#743: Dr. Jane Goodall and Cal Fussman

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0:04:08 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:04:14 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:04:16 No, I would have seen it in a perfect time.
0:04:18 What if I did the opposite?
0:04:20 I’m a cyber-nerdy organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.
0:04:23 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.
0:04:34 This is Tim Ferriss.
0:04:35 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with
0:04:39 world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books,
0:04:44 and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives.
0:04:48 This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary,
0:04:54 which is insane to think about, and past one billion downloads.
0:04:58 To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites
0:05:03 from more than 700 episodes over the last decade.
0:05:06 I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes.
0:05:10 And internally, we’ve been calling these the super combo episodes
0:05:14 because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks,
0:05:19 but to also introduce you to lesser-known people I consider stars.
0:05:24 These are people who have transformed my life,
0:05:26 and I feel like they can do the same for many of you.
0:05:29 Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode.
0:05:34 Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together.
0:05:39 And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim.log/combo.
0:05:46 And now, without further ado, please enjoy, and thank you for listening.
0:05:51 First up, Dr. Jane Goodall, English primatologist and anthropologist,
0:05:57 considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees,
0:06:00 and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots and Shoots program,
0:06:05 building a better tomorrow by empowering young people
0:06:09 to affect positive change in their communities.
0:06:11 You can find Dr. Goodall on Twitter and Instagram @janegoodallinst.
0:06:19 I would love just to spend a moment, and we don’t have to spend a lot of time on this,
0:06:23 but discussing Louis Leakey.
0:06:26 And I’ve read various accounts of how you connected with him,
0:06:31 but I’d like to hear it directly from you.
0:06:34 And perhaps you could describe what it was that he saw in you,
0:06:37 but that initial contact and how that came to be is of great interest to me.
0:06:41 So if you could speak to that, I would appreciate it.
0:06:44 Okay, well, I’d been staying with my friend for about, I suppose, a couple of months.
0:06:50 And somebody said to me at a party,
0:06:53 if you’re interested in animals, you really should meet Louis Leakey.
0:06:57 He was curator at that time of the Natural History Museum,
0:07:01 but of course, he’s best known as a very eminent paleontologist.
0:07:06 He spent his life with his second wife, Mary Leakey,
0:07:10 searching for the fossils of Stone Age ancestors across Africa.
0:07:15 I was very shy back then that I rang the museum and said,
0:07:20 I’d love to make an appointment to meet Dr. Leakey.
0:07:24 And a boy said, I’m Leakey, what do you want?
0:07:26 But anyway, you know, I was so passionate about animals.
0:07:30 Anyway, I went to see him and he took me all around.
0:07:33 He asked me many questions about the stuffed animals that were there.
0:07:38 And I think he was impressed that because I’d read everything I could about Africa,
0:07:43 I could answer so many of his questions.
0:07:46 Well, I mentioned earlier that boring secretarial course that I did.
0:07:51 Two days before I met Leakey, his secretary had suddenly quit.
0:07:56 He needed a secretary, and there I was.
0:07:59 We never know in this life.
0:08:00 So I’m suddenly surrounded by people who can answer all my questions
0:08:06 about the mammals and the birds and the reptiles, the amphibians,
0:08:10 the insects, the plants, it was heaven.
0:08:13 Oh, you asked Leakey, what did he see in me?
0:08:16 He had a feeling that women made better observers.
0:08:20 He thought they were more patient.
0:08:22 He also wanted somebody to go and study chimpanzees
0:08:28 because of his interest in human evolution.
0:08:31 So the fossils of early man that he was uncovering
0:08:35 can tell a lot from our fossil.
0:08:37 But whether the creature walked upright and muscle attachments,
0:08:41 the wear of the tooth shows you roughly the kind of diet,
0:08:45 but behavior doesn’t fossilize.
0:08:47 So he reckoned there was an ape-like, human-like common ancestor
0:08:52 about six million years ago, just now generally accepted.
0:08:56 And that he thought, well, if Jane finds behavior in chimps and humans today
0:09:02 that is similar or the same, maybe it came directly from the common ancestor
0:09:09 and has been with us through our long separate evolutionary journeys,
0:09:13 in which case he could have a better way of imagining
0:09:16 how his early humans used to behave.
0:09:19 So he wanted a mind uncluttered by the reductionist thinking
0:09:26 of the animal behavior people at the time.
0:09:29 It was a very new science.
0:09:31 They were anxious to make it a hard science, which it shouldn’t be.
0:09:35 And so the fact I hadn’t been to college was a plus,
0:09:38 and the fact that I was a woman was a plus.
0:09:41 So I would just fish it nucky.
0:09:43 He seems to have picked the winning lottery ticket,
0:09:46 or at least a very formidable combination of traits.
0:09:51 And if we take that mention of patience or his belief
0:09:55 that in part women make better observers because of more patience,
0:10:00 if we flash forward then to you landing in Gombe,
0:10:06 Stream National Park, Tanzania, if I’m getting the pronunciation correct,
0:10:09 I was watching the first Nat Geo,
0:10:12 or maybe not the first, but one of the more recent Nat Geo
0:10:15 documentaries about you titled Jane.
0:10:18 And in that, and also in your writing,
0:10:21 I believe it took something like five months of constant effort
0:10:27 and having chimpanzees flee from your presence
0:10:32 to finally be what we might call accepted.
0:10:36 And I have two questions related to that.
0:10:38 The first is, what do you think made the difference?
0:10:43 Why did they go from fleeing to accepting?
0:10:45 And second is, when you first really had the opportunity
0:10:50 to look deeply into a chimpanzee’s eyes,
0:10:54 what did you see, and just as importantly, what did you feel?
0:10:57 Well, the acceptance in the movie,
0:11:00 it sort of looked as though they suddenly accepted me.
0:11:03 It wasn’t like that.
0:11:04 It was very gradual.
0:11:05 And it was partly thanks to this one male
0:11:08 who began to lose his fear much ahead of the others.
0:11:12 I called him David Greybeard because he had a lovely white beard.
0:11:15 And because he began to let me get closer and closer,
0:11:21 I think if I came to a group in the forest and he was with that group,
0:11:26 because they separate into separate small groups and sometimes alone,
0:11:31 but if he was there, then the others were ready to run,
0:11:34 but he was sitting calmly.
0:11:35 And I suppose that made them feel, well,
0:11:38 she can’t be so dangerous after all.
0:11:40 So gradually I could get closer.
0:11:43 And the first time I came close to a group that didn’t run away,
0:11:48 I think was one of the proudest moments of my life.
0:11:51 You know, it made it just in time for the six months money ran out.
0:11:55 So the fact that I’d seen David Greybeard use and make tools to pitch the termites
0:12:02 thought to be something only humans were capable of.
0:12:06 That’s what brought the geographic in right at the beginning.
0:12:09 Six months after the study began, they agreed to go on funding it.
0:12:14 Was David Greybeard the first chimpanzee that you were able to
0:12:20 get close enough to to sort of connect eye to eye with?
0:12:24 Definitely.
0:12:26 What did you see and feel when you had that opportunity?
0:12:29 Well, I saw that I was looking to the eyes of a thinking feeling being.
0:12:35 And it was not so surprising as you might think,
0:12:40 because I’d always felt that animals were thinking feeling beings.
0:12:46 But with a chimpanzee, they’re so like us, behaviorally and biologically,
0:12:52 that it’s not like looking at another human.
0:12:56 It’s different.
0:12:56 And I can’t explain how it’s different.
0:12:59 But it was a very magical moment because he looked back.
0:13:04 That was the thing.
0:13:04 He didn’t run.
0:13:06 He just sat there and looked back at me.
0:13:09 I would love to ask questions about what we might learn and what perhaps you’ve learned
0:13:18 about human nature or even questions that have been raised in your
0:13:22 interactions and observations of chimpanzees.
0:13:25 And you mentioned it briefly, but it’s hard to overstate just how incredible
0:13:33 and shocking and world-shattering for many people.
0:13:37 It was that you observed chimpanzees not just using tools,
0:13:42 but constructing tools for, in this case, consuming termites.
0:13:47 I mean, it made news around the world.
0:13:50 You had many other observations.
0:13:52 I believe also that the belief that chimpanzees were purely vegetarians.
0:13:56 Also, you observed not to be the case with their consumption of other primates, exactly.
0:14:03 You noted, and I know this was a real, in some eyes, a faux pas at the time,
0:14:10 real personalities.
0:14:12 And you might have been accused of anthropomorphism and all of these things.
0:14:14 But you observed different personalities in different chimpanzees.
0:14:20 And I thought perhaps we could just start with a story.
0:14:25 And that is the story of Old Man and Mark Cusano, if I’m getting the pronunciation right.
0:14:31 And then I have questions about a few other chimpanzees you personally
0:14:35 had quite a bit of interaction with.
0:14:37 Mark Cusano and Old Man.
0:14:40 So it’s on an island in Lyon Country, Safari in Florida.
0:14:44 And Old Man had been in a medical research lab.
0:14:50 He’d been captured from the wild.
0:14:52 His mother was shot.
0:14:53 And he was called Old Man because an infant chimp who’s distressed and frightened,
0:14:59 they have wrinkled faces and they huddle and they don’t look very old.
0:15:03 And he was lucky.
0:15:05 It was about 12.
0:15:07 And for some reason, he was now more used to the lab.
0:15:11 And he was put on an island with three females.
0:15:14 Two of them from medical research, one from a searches.
0:15:18 And Mark Cusano was employed to look after them.
0:15:22 And he was told, don’t go anywhere near them.
0:15:24 They’re vicious.
0:15:25 They hate people.
0:15:26 They might stronger than you.
0:15:27 They’ll kill you.
0:15:28 So he threw food from his little paddle boat onto the island
0:15:33 and began watching the man.
0:15:36 The baby was born.
0:15:37 So Old Man was the father.
0:15:39 And he felt, you know, these are such amazing beings.
0:15:43 I must have some kind of relationship with them, if I’m to look after them.
0:15:47 So he began going closer and closer.
0:15:50 And one day he held out a banana in his hand.
0:15:53 When Old Man took it, he said, I know how you felt when David took a banana from you.
0:15:58 One day he went onto the island.
0:16:02 One day he groomed Old Man.
0:16:03 One day they played an Old Man laugh.
0:16:09 And they became basically, it was a friendship.
0:16:14 And then one day Mark slipped into being reigning, fell flat on his face.
0:16:20 Unfortunately, frightened this infant who was another Old Man’s life.
0:16:26 Old Man needs to protect him and carry him and share food.
0:16:29 Well, the mother, hearing her child scream, raced and attacked Mark, biting into his neck.
0:16:36 The other two females to support her ran in one bit his wrist, one bit his leg.
0:16:42 And Mark thought, well, how am I going to get away from them?
0:16:45 Because they’re much stronger than us.
0:16:47 He looked up.
0:16:48 He saw Old Man thundering across the island with a furious scull on his face.
0:16:53 And he thought his time had come to die and come to protect his precious infant.
0:16:59 But what Old Man did was to pull those three screaming, rowed females off Mark
0:17:06 and keep them away while Mark dragged himself to safety.
0:17:10 And I met Mark when he came out of hospital.
0:17:12 He said, no question, Old Man saved my life.
0:17:16 And so, you know, I always think if a chimpanzee who’s been abused by people
0:17:22 can reach out to help a human friend in time of need,
0:17:25 then surely we, with our greater capacity for compassion,
0:17:30 can do the same to the chimpanzees in that time of need.
0:17:34 Thank you for telling that story. To what extent, if we take an example
0:17:40 from your personal experience, and I know very little about Frodo,
0:17:45 but Frodo seems to have been amongst the chimpanzees you had exposure to,
0:17:51 one of the more aggressive, but I’d love to hear you speak to this.
0:17:56 And how would you explain the variants among chimpanzees?
0:18:01 Was it also in appear to be innate?
0:18:04 Did it seem to stem from some type of trauma?
0:18:06 How did you think about that and perhaps Frodo specifically?
0:18:11 Well, they’re all different.
0:18:12 Some are much more aggressive than others, just like we are.
0:18:16 And Frodo was spoiled.
0:18:19 He was a spoiled brat.
0:18:21 His mother was the highest ranking female at the time, pee-pee.
0:18:27 He had one older brother who always came to his defense
0:18:31 as did pee-pee, and so he always got his own way.
0:18:34 And he was a real bully.
0:18:37 So it was two young ones playing, same age as him perhaps,
0:18:42 and he came to join them.
0:18:44 They would stop playing immediately because they knew if he entered the game,
0:18:48 he’d suddenly become rough and cause one of them to be hurt.
0:18:52 So it wasn’t just humans field assistants,
0:18:56 and especially me that he targeted with his displays, hitting over, dragging.
0:19:02 I got it worst of all, I was stamped upon them.
0:19:05 But he was not trying really to hurt me.
0:19:08 He was trying to assert his dominance.
0:19:10 And I guess they don’t realize quite how strong they are.
0:19:14 I mean, if he wanted to kill me, I wouldn’t be speaking to you now, that’s for sure.
0:19:19 Is the assertion of dominance, and I don’t know how much of this is conscious,
0:19:24 and I don’t know how one would even know.
0:19:26 But is that a conscious or potentially conscious political maneuver
0:19:34 to get better access to resources and so on?
0:19:36 Or is it really just a conditioned behavior based on, as you said, being spoiled,
0:19:42 and that just being some type of primitive drive that they have, and perhaps even we have?
0:19:49 No, because Frodo’s brother, before him, became the top-ranking male,
0:19:54 and Freud had a very different character, he was reflective.
0:19:58 He became dominant not through aggression, but through being smart.
0:20:03 Some of the males get to the top by sheer aggression, by bullying,
0:20:07 by swaggering about, waving their arms.
0:20:10 They remind me so much of some human politicians, it’s not true.
0:20:14 But there are other males who get to the top by skillfully forming alliances,
0:20:21 and they only tackle a higher-ranking male when their ally is there to support them.
0:20:26 And then there are some who just persist.
0:20:29 They persist in charging towards groups of superior males who are grooming each other,
0:20:35 startling them so that they run away.
0:20:37 And in the end, this was goblin, and in the end, I think the other male thought,
0:20:41 “Well, he’s just going to go on doing this. All right, let’s just let him get to the top.
0:20:46 We don’t care anymore.” That’s how it seemed.
0:20:49 And he ran ten years, and he was small, and he wasn’t very aggressive at all.
0:20:55 I recall a few years ago speaking with a friend of mine, who I consider to be a good father,
0:21:01 a good parent, and I asked him what advice he would have for someone like me,
0:21:05 considering having children. I have none of my own yet. And his advice, he had a number of
0:21:13 pieces of advice, but his first was, “Teach your children to be optimists.”
0:21:18 And it seemed like a precursor or a prerequisite for so many other things.
0:21:25 And I’m looking at a time article, time magazine article, that is, that you wrote in 2002.
0:21:31 And I just want to read one paragraph and then ask you to elaborate or speak to it.
0:21:38 Here’s the paragraph. “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
0:21:41 We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world.
0:21:45 For those of us able to read this magazine, and my side note or listen to this podcast,
0:21:51 it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.
0:21:54 You may be overcome, however, by feelings of helplessness.
0:21:56 You’re just one person in a world of six billion. How can your actions make a difference?
0:22:01 Best you say to leave it to decision makers, and so you do nothing.
0:22:05 Can we overcome apathy? Yes, but only if we have hope.”
0:22:08 And I’d love to hear you speak to that and also just to how you cultivate hope,
0:22:14 whether that’s in yourself or the people you speak to.
0:22:16 Well, you know, I have my reasons for hope, which I’m always sharing with people.
0:22:21 But this thing of people feeling helpless because they don’t know what to do,
0:22:27 this message of our youth programs that every individual makes a difference.
0:22:32 And, you know, if it’s just you picking up trash, if it’s just you saving water,
0:22:39 then it wouldn’t make slightest bit of difference.
0:22:43 But because people are becoming more aware all around the world,
0:22:47 then there’s not just you, but thousands, millions of people picking up trash and saving water.
0:22:55 So the message again being think about the consequences of the small choices you make every
0:23:01 day. Where do you eat? Where did it come from? Did it harm the environment?
0:23:06 Was it cruel to animals like the intensive farming?
0:23:09 Is it cheap because of child slave labor somewhere?
0:23:12 Make ethical choices. And because millions of people are making ethical choices,
0:23:17 we’re moving in the right direction. All of our young people, you know,
0:23:22 they’re influencing their parents and their grandparents. I know that because the parents
0:23:26 tell me. So, you know, my reasons for hope number one is the youth, as I’ve said,
0:23:32 because they’re just so inspiring. And secondly, to start by saying it’s very
0:23:39 bizarre that what makes us more different from chimps and other animals is this explosive
0:23:46 development of our intellect. I mean, look at what’s happening now with just social media.
0:23:51 It’s one example. You and I talking went far apart. We’re reaching millions of people. I mean,
0:23:57 it’s quite amazing, isn’t it? When you think about it. So how art that this most intellectual
0:24:02 creature is destroying its only home? So there seems to be this disconnect between the clever
0:24:09 brain and the human heart, which is love and compassion. And, you know, we’re thinking about
0:24:15 how does this help me now, instead of how does it affect future generations? So now we’re beginning
0:24:23 to use our brains or scientists to come up with more and more sophisticated technology
0:24:29 that will help us live in more harmony with the natural well. If governments would sponsor
0:24:37 clean green energy rather than that, succumbing to their ties with the oil and gas industry,
0:24:44 we could be more or less off the grid in many countries today. China and India are moving in
0:24:50 that direction rapidly and the UAE as well. But each one of us can use our brains to think about
0:24:57 the environmental footprint we make each day. And then there’s the resilience of nature. I tell
0:25:03 people stories about areas that were totally destroyed, rivers, lakes. Lake Erie was so polluted
0:25:11 that it caught fire. It was so polluted. And now there’s fish swimming in it because people cared.
0:25:18 Animals on the brink of extinction are being given another chance. We just have to save the
0:25:24 habitats. We have to change the mindset of those companies that want to destroy tourists to make
0:25:32 money out of wood or destroy forests to get minerals out of the ground to make more money.
0:25:40 But then we’ve got to solve poverty because as you quoted earlier, if you’re really poor,
0:25:48 what can you do except cut the last tree down because you’re desperate to grow food,
0:25:52 to feed your family, eat the cheapest junk food because you’ve got to do it to live.
0:25:57 So we have to solve poverty and the unsustainable lifestyle of the rest of us. But my last reason
0:26:04 to hunk is this indomitable human spirit, the people who tackle what seems impossible
0:26:11 and won’t give up. And they may die as a result of their conviction, but in the end they succeed.
0:26:18 You also seem to be, aside from an expert storyteller, very good at using imagery or
0:26:28 symbols, and sometimes stories themselves are symbols. But could you describe Mr. H? Who is
0:26:35 Mr. H? Mr. H was given to me 28 years ago by a man called Gary Horn, which is why he’s Mr. H.
0:26:45 Gary went blind when he was 21, decided to become a magician. Everybody said,
0:26:51 “But Gary, you can’t be a magician if you’re blind.” He does shows for children. I’ve watched him
0:26:58 three or four times now. And of course he sets his props up ahead of time. Children don’t know
0:27:05 he’s blind and at the end he’ll tell them and he’ll say something might go wrong in your life,
0:27:11 you can’t tell. If it does, don’t give up the small ways away forward. And he does scuba diving,
0:27:18 cross country skiing, skydiving. But I think most amazing, he’s taught himself to paint.
0:27:24 And when he gave me Mr. H, he thought he was giving me a stuffed chimp. But Mr. H has a tail
0:27:31 and I made him hold the tail. He said, “Never mind, take him with you and you know I’m with you in
0:27:37 spirit.” So he’s one of those examples of the indomitable human spirit doing skydiving when
0:27:45 you’re blind. Teaching yourself to paint. And there’s a picture in this, he’s done a little
0:27:50 book called Blind Artist, which you can only get on Amazon. And there’s a portrait of Mr. H.
0:27:58 He’s never seen him. He’s only felt him. And it’s unbelievable. And Mr. H, if I’m not mistaken,
0:28:07 has been many places with you. I don’t know if you still have Mr. H, but…
0:28:13 Me, do I have? He’s in this room with me. If I forget to take him to a lecture,
0:28:20 sure to be a child who bursts into tears. I wanted to touch Mr. H because I tell them the
0:28:24 inspiration rubs off. You said that your friend told you to teach your children to be optimistic.
0:28:30 It’s really, you can’t teach them that. But you can tell stories and tell stories about people
0:28:39 and encourage them and support them. I mean, so many parents have set views on
0:28:44 what they want their child to be. And the lesson they get from your mother is nobody was thinking
0:28:50 about going to Africa and living with animals when I wanted to. Shipped a few explorers, you know,
0:28:56 wanted to shoot them and put them in museums. But when everybody laughed at me and said,
0:29:02 “I’d never get there. I was just a girl. There was a war. We didn’t have money.”
0:29:06 Mom said, “If you really want something like this, you’re going to have to work really,
0:29:10 really hard. But take advantage of every opportunity. And if you don’t give up,
0:29:16 you’ll find a way to do that or something else that you really, really want to do.”
0:29:21 That wisdom I take and share with young people everywhere, especially in disadvantaged communities.
0:29:29 And I wish mom knew how many people have said, “Jane, thank you. You taught me that because you
0:29:35 did it, I can do it too.” I’d be curious to ask if you had a billboard, metaphorically speaking,
0:29:42 that could get a message out to billions of people. It could be a word, a phrase, a question,
0:29:51 an image, really anything. What might you put on that billboard?
0:29:58 Remember that you make a difference every single day.
0:30:02 Perfect. That could not be more perfect.
0:30:06 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:31:16 by Wealthfront. And now, Cal Fussman, New York Times bestselling author, writer at large at Esquire,
0:31:27 international speaker, and host of the Big Questions with Cal Fussman podcast.
0:31:32 Find Cal on Twitter and Instagram @CalFussman. Cal, welcome to the show.
0:31:39 Thank you. I have arrived. You have arrived. And I’m so excited to have you here because we’ve
0:31:45 gotten to know each other a bit over the last however many months. And it’s been such a joy
0:31:51 because as I’ve tried to delve into this craft of asking questions and crafting conversation,
0:31:57 I’ve realized there’s a lot to it. And I’ve been a fan of your work for so many years.
0:32:04 And the subtleties are just so powerful. And I thought that this time we could turn the tables
0:32:11 and I could interrogate you in public. I love asking you questions about your process. And
0:32:17 you’ve been so generous with your time in terms of reviewing some of my episodes,
0:32:21 providing feedback. So first and foremost, thank you for your work and for all of the help.
0:32:26 I’m delighted. You’re good. You’re good. I think I have a lot of room to improve. And so this is
0:32:35 one of these episodes where I’m a little self-conscious because I know that I have a very
0:32:42 unusual, memento-like, sometimes non-chronological approach to interviews. And for that, I’ll
0:32:51 apologize in advance. But we can do a post-game analysis afterwards. So perhaps we could just
0:32:58 start with something that we were discussing before we hit record. So we were talking about
0:33:02 the live event that was here in LA at the Troubadour. And we were doing a bit of analysis,
0:33:08 what went well, what didn’t go as well as planned, and so on. And I mentioned that I suppose due to
0:33:14 also some insecurities of a sort that I try to, when I do these rare live events, if it’s say,
0:33:20 two hours long, I’ll stay for an additional two or three hours and do Q&A or something like that.
0:33:25 And you said that’s straight out of Quincy Jones’ book. And so I know this is an unusual place
0:33:29 to start, but maybe you could just provide that anecdote because it seems like you have an endless
0:33:34 true of these types of anecdotes. But why Quincy Jones? Quincy Jones will go to a book signing.
0:33:40 There will be long lines of people. And he will not sign his name and move them on next. He will
0:33:50 stop, ask everyone who they are, engage in a conversation, and then write a personal note
0:33:59 in his book to them. And the line may be around the block, he’ll be there till three in the morning,
0:34:05 keeping the people of Barnes & Noble open, because he wants to make it a joyous experience
0:34:13 for everybody. So bravo, you’ve followed the master.
0:34:16 Inadvertently. This story, of course, if we rewind the clock, begins at the beginning. And
0:34:23 where did you grow up? I actually am ashamed to admit I don’t know the childhood background.
0:34:29 Where did you grow up? I’m born in Brooklyn and moved to Yonkers, New York, where I did
0:34:38 second grade and third grade. And that’s where I had, when I think back on it, like a pivotal moment
0:34:48 asking questions. Because that time, second grade, was the time that I was sitting in Ms. Jaffe’s
0:34:56 classroom, and she came into the room, she was out for some reason. When she came in,
0:35:03 you could look at her and know something just happened that I don’t know, but it’s different
0:35:13 from anything I’ve ever seen before. And this was November 1963. And it was Ms. Jaffe who told the
0:35:22 class that President Kennedy had been shot. And so we all got sent home, found out that he had died.
0:35:32 And I really would love to see myself on videotape, like that night, because I knew, man, something
0:35:45 is going on here. They explained to me that Lyndon Johnson was a vice president, and he was now
0:35:51 going to become the new president. And I’m thinking, man, what must it be like to be that guy? What is
0:36:01 he feeling? Here he was. I know he probably wanted to be the president, but he couldn’t be the president.
0:36:08 And then he was a vice president, and now the president gets killed, and he gets to be the
0:36:13 president. So I picked up a piece of paper and a pencil, and I just wrote to Lyndon Johnson.
0:36:20 You wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson. I wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson and said,
0:36:24 “What does it feel like?” And about six months later, I got a letter back.
0:36:31 That’s incredible. And it was from his personal secretary, Juanita D. Roberts. And the cool thing
0:36:37 about it was, the first sentence was, “Thank you for the friendly thought in writing.” So I don’t
0:36:43 know what I wrote him, but somehow I must have tried to make him feel comfortable that this question
0:36:50 was coming. And then the second question was, “In answer to your query.” And what that said was,
0:37:01 she was treating me like I was legit. Yeah. You know, I had just turned seven.
0:37:06 Donified adult. Exactly. And you know, when you did the interview with Ed Norton, he talked about
0:37:13 having a mentor in high school who treated him like an adult. That’s right.
0:37:20 And that is what that letter felt like to me. And only now, when people are starting to ask me
0:37:28 questions, did this come to me. But that’s when I realized that asking questions is kind of natural
0:37:36 for me. So that was in second grade. Second grade. Now, I have to ask, when you wrote the letter,
0:37:41 something came back to second grade, and was it written on paper that had the dotted line
0:37:47 in between the intact lines for the lowercase letters? Do you recall the kind of paper it was
0:37:54 on? I don’t know. It’s probably on loose leaf paper if I was making a guess. I wish, you know,
0:37:59 I was talking to the historian, Robert Caro, who wrote volumes about Lyndon Johnson.
0:38:05 Also wrote The Power Broker. Am I right? That’s right. Incredible book. Exactly.
0:38:09 And here, this guy has spent decades knowing everything about Lyndon Johnson as possible.
0:38:17 And I’m telling him this story, and he’s like getting goosebumps when I say, Juanita D. Roberts,
0:38:23 you got a letter from Juanita D. Roberts. And he started asking me all these questions about
0:38:32 the letter and where it could be and how I sent it. And I realized as he was doing it, yeah,
0:38:39 he was made to be a historian. Nobody else in the world would have gotten that high over the words
0:38:49 Juanita D. Roberts. But some people are just born with the proclivity to do certain things.
0:38:55 What do you think, even if it’s God-given talent, what makes you or gives you a gift for
0:39:03 questions? I think part of that has to do with the evolution as an interviewer, as a journalist,
0:39:11 because as we talk it through, you’ll see that I interviewed differently when I was, say, 18
0:39:21 than when I was 24, and differently in my 40s than I was when I was 25. So it really is like
0:39:31 a lifelong voyage of learning about questions and reactions. It’s only when I started to think
0:39:38 back on that first letter that I realized, okay, this is, I guess it would sort of be like
0:39:44 being a basketball player, and you know that you’re born with big hands. If I go up for a dunk,
0:39:52 I can grip the ball with one hand. Carmelo Anthony can’t. It’s like a big secret. He can’t get his
0:39:58 hands around the basketball. He’s great, but some people are just born with big hands,
0:40:05 some people don’t have big hands. And I’m only now starting to realize, okay, I was kind of born
0:40:14 to do this. Did your parents facilitate that and cultivate that in any way, or was it not,
0:40:22 it was a nature more than nurture in the household? Maybe they did in that my dad loved
0:40:30 sports. You know, I grew up in the 60s at a time where Muhammad Ali came into play. He was my
0:40:38 childhood hero, and in some sense, that was the start of it, because he was more than my hero
0:40:47 just because he was the heavyweight champ of the world. And he could dance and make sure nobody
0:40:54 ever hit him. And then when he wanted to hit you, he could hit you 16 times before you even blinked.
0:41:00 And it was more than the fact that he could make predictions with poetry and make you always laugh.
0:41:08 His actions made you ask questions. He would take his Olympic gold medal and throw it in the
0:41:17 Ohio River. And it would make you wonder, hold it, how is it that a black guy can go when a gold
0:41:26 medal in Australia and come back after representing his country and not be able to sit at a lunchroom
0:41:35 counter at a Woolworths next to white people? He would defy the government and refuse draft
0:41:43 injunction, wouldn’t go into the army, and basically say, hey, I ain’t got nothing against
0:41:49 no Viet Cong. And he would make you think, hey, what is going on over there in Vietnam?
0:41:56 So that was a huge, huge part of my childhood. Did you have any particular career aspiration?
0:42:05 What do you want to be when you were a kid, say, from second grade onward? Were there any particular
0:42:10 professions that you knew you wanted to go after? Two things. I wanted to see my face
0:42:17 over a column in a big city newspaper, and I wanted to write a magazine story about Muhammad Ali.
0:42:26 Wow, very prescient. No, I knew what I wanted to do. Only later, after I’d done it so quickly,
0:42:37 did I realize, what am I going to do now, which we can get to.
0:42:42 So you mentioned 18 and 24, so two very specific ages. Take me to, say, 18 and then 24,
0:42:50 and contrast your two styles. But if you could tell us where you were at those two points also.
0:42:57 Sure. So when I grew up, I grew up thinking interview was Meet the Press. I grew up thinking it was
0:43:03 what happened in a locker room after a sporting event. So I knew, in order to achieve my dreams,
0:43:10 I need to go to journalism school. I asked around and found out University of Missouri had one of
0:43:18 the best. So that’s where I went. And I learned to ask who, what, when, where, and why, and went
0:43:27 through the whole journalism cycle. This was also an interesting time. It was a time of Watergate.
0:43:33 So journalists were seen at the highest point that maybe they’ve ever been. It was really
0:43:42 cool to be a journalist. A journalist actually brought down the president when they caught him
0:43:48 lying. So it was a great time. And I went into sports. So basically, after I graduated, four months
0:43:57 after I graduated, I was sitting ringside when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship
0:44:02 for the third time. A year after that, if you lived in St. Louis and you opened the post-dispatch
0:44:07 sports section, you saw my face over a column. And a year after that, I went to the big time,
0:44:15 New York, an amazing magazine called Inside Sports got started up. How old were you at the time?
0:44:21 I was 22 by then. And basically, this magazine was really unique. It was set up in the day that
0:44:32 Sports Illustrated was as big as it gets. And it was set up to compete with Sports Illustrated.
0:44:38 And it brought in all these great writers. And so I’d be going to the bar at night and sitting
0:44:45 next to Hunter Thompson, the Gonzo journalist would be throwing back shots. The next morning,
0:44:50 I’d be getting up and going on a plane to Pittsburgh. Wait, hold on one second. You did
0:44:55 shots with Hunter Thompson? Yeah, yeah. Okay, we’re going to come back to that. Please continue.
0:45:00 Oh, man. So this magazine attracted all these writers. And the guy who started it was a guy
0:45:10 named Johnny Walsh, who went on to start Sports Center for ESPN. So he just had one of the most
0:45:19 amazing things I’d ever seen at the time. I didn’t really even know what a Rolodex was.
0:45:24 And I walked into Inside Sports for the first time. It was a Friday afternoon. And I called him
0:45:33 up. And I said, Hey, like, if I come into New York to work, I’m not asking for a job, just
0:45:42 make sure I don’t starve. And he says, Come on in. So I showed the office at like four o’clock.
0:45:48 And there was two guys with a dolly stacked with beer.
0:45:55 A case after case of beer. And I got in the elevator right behind the dolly. They hit the same
0:46:04 floor number that I needed to go to. And they just rolled it out into the offices of Inside
0:46:10 Sports. And I said, This is where I need to be. And this magazine attracted guys like David
0:46:18 Halberstam, who was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, the best of the best. And basically,
0:46:24 I got to sit next to all the miles. Only a kid. I was 22. And every night, everybody would go
0:46:30 across the street to a bar called the Cowboy. Tony the bartender was behind the bar. And
0:46:37 at the time, I had like I had no money. So they would put out these little hors d’oeuvres
0:46:42 for people that that was like where my dinner would be if the guys would expense accounts
0:46:49 weren’t going out later, the mixed nuts and olives. That was their happy Maraschino cherries.
0:46:54 But it was great because you’re sitting next to Frank de Ford, who was like the big sports
0:47:00 writer of his day. Guy named Gary Smith came to work there. He was a national magazine award
0:47:06 winner for many, many years. And it was just a blast. It was the best time. Sounds incredible.
0:47:15 And then like a lot of artistic successes, it was not a commercial success. And like a lot of
0:47:22 startups, it went belly up. Sounds like the Paris Review and many, many others. There you go.
0:47:26 And so here I am in New York. And basically, I’ve now achieved everything I set out to achieve
0:47:34 when I was a kid. And I’m looking around saying, what am I going to do now? Where am I going to go?
0:47:40 I had no idea. Inside sports was not a job. It was an experience. It was an event every evening.
0:47:49 Who was coming tonight? And I didn’t know what to do. So I called up my mom and dad.
0:47:54 And I said, you know, I think I’m going to take some time off and travel.
0:48:00 My mom, who’s always really supportive, said, oh, Cal, that’s wonderful. And little did she know
0:48:06 when I said it that I wasn’t coming back for 10 years, but I didn’t know it either. I just bought
0:48:13 a ticket to go over to Europe, left with a few guys. And that started a 10-year odyssey of Cal
0:48:22 going around the world. Okay, let’s let’s say pause for a second. I want to do some backtracking here.
0:48:28 Okay. So the first question, and I have not forgotten about Hunter S. Thompson, but
0:48:33 when you said, please correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but I don’t need a job,
0:48:38 I just don’t want to starve. And he said, come on in. Why did he give you such a warm welcome?
0:48:41 He had actually reached out to me. And again, this went back to University of Missouri Journalism.
0:48:48 That’s where he had gone to school. So I found all through my travels, this school and its network,
0:48:57 I was always linked to them in some way. And you knew who was really good from that school.
0:49:05 Everybody knew it. And so if I found out that somebody was doing really good work and they
0:49:13 were an editor and I knew they went to the University of Missouri, it’s an easy phone
0:49:17 call for me to make. And it’s interesting because I didn’t make those calls often because there
0:49:24 was like a nexus. People bumped into people and you wereverted to the right place. And so
0:49:34 when Inside Sports folded, ultimately one of the editors there got the job at the Washington Post
0:49:42 Sunday Magazine. But when I was traveling around the world, I basically, I didn’t really write.
0:49:48 And I have so many questions about the travel, the proceeding contrast. So if we looked at, say,
0:49:55 how you interviewed and asked questions when you were at the tail end of your first
0:50:02 professional gig and then at the tail end of Inside Sports, what changed?
0:50:09 Nothing really changed there. Basically, the idea was to get the information you needed
0:50:14 for a story, to fill out a story. And so back in that day, I know it’s hard for sports writers
0:50:24 to believe it because they asked me to speak at colleges in front of journalism schools.
0:50:29 And in the 70s, women’s sports got no coverage at all. They would beg you to go into, to go to
0:50:42 their games, go into their locker rooms, whatever you wanted. I was talking to University of Nebraska
0:50:48 Journalism School. They can’t even interview women’s volleyball players in a very relaxed
0:50:56 fashion. They have to go through the sports information office and they won’t be able to
0:51:02 ask like personal questions. So it’s a completely different time when I would go out to do a story.
0:51:09 I might spend like a week, two weeks with somebody. And now that just doesn’t happen because of all
0:51:17 the proliferation of media and everybody’s asking for that time. So it’s pretty much shut down.
0:51:24 So basically you got to hang with people and the questions basically filled out the story.
0:51:33 But for me, it was very different than the next stage because that first stage was very
0:51:39 who I went where and why and what might have been underneath, what was your childhood like.
0:51:45 And it filled out a sports story. The next step that started when I was about 23 or 24
0:51:52 was completely different. And that was just to place it in the timeline. That was before you
0:52:00 left. Oh no, this was the moment I left inside sports shut down. And there was actually like a
0:52:08 run on the bank to go over. Seems pretty common. People to get their last checks. And right after
0:52:16 that was when I decided to start traveling. And that’s where interviewing changed for me forever.
0:52:23 Two quick questions before we get there. So the first is what was it like doing
0:52:28 shots and having drinks with Hunter S. Thompson? It was fantastic. He was a very funny guy.
0:52:33 And it was all anecdotes. There were a bunch of people in the bar. Everybody was telling stories.
0:52:41 It’s completely natural. What’s kind of interesting about my memory of it is later on I interviewed
0:52:49 Johnny Depp, who played Hunter Thompson. And he just reached into this vegetable plate
0:52:59 that was in front of a hotel. And pulled out a carrot and put it in his mouth the way Hunter
0:53:08 Thompson had like he was smoking like those long cigarettes. And he became Hunter S. Thompson.
0:53:14 It was wild. And he said, yeah, it comes out in me every now and then. The thing about Hunter S.
0:53:20 Thompson, you think about him almost as a caricature. But like at the bar, he was like a
0:53:25 regular guy just telling stories. I remember him telling stories of like being a bowling writer
0:53:31 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And we’d be laughing about things like that. So it was very human.
0:53:38 The conversation wasn’t with the caricature of Hunter Thompson. It was with the guy.
0:53:43 And when you went out to drink with the guys, hopefully with the expense accounts,
0:53:49 what was your drink of choice? Did you have a go to drink?
0:53:51 Back then was before I knew anything about wine. Back then it was like Guinness or Black and Tan
0:54:01 or maybe Gin and Tonic. Those were the three things. You know, one time I remember this
0:54:09 really crazy. You want to know why Inside Sports went out of business. They had one of the photographers
0:54:15 who had worked with Sports Illustrated in the past. And so I was sent out on a story with this guy.
0:54:23 And this guy was saying, oh, I got to show you how to use an expense account. I could see you’re
0:54:28 young novice here. And like before we do any work, he was straight to the bar. And I’m saying like,
0:54:35 are you sure? Like maybe we should go out and interview with him. No, no, no. And he starts to
0:54:40 say, you know, I think we need to have some green chartreuse. Oh, Lord. What? And like this guy must
0:54:50 have knocked the bar bill. And his point was, look, this is how we do it at Sports Illustrated.
0:54:56 Like if you don’t run up a bar bill like this, you know, nobody’s going to think you’re big time.
0:55:04 Sounds like fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Yeah, it was a little like that. It was all,
0:55:08 I guess, day to day event. And I was like meeting the athletes that I grew up watching on TV and
0:55:20 talking to these sports writers. And it was one of those times that comes around once in a life.
0:55:26 And then when it’s gone, you can never really have it again. Because part of it is your naivete
0:55:32 making it so grand. And then it was over. The magazine was dead. And oh, man, like at the
0:55:40 time I thought I got another like 50, 60 years of live. What am I going to do? So how did you
0:55:45 start on travel? I didn’t know what to do. And I had met when I was in St. Louis, a woman from France.
0:55:55 She came from Mont-Pasier. And she says, oh, like you have to come visit Mont-Pasier and pick the
0:56:02 grapes. So in my mind, I always thought I’ve got to get to Mont-Pasier. And so we bought a ticket,
0:56:10 I bought a cheap ticket to Iceland Air. They would land you in Iceland and then fly you into
0:56:18 Luxembourg. And the idea, I guess, was to get you to somehow stay in Iceland. It still is.
0:56:24 They still sell it. It’s like the stopover destination. Stay for a few days, please.
0:56:30 And you know what? People should, because one of the Playboy centerfold photographers told me
0:56:37 that that was one of the best places that he’d ever been to in terms of like meeting women.
0:56:45 He said it was like outrageous. You’d go there on a Saturday night and everybody knew everybody.
0:56:52 But by four in the morning, people were naked doing cartwheels on top of the bar.
0:56:56 Like, who would have thought of it from Iceland? Iceland, you know, it’s a limited number of
0:57:01 activities if you’re there depending on the time of the year. But I actually went to Iceland for
0:57:07 the first time with my family to see the Aurora Borealis about two winters ago. Just glorious,
0:57:14 fantastic, entirely mystical, word-defying experience. It really was fantastic. So that’s
0:57:21 maybe the other more brochure-friendly side of Iceland. But yeah, a lot of booze. A lot of booze.
0:57:29 A lot of booze. If you’re telling me. And elves. They like elves and gnomes also.
0:57:33 No, that sounds like a magical moment in your life. It was. It was.
0:57:39 Did you have like a notion of what it would be and then did it top it like by 10 times?
0:57:46 Well, the backstory, not to turn this into, well, I guess it is the Tim Ferriss show.
0:57:51 Here we are. But the digress into my own stuff for a minute is my mom had always talked about
0:57:57 wanting to see the Northern Lights before she passed on. And this came up many, many times.
0:58:03 And eventually I was like, fuck it. Why haven’t we gone to see the Northern Lights? Let’s figure
0:58:07 it out. And that’s how the trip came about. And in my mind, of course, the image was informed by
0:58:14 the photos that I’d seen. And it turns out that the colors that are captured by
0:58:20 all of the photographs or the equipment that I’ve seen are very different
0:58:24 when you see the phenomenon in real life with your own eyes. And it’s just the most ghostly,
0:58:30 fantastic, meaning like phantasm like experience that I’ve ever had visually without
0:58:38 any of plants. We really just got the Willy Wonka golden ticket because we showed up and
0:58:48 we were there for, I want to say, 10 days, which is important because you could have
0:58:52 a few days of cloud cover. And if you’re only there for a night or two nights,
0:58:56 you could go all the way out to the middle of nowhere in Iceland or Norway, for that matter,
0:59:00 or other places and never see it. But we saw it, I want to say, like seven out of 10 nights,
0:59:06 it was unbelievable. So it exceeded all expectations. It was really, really a trip to remember.
0:59:11 I just got to ask you one more question now. What was your mom’s,
0:59:17 what does your mom’s face look like when she got the view that she wanted to have?
0:59:23 Kid in a candy store or the description that came to mind first was
0:59:29 like a baby who opens their eyes and sees like their favorite mobile above them,
0:59:34 like just that completely dazzled look where there’s nothing else in the world that exists
0:59:41 for them in that moment, but just the pure joy of that experience. It was great. I mean,
0:59:46 one of the most gratifying things for me, certainly that I’ve ever done for my family,
0:59:49 which makes me feel like a bad son. But for saying it, well, that it took me that long,
0:59:54 but it was a great experience. I will say for those people listening who are thinking about it,
0:59:59 when I say they’re very limited activities, I really mean it in Iceland. And we stayed at this
1:00:03 place called Hotel, I think they pronounce it, but it’s oranga, R-A-N-G-A, which is in the middle
1:00:10 of nowhere. And if you do go, two things to note, it’s dark all the time. And number two,
1:00:17 there are activities that you can pay for, but they tend to be on the expensive side.
1:00:22 So you can take like a helicopter over live volcanoes, which actually was phenomenal,
1:00:27 or you can go say snowmobiling, et cetera, but they all tend to be on the pricey side. So you do
1:00:32 need to check your budget before you sign up for something like that. And yeah, it was glorious,
1:00:36 but the, so Iceland. So you got a cheap ticket on Iceland Air.
1:00:40 Cheap ticket on Iceland Air and landed in Luxembourg. And I was with a bunch of friends.
1:00:45 And how many friends? Let’s see, there were very interesting. I had, I mentioned one,
1:00:53 his name was Gary Smith. But for these purposes, I’m just going to say there was a friend who was
1:00:59 very skinny. Can’t wait to see where this is going. And a friend who was portly. Such an underused
1:01:08 adjective, portly. And I am completely, like these are my best friends, okay? The skinny guy,
1:01:17 the portly guy. And the skinny guy was just coming off a divorce and had basically felt
1:01:26 like his whole life had been constricted in this box around Wilmington, Delaware,
1:01:32 and wanted to go out and just see the world, see whatever, whatever was out there. And of course,
1:01:40 my eyes are open to this because I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,
1:01:47 but I wanted to see the world too. Montposier, let’s go pick the grapes. And then the portly
1:01:54 friend was a guy who was kind of like the mayor of his job. And the mayor of his city in terms of if
1:02:05 you go to the bar in St. Louis, he’s the fixture. Everybody loves him, knows him. And it’s the bar,
1:02:15 the restaurant, everything is very kind of fixed. The mic was always his or he could hold court.
1:02:21 Holding court, but even more than that, it was, you knew if you were in St. Louis, you knew if
1:02:28 you went to Llewellyn’s Bar at 830, you were going to see him. And accordingly, you know,
1:02:36 where he was going to have dinner is only one of a few places. If he wasn’t at one, you can go to
1:02:41 another. You know, the bookstore he walked into, the place across the street where we got chocolates.
1:02:48 So he lived on sort of a ritual. So now the three of us are let loose in Europe.
1:02:56 Now the portly guy’s only got like 10 days. He’s on vacation from his job. The skinny guy who’s been
1:03:04 working at Inside Sports with me, he’s got some time now. And I’m just kind of walking around with
1:03:11 my eyes open wondering where this is all going to take me. So we go to this mountainous town.
1:03:19 We end up in a mountainous town in Italy. It had two names because these countries would get involved
1:03:27 in wars. And then sometimes they would be wherever the winner was, they were named. So I remember
1:03:35 the the German sounding name was Dorf Tirol. And it had a huge mountain. And we found out that on
1:03:43 this mountain, Ezra Pound, the poet, had lived in this castle. So the skinny guys like all except
1:03:50 got to go see Ezra Pound’s castle. So we got to take a hike up to this mountain. And the portly
1:03:57 guys coming along and we’re having a great time. We’re talking and the breathtaking scenery. And
1:04:04 we get to this castle when we meet some people may say, oh, if you would just keep going over this
1:04:11 mountain, you will have an unforgettable experience. There is a farmer there that is living. You
1:04:19 literally will go back to the 18th century. That’s how this farmer’s living. Just keep on going over
1:04:26 the mountain and just walking down this trail. Not many people go over the mountain. But if you do,
1:04:32 you will find this farm, it will put you up for the night. Sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke.
1:04:37 And so we start to get up to the top of the mountain. And now it’s like getting darker and
1:04:45 darker and darker. And maybe it’s eight o’clock, I don’t know what time it is, but we’ve reached
1:04:51 like the peak. And now we almost can’t even see where we’re walking. But the skinny guy knows
1:04:59 if we get down this mountain, we’re going to have an experience like no other. And that’s
1:05:04 what he was wired to do. And the poorly guy is saying, hey, like, better Chinese is being served
1:05:10 down in the restaurant. And they both look at me and say, okay, what are we doing?
1:05:19 And what do you think I did? Oh, this is a toughie. I want to say that you that you went for the
1:05:26 village. But by the very fact that you asked me, what would you do? And you love both of these
1:05:33 guys. And you know that one guy really wants to go over the mountain. The other guy really wants
1:05:39 to bet. I say you can always get fettuccine. It’s not going away. But easy to say is the armchair
1:05:45 listener of stories, as is the case right now. What did you do? Well, I looked at them both.
1:05:50 And then I just realized, look, if something were to happen, like going down, I’m going to regret it.
1:05:58 And I knew in that moment, you know what, there’s going to be a lot of those moments where I’m
1:06:05 heading over the mountain. That was the moment I knew I’m going over the mountain. Not tonight.
1:06:11 I’m going to make sure my poorly friend is taken care of. He eats his fettuccine.
1:06:16 In a few days, he’s getting on a plane. He’s going to go back home. But after that,
1:06:20 I’m going over the mountain. And that’s what set off the trip. And it became completely addictive.
1:06:31 Because I woke up every morning not knowing what was going to happen. And then you asked before,
1:06:41 okay, well, where does the interviewing shift? So what happened was I had hardly any money.
1:06:49 And I would go to a bus station or train station. And I would just walk up, say,
1:06:57 where’s the next train leave out of? Where’s it headed? And they would say a name. I’d say,
1:07:02 okay, I want a ticket. So I would buy the ticket. Destination had no meaning to me whatsoever.
1:07:08 What had meaning to me was I never been there before. And I’m going to take this trip down the
1:07:16 aisle. The trip down the aisle was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle,
1:07:24 I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust.
1:07:33 Somebody who might be able to trust me. And the stakes are high. Because I know
1:07:39 that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home.
1:07:47 Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.
1:07:51 I was going to ask you how you paid for the trip. So it was just savings based until
1:07:57 it was extinguished? Well, there was very little money. I’m trying to let you know that the stakes
1:08:03 that were involved when I got on that train were very high. It was like an athletic event
1:08:09 where you were going out and you had to get a roof over your head that night. And I’ll tell you
1:08:16 how seriously I took this. And I’m going to tell you a story after this, which shows you
1:08:20 what I learned. I’m walking down that aisle and I see an empty seat next to a beautiful woman.
1:08:28 Right? I look at her hands. No rings. She’s looking at me. She’s smiling at me.
1:08:34 She could be a supermodel. I swear I walked right on by.
1:08:40 Why? Because there was no way she was taking me home.
1:08:42 There was no way she was taking me home. Now, nobody can see me, but if you saw me,
1:08:49 you would know the supermodel was not taking me home.
1:08:53 Hey, you know, in fairness, Billy Joel got Christy Brinkley. That’s right.
1:08:57 Not another no offense to Billy Joel, but he and I’m not comparing you to Billy Joel. I think
1:09:02 you’re a very handsome man. But just to say, I’ll tell you a story about this. These things happen.
1:09:07 I’ll tell you a story about this that I came to later regret that. All right. So this is years
1:09:14 later and I get set up working at Esquire where I do this, what I’ve learned column. And I get set
1:09:21 up doing an interview with Petra Nemkova, the supermodel. And I’m waiting for her. It’s supposed
1:09:27 to arrive at like eight o’clock or something. And she’s late. So I’m sitting there waiting for her.
1:09:35 And then she sits down and we start talking. We had this amazing conversation that people may not
1:09:41 know, but she was in Thailand when that tsunami hit in like a bungalow with her best friend who
1:09:49 basically lost his life. And she was swept away by the tsunami and narrowly survived. This is an
1:09:55 amazing story. It took an hour and a half just to tell the tsunami story. And she’s telling me
1:10:01 these great stories and we’re really hitting it off. And the interview is supposed to go for an
1:10:05 hour and a half. Like we’re at four hours. And it’s not an interview anymore. I feel like completely
1:10:11 connected to her the way I would have been had I met her on a bus or train. And I said to her,
1:10:18 I said, Petra, I really, I’m going to tell you something. I apologize. And she said, what for?
1:10:25 And I said, because all those years, those 10 years I was traveling around the world,
1:10:30 if the empty seat was next to you, I would have walked right on by you just because she
1:10:38 were good looking. And she had a very amazing reaction. She grabbed me by the hand and squeezed
1:10:45 my hand. And she said, well, don’t worry, Cal. Tonight, I sat next to you, which is very cool.
1:10:52 But it made me realize, and this is a, this is really, if you’re a good guy, who’s a little
1:11:00 scared to approach that woman, you should remember that story because they want to be treated normally.
1:11:07 And I was talking to another actress about this and she really started writing me. She said, okay,
1:11:15 so you don’t take that seat and now some asshole takes it. And I got to put on that asshole for
1:11:21 the next hour and a half. Thank you very much, Cal. So you walked by this woman when you got on
1:11:29 the train, walked down the aisle, you choose survival and housing over the prospective
1:11:36 walk by the supermodel. And I’m looking, looking down the car and, okay, that grandmother
1:11:44 with no teeth, eating the crackers out of her purse. There’s the winner. So I walk up,
1:11:54 sit down next to the grandma. Let’s say we’re in Hungary. And this happened in many cultures. But
1:12:01 for the sake of the story, and this happened in Hungary. I sit down next to her and
1:12:06 I’ll ask her about goulash. Now, of course, she can’t speak English. My Hungarian at that point
1:12:13 is, hi, how are you? I need to go to the bathroom. And some of the younger people on the train are
1:12:19 watching me and grandma try and talk to each other. And naturally they come over and they
1:12:28 start to translate. He wants to know what makes a great goulash. This grandma’s chest just bursts
1:12:38 with pride. And now she’s talking about her grandmother making goulash, her mom making goulash,
1:12:45 all the ingredients that go into goulash, how they got to be put together just the right way.
1:12:52 And then she looks at all these young Hungarians said, you know, I’ve been riding on this train
1:12:57 for decades. Not one of you has asked how I make my goulash. This American,
1:13:05 he asks, you tell him he has to come to my house because I am going to prepare him goulash. So he
1:13:13 knows what it’s like to eat goulash in Hungary. All the people on the train come along. Now I’m
1:13:21 staying with grandma. Not only does she invite the people on the train, all her neighbors,
1:13:25 all her friends, her relatives. Now I’m at the table room full of people. They’re all surrounding me.
1:13:33 The goulash is in front of me. And I slowly lift it to my lips. I taste it. My eyes shut.
1:13:41 And I smile. And there’s just a roar from this place. He loves grandma’s goulash.
1:13:49 So the party goes on for like four days. And during the party, one of the neighbors says,
1:13:57 well, you know, have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy
1:14:05 like my father. He lives a half an hour away from me. You got to come to taste the apricot brandy.
1:14:11 That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts.
1:14:17 Another neighbor comes over to me. Have you ever been to Kishkenhalis,
1:14:21 the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kishkenhalis.
1:14:28 Now we’re off to Kishkenhalis. I’m telling you a single question about goulash could get me
1:14:35 six weeks of lodging and meals. And that’s how I got passed around the world.
1:14:42 That’s incredible.
1:14:43 10 years. So what else did you learn about asking questions? Or if you want to tackle it a different
1:14:53 way, feel free to take it in any direction. But what are some common mistakes that people make
1:14:59 in asking people questions, whether it’s on a train or otherwise, but feel free to tackle either.
1:15:06 You know what? That’s a good question for a little later, because that’s what I discovered
1:15:11 later on at the time. And I’ll bring it directly toward hiring people, where questions are being
1:15:21 asked of job candidates, like, what’s your biggest weakness? Which they’ve already prepared like two
1:15:29 hours on how to answer that question. You’re not going to get a spontaneous good response to that.
1:15:36 I work too hard. Sometimes I get accused of being too detail oriented.
1:15:41 You got it. You got it.
1:15:43 They’ll do.
1:15:43 That is the wrong question. But we’ll get to that because I wasn’t there yet.
1:15:49 I didn’t even know what I was doing other than, okay, you’ve got to figure out a way to make people
1:15:59 trust you through your questions. And I no longer had to fill out a story.
1:16:06 I didn’t need a who, what, when, where, and why. It was just pure curiosity.
1:16:12 And then it zoned into this basic fact. People want to talk about their lives.
1:16:21 And often, especially if you go to a small town somewhere, people, they may not be able to talk
1:16:30 so much about their lives because everybody talks about everybody in these little towns.
1:16:37 And everybody knows the gossip. Everybody knows the feelings. And you have to keep
1:16:43 some things to yourself. But if this guy comes into your house and he’s from 7,000 miles away,
1:16:52 you can open up in ways and tell him things you would never tell people close by knowing
1:17:00 he’s going to leave. And keep in mind, this was a day, there were no cell phones.
1:17:04 There was no social media. There was no Facebook. There was no going on the Internet and finding
1:17:12 out what this person just told me. It was like a secret.
1:17:16 It was a safe haven.
1:17:16 Yeah, I was completely safe for these people, not only that, but I was a safe haven for a lot of
1:17:24 women because if they were in a small town and they are meeting somebody from their small town,
1:17:33 everybody’s going to know about it. But if you meet this traveler, your eyes are going to be
1:17:40 open to this new world. Plus, you can go over to the next town and have a meal and start talking
1:17:48 and get to know each other. And you are kind of free of all the constrictions of where you live.
1:17:55 And so, in a way, I became handsome. It’s like, I can remember in college going into a bar in
1:18:07 Colorado. And all the guys were like six foot… I don’t know what it was at night, but everybody
1:18:13 was like six foot four or taller. And the girls were over six, but I’m just kind of walking around.
1:18:20 I’m like much smaller. And I just realized there was… I don’t fit in here. It’s just a different…
1:18:26 I’m not handsome here.
1:18:28 It’s like every Dutch or Swedish part I’ve ever been to.
1:18:31 Okay, similar feeling.
1:18:34 Okay, so here’s… There you go. I’m traveling around, right? And I meet a six foot two Dutch girl.
1:18:42 And I want to share a room as we’re traveling. Okay, fantastic. It was so easy because we were
1:18:50 in a different place. And once you’re traveling, you’re a much different person than you are when
1:18:57 you’re at home. People see you differently and they treat you differently.
1:19:02 You see people differently too. Wouldn’t you say? I mean, in a sense that… I don’t recall who said
1:19:07 this initially, but people will travel to the other side of the world to pay attention to
1:19:11 things that they routinely ignore at home. Bingo. Yeah. And it seems like a modern day,
1:19:17 or I should say a different manifestation of this is sitting down on an airplane next to someone.
1:19:23 And you can get people to open up or they’ll volunteer to open up in ways that they might not
1:19:28 to other people because they assume rightly in most cases they’re never going to see you again.
1:19:33 That’s it, 100%. And when you talk about seeing people differently, when you’re waking up in the
1:19:40 morning and you don’t know what’s going to happen and then you meet somebody, the person becomes
1:19:46 like the most fascinating person on the world in that moment. And they feel that because you don’t
1:19:53 know their life, so you’re starting to ask some questions, they’re getting this attention. It’s
1:19:58 like you’re… I don’t want to say you’re making them into a rock star, but they’re getting the
1:20:03 same kind of attention, the questions that are coming. Why did you do that? What kind of friends
1:20:09 do you have? What’s this culture like here? And all of a sudden they’re feeling like they’re in the
1:20:15 spotlight and it feels good. And for women, it feels great because also now, and I’m sure,
1:20:22 if you’re feeling boxed in and you meet somebody from afar, oh, I wonder what it’s like in America.
1:20:28 Maybe you’ll like me. Maybe you’ll take me home with them. Maybe I can visit. And so all of these
1:20:35 conversations are just filled with possibilities and potentials. It’s beautiful. In both directions,
1:20:42 too, I think. I mean, I remember just in some of my travels, I mean, you come across not just the
1:20:48 natives, but you meet other people who are traveling from distant lands and finding their
1:20:53 own way in the same way that you are. And you start to wonder, well, maybe I should visit Turkey.
1:20:57 Maybe I should visit the paprika capital of Hungary. And it’s just that the endless possibilities
1:21:03 when divorced from the routine of your life at home that are so exciting.
1:21:08 It’s that. And also, I remember that the skinny guy were in Yugoslavia. And this was right before
1:21:16 the Olympics in Sarajevo, and it was cold. And I remember we looked at each other and just,
1:21:23 you know, it’s like too cold here. We didn’t have winter clothing. And I said to him,
1:21:31 you know, there are camel races induced Tunisia. And like a day later, we were in Tunisia.
1:21:43 We just got on a flight and flew to Tunisia and headed to Douz. We missed the races. But you know,
1:21:53 the next thing you knew was like, we’ve got pictures of us in like the middle of the Sahara
1:21:57 desert. And so there was just the possibility of, look, it’s even more like that now where
1:22:04 you got the internet to help you connect with somebody you can get on a plane and be in a
1:22:11 different world. Sure. Couchsurfing. I mean, there are cost-free options out there.
1:22:16 If couchsurfing was here when I was going around the world, I don’t know. I might still be going.
1:22:24 I might still be going. I’ll tell you that it was the end of the trip that changed my style of
1:22:28 interviewing again. But if I could have been couchsurfing, I can’t even imagine the potential
1:22:35 I would have had because from what I’m told, like you get raided, isn’t it? It’s sort of like Uber.
1:22:41 You rate the driver. That’s right. So you rate the place you stay and they rate the guest.
1:22:46 So basically, I’m coming in with all these stories to regale you from these different parts of the
1:22:54 world. I’d get ratings across. I’d get five stars across the board. And then everybody would want,
1:23:00 “Come to my place. Please come to my place.” But there was none of that. And every day,
1:23:07 you had to get on the train or the bus unless people were passing me around. After a while,
1:23:14 it became easier and easier because it was, “Well, you know, I got a cousin here and then
1:23:20 I’d get off the train and the cousin would be waiting for me.” And a party would be waiting
1:23:25 for me at his house when I got there. So really, it was like a 10-year party.
1:23:29 I do want to get to the end of the trip and the impact on the interviewing. But first,
1:23:36 and I can’t believe I haven’t asked you this before, but how did you hone your ability to tell
1:23:43 stories? Because you’re very good at asking questions, but that doesn’t automatically make
1:23:47 one good at telling stories. Maybe part of that is through writing because that’s what I was doing.
1:23:56 I would interview people and then I would have to put what I got down in a specific order or a
1:24:04 non-specific order in order to manipulate people into leaning closer what’s going to happen, what’s
1:24:09 going to happen, what’s going to happen. Meaning like an in-media arrest sort of in the middle of
1:24:13 the action type of start to pull them in. Yeah, something exactly. You start it to pull them in
1:24:19 and then you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Now you have to go back to the beginning.
1:24:23 I suckered you in here. But then there are other more complicated ways where you don’t
1:24:31 start that way in the beginning and you save it for the end, but you do it in a more nuanced way.
1:24:37 It’s almost like, “Okay, I’m reading, but what is something?” Could you give me an example?
1:24:43 I’m so curious because for people who aren’t writers, maybe, and I’m not going to lose track
1:24:48 here, but I haven’t been to journalism school, but when I’ve taken some writing classes that
1:24:53 talk about the lead and you get at least for non-fiction stuff, you get a couple of statistics.
1:24:59 You need a couple of quotes. Three people is a trend and then you sort of piece it together.
1:25:03 Don’t bury the lead, meaning bring this sort of attention grabbing piece to the top and so on.
1:25:09 We talked about briefly the in-media rest. What would be a more subtle way to approach an opener?
1:25:14 Okay, so just say you had a murder story and you were operating by that principle in journalism,
1:25:21 like put it right at the top and then, “Okay, this horrible thing happened. Let’s go back
1:25:27 to the beginning and then now you’ve got to add everything up to see why that moment happened.”
1:25:33 Another option is to start it in a very ordinary way with just a twist
1:25:40 that tells you, “Something’s going to go on here. I don’t know,” and you just keep reeling them in
1:25:51 slowly. Just give a little more, “Oh man,” and then they met this person. “What’s going to happen now?”
1:25:59 And then you save it till near the end of the story. Part of the problem is when you do that in
1:26:06 the magazine, they’ll give it away in the headline. I was going to ask about the headline.
1:26:10 Yeah, but you can still use that tactic of telling a story that slowly grabs you and then it just puts
1:26:26 out a little bait and gives you that smell of something interesting here and then you’re dragging
1:26:31 the line so that they’ve got to keep following it and they’re feeling, “You know what? Something big
1:26:37 is behind here and make them get to the end.” And then if you can deliver, I don’t want to say it’s
1:26:43 orgasmic, but… You know, it’s funny. I was thinking of like this sexual analogy, though. It’s like
1:26:47 instead of the wham-bam, “Thank you, ma’am.” Quick fix. It’s like, “Okay, I didn’t think that I needed
1:26:53 some tantric sex in two hours of this.” Turns out it’s pretty great. And then you get the payoff
1:26:57 you’re like, “You know what? That was totally worth it.” You just named it. It’s the tantric sex,
1:27:03 the tantric structure storytelling. That’s it. Sting would love it. You know, six hours.
1:27:10 So at the end of your travels, what happened that affected your…
1:27:18 Okay, so I’m going around. I’m going, having a great time. And after 10 years, I mean,
1:27:23 I get a pretty good network of people. So I don’t really even have to rely on meeting somebody.
1:27:32 Your grandmother’s eating selfies. Yeah, because enough people know me and when you’re in Brazil,
1:27:38 “Oh, there’s this fazende de cacao, this farm where they grow the cocoa beans.”
1:27:45 Like, “Great couple, just go there. We’ll send the letter in advance. They’ll be expecting you.”
1:27:50 So I am, at this point, it’s almost like I’m a guest that’s now expected.
1:27:56 Part of the family. Really, I’m part of the family before I even arrive. And a friend,
1:28:04 the skinny guy, the skinny guy, got married. And he decided to take a year and spend it in
1:28:14 Cochabamba, Bolivia. So I hear that. And I’m thinking…
1:28:19 Hope his wife did be and knew that plan before signing up.
1:28:22 Oh, she did. I mean, that was it. Let’s do something. We don’t have any kids.
1:28:28 Let’s do something outrageous that nobody expected. And so naturally, I hear Cochabamba,
1:28:35 Bolivia, “Hey, I was in Peru. Now, skinny guys moving to Cochabamba. Hey, I’ll spend a few
1:28:44 months in Cochabamba.” So I’m there. And I get a call from the Washington Post Sunday Magazine.
1:28:52 And again, going back to this nexus, the guy in charge had worked at Inside Sports, and now he
1:28:57 was in charge of his own magazine. And he called me up and he said, “You know what? We’re doing an
1:29:02 issue about great beaches around the world. We know you’ve been to Brazil before. Is there a
1:29:10 story about a beach in Brazil that you could write up for us?” And at the time, I said, “Look,
1:29:18 I’m in Cochabamba, Bolivia.” You would think it’s crazy. But I was really getting into Cochabamba,
1:29:24 Bolivia. It’s a completely different culture. And there’s an Altiplano that it’s a landlocked
1:29:30 nation. You really are experienced in something different as a traveler. But I said, “Okay. You
1:29:38 know what? I actually heard of a beach in Brazil. You might not want me to go there because you’re
1:29:45 probably doing this as a travel issue to basically hook up with travel agents and airlines so people
1:29:53 can go to these destinations. This beach that I heard of is on the north of Brazil. From what I
1:29:59 heard, you can’t even get there unless you go on a crude sailing vessel and on muleback and
1:30:07 any other saying, “You know, why don’t you just check this place out?” So I said, “Okay.” And I
1:30:15 leave Cochabamba, I go to Brazil. And I end up in a city called Fortaleza, Fortaleza. And just as I
1:30:25 arrive, the first trip to this isolated beach, sand dunes that look like they’re straight out of the
1:30:35 Sahara, butted against the most sparkling waters of the Caribbean, the first tour bus is going to go
1:30:44 to this place. They’re going to be dune buggies. We don’t have to go by mule. We don’t need the
1:30:48 crude sailing vessels. And I’m just right on time. And so first bus leaves midnight, Friday night.
1:30:58 And I buy my ticket, get on the bus, and I let down my guard. And I spoke to the beautiful woman
1:31:07 on the bus on the way to the enchanted beach in Brazil. And that was the end of the trip.
1:31:12 And I would tell you the rest of the story, except it takes two hours to do. We’ll be at a,
1:31:20 well, you’re not doing it on tape, but if digital has any limits, we’ll be, we’ll be out of there.
1:31:25 But that the important thing about it was that was a moment where my style of interviewing
1:31:32 had to change again, because I was no longer traveling around the world. The woman and I
1:31:38 got married, moved to New York, started to have kids. And then I began to write for Esquire Magazine.
1:31:48 And all the things that I’d learned on buses, trains, I was then able to project into Esquire’s
1:31:58 what I’ve learned column, which consists of interviews with the most celebrated, accomplished,
1:32:04 and creative people on earth. I have the handy recorder, the H4N on top of one of these. In fact,
1:32:11 the what I’ve learned, this is the third volume. That’s the third volume. These interviews have
1:32:17 been done for almost 20 years now, with everybody from presidents to premieres to movie stars.
1:32:25 Basically, people that you know, the idea is for me to interview them. And using their own words,
1:32:36 show them in a light that you never really knew. So you think you know these people,
1:32:44 and then you listen to their experiences and you say, whoa, I never knew that about Robert De Niro
1:32:50 or Mikhail Gorbachev. So that is where these conversations on the trains were so important,
1:32:57 because I did not approach these interviews with Woody Allen or Wolfgang Puck, George Clooney,
1:33:08 as if I was a journalist. I approached them as if they were sitting on the train next to the empty
1:33:15 seat. And I just sat down next to them. And that is where the evolution continued until
1:33:24 actually very recently, it was 20 years. So it took me like 10 years to understand that an interview
1:33:30 was more than Meet the Press, but then another 20 to figure out that it was more than sitting down
1:33:38 with George Clooney and having the time of my life. Because the crazy thing happened to me,
1:33:45 caught me completely off guard, and made me think about interviewing in a whole different way. And
1:33:52 this was only very recently. Can you talk about that or if you keep that off? No, 100%.
1:33:56 Can you mention that just because you brought it up and then we’ll dial back the clock?
1:34:00 Sure. And can I show you something first also? I’ve digested this entire thing with highlights
1:34:06 and so on. There are notes on writer’s block. Jody Foster’s comment, one of my favorites,
1:34:10 just for folks, “In the end, winning is sleeping better.” I just love that. So good.
1:34:15 Highlighted Woody Allen. It just goes on and on. So I love this entire compilation and encourage
1:34:20 people to check it out. But what changed so recently? So I was asked to give a speech
1:34:28 on a cruise and I never, ever, ever went on cruises before. In fact, I got to say
1:34:35 it’s almost laughable because there are certain people like they hear crews and they turn up their
1:34:42 nose. And I think I was one of those people. In fact, I had a friend who’s a writer and his wife
1:34:49 wanted to go on a cruise. And she kept on pestering and pestering him. And my wife finally said to him,
1:34:56 “Why don’t you take your wife on a cruise?” And he said, “Because I draw the line.”
1:35:02 I said, “Oh, man. Maybe I think about cruises that way.” And then I was invited to speak on a
1:35:12 cruise, but it was a special cruise. It was a cruise called Summit at Sea. Yep. And by the
1:35:18 Summit Series, guys. Okay. So you know these folks and basically it’s a cruise ship filled
1:35:25 with 4,000 entrepreneurial minds. And that was wild to begin with because I had never,
1:35:35 I had limited experiences with entrepreneurs. And then you put yourself on a ship with 4,000
1:35:44 entrepreneurs. Your life is going to change. A lot of potential energy. Yeah. It’s like
1:35:48 Ted plus Coachella plus infinite amounts of alcohol. There you go. And you can’t even get on an
1:35:56 elevator without meeting somebody. Somebody on the elevator is going to say, “What’s your name?
1:36:04 I’m Michael. This is where I work. This is what I do. Who are you?” I felt at the end of like three
1:36:10 days and my head was really, it was like getting pumped up with Achilleum. I was about to explode.
1:36:16 It was an amazing experience. And like you’re sitting down and like at dinner and the guy next
1:36:21 to you says, “Oh, this is the rocket ship I’m building. You want to see?” And he pulls out his
1:36:26 phone and he shows you his rocket ship. This is like wild. And it was like traveling around the
1:36:32 world, except the world came to you. I think Jane Goodall was there also. I mean, it just goes on
1:36:37 and on. And like the world is coming to you and wanting to hear you and tell you what they’re
1:36:44 up to. So like in three days at Summit at Sea, you literally can go around the world.
1:36:51 And I was totally unprepared for this. I was asked to give a speech called “Decoding the Art of the
1:36:58 Interview.” And I never spoken before. Didn’t know what it was going to be like. But I have
1:37:05 experience with Mikhail Gorbachev and Donald Trump and De Niro and Muhammad Ali later on
1:37:13 in life that they’re good stories. And so I’ve been telling these stories as I was traveling
1:37:21 around on Saturday nights and people always, “Oh, tell Ali’s story.” So I knew, okay, I don’t know
1:37:27 how to give a speech, but I can tell these stories. And so I go up and I tell my, and here’s the thing
1:37:33 about it. There are 20 events going on at once. Generally, when you look at that, what I’ve learned
1:37:39 column, I’m invisible. I don’t write a single word. I just interview them, the subject, and then put
1:37:47 it down in their own words. So I’m not a guy who you would ever see on TV that you would really
1:37:53 know. I’m invisible. Yeah, there are people who know what I do and people in the know will come up
1:38:01 and tell me, “Hey, I respect what you do in odd ways.” But I’m figuring, okay, I’m on this cruise
1:38:09 ship, maybe 20 people are going to show up at best. And in fact, I had read Pencils for Promise
1:38:16 by Adam Braun. And he talked about giving, it might have been his first speech. And I guess he
1:38:25 was expecting a crowd and he had maybe six friends attending and only one person other than his six
1:38:32 friends showed up. And he went out and he gave this speech. And what he realized was, you give the
1:38:40 speech as if that one person is the entire audience. And it turned out that she was so enthused that
1:38:48 she later went to work for his charity. So I went and prepared that book, prepared me. If there’s
1:38:55 one person in there, I don’t care. I’m going to give that person the best. I’m not going to be
1:39:00 disappointed. I’m just going to go out and tell my stories, give a few lessons, and let’s see how
1:39:07 it goes. Maybe the same day that I’m supposed to speak, they move my event. So it’s now even in
1:39:13 the program. If you’re going to my event, you’re going to the wrong place. So now I’m thinking,
1:39:18 okay, I’m down to like 10 people. That’s cool. I’ll speak to the one. The time for the speech
1:39:25 comes, people start filing in. And I had set up this speech around wine. And there’s a reason for
1:39:33 it because when one of the stories, we could get to a little later, I went out to learn about wine
1:39:38 by becoming the sommelier at Windows of the World at the top of the World Trade Center,
1:39:42 right before the planes hit it. So I’m very attached to wine. And what I wanted to do
1:39:50 was to have everybody drink in a glass of wine while I told these stories. So if I messed up,
1:39:57 they were still … Also, yeah, helps with reality bending also. That’s right. We set it up so that
1:40:02 all the wine is there ready, ready to be served to people as they come in. Budgeting for 10 people.
1:40:08 Well, no, I said, okay, there are like 150 seats. If 150 people show up, fine,
1:40:14 have the glasses and the wine, but let’s face it, you may only go through a bottle.
1:40:19 So they were all prepared and place seated at 150 and this funky nightclub. And all of a sudden,
1:40:26 the time starts to roll around and I’m watching and people are just flooding in. They take up
1:40:34 all the seats. And I was very specific to the people serving the wine. I set up this speech to
1:40:40 have toasts throughout to keep everybody’s involvement going. So everybody had to lift
1:40:46 their glass and scream with me to keep everyone engaged. And so I said to the people delivering
1:40:54 the wine, look, I need you to be able to walk down this corridor down the center and keep everybody’s
1:41:01 glasses filled because it’s bad luck to toast with empty glass. And so we’re all set and now
1:41:07 every seat’s taken and there’s still like 10 minutes before the speech is set to start and
1:41:13 people are still coming in. And now they’re coming down the aisle and they’re sitting like at my
1:41:19 ankles and they’re filling the aisle. They’re seated cross-legged in the aisle. They’re sitting
1:41:24 behind the bar. That’s right. Taking up the foot space. To the back, the complete back and now
1:41:30 there’s a line of people that can’t get in. I’ve become like the hottest nightclub in New York
1:41:37 City and I’ve never done this before. Not to derail this, but what do you attribute that to?
1:41:43 I think what happened is they switched you with Richard Branson in the program.
1:41:53 Just messing with you. That’s good. We’ll have to work on that next time. I think what happened
1:42:01 is we titled it Decoding the Art of the Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert De Niro and Donald
1:42:11 Trump. And naturally it said, like, Cal Fussman has interviewed these people, but people came in
1:42:17 wondering, what’s it like to interview Gorbachev or De Niro or Donald Trump?
1:42:23 And we’ll definitely dig into some of that. Okay. And so I’m watching all these people flood in
1:42:29 and now the aisle is completely cluttered. I can’t get wine to people. Now I’m starting to freak out
1:42:36 because I don’t want people toasting with an empty glass. And the back of the room is like,
1:42:43 it’s getting jam-packed. And so I just said, well, just go out and give your speech.
1:42:52 So the speech, it lasts for about an hour and I guess a really good response.
1:42:57 But what was surprising about it was afterwards, like, there’s just a long line of people to see me
1:43:06 and their business people. And the first couple came up to women and say, okay,
1:43:14 you taught us about asking questions. We got a problem. We are really passionate about our
1:43:21 business. We can’t seem to find people to work for us that are just as passionate as we are.
1:43:29 What can we do? What can we ask? I said, oh, that’s easy. Just tell them the Dr. Dre story. Dr. Dre story.
1:43:36 Yeah. I said, I was interviewing Dr. Dre and I said to him, what’s the longest you’ve gone
1:43:43 working on a passion project without sleep? And he said, oh, man, when I’m working on something,
1:43:50 I really care about, I’m in the zone. I don’t think about sleep. It’s just I go until it’s done.
1:43:57 Could be 72 hours. So I said, just tell the person you’re interviewing Dr. Dre. He goes 72 hours.
1:44:06 What’s the longest you’ve ever gone on a passion project without sleep?
1:44:12 You’ll be able to tell something about that person by their answer. And look, they may tell you,
1:44:19 you know what? I get eight hours sleep every night because I come to work every morning,
1:44:26 fully charged. And you’re going to know, hey, maybe that’s the right person for a certain job in your
1:44:33 company. It’s not going to be the most completely passionate person. But maybe they’re the person
1:44:40 that’s got to do something nuts and bolts. Right. CFO or the guy who interacts with Wall Street.
1:44:46 Exactly. Or gal. And so you will find out through that answer something that’s going to help you
1:44:55 make a decision. And if your girls are looking, you could tell they’re looking at, okay, that’s
1:45:00 our question. We’ll tell them the story. And then people started coming up to me running successful
1:45:07 businesses who had to hire a lot of people all at once because the business is doing really well.
1:45:14 And you could tell they were nervous because all of a sudden a business that starts with
1:45:20 an idea and only them is now taking on a thousand people in a year. How are you sure that those
1:45:29 thousand people have what you had when you started the company? That essence, because if they don’t
1:45:37 have it, the essence of the company is no longer what you wanted. And guys like that and women
1:45:46 are coming up and saying, you know, next time you’re in San Francisco, can we get together?
1:45:52 Because I can tell there’s obviously an issue with hiring. And it’s funny because now I’m starting
1:46:00 to ask everybody about it. And I’m really becoming very conscious that this is like an issue that’s
1:46:11 really important to a lot of people. Oh, it’s the challenge. We were chatting before we started
1:46:16 recording about Silicon Valley and some of the issues surrounding attracting and retaining
1:46:21 top talent. It’s the fundamental challenge for a lot of these startups in particular when you go
1:46:29 from perhaps hiring, say if you bootstrap for a period of time, 10 people in a year to hiring
1:46:34 10 people a day or a week. It’s a massive challenge putting together a process for that.
1:46:39 So question for you about the presentation. So if we were to try to decode decoding the art of
1:46:46 the interview, we’re going to try to meta that and decode the presentation itself. What story
1:46:52 or stories? And I don’t think I’ve heard any of them for that matter yet. Did people seem to
1:46:59 respond best to? There’s one that I have tucked in the back of my mind because when Alex,
1:47:04 mutual friend of ours asked me if I had heard this story and I said no, he was just not going to say
1:47:08 disgusted, but just speechless at how I had not managed to hear this yet. But what did people
1:47:16 respond to best in terms of stories? Interesting. Different people respond differently to the
1:47:23 different stories. One, if I was deconstructing the speech, one of the things that I wanted to do
1:47:31 was to explain how much you can do with a single question in a short amount of time.
1:47:39 And to back that up, I told a story about my meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. So
1:47:47 I’ll take you back to, say, 2008. I think it was February. We’re in New Orleans. And
1:47:54 in a hotel lobby, I’m all set to interview Mikhail Gorbachev for Ask Why Is What I’ve Learned
1:48:00 Column. We’ve got an hour and a half and fully prepared, ready to go. Couldn’t have been happier.
1:48:09 And I get a call. I pick up the phone. “Hi, Cal. It’s the publicist. Sorry to… So I have to pass
1:48:20 this on, but the interview with Mr. Gorbachev is going to have to be cut short.” And now I’m
1:48:25 being like, “Oh, man. Oh, what is it going to be down to an hour?” Because that’s the thing,
1:48:30 with this What I’ve Learned column, I can’t fluff it up. I can’t fill it out. I can’t use my words.
1:48:36 They have to be Mikhail Gorbachev’s words. And they have to be wise words. I need, at the very
1:48:43 least, an hour to extract us. Yeah, move into his soul in a way that makes him feel comfortable
1:48:51 and extract that wisdom. At the very least, 45 minutes. So I say to her, “Oh, okay, okay. How
1:48:58 much time do I got? 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Are you… I don’t want to say are you nuts, but it’s
1:49:06 impossible. I can’t do this interview in 10 minutes. Cal, Cal, look, I understand, but a lot of very
1:49:13 important people have been added to the list to see Mr. Gorbachev. There’s nothing we can do about
1:49:19 this. Do you want the 10 minutes or not? What am I going to do? Say no. Okay, I’ll take the 10
1:49:26 minutes. So I’m sitting down and I’m thinking, and the more I’m thinking about this, the worse it’s
1:49:31 getting. Because number one, I’m knowing that all of my questions are going to be translated into
1:49:42 Russian. And all of his answers are going to be translated back into English. They actually have
1:49:46 five minutes. Yeah, we’re moving down. Plus, you’re going to sit down and you’re going to exchange
1:49:52 pleasantries. It’s not going to start in a finger snap. Two and a half minutes. Yeah. It wasn’t two
1:50:00 minutes, but it wasn’t much more. And so the publicist leads me into the room. And at this point,
1:50:05 I’m thinking, okay, if it’s two and a half minutes, do your best. And I look up and like,
1:50:12 there he is, Gorby. And he’s a little older than I remember. He’s about 77 at the time. He was in
1:50:18 town to speak about nuclear weapons and why they should be abolished. And we sit down and I’m looking
1:50:26 at him and I just know, just know he’s expecting my first question to be about nuclear arms,
1:50:34 world politics, perestroika, Ronald Reagan. He’s just ready. So I looked at him, I said,
1:50:42 what’s the best lesson your father ever taught you? And he is surprised, pleasantly surprised.
1:50:50 He looks up and he doesn’t answer. He’s like thinking about this. It’s as if after a little while,
1:50:58 he’s seeing on the ceiling this movie of his past. And he starts to tell me this story. And it’s this
1:51:07 story about the day his dad was called to go fight in World War II. See, Gorbachev lived on a farm.
1:51:15 And it was a long distance between this farm and the town where Gorbachev’s dad had to join the
1:51:22 other men to go off to war. And so the whole family took this trip with the dad to this town
1:51:32 to wish him well as he went off. And Gorbachev is talking about this trip and he’s providing these
1:51:38 intricate details. And I’m transfixed. And I’m saying like, oh my God, that’s the worst possible
1:51:46 question. This interview is going to be over. He’s not even going to get to town yet.
1:51:50 So finally they do get to town. And Gorbachev’s dad takes the family into this little shop.
1:52:02 And he gets ice cream for everybody. And Gorbachev starts describing this ice cream
1:52:08 and the cup that it was in. It’s aluminum cup. And as he’s telling me, it’s almost like he’s got
1:52:15 his hand out in front of him and the cups in it. It’s that vivid to him. And it’s as if in this
1:52:22 moment, we both have this same realization. That cup of ice cream is the reason that he was able
1:52:30 to make peace with Ronald Reagan and then the Cold War. Because that cup of ice cream,
1:52:37 just the memory of it, is the memory of what it felt like for his dad to go off to war, for him
1:52:44 to see his dad going off to war. That cup of ice cream in the memory was the dread that he knew
1:52:51 of the possibility of never seeing his father again. And we are looking at each other like,
1:52:58 oh man, this is deep. He didn’t expect it any more than I did. Just at that moment,
1:53:05 knock on the door. It’s the publicist. Publicist comes in, very officious. Gorbachev, Cal, time for
1:53:13 the interview is up. And he looks at it and he acts his finger. He says, no, I want to talk to him.
1:53:19 Publishes, puts up our hands. Yes, sir. And he like backs out sheepishly. The door shuts,
1:53:27 conversation continues. Now we’re getting deeper. 10 minutes later, another knock on the door.
1:53:33 This time, the publicist comes in a little slower. Mr. Gorbachev, Cal, Gorbachev says,
1:53:39 no, I want to talk to him. She backs out. 10 minutes later, knock on the door. This time,
1:53:47 she’s in a panic because the train cars are just piling up. Mr. Gorbachev, please,
1:53:56 I’ve got the mayor of New Orleans right outside. There’s a long line of people we’re way behind
1:54:01 schedule. And Gorbachev just smiles. And he didn’t say anything. But the look on his face was,
1:54:07 hey, what can I do, Cal? So I said, thank you. I knew I pushed it to as long as it could be pushed.
1:54:16 And I laughed. And the interview was a success in that, you know, I had a little story like that.
1:54:24 And people could understand something about Gorbachev that they might never have known.
1:54:32 But for me, when I look back on it, what I realized was the power of the first question going straight
1:54:41 to the heart and not the head. Because it was that question that went into his heart that took us
1:54:49 to that very deep place and enabled the interview to continue to go. And because the interview could
1:54:55 go, I was able to fill out the page for Esquire. Otherwise, that would have been it. There would
1:55:02 have been no way the interview would have run. So lesson number one, when people ask me what tips
1:55:10 would I give is aim for the heart, not the head. Once you get the heart, you can go to the head.
1:55:19 Once you get the heart in the head, then you’ll have a pathway to the soul. And so basically,
1:55:26 the speech was lessons tied to stories that backed them up. And whether it was with Gorbachev
1:55:35 or Donald Trump or Robert De Niro or Muhammad Ali, each story allowed the listener to
1:55:42 understand something very basic. So I’m going to pick a name that we haven’t heard yet,
1:55:47 just because this is the one that made Alex dance around, because that’s all he could do to respond
1:55:54 before he insisted that I ask you about it. So Julio Cesar Chavez.
1:56:00 That’s another story. And it goes back to a time when I was a teenager. And again,
1:56:10 as I started out, you knew that my childhood hero was Muhammad Ali, so I followed boxing.
1:56:17 And naturally, I wanted to fight. Where I lived, there were no boxing gyms around.
1:56:22 What we had in New York was a tournament called the Golden Gloves.
1:56:27 Golden Gloves, big deal. Yeah. Sponsored by the Daily News.
1:56:30 The finals sold out Madison Square Garden every year. I had no idea how to fight.
1:56:36 And I wanted to do it. So basically, like a month before the Golden Gloves started,
1:56:44 I showed up at a gym that was a few towns over in a bad neighborhood and said,
1:56:50 like, I want to train for the Golden Gloves. You had to be 16. I just turned 16. I entered.
1:56:55 And this manager pulled me aside and said, no, no, no. That’s not the way it works.
1:57:00 He’s like, you don’t know how to fight. You don’t know anything about fighting.
1:57:04 What you do is you come here every night and we’ll teach you.
1:57:08 And within a year, we can put you in with people who have your experience and you’ll learn.
1:57:16 And then a year from now, you’ll have some experience and you can go into the Golden Gloves.
1:57:21 You know, if you’re good, you’ll do okay. I said, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand.
1:57:26 I came to fight. Thanks, pops. But listen, that’s right. And basically, I wasn’t on the tall side.
1:57:36 So there’s a short guy in a very short arms. And, you know, my style was basically, you know,
1:57:41 hey, man, I’m just going to rush across the ring and I’m just going to start throwing punches.
1:57:44 Joe Fraser style. That’s right. And you’ll see what happens.
1:57:49 Because like Joe Fraser knew how to fight. All I could do was just throw
1:57:55 reckless, wild, crazy punches one after another. I was in good shape. So I could throw punches
1:58:02 three minutes around, just start to finish. And it was actually, for the people in the gym,
1:58:10 it was kind of comical to watch. Because, you know, everybody knew that when I finally got in
1:58:16 the ring, one of two things was going to happen. Maybe I’d be able to just simply overwhelm whoever
1:58:24 was in the ring just by sheer virtue of I’m coming at you to throw everything I got and I’m not
1:58:30 stopping. The Tasmanian devil strategy. You got it. And so the month passes or so. And it’s time for
1:58:38 my fight in the Golden Gloves. And there was somebody at this club that was going to represent me.
1:58:44 And I show up the club. He was going to drive me into Queens, New York. I was living at Long Island
1:58:48 at the time. And I was all set. And so I show up for my manager to pick me up. He’s not there.
1:58:57 Lifted the altar. Right. Now I don’t have a manager. I don’t have a lift to get into this place.
1:59:05 And there’s no cell phones. You know, you’re standing by a pay phone, throwing in quarters.
1:59:10 Like, who can help me? I got to get to the fights. You got to fight. You know, of course,
1:59:15 everybody in the school knows about this. And so it’s at a high school in Queens with a very
1:59:21 large gym arena. It’s like a Catholic school. And I managed to get somebody to drive me down there
1:59:29 and arrive just in nick of time. But now like I’m all nervous just to get there. And I’m able to
1:59:37 check in. I wrap my hands, get my gloves on. And out of nowhere comes my opponent in the dressing
1:59:46 room. And in the most casual way possible, he just puts out his left hand and says like,
1:59:54 hey, Seuss, that was his name. But you can tell not only like was there a scar down one side of
2:00:00 his face to his lip, but you could just tell he had done this like 400 times before he was eight
2:00:07 years old. This is like checking in for work. That’s right. It’s complete. And so now I’m starting
2:00:17 to like realize, uh-oh, this could be like a predicament. And I get somebody who’s never,
2:00:27 I’d never met before to work my corner. And this guy has no idea of my style. No idea.
2:00:35 He thinks like, okay, I know how to fight. And so he says, okay, kid, listen, you know,
2:00:42 we’re going to go in the ring. I want you to just take it nice and easy. You move, move around a
2:00:47 little, show him the jab and let’s see what happens. So start to walk in the arena. And this is like
2:00:56 mid seventies. In fact, it’s not too not right around a few years before the Rocky movie came
2:01:03 out, you know, the Great White Hope. Well, I’m like the only white fighter on this card. And 90%
2:01:11 of the audience is all white. Okay. So when I come in the ring, it’s like the Great White Hope
2:01:20 has finally arrived. Like people are standing, cheering, going nuts. And I’m looking around.
2:01:28 And it’s like, it’s surreal. I’ve lost sense of where I’m at. And this one year I got, okay,
2:01:36 move around jab. I’ve forgotten who I am. And we get to the ring, go to the center,
2:01:43 get the instructions. And I am like completely lost. I do not know what happened. All I remember
2:01:50 was getting up actually my eyes opening and seeing like three fingers that were very blurry.
2:01:59 And then like I’m hearing four, five, six, and I get up. And now I can kind of see clearly.
2:02:11 And Jesus is coming at me. And his right hand comes back. And it’s like right in front of me,
2:02:17 right in front of me, and the bell rings. And so I go back to the corner and now I’m pissed.
2:02:25 Like, what, what just happened to me? Like, get in there, throw your punches, just go at him.
2:02:33 And I’m sitting on the stool. The manager is saying something. I don’t even hear what he’s
2:02:37 saying because all I’m hearing is myself, just screaming at myself, throw punches, remember
2:02:43 who you are. In the meantime, the referee’s coming over and he’s saying like, son, are you okay?
2:02:48 Are you okay? I’m saying, of course I’m okay. I’m going to kick his ass. I’m going to come out.
2:02:55 You’re going to see some punches. Next thing you know, like the referee is like waving his hands
2:02:59 and stopping the fight. I didn’t respond to him. I was like, I was out. So this dialogue that you
2:03:08 were having with yourself, like that was entirely internal. That’s right. I had no idea. The worst
2:03:15 part of all this is my dad is in the crowd and he brought like two of his childhood friends. Oh,
2:03:22 good. Right. So now you can imagine what I’m hearing. Like anytime there’s a family reunion,
2:03:30 anytime this comes up, we need a funny story. It’s like, oh, remember “Cow in the Golden Gloves.”
2:03:37 And so I’m hearing this again and again and again over the years. And finally,
2:03:44 must have been, well, like almost 20 years later, right after I meet the woman in Brazil,
2:03:51 she moves to New York. We get married and I’m watching the TV and Julio Cesar Chavez,
2:03:59 the great Mexican champion, Junior Weltaweight, 140 pounds. He was 85, 86 and 0 at that point.
2:04:07 And I’m watching him on TV as he’s cornering an opponent. I got a big bag of chips between my
2:04:13 legs. And at this point, right after the marriage, he’s put on a bunch of weight. So I got a beer
2:04:19 belly. So I got a beer in one hand, chips in the other, belly between them. And I’m screaming at
2:04:26 the TV, come on, finish him off. What are you doing? Finish him off Julio. And my wife looks at me and
2:04:32 says, hey, like, calm down. We’ve heard your boxing stories because that was the first thing
2:04:38 when my family met her that they indoctrinated her. You know about Cow in the Golden Gloves,
2:04:45 don’t you? So I look at her, I look at the TV and it’s clear what needs to be done here
2:04:52 because I’ve got to get my manhood back. And I said to my wife, you know what,
2:04:57 you see that guy on the TV? Julio Cesar Chavez? I’m going to fight him.
2:05:02 And so naturally, my wife, like, you’re crazy. Forget it. You know, we’ve heard the story,
2:05:13 but now I know I have to do this to close this chapter in my life, no matter what.
2:05:20 No, just to place it, it’s at the time you’re writing for Esquire.
2:05:25 Actually, when we moved to New York, I had written or I was writing for a magazine called GQ. And
2:05:33 the editor at the time, or my editor at GQ, was a guy named David Granger, who later became the
2:05:40 editor of Esquire. And when he did, he brought me and a bunch of writers with him. So this all
2:05:44 started at GQ. And the day after my wife is laughing at me, I march into David Granger’s
2:05:50 office and I say, hey, you want to buy a story? I’m going to go fight Julio Cesar Chavez. He says,
2:05:58 what? I give him the background. And he said, all right, let me go in and check with my boss.
2:06:04 See what our insurance policy looks like. Oh, they made me, that was the first thing,
2:06:08 you’re going to have to sign documents saying, we’re not responsible for this. This is all on you.
2:06:13 I said, that’s fine. And I go down to the Times Square gym. I’m 42nd Street at the time. And
2:06:22 up these rickety old wooden steps, it was like something out of the past, like you could literally
2:06:30 hear each foot that you put down. And then there’s like the drum beat of the bags. And you walk up
2:06:37 there. And since I had followed boxing, I knew who people were. And I just start looking around
2:06:45 at the trainers. And there was a guy I recognized. His name was Harold Weston. And he had fought
2:06:51 Tommy Hearns, the welterweight champion. Tommy Hearns was nasty. Yeah. And he had actually
2:06:58 done pretty well. He was a very slick boxer. He wasn’t that tall. And Tommy Hearns was like
2:07:03 6’2″, 6’3″, a tremendous reach and an unbelievable power in his hands. And I think that fight went
2:07:12 a while. I know Tommy scored a TKO, but Harold had done pretty well avoiding the punishment.
2:07:18 And so I went over to him and I said, hey, I’m going to be fighting Julio Cesar Chavez.
2:07:26 You think you can train me? And now he’s just like, what is this? Like, who are you here?
2:07:33 Yeah, looking for the hidden cameras. You got it. That’s exactly it. And then he’s called.
2:07:39 This guy says he’s going to fight Julio Cesar Chavez. Everybody in the gym is laugh. Are you
2:07:44 a professional? No. I’d like, are you an amateur? Well, I have one fight in the Golden Gloves 20
2:07:51 years ago. It didn’t turn out. And now, Harold’s saying like, okay, okay, you’re really going to
2:07:58 do this, huh? I’ll tell you what, you come back tomorrow, like 3 o’clock, and we’ll do a little
2:08:05 workout. And we’ll see. So I come back the next day. And this guy, he just tortured me. The whole
2:08:15 point was, get out of here. You’re not fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. You have no idea what it’s
2:08:21 like to be a boxer. A little respect for the craft here. And after three hours, I mean, literally,
2:08:28 I was reduced to tears again and again and again. And I just kept going. And I remember getting home
2:08:39 to my apartment. And like, I rang the door, the door opened, I literally collapsed into my wife’s
2:08:46 arms. And it’s like, she dragged me to the tub and had hot water going. She threw in some epsom
2:08:56 salts and I just like laid in there for like three hours, unable to move. And when I left the gym,
2:09:03 everybody in the gym was placing bets whether I was going to come back the next day. And I did.
2:09:08 And that was the first moment where, hey, that’s interesting. And he said, okay, I understand
2:09:16 you’re riding this for GQ. He was a fashionable guy. So that lured him in, you know, the style
2:09:22 element. And he said, so you’re really going to do this. And I said, yeah, I said, look,
2:09:27 I’m just asking for one round with Julio Cesar Chavez. One round. That’s it. But I’m going out
2:09:35 there. And I’m giving it my all. He said, well, look, let me show you ways to get through that
2:09:40 round. Now remember, this is a slick boxer. I’m going to teach you how to move and you will
2:09:45 survive. We can do this. If he’s taken this really seriously, you’re going down. But we don’t know
2:09:52 how he’s going to react. Maybe he’ll be curious. And I will teach you how to move around the ring
2:09:59 and protect yourself so that you don’t die. And now in my mind, I’m also now thinking about
2:10:10 the fight between Roberto Doran and Sugar Ray Leonard. I don’t know if your memory was a second
2:10:16 fight. No moss. No moss. That’s right. Where in the middle of the fight, we don’t know what really
2:10:22 happened. It’s never fully been explained. In the first fight they had Doran won by a decision
2:10:27 in Montreal. And afterward, he went back to Panama as a national hero, 50,000 people waiting for him
2:10:36 at the airport. And he just had like a three month binge party and gained like 50 pounds.
2:10:42 In the meantime, Leonard, after his first loss, went back home and was like training the next day
2:10:49 for the rematch. So they set it up to have an immediate rematch six months later. And after
2:10:57 maybe two months left, Doran started to train. Now he had to take off 40 or 50 pounds. He was in no
2:11:03 condition to do this, but he dramatically lost the weight. And we’ll never know, but he was overweight
2:11:11 a few days before the fight. Now, whether he took x-lax or something to purge his system
2:11:18 or whether after he made the weight, he went out and ate three steaks and a bunch of orange juice.
2:11:24 And we know that his stomach was not in the best of shape. But we also don’t know if
2:11:32 when he got in the ring, his stomach was bothering him or Leonard adopted a style that wouldn’t
2:11:40 allow Doran to hit him and basically broke Doran mentally. So we don’t know if it was his stomach
2:11:46 or his mind or both. But midway in the fight, Doran basically just throws up his hands and
2:11:51 says no moss. No more. No more. And Leonard celebrates and everybody watching was in disbelief
2:11:59 because for 20 years, Roberto Doran had been the epitome of the macho man. He was like Mike
2:12:05 Tyson of the lightweights in his era. He just bored straight ahead. Nothing could stop this guy.
2:12:11 He was relentless. And to see him quit was what I felt about my experience in the Golden Gloves.
2:12:20 So I basically had to somehow eradicate all that feeling. And I had to do it in a way that’s left
2:12:31 me with some shred of pride at the end. So Harold says to me, okay, look, I’m going to teach you how
2:12:37 to move. And he was like a very classy fighter. And as he’s showing me how to move around and
2:12:46 avoid punches, I said, no, Harold, no, no, no, it’s not the way we’re going to do this. No, no.
2:12:51 The first time I got in trouble because I didn’t go out throwing punches.
2:12:56 And that’s how I’m coming out this time. I’m coming out throw punches. And I want to do it
2:13:03 just like Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier is a short guy, stocky arms, just bobbing, weaving,
2:13:11 coming straight ahead. And Harold says, no, no, no, I’m not going to do this. Because basically
2:13:18 now I’m asking Harold to teach me a style that is going to bring all of my energy, full focus,
2:13:27 full bore straight ahead, right at one of the most damaging punches in coming missiles.
2:13:34 That’s right. And so he’s just fighting with like, there’s no way I’m not being a party to this.
2:13:40 If we do this, we do it smart. And you come out alive. Like you’re not going in there.
2:13:44 Oh, there is that gal. You’re not smoking, smoking cow.
2:13:48 Smoking cow. That’s right. And I said, no, I want you to teach me like Joe Frazier. And he said,
2:13:54 okay, you want to be smoking Joe, I can teach you how to be smoking Joe. And he pulls out a rope
2:14:01 and he sets it from one, the top of the ropes on one side of the ring to the other. And he makes me
2:14:08 start bobbing and weaving under this rope. Now, anybody who has never done this before,
2:14:15 like after a minute, your thighs are burning. And basically, Harold’s idea is I will make
2:14:21 him do this so long that he comes to his senses and fights the way I tell him so I can protect him.
2:14:29 But I just, no matter how much it burns, I just got down low and I just bobbed and weaved and moved
2:14:35 my head. And then he’s taken me to the bags and now he’s teaching me how to throw punches because
2:14:40 I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff. And then you have to get in the ring. And now,
2:14:48 like I’m 35 years old and all these kids are like 19, 20, they love to get in the ring because they
2:14:54 want to beat the crap out of me. And believe me, you know, they were because I did not know how to
2:15:00 fight. But every day I just kept on going back. I literally trained like a fighter. It must have been
2:15:08 for like four months. And plus, on the other hand, I had to figure out a way to get Julio Cesar
2:15:13 Chavez in the ring with me. He had no idea this. He had no idea that you’re in this intensive training
2:15:18 camp with no, no agreed upon fight. No, not a clue. He doesn’t know that I exist. And I am training
2:15:25 three hours every afternoon plus running in the morning, plus calisthenics at night,
2:15:31 eating just the way Harold’s telling me. My weight goes from I was about 165. Now I’m down to less
2:15:38 than 147. Closing in on 140. Chavez fights at 140. At this point, he’s 87 and 0 with, I don’t know
2:15:46 how many knockouts, but I think it was in the 80s. Very high percentage. Yeah, very high percentage.
2:15:50 I remember also just as a side note. So I was mystified and just captivated by who this is,
2:15:56 or Chavez, that at some point it looked at x-rays of his head and his skulls, like twice as thick
2:16:03 as normal human being. That’s right. So he was used to coming straight at people
2:16:09 and absorbing whatever punishment they were dishing out in order to lend his shots. And,
2:16:15 and believe me, when Harold heard that I was doing, and he said, “Look, Cal, I know a guy who
2:16:21 fought huluses,” or Chavez. His name is Juan Laporte. Okay. Basically, after that fight,
2:16:28 Laporte was pissing blood for a long time because one of Chavez’s biggest shots was his left hook
2:16:35 to the liver. And he’s saying like, “You don’t understand. This is a professional athlete
2:16:43 at the top of his profession.” You know, a lot of guys think, “Oh, if I was out on that football,
2:16:49 I would have made that catch.” They, you know, they see a professional drop the ball. I would
2:16:53 have brought that in. And lots of times they drop passes that the rest of us might have caught.
2:16:58 But you don’t understand what it’s like to be up against a professional athlete until you are.
2:17:05 Because even these amateur kids were knocking my head off every day,
2:17:10 but I just kept on coming back up them steps, kept on coming back up them steps.
2:17:14 Finally, a friend of mine, the skinny guy, writing for Sports Illustrated, had been sent
2:17:21 to do a story about Julio Cesar Chavez. So, while he’s out interviewing Julio Cesar Chavez,
2:17:27 he says, “Tomorrow, by the way, you know, I got a friend who wants to fight you. Is it okay
2:17:31 if he comes and fights you?” Julio says, “Sure.” I was like, “Send him, send him over.”
2:17:37 “He only wants one round. Fine, fine. It’ll be great.”
2:17:40 So, now Julio has said yes. It’s like, I’m just imagining, it’s like if your
2:17:47 second grade self in a different era had written to Tiger Woods being like,
2:17:52 “My friend in second grade wants to play you in golf.” You’re like, “Sure. Yeah.”
2:17:56 “Why not? Send him over.” Yeah. And like Julio is a very, he’s a fun loving guy.
2:18:03 So, you know, it was, maybe he saw it as a joke. I don’t know. And so, at this point,
2:18:09 it’s like months I’ve been training. Now, you look at my body, man. I got a six pack.
2:18:13 And now I’m getting in a ring and I was up against an amateur who was really beating me up
2:18:20 badly in the beginning. And then one day, he threw a right hand in my head and I ducked under it.
2:18:27 And I clocked him with a right hand and he just went sprawling backward.
2:18:31 And now, like he’s starting to think, “Okay, Julio, are you ready? Are you ready for this?”
2:18:38 All the people in the gym are laughing. That’s all part of like a community where like, what is
2:18:46 going to happen? And so, at this point, GQ meanwhile is funding this. They’re funding all the training
2:18:53 and they’re going to fund my trip to Mexico. They got to send photographers. They’ll send my wife.
2:18:59 Now I got an entourage coming out of Mexico to fight Julio Cesar Chávez. And he’s training to
2:19:07 fight Pernell Whitaker. This is like the biggest fight in his life. And he’s actually not really
2:19:15 training that hard. We’re supposed to have our fight like while he’s in training. And I’m saying
2:19:22 that he’s going to different towns and having parties. And so, I’m starting to think.
2:19:28 This is after you arrived. This is after I arrived. So, I didn’t know. I thought, well,
2:19:33 maybe he’s normally like this. But something in my mind was saying, man, if he’s fighting Pernell
2:19:39 Whitaker, he should be a little more focused than this. So, I’m waiting for this appointed day. And
2:19:46 Harold Weston, my trainer, knew the president of the World Boxing Council, Jose Suleiman,
2:19:52 who set up a weigh-in. And GQ made me robe. And Julio was very amused by all this. We went out
2:20:00 running one morning. And the thing about it was Julio trains in Toluca, Mexico, high altitude.
2:20:06 So, that was my first moment where I said, uh-oh. This might be an issue.
2:20:13 Yeah, because I trained really hard back in New York. But all of a sudden at altitude, you’re
2:20:20 you’re not the same. And so, we’re running the morning and it comes to this day where, okay,
2:20:26 we’re going to do it. So, I show up. I got my GQ robe on. They invited kids from their neighborhood
2:20:32 in to come witness this. And like the kids thought, like, oh, this is a fight. And so,
2:20:38 Julio was set up. I’m set up. We’re ready to go. The one thing Julio said was, look,
2:20:46 I can’t wear eight-ounce gloves like you’re going to wear because I’m scared I’m going to hurt my
2:20:52 hands. So, I’m just going to like wear training gloves. But other than that, and I said, no head
2:21:00 gear. I said, this is a fight. I’m coming to fight you. So, he just wanted to protect his hands.
2:21:06 And so, he had these white gloves. I wouldn’t call them pillowy, but there was cushion in there.
2:21:12 12 or 16 ounces. Yeah, it’s something. I don’t know if they were 12 or 16,
2:21:17 but they weren’t eight like mine. That was the only difference. And Jose Suleiman,
2:21:23 president of WBC, that’s the guy ring the bell. And all of a sudden, I go charging straight in
2:21:30 the style of Joe Frazier, right at Julio Cesar Chavez. He looks at me and he’s used to coming
2:21:36 straight ahead. And now he’s saying like, what’s going on? Now, here’s the thing about this.
2:21:42 Harold said to me, look, you don’t understand how good he is, how quick he is. You have no chance
2:21:48 of hitting him. Do you understand me? Like all the work you did, there’s only one chance you have.
2:21:54 And I’m going to tell it to you. You listen to me. You listen to me good. This is the strategy.
2:21:59 I want you to throw just like I’ve been teaching you. Left jam, right hand, straight, right hand,
2:22:05 left hook. Okay? He’s going to catch those punches. I want you to do it again. Left jam,
2:22:12 straight, right hand, left hook. He’s going to catch those punches. And I want you to do it again.
2:22:19 Left jam, right hand, left hook. And he’s going to catch them again. And I want you to keep on
2:22:24 doing that again and again and again. Do it 20 times. And then on the 21st time, if you’re still
2:22:34 standing, because we don’t know, he may just hit you in the liver and that’s a fight. If you’re
2:22:38 still standing, if you do that 20 times in a row and you’re still there, go left hand, right hand,
2:22:47 and then come back with another right hand. And so Bell rings. And now he’s like circling
2:22:54 around trying to figure out like, who is this lunatic coming out of me like Joe Frazier,
2:22:59 Bob and we even snorting. I mean, I could sound like Joe Frazier, but he’s so fast that just
2:23:04 like Harold says, I throw the left hand, I throw the left jab, he catches it, throw the right hand,
2:23:09 he catches it, I throw the left hook, he catches it. Like the first time I did it, he said, okay,
2:23:13 I know what you got. And I’m just going to see how much you can take in a little while.
2:23:22 But we’ll play this out. We’ll play it out. And so I keep storming in, I keep throwing these three
2:23:29 punches, he keeps catching them, he’s moving me around, but I keep throwing these three punches
2:23:34 again and again and again. Finally, two minutes into the round, I go left jab, right hand, and then
2:23:42 you could almost see him lifting his hand to catch my left hook. And I just throw the right hand and
2:23:48 just socks him in the jaw. And he looks at me and he sprawls backward as a way of saying, uh,
2:23:57 okay, you caught me. Okay, okay, okay. He goes back like he’s staggered. And then he smiles at me,
2:24:06 says, okay, now we’re going to fight. Now we’re going to fight. He comes in on me and he throws a
2:24:13 left hook to my liver. I’m telling you, it was like someone took the pipe of a Hoover vacuum cleaner,
2:24:21 attached to the vacuum cleaner that was on full blast sucking up and just shoved it down my throat,
2:24:26 down to my stomach. And it’s like my whole stomach is coming up through my mouth, right?
2:24:33 And I said, and the thing about it was I just started throwing punches back. It was his way of
2:24:42 just saying, I’m going to give you just like a little taste. But now I’m firing back because as
2:24:47 bad as I was hurt, this was my moment. I had to avenge what happened to me when I’m 16 years old.
2:24:53 And I’m firing back. Now he’s starting to like, now he’s starting to hit me.
2:24:57 And so the rounds over, I go back to my corner. My lips are blue. The altitude and that one shot
2:25:07 literally took everything out of me. But in my mind, I did it. I’m here. I did it.
2:25:14 And Julio, he’s training for his fight. He looks over at me and says,
2:25:20 “Altro, you want another?” And I said, “Si, mas.” And we did another one. And then in the second
2:25:28 round, he really started like, he was having fun, but he was starting to tag me pretty good.
2:25:34 And you could tell Jose Suleiman is watching this and he’s saying, a minute and a half into the
2:25:41 round, ring the bell, ring the bell, ring the bell before we have a gringo casualty on our hands.
2:25:47 That’s right. And so the bell rings and I go back to the corner and we embrace. He was really
2:25:53 wonderful about it because what was cool about what he did was he treated me. Now that I think
2:26:02 about it, he treated me like the assistant to President Johnson treated me. He didn’t laugh.
2:26:11 He saw my punches coming. He saw what I could handle. And then when he saw that I had like
2:26:18 foxed him for a second, he said, “Okay, I’ll lift the game, but I’m not here to level them.”
2:26:27 And so it was a really wonderful experience. I mean, they had been teasing my wife, asking her
2:26:33 like how much insurance we had and stuff like that. But at the end, he really rose to a high
2:26:40 level in the way he handled the whole thing because at the end of it, I walked out of it
2:26:44 after going through everything I did. I pushed myself as far as I could go. I got hit in the
2:26:50 liver and I came back. So now it’s just a good story. When you spoke to your wife after the two
2:26:56 rounds later that night or whenever you actually had a chance to decompress and be by yourselves,
2:27:01 how did she describe what was going through her head as she watched you guys after the first bell
2:27:07 ring? I think she was pretty scared. I think she probably was watching with her hands over her
2:27:16 eyes, but with her finger spread so that she could see. And I think she was really proud. And you
2:27:22 know, the thing about it is you realize it’s not so much about winning and losing. Although,
2:27:30 you know, my kids, it’s crazy because my kids hear the story and they tell their friends and like
2:27:36 junior high school or whatever. And their friends, did he win? They have no concept. But the thing
2:27:42 is I did win because I confronted myself. I had to go up those rickety steps every day. I had to
2:27:50 get the crap beaten up out of me every day in order to learn how to duck a punch. And I did. I
2:27:56 pushed myself as far as I could go. And now I get a great story out of it. And there’s no more
2:28:03 when I talk about the Golden Gloves. It’s just a funny part of the story. It’s not something
2:28:07 that eats at me anymore. I need that part of the story to set up the ending. So I’m thankful that
2:28:14 happened to me because without that, without A, I wouldn’t have done B, which led to C.
2:28:21 That’s a healthy way to think about a lot of things, I suppose. If people, even if they’re not
2:28:25 storytellers or writers, if they think about their mishaps or some of the
2:28:30 challenges they’ve had is the part A they needed to set up part B.
2:28:34 You know what? It is a great way of looking at life. And man, I have taken a beating so many
2:28:40 times. And one of the great things about telling stories is when you realize that,
2:28:47 okay, this beating I just took, maybe I can use that to get in advance
2:28:56 from a magazine to do something cool. And again and again, I use my mistakes, foibles,
2:29:05 humiliating moments to come back and try to make some sense to them and triumph over those
2:29:13 moments. And it’s, again, you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to win, but you have to
2:29:19 look deep inside yourself and know that I respect myself for this. And to this day,
2:29:29 like I really do, it gets complicated when people look at the picture. I get a big picture at home
2:29:35 of me hitting Julio and people look and it looks real. It looks authentic.
2:29:41 It is real.
2:29:42 It is real, but it lends people to say, “What happened? What was the result? The result was I survived.”
2:29:52 So, Cal, there are so many more stories that even if not on tape, I will have to ask you about,
2:30:00 but perhaps we’ll do a round too. I mean, we have to talk at some point about Muhammad Ali.
2:30:04 We have to talk about Trump. We have to talk about De Niro. There’s so many other things.
2:30:07 The James Beard Award, I mean, the list goes on and on, but I know you have a dinner to get to.
2:30:12 Do you have a little bit of time for some of my customary rapid-fire questions?
2:30:16 I love those questions. I hope I have rapid-fire answers.
2:30:20 They don’t have to be. So, that’s the whole twist on the phrasing of the rapid-fire questions.
2:30:25 The questions can be rapid-fire, but your answers can be as long as you would like them to be.
2:30:29 I love those questions.
2:30:31 All right. So, the first that I usually start with is when you think of the word successful,
2:30:35 who is the first person who comes to mind and why.
2:30:37 And you mentioned them during the course of this interview. There are two people.
2:30:41 One is this kid, Alex Benayan, who’s 23 years old.
2:30:46 He was in school at USC, and his parents had basically raised him to be a doctor.
2:30:53 To the point where during Halloween, when he was a kid, they would dress him up in scrubs.
2:30:59 Just get the point. That’s where you’re headed.
2:31:02 And he gets to college and he’s got a stack of biology books next to him, and he just can’t do it.
2:31:11 He’s really smart, but he’s just not linked to it.
2:31:15 And he starts to wonder, what am I doing here?
2:31:20 He’s going to school at USC. He’s a great school.
2:31:23 And he starts to wonder about this word success.
2:31:27 And he goes to the library and starts to look at biographies of people who he deemed to be successful,
2:31:34 to see what the definition of success was.
2:31:38 And he’s reading biography after biography, and he realizes that the book that I’m looking for
2:31:44 doesn’t exist. I need to go out and to interview these people to find out
2:31:51 what they think success is. And so he did.
2:31:56 And on his journey, one of the people that he went to interview was Larry King.
2:32:02 And he actually met Larry outside of Whole Foods when running down.
2:32:08 He saw Larry pushing his shopping cart when running down the street.
2:32:12 “Larry King!” Scared him, but Jesus, that whole Larry.
2:32:15 And asked if he could interview Larry, and Larry invited him to breakfast.
2:32:20 And when he arrived, Alex says, “I’m writing a book.”
2:32:24 And Larry said to Alex, “Well, if you’re writing a book, then you should talk to this guy.
2:32:29 You should talk to Cal, because he’s written two of my books with me, and he can help you.”
2:32:35 So Alex did get to sit down to talk with Larry, but I became very close with Alex at that point.
2:32:43 So when I think of success, I think of everything Alex was trying to find out.
2:32:49 That’s one. The second is another boxer, George Foreman, who you might remember.
2:32:57 My mom’s favorite boxer.
2:32:58 Really? Oh, yeah. Because she remembers old George.
2:33:01 George. Now, the old George was a bigger Mike Tyson.
2:33:06 Oh my God, terrifying.
2:33:07 Tyson was what? Six feet, maybe? George Foreman was six-three,
2:33:10 two-twenty, and just had a string of vicious knockouts.
2:33:16 And won the heavyweight title by knocking Joe Frazier down six times.
2:33:22 One time, he literally hit him with an uppercut and uprooted Joe Frazier like he was a tree stump.
2:33:28 It looks like a superhero movie.
2:33:31 For people, I’m sure you can find footage of it, but if you look at George Foreman, Frazier,
2:33:35 knockdown or knockout, the footage is unbelievable.
2:33:39 And you’re looking at somebody there who George Foreman grew up in a very tangled situation.
2:33:48 His personality was formed, won by living in poverty.
2:33:52 He would go to school in the mornings with a brown paper bag that had no food in it.
2:33:58 And he would blow it up to make it look like there was food in it.
2:34:02 So he wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of the other kids.
2:34:05 On top of that, his siblings, his sisters, would make fun of him.
2:34:10 He was younger. They would say, “You a mohead. You a mohead.”
2:34:14 And George Foreman had no idea what a mohead meant, but he knew it wasn’t good.
2:34:19 And he would hear that and he would chase his sisters around when he heard, “You a mohead.
2:34:24 You a mohead.” And finally, years later, he grew up and he found out what they were saying.
2:34:30 George Foreman’s mom was married to Mr. Foreman, but they separated for a while.
2:34:37 While they were separated, her mom went off with a guy named Leroy Morehead,
2:34:42 conceived George, conceived George, and then went back to Mr. Foreman.
2:34:49 And so when he was born, his siblings were Foreman’s would call him, “You a mohead.
2:34:56 You a mohead.” And so there was this angry part of George.
2:35:00 Very angry.
2:35:01 To the point where he told me people would be scared to ask him for an autograph.
2:35:08 When he would walk into a place, people would look down.
2:35:13 And he had this surliness was a big part of his demeanor.
2:35:17 And when he went to fight Muhammad Ali in Zaire, he was an undefeated champ.
2:35:24 People feared for Ali’s life.
2:35:26 And in fact, Ali would not watch George Foreman hit the heavy bag.
2:35:30 It was too scary.
2:35:31 This guy could hit that hard.
2:35:33 And what Ali saw was George Foreman had so much anger in him
2:35:39 that when he came out, he just came out to bludgeon whoever was in front of him.
2:35:43 And Ali had a sense that if he could make Foreman expend his energy
2:35:48 and not land those punches to have them punches come off his arms,
2:35:53 if he could infuriate Foreman to the point where Foreman lost his cool
2:35:58 and punched himself out, he figured out a way to win.
2:36:02 And naturally in the heat of Africa, it was basically Ali set this thing up perfectly.
2:36:09 Foreman arrived with a German shepherd, not knowing that the Zaireans had in their history
2:36:19 a memory of German shepherds being brought in by the Belgians to keep them under control.
2:36:24 So the Zaireans immediately hated George Foreman.
2:36:28 And a chat grew out of it.
2:36:32 Ali, boom, I Ali kill him.
2:36:34 And the bell rang and George Foreman came at Ali and Ali didn’t move.
2:36:38 He just kept his back against the ropes with his hands up.
2:36:42 This was the ropidope?
2:36:43 This was the ropidope.
2:36:44 And George Foreman is just slugging away.
2:36:47 And Ali would like open his guard up.
2:36:49 Just the little says, “That’s how you get.”
2:36:51 Then close his guard and Foreman just getting more and more infuriated.
2:36:55 Just punch after punch, first round, second round.
2:36:58 Those of us who are watching and I was watching on closed circuit television
2:37:03 on a big screen in St. Louis at the time, you’re almost crying
2:37:06 because you were screaming and Ali, get out of the way, dance, do something.
2:37:10 We couldn’t see what was happening.
2:37:12 That he was just, he kept talking to George.
2:37:14 We couldn’t hear him talking.
2:37:15 Oh man, that’s it.
2:37:17 That’s all you got?
2:37:18 Foreman is just throwing shot after shot after shot.
2:37:21 And then all of a sudden in like the fourth round,
2:37:24 you see Foreman throw a shot and Ali just duck under it.
2:37:28 And then just throw a jab straight back in Foreman’s face and Foreman’s head snapped back.
2:37:34 And we realized, oh my God, he’s punched himself out.
2:37:39 As the fight continues, a few more rounds.
2:37:41 Ali nails him in one right hand and it’s so hot, Foreman’s exhausted.
2:37:46 Ali nails him with a right hand, Foreman goes down, can’t beat the count.
2:37:50 And he’s crushed.
2:37:51 It must be akin to what Rhonda Rousey, for those who are like younger
2:37:57 and watch Mixed Martial Arts, what Rhonda Rousey went through after her recent defeat.
2:38:03 You think somebody is invincible and then all of a sudden they’re on their back.
2:38:07 One head kick, one head kick later.
2:38:08 That’s right.
2:38:09 And George Foreman, for like 20 years, could never get another title shot.
2:38:15 He retired and he did something and he told me what he did.
2:38:21 And he said, this is the hardest thing when you talk about success.
2:38:24 I asked him a question about success and he said, the hardest thing you can do
2:38:29 in life is to change your character.
2:38:33 And basically, in his early 40s, he came back to boxing,
2:38:38 but he was completely different.
2:38:41 He was no longer the surly guy.
2:38:44 He was a guy who would do ads for eating hamburgers, smiling and laughing.
2:38:49 Now, Chris, I’m wrong.
2:38:51 I remember his, I want to say I remember his comeback sort of promotional videos
2:38:56 where he’d be going for his boxing run and people would be handing him food.
2:38:59 That’s right, that’s right.
2:39:01 That’s right.
2:39:02 And he starts his comeback at, I think, more than 300 pounds.
2:39:05 Big guy.
2:39:06 He’s a big guy and he’s in his 40s.
2:39:09 But it’s what he changed in his head.
2:39:12 Now, he was smiling.
2:39:14 What did he do to change that?
2:39:16 He realized that surliness and that anger is what brought him down against Muhammad Ali, right?
2:39:26 So fast forward, he’s 45 years old and he gets a heavyweight title fight
2:39:33 against a guy 20 years younger named Michael Moore.
2:39:35 Oh, I remember.
2:39:36 Southpaw.
2:39:37 Southpaw, who is much faster, a little lighter, but should be able to move around George with ease
2:39:46 and just put punches into George’s face without George being able to respond.
2:39:50 But here’s the thing.
2:39:52 Foreman came into the ring wearing the exact red trunks that he was wearing
2:39:59 when Ali hit him and put him down.
2:40:01 And when Moore’s trainer saw that, he recognized it and thought, uh-oh, something’s up here.
2:40:11 And basically George didn’t waste any energy.
2:40:14 He rearranged his character and Moore, the first nine rounds, was completely out-boxed
2:40:22 and moved around.
2:40:23 George just kept his hands up, tried to land, could barely even land.
2:40:27 And his face started to get swollen and the 10th round started and his trainer, who, coincidentally,
2:40:35 was Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s trainer who was in the opposing corner in Zaire,
2:40:42 basically said to him, George,
2:40:44 you’re way behind.
2:40:45 You got to do something.
2:40:46 And George just kept moving forward and without wasting energy, just saw one moment
2:40:54 and he threw a right hand and he still had the power.
2:40:57 He still had everything that he had when he was young, power-wise.
2:41:02 And he clipped Moyer straight on the jaw and Michael Moore went down and couldn’t beat the count.
2:41:08 And Foreman went over to the corner, got down on his knees,
2:41:13 thank the Lord.
2:41:14 And to me, that was a symbol of success because he needed to change who he was
2:41:22 in order to have that success.
2:41:25 And he did it at 45.
2:41:28 So that’s the best answer I can give you.
2:41:32 Ah, love George Foreman.
2:41:34 This just reinvigorated so much more enthusiasm about learning more about George.
2:41:39 And I remember, it brings back so many memories because I remember that fight also
2:41:43 I want to say George used what I want to say was the crab defense.
2:41:48 In other words, he didn’t hold his forearms together perpendicular to the floor,
2:41:53 but they were kind of crossed over in front of his face.
2:41:56 Such a good story.
2:41:58 Well, it was all designed to, he knew he was going to endure punishment.
2:42:02 And he knew he had to do it in a way that expended the least amount of energy.
2:42:06 And he knew he just had to put himself in the right position to land that one shot.
2:42:11 So it’s a beautiful story to see somebody take their weakest point and do something within themselves
2:42:20 to change who they are.
2:42:24 And the history repeats itself irony of that fight that he won also is that Michael was known as a
2:42:31 very angry guy, had a criminal record and probably lost for some of the same reasons.
2:42:38 That’s right.
2:42:38 In fact, I’d have to go back and watch the fight, but I’m sure his trainer who was like
2:42:43 aware was probably saying, you know, if you’re way ahead, take it easy, stay away.
2:42:49 And he probably said, what are you crazy?
2:42:53 I got this under control.
2:42:55 Boom, one shot.
2:42:56 Yeah, incredible.
2:42:57 What is the book or books you’ve given most as gifts other than your own?
2:43:04 Which obviously for people listening, you know that I’ll link to everything in the show notes as
2:43:07 well.
2:43:08 A hard question to answer because it’s almost like wine.
2:43:12 Every meal, you’re going to have another experience with different people, different food.
2:43:20 So if I meet somebody, I like to give books that I’ve loved.
2:43:25 And like I mentioned meeting Alex and he says, he didn’t know how to write a book.
2:43:33 And he’s like, I want to write a great book.
2:43:36 You could just tell it was bursting out of him.
2:43:38 And so I gave him Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude for him to know, okay,
2:43:45 if you’ve never written a book and you’re going to tell somebody you want to write a great book,
2:43:50 all right, read this and know what a great book is.
2:43:53 And so my gifts tend to judge what the person needs and then fill that need.
2:44:01 So and then no different in wine.
2:44:03 If somebody’s having a steak, I’m probably not going to give them a wrestling.
2:44:07 I’ll give them something to compliment the steak.
2:44:09 I’ll give you more specific circumstance.
2:44:12 So let’s say that someone came to you and they said, you know what, I’m a board billionaire
2:44:17 and I want to give three books to every graduating high school senior in the country this year.
2:44:23 Wow, what a question.
2:44:25 Okay, one book that people should read.
2:44:31 And in fact, I got it with me right now.
2:44:34 One of the blurbs on this book actually says, as Toni Morrison, this is required reading.
2:44:41 Wow.
2:44:42 So yeah, and Toni Morrison is a great African American writer.
2:44:48 And this book is called Between the World and Me.
2:44:51 And it’s by a guy named Tom Nahisi Coates.
2:44:55 And it’s a letter to his son about being a black male in America.
2:45:01 And I think it is required reading just because if we want to understand what is going on,
2:45:10 we see what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri.
2:45:12 It just seems like it’s a month after month after month.
2:45:17 We see protests and problems.
2:45:20 And this is just a way of redirecting your eyesight to a place that you normally wouldn’t go.
2:45:29 And it’s amazing thing about this book because as I’m reading it, I was walking down the street
2:45:36 and I passed a news box with the Los Angeles Times in it.
2:45:42 And on the front page, there was this statistic that said that basically every juvenile
2:45:50 that’s incarcerated in the state of California, it cost us $260,000 a year.
2:45:58 And you–
2:45:59 More than any Ivy League education.
2:46:02 There you go.
2:46:03 And think of that.
2:46:04 If you took that money and put it into lifting that same kid,
2:46:11 who knows what would happen?
2:46:12 You know, there’s DNA involved.
2:46:15 There’s a lot of stuff involved.
2:46:16 But it just made me realize why aren’t we putting the resources in before
2:46:23 rather than just paying this money out.
2:46:28 We don’t even know that we’re putting it out.
2:46:31 And so it’s just a book that makes you see the world differently.
2:46:36 Another book that I would recommend.
2:46:38 It’s a book that I’m reading now.
2:46:41 And just for those people wondering between the world and Maine,
2:46:43 this is a short book.
2:46:44 This is about 130 pages National Book Award winner.
2:46:48 I will order that as soon as we finish this chat.
2:46:51 The second book is OK if I give you two because these two are coming.
2:46:55 I can do two.
2:46:56 Just because these are two that I’m reading now.
2:47:00 So it’s just hot off the press.
2:47:02 It’s a book called Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln.
2:47:09 And I’m carrying it around with me as well.
2:47:11 This is amazing.
2:47:12 Yeah.
2:47:13 You hit me at the right time with this question.
2:47:16 It’s written by James C. Humes.
2:47:18 And there’s for anyone who wants to speak.
2:47:23 And if you’re a high school senior at some point,
2:47:26 you’re going to have to get up and speak.
2:47:28 It’s a great book because there’s all kinds of tips
2:47:32 on everything about speaking.
2:47:35 Subtitle 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers.
2:47:38 There’s this great anecdote in this book that really helped me
2:47:42 as I was preparing to give my speech because it’s hard to memorize a speech.
2:47:47 And then I’m reading about Ronald Reagan known as a great communicator,
2:47:53 American president.
2:47:54 Well, you know, when he spoke, he riveted people.
2:47:57 And when he was a young man, again, we’re talking about basically the same age
2:48:03 as the people you just mentioned.
2:48:05 What would you recommend for the high school senior?
2:48:07 Actually, Reagan was just getting out of college.
2:48:09 And he got a job in radio in Iowa.
2:48:14 And he was very good conversationally on the air.
2:48:16 But then it came time to read the advertisements.
2:48:20 And for some reason, he was so stiff and awkward reading these advertisements
2:48:29 that the advertisers basically said, “Get him off the air.”
2:48:33 And they fired him.
2:48:33 And he went back to his room and he’s like feeling horrible about it
2:48:39 because he loved being on the radio.
2:48:40 He loved communicating.
2:48:42 And he wondered, “What can I do in order to get my job back?”
2:48:48 So I guess FDR was doing the fireside chats
2:48:52 and he realized how riveting those were.
2:48:55 So he got those chats and he started to read them.
2:49:00 But what he did was he would look at the words
2:49:04 and then almost memorize the phrase in his head,
2:49:09 then look up and then say the words conversationally.
2:49:12 So he wasn’t trying to memorize them by reading it off the page.
2:49:17 He would just take a few of the words, then look up, give you those words,
2:49:22 look down.
2:49:22 He would never speak while he was looking down.
2:49:25 And then he went back to radio and that’s how he did his advertisements and it worked.
2:49:31 So it’s a great, the book is just filled with little tips like that
2:49:35 that will make it so much easier for anybody who’s got to get up and give a speech.
2:49:42 I am going to get another book for my list.
2:49:45 Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies?
2:49:48 You know, it’s a really interesting question.
2:49:51 I probably would have told you that there’s a movie Cinema Paradiso.
2:49:58 I love that movie.
2:49:59 Grateful.
2:49:59 Okay.
2:50:00 I would mention that, but something happened to me recently where a documentary and a movie
2:50:05 came together that provided this amazing experience.
2:50:09 The documentary was called Man on Wire.
2:50:12 And it was about Philippe Petit’s walk on a wire across the towers of the World Trade Center.
2:50:18 And it’s amazing documentary.
2:50:20 Everything that he had to go through to almost like a spy or an espionage agent,
2:50:26 figure out how to get up on the roof.
2:50:29 We’re not even talking about how do you walk a rope?
2:50:31 That’s one thing.
2:50:33 But then to wonder how do you get to the top of the World Trade Center as it’s being built
2:50:39 and get a wire from one side to the other to stabilize it at night when nobody’s watching.
2:50:47 And the documentary takes you through the whole thing.
2:50:50 It’s just amazing.
2:50:52 And the way they pieced it together with the alternating sort of black and white
2:50:56 reenactments, just the cinematography and the pacing is genius.
2:51:00 Yeah.
2:51:00 It’s definitely my favorite documentary.
2:51:02 But then last year, Robert Simekis did a movie called The Walk.
2:51:08 Is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt?
2:51:10 That’s right.
2:51:11 I haven’t seen it.
2:51:11 Oh, here’s the thing.
2:51:13 I saw this movie nine times.
2:51:15 The Walk.
2:51:16 The Walk.
2:51:17 I saw this movie nine times.
2:51:19 But you got to see it on 3D IMAX.
2:51:22 Because one of the innovative things about this film on 3D IMAX is you literally feel
2:51:30 like you are on the wire.
2:51:31 I mean, people left the theater vomiting.
2:51:36 I knew everything about that story.
2:51:41 Because as you mentioned, I worked at Windows of the World.
2:51:45 So when I was serving wine at the top of Windows of the World every day,
2:51:50 I was looking down at basically what Philip Petite was looking down at when he was crossing
2:51:57 this wire.
2:51:58 And I seen the documentary.
2:52:00 So I knew that basically not only did he walk on the wire, but he laid down on the wire on his back.
2:52:07 Unbelievable.
2:52:08 And then the police are coming.
2:52:09 And the police had been haunting him for years because wherever he would try and
2:52:14 juggle or walk the wire in order to get people to give change,
2:52:18 they would be trying to chase him away.
2:52:20 And so he had this cat and mouse game going with the police all these years.
2:52:24 And now he’s on the wire, more than 100 stories above New York City.
2:52:28 And the police are there and they can’t touch him.
2:52:31 He could do whatever he wants on this wire.
2:52:33 And so like the tables are turning.
2:52:35 And yet in this movie, when he steps on that wire,
2:52:41 I knew everything that was going to happen on that walk.
2:52:44 I’m begging him.
2:52:46 No, don’t do it.
2:52:47 Don’t do it.
2:52:48 Please don’t do it.
2:52:50 I completely suspended my disbelief.
2:52:53 And let me tell you how much I started taking people night after night to see this movie
2:52:58 again and again, because I want to gauge their reactions.
2:53:02 And gave them motion sickness pills beforehand.
2:53:05 I told, I warned him.
2:53:06 I say, if you’ve got a fear of heights, don’t come.
2:53:09 Go watch Robert De Niro in The Apprentice or whatever they call that movie.
2:53:13 What hit me was there’s this one scene in the movie
2:53:16 where he’s learning how to walk the tightrope.
2:53:19 And this is back in France.
2:53:21 That’s where he’s from.
2:53:22 And he’s like two steps away from getting back to the platform.
2:53:28 And he slips and has to catch the wire with his hand.
2:53:32 And he’s like 50 feet above ground or something.
2:53:36 And he manages to get back to the platform.
2:53:40 And he comes down and his teacher is there.
2:53:42 And his teacher basically says to him, it’s the last two steps.
2:53:48 The people who die, they die in those last two steps.
2:53:51 Remember that.
2:53:53 And in fact, Philippe Petit was paying him to get those lessons.
2:53:56 And when Philippe Petit went to give him money for that lesson,
2:54:01 the teacher said, no, this lesson you get for free.
2:54:04 This doesn’t cost you anything.
2:54:06 So I knew this story cold.
2:54:09 I’d read his book.
2:54:10 I’d seen the documentary many times.
2:54:12 And I’m watching this film.
2:54:13 And when he falls down early on to get that lesson,
2:54:19 it’s shot in a way where the pole literally comes out of the screen right at your head.
2:54:26 Okay.
2:54:27 So the first time you’re just swooning, not swooning,
2:54:30 you’re swaying immediately to the right or the left to get out of the way.
2:54:34 Okay.
2:54:34 So now I’m watching the second time.
2:54:36 I know this pole is coming at my head.
2:54:38 Every time, on the ninth time,
2:54:41 poles coming straight at my head, I’m ducking out of the way.
2:54:44 It was that visceral and experienced.
2:54:48 And the direction was just amazing.
2:54:50 I love the acting.
2:54:51 And so if you can see that movie on 3D IMAX, please do.
2:54:58 It’s just wonderful.
2:55:00 Well, I guess I’ll put out a call or a request to perhaps the people involved
2:55:06 with making that film.
2:55:06 If they happen to be listening or if you know the people involved,
2:55:09 since people might not get to see the theatrical release in 3D,
2:55:14 talk to the people working with virtual reality,
2:55:16 get in touch with the Oculus folks or some of these other studios,
2:55:20 Dackery or whomever might be able to translate some of this to an immersive experience for folks.
2:55:26 Because that’s coming down the pike too.
2:55:28 Wow.
2:55:28 That’d be beautiful.
2:55:30 You know, I feel like we’re just going to have to do around two sometime, but I’ll ask.
2:55:34 You know, I’m going to come back anytime.
2:55:35 I’ll ask three more.
2:55:38 Okay.
2:55:38 If you could have a billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would you put on it?
2:55:42 One word.
2:55:43 Listen.
2:55:44 Listen.
2:55:46 I don’t know what reaction that would get,
2:55:48 but I would like to see the reaction on people’s faces when they saw that.
2:55:56 Because I think that listening is not an art form.
2:56:00 Well, it is an art form.
2:56:01 People just aren’t using it as an art form, but it is an art form.
2:56:04 A lot of great things could be achieved through listening.
2:56:08 What advice would you give your 30-year-old self?
2:56:12 And if you could place us again where you were at 30.
2:56:16 Okay.
2:56:17 I would not give myself one word of advice, and I’ll tell you why.
2:56:22 Because if I would have given myself that advice at 30, it would have moved me maybe one centimeter
2:56:32 in one direction that put my life in a different place.
2:56:35 And I needed to be on a very specific seat, on a very specific bus at a very specific time
2:56:48 in order to meet the woman that became my wife and as the mother of my kids.
2:56:53 So I couldn’t have that moved in any way.
2:56:57 I needed everything to happen just the way it did in order to have that moment,
2:57:03 in order to have the rest of my life.
2:57:04 So after that, I’m sure there are times when I’ve given myself advice.
2:57:09 Really, the time I needed advice was when I was in college,
2:57:16 and there was so much offered and so little I took advantage of.
2:57:20 What would your advice be to either your kids or to people going into college?
2:57:26 They say, “Okay, what should I take?
2:57:30 I just don’t even know what to do with myself.”
2:57:32 Okay.
2:57:33 Paradox of choice.
2:57:34 I can’t figure it out.
2:57:35 If they want to travel, you got a chance to learn like four languages, five languages.
2:57:44 And it’s going to be so relaxed.
2:57:47 All you got to do is just go into the class and then meet somebody from the opposite sex
2:57:53 who speaks the language and you’re going to be going out and talking in the new language.
2:57:58 And you could do that over and over again in college.
2:58:01 You got that time.
2:58:02 One of the things, if it was me, knowing that I wanted to be a writer or knowing that I’m now
2:58:11 going to be speaking and I’m going to be speaking about questions that people ask when they’re hiring,
2:58:18 I would love to have studied human behavior because I know that when a company is looking
2:58:27 to fill a job, if the person doing the interview understands the role that needs to be filled
2:58:35 and understands human behavior, they can ask questions to the applicants that will fill
2:58:42 that role in a really good way.
2:58:45 That’s my hunch.
2:58:46 Have you ever heard the story of the book that Newt Gingrich used to navigate politics,
2:58:53 at least one that he’s credited with a lot of whatever success he’s had?
2:58:57 Chimpanzee politics.
2:58:59 I’m not kidding.
2:59:01 I am not kidding.
2:59:02 I’m going to write that one down.
2:59:03 I’m going to go home and order it.
2:59:04 I am not kidding.
2:59:05 So what about as a writer or to a kid who’s graduating from college and says to himself or
2:59:12 herself, “Should I go on to get my MFA or continue to say go to a specialty journalism school
2:59:19 or writing school if they’d only taken maybe one or two classes that required a lot of writing?
2:59:25 What advice would you give to them?”
2:59:27 I would tell them just write.
2:59:31 And the great thing about it is, okay, I’m not knocking the schooling because as we talked
2:59:37 about earlier, I owe everything to the University of Missouri Journalism School.
2:59:42 It set me on my way and then the connections.
2:59:44 On the other hand, all you need to do to be a writer is to write.
2:59:50 And not only that, but all you need to do is to find places that are interested in taking
2:59:56 your writing, doesn’t have to be for much money, but you can go out especially now.
3:00:01 You don’t even need a physical publication.
3:00:06 Now you can just create a blog on the internet and just start writing.
3:00:09 So I would advise people to just, if you want to be a writer, write and just keep writing
3:00:15 and keep writing.
3:00:16 If you have the means and the will to go to school and get a teacher or teachers that
3:00:22 can help you through, even better, but nothing should really stop you from writing and you
3:00:30 shouldn’t use, “Well, I need to go to school first as an excuse to put off writing.
3:00:36 I need to make the school make me write.
3:00:38 You make you write.”
3:00:40 Yeah, you don’t have that intrinsic motivation.
3:00:42 It’s going to be hard to make anything happen because you won’t always have a school teacher
3:00:47 to whack you with a ruler.
3:00:48 That’s right.
3:00:48 And not only that, but the other thing is just put yourself in a position where
3:00:52 you have no money and you need to write something to make money.
3:00:57 If you need to eat, unless you can find a bar that’s putting out olives and little
3:01:02 chicken fingers, you’re going to write and get paid so that you can eat.
3:01:08 I remember talking to a friend of mine who’s a journalist, writes for a number of very
3:01:13 well-known newspapers and he always laughs when he has to listen to book authors like
3:01:20 myself, sort of whinge and pontificate about writer’s block.
3:01:25 And he just scoffs at the whole idea.
3:01:27 He’s like, “I don’t have the luxury of having writer’s block.”
3:01:30 He’s like, “I have a deadline, a deliverable, whatever it is, 4pm, 5pm.”
3:01:34 He’s like, “No, I can’t use about the subtleties of writer’s block.”
3:01:39 Because he has to ship, he has to ship words every day or whatever it might be every week.
3:01:44 What are your thoughts on writer’s block, if that’s not too general a question?
3:01:48 Oh, I only had it once.
3:01:49 Okay.
3:01:50 I only had it once.
3:01:52 And what happened was I was writing for Esquire and working on a column called “The Perfect Man”
3:02:00 and the idea was basically in line with this conversation.
3:02:04 I was going to take all my flaws and all my mistakes and then go to experts
3:02:08 who were going to teach me how to overcome them.
3:02:11 And then I was going to write about the experience so that everybody could have the
3:02:15 collected wisdom. And so I learned how to walk through using Alexander technique.
3:02:22 I learned how to publicly speak by going in a boxing ring with Michael Buffer and
3:02:28 announcing a fight.
3:02:29 Sounds like a fun gig.
3:02:30 That was great.
3:02:31 I learned how to lose weight by going to Jack LaLaine, who was the exercise champion of his day.
3:02:38 And I went through, learned how to barbecue through Stephen Reichlund,
3:02:43 author of the Barbecue Bible.
3:02:44 And one of the last things I did was go to learn about wine.
3:02:49 Because if you are a man, you want to have a feeling that you can go into a restaurant
3:02:56 with a group of people.
3:02:58 The wine list comes to you and you don’t feel like, oh man, what am I going to do?
3:03:03 I don’t know what’s what here.
3:03:05 And then you don’t know if the waiter is going to try and unload a lousy bottle
3:03:11 that they can’t sell on you or a bottle for a lot of money.
3:03:14 You’re helpless.
3:03:16 So I wanted to learn enough to know how to walk into a restaurant with confidence
3:03:22 and order what I want.
3:03:23 And the solution to that was to be trained to be the sommelier for a night
3:03:29 at Windows of the World, which sold for a time more wine than any other restaurant on the
3:03:34 planet at the top of the World Trade Center.
3:03:37 And I had no idea where this adventure was going to send me, but it took me two years
3:03:43 to learn all about wine.
3:03:45 Because you then find out you have to go to these places where they make the wine
3:03:49 and you have to understand the difference between all of the varietals and the wine
3:03:55 list at Windows of the World.
3:03:57 There was hundreds of pages to know all all those wines.
3:04:02 It was almost impossible, but you start to get an idea.
3:04:06 And I had world-class sommeliers teaching me.
3:04:11 And for one night, I was the sommelier at Windows on the World.
3:04:15 It was an amazing experience.
3:04:17 And one of the great things I did is I had a guy who I knew come in.
3:04:21 He brought his wife.
3:04:22 It’s like the first couple of the evening.
3:04:25 And I seated them right next to a window.
3:04:28 So you’re looking down on New York from 106 stories or whatever.
3:04:33 And I had a bottle of champagne, lordeaux champagne from France, which it basically
3:04:41 was like a $10 bottle of champagne.
3:04:43 But nobody knew that.
3:04:45 And this had been served at the Assemblee National in France.
3:04:52 It was like basic bottle of champagne.
3:04:54 But I took it out to their couple.
3:04:56 They were celebrating their anniversary.
3:04:58 And I walked over with a flourish.
3:05:00 And I announced that I was serving lordeaux champagne.
3:05:04 And that it had never been served at these heights before.
3:05:08 And it would never be served at these heights again.
3:05:11 And this woman looks at me.
3:05:14 She didn’t know who I was.
3:05:15 Her husband did.
3:05:16 And she just broke out in tears.
3:05:19 And then the husband had never tasted the champagne before.
3:05:21 But they both poured it.
3:05:23 They both put it up.
3:05:24 And they said, oh, Cal, we never knew what champagne was before this moment.
3:05:30 And it teaches you that the wine and the moment are inextricably linked.
3:05:37 And I can take a great moment and make a great wine out of it.
3:05:41 And I can take a great wine and make a great moment out of it.
3:05:44 In any event, the evening transpired.
3:05:46 And it was great.
3:05:47 But it was all it was profound.
3:05:49 It was also funny.
3:05:50 I’d spill wine on people’s down the glass because I had to be moving really quick.
3:05:55 There was a lot of people.
3:05:56 And that’s inexcusable.
3:06:01 That should never happen here.
3:06:02 That bottle is on the house.
3:06:04 Everybody at the table.
3:06:06 Oh, this is great.
3:06:08 And people at the adjacent table are saying, come over here.
3:06:10 Spill some here.
3:06:11 Spill some here.
3:06:13 And we get through the night.
3:06:14 It’s a delightful time and really memorable.
3:06:19 Now I go home to write the story and start to go through my notes.
3:06:23 Because it’s taken me two years to get this experience.
3:06:26 And the planes crash into the World Trade Center.
3:06:29 And I remember going to the Brown Zero like a week later,
3:06:35 the military took me around in a Humvee.
3:06:39 And that guy still was so overwhelmed that I was almost knocked out when I saw it.
3:06:49 Because I remember seeing like there was this thin coat of white dust over everything.
3:06:57 And you could see in a parking lot this coat of dust over the cars.
3:07:03 And I actually said to the guy in the army who was taking me around.
3:07:07 I said, why don’t those people come back and get their cars?
3:07:11 And he put his hand on my shoulder.
3:07:14 And he said, Cal, those cars don’t have any owners anymore.
3:07:19 And it’s very hard to explain the enormity, but I just couldn’t write.
3:07:23 How could I translate this experience of utter joy learning all about this amazing beverage
3:07:32 that transformed lives, meeting all these friends along the way.
3:07:37 Wherever you would go, it was like traveling around the world again.
3:07:40 It would just open up a party.
3:07:42 And that party would invite you to another party and another party and another party.
3:07:48 And so there I am having this amazing experience.
3:07:51 And then on top of it, for one night, I was the sommelier.
3:07:55 And not only that, but at the end or toward the middle of the night,
3:07:59 somebody, like people were pressing $20 in my hand.
3:08:01 They thought I was really the sommelier.
3:08:03 And a few days later, somebody who came in that night,
3:08:09 and nobody knew that I wasn’t the real sommelier.
3:08:12 Somebody came in like three days later and asked for me.
3:08:16 And so I was feeling so good about the experience.
3:08:20 And right after that, the planes came in and took the towers down.
3:08:24 And now I’ve got to write the story about this.
3:08:28 And the editor, he now knows, he’s basically bankroll this thing for two years.
3:08:33 Same guy who bankrolled me going up against Julio Cesar Chavez bankrolled the wine story.
3:08:39 I’m flying around the world taste the wines in France, wines in Italy, the wines in Germany,
3:08:45 going to California.
3:08:46 And he allowed me to go through the whole experience.
3:08:49 And now he knows something amazing has got to come out of this.
3:08:57 Because I saw how much he put in.
3:09:00 And we all know this seminal moment in American history.
3:09:05 So he’s got to step up to it.
3:09:06 And I couldn’t.
3:09:08 I would stare in front of the computer for hours at a time.
3:09:12 And nothing would come out.
3:09:15 Like my eyes would be bleeding.
3:09:17 And every time I would have to go into the office to see the editor.
3:09:22 Like I knew we both knew.
3:09:26 Like, where’s the story?
3:09:27 Where’s the story?
3:09:28 Years started passing.
3:09:30 And he started to do things to try to like help me and push it out of me.
3:09:37 Whether it was lighthearted or, hey, you know, it’s like years now.
3:09:42 The movie Sideways, which is about wine had come out.
3:09:45 Wine is really hot now.
3:09:47 Now is the time.
3:09:48 So the editor is really trying to push the story out of me in the best way he can.
3:09:54 Might be lighthearted with a little off-handed joke.
3:09:56 It might be, hey, come on, it’s years now.
3:10:01 We’re waiting for the story.
3:10:02 Movie Sideways comes out.
3:10:04 It’s a big hit in the wide wine world.
3:10:06 And now he’s saying, you know, this is the time that the story needs to come out.
3:10:10 I can’t do it.
3:10:11 I go to the computer almost night after night.
3:10:15 And it’s the most painful thing because I never had writers blocked before.
3:10:21 But there was just nothing that would come out of me.
3:10:24 It just wasn’t, it was like a wine that wasn’t ready to be served.
3:10:28 It needed to be in the barrel.
3:10:30 Only you don’t know how long it needs to be in the barrel.
3:10:34 And you’re feeling all this guilt.
3:10:36 And finally, I just took all my, I had these copious notes in boxes.
3:10:42 And I put them down in the basement.
3:10:44 Just, okay, let me just get it out of my face.
3:10:46 Because every time I would go into my office, I would see these boxes and I would just flinch.
3:10:51 Oh, it seems like a huge just anxiety trigger.
3:10:55 Yeah.
3:10:55 The undone homework assignment.
3:10:57 The ultimate undone homework assignment that your boss has basically bankrolled for a couple of years.
3:11:06 And so you basically know that you can’t go in with any more big ideas until that is completed.
3:11:17 And so it really affected me, but there was nothing I could do about it.
3:11:22 And I put these notes away in the basement.
3:11:24 And then we had this terrible ice storm.
3:11:27 I was living in North Carolina at the time.
3:11:29 And everything turned into mold in my basement.
3:11:36 And all the notes got black.
3:11:38 So I had like no notes of anything.
3:11:44 Basically everything had been wiped out.
3:11:46 My notes were ground zero afterward.
3:11:49 And now like, how am I going to do this?
3:11:52 But you know, there was a writer taught me something very early in my career.
3:11:57 His name was Harry Cruz.
3:11:58 I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him.
3:12:00 No.
3:12:00 Wrote a book called Feast of Snakes.
3:12:02 And if you’re a young man and the Harry Cruz also wrote for Esquire.
3:12:06 If you’re a young man and you don’t even know how this book would translate now.
3:12:13 But it was a real kind of macho.
3:12:16 What was the name again?
3:12:17 Feast of Snakes.
3:12:18 He wrote another book called Car about a guy eating a car.
3:12:22 This guy was out there.
3:12:26 And as soon as I read these books, I just I got to meet this guy.
3:12:32 I got to meet this guy.
3:12:33 So I started to tell people, you know, I’m going to go meet Harry Cruz.
3:12:36 And people started looking at me saying, are you sure?
3:12:40 I said, what do you mean?
3:12:42 And he said, well, his drinking is legendary.
3:12:45 Plus the amount of drugs that he puts in his body.
3:12:48 You’re not going to be able to stay with this guy.
3:12:50 You’re going to hurt yourself.
3:12:52 And so naturally I get in my car.
3:12:54 I drive 20 straight hours down to Gainesville, Florida.
3:12:58 This is when I was living in New York.
3:13:00 And I drive right up to his house and knock on the door.
3:13:04 And there’s no response and knock again.
3:13:08 No response.
3:13:09 And I could almost hear like a snoring.
3:13:12 So I just opened the door.
3:13:15 Oh my God, Florida.
3:13:17 And Harry is laid out on a lazy boy chair with like an empty bottle of rum on his belly.
3:13:27 And I get close to him and he just his head is just moving around.
3:13:32 He’s like getting himself out of sleep.
3:13:34 He said, what do you want?
3:13:35 I said, like, Harry, I just read Feast of Snakes.
3:13:38 I just drove 20 hours straight to see you.
3:13:42 Well, why don’t you drive over to Gator Gulch and let’s get us some alcohol.
3:13:47 I drive over to Gator Gulch and I think that was what was called something like that.
3:13:56 And they’ve already got like a carton filled with alcohol from me to bring back.
3:14:02 The usual.
3:14:02 Yeah, the usual.
3:14:03 That’s kind of the usual.
3:14:04 I come back and we start drinking and like naturally after a little while,
3:14:09 I just been driving for 20 hours and now I’m drinking and I’m starting to float away
3:14:16 and he’s getting more lucid.
3:14:18 And this is before the drugs came out.
3:14:20 And I said to him, Harry, you’re a writer.
3:14:26 Do you keep a diary?
3:14:28 How can you drink like this and do all these drugs and remember anything?
3:14:34 And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, boy, the good shit sticks.
3:14:41 And it was that line that saved me when I needed to write the wine story.
3:14:48 Because I always knew the good shit sticks, the moments that were truly great were the
3:14:55 moments that I needed and almost 10 years passed.
3:15:00 And in a chance meeting with a woman who was in a position, it was a terrible position.
3:15:08 She had loved her husband.
3:15:10 Her husband had died.
3:15:11 She was alone.
3:15:12 Time had passed.
3:15:14 She was ready to go out and meet somebody again.
3:15:16 And she said, I’m older.
3:15:19 I’ve never really dated.
3:15:20 I don’t know what to do.
3:15:22 And I said to her, join a wine class because you will meet people and just by the way they
3:15:30 talk about their wines, you’re going to know if you should like them or not.
3:15:34 And she said, wow, that’s a good idea.
3:15:37 And something in that conversation opened up a pathway.
3:15:44 And then I was sitting, I went to a bar and I’m sitting down and remember this whole thing
3:15:50 started with me just wanting to be able to give somebody instruction.
3:15:55 When the wine list came before me, I could give the waiter instruction.
3:16:01 This is what I want without feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing.
3:16:05 So I have this conversation with the woman and a couple of nights later I said, you know what,
3:16:11 let me just write down the good shit, the good shit that’s stuck.
3:16:17 And I’m sitting at a bar and I’m writing down all the stuff, the good shit that’s stuck.
3:16:23 And the bartender’s pouring drinks and a waiter came back with a Italian dessert wine.
3:16:31 And there’s a white wine and the waiter said to the bartender that people, they don’t like it.
3:16:40 They say there’s something wrong with it.
3:16:42 And so it was Vin Santo.
3:16:44 And so the bartender was a young guy and I think that he really didn’t know much about wine.
3:16:51 He was like a college kid to the bartender.
3:16:53 And so he said, well, look, you know, Vin Santo, it’s not cheap.
3:16:59 And I said, wait a minute, let me smell that wine because he brought the wine back.
3:17:04 I said pour me a glass.
3:17:06 And so I swirled around, I put it up to my nose and I said, no, it’s no good.
3:17:12 And the way I said it, I must have said it with such conviction that the bartender said, oh, okay.
3:17:18 You said it the same way that Jesus said his name in the locker room.
3:17:21 That’s right. That’s exactly it.
3:17:23 I knew this wine was no good.
3:17:26 And so the bartender said to me, well, like, how’d you know?
3:17:29 And we got into a conversation and he had told me that he had been in a choir.
3:17:36 He said, I’m not really a bartender.
3:17:38 And he explained that when he was young, he was a singer and he had actually
3:17:43 gone to the Vatican and sang in a choir for the pope.
3:17:46 So I said, okay, fine, then you understand this.
3:17:49 When you put that wine to your nose, all right, listen to it.
3:17:54 You can tell that as there’s something certainly in the taste, maybe you can get it from the smell.
3:18:01 It starts out okay, but there’s somebody singing off key in there.
3:18:05 And I don’t know if it’s the way the wine was stored.
3:18:09 But in the middle of that taste of wine are off key notes.
3:18:14 And I don’t know, maybe the wine was a little corked.
3:18:18 Maybe it was just the way they stored it.
3:18:21 But as soon as he heard that, like he realized it, it translated for him.
3:18:26 And okay, when somebody in the choirs got a voice that isn’t hitting what the rest of us are hitting,
3:18:33 it’s a problem.
3:18:34 And he understood that.
3:18:36 And he looked at me and he said, thanks.
3:18:40 And I knew that was the end of the story.
3:18:42 And as soon as he said it, I went to the keyboard and I wrote the whole thing out.
3:18:47 Do you recall the title of the piece?
3:18:49 Yeah, it’s called Drinking at 1300 Feet.
3:18:52 Drinking at 1300 Feet.
3:18:54 Yeah.
3:18:55 Cal, you’re a great man.
3:18:57 You’re a very, very generous person.
3:19:00 And I want to let you get to your dinner.
3:19:04 And would love to direct people to where they can find you and more about you.
3:19:08 Because you’ve spent a lifetime gathering, unearthing and telling other people’s stories.
3:19:15 Of course, you’ve told some of your own, but I want to hear more and more of these stories.
3:19:21 Next time, I feel like we should have some wine.
3:19:24 Next time we’ll do this, we’ll wine.
3:19:25 But where can people find you online?
3:19:28 Okay, they can go to calfussman.com.
3:19:31 That’s C-A-L-F-U-S-S-M-A-N.com.
3:19:34 .com and send a message.
3:19:37 I’m just starting to speak.
3:19:39 Anybody interested in listening to some stories or getting tips on interviewing
3:19:44 or tips on interviewing for a job, I’m here.
3:19:49 Go to the website and they can click on the contact form or something like that to let you know.
3:19:53 Are you on social media at all?
3:19:54 Not really.
3:19:55 This is all like a new adventure for me.
3:19:58 I don’t even know how to promote myself.
3:20:00 It’s just happening.
3:20:02 Maybe I can give you the choir acapella analogy version of this type of thing.
3:20:07 Cal, this is so much fun.
3:20:09 I always love our conversations.
3:20:11 And as always, thank you so much for taking the time.
3:20:14 It’s a beautiful experience.
3:20:16 I hope we have many more.
3:20:17 And let me tell you something.
3:20:19 You are really good at what you do.
3:20:21 Thank you.
3:20:22 Thank you.
3:20:22 Well, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.
3:20:24 And you’ve been very, very generous with your time and with your advice.
3:20:29 So I really do appreciate it.
3:20:30 And for everybody listening, thank you for listening.
3:20:33 Hey, guys, this is Tim again.
3:20:35 Just one more thing before you take off.
3:20:38 And that is Five Bullet Friday.
3:20:40 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
3:20:43 that provides a little fun before the weekend?
3:20:45 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter,
3:20:49 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
3:20:52 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
3:20:54 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday
3:20:58 to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered
3:21:01 or have started exploring over that week.
3:21:03 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
3:21:05 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
3:21:11 all sorts of tech tricks and so on.
3:21:13 They get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts.
3:21:16 Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them
3:21:22 and then I share them with you.
3:21:24 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short,
3:21:27 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend,
3:21:30 something to think about.
3:21:32 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.vlog/friday.
3:21:35 Type that into your browser, tim.vlog/friday.
3:21:39 Drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one.
3:21:41 Thanks for listening.
3:21:43 This episode is brought to you by Momentus.
3:21:46 Momentus offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories,
3:21:50 including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more.
3:21:55 I’ve been testing their products for months now and I have a few that I use constantly.
3:22:02 One of the things I love about Momentus is that they offer many single ingredient
3:22:06 and third-party tested formulations.
3:22:07 I’ll come back to the latter part of that a little bit later.
3:22:11 Personally, I’ve been using Momentus Mag3n8, L-Theanine, and Apigenin,
3:22:15 all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep.
3:22:19 Now, the Momentus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients.
3:22:25 I’ve also been using Momentus Creatine, which doesn’t just help for physical performance,
3:22:29 but also for cognitive performance.
3:22:32 In fact, I’ve been taking it daily, typically before podcast recording,
3:22:36 as there are various studies and reviews and meta-analyses pointing to improvements
3:22:40 in short-term memory and performance under stress.
3:22:43 So those are some of the products that I’ve been using very consistently.
3:22:46 And to give you an idea, I’m packing right now for an international trip.
3:22:50 I tend to be very minimalist and I’m taking these with me nonetheless.
3:22:54 Now back to the bigger picture.
3:22:56 Olympians, Tour de France winners, Tour de France winners,
3:23:00 the US military and more than 175 college and professional sports teams
3:23:04 rely on Momentus and their products.
3:23:06 Momentus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance
3:23:09 to bring world-class products to market,
3:23:12 including a few you will recognize from this podcast,
3:23:15 like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett.
3:23:18 They also work with Dr. Stacy Sims,
3:23:20 who assists Momentus in developing products specifically for women.
3:23:23 Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested,
3:23:27 which in this case means informed sport and/or NSF certified,
3:23:30 so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else.
3:23:34 And trust me, as someone who knows the sports nutrition and supplement the world very well,
3:23:38 that is a differentiator that you want in anything that you consume in this entire sector.
3:23:44 So, good news.
3:23:45 For my non-US listeners, more good news not to worry.
3:23:48 Momentus ships internationally, so you have the same access that I do.
3:23:52 So check it out.
3:23:53 Visit livemomentus.com/tim and use code TIM to check out for 20% off.
3:23:58 That’s livemomentus, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/tim and code TIM for 20% off.
3:24:07 This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep.
3:24:10 I have been using 8Sleep pod cover for years now.
3:24:13 Why?
3:24:13 Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like fitted sheet,
3:24:17 you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed.
3:24:21 8Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod,
3:24:24 and I’m excited to test it out.
3:24:26 Pod 4 Ultra.
3:24:27 It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically.
3:24:31 More on that in a second.
3:24:32 First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed
3:24:35 as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature,
3:24:38 keeping you and your partner cool, even in a heatwave.
3:24:41 Or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive.
3:24:44 I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off,
3:24:48 closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down.
3:24:50 This solves all of that.
3:24:51 Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame
3:24:56 and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience.
3:25:00 And for those snore heavy nights, the pod can detect your snoring
3:25:03 and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve airflow
3:25:06 and stop you or your partner from snoring.
3:25:09 Plus, with Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand.
3:25:12 You won’t need them, because these types of metrics
3:25:14 are integrated into the Pod 4 Ultra itself.
3:25:16 They have imperceptible sensors which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV.
3:25:21 Their heart rate tracking is just one example, is at 99% accuracy.
3:25:26 So, get your best night’s sleep.
3:25:28 Head to 8sleep.com/tim and use Code Tim to get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra.
3:25:34 That’s 8sleep, all spelled out, 8sleep.com/tim.
3:25:38 And Code Tim, T-I-M, to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
3:25:43 They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.