ones,
are the ones that we didnt expect to be our biggest tracks. This was not the
leadoff single or anything, it just took on a life of its own. And so the same thing
happened with Love, Death, Immortality. The ones that we thought were going
to be, Okay, this is definitely going to be the one that takes hold, absolutely
was not. And, in fact, Cant Kill us, which ended up being the one on Sin City
and the one that was, if you look on Spotify, its our most played track from that
record, and its the video on YouTube and everything.
Tim Ferriss:
Cant Kill Us.
Justin Boreta:
Cant Kill Us, yeah. That one obviously resonated with many people. But again,
that was the one that we didnt think was going to be. That was the, Lets just
write one just really kind of weird, off the cuff, badass song, but for us that was
us just letting go a little bit and running with something that we didnt really
care if it had any sort of resonance with people.
Tim Ferriss:
I love it. So Fortune Days, one of the most popular tracks from The Glitch Mob,
you have the draft, the sketch? Id love to hear the sketch and the finished
product, or the later draft.
Justin Boreta:
Totally. Yeah, no one else has ever heard this, so its just you and I here, Tim.
Lets play it.
Tim Ferriss:
Just the two of us. [Music plays]
Justin Boreta:
Okay. So you kind of get that vibe, so then Ill play just a little clip of the finished
thing.
Tim Ferriss:
Which version was that?
Justin Boreta:
That was it doesnt have the song number in there but thats July, 2009.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay, got it.
Justin Boreta:
So that was probably about, we finished the album in winter, so that was about
six months. [Music plays]
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool.
Justin Boreta:
So yeah, I think that the only consistent thing that shows the songs that resonate
with people are the ones that were never going to be able to tell, so Ive just
given up trying to figure that out and just kind of make more music.
Tim Ferriss:
Its kind of like the Costanza principle. Its like, Jerry, I figured it out. I just need
to do the opposite of everything that I think I should do, and itll be perfect.
Justin Boreta:
Thats right.
Tim Ferriss:
You just have to All the tracks that you do for yourself that you care the least
about or that you do for the hell of it end up being the ones that pop. Its
funny how consistent that is, even with my writing also. Ill put, and I have an
attention to detail in both cases, but Ill put so much effort into something Im
sure, from the very outset, is going to be a huge hit, and itll just fall completely
flat, and then Ill just kind of vomit something out that has a lot of emotion in it,
and that rawness, I suppose, just clicks, and its depressing or really, you know,
encouraging, depending on how you look at it. Because Ill do these things very
quickly that pop and do very well, like this recent blog post on what my morning
journal looks like. And I think its just called What My Morning Journal Looks
Like, which took me a half hour, or maybe an hour, to get out. And then there
are other posts I spend 30 hours on, and its crickets. Just crickets.
Justin Boreta:
Wow. I would like to ask you, so is the morning journal, I was going to ask you,
what is a post that youve done that you didnt think was going to do well and
then resonated with a lot of people? Is that the morning journal one?
Tim Ferriss:
That is one example. Theres another that I put up which was, lets see. Its
called something along the lines of Do You Need to Borrow Some Strength, or,
Borrow Some Strength Today, Watch This, and it was just a YouTube embed with
a bit of context, and it was about, I believe in that particular case, it was Kyle
Maynard, who was born a quad amputee but ended up being a very successful
competitive wrestler, did the military, was the first person to do the military crawl
all the way up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Hes just an incredible guy. Ive had the privilege
of meeting him and spending time with him. Very short, very emotionally open,
and it makes me wonder if thats the case with the music as well, even though
its conveyed through sound and not through words.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, I think so. And you know, that actually just made me, you know, what
you just said right there reminded me of something. So one of the people on
our team, our art director Dean, who helps create all the visual aspect, and we
could do a whole other episode on everything visual, from the show visuals to
the album cover, Dean is a super old friend of mine, and he designs everything
for us. Everything you see visually passes through him. And the other day, he
sent me a text, and he said, You have to go listen to this podcast, this Radiolab
show, called, In the Dust of This Planet. And the episode, if you havent heard
it, I implore you to go listen to it. Its just fascinating. The whole thing circulates
around this philosopher and nihilism. I wont go too far into it, but its about kind
of the apocalyptic feeling of whats happening right now in the world and how,
what I took from it and how it resonates with Glitch Mob and what, the reason
why he sent it to me, was that theres something about badassery and stuff, and
something that, and they even say that in the podcast about, What is it about
something that is badass that is resonating with people right now?
And it ultimately has to do with music being like a force field or a shield. And
when you said, Can I borrow some strength? It just really made me think of
actually music. And part of the reason why our music resonates with people is,
its almost like, and the darkness of their album cover has this samurai figure,
but theres something about it that says, Ive seen into the darkness, Ive seen
it, and Im not afraid. And what they say in that podcast really resonated with
me. And I almost see music in the same way of some of this stuff that you do
of, youre handing people these little tools, although maybe music is a different
sort of emotional or spiritual tool. I mean, a lot of people will work out to our
music, and if it helps you get out a couple of more reps in your set, then I think
that thats really one of the benefits that it has to offer.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Oh yeah, no, I need to pick up This Is Your Brain on Music as well.
Theres another one called Musicology, I think it is, or Musicophelia, one of the
two.
Justin Boreta:
Thats Oliver Sacks?
Tim Ferriss:
Exactly, which I really want to dig into. Back in the day, I used to take five
piece drum lessons, and got into hand drumming recently which, yeah, with a
djembe and a couple of other types, which Im really enjoying. And its just very
therapeutic. And actually, do you find, so for you, do you have a, do you play any
traditional instruments, or have you practiced any traditional instruments?
Justin Boreta:
So the short answer is no, and I think thats kind of a funny thing. And actually
when you had tweeted this morning, and I posted on our Facebook asking some
people what they would want to talk about, and something that came up, one of
the guys posted something like, How important is it for you to learn traditional
instruments to perform or produce music? And none of us have any traditional
instrument training. We didnt go to music school or anything like that. I actually
cant really I mean, I can kind of get around on a piano. I did go to UC Santa
Cruz and I studied, if you could call it that, in the electronic music program, which
was more about smoking pot and playing with crazy synths, to be quite honest.
But that aside, Ed and Josh both played, they can play guitar and keys just a
little bit. But none of us are really that good at playing instruments. Although I
feel like at this point I have an intuitive understanding for music, but I have come
at it from a very non-traditional angle. I actually came in more via technology.
When I very first started messing around with music, it was through computers,
and we do stuff to make up for the fact that were not really that good at I
mean its like, we can get by, and Eds a pretty good piano player. But nothing
compared to, like, a concert pianist or just someone who is classically trained.
But for instance, one of the tricks we use which, actually, we were using this
yesterday, and I thought this was a very Tim Ferrissian trick, is so, for instance,
in Ableton, theres a plug-in that allows you to transpose a scale. So what that
means is that it allows us to only know one scale. So in the piano, lets say
you study C major. Thats just one combination that keys that all sound good
together, and then you use the plug-in to move that around. So I actually only
know one scale. Theres so many things to know, but I play that one, and then
Ableton will actually translate it for me.
Tim Ferriss:
What is the name of that plug-in, do you know?
Justin Boreta:
Its just the Ableton pitch plug-in. So there are plug-ins that come within Ableton
that allow you to program chords and transpose your playing around so that
you dont Its basically just some shortcuts. Man, I went on a tangent there.
Tim Ferriss:
No no, I love tangents. Thats the whole point.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah. Well I think that So yeah, so we are actually an example of people that
have had, you know, weve made a career but not actually fundamentally being
able to perform music.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, with traditional instruments. So how have you found that to help you,
compared to if there are people you know in EDM who have traditional
backgrounds, how has that lack of formal schooling helped or hindered you, do
you feel?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah I think theres a couple of things there. So one thing to mention is that Ed,
before we were doing Glitch Mob, Ed wrote music for commercials. And I think
it says that this is an interesting piece of the whole puzzle. Its also Ed is, so
the detail focus, the really hard core detail oriented stuff comes from Ed. And
he used to write music for commercials. And so what that looks like is, lets say
that youre writing a commercial and its a cheerful commercial for bubblegum,
and then he would have to write something that sounds like that. Or say that
theres a dark commercial for a new car thats really technological. So for years
and years, he was basically writing jingles. So he has the ability, so you can say,
Ed, we need to have something that sounds this, and he can actually just, like,
piece together something really quick, and I think it kind of comes back to some
kind of the Gladwell 10,000 hour thought, where Ed has spent so much time just
churning out different emotions, theres really little short snippets of different
feelings and emotions that he had that kind of training.
But its very real world stuff. It wasnt like an actual music school. And so that
said, I think for me, coming into it really bending the rules from right out the gates
and having that be part of the way that I see music I think has been beneficial,
because I didnt understand music really, just, I just kind of understood my own
little corner of it, and I was just doing my little thing. And I remember when
someone first explained a chord to me, I was already actually, like, you know,
having a decent amount of commercial success, but I didnt understand a very
basic idea of music thats like, what a chord is. And, you know, its the same
thing. Like before we went to go play our very first show with our new live gear
at Coachella, and I was up there playing drums, I had never even picked up a
drum stick in my entire life, which sounds like something that you have done
which actually, I saw the episode of your show where you did that, and I felt the
pain.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, that was stress-inducing, being on stage. Id never been in front of an

audience for any type of music. I actually had never performed music for anyone,
whether one or two people, let alone a sold out auditorium with an actual band.
Yeah, that was stressful. But it was euphoric at the same time. It was this very
sort of pleasure pain mix. It was interesting. And once I got into the flow, it was
fine, even though I feel like audiences are more forgiving if youre transmitting
the proper emotion for a few minutes. Theyre very forgiving as long as you
maintain the flow, it seems.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, thats true. And thats something why people, you know, like when people
come see us, you dont come to see us play because, exactly like what youre
saying, its not, Wow, theyre really really good at their instrument. Like, if you
go see Santana play, youre thinking, Wow, he is incredibly good at playing that
guitar. That is unbelievable. You dont see us, but at the same time, youre still
used to, you get the feeling of us being up there, being emotive, and playing
the songs. And I think just to jump back, as far as what has helped or hindered,
you know, I know a lot of people that have gone to music school and gone to
electronic music school or electronic production school, and I think theres, it
can help you and hurt you. Because in one way you learn how to make a song
sound finished and proper, but you also learn the rules, and I feel like most of
the really good music that you like is music that inherently kind of breaks the
rules, and thats just whats exciting about music, is something that inspires you
or something that colors outside of the lines.
And I think that had I gone to a music school and learned the correct way to do
it, thats a fast track to being an engineer and being someone who works in the
studio and helps other people produce albums. And thats actually a really cool
thing and thats something that I would love to learn how to do and figure out, is
to be a record producer, like a Rick Rubin style, I mean, I just, Rick Rubin is one
of my biggest inspirations at what he does. But thats a very different thing than
someone like us, who are, you know, were just kind of off in our own little corner
creating our own little soundscapes.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, no, its funny you mention Rick. Im hoping to have him on the podcast, so
I might tap you for questions. So if you were to, and I have just one or two kind
of longer form questions, then Id love to hit you with some rapid fire questions
from some of the listeners. If you were sort of assigned, that sounds like such
a dreary word. If you volunteered for teaching me how to produce music or
make music using the tools that you have, because Ive always found music very
intimidating, but lets just say I were to spend a month with you, and the prize
was several million dollars to get me to the point where I could create a finished
track of some type that didnt make people cringe. Where would you have me
start? What does that first week look like?
Justin Boreta:
Thats a great question. So I think that the core of a really good song, it really
honestly has to do with what you want to say. So I would actually do some, like
lets say I would ask you to go find 10 tracks that resonate with you or something
that, Maybe I would want to produce a track that sounds like this, or, This is
really what Im feeling right now, just to get you in the general creative space of
thinking about what youre really trying to say. And then the next step would be
creating, lets say, a sketch, kind of like we do, and focusing on some very basic
building blocks of music. So, you know, a very basic electronic song would be
a combination of drums, melody, chords, and bass. So those are the building
blocks of a song. And electronic music is so fluid. You can kind of move all of
those things around. So we would go over what all of those different things
are and how they play together. And actually, I wouldnt spend too much time
on learning music theory. This kind of goes back to what I was talking about
before, is theres ways to short cut all that stuff to where we can just learn one
scale, or maybe not even, just learn, Okay, these notes sound good together.
And theres a thing in Ableton that you could lock the keyboard to a scale which
means that, like, if a cat walks on it it will still sound good.
Tim Ferriss:
You could have an entire band of six cats on keyboards.
Justin Boreta:
Yes. Thats actually a great idea. Lets do that.
Tim Ferriss:
The Cat Mob?
Justin Boreta:
Yes.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh man. Get out the trademark lawyers.
Justin Boreta:
That actually sounds like it could
Tim Ferriss:
Im just fucking with you.
Justin Boreta:
Okay, I like that. So yeah, so I would put some tools in place to get everything
fixed, so no matter what we did it was going to sound good. And then just kind
of, I think the next step is, you know the interesting thing, something thats
changed over the past couple of years since weve started, is that you can
actually buy sound sets that are really good. And this didnt exist when we very
first started. It makes me sound like, Hey sonny, we used to have to
Tim Ferriss:
Walk up the soundscape uphill both ways.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, I mean, compared to what we actually had, I mean, if you talked to people
who have actually been doing it for longer, I probably sound like a snotty child
compared, you know, started in 2006. Those people who actually had to write
music on punch cards and stuff like that, and its actually pretty crazy. But
that said, we could walk into Guitar Center now, I mean, I dont know if this
is a good answer. Id be like, Tim, lets go to Guitar Center. Were going to
spend $100.00 and buy a great sample kit, because the stuff that people have
now are because out of the box stuff sounds so good. So we would find some
really good samples that resonate with you that you like, because a lot of music
production has to do with starting with really good source material and taking
away stuff is actually a lot more important than adding to it. So what I mean is
like, if we went to guitar center and bought a sample CD that was good and it
had really good source material and then you put a bunch of stuff together, its
a lot easier to start shaving away and removing the stuff thats not there to get
everything fitting and in its right place.
Tim Ferriss:
When you have a finished track, lets just say like the finished Fortune Days, and
again, this is speaking from pretty deep in my ignorance pool, but if I look in, say,
Garage Band, and you have multiple tracks for different vocals or music tracks
or whatever, how many separate melodies, drums, etc., do you have in a finished
song, like Fortune Days?
Justin Boreta:
It really changes on a song to song basis.
Tim Ferriss:
What would you say the average range is?
Justin Boreta:
The average is somewhere around, you know, 50. And it can be much, I mean
some songs weve had over 100 tracks and some songs have been less. Also,
because the tracks that we write are, especially something like Fortune Days,
theres so many different parts to it, and the way that its talked about in music
terminology is, so its like each section you assign a letter to it. So like the intro
is A, and then the first thing that happens right after that when the drums drop
would be called B, and then it goes back to A, so it could be like, you know, and
a pop song could be like A, B, A, C, style layout, something like that. And our
songs are like A, B, C, A, D, C, B, and it goes on. It kind of gets We have a lot
of complex pieces moving around. So because its like that, we dont always
recycle the sections over and over again, then it can be, you know, each one of
those sections can have 10, 20 tracks, and theres really a lot of layering that
goes on too. And I say thats something that if there are any producers out there
listening that are looking for production stuff, thats a big, thats something that
we spend a lot of time on is the layering of the sounds and the sampling.
All the sounds you hear have been processed, and are complex packs of many
different pieces together to make one sound so that it sounds custom and not
like anything that comes right out of the box.
Tim Ferriss:
What percentage of your samples are sort of off the rack versus custom?
Justin Boreta:
You know, it changes on an album to album basis. But say a lot of the stuff
is custom. Were pretty So lets say you open a synthesizer, a very popular
synthesizer thats used right now is called Massive. So you could open it and
theres a set of presets in there and you can cycle through them, or you can
clear out the synth and then design from the ground up. And we do a lot of that.
We do both, but a lot of our sounds are customized, and what that allows us to
do is really control the sound. And if we do use stuff that is out of the box or
preset, we mash it and process it and layer it to the fact to where you couldnt
really tell.
Tim Ferriss:
Who, besides The Glitch Mob, what other bands might you recommend people
listen to if they want to hear good layering?
Justin Boreta:
Thats a really good question. So theres a producer whos a good friend of ours
called Amon Tobin, and his music is so complex and layered and his album, Foley
Room, like he out-layered everybody.
Tim Ferriss:
Whats the name of the album again?
Justin Boreta:
The album is called Foley Room.
Tim Ferriss:
Foley, F-O-L-E-Y, like the sound effects?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, absolutely. And he went out into the world and recorded sounds of just,
theres actually a little mini documentary about it. Its really fascinating, but
hes recording sounds of animals and motorcycles and walking around on weird
sticks and rocks, and he made a whole album thats almost entirely comprised
of stuff like that. And so when you really, if you put that on your headphones
and listen to that, that is a real master-level mix engineer creative undertaking.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. I would love to ask you some quick questions from some of the
listeners out there, and then perhaps we can listen to another track and then
wrap up for this round one. So the first question is, and Im going to He gave
me two and Im going to have to take the more ridiculous. This is Jin Habitch.
Do you pee in the shower? I assume the answer is yes. I mean, every guy pees
in the shower.
Justin Boreta:
Of course. I think its actually, at this point, especially in Los Angeles, you have
to. The draught police would come and get you if you dont.
Tim Ferriss:
Ian, the BT Winter, this is the desert island question. So if you could take one
book, one album, and one luxury, I would just say one third item of any type, to
a desert island, what would they be?
Justin Boreta:
Thats a great question. So I think my album would have to be Aphex Twins

Selected Ambient Works. Book, oh man, that changes so much. So book is
going to be The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and third luxury item, I think my
Chemex.
Tim Ferriss:
Youve got to hope theres some coffee beans on that island. Chemex is great.
Have you tried the Aeropress?
Justin Boreta:
I have tried the Aeropress. I really like it.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, yeah. Aeropress is great. If youre going to make coffee for more than
two cups though, the Chemex is a good way to go. Very cool. All right, next
question. You know, this is one I think a lot of people get curious about, so if
youre comfortable answering it, what are your different revenue streams for
the band, for the work you guys do?
Justin Boreta:
Sure. So this is an interesting point, actually, that I dont think a lot of people
know, but we dont make any money from touring, to be quite honest. I mean,
theres a lot of money that comes in, but we take all of it, and we dump it all back
into the show. So that, touring for us, I mean, hopefully at some point it gets
there, but its really a labor of love. The process of building The Blade, and all
of the bits and pieces that make the whole thing tick was really expensive, and
we just decided that we want to do this, and so that is never a revenue stream
for us. Eventually, I mean, its kind of like an investment. As we keep touring,
maybe well make some money down the line, and touring is a very expensive
undertaking, because theres people that have to set the show up and everything
has to travel around and be freighted internationally and everything. So theres
a lot that goes into that. A lot of people do make money from touring but right
now for us the equation is not that. So most of our, what keeps the lights on, is
actually mostly the licensing for us, and the music sales.
Tim Ferriss:
Very cool. Do you guys do any merch?
Justin Boreta:
We do. Yes, we actually, thats another thing is Id say part of our whole DIY
ethos is that we have a lot of merch and weve actually worked on and designed
a lot of the stuff ourselves. Almost everything you see in Glitch Mob world is
something that has passed through us. But yeah, you can see our merch store
has a lot of really cool stuff, and we collaborate, weve collaborated with some
friends of ours and made some cool stuff.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, very cool. Are there any bands that youre aware of that you suspect
make the majority of their money through merchandising?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah. You know, thats actually I was just talking with someone about this
yesterday, so thats kind of funny you mention that. But in the kind of punk rock
landscape, as its evolved into, a lot of those bands, the whole Warped Tour,
and I dont actually know this to be a fact. This is something who, someone
else told this to me. But a lot of happens if you go to Warped Tour, theres a lot
of younger fans there, and the bands who play there dont get paid a whole lot
of money, but they make a lot of their money from merch sales. I dont know if
its sort of the majority, but that whole touring entity is set up around the fact
that they have these huge merch stores that theres like a big merch mall in the
middle of the Warped Tour as it travels around.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Sounds like Oz Fest also, which Ive been to a couple of times. That is a
blast, at Shoreline Amphitheater at least. Just insane. Lets see. So this is one.
This is from, Im going to paraphrase here. This is from Agatha Fox. What are
some of your fears?
Justin Boreta:
What are some of my fears? Oh, thats deep. Thats a good question.
Tim Ferriss:
I have a very light question to follow this one up.
Justin Boreta:
Okay. What are my You know, I had a crazy long conversation with my dear
friend Ben Deruit, hes another music producer. Just the other day we were
coming back from the gym, and we were talking about how the climate is fucked,
and how its seeming everything is turning from, What can we do to prevent
total climate catastrophe? To, Now that its happening, how are we going
to wrestle with this catastrophe? And the more I think and read and learn
about whats happening with the current state of earth, it seems to be pretty
doomed, maybe not for us in our lifetime, but definitely for our children and our
grandchildren. So its a pretty scary thought.
Tim Ferriss:
It is. It is. Just as a side note for folks, I just recently interviewed Peter
Diamandis who is the chairman of The XPRIZE. He does a lot of work with space
technologies, and hes the cofounder of a company called, for instance, Planetary
Resources, the idea being to send ships to close orbiting asteroids to mine
precious resources to bring back to earth to use extra-planetarily. And he is
very He would be called by a lot of people a techno optimist, but I was similarly
in the last year or so, especially after talking to climate scientists, getting very
depressed and kind of put into a malaise about, Wow, the whole planet is just
going to be boiling in 30 years if we keep it up. And Peter was talking about,
I dont want to spend too much time on this, but talking about how they could
actually put up a pane in space that could be rotated very precisely, almost to
enlarge or lessen its profile, in between the Earth and the Sun to modify the
amount of energy hitting the planets surface.
And he basically said, I think were going to be able to prevent catastrophic

meltdown, but if were not, the good news is there are actually technologies like
this that we can absolutely deploy to minimize some of the damage. And I was
like, Huh, thats the first time Ive heard anything of that.
Justin Boreta:
Wow. Isnt there a Simpsons episode about that? Doesnt Mr. Burns block the
sun?
Tim Ferriss:
You know, I wouldnt doubt it. Maybe well all look back in 50 years and be like,
Oh my god, The Simpsons fucking called it. Thats amazing.
Justin Boreta:
Once again.
Tim Ferriss:
No, exactly. I mean, didnt they have a Barak Obama versus Mitt Romney
prediction like 10 years ago? I mean, The Simpsons, I think there are people
with ESP working at The Simpsons as writers.
Justin Boreta:
That does make me feel a little bit better. Also, just, I am with you to following
someone, like Elon Musk had a saying, You know what? Im just going to go and
make this reality better, because I get just everything that he does completely
boggles my mind. So it makes me feel a little bit better to know that there are
real live Tony Starks out there doing what they can.
Tim Ferriss:
Working on the problem. So to ask a much lighter question, sort of, what is your
favorite pastry? This is from Medium Rare.
Justin Boreta:
My favorite pastry. I think it would have to be just a plain croissant.
Tim Ferriss:
And you said it correctly too. Is there any particular way you guys celebrate
after shows?
Justin Boreta:
No. You know, we have a pre-show meditation we do.
Tim Ferriss:
Ah, I want to hear about this.
Justin Boreta:
Before every single show, and weve been doing it for a couple of years now, and
before we go on we have a huddle and its just a quick 30 second meditation,
and we say, Heres to the now, and its just a way to let everything go and
focus and go on stage. And it really helps. After the show, no, we dont really
celebrate too much.
Tim Ferriss:
I love the pre-show. So is it, Heres to the now, and then 30 seconds of silence?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah exactly. We count down, we say it in unison, and we also grab whatever
other team members are in the room, and then we do a quick meditation, yeah,
just take a deep breath, and then have silence.
Tim Ferriss:
I love it. When you think of the word, Successful, whos the first person who
comes to mind?
Justin Boreta:
Thats a great question. You know, I dont know if I could actually pick one person,
but I would say that Im so fortunate to be surrounded by so many people that
I consider to be successful, and I guess it can be boiled down to the way that I
define success is someone whos really, genuinely excited about what they get
to do and is carving out their own path. Anyone from someone like my sister
who is in medical school working to be a doctor, who I was just talking to, who
I think has an incredibly, I think its an incredibly difficult path. But what she
does, I mean, I guess, its difficult in the sense of, you know, I was just talking to
her. Shes working at the ICU right now, and I think it can be a really heavy job.
And I think of other people who are like, my artist friends in LA who are getting
to create and do these things. But the fundamental link between all of these
different people is just doing something that really lights you up on the inside.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Lets see. If you could give How old are you at the moment?
Justin Boreta:
Im 34.
Tim Ferriss:
34. If you could Wow, weve got pretty closely matching timelines. I love it. If
you could give your 20 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Justin Boreta:
Chill out. Calm down.
Tim Ferriss:
In what way? In what way?
Justin Boreta:
I feel like myself and other people I know that are in the early to mid-20s get
really wound up about things having to be a certain way or, I dont know, I think
that enjoy, because it all kind of doesnt matter as much as you think it does.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, thats the truth. Will you remember this in ten years? Probably not.
Justin Boreta:
No. No, people dont even remember a Tweet 12 minutes later.
Tim Ferriss:
That is the truth. Into the slipstream. Is there I have never been to an EDM
show of any type. What show or festival should I go to?
Justin Boreta:
That is Thats a great question. I think that if youve never been to a show, I
think Well, you should come to see us play. Im biased, especially because
Tim Ferriss:
Absolutely. No, that has to happen. I remember we missed each other by a

day in San Francisco or something like that and I was gutted. So yes, that must
happen.
Justin Boreta:
Next time you should come. There are, you know, if Daft Punk ever plays again,
if youre going to see one show, your desert island show, I would say if they do
another tour, you have to go see them play, because what they do, and they
have really set the bar for everybody. But its the perfect, their live show is
the perfect marriage between just fun, visceral, classic dance music, and crazy
techno futurism. I mean, it really changed my life.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow. Thats a strong statement. I love it. Okay.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, that would be it.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you have any particular morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day
look like?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah I do, and it changes also because the way The Glitch Mob works is very
much in phases. Our years rotate from phase to phase. So theres studio phase,
which were in right now, then theres tour prep phase, tour, tour recovery, and
then rinse and repeat. So right now I get up at probably around 8:00 a.m. and I
meditate every day, and I have
Tim Ferriss:
For how long?
Justin Boreta:
20 minutes.
Tim Ferriss:
What type of meditation?
Justin Boreta:
I practice transcendental meditation. And Ive tried all sorts of different types,
and this is just the one for me, which Ive heard you say on the podcast too, that
just kind of stuck.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, yeah, did it this morning.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, its great. So I dont actually do it twice a day every single day, and I hope
my teachers dont hear me say that, but
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, you know, I wish And since its just the two of us talking, the two, I feel
like a failure if I mentally commit to two and then cant do two or dont do two,
but once in the morning has a tremendous effect for me.
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, its really changed my life. Its been a couple of years for me now, and a
friend of mine sort of gifted me a course because he works for the David Lynch
Foundation. And so I got to take the class, and its really just been life changing.
And its because Ive been able to stick with it and actually keep it, because
Im just reading, Ive read so many books about mindfulness and meditation
and Ive taken different courses, and its just, whatever, TM just happens to be
something that you can do on a day to day basis and its really quite simple.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you do it in bed? Do you just wake up and sit up against the headboard and
do it? Or is it after you brush your teeth? After breakfast? When do you do it?
Justin Boreta:
So I think, you know, actually an important part of my morning ritual is that I

get up and I dont look at my phone or my computer for the first hour, and I
have this quiet time and I think. And I used to be the type of person where I
would get up and right away Im like emails, texts, tweet, whatever, looking at
the hamster wheel of my phone, and realized how much that was scattering my
brain. So meditation, for me, actually was something that got me out of that
state. So I wake up, I dont look at any technology, I make tea, I make matcha
tea, usually, or different, some kind of green tea, and then I meditate, and then
Ill have breakfast or do a quick morning workout. Those are like separate
from a different, you know, weight lifting, gym, exercise, just to kind of get the
blood flowing. So Ill do something quick, then Ill have a breakfast, and then Ill
intentionally plug in, after I have, and I also will Part of this time will be reading.
So I get even just 20 minutes to read a book in the morning before I plug in and
jump on the information superhighway.
Tim Ferriss:
What is the What would the workout potentially look like, lets say the current
workout or the most recent workout, what were the movements?
Justin Boreta:
This morning I just did some kettle bell swings, and thats kind of like the
quickest bang for my buck thing to do. And Ive been working on mobility quite
a bit more, especially with so much time in the studio. Actually, Ive been getting
really into these, the yoga tune-up balls. Theyre these, like, hard, these balls of
different sizes that you can take. And I think for people who spend a lot of time
sitting down, Ive been using them a lot, even when were in the studio and were
not sitting in the chair, each one of us will have a foam roller, these yoga tuneup balls, and were doing mobility stuff, so that Because sometimes well have
these sessions that go 12, 14 hours a day, and so I think its important to do the
focus on mobility. And then Ill have another workout later on in the day, which
is weight lifting or kind of like cross fit style workouts.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And your breakfast, after that morning workout, what does that look like?
Justin Boreta:
You know, I follow a very paleo/flora body style. I was a big fan of, actually, Ive
definitely evangelized your book to many friends of mine along the way. So
thanks for that.
Tim Ferriss:
No, thank you.
Justin Boreta:
I have eggs almost every single day, and actually I love the either scrambled
eggs or just fried eggs with vegetables and coffee.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, thats the breakfast of champions. Well, one more question and then Id
love to maybe close out with a track. What is the best piece of advice you ever
received, or the most important?
Justin Boreta:
The best piece of advice I ever received. Its something my father told me when
I was very very little, I was probably five or six, that just kind of stuck with me,
and that was, Dont force it.
Tim Ferriss:
Dont force it. And what does that Is it everything? Is it referring to work?
What is that referring to?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah, its seemingly such a simple thing thats really just stuck with me and its
been kind of, its become something of a Its an aphorism thats really stuck
with me. I think that for the creative process, thats really our guiding light. You
know, if something is not working, if something is not happening, I think its
really important to just let it be and just let things happen organically.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like that. Its very short, easy to
remember, and if I think about all those posts that I put tons of time into or
chapters that I put tons of time into that ended up failing or just not doing what
I wanted them to do, theres almost always a point where it was just like, Wow,
this is a grind. This is not Its not coming together, but Im just going to force
it to come together like a Frankenstein.
Justin Boreta:
Exactly. And I think that very rarely has the intended results, whether its
something creative or just in life in general, is trying to force a square peg into
the circle hole.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, absolutely. Well I would love to perhaps listen to another track for a bit
and then you can come back and well learn where we can find out about you
and all things Glitch Mob, but is there something we could listen to before we do
that?
Justin Boreta:
Yeah. Ill play Cant Kill Us off of our latest album Love, Death, Immortality. [Music
plays] So the best piece of advice I ever got and shes a doctor and she was I
dont remember exactly what she said but it was something to the effect of she
was working, she was caretaking for some older people who were nearing the
end of their life, and they were just talking about what things that they valued
sort of closing the door on life and closing the chapter. And they were talking
about what really meant a lot to them, and then it was the thing like love and
friendship and these personal relationships and I think for me there was just
something about the essence of distilling down to, once all the bullshit aside,
what really matters in life. And Ill never forget that, and using that as a guiding
light to just keep in the headlights.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Yeah, its incredible how easy it is to just get caught up in the minutiae and
nonsense. Its so easy, particularly with technology and just the never ending
stream of information and inputs.
Justin Boreta:
Absolutely. And I think you know theres something to music and a statement
like that or anything that, I dont know if theres a word for it in some other
language. You might know this, but the feeling of when you feel really small, like
when you look at the stars, and you feel like your problems dont really matter,
I think that, feeling like something youre connected to, something bigger than
yourself.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been a blast, and hopefully well be able to do
a part two sometime soon. But where can people thank you, find you, ask you
questions online? Where are the best places to learn more about you and The
Glitch Mob?
Justin Boreta:
You can check us out at theglitchmob.com or on Twitter, everything @

theglitchmob and myself @boreta.
Tim Ferriss:
Wonderful. Well thanks once again man. This has been great, and hopefully well
get to do a jam session in person. Maybe Ill get to play around with Ableton and
cause some trouble.
Justin Boreta:
Lets do it. Thanks Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
All right, thanks man.
Justin Boreta:
Take care.
Tim Ferriss:
spelling. All you need to know is this. I have organized my entire life around
can take them out to nice dinners, whatever, but theyre made from athletic,
or on your kitchen table like I did recently, and then pull it out, throw it on, with
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So go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhouroworkweek.com/

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cart, use the code Tim, T-I-M, and you will get the Henley shirt for free. Check
it out, fourhourworkweek.com/shirts, and youll see some of my favorite gear,
including the one shirt that Ive been traveling with. This episode of the Tim
Ferriss show is brought to you by 99 Designs. 99 Designs, is the worlds largest
online marketplace of graphic designers, and I have used 99 designs for years,
including to get cover concepts for The Four Hour Body, which went on to
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it out. And until next time, thank you for listening.
EPISODES 63, 65:
MARK HART
RAOUL PAL
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Hey guys, this is Tim Ferriss, and this is an experimental episode of The Tim Ferriss
Show. Its a little noisy. Im at the Facebook offices in Menlo Park, California. Just
got out of some stuff, but I wanted to get this out to you. So this particular episode
is me in conversation with two financial experts, two hedge fund experts, and those
two names are Mark Hart, and Ive had a lot of experience in time with Mark Hart.
Mark is the founder of Corriente Partners and Investment Fund focused on placing
longshore equity trades based on macroeconomic themes. Hes done a ton, including
basically running a sizeable, fantastic return on his positions during the 2008 subprime
mortgage crisis, which is one of the single best performances of that entire downturn.
Hes really good at spotting patterns, and Ive done some work with him, which well
get into.
Then there is Raoul, and he is the owner of Real Vision Television, from which this
interview is pulled, among other things, but he writes and publishes the Global Macro
Investor, an elite macroeconomic and investment strategy research service for many
of the worlds leading hedge funds, pension funds, banks, and sovereign wealth funds.
He does a lot more than that, of course, but Ill try to keep these introductions short.
He is also the author of The End Game, which is an article that turned out to be one of
the most read financial pieces in the history of the internet.
Its a fascinating conversation between the three of us about business, lifestyle, investing,
all of the above, and for those of you who are interested in real vision television, which
includes all sorts of names that if youre involved with finance, you might recognize
Rick Rule, Mark Hart, Kyle Bass, Mike Novogratz. The list goes on and on and on, really
reversing the dumb down trend that you see in mass media for discussing investment
and finance. It usually costs $400.00 a year. If you use the code Tim, T I M, then you can
get it for $300.00 a year. I get no profit participation in this. Im just doing it because I
had fun doing this interview. I make nothing from it. In any case, without further ado,
please meet both Mark and Raoul and myself in this conversation. Thanks.
Mr. Pal:
Tim, thanks very much for getting this all together. I think its going to be fascinating.
Mark, you did a first-ever master class, and you talked a lot about your trading philosophy
and how you do things and how you look at markets, but you broadened it out and said
how you look at your life and lifestyle and how you broaden your knowledge base. One
of the people you mentioned was Tim, and I said, well, itd be fascinating to find out
how Tim and you have interacted, and we could all have a joint conversation to see
what we could all learn from these kind of things because a lot of people are fascinated
behind those concepts because people dont look at their lifestyle as much as they
look at their career and stuff like that.
So I dont know, Tim, do you wanna give a little bit of background about yourself, and
Mark, just also for people who dont know about you, yourself as well?
Mr. Ferriss: Sure. I have been in the bay area, San Francisco-related area, for about 15 years,
and I really have two primary careers, I suppose. One is as a teacher and author, so
Ive written books, all of which sound like scammy infomercial products, The 4-Hour
Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef. We can talk about the titling some
other time, but the books really the common theme across all of them is trying to
deconstruct world-class performers and look at how the anomalies replicate unusual
results over and over and over again, whether thats in the CEO sphere or in the, say,
Olympic level professional athletics sphere or looking at accelerated learning and socalled prodigies and that arena.
How can someone pull tools from those people so that it can replicate results people
usually associate with some type of God-given talent? There are different types
of analysis we do for that. The second career is really startup angel investing and
advising, so I was C-level and still am advisor to Uber, Evernote, investor in Twitter,
and Facebook, about 35 companies total up to this point in time. So those are the two
areas where I spend a lot of my energy.
Mr. Pal:
Thats interesting. Mark?
Mr. Hart:
Well, Im a hedge fund manager. Ive been involved in the hedge fund world for probably
16 years, running my own funds for 13, almost 14 years, and I wont go into all the
specifics, I run several different types of funds, but typically, my focus is on macro. Its
interesting to me. We had our interview a few months ago and I did mention Tim as a
big influence on me, and specifically how that came to pass I was on top of the world,
and then I sort of crashed down to the bottom in 2009, had some really bad times, and
it was about that time I read a book called The Art of Learning by a guy named Josh
Waitzkin, who has become one of my closest friends and an absolutely brilliant man.
Josh was this world-class chess player, world-class martial artist, and the book was
about his learning process, so I felt like I needed some help on process, and I reached
out to Josh. It turned out he did some consulting with hedge funds on process, and he
agreed to work with me and my team on my process, and he suggested that we bring
Tim into the fold as well. I didnt know Tim before, but Tim has written these books, The
4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Workweek at the time, since then The 4-Hour Chef, read The
4-Hour Body, which absolutely blew me away, and Tim and Josh started to implement
various processes for me and my team.
While I wasnt able to necessarily turn my hedge fund performance around, although Im
still managing money, it completely changed my life, completely changed my outlook,
and so when you suggested the possibility of bringing Tim on and interviewing him, I
thought itd be great. What I thought was particularly interesting is, in the hedge fund
industry, my peers, and these are some of the smartest people in the world and some
of the most driven people in the world, and they put enormous effort into what they do,
and yet, most of them have never even considered putting the same sort of effort into
kind of improving their quality of life.
So I thought itd be great for some people in the financial world to see Tim and to get a
sense of really how far you can improve yourself, how far you can take things.
Mr. Pal:
[Inaudible 00:08:15]. So Tim lets think because Ive heard Marks mindset, but you went
in to see this troubled hedge fund manager whos having a tough time. How did you
evaluate the situation? How did you think you could help him? What tools did he need
to do things with, and how did you go about that process?
Mr. Ferriss: Well, I think there are a number of ways to try to, say, improve the performance of the
company, a group of people, or even a single person. In this particular case, of course,
the landscape of macro investing, hedge fund management, is not a landscape that
Im going to understand as well as someone like Mark, but if you look at it almost like
rally car racing Im fascinated by rally car racing, Ive done some experiments there
but you have a racetrack that is basically designed to kill you. Its not intended to be
as safe as possible. The path is somewhat known, but the terrain is unknown. It could
be raining, it could be sleeting, and Mark knows where he wants to go, but I can help
potentially improve the car itself, so the vehicle, which is the physical body upon which
everything is predicated.
So people tend to have this sort of Cartesian separation of mind and body, but at the
end of the day, you have certain levels of neurotransmitters that are produced at a
certain rate, depleted at a certain rate, and that is the rate-limiting step in your mental
performance. So if you want to have better levels of working memory, sustained
attention and so on, you can optimize those by optimizing the car, i.e., the body in
this case, and you can use exercise to, say, improve a production of brain-derived
neurotrophic factor and all these things that are very, very interesting.
Then you can also look at process, so I think Josh is one of the best in the world, and
Josh is a very dear friend of mine, at looking at repeatable processes. So what are
the daily habits and the ways that you approach turning your effort on or off, say, for
productivity and recovery, throughout the day, that you can tweak? So that would be
driving the car. So we can look at the process of, instead of having the shifter down
here in the normal H pattern that you might have, maybe we should elevate that just
like they do in rally car so that its closer to the steering wheel, and how can you do the
equivalent throughout the day?
That might be incorporating different types of sets of questions that you apply to
certain scenarios. It might be deciding beforehand, for instance, with a lot of my
startups, when you scale to a certain point, youre going to encounter the following
types of problems. So how do you plan for that type of crisis management in advance
so that youre not reactive so that you can be analytical when most people would be
emotional? Those are some of the tools in the tool kit that I would usually try to bring
to bear in a situation like that, and Josh and I have very complementary approaches,
which is probably the reason that we enjoy hanging out so much and working together.
Mr. Pal:
So Mark, so Tim walks in and says okay, this is what you need to do. How did you take
that onboard and then how did you engage with that process and kind of then start to
see the benefits flowing through, and how did that change you?
Mr. Hart:
Well, initially what I tried to do was incorporate 40 different new processes into my
life, diet, exercise, meditation, all kinds of things, and I wasnt particularly successful,
and I peeled it back a little bit and started to implement sort of one process at a time.
Nailing breakfast was a huge one for me.
Mr. Pal:
What do you mean by nailing breakfast?
Mr. Hart:
I mean, have appropriate breakfast. Its whats gonna fuel you for the day. Its whats
gonna it nourishes you. Its something you always have time for because its the
beginning of the day. Nothings going to run over and block it out, so nailing breakfast,
nailing a morning routine was really the first key. Everything from that built, started to
implement then a variety of things I did. I got into martial arts. Im pretty much addicted
to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and both Josh and Tim are expert, really world-class martial artists
as well, but part of that was even, okay, breaking down the workouts. What time of the
day are you gonna be the most productive, the most creative? Usually its after your
mind is cleared.
How you gonna clear your mind? Well, your normal conscious mind has thousands
of thoughts running through it constantly, but the key is accessing the subconscious
mind where youre really doing your thinking. So how do you create these periods of
time when you can best access that? So maybe its breaking up your workout into two
workouts a day that are half the length. Maybe its implementing a five or ten-minute
a day meditation, and then its structuring your workday so that youre not answering
emails during your most productive time, and then its self-tracking.
Mr. Ferriss:
And a lot of it starts with establishing a baseline, so knowing where you are, and I think
that, just to give a very common example of where people get themselves into trouble,
if, like most people, you take these extremely elite thinkers in the form of top hedge
fund managers who have annual checkups once a year, and they make decisions based
on the results of these blood tests that may come back in range or out of range, and
typically the way that even a connoisseurs medical service works, is you have this
checkup, you get back your blood values, utt-oh, this is high, this is low, here are two or
three medications to correct these following things, and you realize a few things very
quickly.
No. 1, if you were to take that test the next day, the values would be different, so you
want to always confirm testing results, and you can apply this to many different types
of thinking. Secondly, what youre interested in when you look at blood values is not
just a snapshot in time because thats like trying to understand a Worlds Cup game
from one photograph. You wanna understand trending. So youre better off having
slightly less data, so lower resolution, but many snapshots so you can look at where
youre trending as opposed to trying to diagnose and treat based on a single point in
time.
What that can do for you, for instance, in the traditional medical system in the United
States or conventional, I should say, you might be able to look at, say, your uric acid
level, which is, in some cases, indicative of gout if it gets past a certain point, and you
could get the lower range of normal and be ratcheting up 10, 20 percent per year,
but the doctor wont flag it as a problem until youve crossed into gout symptomatic
territory, but if youre taking those snapshots, you can catch it beforehand and you can
identify, say, dietary interventions, well, perhaps we should reduce fructose. People
tend to blame gout and uric acid on protein intake. Well, fructose has a huge part to
play in that.
But it all starts with establishing a baseline, so in the case of, say, a daily routine and
a weekly routine, you could identify Mark could identify, during his states of flow,
and we could talk about what that means, but when he feels effortless production,
like he is doing everything well on autopilot, what are the characteristics, what are the
prerequisites or the correlates to that? What are the potential triggers, right, and it
starts with journaling. Similarly, what are the 20 percent of activities or people that
produce 80 percent of the negative emotions and bad decision making? Lets start
chronicling that, and once you start to identify those patterns, say, over a week of
journaling, similarly with diet, right, so you can say, oh, well, youre having a meltdown.
This is not specific to Mark, but like person X is having theyre getting very frustrated
and angry at 11:30, but theyre having coffee and a bagel for breakfast, like, okay, well,
this might be a very easy fix. Just like a lot of people with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome,
simply have a gluten sensitivity. Its not like they need any type of they dont have a
small intestine bacterial infection or anything like that, its just gluten, but it starts with
capturing your baseline, and its [inaudible 00:16:38] to me how I used to do this and
how many people will change many variables without first establishing where they are.
So thats the first step is where is the patient.
Mr. Pal:
Its actually a similar thought process with markets as well. Its the same state of
analyzing. If you just have a snapshot, you dont really know anything about anything.
What you need to understand is the history, where its come from, where its going, and
looking at whole range of different parts of it before you can understand whats going
on, I guess.
Mr. Hart:
Theres no question. Yeah, one of the really interesting things about what Tim does I
mean, you can take this. You can go as deep as you want. I mean, you could spend a
lot of time and really tweak a lot of details, but this notion of 10,000 hours to mastery, I
mean, the way I think of you is as a brain and body hacker, and how do you really shorttype that? One of the things I thought might be interesting would be to actually point
out maybe some of the easy hacks that people can use.
Mr. Ferriss: Yeah, absolutely. No, theres so many, and just to dispel some myths, maybe we can
start there. Im very familiar with the research upon which the 10,000-hour rule, coined
by Gladwell, or was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, has been used. There are many,
many ways to circumvent that in almost any skill, and I think that the way I study the
anomalies rather than discard them as outliers, if that makes sense, and I remember
at some point Im an amateur fan of finance and investing and whatnot. The angel
investing is a whole separate story, very different from the public markets, certainly.
But I think there was one point Warren Buffet was addressing efficient market theory,
and he said, well, you could say yes, if you have 10,000 orangutans flipping quarters,
eventually youll find like ten orangutans who have flipped heads 100 times in a row.
Statistically, sure, you could point out that that doesnt necessarily indicate they have
any skill at coin-flipping, but if they all happen to come from a particular place in Omaha,
you might wanna go see what the zookeeper is doing. So I look for particularly odd
concentrations of anomalies, and you can find them in many different gyms.
I happen to look at athletic performance a lot because Im gonna come back to your
point of easy tips because many people in, say, the hedge fund world, or you pick the
sphere of elite performance that is nonphysical. At some point they decided that they
were genetically predetermined to be able to do certain things and not be able to do
other things. So they were always the fat kid, Im just big-boned, thats not something
I can change, and so they are partially complete in that way. Theyre extremely worldclass at optimizing for, say, reading technicals and trading in a certain fashion or
predicting kind of doomsday scenarios and formulating positions accordingly.
But theyve, in their mind, they view as one of the unchangeable aspects of themselves
strength, endurance, sleep. Ive always had insomnia, whatever it might be, and by
showing them, well, heres a 12-year-old high school girl who a year and a half ago
had never been to a weight room and now she dead lifts 450 pounds for repetitions,
maybe you could do this. It offers them a glimpse into what is possible. As an example
of some of the very easy things that people could do, if you wanted to develop, say, a
basic ability in Spanish, a conversational ability in Spanish, you could look at someone
named Michele Thomas and the original recordings, and you could get to a basic level
of conversational Spanish in a week.
You could get to fluency in 8 to 12 weeks, which is something that Ive looked at very
closely, language learning. I think you can become functionally fluent in almost any
language in 8 to 12 weeks. Another example would be breakfast, as Mark said, and
specifically, 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, and could it be 20
grams, could it be 40 grams, could it be 20 minutes, could it be 40 minutes? Sure, but
30 within 30 is easy to remember, and the good program or protocol that you follow
is better than the perfect program or protocol that you dont, and I think this is also
where a lot of top minds in finance fail is they try to change too many things at once.
And theres a decision fatigue that sets in when youre trying to acquire new habits,
which is why when I start with someone whos very busy, very driven, I never start
with exercise, personally, or I try not to because that is an additional activity that gets
layered on top of their current obligations, but you have to eat breakfast, or you have
to eat. That is a default behavior, and were just gonna swap in a new meal. So if
you were to have, say, lentils, you could eat them straight out of the can. If you want
some spinach, you could just eat raw spinach if you want or microwave, it doesnt really
matter, and two whole eggs every morning.
If you would do that, and I wont digress and tell all the details of why those three are
very interesting combination, but spinach, lentils, and eggs. You could prepare it in
three minutes. If you have that breakfast within, say, 30 minutes of waking up, its not
uncommon if you have more than 20 percent body fat that youll lose 20 pounds in the
first month, particularly if youre a male, and that would be a very simple habit, just like
okay, just thats eating breakfast. Try that for a month, dont change anything else,
and youll very typically see people lose 15 to 20 pounds.
If people have trouble sleeping, theyre lifelong insomniacs, as I was for a very long
time, they feel groggy in the morning even if they get a lot of sleep or think theyve
gotten a lot of sleep, its often times from low blood sugar and not from the length of
sleep or lack thereof. So you could have a tablespoon of unsweetened almond butter
before you go to sleep, and youll see a lot of people who are chronically fatigued fixed
just like that, and I diagnosed that for myself by implanting a glucose monitor in my
side intended for type 1 diabetes. It gave me a readout 24/7 that I could then correlate
to my food journaling. I do all the crazy guinea pig stuff so that other people dont have
to.
If you have to have a cheat meal so lets say Im gonna go out with my in-laws, theyre
Italian, Im gonna have to eat pasta, Im really trying to be good, then I have to eat pasta,
what can you do. Well, you could have a bit of vinegar. You could have a tablespoon
of vinegar before the meal, which will help to lower the glycemic index, so your insulin
and glycemic or glucose responds to that meal. There are all sorts of tiny little tricks,
and the key for me at least is finding the smallest behavior, the smallest change that
will produce the disproportionately largest result for someone so they continue to take
my advice. Thats it. I wanna give them the minimum effective dose, just like medicine.
I dont wanna give you too little because you wont get any result. I give you too much,
youre gonna have side effects, societal, financial otherwise, familial, but if I give you
just the smallest thing, I say, all right, look, I know you hate exercise, you dont wanna
do any of this stuff, I want you to do kettlebell swings, one set once a week in the
following way. Its gonna take three minutes. Kettlebell can fit in 12 square inches on
the floor, thats all I want you to do, no more, and if I can use that as the gateway drug
into the behavioral change that I want, then I can get them to do almost anything once
they start seeing the result.
You wanna put on 20, 30 pounds of muscle in a month, you can do it if you have, lets
just say if youre 170 pounds or more to start with, and thats just the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to learn how to memorize 1,000 digits, a string of 1,000 random digits,
you can train someone to do that in a week, so these impossibles, once you take one
of them and reframe them as a possible. So for instance, when I did genetic testing
through Navigenics, 23andMe, etc., I have something called a [inaudible 00:25:18) for
the [inaudible] 3 gene. All that means is I shouldnt be able to really produce [inaudible]
muscle fiber, so Im doomed. Cant be fast, cant be strong, etc.
Well, it turns out when I took a muscle biopsy out of the side of my leg, the vastus
lateralis, I believe, and we analyzed it, I had a very high percentage of type 2 A muscle
fibers, which is trainable, all right. So I was able to basically renegotiate my genetic
destiny, at least according to the current state of the art testing, and so I always feel
like, outside of very few areas, maybe the law in some cases, reality is negotiable,
and that includes physical performance, and thats a great way to shock people into
believing that all these other things are possible.
Mr. Pal:
The thing that Ive looked at, the thing Im spending more time thinking about is time
itself. Time is, I think, one of the hardest things to control because its a concept we
dont really know how to grasp and have to deal with, I think. How do you look at time
and how do you control that element that gets people kind of breathless with the fear
that I just cant do all this stuff?
Mr. Ferriss:
I think of time as one of several currencies, so I think its very easy to think of, and normal
to think of money as a currency because it is, but what is a currency? A currency is
something that you trade for something else, right, so you use that money to purchase
an experience or a possession, lets just say. Similarly, you have time. Perhaps you
have mobility as another currency, and time is nonrenewable whereas the capital is
renewable. So in the hierarchy of prioritization, you know that time should take, past
a certain point on Maslows hierarchy of needs, right, time should become your No. 1
priority and allocating that effectively.
So I think that if you dont have time, its an indication of not having sufficiently clear
priorities. I think thats it.
Mr. Pal:
And when I think about time, again, Im personally less interested in can I cram more
into a day. Its how do I get the most, the highest quality of life out of the time that Ive
got?
Mr. Ferriss: Right. So I think there are many different ways to approach it, and there are many
people who do a lot of thinking in this area. I think that there are a lot of contemporary
thinkers, David Allen. There are a lot of of course, you can go as far back, Ben Franklin
and beyond, Marcus Aurelius, but I think Peter Drucker, the effective executive, is a
fantastic place to start. They focus on effectiveness over efficiency, so effectiveness
being choosing your activities wisely and then efficiency being doing those activities
well, but doing something well does not make it important, and I think its very easy
to conflate those two in a world where you are constantly hit with propaganda for the
latest tools, but the principles are more important than the tools.
If youre a good artist, you can use a crayon or a piece of chalk or a paintbrush, but if
youre constantly just devising with the latest tool and you never develop those artistic
skills, it doesnt matter, and similarly, I think deciding what is important, deciding
what is which is often times what makes you the most uncomfortable, I think, the
thing you least want to do, pretty good indicator. The general principles of thinking
about prioritization remain fairly consistent, I think and, for me, and many of the top
performers that I see, say, just in the startup world. Its a very exaggerated its a world
in which you can look at every little problem gets magnified dramatically because of
the velocity at which many of these companies are growing.
So a small mistake turns into a very big mistake very quickly, which makes it easier to
see, and for people who are growing at the rate of, say, Uber, which is unprecedented
in the history of startups or anywhere else I can apply this to my own life, but if you
have, say, five to-do items, what is the one of those five that if completed renders the
other four unimportant or that makes the other four easier to solve, easier to address,
right, and trying to pick the lead domino in that respect and prioritize and allocate time
accordingly, I think is just a very simplistic way but effective way to go about picking
that, and I like to think of it as the lead domino that just knocks over the others.
Or which of these decisions can I focus on that will prevent 1,000 decisions in the future,
and thats [inaudible 00:30:32] engineer- like way to approach, say engineers and
computer scientists have a general hatred of repetitive tasks So if something needs to
be repeated, they wanna create a script or a program to run that, and you can do that
by deciding what your decision-making framework is in advance. So those are a few
of the ways that I think very simple, but simple works. If the solution that you find is
complicated, its probably not the right solution.
Mr. Hart:
So, Tim, I guess, and it gets back to what I was saying a little bit earlier, you know,
youve got people in the hedge fund industry and the investment industry. I mean,
these are typically driven people, theyre intelligent people, and they focus their efforts
on their work, and its satisfying, somewhat satisfying to extremely satisfying. What
you and Josh Waitzkin helped me do is access other parts of my life and parts of myself
and do so very easily, where the delta, in terms of improvement, is massive for very
small amounts of effort, and I think that hedge fund managers particularly, theyre the
exact right people who are poised to kind of take advantage of some of the tools and
some of the tricks that you employ.
I mean, two things that really come to mind, you liked to talk about like taking ice
baths. I take freezing cold showers, and its absolute nirvana. Another thing that
maybe you could talk a little bit about is like lucid dreaming and using lucid dreaming
to massively improve performance and improve that sort of conscious/subconscious
brain connection. I know youve used lucid dreaming to train in wrestling in high school.
Mr. Ferriss: Yeah, no, Ill talk about both. So the ice baths or cold therapy, and there are different
ways to do it, you can use ice packs on the back of the neck, really came out of
conversations I had with a former NASA researcher named Ray Cronise, and he had
tripled his rate of fat loss, which hes an expert in thermodynamics. He measured
everything very meticulously after becoming fascinated by how Phelps could eat 10
plus thousand calories per day. What would that be, and he started looking at the
effects of water exposure at different temperatures on caloric expenditure.
Long story short, cold exposure can improve immune function, be very effective as
an antidepressant therapy. It affects hormones including things like adiponectin

that then consequently lead to an increased rate of fat loss in many cases, you know,
thermogenesis related to fat, and that was in The 4-Hour Body. A lot of people kind of
scoffed at it. Its now since been in the New York Times probably half a dozen times. I
think it was just written about a month or two ago, and its extremely effective, and its
an example, like you said, of something that takes next to no time.
You take two bags of ice, put it in the tub, jump in for five minutes, and it can have a
tremendous effect on you, not only for the subsequent, say four to five hours where
you feel like youre on cloud 9 in many cases, where your mood and your mental
performance is highly elevated, its not subtle, to the longer term cumulative fat loss
effects, which can be really tremendous, I mean, tripling your rate of fat loss just by a
very short intervention like that. So that would be one interesting example.
Ive been looking at recently the opposite, which is using heat shock, so saunas for
increasing growth hormone release in combination with types of exercises. So studying
how the extremes impact your physiology is very interesting to me. The lucid dreaming
is a fascinating subject. So for those people who arent familiar, lucid dreaming is when
you are dreaming and you become conscious of the fact that you are dreaming, and it
doesnt have to be anything woo-woo. Theres nothing woo-woo about it.
And theyve demonstrated, I think it was at Stanford, they proved that it existed by
having people memorize, before sleep, subjects, eye movement patterns because in
REM sleep, your eye movement in the dream correlates to your physical movement
when youre laying down. So they could do like left, left, right, left, left, right, right, and
they could do that, and they could track with an EEG or other tools that they were in
REM sleep and, in fact, sleeping. So like, okay, now Im dreaming, just checking in with
the researcher, left, left, right, right, etc.
When you develop the ability to extend your lucid dream experience and theres a
great book called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge, that
makes it quite simple, but there are exercises that you implement throughout your
waking day, which are called reality checks, where youll look at aspects of reality that
change very frequently in a dream state, so complex patterns. If you had tiles that were
laid a certain way longitudinally on the floor, you could look away and look back, and
if it changes orientation, youre dreaming. If it doesnt, youre probably not dreaming.
If you look at a digital watch display, that will also because youre constantly recreating
a landscape in a dream, that will change if you look away and look back, and you start
to develop, and this also pairs very well with something like transcendental meditation
or Vipassana meditation, but you get to a point where you can go into a dream state
and no longer view sleep as a waste of time a lot of people do and you can further
reinforce or develop your skills while youre sleeping.
So the example that you referred to, you can get to the point where youre spending
the vast majority of your REM sleep cycles awake in your dream, and what I did when
I was a competitive wrestling, and I went to prep nationals and was an All American in
my weight class, but one of my idols at the time was John Smith, who was an incredible
Olympian and competitor, went on to then, I think it was Oklahoma State, and dominated
as coach, really pioneered low leg attacks, and I would, in my dream because Id watch
so many videos of John Smith, I would train with John Smith.
There was a very direct transfer of skill improvement from that state to subsequent
practices, which is not that crazy if you think about it because there are many studies
that have looked at, say, skiing aerialists, so the people who different types of ski
jumpers or divers, and looking at the impact of replacing a training session with
visualization, and they see gains in performance, and thats exactly what youre doing
when you are dreaming, but you get the benefit of sort of a simulated kinesthetic
experience. So its a fascinating tool that is really underutilized and underexploited,
and its fun. Its so much fun, which, at the end of the day, its like, look, what are we
doing this all for.
You get to a point when youre playing the game, and it is a game, and we all choose the
games we wanna play, but its like you get to the point youre like, okay, Ive proven Im
really good at this. Im able to meet my needs, I can certainly satisfy a lot of my wants,
like what are the psychological states that I want more of? What are the psychological
states that I want less of? The lucid dreaming is wonderful in the sense that it not
only improves performance, it helps you develop present state awareness and it puts
you into a similar state, if you practice lucid dreaming [inaudible 00:38:36] about the
day youre doing these reality checks, what is that doing? Its like meditating for 15
seconds ten times a day.
So you develop a calmness and awareness of how youre feeling so that you dont make
emotionally based decisions that are bad for you, and that translates very directly to
investing, particularly for the stuff that I dont do much of. I mean, I tend to hold stuff
for a long time in the private markets because thats my game that Ive chosen to play
because I know my lesser self will make bad decisions if Im allowed to play in some of
the sand boxes that you guys play in, but certainly, all the more reason for people in the
hedge fund world if youre making daily or weekly or monthly decisions about positions
and whatnot to have a consistent practice so that they can become the observer of
their emotional self.
Mr. Pal:
Thats the question is how do you know? Because you identified, you know yourself
and you know you wouldnt be a good [inaudible] trader, for example, but you know if
youve got a longer strategic view, probably thats your skill set. How do you learn that
because a lot of people dont get [inaudible] when certain people are good at certain
types of things. How do you understand what youre good at?
Mr. Ferriss: Tests. You throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and you see what sticks, and you
see what you enjoy and you see what you dislike. In my particular case, Ive actually,
despite myself, done reasonably well in the public markets with a handful of stocks
that Ive bought. I mean, Pixar was the first stock I ever bought and then theres a point
where I bought Amazon. Amazon did really, really well, but in 2008 when everything
was going, well, seemingly, if you watch too much television, going to hell in a hand
basket, and I spend, just by the very nature of the blog with two million readers per
month or so, Im online a decent amount to write and communicate.
So Im exposed to a lot of this noise, this Chicken Little, the sky is falling hysteria, for
instance in 2008, and what I realized about myself is that if I can watch a chart of the
value of my holding going up and down and Mr. Market is tapping me on the shoulder
asking, are you sure you wanna hold this, would you like to sell, I really need you to sell,
but wait, wait, wait, it just went down, maybe you should buy some more, you wanna
buy some more, that monkey mind is very untrained in me. It is so poorly behaved and
its such a bastardly little saboteur in my mind, I need to create constraints that allow
me to utilize my strengths while mitigating my weaknesses.
The way I do that is by investing in startups where I have an informational advantage,

where I have a product advantage, and I can also poll, say, a million plus people who
are 25 to 40-year-old males in metropolitan cities primarily on the coast who have
high disposable income. I can get a very good read on those things, do a lot of frontend due diligence, make a decision, and then Im locked in. That protects me against
second guessing and making subsequent decisions that are gonna sabotage the good
work I did in the first place, but I learned that by trying different types of investing.
Mr. Pal:
So do you think maybe you talked about journals before, which I think is an interesting
concept because theres a certain intellectual integrity when you have to write it down
and be honest with yourself, and I think a lot of people in investing arent honest with
themselves. I think it was [Inaudible 00:42:10] would say to me that the thing that
he learns about what makes a good investor is to have your time horizon and your
investment horizon the same. So your ideal time horizon usually is, I think the dollar is
going to go up over three years, Im going to put that trade on over two weeks.
Thats wrong because its a big mismatch, and its all of that intellectual integrity about
what youre actually trying to do and who you are, and then it allows you to do that, I
guess, so then focus exactly where you know your strengths are.
Mr. Ferriss: Definitely, and I think that journaling is one example I think has tremendous value,
especially if you dont view yourself as a writer because what writing allows you to do
we call it journaling just so people dont get intimidated it is allowing you to freeze
your thoughts in a form that you can analyze. Youre not gonna take the time to record
yourself for hours and go over it, but you can write two pages every morning, and what
I would encourage people to do, particularly if youre dealing with the stresses of sort
of a high pressure trading environment or investment environment, is write down their
fears in words and explore those because it will clarify what they are.
Sometimes theyll end up unfounded, which can remove them as an influence that
could lead to bad decisions or impulsive decisions. Other times, it will clarify ways that
those risks can be mitigated, but when its simply a five-second worry that is sort of
on a loop that repeats itself every hour or two, you never get that level of resolution.
So literally have some coffee, have some tea, five to ten minutes in the morning, just
freehand write about what youre worried about for the day, what youre fearful of. Its
hugely pragmatic. Its not just a self-indulgent, its poetic exercise.
Mr. Pal:
So what do you do Ive written that down and Ive done it for a week. Now, how do I
analyze that and how long do I need to do it before Ive got a decent data set to deal
with and what do I do with it when Ive got it?
Mr. Ferriss:
Well, this is a good question. So I thought when I started doing this that the value would
be in spotting the patterns, going back and analyzing, and there is value in that, but
part of the value is youre taking these muddy, distracting thoughts and imprisoning
them on paper so that you can get on with your day and act analytically and effectively
without irrational concerns affecting your rational process.
Mr. Pal:
So youre just taking it out of your mind, plunking it over there for the time being?
Mr. Ferriss:
Thats it, and its surprisingly effective, and its so simple.
Mr. Pal:
Yeah. Some people do that at night. If youve got the night horrors and youre thinking
about something, writing it down. Its out of your head and then you can
Mr. Hart:
You know, one of the interesting things that you and Josh had me implement was, in
terms of taking advantage of the subconscious mind, was feeding myself questions or
problems to deal with before I entered into one of these periods like sleep or meditation
or exercise. Can you maybe expand on that? I dont know [inaudible 00:45:30]
Mr. Ferriss: Sure, yeah, absolutely. I think that it is a wasted opportunity theres just sort of
different levels of processing and that ranges there are many different ways to frame
this. Daniel Kahneman, who wrote Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, talks about system
one, system two. People talk about the conscious and subconscious, but if you look
at talking about pattern recognition, a lot of the breakthroughs, the sort of lateral
or oblique discoveries that people make that are not obvious, they often happen in
the showers. They often happen when listening to music. They often happen when
daydreaming. They often happen in the middle of the night in a dream, etc.
You can encourage that by prompting that level of processing with a question before
you go to bed, which is why, when I journal, its typically five minutes first thing in the
morning, five minutes before I go to bed, and I also do a little bit of sort of postgame
analysis on the day at the end of the day, but thats another very, very simple approach
for allowing those idle CPU cycles, as we think of them as idle when were sleeping,
although its not totally accurate, to have a problem to chew on. Its almost like when
what some people are doing with distributed technology now, where you might have,
say, youre trying to borrow computing power to look at protein folding.
So Sony will make the PS3s in a distributed fashion, if people opt in, available for that
type of offline processing when theyre not in use for Call of Duty or whatever. So when
youre not in Call of Duty, i.e., your job, you can assign a problem in a very similar way
to an extremely power computer, which is your brain, to work on while youre asleep.
It doesnt always produce breakthroughs, of course, but its a fantastic practice to get
into, and its also something that really doesnt take any extra time. Its not an additive
activity. It doesnt displace anything else.
Mr. Hart:
One of the things I wanted to make sure we got in this interview is a little bit about
yourself, and specifically theres an excellent book youve probably read, Robert
Greenes Mastery, and in it, Greene says there are kind of three stages to mastery,
and the most important is the first one, which is identifying your calling. I look at you.
Youre a world-class ballroom dancer, martial artist, life coach. I mean, you seem to
have mastered so many different things. Whats your calling? Where does it all come
from? Is this cultivated?
Mr. Ferriss: Its definitely cultivated. So the calling I think is studying meta learning, so teaching
people how to learn or learning how to learn. What is the framework that can be
imposed on any skill? That is my calling is to study that, test that, research that, and
then hand that tool kit to as many people as possible, and its absolutely a learned skill.
I remember when I was in high school, I had to leave my Spanish class because it was
too hard for me, and I concluded I was bad at Spanish and bad at languages, and a lot
of people make these decisions in junior high or high school they carry with them for
the rest of their lives. They have someone make fun of their singing, oh, Im a terrible
singer, I cant sing, and they carry that for decades.
So for me, that happened with language learning, and then I took a year abroad in
Japan as an exchange student, and I had it wasnt an optional activity. I had to learn
Japanese. I was going to a Japanese high school, and I used Judo textbooks, and I
deconstructed ways of approaching characters so that I could learn how to read and
write and came back, and I realized that I had gone from Japanese One to Japanese
Level Six at my high school in six months, and I was like, okay, well, now I need to really
reconsider this bad at languages conclusion that I reached. I wasnt bad at languages.
It was that I had a bad set of instructions. I had a bad recipe.
So I think my calling is to master the art of meta learning because there are people
who will look at the various areas in which I experiment. It sounds like, all right, hes
taking muscle biopsies and implanting glucose monitors and spending time with
[inaudible 00:50:12] chemists, and NFL [inaudible] trainers, and then hes doing the
startup stuff, this guys a jack of all trades, and on some level thats true, but whats
missed when they they miss the layer on top of that, which is the meta learning.
There is a common thread and there is a common goal, which is figuring out what are
the untested assumptions, what are the best practices that I can test that I can even
attempt the opposite of?
Like the dead lift, perfect example. You have people who will say, well, your strongest
range of motion is from the knee up, so you wanna do rack pulls and all this stuff,
but you find someone like Barry Ross in Los Angeles whos produced multiple world
champions, and he pulls from the floor up to just below the knees, just a few inches
and then they drop the bar, and they do that two to three times, thats a full set. They
do less than five minutes of total [inaudible], and I put almost 120 pounds when I dead
lift in eight to ten weeks.
Mr. Hart:
Its the same thing, on your recommendation in fact.
Mr. Ferriss:
Yeah, its insane. Its insane, and I would encourage and Socrates would say the same
thing. This is not a new recommendation, but for people who really want to open their
mind to what is possible in every sphere of their lives, particularly if youre male, but not
exclusively, get extremely strong. Read, and Im sure you can find what people have
talked on online, with the effortless super human chapter in The 4-Hour Body on the
dead lift. You will not gain a lot of mass, probably less than ten pounds, and you could
add like 100 to 200 pounds on your dead lift. Do that and the lens through which you
view everything will be different. It will be looking at the matrix.
I think that one of my guiding tenets, if I had one, would be a quote from Mark Twain,
which is whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, its time to pause and
reflect. So when youve reached a cheery consensus of any type, its time to be like, oh,
wait, time out, and ask what do we all believe is true and run through and just ask, for
each of them, what if the opposite were true.
Mr. Pal:
A question I want to ask is, so if you spend so much time analyzing improving, when do
you get to the state of equilibrium because otherwise, you end up with your monkey
mind focusing on you and trying to tweak little bits and pieces. When do you get to the
point where you say, okay, Ive got to the kind of status quo, or is there no status quo?
Is it all about constant improvement?
Mr. Ferriss:
Im very aggressive and very competitive. I think that theres sort of a subtext to that
question that I think is important, which is related to satisfaction or dissatisfaction. I
dont think that seeking constant improvement and dissatisfaction have to go hand in
hand. So I feel like if youre not getting stronger, youre getting weaker. If youre not
getting younger, youre getting older. If youre not getting further away from death,
youre getting closer.
Mr. Pal:
Theres no equilibrium?
Mr. Ferriss: Like the biological system generally doesnt work that way. I mean, there are some
forms of homeostasis the body seeks to achieve, but I think that Im constantly trying
to improve. It doesnt mean Im trying to improve everything, but Im trying to improve
something. However, the lucid dreaming, some type of mindfulness practice, which
can be jiu-jitsu, it can be transcendental meditation, it doesnt need to be staring at a
candle flame in your minds eye. Thats not designed for everyone, although you can
use Apps like Head Space or Calm, which are very effective for people who otherwise
cant sit still for ten minutes.
When you allocate time for some type of appreciation, that is how you reach equilibrium,
with the drive for achievement. When you find someone who is solely focused on
achievement and has not created the band with or time or activities for appreciation,
theyre usually pretty miserable. I mean, Im sure you guys know a lot of very successful,
financially successful people. Certainly, I know lots of very financially successful people
who are utterly miserable, and I think the danger in pursuing that game exclusively is
that you get to a point where you have all the money that could possibly solve your
problems and you realize that it doesnt solve all your problems.
Mr. Pal:
So youre solving the wrong problems?
Mr. Ferriss: And thats why I think some of the richest people are the most miserable because
when people have less money, they can hold out with the hope that money will fix these
intrinsically, sort of existential or physical or emotional or psychological problems, but
when you reach the pinnacle, then youre like wait a second, I still have this whole set of
problems. I thought that an extra X amount of dollars per year would have solved this.
Low and behold, no, you still have the work to do. So I think that developing a holistic
set of practices that appreciates the full human, including the body, which is it is your
machine. You cant just take care of the driver, i.e., the mind, like you need the Ferrari,
so you should really care for it.
I think that the way you reach equilibrium or a sensation of balance is by having the
appreciation and a set of activities and practices for that and then a set of activities
and behaviors for achievement.
Mr. Hart:
Yeah, I think one thing Id add to it is, and I think its something that you and Josh
have taught me, is just to love the process. So youre pushing, youre pushing, youre
working, youre working, youre working, but its not even stopping and smelling the
roses, but its enjoying the path and loving the path.
Mr. Ferriss: No, absolutely, and I think that its perhaps clichd to say life is a journey, not a
destination, but at the end of the day, I think from a very strictly pragmatic standpoint,
you have to focus on the process because, due to good or bad luck, you can get a bad
result after a very good process. You can get a great result after a very bad process,
so your method of investing could be covering your eyes and throwing a dart at a
dartboard with a list of companies on it, and you could get lucky and have a great
outcome, but that doesnt make that a good process and vice versa. You could do all
the research in the world, and theres some blind spot that you couldnt have identified
and you end up with a bad result.
But the way that you end up, I think being proud of how you are building, is by refining
and trying to have the most perfect process possible. That also, I think, prevents a lot
of the depression and malaise that can come from bad outcomes, which are just part
of the game.
Mr. Pal:
Yeah, and particularly financial markets. Whats interesting in financial markets is

losing. Even if you lose only a small amount of the time, that losing part, the pain of
that far outweighs the benefits of when youre actually making any money.
Mr. Ferriss: Yeah. Theres a really good book called, that I enjoy anyway, called What I Learned
Losing a Million Dollars, which looks at sort of the psychological dynamics of making
and losing money and what happens when you personalize this or attribute to talents
what should not be attributed to talent, or lack thereof, but what I realized, for instance,
when we were talking earlier how I realized I was not well suited for the public markets,
personally, if Im the one doing the managing of that, is I realized exactly that, but a
small loss, the magnitude of that negative emotion was exponentially larger than even
if I made five times that amount positively.
As a result, I didnt have the stomach to invest enough where a reasonable rate of
return would be meaningful to me, and I was like, on the pro and con list, that makes
that ill-suited to my temperament in psychology, but very oddly enough, people might
say, well, you dont have the risk tolerance. No, no, no. I dont have the appetite for
that type of risk, but I can do a binary investment and a startup where its gonna be
zero or 10 X or 100 X, and I have no problem with that. Much more comfortable with
that because between the investment and the outcome, Im prevented from making
bad decisions.
Mr. Pal:
Yeah, thats right because in private investing, you dont get the choice of market
to market. You dont have to worry about am I losing 10 percent today, tomorrow,
whatever it is. Its just like, Im in it for the ride, Ive made my decision, and the payoff
is that, the loss is done, thats it, Im done.
Mr. Ferriss: Exactly, and I think investing is a good metaphor for life. I mean, its allocation. Its
allocation of resources and sort of bringing it back to what we were talking about
earlier, its a mistake to view your primary and only currency as capital. I think time and
mobility, these all determine the actual value of your capital because if you dont have
time, you cant exchange that money for
Mr. Pal:
And whats your the capital. Your capital is your quality of life, I guess, in some way,
shape, or form, and all of those are the currencies that you would trade for that?
Mr. Ferriss:
Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Mr. Pal:
Great. Tim, well, thanks very much, and Mark, thanks a lot. I think its been really
fascinating.
Mr. Ferriss:
Yeah, my pleasure.
Mr. Pal:
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Mr. Ferriss:
Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Cheers.
Hope you enjoyed that chat everyone, and if youd like more on investing, hedge funds
finance, etc., etc., you might enjoy a number of the interviews that I have done for The
Tim Ferriss Show, including Peter Teale, who is the co-founder of PayPal, first money
into Facebook, or Arnold Schwarzenegger on his real estate empire and how Twins
became his most profitable movie, for instance, for him personally. You can find all of
that at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast, 4hourworkweek.com/podcast, and then for Real
Vision, Real Vision TV, thats what you just listened to, go to realvisiontv.com, and if you
use the code Tim, T I M, you can get $100.00 off, so its not $400.00 a year, its $300.00
a year. I dont make anything from it. I just think theyre doing very interesting work,
so realvisiontv.com, code Tim, and as always, thank you for listening. Talk to you soon.
This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is the
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thank you for listening.
EPISODE 66:
JAMES FADIMAN
Tim Ferriss:
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com/tim.
Tim Ferriss:
Hello boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of
the Tim Ferriss Show where I deconstruct world class performers and experts
of all types ranging from billionaire investors to chess prodigies to Arnold
Schwarzenegger type celebrities and in this case a scientific researcher named
Jim Fadiman. I have wanted to have a sit down conversation with Jim for ages.
He is the author of The Psychedelic Explorers Guide, which is an incredible book

and really one of a kind, but hes also conducted studies since the 60s related
to psilocybin, LSD and so on focusing not only on the mystical implications
but using them in micro-dosing protocols for problem solving, including very
difficult, hard science problems like engineering, math, circuitry, etcetera. This
is a rambling, meandering discussion of all of the implications and applications
therapeutic and otherwise of these substances that have really been criminalized
and politicized and in my view a very counterproductive way. So without further
ado please enjoy a long conversation with Jim Fadiman.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim, welcome to the show.
Jim Fadiman:
Its a real pleasure to finally be here.
Tim Ferriss:
Im so excited to be outside on this gorgeous day in San Francisco, and I have

wanted to have this conversation for so long now. It feels like years, but I think
its probably closer to six to nine months because the term that you introduced
me to which is micro-dosing. Im sure well jump back and forth but could you
define what micro-dosing is?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, lets be clear that were talking about psychedelics because a micro-dose
is going to be a little tiny dose of something. With psychedelics is actually a
low enough dose so it could be called sub-perceptual which means you dont
necessarily see any differences in the outside world. As one person said to me,
The rocks dont glitter even a little, and the flower dont turn and watch you.
But you are using it in a way that is really very unknown. Albert Hofmann who
invented LSD said that micro-dosing was the area of kind of the most neglected
research.
Tim Ferriss:
Why do you think its so neglected and what are the promises or applications of
micro-dosing?
Jim Fadiman:
He took it for the last couple decades of his life, so I like to think that it helps you
be really sharp at 101.
Tim Ferriss:
How frequently did he micro-dose over that period of time?
Jim Fadiman:
It would probably be once or twice a week. What he said is he almost would

always take it when he was walking with the trees. So what it is and why he said
it was under researched is it does a far better job of a whole class of drugs which
were now calling cognitive enhancers, most of which are simply derivatives of
speed.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Definitely, like Methylphenidate, Ritalin.
Jim Fadiman:
Adderall.
Tim Ferriss:
Adderall.
Jim Fadiman:
Probably the most popular among educated students.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, its a popular currency for bartering.
Jim Fadiman:
Right.
Tim Ferriss:
And when we talk about small doses in the case of say Hofmann using it twice
per week, would that be in the 100mg range?
Jim Fadiman:
No, no, no, no. 100mg is a major dose.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a major dose. See, Im not an LSD
Jim Fadiman:
Aficionado?
Tim Ferriss:
Im not well versed.
Jim Fadiman:
Let me just briefly run through doses because it does matter. Lets go from the
top down. Terence McKenna talks about a heroic dose.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Thats enough to shatter the most resistant people.
Jim Fadiman:
What happens is you dont remember anything. You dont bring anything back.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Jim Fadiman:
Its kind of like you want to go swimming. How about going over to Niagara
Falls?
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Not a lot of time to work on technique.
Jim Fadiman:
But if we get down to say 400mg, thats a transcendental dose. Thats for
mystical experience. Thats something you should always have a guide.
Tim Ferriss:
This is LSD specifically.
Jim Fadiman:
This is LSD specifically. If we go down to 200, were talking psychotherapy, deep

inner work, all kinds of healing and great for self-exploration. 100 is really useful
creative problem solving of problems that arent personal, things like in physics
or biomechanics or architecture. We can talk about some of that work thats
been done because theres only been a little bit done, and I was involved in all
of it. Go down to 50 and again Ill really reveal my age. It used to be called a
museum dose.

Now its called a concert dose. And 10, 15 is this micro-dose which another
person described it as an all chakra enhancer, which is everything is just a little
better. You know at the end of a day when you say, Wow, that was a really good
day, thats the way most people report on micro-dose. Theyre a little bit nicer.
Theyre a little bit
Tim Ferriss:
Personally behaving in a nicer fashion.
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah, they also find that stupid people are not so bad.
Tim Ferriss:
More tolerant.
Jim Fadiman:
Theyre much more tolerant including their relatives which is really extraordinary.
They are not at a higher level of creativity, but they can be creative longer - kind
of steady, more in flow. As one of my favorite women whos been micro-dosing
- I discovered her, and she said, Oh, yeah, Ive been doing that for years she said, The only way anyone else can tell is that my computer, I lower the
illumination a little. But she has very large pupils so its hard to tell.
Tim Ferriss:
The micro-dosing, is there an optimal frequency with which to use it? Is there
too much of micro-dosing in terms of frequency?
Jim Fadiman:
Psychedelics are very peculiar. They are anti-addictive which means if you take
it on day one and you have whatever experience you have, if you take it on day
two same amount, maybe some experience maybe not, and if you take it a third
day straight, nothing.
Tim Ferriss:
So you develop tolerance very quickly?
Jim Fadiman:
So your mind develops tolerance. The drug is gone. Its way gone particularly if
were talking LSD micrograms. Its gone within an hour and a half. So something
in the mind says, I think weve just had enough of that for now. Its a little bit
like if you have a fantastic one of your killer carb days.
Tim Ferriss:
Right, my cheat day explosion.
Jim Fadiman:
Right, and then you do that the next day, and then the third day you just get
sick. So theyre anti-addictive. I have a protocol I actually send to people, and it
basically says, Take it on day one. Notice that youre still having experience on
day two. This is different than if you take a higher dose. Day three, take a day
off. And then if you are doing it continually, then you can take it again on day
four. And that seems to work best for people.
Tim Ferriss:
And theyre only dosing once on day one, but they see the residual effect on day
two.
This is one of the things that whats wonderful is I feel like Im Columbus. Any
place I land counts because no ones been there. Most of the people who are
listening to us who have any experience with psychedelics know that LSD is
eight to 12 hours. Psilocybin is five to eight hours. DMT is 15 minutes, etcetera.
Jim Fadiman:
Micro-dose seems to be two days. I was talking with a professor who does
psychedelic research at a major east coast university, and he said tell me more
about micro-dosing.

And I mentioned the two days, and hes basically a specialist in this area and
in neurochemistry. And he kind of looks at me like, Oh, you west coast cool
hippies, and I said, Well, thats been what I hear from people. And then a guy
walks by who runs a very large corporation with manufacturing plants in about
five countries. And he looks down at me and he says, Second day is better.
Tim Ferriss:
This is just a passerby?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, its someone I knew at the same gathering, and then I kind of gave my
buddy a little kick in the ribs. Then he looks back at me, and he says, Ask my
daughter, who happened to be a mental health worker who also said. Yeah,
for her too.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats something.
[Crosstalk]
Jim Fadiman:
So this is one of the things were discovering, and this is the fun part. I dont do
research. I only do search.
Tim Ferriss:
Could you explain that?
[Crosstalk]
Jim Fadiman:
Once Ive learned something, replicating it or doing it with a whole bunch more
people is not as interesting as, Can I find out something else?
Tim Ferriss:
Now I would imagine that you probably run into some resistance or debate
around that point with people who would want to see multiple iterations of
replicating results or they dont pay attention to the empirical data you might
offer otherwise. Has that been a challenge?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, theres a game in science. One is called have a big number. You can always
ask this question, which is, Why didnt you have more? Youve had eight. How
come you didnt have 15? You had 15. How come you didnt have 30? You only
had 100,000, and you had no one from Norway in the sample. How do we know
we can generalize? So thats the kind of silliness that academics do to each
other. The other in drug research - and this is really helping for a very small
number of drugs - is called a double blind, which is you go to people and you
give half of them nothing and you give half of them something.
Psychedelic research has always stumbled on that one because within an hour
except for micro-doses maybe everybody knows. And then the researchers
are stuck acting like jerks all day pretending that they dont know. So thats
another one. But the main thing with micro-dosing is Im not doing research.
Im not giving people psychedelic drugs. One is theyre illegal, and two is Im
not a physician connected to a university. Keep in mind that since LSD became
illegal, 26 million Americans - and just Americans - have taken LSD.
So Im saying to people, If youre interested in micro-dosing and you have your

own material because you either know someone who is in college or in high
school or in prison - these are the three places you can get almost any drug,
particularly these less dangerous ones - then let me know and Ill be happy to
help you make it as safe and as valuable as possible.
Tim Ferriss:
For those people perhaps unfamiliar with your background, could you give a
short chronology or description of your background?
Jim Fadiman:
Sure. I was brought up in Los Angeles in the shadow of the film business. The
shadow being the writers who didnt respect anybody else because they were
the only ones whod read and written. I went to Harvard as an undergraduate,
and my favorite teacher was someone named Richard Aplert. After Harvard I
scrambled around and got all the money and gifts and favors that I could find
plus all the people to stay with and when and lived in Europe for close to a
year. Ram Dass - Richard Aplert - still showed up and said, Hi, Jim, the most
wonderful thing in the world has happened to me, and I want to share it with
you.
And I thought, Okay, whatever it is. And then he takes some pills out of his
pocket, and I think words you dont say on radio - Oh, my - and so I had some
psilocybin with him while living in Paris. A week later I followed him to Copenhagen
where he was teaming up with Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley to present at
the first conference that there was, of a world psychology conference, they first
presented about psychedelics. And then my draft board wrote me a note and
said, You like living in Paris, or would you like to come to Vietnam where we can
show you how to crawl on the ground on your elbows in the mud? Or would you
like to go to graduate school?
And all of the sudden graduate school had these little shiny stars around it, so I
ended up at Stanford. There was a group off campus that was doing psychedelic
research, and I found them. Did my dissertation on psychedelics. Not on
psychedelics but it was about psychedelics. And then as the government said,
We dont know what to do about all these kids taking psychedelics. Lets stop
all the legitimate research. At least we stopped something. So I then went and
had a career doing other things and wrote about altered states and wrote about
madness and wrote one novel - one psychedelic novel.
I used to call it government repression, but one of my fellow researchers calls it

a lull in the research. So one the lull was over, I basically found some areas that
interested me and I now am really a psychedelic researcher in this unusual way
where I dont have a laboratory and I dont stay with people and I just ask them
what theyre doing. So its more field research. At one level its crowdsourcing.
Another level its - this is one of Ram Dasss terms - like going to the explorers
club now and then and you swap stories.
So thats a very short background, and Ive had a long career. Ive been a
professor at various places. Ive been a consultant. I was with the Stanford
Research Institute with a group that developed the mouse and word processing,
which was probably my closest to being woo in history.
Tim Ferriss:
What was your undergraduate major?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, I started in physics, and it was really hard.
Tim Ferriss:
Physics is hard.
Jim Fadiman:
I had this wonderful moment after I just squeaked through calculus where my
advisor said, You know, Mr. Fadiman, that everyone who got a lower grade
than you in this course will not be in your next course. And I thought, Is there
a message here?
Tell me how you really feel.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Fadiman:
Am I supposed to hear something? So ended up in social relations, which was

psychology without rats, and thats where I met Dick Albert.
Tim Ferriss:
How did he differ as Professor Albert versus Ram Dass?

transformation?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, as a professor, particularly when youre a Harvard assistant professor, you

are at the bottom of the stairway that leads to heaven, right, at least thats
what youre told. So youre supposed to just work your ass off climbing those
stairs so maybe, maybe, maybe, they will keep you. So Richard was kind of a
wonderful teacher and a wonderful - as he would say - incredibly neurotic. And
he was also then a closet gay - very closet because thats the era. And the
Harvard department was full of really basically nice people looking at the kind
of better sides of human beings.
Also the department had B. F. Skinner, which was behaviorism, which was saying
there is nothing in the mind worth noticing. So it was a wonderful place for a
kind of nerdy intellectual, which I was. Its like from being seriously unpopular in
high school and liking that to being just one more smarty ass person at Harvard
who pretended to have read a lot more than he ever had.
Tim Ferriss:
What did you like about being unpopular in high school?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, they didnt respect me for the same reasons I didnt respect them. I was
student body president because I was clever enough to figure out a way to
make the other person look foolish, surely a terrible admission. And in turn
when I won a letter in tennis - I was the captain of the tennis team - I never won a
match against another school, but I knew how to get into a good college, which
is to have Tennis Team California on your resume. The lettermans club had a
meeting and changed the rules so that I couldnt get a letter, and I confessed
that I found that wonderful. They and I understood each other deeply.
Tim Ferriss:
Your thesis - what was your thesis about in graduate school?
Jim Fadiman:
Id been doing my Stanford courses by day and psychedelic research by night

and afternoons and weekends.
Tim Ferriss:
What were the courses that you were teaching?
Jim Fadiman:
[Crosstalk]
Well, I was taking.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, the graduate level classes. Im sorry.
What was that
Jim Fadiman:
I was the only graduate student that always wore a coat and tie because I
thought that would fool them, and it did. But my dissertation was on behavior
change following LSD therapy. And it took me two years to get a committee
of three people and about eight weeks to do the dissertation. So it was a little
scary for Stanford because this was just when Dick and Tim had been fired from
Harvard. The country was in
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
This is Tim Leary.
Jim Fadiman:
Tim Leary.
Tim Ferriss:
And Dick - Richard Alpert. Thats right, Richard Alpert.
Jim Fadiman:
And this was when students were taking over campuses and so forth and so on,
so Stanford was terrified at earning its nickname, which was the Harvard of the
West. I basically really had to sneak around very quietly and do my work, which
was this wonderful work where I interviewed 100 people whod had high dose,
mystical, transcendental experiences. And my question was thats really cool.
Has your behavior changed?
Are you different in some way or are you just someone who has a lot of wonderful
kind of new age, flowery things to say? And the answer of course is that people
like their work more. They had more friends at work. They played with their
children more. They were out in nature more. They watched television less.
Their eating habits improved. So they were fundamentally across the board
healthier human beings.
Tim Ferriss:
What - it could be dosages or commonalities - did you find in the people who
had the most durable effects?
Jim Fadiman:
Very straightforward that if one has this transcendental experience and maybe I
should say it a little bit what that is. Thats the feeling or the awareness that you
are connected not only to other people but to other things and to other living
things and to living systems and to the air you breathe. Just think for a moment.
We tend to think were kind of encapsulated. Like, Im separate.
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Like compartmentalized.
Jim Fadiman:
Obviously the air I am breathing comes from all over the world, and some of its a
billion years old. My cells are turning around. Every 8 years I get almost all new
cells from something. Obviously everything I eat is connected to me. Everyone
I meet is connected to me. Right now you and I are sitting outside, and our feet
our touching the ground. Were connected to the ground. Now thats all easy
to say intellectually and even poetically. But when you actually experience that
youre part of this larger system, one of the things that you become aware of is
your ego - your personal identity - is not that big a part of you.
What I learned was - and this is from my own personal experience in 1961 - Jim
Fadiman is a subset of me, and the me is very, very large and a lot smarter
and knows a lot more than Jim Fadiman. And thats been a shift, which in the
people I also saw from my dissertation that was the big shift. Let give you a kind
of really serious example which is some of the people that we worked with were
alcoholics. And what we found is the ones who would have a transcendental
experience, a week later theyd go out and drink, which at first thought, Oh, we
failed.

And theyd come back to us and say, It doesnt work. And wed say, What
doesnt work? Theyd say, Drinking doesnt work anymore. It makes me feel
less. And what we realized is that many alcoholics are drinking because they
feel isolated. They have not made this transition to feeling part of a larger
system, and if we go into their background they may not feel part of their family
and so for and so on. But at the deeper level if you realize that youre part of a
larger existence and that thats basically all positive, then if drinking closes that
down why on earth would you do it?
Its kind of like going to the movies but you carry some little eye shades with
you. And the movie starts, and you put on the eye shades. And someone next
to you says, What are you doing that for? You say, Well, I dont want to be too
much part of the event.
Tim Ferriss:
I dont want to be immersed in the movie.
Jim Fadiman:
Exactly. And when you get into relationships and when you get into lovemaking,
you can see where this could be a real problem.
Tim Ferriss:
Absolutely. And Ive done a fair amount of reading, and Ive had my own
experiences - not with addiction, with other substances - but Ive been in the same
settings as others using, for instance whether it be psilocybin or mushrooms or
ayahuasca for the purposes of overcoming opiate addiction or heroin addiction.
Are there any other aspects of those experiences or the pharmacokinetics of
those substances that lead to overcoming those types of addictions?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, thats the wonderful is there is one, and its a different substance than
what weve talked about yet, which is ibogaine - comes from a root in Africa, the
iboga root, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The tribe that uses it, the Bwiti, has
never heard of addiction. But somehow we discovered that if an addict takes a
session with iboga or ibogaine, 1) is the session may last 36 hours. Its a killer.
Tim Ferriss:
That sounds terrifying.
Jim Fadiman:
And imagine if one of the things you go through is every single event in your
life that you did that wasnt good, okay? And it isnt like reading about it as it
happened years ago, but you got it right in your face, event after event. And
you really get that you dont want to do that. And after 36 hours - and this is the
pharmacokinetic or the medical, kind of chemical part - you come out and you
do not have withdrawal symptoms.
Tim Ferriss:
How does that happen? Im so fascinated by this.
Jim Fadiman:
The answer is nobody has the faintest idea.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats so fascinating because you read about things like Naltrexone, I think it
is, thats used, or obviously you have Methadone, which is totally any different
substance, but Ive heard straight from the horses mouth from people who have
overcome.
Jim Fadiman:
So you have a window because the problem is normally if youre an addict and
you get clean, withdrawals symptoms are horrible - terrible - and the one thing
that we know takes care of them is more of whatever youre addicted to. But
if you dont have that, then it only doesnt last that long, this kind of open, pure
space. If you stop, you have a chance to stop. And the people I know that run
clinics - there are some wonderful clinics in Mexico and in South America, a lot
of countries other than the one were sitting in; dont know why - what they say
is a number of people dont make it on the first session.
They relapse after a couple months, and they come back. We get a number
proved on that group. I remember listening to this wonderful young man talking
about when his sister found him under the bridge where he was addicted to
heroin and methadone - methadone is what youre given to not be addicted to
heroin, by the way - and she said, I think theres a place that could help you.
He was now several years later running a small clinic in Mexico to help other
heroin kind of addicts. So thats a particular one. Ayahuasca and psilocybin
and all can clean up your psyche and again give you this different way of seeing
yourself, but they dont have this amazing kind of grace.
Tim Ferriss:
Grace period provided. It doesnt matter where you are in San Francisco. Im not
sure if you people listening can hear all the sirens. It always sounds like Beirut
warfare for at least half of the day, so I apologize to everybody. The question of
psychedelics and psychedelics of choice, do the applications of say psilocybin
differ greatly from the applications of LSD in your mind? What differentiates
them?
Jim Fadiman:
If youre up on the kind of research game since the government said, Well,
maybe if you go through 82 hurdles well actually let you do it, most of the
research has been psilocybin. There are two reasons for that. One is it takes
five to eight hours. LSD takes ten to twelve. The second reason is so the staff
can go home, which is part of the first reason. The difference between those
two substances and mescaline and peyote in terms of what they do for you and
to you are very much the same. They dont have the same molecule.
Theyre not the same chemically, but psycho dynamically or spiritually theyre
very similar. When you get to another group, kind of like another FM station,
ayahuasca is a totally different set of experiences. The very fast acting ones DMT
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
DMT.
Jim Fadiman:
Being one that is most popular - again, thats a different universe that youre
plunged into. And then theres something called salvia, and the wonderful thing
about salvia is it has nothing to do chemically with anything else Ive just talked
about. And its full name is salvia divinorum.
Tim Ferriss:
Divinorum.
Jim Fadiman:
So its been used in Mexico historically for who knows how many thousand
years for divination for finding out things. And, again, we seem to be able as
Americans to take almost anything that is indigenous and screw it up in some

way. So people smoke salvia and have a short, intense, sometimes meaningful
experience. That isnt how its used. Its chewed, which means it takes about an
hour, and it comes on slowly. And it has a time, and then it goes down. So its a
totally different experience.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, thats something that Ive spoken with friends about before who have
used, and Ive experimented with 5-MeO-DMT. I decided that I disliked it, and
the reason I decided I disliked it is I felt there was - for me personally and this is
certainly subject to debate - but I felt precisely due to its fast acting nature and
how quickly it cleared the system or seemed to clear the system that there was
a higher potential for addiction or abuse maybe is a better way to put it.
Similarly if you look at, say, cocoa leaf tea, which Ive had in South America,
which is just a wonderful tea that is very mild. Its milder than a cup of coffee in
my experience without the jitters and the crash at least. But then you compare
it to same plant matter but refined to cocaine and further lets just say refined
into the quick hitting crack cocaine, the dangers are very, very different. The
risks are very different.
Jim Fadiman:
Its one the things where actually Sasha Shulgin. There are two great beings
that invented psychedelics: God and Sasha Shulgin. And I think Sasha may have
invented more, but there are literally hundreds that he played with and looked
at, and what he says in the beginning of his book is
Tim Ferriss:
Whats the name of his book?
Jim Fadiman:
PiHKAL.
Tim Ferriss:
PiHKAL.
Jim Fadiman:
Phenethylamines I Have Known and Liked.
Tim Ferriss:
P-I-K-A-L?
Jim Fadiman:
And he has another book called TiHKAL, which is Tryptamines I Have Known and
Liked. And theyre filled with synthesizing - how to do various synthesis. And I
asked him once why he put out such a book. He said, So the government cant
stop people from experimenting.
Tim Ferriss:
He wanted to unleash the recipe.
Jim Fadiman:
What he says is, If you are using something and you dont have any knowledge
about it, you are at fault.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jim Fadiman:
So like the 5-MeO of which there are some varieties, one of the problems is that
the very unpleasant or close to toxic dose is fairly close to the dose that people
like. One of the nice things I like about LSD is we dont know what the toxic dose
is. Nobodys ever taken enough, and there is in the literature a great article
which is an elephant was given like several hundred thousand micrograms of
LSD and died. And for many years I used to say, If you give enough LSD to kill
an elephant, you can kill an elephant. Ha, ha, ha.

I only learned recently that the elephant had been dosed with tranquilizers massive amounts of tranquilizers - because the experimenters were afraid. You
dont really want an angry elephant thats says, Hey, who gave me this LSD? Im
gonna stop you. So they had packed this Pachyderm with tranquilizers, and it
basically suffered respiratory failure.
Tim Ferriss:
No kidding.
Jim Fadiman:
So we really dont. So its like 100s of times the dose people take before it really
harms you. Now taking too much of any of these substances psychologically
can be really scary, especially if you dont know what youre doing and especially
if you dont have someone with you. You know, the equivalent of the designated
driver.
Id love to touch on that because Ive spoken openly before about psychedelic
use, although the term bothers me for some reason.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Fadiman:
I dont use it. Try psychedelic experience.
Tim Ferriss:
Psychedelic experience.
Jim Fadiman:
Because that way youre not talking about a drug. Youre talking about the
effects of a drug.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats true. I also came across the word entheogen - I think it is?
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah. Entheogen is
Tim Ferriss:
Entheogen
Jim Fadiman:
That means the divine within, and thats using these substances - ayahuasca,
mescaline, peyote, LSD, psilocybin, etcetera - as a spiritual tool. So what youre
aiming for is to reconnect and reunite and remember - re-member - your
connection with the spiritual world. That is called a entheogenic experience.
Tim Ferriss:
I like that phrase.
Jim Fadiman:
Its a lovely phrase.
Tim Ferriss:
It doesnt have the tinge perhaps.
Jim Fadiman:
It doesnt have all that kind of 60s razzamatazz behind it.
Tim Ferriss:
The connotation.
Jim Fadiman:
You dont hear that going, Hm, he-he-he.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Exactly. But speaking of uninformed use, I think this is very important
because I have shied away from LSD precisely because I have two close friends
who overtime - I saw them after several years of very heavy LSDs, which they
did solo for the most part, and I dont know if it unearthed latent schizophrenic
tendencies that they had genetically or not - but they were noticeably, oddly
enough less connected. It seemed they were just less self-aware and less
connected in much the opposite you might expect because when I meet people
whove undergone a very deep entheogenic or psychedelic experience in a
controlled environment, they seem to gain all of those things. But these people
seemed to have lost that.
Jim Fadiman:
Well, what happens for some people is you discover this incredibly more
interesting world, and you then dont like this one.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jim Fadiman:
Because you dont integrate. So you say, Well, Id like to get back there. And
my buddy said, I bought this off of this guy in the village, and he said its real. Ill
take it. And then if you keep leaving in a sense and not integrating, eventually
you can really get disconnected. And one of my teachers had a really wonderful
image. Now you have to go back to film where you roll the film, and if you take
a picture with film, we got a huge amount of information.
You can also whats called double exposure. You get twice as much information,
but its really hard to figure out whats there. If you do a triple exposure, youve
got a massive amount of information, and its worthless. So one of the problems
that your friends had is they kept kind of piling on the images and not rolling the
film.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats interesting.
Jim Fadiman:
I have a little remark in my book which is a couple of chapters on how to do the

best possible session. Im really into safety. Im really into purity. Im really into
people having the best possible experience just like a good travel agent says,
You know, when you go to Paris, dont jump in the Seine. Its really interesting.
Just walk along it, things like that, kind of the obvious. And what I found is that
when you do things this way, what I say in my book at some point, Youve had a
wonderful
Tim Ferriss:
This is The Psychedelic Explorers Guide.
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Great book by the way. You should check it out.
Jim Fadiman:
Thank you. If youve had a really meaningful experience and about a month later
you say, I really need to have another one, what that means is youre not willing
to work something through. Youre trying to get around it. Youre trying to avoid
it, and thats a real good indicator that that, Oh, I really need another one, not
to. Thats hard for people. Again, thats a reason. When I wrote the book the
purpose was so that people could have safe, spiritual, therapeutic or just for
recreation purposes because theyre not bad for you, but its hard to think of
something you cant misuse.
And theres a wonderful diagram that my marijuana friends use when theyre
describing dangers, and its this chart. And way up at the top is what kills the
most people per year. You know, its tobacco, like 400,000; alcohol, 200,000.
And then you kind of get down there. Theres the iatrogenic diseases. Thats
things you get from hospitals and doctors, about 100,000. And you go way
down to the bottom, and the second from the bottom is peanuts - 100 deaths
a year. And then theres marijuana - 0. And it makes the point, but the point is
peanuts, water, salt. You know, its possible to harm yourself if you dont know
what youre doing with practically anything.
Tim Ferriss:
I think a big part of it coming to just the peanut point specifically is people who
are perhaps either unaware they have a peanut allergy or who dont do their
homework to determine whats in the food that theyre consuming.
Jim Fadiman:
Or they choke.
Tim Ferriss:
Or they choke. Or they choke, right. So it could be all three or one of the year.
In the case of psychedelics, what are some of the guidelines that you provide for
safe and successful experiences? We have a regular parade of dogs coming by
us, which is really pleasant.
Jim Fadiman:
You heard those little bells. The basics are - and you can really do it with just a
series of little S words, which is - What is the set? Meaning, whats the mental
attitude you have? I really want to be with my friends and go to the beach and
then groove on the sunset, or I really want to look into the fact that Ive never
acknowledged that I was raped by my uncle at age 13, and I still hate men.
Those are real different sets. The setting is nature. I cant think of the worse
setting, but its probably in a laboratory in a university.
Almost all the psychedelic research thats done now is in a living room like
setting with comfortable cushions and art and flowers so that you feel physically
and emotionally safe. Then the question is, Whats the substance? and then,
Whats the dose? because as we talked about, that make a huge difference.
And then the question is, Whats your situation afterwards? which is one of the
things we know as people who get out of prison - Im deep breathing while the
truck goes by.
Tim Ferriss:
No, I appreciate that.
Jim Fadiman:
If they go back to the same neighborhood, they are much more likely to go back
to prison because thats the occupations that are available to them. So part of
it is, Whats the aftercare? and the last is, Whos the sitter or the guide or the
person assisting you? In a lot of psychedelic circles Im kind of a rightwing nut
because I really have found that a guide makes an enormous difference in not
only safety, which is pretty obvious, but in depth. Its kind of if youre on safari.
Why do you have a guide?
Well, he doesnt see the animals for you, but he sure can say, Id look over there
if I were you, and you say, Woaw. And hed say, Its your safari, but personally
this rhinoceros coming toward us, Im going to stand behind the tree. Okay? I
remember once - this is not with animals - I was in Australia. And I was in a town
where there was a rodeo with a lot of aborigines coming into town, and after the
rodeo they got drunk.
And that there was this piling out of the bar, kind of angry, swirl of aborigines,
and Im walking along. And I think, Wow, thats really interesting, and so Im
starting to walk right in the middle of them. The woman I was with pulls me
back and says, What are you doing? I thought I was invisible to them because
Im just some white guy, but Im still an object in the middle of people who were
pulling out knives. So a guide is really valuable
Tim Ferriss:
A guide is fundamental.
Jim Fadiman:
If youre serious. If youre really serious to discovering whats inside yourself,

then a guide is really helpful. And its, again, also like a designated driver, which
is you do want to be safe. I remember a wonderful response from a student I
was asking. He said, The session was really going well until the car caught on
fire.
Tim Ferriss:
That tells you a lot about the setting being slightly off.
Jim Fadiman:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
What separates - aside from what you just mentioned - a good sitter or a great
sitter or guide from someone who is not?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, a great sitter is someone you trust. Lets do it this way. A good sitter is
someone you trust. A great sitter is someone who loves you and you trust. And
a superlative sitter is someone who doesnt have any agenda of their own. They
dont want you to see a certain thing. They dont want you to be a certain way.
They dont want you to discover a certain thing. Now, they all do, but what their
job as a guide is is, How can I give this person the best possible experience that
they can have at this time in their lives?
And at some point when someone for instance says, All I want is to be in the
spirit, and after a few hours you can see thats not going to happen, then you
say, Well, why dont we take a walk in nature? which is a beautiful experience
and always a good idea. I met Albert Hofmann just once, and he said - and
my German accents probably a little weak - but he said, People are always
asking me, How should I take psychedelics? and I say to them, Always take it
in nature.
Tim Ferriss:
That was pretty well done.
Jim Fadiman:
Well, it hit me because again what happens when youre in nature is you begin to
understand that youre in nature. Youre not apart from nature, and thats again
part of this deep revelation that you are really connected to a very intensely
alive and complicated system of which you play a role.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, I liked your segregation of re and member, the re-member. I like that a lot.
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah, because what happens a lot of times people at some point will start
laughing. And they laugh and
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
That seems very consistent.
Jim Fadiman:
In a very deep way and it isnt the giggles of marijuana. Its the laughter of how
could I have forgotten who I really am? And then much later in the day when
theyre reintegrating and finding that they still surprisingly are in the same body
they came in with in spite of having been part of the galaxy or whatever else,
and one person said very beautifully, I was back in the prison of all of the things
that hold me back, but I could see that the door was locked from the inside.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh.
Jim Fadiman:
So thats the level of psychotherapeutic insight.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats deep.
Jim Fadiman:
And thats deep.
Tim Ferriss:
What is the proper way to integrate after such a session so that it doesnt get
lost in the slipstream because Ive met people whove been transformed by a
responsible, supervised psychedelic use? Ive also met people - as Im sure
you have - who seem to be theyre almost like seminar junkies: people who
cant stop going to seminars, but they never take the time to do the work thats
assigned to them.
And I go do cocktail parties, of course, ayahuascas very much of the moment.

Its a popular topic of conversation, and I was in New York. And I met a number
of people who claimed to have done it 80, 100, 150 times, and they seemed
utterly unchanged by it. How do you avoid that trap? What is the proper way to
integrate?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, lets put ayahuasca aside for a moment because its a separate question.
With any major intervention in your life, if you dont see how it fits into your life
or try to fit it in, youre going to be in trouble. We have something called culture
shock, which you know a lot about cuz youve traveled in a lot of weird places,
and you suddenly get, Im in a really weird place. I remember a moment. Im in
Japan, and all my friends whove been around me and helping who are Japanese,
they all went away. And Im suddenly aware Im illiterate. Im totally illiterate. I
cannot read a street sign.
I cannot tell what the stop sign says. I look at a restaurant. I have no idea whats
going on. I ended up getting food from the Subway out of like an automat. It
was really just terrible, but I had the realization of what culture shock is. And
then I started to integrate, which is, Oh, Im in Japan. Its okay. Im really not
illiterate. I just dont speak Japanese. And then, Oh, theres that sign with the
word in English, and integration is the missing piece in the psychedelic world,
which is why the successful studies dont talk even as weve been talking about
psychedelic experience. They talk about experience in a therapeutic package.
So the work with MDMA for example, which is wonderfully mind-blowing that it
releases people from post-traumatic stress disorder, but not just taking MDMA,
but taking MDMA, preparing for it with a psychotherapist, having two guides male and female - and then a lot of time with integration with talking with these
people, talking with other people whove had a similar experience. Theres a
term we have, Working it through, which is like getting rid of it. This is the
opposite. This is putting it into practice. Zen Roshi who I know - Kennett Roshi
- said, You know why we call meditation practice?
Its so youre practicing on how to be in the world. Youre not practicing on how
to sit on your butt and look the wall. She said, Thats the easiest possible way
to meditate and to integrate it into your system. The point is to get up and do
something. And she would tell me that these bright-eyed people would show
up and say, Im ready Roshi. Im gonna meditate my little tail off. And shed
say, Youre really serious? and theyd say, Oh, yeah. This is Mount Shasta.
Shed say, Well, one of the goats is giving birth in a shed up there. Someone
has to be with that goat all night.

And they would look at her, and she would look at them. And she said, Some
of them left, but the ones who stayed began to understand that integration
means to put it into your life. I didnt know much when I did my dissertation,
but my question was, If it doesnt change your behavior in ways not only that
you notice but that other people notice, it probably hasnt gotten very deep.
Right? So when someone says to me, I took LSD and discovered I was god, I
say, Thats wonderful. Am I god? And if they say, No, were already in trouble.
But if they say, Yes, then I say, Well, what are we going to do about that? You
know, what are you doing thats different? Because theres a lot of things in the
world that you feel need some help. And when you talk to people who are in the
service world, lots more than you think have had psychedelic experiences that
changed their life.
Tim Ferriss:
Service, meaning wait staff?
Jim Fadiman:
No, service meaning where youre helping people from wait staff up to feeding
people with AIDS.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Jim Fadiman:
One of the curious things, when I give a talk at a university, two things happen.
One is Im assured that there wont be too many people, and its always packed
because I usually go to universities where they dont talk about it much in the
faculty. And I was at Yale, and I was comparing them with UC Santa Cruz. And I
can tell you before its published that UC Santa Cruz students who are interested
in psychedelics take way, way, way, way, way more drugs of all kinds than people
at Yale.
However, the people at Yale took these sessions very seriously, and a significant
number made a serious life change after their one or two experiences. They
would change majors. One wonderful person indicated he gave up his summer
job in a hedge fund and ended up in a service job in a nonprofit. And one of
my favorites was two people said it made massive changes in their religious
orientation.
Tim Ferriss:
Doggy break.
Jim Fadiman:
And one of them said that - I forget if it was a he or she - totally realized that her
religion was a sham and hollow and that there was a deeper universal. And the
other said she became totally aware of how valuable her religion was and how
much more she was committed to it - same religion. So it makes a difference in
peoples lives when they integrate it.
Tim Ferriss:
What did the Yale students do differently and specifically did the integration take
the form of a set of questions that a therapists asked them, a set of exercises
that they did after the fact?
Jim Fadiman:
When I talk to college students, nobodys ever been in a research setting or had
a therapist. Theyve had friends whove been guides. So these are all folks like
the other 25.9 million.
Tim Ferriss:
So what do you think distinguished these Yale students?
[Crosstalk]
Jim Fadiman:
Well, I think the Yale students perhaps because its harder and rarer that they
took it more seriously. They may have had more guiding, and they were taking it
starting with self-exploration. What I found in the Santa Cruz students is a lot of
them simply took what was around at a low enough dose, so it was for fun or for
nature. But what very interesting is what they said is, Eventually I was taking it
more for self-exploration and spiritual work, and I noticed I was nicer. I was less
neurotic. I liked people more.
Tim Ferriss:
Grades were not an issue. These were the smartest people that I know in
Santa Cruz. People with undergraduates developed their own courses and
the administration allowed it. These were all people who were knowledgeable
and understood how to use these, but they had a lot more opportunity and
experiences. So if youre going to do something once or twice in your life, you
take it more seriously than when its more available.
Its ubiquitous.
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
I have so many questions I want to ask, but one of them - I was doing a little bit
of reading - and I want to talk about problem solving and then well come to the
micro-dosing. But before we get to that, I was reading that is it true that one of
the cofounders of AA was a proponent of psychedelic use at one point after the
formation of AA?
Jim Fadiman:
Its a wonderful story. Bill Wilson who had this great breakthrough in his kind of
treatment room years before he had a psychedelic, but he actually was taking
something. This is not generally known, but John Lattin has a book L-A-T-T-I-N,
has a wonderful book which describes that early session. It happened to be
something called the datura cure. Now datura is something which is also known
as locoweed.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Jim Fadiman:
Nobody should try it. Believe me. Cows dont like it. They go crazy. We dont do
much better, but it was in the 30s. This was a possible treatment for alcoholism
because they didnt know what they were doing. But thats when he had his
breakthrough, and a divine being appears in his room and kind of helps him.
Well, years later hes in Southern California in the subculture which included all
Aldous Huxley and a philosopher named Gerald Heard. And he takes LSD, and
he says, Woaw, this is very much like what happened to me, and I think it would
be a wonderful adjunct for AA in every chapter.
And the directors of AA, which by that time was a massive organization, said, We
are so uninterested and so against everything you just, with the usual reasons
which is, We have no idea what youre talking about. We havent experienced
it. If the government says something is bad, those days you had like an evenodds chance that it might be true. The odds have gone way down, but then
they basically said, Thanks for sharing and please go away. You founded this
organization. Now go away.
Tim Ferriss:
Dont discredit it with your rantings.
Jim Fadiman:
Exactly. With your nutty pharmaceuticals.
Tim Ferriss:
What did Bill do after that point? Did he continue to experiment with LSD himself
or do you know?
Jim Fadiman:
I dont know, and I dont think so. Again, theres a saying in the psychedelic
world that if you get the answer, hang up the phone.
Tim Ferriss:
What does that mean?
Jim Fadiman:
I think Alan Watts suggested is when you get the message from God, then you
got it.
Tim Ferriss:
Dont keep knocking on the door?
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah. Dont keep asking. Didnt I tell you that last week? And thats a little
bit, again, the people who keep taking psychedelics over and over, theyre not
getting the message which is obviously theyre designed to help you be here.
As one of my friends years ago said, If we were designed not to be here, we
wouldnt be here. So the people who keep wanting to escape from here, they
havent yet understood it. And what I understand now is theyre escaping that
feeling of being alone because theyre not here. I mean, were now sitting under
- what - about 85 foot eucalyptus trees, and the hillside that were both looking
at is a combination of green grass and bright yellow flowers. Who wants to
leave?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, not me.
Jim Fadiman:
Man, this is your neighborhood.
Tim Ferriss:
Yet another reason to be in San Francisco during our very unusual, scorching hot
winter as it turns out. Could you comment on the problem solving potential of for
instance LSD or psychedelics? And is it limited to LSD? Thats the substances
that comes up most frequently, but who are some of the types of people who
have seemingly benefited from problem solving doses of LSD?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, you can name names. I wont.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, okay, so Im cheating a little bit but yeah.
Jim Fadiman:
Let me go back a step because it isnt clear for many people including lots of
people with psychedelic experience how you can possibly use these for hard
nose, practical, real world problem solving like circuit design because you take a
psychedelic and life is beautiful and youre an immortal being. Who is interested
in circuit design?
Tim Ferriss:
How does that translate?
Jim Fadiman:
But what we did and at the time we developed this study, we werent sure that
anybody could use it either. But we decided one of the things that people do with
that setting was focus: focus on pathology, focus on spirituality. We thought,
Well, how about focusing on a hard science problem? So we created a little
study, and we invited scientists because one of our team was Willis Harman who
was full professor of electrical engineering at Stanford at the time. So we knew
people in the valley, and Hewlett-Packard was roaring along and so forth. That
was those days: Varion and Lockheed, and Stanford Research Institute.
And we said, You may come to this study, and well give you the most creative
day of your life. But you have to have a problem which obsesses you that you
have been working on for a couple of months and that youve failed at. And
these were people who didnt like failure because they didnt have much in
their lives. And we wanted them to have the emotional feeling not only they
were interested in the problem, but they had an emotional kind of money in the
game. And so we said, Come in with that problem. And what we did is give
them psychedelics and give them the kind of traditional way of allowing people
to relax with music and eye shades for a couple of hours.
And then right at the peak, we bring them out and say, You may work on your
problem. And because they were obsessed with their problem, they all did.
And what was wonderful is nobody did any personal therapeutic work because
thats not what they came for. And out of the 48 problems that people came in
with, 44 had solutions.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats incredible.
Jim Fadiman:
And, again, when youre doing problem solving in the real world, you can test,
which is, Did it get a patent? Did it get a product? Did it get a publication?
Thats kind of proof that it was a real solution because what happens in your
mind is you have incredible focus and enhanced pattern recognition. And we
do focus first because its wonderful little tales. This is a circuit design, and if
you imagine a circuit which is energys going from a capacitor to resistor, down
a wire, and it goes through a gate, it has little objects, literally. You can see them
on a circuit board. Maybe not anymore because everything is microscopic, but
thats what it looks like.
And what this guy would do is hed say, Id kind of visualize one of these, and
then Id imagine electricity going through it. And Id watch, and I could see
where it failed. So then I would - imaginary - Id take this peace out and put
another piece in, and Id run it again. So he was running experiments of a very
kind of physical level but totally in his mind. Another different - this was an
architect - and he had a project, and it was a little mall with a few shops and
maybe a coffeehouse and parking and so forth.
And when he came up out of his three hours of - he said - going through Aztec
architecture, Indian architecture, medieval architecture, he gets his big piece of
paper out, and he looks at it. Its totally just blank, and he says, Its just blank.
And he said, That isnt the way I normally work. I usually have a bunch of ideas,
and I sketch and so forth. And it stayed blank. And then says, Okay, but this
customers been really hard. I really want this to work, and he said, I saw the
building. He said, I didnt see a drawing of the building. I didnt see an image
of the building. I saw the building.

He said, The trees were grown. There were cars in the parking lot. The fountain
was flowing, and there were people talking about. He said, So I just made a
bunch of drawings of what I saw. And these are drawings such as if you go kind
of go underneath a little balcony, you can see the four by fours and you can see
the bolts that youre using to hold and what size are the bolts? Okay, well, he
went and looked.
Tim Ferriss:
So he went in his mindscape?
Jim Fadiman:
He could do that level of detail, and then a few weeks later he sat down to do
the architectural drawing because he basically told the client, and the client
liked it. And he said, I did drawing after drawing after drawing. He said, But I
noticed I didnt use the drawings - any of the drawings - that Id drawn the day
of my session because I didnt need them. I knew the building.
Tim Ferriss:
Wow.
Jim Fadiman:
So thats kind of two pieces of it. See, people had wonderful problems. Someone
came up with a new theory of the photon, which he published because, again, he
ran experiments kind of Einsteinian thought experiments, and he kept thinking,
This is so simple. Its gonna fail, and it kept not failing and not failing and not
failing. He said, Woaw. Okay, so thats the background. Thats how they can
be used for problem solving. Now what happens in outside of a laboratory is
that people who care about problems understand that a low enough dose - and
this is, say, 100 micrograms of LSD or youre asking about substances, mescaline
works just as well at an equivalent dose which is about 200 milligrams - and the
desire to solve the problem because people have asked me.
Ive got three countries now that want to replicate this study, and the thing
that I have to make clear to them, which is hard for them, is you cant get 20
computer science students who are in their second year and say, Solve a really
hard problem, because they dont care. And also, when you use scientists who
have put a lot of sweat equity into it, they must know enough to find the answer.
That is what their heads are full of. What they dont know is where to find it or
where to stack it or how to unroll it.
And one of our scientists, his problem - the kind of problems he used - he used
something called matrix algebra. Things that just take numbers is a terrible
thing to do with psychedelics. Numbers just dont lie there. But what he did
instead is he realized he could see the whole matrix. He could see the visual
pattern, and so the other thing were learning is when you have a psychedelic
- and this is true very much at the micro-dose level - you have, technical term,
enhanced pattern recognition.
You can see stuff working with other stuff more easily, more obviously. Its like if
youre a violinist and you listen to a symphony orchestra, you can hear the violin
absolutely as if its sticking above the rest of the orchestra. And if youre a cello
player, you dont hear the violins very well, but you really can see the pattern of
the cello in your head. So thats pattern recognition.

Tim Ferriss:
Have you looked specifically at the implications of using these substances for
say learning music or languages?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, one of my little micro-dose team as I call them, people who write me, he
said, You know, when I have a micro-dose and I jam with friends, Im not a very
good guitar. And Im a little better on a micro-dose, but I remember so many
more lyrics. So thats just something we know. The answer of using them, well,
yeah, Ill give you a wonderful example. This is a young man, senior year, college.
He wants to go to medical school. Hes taking something like embryology, and
the entire course is going through how one cell becomes a chicken. And its a
hard course, but he has a sugar cube of LSD in the refrigerator.
Tim Ferriss:
A sugar cube.
Jim Fadiman:
A sugar cube with - I dont know - a couple hundred mics on it. This is when
sugar cubes had that much and you used sugar cubes. So he said, I used to
take a lick out of it before Id go to class, and it really made class a lot easier. So
thats something about focus.
Tim Ferriss:
Hes like a deer with a saltlick. You just give it a swipe with the tongue and off to
class.
Jim Fadiman:
But then he was ill and missed the final. Thats - eek- a hard course, hard course.
So he called the professor, and the professor said, Of course, I understand. You
can come right over to my office, and Ill give you a makeup final. And he looks
in his refrigerator, and theres just a little bit left. So he just eats it all. So we
dont know how much. He gets to the professors house or to the lab. And its
a lab, and theres a nice window. And theres some grass outside, but she says,
Okay, heres a blank piece of paper and a pencil. Draw the progression from
seed to chicken and label.
He said, Thats the whole course. She said, Well, makeups are supposed to
be harder. So he goes and sits quietly, and he knows that killing himself is not
an option but it certainly came up. And then he closed his eyes, and he saw the
first slide that she had projected. This was before power points. And in his head
he then moved it and saw the second slide, and he realized that he could see
every slide in the course. So he just started drawing madly. He had two hours,
and within an hour and a half he said, Here. And she looked at him with a kind
of, I knew I really screwed you with this kind of an exam, and she goes through.
And he just watches her getting it because he knows everything is right. And
she says, I guess Ill have to give you an A. And then he said when he looked
out at the plants they were just all waving at him.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, and then he said, I can see your pores breathing at me, and then walked
off into the sunset.
Jim Fadiman:
So there are some interesting studies in academia, and I have another one
which is just fun because its again pattern recognition. This is someone taking
economics course. He was probably a B student, but he hadnt studied for the
final. And he had gotten stoned. So he was still kind of stoned when he came
in to the final, and he thought, I dont just know anything.

Tim Ferriss:
Stoned - marijuana.
Jim Fadiman:
Probably LSD. This was LSD. Sorry. Hed been high, and he was still coming
down. So he was in that kind of blissful space of, I love everyone, but, oh, I have
an economics final. And it was all multiple choice. And so he looked at it, and
the answers looked brighter and nicer. So he just toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toottoot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot. Got the highest score in the class. Now I dont
recommend this as a method, but theres a lot we have to discover about how
to use these substances.
Tim Ferriss:
Have you explored at all the world of lucid dreaming or techniques related to
lucid dreaming because there was a previous time where I was very fascinated
and an avid practitioner. Id wake up in the middle of the night. I would do
exercises and kept journals and so on to get to the point where I could induce
lucidity, say, three of four times per night. And I found that I feel like that
experience has helped me to navigate the psychedelic experience in a lot of
ways or at least to mitigate some of the fear factor. Do you have any stories of
people whove combined those two in any interesting ways?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, in an uninteresting way
Tim Ferriss:
Or uninteresting.
Jim Fadiman:
From my dissertation what comes back is - and I love it - people dream more in
color after psychedelics. We all would kind of imagine everyone dreams in color,
but its not true at all because suddenly when youre dream in color, woaw, its
very different. So thats just interesting. David Brown at the moment is finishing
a book on lucid dreaming and the use of all kinds of substances - herbs of all
sorts and some psychedelics, Im sure - that influence lucid dreaming.
Tim Ferriss:
Wheres David Brown based?
Jim Fadiman:
Hes in Santa Cruz.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, he is?
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Makes perfect sense.
Jim Fadiman:
And hes a lovely guy. The problem - and its the problem with a lot of your
questions - is imagine neuroscience that hadnt done anything for the past 40
years, and youd say, Well, how come you dont know where parts of the brain
are? Because we havent been allowed to look. Duh. So were just starting
off. I mean, if you said to me, Give me 15 research projects, Ill give you just one
because its so easy. I know two cases. One is the most famous mycologist in
the world, Paul Stamets, and the other is someone I know in San Francisco who
both cured themselves of severe stuttering in one session.
Now this was in both, not surprisingly for Paul Stamets - this was side by side
with mushrooms. But he was in high school, and the other was a man in his, I
think, late 20s. But they both realized while on the psychedelic that they didnt
have to stutter. This is nothing about insight or psychodynamics or anything
else. Its just they didnt want to stutter anymore. And Paul tells this wonderful
story where imagine not the worst moment in your life but you stutter a lot in
high school and your hormones are in full flower. Okay, its terrible.
Tim Ferriss:
It sounds terrible.
Jim Fadiman:
So the next day hes sitting, and a girl goes by - a girl, a real, live girl - and she
says hello. And he says, Hello. And she goes, Bye, and he just practically falls
down. He said, I just said hello to one of them.
Tim Ferriss:
Without stuttering.
Jim Fadiman:
And if you listen to him, people whove worked on stuttering - my wife was a
speech therapists so Im a little trained - you can tell when someone has learned
to overcome stuttering. Paul doesnt sound like that at all. So thats a piece
of research which is a snap to do: no risks, no pathology. We now do studies
with people who are stage four cancer. Theyre dying. Its a little scary working
with them because you dont want anything in the psychedelic session to upset
them, but, hey.
So were at the place where as the government kind of realizes that keeping
people healthy is better than laws that have nothing to do with science. And
its happening, and fortunately there are a lot of other countries where good
research is also being done, so a lot to be done.
Tim Ferriss:
I want to talk about whats steps might be taken because I feel like there are
many people - in fact I was just at a dinner last night with a very influential
venture capitalist - who feel very strongly that the positive applications,
therapeutic applications of these substances should be fostered and funded
and so on. I think there are actually a lot of people in this neck of the woods who
feel that way and elsewhere. But before we get there, is the choice of say LSD
or mescaline or psilocybin a personal choice from a therapeutic standpoint or of
those three are some of them better for certain things as opposed to others?
Jim Fadiman:
Probably some are better for certain things. But of the three you mentioned,
theyre fairly interchangeable, and the difference between LSD and psilocybin
as we mentioned is simple the length of time. The reason for instance DMT,
which takes 15 minutes, is not really useful. Its just most of your time is spent
rocketing up into space and falling back down. So thats just a time question.
Ibogaine as weve talked about seems to be particularly good for addictive
substances. I met a wonderful young woman in England who said, After I took
ibogaine - she went to Africa and actually worked with the Bwiti - she said, I no
longer took cocaine on the weekends. I stopped being an alcoholic. I gave up
smoking, and I dont eat junk food.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a lot.
Jim Fadiman:
And then a year or two later she took some ayahuasca and worked on some
sexual trauma. So it didnt clear up everything, but these were very different.
Well, thats a hell of a lot to get with one trip.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Fadiman:
Yeah. Its the wonderful kind of question, Which medication for which situation?
For instance, MDMA, its not exactly a psychedelics because you dont leave
your identity behind, but it is the single best way to overcome intractable posttraumatic stress disorder, period. Theres no doubt in any researchers mind or
anyone whos used. You can go to YouTube and people are telling you about
their story. We have 700,000 veterans - Im going to rant for just a moment -
Tim Ferriss:
Please.
Jim Fadiman:
Who have come back with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and
its not necessarily from being in combat in the usual sense of people shot at
me and I was really afraid. Its people whove done unspeakable things thats
against the hardest wiring in the human body. Youre in your tank or your vehicle,
and there are children playing in the road. And your sergeant says, Drive on. It
might be a trap, and you kill them. And you come back, and youve really done
a terrible thing. And post-traumatic stress disorder is about all that. The use of
MDMA in a therapeutic environment, not on the street, can turn that around.
When you start these kinds of things, you always get the worst people to work
with - the hardest ones. These are called patients who had to have had like 20
years of not being helped. And they had two or three sessions plus therapy
sessions, and 80 percent of them dropped so many points on the post-traumatic
stress disorder scale that they no longer could have possibly gotten into the
study, which also means they went back to work. They did not want to strangle
their wives in the middle of the night in a nightmare. Im talking very serious
things, and the government is ever so slowly acknowledging that this might be
a good idea.
And I think the argument thats going to carry is has nothing to do with doing the
right thing, but when I say to someone, Do you want to pay for this 22 year old
vet from Arkansas for the next 40 years at the VA for therapy and medications
and the chances of his committing suicide is very high? Or would you like to
cure him in a couple weeks. Just think of the money. Dont think of being a
human being. Dont think of being nice.
Tim Ferriss:
Its the economic argument.
Jim Fadiman:
So thats part of it.
Tim Ferriss:
With the MDMA specifically, Ive been very fascinated by MDMA but also perhaps
unduly worried about MDMA after, and this is a vague recollection. So I feel like
this could be the equivalent of some type of propaganda like reefer madness
movies back in day. There are people in my family who have histories of battling
depression for instance, and Im very concerned about damaging serotonin
receptors or the serotonergic system in general.
And at one point when MDMA had become very, very popular and was thought
to have no side effects whatsoever or at least that was the common sort of
street lore, seeing slides of damaged serotonin receptors terrified me enough
that its not a substance Ive even considered. What are the risks of misuses of
MDMA?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, the misuse is the usually which is too much, too often.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. For the therapeutic sessions just out of curiosity, what is the range on
dosing for that?
Jim Fadiman:
It depends. Thats not kind of my area, but its well within the safe range. I think
170, 125 milligrams sounds about right, but that might be dead wrong.
Tim Ferriss:
Jim Fadiman:
Speak to your medical practitioner.

Yeah, speak to your dealer or your medical practitioner and in all truth. But one
of the things that we know is that - and youre asking about different substances
- depression and MDMA are not probably the best mix. Curiously, what Im
finding is micro-doses of LSD or mushrooms may be very helpful for depression
because they make you feel enough better that you do something about whats
wrong with your life. Depression - weve made it an illness.
It may be the bodys way of saying, You better deal with something because its
making you really sad. And I was just looking at book on Lincoln, which talks
about his depression. And I those days when you were depressed, people said,
Hes really depressed.
Tim Ferriss:
Melancholy.
Jim Fadiman:
It was assumed that you would have to deal with it. So Im really relooking
at depression, but if we look at substances, ketamine - this is, again a very
odd substance because its used in veterinary medicine as an anesthesia; its
used in humans as an anesthesia - but at another level its psychedelic. At
another level it apparently overcomes depression in a totally different way that
antidepressants. Antidepressants, you take it and then you take, take, take,
take, take, take, take. In four to six weeks later, maybe itll be the right one. And
if it isnt, you take another one - take, take, take, take, take - four to six weeks.
Ketamine, you take it, and about 15 minutes later youre not depressed. Whats
happened is it blew the whole theory of depression wide open. Pharmaceutical
companies are all scrambling to come up with something that has the same
effect but isnt ketamine because ketamine shouldnt be taken very often. Again,
its not one of those. You can not only become addicted but you can get your
brains burned out with ketamine. And Ive unfortunately met one very quiet,
dull, concerned, serious person who his friends told me had been a sparkling,
delightful, charming but now used ketamine endlessly.
So, again, we can misuse anything. MDMA is probably fine as far as we know in
moderation. And, again, its best use is therapeutic. Its to get you to let go of
trouble. Its milder use, which is called raves
Tim Ferriss:
Whats it called?
Jim Fadiman:
When you go to raves.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I see.
Jim Fadiman:
Why are people taking MDMA or ecstasy?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, ecstasy. Theyre taking it because they like everybody, meaning they
arent caught up in negative emotions. And imagine, again, were back in high
school. Imagine you went to a group, and there was dancing and music. And
you liked everyone, and everyone liked you. And it wasnt sexual. Theres a
particular phenomena at a rave called a puppy pile, which is where just kids are
all piled on top of each other giggling and having a good time. And thats an
amazing event if you think of high school.
Tim Ferriss:
[Crosstalk]
Jim Fadiman:
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Its antithetical.
Jim Fadiman:
Thats right. So, again, it has its uses, and, again, overuse of anything. Remember,
why do people like alcohol? Because a little of it really lowers inhibitions and
makes you think youre charming. Okay, right? And when you have everyone
having just a little and everyone thinking theyre charming, its a kind of pleasant
thing. And then if you keep drinking, the effects shift. Again, with LSD, you take
too much and you just have no idea what happened because the part of your
identity that stores memory is kind of offline and so forth. Again, its hard to
think of anything. You know, you take too many baked beans, youre just not
social, okay?
Tim Ferriss:
I speak from experience. This is true.
Jim Fadiman:
Tim Ferriss:
Right. The government propaganda is unfortunately kind of dumb. Its kind of

simpleminded. It is at the reefer madness level, and its going away. And the
great breakthrough is its really hard now to get someone to stand up and say,
I know something, and marijuana is bad for you. You can still get people to
stand up and say, Marijuana is bad for you. But if you say, Do you have any
evidence? and they say, Well, it is.
I say, therefore it is.
Jim Fadiman:
Right.
Tim Ferriss:
What would you like to see happen in the next, say, 5 years? What are they
organizations that are doing good work or the people that folks listening to this
can look into perhaps learning more about or supporting? What is the most,
sort of the Occams razor approach to getting these substances more widely
studied and researched for therapeutic uses?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, strategically youve just given it, which is how do we make them available
for therapeutic uses? Meaning, can we make them available to the medical
community because theyre the very, very conservative community. And these
are substances which go inside your body, therefore physicians are supposed
to be the people who know that stuff. And thats actually happening with
MDMA, and the MAPS organization, M-A-P-S, Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, is funding almost all of that research across the country.
And theyre doing a really good job of making it available to that someone with
post-traumatic stress disorder could go to a place where they know what theyre
doing. If you think about it, radioactive isotope is not illegal, but you dont just
carry them around on the street and say, Would you like one? You have to
Exactly.
Its a tribal behavior.
know what youre doing. You have to know how to use the equipment, etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera. So what were moving towards is trained kind of center.

Like you go to a trauma center or a burn center or a cancer center, you should
be able to go to say a post-traumatic stress disorder center for MMDA. For
psilocybin, another group called the Hefner Foundation is working to make it,
again, medically legal for people who are dying. And one of the nice things is
when people are dying and you give them the understanding that a mystical
experience gives them, they are still clear theyre dying, but theyre not so upset
about it.
And they say, You know, I only have six months. Rather than be anxious and
miserable and frightened and have everyone around me feeling rotten, Im
going to plant flowers with my grandchild. And Im thinking of someone who
was in a study, and we see her later planting flower with her grandchild. So
that group is moving towards, again, medical acceptance. Now I think theres
another part of the whole medical game, which is called off label, which is once
the medical profession is allowed to give something for whatever reason has
been thoroughly researched, it can perhaps go slightly to the right of left and
see.
And the third area is spiritual experience, and when Im kind of on rightwing
radio, I say, Im for freedom, and I think there should be nothing that restricts
a human being from being closer to God. And they go, Uh-huh, uh-huh, and
I say, And I think there should be nothing that prevents a human being from
discovering the majesty and beauty of this world through science. Uh-huh.
And I think there should be nothing that interrupts your ability or prevents you
from discovering who you are. And then I point out that thats the three major
areas where psychedelics are most useful.
And that is my deep belief, which is no civilization is going to really continue to

progress if it prevents people from spirituality, science, and self-exploration. So
its kind of straightforward for me, and the cultures actually moving very fast. I
mean, the number of cheerful articles in places you wouldnt expect it - I used to
say I cant keep up with the research - now I cant even keep up with the popular
articles, you know: Vice and Huffington Post, and New York Times.
Tim Ferriss:
New Yorker recently.
Jim Fadiman:
The New Yorker did this beautiful article with Michael Pollan. Again, Michael
Pollan, who is Mr. Impeccable, why is he looking at psychedelics? Because hes
blown away how much they help people. So were rediscovering in a careful and
sophisticated way and understanding the nature of culture institutions, what
the 60s kind of blundered into and fell all over. I have a daughter whos an
ethnobotanist, and as a child she had a verb and the verb was to flomp. To
flomp, flomp meant you jumped into the center of something and you probably
fell down.
You flomped. But you got into the center of something, and that was pretty
much the way the 60s worked. We all flomped, and the institutions got
terrified. Two things have changed. One is its a very different generation of
very sophisticated people. The other is all the people running the institutions,
a huge percentage of them have had psychedelic experiences and therefore
arent afraid. Theyre saying, Well, lets do science. Lets do good education.
But were not terrified that Tim Learys gonna get us, or that were all gonna
paint our buses psychedelic and become Ken Keseys.
Tim Ferriss:
If you could have 100 people in the United States have psychedelics who have
not in terms of just turning the tide from a political and policy standpoint, who
would those people be?
Jim Fadiman:
Well, the senate would a good start because it is peculiar. When you actually - as
I do - work with lots of different groups and you say, Whats the percentage of
people in this occupation whove had psychedelics? and it goes down as you go
up the kind of socioeconomic world into finance. But when you hit legislators,
theyre the people with the least experience. And so I would like them all to
have enough experience so they would not legislate out of ignorance and fear.
They might legislate in a very different way than I would like, but thats what
theyre paid to do.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. But at least legislate from a standpoint of awareness and ideally firsthand
experience.
Jim Fadiman:
Exactly. Its kind of that when somebody who I usually dont like, what he says McCain really did have military experience. And when he says something about
the military, its not out of reading comic books. So the other probably 100
people that who I really want are the people who are the shakers and movers
in hi-tech, and most of them Ive heard from some people like you have already
made that transition. If youd like to see what a interesting psychedelic culture
might look like is go to Burning Man.
Tim Ferriss:
[Crosstalk]
Jim Fadiman:
Certainly is a unique experience.
Tim Ferriss:
It sounds like the next step I need to get somehow the legislators out there. We
need to get a copy of The Psychedelic Explorers Guide to all members of the
senate. Where can people learn more about you - find you - online?
Jim Fadiman:
I think I have both jimfadiman and jamesfadiman.com which go to the same

place, and that has a bunch of talks, of some lectures. Theres one wonderful
one where I did an evening with a Zen roshi on psychedelics and Buddhism.
Hes just so gorgeous, and before he was a Buddhist monk - and hes been one
for 19 years - he was a follower of The Dead. So he really comes from deep
experience. Thats there. And actually the book The Psychedelic Explorers
Guide is most everything that I wanted to ever get down in writing, and I was
sure when I was putting it together that I would self-publish.
And then this wonderful publisher Inner Traditions said, Oh, that looks pretty
good. And Inner Traditions puts out a lot of the now useful psychedelic books.
So if youre interested in ibogaine or ayahuasca or theres a cactus called San
Pedro which has mescaline just as the peyote cactus does, plus just a lot of
Where you see not only people free kind of emotionally and sometimes sexually
but certainly physically and dancing and enjoying their body. You also see some
of the most fascinating creative productions and buildings and constructions.
And you just look around and you say, Psychedelics may not be available legally,
but they sure are being used well in certain areas.
general books, theyre kind of the go to publisher at this point though Cinetics
Press in Santa Fe, its coming. Again, what people are finding is like that famous
baseball field, if you write it they will read.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, Im very excited for the future of research and exploration related to many
of these substances. I think that theyre very useful tools, and like you said,
theres the potential for misuse of the tools. But in the right hands, with the
right direction, with the right guidance and supervision, I really feel like they can
be transformative for so many people.
Jim Fadiman:
The word tool is really the case. Ive only been asked once, Would you just
talk about psychedelics as tools? So I went through about eight areas of
science where they would be useful. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize, said
psychedelics gave him not the great breakthrough idea. That he got when he
was driving up in Northern California with his girlfriend. But he said - and hes
the one who did recombinant DNA - and what he said was by that time I knew
how to go inside a molecule and look around. It looks like a good tool.
Okay, so if I want to understand visual perception, here I have a substance

which shifts the visual world, and I actually understand some of what people
are experiencing. I have a certain amount of psychological bullshit jargon that
I can throw at that. So we do know a little, but imagine being able to again in
the laboratory. Roland Griffiths talks about - this is a professor at John Hopkins
whos done probably the most and best studies - we can
Tim Ferriss:
How do you spell that?
Jim Fadiman:
Griffiths.
Tim Ferriss:
Griffiths. Okay.
Jim Fadiman:
With a T-H-S at the end. And his research - some of his research - has been that
we can pretty much guarantee that we can establish a mystical experience in
someone, he said from a psychology of religion or from being a religious person.
Thats pretty exciting.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats very exciting. I think that its
Jim Fadiman:
So theyre tools.
Tim Ferriss:
If you look at the origin stories of most of our dominant religions in the world
today, they contain prophetic or mystical experiences that have now been
criminalized in the United States.
Jim Fadiman:
Well, they also have used psychedelics a lot more than some religions will cop to
if you just google secret drugs of Buddhism. And what youll find is one major
school of Buddhism for its rituals for a couple hundred of years clearly used a
psychedelic as the core of the ritual. Greek religion we know about from the
Eleusinian Mysteries, sorry, elic. Though my Muslim friends tend to worry when
I say this - I feel like Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers talking about NPR theres a lot of traditions in a number of Sufi orders in a number of countries who
are using these materials.
Now Hinduism is based on soma, and in a sense it makes total sense because
every culture tends to know about the plants in its vicinity. And if some of
those plants can be fermented and say make beer, I cant think of a culture that
didnt have fermentable plants that didnt ferment them. Right? And similarly
psychedelics mushrooms for instance grow all over England. Theyre called fair
caps. Theres 100 species of psilocybin mushrooms. Theyre around, and then
question that gets profound is why is it that there are these substances which
when given to human beings have this extraordinary effect of reconnecting
them to the natural world?
Now these substances probably are in plants that are older than human beings.
Okay? This is the kind of thing that people late in the night with a small amount
of a psychedelic will talk about, which is, Hm. And then when you go into South
America and you say to an Ayahuasceta, someone who uses ayahuasca, Why
are you using ayahuasca? And you say well, The plants told me how to use
this, and this plant also tells me how to use other plants. Its called a teacher
plant because most of the plants cant talk to us but these plants can. So you
get into some much more fun areas than weve covered so far.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, this could be part one. I feel like we could talk about this for hours and
hours. And suspect we might, but for now I will encourage everyone to check
out your website. Check out your book, The Psychedelic Explorers Guide. Ill
link to everything in the show notes and very fascinating questions and topics
to explore. So I hope to do much more of it, and thank you so much for taking
the time.
Jim Fadiman:
Thank you for having me Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
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I would love your feedback. Let me know what you thought of this show, who
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at facebook.com/timferriss with two rs and two ss. Until next time, thank you
for listening.
EPISODE 67:
AMANDA PALMER
Tim Ferriss:
All right. So Im gonna click record, and then were just gonna take a couple of
seconds of silence, and then well jump right into it.
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com/tferriss or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TimFerriss with two Rs and two
Ss.
Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of
the Tim Ferriss Show where I deconstruct world-class performers, whether
they be billionaire hedge-fund managers, early-stage investors, like Peter Thiel,
or celebrities, Arnold Schwarzenegger, musicians, chess prodigies, and so on.
They have commonalities, and they do have tools and tricks and routines that
you can use.
This episode, I am interviewing Amanda Palmer, who is a musician, but also a

social media virtuoso and innovator as a musician, from the standpoint of both
music and business models.
Some of you, Im sure, have seen her hit TED presentation, The Art of Asking,
which has been viewed more than six million times. But her story goes much,
much deeper, and we will plumb the depths.
We will talk about, of course, perhaps the Dresden Dolls where she first rose to
prominence as one-half of that acclaimed punk cabaret duo, then the journey
from solo album to leaving her record label altogether and experimenting with
things like Kickstarter. She made international news in 2012 when she raised
nearly $1.2 million preselling her new album, Theatre is Evil, which went on to
debut in the Billboard Top 10. Its one hell of a story.
And shes also known as the social media queen of rock and roll for her constant
and disarmingly intimate and I say disarmingly intimate, such as standing
naked in front of a roomful of fans who sign your body with various markers; Im
not kidding engagement with fans via her blog, Tumblr, Twitter, where she has
more than a million followers.
And she has really opened a lot of eyes to, say, direct-to-fan or pay-what-youwant business models for building and running her business. So we get into all
of this, and we, of course, dip our toe in the different tactics and stories from
The Art of Asking, how she manages relationships, and much more.
So let me stop this preamble and allow you to enjoy a very fun conversation I
enjoyed immensely with Amanda Palmer. Amanda Fucking Palmer, welcome to
the show.
Amanda Palmer:
Thank you, Tim Fucking Ferriss. How are fuck you?
Tim Ferriss:
I am great. And the only reason I ask or rather introduce things that way is
because Im been dying to ask you you have Amanda Fucking Palmer listed
as your alias, or also known as, everywhere Ive been able to really try to do
homework, including Wikipedia. How did you end up with Fucking as an
alternate middle name?
Amanda Palmer:
I didnt do that. Well, as you know, Wikipedia is not authored by the artist.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Amanda Palmer:
Amanda Fucking Palmer is a joke nickname that Ben Folds gave me while I was
working on my first solo album. And the funny thing about the name is it was
actually aimed at me as an insult. It was sort of like it was one of those take
back the night moments, you know, like, well, like all the words that youre not
allowed to say.
Tim Ferriss:
Right, yeah, you can say anything on podcast, too. I encourage it.
Amanda Palmer:
Right. But, I mean, it was one of those things where Ben had someone who was
a friend of a current enemy, who referred to me every time she referred to me,
she referred to me as Amanda Fucking Palmer. And so Ben, as a joke, because
we were working on a record in Nashville together for, like, a month, as a joke
started calling me AFP. And it just became and you also, like, you lose your
mind in the studio, and everything devolves into toilet humor instantly.
That just became the running studio joke, and that was Bens pet name for me,
and I thought it was funny enough that I started using it myself. And then it just
sort of turned into a thing. I dont even know how it turned into a thing, but I
think thats a good nickname as an early deliberate kind of like it lands on you,
and then it sticks like glue.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I love it. So you disarmed the insult by adopting it completely.
Amanda Palmer:
Which kind of is my life philosophy.
Tim Ferriss:
I love that. I love that.
Amanda Palmer:
No, really, just take on the pain, and wear it as a shirt.
Tim Ferriss:
I love this. And Ill trade a really quick anecdote, which is I was really bummed out
at some point a few years ago when a new book came out, and it got panned by
this guy in the New York Times that I dont particularly like. But what I decided
to do as retribution
Amanda Palmer:
You steal part of his
Tim Ferriss:
Thats exactly what I took part of it, which was intended to be this over-the-top
insult, but out of context, it sounds amazing. It was, like, Tim Ferriss walks on
air and land or something
Amanda Palmer:
Awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
and, like, dot, dot, dot, and I put it on the
Amanda Palmer:
Thats the best.
Tim Ferriss:
I put it on the inside flap of The 4-Hour Chef as a reward.
Amanda Palmer:
I have an indie rock friend who got panned in I dont know if it was the New
York it was the indie rock equivalent of the New York Times, which means it
was Pitchfork or something.
And they wrote this scathing no-stars review of his new album, saying, Soand-so thinks he is the second coming of Christ and the most amazing musical
genius to ever walk the face of the planet, and he just removed the beginning
of that and stole the rest of the quote and plastered it on his press kit. And I
was, like, You are awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, the movie poster, dot, dot, dot, amazing what magic can be worked doing
things that way.
Amanda Palmer:
Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
So I have a confession, and that is your book, so, The Art of Asking, I got halfway
through it, and the reason I havent read the second half is because I was so
inspired by the book that I put it down to start asking people around me for
all of the help that Id been too ashamed or embarrassed to ask for. And, as a
result, I have fixed my
Amanda Palmer:
You had no more time to read.
Tim Ferriss:
I have no more time to read, so busy asking. And I have ended up
Amanda Palmer:
Thats pretty wonderful.
Tim Ferriss:
fixing my health after a severe bout with Lyme disease last year and have just
had these multiple quantum leaps forward, so I wanted to thank you for putting
the book out there, first of all.
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, thats wonderful. Im so happy to hear that actually. Id rather hear that than
hear that you finished my book and loved it, but it didnt change anything in your
life. So that makes me really happy.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I was so just completely smitten with the book. And the subtitle, I think,
is really important, so correct me if I get this wrong, but I believe its How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help.
And I wanted to ask you and, of course, were gonna come back to some of
your background and everything else but why did you a book is a hard thing.
I mean, a lot of things in life are hard, but books are a challenge. Why did you
decide to put this book together and put it out there?
Amanda Palmer:
I dont think I would have put this book together if I hadnt been offered a totally,
We will make this easy for you book deal because Im one of those people whos
always got 19 projects on the backburner. And one of them was, Someday, I
should write a book. Ill write a book someday when I have time, ha, ha, ha, ha,
ha.
Like, someone who tours 250 days a year and has millions of unrecorded songs
and all sorts of bizarro side projects, you know, a book always seemed like a great
thing in theory, and in practice, just a huge pain in the ass and not something
that I ever really imagined fitting into my life as a runner-arounder because I
know enough about book writing to know that its not something I could tap out
on the fly on flights from one place to the other. I was really gonna have to press
pause on my life as I knew it.
And, after I started working on my TED talk, Id had the vague idea of writing
a book. Sort of the first time I really thought about it, other than the basic,
narcissistic, Ill write my memoir someday, which I think every artist who lives
kind of an off-kilter, bizarre life with interesting stories probably has the thought
someday to just write the stories down, but the first time I really thought about
writing a book was actually after my experience street-performing because
street-performing, in my particular experience with street-performing, was so
unique. And I didnt know of anybody out there who had written about what it
was like to be a living statue.
And then, later in my life with crowd-funding and the internet and really seeing
the connections, the strange but philosophical connections between livingstatue work and stripping and starting a band and trusting fans and asking for
money, I was, like, all of these things are really related. Theyre all kind of part
of one philosophy and one story, and that would make a great book.
And its unlike anything else I know. Its not really a book about music. Its
not really a book about being a street performer. Its kind of a book about an
approach to life that is about abundance and trust, instead of about scarcity
and fear in the frame of art and performance art, but also, as I found as I kept
carving out the book, it was also about relationships and risk and kind of the big
themes.
And, once I did the TED talk, while I was working on the TED talk, I worked
together with my really good friend, Jamy Ian Swiss, whos this fantastic
magician and essayist. And he sort of fell into my lap as my TED coach because
I called him one night, and I knew that he had given talks at conferences. So he
was one of the people in my life that I could tap as, You understand TED. You
understand conferences. I cant ask most of my friends about this. What makes
a good talk? Could I read you what Ive written?
And what I thought was gonna be a 20-minute phone call turned into a threehour phone call with Jamy giving me all sorts of advice and all sorts of opinions
and all sorts of, you know, calling me on my bullshit. And by the end of that
three hours, I was, like, Jamy, youre gonna be my wingman on this TED talk. If
you help me do this, I will love you forever. And he was, like, Im here for you. I
will help you with this TED talk.
So I would say hes sort of like the hidden hero, man behind the curtain of my
TED talk because he was the guy on the phone with me every other day for an
hour while I read him draft after draft after draft of my TED talk.

And theres a reason my TED talk wound up so good. I didnt just knock it out
and read it. I worked slaved on that fucker for two months. Really, it was like
constructing a perfect little monologue with no fat and just the right cadence.
And I really, really, really I really worked hard on it.
But one of the things that happened, as I added little anecdotes and added
stories, and we cut them, and we refined and honed and decided that this was a
little too off-topic, is we came up with the phrase, Itll go in the book. You dont
have to put it in the talk, Amanda. You only have 12 minutes. Thatll go in your
book someday.
And so that was when the imaginary book took shape, which is, for this
12-minute TED talk, I was trying to condense my entire life philosophy into a
teeny amount of time, but there were so many other stories that were relevant.
And I comforted myself with the idea that, if the TED talk resonated, I would
someday expand it all into a talk.
And then I didnt have to worry about that at all because the minute the TED talk
went online and went viral, my phone rang off the hook with book deals. And I
just decided I would take one, and then I would just go down the rabbit hole and
figure out how to write a book.
Tim Ferriss:
The TED talk is fantastic. And for people listening, Ill put the TED talk in the
show notes, so you guys can check that out, as well. Its a great introduction
to the then expanded narrative and collection of stories and lessons that is the
book, of course. And Im sure when you wrote the book, you were, like, Well, it
doesnt have to all go in the book. Thisll be the online extras, right?
Amanda Palmer:
Right.
Tim Ferriss:
But the mention of TED and the Amanda Whisperer, your friend who was helping
you with the presentation
Amanda Palmer:
I call him the TED doula and then the book doula.
Tim Ferriss:
Exactly. The TED doula, Id be very interested to hear what some of the best
feedback or changes were that he gave to you for the TED talk itself.
Amanda Palmer:
Well, a lot of it was not unlike writing a book. And, since youve written, Im sure
you know this quandary, which is you get so interested in your topic that you
keep wanting to expand and expound. And the true beauty of making a good
TED talk or a good book is that you edit down, and you distill.
And so the key with the TED talk was I kept wanting to add. Like, Oh, my
God, and then theres this, and how could I not talk about this? And there was
this amazing thing that happened. And our goal was to just, literally using
an economy of language, I would write a sentence and write an anecdote and
speak it. I would be on Skype with Jamy.
And it would take me a minute and a half to tell this story about couch-surfing
with this girl and her family down in Florida. And then the goal was, how do we
take this story that took a minute and a half to tell, and I thought I had got it as
far down economically as possible, and then take that minute and a half story
and condense it into 20 seconds? Literally, what words, what single words could
we use to convey that whole sentence?

And it was like songwriting or poetry where, instead of saying and expounding
and going off on tangents, you just pick that one perfect sentence that sums up
everything you felt. And, in that sense, there was a real artistry behind it.
And I found, watching other TED talks and looking at other TED talks, they have
that in common, which was an economy of emotion and of expression. They
didnt need to explain this and that and the other thing. With a single anecdote
or a single detail, they emotionally take you right there, and they dont need to
say anymore, and they can get on to the next thing.
Tim Ferriss:
It brings to mind a couple of things. The first was an exercise that a writing
professor of mine back in college, named John McPhee, used to have us do,
which would be to take something like the Gettysburg Address and have to pull
out five lines or six lines, which was always so torturous, but separately was told
very early on I think it was related to teaching, as opposed to writing, although
I think the two are very similar when youre talking about non-fiction and that
was that most teaching fails from too much information, not too little. And I
think the TED presentations very similar.
Amanda Palmer:
Sure. I think you could say that about art.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure, yeah.
Amanda Palmer:
The best art is about economy. And even if your art is durational performance
art, even within that, there can be an economy because the artist whos just
trying to do everything winds up unable to express whatever it is thats of
importance.
Tim Ferriss:
Durational performance art.

performance art?
Amanda Palmer:
Marina Abramovi sitting in a MOMA for three months.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. Thats a long duration.
Amanda Palmer:
Thats durational performance art. But, if you look at Marina Abramovi sitting
in a MOMA for three months, there was an economy about what she did. She
didnt wear a different costume every day and also try to do 90 other things at
once. It was her and a chair and another person, and there was a real economy
in that.
So Ive definitely had a battle all my life with economy. Im a maximalist. And
I have driven collaborators and managers and boyfriends and girlfriends and
pretty much everybody in my life crazy because I always wanna add more, and
I wanna do more. And, oh, my God, if were gonna do this, we could do this on
top of it, and we could do this, too, and lets add more dancing girls, and lets
add more triangle, more cowbell, all the things.
What would be an example of durational
And, as an artist and you see this in the wisdom of older artists as they talk
about their processes your life goes on, and you pare down, and you keep
paring down to the point where you realize that it wasnt the extra performance
artists that made your show good. It was the ability to pare down to the impactful
detail. And thats just true in art, as in life, for sure.
Tim Ferriss:
And how have you become do you feel like you have become better at editing
and distilling in your art? And, if so, what has been the most helpful in getting
you to that point?
Amanda Palmer:
Thats a really good question because it also really depends on the form.
Songwriting is a good example.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure, songwriting.
Amanda Palmer:
And even recording songs is a good example. I used to think heres a really
specific but a really good lesson I used to think, and one would think, that if you
were just recording a single song lets say its a really aggressive piano song,
and its just piano and vocals you would think that layering and overdubbing
more piano would make for a stronger sound.
So, instead of just having one single piano playing a baseline on the right hand
and your vocal on top of it, you record the piano ten times over, and so youve
basically got the entire range of the piano on the recording, and you crank
everything up to 11.
And the fascinating thing about that is and incredibly poetic, as related to the
rest of art and life is the strongest, loudest sound you can get from a piano
is playing two notes, a low C and a middle E. And banging the shit out of those
two notes is way more impactful and striking and strong and aggressive than
overdubbing 27notes on top of that.
And AC/DC is kind of the perfect example. Those guitar riffs and those single
notes, they burn themselves into your brain, and they dont need a whole lot of
extra. Its the sheer epic simplicity of the minimal.
And Ive found that this is true pretty much everywhere in life, especially when
it comes I mean, you were mentioning it with teaching its something that I
have been learning in my relationships from Day 1 and still struggle with to this
day and found myself even doing in the last 48 hours of my relationship with
Neil, which is learning how to say less, and especially for someone like me, whos
a motor-mouth and wants to be constantly communicating and engaged, the
ability to have a thought and not just blurt it out and to have something that
you think is interesting that you wanna share or to have an observation or a
criticism and not say it and deliberate and consider, Is this actually useful? Is
this actually compassionate? Is this actually necessary to the conversation, or
does saying less actually leave more space for more love?
And Ive found the best advice from my mentor, who I also talk about in the
book, and funny enough, its pretty economical advice, as well. His life advice to
me, when Im going into a conflict or a difficult situation with my parents or an
argument with Neil, his advice is, Say less. Thats it. Just say less.
Tim Ferriss:
Its such good advice.
Amanda Palmer:
Its great advice.
Tim Ferriss:
Great advice for emails, too, oh, yeah.
Amanda Palmer:
And on that, we should just skip the next 60 minutes of the podcast and leave it
at that.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Gonna play two notes on a piano for the next 45 minutes. Please stand
by.
I definitely wanna come back to your relationship briefly a little further down the
road. But Id love to rewind the clock a little bit and talk about the Eight-Foot
Bride. Could you give people a little bit of context, for those who dont know
your story, just a little bit of context on the Eight-Foot Bride? And the question
Id like to then add on that is just what your main lessons learned were from that
experience that have translated to all of the other endeavors and experiments
that youve had.
Amanda Palmer:
Okay. Well, the basic background is that I was a living statue, and most people
know what that is because theyve seen it, if theyve traveled to any metropolis.
But, if you dont know what a living statue is, its a street performer, usually
monochromatically colored, all white, all silver, or all blue, face painted, gloves.
And, sometimes, living statues wear sunglasses and wigs. And my least favorite
living statues wear masks because I think thats cheating because theres a real
beauty in watching somebodys frozen face. Thats a real part of the talent.
But, basically, I graduated college. I knew I wanted to be a performer, a musician.

I knew I was either gonna go into music or theatre, but my main passion was
songwriting. And I was working my collection of shitty jobs. My main shitty
job being and it was a great shitty job, just in case my old boss is listening,
because I love him I worked in a fantastic little ice cream shop in Harvard
Square that was called Toscaninis, and we scooped ice cream and made coffee
for the denizens of Harvard Square and Harvard.
And I had seen street performers all my life, and I remember mentally noting
every time I saw a living statue, Who does that, and who gives you permission
to do that? And I could do that. Anyone could clearly do that. You just need to
paint yourself and get on a box.
And so, one day, I just did it. I painted myself white and put on a bridal gown and
a veil and some gloves, and I stood on a box. I was terrified. And I put a hat at
my feet, and I gave out flowers. And that first time I got up and did it was a real
it was sort of one of those life breakthrough moments where I felt so fraudulent.
I was, like, no ones giving me permission to do this. No ones taught me how to
do this. Im really faking this. I mean, I assume you just stand here. But I dont
remember how. Are there rules for being a statue? And I just did it, and it was
delightful.
And I really I had this moment of feeling incredible freedom, just taking that
$17.00 I made that day and just going out and buying a sandwich and a packet
of cigarettes and going, Oh, my God, this money is just mine. People just gave
it to me. It was such a like a eureka moment, after only having been given
money in the form of a paycheck from a boss, to just have people giving you
cold, hard cash for performing in the street was a really beautiful feeling.

And I never went back after that, although being a living statue in Boston is a
clearly seasonal occupation. So I would sort of I would go back to caf work
in the winters, or I would travel and perform the Eight-Foot Bride in warmer,
hospitable climes, like I went down to Key West, and I went to LA. I tried my
hand at Vegas. I went to Australia one winter. But I would say I made about 95
percent of my living statue income right in the middle of Harvard Square over
the course of four or five years.
And it wasnt until I looked back after years of having transferred into the music
and rocking and rolling, touring performer career that I realized how much street
life and busking life had shaped my approach to everything. My life philosophy
was not an academic approach. It was not a music business approach. It was
a busking approach, which is you have to be good at what you do, and then you
rely on the good will of others. And thats the way busking works. Nobody buys
a ticket. You do your thing, and you have to captivate a crowd, and then you
pass your hat.
Tim Ferriss:
What separates a good living statue from a great living statue?
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, I think theres two answers to that question. I have seen some shitty fucking
living statues in my day. I have seen some people who have put the absolute
minimal amount of care and effort into their costumes and makeup. And its
always really depressing to me to see a bad living statue, someone whos just
wearing a raincoat and a bad mask and isnt even really standing still and is
barely interacting with the people who are giving the money.
And, regardless, everyone is always curious about a living statue, even a bad
living statue. And childrens curiosity is unrelenting. So they cant really tell
the difference between an immaculate living statue, who spent $2,000.00 on a
beautiful latex costume that looks completely realistic, or someone whos just
wearing a shitty raincoat and a mask. All they know is that theres something
happening, and it might be magic. And if they put their dollar in, something
magical is gonna happen.
But I have seen some really incredible living statues with just glorious costumes,
and theyre just killing it in the aesthetics department, but they dont love you.
And my favorite living statues are the ones who have some pathos and who
actually connect with you.
And that was the approach I took to the Eight-Foot Bride, which is, as a
performer hungry for love and connection, I treated every single patron as like
a ten-second love affair. And I just I enjoyed so deeply the act of looking into
a strangers eyes and thanking them for giving me a quarter, that it was a real
part of the job, but also means that Im really disappointed if I go up to a living
statue, and theyre, like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you gave me a dollar. Now, fuck off.
It always just makes me sad.
Tim Ferriss:
It feels like a cheap trick or something, yeah.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
You mentioned eye contact, and you have very striking eye contact and certainly
used that in your TED talk, and Ive seen it in other photographs and videos.
What advice would you give I think that most people avoid excessive eye
contact but what advice would you give to average Joe or Jane out there
about using eye contact to connect with people? What are your thoughts on
that?
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on that. I mean, I think eye contact is very hard for a
lot of us because its so threatening. And the more disconnected we are and the
more time we spend looking into our devices and barely looking at each other,
the more threatening it is to keep and hold somebodys gaze.
But, God, is it powerful. I mean, looking somebody in the eye, unthreateningly,

unaggressively, I really feel like it is often the antidote for what is ailing us
because we feel so connected superficially in so many ways, and perhaps we
are, through our Twitter feeds, through our Facebook feeds, through our many
events, through our doing this and that and running around, but if were able to
do all that, and were not able to look at and see each other, it all can feel really
superficial.
And I had some really life-changing experiences in yoga retreats particularly,

and I read about one of them in the book. One of the first teacher training yoga
retreats I went on, I was probably 26, 27, and we did this exercise where there
was maybe 50 of us in the group total, and we did this exercise where we got
into groups of, like, ten, and we took turns just standing in a line facing each
other. And it was basically an exercise in presence.
And the goal was just to stand there and face another person, maybe about a
foot apart, eye to eye, just gazing into each others eyes and not reacting, not
smiling, not giggling, not rolling our eyes, not saying, Oh, doesnt this feel kind
of uncomfortable and silly, just really just holding the gaze.
And what was so incredible to me about that and this was after I had clocked
my five years as a living statue. So I, of course, am just loving this. Im soaking
this in. This is like crack cocaine to me basically. Im, like, yeah, I get to just look
in someones eyes for three minutes, and then I get to look in someone elses
eyes. And I just to me, the juicy intimacy of that felt like a warm bath.
But, for six or seven people in that group of 50, they burst out sobbing. They
could not handle actually and we did a lot of talking and kind of breaking down
postmortem of this experience afterwards.
And it wasnt even that they felt overwhelmed by having to look at someone
else. They felt overwhelmed by actually feeling seen by another person and
the emotional, overwhelming experience of feeling really just intimately seen by
another, having spent possibly an entire lifetime not being seen by their parents,
not being seen by their peers, not being seen by the people around them and
maybe avoiding it for reasons of just fear, fear of intimacy, fear of being found
out, fear of whatever it was.
And I remember looking at this and these werent fucked-up people. These
were your average, totally functional adults in their 30s with jobs and kids and
the whole nine. And I remember thinking, this isnt just them. This is really all of
us. We do not connect with each other at nearly the level we could. And though
we live in close proximity, and though we sit on the subway with each other, and
though we have a wide variety of things connecting us and making us sort of
pseudo-intimate, a lot of us are really alone. And that was a real eye-opener.
Excuse the pun.
Tim Ferriss:
No, I think this is a really profound point that youre making, and the pseudointimacy, I think, is a great way to put it. I tend to unexpectedly at times brush
just enter a zone of sort of profound loneliness.
And the irony in some ways, I think, is that, of course, you have an incredibly
loyal fan base, and Im very fortunate to have a really fantastic group of readers
and listeners. And I find it so easy to love them, to love my friends, to love my
family. I find it very difficult sometimes to love myself. It seems almost selfindulgent, and thats some kind of weird Im sure theres plenty of analysis that
could be done on that.
But one of the most therapeutic we were talking about you had mentioned
yoga before we got started and also again here one of the most therapeutic,
unexpectedly therapeutic experiences Ive had in the last six months is starting
to play with something called acro-yoga
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
where youre doing acrobatic yoga, and theres a trust element and a
vulnerability element of balancing each other upside down and staring. You
have to maintain points of eye contact, and its a very visceral, primal need
that is being satisfied. Anyway, I dont want to ramble on, but its been a really
profound realization for me that I cant think myself out of this loneliness.
Amanda Palmer:
No, yeah, I mean, I think we think that we can think a lot of things. We can think
our way out of a relationship problem. We can think our way out of a sexual
problem. We can think our way out of a work problem. And, to me, yoga and
also meditation and really trying to have a constant level of body awareness, its
so important because you really can get lost in your head.
And if you demand that your head and your body are disconnected, and you
really can just, like, as long as you sort of feed your body and drag it around as a
container for your mind, everythings fine, the whole system starts to fall apart.
And I see that more and more, especially as I get older. If I neglect my body, and
I neglect actual physical contact with other people for too long because its just
a pain in the ass, because I just dont have time, because Im too busy this week
to get to yoga, because of da, da, da, da, it really the whole building starts to
feel like its built on sand. Shit just falls down.
And theres still something in us and in me because we are taught to be so

rational and so head-oriented that you kind of dont wanna believe that its true
and that you can get away with it, but you cant. It all eventually comes back to
roost.
Tim Ferriss:
You mentioned meditation. Id love to dig into that for a second. And, as I
understand it, youve also written about meditation before. Theres one piece,
when I was doing a bit of research, Melody vs. Meditation. What does your
meditation practice look like, and what are the benefits that youve seen?
Amanda Palmer:
Well, I have this special room in my house thats covered with candles and lots of
statues, and I burn six sticks of incense, and I drink a special stick tea, and then
I float into the air, and its really rad.
Tim Ferriss:
When can I come to your house?
Amanda Palmer:
Thats all bullshit.
Tim Ferriss:
I had a feeling.
Amanda Palmer:
What I usually do, if Im being good, is first thing in the morning, I will just use
my phone as a timer, and I will sit on whatever I can grab. If I dont have a
meditation cushion around, Ill grab a bed pillow or a towel, and I will sit crosslegged somewhere. If Im in a teeny hotel or a friends house, sometimes, its in
the bathroom or on the bed. And I try to meditate for ten minutes if its a crazy
busy day and a half an hour if I can carve out the time. And I definitely notice a
huge difference in my day if I actually make the time to do that.
And I was brought into the world of meditation in my late teens, early 20s and
just basic Vipassana meditation, nothing fancy, no crazy mantras, no gods or
deities, just basically sitting on the earth as a human being and paying attention
to your breath and your body and letting thoughts come and go, but really trying
not to be attached to the drama that comes visiting.
And I wish I could tell you I was great at it. Ive been meditating for 20years,
and I still feel like a shitty meditator, which I think thats part of the journey is
realizing that its not like you meditate for a year, and all of a sudden, youre
enlightened, and you can sit and think about nothing for a half an hour.
But what you do learn is that just the act of watching where your brain is obsessing
for a half an hour. And if my timer goes off after a half an hour of meditating, and
I realize that all I have been doing is constructing an argument in my head with
a person in my life or thinking about merch designs, and I somehow lost the plot
two minutes into my meditation and flew off, that just tells me where my head is
at. It tells me that Im stressed out. It tells me that thats whats preoccupying
me.
And on a good day, I think about constructing an argument, I think about my

list of things to do, I think about what Im about to eat when I get up, and those
thoughts come, but Im able to let them go five or ten seconds later and say,
like, Hi, okay, I see you, yeah, youre here. Okay. Now, youre gone. Lets go
back to paying attention to our breath. And then five seconds later, its another
thought, and you say hello to it, and you say goodbye to it. And, to me, thats a
much more, quote, unquote, productive meditation practice.
But the real productive meditation practice is just that you sit your ass down,
and you actually do it, and you watch what happens. That is the practice. And
its never easy, but you do get a perspective onto the inside of your head and
your thought process that I think is essential if youre going to progress because
you get to know yourself. You get to watch the little tricks that your brain is
playing and the places where you are obsessive and getting stuck.

And it has been in moments of meditation and, honestly, actually, more moments
in yoga, often just like at the end of a yoga class, lying on a mat on the floor,
watching my thoughts enough that Im not just caught in them, where I have
had the most insightful I wanna say the most insightful insights but Ive had
the most insightful moments of my life, looking at my thoughts and going, Are
you serious, Amanda? Like, you actually really just spent five minutes coming
up with a plan that actually you know is really destructive, and yet, your brain
was having a field day with it?
And just the act of being able to stand back and saying, Wow, youre thinking
this. Youve actually been thinking this way all your life. This is not necessarily
good. Maybe we should find another way out of this problem, or whatever.
And you dont get insights like that unless you give yourself some perspective
because, if youre just spending your life going and going and going and being
trapped in the thoughts and not giving yourself a different point of view, you
just you stay in the crazy.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, I think developing the skill as the observer is, Ive found, just so critical to
be able to step out of the rapids onto the shore and just observe it for a while,
as opposed to being sort of trapped like a monkey in the slipstream of thought,
getting washed over the rocks.
And, as you put it, I think a lot of people have this pass/fail mentality with
meditation where, if they cant think of a candle flame for 20 minutes straight,
theyre a failure, and they quit.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
And I tell people all the time, I say, Look, almost without fail, every time I
sit down to meditate, a portion of it will be spent fantasizing about some
elaborate retribution against someone who cut me in the salad line in college or
something so fucking ridiculous. But its just the act of meditating, somewhat
like stretching, I suppose, just gives you a certain responsiveness, as opposed
to reflexive kneejerk response to stuff, that I find very helpful.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah, well, it is not unrelated to the say less conversation we were having.
Tim Ferriss:
Right, right.
Amanda Palmer:
It is the ability to realize when you are not saying less is directly related to the
amount of perspective you can take in any given moment, argument, conflict.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. I would love to ask you a couple of questions that are a bit of a lateral
step, but Im curious nonetheless. The first is: What book or books do you give
most often or have you given most often as gifts to other people?
Amanda Palmer:
Well, I go through different phases.
Tim Ferriss:
Besides your own, I suppose.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah, that one doesnt count. I go through phases, but I have some perennials,
and two that I can think of off the top of my head, one is directly related to
what we were just talking about, mindfulness and meditation and sort of cutting
through the bullshit.
One of my absolute favorite books of all time, because it changed my life, is a

book called Dropping Ashes on the Buddha. Its by Zen Master Seung Sahn,
who was a Korean Zen monk. And I read it when I was maybe 24. And its a
short book, and its actually its just a series of letters that this really funny,
very direct, very no-bullshit Korean monk wrote back and forth with his students
in the 70s. And most of the students are Americans. Theyre sort of that first
wave of, We are getting into meditation. We are lost. Please help guide us.
And this guys ability to economically get to the point of whats important and
how to explain to somebody else how to cut through the bullshit and just get
to mindfulness was a game-changer for me at 24. And all of the yoga and
meditation I had kind of dabbled with up until then sort of coalesced, and that
book really opened my mind. It was sort of one of those, Oh, my God, I think I
get it books.
And so I have given that book to probably 30 people or 40 people, especially

people who have told me that they are feeling kind of lost and/or depressed
or directionless or younger people who are at crazy crossroads in their life and
need something to hang onto. Ive given many copies of that book.
Tim Ferriss:
I cant wait to read it.
Amanda Palmer:
Its fantastic. And theres actually if you like it, there is a companion book that
was his second collection of letters, which was called, Only Dont Know, which
was one of his because he spoke in this thick Korean accent and had all these
hilarious ways of phrasing things, which is one of the most amusing things about
the book. And he keeps saying to his students all the time, Only say, Only dont
know. It was just a great, great accent.
So my other one that I have given to a gazillion people, which is sort of on the
flip side of the other metaphysical side of the fence, is Bill Bryson, who is one
of my favorite non-fiction writers, wrote a book called A Short History of Nearly
Everything, which is I dont know if youve read Bill Bryson, but hes one of the
Tim Ferriss:
I have.
Amanda Palmer:
hes one of those guys, like, he can write about anything, and I would read it.
Tim Ferriss:
What is it, Into the Wilderness, or he has one about hiking or attempting to hike
the Appalachian Trail?
Amanda Palmer:
Yes, I love that. Ive read all of his stuff. So he decides to, as an every man with
a basic understanding of the history of the earth and basically the history of
science and how things work, decides to tackle this with his basic knowledge
and spends a few years researching a book. And just the first 20 or 30 pages of
this book are of great comfort to me because he spends pages expounding on
exactly how small the earth is in relation to the rest of the universe.

And, along with reading about Zen meditation or anything, if anything is gonna
put you in a good mood, or maybe send you into an existentially angry crisis,
knowing how totally insignificant your life as a human being on the planet earth
is, in the grand scheme of things, and were talking space and time, this book is
just like is incredibly humorous, but also is just one of those great perspectives
where you read it, and you feel totally emotionally connected to Bill Bryson and
his desire and his hunger to learn these things. And, also, you get to feel like
your place in the your insignificance in the cosmos, and thats another favorite.
And thats just in the nonfiction department. Fiction, I think, is for another
podcast.
Tim Ferriss:
We can do that in a Round 2 for sure. Well, I know what Im getting on my

Kindle then, particularly Dropping Ashes on the Buddha. I thought I had the
collection of letters format is really one of my favorites, so Im excited to grab
that.
So a lot of what weve talked about ties into, directly or indirectly, how people
define success. And Id be curious to know, when you hear the word, successful,
who is the first person you think of, and why?
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, God. You know, its funny, when you said it, the first person who popped into
my head was Neil, but thats probably because I just spent all day with him, and
he is successful.
You know, it may feel like a dodge to answer it this way, but success is something
that has been so plastic and fungible in my life, especially because I live in a
world in entertainment and in performance and now in book-writing. It is a
competitive field. Its not like my sister or someone else who just has a job
in science and gets their job at the university. And maybe Im full of shit, and
everybody out there with any job, from shoemaking to plumbing, feels highly
competitive.
But, especially being a female singer, the world sort of views you as being in
competition with the woman next to you, right down to the fact that you are on
the charts here, and she is on the charts there. And the world measures you
and measures your success by number of downloads, number of fans, number
of Twitter followers or whatever.
And I have found that part of the struggle of actually finding happiness as an
artist is the daily fight to not define success by the way the rest of the world
defines success, which is hard because you have to fight the same battles every
day, because you go out into the work environment, and the entire industry,
and even to a certain extent your own fans, because theyre sort of all drinking
the same Kool-Aid, are kind of all telling you, Well, success is defined by this.
Success is defined by this. Success is defined by this.
And youre there in your own little bubble, going, Well, I know thats not really
true. I know that there is that superficial level of success, but then theres also
my personal success, which no one else can define for me and really is only
defined by how happy was I when I woke up this morning, and how happy am I
when Im bedding down at night? And thats not reflected in any of the billboard
charts or in any of the iTunes downloads.

So success has this bizarro two-faced Im losing my words today whats the
word for what a thing is?
Tim Ferriss:
The essence?
Amanda Palmer:
Essence, perfect. So, yes, success has this very two-faced essence where
you, especially as an artist playing the game in the industry and putting out
music and putting out books and so forth, you kind of have to play that game a
little bit and ride the balance of trying to get your book on the New York Times
bestselling list and knowing what to do to do that, but also, simultaneously, not
drinking the Kool-Aid, like swishing it around in your mouth and then spitting it
out.
Tim Ferriss:
Going for a success tasting, but not
Amanda Palmer:
Exactly. Its like being a wine sommelier who doesnt drink. And I think, speaking
of meditation, it all kind of this winds together and is actually a really good
example of the sort of thing I would notice myself thinking and finally get to
a point where I could really catch myself in the act of comparing myself to
other artists and being jealous of people who had more chart success or being
jealous of artists who seemed to me to be more successful. And so, in my crazy
brain, they must somehow be happier or must somehow have beat me or must
somehow have something that I dont have.
And, honestly, its in the moments of yoga and meditation that I find myself
its like you and your revenge plot against the person who cut you in the salad
bar my moments like that are going, Oh, my God, I really am doing that thing.
I really am thinking about Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, or Lady Gaga as the
person who sold more records and, therefore, must be happier. Why didnt
I make that decision? Why am I not where they are? Why did I not do this?
Why didnt I go into fashion? Why didnt and watching and actually having
the ability to watch my brain and stand back and go, You know, Amanda, you
realize that thats not actually success. You realize that, even if you had that
whatever thing X is its not gonna buy you happiness. Just sit with that for a
second, and notice what youre doing.
And to that, I am grateful, really grateful for a mindfulness practice because

I dont stop having those crazy thoughts. They come, but I can at least catch
myself in the act and see that Im doing it.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre getting better at training them, the wild thoughts, in a way perhaps.
So this, I think, underscores a really important point, I mean, the definition of
success and the misconceptions or self-delusion that we can get caught up in.
Looking externally, what are common misconceptions about you?
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, thats a good question.
Tim Ferriss:
Those people who think, I know who Amanda Palmer is, what are the common
misconceptions?
Amanda Palmer:
I know who Amanda Palmer is. Shes that narcissistic, talentless, hairy cunt
married to my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. Fuck her.
You know, I would like to think in my darkest moments, I would like to think that
the most common misconception about me is that I am not self-reflective and
that I dont have self-knowledge and that, if I am a narcissistic, evil, attentiongetting fill-in-the blank, that Im not the kind of person who knows myself and
dissects myself.
And one of the weird things about especially being a female performer is you
get a lot of the same grief. You start to notice the patterns. And when I was
in my mid-20s, and it was sort of the dawn of the Dresden Dolls, and I sort of
faced my first wave of internet criticism, and the main criticism was, Shes an
attention whore. That was sort of the big go-to for people.
And the amount of sort of bravado and simultaneous shame that I felt when
I would see people saying that about me was really interesting because, on
the one hand, I was intellectually and emotionally smart enough to go, Okay.
Well, people are calling me an attention whore, but Im a performing singer/
songwriter. My job is to get attention.
So I can see the double standard here. And I can also see that nobody is calling
the male artist who I opened up for or who opened up for me, no ones calling
him an attention whore. I think this is a thing thats more or less aimed at me
because Im a woman, but I could be wrong. I mean, maybe theres something
in this, and maybe my very insecure secret self is right. Maybe I am in this for all
the wrong reasons. Maybe I am just too narcissistic. Maybe I am too hungry for
attention. Maybe Im doing something wrong.
But, honestly, having now been in the business for its now whatever it is, 13
years later since I started the Dresden Dolls I feel like Ive seen enough waves
of criticism and also detected enough patterns after enough time and done
enough self-inquiry that I can sort of piece the puzzle together and get, Yeah, I
was kind of right, and I was kind of wrong.
Mostly, looking back at how I reacted in anger and fear at 25, I was mostly right.
Most of the people criticizing me, as I was 25 and struggling to make it as a
musician in Boston and aggressively pounding at the piano, and aggressively
wearing few clothes, and aggressively doing whatever the fuck I wanted, and
aggressively not caring about the etiquette and the fashions of the day, yeah,
mostly people were threatened or angry. But it didnt have a whole lot to do
with me. It mostly had to do with them, and it still feels true.
And I think one of the things you come to terms with, as a performer, and
especially as a female performer, is you are so desperate, especially at the
beginning of your career, you are so desperate for universal approval and
universal love. And you figure that, if you do your job right, and you really work
hard, and you write fantastic songs, and you are a consummate entertainer, that
everyone must love you, and its not a bad way to be. You aim high. You aim for
the center of the target and the brass ring thats furthest away.
But, also, you realize, whoever you are, there is no universally beloved performer.
There are people out there who hate John Lennon. Theres people out there
who name an artist, and theres people who hate them. And one of the things
that you discover, as you journey down your livelihood as a performer, and you
sort of negotiate your own career, is sort of developing an acceptance that your
audience is gonna be your audience, and your audience isnt everybody.
And there will be those out there who decide that youre not their cup of tea and
that your style rubs them the wrong way and that they dont like your voice, or
they dont like your songs, or they dont like your appearance, or they just dont
like you. And its just part and parcel of the job.
And I remember people telling me, at 25 and at 27 and at 29, that if I was being
criticized, it was a real sign of success. And even though I intellectually knew
that, that took me years to actually emotionally take on and feel the truth of
that, that if people are angered by you, if people care enough to write about how
they dont like your music, write about, at this point, write about how they dont
like your book, youre doing something right because, if youre being discussed
at all, and your work is of enough merit to merit criticism, then youre just on the
path.
And youre not so nave as you were at 24, thinking that if you just pushed all
the right buttons, everyone would eventually see the light and love you. It just
doesnt work that way.
Tim Ferriss:
Doesnt work out that way, yeah. I think that you could mention any artist, any
person of note or whos had a decent amount of public exposure, and they
probably have a hate page dedicated to them. I mean, it really doesnt matter
who it is.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah, [inaudible] [01:09:19].
Tim Ferriss:
But you mentioned fans and wanting everyone to like what you do. But, certainly,
I think that to business, as in art, if everyone is your customer, then no one is
your customer on some level. Youre, I think, somewhat famous for having a
very diehard fan base. And maybe this is a tired question, but I would love to
still hear from you, why you think thats the case, and Ill just leave it at that.
We can certainly dig into it, but you have such a dedicated fan base, I mean,
above and beyond, in a way that has sort of mesmerized a lot of people in
the music industry and elsewhere, ranging from the huge success of your
Kickstarter campaign, to, I think, challenging the status quo, which may be part
of the reason that you get a lot of the flack that you do, couch-surfing with fans,
bringing fans up on stage. Theres so much we could dig into. Why do you think
your fans you have such a large contingent of diehard fans?
Amanda Palmer:
Well, I think that has to do with how specifically intimate my writing is because
its certainly not for everybody. And when I look back at my career you can
hear me, right?
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I can hear you.
Amanda Palmer:
Okay. I just thought I lost myself for a second. So, when I look back at the last
10, 15 years of my life, I definitely see a lot of moments where I could have turned
to the left, or I could have turned to the right, and I could have made things, for
lack of a better word, more palatable, more radio-friendly, more universal, more
this is the kind of thing that I know more people can digest. And when I look at
those choices, I pretty much have, on the whole, chosen not to take that turn,
which isnt to say that I want to alienate people. In fact, the opposite is true.

But Ive kind of deliberately resisted commercial success, mostly because, as I

grew in my career, which did grow slowly its not like I started writing songs
one day, and then the Dresden Dolls started, and then six months later, we were
famous. I was on a really slow climb from the time I started as a songwriter as a
teenager, to solo-performing, to meeting Brian and starting the band, to touring
locally for three years, to ultimately getting signed.
So I had a lot of time to sort of look around and gauge who I was and which
bands I really admired and kind of what forms of success were available to me
because, when I was 18, there was only one thing. It was, like, get on MTV, be
famous. That was success.
But then, as I grew into my 20s, I realized there were a lot of artistic choices and
a lot of lifestyle choices open to me, and I was master of my own fate. I was
allowed to choose whether I was going to be the kind of artist who spent two
hours getting ready before shows, doing massive hairdos, putting on makeup,
getting into fashion, trying to work with pop producers, putting dancing in my
videos, really trying to sell myself as someone who could hopefully ultimately go
platinum and sell four million records.
And part of the curse is, if you wanna look at it that way, which I dont, but it was
like I learned too much too soon, and I knew that going the Lady Gaga route or
whatever and taking the bare structure of my songs and handing them over to
a pop producer to turn them into dance hits wasnt necessarily gonna make me
a happier person. I just sensed it.
And I dont want this to come across sounding pretentious or anything because
I think theres really different ways of being happy. And I think its very possible
that Lady Gaga is happy, and I dont know because I dont know her.
But I looked at my life as a long expanse of time, energy, choices, and who I
was gonna get to hang out with. And I was, like, you know, I think it may mean
less chart success, radio success, less chances of getting on MTV, but I know if
I make this choice and this choice and that choice, its more probable that Im
gonna enjoy my day. And so those are the choices I kept making and
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, Im sorry. Is that what you mean by lifestyle choices? Is it a quality-of-life

thing, or is it something else?
Amanda Palmer:
Well, its both. The choice to and theres just some certain things, especially
if youre talking about pop life, theres certain choices as a woman where, like,
some shit just comes down to time and energy. I got into a conversation about
this on Facebook.
I have never spent any time doing my hair. And it may seem stupid or like a kind
of irrelevant thing, but I actually know, for the pop stars out there who kind of
want to do the fashionista thing and take that particular fork, it just takes time
out of your day if you want to go in that direction and do fashion and always
look photo-ready and vogue-ready on stage. I know what it takes. Ive done it
for video shoots. Ive done it for photo shoots. You need to sit in a chair for two
hours.

And I sort of looked at that and was, like, I dont wanna sit in a chair for two
hours. I wanna spend that two hours going out to dinner with my friends in
Philadelphia and hearing about their art projects. And I wanna spend that two
hours meeting and greeting with fans before the show. So I get that its kind of
a sacrifice, and I get that I wont look like Katy Perry on stage, but its okay. Ill
give that up. Ill make this choice and not that choice.
Tim Ferriss:
So Ive been fascinated with your story on so many levels, and one of them,
if youre able to discuss it, relates to crossroads that I find myself in, which is
being tired of the charts, the New York Times bestseller list. Im just fatigued by
it. Ive been through that game several times. Its exhausting. Its not objective.
Its really there is a very subjective kind of editors choice element to it that
I dislike because I dont feel its I feel that its not a real reflection of the true
success of any given book.
And I was hoping maybe we could chat about the rebellion and splitting with
Roadrunner Records, if youre able to talk about that, because if you could give
people a little bit of context on that Im thinking of going completely indie as a
writer potentially, moving forward. And theres a certain appeal in the simplicity
of that, and well see if I have the fortitude to do it.
But are you able to give people a little bit of context on what happened with
Roadrunner and then what you learned from that?
Amanda Palmer:
Sure. Well, the rebellion specifically was this hilarious moment in my career.
This would have been 2008. I had put out my first solo record, Who Killed
Amanda Palmer? I was really proud of it. I still am. I think its a great record.
And there was a song on it called Leeds United, that was like a big-band, crazy,
drunken, brash it was sort of one of the poppiest songs on the record. And I
decided to make a video for it. I made the video in London. It was really fun.
And the record label at the time, I was still on Roadrunner Records. Things
with them had just started falling apart because theyd barely lifted a finger
to promote the Dresden Dolls second album, and that left us feeling really
disillusioned. But I sort of gave them a chance to make good on my first solo
record, which came out right after that. And they didnt, by the way, long story
short.
But, somewhere in there, this video got shot, and the rough cut was sent over
to the label. And I, in the time in between, had made my way back to New York.
And the A&R guy called me into his office.
Tim Ferriss:
A&R is advertising and something else?
Amanda Palmer:
Technically, in old-school terms, it meant artists and repertoire. But, in laymens

terms, your A&R guy is basically your representative, your dude because its
usually a dude but your dude or gal at the label who is the artists liaison,
basically.
Tim Ferriss:
Your point of contact, got it.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah, your person. So my person, Dave Rath bless his heart because he had
to speak for the trees and he called me into his office and tried, as delicately
as he could, to tell me that the label had had a meeting, and they thought that
I looked too fat in the video, and would I be willing to cut the shots that showed
my bare midriff?
And I was astounded at this because I am vain, and I had seen the rough cut,
and I thought I looked fantastic. I was really thrilled that, you know, I had been a
little because, you know, Im not trim, but I have my little pot belly. But some
pot belly can be attractive, as long as its not hanging out over your pants. And
I was actually really thrilled when I saw the rough cut because I thought I looked
fantastic.
And so I sat there with my jaw dropped to the floor, going, like, Youre kidding
me. No. Like, what shots are you talking about because I think I look great,
and Im a vain motherfucker. So we just clearly disagree. And, at that point, I
had kind of had it with the label, and I had sort of decided at that point to just
probably split off and go my own way.
So I basically did I did an act of war, and I posted to my blog I posted this
story to my blog, knowing that my fans would all be aggrieved, and everyone
would be sad on my behalf. And, at the end of the day, the label backed down.
They put the video out. They, of course, did nothing to promote it, which I was
probably shooting myself in the foot, but who knows? And this was also at the
point where the video was basically internet-only, so it was up to me to do any
promoting that was gonna happen.
And this beautiful, organic internet moment happened where I shared this story,
and that was it. I gave no directive. And then, on their own, the fans created
this movement where they started a page on the band forum, uploading selfies
of their own stomachs with messages written on them to Roadrunner Records,
saying things like, This is what a normal belly looks like, and, Fuck the label,
and, Long live and they gave the movement a title, which was The Rebellyon
get it? because their belly was in the middle.
Tim Ferriss:
Rebellyon, got it.
Amanda Palmer:
But this wasnt just a couple people or even just a couple dozen people. This
was like hundreds of fans did this. And it was hilarious because it was a lot of
huge man bellies and teeny little baby bellies, and people wrote on their cats. It
was just it was fucking hilarious.
And someone even one of the fans even collected all of these photos and
published a little chat book and, with my permission, which they didnt even
need, printed up 1,000 of these books and just offered to send them to people.
And it just it was one of those moments where I stood back like a proud parent
and looked at my fan base, and I was, like, You guys are awesome. I just love
that you fucking did this. Youre creative, and youre weird, and youre all with
me.

And that was just it was also one of those moments where I looked at them,
and this was my demographic. These were my fans. These were the people
for whom the video was made. And they were all so proud of me and, also, so
happy for me to be authentic.
And I sort of looked over at the label, who were, like, Well, you know, Amanda,
if you really wanna be successful, you have to X, Y, Z, and I was, like, You know,
I really dont think you guys get it. This is my audience. This is who Im making
the video for. This is who Im making the music for. They understand. You guys
dont seem to. I think this relationship has come to an end.
But it was also if you look back at internet history, it was one of those moments
where you know, in 1995, that wouldnt have happened. But these people all
found each other, grouped together, and could create their own moment. And it
is one of the blessings of the internet, which is the paradigm shifts that people
in power, really, everything is called into question.
And its very possible that, in 1995, I might have believed the label. I might not
have understood that my audience really did just want me, the authentic me,
not the airbrushed one. And this is why its sort of been a lifelong conversation,
a dialogue with my fan base. Its not just me, the artist with a megaphone.
Tim Ferriss:
If you had to choose one way online to communicate with your audience, what
would you choose, as it stands right now?
Amanda Palmer:
If I only got to use one social media platform?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Amanda Palmer:
Or do I have to choose between Twitter or email?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, you have to choose. So it would be one online tool, whether social network
or otherwise. What would you choose, and why?
Amanda Palmer:
If I could only communicate one way on the internet, you know, probably Twitter
because Twitter has direct-messaging, so I could mini-email people.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats right, yeah, thats true, you could. Its a two-for-one.
Amanda Palmer:
Because email cant, for lack of a better word, email cant its only person-toperson, so it cant collect. You cant create a movement on email, unless if
that were the case, I would probably find myself kind of on massive chain group
emails with 900people all bccd into conversations, if you know what I mean.
Tim Ferriss:
I do. Let me ask just a couple of fan questions, a couple of listeners who were
very curious to know, what is the dynamic like, having two creatives in one
household? So your husband is, of course, a very prolific writer. You have many
different creative endeavors. Do you work together? Do you work separately?
Do you ask each other advice? Is there collaboration? How do your creative
tempos differ?
Thats a lot at once, so you can kind of answer it however you want. But Im just
so fascinated to know how you guys make that work.
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, boy, well, thats a huge question. I mean, thats a huge lot of questions. I
think the biggest blanket answer is we help each other a lot. But we also have
private areas and rooms where we really dont fuck with each other.
And weve learned the hard way. I have learned if nothing else, Neil and I have
found that we are insanely similar, and we both constantly make the mistake of
thinking that the other one has thicker skin than they do, when the truth is we
are both, at our core, really fragile artists. And I think most artists, at their core,
may seem thick-skinned, but when it comes down to it, we really want people to
love and understand our work.
And so Ive learned Ive been with Neil for six years, and I still am constantly
fine-tuning how honest to be with him about something he shows me, and viceversa. Neil read me something he wrote a couple weeks ago, and I gave him
my honest opinion and immediately wanted to take it back because I was, like,
You should have just not you should have oh, God, Amanda, why did you
say that? Now, hes gonna be depressed for three days, and he was, because I
didnt particularly love this or that and was totally blunt.
And I would have wanted the same thing from him if I had written a piece of
music and played it for him, and no one had heard it yet, and I was feeling my
small, fragile self, crawling out of my little art cave, waving my watercolor around.
Thats the way I think. Even when youre 54, I totally think that, whether its a
novel or a song or a poem or an opera or whatever it is, to me, youre still five,
showing your mom a watercolor, going, Do you like it? Do you like it? And the
only answer is, Yes, youre a genius. Im putting that on the fridge. Its your
watercolor. I dont know what it is. Its totally abstract. I know its supposed to
be a tree, and it doesnt really look like a tree. But every artist in that way is kind
of five, and you really do have to choose your words carefully.
And, on the other hand, the reason Neil and I love each other and respect
each other so much is we dont really bullshit each other. And we speak the
language. We know that theres a difference between, Holy fuck, I think thats
the best thing youve ever written, and, Yeah, thats really good. And those
are basically two ends of the spectrum.
And you really, if youre trying to be kind and a good, attentive art spouse, youre
really not supposed to go into, Yeah, I think I get it, not your best work. I didnt
really dig it. Youre just not allowed to say that.
Tim Ferriss:
Its more like a Japanese tea ceremony exchange.
Amanda Palmer:
Exactly. And thats with the work itself. We also help each other with more of
the nerdy stuff. We edit each other on social media. There have been nights
where one of us has and this has happened in both directions where one will
text the other and be, like, For fucks sake, delete that Tweet before you find
yourself in the middle of an internet shit storm tomorrow because you have
press tomorrow, and youre too busy to spend all day writing a blog, defending
your right to X, Y, Z. And 90 percent of the time, the person will be, like, You
know, I knew not to do it. I just wanted no, fuck it, youre right. Ill delete it.
Tim Ferriss:
So, for fucks sake sounds distinctly non-American. So Im guessing you get a
fair number of those.
Amanda Palmer:
We both do that for each other. And we not only text each other and say, Hey,
delete that Tweet. Youre an idiot, but well also well run things by each other.
Neil and I have both stepped in the middle of controversies unwittingly, Neil
more recently than me. He got himself in an internet shit storm with the title
of his most recent book. And we sat in bed and had long conversations about,
Is this really a good idea? and, When people come yelling at you, how are you
gonna deal? and, Why dont you actually write something in the introduction
of the book to explain it, so that you can kind of proactively blah, blah, blah.
Like, we sit there like a couple of marketing managers, dealing with the kerfuffle
before it actually blows in the window. But weve both been there, and weve
both been there, holding the hand of the other, while the other stands in the
internet shit storm, having to deal with the op-eds and the angry Tweets and
the angry Tumblr people.
And theres something really wonderful about having a spouse who really
fundamentally understands you and has your back. We deeply understand each
other, and we deeply share a philosophy about life work, freedom of speech,
and compassion that, even if we express it differently, is one of the reasons we
were so attracted to each other to begin with. It was, like, Oh, youre one of me.
I see what youre doing over there, got it.
And theres something really comforting about that because it can be a

really lonely job when youre out there trying to explain how your work was
misunderstood, how your book title was misunderstood, how your intention was
misunderstood. Its nice to deal with that kind of bullshit on the internet all day
and then sit down to dinner with someone and have them deeply understand,
not just the intellectual bit of it, but how it emotionally feels to go through a day
like that.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, someone else whos been deployed to the internet before, had to contend.
Amanda Palmer:
Exactly, exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
Last questions: You walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender?
Amanda Palmer:
What temperature is it outside?
Tim Ferriss:
It is Boston in the winter.
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, I order a red wine or a hot toddy.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, hot toddy, good choice. If you could give one piece of advice to your 20-yearold self, what would it be?
Amanda Palmer:
Leave college.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay.
Amanda Palmer:
Leave, transfer while youre still a sophomore, and go to art school in New York is
what I would tell myself. Leave the liberal arts bubble, for Gods sake. Run while
you still have time, although in the back-to-the-future time/space continuum
problem, would I be talking to you right now about my wonderful marriage to
Neil Gaiman and my bestselling book? I dont know.
Tim Ferriss:
Its dicey time travel.
Amanda Palmer:
Its dicey time travel. I think, you know, Ive got no regrets. But Im sure, if I had
escaped my shitty situation at 20, I might have just jumped into another shitty
situation, so you never know.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, this has been so much fun. I wanna be respectful of your time. Perhaps we
can do a Round 2 sometime.
Amanda Palmer:
Oh, I would love to. I could talk for hours.
Tim Ferriss:
This is really fun. Where can people find you on the internet and say hello and
learn about what youre up to, and so on?
Amanda Palmer:
People can find me in the obvious places. You can Google up Amanda Palmer
on pretty much any social media site, Amanda Palmer on Twitter, and Im on
Facebook.
And I actually one cool thing that you might not find Googling is I just created
a special page of my website for people who arent familiar with my music
because Ive had so many people coming to me as blog readers and as readers
of the book and as followers of me on Twitter, who actually didnt come through
the music, but came through some other avenue and really want to get to know
the music, but are kind of overwhelmed by the whole catalogue.
And so I created a page on AmandaPalmer.net, and its called, A Walk Through

Amandalanda. It just starts with the beginning of the Dresden Dolls and kind of
walks you through the basic albums and what the singles on the albums were
and what the best videos are. And its a really good primer if you wanna just go
in and sample the last 13 years of albums and music and stuff, and its pretty
funny. I wrote it.
Tim Ferriss:
Beautiful.
Amanda Palmer:
And I think, if you Google Amandalanda, youll probably find it, or just go to
AmandaPalmer.net and kind of have a browse around.
Tim Ferriss:
And your name on Twitter is?
Amanda Palmer:
Its just @AmandaPalmer.
Tim Ferriss:
You got the name. Thats a good one to have. Awesome. Well, Amanda, thank
you so much. Everyone whos listening, of course, Ill put links to everything
that I can track down that weve talked about in the show notes, the books,
Amandalanda, and everything that was mentioned.

Amanda Palmer:
Amandalanda.
Tim Ferriss:
And I will let you get on to another creative day, Im sure. So thank you so much
for the time.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah, thank you, Tim. I think you are awesome. And if you decide to fly solo,
Godspeed.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you.
Amanda Palmer:
Its a lot of work, but, boy, is it satisfying.
Tim Ferriss:
Gotta jump off and grow wings on the way down, yeah.
Amanda Palmer:
Yeah. I mean, one final thought on that because I wanted to say something
when you said that I think, you know, I went solo and did solo music everything
once I dragged myself off the label. But then I decided to put my book out with
one of the biggest publishers. And I think the freedom to pick and choose is
more important than the freedom of being independent.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats a great point.
Amanda Palmer:
And it really is. Its like work with the man when youre digging the man and the
man can actually help you make your art, and then dont when you dont want
to. But there is no such thing as true freedom because youre always trading
something for something else. And having tried to run my own record label and
all of that, you really do appreciate the people sitting in offices, shuffling the
papers that they do shuffle.
So, when in doubt, and if you go through Round 1, 2, 3, and 4, just remember
that, at the end of the day, you get to do whatever the fuck you want, whether
its work with a publisher or work with yourself, and you get to change your mind
ten times if you want to
Tim Ferriss:
Hear, hear.
Amanda Palmer:
because I have.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, I wish you and yours many more adventures, and I hope we get a chance
to have a hot toddy in person soon.
Amanda Palmer:
I would love that. And we can invite Neil, and he can talk British at you.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I would love that. I want him to narrate my entire life with all of his free time,
just, like, so soothing.
Amanda Palmer:
[Inaudible] [01:39:23] I want Neil Gaiman to narrate my entire life.
Tim Ferriss:
Doesnt pay well, granted, but we could talk about that over alcohol.
Amanda Palmer:
No, but you could create the app. All youd have to do is get him to read the
entire Oxford English Dictionary.

Tim Ferriss:
Thats it.
Amanda Palmer:
And then you could make gazillions on the Neil Gaiman Narrate Your Life app.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats true, thats true. All right. Well, Amanda, youre very sweet and very
generous for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
Amanda Palmer:
Youre so welcome.
Tim Ferriss:
And youre an inspiration. Thank you.
Amanda Palmer:
You are, too. Take it easy, Tim.
Tim Ferriss:
Bye.
Amanda Palmer:
Bye.
Tim Ferriss:
This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by 99Designs. 99Designs
is the worlds largest online marketplace of graphic designers. And I have used
99Designs for years, including to get cover concepts for The 4-Hour Body, which
went on to become No. 1, New York Times, No. 1, Wall Street Journal. It was a
huge hit.
And heres how it works, and you can check everything out, including some of
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have mentioned it before, including in The 4-Hour Work Week, as a resource.
Check it out, 99Designs.com/Tim, and if you use that link, youll be able to see
what Ive done on the platform. You will also get $99.00 as an upgrade for free,
which will get you more designs, more submissions. So check it out. And, until
EPISODE 69:
GLENN BECK
Tim:
This episode of the Tim Ferriss show is brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book
Club. I have a book club where I resurrect or purchase books that I feel didnt
get the attention they deserved. And theres a brand new book that I have put
out called We Learn Nothing, by Tim Kreider and I there are I think five others,
including several of my favorite books of all time. So to get free samples of all
of them to check them out, go to audible.com/timsbooks thats audible.com/
timsbooks.
Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show, 99 Designs, which is your
one stop shop for all things graphic design related. Go to 99Designs.com/tim to
see the projects that Ive put up, including the mockups and drafts of the book
cover for the 4-Hour Body. You can also get a free $99.00 upgrade when you go
to 99Designs.com/tim.
Tim:
Hello boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the
Tim Ferriss Show where I deconstruct and analyze world class performers to
find the things they have in common. Most important, the tools, the tricks, the
favorite books, the routines that you can use that you use. And the figures that
we look at range from billionaire investors like Peter Thiel, to actors like Arnold
Schwarzenegger, to musicians like Boreta of Glitch Mob, or Mike Schneider,
Amanda Palmer, to chess prodigies like Josh Waitzki.
And the point of this podcast is to help you to question assumptions, to find a
better way of doing things, whether that is agreeing or disagreeing with these
guests. And its really an exercise pushing your comfort level and pushing you
outside of your comfort zone. And the guest for today is no exception. Hes
definitely going to help you get excited one way or the other. And his name
is Glenn Beck. And theres no secret agenda, no secret political agenda to
this show; thats not what this is about. And it is both not a gotcha interview
conversation with Glenn, but it is also not a softball interview with Glenn.
So we dig into a lot of his personal habits and role models like Walt Disney, and
Orson Welles, for instance. But I also ask him questions, such as how he feels
interacting with Peter Thiel, who is openly gay. Or how he feels interacting,
as he has, with Penn Jillette, who is a very open atheist. And I ask him a lot of
questions that many of you submitted via Facebook, and some of them are
pretty hardcore. And I think he does a very fascinating job of answering them.
So that is that.
Now, theres a bit of background because I think Glenn is a world class storyteller.
Hes also a world class performer, radio personality and entrepreneur. Some of
you may not realize in 2014, for instance, Forbes named him to their annual
Celebrity 100 Power List, which pegged earnings at $90 million for that year and
placed him ahead of people like Mark Burnett, Jimmy Fallon, Leonardo DiCaprio
and Will Smith. He is founder and owner of theblaze.com, which gets somewhere
between 30 and 50 million unique visitors per month, which needless to say is
massive. And theres no end to the growth in sight.
So its a fascinating story, its a controversial story but theres something to be

learned, here. And I think youll enjoy the conversation. So withhold judgment,
reserve your judgment, and try to listen with an open mind. Again, this is not
a political show. Im not trying to convert you to anything. But it is a learning
show, and there are some gems in here. So without further ado, please meet
Glenn Beck. And for the resources links, show notes and so on for this episode,
you can just go to 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. Thats 4hourworkweek.com/
podcast, where you can also find all the other episodes. Thank you for listening.
Tim:
Glenn, welcome to the show.
Glenn:
Thank you, very much.
Tim:
Im thrilled to have you here. Were sitting outside at Aquatic Park in San
Francisco. It is a gorgeous day.
Glenn: Perfect.
Tim:
And I was going to say, has anyone ever told you you have the perfect voice for
radio, but youve probably
Glenn:
Not today, not today.
Tim:
I know we have a block of time. I want to get into a lot of different subjects. The
first question I really want to ask is what your close friends or colleagues believe
youre world class at.
Glenn:
You know, I know you always ask that question, and the punch in the face
question, and Im stumped by that because I dont consider myself world class
at anything. I think that Im a guy who just kind of slips in under the radar a bit
and does things just differently enough to where it kind of short circuits the
system. So maybe short circuiting the system, maybe.
Tim:
Okay. This is an interesting place to start. So what are the elements of short
circuiting the system that you are gifted at? Or have developed a gift for?
Glenn:
Yeah, I think its just quite honestly, let me just start here. I have a friend who
is an economic professor at Columbia. And he came up to me first time we
met, he came up to me and it was a cocktail party and he said, So tell me, Mr.
Beck, whered you get your education in economics? And I said, I dont have a
formal education. Im a self educated man. He said, I knew it. Now, I thought
to myself: you S.O.B., here we go.
Tim:
Yeah, here we go.
Glenn:
And I said, Did you? And he said, Yes, because I cant get my students to
think like you. He said, Theyre all trained to think a certain way. So I think
short circuiting the system is a lot easier when youre somebody Steve Jobs
is a great example that just has not been trained to think like everyone else.
Because everyone else expects the system to work this certain way. And then
when you walk in and you dont have that formal education, you walk in and you
look at it and youre like: this doesnt make any sense. Theres an easier way to
do this, or a better way to do this. And you kind of charge your own path and
everybody stands around telling you: dont do it that way.
And you do, and it usually works.
Tim:
Jobs is a really interesting example because he was able to take disparate areas
such as calligraphy where, in that case, he took a number of classes that he then
brought over to the development of Apple and its interface. Lets talk about
radio for a second. Actually, before I get to radio, you did not graduate from
college but you took and correct me if Im wrong one class at Yale.
Glenn:
One class, yes.
Tim:
What was that class at Yale? And I read that you were encouraged or introduced
to Yale through a senator. Id just love to hear a bit of the story surrounding that.
Glenn:
I sobered up in my 30s. I was an alcoholic and really a pretty despicable guy.

And very arrogant and just not a good guy. And had tried not tried, but had
begun to follow the path of my mother, who was an alcoholic and drug addict
and committed suicide when I was 13. So I was kind of going down that road.
And when I turned 30, I knew my life was at a crossroads. It was either over or I
was gonna restart. And at the time, I thought it was over.
But my daughters convinced me that I could start all over again, and so I did.
And I realized I didnt know anything. I was reading everything I could get my
hands on and trying to educate myself because I was just a self I was living
in self imposed ignorance. I didnt care. So I started reading a lot. And I was
reading Carl Sagans Demon Haunted World. And at this time Im not really
religious at all. I was raised Catholic but I didnt really believe in any of it. And
Im reading Demon Haunted World and it was all about technology. But he was
comparing it to: technology is going to become like Latin to a lot of people.
And there will be priest holders, you know. And were kind of there now. Its like,
IT, can you fix this? And you have no idea how to fix anything. And so he was
warning about it. I dont remember what it was, but he just made some mention
of the church. And I snapped the book closed and I threw it down. It caught me
off guard and I thought: what the where did that come from? Where did that
anger come from, here? I dont believe in the church and this was something
that was a thousand years ago in the Dark Ages; of course it was like that.
And I realized I didnt know anything and I thought: how much of whats in me
has been planted in me just through my experiences or just through other
people, or my teachers or my parents? Not stuff that I even believe, but just
stuff thats been planted there. And so I decided to take everything out and
examine everything piece by piece. I was reading a letter from Peter Carr about
a month later from Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr.
Peter was his nephew. Peter was coming of age and his mother had died when
he was young, and his father was dying
And before his father died, he went to Thomas and he said, Youre the smartest
man I know. Would you please oversee his education? Thomas said yes. So as
Peter comes to age, he writes this beautiful letter and it starts out and it says,
When it comes to literature, never read a book out of its native tongue because
youll lose too much. Learn the language, then read the book. And he goes
through all of the different studies mathematics and physics. The last one is
religion.
And he says, When it comes to religion, above all things fix reason firmly in
her seat. For if there be a God, he must surely rather honest questioning over
blindfolded fear. When I read that, that freed my mind up to question everything.
And so I began to. And I started reading Hawking and Einstein and Immanuel
Kant and I just couldnt keep up with it myself. I was just not prepared.
So I decided to go to school. I was friends with Senator Joe Lieberman at the

time.
Tim:
So this was around age 30?
Glenn:
Yeah. And Im talking to Joe and said I just gotta go. And he said, Well, why
dont you go to Yale? And I said, I dont think Im smart enough to go to Yale.
And I said, I dont even remember my high school grades. I think they were
bad. As it turns out, they were all As but I had such a poor image of myself that
I thought I was a horrible student. So I was accepted and went in. I could only
afford one class. The first day of class was the day my wife and I decided to get
a divorce, and so it was really hard. But I took Early Christology. And I wanted to
take it out of the Theology Department. I wanted to take it through the History
Department.
So I had a professor named Wayne Meeks, and he was great. I was an

underclassman so I am this 30-year-old freak in the class and nobody knows
what Im doing there. He doesnt know what Im doing there. And Im engaging
him on everything, and the underclassmen love it because they just want to
skate, you know what I mean? So Im really keeping it busy. And at one point, he
said to me I was reading I really do have the library of a serial killer because
I go and I look for people who disagree with each other. And so I was reading
well, I was reading all the things that were supposed to teach me about Christ.
I was also reading all of the people who were saying its bunk.
And I was reading a guy named Dominic Crossan at the time. Hes a Catholic
theologian who doesnt believe in the divinity of Jesus, doesnt believe in the
resurrection or anything else. And the professor had said something, and I said,
Well, how do you explain, then, this particular point of view? And he said, Mr.
Beck, who are you reading? And I said, Im reading Dominic Crossan. He said,
Dont read him. Hell screw you up. Dont read him. I said, Okay, who do you
recommend I read? And he recommended somebody.
So the next week I came in and I asked him the same question. And he said, Mr.
Beck, didnt I tell you not to read Dominic Crossan? And I said, Yes, you did.
You told me to read this other guy and Ive read him. And I get it. But I want
to know why Dominic Crossan is wrong. And he said, Ill see you after class.
Turning point in my life. We went and had lunch. And he looked at me and he
said, Why the hell are you here? And I said, Because I know I dont know
anything. Im a moron and its self inflicted and I need to know whats going on
in the world and in my life and what I really believe.
He said, What are you doing, what are you reading? And I told him. And he
said, Whos guiding you through all of that? And I said, Im not and Im having
a hard time getting through it. And he said, Nobody gets through that. Then
he reached across the table, and I said, I know, but Im really struggling. He
reached across the table and he grabs my hand and he said, You listen to me
for a second, would you? You realize you belong here, right? Youre okay to be
here. That endorsement, and as stupid as it seems, that endorsement opened
up my whole world. Because it was the first time somebody said, Youre smart
enough. You can do it.
That changed my world. I wish it hadnt, in some ways. I wish it didnt mean
so much to me. But Ive learned from that, now in my position, to say that to
people. Because theres something stupid in us that just makes us feel like
were not good enough, were not smart enough. Everybody else is better. If
they just knew who we were. If they just knew how much Im bluffing, Id be
caught. No, were all bluffing. Were all trying to figure it out.
Tim:
That brings me back to something you said earlier that Id love to explore a little
bit, which is your daughters convincing you to forge on. Was that a conversation?
If so, what did they say to you? Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Glenn:
I used to
Tim:
Because I think everyone listening or a lot of people listening have faced dark
periods. I know Ive faced some pretty dark periods, and Id love to just hear a
bit more detail on that.
Glenn:
I used to think I was a better father when I was drunk because I riddled with
ADD and so I operated at a high speed. I have a really hard time sitting on the
floor and just playing with the kids. Like: no, no. Dont you see the blocks? We
can build a bridge. You know what I mean? And so I would drink and I was a I
didnt think I was an alcoholic because alcoholics are poor, living on the street,
cant hold a job, and are abusive. I was none of those things. And I was a very
high functioning alcoholic, and became even more creative when I was drunk.
So every night I would tell my kids a story about Inky, Blinky and Stinky, the three
little mice that would go to the island of cheese where it would rain Parmesan,
and their adventures against Thomas the cat. And they would go out on their
marshmallow boat every night as they would escape from their parents house.
And I would tell them these stories and we had a great time. My alcoholism was
getting worse and worse and I was starting have blackouts. And I know that
people in movies are like: I dont remember what I did last night! Bull crap. If
you dont remember what you did last night, you dont have that attitude. Its a
scary thing.
One day my kids came down to the breakfast table and they were so cute.
And they said, Dad, tell us last night the story from Inky, Blinky, and the
Stinky. That was the best story ever. Tell us again. And I realized I didnt even
remember tucking them in. And I lied to them and I said, Lets see how much
you remember. You tell me the story of Inky, Blinky, and Stinky and Ill tell you if
you have it right. And as they were telling me the story, all I could think of was:
what are you doing? What are you doing? Youre missing everything. Youre
now lying to your children about this. What are you doing?
And it had been about a two year struggle to finally get the guts to admit that I
was an alcoholic. But that was the weekend that I did it. And I left the breakfast
table and looked for a place for AA, and went into a meeting.
Tim:
I know were bouncing around quite a bit chronologically, but how do you structure
youre life to avoid the temptations or problems that youve experienced in the
past? And I think this is an AA expression, but If you dont want to slip, dont go
where its slippery, for instance. Are there ways in which you structure your life
so that youre insured against revisiting that past?
Glenn:
Yeah, theres a couple of things. I was just talking to Jim Dode from the Center
of Compassion and Research of Altruism at Stanford last night. And hes an
atheist. Hes totally cool without any framework of God. My friend Penn Jillette,
atheist; totally cool. One of the most moral men I know. Really good, decent
man. Id leave my children with him. If there was a problem, Id be like, Penn,
protect my children, you know? But doesnt believe in God at all. Okay. And?
Honestly, as I told Jim last night, my church the one I go to is a three hour
service on the weekend. Good God almighty, thats just agonizing. Three hours?
Tim:
Dances with Wolves.
Glenn:
It is, it is. You know, and I gotta get up on Sunday and put a tie on and a jacket.
I hate it. I hate it. But it holds my feet where it needs to be, and it teaches me
and it forces me to serve. And so for me, service is really, really important.
Tim:
Service meaning the weekend service? Or different type of service.
Glenn:
No, service meaning in my church, there is no paid clergy. So everybody

like Im a teacher, my wife and I ran the New York drug and alcohol addiction
program for awhile for the church, New York City. And its all non paid positions.
And so youre forced to serve. And then youre also we call it home teaching,
where everybody is responsible for other families in the church. So your job is
to go over and teach the family and make sure the family is okay, and see if they
need anything. Because the bishop, if you will, doesnt have the time. Hes got
a job. Hes got a full time job. So at 300 families, weve got to take care of each
other.
And so it forces us to live the principles that Jesus taught. Its not up to the
government. Its not up to your priest to do it. Its up to you to do it. Take care
of your brother, take care of your sister. Thats probably the biggest principle of
AA that keeps people sober is serve; serve other people.
Tim:
How much of the service and the church being able to hold you firmly to the
ground do you think is the theology or the scripture versus the accountability of
having that social fabric?
Glenn:
Im not
Tim:
If that makes any sense.
Glenn:
I think it does. Let me answer and see if my answer makes sense to your
question. I really dont care what other people think about me. And I say that
somewhat hesitantly because Im not a robot. You can only take Im actually
grateful that I get hit in the head as much as I do, and take the or Im handed
the abuse that sometimes is deserved. Because it keeps me honest. It keeps
me constantly reflecting: am I that guy? Do I believe those things? Am I a jerk?
And this and that. But beyond that, I dont care if Im rich or poor. I dont care
if Im famous or not. And I dont care what other people think. I do care deeply
about what God thinks of me, and hes the only one that can judge my heart.
And that comes from being as low as I was. And for anybody who doesnt
believe in God or whatever, they may not understand this. But I believe in the
redemptive power of baptism. And whether it is a complete sham, it doesnt
matter because it works for me. But when I got into the water, the promise is
that if you ask for forgiveness and say, I will obey you and I will do what is right
and what you tell me to do, then Ill remove all the problems of the past. Ill
remove all your mistakes, and you dont have to carry them anymore. That was
really important to me because I was repeating my moms life, and there was no
out for me. I mean I just couldnt live with myself anymore.
And I stood in the waters of baptism. And I dont recommend anybody ever
does this, but I stood in the waters of baptism and I have a very contentious
relationship with God. I challenge him and I said, You promise your words
promise that you will set me free. If I live the truth, you will set me free. And if
thats not true and I live up to my side of the bargain, then you cease to be God.
There is no God. Because to be God, you have to be handcuffed to that truth.
You cannot break your promise.
And I said the dumbest thing Ive ever said, and that was, Its not gonna be me
that breaks the promise, dude. And I challenged him. And that I guess was
good for me in a way because I think of that quite often. I challenged him and
he kept up his side of the bargain, and now its my turn.
And so I do a lot of things. Like when I left FOX, I left FOX because I felt led to
leave FOX. It was really I think I would have well, I know I would have been
destroyed had I stayed.
Tim:
Why is that?
Glenn:
Fame is a really ugly, ugly, corrosive, awful thing. Especially that kind of fame.
And when I was going up there, and we were being on the cover of Time
Magazine and being as ubiquitous as I was at the time is really intoxicating;
really intoxicating. And right towards the end, I remember the last night before
I told FOX I was leaving. My wife and I had decided, and we had worked months
on it going back and forth. And that night Ive always been a pariah. Ive
always been the kid who was beat up in school and whatever. I was never the
popular one. And the night we decided and I was going to go in and tell Roger
Ales that next day I went to Spiderman. And I had been to Spiderman
Tim:
The movie?
Glenn:
The Broadway show. And I had been to Spiderman two weeks before, and they
were that week they were gonna close it. But I gave it a review that saved the
show and so they invited me back and said, Hey, weve made some changes;
will you come back? So I came back. That night, halfway through, I get a text
that says, Bonos backstage; wants to meet you and say hi. So I go back.
Backstage is Michael Cole, is Julie Taymoor and Bono and we spent about 30
minutes talking about the show. And they were struggling with the ending. And
Im like, You guys have the ending. The ending is the beginning. Thats the
ending. Youve just got it in the wrong place.
And as they were talking about the ending, I was walking into the meeting and
I said, They dont know what the ending is, and heres the ending. So when
they said they dont know what the ending is, my wife looked at me like: Dear
God, dont talk; please dont give them advice on this, please. But I did. And we
had a great conversation. And it was like a cool moment. It was like: Im cool for
30 minutes. I go home, and we lived in this apartment in New York that was I
mean it was movie cool. It was in the Bloomberg building on the 50th floor. Had
a 180 degree view of the city.
I mean it was just spectacular. Floor to ceiling windows. I walk in, I open up
the door, and all the lights are off and theres just the city, just lit up. And Im
looking right at Rockefeller Center, which is where I wanted to work when I was
a kid. I wanted to work in Rockefeller Center. So it was a lifetime dream to be
there. And I just had the cool kid night. And I walk into the living room, and Im
standing right there by the window. And I said to my wife, How can this be
Gods plan? Weve worked hard. I know I didnt get me here, because ten years
ago I was a nobody.
So here we are. I finally have access. Im finally starting to get in with creatives,
which Im better at than all this other crap Im doing. And we can make a
difference in culture. How can this possibly be Gods plan? And I was lucky
enough to be married to a woman who does not care about fame or fortune at
all. And she just said to me, Im going to bed.
And I stood there and I put my head up against the glass, and I looked down
on Lexington Avenue. And I heard in my head: if you dont leave now, you wont
leave with your soul. And I knew that to be true. I was beginning to want it.
Once you want something, get rid of it. Get rid of it.
Tim:
Meaning once youre attached to something? Once you start needing something?
Glenn:
Yeah. Once youre like, I really want that, then youll pay too high a price for it. If
youre like: this is cool you know, my kids ask me all the time, Dad, why do you
always say: enjoy it while it lasts? And I say, Because nothings permanent. Ive
been rich, Ive been poor and you dont know whats gonna happen tomorrow.
Lets just enjoy it for today. And if we have nothing tomorrow, well enjoy that
tomorrow. And I think that keeps me healthy. The minute you start to say:
its always gonna be like this; or: its only gonna get better; or: I cant lose this,
youre starting I am; I cant speak for everybody else I know Im starting
down a road of trouble.
Tim:
One of the most fascinating aspects of doing research for chatting today was
discovering things like your friendship with Penn Jillette, for instance, which I
never would have anticipated in a million years.
Glenn: Why?
Tim:
Well, because he would seem to be so antithetical to a lot of your beliefs and

I admire the fact that you have that friendship. Youve spent time with Peter
Thiel, for instance, who is openly gay. How do you feel about his homosexuality?
Glenn:
Im totally fine with it. How does it affect me?
Tim:
It doesnt.
Glenn: Right.
Tim:
This is why
Glenn:
Let me back up with
Tim:
I think a lot of people there are people who
Glenn:
I think there are people who project what they think I believe.
Tim:
Oh, definitely, which Id love to hear you talk more about.
Glenn:
Penn Jillette and I the only thing that Penn Jillette and I really have found some
disagreement in is God. And we respect each other on that. And at first, we
didnt. When I first met him at CNN, I spent an hour with him. And I just think
Penn Jillette is just brilliant, just brilliant. Ive respected him for years and years
and years. So we did an hour with him. And I finished, and were standing on
the set and had a great time. And I said, Penn, next time youre in town, lets go
have dinner. And he said, Dude, I dont think so. I said, Okay. All right. And
he said, Look, man, youre a religious freak. Religious freaks, youre a cancer.
Youre the problem with the world.
And I just stood there and I was shocked. And I said, Wow, Penn, Ive thought
a lot of things about you but I never thought you were a bigot. And he said,
Look, Im not gonna bring a disease into my family. Im just not gonna do it.
And thats what religion is. I didnt say anything. I just decided Im still gonna be
his friend, you know? And Id still invite him to a show, and wed still be on and
I just love him for who he was. Because I respect him on so many other things.
And years go by, and Penn is really getting conflicted because now Im suddenly
this anti-homosexual none of the things that I am; just Im getting these labels
because I believe in X so I must believe in Y, Z, and D and C and you know, M. Im
not a Republican, Im a Libertarian.
And so I see this post that Penn had done backstage, and hes crying. And he
said, My childhood hero, Tommy Smothers, has just reamed me for going on
the Glenn Beck show. I told him I was gonna go on next week. And he said how
could you possibly be with a bigot like that, and this bad man, and I dont know
if I can be your friend, Penn, if youre gonna be friends with him. And Penn was
just torn up. And I wrote to him and I said, Penn, you dont have to be on the
show, man. I understand what its like to have heroes say things to you like that.
And I really, deeply understand.
He came on. He tried to corner me on homosexuality out of the blue. And hes
like, So what do you think about gay marriage? And I said, Im totally cool
with gay marriage. And then he didnt know what to do. Over time, Penn came
to me just last year and he said, I have to apologize to you for something. He
said I dont know if you remember, but the first time we met was at CNN. And I
said, Oh, I do remember. And he said, I hated myself the minute I said it. I was
angry at 9/11 and I was confused and I didnt know what to do because of 9/11.
And he said, Thats not who I am. And I said, I know that and Ive known that
the whole time.
And so weve become great, great friends. Thats the way we should be. The
country right now is so screwed up because were all talking about interests
instead of principles. Why are we talking about gay marriage? Why do we
even have the government involved in marriage at all? I contend its because
of interests. We started issuing marriage licenses one of the reasons why
we started issuing marriage licenses is so we could stop blacks from marrying
whites. Well, that sounds like a really bad idea. Why are we still in that business?
Tim: Right.
Glenn:
So all the people are doing is theyre using this to separate us from each other.
I have no problem. You want to get married? Get married. Dont tell my church
what I have to do; I wont tell your church or your judge or whoever what you
have to do. Lets just leave each other alone. Lets just live side by side and be
decent to one another. Lets celebrate real diversity. Were living in this world
where were arguing about nonsense and real, massive the biggest issues
possibly that man has ever faced are happening right now, and were arguing
over what? Why?
Tim:
How would you suggest people on opposite sides of the fence try to find common
ground? And the reason I ask that is when Ive observed a lot of whether it
be religious debates or political debates, oftentimes it seems like people are
unwilling to be moved.
Glenn:
Theyre afraid.
Tim:
Theyre afraid. It turns into a question of who is right not being effective in
terms of solving problems. How do you try to bridge that gap? How do you find
common ground with people who are arguably opposed to or feel like they are
opposed to you?
Glenn:
I will be friends the Jefferson quote I gave you guides my life entirely. Because
it has every important word in it. Question with boldness even the very existence
of God. So at that time when he wrote that, and for me, theres nothing bigger
to question than God. Theres nothing more damning than saying, I dont know
if you even exist. So question with boldness. Dont be meek. Question it. The
ultimate authority, question it. Question everything, turn over every stone.
And then because he must surely rather honest questioning over blindfolded
fear, we live in a society where rarely do you hear honest questions. I havent
heard a dishonest question from you yet. I havent heard an agenda from you. I
havent heard a gotcha question. Youre not coming in and this is what most
people do. They come in on both left and right; doesnt matter whos doing
the interview journalists generally say, Ive made up my mind who this person
is and Im now going to prove it.
Tim: Definitely.
Glenn:
Thats not an honest question. So were not gonna get anywhere. So if I sit
down at a table with somebody who I disagree, and theyre really looking and
they really will say:Okay, now wait a minute, wait a minute. Jeez. Holy cow.
Maybe I am wrong. And theyre willing to say it. I can meet with anybody. Those
people will change the course of the world. But that takes real confidence to
say you know, I think most people are I was. When I was at the height of my
alcoholism, and I think most the average person is like this. Theyre not sure
theres enough inside of them to be full.
And there is. Thats a lie. And so if they get rid of maybe their illness, their
disability, their complaints, their childhood trauma, whatever it is; I dont know if
theres anything left besides that. Thats who Ive become. Thats who I am. Its
not. Thats not. Those are the bumps along the way. Theres a gold nugget in
each one of us. You just have to be willing to say Im gonna get rid of everything
and Im gonna go mine for that. The true, last, unexplored frontier is inner
space of each of us. We start exploring inside and say, I dont care what I find.
Whatever I find will be good. Whatever I find will be real and authentic. Thats
when we really change things.
Tim:
Ive been very impressed with how many books youve read. But of course,
there are more books in the world than you could possibly read and consume
as one person. What are the books or book that youve gifted most to other
people?
Tim:
Probably Book of Virtues, for anybody who has a baby, Book of Virtues by
William Bennett. Its just all the old stories of who we are and how we grow.
The things you tell your kids; the stories you should tell your kids and we should
relearn. Another one I think I s really good is John Huntsmans the senior
John Huntsmans book, Winners Never Cheat. Its awesome. Heres a guy who
is really responsible for the idea of the Catel record. And he did that he was
trying to make hes the pioneer of Styrofoam and hes trying to get enough
money to make the mold for the McDonalds clam shells for the hamburgers,
okay?
And he knows he can sell a million of those. He knows. Thats the perfect
thing to keep hamburgers warm when you go. And hell just make these little
Styrofoam clamshells. But he didnt have the money to make the mold. And
he had just he invented the Styrofoam egg carton, and he just knows. But he
didnt have the money. So hes like, Okay, how can I make money to be able
to fund this other? And he comes up with the idea that: you know, theres all
these songs that I like but I dont like the whole album. Ill just make a collection
and Ill sell the collection of these songs on one album. Well, those are like the
Super Hits of the 70s. That came from him. Hes a petro chemical guy. Hes not
a music guy, a record guy; hes a petro chemical guy.
And so he really thinks out of the box. But more importantly, he knew who he
was every step of the way. And in the book, he talks a little bit about making
a deal. I think it was with Shell. And I dont remember any of the numbers; its
been years since I read the book. But hes doing a deal with Shell and its a deal
for I think $250 million and hes selling off part of his petro chemical company.
Well, Shells attorney starts screwing around. They have a handshake deal on it,
he and the head of Shell. And the attorneys start screwing around with it. Takes
him eight months. Well, in those eight months, Johns company is valued three
times as much. And the head of Shell calls him up and says, John, I need you to
fly out and talk to me about this deal. He says okay. So he goes, he flies out and
he said, How can I help you? He said, Well, you know, weve been screwing
around so its our fault but you know, I was hoping that maybe we could kind of
fall in the middle, here, because I know we have a deal at 250 but its 750; maybe
we could do 500.
John looked at him and said, We shook hands at 250.
Its 250.
Tim: Wow.
Glenn:
Yeah. And when you are that man, thats where your success comes from. When
you can say money doesnt mean more than my word. When we can get away
from people who are doing business and theyre taking you because they can.
Thats when were in a business world I dont want to be in.
Tim:
Ive read that in the last two or three years, youve been trying to be more
positive. I dont know if thats that was in a profile I read. I dont know if thats
accurate. But if it is, what was wrong and what are the ways in which you have
been trying to be more positive? Or maybe its a misquote. You can also
Glenn:
No, no. I dont know if more positive maybe less divisive.
Tim:
Okay, lets talk about that. Because a lot of people would accuse you of being
very divisive and so Id like to hear how your thinking or behavior has changed.
Glenn:
That was never my intent. I never set out to be the guy I dont want to be
the guy on FOX News. Im not Sean Hannity. Im not Bill OReilly. I dont like
confrontation. How weird is that? I dont like confrontation. Bill OReilly loves it.
I hate it.
Tim:
Well do it live.
Glenn:
Yeah. I just hate it. I like it when we all get along. I was the kid in the alcoholic
family that was trying to make everybody get along. How did I become the
divisive one? Its not cool. And so here I am finding myself in a position that Ive
never wanted to be in and I dont like. And I went to FOX only because I believed
the country was in trouble. I was saying the same things over at CNN. I was
calling for the impeachment of Bush on CNN because what are we doing with
the Patriot Act? What are we doing with the border? What are we doing? Hes
lying to you.
What are we doing with the war? And nobody paid attention to me because
I was on CNN and it was popular to say impeach Bush, I guess. As soon as
I pointed out the same things about President Obama, well, then it becomes
divisive and Im on a much bigger stage at FOX. But I only took that job and I
knew Id only be there for a couple of years; because its not who I am, not what I
wanted I just really believed that and this is why I always said it almost every
episode: Dont take my word for it. I dont want your trust. I dont trust people
who say trust me. Do your own homework. And if I have it wrong, Ill lead with
my mistake.
And so I got out of there and now I think Im finally in the place to where I
finally am beginning to put the team around me that is building the company
and the direction that is really, truly, authentically me. And that is lets build a
better world. Lets look to people who are focused on principles and ideas and
a brighter tomorrow. Because we choose. Yesterdays gone, tomorrow may
never get here, but today we choose. Today we choose.
Tim:
I want to dig into I definitely want to talk quite a bit about the company, and
especially how you manage your time because Im just astonished with how
many arms to this business you have. But before we get there, Id be very
curious to hear a little bit about radio. Because you started in radio at
Glenn: 13.
Tim:
13. And it wasnt until much, much later that you got into talk radio.
Glenn: 2000.
Tim:
2000. In that span of time, what were the most important things you learned that
helped you get good at radio, or what was the best advice that you received?
Glenn:
The best if I would just have to pick one, the best thing I learned, I learned
by mistake. I learned by self sabotage, actually. I was it was in the 90s.
Im sobering up. Everybody thinks Im clean cut, you know, I had the image if
anybody listened in the 80s to radio in Los Angeles, I was kind of like a Rick
Dees, kind of clean cut Mr. Wholesome, golly gee, mom; that kind of guy. So
nobody knows Im an alcoholic. Nobody knows that my life is completely out of
control. The people who work with me know that Im a complete ass. But other
than that, they dont.
So I sober up and I start going to school, start learning, start really searching for
truth in God. And those are all the things I cant talk about. And I just dont want
to do radio anymore because its empty. Its meaningless. Im talking about
Brittney Spears and Madonna and its like: what the hell does any of this mean?
And I got to the point where Im introducing the music and stuff in the morning
and Im like, And thats that super classic from whats her face, and I would just
go on and I didnt care about any of it.
And at one point, its during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and its a topic on
the Morning Show. And there are about eight people on the Morning Show.
Somebody calls in and said: Glenn Beck, youre Mr. Perfect, like youve ever
done anything wrong. You just cant accept a flaw in anybody. I stood there
for awhile and the room got really quiet. And I said, You know, let me tell you
something. You dont have any idea who I even am, or the bad things that I have
done. Let me tell you who I am.
And the whole room just turned like God, whats about to happen? And I spent
about 15 minutes just being unbelievably, brutally honest and laying out who I
am. The worst. No apology, nothing. Just saying: You think you know? Ive
been lying to you. This is who I am. I turned off my mike and I looked at my
then intern, lowest producer on the ladder whos now my executive producer,
Student. And I said to him, Mark this down on your calendar. Today is the day
Glenn Beck ended his career.
The opposite thing happened. I had grown up in a world where everything

was manufactured, everything was written, timed, produced perfectly. What
I realized that day was people are starving for something authentic. Theyll
accept you, warts and all, if thats who you really are. Once you start lying to
them, theyre not interested. Were all alike. So the best advice I learned by
mistake, and that is: be willing to fail or succeed on who you really are. Dont
ever try to be anything else. What you are is good enough for whatever it is
youre doing.
Tim:
Peter Thiel has a number of very fascinating questions that he asks. Youve
spent time with him; I interviewed him on the podcast.
Glenn:
He is a tough interview, isnt he?
Tim:
He is. Hes a very incisive guy and he asks questions including and Im
paraphrasing here, but what controversial thing do you believe that few people
agree with you on? I want to ask you a separate question, but lets start with
that. So what controversial thing do you believe that few people agree with you
on?
Glenn:
That we have already seen our Arch Duke Ferdinand moment. Arch Duke
Ferdinand was the beginning of World War I, and it seemed like a disconnected,
stupid little assassination that nobody was going to pay attention to and it
ended up washing the world in blood. And I think that that was the man who set
himself on fire in Tunisia. I think that was the thing that started the ball rolling
for the chaos thats now in the Middle East. And that Russia Putin is either
going to orchestrate or he is going to be taken out by his own people because
he has allowed really very, very bad men who are Uber fascists literally talk
about Hitler in glowing terms; about Hitler didnt go far enough.
Alexander Dugan is one of them. He runs the Moscow University. And really
frightening people. And we are now set up for a global conflict unlike anything
we have seen since World War II. Ive been warning about the caliphate
people made fun of me on the caliphate and now the caliphate is in everybodys
language. But when I talked about it four years ago and said this is going to lead
to a caliphate, I was hammered and made into the biggest joke in the world.
Now I am telling you not only is the caliphate real, this particular strain of the
caliphate, they actually believe you dont have to, but they do they actually
believe that they are the army to bring on Armageddon and they are calling on
the armies they call it the armies of Rome.
Meanwhile, Dugan and Putin and his crew in Russia have just taken the Crimea
and theyre doing it because they are becoming, in Putins own words: We are
restoring the third Roman empire. And he is trying to take back all of the land
that the Soviets lost. And nobodys paying attention to this. We have to take our
troops out of there, and we have to pull back and stop getting into everybodys
business until we will at least admit what the hell is going on and be honest with
ourselves. Were asking people now to kill people in our name, and I dont know
why were killing them; I dont know who were killing. I dont see anything good
coming out of this, and were about to go into a global conflict that people our
age have never witnessed.
Tim:
What are you doing, if anything, to prepare for that or mitigate against how that
might impact your life?
Glenn:
I dont know. I dont know how you even prepare for that, I really dont. Ive
talked to great financial advisors and you know, when youre printing money
all around the world like we are and now Europe is with QE, the worst phrase
uttered today is: well, this time its different. No, its not. It never is. Thats a lie.
So Im looking into things like bit coin and what is the new technology. Thats
one of the reasons why Im here. There has to be a group of people that say:
okay, this old system doesnt work. It just doesnt work. The principles work but
the power structures, the way they were made were sitting here in front of a
building that was made by FDR.
Were still using this power structure. Look at the architecture of this building.
Its art deco. It is clearly from a different time. Were using the same structures
for a world that is totally different; doesnt need any of this crap. So look for the
people who are thinking differently that can connect. And then more importantly,
are honest and will honestly connect in love and in tolerance of one another.
When I went to Auschwitz I took my family to Auschwitz about three years

ago because I really at the time, I was talking about the rise of neo Nazis in
Europe, which again, mocked for; look at it now. The Nazis are in Germany,
theyre in Spain, theyre in Italy and theyre in Greece, the Golden Don Party. And
it talked about the rise of anti-Semitism in France and in Europe, and look at it
now. So about three years ago, maybe four years ago, I went over to Auschwitz
and I took my family and I had them read the Corrie ten Boom story of the
hiding place, which she was one of the righteous among the nations and she hid
families in her house, her family did.
And I asked my family: lets decide who we are now before trouble comes, and
lets now build and water those seeds so God forbid, those times come, were
prepared. And thats all it really has to you cant prepare financially or anything
else. You can prepare
Tim: Behaviorally.
Glenn:
behavior. And I talked to one of the righteous among the nations, this old,
sweet lady. She wouldnt let me take any pictures of her but she let me record
our conversation. And she was fantastic. And she said to me I said, Paulina,
you were 16 at the time when you decided to give a Jewish person a bowl of
soup. That was the first thing she did. That was a death sentence. Everybody
has that righteous seed in them. How do we water it? And she said to me and
I thought this was really important she said, Glenn, remember the righteous
didnt suddenly become righteous. They just refused to go over the cliff with
everybody else.
Thats all we have to do: know what our principles not our interests know
what our principles are today. And as the world goes over the cliff, Im not going
to change my principles. Treating human beings, whether theyre like me or
not like me, whether theyre the same religion or a different religion, I will treat
them with love and respect. The story of the Good Samaritan. Most people
dont understand the Good Samaritan. If you dont hear that story of the Good
Samaritan and when Jesus says and you know who was you know who the
good guy was? The Samaritan.
When you dont hear an audience go [gasp], that means they dont understand
the story. Let me just tell that line over in todays terms. So you know who the
guy was that helped the other guy on the side of the road? It was Jihad Johnny.
Its the most vile person you can think of, the most hated person you can think
of, your biggest enemy you can think of.
Tim:
So the Samaritans were reviled in that time?
Glenn:
They were the Jihad Johnny of the day. So we have to understand that even
Jihad Johnny, we better love. We need to be loving to Jihad Johnny.
Tim:
How do you demonstrate or embrace love with people you fear to be violent?
Glenn:
I would say I dont know. Im not
Tim:
Its a tough question.
Glenn:
Its a tough question. But I would say, the same way I love my children. And I
know theyre not violent, per se, but yeah, let me just say my kid is violent. My
kid goes out and he robs a bank. I love my kid but I turn him in because its the
right thing for the kid and the right thing for society. But I go and I visit him in
prison and I love him. But I dont excuse it, and I love him every step of the way.
Unconditional love, but not love that makes excuses.
Tim:
I would love to shift gears a little bit, and I know a lot of people are very curious
about your departure from FOX and the success that youve experienced. And
just out of my own personal interest, also. Im at a point where I have writing
the podcast started off as a lark and now has become quite a thing.
Glenn:
Id say.
Tim:
Im bursting at the seams. And at one point when you walked off of FOX, I assume
you are effectively starting from an organization of one, as it were. Some of
the numbers and we can update these as need be but with GBTV, so your \
streaming network featuring your daily TV show in its first year generated more
than $40 million in revenue compared to the $2.5 that you made at FOX News.
If you were doing it all over again, or giving someone advice who was doing the
same thing, what are the first three hires that you would suggest they make?
Glenn:
I would
Tim:
Specifically in the content game, sort of in the world that you operate in: the
media content camp.
Glenn:
Let me answer that a little differently. Let me answer in a way that I think you
need to hire it was just in Facebook yesterday. And everybody there is a fan
of Mark Zuckerberg. You dont really find anybody whos like; yeah, you know,
Mark is okay. It\s important that the team you have around you are not yes
people, but they are one with you. If youre the visionary, they have to be one
with you. They should throw you up against the wall and say: Glenn, I dont
know how that works; I dont understand it; show me the vision. You know what
I mean? Help me explain explain this to me again.
But they have to be in the pocket of exactly what youre trying to do. And that
was I got a little too broad with some of the hires. We had to hire and take
on geez, I think we went from 30 or 60 people to 300 overnight. It was really
hard. You just cant hire that fast and hire right. And we hired a lot of people
that were not in the pocket. And so they didnt see the vision. As I explained to
my staff here recently, I just went to a store in I went to the new Ralph Laurent
store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And you can take all the labels off of it and
I could walk by the windows and Id know its Ralph Laurent.
I walk into the entry, and its all paneled and it just looks like Ralph Laurent. You
go in and now all of a sudden its Indian motif and hunting lodge. Ralph Laurent,
it screams it. Upstairs, its all white walls, black polished floors and black and
white photos. And all of it screams Ralph Laurent. And I thought to myself:
how the hell does Ralph Laurent do this? How does he do this? Its because
most people, I think, can see the difference. Can see Ralph Laurent and Tommy
Hilfiger. Most people will see those two and go: eh, its pretty close. Ralph
Lauren Brooks Brothers. Ones got a pony, ones got a I dont know, lamb or
sheep or whatever it is on it. Okay, I got it.
But the same thing: theyre both button down shirts. Not to Ralph Laurent,
theyre not. Theyre wildly different. And if you dont hire the people that know
the difference between Brooks Bros. and Ralph Laurent; if you dont know the
difference between Tommy Hilfiger, an American East Coast kind of guy, and
Ralph Laurent, its not close enough. So he developed a team that could see the
vision and then execute the vision, and didnt have to come back to him every
time. Thats really hard to do. Really hard to do. Youve got to have a head of
product, first.
Tim:
And they oversee the unity of the messaging on those different platforms?
Glenn:
Make sure that vision is consistent every step of the way. The second thing is
and we did this poorly, really poorly and Im spending all this year working with
a new head of product that we havent hired yet, and somebody else I havent
hired yet: new head of customer service. There is nothing more important than
my tribe. And most companies let me just speak from me and Ill just give you
the warts of my company. I started looking at my company over the last year
and I had been really sick, and thought when I left FOX I was sick and most
people didnt know it. I thought my wife and I had talked about it that this
last Christmas might be my goodbye and I would leave the public sphere.
Tim:
This last 2014?
Glenn:
Yeah. And we had given it my health to recover to 2014. And if it didnt

recover, then we would leave and I would just go off into the sunset. And so I
had some miracle doctors and some miracle cures happen over the last spring
and summer, and in this last six months. And so I got enough brain power back,
if you will, to be able to really look at my company. Because I had turned my
keys over to my partners and said: hey, take this. What we had done was we
had flipped the entire company upside down. And we had become a company
that was all about profit: make the money, make the money, make the money
and then protect that profit.
Dont let anything happen to that profit. You gotta keep that money in there.
And then, what products can we make to make the money, make the money,
make the money? And then people. Well, thats upside down. Principles werent
even there.
[Crosstalk]
Tim:
[Inaudible] in the team that youve hired.
Glenn:
The team and the tribe, okay? The company and I think all companies, to be
successful, need to be the exact opposite. So I went back in over the summer and
I said, Were flipping this whole thing upside down. The first thing is principles.
Why do you come here? Why is anybody getting up in the morning? We do it
because we believe in something, right? What are our principles? What drives
us? What do we know that we can say we do this because of these principles,
okay? Were never going to violate those things.
Then, the next thing is the people. Our principles revolve around the people;
our tribe and the people that we work with. Then, because we love the people
and we know our principles, then were going to find the product that makes life
easier for the people that we love and serve. Then were going to protect those
people and those products and those principles at all costs, and profit becomes
a byproduct. Thats the way a company needs to work.
Tim:
Thats analogous, I suppose, to whats on the Facebook walls when you walk
into a lot of the buildings, which is a quote from Zuckerberg saying, We dont
make services to make money; we make money to make better services. Now,
at the same time, whos the first person Im stunned by how quickly you were
able to hire and your team was able to then expand coming out of FOX News.
Had you had experience hiring people before, and who was the first person that
you hired to
Glenn:
Betsey Morgan.
Tim:
All right. Id love to
Glenn:
And she was the head of Huff Po CEO of Huff Po and quite controversial.
Because everybody was like: what? What are you doing? But she was the
fastest hire Ive ever made.
Tim:
How did that hire happen?
Glenn:
Through mutual friends and Chris Balf, who was running my company at the
time. He had done a search and talked to her and said you should meet with
her. And I said all right, and met with her and literally Im a really fast hirer. If
it drags on, its not going to happen. But I was sitting with her for about three
minutes and I was done because I could tell she had good, quality principles.
She was honest and full of integrity. And obviously, shes smart. Youre not
getting into the office unless youre smart. But she has been fantastic. Now
shes the CEO of the place. Shes replaced Chris.
Tim:
What did she say or do in those three minutes that made such an impression to
you?
Glenn:
Im a gut guy so I cant remember anything that we even talked about. I just
looked her in the eye and I just felt she was a person of real principle. And I
asked her, Do you know who our tribe is? She said, Yeah. I said, Tell me
about it.
Tim:
Whatd she say?
Glenn:
I dont recall. I think it was probably somewhere along the lines of You have a
wildly underestimated, under served and misunderstood group of people. And
thats true. We have this massive audience that nobodys serving anymore.
Tim:
27 million plus uniques a month to the website, something like that?
Glenn:
To the website. I think the total the last total I saw was like 50 million footprint
of 50 million a month, which is insane. Its hard for me to go back in time and
redo what Ive done. But if I could start all over again today, the first thing I just
hired a guy named Jonathan Schriber and I look at him as an architect. He can
build the structure. Im not a business guy. Im more of a creative in the content
and I can see the vision of where I want the company to go, but I have no idea
how to build it, per se. So I need an architect. I need somebody who can really
see my vision, really get it, and then say: heres how the structure works.
Because for instance, I know I want an extraordinarily flat operation. And thats
one of the things that we built improperly. We were building a lot of stuff up
in New York and it was being built like CBS. And thats not a flat organization
and that doesnt work and its just not gonna happen. I want a very mobile,
empowered group of people to work with me that doesnt have to go through a
lot of red tape.
So you need a good architect. And then you need somebody whos looking at
the product itself and the customer. Protect the customer, protect the content
or the product and protect the flatness of the organization.
Tim:
Ive heard a question you sometimes ask is: how is your soul? And you have
very good eye contact. What do you look for or get when you ask someone that
question?
Glenn:
Do they even know what that question means? Are they just skating through
life? If they answer that question like: oh yeah, my souls good. Or have they
pondered especially and I ask that generally of politicians new politicians
because most of them dont have any idea what theyre walking into. I mean
theres no hope in Washington on either side. I dont know how you do it. Youre
walking into a lions den would be a picnic. Its just a its a cauldron of rot and
everything and I know this because of the media.
Had I wanted to play the game, I could have made a lot more money for the
rest of my life and be given anything Ive ever wanted. Theyll give you anything
as long as you perform. Give it to him. The same thing with politicians. Youre
going in there. Play the game, brother, play the game. Just make it all go
you and your family are going to be taken care of forever. Dont worry about
anything. And so your soul is gone before you know it. You first think: well, you
know what? If I just compromise a little bit, Ill be able to do X, Y, and Z. Youre
done. Youre done. So hows your soul?
Tim: Right.
Glenn:
And if they take it likely, theyre not the guys. If they are afraid of losing their
soul, then they have a chance. I want somebody whos like: geez, man, I gotta
get out of there before I lose my soul. Because nothings worth losing my soul.
Tim:
So they at least demonstrate that self awareness.
Glenn:
Yeah. And the awareness that theres more to life than being successful or being
a senator or I dont believe in Saul Alinsky, that the ends justify the means. I
dont believe in that. We dont torture. Im sorry. One of the reasons why were
having a problem in that country is because we torture. We dont torture. And
so weve diminished who we are. The ends dont justify the means.
Tim:
What does your the first 60 minutes of your day look like?
Glenn: Ugly.
Tim: Ugly?
Glenn:
I get up
Tim:
What are your morning routines or habits?
Glenn:
Get up in the morning around 5, read for about 15 minutes, just check the news,
check Facebook, check my email.
Tim:
What news do you check?
Glenn:
Just generally The Blaze and just the quick headlines. Ill check The Blaze,
Drudge, Business Insider, Zero Hedge. I like Zero Hedge a lot. And then just
get ready. I get up in the morning, I say my prayers for probably five minutes,
then read, then get ready, then get in the car. Try to watch any clips that might
be wanted for the radio show or for television. Then I go in and I have my first
briefing within that first hour.
Tim:
What are your prayers? Are they the same prayers each morning?
Glenn:
No, theyre just I mean generally they are help me see the things that Im
supposed to see, help me avoid doing damage, help me be wiser than I was
yesterday.
Tim:
And do you do that at the kitchen table? Do you do that in your bedroom?
Where is that
Tim:
On the side of my bed.
Tim:
On the side of your bed?
Glenn: Yeah.
Tim:
And when you go into your office for your first briefing, how is that briefing
organized? What happens in that meeting?
Glenn:
I have the main executive producer, Tiffany Seigel, she produces television. She
gives me a briefing. I get three briefings. I get one from Benjamin Weingarten,
he is a guy who looks at things that are a little deeper than the average person.
Maybe hes looking into the Middle East, hes looking into Russia for me. Hes
looking a little more over the horizon for the deeper issues. And hell give me
probably 15 stories a day. Then I have another guy who is actually from Silicon
Valley who is kind of a mole for me that is as fascinated by the singularity as I
am in Ray Kurzweil.
And he looks at emerging technology on a much bigger scale. Im not interested

in the latest app; Im interested in the singularity and the ethics that go behind
that, and so whats coming. And I get about ten to 15 stories from him a day.
And then Tiffany Seigel, she gives me about ten or 15 stories that are considered
useful for television on things that she knows Im watching for that.
Tim:
How are these stories given to you? Whats the format?
Glenn:
I get a one sheet with just a quick brief on it, and then I get the full story. So I
get packets.
Tim:
Got it. So each one basically has a its almost like a research paper. You have
your abstract on the front page.
Glenn: Yes.
Tim:
Potential hotline and then the
Glenn:
And then I have the full story. And then I get one more briefing from the radio
division, and those are all the stories that theyre looking at for radio. And so in
that second hour, if you will, as soon as I get to work, in that second hour I go
through all of those briefings and decide and pick the direction of the day and
then the longer term.
Tim:
How do you choose those stories for the day? How do you choose the right
combination of stories?
Glenn:
I have absolutely no idea. Just my gut. Just whatever is whatever interests me,
you know? Whatever I think the one thing that I am decent at is tying stories
together. I can see connections on stories and see things that how they can
come together that most people dont. I think thats one of the problems with
the news and with today is everything is just a separate topic. Its not, really. Its
not. Were all connected and the stories are all connected. Whats happening in
the Middle East does matter here. And whats happening on Facebook matters
to people.
Tim:
What type of tools or software do you use or apps on a daily basis to help
you manage your time? Because I think most people listening to this probably
dont have an idea of the breadth of your business insomuch as you have all the
content, you have a clothing line, you have a very large business. What are the
tools, tricks that help you
Glenn:
I dont. I just have a really unbelievable staff. I mean it is really I went through
a period where my day is so scheduled that we call it the Great Sock Incident
of 06 because I just snapped one day. Because I had gone from a regular life to:
you dont have a life, Glenn. Everybody has to do everything else for you. You
have to focus on what you do. Everything else in life, you no longer get to do,
okay? And I wanted to go buy a pair of socks. Thats all I wanted to do, buy a
pair of socks.
And everybodys like: Glenn, well get you a pair of socks. Im like: no, I want to
go buy a pair of socks. I want to go buy a pair of socks. And it went on for like
two weeks. Okay, well schedule in a time for socks. And I finally I just like I
just flipped. And I was like, Im going right now and Im going by myself, and Im
buying a friggin pair of socks. That was the last time I wigged like that. But you
just have to kind of get used to your time is no longer really your time. You have
to I read a great book years ago. Theres two of them, and I dont remember
which one this was in but The Mind of the Millionaire or Millionaires Mind or The
Millionaire Next Door; something like that.
One of them was talking about how, unless youre a plumber, dont fix your own
plumbing. Because youre going to spend way too much time on that. And you
can hire somebody. I concentrate on the things that I do best and let everybody
else do everything else. So I have very regimented times to where you know,
I just had somebody shadowing me a couple days ago and I think they freaked
out. I think they were about to go into an institution afterwards because they
had no idea what it was. And I was in Id come right off of radio that day, and I
walked right into another stage where were doing Claymation.
And Im talking to him about the Claymation and were talking about the
story and so Im looking at the Claymation, Im looking at the shots. Then Im
talking to them about the story. I go upstairs and Im talking to them about
the orchestration and all of the music for the story, and kind of doing a quick
download on what it needs to sound like. And theyre showing me some pieces
of music that have been coming back. And then I go right from there, I go to the
clothing line where were looking at sweaters and designs and what I want for
the designs to be.
You know, in the patterns of the sweaters Im talking to them about what are the
companies that are making these for us, what are the conditions for the workers,
etc., etc. And then I walk out of there and Im into another TV shoot that Im
doing for a special for three weeks down the road. And I get my briefings as Im
walking from place to place. And so its enough to drive you insane until you get
used to it, you know.
Tim:
Did you change anything after the sock incident of 06, or ?
Glenn:
I let it go.
Tim:
You let it go?
Glenn:
I just let it go.
Tim:
So youd just become accustomed
Glenn:
Yeah, I just let it go. And then there are times, too, that we just schedule in I
just want time. I just want my own time, now, you know.
Tim:
So you block that out on the calendar?
Glenn: Yeah.
Tim:
When you hear the word successful, whos the first person that comes to mind?
Glenn:
Gosh, the first person that came to mind was Billy Graham, only because I was
talking about him last night. And when I met with him, he was the most at peace
man Ive ever met in my life. He was just totally comfortable and happy. And he
said to me with tears in his eyes, he said, Im not afraid of death. And he was
smiling. Im not afraid of death. The whole dying part has me a little freaked
out, but death Im not afraid of. And he said, Ive done my best every step of
the way. Ive failed on many things, but Ive tried my hardest every step of the
way. Thats success, to me. Can you get to the end and go, Man, I screwed it
up, but I tried.
Tim:
You have mentioned before we had dinner a few nights ago with a group of
folks here in Silicon Valley Walt Disney specifically also George Orwell quite
a lot. Why the fascination with these two men?
Glenn:
George Orwell not so much. Maybe Orson Welles?
Glenn:
Oh, Im sorry.
Glenn:
Yeah, thats all right.
Tim:
I need another cup of coffee. Sorry about that.
Glenn:
Because Orson Welles let me start with Orson Welles. He played a role in the
early part of my life. At 8 years old, my mother gives me a set of record albums
called The Golden Years of Radio. And its because I grew up in Seattle, and
it was a day like today. It was beautiful outside. And I was in watching TV. I
must have been 7, I think. And she said, Turn off the TV and go outside and
play. And I said, You watched TV when you were a kid. And I talked back to
her. And she sat me down and taught me not to talk back to her and then said,
You know, we didnt have TV when I was a kid.
I mean I was thinking Wilma Flintstone had TV; how old are you? For my 8th
birthday she got me this record album a group of them. And most of them
were Orson Welles: War of the Worlds, The Shadow. There was Jack Armstrong,
the All American Boy, Fibber McGees Closet, all these great, classic radio shows.
So at 8, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell stories. And I
thought radio and the spoken word was so much more powerful than anything
Hollywood could do, anything television could do because your imagination is
so much stronger.
And then growing up and learning about Orson Welles, he taught me the two
most important things. One, never give up. And two, because of his failure
and borderline insanity, I think, on never admitting defeat let it go. Let it go.
Tim:
Is this Citizen Kane specifically?
Glenn:
Yeah. Let it go.
Tim:
What was he not able to let go of? And why was it important that he let go?
Glenn:
Because he took on I mean Citizen Kane is masterpiece. He took on a fight

that he knew anybody who was less arrogant would know: youre probably not
gonna win.
Tim:
Which fight was this? I dont actually know my history, so.
Glenn:
Citizen Kane is the story of William Randolph Hearst. And its deeply personal.
Rosebud is the name that William Randolph Hearst gave to his mistresss private
parts.
Tim:
Very direct.
Glenn:
In your face. The most powerful man on the planet. Were you gonna take him
on, youre not coming out without a bloody nose, maybe a broken head, right?
So he gets his head kicked in on that.
Tim:
So what happened? I actually dont know.
Glenn:
Okay, so he makes this movie. Hes bluffing. At the time, he is the highest paid
guy in Hollywood: more than Spencer Tracy, more than Clark Gable. Hes never
done a movie, okay? Hes done Macbeth with an all black cast in New York.
Hes done all of the best radio shows. Hes brilliant. And hes got all of this stuff
going but hes never done movies. So he goes and he does he goes out to
RKO, they pay him a fortune. Hes bluffing. He doesnt have a story. He goes up
to San Simeon and he sees
Tim:
Hearst Castle.
Glenn:
The Hearst Castle. And hes like: this is the story were gonna tell. Thats insane.
Its a closed set. Nobody knows whats going on. He writes it all. Hedda Hopper,
whos the gossip columnist at the time, she finds out about it, once its all done.
She tells Hearst. Hearst goes Im giving you a very short version of this
Hearst eventually goes to all of the heads of the movie studios and says, Here
are the pictures of the homosexuals that work for you. Here are the pictures
and I dont think I need to remind America about all the Jews that work here.
And he just takes them all out and says, Im going to destroy all of you. I want
this film destroyed.
Welles gets on a plane, flies up to RKO in New York and meets with all the Jewish
investors and the board. And its right after Czechoslovakia. And so theyre
very well aware of whats happening in Hitler. Well, Welles gives one of his best
performances ever and basically he says, You dont let one man squash the free
speech of everyone else. They release it. Hearst destroys him in it. Its just
pure slander and everything else.
[Crosstalk]
Tim: [Inaudible].
Glenn:
Yeah. Just hammers it. Its remembered as a horrible movie and everything
else. Its not found until the 60s. When its found in the 60s, everybody realizes
this is a masterpiece. But he couldnt let it go. He couldnt let it go.
Tim:
Couldnt give up the fight.
Glenn:
No. Just let it go, man. You did a great thing. Now go do something else.
Tim:
How have you found that to apply to your own life? Have there been any
moments where that has been particularly relevant for you?
Glenn:
Yeah, I think right now is one of those moments for me. I believe the things
that I believe about the country and the direction that were headed with
progressivism. And I dont agree with it. But the countrys made its choice.
Okay, let it go. And now lets see what impact I can make in a positive to help
bring people together and make it the best that we possibly can so we dont go
down some of these horrible roads that weve gone down before in the past.
Tim:
What about Walt Disney?
Glenn:
Walt Disney, most people dont know Walt Disney was responsible for the death
of his parents.
Tim:
I didnt know that.
Glenn:
Walt I love because he was eternally optimistic and he believed in a better

tomorrow. And he had a horrible childhood. His father was abusive and his
mother he loved, but his father was he just was not a good guy and was a loser.
But Walt and his brother loved him and wanted to bring him out to California.
So when they first became successful, they decided to buy a house. Back then
you didnt have inspections and everything else. So they bring the family out.
His father calls him as soon as they move into the house, his father calls him
and says, Walt, somethings wrong with your mom. Youve got to come to the
house quick. Shes sick. Somethings wrong.
When they got there, they were both dead on the floor. There was a gas leak.
So the house that they bought their family and then didnt do the due diligence
Tim:
Proper inspection of.
Glenn:
Right. Had a gas leak and it killed their parents. They never, ever spoke about
it. So he had really tragic stuff happening in his life, but he was really, really
optimistic. More importantly, Walt I think saw the future. I have a book that
was really hard to find. It was the book that he carried in his pocket the last ten
years of his life. Its called The Garden Cities of Tomorrow. It was printed in 1898
and its the first book on urban planning. This is the key behind the Epcot and
what he believed Epcot was. Epcot is a dream killer. I was just talking to the
head of Imagineering at Disney and we were talking about it.
He was there, part of the team as a younger man, making Epcot. And he said I
said, How did that feel? And he said, I never felt like I had ever killed a mans
dream more than making Epcot. Walt saw the future and was responsible in
many ways for us going to the moon. He was the guy who brought Wernher
Von Braun and Ward Kimball together and did an episode in 1955 called Man
in Space. Because of that episode, the legend is that Eisenhower called Walt
and said, Walt, you son of a bitch, you did it. Ive been trying to convince the
Pentagon we could go to space. You did it better. You convinced the American
people.
And I think in 1955, it was very much the same kind of atmosphere that we have
now, to where people are concerned. They dont know the technology is all
about to change. We could destroy ourselves in a heartbeat. They had the Cold
War, we now have whats brewing over in the Middle East. Were afraid. The
world is changing under our feet rapidly. Somebody just needs to be a warm
blanket and say, Its okay; look this way. Look to Silicon Valley. Look to space.
Look to whats on the horizon. If we all just take a deep breath, relax, believe
in the best of one another, believe that the principles of America work, were
gonna make it and itll be a far greater tomorrow than it has been in the past.
Tim:
Thats part of the reason of all the places in the world, Ive chosen to live here in
SF, in Silicon Valley, because theres such an element of optimism and possibility
with people like Peter Diamandis, who actually lives in LA but hes chairman
of the XPRIZE and the Elon Musks of the world ironically enough also in SoCal
but its a place where people ask why not quite a bit. Love to ask one more
question, and then a few questions for my listeners.
Glenn: Sure.
Tim:
First is, if you could give your 30-year-old self one piece of advice or two pieces
of advice, what would it be?
Glenn: Relax.
Tim: Why?
Glenn:
I dont know. Ive always been in a hurry and Ive always felt like gotta get it
done, gotta get it done. Relax. Let it happen. Nothing ever is good when its
forced. Nothings ever good when you try too hard, you know? Do your best,
then let it go.
Tim:
If you could give yourself one more piece of advice, when you just got hired to
work with FOX News, what would that advice be?
Glenn:
That one I have thought about a lot, and Im trying to think of an answer, here.
I was really believe it or not, I tried really hard to do the right thing. So I dont
know what advice I would give myself. Because I know I didnt do it right, but
I dont know how else to have done it in that time period of where I was, you
know what I mean? Maybe this is this sounds horrible, but maybe they wont
listen. They wont listen. But I dont like that advice because that leads me to
say dont try.
Tim:
Its tough. Ive heard it said before, the person who says nothing can be done
and the person who says everything will be all right are the same because
neither does anything.
Glenn:
Yeah, and I dont accept that. But I dont know how else to have done it. I have
wracked my brain on it and I wracked my brain then. You have to be a pretty bad
monster to kick up the dust that I kicked up without any reflection on it, during
it. You know what I mean? I think that would probably be the more surprising
thing. The staff I have is still the staff a lot of the staff that I had at CNN and the
staff that I had at FOX. And a lot of the staff, they dont agree with me politically.
You know, I have atheists, I have Democrats, I have Progressives. My director is
from San Francisco and shes about as progressive as you can get. We agree on
principles and so
Tim:
What are the principles you guys agree on?
Glenn:
That we need to try to be good to one another, we need to take care of one
another, we can be better tomorrow. Dont fuel hate. But as we have gone
through this, theyre with me because Ive looked to them and said: How am I
missing it? Help me. Help me. How can I you know? And so Ive had many
of my advisors are t he ones who dont agree with me. Some of my best friends
are people who dont agree with me politically. And theyve helped me a lot. But
I dont know how to mix I dont think you can. I dont know how you mix politics
with reality because I dont think politics is real.
Tim:
This is actually a good segue. So Id love to ask you I know were running tight
on time now, but just before we close up, a couple of questions from people
on Facebook. And I think that at least one or two of them will perhaps offer an
opportunity to as you did earlier correct some misperceptions and so on.
So the first one is from Matt Brandt. And the question is and again, I have
no agenda in asking this. Im very curious to hear you answer it. If you were
to theoretically be reborn as a disabled gay woman into a poor family, what
political system would you want in place?
Glenn:
A Libertarian one. The one Im advocating for.
Tim:
Id love to hear you elaborate.
Glenn:
One where we are free to be who we are. We are judged on the content of our
character, not our abilities, color of our skin, or sexual preferences, or our political
preferences. I mean the most power to the individual is the system that I want.
And its the one that I think the Constitution gives us. Not the Constitution that
weve been living under for 100 years; we dont even recognize the Constitution
anymore. But one where the individual is empowered at the maximum, and the
government is at the minimum, although we do need government.
Tim:
So I suppose its almost like a its one of the most famous track coaches and
Im blanking on his name said. Hes broken dozens of world records. Hes in
the 4 Hour Body. But he said, The goal is to do the least amount necessary, not
the most possible.
Glenn:
Yes. Yes. Thats the way government should be.
Tim:
The next question is from Alex Kirby. And it is: what are some of the things
we can do to quote rebrand capitalism and encourage entrepreneurship to
people here in the U.S. and abroad?
Glenn:
Tell stories. Tell the stories like what you do, you know? Let people see whats
really happening in America. The media is full of crap and nobody in the media
is empowered to tell the story of the people who are reinventing the world
because theyre reinventing a world that doesnt include the people who have
all the power right now, you know what I mean? So the best thing we can do is,
as individuals, look for the stories of the people who are changing the world. I
really feel that a gift that I have that I want to use is to be able to connect and
highlight the dreamers and the doers of tomorrow.
Kind of like what Walt Disney did with the Spaceshot. To be able to highlight
them and show the American people again its good to dream, and we will make
it. But highlight those people and look for those people, and stop considering
what were doing now capitalism, because were not doing capitalism. Were in
some sort of crony, I dont know, capitalism thats ugly now. This isnt capitalism.
Tim:
If you were to leave people listening to this with one piece of advice or a question
they could ask themselves, what would that be?
Glenn:
What role have you played in the dialog of humanity lately? Are you playing a
positive role or a negative role? How can you change or enhance that to make
the most positive impact? Who is it that you should reach out to and go, Hey,
dude, I really screwed up. Im really sorry. Or I misread you, or you misread me
and I want to fix this. Who or what have you done that has put you way out of
your comfort zone lately?
Tim:
Thats a strong question. Thats a very, very powerful question. One personal
question and then well close up with how people can find you and where they
can learn more about you. If you were in my position Ive always tended to
stray away from politics because I quite frankly dont know what label to apply
to myself. I fly to Alaska to go hunting and I eat everything I hunt. I live in San
Francisco, lots of gay friends, like minimal government.
Glenn:
Youre a Libertarian.
Tim:
I guess. Thats what somebody said. Socially liberal, financially conservative; I

dont even know where to start.
Glenn:
Liberal and conservatives can get along entirely if theyre Libertarian. Because
Im not gonna control your life and youre not gonna control mine. So I dont care
what lifestyle you lead; it doesnt matter to me. Lets just be good to each other.
You do your thing, Ill do my thing and lets just be good to each other. Thats
how we get together. Its this Im gonna control your life and Im gonna tell you
who you can marry, and what you can eat, and how you carry your gun, and what
you do, and how you do your job. Thats crazy. Thats crazy.
Tim:
Each to their own. Where can people learn more about you? Where would you
like people to visit you online?
Glenn:
GlennBeck.com. Facebook, Glenn Beck and TheBlaze.com.
Tim:
Wonderful. Glenn, thank you so much for taking the time.
Glenn:
Its a pleasure. Really a pleasure.
Tim:
Really had a great time. Thank you.
Glenn:
Thank you.
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EPISODE 71:
JON FAVREAU
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99Designs.com/Tim.
Hello ladies and gents. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of
the Tim Ferriss show, where I deconstruct world-class performers to figure out
what makes them tick, and moreover, what are the tools, tricks, tactics, routines,
books, whatever, secret snacks that you can replicate that you can actually use
in your daily life or in your career, or in your personal endeavors and your journey
into life itself. Wow, that was profound. Anyway, my guest for this episode is just
a tremendous, tremendous man. He is an actor, writer, director, and producer.
His name is Jon Favreau. Ive been hugely impressed by Jon, and weve had an
opportunity to spend some time together. He is a man of many talents. He burst
onto the acting scene with his role in Rudy. Then he established himself as a writer
with the iconic cult hit Swingers, in which he starred, and many of you have seen it.
We have a lot of stories about Swingers, which I was surprised by, and I had
done a lot of homework. Then Favreau made his feature film directorial debut
with Made, which he also wrote and produced. His other directing credits
include Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Elf, and that was a
real turning point for him. So he did get into that, and I did not know that
he was involved with Elf before I really dug into it. Zithura and Chef, which
he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. And the way he approached
making Chef was very, very fascinating. And as someone whos trying to
create myself, in more than one way, I suppose Im creating books and
podcasts, and now TV shows, and I have news coming related to that I was
very, very interested in how he approached doing Chef, which I fell in love with.
And thats actually how we ended up connecting. It was through Chef, and I
went on Twitter, and then we connected. Had a short exchange on Twitter, and
we also ended up investing in a couple of startup companies together. Okay.
So lots of commas. This guy does everything. Some of his recent acting credits
include The Wolf of Wall Street and Identity Thief, and hes done much, much
more. He is currently directing the live action feature film that Im dying to see,
because Im obsessed with The Jungle Book. This is Disneys adaptation, which
is set to be released in April 2016. So without further ado, I invite you into the
mind and story, some of which are very funny the stories of Jon Favreau.
Jon, welcome to the show.
Jon Favreau:
Thank you.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you so much for taking the time. Ive really been looking forward to this.
Jon Favreau:
Oh, good.
Tim Ferriss:
And I suppose we could start, perhaps, at the beginning. And one of these
questions that I like to sometimes ask is what albums or bands you listened to
in high school. What was your go-to music?
Jon Favreau:
Wow. Thats a really nice one. Lets see. I liked the earliest music I listened
to that I can remember actually having like an album of was I remember the
Animal House soundtrack of all the old music, like the 60s music, and then Billy
Joel. I grew up in New York, so Billy Joel. And my first rock album I ever bought
was Led Zeppelin. It was Led Zeppelin. I was in high school already. And then I
was in high school in the 80s, so then you had like the Ramones around in New
York, and Queens, where Im from. So it was an interesting time. And then I
there was a little bit of overlap with CBGBs as I got older in high school, but that
was more for the scene, because it was cool, rather than the music itself, which
was I dont find myself listening to too much.
Tim Ferriss:
I ended up getting into Billy Joel myself. I was well, I was a Metallica sort of
heavy metal head, and I got into Billy Joel because I was a bus boy and waited
on him at one point
Jon Favreau:
Oh really?
Tim Ferriss:
On Long Island, and he was the coolest
Jon Favreau:
Oh, thats nice.
Tim Ferriss:
Guy Id ever met. He would buy a cup of coffee and give me a 20 as a tip, which
was a lot of money to me at the time.
Jon Favreau:
Oh, thats great.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Jon Favreau:
Thats a good thing to remember, by the way. Thats pretty good. Thats not
and in the greater scheme of things, he could probably afford it. But it made a
big difference. Look at that.
Tim Ferriss:
Huge impression.
Jon Favreau:
I mean, he made a fan out of you.
Tim Ferriss:
I still remember it to this day.
Jon Favreau:
Just remember how now we may not have the same exact frame of reference.
What are you Im 48 years old.
Tim Ferriss:
So Im ten behind, roughly. Im 37 right now. So that was a golden oldie. You
were listening to the oldies.
Jon Favreau:
Right. He was still recording when I was listening to him.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, he was still I mean, everyone the hush came over all the wait staff when
he came in.
Jon Favreau:
Yes, in Long Island, especially.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Out by Montauk. And the I remember the waiters
name, Gavin. He was supposed to wait the table, and he said, All right. Im
gonna do you a favor today, Ferriss. Im gonna give you that table.
Jon Favreau:
Because he knew youd get broed out so hard with the
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, exactly. What was your experience in high school? What was it like? Can
you paint a picture?
Jon Favreau:
High school was lets see. I was I had just gone to Bronx High School of
Science, which was a public school that you had to take a test for in New York. It
was a very good school. It had been around for a while. And the New York public
school system was very good at the time. I think it still is. If you do well, you will
never outgrow the public school system. Theres always room for people who are
have who acquire different education needs in every way. And I know my dad,
who was a public school teacher, and I feel pretty strongly about that system. And
especially having lived in other cities, too, that I really grew to appreciate it. And
then the Bronx High School of Science was one of the flagship schools for it was
at Stuyvesant Brooklyn Tech. All of these free schools. But I did have to commute
all the way from Queens to the Bronx, so it was about an hour and a half each way.
But I was around other people who were more academically inclined. But I also
met people from every different borough and all walks of life, because the one
thing that unified us was that we all passed this test. And youd have a lot of
different socioeconomic backgrounds because, again, it was a free school. And
so I had the good fortune of meeting the brightest from every community. So
everybody that I met if I met a kid from Harlem, he was a really smart kid from
Brooklyn. If I met someone from Brooklyn, from Riverdale so you really had
all walks of life. I didnt realize it at the time, because I grew up in New York,
so diversity was just something you grew up with, especially as you traveled
through different boroughs. You just met new people from all over the place. Or
if you worked in the city, you met people from everywhere. And that was a good
experience too. You learn a little bit. I know you like to speak a lot of languages.
You get to know how to curse in every language.
Tim Ferriss:
I try. Thats usually what you pick up first, yeah.
Jon Favreau:
Its you do. Greek, and yeah. In Spanish. So but it was so you met a lot
of great kids. But they were kind of nerdy kids. They werent big on sports
teams, things like that. The long commute time, lot of homework. So I
early on, the first thing from high school that I got into through that crowd
was Dungeons and Dragons. That was something I was really into. Then
I kind of outgrew that a bit, more socially than anything. But I always liked
fantasy. I always liked that swords and sorcery stuff, and science fiction. And
then I moved more into because remember, I graduated in 84, so it was the
early 80s. Thats when also punk rock was kind of in its heyday, and there
were a lot of clubs downtown that were going strong that you could go to.
So and we were from all the different boroughs, so we were very comfortable
going into Manhattan. That was kind of the central point for us. This was still
in high school. Still in high school. Never really was a the kids from the city,
from Manhattan, were more the a little bit more socially advanced, and could
actually get into these clubs.
Tim Ferriss:
A little edgier.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Were from the were the bridge and tunnel crowd, so we didnt really
end up in the nightlife too much. But you were exposed to it, and you were
going down to Greenwich Village, and hanging out in Washington Square Park.
And also, that was a lot of when I got introduced to cinema, because it was preVCR. The only way youd see a movie is if it was in a movie theater, if it was on
television. And so I remember going to a lot of the revival houses. First with my
dad, when I was younger, and then when I was in high school, going on my own
down to like the Cinema Village. All around NYU, down there. There were a lot of
great revival houses, and seeing the films of like Kurosawa, Scorsese. And just
being introduced to a lot of stuff I would not otherwise have access to.
Tim Ferriss:
Was there any particular film that was the inflection point for you wanting to
focus on that craft yourself?
Jon Favreau:
I didnt want to do it till much later. Like it was never a realistic option for me. So
all the way through high school, college, it was never something that I thought
I would do. It wasnt till I was 22 that I actually decided to try in earnest to get
into the entertainment. But I always enjoyed acting, and I always loved movies.
And I was an usher, actually, during high school, at an old ex-vaudeville house,
the RKO Keiths in Flushing. And as an usher, you got to see movies over and
over again. And it was still the architecture, the projection room, all of it really
felt like something out of a time machine. So I was exposed to that side of the
movie business first. And it was really cool. I liked it. I like movies. It was an old,
rundown theater. Its not there anymore. But it was really wonderful seeing the
you kind of could see the history of it if you looked behind the curtain. Because
first it was an old vaudeville palace, and then it started showing films, and then
eventually it got broken up into a triplex. So you had this beautiful, elegant,
Moore-ish style just again, the movie palaces of the vaudeville era, and the
post-vaudeville era broken down into the multiplexes that didnt have a lot of
personality back in the 80s. I guess the 70s started that. But it still had some
of the gloss of it, and some of the beauty. And but of course there were still the
dressing rooms from the vaudeville days, and there were sub-basements, and
you went behind the screen in the big theater, and you saw all the ropes and
rigging from its live theater days. So it was kind of nice, and there was a sense of
nostalgia, but it was also just overrun by mice, and it wasnt just, it wasnt well
maintained. So there was sadness to it. So there was and I have a nostalgic
feel towards the movie business even from before I was around because I was
exposed to all that stuff. And of course, all the movies keep the legacy alive as
well. And that was part of the fun part about coming out here, even when I was
just auditioning for the first time for bit parts. You would audition on the lot. You
would go, youd get a drive on, and then youd be walking around like the Fox lot,
see the New York streets, or Warner Brothers, and see all the back lots as youre
walking from your parking to the appointment. And you just felt so lucky to be
in the business. You were like; Im somehow connected to this industry. And
even though we were just like the guy sweeping up after the parade, we still
were what? And give up showbiz? Even the guy shoveling after the elephant,
it feels like hes part of the show. And I was that guy.
Tim Ferriss:
And you dropped out of college. Is that right?
Jon Favreau:
I did, yeah. It was well, misleading, because I took
Tim Ferriss:
You took a lot of credits.
Jon Favreau:
I left to go to I got a job offer. I got a job offer to work
Tim Ferriss:
What was the job?
Jon Favreau:
On Wall Street.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Jon Favreau:
For a friends dad who needed to hire an assistant. And I worked there for a year.
And it wasnt a great fit for me. But I had not been a great student in college.
Id gone to a very academically oriented high school, as I said, and then I was
on the waiting list for Cooper Union to go to school for engineering. Cooper
Unions a great school in Greenwich Village that is its all scholarship. It would
have been a great fit for me, and again, my family was my dad was a teacher,
so there wasnt a lot we didnt have a lot of dough for a private education.
But the idea of Cooper Union, I would have gotten a great opportunity. Waiting
list, never got called up. I ended up going to Queens College, which was a city
school. Good school, too. And but never really found my footing, what I wanted
to do. Was more interested in what was going on socially at school rather than
academically. I didnt really have a major. I didnt find myself excelling. I got by,
but I didnt excel. And then after Id worked for a year and went back to school,
then I got deans list straight As, because that year of working in the real world
really seasoned me a bit, and it got me I think matured me a bit. And then
after I was back in school, and back on the deans list, thats when I went cross
country, and thats when I discovered people doing improvisation in Chicago,
and decided I wanted to join that circus. And thats when I dropped out.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it. And the when you came back and were more seasoned, and hit the
deans list, was that because of the structure of working in the adult world, or
was it because you saw the benefits of focus rewarded in, say, a company, or
what?
Jon Favreau:
Well, kind of the opposite of that. I felt that you at school, if you worked at
all, it got recognized. Every once in a while, an asshole teacher that busted my
ass, and the guys still giving me bad grades, but thats like a rarity. Usually if
youre not doing good in school, you dont like the teacher. Youre not coming
halfway. Youre not doing your job. But if you do your work, youll get an A.
And theres something real egalitarian about that, whereas in the workspace,
youre expected to bust your ass, and rarely do you get recognized for the work
you do. Because somebody else is either theyre either oblivious because
theyre so hung up on what theyre dealing with, your boss, or somebody else
is theres weird office politics, or youre just its just expected of you to
do your work. So it felt like a whiff of reality, of the real world, where its not
revolving around you. Whereas in school, even if youre part of a big lecture
hall, at the end of the day, its about you. Youre paying money to be there.
Theyre gonna give you a grade based on the work you do. And its focused
around how you absorb and fit the work, and how you fit into the system.
In the work space, youre a cog, and you can figure out how to move your way
up, but its not incumbent upon them to recognize you. You have to make your
own way. So it felt like a very a much it felt like I was going back to a kinder,
gentler situation when I went back to school, where I put in the same work I
wouldve on Wall Street, and then I was getting straight As. So it felt good. But
I also felt in another way that it let some of the air out of the balloon, that I got
a whiff of what real life was.
Tim Ferriss:
What was waiting in the wings?
Jon Favreau:
And it was kind of scary that it was like, okay. Now Im gonna work 50 weeks
a year to get two weeks off. And Im gonna live in those two weeks. Because
pretty much everything happening during the week, youre either recovering
over the weekends, or youre everythings about getting ready for work, I just
came home from work, decompressing, and just getting back on the horse the
next day. And especially in Manhattan, where youre I was commuting from
the boroughs also. And then I had gone cross country, and seen how everybody
was living, and I had
Tim Ferriss:
What sparked that cross country trip?
Jon Favreau:
I think it was that I had worked for a year, right? And I had saved up enough
money for a motorcycle, and that was sort of a fantasy to go you watch like
Easy Rider.
Tim Ferriss:
Easy Rider, I was just gonna say.
Jon Favreau:
Well thats the thing. Oh man. And so I went cross country, and there was a
motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, that happened to be lining up with
when I wasnt in school, or something. I dont even remember if I still in was
in school. Its going back many years now, in the 80s. But I remember saying,
oh, let me go check this out. And then once I was all the way in South Dakota,
the girl I was dating at the time was in San Francisco, and it looked close on the
map. And I was like, let me just
Tim Ferriss:
Youre like, its only three and a half inches.
Jon Favreau:
Ill never be closer. And thats back when I was just thinking about this the
other day. It was back before you could just go online and get a map. Like you
had to belong to like the Triple AAA and Triptych something, where they would
send you maps with highlighters showing you the routes. So you had this map
that was like folded up in your saddlebag, and you would look at it. It really was
like the Old West, and youre like on horseback going cross country. And it was
such a long, harrowing trip. And I remember how many people in the country
look like they werent enjoying themselves, the way they live. And some people
were having a great time. But like there seemed to be a lot of variety in the way
people lived, and the lifestyles people had. And I think also having grown up
in a big city, I didnt realize what rural America was like, and really how big the
country was, and how much variety there was.
And also the other thing was how personable people are. And here was on
a motorcycle, and I was young, and I was not user friendly. I didnt have the
Buckminster Fuller banker look. I was a guy climbing all covered with dust,
and young, and New York plates on my bike, and people were really cool to me.
Like people really when if I broke down, people helped me out. I helped
other people out You sort of develop a sense of how you fit into the world, and
how its not abut you. Youre one little piece of the whole thing. And you start
to appreciate how big the world is, and that you have to figure out how to fit
into that. Whereas I think your whole life, especially the way I was brought up,
its more about how does it fit into my world? So its that perspective that I think
we all continue to struggle with as we get older, how we fit into this whole thing.
How this whole its not fair feeling is one that you feel a lot more when youre
young than when youre older.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. Theres something magical about motorcycles, too, and being part of the
environment, as opposed to inside the bubble that is the chastity of the car.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Would not recommend it, by the way. Very dangerous. Im not my
buddy is in a wheelchair now who introduced me to it. It fits in really well with
your sense of invulnerability that comes at that age. Not something I would do.
I thought if I could afford one I would. So let me just say to the people listening
out there, I dont want to turn this into something where Im proselytizing for
it, because its not something that I do anymore, but it was definitely a bit of a
transcendent experience that youre flying, and you are so vulnerable, and so
much youre just taking it in in a much different way. Its like a ride.
Tim Ferriss:
So Im gonna love to ask you about Chicago. The motorcycle, also just a side
note for folks, I totaled a bike, and at that point sold it because I had a friend
get fantastic rider. Had a car run a red light, hit him at an intersection, and cut
off one of his legs. And when your body is the bumper my mom actually calls
motorcycles donor cycles, because shes been a PT for 30 plus years.
Jon Favreau:
Thats right. Brain injuries with perfect organs.
Tim Ferriss:
So and its not the rider. ITs the people around you. And under the right
circumstances, its great. But the way Im very fortunate that I made it out
intact because its bad odds.
Jon Favreau:
Youre playing slots. Its not the best game.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. It has nothing to do with how good you are as a rider, like you said. So
dialing back the clock a little ways. So and I wont spend too much time on
this, but I was a runt up until about sixth grade. I got the living hell beat out of
me all the time. And D&D was my refuge.
Jon Favreau:
Oh yeah? Okay.
Tim Ferriss:
So I still have all of my modules. Im one of those guys.
Jon Favreau:
Im completely self-conscious about the fact that I played. It takes a lot for me
to talk freely like this about it. I feel a weird shame for some reason.
Tim Ferriss:
Why do you feel shame about it?
Jon Favreau:
I dont know.
Tim Ferriss:
Because I feel this I kind of wear it as a badge of honor, in a way, because I run
into so many people who also had that shared experience.
Jon Favreau:
Well, I think Ive grown into it. Like I think Im accepting of it now. But it was such
a way I had defined myself for the first few years, like for like a freshman and
sophomore year in high school. And that was like what and then when I didnt
do it anymore, youre so quick to say because I find that theres nothing more
embarrassing than whatever the last phase you just went through was. And I
continue to feel that way. Thank god my life is not all the things and ways you
embarrass yourself, all the haircuts youve had, the ways that youve dressed,
the music that you listened to
Tim Ferriss:
I used to have a rat tail for years.
Jon Favreau:
Growing up exactly. And now Im of the age where for the childrens generation
of this age, thats all gonna be well-documented, and very hard to escape.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Jon Favreau:
Every single Facebook picture youve put up will be there on some level. So but
youre right. I think that there was tremendous value in it. I have an affection
for it. I remember too much of it. It really took up a lot of my brain space when I
was around that age, whatever, 15 or 14. I forget what age I was playing. But it
also created a set of I think it encouraged a set of skills that is not that unlike
filmmaking. Because youre telling a story, and the people who are experiencing
that story especially if youre like a dungeon master. Youre telling the story
in a way that where the people who are participating, whove signed on, are
experiencing it in a very subjective way.
And there appears to be a certain level of spontaneity or free will, and there is,
built into it. But youre creating a context and a world and an experience thats
very specifically curated. So youre guaranteeing a sort of experience regardless
of what they do within it. And I think when youre watching movies, the illusion
is that youre subjectively experiencing the film as an individual, and youre kind
of making those decisions in a de facto way through the character that youre
following the film through. If a character in a film ever makes a decision that
the audience doesnt feel that they agree with, it changes the experience. It
becomes like a horror movie, where dont go in that room! It becomes a much
different type of experience. Or if youre watching a character thats not that
youre watching because theyre an antihero. When youre watching Travis Bickle
is a different experience than most films, because most films, youre going to
walk through it experiencing things that the characters do. Theyre gonna do
a smarter version, usually, of something you wouldve done, and theyre gonna
be facing a lot of consequences. And youre rooting for them, because you and
them are kind of riding next to youre the copilot of the protagonist. And in
roleplaying games, theres its a similar experience, but a different medium.
Tim Ferriss:
Were you did you have a particular race of preference? Were you a dwarf? An
elf?
Jon Favreau:
I liked all those. I didnt like the elves so much. I liked the dwarves. I liked the
hobbits.
Tim Ferriss:
I was always a grey elf.
Jon Favreau:
Were you? That makes sense for you. I dont remember, whats the gray? Is the
gray different from
Tim Ferriss:
I just liked the
Jon Favreau:
Those wood ones?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. There were also I think it was the dro elf. Those were the dark elves.
Jon Favreau:
There was the dark ones.
Tim Ferriss:
They were the
Jon Favreau:
I remember more from the Tolkien stuff now. It sort of replaced it. Because I
was
Tim Ferriss:
They do blend together, but.
Jon Favreau:
They do. Well, yeah. Or very close. But I liked the hobbits because I read the
book The Hobbit before I ever played the game. It was an important book to
me. And I always liked I kind of relate to that character because he just wants
to be comfortable, and living in like the nice environment, but then is drawn out
into the adventure, and then returns. Its very Joseph Campbell, that reluctant
hero. And I think that thats a good metaphor for what Ive experienced is
that Ive never jumped into the stuff. I guess maybe theres been a little bit
of boredom and unrest earlier in my life, but generally, I kinda like I like things
kind of boring. But then every once in a while, I just theres a little bit of that
adventure blood in me that forces me out of it. I think were different people
from reading, and knowing
Tim Ferriss:
You have more self-preservation instinct, I think, because
Jon Favreau:
Its either that, or its complacency, or something. But I do it kind of in spite of

who I am as opposed to because I have this wanderlust, and I cant sit still. I
just get bored sometimes, and I want variety, or I get something captures my
fancy, and I get really curious and want to try something new. Im an only child.
I tend to do it more for me, I find, than to show other people. I tend to be very
solitary on that front.
Tim Ferriss:
What is the itch that youre scratching with that that novelty satisfies, do you
think?
Jon Favreau:
I dont know. I think its different as I get older, because now it becomes about
what impressions I had from younger in life, and things on that checklist of you
know how people buy the car that they never could afford later, or they date the
girl they couldnt date? Theres a sense of somehow working on your score card.
But for me, its like I want as I get older especially, its like I wanted to try to
sculpt. And I started
Tim Ferriss:
Sculpt, literally.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. I literally like sculpting, and Im lucky that I work with such talented
people of all different diverse skill sets in the movie business, that when I want
to sculpt, I talk to somebody whos an expert sculptor, and they put together a
little package for me of and a list of tools I need, and the next thing you know,
without a lot of wasted time, Im sculpting. I always drew, and I always would
sculpt a little bit here and there, whatever, if I was in like a class, or playing with
the kids Play Do, and daddy was always good at making
Tim Ferriss:
Step aside, kid. Let me show you how its done.
Jon Favreau:
Well, yeah. You get a lot of when you go parent teacher day, or whatever, the
kids would bring dad to school, or whatever that thing is when daddy could
make something cool out of Play Do, hed get
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Some street cred.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
So what material were you or are you using?
Jon Favreau:
On that? Chevon.
Tim Ferriss:
Chevon.
Jon Favreau:
Something called Chevon, which is one of those, I think its petroleum-based or
wax-based clays that doesnt dry. And you have to heat up to get it to be viable.
Tim Ferriss:
So you get these blocks that look kind of like plastic explosives, I guess.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, kind of.
Tim Ferriss:
I know what youre talking about, yeah.
Jon Favreau:
And it was developed, I think, for the automotive industry, so you get some
really nice textures out of it. And its just fun to do because youre doing better
than you thought you could.
Tim Ferriss:
Now why sculpture as opposed to I wanted to be a color penciller for almost

ten years, so I did a lot of illustration. Why sculpture as opposed to something
else, like watercolors, or?
Jon Favreau:
Oh, because I dont know. Theres something fun. I did it because you could
give it to people. Its like a thing, a substantial thing that you have, or you could
display, or you could give, or cast into a metal, or I dont know. It just seemed
kinda cool. I was messing around on the set of Jungle Book with we had
block of wax because theres a sequence where we have big beehives that we
had to cast, and we had to cast it out of wax so it interacted in a way that was
realistic. And so we had blocks and blocks of beeswax around. And so while I
was on the set, on the many hours sitting at the in the directors chair, I had a
block of wax sitting there for about a month. And then the next thing you know,
I asked for something to carve it with it carve it with, and I got like some little
carving tools. The next thing you know, I was carving a bear, and the next you
know, its like I pull over all these artists that are working on this, and say, well,
whats how should I well, the bears ears are a little far back. Move this a
little farther and so I was getting pointers. And everybody who would pass
by would go, oh, look! It looks like a bear! So its a little bit, oh, what a good boy
am I, and something of to see at this age, honestly, its like Im very happy to be
working in the field that I am. I feel like Im learning constantly. But I understand
why I think like Nick Nulty, I heard like loves glass blowing. Like I get it. I get why
thats exactly the type of thing to be doing. And I did actually, my experience
was with cooking, with I read your book, by the way. I know Ive told you this,
but let me tell you this on the podcast.
Tim Ferriss:
I appreciate that.
Jon Favreau:
The Four-Hour Chef. When I was preparing to do Chef, I was watching
Tim Ferriss:
Which blew my mind. Ive said it to you, and Ive said it on the Internets, but
were gonna dig into that. Lovely movie.
Jon Favreau:
Thank you. It was a great movie. An important film for me, because it just it
allowed me to deal with themes that I felt were important, but also, it gave me
the excuse to learn from great chefs, and work in the kitchens of great chefs
to prepare for acting in the film. And I loved cooking, and I loved and I never
Roy Cho, the chef who really was my partner in this, as he was preparing me,
when we first started, he said, Youll a chef when a chef, because he was
telling me these things to teach me, but also to understand insight as I told
the story to make the film one that he and the community would like. He said,
When a chef sees a bag of shallots, they get excited because theyre gonna get
to peel all the shallots. And which I thought was it was confusing at first, but
then after going through the culinary training and everything, its true. Theres
something very meditative about preparing your mise en place. Because youre
dealing with sharp implements, and you have to get it perfect, and you cant hurt
yourself, and you cant really do anything but this thing. But it doesnt require all
of your brain at the same time. And so you get into this really cool zone where
you everythings so thoughtful that youre doing. And by the time you actually
prepare a meal with all of these mise that you prepare, that you get ready,
theres a tendency to be very tuned in to what youre tasting, or what youre
presenting to your guests. Because they know the work. Theyve been watching
you put work into it. And so the mindfulness that it implies, and demands in its
preparation, but it also asks of the people who youre sharing it with, it creates
a nexus point of all the people, the way youre all sharing a common experience
at one moment, which is something Ive grown to appreciate. And its a very
elusive dynamic. As a dad, its very being very present as you spend time with
your kids, making sure youre not checking your emails when youre tucking the
kids in, its and with friends, and as a husband, theres its not something
I did effortlessly a decade ago. And its something Ive grown into. And I find
that people, as they mature, they start to value that more. And so everything
I look to do, whether its sculpture or I would be a glass blower. I would love
to play with that. It seems fascinating. Or any of these hobby type things, or
the cooking, is all about being very present in that moment, and its a good
counterbalance to the intensity with which I approach the work that I do.
Tim Ferriss:
I think the word mindfulness is so appropriate for cooking. And Ive found that
what used to create so much stress, such a stress response in me, which was
preparing food, has now become, like you said, almost this meditative practice,
where I could meditate in the mornings, and I tend to do that, but I also find
that if I just make food, make dinner, two or three times a week, and you have
these knives, so you have to be present state aware, it has a tremendous
decompressing effect. Are there any particular ingredients that youre playing
with these days, or anything that youre
Jon Favreau:
Well, I like ever since I made Chef and met Aaron Franklin down in Austin, Ive
been, over and over again, refining my smoked brisket, the Central Texas South
smoked brisket. And to me, thats like alchemy. Theres a certain amount of
technique in the trimming, and in the way you but mostly its about leaving
it alone. Its almost like baking in that way, like its chemistry. And changing
little factors, but taking whatever it is, 14 hours, to see how it turns out, theyre
something really rewarding about that. And its also a flavor that people dont
get anywhere else. So when you do it right, and people get to taste it, its kind of
a fun thing to share, because its special. And its only good for a short amount
of time too. Its like
Tim Ferriss:
Its like coffee.
Jon Favreau:
And then it kind of goes away. And then I like that. I like simple pasta dishes,
very simple ones. Like theres a pasta, Scarpeta, the restaurant Scarpeta makes
a really good pasta thats just in a tomato sauce that you could find online the
recipe for. But making the pasta from scratch, infusing the oil, starting the
tomato sauce from Roma tomatoes that you blanche and peel and slow cook
and mash down into a sauce, and then mixing it with the infused olive oil. And
then cooking that with the pasta water, and getting the right texture. And again,
its amazing, but its only good for just a few minutes. And then with the pasta
dishes its great, because you pull together a group of people who are interested
in doing it. Like its a great thing to do if the familys on vacation someplace, or
youre over at a relatives house. Especially because I have less and less things
to talk about, because my contacts are so different from everybody elses,
that if we talk about movies, its not Im thinking about other things than the
people talking to me are thinking about. And theres so little overlap with most
people that I meet that cooking is great because it creates this context where
everybody is on equal footing, and everybody has a different skill set and it
becomes a real task that you have to be youre interdependent with, and I
find I have endless patience to spend time with people that I dont know very
well if youre working on a really intimate cooking project. And then at the end,
we all serve it together, and we really feel like we fought a war together. Its a
great bonding thing. Im working on a kitchen at my house thats geared toward
having like groups of people cook that feels more like a restaurant style.
Tim Ferriss:
Big tabletops?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. And all like open shelving, and everything that youd see beautiful in the
way a restaurants beautiful. Not beautiful for a house, but the people who like
to cook, its like the perfect like a lab. And its fun because youre all gathered
around, and I did it my experience the first time I did it like that was at the
Skywalker Ranch, which was where we mixed the sound for a few movies. Ive
been working with them, I think, since Iron Man. But for those of you who dont
know, its like a 5,000-acre ranch in Northern California in Marin that George
Lucas put together, and oversaw the architecture for. And it started off as just
a sound facility .Very high it looks very low-tech. It looks like a winery, almost.
But beautiful rolling hills with cattle grazing. A Victorian house on the hill where
he does his editing, and where he uses his own bass. And other technical
buildings that have cropped up around it. And its state of the art mixing facility,
sound facility, recording stages. So its this very strange and then a bunkhouse
with themed rooms for the people who work there. Because you stay there
when you work there, because its so remote. And so each room is themed for
either a director or a writer, and lets see. You have like the John Ford room.
Thats Western themed. The Akira Kurosawa room, Dorothy Parker room. And
so you stay there, and during the day, there are restaurants that are open on
the facility. At night, everything closes down, but theres a commercial kitchen
in the common area, and a walk-in fridge. And so as we were making Chef,
youre looking at these scenes over and over again, listening to the crackling of
the frying food, and the pasta, and the olive oil, and the garlic simmering, and
your mouths watering all day. And each night, we would pick another recipe
from the movie, and all of us, me and the editors, the sound crew, wed all get
together, and wed cook together at night, and wed cook all the dishes from the
movie. And it was so much fun, because here we were in the middle of nowhere,
really, in a very remote spot, and just together, the fireplace going, and all of us
cooking together, and then you sit down for the meal, and you sleep good, and
then we hit it the next morning. And we would do the next reel.
Tim Ferriss:
Sounds like a hell of a routine. That sounds amazing.
Jon Favreau:
It was great. It was really wonderful. So thats why I want to see if I can try to
capture some of that at home.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah. The one thing thats always struck me about a well-designed kitchen
is just the elegance and the economy of movement that it provides for a chef,
where theyre never reaching too far for everything. I mean, you have everything
in its place, right? The mise en place. And how quickly a good line cook, a chef,
can work if they have all their items in the right place.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, its true. Its interesting because I did part of the training I did was
working first I went to some pretty accelerated culinary training that Roy sent
me to, off with a French, to get the context before I ever entered a professional
kitchen. And so I went through all my mothers sauces, and my knife cuts, and
basically an overview of what the first year of culinary students would deal with.
Then I got to come into his kitchens. He has a few different restaurants and
food trucks, too, and I spent time floating from restaurant to restaurant. First
they let me like prep cook. So I was picking parsley, and you know what I mean?
Tim Ferriss:
Ive done that. I grew basil. Theyre like, youre holding up my station, Ferriss!
Im like, oh god.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Like thats all theyre gonna trust you with. And its so like labor-intensive.
And so you finally do that. And then eventually I worked my way up to the
hot line. And on the hot line, then I started working and then I worked the
pretty about midway through, I started working on one of his Cogie trucks.
And it reminded me because there, youre in tight quarters too. It reminded
me very much of bartending, which is what I did to make a living in college,
and after college when I moved to Chicago as a bartender. And theres that
dynamic of getting in the weeds. Its kind of halfway between being a chef and
being a server, because youre preparing things, but youre also dealing with
the public, and youre not doing anything that complicated. So you dont have
the theres not the elegance of being a chef, at least the type of bartender I
was. I wasnt like a mixologist like you see now. But there is this you do get
into the weeds, and you have to do this dance with the people in a very small
space. And I found that that rhythm was coming back to me as I was working,
especially on that truck. Well, you know how to get out of the way. You pop in,
you pop out. You reach around on somebodys left, on their right. Youre behind
them. Youre not crashing into each other, and youre helping each other out,
and you become like this big octopus together. And when youre working on
the hot line, its even more that way, because theres behind you! Theres like
hot food coming through, people are speaking different languages, youre being
asked to do things. Youre being instructed, too. Thats the other weird thing.
Its not like they prepare you ahead of time and say, Heres how you make
everything. Lets train. Maybe when you first open a restaurant its that way,
but when youre working in an established kitchen, they basically just throw you
on the line. And then the rush comes. And then they show you once how to do
something, and then you just copy them, and maybe they show it to you again.
And then the chefs watching you from a distance and saying, hey, you only put
mayo on one side of the bun. It goes on both. Theres a certain quality control
aspect that the chefs thats really what the chefs job is, is overseeing other
people doing the work, and keeping the standards to a certain consistency. And
so there I was working, and little by little, first its Im just doing the popcorn at
A frame, and then Im the next thing you know, Im pulling the burgers out, or
doing the assembling some sandwiches. The next thing you know, Im plating.
The next so by the end of the Saturday dinner rush, theres a half dozen plates
Im helping with. And you start to appreciate how good these other people are.
The people who work the broiler, or the saut cook, or
Tim Ferriss:
The grill station.
Jon Favreau:
Whos just nailing them. Making it perfect, and timing it just right, and then the
one that I remarked at the most was the bus boy who knows just when to walk
up to you with that deli container full of ice water, and like its the best water
youve ever had. Like I didnt even know I was thirsty, and then this guy this like
16-ounce the quart size, like you get wonton soup in. That clear container. So
those are all over kitchens, right, those deli containers. And theyll give you one
full of ice water, and youll drink it in like one sip. And its the best thing youve
ever had in your life. And as I was mentioning that to Roy, he says, Now youre
ready to make the movie. Now youve had that experience is what how I know
youre ready.
Tim Ferriss:
So speaking of moments, when did you decide to write Chef? Id love to talk a
little bit about the writing process.
Jon Favreau:
Chef. Chef was okay. So remember, its kind of hard out of context with what
the Swingers experience was.
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Well, lets talk about both.
Jon Favreau:
So with Swingers, it was that I had not known I was gonna be a writer. Had
received, from my dad, Final Draft, which was a program that is pretty user
friendly, and formats your writing to look like a screenplay. And for people who
are writers, or want to be writers, a lot of it is there are subtle things that,
much like a job like a resume for a job. There are certain standards by how
youre gonna put that together, so that when somebody receives that resume,
it looks professional.
Tim Ferriss:
The formatting.
Jon Favreau:
The formatting. All that stuff. I dont know that much about just regular jobs,
but I know like a lot of effort goes into the resume, a headshot for an actor.
For a screenplay, as people receive the script, theyre making a lot of little
subconscious calculations and decisions about you based on what theyre
seeing. And a screenplay thats not formatted properly is something thats
completely dismissed. And what was fun was when I received the program, I just
typed a little bit. The next thing I know, it would look just like a real screenplay.
And I had read enough of them from being an actor. And this was after I had
already done Rudy. I had moved to Los Angeles. I thought that was gonna be
my big break. But things werent really popping for me. But I had read enough
scripts, and knew enough about acting, to feel comfortable tapping away at a
screenplay, never thinking anything was gonna happen with it. More to show
my friends. You type for a half hour, an hour or two hours. The next thing you
know, you get like a stack of eight pages, and it feels like youve got a piece of a
screenplay there. So then it becomes like I just want to try this. It kind of goes
back to the earlier conversation we were having about why do you do things?
For you, its that you cant sit still, and youre
Tim Ferriss:
Thats part of it, yeah.
Jon Favreau:
And youre super curious, and youve got a lot of energy, and you kind of hunger
for it. I think with me, its a little bit more erratic than that, where I just get
something bites me in the ass, and I want to try something. Like Im just curious
about something, if I could do something. But its much subtler. And I just tap
away at it, and peck away at it, and then it starts to look good, and then as
it looks better, you start to build up like with doing sculpture, like messing
around a little bit. The next thing you know, oh, it kind of looks like a bear. Well,
let me carve it a little bit better. Let me try it a little bit more. Lets see how far I
could take this thing. And so with the screen play, it was kind of like that. And I
showed it to some friends, showed it to the acting agent I had. People felt good
about the Swingers screenplay, and then we
Tim Ferriss:
How long did it take you to get it to a first draft, lets just say?
Jon Favreau:
Very fast. Because there was no pressure. I didnt have any I would outline
maybe a few pages ahead of where I was. I came from an improve background
from Chicago. So it was really just characters talking to each other. The improv
that I did was something called the Harold, which was Adele Closed invented,
who was a great improve teacher.
Tim Ferriss:
The Harold.
Jon Favreau:
The Harold. Like the name.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, okay. Got it.
Jon Favreau:
And it was one of those things like what do you call it? Harold. It was one
of those thats how it got its name. Like the Beatles haircut, I think, had a
name. I forget what the name was. But theres its long form, so you would
start off and take one suggestion, and do three different scenes with different
characters that were unrelated, all inspired by this one suggestion. And then
you would have three beats of those scenes. And by the end, they would all
interweave and connect, and come to some greater statement about the
suggestion than just a short form joke oriented improvisational skit would. So
its looking to bring improve into revealing as a higher form to reveal greater
truths about the suggestion by forming group mind with a team of improvisers
who are used to working with one another. That was the aspiration for that.
But it did give me a set of skills, having done that in Chicago for a while, that
youre self-editing, youre knowing when each scene should end. Youre bringing
the next scene to begin, maybe after some time has passed, or with a plot point
that had occurred, and youre learning story. Youre learning story the hard way.
Youre learning story in front of a bar full of people who paid $4 to be in there,
and they want to be entertained and laugh. But the laughter doesnt last if
theres no story. Story is the king. And you think its about the laughs, but really,
its about investing in the story being drawn in. And so I guess I had enough
skills from that, and also read enough screen plays, and maybe the Dungeons
and Dragons and stuff, and being a storyteller, knowing how to create a little
bit of a world that here I was, unfolding the story about this group of friends
in Hollywood, set in the same world I lived in. I had broken up, or been broken
up with at the time, about a year earlier, so I was still that was fresh in my
mind, so that was one of the characters dilemmas. And although it wasnt really
autobiographical, there were enough things that I could draw from. Whats the
expression from Glen Garry Glen Ross? Always tell the truth. Its the easiest
thing to remember.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Jon Favreau:
Draw upon if youre gonna talk about a neighborhood, talk about the
neighborhood you grew up in. Talk about the neighborhood you know. Even if its
not you. But youre gonna have a more consistent world that youre developing
than if youre putting the on Mars, and you dont understand Mars. So a lot of
things got slugged in, and I wrote it fairly quickly. About two weeks.
Tim Ferriss:
Two weeks.
Jon Favreau:
It was very quick. And it didnt change really that much after that.
Tim Ferriss:
Did not change.
Jon Favreau:
Did not. But I had remember, I had written like sketches and things.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you write it start to finish?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Did you write it you wrote it from the beginning to the end?
Jon Favreau:
From the beginning to the end. A few things changed. Not much. Ten percent,
over time.
Tim Ferriss:
And that was in Final Draft?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. It was a good
Tim Ferriss:
Was Chef the same way, that you did it start to finish?
Jon Favreau:
So Chef, didnt Id written Made after that, a few years later, and then I had
been hired as a writer based on Swingers to do script doctoring and things. And
thats where it gets tough because when you start getting paid to do something
that you used to do for fun, you dont want to do it for fun as much. And what
was nice about it is that you can make a living enough for a single dude to be
able to buy a house over a few years, and drive a new car, or new-ish car. But
you can make a living just being a writer for hire. Because theyre always looking
for people with fresh takes and new ideas in the writing area, because the very
established writers are all theyre busy. You get hired to do one thing, that
could keep you busy for a year. So theres always room for another writer once
you kind of make that list. Unfortunately, if youre not on the list, you cant get
in the door.
Tim Ferriss:
And Swingers put you on the list.
Jon Favreau:
Swingers put me on that list. So I went from an actor, and also people kind of
knew me from my acting from Rudy, and so theres a bit of a novelty of being
an actor that they recognize. And when youre already used to being in those
rooms, youre already people know who you are. You know who they are. You
already have representation. So its easier to get into that system. So that was
a bit of a I wouldnt say its a life hack, but its am I using that term properly
or not?
Tim Ferriss:
I think that
Jon Favreau:
Im trying to sound like I fit on your podcast here.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, you already fit on the podcast. Youre doing great. I think the it seems
like you gave yourself sort of more tickets in the raffle, so to speak, than a lot of
people get, because you had the writing, acting, directing irons in the fire. Not
all necessarily at that point.
Jon Favreau:
Thats eventually. But in the beginning, remember, Im trying to break into

another field, right? So Im like seeing how far I could take this thing. And the
acting thing got me more raffle tickets in that sense. But it was an interesting
way into writing. And much like how acting was a really interesting way into
directing, because in directing, one of the disadvantages that most people
other than me had was that if youre going to direct, the only way you can show
people youre a director is by directing. Theres no apprenticeship, per se, in
directing. Its not like assistant directors. Theres an apprenticeship. You could
work your way up from a PA, work your way up to second second, second AD
to first AD. You will hit the top of the food chain by learning from other people
who are better than you. Theres no room on the set for another the directors
assistant is not another director. The directors assistant is somebody who was
a PA. Somebody who worked in a development. Somebody whos most I
dont think Ive ever met a director whose assistant was a director in training.
And even then, youre not getting that experience. But as an actor, I got to
have front row seats for every director that I worked with. So by the time I
ever directed, I already there were half a dozen directors that I thought were
great, and half a dozen that I thought werent great. And I emulated the ones
that I thought were great. And being an actor, youre kind of modeling yourself,
imitating what the people you respect do. And thats kind of what musicians do
too, right? If you everybody practices Hendrix licks first, and then they come
up with their own style. But there is this mimicking phase of learning. And its
tough to get those 10,000 hours under your belt just by going to film school.
Now maybe its different, because now people can literally take a camera, go
out, film something, edit it, put it up, get feedback, see if people like it or they
dont, and they could hit the drawing board again, and it does not cost hundreds
of thousands of dollars. They can do that thanks to technology. By the time I
was coming up, that wasnt even an option. Swingers was done as cheaply as
you possibly could for that quality of a film, and that was almost $200,000 And
Clerks had been done even cheaper than that.
Tim Ferriss:
The budget was $200,000?
Jon Favreau:
$175, something like that. But Clerks had been done for, I think, $10,000, or
something ridiculous like that. And thats a feat.
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
That had been done at a time when it wasnt quite that straightforward.
Jon Favreau:
It was very inspiring to us. It was before we had done it, and were like, why cant
we just do it? Because instead of trying to sell Swingers, we ended up making
it ourselves. So by the time I had done Chef, it was like I had been wanting
to do something everything was developing, I was trying to work as a chef
into. Because I wanted it to be something I wanted to learn about. So f I was
working on a TV pilot, or working on a developing something for producing
something for somebody else, it was like what about a restaurant? What about
a chef? Because it seemed like it was a very from watching Top Chef, and
following reading chefs biographies, reading Kitchen Confidential, which was
the first one that I read by Bourdain.
Tim Ferriss:
Great book.
Jon Favreau:
Great book. And it seemed like theres something here. But it didnt seem like
something that warranted its own I couldnt see the way to make it into its
own thing. So that was kind of bubbling around my head. And then something
about doing something about being a dad, being we were talking about
mindfulness? About mindfulness and parenting. About how a few simple
overseeing a few important things in your life over the course of many years
can ruin your life if you dont invest enough into the things that are important,
but not pressing. So if you put everything at your career, and not into the things
that wont things that arent the squeaky wheel, but are important, but not in
the short term, over time, youll find yourself in a situation that you dont even
understand how you got into. And you see a lot in the Chef world, you see a
lot in the movie world, a lot of families where it doesnt work out. And a lot of
its because the career demands so much time, so much effort, and creating
that balance, which fortunately Ive done. The older I get, the better I get at
it. And now things are, I think, well-balanced for me. But I wanted to make
something about somebody where they werent well-balanced. What if I had
made different decisions in my life early on? And then looking at it through the
idea of the culinary world, and having stories are about growth spurts. Its
about, right, coming of age. Im a big I mentioned Joseph Campbell before.
Im a big
Tim Ferriss:
The monomyths.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Huh? Sorry?
Tim Ferriss:
No, I was saying, just the monomyth. I find
Jon Favreau:
The mono?
Tim Ferriss:
Well see, he talks about Ive become fascinated by Joseph Campbell in the
last few years also. How these archetypes translate across all cultures, and
indigenous tribal
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
Exactly.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. You ever seen, speaking of Skywalker, I think the first time I ever saw
the Skywalker ranch was on The Power of Myth, where Joseph Campbells
interviewed by Bill Moyers.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, I havent seen it. I havent.
Jon Favreau:
Thats one of the first when video first came out, that was one of the first
things that was available in that realm, and it still holds up. Its great. Im sure
its easy to get your hands on, The Power of Myth. And hes being hes sitting
in the library at the Skywalker ranch being interviewed of everything back from
Adam and Eve and earlier, all the way through Star Wars. And its like a four part
or six part series from PBS, I think. And it was great. That was my introduction
to Joseph Campbell. And then theres books about relating that archetype
rise of the hero storytelling to screenplays, and how theres less variation than
you might think. And the more you stick to it, the better it just is. Those are
great instruments to fly with. And with Jungle Book, I really am going back and
doubling down on that, on just going back to the old myths. And it works so well
for Lucas.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, yeah. I mean its Ive been Im fascinated by screenwriting, and I havent
spent a lot of time looking at the format. But I took this story seminar by McKee,
and have read a handful of books.
Jon Favreau:
Thats pretty intense.
Tim Ferriss:
That is intense.
Jon Favreau:
Even that book is intense. I dont know if Ive ever gotten all the way through it.
Tim Ferriss:
I found it very dense. I found it difficult. There were a handful of others, like
Save the Cat, that I found very helpful for me personally, just to think about the
storytelling mechanisms.
Jon Favreau:
Theres one called, if I may?
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, of course.
Jon Favreau:
The Writers Journey.
Tim Ferriss:
The Writers Journey.
Jon Favreau:
The Writers Journey. And Im sorry, Im at a loss. I could look it up while were
talking here.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, Ill put it in the show notes as well.
Jon Favreau:
Okay. Youll put it in? Okay. Right. Because what it does is it takes Joseph
Campbell, and refines it down from the perspective of somebody I think it was
a story executive at Disney. And breaks apart what those archetypes are, and
how they apply to movies that you would have seen. Breaking down movies
using that, and also talking about the three ax structure as it pertains to the
mythic structure that Campbell talked about with the calling, the refusal of the
call, the entering into the extraordinary world, the entering Inmos cave, the
killing the dragon, taking the elixir, going back and healing the land. And even
back when I I even looked I had already read the book by the time I had done
Swingers, and looked at Swingers.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, The Writers Journal. So its been around for a while.
Jon Favreau:
Its been around for a while, and I remember reading that book, and seeing if it
if I was structurally correct with Swingers, and I was satisfied that I was. But the
trick, I think, is not to use it as a map to write. Because you have to write I think
you just have to brain dump when you write. I dont think you could try to control
your writing too much, for me. Some people are very different. People who
come out of where theyre creating series arcs for a television show, it becomes
a you have to develop a group mind, and you use the dry erase board, and you
plot things out. It may change, but its very well thought through. And I find
that people that have come from that background tend to like to outline a lot.
And then there are other people who just come from prose and creative writing,
or short story writers that where they just want to the routine has more to do
with what time of day they write, and how much coffee they have before they
do. Getting into that getting into the creative routine. And thats where their
structure is. Theres always some form of structure. Sometimes the structures
in the writing. Sometimes the structures in the writing, the act of writing. But
I find that for me, I like to do I like to outline a little bit. I like to first I do so
heres what, getting back to Chef. So with Chef, those two thoughts of wanting
to write something about the chef world, and wanting to do something about
mindfulness and parenting, both crashed into each other. And I got the idea,
the epiphany hit me, that this could all come together in a project. Let me write
this thing. And I took out I like composition. I know you like the minutiae.
Tim Ferriss:
I do. I love the minutiae.
Jon Favreau:
So composition Mead composition notebooks, the black and white flecked

cover, cardboard.
Tim Ferriss:
Sure.
Jon Favreau:
Sewn spine.
Tim Ferriss:
Looks kind of like a zebra, the black and white on the cover.
Jon Favreau:
Right, right. Exactly.
Tim Ferriss:
I like those because I find I think its from my drawing days, when I used to get
like a really nice leather-bound drawing paper sketchbook, Id be so reluctant to
defile it.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Like is this drawing good enough for my because it always feel like a
showpiece, whereas the notebooks seemed like because everybody grew up
with them, like as their first notebook, that theres a freedom in marking it up,
but you cant rip pages out, right? So you cant self-edit because if you do, the
book falls apart. So its not like a spiral. You cant use a spiral for me. You cant
use a spiral. So I have, for everything Ive done, and theres a lot of incomplete
projects. Ill get a composition notebook. Ill date it, title it, and then just start
filling it with sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes a list of movies
that I want to look at that relate to this, a book, an image, something, and it
becomes my its where I just brain dump.
And so for Chef, I was actually meditating. I was meditating, and the two things
hit each other .And usually, if Im meditating, which I try to do at least once a
day, Im although I dont always, but it I find that in part of the distraction
of meditating, creative thoughts might pop into my head, but that seems to
be a distraction, so I have to push past those. Its kind of like on the highway
entrance. First you have everything youre worried about hit you. Then you
start to have creative thoughts that are interesting and inspiring. But thosell
trick you into not meditating too. So like these are all obstacles that you have
to kind of pass by. And then you get into the good part, if theres such a thing.
I know, youre not supposed to judge it or think about it any but you get into
that brain wave, or whatever that thing is that seems to be the experience that
when you meditate, that you seek. That kind of baseline thoughtless
[Crosstalk]
Tim Ferriss:
The void. Floating in the void.
Jon Favreau:
I dont know if I get as far as the void, but
Tim Ferriss:
For me, thats how I feel, but thats
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, thats good. I dont know if Im that good at it.
Tim Ferriss:
How do you meditate? What type of meditation?
Jon Favreau:
Just
Tim Ferriss:
Do you focus on your breath? Do you focus on something else?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, I can do that. That TM, or breath, or I try different things. But now, honestly,
its like I dont even its more of like an exercise now. Like I know how to get to
I think it might be a brain wave pattern. I dont know. But its a state of mind
that I can hit without really tricks. I kind of just need to it takes me about five
or six minutes, and I could get there.
Tim Ferriss:
Do you sit on a chair with your feet on the floor, or are you legs folded?
Jon Favreau:
Different. I try not to lay down because you fall asleep, right?
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Jon Favreau:
But I try to do that. I used to do it I havent found a place ever its nice when
you can do it the same time every day. I just switched from production to postproduction on this, so I dont havent gotten into my routine. I havent been
doing it as much as I should, or as Id like to. But in the middle of it, I got the
idea for Chef hit me, and I let myself stop, which I dont usually do, and I took out
a pad, and I just scribbled down like eight pages of ideas and thoughts. And left
it alone. And then read it, and it had if I look back on it, and read those pages,
it really had 80 percent of the heavy lifting done as far as what it was about,
who was in it, who the characters were, what other movies to look at, what the
tone is, what music I would have in it, what type of food he was doing, the idea
of the food truck, and the Cuban sandwiches, and Cuban music, and hes from
Miami, and so it all sort of grew out from that. And then I went ahead, and I
have enough half-written screenplays that I just force myself to keep writing
every day. And so this only took me a few weeks. Two to get the first draft. But
the big thing was I was so scared of its like the Kubla Khan dream, the poem
Kubla Khan, right? Wasnt that the story that it was a dream, and only part of it
was written down because he forgot it all? The poet. I think I have that right.
Going back to school. I dont remember some of the details right. But the idea
that sometimes you feel like when youre writing a story or screenplay, if you let
enough time pass in the first draft, you get off of that kind of creative
Tim Ferriss:
Get out of the zone.
Jon Favreau:
Run youre on. Yeah. Because I dont think its something you control. I think
its something you access. And I dont think not to say its from some other
mystical place, but whatever that part of your brain that it comes from is not a
part of your brain that you necessarily can force to do what you want it to do.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre not fully domesticated.
Jon Favreau:
Right, yeah. You gotta kinda trick it into doing its thing.
Tim Ferriss:
And when you did the brain dump down into the composition notebook, do you
take then I imagine these are not necessarily in chronological order. Its just a
full-on brain dump?
Jon Favreau:
It is. Its some of its chronological. Then you go back and hit another part of
it, and then run it through again. And so it does go on little tears. Its like a pitch
session, except youre alone.
Tim Ferriss:
And when you said tone, what would be an example of tone for a movie? How
would you sort of write that down or describe that?
Jon Favreau:
I said that like eat, drink, man, woman, opening. Like that stuff, right?
Tim Ferriss:
Fantastic.
Jon Favreau:
Big night. A lot of its movies. A lot of it is Buena Vista Social Club. Soundtrack.
Food truck. Cuban sandwiches. Cuban sandwiches. The son. Theres a divorce.
Theyve been separated, but they get along. Get along, and hes with hes
stuck. Hes with theres a critic coming. This is Ratatouille. Theres only so
many cooking restaurant movies you can make. And the guy is preparing these
he goes to the farmers market and brings his kid with him. Like so theres
moments, theres vignettes. Theres images. And some of them are sequences,
and some of them are movies. And sometimes its movies that are in your
memory, and then when you see the movie, its not that. But its the version in
your head from what you remember of a movie. And then Kitchen Confidential,
I remember referencing that a lot. And who the characters are. And I wanted
very a lot of Latino cast members, because thats what was really Kitchen
Confidential, I remember, like thats really what kitchens were, and what I saw,
and what it was, and never what was depicted. And how does that how does
the vibrance of that culture, with the music playing in the kitchen, and theyre
cooking food thats not that? And then in being re-inspired, hes inspired by that.
Who the people that are surrounding him, the music hes listening to, and where
he came from in Miami. And maybe thats the type of food he used to cook, and
now hes cooking very trendy, user friendly food that wasnt inspiring to him,
and being frustrated by not being inspired by his art is no longer inspiring him,
and hes hit an impasse. And also the impasse is affecting both his professional
life, but in a way hes not aware of, his personal life too. Hes stuck. Spiritually
stuck.
Tim Ferriss:
And on the show business side of things this is something I know very little
about, but in terms of the actual making, selling, distributing of the film, and feel
free to correct me if I get this wrong, but Ive heard you refer to, I think, making
Chef as going back to basics, and sort of constraining the size, or the budget,
so that you could do certain things, like have the language you wanted to have
in the movie, for instance, be authentic.
Jon Favreau:
Yes, thats right.
Tim Ferriss:
How did you make this movie? And I know thats a very novice question, but
Ive talked to people sort of indirectly who have gone through the big studio
process, and have had a very rough time of it. What made Chef different? How
did you or similar? Did you get to come in on
Jon Favreau:
Different times.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah.
Jon Favreau:
Again, I think its all a matter of adjusting to what the environment is at any given
moment, an adjusting in an Art of War kind of way. I dont think about it in those
terms, but acknowledge what the terrain is. And I think a lot of what seems like,
in my career in general, as though Ive had this vision for how my career was
gonna change, and things I would try to do, and to get things accomplished
was more a reaction to what the circumstances were. So for example, I thought
Swingers would open a lot of doors for me acting-wise. It didnt. I got to do
a little bit of stuff here and there. It was fun. But I was very sought after as
a writer after that. And so the writer door opened up. The actor door was
more of a small a little cracked open door that occasionally I could poke my
nose through. But it wasnt receiving me. But the writer door was wide open.
So I started to do that, and I learned a lot about storytelling, and interacting
with executives, and what the system was by being involved with projects, and
none of which ever got actually produced with the versions that I wrote. But
I was part of a chain of writers on certain projects. So I was pretty good at
adjusting to what path was available to me, and finding something interesting
about what was available. But without ever feeling that I was compromising,
but just trying to check out something that could be cool, and not getting in my
own way of saying, Why shouldnt I be a writer on this? Why not pitch this take
on a movie? Even though Ive never done a rewrite, why not go in there and talk
to them about this. And so I think Ive had enough confidence to not be scared
to try something new, which is something that I think gets in a lot of peoples
ways. I think people get in their own way a lot, and there are certain things that
I have been scared of, but for some reason, career-wise, maybe its my early
upbringing I dont know what. But I never feel intimidated when Im in a room
with people, or if Im onstage in front of people. Like I dont get that my heart
doesnt race in those situations.
Tim Ferriss:
And that was even before the improv?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. Ive always been comfortable like getting in front of people and talking,
and Ive been a bit of a ham when I was little, like loving to jump up in front of the
family and put on shows. I just think certain people are wired, now that I have
three kids.
Tim Ferriss:
For sure.
Jon Favreau:
Youre just kind of wired a certain way, and certain people are kind of they kind
of have certain things that they like, and certain things that theyre good at. And
you could adjust them, and change them, but youre kinda working with youre
kind of handed its like poker. You get a deck you get dealt a hand, and you
can play those cards well or poorly, but youre definitely working from youre
definitely inheriting your properties in Risk at the beginning of the game, you
know what I mean? Youre starting from a certain vantage point, and then its
what do you do with that?
Tim Ferriss:
With a movie like Swingers, for instance, and again, this is these are just things
that Ive heard quoted, so feel free to correct me if Im wrong, it seems like
everyone is in Swingers. I mean, it gets quoted all the time. The box office was
around six million?
Jon Favreau:
It was yeah, if that.
Tim Ferriss:
If that.
Jon Favreau:
So it was considered so just to give you a perspective, we trying to get it

made for a year. Nobody gives us the money. Doug Liman was able to raise the
money, and we make it together.
Tim Ferriss:
What is his, I guess
Jon Favreau:
Hes a director. Sorry.
Tim Ferriss:
Director. Got it.
Jon Favreau:
Hes the director of the film. But when I had met him, I was trying to set it up as
a director. I was trying to direct it. And he had already done a film. He was just
part of a circle of friends. Not very I wasnt very close with him, but I knew him
through somebody else, and he was somebody who had directed, and so I had
bought him a cup of coffee. He talked me through lenses, and was preparing
me for when it was time for me to direct. And then in that process had said,
look, hopefully you will get to put this thing together, but I can raise the money.
And so we agreed to creatively be partners on this thing, and we made it a much
smaller budget than I thought was possible.
Tim Ferriss:
This was the 200k or so.
Jon Favreau:
This was the 200k that he was able to bring, and figure out how to bring that
movie to the screen with that budget with the experience that he had had. So
that it happened. We tried to get into Sundance, and
Tim Ferriss:
Not to interrupt, but was he that financing from some independently wealthy
individuals, or was it from companies, or?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, I think it was more like that. I think it was more the connections that hed
had from growing up in town, and being involved with there were people that
he knew that were willing to bet on him. Some of it was based on stuff he had
done already, and some of it was that he had passion about this thing. But he
was able to get the secure the financing.
Tim Ferriss:
Got it.
Jon Favreau:
So the first experience was that then we made it, and that was real seat of
the pants, and then we didnt get into Sundance, which was our goal, was to
get in. That was the be all and end all for us. And I dont know if it was that it
wasnt finished enough, or we had just pulled a cut together for them, or it was
screened on videotape versus a screening. Who knows what it was. But it was
incredibly disappointing to us. So it felt like all was lost. Then we put up after
Sundance, that Sundance festival, when everybody had gotten back, we had
done our own screening in Los Angeles for the cast and crew, and invited some
distributors to it as well, and it played extraordinarily well there. And then we
had multiple buyers, and you dont have to be in Hollywood to know what that
means. More than one person is interested, its a whole different dynamic. And
now there was a bit of a bidding war over it, and it ended up selling for five
million dollars, and
Tim Ferriss:
There are distribution rights.
Jon Favreau:
Distribution rights. And so we were riding high. It was and all the everybody
wanted to interview us, and everybody wanted to feature us in their magazines,
and we were like the next thing. And so in like the year between when it was
acquired and it came out, we were riding very high. Vincent I think got cast in
the sequel to Jurassic Park, which is as big as you can get, and everybody who
was nobody was now had a seat at the table. Had another shot. And the by
the time the movie came out, it opened the first weekend was in, whatever,
two theaters, four theaters. It was a huge box office. And then a few weeks later,
nobody cared, and it made five million dollars, and it was considered a failure,
box office-wise. Because you gotta figure on one side of us was like Slingblade
that made a hundred million dollars, and won Oscars, and on the other side was
Good Will Hunting that won Oscars and made like a hundred million dollars. So
we were kind of the disappointing underperformer at Miramax at that point.
And so all of it kind of ebbed away. But again, it was enough to get my foot in
the door as a writer, and I had already now I had not just been the guy who was
in Rudy as a character actor, but now I had been in this movie that, as you said,
everybody has seen. So thanks to video, and later DVD, and later on, laser disc,
everybody had seen this film, and it had become part of our culture. And thats
when I kind of learned that its not always the movie that does the best that has
the most impact, or is the most rewarding, or does the most for your career,
for that matter. Even though in the short term, success is celebrated here, and
failure is unforgivable, but over time, I think that that shifts a bit. And I know,
for example, like Vincent got in Jurassic Park on the heels of Swingers. Hes far
more recognized now from Swingers that grossed one, not even a tenth, maybe
a hundredth of what that movie made. But for some reason, this one has had
more impact on his career, even though far less people went to see it in the
movie theater. So you never know whats gonna and I find in my own career
the same thing. Its not always the things that make the most money. Its the
things that performances where theres certain things about certain projects
that stick in peoples memories more.
Tim Ferriss:
Yeah, the staying power. I mean, I was astonished as I started studying film
more, and looking at movies that had a huge impact on the era where these
landmark, iconic films among the high school and college males who were the
majority of my friends. Fight Club, for instance. And I was astonished that it
wasnt some massive, massive hit.
Jon Favreau:
What, Raging Bull was all these movies that are sort of failures in the beginning,
and for Rudy was my first experience with a movie coming out, and it didnt do
well at all. It didnt even do No. 1 at the box office, and was considered also
an underperformer. But now everybody knows it. Its a cultural its a cultural
point of reference. I hear the music everywhere. People refer to it constantly.
So like those are the ones where you make the ripple, the cultural ripple, and
thats honestly the thing that is most exciting, thats most appealing to me, is
how can you impact how can you make that kind of impact, and affect people,
and either touch them, entertain them, make them laugh, make them feel
connected? Thats the part thats the most rewarding at this point in my career.
Tim Ferriss:
And I am keeping an eye on the time. I know that youve been very generous
with your time, and Ill only take a few more minutes. The it would be remiss
of me if I didnt mention that a number of my fans have said thank you for Chef.
Theyve rented it five to ten times. Just to show friends. So I think that that
Jon Favreau:
Thats awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
I think that thats gonna be one of the movies. I think its
Jon Favreau:
That was kind of the thing. I know within like the chef community, they accepted
it, the ones that Ive met. So that was a big, scary part of it for me. Because
if everybody if people had liked it who didnt know about that world, and but
then the people who were in the world didnt like it, it wouldve been a mixed
it wouldnt have felt good to me. But the fact that people are seeing it, and
theyre like, Im spending more time with my son after seeing the movie. Or you
know what? Im gonna try to open up my own business that Ive been putting
off forever. And thats when you feel really humbled, and good, and flattered,
because you feel like youre connecting. Its selfishly just a very good feeling
to know that your me being on this planet has changed somebody elses
experience, like in a good way. And it feels you feel connected to people,
which I think is kind of part of the trip here. Its kind of part of the goal.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, for sure. Well, I think anything with a basis for storytelling at some point, I
mean, youre making a lot of connections through this. I think we are hardwired
for this Joseph Campbell-like experience.
Jon Favreau:
I think so.
Tim Ferriss:
Even in our own lives. Id love to ask just a couple of rapid fire questions.
Jon Favreau:
Sure, sure.
Tim Ferriss:
The first is, when you hear the word successful, who is the first person that
comes to mind?
Jon Favreau:
Wow. Oh, I like listening to this on your show. I dont like answering it. Lets see.
I guess just kneejerk?
Tim Ferriss:
Kneejerk.
Jon Favreau:
Gates. And not you know why? Because not because of the richest guy, but
because of his because of how he shifted his priorities. Because hes now
making tremendous impact with the hand hes been dealt, or the pot that hes
built up. That hes making that theres one theres like the Bill Gates from
theres the Microsoft Bill Gates, and theres the post-Microsoft Bill Gates. And
to me, theres something fascinating about that. And that he would be able to
be effective in what his goals were for the first chapter, and then what his goals
are now, which are very different. So he was able to shift his entire agenda, and
be effective.
Tim Ferriss:
Be completely effective on the very similar, metric-driven, hardcore approach.
Jon Favreau:
Yeah. And I dont know a lot about him, honestly. This is purely laymans
perspective of, hey, theres a lot of this is how many lives have been saved by
this, or this many people have agreed to have charitable donations. But its just
theres something that hes just the first name that popped into my head.
Tim Ferriss:
Any particular director who comes to mind? Director or writer in film?
Jon Favreau:
Yeah, theres a few, and theyre all different. Like I worked with Scorsese, and I
think that hes been I think theres a certain there must be, when I came up,
and what he represented, and I got to meet him, and see him work. And so hes
inspired me as far as what his body of work, and who he is as a person. But I
also think of like the Coen brothers, whove managed to tickle their own fancy,
and enjoy everything theyre doing, and have tremendous variety, and entertain
people as well, but seem to have maintained a certain balance, a healthy balance
between their work and their private lives. And I havent dealt with them that
much, but they seem like genuinely well-adjusted, normal, nice people who
happen to make really exciting, cool movies. And then Jim Cameron, whos sort
of at the other end of the spectrum, whos kind of the guy whos reinvented
aspects of the industry over and over again with tremendous enthusiasm, and
also just a sharp intellect thats into solving problems and changing the way we
do the magic tricks. And Ive certainly inherited a lot of the ground that he broke
with Avatar with Jungle Book. A lot of the same technology, a lot of the same
people, Im working with. So theres a healthy respect. And then Walt Disney is
another one who I had researched quite a bit back around the time of Iron Man
2, when we were referencing him in the Stark expo, in the old Stark archives.
But he was a bit of a techie in his time, and a bit of a storyteller too. And so he
was doing the what he was doing in his time seems like what Pixars doing
now. Its like cutting edge technology, great stories, great emotion. Telling
stories with a different set of tools that nobody ever had before. And theres
something really, to me, I think hes one of those key figures.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, a total hacker. They display a bunch of his old, cobbled together, MacGyverlike rigs at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, yeah. Which is amazing.
What is the book that youve gifted the most to other people?
Jon Favreau:
Actually, The Writers Journey was one of them. Ive given your book. Ive given
Four Hour Body to people too.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, thank you for that.
Jon Favreau:
Ive given that. Those are the biggies. Im trying to think if theres anything else.
Hm. I did when I first started off in acting, I gifted Grodins book to my family,
his first book, It Would Be So Nice If You Werent Here, because it really told the
story about how difficult it is when youre first starting off trying to be an actor.
And he had such a great voice. Other than that, I cant none are jumping to
mind. Thats three, though.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats plenty. Thats plenty. Last question. Actually, theyre two. Theyre pretty
quick. The first is: what advice would you give to your 20-year old self?
Jon Favreau:
Wow. Oh, he wouldnt listen.
Tim Ferriss:
30-year old self.
Jon Favreau:
I think to not confuse how you feel about something with how that thing really
is. I think you think youre being more objective than you really are, and youre
colored by emotion more than you think you are. In positive ways and negative
ways. But its perspective is much more subjective than you think. You think
youre a lot more objective than you are. To me, specifically at 30. And 20, I dont
even know. I wasnt even a human being yet. I dont know what I would say at
20. Because part of it is just the ignorance of walking into the forest, and not
knowing where I was going. And whatever was getting me through it, thankfully
I had enough something in the back of my mind told me to just take that road,
and walk not knowing where I was going. And so that was so Im very grateful.
I like where I am. I like what the experience of my life is. I like every year I like
better, I like who I am better, I like what my life is better. So Im very reluctant
to interfere with the way things were. But I think a lot of it is how I feel about
things, and what I do to how I kind of balance things out n a way that Im proud
of, that I like.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, I love your work, and thank you so much for the time. Where can people
find out more about you, find you online?
Jon Favreau:
Me? Lets see. I dont know. Im on Twitter and Facebook, @jon_favreau. Oh, on
Twitter. And Facebook, I think, is just Jon Favreau. And Instagram, Jon Favreau.
Its pretty
Tim Ferriss:
Pretty consistent.
Jon Favreau:
Ive been working, so theres not a lot of stuff up there. Im on there. We do

popups once in a while in Los Angeles. Maybe well do one up north for the
from the food from Chef.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, thatd be great.
Jon Favreau:
So weve been doing that, so thats
Tim Ferriss:
Ive been dying to have not only Cuban, but the grilled cheese sandwich. Im
sure you must hear about that a lot.
Jon Favreau:
Yes, Ive cooked them. I cooked them for the crew of the movie. I cook them
for my kids. I cook them here at the in the editing rooms. But I enjoy cooking.
And weve cooked together.
Tim Ferriss:
We have.
Jon Favreau:
I think. Can I reveal that?
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely.
Jon Favreau:
That you and I have cooked beignets together.
Tim Ferriss:
Beignets. That was an amazing experience.
Jon Favreau:
That was for a Super Bowl party.
Tim Ferriss:
So good.
Jon Favreau:
You had never done that before.
Tim Ferriss:
I hadnt.
Jon Favreau:
There it was, that was what we were talking about. Here we were. We didnt
really know each other that well. Id read your stuff, you saw my stuff, and then
lo and behold, you put some hot oil there, and the focus is no longer on one
another. Keeping all your fingers while youre at it, scalded.
Tim Ferriss:
Keeping all your fingers. Well Jon, thank you so much. Theres tons more to
explore. Everybody, Ill put links in the show notes to where you could find Jon,
and thanks so much for your time.
Jon Favreau:
Great, great. And thank you too. I love the podcast, but youve I know this
is about me, not about you. But I got to know you through your writing, and I
was very youre very intriguing. I get pulled into your work. You make it very
easy to read your stuff. It had been recommended. I think Four Hour Body was
recommended to me. And one of those things where you just pick a chapter
here, a chapter there. Next thing you know, youre reading the whole thing.
And your approach to questioning things, and curating research, and factbased, but not being it seems like theres always youre always either dealing
with a scientific method where something has to have been through a double
blind study, or completely anecdotal. There is no middle ground. And whats
interesting about your stuff is youll say, hey, look. Heres what Ive experienced.
Heres the sample that Ive seen this experience with. Its not something that
should be looked at scientifically, but there are certain indications that this is
worth looking into more. And heres what I do, and heres what Ive done. And it
makes it much more inviting than either the very walled off world of traditional
Tim Ferriss:
Academia.
Jon Favreau:
Academia, and also this, I dont know, science thats more based on anecdotal
information that doesnt take science into consideration as much. But to
acknowledge that science has an importance to it, but also looking at how
what has not yet gone through that machine might have some truth to it too,
and giving full disclosure of your context, and why, makes it not intellectually
offensive, you know what Im saying?
Tim Ferriss:
Sure.
Jon Favreau:
It feels like you could be responsible intellectually not flying in the face of
science, but youre also opening it up to new ways of thinking, and I think it
relates to the way your context, the whole world that youre the whole northern
California way of ethos of looking at things, and how to be more effective and
efficient in approaching problems that we still face. So I love looking at your
stuff.
Tim Ferriss:
Thank you.
Jon Favreau:
And like I said, the Four Hour Chef was really was a great counterbalance to
the other chef biographies that I was reading, or autobiographies, or cooking
books, and documentaries I was watching. And then here was the very concise
version of a lot of the same information that was a really good counterbalance.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, I really appreciate it, and I love watching your experiments. I love watching
you do the huge blockbusters, then do Chef. I cant wait to see what you do
next. Well, I know I guess Im waiting to see
Jon Favreau:
For Jungle Book.
Tim Ferriss:
Jungle Book.
Jon Favreau:
For about a year.
Tim Ferriss:
Its gonna be amazing.
Jon Favreau:
Its gonna be something different and cool, and just like everything else, doing
one with this level of technology, which I got a taste of here and there with Iron
Man, and but to really throw the whole thing into have the whole thing rely
on that magic trick working is its exhilarating. But if it all works as well as it
looks like it will, itll be something nobody has seen before. So its exciting stuff.
Tim Ferriss:
I cant wait to see it. Well Jon, to be continued. Thank you so much for the time.
Jon Favreau:
Great. My pleasure.
Tim Ferriss:
And this was fun.
Jon Favreau:
It was quick and easy.
Tim Ferriss:
Quick and easy. All right, thank you.
Jon Favreau:
Thanks.
Tim Ferriss:
Take care. The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used
Onnit products for years. If you look in my kitchen, in my garage, you
will find Alphabrain, chewable melatonin for resetting my clock when Im
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EPISODE 72:
TRIPLE H
Tim Ferriss:
Why, good morning, you sexy beast. Would you like me to make some breakfast?
Oh. Im sorry. I was having a flashback there. Folks, this is Tim Ferriss.
This is an addendum, an urgent update recorded after this episode was
completed. Because I was going through a roster of all of the most amazing
things Ive been able to experience in my life, and at the top of the list was:
floating at zero gravity, experiencing weightlessness in a shuttle and being able
to, say, chase after globules of water floating in mid-air or chase Skittles that
youve tossed into the air its floating right in front of your face, say five feet
away. Or skreeing around all the way around the perimeter of the shuttle like a
hamster in a hamster wheel, if you were inverted, in a way. Its really amazing.
And I loved it so much that I decided to give away a flight. So I am giving away
a flight at zero gravity. And you can get it. Theres no cost involved. But its
only possible this week that is, the week of Monday, April 20th. So jump on
this right now. I would suggest that you pause this and check it out. Just go to
fourhourworkweek.com/zero. Thats fourhourworkweek all spelled out: F-O-UR-H-O-U-R, etc., forward slash zero Z-E-R-O. So check it out. And now, back
to your regular programming.
This episode is brought to you by LSTN headphones, which are gorgeous and
produce incwedible incwedible
Tim Ferriss:
This episode is brought to you by LSTN headphones. LSTN headphones are

gorgeous, made out of real, exotic, reclaimed wood. But they are also doing
good in the world. Proceeds from each purchase help someone to hear for
the first time, through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. Ive been using LSTN
headphones since they came out, partially because the founders started the
company after reading The 4-Hour Workweek. And now theyre available in
Nordstrom and all over the place. Theyre super high quality.
And if you wanna see the headphones that I travel with, that I love, both in-ear
and out-of-ear so kind of big ole old school headphones then you can go to
lstnheadphones.com/tim. Thats L-S-T-Nheadphones.com/tim. You will also get
a $50.00 thats right $50.00 discount. Thats a big, whopping 5-0, folks. So
go to lstnheadphones.com/tim, L-S-T-Nheadphones.com/tim.
This episode is brought to you by 99designs, which is your one-stop-shop
for all things graphic design-related. They have thousands upon thousands
of designers around the world. You put up what you want, whether thats a
business card, a t-shirt, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever, and they submit
drafts, mockups, and designs that you can choose from. And you get an original
design you love, or your money back.
I have used them for years, including to grab cover concepts for The 4-Hour
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check out 99designs.com/tim.
Well hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another
episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I am drinking tea with coconut oil in it because
I am in ketosis. So my brain is running like Speedy Gonzalez on some type of

biochemical advantage. But thats not what Im here to talk about.
I am here to do what I do every episode, and that is: deconstruct world-class
performers to find the tools, tricks, routines, habits, and so on that you can
use whether those people are billionaire investors like, for instance, Peter
Thiel, who was the first money into Facebook, also cofounder of PayPal and
Palantir, or celebrities and actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, tech icons like
Matt Mullenweg behind WordPress and WordPress.com, and so on and so forth.
Musicians weve got everybody.
And I have wanted to interview a professional wrestler for a very long time now
after seeing the movie, The Wrestler, but also having wrestled myself, and
having watched WWE, and WWF before that, and then the rise of MMA.
And I managed to get ahold of a fantastic performer and incredible athlete,
Triple H. So: Triple H, who is a 13 time world champion in the WWE. But that is
not all. Hes also the executive vice president of Talent, Live Events, & Creative
at the WWE. And we talk about just about everything in this episode.
His real name is Paul Levesque, and we dig into the questions of misconceptions
related to both Triple H, his stage name his stage persona, and WWE; the
important lessons he learned while training with a wrestler named Killer Kowalski,
including getting hit in the back of the head with a phone book in a garbage bag;
ouch. And we get into his longevity: how he avoids, and also repairs, injuries;
pre-game rituals, including input from a trainer named Joe DeFranco, of course
his colleague-in-arms, The Undertaker, and even Floyd Mayweather. And who
does he model? How does he view parenting? He has a bunch of daughters.
And it goes on and on. We really dig deep. It turned out better than I could
have expected. And I expected it to be good. So I hope you really enjoy this.
Of course, all show notes can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all
spelled out. And please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Triple H,
Paul Levesque.
Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul Levesque:
Thank you very much, man. Its an honor to be here.
Tim Ferriss:
I am so excited for this. You are a massive human being.
Paul Levesque:
Its a job requirement, kind of.
Tim Ferriss:
It does seem to be a job requirement. And you have worn a lot of hats, and
have had a lot of different titles, a lot of different jobs. When someone asks
you, What do you do? if they dont recognize you, how do you answer that
question?
Paul Levesque:
Its funny now because Im kind of in this weird kind of combo twilight zone of
the last bits of my in-ring wrestling career. Even when I did it then, I used to
say I was an entertainer. Because people the WWEs a weird thing. Its like
one of those things: if you not into it, no explanation can explain it to you to
make you like it. And if you are into it, theres no explanation necessary. It just
is what it is. And so to sometimes say, Oh, WWE, they would go like, Ohthe
wrestling? You know? And it just had a weird connotation to it. When you say,
Entertainer, Oh, what kind? Oh, WWE. It just took on a different meaning
Tim Ferriss:
Sure.
Paul Levesque:
to people that dont understand what we do. So I always went with that. Right
now, its kind of a combo. We have a saying that we use at WWE, which is, Our
job is to put smiles on peoples faces. And its kind of the overall thing of what
we do. But its been 90 percent of my day as an executive. So, there you go.
Tim Ferriss:
Okay. We are gonna also dig into that and rewind the clock and look at the
trajectory. But: what are misconceptions that people have about you, or Triple
H, or WWE?
Paul Levesque:
I think they dont they just see what they see on TV. The misconception, for
me, is that Im very much what you see on television, or Im this character. They
see the simplistic things of what we do. Its funny: even if youre this huge fan
of the WWE, they get so upset over things like: Why would this guy beat that
guy? Just: guh! Its one of the terms right now: He buried him. You know?
Its a show.
And what they dont get about our show is: we are like this never-ending you
can compare it to whatever you want: comic book, soap opera, TV drama, movie.
But it never ends. So theres always another chapter. And they get so upset
in the moment of not liking maybe the end of the chapter that theyre on. But
theres another chapter. It starts tomorrow. It actually started right now when
this one ended. But they dont get that, and they cant wait for that. And they
dont understand all the complexities that go on behind the scenes.
So thats probably the biggest misconception is that the WWE is just a bunch
of guys, at its simplest form, that just go to the ring in their underwear and
pretend to fight with each other. But when you really break it down, its a
massive, global business.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, theres a lot behind it.
Paul Levesque:
Oh my God, its huge.
Tim Ferriss:
And Ive been so impressed by it for so long. Not the least of which and well
certainly explore the physical and mental stamina: how many matches would
you say you have had, total, to date, televised or otherwise?
Paul Levesque:
Thousands. You know, if you break it down simplistically and math is not my
strong suit but I started wrestling I think in 93-ish. Just training 92, 93,
training.
Tim Ferriss:
Was this in in New Hampshire?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. In New Hampshire I trained with a guy named Killer Kowalski, an old
Tim Ferriss:
Who my mom loves, by the way.
Paul Levesque:
Oh really? Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
So I wanted to dig into that.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. He was one of the first guys to become kinda like globally known. And I
started training with him. He had a school, if you wanna call it that. It was like
a little run-down mill building with a boxing ring in it, in Malden, Massachusetts.
And I started training with him there. So if you break it down from there to today,
20-plus years and then once I made it to the WWE, which was 95, even if you
just wanna look at it from there and just say 20 years, 20 years I probably, for a
lot of those years, wrestled 250, 280 days a year. Sometimes on the weekends
we did double shots. So wed wrestle a matinee in the afternoon and then a
night show. So its a lot.
Tim Ferriss:
A lotta mileage.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. Its a lotta mileage.
Tim Ferriss:
What were the most
Paul Levesque:
Thats the thing we always say: Its not the years, its the miles. You know?
Tim Ferriss:
Figuratively and literally.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
And its a hell of lot of travel. But before I get to asking about travel and all these
different training aspects, what were the most important lessons you learned
while training with Killer Kowalski?
Paul Levesque:
Its funny. A lot of the things I think, as in life, he taught me a lotta things that I
didnt know he was teaching me at the time. He would tell me a lotta things and
I would be like Ugh, because hes just
Tim Ferriss:
The Mr. Miyagi approach?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. You know, you have this it wouldve worked very well in todays millennial
age. But his theory of telling you you did something wrong was hitting you in
the back of the head with a phone book that was in like a shopping back.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh my God.
Paul Levesque:
But yeah. He would just teach all the he wouldnt say a whole lot, and then all
of a sudden hed come in and he would say, You need to be spectacular. Make
everybody look at you, no one else. And then he would just walk away. And
then you would be like, What does that mean? You kinda had to figure it out.
Now theres a lotta things that he said to me then that I find myself telling the
young guys now. In a different way, but its the same lessons, kind of, you know
Tim Ferriss:
Are there any examples that come to mind?
Paul Levesque:
Well, just in how to be spectacular. But also how to break things down and to
just look at what you do like never be satisfied with what you do. If you dont
do something well, dont do it. Unless you wanna spend the time to improve
that. Like still, to this day, I see a lotta guys do stuff in the ring that Im like, He
doesnt do that well, but he does it all the time. You shouldnt do that.

I have things that I dont do well in the ring. Just dont. Thats just
Tim Ferriss:
What would be an example?
Paul Levesque:
For example, theres this one thing that guys take where they go through the
top and middle turnbuckle and hit the post from the inside, hit it with their
shoulder. I just its one of those mental block things for me. Like I cant seem
to navigate going between the two turnbuckles and getting the thing. Like I
always get stuck somehow. Or Ive tried to do it before and its just one of those
things doesnt work out for me. So I never do it. And if guys will grab me in
the ring over the years and say, Take the post. And Ill just: Nope. Im not
you know what I mean? Because I dont
Tim Ferriss:
Its slight correction.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. I just dont do that well. Im not gonna do it. And I think theres little
things like that that guys dont analyze what they do. They do what they do, and
then they say, Oh, that was really good in the overall picture of things. It was
really good. People really liked it. It was, but there were some things in there
that werent really good.
Tim Ferriss:
So it averaged out well, but there were things they shouldve omitted.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. And, to me, I dont know Ive always been the kinda guy: if youre doing
it, why wasnt everything what you wanted it to be in there? There shouldnt be
wasted movement. There shouldnt be things that arent what you want them
to be. I dont wanna do something just to get to the next thing, you know?
Tim Ferriss:
No, I do. And what are you particularly good at in that environment? What are
the strengths that you focused on?
Paul Levesque:
For me, it was never about individual moves. And I think as the business maybe
some guys now look at that and they think differently because they might look
at my style and say I was never an over-the-top spectacular guy. But I wasnt
supposed to be. I was usually the bad guy. So I wanted to be that constant, and
let the other guy be spectacular around me. And, for me, it was never about the
spectacular moves. It was about the drama of the match. And I look at what we
do as: were more like Rocky, the movie, than we are legitimate boxing.
Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Paul Levesque:
Its about the story that you tell. So if the story is really good going in and you
care about the two characters and then you make that emotional story play
out through those two characters nonverbally in the ring, thats the magic of
what we do. It doesnt matter if yeah, it makes the highlight reel: Oh my God,
he did this one spectacular move. It was crazy. I dont know how he made it
through that or whatever. Its not really about that. Because tomorrow therell
be another guy can do that move better than you just did it. And itll be even
more spectacular. Or hell come up with another way to do it thats even crazier.
Tim Ferriss:
Well you mentioned Rocky, right? Its about the story arc, not just a handful of
really good lines of dialogue.
Paul Levesque:
Exactly. Yeah. And thats the thing of it. Its one of the things that works. We
have the WWE network. Its a lot of old content. People will go back and theyll
watch WrestleMania I over and over again, and how great it is. Or WrestleMania
III and all these things. Its because its a emotional story. If it was just about the
moves, it wouldnt be so impactful to you still. The emotional story thats why
people will go back and watch the movie, Rocky, over and over again. Because
its a great story.
They very rarely go back and watch you know, theres exceptions: Mohammed
Ali and Foreman or something, moments in time. But the average person, unless
theyre a boxing connoisseur, doesnt go back and watch boxing over and over
again.
Tim Ferriss:
No. And you know whats fascinating about the examples you just gave, whether
its Ali/Frazier or whatever those, in real life, ended up being like story arcs
because you would have this back-and-forth and this drama, and the Thrilla in
Manila. And there were all the elements of sort of the monomyth or the
Paul Levesque:
And even when you go back and usually watch those fights, you go back and
you watch them in a show that now chronicles the story of
Tim Ferriss:
That ties them together.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. It chronicles the story of those epic contests. And thats the reality of the
story. I say it all the time: if you know whos in the ring fighting, youll tune in and
youll watch. To just watch two guys fight for no apparent reason its not that
interesting. Unless youre a connoisseur of what theyre doing
Tim Ferriss:
Of the craft.
Paul Levesque:
If youre watching the FC and youre a big mixed martial arts fan, or all those
things and theres a lot of those. But theyre very into whats going on
scientifically, and
Tim Ferriss:
Technical
Paul Levesque:
the chess game, the technical chess came thats going on. But thats not the
general public. To hit the general public, they need to know something about
the two guys and why theyre fighting.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. The fighting. Now, at your peak point in your on-stage wrestling career,
you mentioned two hundred and something like 250 to 300 days of the year,
you were probably travelling? Something like that?
Paul Levesque:
Travelling, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
What were some of the keys to your longevity? Being able to maintain that?
And I know we have a common connection in Joe DeFranco.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
And hes mentioned that you very rarely, if ever, miss training days.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
And maybe you could speak to that. But even if that means coming in at 2:00,
3:00 in the morning to train. What have been some of the keys or practices that
have allowed you to sustain that type of torturous schedule?
Paul Levesque:
I think you speak a lot, in your podcast and in your books and everything,
about routines, and having things that you do. And Im very big in that way. And
I like to have my life kind of when it gets chaotic, it bothers me. Which sounds
silly, because what we do is chaotic at all times. My day varies, and people
talk about: when you do live TV like Monday Night Raw, for us we work on
that show and that isnt done until like sometimes guys are walking out the
curtain and somebodys shouting a change to them as theyre walking through
the curtain. So the chaos is there.
But having that consistent thing so, for me: I had very distinct things like: if I
was in the beginning there wasnt as much supplements and it was a little bit
more difficult. But as supplements became more available, I would Im big on
the preparation part. So if I was gonna get on a plane to fly to Japan, I would
take either containers or later, when they were there, I would make my own
protein shakes. Id put the two scoops of protein in the thing, Id put some oil in
there, Id put whatever I needed, Id put the top on it no liquid in there and Id
stick it inside my carryon bag.
And I would time it in my head so Im on the flight for Its a 16 hour flight. I
need to eat every three hours. Im not gonna count on the food on the plane.
That would just be bonus food. So I have a shake for every three hours. And Id
set my watch to go off every three hours: Oh, time to eat. And Id get a shake
out, get water, drink my shake, put it in, go back to sleep. Whatever I needed
to do.
When I landed, I would check into the hotel. Second we checked in, Id ask them:
Is the gym open? Can I go train? Even if it was to get on a bike and ride for 15
minutes, reset that I learned early that it seemed to me: any time I did that, I
didnt get jet lag. Any time I did that, I seemed to we use wrestling terms like:
Id kick out faster. So while everybody else would be at the building dragging
that day, Id be like, I feel great. I dont feel so bad. Getting your blood flowing,
resetting your clock.
If we were in Australia, I would always that last day there, I would force myself
to stay up. Because then I could sleep the whole way home, and by the time
I landed, Im landing in the morning and its perfect. Im just waking up. And
Im great. And Id do the same thing: Id land, Id try to find a gym, whether at a
hotel or something, ride a bike, reset my clock, do the deal, you know? So those
routines and regimented stuff and same with my training.
When new guys would start a lot on the road, like internationally when were all
traveling together, its hard when you go overseas. Youre on a bus. Theres a
gym set up for you, but they dont know how like, How do I get to the gym?
Im not sure. Am I supposed to go downstairs, get on a bus? I dont know. The
guys would always come to me and say, Hey, weve always heard that you go
to the gym every day. Can I go with you? Id say, Yeah. Meet downstairs. A
bunch of guys would come down. Wed all go to the gym together. Because I
would go every day. I didnt like missing it. To me, it was that regimented thing.
And I can look back on my career and say, I think part of that regimented stuff
is why I was able to maintain it, or maintain that schedule. Because I was one of
the guys, also, that really, truly believed in that: when you make it, the job gets
harder. Its not the other way around. You dont make it and then go, Okay, now
I can cruise. Because now Im the guy, and now that means I can say, No. And I
can not do these things. I felt the opposite. When you get there, now its your
responsibility to not say, No.
So Ive had times where Ive worked 64 straight days. And everybody else
went home; I went on a media tour. Everybody else went back home; I went
to something else. I did that for years. And that regimented having those
distinct patterns, so to speak, I think helped keep that.
Tim Ferriss:
I think it helps preserve your bandwidth, also, for making decisions about other
things. So that you dont have to decide each morning, or each day, what all the
elements of your routine are gonna look like.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. Its funny. I heard you talk just recently I listened to your podcast, in my
research for this. Because Ive read your books, but hearing somebody speak is
different than what you put in your mind of how they speak. So I wanted to
Tim Ferriss:
Youre like, God, that guy sounds a lot dumber on audio.
Paul Levesque:
No, no. But you put something in your head and then get there, go, That is not
what I expected at all. So I listened to a few of your podcasts
Tim Ferriss:
I sounded more like Barry Manilow?
Paul Levesque:
Yes. Much. You spoke now I forgot what I was talking about.
Tim Ferriss:
That was bad Tim Ferriss etiquette on my part.
Paul Levesque:
No.
Tim Ferriss:
We were talking about routines.
Paul Levesque:
Its bad memory on my part, is what it is. Routines oh, I know what I was gonna
say. Yeah: I believe that training is almost like a meditation.
Tim Ferriss:
Totally agree.
Paul Levesque:
Like I heard Anthony Robbins say he didnt meditate because he didnt like
shutting off. Hes the opposite: he wants to just keep going. But I also believe
you need to reboot your brain, because your brain will get stuck in its like
when you go to sleep and you cant stop thinking about something you got
going on at work, and you cant get it out. And in the morning you realize it was
actually gibberish that was in your brain going on?

Tim Ferriss:
Right.
Paul Levesque:
I think training, when you do it well, if youre into it, you cant focus you cant
be in the middle of trying to do a heavy set of something and be thinking about
another project. You have to be in that moment, and it allows you to reboot,
which I kind of believe is what meditation and all that stuff is anyways. Its just a
reset button for a second that just allows you to go like, Okay. Start over. Clean
the plate, and now lets do this again. And thats really, to me, what training is.
Tim Ferriss:
Definitely. Digging a little bit more on the routines: for instance, in the last
lets just say as youve gotten older, in the last handful of years, what is your
pre-game ritual, if you have one? Before youre gonna go out and compete and
perform?
Paul Levesque:
So that just became a necessity of age. I never
Tim Ferriss:
And just for people listening, if you dont mind me asking: how old are you at the
moment?
Paul Levesque:
45. But so, for years, when I was doing all that stuff with wrestling, wrestling
all those dates and everything its funny, because some of the younger guys
would joke with me about it, like, Youre the old school guy. I would literally be
sitting in the chair up at we call it Gorilla position, right before you walk out
the curtain. Its named after an old wrestler, Gorilla Monsoon. But I would just
be sitting in a chair, my music would hit, Id get up and go to the ring. And they
would say, You dont warm up at all. Id say, A walk to the ring is good. Take a
good warmup, you know? Ill start slow. Itll be fine.
Now I have to stretch and warm up. And Joe DeFranco you mentioned my
strength and conditioning guy one of the things when Im really bad with
years and dates, but: four years ago, as my career was kinda winding down but
I was still wrestling fairly regularly, I had had this problem. I thought it was a
neck injury. And really having all this problem with my neck and my shoulder.
And I got into a position with the company where I needed to go make a couple
of movies for them. Long story, but I went to go make two movies. I ended up
taking about a month off from the ring to go make these two movies and then
was supposed to come back.
While I was making the movies, one day I went to the gym to train, and it had
gotten to a point where I couldnt raise my left arm up over my shoulder, and
my neck was really bad. And Id been going to see our team physician the guy
that runs our medical. And Id been getting stuck with needles and dye and
MRIs and things. And they kept saying, It looks great. We dont see theres
clearly something nerve going on here, but we dont know what it is. And they
kept doing all this stuff. And went to the gym one day and tore my bicep. And it
didnt hurt at all. It like snapped, I looked down and I had the big gap in my arm.
I was just
Tim Ferriss:
God.
Paul Levesque:
mad more than anything. I was like, Ugh. I cant believe that.
Tim Ferriss:
It just rolled up like a venetian blind.
Paul Levesque:
No. It tore at the top, so it just plopped down
Tim Ferriss:
Oh god.
Paul Levesque:
and made this divot there, right? And I had headphones on, and I heard it, and
I looked down and there was this divot. I was like, Son of a bitch. I cant believe
I just tore my bicep. So Im mad. I put my weights down. And literally, I was
done training. I was just gonna do a couple extra sets of biceps or whatever.
And I called the guy to come back and get me. And as I went to go outside I
was sweating and now Im pissed, so Im just gonna leave and I go to put my
sweatshirt on, and as I did, I put my sweatshirt threw my arm up over my head
to put my sweatshirt on and realized: Wait a minute. I can move my arm all the
way around my head like that. I couldnt do that
Tim Ferriss:
Your shoulder mobility got back.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. It was like everything came back. And: Hey, wait. My neck doesnt hurt.
It was all from this bicep. And I had to get surgery and the whole thing. But it
got me to a point in my head like: Im getting older. Im falling apart a little bit.
I have to start maybe I should think about trying to train like an athlete instead
of just being a bodybuilder and looking good or whatever.
So Im not a guy that just calls a local gym. I have to then dig into it. So I start
researching trainers and everything. And, ironically, I end up probably where
you did in your quest to do when you did 4-Hour Body, which is you start
researching all these guys that become the best at what they do. And I come
across Joe DeFranco. It keeps coming back up: Joe DeFranco. So then I call
Joe DeFranco out of the blue one day, and just say I was actually because
he was in Jersey and I was in Connecticut, and I was thinking maybe he could
recommend me to somebody.
And he said, Can I come and meet with you? Id like to meet with you just
so I can analyze the thing. I still had my arm in a sling and everything. And
just finished making the movies. I didnt have the surgery until after I finished
making the movies. And he came and, after we met, hes like, You seem like a
really great guy. Id like to take a stab at doing this with you. Ill drive up here.
Im willing to do it and drive up. And this is the thing: hes awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
Hes a great guy. And for people who arent familiar, hes very well-known for
a lot of reasons. But does a lot of work with football athletes training for the
NFL Combine. And thats how he ended up the chapters in The 4-Hour Body
where I showed how un-athletic I am, but how much Joe could improve my
performance, attempting to simulate the Combine for a handful of chapters.
But please continue. I just wanted to give some context for people.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. Thank you.
Tim Ferriss:
Great guy.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. And just wealth of knowledge. Incredibly smart. And he said to me, So
thisll be a difficult transition for you. Because your mindset is totally different.
Id never been with a strength and conditioning guy. Everything I learned in the
gym was from body builders or power lifters. I just went to the gym and trained
with guys and learned everything I could. But I was a sponge for it, and Arnold
was my hero. And just was a sponge for all that stuff. But thats how I learned it.
So strength and conditioning and the whole stretching and mobility was totally
foreign to me. And he said, This is gonna be a tough thing for you. Well see if
you can do it. Because tough with old dogs, new tricks.
And I just went to him and I said, Dude, I will tell you this: Im all in. Tell me what
to do. Ill go do it. But it changed my life. It changed my life athletically: I went
from a guy gimping going up stairs because my knees were killing me Ive
torn both my quads and my knees were really bad and all that. I have zero knee
pain now. Im as strong as Ive ever been. I dont have physical issues. But its
because of that type of training and Joe.
And he was one of the guys that got me: When you do wrestle, heres what
were gonna do. Were gonna get you in this kinda shape, and then heres gonna
be your pre-match ritual of your stretching and your mobility. Were gonna light
your body up, get your nerves kicking and firing. And then youre gonna go.
And thats what I do now, and it works out a whole lot better.
Tim Ferriss:
What are as opposed to going from the gorilla position straight out to the ring
and what Ill provide for folks obviously lots of links to everything that youre
up to. But also Ill ping Joe and get some links to exercises and some videos.
What does that look like now? What are some of the exercises or the sequence?
Paul Levesque:
Its a lot of mobility stuff: Cossack squats
Tim Ferriss:
Is that a weighted Cossack squat, or is it ?
Paul Levesque:
No. Well, it depends. But usually I dont weight if Im getting ready to go for a
match. But hell have me do Cossack squats into maybe just a squat but when
I come down Im pushing my knees out to the side to stretch my groin out,
into some type of eccentric explosive pushup, but just getting things to fire my
nervous system, wake my nervous system up, but then also just open my joints
up a little bit and just warm my body up.
But its never anything like I see guys running up and down hallways and doing
all these things to get a sweat going. Im never at that point. But when Im
done, I always feel alive. As opposed to just kind of physically shut down but
mentally aware because Im about to go to the ring. So no matter how many
years youve been doing this, youre still nervous and freaking out. And to then
have your body just kick in a wake up. But when youre there, you know what I
mean? And thats really what it is. He varies it, but its a little series of exercises.
Just makes me go: pu!
Tim Ferriss:
How long does it typically take?
Paul Levesque:
Five, ten minutes.
Tim Ferriss:
Oh, its nice, short and sweet.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. I just go right from one thing to the other. Its
Tim Ferriss:
Awesome.
Paul Levesque:
a good little deal, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Ill ping Joe. So people, you can find that at the show notes at fourhourblog.
com. The fear factor: what you guys do is can be very dangerous. I mean,
there are risks involved.
Paul Levesque:
Sure.
Tim Ferriss:
When youre nervous or have been nervous, what does your inner dialogue
sound like, when youre preparing yourself to go out? When youve been most
nervous? What are you saying to yourself?
Paul Levesque:
So its changed over the years. I used get really intense and really almost like
that same level of intensity if you were gonna go for a personal record squat
or something where you just get in that zone of intensity and just: nothing else
is around you and youre in your own little world and just on fire, ready to tear
through this thing. And that when I was younger that used to be the thing.
For me, now, its much more of an inner dialogue of: You have been doing this
for 20 years. You know how to do this. Relax. And this is fun.
And somewhere theres that inner dialogue in me saying, Could be the last
time you do this. Enjoy it. Undertaker and I had a conversation a couple years
ago about this. Its a little bit of: You can still do this and calming yourself
down. But at the same point in time, Dont forget to enjoy this moment when
youre out there. Because you might not get another one. You dont know. And
injuries do happen, especially as you get older. And you cant think about it once
youre out there.
And thats the thing for me: its always been this emotional and nerve and music
hits, and the second I walk out, its gone. Like I dont have any of it. When Im in
the ring, waiting for the other guy or whatever, I dont have any of it.
And its an interesting thing to me that Im friends with Floyd Mayweather.
Tim Ferriss:
Incredible athlete.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. And I was walking him to the ring one time, I think when he fought Marquez.
And we got there early and his guys came and got me. And I wanted to watch
some of the Undercard. And then they came and got me and they said, You
know, Floyd just wanted to say hi before he starts getting ready and stuff, chat
with you for a few minutes. So Steph and I went backstage my wife. And we
get in his locker room and hes laying down on the couch watching basketball
game. And we come in and say hello and all that. And hes like, Hi, have a seat.
Were talking a little bit. But Im trying to be ultra-respectful of him. Hes about
to go in this massive fight.
And the second theres a lull in the conversation, Im like, All right, man. Were
gonna get outta your hair and head back. And well come back here when its
time for us to get ready for your deal. And hes like, Man, you dont gotta take
off. You can sit down. Im enjoying the conversation. And hes like completely
relaxed. So another lull in the conversation, I go, Were gonna run, Floyd. I dont
wanna be in your way.
And he goes, Hunter, Im telling you, Im just chilling, watching the game. And
I said, Youre not wound up about this at all? And he goes, Why would I be
wound up? Im either ready or Im not. Worrying about it right now aint gonna
change a damn thing. Right? Whatevers gonna happens gonna happen. So
Ive either done everything I can to be ready for this, or Im not.
It was a fair point. I sat back down. We watched the game for a little more.
Tim Ferriss:
Youre like, All right, want a beer?
Paul Levesque:
He just is very calm and relaxed.
Tim Ferriss:
Thats amazing.
Paul Levesque:
And I think when you feel in your mind that youre ready, youre ready. And
youre gonna have those nerves, but you know its there.
Tim Ferriss:
When you were coming up lets just say when you had hit your stride somewhat,
so youre starting to make the assent through the ranks and really become
popular when you thought of the word successful, who was the person in
your head at that time?
Paul Levesque:
I dont know. Its hard to say. Because I looked at inside of our business, there
were guys, like, for me, my favorite performer character was Ric Flair. Just kinda
felt like overall he had the best package of everything to offer. You know, there
were guys that were great showmen, very popular, or guys that were great
at one thing. He had kinda the combo of: great in-ring performer and made
everybody look good, this great character, all these things. Inside the wrestling
business, that was a component of success for me: just that level of performer,
the way he handled himself in the ring.
I always wanted to be the in-ring kind of general and understand. And its one
of the things I prided myself on at the peak of my career, was: if there were six
people involved in something, I could tell you at any given time, if I closed my
eyes in the ring, where they all were. No matter how much they were moving
around and what they were doing, I knew where they were, I knew what they
had in their hands, I knew just on glimpses as I was moving around the ring.
I always felt like it was my job if something was gonna screw up, that was my
fault. It wasnt because he didnt know what was coming. It was because I didnt
control that. So I always felt like the control was mine to take, because it was
what I could count on. I couldnt rely on: this might get screwed up because
maybe theres a confusion between those two guys over there whore supposed
to do their thing. So I always took it on me to make sure I was there to tell them,
This is coming up. Be ready. Here we go. Get the chair, whatever. Flair was
very good at that. So that was, for me, from that point of view, was a success
component.
But there was a lot of things that I looked for. Wrestling didnt define me as
far as what I saw was successful. I looked at my father-in-law, now Vince. I
looked at that as a guy that saw a business that was one thing, but had a vision
of it being something else. He saw this little territory business and thought,
This should be one global brand that everybody watches, because the worlds
getting smaller. Cable is taking over. So he had this vision and then he just
kinda set out doing it.
I looked at Arnold. I remember, as a kid, reading Education of a Body Builder
and very structured, methodical set of: Heres what I wanna do, heres what I
wanna be, and heres how Im gonna get there. Those kind of things and those
kind of people were success models for me. Arnold was that in the structure. I
just said it to him a few weeks ago. I say this in interviews a lot: that gym taught
me everything I needed to know for life. I walked in a gym at 14 and I fell in love
with it. I fell in love with the end result look, right? Always in awe of these big,
powerful, impressive guys.
I think its part of what I dug about wrestling. I enjoyed the physical and all that
stuff of it. And fell in love with that really, wholly. Thats probably what led me to
the gym at first. But just the discipline of it. And the going to the gym when I
say its like life: the more you put in, the more you get out. The harder you work,
the better the results. If youre willing to prepare, to sacrifice and its not just
about to the gym, lifting weights, and then going out and goofing off the rest of
the time. Its your life. So if you discipline your diet, if you discipline your rest, if
you dont go to the party with your friends, if you dont do all these things, your
results follow suit.
I just got inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame Arnolds
International Sports Hall of Fame.
Tim Ferriss:
Congratulations.
Paul Levesque:
Thank you. But I bring it up because Evander Holyfield was there. And he told
this story. And Ive never heard it said this way before. And Im sorry, Evander,
but Im gonna steal this. He told me that he was giving his speech and he said
that his coach at one point in time told him, like his very first day, he said, You
could be the next Mohammed Ali. And he said, Do you wanna do that? And
he said he had to ask his mom. And then he went back home and he came back
and he said, I wanna do that. And he said, Okay. Is that a dream, or a goal?
Because theres a difference.
Id never heard it said that way, but it struck to me. So much so that Ive said
it to my kid now: Is that a dream, or a goal? Because a dream is something
you fantasize about that probably will never happen. A goal is something you
set a plan and work towards and achieve. Is that a dream or a goal? I kind of
always looked at my stuff that way. So the people that were successful models
to me were people that had structured goals and then put a plan in place to get
to those things. And I think thats what impressed me about Arnold. Its what
impressed me about my father-in-law. To this day, hes still very much a: Heres
the goal. Now heres how Im gonna get there.
Tim Ferriss:
Energizer bunny. Thats an amazing man. You guys seem like peas in a pod
from a stamina and endurance standpoint.
Paul Levesque:
You know, and Ive heard you say it before: when you have that goal in mind, now
its not, Ugh, I gotta do this thing to get that done. You cant wait to do that
thing to get that done, because its gonna get you closer to your goal.
Tim Ferriss:
Right. Well, its the compass that allows you to find order in the chaos too.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
Parenting I dont yet have kids. That I know of. At some point I would love to
have a family. How do you think about being a father? What type of father do
you want to be? What do you think is important in that role?
Paul Levesque:
Thats a tough one. I have three girls: an eight, a six, and a four.
Tim Ferriss:
Very well-spaced.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. And thats it. Were done. Its hard. The pressure, as a parent hopefully
if everybody takes the job seriously, youre giving them the examples of how
theyre gonna live their life. Kids dont do what you say. They do what they see.
So how you live your life is their example. Ive heard it said, and I believe this:
the way I treat their mother and the way I treat them is what theyre gonna look
for in a significant other. You gotta think, So, what do I want them to have in
their life? Holy cow. Now I gotta do all that stuff. Its a lot. And then you add
in all the other things of life. Its a very difficult challenge. But you wanna teach
them right from wrong. You wanna give them a path and a direction, but all at
the same point in time, you learn as much from your failures as you do from your
successes, so you cant give them everything. You wanna help them so bad.
Like Im watching you make a mistake and I wanna help you, but go ahead and
make the mistake, because you gotta learn from that mistake, you know what I
mean?
And its tough to do. But you have to and theres no manual. Thats the hard
thing about kids. Theres no manual that comes with it. And youre just doing
the best you can. I remember when we got our first one home, the hospital put
it in the car seat and you take the thing home and then we walked in the door
and we put it on the step and we were like, What do we do now? We just stood
there looking at it her for a little bit like, What do we do? Eventually she cried
and we had to feed her and whatever. But you dont know what to do. Its like,
We have a kid. Holy cow.
Tim Ferriss:
You figure it out as you go.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. Luckily I like, I gotta go on the road.
Tim Ferriss:
The aspect of routines that we touched on earlier, Id love to bring back into focus
for a second, specifically morning routines. What does the first 60 minutes of
your day look like? And Ill probably ask a bunch of really irritating and nitpicky
questions because thats how I am. But when do you wake up? What does the
first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. So I wish I had a really cool example of that. Like Anthony Robbins
Tim Ferriss:
I wake up, I go in a Cryochamber.
Paul Levesque:
Ive got the Cryochamber. Hes got this elaborate ritual of mind-altering
spiritual jumping in a hot tank and a cold tank and a mine involves my kids
waking up at an ungodly hour after I you know, we work under the premise
of my wife and I and, to me, she gets this even more than I do because shes
got all the roles and all the stuff and then shes Mom.
And when youre the dad, its a big responsibility but the mom if anything
happens, if they wake up, they go to her first. When the kids wake up in the
middle of the night, unless theyre scared they might call Dad if theyre scared,
but usually its Mom because they just Moms more the comforter, right? So
its all those things. So thats a even harder job.
But we train late at night. We try to get home every night no matter what to
spend a little bit of time with them and put them down. And read them a book,
whatever, get them in bed. So Joe comes to my house around 10:00.
Tim Ferriss:
P.m.?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. So I get them done, we get them in bed, change, and then Joes there.
And we start training. And usually by the time you warm up takes me a while
to warm up at 10:00 at night. You train and do all the stuff. By the time we
get done, usually its 1:00, in that ballpark. And then you get into bed after
1:00. Theyre up at like 6:00 at the latest. And theyre in the room. So theres
no really cool ritual. I wish I could say I jump in a Cryochamber. Its usually me
stumbling downstairs with them to try to make every morning, my ritual is
also, ironically, out of your book, Dave Palumbo is
Tim Ferriss:
Jumbo Palumbo.
Paul Levesque:
Ive been friends with him for years, and hes a bigketogenic diet guy. So he
works with my diet a lot when Im getting ready for a WrestleMania. So Daves
kinda my diet guy. I use his protein powder, Species Protein. But so: every
morning, roll downstairs, two scoops of whey protein, a bunch of Starbucks
coffee, powdered Starbucks coffee, some macadamia nut oil, and I make a
shake. And thats the start. You gotta get the kick-in going.
Tim Ferriss:
So its powdered Starbucks, macadamia nut oil what else was in there?
Paul Levesque:
Two scoops of Isolyze protein and some ice, blend it all up. Its a Starbucks
smoothie kind of concoction, but very healthy, and has enough caffeine in there
to at least make me realize whats going on.
My wife and I get them ready for school, jump in the shower. Depending if Im
getting ready for WrestleMania its either: throw sweats on because Im gonna
bring them to school and then get a workout in because usually I train twice a
day when Im getting ready for WrestleMania or something but train and then
off to work. If Im not getting ready for WrestleMania, its: shower, get ready,
suit, bring them to school we drive them to school, get them to school, get
them in their class, do all the stuff, and then drive to the office, start the day, get
home at 7:30, 8:00 at night and repeat.
Tim Ferriss:
And this is all in Connecticut, is that right?
Paul Levesque:
All in Connecticut, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
And the HQ I wanna say Im gonna get this wrong. Its not Stanford, is it?
Paul Levesque:
Stanford, yeah.
Tim Ferriss:
It is?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. See it right from 95, right off the highway.
Tim Ferriss:
Close to the UBS building?
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. Down the street, not far.
Tim Ferriss:
Friend used live used to work there. I just slip of the tongue. Live there
was probably appropriate. He pretty much lived in the office. What is your role
currently at WWE in the executive capacity?
Paul Levesque:
So I am the executive vice president of Talent, Live Events, & Creative. So if

you look at the core of what we do as a company, from the product itself Raw
SmackDown, all that and were a lot more than that, because we have movies
and music. I say all the time, Its like saying Marvel a comic book company. But
thats the core of what we do. I control those aspects.
So: talent and that goes from we have a department, Talent Relations, which
is like their HR. And they handle everything that has to do with talent, from their
travel to anything that has to do with them: all the logistics of WrestleMania
week, what talent theyre doing. Theres 1000 appearances for talent, literally,
in the week of WrestleMania. They have to handle all the logistics of getting
who where, making sure nobodys late and all of it. Its a maze. To Talent
Development, which is the biggest, probably, thing thats closest to my heart
that I do, which is: where do we find talent? Where do we recruit them from?
How do we train them?
We opened a performance center in Orlando, Florida. To a developmental
territory or a developmental system that I have called NXT that has become
kind of like an alternative brand. Through to: how do they then evolve and get
into the main roster of the WWE? So basically what we did is kinda created
college football to get guys ready for the NFL.
And then the last part of what I do is Creative, which Vince is kind of the ultimate
filter of Creative. Im more while I weigh in a lot on that stuff and the content
thats gonna go on the network and all these things, and I weigh in on it from
a creative concept but Im also approving t-shirt designs and banner designs
and going through all that stuff, through all the different departments, and doing
the approvals of all that day-to-day process.
Tim Ferriss:
Sounds like quite a few hats.
Paul Levesque:
Its a lotta hats. Its funny: I used to marvel at Vinces ability when I first started
coming in the office Ive had a working, kinda behind-the-scenes relationship
with Vince since probably I started in the WWE in 95 since like early 96. I
just was always fascinated with the behind-the-scenes of the business and how
it actually all came together, as much as I was doing it in the ring. And he and I
just kinda clicked in that sense, and we started working together.
I didnt meet Steph, his daughter, until quite a few years later. And then we
ended up having a relationship and the whole thing. But I had this working
relationship with Vince. And as time went on and I got more and more involved
in that and then, kinda later in my career, he kept always asking me, When are
you gonna stop messing around in the ring and come do some real work in the
office? You need to be in the office. I need to get you in the office.

I used to marvel at how many hats he wore and how quickly he could change
them. You know, hed be talking about a foreign tour and box office receipts
or a touring strategy or a marketing strategy for that, and then two seconds
later hes looking at a t-shirt design and approving colors and that. And then
that would go away and how hes looking at some new talent or hes just was
so many hats that he wore. And it used to amaze me at how quickly he could
change gears.
And I find myself, now, having to do that same thing. And its really cool to see
yourself grow in that way. Because I used to think, But how does he keep that
all straight? And at first I couldnt keep it straight. And now you learn it. You
adapt to that process.
Tim Ferriss:
I know we only have a few minutes left. I feel like I could ask you questions for
hours. So maybe well do a Round 2 sometime.
Paul Levesque:
Id love it.
Tim Ferriss:
This is great. Id love to ask you some rapid-fire questions. And I think we could
do an entire session just on productivity. But just really quickly: what is the book
that you have gifted most to other people? Or any book youve gifted a lot to
other people?
Paul Levesque:
I dont know that I could answer that question. I dont give books much.
Tim Ferriss:
Not a problem.
Paul Levesque:
Most of my friends arent big readers, I guess. I need to work on that.
Tim Ferriss:
We can come back to that. What band or song have you been playing most on
your iPhone or in the car or otherwise, recently?
Paul Levesque:
So lately its been anything heavy: Metallica, Motorhead. Im in training mode for
WrestleMania. So at 10:00 at night I need to put something on the stereo that
just gets me in ass-kicking mode.
Tim Ferriss:
If you could only do one or two physical exercises for the rest of your life,
movements, what would they be?
Paul Levesque:
Wow. I think, at this age, if I could do freestanding bodyweight squats and

pushups bodyweight exercises would be where I would be at. Because I think
you can stay in phenomenal shape doing them, and you dont need a whole lot
of space or equipment.
Tim Ferriss:
I should, at some point, introduce you to a buddy of mine named Travis Brewer
who is a top competitor in American Ninja Warrior, and you guys could trade
workouts. I think that would be amazing.
Paul Levesque:
I bet you thats awesome.
Tim Ferriss:
Hes a little monster.
Paul Levesque:
I bet.
Tim Ferriss:
Thisll be the last question before I ask you where people can find out more
about you online. But what advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
Paul Levesque:
Dont take it all so serious. You know? And be more open. Man, when youre
so focused on making it and youre I always had fun in the business, and it was
one of the things that I can look at it now and say I didnt take everything so
seriously that it was detrimental to me, but there were times when something
happened and itd just eat me up, you know what I mean? And I would be just
couldnt take it because I was so hungry to get to that next place. And you need
to keep that perspective of where everything lays out.
Theres times when I over the years when weve looked at each other my
friends within the business, little group of guys, and wed always look at each
other, and at a certain point in time you just laugh and go, Its the phony fight
business where we wrestle in our underwear. You know what I mean? What am
I getting all worked up about?
And I think that is the biggest thing, is just: not taking it so seriously. And
then being open to stuff. Its funny: I mentioned that I listened to the Anthony
Robbins interview with you, and I was fascinated with it. I met Anthony one
time. I was probably 2000. I was just kinda getting to a high spot in my career.
And I just happened to be in a hotel. I look over next to me, hes checking in
next to me. I [inaudible] [00:56:47] big, giant dude. But I recognized him from
TV, and he looked over at me, said, Howre you doing? I said, Great, how are
you? Good. Then I grabbed my keys and I went and get in the elevator and
he gets in the elevator with me.
And he looked at me and said, Forgive me. I dont know what you do, but I
clearly see people looking at you, and I clearly see youre somebody and I dont
what do you do? And so I tell him who I am and what I do. And I said, Ive
seen you on TV. One of those two second chance meetings in an elevator,
right? And this really impressed me: that I get back a couple weeks later and I
get a big box of the cassette and his books and all his stuff that he had written
me this hand-written letter and sent it didnt know how to get ahold of me,
sent it to the WWE office. Whatever two weeks, a month later when I come
back through the office at some point in time in my travels, they give it to me.
And Im like, Wow. This is amazing.
I was too young and stupid and un-open at the time to foster a relationship or
I listened to the tapes and I read the books and all that stuff. And if Id have
thought about it, maybe I wouldve reached back out to say, Thank you, and,
Hey, this is really cool. And he invited me to one of his seminars. And I was
just, at that time, like, Im doing good. Was closed to it. I wish I was more open
to it. I wish I couldve had the bandwidth to not be so absorbed in what I was
doing and my moments going for that I couldve said, But this guy could teach
me so much. And, man, I should call and just foster that relationship.
Because he put the hand out and I was like, Gah. I dont need a hand. And
those are things that I look at theres other opportunities in my life that I wish:
Oh, man, I wish that was right in front of me and I couldve grabbed that but I
was too narrow-minded to see it.
Tim Ferriss:
Well, this has been fascinating. Youre a fascinating guy. I would love to do a
Round 2 sometime. But were out of time. I know your schedule is incredibly
impressive to me. Where can people find more about you online, say hi, and so
on?
Paul Levesque:
Twitter whats my Twitter handle? Its like @TripleH? I dont know. I just know
how to push the buttons on it. I dont actually
Tim Ferriss:
If you search
Paul Levesque:
@TripleH.
Tim Ferriss:
Easy peasy.
Paul Levesque:
Yeah. WWE.com is for our company and our site and all that. I do stuff on
Twitter, and whether anybody believes it or not, I actually do it. Its not somebody
else doing it. Its me. So if its terrible, it was me. If it was really good, it was
me. You know, if you wanna go back and look at my career, the WWE network is
a great place to do it. All the historical content is on there. Thats really me.
But, for me, Im I know you say Im fascinating. Im fascinated by this process
and what you do and how you do it. And Id love to do this again. Because I think
these kinda things its funny. A lot of things I said in here when you asked me
questions today I feel like I gave you long-winded answers. I apologize if I did.
But Im almost explaining it to myself as you asked me. I never thought about
it that way. So Im kind of explaining it to you, going, Yeah. Thats really cool.
Tim Ferriss:
Not long-winded at all. Youre a great storyteller. Youre a great story creator, an
incredible performer. And I hope I am Ill never be as big as you. But hopefully
I will be as bulletproof as you are when Im 45. So, until next time: thank you so
much.
Paul Levesque:
Thank you very much, man.
Tim Ferriss:
This episode is brought to you by LSTN headphones. LSTN headphones are

gorgeous, made out of real, exotic, reclaimed wood. But they are also doing
good in the world. Proceeds from each purchase help someone to hear for
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headphones since they came out, partially because the founders started the
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And if you wanna see the headphones that I travel with, that I love, both in-ear
and out-of-ear so kind of big ole old school headphones then you can go to
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I have used them for years, including to grab cover concepts for The 4-Hour
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And, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Chase Jarvis

So, Mr. Jarvis?

The tables have been turned.

Yes. Normally you dont videotape it, right?

Why dont you tell us where we are?

We are in a studio called CreativeLive, which is a start-up based here in San

It had to be a good number of years ago.

Weve had a lot of adventures.

We have had some good adventures.

Wow, people are going to be so disappointed with this third podcast.

Did you just call me manager?

Perfect, yes, I love Dilbert.

I had that little part in Office Space. That was cool.

My first paying gig was-

Youre already time traveling.

Im going to continue to bring us back to that because I think thats a really

Where did you grow up?

My childhood was a very creative childhood. My parents would give me a block

What did your parents do?

What did you play?

Soccer and football.

Which one were you better at?

I had opportunities to play either in college... I ended up playing soccer at San

You were going to say handsome, werent you?

Im dashing. If you could only smell...

It smells really good.

Staving artist. Those two go together.

They do, they do.

Im not saying in reality, but in mass perception.

Yeah, culturally. I, again, recoiled from that thought.

Your first act of photography was in college?

Immediately after college. My grandfather died two days before my college

very passionate about it so it was easy to make connections in that community.

There was that one time.

Nice. Thats a big first sale.

What were you doing for $10.00 an hour?

I have a pretty good YouTube channel. Its just Youtube.com/ChaseJarvis. I think

I get paid very well on top of all that stuff.

You get paid very well on top of it.

writer. Then you have all these...

Youre blocking my shot there with your hand.

I know. Youre a professional. Its like...

You have to claw your way.

You talking about your wife or photography?

I think theres a way to extrapolate that to every profession. Weve talked to

If it goes sideways, theyre done.

Right, and thats the point I was trying to make.

Ive got to stop that 8,000-page stuff. My God.

Were killing it in audio right now.

Tools... This is going to be a date. Date myself idea here.

Its already a date.

Just two men getting together.

As opposed to trying to get better at zigging.

Andy Warhol, what where the names again?

Traitor to the guild.

What started off by sharing my experiences ultimately hacked the system.

There was a couple of Austrians that had very thick accents.

How far back was this?

This was 90s.

[Imitates Arnold Schwarzenegger] California.

Super short, that books like that big.

I know. Its like bleeding a stone here.

Get in line. Thats 100 Facebook ads.

Ive seen your Facebook.