0:00:04 Well, hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:10 The Tim Ferriss Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. This time around, we have my good friend Derek
0:00:16 Sivers back on the show. He’s one of my favorite humans. I call him often for advice. He is hilarious,
0:00:24 and he will do his own introduction because I am incredibly lazy, or I was feeling playful and lazy
0:00:30 in this conversation. He is a philosopher, programmer, musician, king of sorts. That’s how I
0:00:35 would describe him. It is a very fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. And you can find Derek’s books,
0:00:43 including his latest Useful Not True, which we discuss at his website, Sivers.com, or sive.rs,
0:00:48 which is probably just about as confusing to people as Tim.blog. If you enjoy this episode,
0:00:53 you should go back and listen to the 2015 conversation I did with Derek, the very first
0:01:01 one, you can find that at tim.blog/DerekSivers, and many longtime listeners out of the nearly 800
0:01:08 episodes I’ve done consider this their favorite or certainly one of their favorites. It is a
0:01:14 barn burner of an episode. And now we’re going to get to it. First, just a quick word about the
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0:02:12 I’ve always been very skeptical of most probiotics due to the lack of science behind them and the
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0:04:00 One more time, seed.com/tim code 25TIM. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called
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0:07:21 while supplies last. For people who don’t know who Derek Sivers is,
0:07:33 what is the brief overview of Derek? Oh, I have to do it, right? I was a musician for many years,
0:07:40 and then I started selling my music online in 1997 when there was no PayPal and there was,
0:07:45 you know, Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD Baby just to sell
0:07:49 my music, but then it grew and became the largest seller of independent music online. And I did
0:07:54 that for 10 years until I got sick of it and sold it. And then I was a TED speaker for a few years
0:07:59 and then kind of threw myself into that completely. And then Seth Godin asked me to write a book.
0:08:03 So I wrote a book and then people really liked it. So now I’ve written five.
0:08:10 Now I’m a dad in New Zealand thinking philosophically and living my life. How about that?
0:08:15 I thought you did a great job. Thank you for that. You know, when I can’t find a
0:08:19 virtual assistant to do work for me, I’ll ask my podcast guest to do my job.
0:08:26 I will also add number one people if you enjoy this conversation, which I’m sure you will not
0:08:30 to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun. Go back and listen to the other
0:08:35 conversations also because you’ll notice a few things. Number one, Derek has one of the most
0:08:44 eclectic CVs imaginable. He’s worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at pig fairs. He
0:08:51 has been an entrepreneur. He has certainly been a philosopher coder and many other things, but also,
0:08:58 I would say, overarchingly crafted a life that is uniquely Derek’s and frequently
0:09:06 tests assumptions and to, I suppose, bucket one of what we’re going to discuss today,
0:09:14 changes his mind and finds himself zigging when he might have otherwise zagged or where other
0:09:22 people are zagging. That is part of why I enjoy spending time with Derek, aside from the dashing
0:09:29 good looks and wit and charm, of course. Let’s begin as we were brainstorming what we might chat
0:09:34 about because we were hoping to catch up. I suggested a few things. We batted a number of
0:09:41 things around, and we landed on things you’ve changed your mind about, things you’re fascinated by
0:09:47 people you’re studying, not necessarily in that order. Let’s start with things you’ve changed
0:09:54 your mind about or on. Where shall we begin? I’ve got five things for you. I’m starting small and
0:10:02 getting big. Coffee. I’ve never liked coffee. Every time I tried coffee, I went, “I don’t know
0:10:06 understand how you people like this.” And even when I’d be with somebody that knew I
0:10:11 didn’t like coffee and we were out somewhere and they would go, “Oh my god, this is the best
0:10:14 coffee I’ve ever had in my life here. I know you don’t like coffee, but if you’re ever going to
0:10:20 try coffee, this is the one. Try a sip.” And I’d say, “Okay.” I’d try to get myself into this mindset.
0:10:30 I’m going to like this. I just never liked it. So then I was in United Arab Emirates and I was
0:10:37 the guest of this Emirati man that we will get to later. And he said, “It is Emirati custom. You
0:10:41 must have the coffee.” And I went, “Oh, sorry. I don’t drink coffee. I just…” He said, “You must
0:10:45 have the coffee.” I said, “No, really. I’ve never liked coffee in my life.” He goes, “My friend,
0:10:51 you must have the… It is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee.” I went, “All right.”
0:10:59 I took a sip. I’m like, “Oh my god.” I’m like, “This is really good.” He goes, “That is Emirati
0:11:03 coffee.” I went, “No, you really… There’s something different about this.” He goes, “Yes,
0:11:07 it’s Emirati coffee.” And I said, “Is that the one where they make it in the sand?” He said,
0:11:12 “No, no, no. That’s Turkish.” He said, “This is Emirati coffee.” So knowing that we were talking
0:11:16 today and I was going to mention coffee, I texted him. I said, “Hey, what was that coffee you…”
0:11:21 Because he’d said, “There are only three places in Dubai that know how to make real Emirati coffee.”
0:11:28 So he told me one, “Bateel, B-A-T-E-E-L. If you’re in Dubai and you want to try real
0:11:34 Emirati coffee, apparently, according to this Emirati, try Bateel in Dubai for real Emirati
0:11:40 coffee, I’ve changed my mind on coffee. I now like at least Emirati coffee.” Here’s one.
0:11:47 Okay. Just for definition purposes. All right. You know, I’ll hold my follow-ups. There are going
0:11:51 to be a couple of follow-ups including, “How do you define Emirati? Is that basically a Brahmin,
0:11:55 the UAE?” Sorry, that’s what we call people from United Arab Emirates.
0:12:00 All right. Everybody. “If you are of the lineage, if you were a citizen
0:12:03 of United Arab Emirates, you’re referred to as Emirati.”
0:12:08 What is the special technique or special ingredient that makes Emirati coffee so miraculous for you?
0:12:13 “Hey listeners, if you find out what’s different about Emirati coffee, please let me know.”
0:12:17 “I went back six months later, same thing. I tried Emirati coffee and I like it.”
0:12:19 Severe social pressure.
0:12:25 Maybe that’s the magic ingredient. Severe social pressure.
0:12:28 It makes anything taste better.
0:12:33 “You must have it and it will be disastrous if you don’t like it.”
0:12:37 I don’t know what it is, but a surprise. Okay. Python. So I’m just going to include this because
0:12:42 23 years ago, I learned the Ruby programming language and I became fluent in Ruby.
0:12:49 And Ruby and Python are as similar as Portuguese and Spanish. But let’s say Ruby is
0:12:53 Portuguese where Spanish became more and more and more popular.
0:12:58 So when I first learned Ruby, it’s like Ruby and Python were kind of side by side.
0:13:02 Ruby was a little more popular at the time. But then over the years, Python just took off
0:13:06 and I refused to look at it. I was like, no, I chose Ruby. I speak Ruby.
0:13:10 I don’t want to learn Python. It’s too similar. If I’m going to learn another language,
0:13:12 it’s going to be Lisp or Haskell or something really different.
0:13:17 I’m not going to learn Python. No. And so for years and years, I’ve been
0:13:21 refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against Python.
0:13:26 When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything but Python.
0:13:30 And then I realized I had left Python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good
0:13:36 reason. So I finally looked at the Python programming language and I went, oh my god,
0:13:43 it’s beautiful. It’s great. Oh my god, it’s wonderful. So now I love Python.
0:13:47 And that just felt amazing in my heart to be like, wow, this thing that I was prejudiced
0:13:52 against for 20 years is actually wonderful. How cool. So coffee, Python, number two.
0:13:59 Should I go on? Number three, let’s go on. Rats. Okay. Rats. I brought a prop.
0:14:08 I want to make this a good show. For the first time ever, appearing are my little pet rats.
0:14:12 Okay, if you see on YouTube. Oh, look at that. All right. So we have two rats on video. They’re
0:14:19 sizable. Yeah. Yeah. Trunky monkeys. They are so cute and they’re so wonderful and they’re so
0:14:23 affectionate. You can’t maybe tell because I’m holding them up like they owe me money right now,
0:14:32 you know, but. So here’s the deal. Years ago, I used to kill rats. I hated rats so badly. I
0:14:37 lived in a basement apartment in Boston that had rats in and around the apartment that would
0:14:42 sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment as I would come home and I was tired. So I
0:14:48 killed many rats with great vengeance. I hated rats. And then just a few months ago,
0:14:53 my boy said, hey, dad, can we get a pet rat? I was like, and I just thought it was it was
0:14:58 kidding. And he said a week later, he said, you know, that really kind of made me sad that you
0:15:05 just shot down my idea of the pet rat. I said, wait, you were serious? He said, yeah. Oh, well,
0:15:11 why would you want a nasty awful rat as a pet? He said, no, they’re not nasty and awful. Look,
0:15:16 and he showed me some videos that rats are really sweet and they’re really wonderful. They’re smart.
0:15:20 They’re trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and like pick things out and like go to a
0:15:25 wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you. And, you know, very useful in a crowd.
0:15:30 The thieves’ guild. This is gonna be interesting. The little art frilled dodgers. So it’s like
0:15:36 the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat is like the difference between a wild dog
0:15:40 and a poodle. The pet rats are really sweet. So no matter what you think of wild rats,
0:15:45 don’t discount or don’t hate on pet rats. They’re actually really wonderful and cuddly
0:15:49 and they’re even clean. They use a litter box. They can control their
0:15:54 bladder like a cat. They prefer to go in a litter box and so they’re really clean and wonderful.
0:16:01 So, oh, and wait, the lifespan. Their lifespan is two to three years, which as a parent is really
0:16:06 wonderful because when a kid says, I want a pet, you don’t always want like a 15-year commitment.
0:16:10 You know, the kid’s gonna be away at college and you still got the pet that your kid wanted when
0:16:15 they were eight, you know. So I like that the lifespan is two to three years, which is, you
0:16:21 know, so rats are good pets. And so I love my little rats. We’ve just got these two boys.
0:16:27 But even more than loving the rats, I love that I am now cuddling what I used to kill.
0:16:33 Like that I now love what I used to hate. It’s so sweet. Like I cuddle them, but it’s like,
0:16:38 God, I used to hate you. This is such a good feeling in my heart that I now love what I used
0:16:42 to hate. And you’ll see this is the theme of my five things today. Ready for the next?
0:16:46 What are the names of the two rats? Cricket and Clover. Cully Clover and
0:16:50 Crazy Cricket Climber. Do they eat crickets? What do they eat?
0:16:54 Actually, well, they do love Clover, but now they just kind of eat rat food from the store.
0:16:59 They eat anything. It’s like when you’re making food and you’ve got little leftovers,
0:17:03 you’ve got little bits and crusts or little things that you just give it to the rats and
0:17:05 they usually love it. It’s great. I keep them in the kitchen.
0:17:10 That’s perfect. That’s what some folks in South America do with
0:17:13 guinea pigs, although the difference is they fatten up the guinea pigs on the table scraps
0:17:18 and then they eat the guinea pigs. Probably not going to eat cricket and Clover, I imagine.
0:17:22 I would eat cricket and Clover, but I do like that kind of hang out near the kitchen and give
0:17:31 them the scraps. Okay. Number four, China. Number four, China. So in 2010, I went to Guilin, China,
0:17:39 and then I went to Taipei, Taiwan. And at the time, China was rough. I was walking over rubble.
0:17:45 The air was just choking me with its smoke and the sense of oil. And everything felt very third
0:17:51 world, very rough. And I just thought, okay, that’s what China is. China, you know, developing
0:17:57 economy. It’s just rough. And then you go to Taipei, Taiwan, and it just feels like
0:18:03 the most refined first world, beautiful version. It’s like Japan, but with Chinese culture.
0:18:09 And I thought, aha, someday I want to live in Taiwan because that’s the really nice part of
0:18:17 China. So here we are 2024, 14 years later, I go to bring my kid on a school holiday to
0:18:22 China for his first time. And I thought, well, we’ll start out rough by going to mainland China.
0:18:28 And then we’ll move on to like the best of the best with the refined culture of Taiwan and Taipei.
0:18:35 And it turned out to be the opposite. That China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai and it was like
0:18:43 first world, amazing, refined, silent, because all the vehicles are electric now. So that was
0:18:47 the very first thing I noticed as soon as I took the train from the airport. We got off in downtown
0:18:53 Shanghai, I’m surrounded by a hundred vehicles, and I hear nothing. It’s just, that’s so nice.
0:19:01 And I’m like, oh my God, what’s real, like 20 motorbikes went in front of my face, like right
0:19:05 there, like, you know, three meters away. And I heard none of them. There was just the silent
0:19:11 movement. I was like, oh, this is so nice. And the people were just so polite and cultured. And
0:19:16 it was none of this like hacking and spitting that I associated with it before, like the shouting
0:19:20 and the spitting, you know. Yeah, that’s good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits.
0:19:26 A lot of spitting. Yeah. And even just transactionally, you have to get Alipay or WeChat on your phone
0:19:31 first before you go like attach it to your credit card. But then once you’re there, all transactions
0:19:37 are just, everything is so easy. And they’re beautiful, like rental bikes everywhere, laid out
0:19:42 in perfect color coded cues. You can just walk up to one and go and step on the bike and then
0:19:46 just go where you want to go. And you drop it off, you go beep. And everything is just
0:19:54 so civilized and wonderful. I was so it completely changed my mind about China. And then I don’t
0:20:00 want to sound like I’m trashing Taiwan, but it was just interesting that by comparison,
0:20:04 then I went to Taipei and I thought, whoa, if China is this nice, imagine how nice Taipei is
0:20:10 going to be. And I got there and it was kind of like stinky and trashy. And they don’t take credit
0:20:14 cards or they don’t have the apps. And so you have to pay cash everywhere. And I’m like,
0:20:21 money and paper and coins. And I was like, wow, interesting. And so I met with a Taiwanese woman
0:20:27 for lunch that I emailed with before. And she’s an investor that goes to mainland China often.
0:20:33 And I mentioned something about this cautiously as like, I don’t want to trash your home. I didn’t
0:20:38 say it like that. But I just cautiously said, hi, I noticed something. And she said, I’m glad you
0:20:44 noticed. She said, I noticed this too. She said, I go to mainland China’s cities every six to 12
0:20:50 months. And she said, I feel like Taiwan may be plateaued like 12 years ago, like we kind of hit
0:20:56 first world status and then stayed there almost like Japan, you know, it’s like Japan used to feel
0:21:01 futuristic. Now it feels kind of stuck in the 90s, you know, fax machines and stuff. And which is
0:21:06 kind of cute in a way like, again, not to knock it, it’s just it feels like it, it got to a certain
0:21:13 point. And then it said, okay, we’re happy here. And she said, every time I go to China, she said,
0:21:19 there’s visible, noticeable improvements like every six months, she said it blows my mind that
0:21:26 they just keep improving and keep pushing. So I read a book called China’s worldview by David
0:21:33 Daokui Li that changed my perception of China’s government too. It’s really impressive. He’s a
0:21:39 guy that in but not in China’s government. And so he kind of is trying to explain the mindset
0:21:44 of China’s government to outsiders. And it’s a beautiful book I highly recommend if somebody
0:21:50 wants to understand China better, China’s worldview. China’s worldview, just as a sidebar note,
0:21:57 your mention of Japan, I love Japan. And I’ve spent time in mainland China and in Taipei. It’s
0:22:01 time for me to get back to both of those. I’ve spent much more time in Japan. But when people
0:22:06 are going to Japan for the first time, they’re like, I can’t wait to experience this futuristic
0:22:14 view 30 years ahead. I typically say, look, especially if they’re going to stay there for a
0:22:25 longer period of time, I say, you’re going to love it. And it is 30 to 40% Blade Runner and 60 to 70%
0:22:33 DMV, just like feeling filling out paperwork and triplicates and fax machines. It’s going to drive
0:22:37 you nuts if you actually try to live there on some levels, right? There’s so many beautiful
0:22:42 things about it. But yes, it does have the feeling of having frozen in time, in a sense,
0:22:49 as opposed to continued to inflect the way that it was. Perhaps some time ago,
0:22:53 need to get back to the East, so to speak. It’s been a long time. All right, I think you have
0:22:59 actually, because of this newfound love, I’m actually going to Shenzhen and Chengdu in a few
0:23:05 weeks. Oh, wow. I just want to keep experiencing different Chinese cities. Are you going to do
0:23:11 any factory tours or see manufacturing there? I’m just meeting with people. That’s kind of how
0:23:15 I travel these days. I tend to go to a place and instead of just, instead of seeing the sites,
0:23:18 I want to meet the people. So I’m meeting with people that I’ve emailed with over the years and
0:23:23 just, I chose those two cities because I know a lot of people there. Great. Can I hear the
0:23:27 report? So I think, I’m no mathematician, but maybe you have one more.
0:23:41 Smartass. Okay, number five, Dubai. So this is my big one because when I lived in Singapore,
0:23:43 Dubai would often come up. People would compare the two and they would tell me
0:23:49 things about Dubai, about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering and the Instagram
0:23:57 hashtaggy. You look at me kind of crap. And Dubai was in my top 10 places I never want
0:24:03 to go in my life. Fuck that place. It sounds awful. It sounds like everything I hate in one place,
0:24:09 you couldn’t pay me to go there. But then I have to notice that feeling in myself. And this is
0:24:13 going to be, we’ll get to like the theme when we’re done with this number five. But I had a
0:24:18 flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai and I looked at that and I went,
0:24:23 ugh, Dubai. And I was like, wait a second, what is this prejudice in me against Dubai?
0:24:28 It’s like saying, I hate artichokes, but I’ve never tried artichokes, right? Like I hate Dubai,
0:24:33 but I’ve never been to Dubai. Maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three hour
0:24:38 layover, I made it like a three or four day layover. I went, wow, okay, I’m going to Dubai for a few
0:24:46 days. So I read a book called City of Gold, which was about the founding of Dubai and the
0:24:50 creation of Dubai. And dude, it was so good. It is such a great book. Anybody listening to this,
0:24:58 if you want a great read, read the book City of Gold about the history of Dubai. It is inspiring
0:25:05 the wisdom and the foresight and the boldness it took to make that place happen. It was really
0:25:09 just like a vision that saw its way through to the end against all odds, right? So super inspiring.
0:25:15 Then somebody said, oh, you need to read Arabian sands by this man named Fessager.
0:25:20 And that gets into like the Arab Bedou culture. It was written in the 1940s or 50s,
0:25:27 kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia kind of guy, like from England, but went through the desert
0:25:31 and kind of became one with the Bedou people and got to know the culture and wrote about it.
0:25:37 So that was really inspiring. And then the United Arab Emirates itself, as I learned more about,
0:25:42 so Dubai, you know, is a city and a region inside the United Arab Emirates. It’s one of the seven
0:25:48 states, the Emirates in that country. So Sheikh Zayed, the guy that was really like the father of
0:25:53 the nation, was a really great dude, kind of like when I moved to Singapore, and I learned more
0:25:57 about Lee Kuan Yew and started to really admire the decisions he made. He became a bit of a role
0:26:02 model, like learning about him like makes me want to be a better person. You know, I just noticed
0:26:07 that it actually subtly influences my actions. And so when I’m in Singapore, I feel like a little
0:26:13 bit infused with the role model, like I feel the presence of the role model of Lee Kuan Yew,
0:26:19 and when I’m in UAE, I feel a little bit inspired by Sheikh Zayed because he was just such a great
0:26:24 generous dude. And also, I think it’s interesting that Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the
0:26:30 media, like Hollywood portrayal is usually some like white actor with brown makeup being stupid
0:26:34 saying, you know, oh, I like this building, I’ll buy 10 of them, you know, I think I want a penguin
0:26:41 colony in the desert, you know, make it happen. And they’re kind of portrayed as fools that are too
0:26:46 rich. And so getting to know the culture felt like this is really interesting. I really had the
0:26:52 wrong idea about this culture. Okay, so as I read these books, City of Golden Arabian Sands,
0:26:57 I have a thing on my website where I always show what I’m reading, and I take notes from the books,
0:27:04 and I put notes on my website. And a friend of mine that lives in Muscat, Oman, saw my reading
0:27:08 list, and he said, what is your interest in this region? I’ve noticed you’re reading books about
0:27:12 Middle East. And I told him, I just really interested in Arab culture. And he said,
0:27:21 you must meet the man from Tamashii. I said, what? And he goes, go to tamashii.com, T-A-M-A-S-H-E-E.com.
0:27:28 And he said, you will see a shoe store. His name is Mohammed Kazan. He designs sandals,
0:27:34 but underneath the surface, he’s an educator of Arab culture. So the sandals are just like
0:27:38 the storefront. It’s like the pirate shop in San Francisco. Oh, I haven’t heard this.
0:27:44 There is a place in San Francisco, it’s on Valencia Street, and it is used for
0:27:51 now educating kids, writing workshops, things like that. But because they couldn’t get it zoned,
0:27:55 in San Francisco, they couldn’t get permission for what they actually wanted to do. They had to
0:28:03 create a storefront and then do the teaching in the back. And so they created a pirate attire store,
0:28:10 and all of the classrooms are in the back. So that was a bit of a digression, especially because I
0:28:18 can’t even recall the proper name of the sort of writing outlet that is associated with this.
0:28:26 But Tamashi, shoe store, sandal store on the front end, but it’s actually education in disguise.
0:28:30 Yeah, well, at first I thought there was no connection. Then I realized that his
0:28:38 sandal designs are actually kind of reflecting Arab traditions and culture through the design
0:28:42 of the sandals. But it’s like his true passion are these cultural trips he does. So if you go to
0:28:47 tamashi.com and you click on the menu, you can click cultural trips and then you’ll see. So
0:28:54 my friend introduced me to this guy. So I met with him on my trip to Dubai. We meet by the creek,
0:28:59 and he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai. That was his grandfather.
0:29:03 That’s how young that city is. And he’s just like, yeah, right, basically right over there. There
0:29:08 was a very first building in Dubai. My grandfather is the one that built it. So I said, can you explain
0:29:13 to me something about Arab culture? And he said, well, wait, first you got to understand the culture
0:29:19 of the people of the desert is very different than the people of the sea, the Arabian coast,
0:29:23 and which is very different than the people of the hills. And I said, okay, well,
0:29:26 where’s your family from? And he said, well, from the desert. But he said, but you know,
0:29:32 two uncles got in a fight. And so kind of half the family moved off to Iraq for a while. And there
0:29:38 was kind of like a split in the family. But then they kind of reunited in Abu Dhabi. And he said,
0:29:44 but then Islam came along. And I said, wait, hold on, Islam, that was like the year 600. I said,
0:29:49 have you been telling me your family history from 2000 years ago? And he goes, well, 1800 years
0:29:55 ago. Yeah, I said, wait, how the fuck do you know your family history back 1800 years? He said, well,
0:30:04 we keep good records. Whoa, imagine what that does to how you see your life. If you see yourself in
0:30:10 this long lineage of 1800 years of recorded family history, like how that affects your dating and
0:30:16 whatever choices on where to live. So Muhammad cousin, this guy is a badass. I love this guy.
0:30:21 He’s such a wealth of information. And he communicates it so well. It really helps by the way
0:30:25 that so he’s got a complete American accent. He went to college in Boston for six years,
0:30:30 like got into finance, came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi, and then just said, no, my real
0:30:36 passion is teaching the Arab cultural traditions that I think have gotten lost in our modern
0:30:41 skyscrapers. So that’s why he made it his passion project. He could have made way more money in
0:30:47 finance, but he has this tamashii.com sandal store and he teaches Arab culture. And I admire the
0:30:51 hell out of this guy. That’s a really cool Easter egg. All right, so we’ll link to that in the show
0:30:58 notes. And I also pulled up this word that was on the tip of my tongue McSweeney’s McSweeney’s.net.
0:31:04 People can check it out. There’s some hilarious writing. The one that I most recently shared
0:31:08 with someone after it was shared with me is Cormac McCarthy writes to the editor of the Santa
0:31:14 Fe New Mexican by John Keenan. It’s only going to be funny for people who have read some of Cormac
0:31:20 McCarthy like The Road or Blood Meridian. But there’s a lot of really good stuff. So that is
0:31:28 the outlet. Also wanted to mention, because you mentioned Iraq, Iraqi music, traditional music
0:31:34 is some of the most incredibly intricate music I’ve ever heard. Using a dulcimer or a hammer
0:31:40 dulcimer, there are different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been
0:31:45 destroyed, unfortunately, culturally and various teachers and so on due to all of the
0:31:51 goings on in Iraq over the last while. But what is the overarching lesson that you take
0:31:58 from the five things you have changed your mind on? Are there kind of meta lessons that you take
0:32:04 from this? Yeah, you can see the theme, which is like, I love my rats. But even more, it’s like,
0:32:10 I love that I used to hate them. And now I don’t. And I could have gone on twice as long
0:32:15 about Dubai, by the way, the place is amazing. It is this cultural melting pot that just warms my
0:32:20 heart sitting on the second floor of the Dubai mall and watching the whole world go by just the
0:32:26 Nigerians and the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British just all walking in
0:32:32 through in the same place. And it’s so amazing. I just, I kind of want to live there. But as
0:32:38 happy as it makes me, I get this extra happiness of going, wow, I used to hate this place without
0:32:45 even knowing it. And I take a sip of this coffee and it’s like, wow, for my whole life, I’m 55,
0:32:50 I hated coffee, the Python programming. But the secret has been held back from you. So now you
0:32:58 have to go to Dubai to have the coffee that you’re like, right. The theme is that if you feel completely
0:33:05 averse to something, get to know it better, that whatever you feel yourself leaning away from,
0:33:12 try leaning into. If you hate opera, then go learn more about opera. And if you hate sports,
0:33:16 well, then go learn more about sports. It’s usually just learning about something
0:33:20 gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just dismiss.
0:33:26 At the end of the year last year, I just thought, God, this has been, I think, maybe the greatest
0:33:31 year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. And I think the
0:33:38 reason why was because I had five major things in one year that I used to hate that now I love.
0:33:44 And God, this is the greatest joy. So major things. So the rats makes it into major things.
0:33:49 I like this. Sure. I mean, you know, they’re my they’re my I’m not minimizing rats. Yeah,
0:33:54 I’m not minimizing rats. But it’s, you know, even the coffee and even the Python,
0:33:58 I’m doing something Python going, wow, I can’t believe I hated this for 20 years.
0:34:05 Well, I suppose they’re major in the sense that to the degree you had a fixed position beforehand,
0:34:13 these were kind of strong, fixed positions of dislike. So that turnaround is very interesting.
0:34:21 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:34:31 carrying tons of weight, and I needed all the help I could get. And in those circumstances,
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0:35:30 performance stack. I’ll spell it out. It’s a long one live momentous.com/tim. Live momentous.com/tim
0:35:40 for 20% off. Let me ask you this. Since in the case of the rats that was catalyzed by your son
0:35:51 bringing up pet rats, Dubai, you had a layover that then prompted you to extend how long you
0:35:57 stayed there. Python, I’m not sure exactly how that about face came to be, but having experienced
0:36:02 the past year, you say to yourself, this is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life,
0:36:10 high levels of happiness. I think it’s because I had these changes of mind. Are you farming for
0:36:16 opportunities to change your mind proactively? Yeah. And if so, how are you doing that?
0:36:21 I don’t have a systematic thing I can share and not that I’m not sharing it. I just don’t have
0:36:29 it. But it just made me notice like now I just need to notice in myself when I’m
0:36:33 irrationally averse to something. It can’t even be a thought process. Sometimes, okay,
0:36:39 this is actually in my useful, not true book that just came out. This idea that was actually
0:36:46 a little bit sparked by you where somebody dismisses everything a person says. It dismisses
0:36:51 everything a public figure says because they don’t like something about that public figure,
0:36:56 right? Like, oh, I don’t like the way he acts on social media. So fuck him. I’m not going to
0:37:02 listen to a word he says. And that was inspired. I think I told you last time that the first time
0:37:06 I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw somebody holding four hour work week.
0:37:12 And I said, oh, wow, great book. And he goes, yeah, the guy’s full of himself. Here you want it.
0:37:18 He’s like, he didn’t want to read the book because he saw one thing in there that made
0:37:23 him think you were fully yourself. So that’s it. Fuck this whole thing. Fuck this 400 page book.
0:37:26 There’s nothing in it for me because there’s something I don’t like about this guy.
0:37:33 When I think about that, to me, that’s trying to think of people as either true or not true
0:37:40 instead of useful or not useful. That’s judging the box, not judging the contents inside.
0:37:44 And so I think there are many things in my life where I have judged the box like
0:37:53 Python, no, you know, China, rough Dubai, fuck that place. Rats, coffee. Sorry, I just had to
0:37:59 spit all five times. And all of those, I was judging the box. But if you learn a little bit
0:38:04 more about it, then you get into the contents and you go, oh, actually, the contents are wonderful.
0:38:09 It was just I was dismissing the package. He probably read the first edition where I had that
0:38:14 whole chapter on my cock size that ended up being a little over the top. So I took it out for
0:38:20 reprints. And then he put it into four hour body. It was a bit much. Yeah, then I ended up putting
0:38:27 that as an appendix in the four hour body. So fair play on his part. I would actually
0:38:37 build on that to say that I look to my close relationships, and I pause and question
0:38:44 how I’m thinking about friendships. If in every case, there isn’t something substantial,
0:38:49 I disagree with each of those friends on. Does that make sense? Yes. I love that.
0:38:56 I really want friends where the differences of opinion bring us closer and make our
0:39:02 friendships more valuable, not the other way around. Yes. If you and your friends agree on
0:39:09 pretty much everything, I view that as symptomatic of a problem. Okay, I’m so glad you brought this
0:39:19 up. Sometimes I wonder about your motivation for continuing these podcasts and how you keep up
0:39:24 the enthusiasm for doing this for so long. And then I thought, God, wait, you must
0:39:31 be immersing yourself in so many diverse world views that it made me think about the
0:39:37 comparison to investing. I was in a situation recently, you’ve probably had this many times,
0:39:42 and I think it’s maybe part of why you left California, where you catch yourself in a group
0:39:47 of people and everybody agrees with everybody else. It’s like this group think, even if they’re
0:39:52 all really smart, but damn it, they all basically agree. This sucks. And I thought about the benefits
0:39:59 of diversification when it comes to investing, right? So anybody who learns like investing one
0:40:07 to one learns about having a low correlation between your asset allocations. So your US stocks,
0:40:14 international stocks, real estate commodities, bonds, gold, cash, some things risky, some things
0:40:19 riskless. And the whole idea is they’re supposed to have a low correlation. So if one goes down,
0:40:26 they won’t all go down. And I thought about that in terms of the thought portfolio
0:40:33 in our head, any given person. So you say it with the friends you have around, but I assume,
0:40:40 aren’t you then by knowing your friends so well, when you’re in a certain situation and you’re
0:40:46 thinking about what to do, you don’t just have Tim’s thoughts, you also have this friend’s thoughts,
0:40:50 and that’s friends thoughts. And it’s like, how would this friend of mine approach this?
0:40:56 Do you do that actively? Oh, yeah, I definitely do. And I’ll give a real world example. And I don’t
0:41:03 know if we want to get into the thick of it. But I was reading some of your writing before we hopped
0:41:08 on the phone. And I was taking an ice bath also right before we got on the phone, which I know I
0:41:15 am fonder of than you are. But I was sitting in the tub freezing my balls off. And there were certain
0:41:23 statements and positions in the writing that got me all riled up. And I was sitting there getting
0:41:36 riled up and thinking about my counter positions. And then I thought to myself, well, that’s interesting
0:41:41 to observe these feelings coming up, these very strong feelings. Then I thought to myself,
0:41:49 this is really good. This is good because the feelings are coming up in a strong way. And
0:41:56 you’re not someone to shy away from a conversation about those things. And what a gift to be able to
0:42:06 have civil disagreement with friends like what a fucking treasure that is. Because we don’t have a
0:42:13 lot of models for civil disagreement, I would say, at least not in most media or online. It’s just
0:42:21 not what sells. And I very much want friends who are going to call me on my bullshit or at least
0:42:31 take counter positions and help me think through things. And I think that in your new book, for
0:42:36 instance, there’s a very good job of discussing perspectives and perspective taking and how you
0:42:44 can read many things differently from different viewpoints. And you want friends who can help you
0:42:49 do that so that you don’t get trapped in your own thought loops. And furthermore, just on a very
0:42:55 practical sense, you want to be able to speak truthfully to your friends and you want them to
0:43:01 be able to do the same. And if you do that and you talk about a really wide breadth of things,
0:43:07 if you never have conflict, one or both of you is probably being dishonest. And if you’re going to
0:43:11 have some friction in the system, which you probably will if you’re really being honest,
0:43:20 then you’re going to need to be good at conflict resolution or repair or talking about hard things.
0:43:31 So that’s a very long stream of consciousness that I just let out. But if I look for friends
0:43:39 who I can and will disagree with on things, then it becomes my dojo for life overall
0:43:48 with people I really care for and love. And good God, what an amazing gift and advantage that is.
0:43:55 So yes, I do that deliberately. And I invite people on the podcast who I suspect or know I
0:43:59 will disagree with on a few different levels. And that gives me a chance to interrogate their
0:44:05 thinking, but also interrogate my own thinking. Love it. I’ve noticed within myself that when I’m
0:44:13 around people that I know agree with me, my inherent curiosity level drops a bit.
0:44:19 And when I’m around people that I know don’t think like me, my curiosity peaks.
0:44:27 So when I meet somebody that is like a scientist that is also Hindu, I’m like, oh,
0:44:30 oh my God, I have so many questions for you. I was like, can you explain to me how this, okay,
0:44:37 I’m filled with curiosity to meet somebody that grew up Hindu and still actively has the Hindu
0:44:41 beliefs. I want to understand this better. I’ve read two books about Hinduism. I don’t get it
0:44:45 still. I have so many questions for you. But if I’m around somebody that’s like me and like,
0:44:52 how are you doing? What’s up? Yeah, me too. Cool. All right. So I think it’s a deliberate
0:44:59 over waiting if we’re going to kind of use a back to like quantitative and investment metaphor.
0:45:08 I have a whole lifetime of thinking my way. Now I want to overweight learning other ways of thinking.
0:45:12 And to me, it’s just pure curiosity. There’s no debate. There’s no like, let’s work this
0:45:17 out and get to the right answer. It’s just, no, please tell me this other way of looking at
0:45:21 things. Tell me this other way of looking at your family history, 1800 years. Tell me this
0:45:27 other way of looking at, I don’t know, spirituality, life after death, etc. Please. I’m so curious,
0:45:34 because it reminds me that my way of looking at it is not the only way. I love dislodging
0:45:42 my first impression. I think our first thought is an obstacle. And we have to get past it
0:45:47 to realize there are other ways to look at the situation. Once you realize that you can get
0:45:52 past your first way of looking at something, then you can do that like what do you call it systems
0:45:57 to thinking, right? Thinking fast and slow, you can go, Oh, right. Okay, hold on. That was my first
0:46:03 reaction. What are some other ways I could look at this? That’s what my whole useful not true book
0:46:10 is about. Yeah, I remember also, this is, I think this was on the podcast in one of our earlier
0:46:17 conversations. But I asked you, it was on the podcast, probably the first conversation. I asked
0:46:24 you who the first person was you thought of when I gave the word successful. And your answer was
0:46:29 along the lines of, Well, I think answer number one isn’t that interesting, because I might say
0:46:36 Richard Branson, but really memory or Elon Musk. But if Richard Branson wanted a life of peace and
0:46:43 tranquility and a slower pace, if that were his goal, then he’s utterly failing. So maybe that
0:46:50 isn’t success. But perhaps overarchingly, I’ve used that twice now as an adverb, that’s pretty
0:46:55 funny. I never use that word. But the question should be who’s the third person you think of
0:46:59 when you hear the word successful? I am so impressed that you remember that.
0:47:05 It’s a long time ago. Yeah. And that is an example of what you’re talking about,
0:47:09 is getting past the first thought. I think the operative word there is thought, right? Because
0:47:17 just to draw a distinction for me, I think paying attention to feeling, the first feeling can save
0:47:24 you from a lot of pain in the short and the long term. In other words, along the lines of the gift
0:47:30 of fear, Gavin DeBecca, etc. If your system says no, pay very close attention to that. But if you
0:47:38 have a inbuilt story, I hate Dubai because A, B, and C, which is very different from,
0:47:42 I don’t feel safe in this airport and I don’t know why. Those are two very different things.
0:47:47 Very, yeah. Questioning that first story can pay a lot of incredible dividends.
0:47:51 Dude, I love this subject so much. To me, it’s kind of like the key of life.
0:47:58 So often the difference between success and failure is the mindset that leads you to take
0:48:04 different actions. But if you just look at a situation and you say, that’s it, that’s what
0:48:09 the situation is, I’m not talking about physical things. I mean, declaring something to be a dead
0:48:16 end, declaring something to suck. These are all things of the mind. And nothing of the mind is
0:48:20 necessarily true. Everything that’s just in the mind is just one perspective. Like physical
0:48:26 things are true. Sure. There are some physical realities. The number of votes cast in an election
0:48:33 is a physical reality that an alien or a computer could observe and agree. But all of these things
0:48:38 of the mind were social creatures and we treat them like they are realities. Like, hey, that person
0:48:43 wronged me. And that’s just a fact. It’s like, hmm, that’s not just a fact. That’s one way of
0:48:48 looking at it. And you might be a lot happier and a lot more successful if you realize that that’s
0:48:54 just one way of looking at it. It’s not true. It’s just a perspective. It’s just a thought.
0:48:58 And there’s another way of seeing that. And that other way of seeing it might lead
0:49:01 to actions that would be much more effective for you.
0:49:08 Yeah, for sure. And I think your new book pairs well with Byron Heddy’s The Work,
0:49:14 which focuses on a lot of what we’re discussing. And I was going to say,
0:49:21 in addition to what we’ve already covered, that the content is different from the mindset. And
0:49:28 what I mean by that is you have crafted a very path of Derek life for yourself. And you’ve made
0:49:35 some very unorthodox decisions, some of which I think are frankly, sometimes cuckoo bananas.
0:49:40 But thank you. You’re welcome. If I don’t agree, even if I wouldn’t replicate the decision,
0:49:48 hearing you explain why you did it and how you navigated that, the lenses through which
0:49:54 you view this scenario has allowed me to learn things that I can apply to totally different
0:50:02 circumstances. And that’s really valuable. You might not make the same house as someone else,
0:50:06 but learning how to use the carpentry tools that they use to build that house
0:50:14 could actually really, really aid you in a lot of disparate scenarios. So that’s how I’ve also
0:50:22 thought about it. I so often try to get people to devalue the example, but value the theme,
0:50:26 the process, like you just said, that too many people focus on the example that you give them.
0:50:32 It’s like, try to forget the example and look for the process. So thanks for saying that. I do that
0:50:38 with everything. There’s a person that we could talk about here if you want later, but he’s a
0:50:43 computer programmer, but he gets up and gives a talk about computer programming that I see the
0:50:48 theme in what he’s talking about. I’m like, oh, okay, well, forget the code for a second. That’s a
0:50:55 brilliant theme. And it’s fun to be able to do that. So let’s pause. This might be a good segue.
0:51:04 Is that part of the next bucket of people you’re studying? Or things you’re fascinated by? Where
0:51:10 would you like to go next? Because this might be a good segue. Yeah, it’s funny. You actually jumped
0:51:16 to the last thing I was going to mention. You brought up this diversified portfolio of perspectives.
0:51:20 So that was one of the things I wanted to talk about today. And you didn’t even know that.
0:51:25 Oh, amazing. Look at that. I did not. That was great. Yeah, let’s talk. Okay, you asked me in
0:51:32 advance. People I’m studying. So let’s do them in reverse order since we already brought up
0:51:39 Rich Hickey. So R-I-C-H-H-I-C-K-E-Y. Wait a second before we switch to that. Have you ever met Brian
0:51:49 Eno, the record producer? I have not met Brian Eno, but I have his oblique strategies part set.
0:51:55 I was just reading about how he ended up coining the term ambient music in the hospital because he
0:52:00 couldn’t get up and change the volume and ended up he ended up listening to very, very low volume
0:52:05 music a friend had put on for him. So I’m fascinated by Brian Eno, but I’ve never met him.
0:52:14 Brian Eno is one of these guys that his thought process is fascinating. I don’t love his music.
0:52:18 I like his music. I don’t love it, but I love his thought process. By the way, if you go to the
0:52:24 website musicthoughts.com, that’s my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music
0:52:31 thinkers. I made that website in 1999 and it’s a collection of inspiring quotes from Brian Eno,
0:52:35 John Cage and a bunch of other musicians. Musicthoughts.com. Yep, musicthoughts.com. It’s
0:52:39 totally non-commercial. I’m not going to make it penny off of anybody looking at it, so I’m not
0:52:46 trying to pitch it, but I’m just saying it’s a collection of Brian Eno’s philosophies on music
0:52:51 and thoughts on music that I would read these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and
0:52:57 kind of knock my thinking kind of like the oblique strategies cards to shift my thinking
0:53:03 into something different. And so even just reading his interviews, one thing he said is his job as
0:53:10 a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio so that if he’s in there producing a
0:53:16 record by you too and the guys are fighting about whether to have a guitar solo or not,
0:53:20 whether it should be a loud guitar solo or a quiet guitar solo, he said, “Well, my job then
0:53:25 would be to say, ‘Well, how about we have no guitar at all in this song?’ And the band members go,
0:53:30 ‘What? Are you crazy? No, this song needs a guitar.’ No, Brian, we absolutely need guitar.’
0:53:35 And he goes, “All right, happy I could help. By you disagreeing with me, I just helped you
0:53:40 solidify your position, so that’s my job here.” So on the other hand, if you would have said,
0:53:45 “Yeah, okay, no guitar, that’s a good idea. Great, glad I could help. I’m not saying my
0:53:52 opinions are right. I’m just trying to help you respond.” I love that.
0:53:58 You’re providing a foil. Yeah. Yeah, you’re providing a foil. That’s musicthoughts.com.
0:54:02 Quick question on, was it John Cage you mentioned? Yeah.
0:54:08 So I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary, a friend of my name, Steve Jang,
0:54:15 was involved with Namjoon Paik, Moon is the Oldest TV, which is about Namjoon Paik,
0:54:21 this amazing pioneer in experimental art, performance art, many different media.
0:54:26 And he was inspired by John Cage. Now, I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see
0:54:32 a segment of a performance that he did, which caused like 90% of the audience to leave.
0:54:38 He was just like the most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say, noise to listen to.
0:54:44 That is my sole exposure to John Cage, but I’ve heard him invoked as this
0:54:50 figurehead of great influence. And I’m basing my impression of him only on that,
0:54:56 what I would just say is awful performance that I saw a part of in this documentary.
0:55:01 How would you sell John Cage or why is he interesting?
0:55:09 I’m no expert, but let’s just say he questioned things that hadn’t been questioned before.
0:55:18 A lot of modern art, the kind where people look at it and go, what, that’s it? It’s a seesaw over
0:55:23 the border between U.S. and Mexico. You call that art, I could do that. And it’s like, yeah,
0:55:27 but you didn’t. Somebody looked at that border between U.S. and Mexico and said,
0:55:31 I think we could put a seesaw over that. And in a way, that’s a beautiful statement.
0:55:35 It’s not about the brushstrokes on canvas. It’s about the statement.
0:55:42 So I think John Cage was doing that with music. He was questioning the core of what is this anyway.
0:55:46 And so that’s why I think his most famous piece is called Four Minutes in 33 Seconds,
0:55:51 which is just Four Minutes of 33 Seconds of Silence. The point was, hey, listen to the room
0:55:56 around you for four minutes and 33 seconds. There are sounds going on here already. I mean,
0:55:58 I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it. I don’t know.
0:56:05 Okay. So is it fair to say that he’s interesting to you for the same reason that Brian in the
0:56:11 producer capacity is interesting as a provocateur of sorts, like an instigator of new thinking?
0:56:19 Yeah. I want to emulate his thought process, even if I don’t love his end results. Well,
0:56:24 you said it first. That’s why I love that you beat me to this. It’s your friends. You may not
0:56:30 want to live my life here with my, whatever, three glasses and two rats, but you like some of my
0:56:38 thought process. People keep emailing me about that. Hey, I heard your podcast with Tim Ferriss.
0:56:44 So three glasses. So let me explain that for people who don’t have the content. You should get
0:56:48 a third rat just so you have the same number of rats that you have glasses. But when I visited
0:56:51 you in New Zealand, I was like, Hey, do you mind if I have glass water? No, no, knock yourself out.
0:56:56 We’re the glasses. Other in the cabinet. And I went and I saw three glasses, all of different,
0:57:02 dramatically different sizes. And I was like, what happens if you have more than three people over
0:57:06 here? Like, I’ll just buy some more glasses. I was like, well, actually, that kind of makes a certain
0:57:10 elegant sense. So those are the three glasses. All right, you know what? On that note, do you want to
0:57:15 hear? I am building my dream home right now. Can you imagine where this is going?
0:57:21 Just 20 minutes north of Wellington, I bought a piece of land or I’m building my dream home.
0:57:28 It is a four by eight meter rectangle with nothing inside. No toilet, no kitchen, no nothing. Because
0:57:36 I thought every house I’ve lived in came with its default shit. And I adapted myself to its
0:57:40 default shit. Like, well, that’s just where the bathroom is. That’s just the size of the living
0:57:44 room. That’s just what it is. And I’ve always had to adapt myself. So I’ve never experienced
0:57:54 the process of making the place adapt to me through practice, not in theory. So I thought,
0:57:59 if I just start with a four by eight meter well insulated rectangle, then over time we’ll see
0:58:07 what I need. Wait, did you say four by eight? Four by eight meters? Yeah. Is the whole house?
0:58:14 Sorry, it’s actually two. So it’s a four by 12? Okay, got it. No, four by 14 meter rectangle,
0:58:19 that’s the two bedroom place where I’ll sleep with my kid. And then next to it is a four by eight
0:58:24 where I spend all of my waking hours. Okay, so it’s the sleeping house and the waking house.
0:58:29 And my kid actually gets his own four by eight meter cube to experiment with. And the whole
0:58:36 idea is to see what you need. So I’m starting with no bathroom, no kitchen. I’m just going to put a
0:58:42 little induction hob outside and an outhouse. And then I’ll see if that’s okay with me. Or if I find
0:58:48 through experience that I really want a bathroom inside, okay, well now I know from experience,
0:58:53 not just because it’s the default setting. So I’m trying to start from scratch. And this is my
0:59:00 dream house because of the process that it will allow me to have. Okay, so this is a very mundane
0:59:04 question. But I’m curious, generally, if you’re going to have like a kitchen or a bathroom or
0:59:13 something, you would have the piping or the power and so on put in a certain place. So as it stands,
0:59:20 that is not the case. So you might have to do a fair amount of demo or deconstructing your house
0:59:29 to add any of these things internally. I got this tip from Stuart Brand wrote a brilliant
0:59:33 book that everyone should read. Anyone who’s smart that is called How Buildings Learned.
0:59:38 How Buildings Learned by Stuart Brand, you should try to get the paper book because it’s
0:59:43 just laid out in such a way that you kind of need the paper book. He goes through this analytical
0:59:49 thing about buildings. And he said, “This is a reason why you should never hide your wires and
0:59:54 pipes. Just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it’s easier to change.” He has a beautiful
1:00:00 line in there. It’s almost the opening point. He says, “All buildings are predictions and all
1:00:09 predictions are wrong. So therefore, the less predictive you can make your building the better.”
1:00:14 That’s why I’m just getting this rectangle. All pipes and wires will just be exposed to nothing
1:00:18 buried so that I can quickly change them. I can always see where they are. I’m very much
1:00:25 following Stuart Brand’s philosophy. Stuart Brand is a smart, fascinating man. Just a quick
1:00:31 pitch for Stuart Brand. So I met Stuart through Kevin Kelly. Now, Kevin Kelly found an editor
1:00:37 of Wired Magazine. Fascinating, genius, bizarre guy. Has an Amish beard, but he’s a technology
1:00:43 futurist, built his own house by hand. Spends more time in China than probably anyone I know.
1:00:49 He’s just an eclectic combination of all sorts of things. The title of my podcast with him way
1:00:55 back in the day was “The Real World Most Interesting Man in the World” or something like that.
1:01:01 In the midst of the conversation with Kevin, or maybe speaking offline, he said, “If you really
1:01:05 want the person I consider to be the most interesting man in the world, it’s Stuart Brand.”
1:01:12 It’s so… I had Stuart on the podcast a number of years ago, and boy, oh boy, you want to talk
1:01:17 about a polymath. He’s something else. All right. So you’ve preserved the optionality
1:01:23 with the possibility of putting things on the outside rather than on the inside in terms of
1:01:31 support infrastructure. And how do you see yourself using a space with nothing inside?
1:01:35 I don’t know. See, that would be a prediction. I’m trying to not predict. I’m just…
1:01:39 I’m just going to show up. It’ll be ready in a few months, and then I’ll start living there,
1:01:43 and we’ll see what happens. That’s all I know. Okay. Is it going to be totally empty,
1:01:46 or are you going to have some desks at chair? I mean, are you going to have anything at all,
1:01:51 or are you just going to sit on the floor and be like, what do I require at this moment?
1:01:56 I’m bringing a mattress to start. And then over time, I’ll notice if I wish I had a desk here,
1:02:02 then I’ll get a desk there. So I’ll add things as I feel that I really, really need them.
1:02:07 Again, I highly recommend in How Buildings Learn, he kind of goes into this about, like,
1:02:13 the best spaces are just rectangles, and the best places are ones that are easy to alter,
1:02:16 so that if you suddenly decide, he talks about this MIT building,
1:02:20 where people were just allowed to bash a hole in a wall because it wasn’t some beautifully
1:02:24 architecturally designed masterpiece. It was something thrown together quickly in World War
1:02:28 II, and people love that building because if they do need to bash a hole in the wall or run
1:02:32 some wires through, they can just do it because it’s a trashy old building. And because of that,
1:02:37 it’s such a creative space. The places that are award-winning are often the ones that are the most
1:02:41 hated by their residents. They might win the award for the architect. That’s true. But because
1:02:46 they’re award-winning, they’re inflexible. They’re sacred. I mean, talk to people who live in a
1:02:53 Frank Lloyd Wright home now, and it’s like, you know, living in a masterpiece museum, and I can’t
1:02:57 change a single screw or anything because it’s the way he wanted it. So practical recommendation,
1:03:01 I would say if you’re going to be sitting on the floor a lot, if you’re not accustomed to doing
1:03:06 that, just so you don’t end up with all sorts of orthopedic issues, I would start doing Turkish
1:03:12 get-ups and getting accustomed to sitting on the floor and getting up a lot. I’ll probably get a
1:03:17 good chair almost right away, but I just want to make sure that I really… So your body’s ready for
1:03:23 the rectangle. All right, fascinating. Another example, I’ll let you be the first monkey shot
1:03:28 into space on this particular type of home design. I can’t wait to learn so many things.
1:03:33 You experiment with some things I don’t want to experiment with, and I’ll experiment
1:03:37 with things that you don’t want to experiment with. I’ll renounce my US citizenship and let you
1:03:43 know how it goes. I’ll build my dream home of a four by eight rectangle, let you know how it goes.
1:03:47 Yeah, you got to divvy it up. I mean, the redundancy and experimentation is kind of,
1:03:50 I don’t want to say pointless, but it’s more fun to have people doing different things.
1:03:57 Other people, you are studying. All right. Or things you’re fascinated by. We can hop around,
1:04:02 depends on where you want to go. I already started. Rich Hickey. Oh, that’s right. You mentioned him.
1:04:06 I wrote him down because that was left dangling, and I was like, who is this Rich Hickey?
1:04:12 So Rich Hickey is… He’s a programmer. He’s the inventor of a programming language called
1:04:17 Clojure, C-L-O-J-U-R-E. He’s actually one of my number one picks for somebody
1:04:21 that I would like to get on your show. Like, if we did a co-hosting kind of thing,
1:04:27 and I were to get somebody on, actually, I already emailed him. He didn’t reply, but maybe,
1:04:31 hey, if anybody knows Rich Hickey, and if he’s interested, nudge, nudge, nudge.
1:04:39 He did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either Simple versus Easy, or I think the
1:04:45 name of the video on YouTube is called Simplicity Matters, here’s his point. And I actually jotted
1:04:49 down these notes so I could try to bang out his point quickly, and then we’ll talk about it.
1:04:54 And keep in mind, everything I’m about to say, he’s just talking about programming.
1:05:00 He’s speaking to a room of programmers. He said, we mistake Simple and Easy. We think that Simple
1:05:06 means Easy, and Easy means Simple. But he said there are two different things. The word complex,
1:05:10 if you look at the definition, it’s actually, it comes from the word complex,
1:05:16 which is to braid things together. So if something is complexed, it means it’s intertwined with other
1:05:22 things. And so the adjective complex means that something is bound to other things.
1:05:28 Whereas Simple comes from simplex, which means it is not bound to other things. It stands alone.
1:05:36 Easy, the root of that means that something is near at hand. It’s something you already know how to do.
1:05:44 It’s within your realm. So Easy and Hard are subjective, but Simple and Complex are very
1:05:48 objective things that we can look at. Something is Simple, it stands alone, it’s complex if it’s
1:05:55 bound to other things. And he said, here’s where it gets tricky, is that it can be very easy to make
1:06:03 something very complex. So he says, you could just type gem install hairball. And with typing
1:06:08 three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework, whether it’s Rubion Rails or
1:06:14 WordPress. And if you start using that, well, wow, you are now complexed with a huge complicated
1:06:20 system that you’re intertwined with. And so now everything I say after this, this is my take on
1:06:29 his analysis. But it’s really easy in life to say, okay, yeah, let’s get married, or to have
1:06:36 unprotected sex and get pregnant and have a baby. That’s easy. Adopt a dog, hiring people. You can
1:06:40 have a problem and think, all right, well, I’ve got some money and I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to
1:06:44 get a consultant to like hire 10 people. Okay, great. Now I’ve got 10 employees. Phew. That was
1:06:52 easy to take some work off my plate. But your life is now objectively complex. You are complexed
1:06:56 with these other people and their needs and their time schedules and their desires,
1:07:04 handing off parts of your business to say, this is hard. I’m just going to hand off my billing
1:07:10 or my something or my this or my scheduling to these apps or these subscription services.
1:07:17 That was easy to just hand it off. But now your business is very complexed with these other
1:07:28 services. So hence my rant on our last conversation over scotch at my house about tech independence.
1:07:35 His point is it can be really hard to make something simple. It can be much harder to do
1:07:41 something that is objectively simple, that stands alone, that isn’t dependent on other things. It
1:07:48 can be harder to make that, but it’s ultimately usually a better choice because it’s more maintainable.
1:07:54 It’s easier to change. It’s easier to stop and start. It’s simpler, even if it’s harder to make.
1:08:01 So the point is in his thinking is to beware of the objective measure of complexity or
1:08:06 beware of complexity, which can be objectively measured and aim for doing the simpler thing,
1:08:12 even if it’s harder. In my take, I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more,
1:08:18 say about the fundamentals of something instead of just adopting somebody else’s high-level solution.
1:08:24 You can spend a little time learning about the core underneath it, about the fundamentals.
1:08:29 Then you can forget norms. You could forget what others do, what others think.
1:08:33 And you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I’m not just talking
1:08:37 programming now, I’m just meaning in life. What would be an example of that?
1:08:44 Okay, my four by eight house. Really, I just need a shelter where it’s temperature controlled,
1:08:51 so it’s really well-insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on, and I do need a place I can work.
1:08:56 But to me, those are the… Oh, and I do need a little food. To me, these are the core things of a
1:09:02 shelter. But even say with friendships, do I need to live in the same place with my friends? Well,
1:09:09 not necessarily. My dear friends, my best friends are often far, far away. I don’t need to move to
1:09:14 a place that has all my friends if I can reach them on the phone. I’m very often talking about
1:09:19 just the thought process. I very often find myself asking, like, well, what’s the real outcome I’m
1:09:24 after? What’s the real point of this? And once I figure that out, well, then what’s the most
1:09:29 direct route to that outcome? Never mind what other people do, what the norms are.
1:09:36 What do I think is the most direct route to that outcome? And then try to keep it simple along the
1:09:42 way and be very wary of dependencies and entangling myself with other things. That’s my take.
1:09:48 Could you give another example or two of how you implement that in your life?
1:09:48 Sure.
1:09:52 Or how you might? Because I know there are more examples.
1:09:57 The next two might be less relatable, because it’s…
1:10:00 It’s less relatable than the four by eight meter box.
1:10:01 Because I know everybody wants to live in it.
1:10:02 With nothing inside.
1:10:10 So, I mean, well, first, here’s a good question to strip away some things. Ask yourself,
1:10:17 would I still do this if nobody knew? There might be a lot of things in our actions that we do
1:10:22 because we like the way it would look to others, because it would be impressive to others.
1:10:27 That’s the first thing to just strip away when you’re beginning this thought process is like,
1:10:32 if I were to never tell anybody and nobody were to ever know, would I still do this thing?
1:10:34 Okay, well, then that might just be the decoration.
1:10:40 Okay, so two examples. Programming wise, I’m constantly asking this
1:10:47 when I’m building something. It’s just I need to get this calendar entry into this database
1:10:51 with this time. Do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript?
1:10:54 Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around?
1:10:55 Do I need fading graphics?
1:11:00 No, I just need this thing there.
1:11:04 What’s the most direct way to get that calendar entry into that database?
1:11:05 So that’s like a programming example.
1:11:11 Writing wise, my last two books, How to Live and Useful Not True,
1:11:16 I’m spending most of my time reducing.
1:11:20 My rough draft, I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject.
1:11:27 And then I spend 1000 hours every single word going, is that word necessary?
1:11:30 Wait a second, is that whole sentence necessary?
1:11:33 Wait, can the point still be communicated without that sentence?
1:11:37 If it can, okay, let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if the point still comes across.
1:11:40 Actually, does the point come across without this entire chapter?
1:11:41 Oh my God, it still does.
1:11:43 Therefore, I don’t need this chapter.
1:11:48 One of the most useful things that happened recently is a few months ago,
1:11:53 an organization in Australia paid me to come give a talk.
1:11:56 And I said, what do you want me to talk about?
1:11:56 They said anything.
1:11:59 I said, how about my next book called Useful Not True?
1:11:59 They said, sure.
1:12:04 So it was a room of very successful, very effective people.
1:12:08 And I had one hour on stage to communicate the whole idea of my next book.
1:12:12 And at the time, the book was still in process.
1:12:19 And that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things on stage,
1:12:22 even though I had it in my notes, I skipped over it.
1:12:24 And I thought, okay, well, actually, we don’t need to do that.
1:12:25 Okay, let’s get to the next point.
1:12:27 And so later when I was back home, I thought, wow,
1:12:29 I just skipped over that whole point on stage.
1:12:34 So why do I think it’s worth killing trees to print that point?
1:12:35 Apparently it’s not.
1:12:36 Cool.
1:12:38 This is now the shortest book I’ve ever written.
1:12:40 I’m very proud of that fact.
1:12:44 I compressed this 400 pages down to, I think it’s 102 pages or something.
1:12:48 So those are two examples where I’m constantly asking like,
1:12:51 what’s the most direct way to just get rid of what I really want?
1:12:56 Get the outcome, skipping the usual fanfare.
1:13:04 How do you think about burst order simplicity versus complexity versus second order,
1:13:07 third order, and planning?
1:13:16 And the reason I’m asking that is you strike me as someone who prizes freedom, independence,
1:13:20 simplicity, all very highly.
1:13:28 But I imagine there could be cases where looking at the first decision and the first order effects,
1:13:35 you might think, well, it’s much simpler for me to do X, to renounce my US citizenship,
1:13:41 to build a box, to do everything myself instead of taking on these cloud services
1:13:42 for accounting and so on.
1:13:50 But there are levels of second, third order complexities that ultimately make it kind of
1:13:55 net net more complex than doing the slightly more complex thing up front.
1:13:56 Does that make sense?
1:13:58 Almost.
1:14:07 I guess I’m wondering how practically people might think about simplifying but not oversimplifying
1:14:10 and then shooting yourself in the foot in the long term.
1:14:12 Give you an example.
1:14:19 I know people who have moved to Puerto Rico to trim taxes substantially.
1:14:25 But in the process, they viewed that as the most direct route to reducing taxes.
1:14:30 Therefore, they can do X, Y, and Z over time with more income or preserved capital gain,
1:14:30 whatever it might be.
1:14:38 However, in the process of doing that, they’ve created all of this lifestyle complexity and
1:14:41 applied a lot of constraints to what they can or cannot do.
1:14:50 The tax tail is wagging the dog and instead of money serving life, now life is serving money,
1:14:56 and they’ve kind of put themselves in a topsy-turvy upside down situation.
1:14:59 And if you were to look at it from first principles two years later, you’re like,
1:15:01 “Wow, that was really bungled.”
1:15:04 And that’s not true for everybody in Puerto Rico.
1:15:05 I’m not trying to make it sound like that.
1:15:10 But I have seen those types of examples where the thing that seemed simple and straightforward
1:15:16 at the outset ended up producing a lot of ripple effects that produced not just complexity,
1:15:18 but complexity that was hard to undo.
1:15:21 Yeah, great example.
1:15:25 So, yeah, how do you think about that kind of risk mitigation?
1:15:29 By the way, my two little examples of that.
1:15:32 A few years ago, Tony Robbins had a Money Master the Game book.
1:15:36 I was like, “Oh, wow, Tony hasn’t put out a book in like 20 years.
1:15:37 I wonder how this is going to be.”
1:15:43 And in it, he’s giving these prescriptions for extremely complex like insurance things
1:15:44 that you could set up.
1:15:48 I was like, “Ooh, wow, that’s objectively complex.”
1:15:53 And another example is in Neil Strauss’ book called Emergency.
1:15:55 I’ll never forget this point.
1:16:00 He said that he’s off at one of these nomad, sovereign individual,
1:16:03 “I’m beholden to no country” kind of events.
1:16:06 And he meets this guy that is bragging to him about his setup.
1:16:09 He’s like, “I got my income coming here, but then all expenses go here,
1:16:13 but then I’ve got a trust and this, but I’m the non-managing member of the trust,
1:16:14 which is held by this and that.”
1:16:18 And in the end, he’s going to save 30% taxes.
1:16:25 And Neil said, “Wouldn’t it just be a lot easier or make a lot more sense to just work
1:16:29 30% harder or like to just make 30% more money?”
1:16:31 He said, “That’s a ton of work just to save 30%.”
1:16:35 He said, “It’s not that much harder to just go make 30% more.”
1:16:39 And dude, when I read that, I love that thought process.
1:16:47 So I think that I know that your podcast and the Titans and all that is often about
1:16:54 how do we use the wisdom of others to avoid making these mistakes ourselves.
1:16:59 But some of these things maybe just have to…
1:17:00 I don’t know.
1:17:02 I think for some of these things, I’m willing to throw myself in and feel the pain
1:17:03 to see if I’ve done it wrong.
1:17:06 I know we’re improv-jazzing here, so let’s keep going.
1:17:13 This thought just occurred to me because when I hear you talk about code and programming,
1:17:20 I mean, there’s a poetry to it and there’s an economy to it that seems I’m not a programmer,
1:17:21 but I do write.
1:17:27 There seems to be something intrinsically rewarding to you about that presentation of elegance.
1:17:34 And I’m wondering in the case of following Stuart Brand’s principles in building this box
1:17:42 or doing certain things that seem to me optimized for freedom, independence,
1:17:50 is there… even if it ends up face-planting, is there something that you find beautiful
1:17:55 and redeeming just about taking the simple approach, even if the outcome is suboptimal?
1:17:57 It’s related.
1:18:01 It’s finding out, in fact, instead of just in theory.
1:18:06 We can sit at home and wonder what it might be like to do such and such,
1:18:09 but at some point you just got to throw yourself in and go try it.
1:18:14 And if you try moving to Puerto Rico and you hate it, well, now you know.
1:18:16 It was worth a try, maybe.
1:18:20 And now you know, in fact, that doesn’t work for you.
1:18:28 That’s maybe the how buildings learn idea is don’t predict that you will want to sink
1:18:34 in that spot, put yourself into that spot first, live without a sink for a while,
1:18:38 and eventually you’ll get a good feeling for where the sink needs to be, in fact, not in theory.
1:18:49 And so I think I do this with my life, is I’m willing to mess up happily because I will know
1:18:53 that then I found out, in fact, that that doesn’t work for me.
1:18:58 And maybe this is coming from the core of the fact that I’m a really happy person.
1:19:01 And so I feel that like my base level is up here.
1:19:06 I can take some big knocks and I think a lot of the crazy should have done.
1:19:10 I did marry somebody that I hardly knew after a few months because,
1:19:12 fuck it, let’s see what happens.
1:19:15 In fact, you and I have never talked about that directly.
1:19:18 But do you know what the mindset I was in at the time?
1:19:20 I had just sold my company.
1:19:26 I had a ton of money and I felt like I need to change my trajectory
1:19:31 because my first impulse after selling my company was literally the next day I set up
1:19:33 my next company.
1:19:34 And I thought, I’m going to move to Silicon Valley.
1:19:36 I’m going to do this thing.
1:19:37 I’m going to stay on the same trajectory.
1:19:44 And I did that for a few months, but then I caught myself going, wait, I want a full life.
1:19:45 I don’t want to stay on the same trajectory.
1:19:46 I want to shake shit up.
1:19:52 So I very deliberately did what we might call the George Costanza principle,
1:19:54 which is do the opposite.
1:19:57 Do the opposite of all of my impulses.
1:20:00 Every time I felt yes, everything in me said yes.
1:20:01 I would say no out loud.
1:20:04 And everything in me says no.
1:20:07 I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up.
1:20:13 And so I was dating this woman for a few months and we had no great connection.
1:20:18 And she said, oh, well, I can’t travel to California with you unless we get married.
1:20:22 And everything in me says, oh, hell no, don’t do that.
1:20:22 That’s stupid.
1:20:23 I don’t want to marry this person.
1:20:26 So I said, yes, let’s do that.
1:20:28 And so we got married.
1:20:32 And I kept doing that in every way.
1:20:38 I deliberately fucked up my life and made a bunch of crazy fucking decisions.
1:20:42 And some of them worked out great and some of them didn’t.
1:20:43 And I’m so happy that I did that.
1:20:47 Like in some ways I could say that that’s my biggest regret or biggest mistake.
1:20:50 But in other ways, it was wonderful.
1:20:53 It deliberately sent me on a different trajectory.
1:20:55 And I’m glad I did it.
1:20:56 That it definitely will.
1:21:01 So for people who don’t have any of the connective tissue here to figure out
1:21:06 how to orient themselves to this, people are going to want to know, right?
1:21:07 Cliffhanger.
1:21:09 So how did that turn out?
1:21:10 Everything in me says no.
1:21:12 So I said, yes, let’s get married.
1:21:12 Let’s do that.
1:21:14 The marriage is awful.
1:21:16 No, that was terrible.
1:21:19 And we knew it literally like days later.
1:21:21 Like, oops, we made a big mistake.
1:21:23 Yeah, that was instantly a big mistake.
1:21:24 And that’s fine.
1:21:31 Because we knew in fact then that it was a big mistake, not just in theory.
1:21:35 I could have walked away from that going, oh, God, remember that woman that wanted
1:21:36 me to marry her?
1:21:38 And I said, no, God, I wonder what would have happened.
1:21:40 Well, now I get to find out.
1:21:41 Like, I did it.
1:21:42 Now, hold on a second, though.
1:21:44 I’m going to push on this a little bit.
1:21:51 We could use this logic to be a reverse George Costanza for every decision we think is bad.
1:21:53 We could turn around and say yes to, right?
1:21:57 But as a life strategy, I don’t see you continuing that, right?
1:22:02 So you don’t know for a fact that the awful idea would have been awful.
1:22:06 But I mean, there has to be a point at which you think about self-preservation and
1:22:08 time as a finite currency.
1:22:11 So you’re like, well, when would you apply that versus when would you not apply it?
1:22:14 Because you could apply it everywhere, indefinitely.
1:22:19 But certain things are one-way doors and some are two-way doors, right?
1:22:28 I mean, for instance, getting a pet rat will lower cost, more reversible, let’s just say,
1:22:31 than maybe giving up your US citizenship, right?
1:22:34 That is a little harder to control Z.
1:22:36 Yeah, I cannot undo that.
1:22:38 Yeah.
1:22:43 So moving forward for you, having learned everything that you’ve learned, when do you
1:22:48 play the George Costanza strategy versus not, right?
1:22:53 Because there are lots of things we can’t know for a fact unless we make the right or
1:22:54 the wrong or the good or the bad decision.
1:22:56 But you can’t make all decisions.
1:22:57 So what do you do?
1:23:03 You know, long ago, when I said the hell yeah or no thing, and…
1:23:06 It’s going to be in your gravestone.
1:23:11 Hell yeah or here I am.
1:23:13 Here he lays.
1:23:20 So some people emailed me after that, after that was on your show and they said,
1:23:22 “Hey, man, I like this hell yeah or no thing.
1:23:23 I’m using it for everything.
1:23:24 You know, I just got out of college.
1:23:25 I’m getting a bunch of offers.
1:23:28 I’m like, I’m not feeling hell yeah about any of them.
1:23:31 You know, I’m dating and we’re just like, you know, I’m not hell yeah about any of you.”
1:23:32 And I go, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on.
1:23:36 Everything does not become a nail because you’re holding this hammer.
1:23:36 You don’t…
1:23:41 This is a tool for a specific situation when you’re overwhelmed with options.
1:23:44 You have to have the wisdom to know when to use this tool.
1:23:46 You don’t use it on everything always.
1:23:49 It’s the same thing with this going against your instincts.
1:23:52 Of course, you don’t use it on everything always.
1:24:00 But that was a specific time in my life when I wanted to deliberately change my trajectory.
1:24:02 I wanted to go against my normal way of doing things
1:24:07 and deliberately introduce some randomness and variety into my life.
1:24:08 Right, it’s not your default.
1:24:12 Right, but let’s look at, you know, I mentioned Dubai earlier.
1:24:14 Everything in me said, “Fuck that place.”
1:24:17 And then I caught myself feeling that.
1:24:20 And I thought, “Okay, wait, hold on.
1:24:23 This is a good time to use this tool.
1:24:24 My impulse is saying no.
1:24:26 I’m going to try saying yes.
1:24:27 I’m going to go get to know this thing.”
1:24:32 Because that sounds to me like that would be a learning, growing experience to try it.
1:24:35 That’s a good example of integrating this into your life.
1:24:41 But then say, like if maybe you do hit a situation where it’s like nothing is working out.
1:24:43 You’ve been an idiot your whole life.
1:24:44 You just got fired.
1:24:47 You were just dumped by your romantic partner.
1:24:48 You’re at skid row.
1:24:53 Maybe it’s a really good time to go against all your natural impulses
1:24:57 since it’s pretty clear that your defaults were set wrong.
1:24:58 They’re not working.
1:25:00 Yeah, they’re not working very well.
1:25:03 Yeah, I like integrating it.
1:25:08 Maybe it’s the question is like, “Is this going to be a learning, growing experience for me?”
1:25:11 I like leaning into discomfort.
1:25:12 Whatever scares you, go do it.
1:25:16 All right, so I have quite a few follow-up questions.
1:25:18 We can take them in many different directions.
1:25:22 So we’ve covered Rich Hickey, Clojure, Knock Knock.
1:25:26 We’ll see if anyone lets him know he appeared on the show.
1:25:31 And I also want to ask you a question we can cut from the conversation if we need to.
1:25:33 But since Dubai has come up repeatedly.
1:25:34 That’s a great lead-in.
1:25:35 I love that.
1:25:38 This may be too risky for anybody’s ears, but here we go.
1:25:40 Do taxes fit into this at all?
1:25:44 Is this like people who move to Nashville or Austin,
1:25:46 and they’re like, “Oh, the barbecue and the music.”
1:25:51 And they will dance and dance and dance until you corner them with a broomstick.
1:25:52 And then they’re like, “Yeah, okay, fine.
1:25:54 Yeah, the taxes are all so it’s a thing.”
1:25:58 Is Dubai one of those or no?
1:25:59 Not at all.
1:26:01 I mean, I had to ask myself that.
1:26:04 That’s like one of those things.
1:26:09 Okay, when you ask yourself, would I still be doing this thing if nobody knew about it?
1:26:11 I got an email from Guy once.
1:26:14 It was just like, “Hey, man, I want to travel the whole world.
1:26:16 I’m going to visit every country in the world.
1:26:18 Do you have any suggestions for me?”
1:26:22 I said, “Yeah, don’t bring a camera and don’t tell anyone that you’re doing this.
1:26:24 Is it still appealing to you now?”
1:26:26 Yeah, probably not.
1:26:32 Okay, so anytime, say Dubai, for example, I was like, “Whoa, this place is fascinating.
1:26:34 Oh my God, I think I want to live here.”
1:26:38 I was like, “Would I still live here if the taxes were like 50%?”
1:26:41 I was like, “Yeah, that’s moot to me.
1:26:45 I mean, look, I’m living in New Zealand where my income tax right now is 45%.
1:26:49 I pay a ton of taxes, but it’s worth it to me.
1:26:50 I love it here.
1:26:51 I don’t care.”
1:26:57 So that thing I mentioned in Neil Strauss’ book, Emergency, that sentence hit me hard.
1:27:02 When I first sold CD Baby, that was 2008.
1:27:04 There were some things I was thinking at the time.
1:27:07 I was like, “Ooh, wow, I just got Mega Millions.
1:27:09 How can I pay less taxes?”
1:27:14 And it was literally like the month before or month after I sold CD Baby
1:27:17 that I read that book, Emergency.
1:27:19 And I saw that sentence and I went, “Whoa.”
1:27:22 -Good timing. -That is a great point.
1:27:25 Don’t jump through hoops to save taxes.
1:27:27 Jump through a hoop to go make more money.
1:27:29 That’s the growth choice anyway.
1:27:34 That’s the thought process that leads you to make growing decisions, not shrinking decisions.
1:27:39 So you’re about to sell or have just sold CD Baby.
1:27:42 You form a new company the next day.
1:27:47 You’re planning on moving to Silicon Valley and you see yourself moving on that track
1:27:52 and you decide to throw a Costanza curveball in and mix things up.
1:27:54 Why?
1:28:00 Like, what was the fear or the hazard you’re trying to avoid by following that path?
1:28:06 Was it doing something thoughtlessly and repeating what you’ve done before?
1:28:07 That it wasn’t intentional?
1:28:08 What was it?
1:28:10 I want to live a full life.
1:28:15 At the end of my life, I want to look back and go, “Wow, I did a bunch of different things.
1:28:17 I tried a bunch of different ways of living.
1:28:20 I followed this philosophy for a while.
1:28:21 I followed that one.
1:28:22 I tried this.
1:28:23 I tried that.
1:28:24 I lived here.
1:28:25 I lived there.”
1:28:28 That to me is my definition of a full life.
1:28:38 But my previous book called “How to Live” was 27 conflicting philosophies and one weird answer.
1:28:42 And the whole idea was that it’s 27 chapters.
1:28:46 Each one disagrees with the rest, but each one has a strong opinion of saying,
1:28:49 “Here’s how to live, live for the future.”
1:28:53 Then the next one’s like, “Here’s how to live, live only for the present.”
1:28:55 And the next one’s like, “Here’s how to live, leave a legacy.”
1:28:58 And these are all valid ways of living.
1:29:04 And my definition of a full life is I want to experience the different approaches to life.
1:29:10 I want to have the diversified portfolio of thought and of experiences.
1:29:11 So that was it.
1:29:15 I just felt like if I was to create a new company the next day and move to Silicon Valley,
1:29:17 I’d just be doing more of the same shit I’ve already done.
1:29:18 Yeah, makes sense.
1:29:20 Makes perfect sense.
1:29:22 Who else do you have on your list of people you’re studying?
1:29:24 All right.
1:29:30 Tyler Cowan, just a few days ago, in an article on Bloomberg.com called,
1:29:32 “Who was Bitcoin’s Satoshi?”
1:29:36 So we still don’t know who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin.
1:29:43 And there’s this law of headlines that if it ends in a question mark,
1:29:44 the answer’s usually no.
1:29:51 So when I first saw the headline, I thought that the answer was going to be,
1:29:52 “It doesn’t matter.
1:29:53 It doesn’t matter who Satoshi is.
1:29:54 Forget it.”
1:29:57 And oh my God, Tyler Cowan took it somewhere else.
1:29:59 Even if you would have asked me, by the way,
1:30:03 “Hey, Derek, I’m going to give you an hour alone in a room to think about one question.
1:30:07 Does it matter who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin?”
1:30:11 Even after an hour, I think my answer would have been, of course not.
1:30:15 And I would have just sat there for an hour just going, “No, no, no.”
1:30:18 Tyler Cowan took it the opposite way.
1:30:25 I jotted down his points, but it’s a masterpiece in this kind of if-then-knock-on thinking.
1:30:33 So he said, “Okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead, that the inventor of Bitcoin is dead,
1:30:38 then that’s a good thing because it means Bitcoin will be more safe
1:30:41 because it won’t be open to future alteration.
1:30:44 The person can’t tarnish the reputation of it.”
1:30:48 You know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter, kind of like, you know,
1:30:52 by continuing to be there, can tarnish the reputation of something.
1:30:53 Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone there.
1:30:57 Satoshi can’t come back and change the rules for the worst.
1:31:02 And then he even said, “This is why all religions have dead founders,
1:31:07 is because the founder can’t stay in and tarnish the reputation of the religion.”
1:31:10 So I went, “Okay, good point.
1:31:13 If Satoshi is dead, that is good for Bitcoin.
1:31:15 It can stay as is and won’t get tarnished.
1:31:16 Won’t get changed.”
1:31:20 And he said, “So there’s a chance that Satoshi is an older guy
1:31:26 from this previous movement around e-gold that was generally seen as like a failed project,
1:31:29 that a bunch of people were into this idea of e-gold and it didn’t work out.
1:31:36 If Satoshi is somebody from that group, then that means that even projects that look like
1:31:39 they’ve failed can create great things.
1:31:46 So we should maybe think more highly or be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing,
1:31:48 because who knows what they will lead to.
1:31:52 He said, “There’s a chance that Satoshi is this person,” and I forget their name,
1:31:58 but he said, “that would have been 21 years old and in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin.”
1:32:03 He said, “If that’s true, that means we should raise our perception of what young,
1:32:06 busy people can do, that they can do more than we realize.
1:32:09 This guy while in grad school also invented Bitcoin.”
1:32:15 And I said, “If Satoshi is still alive, that means,” oh, by the way,
1:32:18 we should say for you, I assume people know, but maybe not,
1:32:25 “that whoever is Satoshi has hundreds,” okay, let’s say at least tens of billions of dollars
1:32:32 in Bitcoin, that all he’d have to do, whoever Satoshi is, would have to just take it.
1:32:34 It’s already there in the account in the public record that we can see.
1:32:38 So Satoshi is one of the richest people on earth, whoever Satoshi is.
1:32:44 So he said, “If Satoshi is still living, that means that some people don’t want to be billionaires
1:32:46 or just have incredible self-restraint.”
1:32:51 Like maybe upon realizing what he created, he destroyed the key, destroyed the password,
1:32:54 so that he could not take those billions of dollars.
1:32:57 You know, to protect himself from that.
1:33:00 There’s a chance that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people.
1:33:06 If that’s true, it means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected,
1:33:12 which means that conspiracy theories are more likely to be true.
1:33:14 About anything in general, about UFOs, about JFK or whatever.
1:33:20 If this group of people is Satoshi and they could have hundreds of billions of dollars
1:33:22 or tens of billions of dollars, but they are choosing not to
1:33:25 and they are all keeping the secret, that’s amazing.
1:33:29 And we should regard secrecy more higher than we can.
1:33:31 So that’s the end of the bullet points.
1:33:35 But I read this one little Bloomberg article and my jaw dropped.
1:33:39 I went, “Oh my God, this is the kind of thinking I aspire to.
1:33:42 That is some amazing lateral creative…”
1:33:43 I don’t know.
1:33:44 What kind of thinking do you call that?
1:33:45 But that’s what I want to do more of.
1:33:48 Love it.
1:33:49 Yeah, Tyler’s incredible.
1:33:51 I highly recommend people check him out.
1:33:53 That’s a really good Tyler example.
1:33:55 Cowan, C-O-W-E-N.
1:33:57 Definitely recommend people check him out.
1:33:59 Also, past podcast guest.
1:34:00 Yeah, that was a great one.
1:34:03 Previously to this, one of my favorite points of his
1:34:08 is he said that restaurants are better in places of high income inequality.
1:34:09 Why?
1:34:15 Because these are places that have both rich customers and low paid staff.
1:34:18 So somebody can afford to run a great restaurant
1:34:20 because there are enough people that will pay
1:34:21 because there are rich people around.
1:34:24 But there are enough low income people
1:34:26 that we can have a good amount of staff.
1:34:30 He said that’s why the best restaurants are in places of high income inequality.
1:34:32 Whoa, that’s again a brilliant connection.
1:34:33 That’s interesting.
1:34:37 I would also add to that that a lot of folks who want to dedicate themselves
1:34:43 to a craft or an art are, depending on the industry,
1:34:46 but frequently not going to be well paid for that.
1:34:54 And so, let’s just call it volitionally poorly paid in some cases.
1:34:59 And I’m thinking of, in this particular case, San Francisco and East Bay,
1:35:02 where a lot of restaurants in San Francisco,
1:35:03 a lot of restaurants in different places.
1:35:06 But as the price of living went up in San Francisco,
1:35:10 a lot of the best restaurateurs, meaning I should say chefs,
1:35:12 a lot of the best chefs, a lot of the best line cooks,
1:35:14 a lot of the best massage therapists,
1:35:17 a lot of these people could no longer afford to be there,
1:35:18 had to move to the East Bay.
1:35:23 And I would say that led to a decline in the quality
1:35:26 of all of the goods I just mentioned in services.
1:35:30 So that would also make sense if you want access to the artists,
1:35:34 they’re not going to be in the most expensive areas typically,
1:35:36 unless it’s like a Jeff Koons or someone.
1:35:37 I haven’t been to Pittsburgh lately,
1:35:39 but I heard that that happened with some of the,
1:35:43 a lot of the best chefs from New York City went to Pittsburgh.
1:35:46 And that now Pittsburgh is hotter than you’d expect.
1:35:49 I can see that. I can totally see it.
1:35:52 All right, Tyler, anybody else on the list
1:35:54 of people you’re learning from or people you’re studying?
1:35:57 Those of my two, that Tyler, it’s because they’re specific things.
1:35:58 I love it. All right.
1:36:00 So I think we have one more category.
1:36:05 We’ll see how many we get to, but I heard a sharp inhale.
1:36:06 Where should we go?
1:36:13 Okay, so inchword, inchword.com, I-N-C-H-W-O-R-D.com.
1:36:16 This is actually a bit of a call out.
1:36:21 I don’t usually do this, but I would like to hear from translators
1:36:25 that if you’re a translator, contact me,
1:36:26 because I’ve got a lot of paying work,
1:36:32 because I’m really interested in the subject of translations
1:36:34 that are always improving, well, not always,
1:36:36 at a certain point you call it, maybe you call it a release.
1:36:40 But you know, as a writer, the first time you write a sentence
1:36:41 is not always the best.
1:36:44 You improve it the second or third time,
1:36:48 and at any given sentence we see in your books,
1:36:52 that might be the fourth time you’ve improved that sentence,
1:36:53 maybe over the course of months.
1:36:55 There’s always room for improvement.
1:36:57 When somebody makes a translation of one of your books,
1:37:00 the incentives are a little off now,
1:37:03 because the translator’s incentive,
1:37:06 as long as they’re not translating the Bible or something,
1:37:10 their incentive is mostly just get it done, good enough, get paid.
1:37:12 The publisher’s incentive,
1:37:14 the publisher who publishes the translation,
1:37:18 their incentive is hire a translator
1:37:22 that will make a good enough translation for a low enough price
1:37:24 that we can get this out in the market now
1:37:26 and make a profit selling it.
1:37:31 But my incentive as the writer that sweated over these words
1:37:35 for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics,
1:37:37 like I have a different incentive,
1:37:40 if I’m going to have a translation of this book out in the world,
1:37:44 I want it to be great and really, really great,
1:37:46 which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator
1:37:50 to make sure that what they’re doing is the best it can be
1:37:53 and that it’s communicating what I intended.
1:37:56 How do you do that in a language you don’t speak?
1:37:58 I don’t know, that’s my question.
1:38:00 So this is the, I don’t have the answer,
1:38:03 but I’m fascinated with the problem.
1:38:08 So so far, the best idea is what I’m putting at inchword.com,
1:38:10 which is this idea of incremental improvement.
1:38:11 Oh, so this is your website?
1:38:13 Yeah, I made it.
1:38:15 It’s my little passion.
1:38:19 So it’s this idea where once I call up something done,
1:38:21 whether it’s an article or a book,
1:38:24 I put every sentence into its own entry in the database
1:38:26 and then I pass it to a computer
1:38:29 that does the first round of a bad translation.
1:38:30 So now we have a starting point.
1:38:33 So now if you’re the first translator to come through
1:38:37 and translate the automatic translation into your language,
1:38:41 let’s say that’s a low bar, that’s low hanging fruit.
1:38:43 So let’s say that will pay 50 cents per sentence.
1:38:46 But now if you’ve done one round of improvements
1:38:48 over the computer translation,
1:38:50 and now somebody else comes through and says,
1:38:53 I can improve that further, that sentence,
1:38:54 not the whole thing,
1:38:56 that sentence I can improve that one.
1:38:59 Now that’ll pay like a dollar per sentence if it’s an improved.
1:39:03 And now say two different people have improved it twice.
1:39:05 And now a third person looks at that
1:39:07 and says, I know how to improve that better.
1:39:09 Okay, well now you can make say two dollars per sentence
1:39:11 to improve it better.
1:39:13 The stakes are getting higher for improving it.
1:39:18 There are incentives now to make it as good as can be.
1:39:20 How do you know if it’s been improved?
1:39:23 So yes, how do we know it’s a better translation?
1:39:26 So then we have readers who, reviewers,
1:39:26 readers, whatever you want to call them,
1:39:31 that are paid a little something to just read through and judge.
1:39:34 And at any given sentence where an improvement has been made,
1:39:37 both sentences are shown in random order
1:39:40 and they have to vote for which one they feel
1:39:43 is the better sentence in that case.
1:39:47 When a majority votes that sentence is better than it’s chosen,
1:39:48 and that’s when the translator gets paid.
1:39:52 So a translator can’t get money just for coming in and spewing crap.
1:39:53 They only get paid when the readers believe
1:39:55 that that was a better translation.
1:39:57 Anyway, I’m not saying this is the final answer,
1:39:58 but I think it’s a fascinating problem
1:40:02 that I’m willing to spend money on
1:40:04 because I’m incentivized to have the best translation
1:40:05 of my works out there.
1:40:07 That’s it.
1:40:08 If they are a good translator,
1:40:11 how do you incentivize them to go first,
1:40:13 knowing that someone might come along
1:40:16 and make substantially more money
1:40:18 by doing the fourth or fifth iteration?
1:40:21 Or is that not a problem?
1:40:22 I don’t know.
1:40:24 See, you just asked a great question.
1:40:25 Thank you.
1:40:29 You’re welcome.
1:40:31 That question is kind of the answer.
1:40:32 That’s a really good thing to ask.
1:40:32 I don’t know.
1:40:34 I mean, I know nothing about this.
1:40:36 I’m not fluent in any other language,
1:40:39 but you’ve probably seen this effect.
1:40:41 Whenever you start to learn another language,
1:40:45 doesn’t it make you look at your English more closely?
1:40:46 Oh, 100%.
1:40:47 That’s part of the fun.
1:40:47 Yes.
1:40:49 Makes you look at the whole world differently,
1:40:53 depending on how divergent the language is
1:40:54 from your native language.
1:40:56 In this case, English for us.
1:40:57 Oh, yeah.
1:40:59 So, so, so interesting.
1:41:00 I was just trying to help somebody
1:41:03 with their approach to Japanese yesterday.
1:41:04 And my first thought was,
1:41:07 if you have three or four weeks,
1:41:11 maybe you go to South Korea first
1:41:14 and try to pick up Korean
1:41:16 because the reading is so much easier.
1:41:20 So perhaps you could learn the basics of Korean,
1:41:23 which isn’t identical to Japanese,
1:41:26 but the grammar is very, very, very, very similar.
1:41:27 And then you go back to Japan
1:41:30 with your newfound knowledge of the grammar
1:41:32 without the handicap that slows you down
1:41:35 of having to learn three writing systems, right?
1:41:36 Kira ga na kata ga na nankan di.
1:41:37 Interesting.
1:41:40 And I don’t know if that’s a good approach,
1:41:41 but it was the first time it had occurred to me.
1:41:42 And I was like, huh,
1:41:47 wonder if that actually would be helpful
1:41:49 or kind of like Python and Ruby,
1:41:51 would it just be confusing as fuck?
1:41:52 Because now you’re like,
1:41:54 learn Portuguese and Spanish at the same time
1:41:55 and you just get scrambled.
1:41:57 It’s possible that it would be the latter.
1:41:59 Yeah, okay.
1:42:00 Do you remember Benny Lewis?
1:42:02 Fluent in three months, Benny Lewis?
1:42:03 Sure.
1:42:07 Yeah, the Irish polyglot, I think, was the nickname.
1:42:11 Yeah, Benny recommends Esperanto
1:42:12 for that same thing that you just said.
1:42:15 He said, because of objectively,
1:42:17 Esperanto is the easiest language to learn.
1:42:20 That’s why it was invented in 1888.
1:42:23 By Zamanoff to be easy to learn.
1:42:27 Therefore, if you’ve never spoken a second language before,
1:42:29 go learn some Esperanto first.
1:42:31 Get used to having a conversation
1:42:32 that’s not in your native tongue.
1:42:33 Interesting.
1:42:35 And then go learn your target language.
1:42:38 Wonder if that’s too much of a lift.
1:42:38 Have you done it?
1:42:40 Well, I will report.
1:42:41 I did it.
1:42:43 I became fluent in Esperanto about six years ago
1:42:46 on Benny’s advice and I regret it.
1:42:54 It’s less useful than Klingon,
1:42:56 at least in communicating with others, right?
1:43:01 Actually, I think Esperanto is hippy Klingon.
1:43:06 I went to the annual Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea
1:43:11 and it was a bunch of 60-year-olds in tie-dyes
1:43:12 singing about world peace,
1:43:15 kind of like Woodstock 1969,
1:43:18 revisited and they’re all singing like,
1:43:19 “Oh, the world would have perfect harmony
1:43:22 if we all just followed the ways of Zamanoff
1:43:23 and had the one-world language.”
1:43:27 And even though I had spent six months learning this language,
1:43:28 I got to the event and I went,
1:43:31 “I don’t like you people.”
1:43:36 I stopped on that day.
1:43:38 I was like, “I don’t want to speak this language anymore.”
1:43:42 Okay, but so talk about the Ruby Python.
1:43:44 I never learned any Spanish my whole life,
1:43:45 even when I grew up in America.
1:43:48 I just thought, “No, Spanish is too similar to English.
1:43:50 If I’m going to learn another language,
1:43:53 I want it to be Chinese or Arabic or something very different.”
1:43:54 So I never learned any Spanish,
1:43:56 but just two months ago,
1:43:58 I went to South America for my first time
1:44:04 and so I spent like a month learning Pimsler Basic Spanish.
1:44:08 And Tim was like, “Oh my God, this is a great language.
1:44:09 This is amazing. This is fascinating.”
1:44:10 It is.
1:44:15 And also, it is so easy that I went, “Damn it, Benny.
1:44:18 I shouldn’t have learned Esperanto for six months.
1:44:20 I should have learned Spanish. It’s just as easy.”
1:44:23 And it would have been more useful.
1:44:25 Anyway, I like that you brought up the Korean thing.
1:44:29 I think it is proven to be a good technique
1:44:32 to do the easier language first to help you disconnect
1:44:34 or like you say, to help you understand the grammar
1:44:35 and then do the difficult one.
1:44:37 But it does help, I guess,
1:44:40 if it’s Korean or a language that people actually use.
1:44:41 Not Esperanto.
1:44:43 Yeah. Spanish is a great language.
1:44:49 For people who are curious about Korean
1:44:53 and just how brilliantly the writing system is designed,
1:44:54 it’s a point of national pride.
1:44:57 And it is not something that was out of the box.
1:45:01 It was something that was developed long after
1:45:06 Korea had first adopted Chinese writing,
1:45:08 much like the Japanese.
1:45:11 There is a cartoon online and it is something like
1:45:14 how to learn to read Korean in 15 minutes
1:45:16 or how to read Korean in 15 minutes.
1:45:18 And it’s a comic book. You can find it.
1:45:21 And literally, it might not be 15 minutes,
1:45:23 but within two or three hours,
1:45:24 you can learn Korean well enough
1:45:26 that you can read anything in Korean.
1:45:30 You will not understand a damn thing that you’re reading,
1:45:34 but you will be able to sound out phonetically roughly,
1:45:37 roughly what it is, which is great fun.
1:45:42 And well enough that if you’re, as I was a few weeks ago,
1:45:48 in an Uber and you see the Uber app is set to Korean,
1:45:50 you could say thank you or have a nice day
1:45:51 or how are you in Korean?
1:45:53 And below that in the back, how did you know?
1:45:54 And you’d be like, “Well, it’s Korean on the app.”
1:45:55 “Oh my God.”
1:45:57 If you want some cheap applause
1:46:00 that’ll make somebody’s day, that’s an easy way to go.
1:46:01 You know, it’s funny, it fits right in.
1:46:02 You remember your whole like,
1:46:05 “Hey, here’s how to learn how to spin a pen with your fingers?”
1:46:08 Like, here’s some things you can learn in 15 minutes,
1:46:13 like the old like Tim Ferriss 1.0 South by Southwest.
1:46:14 Yeah, exactly.
1:46:16 Speak Korean in 15 minutes.
1:46:18 Also, courtesy of Japan for sure.
1:46:21 This is what all the kids used to do in class,
1:46:24 and now I have something that will endlessly distract
1:46:28 and annoy everyone who sees it from an airplane or something.
1:46:30 Thanks, Japan.
1:46:31 Oh, all right.
1:46:32 What else do you have?
1:46:35 Derek, anything else in that top hat?
1:46:36 I’ll just say this quickly.
1:46:37 I love this little phrase.
1:46:40 I realized when I was like digging into my incentives
1:46:44 why I do things, I travel to inhabit philosophies.
1:46:47 You can hear about life in Brazil or life in Japan,
1:46:51 but it’s a different thing to be there in it.
1:46:53 But I think there’s some philosophies,
1:46:55 whether it’s stoicism or hedonism,
1:46:58 that we can just do from a chair
1:47:01 by just sitting and changing our thought process.
1:47:07 But, you know, Brazilianism, Japanism, Arabianism,
1:47:10 I don’t know, Parisianism, these are kind of like philosophies.
1:47:12 The way that people live in places
1:47:14 are kind of living philosophies.
1:47:18 But I want to experience what it’s like
1:47:20 because I want to think that way.
1:47:21 So I would really like to go there,
1:47:25 live as close as I can to being like a local,
1:47:29 learn the language, live that life according to that way
1:47:32 to inhabit, embody this way of living
1:47:37 in order to feel the actual physical results,
1:47:40 the actions of living that philosophy.
1:47:42 And I thought, this is actually the reason I travel.
1:47:45 It’s not to look at things or take pictures
1:47:47 or post them to impress people.
1:47:49 I travel to inhabit philosophies.
1:47:51 I love that.
1:47:54 What are you finding of the philosophy?
1:47:59 What is the philosophy of the UAE or Dubai?
1:48:00 Recognizing that the culture is very different,
1:48:04 depending if they’re by the hills or the water or the desert.
1:48:08 But how would you try to express that philosophy?
1:48:11 Easy. Generosity.
1:48:14 That’s the thing when I said that Sheikh Zayed, who founded it,
1:48:17 Bedouin culture underneath it,
1:48:21 and then say Emirati culture or Arabian Arab culture.
1:48:25 Generosity is by far the number one.
1:48:27 If you read this book, Arabian Sands,
1:48:30 by Thatcher, he has all these stories of
1:48:33 when he’d be out in the desert on the camels
1:48:35 with his little crew of six guys,
1:48:38 and they only have this much food left,
1:48:40 like nothing, and their tummies are grumbling
1:48:41 and they’re starving.
1:48:42 It’s funny that I just said tummies.
1:48:44 That was cute and dust.
1:48:46 I just noted that for myself.
1:48:49 Who wins my bedtime story, Dad?
1:48:52 And also my little rats here.
1:48:53 I love kissing your little tummies.
1:48:56 Anyway, okay, so, but then if somebody would approach them,
1:48:59 you know, like, oh, hello, my friend, whatever.
1:49:01 He said, as soon as somebody approaches,
1:49:03 that’s it, we’re not going to eat today,
1:49:04 because this is the way.
1:49:07 You give whatever you’ve got.
1:49:08 So anybody, a stranger approaches,
1:49:10 you say, hello, friend, come sit with us here.
1:49:11 No, have some soup.
1:49:12 Don’t worry, we’re not hungry.
1:49:14 We’ve eaten enough.
1:49:15 This is for you now.
1:49:16 Come sit with us.
1:49:19 When I went to Dubai that first time,
1:49:22 somebody I had met once from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
1:49:25 We met briefly in Oxford.
1:49:27 He was the only person I knew that lived in the region.
1:49:29 So I emailed him saying,
1:49:31 hey man, I’m going to Dubai for my first time.
1:49:32 Are you going to be around?
1:49:33 And he said, my friend.
1:49:35 He said, cancel your hotel reservation.
1:49:36 He said, you’re going to stay at my home
1:49:39 in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
1:49:39 You’re going to stay.
1:49:41 I have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa.
1:49:42 Stay at my home.
1:49:43 You’re my guest.
1:49:44 I said, wow, that would be great.
1:49:46 I said, it’ll be so good to see you again.
1:49:48 And he said, no, no, I won’t be there.
1:49:48 He said, I live in Riyadh,
1:49:50 but my uncle will get you from the airport
1:49:51 and just give you the keys.
1:49:52 My home is your home, stay as long as you want.
1:49:56 So I did. I stayed in the Burj Khalifa a few days.
1:49:58 This generosity runs so deep.
1:50:00 It’s hospitality, it’s generosity.
1:50:04 And you understand why you’re in the harsh environment
1:50:05 of the desert.
1:50:07 Everybody’s living a harsh life.
1:50:09 When you meet somebody that’s traveling and passing,
1:50:11 it’s like, oh, come in, come in.
1:50:12 Here, have some.
1:50:13 Don’t even need to tell us your name
1:50:15 or who you are or your tribe or nothing.
1:50:17 Just come in, my guest.
1:50:18 Please have whatever you want.
1:50:19 My food.
1:50:20 Take a bed.
1:50:21 Stay as long as you want.
1:50:25 And that’s so deep in the culture
1:50:29 that yes, I would like to inhabit that philosophy.
1:50:33 Now that I’ve been on the receiving end of that hospitality,
1:50:38 part of me kind of wants to have a home near the Dubai airport
1:50:40 and make that my main home base.
1:50:43 And for whenever I’m not there and I’m traveling,
1:50:46 to just open it up for any of my friends in the world.
1:50:46 Like, please, you’re coming through.
1:50:48 Please stay at my home.
1:50:49 Like, I want to return that generosity.
1:50:50 Is it going to be a six by eight foot?
1:50:52 Thank you.
1:50:54 God, Touche, come.
1:50:56 Everything I have is yours.
1:50:59 Wait, Derek, quick text.
1:51:00 Where’s the bathroom?
1:51:01 Oh, no, there’s no bathroom.
1:51:02 Oh, no, my friend.
1:51:06 Question whether you truly need it or not.
1:51:09 You will find out.
1:51:12 Let me know where you think the sink should be.
1:51:14 I’ll be a bad Emirati.
1:51:15 I’ll be fired.
1:51:24 How is understanding that Dubai is an international city
1:51:27 for a lot of different reasons you could get by
1:51:29 on English almost certainly?
1:51:30 How is your Arabic coming?
1:51:32 Have you started tackling that?
1:51:34 I haven’t spent more time in Dubai yet.
1:51:36 I’m planning on going back very soon
1:51:37 and getting to know more people
1:51:38 and spending more time there.
1:51:40 And considering it as a place I really might want to live.
1:51:43 Because I’ve just noticed throughout my life,
1:51:44 like I grew up in a suburb of Chicago,
1:51:46 then I moved to downtown Boston,
1:51:48 then I moved to New York City in the middle of it.
1:51:52 And it was like, oh, yes, this multiculturalism,
1:51:55 like this feels more like representative
1:51:57 of the real world to me, right?
1:51:59 And then like when I went back to my hometown
1:52:02 in Hinsdale, Illinois, it’s like everybody’s white.
1:52:03 This is weird.
1:52:07 You know, it’s like I like places that are multicultural
1:52:09 because it feels like I’m more in the real world, right?
1:52:13 So I thought New York, like I’ve also lived in London.
1:52:14 I moved to Singapore.
1:52:15 I lived in Singapore for years.
1:52:17 I thought I had been in the most multicultural places
1:52:18 in the world.
1:52:22 No, I looked up statistically New York, London, Singapore.
1:52:26 They’re all about 35 or so, 30 to 35% foreign-born population.
1:52:32 Dubai is like 90 plus percent foreign-born population.
1:52:34 Everybody is from everywhere.
1:52:38 And so when I got there, it was like anthropology jackpot.
1:52:40 I was like, oh, this is amazing.
1:52:41 Everybody’s from everywhere.
1:52:43 I get into any taxi driver, you know, anybody.
1:52:46 You can just ask anybody you see where you from
1:52:48 and you’re going to get a different answer all the time.
1:52:49 I’m from Cameroon.
1:52:50 What are you doing here?
1:52:51 I love languages.
1:52:53 I said, okay, what does that mean?
1:52:55 He said, well, I love languages.
1:52:57 And I thought, where can I get paid to learn languages?
1:52:59 I said, I’ll move to Dubai.
1:53:02 I’ll drive a taxi and I can get paid to learn languages.
1:53:03 I said, did it work?
1:53:06 He said, my friend, I can speak eight languages now.
1:53:08 I’ve been here 18 months.
1:53:10 I can converse with people in eight languages.
1:53:12 He said, everybody that gets into my taxi,
1:53:14 I just talk with people all day long.
1:53:17 He said, I speak Urdu, Hindi, Arabic.
1:53:18 I think he grew up with French.
1:53:20 He said, I’m speaking to you in English.
1:53:22 He said, I couldn’t speak English 18 months ago.
1:53:23 Now look at me.
1:53:25 And he said, I’m getting paid to learn languages.
1:53:26 This is amazing.
1:53:27 And I turned to somebody else.
1:53:28 I’m like, where are you from?
1:53:30 She’s like, I’m from Nairobi.
1:53:31 She had the most beautiful accent
1:53:33 and we got into a long conversation about Nairobi.
1:53:35 And I just thought, this is what I want.
1:53:36 Like just by being in Dubai,
1:53:38 the whole world comes through there
1:53:40 and you meet so many people from all over the place.
1:53:42 I thought, oh, God, this is what a beautiful place.
1:53:45 Anyway, it’s like, there we are,
1:53:47 living in the cantina in Star Wars.
1:53:47 That’s fine.
1:53:49 Dude, you said it first.
1:53:50 That’s what I usually say.
1:53:53 It’s like, Dubai is the bar in Star Wars.
1:53:54 It’s the cantina.
1:53:57 Everybody comes from all over the world to this spot
1:53:59 to kind of do their shady dealings.
1:54:02 But oh my God, if you’re an amateur anthropologist
1:54:03 like me, it’s heaven.
1:54:05 Well, I’m excited that you’re excited, man.
1:54:06 It’s fun to see.
1:54:09 And I hope to break some bread in person
1:54:11 in the not too distant future.
1:54:12 What’s fun?
1:54:13 Always fun to hang out.
1:54:14 Always great fun.
1:54:18 Is there anything that you would like to say,
1:54:20 anything you’d like to point people to,
1:54:22 mention anything at all before we–
1:54:24 Bring out the little buddies again from here.
1:54:25 Hop off and land the plane.
1:54:28 These guys have been sleeping by my feet
1:54:29 the whole time we’ve been talking.
1:54:30 Adorable.
1:54:33 They’re really good little pets.
1:54:36 They’re really, if you don’t wash your hands
1:54:38 after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers.
1:54:39 Oh, he’s licking me right now.
1:54:40 It’s really sweet the way they lick.
1:54:42 They never, ever, ever bite.
1:54:43 They’re very gentle.
1:54:46 Well, unlike my hamsters I had when I was a kid,
1:54:47 they were biters.
1:54:48 Yes, same.
1:54:48 I had gerbils.
1:54:49 They were nasty.
1:54:51 Anyway, I don’t know.
1:54:52 Well, you know my usual call out.
1:54:57 I really enjoy the people that I’ve met through your podcast.
1:54:59 So, hey, anybody listen to this all the way through,
1:55:02 I truly enjoy my email inbox.
1:55:04 I spend about 90 minutes a day just answering emails,
1:55:05 and I really like it.
1:55:06 So, send me an email.
1:55:07 Say hello.
1:55:09 Introduce yourself, especially if you’re a translator,
1:55:13 or if you live in Dubai, or you found anything here fascinating.
1:55:14 All right.
1:55:16 Do you want them to do the detective work
1:55:17 of finding the email address?
1:55:18 Is that the hurdle?
1:55:19 Oh, sorry.
1:55:19 Go to my website.
1:55:21 Just go to sive.rs.
1:55:23 There’s a big contact me here link.
1:55:25 It’s easy detective work.
1:55:27 Okay, sive.rs.
1:55:30 That’s pretty low hurdle.
1:55:33 If they can’t clear that, then they have other problems.
1:55:35 All right, man.
1:55:37 Well, thanks for taking the time.
1:55:38 As always, really appreciate it.
1:55:40 Sorry, I missed you in England.
1:55:42 Yeah, next time.
1:55:44 We’ll both get our knees repaired,
1:55:46 and then we’ll meet up for another walk and talk.
1:55:49 I might ask you some tips on meniscus stuff.
1:55:52 Boy, yeah, we’ll talk about the knee repair.
1:55:56 For everybody listening, go to tim.blog/podcast.
1:55:58 I’ll link to everything we talked about,
1:56:00 all the books, City of Gold, China’s worldview,
1:56:05 all of these various things, the figures and places,
1:56:06 musicians, and so on.
1:56:09 Oh, I should say that useful not true
1:56:10 is only through my website.
1:56:11 It’s not at fuck Amazon.
1:56:12 It’s not on Amazon.
1:56:14 I put it on my website only.
1:56:15 So don’t go to Amazon and look for it
1:56:17 and email me and ask why it’s not there,
1:56:18 because I don’t like them.
1:56:19 So go to sive.com.
1:56:25 All right, go to sive.com or sive.rs.
1:56:26 I guess let’s go to the same place.
1:56:30 And you can find all things about Derek.
1:56:33 And until next time, be a bit kinder than is necessary,
1:56:36 not just to others, but also to yourself.
1:56:37 And thanks for tuning in.
1:56:40 Hey, guys, this is Tim again.
1:56:42 Just one more thing before you take off,
1:56:44 and that is Five Bullet Friday.
1:56:46 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me
1:56:50 every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
1:56:51 Between one and a half and two million people
1:56:53 subscribe to my free newsletter,
1:56:56 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
1:56:58 Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
1:57:03 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday
1:57:05 to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered
1:57:07 or have started exploring over that week.
1:57:09 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
1:57:12 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading,
1:57:17 albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks
1:57:19 and so on that get sent to me by my friends,
1:57:21 including a lot of podcasts.
1:57:25 Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field,
1:57:28 and then I test them, and then I share them with you.
1:57:31 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short,
1:57:34 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off
1:57:36 for the weekend, something to think about.
1:57:37 If you’d like to try it out,
1:57:39 just go to tim.blog/friday,
1:57:43 type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday,
1:57:46 drop in your email, and you’ll get the very next one.
1:57:46 Thanks for listening.
1:57:50 Way back in the day, in 2010,
1:57:52 I published a book called The Four Hour Body,
1:57:55 which I probably started writing in 2008.
1:58:00 And in that book, I recommended many, many, many things.
1:58:02 First generation continuous glucose monitor.
1:58:07 And cold exposure, and all sorts of things
1:58:09 that have been tested by people from NASA
1:58:10 and all over the place.
1:58:14 And one thing in that book was athletic greens.
1:58:17 I did not get paid to include it, I was using it.
1:58:21 That’s how long I’ve been using what is now known as AG1.
1:58:24 AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance,
1:58:25 and I just packed up, for instance,
1:58:27 to go off the grid for a while.
1:58:30 And the last thing I left out on my countertop
1:58:32 to remember to take, I’m not making this up,
1:58:34 I’m looking right in front of me,
1:58:37 is travel packets of AG1.
1:58:40 So rather than taking multiple pills or products
1:58:41 to cover your mental clarity,
1:58:43 gut health, immune, and out of energy, and so on,
1:58:47 you can sport these areas through one daily scoop of AG1,
1:58:49 which tastes great, even with water.
1:58:51 I always just have it with water.
1:58:52 I usually take it first thing in the morning,
1:58:54 and it takes me less than two minutes until,
1:58:56 honestly, it takes me less than a minute.
1:58:58 I just put in a shaker bottle, shake it up, and I’m done.
1:59:02 AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption
1:59:04 by including ingredients optimized
1:59:07 to support a healthy gut in every scoop.
1:59:09 AG1 in a single-serve travel packs,
1:59:11 which I mentioned earlier,
1:59:13 also makes for the perfect travel opinion.
1:59:15 I’ll actually be going totally off the grid,
1:59:19 but these things are incredibly, incredibly space-efficient.
1:59:20 You could even put them in a book, frankly.
1:59:22 I mean, they’re kind of like bookmarks.
1:59:25 After consuming this product for more than a decade,
1:59:27 I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021
1:59:29 as I trust their no-compromise approach
1:59:31 to ingredients sourcing and appreciate their focus
1:59:34 on continuously improving one formula.
1:59:35 They go above and beyond
1:59:38 by testing for 950 or so contaminants
1:59:41 and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10.
1:59:43 AG1 is also tested for heavy metals
1:59:47 and 500 various pesticides and herbicides.
1:59:50 I’ve started paying a lot of attention to pesticides.
1:59:52 That’s a story for another time.
1:59:55 To make sure you’re consuming only the good stuff.
1:59:58 AG1 is also NSF-certified for sport.
1:59:59 That means if you’re an athlete, you can take it.
2:00:02 The certification process is exhaustive
2:00:04 and involves the testing and verification
2:00:07 of each ingredient and every finished batch of AG1.
2:00:09 So they take testing very seriously.
2:00:10 There’s no better time than today
2:00:13 to start a new healthy habit.
2:00:14 And this is an easy one.
2:00:15 All right, wake up.
2:00:16 Water in the shaker bottle.
2:00:18 AG1, boom.
2:00:20 And right now, every week of November,
2:00:23 AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer
2:00:26 for a free gift with your first subscription,
2:00:28 which is in addition to the Welcome Kit
2:00:30 with five AG1 travel packs
2:00:32 and a bottle of vitamin B3 plus K2.
2:00:36 So make sure to check out drinkag1.com/tim
2:00:38 to see what gift you can get this week.
2:00:41 That’s drinkag1.com/tim
2:00:42 to start your holiday season off
2:00:45 on a healthier note while supplies last.
2:00:49 I have been fascinated by the microbiome
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0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:09 The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all
0:00:13 different disciplines, from all different places around the world. My guest today is
0:00:18 Darren Brown. What makes him tick? How does he do what he does? What does he do anyway?
0:00:23 Darren Brown is a psychological illusionist who can predict, suggest, and even control
0:00:28 human behavior. Some of his videos are absolutely bananas. You can go on YouTube,
0:00:36 search Darren Brown, D-E-R-R-E-N, Darren Brown, paying people with blank money as an example.
0:00:42 You can watch his TED Talk to see examples of mentalism. They will blow your mind. He started
0:00:47 his TV career with shows such as Mind Control and Trick or Treat for Channel 4. That’s the UK’s
0:00:53 equivalent of PBS. He has combined spectacular illusions with insights into how we see the world
0:00:59 and those around us or expect to see them. Rather than guard the mystery behind his illusions and
0:01:04 manipulations, he lays bare his techniques and demonstrates how the human mind works.
0:01:09 A prolific creator and performer, Darren has appeared in blockbuster stage and television shows
0:01:14 like, including the sold-out Broadway run of his one-man show Secret, his Olivier award-winning
0:01:20 tour of Sven Galli, and his Netflix specials, which we will talk quite a bit about in this
0:01:25 discussion because they are cuckoo bananas. They’re completely nuts. Darren is the author
0:01:30 of multiple books, including Happy, Why More or Less, Everything is Absolutely Fine, and A Book of
0:01:36 Secrets, Finding Comfort in a Complex World. His new tour, Only Human, materializes on stages
0:01:43 across the UK beginning April of 2025. Very soon. You can find Darren on Instagram and X at
0:01:49 Darren Brown, and you can find his work, his books, and his amazing artwork also at
0:01:55 Darren Brown, that’s D-E-R-R-E-N, DarrenBrown.co.uk. We’re going to get right into the conversation,
0:02:00 but first, just a few quick words about the sponsors who make this show possible.
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0:03:45 the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had the experience
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0:03:57 and it says not available in your current location, something like that, or creepier still if you’re
0:04:02 at home and this has happened to me. I search for something or I type in a URL incorrectly
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0:04:13 And it suggests an alternative and I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service
0:04:20 provider is tracking my searches and what I’m typing into the browser. Yeah, I don’t love it.
0:04:25 And a lot of you know I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I’ve been using today’s
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0:06:47 time, expressvpn.com/tim. I’m looking at your website right now,
0:06:53 DarrenBrown.co.uk, for people who would like to check it out. And I’m just going to mention two
0:07:00 quotes, which are in the now streaming on Netflix section here. And the first is under
0:07:05 sacrifice. And the quote is, “Sacrifice is an utterly bizarre, ethically questionable, totally
0:07:11 gripping must see.” That’s from paste. And then under the push, the quote is, “The most nightmarish
0:07:16 and provocative piece of pop culture in TV history.” And that’s from the New Zealand Herald.
0:07:26 Could you please explain, just in brief, these two specials and the premise of each?
0:07:33 I started off doing mind reading TV shows back in 2000. And then as I sort of, I guess, I kind of
0:07:38 in the world of being a magician, mind reader, sort of mentalist. And then over the years,
0:07:42 they kind of, as I grew up, I guess, and wanted to do something I found more interesting with it,
0:07:50 the shows became largely about people being put unwittingly through these kind of social
0:07:56 experiments and slightly kind of Truman show kind of way, generally to come to a better place in
0:08:00 themselves. Or generally, there was a good reason for them. Yeah, you do kind of have license in
0:08:06 a way that you couldn’t in a clinical setting to stage things that are quite sort of dark. So in,
0:08:10 to you mentioned there, so sacrifice was the last one I did. And the idea was to see whether
0:08:19 a guy who was very anti immigration and big Trump supporter at the time that was all sort of kicking
0:08:25 off and probably to a lot of people’s ears had kind of fairly racist views, whether he could be
0:08:32 brought to a point where he would lay down his life for an illegal undocumented Mexican immigrant.
0:08:37 So the whole show, and this is a sort of a kind of a format that I’ve used in different ways,
0:08:42 is about layering in. Sometimes they don’t know they’re part of a TV show at all. He thought he
0:08:46 was part of a documentary, thought we’d implanted a microchip in the back of his neck and were
0:08:51 following, I’ve thought about this for a long time, following his sort of progress with that was
0:08:58 actually that microchip thing was a big placebo. And it was a way of kind of getting a not a hypnotic
0:09:02 response from him, but a kind of allowing suggestion to work well with him and getting into the point
0:09:07 where I could layer in these triggers, and then set them off at a moment that we staged using
0:09:11 lots of actors that you didn’t realize were actors whereby he would be given this sort of moral
0:09:17 choice and would he do it would he lay down his life and lay down his life meaning take a bullet,
0:09:23 take a bullet. So that’s sacrifice and then the push was another kind of life and death thing.
0:09:30 It was to see whether could you make some saviours out loud and realize how ludicrous they are.
0:09:33 Could you make somebody push someone off a building and kill them
0:09:39 purely through social compliance. So it was a show about compliance. So again, you’ve got someone
0:09:43 going through it that doesn’t realize they’re part of a TV show at all. This is completely hidden in
0:09:50 terms of the filming and a whole load of actors and this really anxiety ridden hilarious kind of
0:09:55 evening that they go through when they’re a guest at what they think is a big high stakes auction
0:10:01 party and one of the guests. I would support the story in case anybody sees it, but I recommend
0:10:05 people watch it. I’ve seen it. Thank you. Thank you. It’s yeah, these things have always interested
0:10:10 me and generally it’s been about as I said kind of taking someone that by all reports needs to kind
0:10:15 of step it up a little bit somewhere in the life and get them to that point. The biggest one I did
0:10:20 was called apocalypse and it involved ending the world. A lot of these ideas come from frustrated
0:10:24 writing sessions and we’re going around in circles and then one of us goes, ah, can’t we just
0:10:29 an apocalypse? Can’t we just end the world and then somebody wakes up and it’s all zombies and
0:10:33 they’ve got to find their way home and so we did that and part of the process of making the show
0:10:39 is trying to stick to these original ideas and stick to the scale. So we had a meteor strike,
0:10:44 we had to convince this guy that it was a meteor was going to land and so we hacked into his news
0:10:48 feeds, his television, his family running it, his house is full of hidden cameras, doesn’t know we’re
0:10:52 filming in his house for months. It’s like the game with Michael Douglas. Exactly. No, that is a
0:10:57 big reference point for us. Yeah, it’s exactly that. So yeah, that’s been fun. It’s been a few years
0:11:02 since I’ve done TV because I was out in, I do stage shows as well every year and I was out in
0:11:07 doing a show on Broadway and then there was COVID and then I had a lot of theater projects going
0:11:11 on. So I’ve taken a bit of a rest. So if I come back, it’ll be something different, I think. But
0:11:17 yeah, that’s the general picture. You’re good at different and just to add a little bit of
0:11:24 additional connective tissue for the push. And now I have not seen the push in a long time, but
0:11:27 am I right that you make reference to, and I’m probably getting the pronunciation wrong here,
0:11:34 but Sirhan Sirhan at the beginning of that, am I inventing that? No, that’s a different show.
0:11:38 That’s a different show, which was another assassination as to whether you could take
0:11:44 so Sirhan Sirhan who shot Bobby Kennedy, it was to see whether his claim, how he was set up by
0:11:49 the CIA could actually work, whether you could do those things and set up those triggers. So we
0:11:53 just followed basically his story and did it with somebody who had them assassinate. Could you
0:11:59 replicate it? That’s Stephen Fry, again, who was in on it. Stephen Fry, just for those, we won’t
0:12:03 get into his bio, but the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy audiobook, if you want to get a real
0:12:09 taste of the brilliance of Stephen Fry, at least as a voice actor, highly, highly recommend.
0:12:16 He’s a great man. Amazing. We’ll come back to some of the ethical questions around these social
0:12:21 experiments. There are none. There are none. There are none. We’ll come back to that. But
0:12:27 I wanted to rewind. So you mentioned, I guess around 2000 or so, if I’m getting the chronology
0:12:36 right. I believe this is referring to mind control. Is that the right, Peg? How did that happen? And
0:12:42 is it fair to say that that was the first kind of catalyzing event that set the stage for a lot
0:12:48 of what came later? I’m wondering what ingredients went into that happening, whether serendipitous,
0:12:55 engineered, or otherwise. So I studied law and German in Bristol, in England, and I lived there
0:13:01 for many years afterwards. And I’d seen a hypnotist in my first year at university and just was so
0:13:08 besotted with it. I learned how to do that. And by the time I graduated, I was the hypnotist guy at
0:13:14 university. And I also started doing close-up magic as well. And then I sort of kind of made a living
0:13:20 doing those things. And after sort of mid 90s, I wrote a book for magicians. And then that got me,
0:13:24 which is kind of a whole, there’s a whole niche world of publishing there. So I got known to that
0:13:31 community. So when a TV company here, who I guess we’re looking for a British answer to Blaine,
0:13:37 David Blaine, who sort of shows a particularly hot new at the time, they spent a couple of years
0:13:41 looking for somebody that could do mind reading, because there really wasn’t very much of it around.
0:13:48 And that had become my thing. So I got a phone call and I went to London and met the
0:13:52 two guys that ran the production company. One of them has since become my manager.
0:13:57 And the other one is now my sort of, well, we’re all kind of co-producers in our own company.
0:14:01 And I showed them a few things and they really liked it. And we put together this first
0:14:07 show and it was a one hour special, yeah, in 2000. And I think it was the repeat of the show,
0:14:11 actually did well. So the Channel 4 in the UK commissioned another one. And then it just
0:14:15 sort of built from there. And then there’s been a couple of things I did. Three years into it,
0:14:20 I did this Russian roulette on TV, like a live thing. And that got a lot of publicity. So it just
0:14:25 kind of kept going. And then along the way, as I’ve sort of grown up, I’ve kind of tried to take
0:14:33 it in new directions. But essentially, it was a mixture of a lot of background work. I was just
0:14:37 doing it a lot. I just loved it. I just loved sort of spending my days dreaming up tricks and going
0:14:42 out performing in the evening. And as I said, writing the book and just getting known to that
0:14:46 world and then being offered the show. What was it that grabbed you in the beginning? I don’t know
0:14:53 if it was Martin Taylor originally or someone else. But number one, why did you even see hypnotism
0:15:00 on campus or while you’re at university? And then secondly, what about it
0:15:04 attracted your attention enough? You’re a smart guy, you could do a lot of things. You already
0:15:12 do a lot of things. What was it that pulled you in after or during that performance?
0:15:16 Yeah, so Martin Taylor was the hypnotist that I saw. And I think it’s probably, I don’t know what
0:15:24 it’s like in the States, but it’s a fairly popular student staple in terms of entertainment. And
0:15:27 it was a really good show. I think sometimes they’re going to be spoiled by people being
0:15:30 made to look like idiots. And this wasn’t like that. It was really fascinating. And it was in my
0:15:39 first week, I was a great kind of attention seeker and just quite insecure. And I didn’t realize it
0:15:44 consciously. But I think the idea of hypnotizing people, particularly, I mean, often there’s
0:15:50 sort of people that respond to hypnosis, well, are the kind of very extrovert kind of jock
0:15:55 types. And suddenly you’ve kind of got control over that, you know, which is the exact of the
0:15:59 people that would have intimidated me so much and had done like through school. And I think
0:16:04 something in that just made it so appealing. And I walked back, I was walking back with a
0:16:08 friend of mine from that show. And I said, it’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to learn how
0:16:12 to do this and do it. And I remember he said, oh, yeah, me too. And I knew that he didn’t mean it
0:16:17 the same way I did. You mean he was going to be more of a tourist and you were like, no,
0:16:22 no, no, I’m going to medical school for hypnotism. Yeah, really clicked into place. And of course,
0:16:27 that was, you know, there were no YouTube videos or anything. So I was bought and stole books and
0:16:30 anything I could find. And I kind of learned it the long way around. I think if you,
0:16:35 there are probably shortcuts to learning hypnosis, but it helps you to learn it the long way around
0:16:39 because you’re going to run into strange situations with it sometimes, which, you know,
0:16:45 happens and still does. So what do you mean by strange situations or run into strange situations?
0:16:53 Well, actually, so the state shows that I do don’t really have much overt hypnosis. And I’m using
0:16:59 suggestion and subtle stuff with the audience all the time. So I’ve taught every year for 20 years
0:17:05 or so apart from COVID. It’s a strange feature. I think of the last show I did showman, which is on
0:17:12 Channel 4. So this is post COVID. And maybe it’s also the first show that the kind of younger,
0:17:17 or that kind of Gen Z world was sort of an age limit, a bottom age limit on the shows.
0:17:21 So it was the first time it sort of really started to be sort of populated, maybe as well, by
0:17:26 that sort of generation, I don’t know, but there was a little bit of hypnosis in the show. I don’t
0:17:32 really do hypnosis overtly, but it was to serve a bigger end. And yeah, for the first time,
0:17:36 as these really odd reactions, much, much stronger than before. I’m used to sort of sometimes having
0:17:41 to go out and speak to someone in the interval or after the show. There was a woman who I got a
0:17:47 message in the interval that there was a woman with a head stuck to the table in the bar in the
0:17:53 theater, which sounded odd because it’s not like nothing that I’d said or done to the audience would
0:17:58 have, I could think would have made that happen. But nonetheless, people sometimes highly suggestible
0:18:01 people, maybe it’s sort of she maybe she picked something up. Anyway, so I went out and spoke
0:18:06 to her because she looked drunk. She’d sort of largely been ignored. And the rest of the audience
0:18:10 has sort of found their way back into the theater by this point. So I could go up and talk to her
0:18:19 on her own. And she was sort of furious and angry. Her head stuck to the table. It was a very odd
0:18:24 situation, which has never happened in 20 years. There are lots of sort of things arose like this
0:18:29 where I’m trying to kind of, because you know, your natural instinct is to then you find rapport
0:18:32 with the person and you bring them to where you want them to be. It’s kind of straightforward
0:18:38 stuff. But she was absolutely not having any of it. Didn’t want me to help her, was angry. And in
0:18:42 the end, I had to say, because it was time to carry on with the show. Look, I’ve got to go,
0:18:46 I’ve got to carry on with the show. And she’s like, yeah, you do that. You know, great. Well,
0:18:52 I’ll see you afterwards. Yeah, yeah. And it got slightly argumentative. And then I went back to
0:18:56 the rest of the half of the show, doing this show, knowing there’s a woman with her head stuck to
0:19:00 the table upstairs thinking, why did I get slightly chippy with her? And she was, you know,
0:19:05 she was fine at the end. But it’s just, it was an odd thing in the air that, and I think a lot of
0:19:10 the strange reactions that, and this only has taken me 20 years to learn this, that when people do
0:19:16 act oddly or seem to get in quotes, caught, you know, stuck in hypnosis, or it’s generally people
0:19:21 having panic attacks, they’ve sort of, you know, hypnotists have said, okay, open your eyes to a
0:19:25 big audience of people and you haven’t been able to open your eyes in the moment. And then you get
0:19:32 into a kind of a recurring spiral. Yeah, exactly. And once I started saying, don’t do this, if you
0:19:36 are prone to panic attacks, just sit this bit out or go outside of the theater, go outside of the
0:19:40 auditorium for a bit. It stopped. But it’s, it’s a really interesting, have you had much to do
0:19:44 with it? If you, you must have skirted around hypnosis a lot, even if you haven’t done it.
0:19:50 I have. Yeah, I have. I’ve had at least one or two people on the show who have practiced hypnosis,
0:19:58 that clinical hypnotist from Stanford on the show as well, and have a deep interest, but
0:20:08 very little personal experience. Would you mind defining mentalism, cold reading, and then describing
0:20:15 how you made the hop, if it is a hop from hypnosis to those things, or how you incorporated them?
0:20:20 But what are they? Hypnosis, I think, is very difficult to define. And there are definitions
0:20:26 of it, of course. But in terms of what’s actually happening and what’s going on, it’s always been,
0:20:30 there are some people that have always said it’s a special state. And there are others that say,
0:20:35 no, it’s just, it’s really just sort of behavior being motivated in a particular way. So for example,
0:20:41 you know, you see somebody on stage being given an onion to eat and you’re told it’s the, it’s a
0:20:45 delicious apple and you see them eating an onion. And it seems like, well, there must be in some
0:20:50 special state to be able to comfortably eat an onion and not find it disgusting. And I was talking
0:20:55 about this with my co-creator, one year, because we were talking about doing these sorts of things
0:20:59 as part of the show. And he said, I bet you can just eat an onion anyway. And he went to my fridge,
0:21:02 took out an onion, took out a big bite of it. And he said, yeah, look, that’s fine. I can eat the
0:21:07 onion. It’s fine. Because his motivation was such that he was wanting to prove a point. And then,
0:21:11 lo and behold, it’s actually all right if you’re motivated in the right way. Whereas if you’re
0:21:16 eating an onion and going, oh, this is disgusting, then it’s going to be very different. So I veer
0:21:22 more towards that sort of, it’s just something in motivation and behavior rather than a special
0:21:27 state. But there are things that we’ve done, like putting people in an ice bath under hypnosis,
0:21:32 having them not feel the pain that you’d find. Well, they’re not just faking it because you
0:21:36 couldn’t just fake that. It’s not the same as that. There’s something else, some middle ground
0:21:42 going on. That’s a tricky one. But also a great source of fascination for me. Mentalism is,
0:21:48 well, it’s a sort of type of performance that it’s always has been a little niche.
0:21:55 A magician that is obviously a magician doing a trick with a sort of mind reading theme as if
0:21:59 that’s kind of mentalism. If somebody makes that they’re living, then they’re a mentalist.
0:22:05 But also you could probably think of a stage medium or a psychic as also being a sort of
0:22:12 mentalist. So it kind of covers the performing world of psychological or supernaturally kind of
0:22:17 that world as opposed to the more obvious fodder of conjuring card tricks and soaring
0:22:23 people in half and so on. It sort of had its heyday, I think, back in the turn of the 20th century.
0:22:30 And a lot of the things I’ve drawn on really have come from that. It’s more popular nowadays.
0:22:33 And the same way that when Blaine was very popular, a lot of magicians,
0:22:37 Copperfield, David Copperfield brought in a wave of magicians doing that style of magic and
0:22:42 Blaine did a similar thing with that style of magic. I think I’m probably responsible for the
0:22:45 wave of mentalism. There’s more of that around now than there was before.
0:22:49 And it’s sort of going to be defined by whatever people choose to do that I guess that call themselves
0:22:56 mentalists. Because when I started in hypnosis, my skill base is a mix of sometimes it’s
0:23:00 real stuff that looks like tricks and sometimes it’s tricks that looks like real stuff and it’s
0:23:06 suggestion and it’s magicians techniques as well. So it’s kind of a mix of all of those things.
0:23:11 And then cold reading, which is the other one you mentioned, is what distinguishes from hot
0:23:18 reading. It’s the techniques used by generally fake psychics, but also the sort of thing you’d
0:23:26 read in astrology columns and magazines and so on, where you make it sound like you have some
0:23:30 clever insight into somebody. And you’re saying things that sound very specific to that person,
0:23:35 but actually are things you’re just throwing out and you know that the person will pick up on the
0:23:41 stuff that hits and matches their experience or sort of ignore all the other stuff that doesn’t.
0:23:49 And there are any number of clever ways that people in that world use to make it seem like
0:23:53 it really sounds like they’ve said something more specific than they have. So if you go and see a
0:23:56 medium on stage, classically, they’ll say, “I’m getting a name,
0:24:01 Jean.” And then you’ve got hands will go up. Now, that could be that somebody in the audience
0:24:05 is called Jean. It could be, “Well, my sister died and she was called Jean.” Or it could be,
0:24:10 “I know a Jean.” So that could be anything, but as soon as someone says, “Oh, I know a Jean.” Oh,
0:24:16 well, this is for them. “Wow, how did you know? I had a friend called Jean.” Well, he didn’t.
0:24:21 You provided that information, you know, and so on. So you’re generally saying stuff when it’s a
0:24:25 conversation like that and people provide you some little thing back, which you then take credit
0:24:32 for and this sort of conversation winds its way along. And if you’re not skeptical, it can seem
0:24:39 convincing on a good day. Hot reading is when you’re using information that you’ve gleaned
0:24:44 from a person. So very specific information that you’re just feeding. You’re feeding straight back.
0:24:52 So a friend of mine was at a recording of a very famous TV medium in the States,
0:24:55 a good few years back. And it was when this sort of thing was starting to become popular,
0:24:59 it was, I think, probably the first big name doing that sort of thing. And he had a studio
0:25:04 audience set up. And this friend of mine was sat in the audience, skeptical like I would be,
0:25:08 but just there out of curiosity. So the guy comes out before they start filming.
0:25:11 This is the TV personality who’s the medium.
0:25:15 This is the medium. This is the medium comes out to talk to the audience before they start
0:25:20 filming and says, “Obviously, the audience is full of believers, apart from people like my friend.”
0:25:24 And says, “Anybody here hoping that someone’s going to come through for them?” So lots of
0:25:28 hands go up. And he just goes around and talks to people and says, “Who have you lost? I’ve lost
0:25:33 a son. Okay. And what happened? Well, this happened.” He drowned. And, okay, can you tell me his name?
0:25:36 Do you remember what he was wearing on the day? Just so that if he comes through,
0:25:40 I’ll know that it’s him. So he gets all this information and then the cameras start rolling.
0:25:44 And he just goes out and feeds that straight back to the people. I’m getting a,
0:25:48 this is a guy and this is a young boy. He was seven. He drowned. He’s wearing a red sweater.
0:25:53 Does anybody take this? And of course, the woman in the audience is in tears and, you know,
0:26:00 because she, so often with this thing, the reason why people don’t want to believe it’s fake is that
0:26:05 the lie is so ugly that anybody would actually do that just to make themselves look good. And,
0:26:10 you know, that it’s easier to believe it must be real, or at least maybe they believe it themselves,
0:26:16 or they’re trying to do good, or that it’s just so often just kind of ugly. So that’s hot reading,
0:26:20 or as cold reading as the, you have no information, but you’re good at making it sound like you do.
0:26:22 Those are my definitions.
0:26:26 If you were to do an online course training people to be more skeptical,
0:26:31 how might you think about that? Would you have a signed reading of any type? Would you have them
0:26:39 watch certain things? I’ve seen more and more, I think in like a foreboding burgeoning nihilism
0:26:44 with a lot of worries around climate change and so on, people want something to grab onto.
0:26:50 The Judeo-Christian religions in many places have faded away, no longer have the hold that
0:26:56 they did, therefore not offering the guidance they once perhaps did. So at least in Austin,
0:27:03 my pet theory is that people are looking for some sense of wonder at work and possibility,
0:27:09 and then they start grasping onto QAnon, they start grasping onto whatever the latest and
0:27:13 greatest kind of magical thinking might be. How might you train someone in the opposite direction?
0:27:19 Well, first of all, I mean, that’s a very noble human urge. We all want to find meaning in our
0:27:24 lives and so much of happiness and good stuff comes from that as a byproduct from that. And
0:27:28 you find meaning in your life by finding something bigger than you and then just throwing yourself
0:27:37 into that thing. So that’s okay. The human urge to transcend is important and worth honoring,
0:27:41 but yes, of course it can misfire, but it also misfires when we attribute it to
0:27:46 money and success and fame. If we think those things are going to make our lives transcendent
0:27:50 or us happier, and again, there’s lots of ways in which it misfires. But yeah, we can also attach it
0:27:58 to these sorts of structures provided by conspiracy theories and so on. I have over my years read
0:28:02 through quite a lot of books on skepticism. So perhaps I’ve sort of just developed a kind of a
0:28:07 way of thinking, but to me, the things that have sort of landed and stayed with me are first that
0:28:14 humane idea of strong claims demand, strong evidence. So if somebody is making a positive
0:28:23 claim about something that is unusual, this thing exists, whether it’s something supernatural or
0:28:26 it’s up to them to come up with evidence for it. It’s not up to you to try and disprove it,
0:28:30 because that’s always going to be a losing battle. So when people
0:28:36 say, “Oh, this is true. Is it what I believe?” and you can’t disbelieve it, well, no, you can’t.
0:28:40 And that’s fine. You don’t have to sort of rise to it. And I think a lot of the problem is once
0:28:44 you start rising to it and it gets into a sort of heated thing, you’re arguing about stuff
0:28:50 you don’t need to be arguing about. I’ve had a million people over the years say to me, as someone
0:28:56 that’s often doing stuff that appears psychic and saying, “Look, this isn’t psychic.” Say,
0:29:01 “Well, how do you explain this?” This psychic said this thing to me, a ghost that they saw
0:29:08 or these experiences that people have. And particularly when it’s ghosts of loved ones
0:29:14 and so on, all these experiences, they’re really meaningful to people. And I think there’s probably
0:29:19 all sorts of other things going on. I lived in a house for a few years that was damp. Damp’s a
0:29:23 funny thing. It creates a real feeling of death when it’s just not quite enough that you can
0:29:28 identify as damp, but it’s enough that it just does something in the air. It took a long time
0:29:33 for us to work out. It was damp, but it felt just like death. There was just something wrong,
0:29:37 you know, that feeling of a room being wrong. There was vents that air would come in and the
0:29:41 dogs would do that thing of barking at nothing, barking mid-air. It turned out it was smells
0:29:47 coming up through vents. A friend of mine who works a lot in the sort of parapsychology world,
0:29:50 Richard Wiseman, I don’t know if you’ve come across him, but he… He’s been on the podcast.
0:29:55 I’m sure he has. He’s a brilliant, hilarious man, but he was talking about windows open at just the
0:30:01 right amount of extractor fans and things. So you’ll have air passing into a room at a particular
0:30:06 frequency where… And we all know about brown noise and white noise and things that can make
0:30:11 parts of us vibrate and it makes us feel a bit sick. Well, there’s a particular frequency that
0:30:16 will just make our eyeballs vibrate a bit. And what that means is we’ll see shapes and it will see
0:30:21 like dark patches in the periphery of our vision. Now, you never know that. That’s not somebody being
0:30:26 stupid or gullible if they’re seeing things like that. There’s all sorts of stuff that goes on. But
0:30:31 ultimately, whatever is causing these things, these are powerful experiences for people and I…
0:30:36 There’s something wrong with leaping on them and saying, “That’s wrong. That’s stupid,” because
0:30:40 they really can mean a lot to people and particularly said, “If you’ve lost somebody and then feel that
0:30:45 you’re having some connection with them afterwards.” So I think not rising to it and understanding
0:30:51 these things as stories and experiences and what meaning that can have for a person. So I’m really
0:30:54 taught… I guess I’m talking more about the sort of supernatural side of thing rather than
0:30:59 conspiracies as such. But even, I suppose, with conspiracy theories, these are things that mean
0:31:04 something. They’re giving this person something. I think there’s a bit of space around that that
0:31:09 can be sat with rather than immediately leaping on them. Otherwise, it’s about the obvious things.
0:31:16 Check your sources. And is this government that on the one hand you’re saying is totally ineffectual?
0:31:24 Are they also clever enough to have created this enormously elaborate thing that you’re saying
0:31:30 that they’ve done? It’s always going to be with us, and it points to that feeling of wonder and
0:31:36 storytelling and how we latch onto a nice, neat story of cause and effect. And that’s exactly
0:31:39 what I do for a living. I see value in all that stuff, but yeah, it can misfire.
0:31:45 It’s something I think about a lot. I fund a lot of early-stage science, and I’ll just give people
0:31:50 a couple of recommendations actually. This is, I think, pretty sure it’s fellow Brit. Ben Goldacre
0:31:55 wrote a book called Bad Science, which I think is worth, should be required reading for every
0:32:00 school child on some level, at least parts of it. Michael Sherman’s written a lot in the area.
0:32:04 All right, I’ll check him out. There’s also, well, I think the best book I’ve seen on cold
0:32:09 reading, and it might be very hard to get now, and it’s a book written for magicians. I have a
0:32:13 load of sort of old pamphlets and strange old books on these things, but there’s one relatively
0:32:20 modern for me at least, so written in the last 20 years, called the Full Facts Book of Cold Reading.
0:32:25 It’s a great title. He may have written other books with the Full Facts Book of dot, dot, dot,
0:32:32 but this is the Full Facts Book of Cold Reading by Ian Rowland, R-O-W-L-A-N-D. And I remember that
0:32:37 when I was learning all this stuff, that was definitely a kind of, that was a really useful.
0:32:42 It was certainly up to date at the time compared to the very sort of, you know, strange old antique
0:32:47 things, because it’s such an old profession. It’s, you know, probably the second oldest
0:32:52 profession around, you know, it goes right back to the Oracle of Delphi, you know, giving people
0:32:57 information that you seemingly couldn’t know. So it’s a very old literature too.
0:33:04 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:34:30 I’m enjoying this conversation on a few levels, including a meta level, which is this conversation
0:34:37 is going to be published directly before, directly after a musician who is devoutly religious.
0:34:44 So we’re going to have a contrast of styles as it were. Is it true that you were Christian until
0:34:48 reading the God Delusion? Is that an accurate statement? Not quite. No, I was very much a
0:34:52 Christian when I grew up. I didn’t really have any Christian friends, apart from one or two,
0:34:57 but didn’t have a Christian family or a Christian group. So it was relatively easy to sort of grow
0:35:03 out of it really. How did you end up an island of Christianity in the beginning? Meaning you
0:35:06 didn’t have Christian friends, you didn’t grow up in a Christian family, but you yourself were
0:35:12 Christian. How did that happen? There was a teacher at my primary school, elementary school, who
0:35:17 invited me to join her Bible class when I was five. I just didn’t know any, any difference.
0:35:23 So I was inculcated quite young. And by the time I realized, oh, it’s not everybody that believes
0:35:28 this. It was too late. And then I came out of it partly because I was doing magic and hypnosis
0:35:37 and stuff at university and getting such a strong, angry reaction from fellow Christians. I started
0:35:41 to say, oh, okay, this is just sort of fear of something that’s misunderstood. Okay. And I had
0:35:47 them literally exorcising demons from me during the show, you know, at the back of the rave. It
0:35:54 was extraordinary. That’s a little bit of extra flourish to the show. Yeah, added to the drama.
0:36:01 And then soon after that, I had a good friend who was a psychic healer and did tarot readings and so
0:36:07 on. And I was just looking at her, what to me struck me as a pretty circular belief system
0:36:11 around it and thinking, I’m sure I’m doing the same. I must be just doing the same with Christianity,
0:36:16 but it’s just a bit more, well, it’s less of a fringe thing. So it’s a little harder just to
0:36:21 laugh at. So I tried to find some sort of intellectual base for it other than just what could just be
0:36:26 a circular belief system. And never did. And magic gives you a very, it really drives a wedge
0:36:31 into that thing of belief and skepticism. It always has been, it’s always been the magicians
0:36:36 that are exposing the psychics and the frauds. Well, it gives you sort of the implicit,
0:36:43 how could you explain this otherwise frame, I would have to imagine, very similar to good
0:36:50 scientists in the sense that you’re as a magician, sort of deconstructing phenomena to ask,
0:36:54 how did they do it? How could they do it? How might they have done it? How might you explain
0:37:00 this, right? Which I imagine laypeople just don’t do as often, but you’re getting a lot of repetitions.
0:37:04 There’s a terrific magician with the great name of Tommy Wonder. I don’t think it’s his real name.
0:37:10 No longer with us. But he had this nice idea that you, the story of your trick gives you the
0:37:14 highlights of the trick and that in between the highlights, there will be the shadows and the
0:37:19 shadows is where you put your method. And what that means is that what you learn as a magician,
0:37:25 and it’s a very hard thing to decode this if you’re not another magician, is you’re not hiding
0:37:31 your methods in secret moves and so on. A lot of what you’re doing, you’re doing very openly
0:37:36 in plain sight, but you’re doing it in those little moments of relaxation that are out of the
0:37:42 story that people are going to follow later. And it’s a very hard thing because that’s such
0:37:47 a human thing to sort of follow those cues. That doesn’t matter if you’re a scientist or what you
0:37:52 are, you’re still going to do that. So you need the kind of familiarity with that. You need to
0:37:59 instinctively watch and have the kind of emotional distance that allows you not to fall for the same
0:38:05 rhythm. It took me a long time to realize this. We were doing a show on Broadway, I think, and it
0:38:10 was the first show I’d done that was a compilation of the best bits from previous shows. So it meant
0:38:14 that when we wrote it, it didn’t have the same heart and through line as the other shows had,
0:38:17 because they were always written with that first. Didn’t have an arc in the same way.
0:38:21 Yeah, exactly. But it needed one. And I was sort of trying to work out what that was
0:38:28 in real time doing the show. And it struck me, especially because magic is such a childish
0:38:32 thing, really. You’re just the quickest, most fraudulent route to impressing people,
0:38:35 isn’t it? So it struck me that… There are a lot of those.
0:38:41 What happens with the magic trick is that you are seeing something happen that is showing you
0:38:45 that your understanding of reality isn’t right, that there’s something you’ve missed,
0:38:50 that your story, as you put those highlighted moments together and form the narrative of
0:38:57 what’s happened, cannot be the full picture. Something else has gone on. And it really stayed
0:39:02 with me because in amongst that childish, sort of really quite infantile world of magic, there
0:39:08 was this thing that’s like, well, that’s a really useful thing in life. That’s the nature
0:39:13 of storytelling. We sit around these… It’s like the image of sitting over a campfire, right? So
0:39:17 you’re not over a campfire, you’re uncomfortable, but across from a campfire from somebody. And
0:39:22 you’re in a forest and it’s dark and you’re lit by this little fire and you’re telling a cozy story.
0:39:27 That’s what stories are. They are cozy. And then outside of that is the darkness and the forest.
0:39:31 And that’s where all the monsters are. And they’re all the things that are being excluded.
0:39:35 That’s what Jung would call the shadow. It’s all the stuff you’re not including in your narrative.
0:39:40 And all the stuff you push out of your personality, they’re talking about coming out late,
0:39:46 the stuff you want to bury. It works at a societal level as well. The parts of society you don’t
0:39:50 want to include in the narrative of who you are. These things will always come back and bite you
0:39:56 because they gain a certain power in the shadows. The old fairy tale idea of the evil godmother
0:40:00 banished from the christening who turns up, she gate crashes the christening and lays a curse
0:40:07 on the infant. These ideas resonate because they mean something to us psychologically. The things
0:40:13 we banish or it’ll be the hero that’s banished from the city and comes back at the end of the story
0:40:19 with an army and defeats the bad king. These things will come back. So the point being that
0:40:24 in amongst all of its nonsense, there was something about magic that does show us that the stories
0:40:31 we’re telling were not including things that are important and gain a certain power if we don’t
0:40:36 include them. It’s meant that over the years, particularly with my first for the TV, but also
0:40:41 with the stage shows I think now in particular as I do more of those, that I like to make it about
0:40:48 that or something. I like to do that. Something that’s important because how you do tricks
0:40:52 isn’t important particularly and it’s entertaining and it’s a lovely vehicle, but
0:40:55 there’s just something in it that I think tickles at a deeper experience.
0:41:02 Let’s talk about not necessarily a shadow, but something you seemingly pushed away or excised
0:41:06 for or compartmentalized at least for a period of time. You already mentioned it twice.
0:41:14 Coming out in your 30s, could you describe if there was the moment, the conversation, the day,
0:41:19 the realization that led you to then come out? Because there was not coming out,
0:41:23 not coming out, then you came out, but presumably there was some type of catalyst for that. What
0:41:31 happened? I think this is the lingering Christian thing didn’t help. The one Christian friend that
0:41:39 I had had got involved with that sort of gay conversion thing which doesn’t work terribly
0:41:44 well. Although I didn’t get very involved in that, it was in the air because he was experiencing it.
0:41:49 So I think it just sort of kind of lingered and although I sort of didn’t really,
0:41:53 wasn’t a believer anymore, it just kind of, I don’t know what it’s like now for people,
0:41:57 I’m sure it’s very different, but you can sort of think it’s going to pass. There’s a lot of
0:42:02 that or you sort of don’t really own it and it just got to the point. I thought this was just
0:42:05 silly and I’ve just got into a relationship and I thought I was known in the UK and I
0:42:10 thought I don’t want to be, I don’t want this to feel like it’s some secretive thing unnecessarily.
0:42:17 So I just sort of did and because what you realize, whatever you come out about, whatever your
0:42:22 thing is, how little people care. I mean, that’s, I expected, you know, the final scene of
0:42:27 Dead Poets Society. I thought I walked out, walked out of my building the next day thinking I was
0:42:30 going to get a round of applause from people on the street and of course no one cares of no interest
0:42:36 to anybody. And I think the reason why it could be so liberating is not because you get to swing
0:42:41 around with, you know, shopping bags in the street and live this flamboyant life. I think you just
0:42:45 realize that these things aren’t important and if that isn’t important, if the big thing you’ve
0:42:50 carried around for so long that felt so much shame about isn’t important and all the other stuff
0:42:56 certainly isn’t. So I think that’s why it’s always good to when the time is right to do those
0:43:03 things. I told my mum, actually I came out to my mum and I think the next day she had a stalker of
0:43:09 mine, a woman turn up on her doorstep saying that I was her abusive husband. It was a very confusing
0:43:18 week for my mum. It was a rough week for mum. You mentioned
0:43:24 quite a while back finding something bigger than yourself and there’s a guardian piece I read this
0:43:29 was just before you turned 50 that in the second half of life it’s important to find things that
0:43:33 are bigger than yourself and finding meaning through losing yourself in those things. I’d like
0:43:39 to ask about this because I know a number of, I won’t mention them by name, some would be recognizable
0:43:44 but let’s just call them sort of ultra skeptics and it’s hard to say that this is causal but they
0:43:50 aren’t necessarily the happiest people who seem to be the most fulfilled and there are exceptions
0:43:54 of course. Now you might say that came first and then they found the skepticism, who knows. So I’m
0:44:02 not saying one causes the other. In any case, without religion, without that type of mooring,
0:44:10 not saying it’s necessary, but how have you found meaning? How have you found things bigger than
0:44:17 yourself? What does that journey look like for you? I think I’ve done the thing of looking for
0:44:25 other structures. So I kind of drifted out of Christianity around university time. So I was
0:44:29 doing magic and hypnosis but not really. It didn’t feel very full time. I was kind of a little bit
0:44:33 drifting but I was sort of earning enough to just sort of tick by and I remember thinking,
0:44:40 “I don’t have any ambition here. I’m just enjoying this rhythm of life.” I remember quite consciously
0:44:45 thinking, “I just want to be able to take a cross-section of my life at any point and is everything
0:44:50 in this moment sort of roughly in the right place? Am I getting up when I want to and not
0:44:55 having to do things I don’t want to and the things that felt important to me at 21?” And if they’re
0:45:01 not, that’d be kind of easy to change. And that became a bit of a guiding principle. I’ve never
0:45:06 had any, generally never had any ambition, didn’t try and get a TV show or anything like that.
0:45:13 I’ve always just had that feeling of how are things feeling now and this is long before
0:45:18 talk of mindfulness or anything like that. So that’s been a sort of a guiding principle. And
0:45:25 years later though, I wrote this book “Happy” which was largely about stoicism and I realized as I was
0:45:32 reading the Stoics that they were giving language to or Seneca I suppose I was reading first was
0:45:38 giving language to a big part of that experience. Although it’s not, stoicism isn’t, as you know,
0:45:43 it’s not really just about that. But that feeling that I had really resonated and in the way we
0:45:47 often find things inspiring because they’re articulating something clearly that we half
0:45:52 feel that haven’t really found language for. So I kind of found myself latching onto that.
0:45:55 And I wrote “Happy” and I wrote “Happy” over three years because I was
0:45:59 touring and I like to write while I’m touring. So it split up over three years and of course it
0:46:03 meant at the end of the three years I had a different take on it. And then my feelings about
0:46:08 about stoicism have sort of changed over the years. But I think often, you know, one we look for
0:46:13 another structure, don’t we? So I’d left behind the sort of Christian world as a structure and I
0:46:19 think it was appealing in the hypnosis, NLP, all of those things, they give a certain kind of
0:46:24 structure to experience as well. And I think that’s probably a part of it. And as I’ve grown
0:46:29 up and got older, what I was trying to articulate there was that the first half of life, I think,
0:46:36 is very much about having this sort of dialogue with the world in terms of the world is telling you
0:46:42 what you need in order to move forward or have a reputation or be liked or whatever. You’re kind
0:46:47 of this axis of dialogue is very much with the world. And I think there’s a natural shift in
0:46:53 the second half that actually is about having that dialogue more internally. I’m 53 now and I
0:46:58 think there’s, you know, I’m sort of aware of that happening and my feelings of, you know,
0:47:03 stoicism have shifted. I suppose that’s it. Like we all do, we find a thing because the
0:47:06 experience of something bigger than yourself is how we find meaning.
0:47:11 What do you or what have you historically struggled with? Is there anything that pops to
0:47:19 mind? My mind immediately goes to the horror of dinner parties and high status people, which
0:47:24 of course I come across a lot because I’m known a bit here and sometimes I get invited to things and
0:47:30 I’m not very good at that. I guess I’m quite introverted. So unless somebody is really warm,
0:47:35 I very quickly get into a thing of really not knowing what to say. I found myself at the
0:47:42 Clintons for Thanksgiving one year. I mean, it’s incredibly, incredibly high status,
0:47:47 isn’t it? I mean, they were wonderful at everything, but it was, you know, kind of
0:47:55 that sort of thing I find very difficult. I generally don’t hang around other famous people
0:47:59 here. I like the experience of people, you know, sometimes being on a bit of a pedestal and it’s
0:48:04 different if you then meet them and they’re not perhaps a bit disappointing. It’s hard to go back
0:48:09 to their work and appreciate it in the same way. Yeah, the heroes with clay feet situation, yeah.
0:48:13 Yeah, totally. So I think that when you say where do I struggle, I think it’s
0:48:19 what immediately comes to mind is sort of awkward, difficult things with people of high status.
0:48:25 Maybe this is a dead end, but I’ll probe a little bit more. I’m curious also psychologically for
0:48:31 yourself. When you are by yourself, does anything come to mind? And maybe this is
0:48:37 me misreading, and if so, I’d love to know the origin. That’s one piece, right? For yourself,
0:48:40 psychologically, is there anything that you struggle with or have struggled with?
0:48:45 And then the follow up to that would be why write these books? You know, happy, why more or less,
0:48:49 everything is absolutely fine. A book of secrets, finding comfort in a complex world,
0:48:54 or doing the audible original right book camp for emotion, these types of things. Are those
0:49:00 reflective of things that you have found challenging in the past? Or is that not the case?
0:49:11 I think since writing Happy, that book, I have found the world of what it is to flourish,
0:49:18 really interesting. And I’ve never felt it in the way, in that very, forgive me,
0:49:23 with that American optimistic goal setting mode at all. I’m very much not about that.
0:49:29 So that’s meant that it’s less simple and it’s more interesting to sort of navigate and is then,
0:49:35 because I enjoy writing so much, probably more than anything. I’ve naturally been the sort of
0:49:39 stuff that I’ve taken into my stage shows and very much wanted to write about as I go along.
0:49:47 I guess I am a kind of reflective type. Life’s difficult. Life has this centripetal quality.
0:49:53 It brings us to these difficult, central points. And when we’re there, and it’s interesting that
0:49:58 the last show I did showman was about this, we wrote the show, I don’t know if anybody might see it,
0:50:04 but certainly it was pre-COVID and I wanted to write the show with this thing at the heart of it,
0:50:10 that life brings us to these difficult centers. And when we’re there, it feels lonely. We feel
0:50:14 like we’ve failed, which is the big problem with the American optimistic goal setting model,
0:50:17 that when things don’t go well, you’re supposed to, I guess you have to blame yourself because you
0:50:22 didn’t set your goals well enough or believe in yourself well enough or whatever that strange,
0:50:27 Protestant work ethic applied to life tells us we should feel. So the reality is that
0:50:32 lonely, difficult central point is exactly the human experience is because we’re all
0:50:38 brought to those points. It’s what we all share and the thing that makes us feel most isolated
0:50:42 is the one thing that actually connects us the most. And interestingly, we’d sort of written
0:50:47 this show and then lockdown happened and it just played out. The very thing that was physically
0:50:57 isolating us was the one thing we were all sharing. And that, I think, is eternally valuable to me.
0:51:03 And it’s the thing that, and I know is also that the answer to finding dinner parties with
0:51:08 high status people difficult is that they’re the same. They’re probably hating as much of it as I
0:51:14 am, that we’re all having these awkward experiences most of the time. And you shouldn’t compare your
0:51:20 insights to other people’s outsides because they’re very different things. I find that a helpful
0:51:26 thought. One of the issues with stoicism for me, I suppose, is that it’s another way of life being
0:51:30 a bit of a fight. The thing I love most about it, actually reading Marcus Aurelius, he talks so much
0:51:36 about retreating. And I love that. I love this very introverted aspect of reading Marcus that you
0:51:41 don’t get so much from the teachers from Seneca and Epictetus that are very much telling you what
0:51:46 to do all of it. I do love it all, but there is a bit of a constant fight at the heart of it. The
0:51:53 images, the metaphors, they’re either military or they are, you’re a rock with waves lashing against
0:51:57 you and you’ve got to be solid in the face of all this. And you are setting yourself up for a
0:52:01 world that’s not going to live up to your standards. And I don’t know. I don’t know. Is that the way
0:52:07 to live? There’s a German sociologist called Hartmut Rosa who’s got a terrific book. It’s not an easy
0:52:12 read. It’s a beast of a thing called resonance. So have you come across this? Have you come across
0:52:17 resonance? I’ve heard the total I haven’t read it. It’s a very different look at what might make a
0:52:24 successful life. And rather than being about virtue and so on, it’s about a mode of relating to the
0:52:30 world where it’s a level, I suppose a type of engagement. It’s not an emotional state. It’s
0:52:35 not about feeling anything in particular, but it’s just about what it isn’t and how most of us live
0:52:41 is we treat the world as a resource. So imagine if two artists and it’s an art competition,
0:52:45 they’re told to go out and paint the best picture they can. And one of them goes home and does the
0:52:49 best he can do and provides his picture. And the other one thinks, okay, all right, well,
0:52:52 I want to do the best picture. So I better get a… Well, first of all, I need a really good studio
0:52:57 space. So he finds a great studio space. And now I need the best possible easel and, okay, a proper
0:53:03 good linen canvas. And he sources that and they’re going to get the best paints and the best brushes,
0:53:11 the finest brushes and so on and so on. And then times up. And this is what we’re doing. Generally,
0:53:16 we’re treating the world as a resource. But what’s happened is that the resources that are a means
0:53:20 to an end, right? So we’re trying to be richer and more attractive and more this and more that.
0:53:25 Those are only means to an end. They got a bit confused with the goals somewhere along the lines.
0:53:30 And he’s suggesting a sort of rather more… He talks about like a tuning fork. Like, you know,
0:53:33 you put one tuning fork next to another one and the other one starts to vibrate. And it’s just a
0:53:38 different sort of relationship of resonance with the world as opposed to treating it as a resource
0:53:42 and a number of other things that we do. And I’d rather like that. And I don’t think it’s
0:53:48 incompatible with stursism at all. And the part of stursism I like the most. And I think that
0:53:54 initially drew me to it is that life is difficult, you know, and you’ve got your, here’s your x-axis
0:53:58 and your y-axis. And on the one axis, you’ve got all the things you want to achieve, your aims and
0:54:02 your plans and the other axis is stuff that life is throwing back at you, what they used to call
0:54:08 fortune. And we don’t really talk about that anymore, which is a shame. And we’re told,
0:54:12 if you set your goals and believe in yourself correctly, that you can crank this line of life
0:54:18 up. So it’s in line with this x-axis, in line with your goals and your aims. But the reality
0:54:25 is we live this, an x equals y diagonal, a sort of a meandering line. And sometimes we’re on top.
0:54:28 And sometimes we’re not, you know, we’ll have a great day and then life will throw something
0:54:33 horrible our way. And it’s that. So how do you make your peace with this? And that image of that x
0:54:39 equals y line is something that resonates throughout history. Schopenhauer spoke about it. Freud,
0:54:43 he wasn’t trying to make that first talking therapy was never about making people happy.
0:54:50 His goal was to restore a natural unhappiness, right? So the life is basically going to be
0:54:54 unhappy a lot of the time. And you don’t want to be overly unhappy, but it’s just how you make
0:54:58 your peace with the fact that life’s always going to be a bit dissatisfying. You’re always going to
0:55:02 get caught between these poles. Michael, do you accept me high? I’m sure you know who wrote flow.
0:55:09 Again, you’re caught between anxiety and boredom and the flow state between whether your skills or
0:55:17 your challenges are going to win out. The same idea is so helpful. And that’s the stuff I love,
0:55:22 because I think that’s a real antidote to the fetishizing of optimism and so on.
0:55:28 I worked a lot with them. I’ve been around faith healers a lot. And the thing that really struck
0:55:34 me, by faith healers, I mean the kind of the Christian evangelical type that it getting
0:55:38 people up out of wheelchairs and so on. I recommend everybody watch Miracle, by the way.
0:55:43 Nice stage show. Thank you. That was a fascinating show. I really enjoyed that.
0:55:50 Thank you. Thank you. It was amazing to do every night. I was doing it for a room of
0:55:55 non-believers. I didn’t know if it was going to work at all. But watching the people out there
0:56:00 doing it, a recurring idea is that you throw your pills away. You don’t need your medicine.
0:56:03 And if the disease comes back, it’s because you didn’t have enough faith,
0:56:11 which is this perfect formula for absolving yourself of any responsibility as the healer.
0:56:14 I’m putting all the blame on the person going through it. And there’s any number of horror
0:56:19 stories, of course, of people that get caught up in that. And it’s exactly the same. You read
0:56:27 something like The Secret, but is it Rhodoburn, Rondoburn? It’s telling us quite specifically,
0:56:32 you send your wishes out to the universe. And if it doesn’t provide, it’s because you didn’t
0:56:36 commit to it enough. You didn’t commit enough to that belief. It’s not the fault of the system,
0:56:41 it’s your fault for not committing to it. And I think it trickles down into goal setting and
0:56:48 all the rest of it. So I like this idea of life’s difficult and we all share that experience no
0:56:55 matter where we are and what we’re doing in our own way. And actually, how do you sit comfortably
0:56:59 and hopefully resonantly with a life that isn’t always going to give you what you want?
0:57:04 All right. So I would like to come back to this word ambition. If somebody looks at your website,
0:57:11 if I look at your Wikipedia page, I may describe you or be inclined to say this is an ambitious man,
0:57:19 given the corpus of work. You have six or seven books, you have the Broadway shows,
0:57:26 the theater, the one man shows, the television, the collaborations, it goes on and on and on.
0:57:33 So what I would love to know is how you define ambition, because maybe I don’t want to end up
0:57:37 arguing about God where we have different definitions of God, for instance. So maybe
0:57:42 it’s just in the way that you define or think about ambition. But it strikes me that you are
0:57:48 very active. And you mentioned painting a moment ago. People should go to your website just to
0:57:55 see your painting as well. We may come back to that if we have time. How do you explain your
0:58:00 productivity? Because if you were just sitting in your room trying to be receptive to the universe
0:58:06 delivering you signals, you may just end up sitting in your room, right? So there is some
0:58:11 proactivity involved, it would seem, in what you’re doing. How do you explain the level of
0:58:16 productivity? What contributes to that if not ambition? Certainly isn’t ambition. And by
0:58:24 ambition, I mean, I’ve never sought out something ahead in the timeline that I think would be
0:58:32 good for me or productive or expand my reach or those things really send shivers through me.
0:58:39 But I have a manager and I have co-producers and grown-ups, essentially, who do think about those
0:58:45 things. And as time’s gone on, what I choose to do has become up to me, which is nice. And
0:58:52 I won’t be blind to the, if something, you know, like, yes, it’s a good thing to do a show in New
0:58:56 York, of course. But really, I’m thinking it would be very lovely to live out there for a bit and
0:59:01 what an amazing experience that would be. But I wasn’t seeing it as a step to anything else. It
0:59:06 just felt like, well, that would be an enjoyable thing to do. And, you know, the projects all take
0:59:11 a long time. And there is a lot that’s come out of it. But I’m not running around frantically
0:59:17 from one thing to another. They’re things that just take a chunk of time. And then normally,
0:59:21 I’m just sort of obliged one way or another to get on to the next one. Because a year before,
0:59:26 I said, I do it. And somewhere people would be making arrangements. And teams have been assembled.
0:59:30 And I can’t, at the last minute, go, I just want to sit at home. But I have had a time of sitting
0:59:36 at home the last year or so because I got a bit burnt out with it. And I’m very aware that I
0:59:42 am really not my best if I’m not creatively engaged with something. So painting is very helpful
0:59:46 for me because I can just do that. That’s like a week or two of just in a studio painting. And
0:59:51 that’s lovely. Is that how long it takes you to do one of your pieces a week or two? Well,
0:59:55 often sometimes a bit longer because I don’t get to give it a time I want. It strikes me as very
1:00:00 fast. People should need to go to your website. Everybody go to the website. We’ll put some links
1:00:05 in the show notes as well. But darrenbrown.co.uk, when you look at the artwork, you would,
1:00:12 I mean, this could be another career for you. I mean, it’s, it is that developed. Very, very,
1:00:16 very impressed. And I grew up in a family of artists and wanted to be a comic book
1:00:22 pencil for 15 years myself. So I paid for some of my college expenses being an illustrator. And
1:00:26 like, I cannot even come close to doing 10% of what you do with the portraits that you do. There’s
1:00:33 no way. Oh, very kind. Well, I really, really very much enjoy it. And I, it’s a nice way of
1:00:38 shutting yourself away and just throwing yourself into something for a big chunk of time, which I
1:00:44 find helpful. So I think that’s probably part of it. But I really feel it’s mainly due to the other
1:00:51 people I have around me who are more savvy with it. So what it sounds like, which is I’ve never
1:00:56 discussed with someone is that it’s not that you live in a life devoid of ambition, but you
1:01:02 have freed yourself from the need to be ambitious yourself, which is part and parcel of maybe
1:01:09 side effects that come with it by having team members who are ambitious on your behalf in the
1:01:15 sense of thinking about how certain options will create or open other doors. And so on. Is that a
1:01:19 fair description? I think there is a fair description. I think that if there’s a recipe for
1:01:26 success is talent plus energy. So you, you know, you develop your talent because if you’ve got no
1:01:30 talent, and your energy is, you know, how you get it out into the world. And if you’ve got all the
1:01:34 energy itself promotion, but no talent to back it up, it’s not going to be very helpful. And if
1:01:38 you’ve got all the talent in the world, but no energy of getting it out there for people to see,
1:01:44 that’s also not great. I’ve certainly never had any, any energy with it at all. So having a manager
1:01:49 and people like that to do that side of it. And very early on, I realized I needed that. So
1:01:55 I genuinely are not saying it with any overweening false modesty or anything. I just,
1:02:02 my principle and even more so now that I’m older is what would be enjoyable in and of itself.
1:02:07 I forget his name, but there’s a philosophy talks about the importance of this in midlife of these
1:02:12 italic activities that things that just bring pleasure in and of themselves and aren’t constantly
1:02:16 about the payoff at some point in the future. I think as we get older, those things are more
1:02:22 important. But I’ve always had that and maybe I’ve never really had a proper job and it’s sort of
1:02:29 easier to seems to be working out for you. All right. I’m touring next year in 2025 with a new
1:02:34 show. And like all these things, we got a title, it’s called only human tickets on sale. People
1:02:38 have my and I have no idea what the show is yet. We haven’t written a word of it. And I’ve kind of
1:02:42 got used to this over the years. So, you know, we’re starting to kind of think about that now.
1:02:48 Okay. It’s Louis. If you don’t know what the content is, how did you choose the name and a
1:02:53 poster and everything? I know it’s, we’ve sort of got used to it now because this is the 11th
1:02:58 show that I’ve done. And as soon as we say, okay, let’s do a show next year, my manager’s saying,
1:03:02 right, well, the brochures will need, you know, the theater brochures programs will need
1:03:08 an image and a title description. Yeah, or not even a description. They need an image and a name
1:03:12 at the very least. But it’s a great example of, you know, how you give yourself a structure and
1:03:18 then think within that. So all the show titles have kind of been a bit generic. And then we’ve
1:03:23 found ways of making them work. A show of mystery and suspense, right? I mean, you have a lot of
1:03:29 room, wiggle room with it. Totally. It is a little bit like that. And is it typically this way that,
1:03:34 like you book it and then with the positive constraints, you figure it out. But how did you
1:03:38 choose in this particular case, only human? This was going to be related to my next question is,
1:03:43 how do you pick the next project? But let’s get specific on the only human. How did you pick this?
1:03:48 It sounds like you’ve done this more than once, knowing that you will have to figure it out later.
1:03:52 It’s absolute necessity. In the same way that you’ve booked the theaters, you have to come
1:03:56 up with a show. And likewise, if you need a title for the brochures, we have to come up with the
1:04:02 title. So Andrew and I just had an email exchange back and forth go, okay, and we send a bunch of
1:04:08 things. And it’s going to be something about being human. And because I just know that’ll be the
1:04:14 heart of it somewhere. And within a few emails back and forth, no one found that one, no one found
1:04:20 only human offensive or to this or to that. You don’t seem to mind offensive. Are you steering
1:04:26 away from controversial and offensive? No, well, yeah, but it’s also about not being too specific.
1:04:30 You know, that’s the trouble with an offensive bold title is that you’re then going to
1:04:36 get too specific. That’s the issue, right? That’s the issue. And then in terms of choosing
1:04:42 the projects, well, I mean, it’s really it’s what I would like to do. And yeah,
1:04:46 I want to know how you know that though, right? Because I, for instance, I’ll buy a little time.
1:04:50 So my friend Kevin Kelly, he’s founding editor of Wired Magazine. He tries to give away all of his
1:04:56 ideas. And if one idea keeps coming back to him and no one will do it, and he can’t seem to get
1:05:02 rid of it, and he’s it’s floating around its head, then that’s how he chooses a lot of his projects,
1:05:07 at least the new exploratory projects. In my case, you know, nonfiction books, let’s just say
1:05:12 it’s a book I can’t find myself, I want to learn about it, I immerse myself. So it’s sort of a
1:05:16 graduate degree for myself. And there’s there’s a bit more that goes into it. I test it with my
1:05:21 audience using blog posts and podcasts and things. But you were saying you want to do. And this might
1:05:25 sound like such a silly question. But how do you know that? Because there’s some people who
1:05:31 describe a feeling, or maybe they’re kept up at night. But it’s an excitement, it’s not an anxiety,
1:05:36 the tenor, the emotional tenors different. How do you feel your way into it? How do you know
1:05:41 that you want to do it? Because my experience with people who have a lot of options as you would,
1:05:47 you also have a lot of inbound, you have, sure, a wide menu, is that it’s not sorting good from
1:05:53 bad ideas, you’re going to have lots of good ideas. And then you have to choose the better idea or the
1:06:00 great idea or the good for you idea amongst many good ideas that you would actually like to do.
1:06:06 So how do you pick? I think it really depends on what sort of project it is. Like for TV and stage,
1:06:11 I’m always writing with other people. And I don’t give it any thought until the three of us are
1:06:17 on Zoom or in a room talking. And then we’ve got a whole backlog of experience. There’s
1:06:22 templates that are in place that we can dispose of or use again. Or, you know, we’ve kind of got a
1:06:27 shorthand. For the format, you mean? The template? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. There’s a sort of,
1:06:34 there’s a lot of pre-existing ways we found work, which I said we can often very consciously dispose
1:06:40 with. But there’s something in place so you don’t feel completely at sea. I suppose it’s most difficult.
1:06:43 So book writing, like the moment I’m trying to get my head around and writing another book.
1:06:48 And that’s just me. And that is, that is more difficult. And that simple question of how do
1:06:53 you know what you want? What do I really want? It is difficult. So the last book I wrote was a
1:06:59 slightly off-grid book for magicians called Notes from a Fellow Traveler. And I wrote it on the road
1:07:04 while I was touring because two reasons. Firstly, I felt that a book about touring and how to put a
1:07:10 show together and the experience nightly of doing a show for large audiences and dealing with all
1:07:16 the stuff that goes wrong and blah, blah, blah, would be of use to magicians that are just maybe
1:07:20 starting out with putting a show together and all the really important stuff about performing,
1:07:24 which just isn’t really written about too much in the magic world. So that was one reason.
1:07:29 But also it would be really fun. I need to write during the days on tour, otherwise you’re just
1:07:34 kicking around in somewhere that there may be nothing to do and what are you going to do for
1:07:38 a week. So writing is really important. And that was a big part of it. And sometimes it’s that sort
1:07:45 of thing, isn’t it? Sometimes I’ve always been, if I’m driven by anything, it’s thinking I should
1:07:51 be doing better than whatever I’m doing. I always say if I can do something and I find it sort of
1:07:59 easy, I just presume it’s a bit stupid. And I’m always sort of trying to do the next thing.
1:08:04 But I particularly feel that with writing and I make it more difficult for myself probably
1:08:08 than I need to. So the magic book was actually a really enjoyable, easy, I didn’t need to do
1:08:12 loads of research and bring a suitcase of books around with me. It was actually a kind of this
1:08:17 a really enjoyable, lovely thing. So now I’m trying to listen to that and I’m trying to let
1:08:22 something settle into something that when you’ve got it just feels obvious. I will, of course,
1:08:28 because those tend to be the best things, but there is no easy route. And with the TV shows,
1:08:31 as I said, often the idea of, oh, can you make someone push someone off a building?
1:08:37 Everyone at the party is an actor apart from one person. Could you, those come sometimes from just
1:08:42 a frustration of just trying too hard and going down rabbit holes and running circles,
1:08:46 trying to find something that is clever all by then just you go blah, can’t we just do this?
1:08:52 And it feels obvious and a bit silly. And, oh, that’s it. That’s it. That’s exactly what it should
1:09:00 be. So I think maybe recognizing that you know when you’ve got it when it because then it tingles,
1:09:05 you know, it’s right because it resonates to use that word and it has this little buzz of it,
1:09:13 buzz of excitement to it because it’s really hard to force it directly. But if it was, you wouldn’t
1:09:20 be doing such good stuff if it was easy to find, I suppose. I will ask you because I have a prompt
1:09:25 in front of me using forms of suggestion as self-defense. So I do want to hear a story about
1:09:31 that. But before we get to it, since you mentioned the push, and I promised at the very beginning,
1:09:37 I would touch on the ethics piece. So for people who have watched some of these or do a little
1:09:44 homework, one might think as a viewer, knowing that you’re putting people through this process,
1:09:51 we’re unbeknownst to them, ultimately, they’re being groomed and conditioned and set up to do
1:10:00 something very extreme that people would end up with all sorts of complex PTSD and that the
1:10:07 show itself could produce all sorts of capital T trauma for people involved. How do you respond to
1:10:16 people? And? Do you respond to people with this concern? Well, so if you take, for example, take
1:10:25 sacrifice then, which was the last one, that show, somebody’s going through a really like roller coaster
1:10:29 series of things to get to a life and death situation where they think they’re going to be
1:10:34 shot at the end of it and so on. So the first thing is when we write the show, and I’m writing
1:10:39 these shows with a, we are at the show, but a lot of experience of making similar things.
1:10:44 I’ve got very used to making sure this person is going to be just held in a place that is,
1:10:49 they’re okay, and they’re going to be sort of safe in themselves. That’s like the first layer,
1:10:54 the actual writing of the show. And at any point, bear in mind, if it’s a big hidden camera thing,
1:11:00 I can just step in. If anything bad happened, I could simply step in. And also everything gets
1:11:06 passed by is important. An independent psychological team. So we’ll have a psychologist on board who
1:11:10 knows the show, knows exactly what’s going to happen, all the things that might potentially be
1:11:14 triggering. You know, if someone’s lost someone, dears them in a car crash, we’re not going to
1:11:19 want them witnessing a car crash, for example. You know, so that might not be obvious, might not
1:11:27 know that. So everybody that applies or gets shortlisted will have this session with a psychologist
1:11:31 that they’ll think everybody gets, but it may only be, you know, three or four people that
1:11:34 get it by this point. But if we don’t want them to know they’ve been shortlisted, then they don’t.
1:11:39 We’re also preserving this fiction for them as to what’s going on. But we’ll have that too.
1:11:45 And then during the show itself, again, we’ve got that psychologist, we have other independent
1:11:50 people that are with us in the truck, watching it play out any number of measures, where if anything
1:11:55 is going a bit off track, or they see genuinely some line has been crossed, we can step in.
1:12:00 And I’ll, if I get the chance, it depends on what the show is. But if I’ve been able to interact
1:12:07 with the people before, then I can layer in language and triggers, which I can give to the
1:12:11 actors, particularly if I’m talking to them through earpieces, to use, which I know will have
1:12:18 an effect on the person that’s going through it to calm them or give them some resources.
1:12:23 So I’m kind of using the hypnosis in a way that’s for that benefit to come back at a later point
1:12:29 rather than me making them do stuff. Things like that are in place. Next, they go through the experience
1:12:35 and they’ve always, and I’ve done this so much, and I’ve always loved it and taken a huge amount
1:12:41 for it. No one’s ever like actually had a bad time or come out of it. However, it looks or feels
1:12:46 like to the crew making the show, the other actors actually have often a far worse time
1:12:49 because they’re making, you know, they’re feeling terrible putting somebody through something,
1:12:52 because the guy or the girl that’s been through it’s always, always loved it.
1:12:58 So going back to sacrifice, Phil does this whole thing, comes out the other end of the show.
1:13:03 But there’s actually the trickier part then is, well, how do you now deal with this person who’s
1:13:09 been through a hopefully life-changing or at least pivotal big thing in their lives?
1:13:14 It’s now going to be a TV show that’s out there. That’s weird and that’s a sensitive thing.
1:13:20 So I flew Phil over and he came and he watched the show in my house. He watched it three times.
1:13:26 Once, he needed to see it first as a show with music, underscoring, close-ups, bits that were
1:13:29 taken out that didn’t make it to the final cut that might have meant a huge amount to him and now
1:13:33 he’s got to get his head right. Okay, that’s not part of the story because they didn’t really
1:13:37 serve a purpose at the end of the day. And, you know, there’s a bit in the show where he doesn’t
1:13:40 do something and it’s a bit like, “Ah, he’s not doing it. Is this going to work?”
1:13:47 And he had to then get his head around, he’d let us down or that he’d failed and that’s a difficult
1:13:52 thing. That’s a real thing for him. I watched it a second time with the other people that had done
1:13:57 similar shows that I’d made. So the guy from the Apocalypse One with the Zombies and the guy from
1:14:01 the Persian, they came. So now he felt like he had a little group of people that had been through a
1:14:05 similar thing and shows because he was a fan of the show. So these are people that he knew. So that
1:14:10 was a really helpful thing for him. And finally, bizarrely, we watched it. Do you know Martin Freeman,
1:14:14 the actor you come across to me? The name rings a bell, but I can’t contour a face.
1:14:19 Okay, famously Watson to Benedict Cumberbets, Sherlock, and all sorts of things. Certainly a
1:14:24 big name here and Phil was a big fan of him. He was a big star in the Fargo. Oh yeah, of course.
1:14:28 Of course. I just pulled up his photo. I know who Martin Freeman was. You got it. So we watched the
1:14:33 show with Martin. That was the third time. So Phil could sort of, you know, hopefully feel proud
1:14:38 of it. And by this time, after three meetings, I got used to it as a TV show. But then you’ve got
1:14:43 what about when the show airs and it’s a controversial subject. So he might have a lot of
1:14:48 backlash from people. And I remember the first show he did that was a tool like this. And when
1:14:54 this was a bit of a learning curve for us, this guy that’s been through this extraordinary journey
1:14:58 that meant so much to me, so excited the show’s going out. And this is back in the day when it’s
1:15:02 just broadcast and everyone’s going to watch it at the same time. So he’s got Twitter open on his phone.
1:15:07 And he’s just reading the nastiest things about himself. His girlfriend’s too pretty for him.
1:15:12 If you should get his eyebrows sorted out, you’re just awful, awful stuff. And it was really miserable
1:15:17 for him. So we got somebody out there to be with Phil in the States so they could be around
1:15:22 during that time, which would be sensitive and weird that it suddenly goes out in the public domain.
1:15:27 So it’s a long answer. But basically, there’s a huge amount that we do that doesn’t really form
1:15:32 part of the drama of the show you’re watching because it’s a whole different story that has to
1:15:38 preserve the fiction. What you’re seeing is absolutely the guy’s experience. But all this
1:15:43 other stuff has to happen to make sure that it’s safe and does the job it’s supposed to do. It’s
1:15:50 there for one reason, which is to give him a real proper, hopefully, important pivotal moment.
1:15:55 You know, hell of a job, sir. As promised, suggestion is self-defense.
1:16:01 Oh, that’s right. What does this mean? Do you have a story? You must have a story.
1:16:05 Well, it was just it was an experience of it’s worth knowing this. Actually,
1:16:11 I think we should all have this ready in our head. So I had spoken after doing hypnosis shows,
1:16:16 I would sometimes do a Q&A afterwards and people would ask about both even hypnotize people without
1:16:20 them knowing it and so on. And it always occurred to me that, you know, if you want to keep the
1:16:23 seat next to you free on a train, you know, you don’t put your bag there because that’s what
1:16:27 everybody does. And it’s just annoying. And then you want to ask the person to move their bag.
1:16:32 Instead, pat the seat and nod and smile at people. No, no one’s going to sit next year, right?
1:16:38 So I’d sort of spoken about this kind of stuff. And then I found myself in a sort of a real life
1:16:44 situation. And I was walking from one magic convention to another. And I was before the TV
1:16:50 or anything. I was sort of mid 20s. I was in a velvet three piece purple suit with the fob watch
1:16:58 chain and long hair. And I mean, if anyone was going to get brutally murdered that night was me.
1:17:04 And this very drunk, angry guy and his girlfriend are walking towards me. Just look, he’s disguised
1:17:10 as looking for a fight. And because I’d sort of spoken about how to these slightly offkilled
1:17:16 ways of dealing with these sorts of situations, the trick is to act in a way that it makes complete
1:17:20 sense, but it’s utterly out of context. So the other person thinks they’ve missed something.
1:17:23 You know, because if somebody comes up to you in the street and says,
1:17:30 it’s not 20 minutes past five, your reaction wouldn’t be to go, yeah, I know it’s whatever
1:17:34 you’re going to what I’m sorry, you know, like you’ve missed something. So he comes up to me,
1:17:38 what the fuck are you looking at? Do you want to fight? Or whatever he was saying.
1:17:44 And I said to him, the wall outside my house isn’t four foot high. And what you get, and I
1:17:48 guess it’s a similar thing in martial arts of that adrenaline dump. He asked me to repeat
1:17:53 first of all what I’d said. So I said the what it’s not four foot high. I lived in Spain for a
1:17:56 bit. The walls were much higher. But if you look at them here, they’re tiny, they’re nothing.
1:18:03 He sort of did this. He just essentially not exactly collapsed, but he just sat, he went,
1:18:10 and he sat down on the pavement. His girlfriend walked off. I had in my mind what I was going
1:18:13 to do. A girlfriend made the right choice. She’s like, I don’t want to do all the other of these
1:18:20 people. My plan was, which I didn’t get to, my plan was to then give you give the person relief
1:18:24 from the confusion. And this is where the sort of hypnotic element comes in. I was going to say to
1:18:30 him, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter whether you’re left or your right foot is released first, but
1:18:33 you’ll find within a couple of minutes you can walk and you can move and everything. And it’s
1:18:36 it’s fine. It doesn’t matter if it takes a couple of minutes. So that was the plan, right, to leave
1:18:42 him stuck to the pavement. But I didn’t get to go that far. He collapsed. And I ended up weirdly
1:18:47 sitting down with him and saying, so what happened? What happened tonight? And his girlfriend had,
1:18:50 she’d gotten a fight and she bottled somebody. I think it was something like that.
1:18:55 Birds of a feather. Yeah. Yeah. So he went off. I then walked off to this other magic convention,
1:18:59 told everybody. I was so excited. No one believed me because they thought it was just me making
1:19:05 stuff up. But if there’s a takeaway there, it’s you have a song lyric or just something. It came
1:19:10 out of a conversation with a friend who used to walk home from his art studio late at night. And
1:19:15 there was always gang just like intimidating gangs standing around. He’d always like crossover and
1:19:19 sometimes they’d shout things. And it was just horrible. I said, why don’t you cross over to
1:19:24 their side and you know, say good evening as you walk past and you know, and he did and he never
1:19:29 had any trouble because they just thought he was strange. So I think have something like that. If
1:19:33 someone’s running at you with a knife, you know, it’s not going to help. But if you if you’re in
1:19:40 that situation where people are being intimidating, it’s a very, I think a powerful route. It has to
1:19:45 make sense, but just be out of context and just commit to it. Could you elaborate on the making
1:19:50 sense, right? Because you could be like a boogity boo, dinosaurs times two. They need to feel they’ve
1:19:55 missed something. So I had that phrase in my head that the wall outside my house isn’t full for high
1:20:01 because I’ve spoken about this sort of thing with audiences after the show. So I had sort of without
1:20:06 meaning to kind of rehearse it. So it just kind of came out. So I think having something like
1:20:12 that, for some reason, the negative in it really helps because it’s like, it’s like they’ve said
1:20:15 something that you’re responding to, but they haven’t said, you know, it just adds it adds something,
1:20:21 it adds something to it. You know, I’m just imagining dating you and wondering like,
1:20:28 what is he up to? Are you doing that thing? Are you doing exhausting? What are some benevolent
1:20:37 applications of the techniques that you have acquired? What are some offstage applications?
1:20:43 This would be an example. This would be a problem solving example. Where else can you apply these
1:20:48 things? I really weirdly don’t use it in real life. Now, that’s the lesson of not trying to control
1:20:54 things that are out of your control. It’s so the opposite of what this strange job is that I have.
1:20:59 So I actually very much don’t. I mean, the thing I’m most aware of, which is not a new
1:21:07 thing for anybody to hear, but in my mind ties in with the same sort of world is just the importance
1:21:14 of being heard. So, you know, your partner, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend comes home and
1:21:21 has had a frustrating day and just wants to offload. And particularly, for some reason,
1:21:26 if you’re a guy, let alone if you’re stoically drawn. But our natural thing is, of course,
1:21:31 to offer solutions and so on. And you’re just doing the thing again of not letting the person be
1:21:38 heard. And it’s so obvious. And I think I really don’t walk around in that Derren Brown mode,
1:21:47 but I catch myself consciously just trying to be present and hear and listen and know that it’s
1:21:50 because you know the moment you start offering solutions, they’re dismissed. There’s a million
1:21:54 reasons why that isn’t appropriate, you know, so you very quickly get told if you do get it wrong.
1:21:59 But I think that’s and it goes back to this thing of people’s stories of ghosts and psychics that
1:22:05 told them amazing things just to be present with those things and not feel that it’s your job to
1:22:11 step in and kind of morally correct them or in some way put them on a different path or even
1:22:18 offer a solution to a puzzle that sometimes we just need to sit in these things and be heard
1:22:22 because what we’re actually saying is something deeper than the specific
1:22:29 problem of the thing that’s niggling us. I don’t really carry a lot of it around. Well,
1:22:36 I’m in work mode. I’m full of that stuff. The power of presupposition is, I use it all the
1:22:39 time in card tricks, you know, you say you’ve got a deck of cards at the beginning, they’re in a
1:22:43 special order. So you can’t have the person shuffle them. But maybe there’s a point halfway
1:22:46 through the trick where they can shuffle the cards. So at that point, I’d give them the
1:22:51 cards to shuffle that I’d say, I’ll shuffle them again, but this time do it under the table.
1:22:54 So now they’re taking the cards onto the table and somehow in doing that, they’ve accepted the
1:22:59 word again and they’re shuffling it. And later when they describe the trick and they want the
1:23:02 trick to sound as amazing as possible because they’ve been fooled by it and don’t want to look
1:23:06 stupid, the amount of times they would say, well, I shuffled the deck at the beginning
1:23:10 and you know, and they didn’t. And then the trick really is impossible because they couldn’t have
1:23:14 shuffled it at the start. So the power of presupposition is really, you know,
1:23:21 you can apply that to yourself, I guess, in your inner language as much as trying to
1:23:29 influence others. But I just somehow don’t sit in that world in real life. I think it’s enough
1:23:35 in life to try and find a way of gathering yourself afresh and then going out in the world
1:23:39 and taking some responsibility, you know, amidst your mess. I think that’s enough. I don’t think
1:23:44 self-esteem is that important. I certainly don’t think influencing others is that important. I
1:23:50 think we’ve got enough to be getting on with. When I first started, I loved all that stuff and now
1:23:55 it leaves me a little bit cold. I don’t think it’s about that. I think just how you make peace with
1:24:00 life that’s not always going to go your way. That’s the project. That’s a successful life.
1:24:06 You read a lot. You’ve written a lot. Are there any books in particular? And you can name at least
1:24:13 two. So one could be of your own. But are there any books that you have gifted or recommended
1:24:18 frequently to other people that come to mind? A big fan of Jonathan Haight who, if you haven’t
1:24:23 had on this podcast, you should do his own. I have. He’s outstanding. Yeah, wonderful. Brilliant,
1:24:29 brilliant guy. So I’ve just finished his book, The Anxious Generation, which is his last one.
1:24:35 I’ll often find myself giving those to people. I like James Hollis as well a lot. I don’t know
1:24:41 if you’ve had one. He’s a Jungian psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, I suppose. He writes a lot in that
1:24:49 mode. Irvin Yalom, who is a wonderful writer and does that thing. Oliver Sacks, I think, started
1:24:56 of writing little accounts of interesting cases. He’s a beautiful writer. Do you read fiction?
1:25:02 No. No, I don’t. I don’t. And it’s missing. I think I should. And there’s probably a lot more
1:25:06 truth to be found in reading fiction than in the nonfiction that I do. But I’m always drawn to it.
1:25:11 And I always feel, because there’s always a book project somewhere in my mind, I always feel like
1:25:16 I should be. As I become more aware of that thought, I sort of feel like I can now and read
1:25:24 more fiction. If you were to read fiction, what type of fiction might you start with?
1:25:27 Are there any kind of parameters or characteristics? Driven by that thing,
1:25:30 if I should always be doing the thing that isn’t easy, I think it would be
1:25:35 the only fiction I read more of that. So Dostoevsky and so on. It would be that. It would be the
1:25:41 big, heavy classics, because that’s where I feel that’s where you should start. I’ve occasionally
1:25:47 been given a novel by a friend, and I always find them very sort of forgetful. So I think probably
1:25:52 the big European works, because that I didn’t feel I was. You want to learn how to ski, so
1:25:55 like get dropped out of a helicopter at the top of K2, that type of approach.
1:26:02 I love the Thomas Harris, the Hannibal Lecter series of books. I remember absolutely devouring
1:26:04 those. And I was a big fan of Stephen King when I don’t know what any of this says about me.
1:26:09 When I was younger. So I’ve definitely had that. And if you brought out another one in the Hannibal
1:26:14 series, you might go. All right. You know, since you like difficult, I’ll just make one recommendation
1:26:19 for a book that for nine out of 10 people, it’s a miss because it’s hard. It’s dense.
1:26:26 It’s called Little Big. The alternate title is the Fairies Parliament by John Crowley,
1:26:33 who is also a poet. And this book, Little Big,
1:26:40 when it works, at least for me and for the one out of 10 that it might work for,
1:26:49 has the most profound effect on time perception and time dilation. It feels like you go on a
1:26:56 one to two week psychedelic experience on a the lower end of the mystical scale. But
1:27:02 it is such a mind altering book in the way that it is written as almost a fever dream with multiple
1:27:08 intertwining timelines and magical surrealism. If you’re looking for something hard that is also
1:27:13 incredibly beautiful, and it’s this book I’ve never had an experience like this,
1:27:18 you have to charge through the first 150 pages. If you put it down after 20 and pick it up a week
1:27:24 later, it won’t make any sense. But if you get through it, you’ll be like that. It was an incredible
1:27:30 book. Hopefully I want to recommend it to friends. And then two weeks later, if someone asks you what
1:27:35 it was, you will not be able to describe what the book was about. It’s bizarre. So that will be
1:27:39 just my my recommendation. Little Big by John Crowley.
1:27:43 Thank you. I’ve made a note. I recently read a book I really enjoyed called
1:27:50 Picnic comma lightning three words picnic comma lightning by Lawrence Scott. And I loved it.
1:27:56 And I could not tell you what it was about at all. It’s nonfiction, but it’s I just adore it.
1:28:00 Maybe that’s the sign of a good book on some level, being lost in it to the extent
1:28:05 that you kept pieces back together in retrospect. If you had to give and I know you’ve given a great
1:28:12 Ted talk, I recommend people check it out. Great bow tie also. But I recommend people check that out.
1:28:16 If you had to give another Ted talk, but it had to be on something you are not known for. So it
1:28:21 can’t be the magic, anything tangential to magic. Also, I’m going to take art off the table. Sadly,
1:28:25 I’m going to take art off the table. What might you give a Ted talk on?
1:28:32 I think this idea that we’re all joined up by how lonely it feels and things go wrong. This thing I
1:28:36 said of life pulling us towards difficult places. I don’t say that because I’ve had a particularly
1:28:42 difficult life. But I just think it’s just part of life. And it’s part of someone’s life is going
1:28:48 well, it’s still a common thread. And I think that is not the mode that we’re encouraged to live in.
1:28:52 It was very strange when I did that Ted talk and I really enjoyed it. But it was, I don’t
1:28:56 say this with any disrespect to the Ted people at all. They were wonderful. But
1:29:03 it was in Vancouver and you step out of that Ted building into some of the worst
1:29:09 homelessness in the world. And it’s like Disney have staged the apocalypse. There was a bride
1:29:15 covered in blood, pushing a trolley through fire. There were just things on fire. I mean,
1:29:20 it was extraordinary, not quite on its doorstep, but like 10-15 minutes walk. And it was very old
1:29:25 going out and finding a coffee in the middle of all that and then going back to the sort of
1:29:29 Ted talk topics. It was a strange thing. So maybe partly for that reason. But I think the
1:29:34 difficulty of life and how we sit well with that, I think that’s the perennial subject for me.
1:29:39 I mean, we should make that happen. Yeah, in Vancouver, I presented a Ted
1:29:46 any number of years ago, I can’t remember. And some of the worst opiate and opioid addiction
1:29:53 in North America, for sure, in terms of density. Gabor Montes has done a lot of work there.
1:29:58 All right, shifting topics a little bit. In the last handful of years, five years,
1:30:04 I mean, somewhat of an arbitrary timeframe. But what new belief or behavior or habit would you say?
1:30:09 It doesn’t have to be the most has improved your life the most. But are there any new
1:30:13 beliefs, behaviors, habits that have meaningfully improved your life?
1:30:22 Ways of looking at the world could be anything. Being confident to go with my instincts on
1:30:27 particularly work related things historically. So these are big projects. I have these other
1:30:31 people around me that are putting things together behind the scenes in terms of productions and
1:30:37 meetings and pitching ideas and so on. And I get caught up with that. As I said, that productivity
1:30:42 that you see isn’t driven by any sort of workaholic tendencies on my part. It’s just
1:30:47 what I find myself swept up in. So of late. And it’s an odd thing to be saying, no, I don’t want
1:30:53 to do this or being offered some private gig out somewhere and I say, I’m not going to enjoy that.
1:30:55 Unless it’s the Clintons, then you can’t say no.
1:31:03 That’s sort of good. I’ve been in my current relationship for 10 years and probably the last
1:31:10 five years of that has settled better with me in terms of… They were very different. So
1:31:16 I think I’m naturally disposed of a kind of a quite a stoic, placid thing. He’s very fiery.
1:31:22 And I’ve sort of quite enjoying the sort of learning from that. It makes me a bit less of a
1:31:26 people pleaser, I suppose. We’ve had lots of work done in the house for a long time and he’s
1:31:30 very happy to start arguments with people that are doing that. And I’m just trying to keep everybody
1:31:35 happy and making them coffee and trying to iron over any tension. And actually, sometimes a bit
1:31:40 of conflict is important because it isn’t really about conflict. It’s about being able to have some
1:31:46 faith in what you actually are and want to say and stand for. It’s not about conflict. You think
1:31:50 it’s about conflict so you don’t do it, but it’s not. It’s just about having some faith in yourself.
1:31:57 What caused that settling? Was it relating to it differently, that dynamic that you just described?
1:32:02 So you have 10 years, like in the last five, you’ve settled into it in a different way.
1:32:08 What has contributed to that? I think just time. I think it’s just slowly, slow process.
1:32:22 My natural predisposition is kind of mental space. I’ve always sort of saw myself as probably
1:32:28 being on my own with a dog. And even getting a second dog as a couple, having now a second dog,
1:32:31 it felt, “Oh, no, no, it’s wrong. It should be.” I remember saying, “Let’s not get a second one.
1:32:36 I like that it’s just me and my dog.” And my partner said, “What do you mean you? It’s us,
1:32:39 and what do you mean? What are you talking about?” And I realized that was my image of myself was
1:32:46 still kind of a bit single. That’s definitely a new mode for me. I am trying to work a little
1:32:52 less, but I’ve also become very aware. When I wrote the happy book afterwards, I was going out and
1:32:57 giving talks on happiness to promote the book a little bit. And because I had all this knowledge
1:33:00 that I found really interesting and I wanted to do something with it and not just end it because
1:33:05 I’d finished writing the book. And I was really unhappy. I was going out thinking, “I’m actually
1:33:09 feeling a bit miserable and I don’t know why and I feel a bit of a hypocrite.” And I realized it was
1:33:16 because I’d finished writing the book and I didn’t have that engagement in a big creative project.
1:33:20 So those are important to me. And I think realizing that as well, I think, as we can
1:33:25 hope for, has become more conscious of the things that we do find meaning, the things that we do need
1:33:33 and having more of those. If you could put a message, quote, image, anything non-commercial
1:33:38 on a billboard, meaning make it present for millions or billions of people.
1:33:45 There’s a line or a verse of Rilke, the German romantic poet, which is
1:33:53 something like, “Experience everything, the beauty and the terror, no feeling is final,
1:33:59 just keep going.” Oh, I thought that was great. I’ll have a drop of Rilke. So yeah, maybe that.
1:34:02 Or just if you want something snappy, I think gather yourself afresh,
1:34:07 first of all, just to find ways of being able to do that. What we need in our life just to kind of
1:34:11 get ourselves back together and step back out into the world, I think that’s having that and
1:34:17 knowing what you need. That’s a big tick, isn’t it? Well, Darren, I could keep going,
1:34:21 but I want to be respectful of your time and this has been a great wide-ranging conversation.
1:34:26 My AirPods are starting to run out. They’re starting to. You can dipping out.
1:34:33 So people can find you on social @darenbrown. We’ll link to everything on Instagram and
1:34:41 on xdarenbrown, D-R-R-E-N, brown.co.uk. Is there anything else you’d like to say before we wind
1:34:45 to a close, requests of my audience, things you’d like to point them to, anything at all?
1:34:50 Just to recommend our hairdresser that we both share. Give them a shout out.
1:34:58 Yes, we do share the same stylist and beard trimmer. It’s a good luck. It looks good on you.
1:35:03 Thank you. Very you too. It was very good to finally make contact. Thank you so much for
1:35:04 thank you for having me.
1:35:07 My pleasure. My pleasure. And for everybody listening, we’ll link to everything in the
1:35:13 show notes, tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be just a little kinder that is necessary
1:35:16 to others and also to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
1:35:23 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is Five
1:35:28 Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little
1:35:33 fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter,
1:35:39 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is
1:35:44 basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found
1:35:48 or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like my diary of cool
1:35:55 things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
1:36:00 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast
1:36:07 guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I
1:36:13 share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness
1:36:17 before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you’d like to try it out,
1:36:24 just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and
1:36:29 you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had the
1:36:35 experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something, say a show on Amazon or elsewhere
1:36:42 and it says not available in your current location, something like that, or creepier still if you’re
1:36:48 at home and this has happened to me. I search for something or I type in a URL incorrectly and then
1:36:54 a screen for AT&T pops up and it says you might be searching for this. How about that? And it
1:36:59 suggests an alternative and I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service provider is
1:37:06 tracking my searches and what I’m typing into the browser. Yeah, I don’t love it. And a lot of you
1:37:11 know I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I’ve been using today’s episode sponsor,
1:37:16 ExpressVPN for several years now and I recommend you check it out. When you connect to a secure VPN
1:37:20 server, your internet traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see into, including
1:37:26 hackers, governments, people on Starbucks, your internet service provider, etc. And no,
1:37:31 you’re not safe simply using incognito mode in your browser. This was something that I got wrong
1:37:36 for a long time. Your activity might still be visible as in the example I gave to your internet
1:37:41 service provider. Incognito mode also does not hide your IP address. Also with the example that I
1:37:45 gave of you can’t access this kind of that content or whatever you happen to be, then you just set
1:37:50 your server to a country where you can see it and all of a sudden voila, you can say log into your
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1:38:01 ExpressVPN protects you and enables you because it encrypts and reroutes your network traffic
1:38:05 through secure servers. So even though your traffic is still passing through your internet provider,
1:38:11 now they can’t read it. ExpressVPN is so fast, also it doesn’t bog things down at all. I usually
1:38:17 forget that I even have it on. I can stream high quality video, no lag or buffering, even on servers
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1:38:28 very helpful as I am constantly traveling and love to do so. It’s easy to use. You just choose a
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1:38:46 phone, laptop, tablets, even TVs. ExpressVPN has really changed the way I use the internet and I
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1:39:07 extra three free months of ExpressVPN. One more time expressvpn.com/tim. This episode is brought
1:39:13 to you by Eight Sleep. I have been using Eight Sleep pod cover for years now. Why? Well, by simply
1:39:18 adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or
1:39:23 warm up each side of your bed. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod and
1:39:30 I’m excited to test it out, Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically,
1:39:35 more on that in a second. First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20
1:39:40 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature, giving you and your partner cool, even in a heat wave,
1:39:45 or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive
1:39:50 pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down. This solves all of that.
1:39:55 Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame
1:39:59 and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience. And for those
1:40:04 snore heavy nights, the pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees
1:40:10 to improve airflow and stop you or your partner from snoring. Plus, with Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave
1:40:14 your wearables on the nightstand. You won’t need them because these types of mattress are integrated
1:40:19 into the Pod 4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible sensors which track your sleep time, sleep phases,
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1:40:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:01 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.
0:00:05 This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show.
0:00:07 This isn’t just any episode.
0:00:11 This one turned out really, really special.
0:00:17 And I really encourage everybody to listen to this once as audio only
0:00:21 if you are listening to this without any video.
0:00:27 But also go to youtube.com/timferriss to ours two S’s to see the video.
0:00:33 We recorded this episode in the recording studio designed by Jimi Hendrix,
0:00:40 where he slept the acoustics, the surroundings, everything is gorgeous.
0:00:42 And my guest was in the flow.
0:00:45 We happened to mesh really well together.
0:00:49 And it’s one of those episodes that I will remember for many years.
0:00:52 My guest, John Batiste, is a five time Grammy Award winning
0:00:56 and Academy Award winning singer, songwriter and composer.
0:01:01 I met him ages and ages ago back when he was a mere incredible,
0:01:04 incredible musician, composer, et cetera.
0:01:08 But I’ve been able to watch him become the marquee lights, John Batiste.
0:01:10 And it has been a thrill to watch.
0:01:11 We talk about it all.
0:01:16 His eighth studio album, Beethoven Blues, is set for a November 15th release.
0:01:21 When we are sitting in Jimi Hendrix’s studio, there are pianos, guitars,
0:01:24 you name it, and we don’t just talk.
0:01:28 We walk around and he uses music to answer some of my questions.
0:01:29 It’s phenomenal.
0:01:34 Beethoven Blues marks the first installment in his solo piano series,
0:01:39 showcasing Batiste’s interpretation of Beethoven’s iconic works reimagined.
0:01:40 And that is an understatement.
0:01:45 You’re going to hear a lot of it in this episode towards the last 25 percent.
0:01:47 So buckle up and stick around.
0:01:51 Beethoven Blues follows Batiste’s studio album, World Music Radio,
0:01:55 which received five Grammy nominations, including album of the year.
0:01:59 As a composer, he scored Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Now in theaters.
0:02:03 The film depicts the chaotic 90 minutes before Saturday Night Live’s
0:02:08 very first broadcast in 1975, underscored by Batiste’s blending
0:02:10 of jazz, classical and contemporary elements.
0:02:15 He composed and produced the music live on set, capturing the intensity
0:02:17 of the show’s debut.
0:02:20 He also appears in the film as Billy Preston, the show’s first musical
0:02:23 guest, and certainly he has lived that out himself.
0:02:27 Additionally, Batiste composed and performed music for the Disney Pixar
0:02:31 film Soul, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score
0:02:34 alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
0:02:36 You can find him at JohnBatiste.com.
0:02:43 That’s J-O-N-B-A-T-I-S-T-E dot com on Instagram and socials @JohnBatiste.
0:02:46 And boy, oh, boy, I love this.
0:02:49 I really think you guys are in for a treat.
0:02:49 Stick around.
0:02:51 Listen to the whole thing.
0:02:55 Watch it a second time on video at youtube.com/TimFerris.
0:02:59 So we’re going to get to the good stuff, but first, just a few words
0:03:01 from those who make this podcast possible.
0:03:05 The following quote is from one of the most legendary
0:03:09 entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley, and here it goes.
0:03:13 This team executes at a level you rarely see even among the best
0:03:14 technology companies.
0:03:19 And quote, that is from Peter Thiel about today’s sponsor Ramp.
0:03:22 I’ve been hearing about these guys everywhere and there are good reasons for it.
0:03:26 Ramp is corporate card and spend management software designed to help you
0:03:29 save time and put money back in your pocket.
0:03:31 In fact, they’re already doing that across the board.
0:03:37 Ramp has already saved more than 25,000 customers, including other podcast sponsors
0:03:41 like Shopify and Aidsleep, more than 10 million hours and more than $1 billion
0:03:44 through better financial management of their corporate spending.
0:03:48 With Ramp, you’re able to issue cards to every employee with limits
0:03:52 and restrictions and automate expense reporting, allowing you to close your
0:03:54 books eight times faster on average.
0:03:59 Your employees will no longer spend hours upon hours submitting expense reports.
0:04:03 I mean, within companies, fast growing startups or otherwise, a lot of employees
0:04:06 spend half their time, it seems, trying to get all this stuff together.
0:04:08 No more. Ramp saves you time and money.
0:04:13 You can get started, issue virtual and physical cards and start making payments
0:04:18 in less than 15 minutes, whether you have five employees or 5,000 employees.
0:04:20 They’ve streamlined everything.
0:04:24 And businesses that use Ramp save an average of 5% in the first year.
0:04:27 And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp.
0:04:30 Just go to Ramp.com/Tim.
0:04:31 All spelled out.
0:04:36 That’s Ramp.com/Tim, R-A-M-P.com/Tim.
0:04:40 Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply.
0:04:44 This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep.
0:04:47 I have been using 8Sleep pod cover for years now.
0:04:50 Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top, like a fitted
0:04:55 sheet, you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed.
0:04:59 8Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I’m excited
0:05:01 to test it out, Pod 4 Ultra.
0:05:05 It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically.
0:05:06 More on that in a second.
0:05:10 First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20 degrees
0:05:15 Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping you and your partner cool, even
0:05:18 in a heat wave, or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive.
0:05:23 I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off, closing the windows,
0:05:24 trying to crank the AC down.
0:05:25 This solves all of that.
0:05:29 Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress
0:05:33 and your bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding
0:05:36 experience. And for those snore heavy nights, the pod can detect your
0:05:40 snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve air flow
0:05:43 and stop you or your partner from snoring.
0:05:46 Plus, with the Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand.
0:05:49 You won’t need them because these types of metrics are integrated
0:05:50 into the Pod 4 Ultra itself.
0:05:55 They have imperceptible sensors which track your sleep time, sleep bases and HRV.
0:06:00 Their heart rate tracking is just one example is at 99% accuracy.
0:06:02 So get your best night’s sleep.
0:06:08 Head to 8sleep.com/tim and use Code Tim to get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra.
0:06:09 That’s 8sleep.
0:06:17 All spelled out 8sleep.com/tim and Code Tim TIM to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
0:06:22 They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia.
0:06:28 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:06:30 Can I answer your personal question?
0:06:32 No, I would have seen it in a perfect time.
0:06:37 I’m a cybernetic organism living this year over a metal endoskeleton.
0:06:51 The snow monkeys in Japan figured it out, so we’ve been doing it a long time.
0:06:53 They just hang out in the hot springs.
0:06:58 Did you ever go to a place in Japan, Okinawa?
0:07:02 I’ve spent time there because I lived in Japan when I was younger.
0:07:04 So I’ve been to Okinawa.
0:07:07 I have, yeah, culturally, super different from the rest of Japan.
0:07:07 It’s cool.
0:07:09 I can’t wait to go.
0:07:10 I wanted to ask you if you had been.
0:07:17 I’d never been, but I’ve always wanted to just go there and like spend a long period of time, like months.
0:07:18 Yeah.
0:07:19 I feel like it could change you.
0:07:25 I think it could in part because I asked everybody down there
0:07:28 because the Okinawans have so many hundred plus.
0:07:31 Yeah, senior citizens, they live a long time, or at least they used to.
0:07:34 And I asked every person I met, what’s the secret?
0:07:37 And they all had a different answer, which was pretty adorable.
0:07:41 But the one constant was they were all active.
0:07:43 I had a driver who was helping us out.
0:07:44 He considered himself young.
0:07:49 He was 85 and we would drive and he’d point to the retirement homes and he’d say,
0:07:51 that’s where you go to die.
0:07:52 That’s when you stop.
0:07:55 He’s like, as soon as you sit on the couch and start watching TV, it’s over.
0:08:00 And we would go to the farmer’s markets and you’d see people were at 98, 103,
0:08:05 walking around shopping, tending garden, active, they’re still engaged.
0:08:14 That’s absolutely incredible because all of those things you think of are mundane
0:08:17 and that you are trying to get away from doing.
0:08:18 Exactly.
0:08:20 That’s what I’m trying to retire from.
0:08:21 Yeah.
0:08:26 Or I want to outsource that, which that almost becomes a way of life.
0:08:27 It’s like a philosophy.
0:08:28 Yeah, totally.
0:08:33 I remember I was reading different books by Kurt Vonnegut.
0:08:34 He was one of my favorite writers.
0:08:35 Oh yeah, Kurt did.
0:08:37 He had this, I think it was an essay.
0:08:42 He was like, if people tell you the purpose of life is not to fart around, don’t believe them.
0:08:44 He’s like, I go to the post office.
0:08:45 I wait in line.
0:08:46 Most people don’t want to do that.
0:08:50 He’s like, but that’s the connective tissue, all those in between moments.
0:08:55 And if you’re only celebrating the huge this, the huge that, the big events, I mean, you’re
0:08:57 missing like 98% of your life.
0:08:58 Oh man.
0:08:59 Wow.
0:09:04 There’s something about that I think about often.
0:09:10 How do you maintain a flow state in waking life throughout the mundane?
0:09:17 How do you embrace the mundane and find the muse in the mundane without having to go to
0:09:18 some sacred place?
0:09:19 Yeah, exactly.
0:09:21 You have to take a time out.
0:09:28 Like I have to go and plug into something else to connect versus just being connected.
0:09:33 The muse in the mundane, how do you, how have you found that?
0:09:36 Or how have you tried to find that?
0:09:37 Mistakes.
0:09:38 All right.
0:09:39 Mistakes are amazing.
0:09:40 Mistakes are brilliant.
0:09:47 It’s a gift to go about your day and for something, either a mistake or something that you didn’t
0:09:57 plan an interruption, some seeming calamity happening that allows for you to not only
0:10:01 respond but to create.
0:10:05 And then in that moment, you have the ability to discover something that’s much greater
0:10:11 than anything that you could invent or devise because there’s something that happens with
0:10:19 the synapses and the way that you respond to seeming calamity that brings you to your
0:10:22 highest potential.
0:10:26 So I have to ask you about something I read when I was doing research for this, which is
0:10:31 always fun because I get to be like a creepy stalker online for people I know.
0:10:35 Which otherwise would be very strange and uncomfortable for everybody.
0:10:40 And I was reading this piece from The Guardian and I want to ask about introspection because
0:10:43 you’re very reflective and I admire that.
0:10:49 I mean, you seem to have cultivated self-awareness and a lot of what you do.
0:10:53 In this Guardian piece, they said maybe that’s because he didn’t speak until he was 10 or
0:10:55 something along those lines.
0:11:00 Did you not speak for a lot of your, I guess, childhood given the framing that they put
0:11:01 in the article?
0:11:07 Man, you know what’s amazing is those years, I don’t have so many memories of those years
0:11:08 either.
0:11:09 And I don’t understand why.
0:11:15 I’ve just started to excavate that more and more in the last year, just trying to figure
0:11:20 out what was going on, what was the context.
0:11:25 And for all intents and purposes, my life has truly been blessed.
0:11:29 I’ve had such a great upbringing.
0:11:37 But there was something about being born into the world that felt like I needed to observe
0:11:38 before I participated.
0:11:46 It felt like I needed to watch what was happening and synthesize what was happening.
0:11:50 All the different perspectives, all the different personalities growing around a lot of colorful
0:11:57 personalities, a lot of sounds and rhythms, a lot of life, life force energy and a lot
0:11:58 of danger.
0:12:07 So I think the aspect of being in all of that, meeting my natural state, my innate makeup,
0:12:16 it was deep in introspection, something that I still have yet to put words to a fully understand
0:12:24 in my early years, put me in a space where I was observing and gathering, observing and
0:12:32 gathering, observing and gathering, and then eventually it became okay, let me emerge into
0:12:34 a new era.
0:12:38 Let me try to mold some things, and it started with music.
0:12:40 Let me try to mold the world around me.
0:12:45 Let me try to shift things and create things and influence things, dare I say.
0:12:52 Let me try in little ways I would start, and then it extended far beyond music.
0:12:54 What age would you say that was?
0:12:55 Hard to pin down.
0:12:57 Yeah, exactly.
0:12:59 You already peeped it out, Tim.
0:13:04 It’s like it’s around 14 or 15.
0:13:10 It was music that allowed for me to have a opportunity to present myself.
0:13:18 On stage you have to present yourself in a way that is amplifying aspects of what’s inside.
0:13:24 And ultimately, you have a decision to make as a performer to decide how far between who
0:13:32 you actually are and who you’ve created to project on the stage are you.
0:13:35 How big is the jump, the discrepancy between those two?
0:13:37 It’s a choice you make.
0:13:41 How do you think about it, because I remember chatting with Andrew Zimmer and TV host does
0:13:42 a lot of different things.
0:13:46 And he said be very careful about, and I’m paraphrasing, but he’s like be very careful
0:13:49 about who you are in episode one, season one.
0:13:52 Because you could paint yourself into a corner where you have to be that guy now forever
0:13:53 if it’s popular.
0:13:56 How have you thought about that?
0:14:01 I thought about it from first the perspective of how do I get to a point where all that’s
0:14:08 within me, all these things that I feel, these ideas that I have, this vision becomes a reality.
0:14:14 So that took so much stepping outside of my comfort zone, we call it throw yourself in
0:14:15 the water.
0:14:21 We do things like when I was in college, my band and I would go in the subway and we would
0:14:22 play for people.
0:14:23 We wouldn’t ask for money.
0:14:24 We wouldn’t bust.
0:14:30 We would just play concerts for people who weren’t expecting a concert to just get to
0:14:37 the point where we were fearless about presenting art and also wanted to change the atmosphere
0:14:42 in this community of a train station that has all these people from different walks
0:14:45 of life now locked in the train together.
0:14:51 So it’s a certain aspect of winning them over that we worked on.
0:14:54 How do we create harmony in this scenario?
0:14:59 And then that extended, now let’s go and strike up conversation with people that we don’t
0:15:04 know and talk to them about things that they’re going through.
0:15:08 And then let’s share some things that we don’t want to share that we’re going through.
0:15:09 I have a big question for you.
0:15:12 I think it’s really to all of this and I’ve wanted to ask you a lot and Molly’s getting
0:15:14 excited and stretching over here.
0:15:16 So I think it’s a good sign.
0:15:24 So the question is about how to choose where you go on this quest of originality.
0:15:30 It seems like that was part of your life pretty early, maybe 15, 16, 17.
0:15:35 The phrase that keeps coming back is “quests for originality.”
0:15:36 And of course, we’re all original.
0:15:38 We’re all one of a kind.
0:15:39 Yes.
0:15:44 But in a saturated world and a busy world, with so many facets of ourselves, you can
0:15:45 go in a million different directions.
0:15:48 You have a lot of choices.
0:15:54 So how have you chosen which pathways to explore, like interacting with these people on the
0:15:59 subway, playing some of the instruments you’ve played that I know were not assigned to you
0:16:00 at Juilliard?
0:16:01 Yes.
0:16:02 Yes.
0:16:03 Yes.
0:16:08 So how do you pick which aspects of yourself or which scent trails to explore?
0:16:16 You have to understand what is it that’s yearning to be expressed within you.
0:16:26 Even if you’re dreadfully afraid of it, you can have something within that seems so far
0:16:35 away from the reality of your current state that it couldn’t possibly be for you in your
0:16:37 mind.
0:16:42 And every fiber of your being is telling you, “This isn’t what I should be pursuing.
0:16:46 This isn’t who I am.”
0:16:47 That’s the one right there.
0:16:48 That one right there.
0:16:50 The scary one.
0:16:51 This isn’t who I am.
0:16:52 It won’t go away.
0:16:53 Yes.
0:16:57 But it sticks with you and you start to say, “Oh, it’s not going away.”
0:16:58 Could you give an example?
0:17:01 Do any examples come to mind for you personally?
0:17:09 Oh my gosh, well, performing for me, my first experiences with performing were traumatic
0:17:11 at best.
0:17:19 I mean, the level of performance anxiety that I still have is unbelievably paralyzing to
0:17:26 the point that I’ve developed mantras in different ways of reaching for what’s inside
0:17:32 and also just a greater sense of purpose and philosophy that really is a foundation that
0:17:38 lifts me to the point of taking the stage and sharing it because it’s bigger than oneself,
0:17:39 right?
0:17:42 And did you feel that yearning to perform?
0:17:43 Was it an image?
0:17:44 Was it a feeling?
0:17:45 Was that the yearning?
0:17:46 That was part of it.
0:17:51 I remember my first time on the talent show dancing, which is another aspect of it.
0:17:58 Something that I was not naturally accustomed to doing besides just that family functions.
0:18:01 And it wasn’t something that came natural to me.
0:18:10 I was more of someone who was a spiritual mover versus the most precise dancer.
0:18:13 But I went on a talent show with my best friend.
0:18:19 We were in elementary school at the time and he was a very natural dancer and he convinced
0:18:26 me to join him on the talent show stage in front of the entire school from K-8.
0:18:32 The whole school, all the teachers, everybody just gathered in the auditorium.
0:18:33 The music starts playing.
0:18:45 It was like some sort of decrepit Michael Jackson beat, like Fisher Price that you did.
0:18:52 It was going man and I get up there and I’m going and at this time what I knew was the
0:18:54 running man, MC Hammer.
0:18:55 I remember.
0:18:56 You know that?
0:18:57 Oh, of course.
0:18:58 But the pants parachuted.
0:18:59 Gotta be careful.
0:19:00 Can’t ride any horses without that.
0:19:01 Yeah.
0:19:03 You can dance with them on.
0:19:04 Yeah.
0:19:06 They riding the horse with that.
0:19:08 What kind of horse you got?
0:19:11 You got to get away from that.
0:19:14 I said, man, listen, let me try the running man.
0:19:15 That didn’t work.
0:19:16 Everything I turned to didn’t work.
0:19:19 Okay, let me try to do the moonwalk.
0:19:20 Keon just did it too.
0:19:21 That didn’t work.
0:19:29 It was a mix of cheers and laughter, both this sort of excitement by what he was doing from
0:19:34 the audience and also this sort of what is wrong with this child to think that he could
0:19:36 be up there.
0:19:43 I was mortified and I remember leaving that scenario and thinking I would never, I had
0:19:45 so many moments.
0:19:49 That’s the thing that I remember most about performance early on.
0:19:55 Every moment I tried to perform, I faced rejection and left thinking I don’t ever have to do
0:19:56 that again.
0:19:58 There’s nothing in that for me.
0:20:03 Now, fast forward, I’m thinking about that dancing moment because it came back to me
0:20:08 again a couple years ago when we were at the Grammys and we were rehearsal and I’m leading
0:20:19 this performance with 30 dancers and there’s a moment where we all run, the tape is probably
0:20:24 somewhere out there, but there’s a moment where we all run in place.
0:20:30 We break the fold while we jump into the audience and we run from the stage and the vision,
0:20:34 Jamel McWilliams and I, we were coming up with this vision of let’s just break through
0:20:35 the screen.
0:20:38 Let’s break through any pretense.
0:20:46 Let’s build an energy with our collective here, this group of us that just permeates
0:20:48 every soul watching.
0:20:53 I remember even saying at some point on the stage, touch the screen, get a blessing.
0:21:00 It was almost like Tony Robbins motivational speech meets Baptist church.
0:21:05 We got to this point where the energy, it was fierce, just like a shaman, just moving
0:21:06 the energy around.
0:21:09 We got to this running move and that was the launch of it all.
0:21:16 And I remembered thinking back to when I was that kid in second grade and I was almost
0:21:19 booed off the stage if it wasn’t for Keon, right?
0:21:25 And I’m doing this move at the Grammys and it’s happening in real time.
0:21:30 There’s a collective life force energy that’s coming from it and that’s the thing that creating
0:21:37 that moments like that moments long before that, whether it’s in the subway, just creating
0:21:39 that energy was the call.
0:21:45 That was what you were yearning for was creating the energy that type of electricity.
0:21:47 It’s electricity.
0:21:49 It’s community.
0:21:51 It’s what the world could be.
0:21:55 It’s an aspirational vision of, of us.
0:22:02 I thought for a while, like, what is the field that I enter into to create this or to cultivate
0:22:03 this?
0:22:04 What is that space?
0:22:10 And I didn’t have words for it for many years and it evolves over time and it requires performance.
0:22:15 But it’s so much, I’ve never said I shared this, but I didn’t think, I mean, we already
0:22:16 getting deep.
0:22:17 So why not?
0:22:18 So let’s go for it.
0:22:26 My idea has led me to places that in recent times, I don’t know how much longer I will
0:22:30 be performing or be a musician.
0:22:31 Why is that?
0:22:35 I’ve never said that, but it’s been coming up in the last, I mean, Sulayka and I have
0:22:40 talked about it before just because we have that type of relationship of exploring and
0:22:41 challenging each other.
0:22:50 But the form of the vocation is shifting and the gift of music for me and its meaning
0:22:54 in my life and its application within the vocation is also shifting.
0:22:59 Do you know where it’s shifting to or do you just feel the tectonic plates shifting
0:23:02 and you’re like, all right, let’s pause and pay attention.
0:23:05 How are you experiencing that shift, that shifting?
0:23:08 Man, it’s such an intuitive thing.
0:23:12 It’s such a trust-based relationship.
0:23:14 You don’t force it.
0:23:16 You don’t force it.
0:23:18 You can’t force it.
0:23:21 It just tells you when it’s time.
0:23:25 Is that a sensitivity that you think everybody has or do you think you have greater sensitivity
0:23:31 to feel that and to sit with it, even though it might be uncomfortable to not have a compass
0:23:34 pointing you in a certain direction?
0:23:44 I think those early years coupled with now by my own volition, but when I was in college,
0:23:49 there were times when they sent me for psychiatric evaluation.
0:23:56 In those early years, there may be some root to your first question about why I wasn’t
0:23:57 not speaking.
0:24:03 There may be some root within the way that my psyche was formed.
0:24:06 For me, also the superpower within that.
0:24:13 That’s allowed for me to develop a relationship with presence and with being that allows for
0:24:14 me to trust and have faith.
0:24:21 Also, just the natural state of an artist is to have complete faith, unwavering faith
0:24:26 in the ability for you to make this thing real that no one sees or can experience yet,
0:24:28 but you.
0:24:32 You have to do your best with words which fail to describe it.
0:24:35 You have to communicate to collaborators to potentially join the ranks of building this
0:24:36 thing.
0:24:37 Yeah, I do.
0:24:42 I think I want to turn this into a confessional on my part, so maybe for another time.
0:24:44 No, no, go for it.
0:24:46 Well, I do.
0:24:51 There are experiences on the maybe far end of the spectrum, you have mystical experiences
0:24:54 which by definition are ineffable.
0:24:57 They translate very poorly to words.
0:25:03 Then there are these felt senses and these evolved capabilities that also pre-day language,
0:25:11 so it’s very difficult if not impossible to apply clean prose to describing them.
0:25:15 To that extent, I do think I feel what you’re saying.
0:25:20 I’m curious, as these things are taking shape in your body and your mind, these things you
0:25:26 feel that are not yet externalized, how much of it is waiting and how much of it is tickling
0:25:32 the muse for these original concepts or ideas or impulses?
0:25:38 Are there ways that you help yourself to generate or be receptive to new directions and new
0:25:39 ideas?
0:25:46 You know, I was checking out Alfred Hitchcock the other night, Suspense.
0:25:55 If you think about the device of suspense in cinema that he mastered and you experienced
0:26:02 that through the things that he created, at least for me that was something that brought
0:26:11 me back to an understanding of the muse, which is this idea that suspense is created when
0:26:17 there are stakes and when you don’t know what’s going to happen on the other side.
0:26:25 So you then have to put everything on the line that you believe in that motivates you,
0:26:31 that powers you, you have to put it on the line in order to move toward whatever your
0:26:38 desired outcome is in a limited amount of time and sometimes without enough intel or
0:26:44 intellectual processing of the information to even know which direction you want to take
0:26:45 it in.
0:26:47 You just have the moment.
0:26:59 So for me, I love to create these pockets of suspense, these pockets of pressurized creativity
0:27:06 or pressurized experience that leads me to discovery, that it pushes me forward.
0:27:11 And I think about things that are not music like cinema or there’s so many things that
0:27:19 are not connected to the actual craft that I draw from much, much, much more than actually
0:27:25 thinking about the inspiration of music and the fruit of the craft itself.
0:27:32 So if we take a closer look at the stakes and the unknown, I’m wondering if I’m hearing
0:27:34 you correctly because that was just a week ago.
0:27:39 I had a conversation with a number of friends, having dinner, drinks, and I posed a question
0:27:44 which was what do you do when you get stuck or you’re feeling stuck and you want to push
0:27:47 yourself in a new direction?
0:27:51 And there were a lot of different answers, but there was one common thread which was
0:27:55 in effect, I need to book the theater so I write the play, a feeling of getting in over
0:28:01 your head where you commit to something and then you figure out what that thing is going
0:28:02 to be.
0:28:06 But now you have something like on the schedule, people are involved, and then you’re in the
0:28:08 dark, groping around, you kind of figure it out.
0:28:14 I’m wondering if you apply some version of that in your own life, if that’s what, in
0:28:21 a sense you mean by stakes and moving into the unknown or if it takes other forms.
0:28:27 That was the gateway drug, but what happens for me at this point is the zoom out, and
0:28:37 the zoom out is this perspective on all things, time, the perspective of your lineage, the
0:28:44 understanding of your lifespan, all these things that require you to zoom out to really
0:28:48 assess and feel in your marrow to grasp.
0:28:56 And it makes those commitments feel minor to me, even if they’re attached to some monetary
0:29:04 outcome or some consequence that is deemed dangerous by the way that we metrics on these
0:29:12 things almost become so irrelevant to me that it requires me to have another motivation
0:29:17 in order to really reach the thing that is most impactful and most resonant within.
0:29:20 What kind of motivation motivates you these days?
0:29:27 So when you have the zoom out, when I come back to the creative process, it almost has
0:29:33 to be the opposite of what it used to be, which is let me put myself in a position, throw
0:29:37 myself in the water and figure out how I’m going to evolve and do something.
0:29:42 Then it eventually went to how do I bridge this into a whole another craft?
0:29:43 How do I create?
0:29:49 That’s why I love the idea of what we call genres, which are just silos that promote
0:29:50 ignorance.
0:29:52 That’s fun for me.
0:29:53 That’s not based on a truth.
0:29:59 So the zoom out helps you to assess all the truths, the laws.
0:30:00 This is what is, right?
0:30:07 And then the motivation has to come in the opposite way of force.
0:30:11 It has to come almost like a dream comes to you in the night.
0:30:18 You can’t do anything about your dreams per se, but feed the dream machine.
0:30:24 You can’t generate the opportunity for you to have a certain dream.
0:30:32 You can perhaps interact with your dream once it arrives and it’s so ephemeral.
0:30:38 Even remembering your dreams oftentimes can be difficult depending on what space you are
0:30:39 in your life.
0:30:46 It makes everything that happens delicate and it makes everything that I commit to in
0:30:50 some ways very tenuous when it comes to the mammoth mechanics of our industry.
0:30:56 And I’m getting to a point, which is a part of the realization where perhaps there’s not
0:31:02 a context within the industry and the mechanics therein that as they exist today, that I can
0:31:08 find true inspiration from and that I can connect the dots of my, there’s a constellation
0:31:15 of inspiration that crosses so many spectrums of society and I can’t access it if I play
0:31:16 by these rules.
0:31:17 Yeah.
0:31:23 If you’re in the silo playing by the laws and quotation marks, right?
0:31:24 Exactly.
0:31:29 And the zoom out gives you such a perspective on that, that it makes you fiercely prepared
0:31:35 for when the dream comes because then you’ll embrace it because it’s your top priority.
0:31:39 It’s the chief motivation, but you can’t make it come.
0:31:40 Yeah.
0:31:42 But you’re primed to receive it when it shows up.
0:31:43 You’re ready.
0:31:48 So when I don’t have inspiration or I have a block, I do nothing.
0:31:56 I live and it’s absolutely because of the deeper inspiration that I’m blessed to feel.
0:31:58 I feel it’s been cultivated.
0:32:02 I’m connected to it and I know it’s real.
0:32:03 It doesn’t have to greet me every day.
0:32:04 I know it’s there.
0:32:05 Like an old friend.
0:32:07 Not a lot of maintenance required.
0:32:08 Yes.
0:32:15 This requires you to be focused and be ready when it’s there.
0:32:18 So let’s say the muse makes an appearance.
0:32:25 You’re receptive and you’re not grasping, but your hands are ready to catch, right?
0:32:29 And then you go into execution mode on whatever it might be or you start exploring.
0:32:35 I want to come back to something you mentioned, which was the performance anxiety and the
0:32:38 mantras and various things you used to ground you.
0:32:42 What are the mantras that you have landed on?
0:32:43 I haven’t shared all of them.
0:32:49 I share some, two of them we share at the shows when we perform often.
0:32:55 One is one that I thought of for children and I thought of for the child within me.
0:32:57 And it’s I feel good.
0:32:58 I feel free.
0:33:03 I feel fine just being me and you go over and over and over and over.
0:33:04 I feel good.
0:33:05 I feel free.
0:33:07 I feel fine just being me.
0:33:08 Circular melody.
0:33:12 I feel good today, oh so good today.
0:33:13 I feel good.
0:33:14 I feel free.
0:33:16 I feel fine.
0:33:20 One, two, three, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
0:33:22 So everybody sings along automatically.
0:33:23 I’ve seen it.
0:33:29 I’ve seen it because I was in Moody Theater in Austin watching this just extend into the
0:33:30 audience.
0:33:31 Yes.
0:33:32 It’s amazing to watch.
0:33:34 It’s amazing to experience and participate in too.
0:33:40 I was so, man, that was such a great feeling seeing you there.
0:33:43 Just because I understand you get it on so many levels.
0:33:47 You really understand it’s such a spiritual practice.
0:33:54 It’s not so much about me showing up and playing instruments.
0:33:58 Look at how great the band, look at the dance, look at the more and more, more and more.
0:34:04 And it always has been, but more and more, how do we continue to refine this spiritual
0:34:10 practice, this ritual of community, of sharing, of artistry, all of it?
0:34:12 And what do we point it at?
0:34:16 What do we focus this life force energy at next?
0:34:22 So those mantras for me, if you don’t live it and it’s not a part of you, it’s not going
0:34:24 to come out of the instrument.
0:34:26 What we play is life.
0:34:28 What we create is life.
0:34:33 The quality of the human being, the quality of the vessel, even a broken vessel, which
0:34:38 is oftentimes the most effective, the most relatable, the most universal.
0:34:44 But there has to be that space in you that you’ve saved that is the sacred space.
0:34:52 It doesn’t have to be, of course, there are great ways to cultivate physical world, sacred
0:34:54 places and practices.
0:35:00 So for me, those mantras and my prayers, in that sense of understanding how to always
0:35:01 know if that’s there.
0:35:05 And if it’s not there, it might be time to take six months a year, whatever I need to
0:35:09 take off so that then I can know that it’s there.
0:35:14 Right now, I’m in a period where it’s very strong.
0:35:22 So it allows for me to be fearless, which is something that I haven’t felt that this strongly
0:35:23 in a while.
0:35:25 Yeah, gotta ride the wave, then.
0:35:26 You know what I mean?
0:35:30 Yeah, you got a paddle for the wave.
0:35:31 Yeah.
0:35:35 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:36:38 What other mantras can you share?
0:36:40 Oh, man, this is deep.
0:36:41 You going in.
0:36:42 I’m going in.
0:36:43 I’m going in.
0:36:44 Scuba gear intact.
0:36:45 Tim.
0:36:46 Yeah.
0:36:47 Yeah.
0:36:48 You know.
0:36:50 Because I believe in the power of mantras.
0:36:51 Oh, you?
0:36:52 I do.
0:37:01 In meditation, in repetition, the ability to, in a sense, end up with the mind of no mind
0:37:02 to cleanse the palate.
0:37:07 I mean, there’s so many different ways you can use mantras also, which is why this is
0:37:09 as deeply interesting to me.
0:37:10 It can be a concentration practice.
0:37:15 It can be sort of an erasing practice to regain some equilibrium.
0:37:17 There’s so many different ways to use repetition.
0:37:19 It could be drumming too.
0:37:22 It doesn’t have to be, could be instrumental.
0:37:30 There are so many different ways that you can enter unusual, uncommon states using repetition.
0:37:33 So I’m very, very interested in this, which is why I’m asking.
0:37:34 Yes, for sure.
0:37:40 So two of the ones that I, not for stage, but just more for crisis that I go to is be
0:37:43 still and know, which is from the Bible.
0:37:45 Be still and know that I am God.
0:37:54 It is this idea that I’ll give you a practice so be still and know that I am God.
0:37:57 Be still and know that I am.
0:38:05 Be still and know that I, be still and know that, be still and know, be still, be.
0:38:11 Just this idea, I’ve sat with that and each phrase has a different meaning.
0:38:20 Even be still and then breath or room tone, there’s messages in that, that space, there’s
0:38:22 messages in the crevice.
0:38:30 So I’ve done that and sat in that and it’s changed my entire perspective on a crisis
0:38:37 or something that I felt perhaps I was wrong, but perhaps, you know, there’s so many opportunities
0:38:46 for us in this life to transmute darkness into light or even darkness into perspective.
0:38:50 Another one is, “Thy will be done,” which is one of surrender.
0:38:56 Now, we believe there’s a divine power, there’s, however you name it, whatever your relationship
0:39:03 to it is, we’ve, for the most part, had an experience, there’s something beyond explanation.
0:39:09 The universe is carrying us in some way, “Thy will be done,” is trusting that there’s a
0:39:12 divine logic to it all.
0:39:16 When there’s nothing that you can do, “Thy will be done,” “Thy will be done,” “Thy will
0:39:24 be done,” because the belief of this divine logic allows for you to understand that there’s
0:39:29 a path and you are accounted for in that path.
0:39:34 You are accounted for, there’s so much that is allowed for you to be, the culmination
0:39:40 of so many things has led to you and there will never be another you, you the only one.
0:39:46 That specificity alone is something that comes to me when I’m in that “Thy will be done.”
0:39:52 It’s a revelation of so many other things, which is also allowing for the right thing
0:39:58 to occur and for me to be accepting of it, versus for me to control it without knowledge
0:40:01 of what the true right thing is.
0:40:08 There’s so much that you have to cleanse yourself of from believing, from holding on to that’s
0:40:13 not actually connected to the best outcome, but you can’t always know that, especially
0:40:14 in crisis.
0:40:15 It’s very hard to know.
0:40:18 Many parables are always like, “This, this happened.
0:40:19 Such good news.
0:40:20 Maybe.”
0:40:21 Right.
0:40:22 “Such and such happened.
0:40:23 This is terrible.
0:40:24 Maybe.”
0:40:28 It just depends on so many things outside of our sphere of knowledge that on so many levels
0:40:29 can’t be known.
0:40:34 When would you be inclined to say to yourself that last mantra?
0:40:36 When would you apply that in your life?
0:40:41 There’s so many things that happen to us with our health.
0:40:43 I talk about Sulaika a lot.
0:40:45 I love her as you know.
0:40:46 She’s great.
0:40:47 Yeah.
0:40:48 Had her on the show.
0:40:49 Yes.
0:40:54 And I also borrow a lot of phrases from her, in particular, this idea of being between
0:41:00 two kingdoms, this idea of the kingdom of the well, the kingdom of the sick.
0:41:04 And we all exist in this in-between space.
0:41:10 And we have a passport for both, which is something that she created this understanding
0:41:15 of that through the way she lives through it, the way she gracefully moves through this
0:41:22 time with such grace, with such power, with such clarity.
0:41:24 I think about that.
0:41:31 I think about how there’s a certain surrender that’s required of all of us in times when
0:41:34 we deal with health challenges, whether it’s us or a loved one.
0:41:39 And you find yourself in moments where there’s literally nothing that you can do to take
0:41:45 away pain or to take away the unknown and the anxiety of waiting.
0:41:50 So that’s an opportunity for a great amount of growth.
0:41:57 That’s an opportunity for a lesson to be instilled in a way that almost nothing else that I can
0:42:01 think of affords you the chance for.
0:42:02 That will be done.
0:42:03 That will be done.
0:42:04 Yeah.
0:42:06 This is a coach I worked with for a while.
0:42:10 He used to say, “This is your pop quiz from the universe.”
0:42:13 When something unexpected would pop up, he’d be like, “All right, all that meditation you’ve
0:42:14 been doing.”
0:42:15 Let’s see it.
0:42:16 Let’s see it.
0:42:17 Let’s see, bro.
0:42:18 Come on, bro.
0:42:19 You’ve been rehearsing.
0:42:20 This is game time.
0:42:21 Let’s see how it goes.
0:42:22 Yeah.
0:42:23 Yeah.
0:42:27 Oh, Tim, you know what I’m saying when you’re in that moment.
0:42:28 Yeah.
0:42:32 I’ve had a lot of sympathy for watching you both go through that journey, and I can only
0:42:33 imagine what it’s like.
0:42:38 I have been, of course, and most people listening have been in a position where they feel powerless
0:42:42 to help or they don’t know how to help a loved one.
0:42:51 But I’ve had a lot of sympathy for a challenging road and also really been in awe of how much
0:42:58 growth both of you have exhibited through the challenges and pain and so on.
0:42:59 In any case, I just wanted to say that.
0:43:00 Oh, man.
0:43:09 It means a lot to hear that, and it feels so much of the time as odd as it may sound.
0:43:16 It feels like a privilege to go through it together in the way that we have seen it.
0:43:24 It’s shifted into almost the orientation of blessing, and that’s not to say that the
0:43:28 difficulties are any easier, right?
0:43:30 It doesn’t change the nature of hard things.
0:43:32 They’re hard.
0:43:36 But there’s something about life.
0:43:37 There’s a truth.
0:43:46 There’s something about going through the fire that is so required and something about suffering
0:43:48 that is so essential.
0:43:57 This idea that we’re meant to run from pain or run from difficult things and find the
0:44:05 most leisurely and completely frictionless existence possible.
0:44:06 It’s such a lie.
0:44:13 It’s not just a lie because it’s not possible, but if it were possible, that would kill you
0:44:14 the most.
0:44:18 It would rob you in so many ways, which is, of course, easy for me to say, sitting in
0:44:22 this comfortable chair right now, but in the midst of it, it’s sometimes hard to see it.
0:44:28 At the same time, there was an astrophysicist, Jan 11, who was on the podcast some time ago,
0:44:32 and I’m going to butcher this quote, but it’s more the concept for me that has really
0:44:33 stuck.
0:44:37 She said, “Something along the lines of, I used to look for the underlying path that
0:44:40 would help me navigate around obstacles, and then I realized there is no underlying
0:44:41 path.
0:44:49 The obstacles are the path through which you discover yourself, through which you learn,
0:44:50 through which you grow.”
0:44:51 That is the path.
0:44:52 That’s the path.
0:44:53 Take those away.
0:44:54 That’s it.
0:44:59 Then you’re just a free-floating essence of comfort.
0:45:01 That’s just not the human experience.
0:45:02 Yay.
0:45:04 Also, you’re talking about blessings.
0:45:09 I could imagine, even an earlier version of me would say, “Oh, come on now.”
0:45:13 I suppose it’s helpful, but maybe it’s delusional and it’s overly optimistic, but it’s deeper
0:45:14 than that.
0:45:22 I think that misses the mark because given a longer timeframe, given all the unknowns,
0:45:23 it could be a blessing.
0:45:27 It could be a curse, but you can’t know which it is over time, and it depends a lot on your
0:45:30 perspective, so you might as well choose a blessing.
0:45:36 That is the more enabling perspective, and since you can’t know, it’s a coin flip.
0:45:41 Choose the side of the coin that is most enabling, it seems to me at least, in the abstract.
0:45:43 It’s easy to say.
0:45:44 Taxi runs over my foot.
0:45:47 We’ll see how I do later today.
0:45:52 It’s that, and it’s also, you only will know when you are there.
0:45:54 You have to go there to know there.
0:46:00 You will only know what it can be for you when you’re in the fire.
0:46:05 Everybody can talk about what they would do when they are there.
0:46:13 We can all say, “Man, if that would have happened to me, I would slay the dragon.”
0:46:20 Whatever you think you would do, most often is not what you would do, and that’s not
0:46:23 because you’re not who you think you are.
0:46:27 It’s because there’s so many other factors you can’t know.
0:46:32 For many things in my life that I think about, the things I’ve learned the most from are
0:46:37 when I’ve embraced the discomfort and realized what I was made of through it.
0:46:40 Let me just sit with that for a second.
0:46:45 Do you have, and then we’re going to rewind the clock, and I want to go back to very young
0:46:49 John with a question or two, but do you have any favorite failures?
0:46:54 Now, I put failures in quotation marks because this is something that at the time seemed
0:47:03 crushing or seemed awful that actually in some way set the stage for much bigger or better
0:47:04 things later.
0:47:11 Do you have any of those types of slips or rejections or failures that come to mind?
0:47:12 Wow.
0:47:15 I feel like my life is riddled with them.
0:47:23 And I also feel like I move through them fairly quickly, not cavalier, but there’s a sense
0:47:27 of understanding it now that I didn’t have then.
0:47:28 Yeah.
0:47:29 How do you move through them quickly?
0:47:31 Why do you think that is?
0:47:36 It’s because I know they’re for my own good, not that they’re all for my own good.
0:47:41 I guess the reason is because I don’t actually believe that failure exists.
0:47:45 It’s not that it’s necessarily for your own good, but failure doesn’t exist.
0:47:49 It’s opportunity for you to take something from the experience.
0:47:55 And even if the experience is reinforcing something that you already know, it’s reinforcing
0:47:57 something that you already know.
0:48:02 It’s an opportunity for you to see this experience, this thing that you wanted, this thing that
0:48:06 maybe you hoped would work out, but didn’t work out.
0:48:11 All of that adds to the fabric and the richness of your character and your experience and
0:48:16 your knowledge base so that you, as I said, you go there to know that you’ve been there.
0:48:18 I’ve traveled that road.
0:48:19 I’ve played those notes.
0:48:21 I know that piece.
0:48:22 I sung that song.
0:48:23 I own that.
0:48:29 And there’s always on the other side of everything, the opportunity for transformation.
0:48:36 Can you tell a story of any, I’m not going to use the word failure, growth opportunities
0:48:42 that you encountered before you turned into John Batiste and kind of marquee lights, right?
0:48:46 Because you’ve really popped in a huge way since I first met you ages ago in probably
0:48:48 Utah or wherever we happened to be.
0:48:55 I can’t remember initially where it was, but before that, can you tell the story of any
0:49:01 incidents where things didn’t go your way and how you metabolized it?
0:49:09 I grew up in between Canada, Louisiana, which is a very old school, Southern town, old country,
0:49:15 railroad tracks running through the middle of it with canals, provincial, Southern town,
0:49:16 just outside of New Orleans.
0:49:20 New Orleans is another planet.
0:49:25 And I grew up as a kid getting bullied for all types of things, man.
0:49:29 When I was in school, I’d get bullied whether it was, “Are you okay?
0:49:30 Are you with us?”
0:49:33 Or, “Are you slow?”
0:49:41 Your feet, your nose, your hair, all these aspects of self-esteem that were attacked.
0:49:48 So then you go through life in the early years with no real understanding of what you have
0:49:51 of value to offer the world, what you have to connect.
0:49:57 So fast forward, you get to a point where you discover music, but it’s still something
0:50:01 that amongst my family, I was the youngest and least talented.
0:50:04 When I was growing up, I didn’t think that I would ever be a performer because there
0:50:07 were 30 other people who had that covered.
0:50:08 It wasn’t like–
0:50:12 That’s just wild to try to paint a picture of that in my mind.
0:50:14 That’s a lot of performers, yeah.
0:50:15 People don’t get that.
0:50:22 They think, “Oh, you were born with a tambourine in your hand and you came out singing.”
0:50:23 This is not the case.
0:50:25 There was a glorious awkwardness.
0:50:29 That was a decade or more before I touched the instrument.
0:50:34 I started at 11 years old, late bloomer, in the context of everybody around me.
0:50:38 Now, there was so many bad gigs, bad performances.
0:50:41 And I was known as the kid who would play expressionless.
0:50:47 I would be playing and it would be all well and good, but my face would have no expression,
0:50:48 none.
0:50:50 It would be like I was shut off.
0:50:55 So I get to the point where there’s a long period of hours and hours in the practice
0:50:59 room and performances between 14 and 17.
0:51:00 Where were you at the time still?
0:51:01 In New Orleans.
0:51:02 In New Orleans.
0:51:06 Living in Kennet, going back and forth in New Orleans, performing at night, going to
0:51:07 two schools at once.
0:51:11 Just this idea that you had the art school in that evening, then in the morning you had
0:51:13 an academic school.
0:51:22 Still getting bullied, still also becoming somewhat of a young musical phenom, but not
0:51:23 the best one.
0:51:29 So there’s still not really like … You don’t really know where you fit or where it’s all
0:51:30 gone.
0:51:37 And was at that point, was piano the key to that phenom perception?
0:51:38 It was the piano.
0:51:40 That was the thing.
0:51:47 That was something that I’d alternate between playing in clubs at 14, 15 years old that
0:51:52 I wasn’t supposed to be in at night after going to school.
0:51:58 And then I would also on the weekends be doing classical piano lessons and piano competitions.
0:52:04 So alternate between those two realities and also going and really finding this sort of
0:52:11 tribe, my peers, starting bands with first my cousins, Travis and Jamal, who are older
0:52:13 and multi-instrumental and inspired me.
0:52:20 Then Troy, Trombone Shorty, Andrews, who’s maybe at the time we met 11 or 12, he’d been
0:52:23 playing for a decade and touring the world.
0:52:27 So we start bands, we’re doing club shows, we’re doing all these things and constantly
0:52:32 just presenting things that are experimental and pushing ourselves to do things that we’ve
0:52:33 never done.
0:52:42 I didn’t have a desire or a real push to go into music until I was maybe 17.
0:52:45 And I moved to New York on my own in the first story of failure.
0:52:46 Yeah.
0:52:47 Pleasure for one sec.
0:52:48 So okay.
0:52:49 That’s a cliffhanger.
0:52:50 So first story of failure.
0:52:51 Yes.
0:52:57 What did the conversation look like when you’re informing friends and family that you’re gonna
0:52:58 move to New York?
0:52:59 All right.
0:53:00 What was the drive behind this?
0:53:02 How did that go?
0:53:04 And then we’re gonna get back to the cliffhanger.
0:53:08 I felt like there was a great deal of support.
0:53:15 My mother is a visionary when it comes to understanding what someone could be.
0:53:22 She was the driving force of the piano being the instrument that I focused on at 11 versus
0:53:24 several other things that were in the periphery.
0:53:26 I could have chosen the drums.
0:53:31 Just in brief, why did she think that was a clutch move?
0:53:33 I don’t understand how she does it, but she does it.
0:53:35 Or she just saw.
0:53:36 That’s the thing.
0:53:37 That’s a thing.
0:53:38 You have a piano player inside of you.
0:53:39 Yes.
0:53:40 Yes.
0:53:48 Even if she didn’t see that fully, she saw that the piano is the right direction for
0:53:50 you to take in music.
0:53:54 Because it’s the option that opens up the most options or is there more to it?
0:53:56 I don’t know if she had a vision.
0:54:03 She mentioned sometimes that there’s a sophistication to the piano that she was attracted to that
0:54:10 felt like it was the instrument for someone who is going to apply all of their forces
0:54:13 and all of their abilities.
0:54:14 It’s the conductor’s instrument.
0:54:16 It’s the maestro’s instrument.
0:54:18 So I know that that was a part of her thinking.
0:54:26 It’s the thing that’s going to allow for you to be as high-brow or as low-brow as you want.
0:54:27 I think it was a smirk.
0:54:36 It seems maybe self-evident to say, but very prescient, incredibly powerful, deeply directing.
0:54:40 Because when I look at what you’re capable of doing, part of the reason it seems to me
0:54:46 that you’re able to harness this broad spectrum of options is because you have that high-brow
0:54:48 card to pull out.
0:54:52 If people want to nitpick or they want to do this and this, you’re like, “All right.
0:54:53 Let me just sit down for a second.”
0:54:59 Then they’re like, “Okay, I take it back,” which buys you permission to do a really
0:55:01 wide range of things.
0:55:02 Yes.
0:55:03 Yes.
0:55:04 That is her thing.
0:55:07 She’s very clairvoyant.
0:55:09 It’s also a leadership quality she has.
0:55:15 She was environmentalist before it was the in vogue thing to do for many years.
0:55:20 She would, at a different time, not having been born in the South, a black woman like
0:55:22 her would be a CEO of a company.
0:55:25 It’s a different thing that she has.
0:55:31 It’s significant to think about now in retrospect all the decisions that she made, which eventually
0:55:38 led to me graduating high school a year early, moving to New York as a minor at 17.
0:55:40 Her supporting that.
0:55:45 My dad also supporting that as a musical mentor, my first musical mentor.
0:55:49 He was the one who was like, “Okay, New York is what cats really play, bro.”
0:55:56 In New Orleans, we play, and then there’s a legit thing with the cats in New York.
0:56:00 They’re a little stiff, but you’ll learn a lot.
0:56:03 He supported that too from a different angle, right?
0:56:08 I went up there and he’s like, “If you can make it in there, you have a lot to come back
0:56:09 with.
0:56:12 The vision was never, ‘Oh, you’ll go there and stay.”
0:56:13 Stay there.
0:56:14 You did.
0:56:15 I do, too.
0:56:19 So, you were saying your first failure, so you get to New York.
0:56:20 What happens?
0:56:22 It’s a disaster.
0:56:24 Man, listen.
0:56:27 Molly’s like, “I’m listening.”
0:56:28 You dig?
0:56:36 I went to New York and within the first week, I’m in the subway traveling around and I
0:56:38 pass out on the platform.
0:56:39 Pass out on the platform?
0:56:41 Yeah, as I’m out.
0:56:43 I’m like, “What’s going on?
0:56:44 What’s happening here?”
0:56:45 This doesn’t happen a lot.
0:56:46 You pay attention to this.
0:56:48 Molly’s sitting right next to you.
0:56:49 “Hello, Molly.”
0:56:50 Hey.
0:56:51 My external nervous system.
0:56:52 Hey.
0:56:53 So, you pass out on the platform?
0:56:54 Yes.
0:56:55 Yes.
0:56:56 That sounds dangerous.
0:56:57 Yeah, very dangerous.
0:57:02 Luckily, there were some friends there who could catch me and take me to, which at this
0:57:04 time, it was things Roosevelt, the ER.
0:57:08 The one that’s right next to Lincoln Center, maybe near Fordham.
0:57:09 We went there.
0:57:10 I’m there.
0:57:15 Oh, you’re exhausted and maybe you’re having some migraines or something.
0:57:18 They give me Tylenol, tell me to go away.
0:57:19 I’m having night sweats.
0:57:25 I’m basically feeling this sharp pain in my lung and then I start to pass out again.
0:57:27 I feel this intensity.
0:57:32 Meanwhile, the second day that I was there, before all this happened, I’m in the dorms
0:57:33 at Juilliard.
0:57:34 I’m unpacking.
0:57:35 I’m doing all the things.
0:57:36 The bunk is up.
0:57:43 I fall off the bunk and basically fracture rib, if not close to it, they do the x-ray.
0:57:48 They’re like, “You got a lot happening, but now this is the wildest part.”
0:57:50 I go back to the ER.
0:57:56 They say you have walking pneumonia that you’ve had for two weeks.
0:58:01 You have to stay here overnight over a few days while we give you the IV fluids and the
0:58:03 antibiotics and all the things.
0:58:07 I missed the orientation of the school year.
0:58:10 I missed all the things that you get acclimated to.
0:58:12 There’s nobody in New York.
0:58:17 I have a second cousin who lives in Harlem who I get acquainted with and we become closer
0:58:18 during this time.
0:58:22 I remember thinking, “Am I supposed to be here from falling off the bunk?”
0:58:24 I’m like, “No, I can’t miss this.”
0:58:25 I go back.
0:58:26 I’m just in there.
0:58:27 Next thing, I’m fainting in the subway.
0:58:28 “Oh, man.
0:58:29 I’m just exhausted.
0:58:30 I got to cool out.”
0:58:34 I’m in the nights of sweat and something’s happening.
0:58:36 That’s my lungs crying out.
0:58:37 You’ve had pneumonia.
0:58:40 You’ve been walking around with this.
0:58:47 Between that being the first year of me being in New York, first time at Juilliard, first
0:58:53 time being away from home, it completely felt like a crash and burn scenario.
0:58:56 It’s time for you to get out of here.
0:58:58 All the signs point to the exit.
0:59:02 Things telling me at this time internally, as I’m sitting in the hospital, I remember
0:59:03 those days.
0:59:05 It was like three or four days I was there.
0:59:12 I felt this sort of … As a kid, you’re like, “I don’t want to tell my parents, but
0:59:15 I also don’t feel like I belong here.
0:59:17 I need to get out of here.”
0:59:25 It’s also this kind of … There was a dichotomy of coming from this very rich cultural heritage
0:59:32 and this beautiful expression of excellence and pedagogy, but Juilliard being this European
0:59:40 classical legitimizing entity that especially as a young black kid pushing the boundaries
0:59:47 of what, generationally, my family has achieved and also musically eventually wanting to become
0:59:53 a disruptor from inside of all of it and just in the most benevolent way, rip it all down
0:59:56 and build it again in a different way.
1:00:01 Knowing that that was somewhat of a motivation and then landing and sort of dead on arrival
1:00:08 felt like it was ultimately the type of failure that it almost not only made me go home, but
1:00:09 quit music.
1:00:11 Just kind of just like, “This isn’t my profession.
1:00:13 I can just go home.”
1:00:17 I had a whole bunch of things I could have done other than this.
1:00:21 You know, the sitting there by yourself thinking about, “Is this a message?”
1:00:23 So what happened?
1:00:24 You’re here?
1:00:28 What resurrected the confidence or the direction?
1:00:30 Just the inner knowing, man.
1:00:31 You got to just know.
1:00:32 All right.
1:00:33 Hold on.
1:00:34 Hold on.
1:00:35 I don’t have a … I believe you.
1:00:38 I believe you and I underscore it and you’re a sensitive guy.
1:00:41 When I say sensitive, I mean your instrumentation is sensitive.
1:00:46 You’re like a jewelry scale, not some scale at the sports club in New York that’s five
1:00:47 pounds off.
1:00:48 You’re down to the nanogram.
1:00:50 So you have sensitive instrumentation.
1:00:56 If you’re thinking to yourself, “Man, I really thought A, B, and C, here I am.
1:01:01 I’ve had this 12 car pileup of disasters.
1:01:02 Maybe I should just go home.”
1:01:08 What did the little whisper say that started to tilt it back in the other direction towards
1:01:09 that inner knowing?
1:01:11 What was the feeling?
1:01:12 That’s one question.
1:01:15 If you want to take it a different angle, I would say, “Let’s say there’s a kid 10
1:01:17 years from now.”
1:01:19 I believe you.
1:01:20 Very similar.
1:01:21 Kenner, Louisiana.
1:01:24 It’s at your yard and sends you a letter.
1:01:26 All these things have happened.
1:01:30 Different set of disasters because I really don’t know if this is for me.
1:01:32 I could go back and do A, B, and C.
1:01:37 So very similar situation and he’s like, “Maybe he has an inner knowing, but you don’t know.”
1:01:38 What do you say to that kid?
1:01:39 Would be another way.
1:01:42 You can take it whichever direction makes sense.
1:01:47 So youngster, take your time to find the prize.
1:01:49 There’s no rush.
1:01:50 Pace yourself.
1:01:53 What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is what they say.
1:01:56 But until you experience it, that’s the only way.
1:02:04 The texture that added to me immediately in retrospect is why I continue.
1:02:14 The inner knowing that these experiences which are just a series of unfortunate things at
1:02:22 an unfortunate time can be exacerbated in your mind and in your psyche, especially if
1:02:23 you stew in it.
1:02:31 So I think, and I will tell this to the youngster, that happening to you is the gift of your
1:02:38 arrival because it allows for you to figure out upon entry how to process all of the
1:02:43 discomfort that’s to come in different forms, in different ways.
1:02:45 So pace yourself.
1:02:47 Take your time.
1:02:48 It’s your time.
1:02:51 It doesn’t all have to happen right now.
1:02:56 As I’m listening, you describe the gift of these unfortunate events because it’s preparing
1:02:57 you for the discomfort to come.
1:03:03 It makes me think of psychological and spiritual calluses to, “Oh, now you can do some real
1:03:04 heavy lifting.”
1:03:05 Yeah, yeah.
1:03:06 Not you.
1:03:07 Yeah.
1:03:08 Yeah.
1:03:09 Yeah.
1:03:10 Yeah.
1:03:11 That’s right.
1:03:16 So the sensitivities I want to double click on again just for a second because personally,
1:03:20 and I’ve seen this in friends, busy, busy, busy, go, go, go, 100 miles an hour, trying
1:03:22 to do everything all at once.
1:03:27 And that hasn’t been me forever, but there have been periods of time when I’m like that.
1:03:36 And when I’m in that gear, I wouldn’t say that if someone were to ask me, “Do you feel
1:03:40 a deep sense of inner knowing about where you’re going to be a year or two from now where
1:03:41 you want to be?”
1:03:42 I’d say, “No.”
1:03:48 However, if I slowed down a bit, if I decluttered my mind a bit, not necessarily watching paint
1:03:53 dry, but I create the space, whether it’s through meditating, whether it’s through exercise
1:03:57 of a certain type, like I just did archery before I came here, which clears my mind really
1:04:06 well, then the volume of the competing voices in my head has been lowered enough that I can
1:04:07 hear things, right?
1:04:12 And I’m wondering if you have ways to do that for yourself, or if the signal is just
1:04:14 so strong, you don’t need to do that.
1:04:18 But I mean, you have a lot of projects and commitments, and I’m sure you have a million
1:04:20 opportunities presented to you.
1:04:27 When things get noisy, how do you help yourself to hear the inner feelings and voice and so
1:04:31 on so that it doesn’t get drowned out?
1:04:39 Man, Tim, we have to own what’s been entrusted to us to own.
1:04:50 We really have so much that is divinely bestowed upon us, and you wake up every day as a steward
1:04:56 of it all, and then you get up and you have a choice, “Do I pick up my phone?
1:05:02 Do I give my mainframe away to some other thoughts or ideas or visions or distraction
1:05:04 if you want to even call it that?”
1:05:07 It’s a choice, whatever.
1:05:13 How did I set that intention prior to laying down the rest?
1:05:16 What am I feeding into my psyche?
1:05:18 What am I watching, the eye gate?
1:05:20 What am I listening to?
1:05:25 That’s why I make music a certain way, because I know that for some, that’s going to be a
1:05:28 fueling prerequisite for them.
1:05:31 It’s going to be there, fertile ground.
1:05:34 Yeah, something powerful is going to emerge from that.
1:05:41 For me, it’s like owning a car or you have this.
1:05:45 You have this thing, it’s on lease, and to me, that’s it.
1:05:51 I don’t try to hear, as I was saying before, it’s like a dream if it comes.
1:05:59 I don’t rely on that to be the thing, and I have ways like for you, archery connects
1:06:02 you or primes you to be connected.
1:06:09 I’ve strayed away from the desire to have this mystical encounter at every turn in
1:06:13 order to prove the existence of, be still and know.
1:06:15 This is for funny how that’s come.
1:06:23 When you evoke these mantras, I’m telling you, man, but that’s not a real thing.
1:06:28 That’s not a real need for me to own what I’ve been given.
1:06:34 To own what I’ve been given also, when it comes to how to be primed to hear and to
1:06:42 receive the download, it’s found in the mundane things and also the basic things.
1:06:43 Do you drink enough water?
1:06:45 Do you get enough sleep?
1:06:48 Do you feel your heart would love when you can?
1:06:51 Do you feel your mind with good things?
1:06:58 Not even just things that are of good report, of course, it’s great, but also information
1:07:01 that will empower you with what you have.
1:07:05 For me, I’ve studied music as an empowering force for what I have.
1:07:09 I’ve studied many things, music being chief among them.
1:07:12 That’s going to ignite me based on what I’ve been given.
1:07:14 What ignites you?
1:07:19 How do you surround yourself with all of that, and then, okay, we have a sense of that to
1:07:21 some degree.
1:07:23 We have a lot of experts in that to some level.
1:07:29 The flip is, how do you cultivate giving it all the way, all the time?
1:07:30 How do you give it?
1:07:33 The measure of your greatness is the measure of your generosity.
1:07:34 How do you give it?
1:07:40 Now, this is sharing the thing that you have on lease, this thing you’ve been endowed with.
1:07:44 It’s hard because you can cultivate portals of giving.
1:07:46 You can donate.
1:07:52 You can give your time, which is the highest level of giving in terms of intentionally
1:07:56 giving of your time is the highest level that you can go.
1:08:02 But can you give of your time and your resources and your energy in a way that’s not regulated
1:08:06 by a portal or something that you set up in advance?
1:08:09 Can you live in a posture of giving?
1:08:13 Can you create a generous temple within?
1:08:21 And can you walk through the world and live in a space where you’re unfettered and unbothered
1:08:28 by the need, but also you’ve preserved, you’ve maintained the vessel so that you don’t completely
1:08:31 rid yourself of your life force energy.
1:08:34 You don’t want to be drained.
1:08:38 There’s many things that can drain you and pull from you, and there’s darkness in the
1:08:39 world.
1:08:43 And then the discernment comes with this sort of awareness.
1:08:48 And there’s spaces in time when I’m much, much more aligned with that.
1:08:56 And it’s so clear in so many moments of the deepest, most lasting impact and inspiration
1:09:00 have happened when I’m in that space, but it’s maintenance.
1:09:04 It comes back to like, it’s so simple.
1:09:06 It’s so simple.
1:09:10 And we feel good when we do that because that’s how the machine was made.
1:09:11 We have joy when we do that.
1:09:13 We feel purpose when we do that.
1:09:16 It’s like the machine was made a certain way.
1:09:20 You take care of the machine that you have is going to function a certain way.
1:09:23 Yeah, you got to do the maintenance.
1:09:26 May not be sexy, but the machine needs maintenance.
1:09:29 That thing needs, come on.
1:09:31 Get it together.
1:09:33 Come on, doctor.
1:09:34 Just a few more questions.
1:09:35 I’m having too much fun.
1:09:40 I can go for six or four hours, but if you could put something metaphorically speaking
1:09:46 on a billboard, right, so this isn’t an advertisement, it’s to get a message, feeling a quote, anything
1:09:48 out to the world.
1:09:52 Just pretend that hundreds of millions of people would see it, billions who knows.
1:09:53 Could be anything.
1:09:55 What might you put on that billboard?
1:09:58 I don’t know if I would take that opportunity.
1:09:59 Tell me why.
1:10:01 I don’t feel called to do that.
1:10:10 And I also don’t feel like we’re in a time where anything without context can be received
1:10:11 purely.
1:10:12 Tell me more about that.
1:10:15 This is a thread that I think I’m also pulling onto my own way.
1:10:19 So I want to hear more about what you mean by that.
1:10:26 Everything is received now based upon the context that we have defined within different
1:10:35 cultures and all of our culture of humanity and the stereotypes and the social cultural
1:10:41 practices and all of the ways we relate to each other and exist.
1:10:49 We have decided to go in the direction of believing that I can look at you or I can
1:10:54 hear something, a snippet of you fragment.
1:11:00 A fragment of Tim is all I need to understand.
1:11:06 And whereas there’s a proliferation of data and we’re more connected now than we’ve ever
1:11:12 been, but we’re more susceptible to deception as well.
1:11:18 And we would rather express and connect in those ways in lieu of going deeper.
1:11:26 And a billboard and media and all these expressions, which is why I love this because it allows
1:11:27 for that.
1:11:33 But all these other forms that we have propped up as primary separate us from depth.
1:11:34 Yeah.
1:11:38 It’s the surface level that doesn’t lead to the deeper levels.
1:11:43 It prevents us from getting to the deeper levels in a sense.
1:11:47 So you don’t want to traffic in that anymore in any way.
1:11:53 The reason I started this podcast 10 plus years ago now was to be able to get into the
1:11:59 deep water to have the space for that and to hopefully at the time I didn’t know, but
1:12:06 attract a listenership who also felt a thirst for the subtleties that you can only touch
1:12:12 upon and the holistic edges of a person or a topic that you can only get access to when
1:12:16 you have the space, when you have time.
1:12:20 So I resonate a lot with that.
1:12:24 Sometimes things take multiple listens, multiple exposure.
1:12:31 If you feel something from something, that’s your first signal, the emotional connection.
1:12:35 Something even if you don’t understand why, something relates to something you experienced
1:12:41 or something that you heard, you want your aspire to has been revealed as clues or tips
1:12:43 or some vision, right?
1:12:49 That’s how you know that there’s many, many, many more layers there for you.
1:12:50 Yeah, totally.
1:12:55 I was just thinking as you were saying that of this book that I’ve read so many times
1:12:57 called Awareness by Anthony D’Amelo.
1:13:01 I think the subtitle is the promises and perils of reality.
1:13:04 In any case, really fun book, very short.
1:13:11 And I’ve read it on Kindle, but I’ve also read it in paperback over and over again.
1:13:16 And what strikes is each time I read it because I have one copy with highlights over time,
1:13:21 I highlight different things whenever I go back because I am a different person in a
1:13:27 different situation or a developing person in different circumstances with different
1:13:30 feelings about things.
1:13:36 And it’s just remarkable how each pass reads like a new book almost.
1:13:42 This is the thing that I’ve been thinking about for years, this idea that as people,
1:13:47 whether creative or not, but it applies to the creative, obviously.
1:13:55 We only have two, maybe three ideas in life.
1:14:07 We have two ideas that we are constantly refining, recreating, presenting, refining, recreating,
1:14:13 presenting, and it’s your life’s idea set.
1:14:20 Then, if that’s the case, how much, and I ask you this because I want to know if you
1:14:25 made a list of the five books or the five things or five places, because I love your
1:14:26 list.
1:14:28 This inspired me.
1:14:34 What are the five things that you know you could possess in this lifetime if you had to
1:14:41 wipe everything else away and the only knowledge and the only inspiration, only experience,
1:14:47 the only everything that you could draw from were of this five?
1:14:53 Because I’m reaching a point where that’s almost something that I’m willing to live
1:14:54 by.
1:15:04 Instead of the pursuit of more knowledge, more understanding, more broad vision and connectivity,
1:15:12 how do I go as deep as I can within a handful of things that are for me and leave the rest?
1:15:13 Yeah.
1:15:14 Which is a radical …
1:15:15 Yeah.
1:15:16 Yeah.
1:15:21 So, for you, if you were to play that game, what are the five things?
1:15:25 Maybe you should have a podcast, maybe that’s your next thing.
1:15:26 Man.
1:15:29 I will give it a shot and then I want to ask you the same thing because what’s a cool
1:15:37 twist on the question is it’s not just books, documentaries, people, but experiences or
1:15:42 beliefs that could be in the list, then it gets really interesting.
1:15:43 It’s …
1:15:44 Right?
1:15:45 Yes.
1:15:47 It gets interesting because you can’t outsource it.
1:15:48 No.
1:15:49 Now you have to own it.
1:15:53 So, for me, I was thinking as you were talking, this is rough draft, right?
1:15:54 Yeah.
1:15:55 Of course.
1:15:56 I totally get it.
1:15:57 This is rough draft.
1:15:58 It’s changing every other day.
1:16:03 It might be a lot of red ink at some point, but what comes to mind for me was, number one,
1:16:04 everything’s going to be okay.
1:16:08 I think from a very young age, I’ve just been hyper-vigilant, had a lot of bad things happen
1:16:09 to me as a kid.
1:16:13 So, my system has always been oriented towards things are not okay and they’re not going
1:16:14 to be okay.
1:16:19 You have to be constantly scanning your environment, scanning people for threats, et cetera.
1:16:22 So, number one would just be everything’s going to be okay.
1:16:26 Number two would be, it’s all about relationships.
1:16:28 The relationships are what matter, friends, family.
1:16:29 That’s it.
1:16:30 That’s it.
1:16:34 And also your relationship with yourself, but honestly, I feel like I best develop myself
1:16:35 in relationship.
1:16:42 So, I pay attention to the question of, do I like the version of myself that I am when
1:16:43 I’m with this person?
1:16:46 So, the relationships being everything.
1:16:50 Number three, this one, we could dig into it if we want, but I would say death isn’t
1:16:52 the end, so don’t be afraid of it.
1:16:57 That might require some explanation, but I would say, don’t spend your whole life afraid
1:16:58 of death.
1:17:01 That would be number three.
1:17:03 That one, it got a lot of meat on the bone.
1:17:06 Yeah, there’s a lot of meat on the bone there.
1:17:13 And I would say, honestly, those are the top three that immediately come to mind.
1:17:19 What I might say is for me personally, don’t be afraid of your sensitivity.
1:17:20 It can be hard, but it’s a gift.
1:17:24 The instrumentation, like my sight, my hearing, it’s all very, very, very sensitive.
1:17:27 So being in a place like New York City can be completely overwhelming.
1:17:30 Being at a dinner party with eight people can be really overwhelming.
1:17:36 So interestingly, so I very rarely go to concerts, but when I attended your event, it resonated
1:17:42 differently because it wasn’t unidirectional.
1:17:48 It was not the stage on the stage or the performer on the stage inflicting sound on the audience.
1:17:55 It was a collective experiment, and there was a lot of emergent participation and interaction
1:17:59 which changed how my senses metabolized the whole thing, which is very interesting.
1:18:00 Wow.
1:18:06 So I didn’t feel any overwhelm at all at that event, but on a pure decibel level, it wasn’t
1:18:07 overwhelming.
1:18:08 But you’re in a concert, right?
1:18:10 And it’s a cozy venue.
1:18:12 You feel it.
1:18:16 So I would probably talk to myself about the sensitivity because I’ve viewed it as a liability
1:18:19 for a long time, but I think there are different ways to frame it.
1:18:21 That’s what comes to mind for me.
1:18:23 What about for you?
1:18:24 Man.
1:18:25 Wow.
1:18:26 You mind?
1:18:28 I could play my answer.
1:18:29 Yeah.
1:18:30 Let’s do that.
1:18:36 Because it’s in abstract form, but rapidly approaching clarity.
1:18:37 Let’s do it.
1:18:38 Yeah.
1:18:39 Absolutely.
1:18:40 100%.
1:18:41 Where are we going to do that?
1:18:42 Over here?
1:18:43 I mean, is that okay if we go?
1:18:44 Yeah.
1:18:45 We got the lav mics on.
1:18:46 We can just wander over.
1:18:47 Oh, we don’t need.
1:18:48 Okay.
1:18:49 Yeah.
1:18:50 Yeah.
1:18:51 Let’s give it a shot.
1:18:52 I’m excited about this.
1:19:09 Let’s see.
1:19:10 So see.
1:19:11 Oh.
1:19:29 I do these concerts without, I call them streams.
1:19:37 It’s like stream of consciousness, completely improvised, spontaneous composition.
1:19:38 Right?
1:19:40 Right at the piano.
1:19:48 And without any sheet music or any preparation, I will play 90 minutes, two hours.
1:19:58 And it really invites the audience to feel this wave, it’s akin to a collective chant.
1:20:05 And we’re, we’re in spaces that we’re discovering together.
1:20:11 So when I was saying, I wanted to answer at the piano, I was just going to stream for
1:20:24 a minute.
1:20:42 Okay., so we’re going to play 90 minutes.
1:21:08 Okay., so we’re going to play 90 minutes.
1:21:35 Okay., so we’re going to play 90 minutes.
1:21:57 Okay, so we’re going to play 90 minutes.
1:22:24 Thank you for that.
1:22:25 Thank you.
1:22:27 That’s beautiful, man.
1:22:28 Beautiful to be with you.
1:22:29 Yeah.
1:22:30 Likewise.
1:22:31 Yeah.
1:22:32 I like your answer.
1:22:33 Yeah.
1:22:36 So what does that feel like to you, to do that?
1:22:39 What is the felt sense?
1:22:50 Feels like you are traveling, you’re moving, and your hand is telling you, this is what
1:22:55 I want to play.
1:23:03 And as you play it, you’re seeing all of the colors and you’re hearing the sound and it
1:23:10 starts to tell you, I want to go here.
1:23:22 And then it sometimes is telling you things that you don’t know, you’re not familiar,
1:23:23 but it’s going to anyway.
1:23:29 And that’s the biggest difference because it’s telling you something, you haven’t practiced,
1:23:38 you don’t know if you can actually play, you don’t know if you actually will make it.
1:23:41 Why do you think it takes you there?
1:23:49 It’s the truest expression, the moment calls for what it calls for, and you can’t really
1:23:54 dictate what the moment calls for based on your preparation.
1:23:56 Yeah, or your preference.
1:24:06 Your preference is, because it’s your preference is probably not true.
1:24:10 Yeah, that makes sense to me.
1:24:18 So it truly is music that is channeled from, it’s channeled to you for everyone in that
1:24:25 moment never to happen again.
1:24:31 Thank you so much.
1:24:32 Wow.
1:24:33 Yeah.
1:24:34 Yes, sir.
1:24:35 Yes, sir.
1:24:36 You know.
1:24:37 Yeah.
1:24:39 So glad we did this.
1:24:42 This is amazing, man, to have the piano here like this.
1:24:43 Oh, it’s beautiful.
1:24:44 I didn’t know you were going to have this.
1:24:45 I never have you done that.
1:24:48 I haven’t heard that before with the piano.
1:24:55 The only time we ever had a piano make a guest appearance very different was 2000, and we
1:25:07 got this right, 15, long time ago, I interviewed Jamie Fox at his house, and he got on the
1:25:08 piano for a second.
1:25:13 It was very short, but totally different context, totally different context.
1:25:18 Because there’s the instrument, then there’s the vessel, then there’s the communication
1:25:25 between the two, and that’s the one and only time that piano and my recollection has made
1:25:33 an appearance in 750 episodes, so this is a first.
1:25:37 Man, that’s amazing.
1:25:42 Yeah, it’s incredible.
1:25:46 I have to ask you, because number one, I’m excited about it, we can do it here, I don’t
1:25:49 need to sit down, but Beethoven Blues.
1:25:50 Oh, yeah!
1:25:51 Beethoven Blues.
1:25:52 Yeah!
1:25:53 Yeah, the blues!
1:25:54 I am excited about this.
1:25:56 Yes, it’s going to be amazing to share.
1:26:00 Especially after our conversation, even more so.
1:26:01 Wow.
1:26:02 Wow.
1:26:04 And after spending a little more time hanging out, it’s been a minute.
1:26:11 Because now I’m thinking about the music as something that I can ingest, something that
1:26:18 I can let feed me inspire in the sense of breathing in.
1:26:19 That’s right.
1:26:22 So could you say a bit more about how that came to be?
1:26:29 You know, the idea is something that I feel uniquely positioned to do is hearing Beethoven’s
1:26:35 music and not just playing it as it says on the score, but being in conversation with
1:26:37 Beethoven and extending his music.
1:26:44 So as we talked about, you know, the idea of streams, this sort of spontaneous composition,
1:26:53 if you were to take Beethoven’s music and exist within the music as if you were co-composing
1:27:04 it with him and adding all these elements that many of which, all of which existed after
1:27:06 his time on earth.
1:27:19 So you have things like Flamenco music or gospel music, soul music, jazz music and blues primarily,
1:27:31 which to me is the, not just musical innovation of the 20th century, but an innovation of
1:27:35 human expression and spirituality.
1:27:41 Could you say a little bit more about that because I listen to blues, but I want to understand
1:27:43 why you feel that way about it.
1:27:48 And it’s not that I disagree, but I want to understand the magnitude of what you’re
1:27:49 saying.
1:27:50 Yes, yes.
1:27:53 Blues is a form of music.
1:27:54 It’s also a form.
1:27:56 It’s a 12 bar form.
1:27:57 It’s a sound.
1:27:59 It’s a style.
1:28:01 It’s an inflection.
1:28:04 You can sound like the blues without playing the blues.
1:28:15 If you moan or you cry, the instrument wails.
1:28:23 That idea is something that is about our existence in the human condition and the blues is an
1:28:27 allegory for the human condition in sound.
1:28:34 It’s a musical allegory that exists within the context of a cultural movement.
1:28:39 So that’s something that has not happened and has existed before it had a name.
1:28:48 So for you to find things like that in the world that are foundational to our existence
1:28:54 and then to figure out how do I name them and identify them so then they can be shared
1:29:02 and then furthermore, how do you create a whole system that not only becomes its own
1:29:09 form of musical engagement, social, cultural engagement, their dances, their blues rituals,
1:29:14 juke joints, stomps, boogie woogie, all this that we’ve grown accustomed to.
1:29:22 Now I can also implement that into other spaces of music which becomes this democratic expression
1:29:24 of humanity.
1:29:30 So what I started to think about with the blues is there are forms of music that express
1:29:38 that aspect of the human condition and that pathos but didn’t have all of the language
1:29:45 that we have to acutely express it and also include the range of cultural diasporic reality
1:29:48 that has existed since.
1:29:58 So now we can take that and inject these other forms of music, these other expressions with
1:30:04 something that’s so profound and so deep and so rooted, so human.
1:30:11 It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for an artist and the blues provides that.
1:30:13 Not a one other thing in the technical realm.
1:30:16 The blues is simple and it’s complex.
1:30:20 The blues is generally three chords but you don’t always have to be playing those three
1:30:23 chords to be playing the blues.
1:30:26 It’s spiritual but it’s also very much scientific.
1:30:34 So if you take these five notes, that’s the pentatonic scale.
1:30:35 That’s the sound of the blues.
1:30:43 The pentatonic scale though, in this form, has existed in music since the beginning.
1:30:49 Gregorian chants, indigenous folk music, music of drum circles in West Africa, in Ghana.
1:30:52 All the different sounds of Appalachia.
1:30:59 Modern music, you’ve heard the sound.
1:31:04 You hear this sound in every culture since the beginning.
1:31:13 Now if you add that note, that’s what we call the blues scale.
1:31:17 The blues is in the sound of the pentatonic scale.
1:31:22 That in and of itself has a perfect symmetry.
1:31:33 The blue note is the expression that our early ancestors in this country created to add the
1:31:38 sense of the American experience to this scale.
1:31:40 It’s more than the scale.
1:31:47 They added this to exemplify the specificity of America and the experience of American
1:31:50 life.
1:31:54 And all different ways you can play the blues, even without playing the scale, because the
1:32:01 thing about the blues, inflection, is that if you can capture that blues inflection,
1:32:03 you can find melodies that have the blues.
1:32:07 You can find voices that have the blues.
1:32:11 You can find rhythms that have the blues, mainly the shuffle rhythm, which is something
1:32:18 that came from Africa and is the marriage of six, eight over two, a two beat and a three
1:32:20 beat combined at the same time.
1:32:23 And that evolved into the American shuffle rhythm.
1:32:30 So all of these things are so interconnected and so sophisticated, so intricate.
1:32:37 And the blues, after all that, you can sit on a porch or a ballroom or a juke joint and
1:32:39 anybody can sing it.
1:32:45 And it’s always two verses in an answer.
1:32:46 The thrill is gone.
1:32:49 The thrill is gone away.
1:32:50 The thrill is gone.
1:32:54 The thrill is gone away.
1:32:55 Finish it for me.
1:32:56 No, no, no.
1:32:57 I’m just saying.
1:32:58 Yeah, yeah.
1:32:59 It’s simple.
1:33:00 It was codified.
1:33:01 Mm-hmm.
1:33:06 Yeah, the architecture, like the basic undergirding sort of eye beams of the architecture are
1:33:12 quite simple, but the way that it can be applied is just beyond counting, right?
1:33:19 It’s the thing that existed in the air and the thing that we’ve all felt within.
1:33:24 And it took this American experiment for it to emerge into a form.
1:33:25 Yeah.
1:33:26 That makes sense.
1:33:31 And I mean, it’s a combination of, like, discovering fire, this thing that has always
1:33:35 been there, that we now have a form for.
1:33:40 And it’s also something very elemental that can be wielded in a million different ways.
1:33:44 And as you have different cultural influences, you have different combinations of people,
1:33:48 newer and newer and newer ways of applying it emerge.
1:33:54 We’ve heard it in rock and roll baselines our whole life, the old.
1:34:00 Just thinking about all of the ways that I’ve heard the blues before even really understanding
1:34:02 that is so ubiquitous.
1:34:03 You know what I mean?
1:34:10 I’m thinking, we’re here in Jimmy Hendry’s studio.
1:34:11 That’s the pentatonic scale.
1:34:18 There’s just so much that you would, you can listen to so much and understand it.
1:34:38 So when I took Beethoven, I was thinking, you know, if you put that on it.
1:34:53 In the congo, one, two, three, one, two.
1:35:19 So, you know what I mean?
1:35:20 I do.
1:35:33 I find the blues as a.
1:35:37 My dad used to play that song on the piano when I was a kid.
1:35:45 That specific segment just activated like ratatouille style, an Anton ego flashes back to being a
1:35:46 kid.
1:35:47 That was wild.
1:35:48 It’s incredible what music does.
1:35:54 And I’m not a musician, but it’s so igniting to use that word.
1:35:59 It’s just an incredible key that unlocks.
1:36:04 These songs too are so deeply connected to us.
1:36:05 Beethoven wrote songs.
1:36:08 We’re listening to these compositions, these melodies, themes, all these things we’ve heard
1:36:11 for years and years over generations.
1:36:17 So it ignites people’s love, not just for music, but brings them back to moments in their
1:36:19 life, experiences in their life.
1:36:25 And that’s what this album, this music is generally about the concept of Beethoven blues,
1:36:31 but also about the humanity that it will bring people together, bring somebody back to the
1:36:36 instrument who stepped away for many years, a kid to a growing up who maybe I don’t see
1:36:44 myself in classical music, but now I see, oh, there’s a, I see something that was always
1:36:47 there like the blues can bring it out.
1:36:51 But it just hadn’t been presented to me in that way.
1:36:57 And I mean, what comes to mind as an image for me also is you have these various tributaries
1:37:03 of music that have in some ways separated out of mushroom using the right geological
1:37:08 term here, but they’ve sort of separated and flowed out into different fingers.
1:37:13 And what you seem to have done starting, maybe not starting, but certainly at Juilliard,
1:37:18 especially afterwards, you’ve sort of brought these flows back together in a way that they
1:37:24 can intermingle, which gives people permission to remix, to make something that is uniquely
1:37:25 theirs.
1:37:26 To live, baby.
1:37:27 To live.
1:37:28 That’s it.
1:37:29 That’s it.
1:37:30 That’s it.
1:37:31 That’s it.
1:37:32 That’s it.
1:37:36 It’s not just the music, it’s not about the music.
1:37:39 It’s about the music and more.
1:37:44 Wow, he played that.
1:37:51 I like doing this, these harmonies, like imagine if you, there’s a version on the album that
1:37:58 goes for 20 minutes and it makes this into a, it’s this healing trance.
1:37:59 It’s like a meditation.
1:38:00 .
1:38:02 .
1:38:05 .
1:38:09 .
1:38:14 .
1:38:19 .
1:38:22 [inaudible]
1:38:25 (soft piano music)
1:38:28 (soft piano music)
1:38:38 (soft piano music)
1:38:44 (soft piano music)
1:38:48 (soft piano music)
1:38:53 (soft piano music)
1:38:58 (soft piano music)
1:39:03 (soft piano music)
1:39:08 (soft piano music)
1:39:10 (soft piano music)
1:39:12 – I’m just gonna put this album on repeat
1:39:14 and listen to it a thousand times.
1:39:15 – Oh man.
1:39:19 – I mean, 20 minutes of that, I mean,
1:39:25 that feels like taking the hypotenuse to catharsis.
1:39:30 – Yes.
1:39:32 – That’s it. That’s the idea.
1:39:34 – Yeah. Wow.
1:39:38 I feel very privileged to even watch you do that.
1:39:39 – Brother, thank you.
1:39:43 I’m grateful for you building this space
1:39:47 and allowing for folks to come in and share who they are
1:39:49 and what they have to offer.
1:39:53 And then it becoming this feedback loop of us all growing.
1:39:54 – Yeah.
1:39:57 – Of us all learning and growing together.
1:39:58 That’s you, man.
1:39:59 Thank you for that.
1:40:00 – Thanks, brother.
1:40:01 – That’s powerful stuff.
1:40:02 – Thank you. I love doing it.
1:40:04 How did this end up being a job?
1:40:05 Crazy.
1:40:06 – Hey, man.
1:40:07 – Man.
1:40:08 – Blessing of life, right?
1:40:10 – JohnVatisse. JohnVatisse.com.
1:40:12 Beethoven Blues. Go get it, everybody.
1:40:15 – Hey, guys. This is Tim again.
1:40:17 Just one more thing before you take off,
1:40:19 and that is Five Bullet Friday.
1:40:22 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
1:40:24 that provides a little fun before the weekend?
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1:40:31 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
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1:40:42 or have started exploring over that week.
1:40:44 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
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1:41:20 drop in your email, and you’ll get the very next one.
1:41:22 Thanks for listening.
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1:42:30 You won’t need them, because these types of
1:42:32 metrics are integrated into the Pod 4 Ultra itself.
1:42:34 They have imperceptible sensors,
1:42:37 which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV.
1:42:39 Their heart rate tracking is just one example
1:42:41 is at 99% accuracy.
1:42:43 So, get your best night’s sleep.
1:42:45 Head to 8sleep.com/tim
1:42:47 and use Code Tim to get $350
1:42:49 off of the Pod 4 Ultra.
1:42:51 That’s 8sleep, all spelled out,
1:42:53 8sleep.com/tim
1:42:55 and Code Tim, T-I-M,
1:42:57 to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
1:42:59 They currently ship to the United States,
1:43:01 Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe,
1:43:03 and Australia.
1:43:05 The following quote is from
1:43:07 one of the most legendary
1:43:09 entrepreneurs and investors
1:43:11 in Silicon Valley.
1:43:13 And here it goes.
1:43:15 This team executes at a level you rarely see
1:43:17 even among the best technology companies.
1:43:19 That is from Peter Thiel
1:43:21 about today’s sponsor, Ramp.
1:43:23 I’ve been hearing about these guys
1:43:25 everywhere and there are good reasons for it.
1:43:27 Ramp is corporate card
1:43:29 and spend management software
1:43:31 designed to help you save time
1:43:33 and put money back in your pocket.
1:43:35 I think they’re already doing that across the board.
1:43:37 Ramp has already saved more than
1:43:39 25,000 customers,
1:43:41 including other podcast sponsors like
1:43:43 Shopify and 8sleep, more than 10 million hours
1:43:45 and more than $1 billion
1:43:47 through better financial management
1:43:49 of their corporate spending.
1:43:51 With Ramp, you’re able to issue cards to every employee
1:43:53 with limits and restrictions
1:43:55 and automate expense reporting,
1:43:57 allowing you to close your books 8 times
1:43:59 faster on average.
1:44:01 Your employees will no longer spend hours
1:44:03 spending expense reports.
1:44:05 I mean, within companies, fast growing startups
1:44:07 or otherwise, a lot of employees spend
1:44:09 half their time, it seems,
1:44:11 trying to get all this stuff together.
1:44:13 No more. Ramp saves you time and money.
1:44:15 You can get started, issue virtual
1:44:17 and physical cards, and start making payments
1:44:19 in less than 15 minutes.
1:44:21 Whether you have 5 employees or 5,000 employees,
1:44:23 they’ve streamlined everything.
1:44:25 And businesses that use Ramp
1:44:27 save an average of 5% in the first year.
1:44:29 And now you can get $250
1:44:31 when you join Ramp.
1:44:33 Just go to ramp.com/tmp.
1:44:35 All spelled out, that’s Ramp.com/tmp,
1:44:37 R-A-M-P.com/tmp.
1:44:41 Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC.
1:44:43 Terms and conditions apply.
1:44:45 [Music]
1:44:48 (upbeat music)
1:44:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]