#710: Super Combo: Jamie Foxx and Maria Popova

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5:01 No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines. To tease out their routines. Habits, favorite books. Lessons learned.

5:21 Mental frameworks, et cetera, and so on and so on and so forth that you can apply to your own lives. This time around we have a very special edition with two hit interviews from the podcast back catalog. We're coming up very soon on the 10th anniversary of the podcast. And I wanted to experiment with a new format, and that is taking someone who is very much a household name, a superstar who is known to the masses, in this case Jamie Fox, and pairing that person with with someone who is lesser known, but who I consider to be a superstar and who I would love to have a little more visibility. So it's a two for one. And uh in this case The names are Jamie Fox and Maria Popova. Jamie Foxx, for those who may not know, you can find him on Twitter at IMJamie Fox, is an Academy Award winning actor, a Grammy Award winning musician, and a stand-up and improv comedian. He is one of the most consummate performers and entertainers that I have ever met. Honestly, I would say that. The two top

6:24 Or Jamie Fox. and Hugh Jackman who've both been on the podcast. But Jamie blew my mind in this conversation. It was so much fun. It ended up being voted podcast of the year in twenty fifteen, back in the Pliocene era of podcasting when celebrities appearing on podcasts were really Few and far. Between. And we did this in his recording studio at his house.

6:48 There's music. There's comedy. There's everything. The stories are amazing. And then we have Maria Popova. who you can find on Twitter at Brain Picker, who is the creator of the marginalion. Long ago this was named Brain Pickings. And it is included in the Library of Congress's permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials. It started off as a newsletter to a handful of friends, I think maybe six people, and now millions and millions and millions of people. Read her work.

7:15 Constantly. The marginal is Maria's one woman labor of love. An inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life. She is unbelievably prolific. She reads So continuously. She writes so beautifully. She speaks multiple languages, and English is not her first language, which is always incredibly impressive to me because her writing is better than mine, which is not to say that I'm the best in the world, but her English is far more elegant, far more eloquent than mine. She is incredibly consistent. The Marginalian was created on October twenty sixth, two thousand six, and it has been running strong

7:54 for seventeen plus years. So I hope you enjoy this format. You can Dip in, dip out, you have two people to choose from. My hope is that you will Begin.

8:06 with the entertainment, the no name And that will pull you in. In this case with Jamie Fox, who better, and then you will continue and listen to someone you may not come across otherwise, and that is Maria Popova. I love both of these interviews, and I would love to know what you think of this format. So let me know on Twitter. It's gonna be a while before I can bring myself to say X. as the cool kids might be saying, by tagging at T Ferris, at T F E R R I S S. Let me know what you think of this format. My goal, again, is to introduce people to interviews they might have missed over the years. They might miss forever if they weren't surfaced and brought to your attention. And You can think of this as my personal curated selection of

8:50 If not the best of the last ten years of the podcast, at the very least, some of my own personal favorites. So I really hope you enjoy this, and please do let me know what you think. Jamie, welcome to the show. Man, thanks, but I'm so excited to be here. I'm I'm uh admiring your setup here. This is where the magic happens. To be honest with you, a lot of magic happens here. I mean the w for for the people that are listening.

9:18 Oh, we are actually in my studio. Uh my home studio. Now You know, studios We're talking about tech world? Studios because of the tech world.

9:27 Uh a lot of'em dissip dissipated in closed doors. Because um If you think about when L M F AO came around. They didn't need studios. They did all of their music on a laptop, right. Flying from here to Germany or whatever like that and just dumped it on to uh and and just pressed up the C C D or the iTunes. So studios are but almost becoming obsolete. But there's something very interesting about This studio. First just

9:55 For people that are listening. This Studio and I'll describe it. It's you know, it's sort of plush. Th the carpet is great. We can sit next to a grand piano. Uh he had a grand piano, which a lot of places So we keep a grand piano around just to make sure that we don't lose, you know, we won't get too techie, but what's interesting about it is it's actually electric. But it's an electric grand piano, so we still have the wood to give you that warm sound.

10:25 Uh, which, you know, we I think it makes a lot of sense because as music starts to progress Uh Because of the way we record now, sometimes you lose a little bit of the heart of it. So I think within the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years it'll be, you know This type of music, the real sound will You know, remain.

10:45 That makes sense. Now the the studio When I first got the house looked like a a old porn set. It had a it had like a old basement carpet and a couch and like a metallic uh poster. And I was like, What would I do with this because

11:02 I needed a place to to work and and do music. What's interesting now, I I got a guy to change the whole place over and as you can see, we'll take pictures and show it f for you. But They did a very good job in it. But if you look over here, this is where we do the recording. There's a there's a booth, which is normal, but also the recording on both sides were able to do animation.

11:22 We're able to do uh if we want to do ADR for movies. Um what is ADR? ADR is like when you um like when we're doing a movie but we're recording the the the movie outside, there's a lot of noise. Oh you doing pickup audio? So we'll do pick up audio. Uh so uh and so and and most Any actor or actress will tell you ADR is the worst thing in the world to do. So to be able to have here, have it here, I could do my ADR here, I could do my animation here and things like that. And so Just the

11:51 Now the the studio itself The actual brains of the studio, it's a old hard drive. And the reason I kept that old hard drive, I used to have a smaller studio in a smaller house. But when I had that small studio I wasn't in music.

12:06 I built the studio in my smaller house because I wanted to get a music but I was from comedy and from acting and things like that. But what I would do is I would throw parties and I would invite musical people over Uh at the party, like s but and when they would come over like if I had Puff or or Snoop or back at that time John B. or or Brian McKnight, I say, Hey man, you know I'm trying to get into music. Would you leave me some music in my studio? So the people leave me like sixteen bars, twenty four bars,'cause I mean they would they would record Something while they're in the studio. They would record we'd have the party going, I say man's go in the back. You know, while we're drinking and whatever like that and go and I said, Hey man, just leave me a little something'cause I was trying to get into uh to music. And then I met this kid uh

12:48 uh named Breon Prescott, basketball you we play basketball and all this kinda stuff, pick up basketball games. And he said, Hey man, why don't you ever do music? I said, Man, I'm trying to get into that shit man. I just you know I don't know how to get into it. And then one day he I throw this big party. And uh it was a um Uh the party was was crazy because as I di digress a little bit.

13:10 I would follow Puffy combs around back in the day when it was just like Puff and J Lo and back at that time no one could get into his parties, but the reason he would let me in because I would carry a camera with me everywhere I go. But it was back in the day day, like you know, the big canon cameras. Wait, he would let you in because you carry a can. Yeah, because at that time I wasn't Jamie Fox, I was just Jamie Fox. And uh so I couldn't get into all the parties because Puff was so big, like he come to LA, we couldn't even get in our own clubs. Right. But I popped I I I took a town car everywhere he went. Jumped out of the town car one day and said, Yo Puff, can I record. No, at that point he didn't know you at all. He knew me. He knew me the the kid that was on the Living Color or whatever like that, but it wasn't elevated. Right. And plus he was having parties that were like huge, like nobody's getting it.

13:56 And so they was he saw me with the camera, he's like, Y yo let him through. And it was back in the day was it like the big canon camera with the light and I had to change the battery. It wasn't like how today you just got your pocket. No, I had I had production. But uh I would follow him around and then one day we had this this party in Philly that I recorded for him and he said, Yo your money, you know how much this party costs? What? So it costs a million dollars for this party. I said you paid a million dollars for a party? He's like yeah, that's how we I told Puff I challenged him, I said, I'll throw you a party At my house in LA. Which is way smaller than this situation. But I'll spend maybe four hundred dollars and it will rival this party, not in the scale of it, but in the type of people that are there.

14:35 And he was he was a little upset. You know, Puff is a you know, he he always likes to win. He's a competitive guy. I was like, all right, I I get it. And uh he actually came to uh LA a few weeks. Later. And it was a Saturday. He said, Yo, Playboy, make that shit happen. So he calls me like nine in the morning, right? For that night. For the sake of the day. For the day. I said no problem. So I go into my cellphones.

15:04 Call I I have a I have a list of people. Oh that since I First came to LA. The way I got into uh um Um

15:14 knowing everybody. I was the first I was the first social media guy without social media. Mm-hmm. I would go do a stand up comedy routine at a club. If they like the routine, I had cue card back in the day and would have people sign cue cards, sign the name, did you like the set, give me your page or number, I will text you and let you know where I would be.

15:38 You have time. Yeah, with they were like index cards. Index cards. So a box and I had these got rid of this fly, man. Stop it for a second. Alright, so we're picking back up. I just have to we took a fly break. Yeah, so it was a fly of salt. I just have to admire this. What would you say? Maybe like thirty thirty by fifteen feet.

15:59 On the floor and then another fifteen feet tall. And you said I'm gonna stop and get this fly. Yeah, I saw the fly salt in my man. This is a lot of space. And it took you about seven seconds to drive this fly down and kill it. I was very impressed. So the cu cards. So so what so I would get cue cards and and and like I said, I would send it you know, I I had a list of about eight hundred people. Had six hundred women because women at that time, this is like around ninety ninety one, women at that time loved to go to comedy clubs. So it was all the pretty girls because pretty girls like to laugh, you know, and and eight, nine girls together. Jamie, you're so crazy. Whatever. And so uh I had eight hundred signatures, two hundred guys because They wanted to be where the girls were. So I would take that list and also

16:43 say, okay, well now I'm having a party here, here, here, whatever, whatever if you want to come by. So that same list along with the other people that I met as I As I started to grow in the business. I text and said, I'm throwing a party for Puff and this one Puff had Uh dun dun dun dun dun dun dun pa Uh we ain't going nowhere with that.

17:04 And it was bl it was popping. I mean, even the LA dudes was like, man, we don't wanna fuck with this New York dude, but the shit is so the song is so hot. So I text I said, Listen, I'm um Puff is coming. And the people that I text were only cool people. Like no guys that'll be hating. You know, uh the girls are pretty.

17:23 Uh uh not sluddy, but not Not too tight. Right. You know I mean it was just it was just really it was it was mm it was mm mm. And so I hit him at twelve noon. I said, Yo, where you at? We're at a fevered pitch.

17:37 It's going off over here in my little house. And when he gets there His mind is blown. And you know, he shows up with the entourage that you know, he Puff Puff he was like Gatsby. And he walked in, he says, Oh, that's the girl from that show And that's the girl on the And I said, Yeah, Puff, we

17:53 We all live out here. You know, so all the people you see in Hollywood, I I know they're my friend. And so he's like, Oh shit, so the party's incredible. We're playing his music through my little sound speakers. Everybody's really toasting him. And I said, Puff, the people that are here. A different in the What the fuck?

18:12 Almost there, isn't it? Good night. Two for two. Two for two.

18:23 So so t so so he's he's admiring the the it's it's crazy. And um and and everybody's in tune with him and I explained to him. I said, Puff, let me explain to you who you are. I said, These are the people who not only live in LA, but I think I've found the right set of people who appreciate the art as well. Because what you do musically and what you doing on the artistic side is blowing our minds as well. And I said

18:50 Therefore, look at the table. I only spent four hundred dollars on the table there's Kentucky fried chicken. I just put it in a nice bowl. Uh there's cola. I just put'em in pitchers. I said, so no more than four hundred dollars, but people are here. I said, because here's the thing. A fitted baseball cap, New York. Fit it. It's fifty eight dollars maybe retail. I said, but Puff, on your head on your head it's priceless. We just wanna be around this fly shit, right? So we partying, Puff is partying, and then it's the dude standing uh next uh uh like on the wall. No one's talking to he got a little green jump jacket on. Guess who it was? Jay Z. Nobody knew who he was. I said, Yeah, I know they do. Uh Missy Ellot has one room, Puff has the other room. Then I go to my garage.

19:32 to grab some other drinks and I see this tall dude and this little dude and and they're like the little guy goes yo B it's like this all the time I said yeah what you mean you know the girls and and karaoke and I said yeah yeah man who are you oh we're the Neptunes my name is Pharrell I said yeah man I heard of you Yeah, man, I like your shit. So that's how long ago this was. Amazing. So here's how I make the music play, though. So as Puff is there, I get people to leave me different bits of music or whatever,'cause I'm trying to get into the music thing. So I turned that into a show in a sense to where I would just have different people I would toast. and try to, you know, get my music on. So one day

20:10 My boy Breon brings in this kid, he has a backpack on. His jaws a little busted. His name is Kanye West. And I say Yo, yo, who's who's that? They said, yo, that's a new kid, Kanye. Where's he coming on? I said, really? What he do? Say he rap. I said, Well shit, he gotta perform that shit, because everybody comes to this to my house, they gotta perform.

20:30 So I said, yo, man, they say you the shit. And he was really quiet. You know. I said, man, let me hear you rap. You need your beats or whatever? He said, I don't need no beat. Freestyle. The

20:41 chopp everybody's head just amazing I said dude I don't know where you come from But you are going to be one of the biggest stars. Ever. And he says, I actually have a song for you. I said, Mwah? Me? A song? Like, what you mean? He said, I got the song. He says, I want to record it. I said, Well, you happen to be in luck because I got a studio in the back. So we go in the back.

21:04 And my studio at that time I call it the Porsche. It was l lot smaller than this. It was really like nipp it was like a uh It was like a liaje. It was compact. It was compact. The sound was toasty. I had uh engineers from all over the the the city. Dial it in so that when real artists come, they don't think that oh this just comedian fucking around some real shit. So we go in and and and and uh Kanye, you know Quiet.

21:28 But but at the same time. He knew what he wanted. He says, okay, the song goes like this. She says she wants some Marvin Gay, some Luther Van Jose, a little I said, I got it. And I started going, She says she wants some Mar Vay. And he said, What the fuck are you doing? I said, What's the young man? You don't know nothing about R and B. See I'm a R and B motherfucker. See, I I got to give him the shit, you know, I gotta put the shit on it. And he goes really politely, he says Hits the the button, he says, Uh, don't do that. I said, but you don't know what you're talking about, but yeah. Uh that ain't how the song go.

22:00 You gotta sing it this way. So in my mind I'm thinking You know what? I'm a single shit. The song is whack. It's not gonna make it. 'Cause I'm thinking

22:09 Old school R B. But he was teaching me the simplicity of hip hop. Which I didn't know. Yeah. Cool guy.

22:17 Great rapper. I don't think it's gonna happen for him. So I'll go off and do a bad movie and when I come back My boy says, Remember that song you said was whack? I said, Yes, number one. In the country. You, Kanye and Twister, Kanye's first record.

22:31 And it was actually Twister's record. I said, oh shit. So I'm at a club, he said, You don't believe me? I said, No, I'm we're in Miami. He pl they played it, everybody ran to the dance floor. I grabbed the mic, said that's me, that's that's that's my song. I'm I'm on that, you know. And so the music, that's how I got into the music. Now the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use that same hard drive

22:54 That we use, I brought it to this studio. Oh no. So that hard drive is is magical because we also did just to give you a history on the on the music, Breon found that song, Slow Jams, that went number one. And then as we started getting into music There was a song that Breon brought in. And he will play these

23:13 Brian would call me. Like he said, You want to be in the music business. It's like, you know, two or three in the morning. He call me, says, You want to be in the music business. I said, Yeah. He said, Then wake your ass up. I said, What? He said, I got this song you gotta hear. So I drove all the way from my house in the valley to this to this uh to this to this little studio. He says, You ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? And Brian always says everything three times. Are you ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? Are you ready? I said, Yeah, yeah, man, play the shit. So he plays it. And the song was Blame It on the Goose, Gotch Feeling Loose, Blame It On the Ah, I stopped it.

23:46 I said, listen. First of all, please tell me that's my song. He said, Yeah, it's your song, but you gotta record it right now because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not. He said, But I know it's a hit. We did blaming on the alcohol. That night I sang it exactly like the record, which goes way in contrast to my R and B roots,'cause it was out of tune and everything like that, but we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo So we wouldn't lose the essence of it. I don't wanna be like blame it on the alcohol you know, some corny shit.

24:13 So we did that. And then we went from every the way we broke that record is that we went from every club. We went to the strip clubs first. Went to the strip club. We went on we w we did a East Coast run. So we we're gonna break the record in the East Coast. So we went to the strip. We went to New York. Oh My man Pecus took us around.

24:33 Uh and I will go into the club and use my comedic you know, vernacular to get the song off. I said fellas, you ever been Uh at the club, you meet a girl, you've been drinking, you think she look like Hallie Barry, you get her back home, she looks like Hallie Scary, you know what you gotta do. Blame it on the goose, got feeling loose, blame it on the Stop the record. Ladies, you ever meet a guy, you get back to the house with him and you've been drinking too much and you say I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway, you gotta blame it on the So we took that and we went all the way down from New York all the way down to Miami. This is like 2008. And then the song took off. And so

25:12 Long story longer. Mm. Blame it on the alcohol was done here, slow jams was done here. So this studio has That That essence to it that you just

25:22 You don't throw that away. And just the building itself? Natasha Bettingfield's been here, she's cut, Kelly Roland's been here, she's cut, the game has been here, he's cut. Right here on this floor. And I'm sure on the st uh for you guys listening.

25:35 I'm pointing to the floor, to the carpet. A young man by the name of Ed Sharing. Slept on this carpet for like six weeks. uh trying to get his music career going. Uh he came from over from London. He heard about a a live show that I do in LA. So really wanna uh do your live show if it's possible. Uh you know, because have some music that look like this kid with this red hair I'm like, Yeah, you do my live show and it's all b it's mostly black, you know what I'm saying? But it's really like music people, like really hardcore music people. The very finicky.

26:07 You know, people that have played for Stevie W one the people will come there to I mean, I had Miranda Lambert one night, I had Stevie Wonder on stage, I had baby face, I said, So this is the real shit you talking about. You know, you can come here, I don't care about the London and the accent. You gotta really come with it. All right.

26:26 So I'm taking on my live night. Eight hundred people there. People's plan. Black folks. Just getting it. You know what I'm saying? I mean people singing and you know, they would they would tear American Idol up, you know, so and these people

26:38 don't necess hasn't haven't necessarily made it. So all of a sudden the Sharon gets up with a ukulele. Walks but out onto the stage. And the brother that was next to me was like, Yo, Foxman, who the fuck is this dude right here, man, with the red hair and shit in the fucking Ugulele? I said, man, his name is Ed Sharon. Let's see what he does. Within twelve minutes, he got a standing ovation. Wow.

26:59 From that crowd. And I said, Bro. You're on your way. This studio has a um Like I said, a lot of history.

27:08 And it has that magic. To it as well. Yeah. Now you uh You mentioned getting into music. But it seems like from what I've read of you

27:18 That Music in some ways came first. Music did. Music did my when I was a kid, my grandmother Uh make sure that took

27:27 Piano lessons. And you know that's tough for a little boy in Texas. You know. Playing Furry Lease and Chopin and Mozart. Houston or No, we're talking Terrell, Texas.

27:41 And I love my city. My city was dope because it was only twelve thousand people. So it was like literally like twelve or fifteen families. So we all knew each other. But you know, for a little boy playing at that time, you know, the kids didn't understand, yo, man, why you doing that? Man, my grandma want me to do this, you know. And so I would sometimes I would be belligerent and be like, Why you want me to do this? She says, the reason I want you to learn Classical piano. is because I want you to be able to go across the tracks and play your music. For people listening. Across the tracks or on the other side of the tracks for Southern City.

28:11 was the tracks in a southern city. Separates the city. One side is black. Other side is white. So in our city, the south side, the south side of town was where all the black folk live.

28:24 The north side of town. Well the white folks live. So she says I want you to be able to go on the white side of town and play c classical music. So she taught me how to play classical piano. Um a lady by the name of Lanita Hodge taught me how to play classical piano And I literally would go on the other side of the tracks and You know? and and start playing for like wine and cheese parties and things like that. But my grandmother took it a step further too,'cause she was able to see the future.

28:49 Uh Here's a lady with an eighth grade education. She had her own business for thirty years. She had her own uh nursery school business. She says, When I say across the tracks, I don't just mean And Terrell and Those people over there. I mean the metaphoric. Like across the track like meaning everywhere in the world. So you be but she's it because c music connects you to the to to the whole world.

29:10 So And doing That's I would connect with people on the other side of tracks who You know, in a southern city.

29:19 And Terry, you know we were a little we were a little behind the curve when it came to race relations. Let's just say it that way without, you know I don't wanna demonize my my my hometown, but there was there was that Who's a little black kid? And my grandmother would be like don't you know

29:35 play. Do you think and when I would play, you know, a lot of that broke up broke you know, broke up. I remember even Like being armed with just my music in sort of that racial setting and some t sometimes. Like there was a uh a time when there was a Christmas party. Were these paid gigs? Yeah, I make like me, I get like ten, fifteen dollars. You know what I'm saying? At that time I was like and I played for the church.

29:56 So playing for the church, I would make like uh seventy five dollars a week. So if you count that up, that's like three hundred a month, you know. That's real money at thirteen fourteen. My grandmother would take the money though. I said put it yeah, and give me this money. So great, but you don't want my money. Shit, you ain't gonna you ain't paying no rent, you ain't gonna give me this money. Mm

30:13 So but I remember at that time being armed with just my music and uh there was a Christmas party that I was supposed to play for. Myself and my best friend who was seventeen, I was sixteen at the time. And so here's a little bit of the the racial misunderstandings, shall we say. I went to play for the guys Christmas time. Maybe it's like December 17th. And we show up as two little black kids on the white side of town. And uh when he opens his door and he sees his two little black kids on

30:40 He says, What's going on here? I said, Well, um I'm here to play uh for your Christian part show then why are two of you here at the same time? I said well I don't have a license. He you know, he drove me. Uh is there a problem. Yeah, it's a problem. I can't have two niggers in my house at the same time.

30:56 And I was like, Oh, well, you know, I've been sort of used to the racial misunderstandings. And I said, Well, is there any way he could wait outside or wait in? He can't wait on the street. Starts at six thirty. Now you gotta make your make your mind up, man. So uh I said I told my boy, I said, Let's just come get me at eight thirty, which was pretty late. You know, for kids at that time, you know.

31:16 Uh so I go in. He says, Where's your tuxedo? I said, Well, he didn't tell me to have a tuxedo. So we go into this room which looks like a bedroom and I'm looking like why the fuck does he have clothes hanging up in his bedroom. But it was a walk in closet. I never see no shit like that. I'm like, oh man, we can make a split level condo out of this shit.

31:35 So He gives me a Brooks Brothers jacket that had the batches on the elbows. I'm like, oh shit, half a little. So now I'm really playing. You know, but as I'm playing Uh they were doing uh the grown ups there were doing uh Racially misunderstanding jokes.

31:53 I'll say it like that. And my grandmother. At that time she said, uh when you're in a setting like that. Uh there's a word I want you to remember, it's called furniture. I said, What's that? She said, You're part of the furniture. So you don't comment on what's being said.

32:09 play. That's what you're there for. You let these people enjoy their And the lady of the house felt bad. She said, I just wanna apologize to you for What they're saying. Oh no problem. She said, can you sing something for us? And I was like, Sure.

32:24 I could sing so far. And this was the song that I song. Just not trusting no. An open fire Jack Frost nipping that y'all know.

32:45 You take him. Speaking song. Bye. Um Oh

32:53 Just uh Oh Everybody.

33:00 Anyway. So as I'm seeing it. I remember watching those White guys. Old man.

33:07 Some of them faculty in my school. That had just said something, you know, probably not I don't think it was that they meant harm harm, but it was they'd have to resign today. Yeah. And they look and they go, they they immediately change. So wow, man, that's good. You know any other songs? And I sat and I did about maybe like a six song set. And I saw what my grandmother talked about, that music cracked them in half.

33:30 They saw a different me. And then afterwards, he gave me a hundred bucks. And I'm like, shit, call me nigga every day. I got a hundred dollars. I'm rich.

33:42 And what was interesting was I went to give him the jacket back. He's like, no, I don't I I can't wear the jacket. So it was still a little bit of residue left over. But I saw what the music did and I remember when my When my boys show back up, I say, listen.

33:56 It was cool gig. We got paid. I said, but I gotta get out of here. I said because I'm too smart for this. Yeah. I need to go elsewhere. And

34:06 I did. I changed my major well, I changed the college that I was gonna go to. I was gonna go to another college in Texas and study music instead. I came to California, San Diego. To study music. uh international university. And what was interesting about that was is that Being in Texas it was black, whites, and Mexicans. When I got to international university, it was eighty-one different countries represented at that school, all connected by music and other things, music and sports.

34:32 Um In the music. The music arena at that time was high end strict child prodigies from Japan, child prodigies from China.

34:43 I had a Russian uh uh music teacher and it has a Yugoslavian music theory teacher. So it was It was really across the tracks. But uh because of that, because of Estel Talley and Mark Telle, you know. Picking me up every uh weekend to go play music.

35:01 Um Man, I w it set me on a like I said, a a crazy wonderful journey. And uh uh So the music was first. You know, and

35:12 Um my college was interesting. I didn't know anything about Jewish Palestinian. I had no idea. I was at the student center and there was this argument going on, yeah. So why what are what are you talking about? Oh my brother, my brother, my friend. You're talking about the Gaza Strip.

35:30 The fuck is that? And he said, no, the Jewish. The occupation, the this, the that and I I had a I l I got a quick I got a quick uh history lesson on on that. I got a quick history lesson on people from Argentina. Uh or I would see a person who looked black and I'd be like, Hey what's up, brother? And I'm being like, Oh shit where you from, yeah. Oh Paris. I was like, What the fuck? They got black beard. So That music gave me not only an opportunity to share, but opportunity to be educated by other people because we study Texas history. And studying Texas history is interesting. Like if

36:04 You study Texas history. If it didn't happen in Texas It didn't happen. So when you look at like like it this is just a sidebar. But when you think about politics and what people know and don't know in politics and what they know about across the sea or what they know about even on the next block or what they know about what's different in Texas from New York. The reason that politics is so interesting is because the people don't necessarily have educations.

36:32 Which is why I think that once we start Opening up. A little more and traveling a little more because what is it, less than how many percent Less than less than five percent of Americans have passports and things like that. So anyway, that music, like I said, took me

36:50 Took me everywhere. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. If you are a business to business marketer, your needs are unique and your solutions should be unique as well. B2B buying cycles are long and your customers face incredibly complex decisions. It's time that you had a marketing platform built specifically for you. LinkedIn Ads empowers marketers with solutions for both you and your customers. LinkedIn Ads allows you to build the right relationships, drive results, and reach your customers exactly where they are already. You'll have direct access to and can build relationships with

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38:14 What other your your grandmother seems like a very wise woman and uh I've heard you describe her and I might be par I'm sure I'm par paraphrasing this, but that she She was the bow or had the o and you were the arrow. And she pointed you in different directions. I'm wondering what other Like you are the furniture, right? I mean when to speak, when not to speak. What other lessons did you learn from your grandmother?

38:37 My grandmother taught me confidence as well. My grandmother was a very confident person and uh very smart. Just How would you say just Naturally intelligent. She was a a a a a a Taurus.

38:51 You're saying natural. It's like it wasn't something that was super educated or anything like that. But you just had a na wh i I I'll give you I'll give you I'll give you a uh a hint of my grandmother. I'm ten years old, maybe. I think I'm in the fifth grade, seventy six, uh President Carter. The preacher started preaching about Homosexuality.

39:11 I don't know what it is. Ten or eight or wherever. So he's saying God made Adam and Eve. God didn't make Adam and Steve. So people like, you know, it's southern. It's Texas. Amen. My grandmother stood up and said, You stop that. And the whole church thought.

39:29 What's that, Miss Taylor? You stop that. Now her words What she said next was very interesting. Let me tell you something. I've had this nursery school for thirty years.

39:40 And I wanna let all y'all know. The God makes sis too. And the whole place went what? She said, These little boys I've watched

39:50 Since they could walk. They they play by d they play by different music. And you stop that because you're making it hard for them. To navigate.

40:03 He goes to another subject. Eventually he leaves the church. But I found that very interesting. At that time I didn't know what that meant. Until I got to be about Asian w you know, what was you talking about? She says Yeah, it's true. She says, you know, I I've had this nursery school. I I see the difference in the kids. And so therefore I would have these kids come to me.

40:22 after they graduated from high school, gone to college or tried to have a family. Although they had they were living with this. So she was a type of woman who had natural intelligence. I said, Well, Granny Well what does it say about religion? Doesn't it say that it's that it's wrong? You know, being a You know, care for Texas is

40:41 Natural question. She says you know when I think about it She said you have to open up the umbrella of religion. I said what do you mean? She said if you only open up the umbrella halfway, only a few people can stand under it. She said you have to open the umbrella all the way through. So God's children can stand on it.

40:58 Because no one here did not get made by anybody else or anything else, but God. So that was my grandma. You know? It seems very uh the but the the move in church, that's a very bold move, very courageous. Very bold, very bold. But my grandmother raised those people in church.

41:16 See, I was adopted. You know, at seven months. So she was much older. So all of the kids that were there were the and it was only like I said, it was only a few families that lived in terror. So all of the kids that grew up Well all of the grown ups that were there, she She was the matriarch. She right because during the during the year it was a s it was a uh it was a uh

41:34 It was a school. You know what I'm saying? But then during the summer you drop your kids off of my and my grandmother's house and just let them keep'em. So she was very uh powerful in that sense. And then When I did finally make it. It was wonderful to tell my grandmother to come live with me. So my grandmother was living with me.

41:51 So we go to the clubs. You know, my grandma was like She had to be eighty three at th. She we go to clubs, we hang out. You know what I'm saying? She did this in L this is in LA. Oh, I had a little apartment, split level condo. Remember when that was hype? The split level condo.

42:07 So I had a loft. Oh yeah. Ricardo, he's only nineteen, he don't know what I'm talking. But I had a loft. And we were living in that loft and then we eventually rented a house and Me and my grand I and I didn't know I was a mama's boy. Like we go to the parties, come back, we have an after party at the crib and then one of my homies came and said, Yo, uh Yeah, Fox, uh So older lady out here, uh

42:27 In the in the front room, I said, Yeah, that's my grandma. What's that? Uh yeah, yeah, and then you use a bottle of champagne pop. What we doing? We getting it or what? You know, so uh she was uh she was amazing, man. So, you know, my grandmother, you know, we party, hang, have a good time. She was eighty three years old. And then the the big thing was is like, granny, you know, it's Christmas time. Why don't we do something we ain't never done?

42:51 You know, you y you saw them making a little money. Why don't we go to Hawaii for Christmas?'Cause I got some friends from Hawaii. Well what yeah, well let's get it going. Gas up the plane, right? So we uh fly to Hawaii one year. And I it was just amazing to be able to show my grandmother

43:07 Another side of the world. It even made the papers in Terrell, Texas. Estel Tally. Uh on our way to Hawaii, you know. And I remember and you know just a fun Just a fun time. I remember um

43:21 We're having a good time, we're going everywhere. And she had a boyfriend at the same time, who's eighty three too. And he was on the you know, he was on the land side. And so So it was like December twenty third and we uh we called her boyfriend just so they could talk. So she's on the phone. Yeah, having a good time.

43:40 Mm oh yeah, yeah, weather's nice. Mm funny. Oh food is good. I got my own seasons though. Mm-hmm. Well I tell what look I'm gonna go but let me tell something.

43:52 No let me come back there and uh catch you with no young girls. You understand? Cause I don't play that. But let me catch up with no young girls. You hear me? So she hangs up, you know. It's like three or four families there. We're having like a little Christmas party and we all go, Granny, what When you said the young girls, what you talking about? You know sixty, sixty five. I don't want to mess with no sixty five. She said shit, I'm eighty three, no so I can't handle sixty five year old woman all in my shit.

44:15 So she was just a Great person. Tough girl. Oh I remember there was some situations where I did make it and some people in my family felt like I should give them all the all of my money. This lady walks in and

44:31 We're in my apartment, she comes and says, My rich cousin. I didn't even recognize'cause I you know, hadn't I only seen it maybe once or twice growing up. So anyway. It gets around to it, she says, I need ten thousand dollars for a kidney. I'm not. Woo who's kidding it?

44:47 Well, I need kidney surgery or something like that. So if you give me the cash, I could take it and get the I said, Well why don't you if it's a situation of medical I I know some doctors maybe they can help you. Oh I would prefer the ten thousand dollars. I said, Well yeah, okay, I'll I'll hit you. Then I didn't call back. I was like

45:05 So that became a problem for her. She called me one day and left on the answer machine. Young fella. The last time you seen the answer machine. So I'm checking my answer machine and she leaves a scathing

45:17 Message. Well, you know what? I didn't get the money from you. And that's fine, because you're not part of this family anyway. You was adopted. Nobody wanted you anyway. This is what this lady's saying to me. Brutal. I was like, what the hell? So I let my grandmother here. Let me run that back.

45:32 Played it. Mm-hmm. What's that number? And she called and I I remember listening. Now I'm grown, you know, I'm I'm twenty two. So I'm grown. And I hear how she stuck up for me.

45:47 She let me explain something to you, boy. And I could hear I got the boy when he was seven months old. I said everybody wanted him. I wanted him. Uh everybody. Yeah. He may not be blood.

45:59 But he's our fam that it just it was just incredible. Yeah. My grandmother was absolutely amazing. I think you need people like that. And when you talk about that bow, that's what that's my reference to to raising kids. And I got my own kids now. Is that when you raise your kids, you are the bow and arrow. You're the bow. They're the arrow. And you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can and hopefully uh Your aim isn't too off.

46:22 And uh that's what she did for me and then uh You know, she watched my whole career. Uh all the way up until getting nominated for an Oscar. Where all of the things that she taught me.

46:35 came into play. When we did uh Uh Ray Charles. That was an opportunity. To play the piano. To be funny.

46:45 to do an impersonation and all these things is what my grandmother championed. So when we when we embarked upon that film I was like, Oh man. Granny was right. This is taking me on the other side of the tracks. And When we got in

47:00 Even when I got a chance to meet Ray Charles, which you know That's my grandmother's heir, you know? Uh and she didn't get a chance to meet him'cause at the time she was, you know, she couldn't move bedridden a little bit. But uh Being around older people.

47:16 You know, I understood that muscle too,'cause I was always the young kid with the old parents. So Meeting Ray Charles was like seeing my grandfather or seeing one of my uncles and When I met Ray and we were trying to do Ray Charles the movie. And Taylor Hackford, who was a director, and he said, You know, I've I've been wanting to do this movie for twenty five years. I'm glad you came along because it's the right time. And I remember meeting Ray Charles, walking down his studio. You know.

47:41 Clean, you know. Look like almost like you can see, you know. And I said, Mr. Charles, you know, I'm just trying to do the best I can to Yeah, to do uh

47:54 If you could play the blues, man, shit, you could do anything, man. I said, What you mean? He said, Can you play the blues? Shit, that's what I'm asking you. I said, I guess so. Then come on. And we go and we sit down. And all of the hard work that my grandmother All of the days my grandfather drove me to Piano listin.

48:14 With A legend. And we were like And I was like Playing the blues.

48:26 With Ray Charles. And as we're playing I'm like I'm on cloud nine. Then he moved into the some Intricate stuff like the Lonious Monk. And I was like, Oh shit, I gotta catch up. And I hit a wrong note. And he stopped because his ears are very sensitive.

48:48 I said, Well I I I I'm sorry, m m m uh m mister Charles, I just say uh let me tell you something. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just gotta take the time out to play the right notes. That's life. So that was a list. That the notes are right underneath your fingers. So metaphorically. So now you gotta cross the tracks. There's someone like

49:12 Estel Tally teaches you. Then you got Ray Charles explaining Now that you across the tracks. What notes are you gonna play? And so now we go on and we we we we do that movie. Which we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that it was gonna be like that. It wasn't a studio film.

49:30 Uh it was independent. And uh You know during the during the process of the movie was interesting. Of my b you know background being from Terror h knowing how to mimic.

49:43 But I needed to know how to do Rach do Rachel's like The young Rachel. So I got in touch with uh Quincy Jones. And for all of you young ones out there. Uh listening. Make sure you Google Chris Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. And the reason why you should do that is because they were the building blocks of our music today, which started in Seattle, Washington, which was interesting. Seattle at that time was was a big hub for jazz music, jazz musicians, and that's where Ray Charles migrated to. running into a young Quincy Jones. Ray Charles actually taught Quincy Jones everything he knows about music. Who is Quincy Jones for the you young ones listening. Quincy Jones was the one who

50:21 Did I mean he played he was a band director for Frank Sinatra. All of those guys, the rat pack, all of those guys, he was the band leader of Uh if you and then when I met Quincy Jones He talks about that. Yeah, man, shit, man. Music, man. These young cats don't know music anymore, man. Shit, they wouldn't they play in the key of Q if they would, man. Shit. Man, when I played baby Frankie, baby, I said, Mr. Jones, who's Frankie? Man, shit. Frank's Sinatra, man.

50:51 Shit, I was young, man, the band we were playing in Monaco, man. We didn't even have time to rehearse, baby. We're just there playing, waiting on Fucking Frank for come in. I said, What do you mean? He says we we had to play this show in Monaco. Frank had never met me. Knew that I was this young kid.

51:09 Who was great with the music. I become the band leader. We don't get a chance to p rehearse. Monaco, where is billionaires and millionaires in the audience waiting on this incredible show. And he says, We're just vamping, man. Shit. And Frank doesn't even come out on the stage. He comes through the audience, man. Shit, talking and shit. I'm like, man, I'm nervous as hell. And then Frank got up. He said he sang. The band was tight. And Frank Sinatra knighted him, like gave him a ring that was like, you know, pretty significant, if you know what I mean. And if you guys uh Google Frank Sinatra, you'll understand what I mean about the Lucoso Nostra

51:46 And uh uh So Here I am now talking to Quincy John. And he's telling me about Ray Charles. He says, Yeah, man, Ray taught me everything, man. Shit, man, he taught me how to dress. We were wearing suit suits, zoot suits and shit, man. He had nice suits, Taylor Maiden. I said, Why did he have nice suits? Shit, man, he was always around women, man, and women would tell him, man, those zoot suits are ugly.'Cause he couldn't see, so the women was tell him how to how to dress.

52:14 And I said, Well, Mr. Jones, I'm trying to figure out how to do Ray Charles But I need the young Ray Charles, right? And he says, Well man shit, let me look. And he br gives me a cassette tape. To you young ones out there, a cassette tape back in the day was a way for us to I'm just messing with it.

52:32 To uh to share music. And I said, Okay, I got it the cassette tape. I had to go rent a truck from rent a from a Hertz rent a car because there was no cassette players in the cars. So I popped the cassette tape in. And uh uh on the tape was Hi, this is Donna Shore from the Donna Shore Show. We have two very wonderful musicians here today and Mr Kenny Rogers.

52:54 And Mr. Ray Charles. And you hear the young Ray. You know what, Van, I'm just so happy to be here. Uh so happy to hear uh that you know my music. I mean this is just great. And it was the young Ray, like, you know. Uh, because when I was talking to the older Ray, I didn't want to grab those bad old habits I want to play in young. So I hear Ray talking young on the tape. And then all of a sudden He's in charge of the gr o of the interview and this is you know, he was just doing his thing and then all of a sudden she says Talk about the drugs, Ray.

53:21 And then he started to stutter. Well you know what So I use that as DNA. To play. the iconic character Ray Charles that when he's talking about his music, he's fully in control.

53:34 When he's confronted with real life things, why are you doing drugs? Why don't you take care of your family? Why are you cheating on your wife? He would Student. And I say this long story to say this. After the success of Ray Charles. After being nominated for

53:49 Uh an Oscar. Uh my grandmother got a chance to witness all of that. She got a chance to see The bearing of the fruits. Of you know, of of her labor.

54:02 Coming from that. Racially misunderstood town, which I love. And wouldn't change anything in the world. When it comes to tarot taxes.

54:13 Her scene. Get across the tracks. We've now gone across the tracks. We've gone all over the world and then here we are. And think about think about What's the what's the odds?

54:25 Of a kid Who lives in a town, population twelve thousand two hundred and forty people. From tarot. To go all the way to Los Angeles, California. Meet Puff, meet all these different people, and then actually have an opportunity to win an Oscar. And your grandmother gets a chance to see that. Now, October twenty third.

54:47 Two thousand four, she passed away. Which if you know The actual awards Well Uh two thousand five.

54:56 Uh in February. But she got a chance to hang in there and and you know and feel it. You know, so uh it's uh uh It y you know, my grandmother was just like you know The the blueprint. How do you think of

55:10 Teaching confidence with your own kids because you're you're clearly a very confident guy. Uh, grandmother was very bold, very strong woman. How do you try to teach that to your kids? Well what you do with your kids is like w w with my daughter is I there's a the phrase that when you see Annalise, I my my my daughter, my oldest daughter, Corinne. I would always ask them.

55:30 What's on the other side of fear? And it'd be like Huh? I said, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like if I stood in the middle of this floor right there and just yell What's on the other side of that? Or if I stood on the in the middle of the floor and went, Uh, what's on the other side of? Meaning like

55:46 Either you do or you don't, but there's no Pillow leaf? There's No reward. It's just You just be yourself. So I taught them what's on the other side of fear? Nothing.

55:57 People are nervous for no reason. Because there's nothing no one's gonna come out and slap you or beat you up anything. You're just nervous. So why even have that? And so That's a building block that they can use.

56:09 Not just about the entertainment business, because that's the other thing. You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer or school teacher or tech Guy or whatever, or girl, whatever it is. There's nothing on the other side of it. What's on the other side of here? I like it. So it's like so why are you why when people say Oh I'm so nervous, what are you nervous about?

56:30 sort of r recite to myself and I'm gonna paraphrase it because I have it written down, but it's from Mark Twain. It says I'm an old man who's known a great many troubles, most of which never happened. Yeah. Exactly. Because all of it is in our head. When we talk about Fear or

56:48 Lack of uh being aggressive or it's just it's it's it's it's in your head. So not everybody's gonna be super aggressive, but the one thing that you can deal with is a a person's fears. So if you start early If they are a shy person. They just won't be as shy if you keep instilling those things, so The mimicry, the impersonation. Yeah. How early did that start? And and maybe you can

57:12 Tell me if this is off. Or not because you never know at the internet. Uh that your second grade teacher used to reward the class if they behave by letting you tell jokes. Yeah, they will let they will let me tell jokes because I would get in trouble. Miss Reed's my I think it was my third grade teacher, Miss Reeves. 'Cause I would like talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school. I sh I lived in a school. So I I'd already knew the the the the from like first to eighth grade, I already knew all of the lesson plan.

57:41 So you know, a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, I'm gonna get in trouble. So she would um Let me do stand up comedy on Fridays. For the kids and all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson and the only room that had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson too as a kid. So nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old. I would just take the jokes that were being told by

58:05 Uh, David Brenner and Steve Allen. A young uh David Letterman. Uh uh, who else would be on there? Franklin the Jai. Uh you guys when you when you're hearing this, you go Google these guys.

58:19 Uh a young J Leno. Uh uh these were like sort of like uh You know, Richard Pryor. What so I would take those jokes. And tell them at school'cause those kids wouldn't want to. Please tell me you use Richard Pryor on Friday's. But like uh uh

58:41 Uh uh Rich Little. And Google Rich Little because Rich Little was the first person that I saw do impersonations. So there was a there were this was this had to be This had to be like seventy six, nineteen seventy six. So it's like fifth grade for me. The joke was uh

59:00 Jimmy Carter. Which was the president. At the time. Singing You Light Up My Life. And at that time his brother

59:10 Or was getting caught drunk all the time. Like uh Billy. Uh so it was a Jimmy Cardigan. Uh Solman and Nets. Oh, me and my brother Billy. Oh what's it by the window?

59:20 Waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at an an impersonation. And then it went on from there to do a retroduction. I am not a crook. So, you know Uh who else would I do? Reagan. Uh that came later. But but here's it. Reagan came later, but Reagan came like in the eighties when I was actually like twenty one

59:40 And I was the first black guy Uh doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one. So I would be uh on stage doing my impersonations and go into Ronald Reagan, people are like, No, it ain't no way. Well Well, as a matter of fact, I uh

59:55 No. There you go again. That that being being young and and and that teacher Miss Reeves and Miss Miss Dalf it and all those. teachers allow Miss Cole allow me to be myself.

1:00:08 Um You know, help me hone in on what I was gonna be doing. for the rest of my life. Like like literally my friends from Terror go like How the fuck did you do that? This is the shit you used to do. You turned to thirty. It was literally the same shit. I'd be like, wow. Millions of people are watching this shit. It's the same

1:00:29 It's the same thing. And then You know uh came up, you know, the the impersonation, you know, I The Cosby is back in. To do the Cosby impersonation is back in. Don't know how I'm gonna do it, but

1:00:44 There's definitely a Cosby joke somewhere. I don't know where it but I I I used to do C Because of the people and the jello pudding and the and the filth and the flying and the farm which Eddie Murphy did, but people didn't know like Cosby's real speaking voice is not like that. What's the speaking voice like? The speaking voice was different, because I remember I got in trouble with Mr. Cosby because uh He felt that the the the the movie Booty Call Was Not cool.

1:01:12 And he said some things in the press about us and I was like a young comedian, like, damn man I I'm just trying to work, you know? But but his speaking voice when he was on the phone. Well see the thing is Is it when you do something like Bulldog.

1:01:25 What is a booty call? See you. Why are you calling the bo you know, whatever but it was so It wasn't the it was because you and then you find out that that was your stick. Yeah. Because it

1:01:37 Kid and the child and people and Far but you know. So I I know that that will That will come up. I I'll I'll find the joke for for Cosby that uh of course it's gonna be a little uh

1:01:50 People gonna be like, uh, but it's gonna be funny shit. Uh and now who who's now uh Doc Rivers from uh The Clippers. Hey you know. We're gonna try!

1:02:00 You know it it's not Blake's fault. You know, next year we gotta we gotta do better. You know, it's so I'm working on like the new impersonations now. Uh so that's And the way you do an impersonation is usually about it's it's it's musical. Like um say Kermit the Frog, right?

1:02:17 So Kermit the Frog is So it's sort of like the way you do your Yeah, You know say it's it's fine and Mm.

1:02:26 Mm, mm, mm. Mm. So the actual voice tone is in the key of G for current defraud. Uh uh Cody.

1:02:41 Hurry the fur here with the search meeting. So that and then once you get the voice tone, it's how you make Is how you manipulate your your your mouth to get the sound. You know what? So it's it's sort of constricting.

1:02:58 And then and then and then it's and then it's asking the character to come sit with you. Kermit the Frog here. Here with the uh three little p So, you know, it's but the key is this. And at the same time Kermit the Frog, who else sounds like that? Sammy Davis Jr. a little bit. Because you know, man. So now Kermit the Frog is is one way, but if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right And grab some swag now, you're Sammy Davis Jr. Committee Figure, because man, you know it's the same voice. You know? So that's That's sort of like the mechanical way of of getting to the impression. So you would start with not the visual, because obviously f those people who are listening can't see this, but The uh mannerisms are also very much on point.

1:03:46 Oh Like I I I do an a LeBron James impersonation, which is really not uh uh uh uh a uh A voice. It's more of his mannerism. This the jaw. No, it's the look. Let's go, Ro. You know just go, Ro, you know the game of basketball, you know, we just try to you know you know, it's that.

1:04:04 You know. No, it's right it's right after it's right after playing. You know, when it comes off the off the the court, they're catching me still tired. You know, uh you know, the game of basketball we just try to you know, do the best you know, so it's the the mannerism. So people will appreciate the mannerisms for the physicality of the physicality of of someone like uh Uh uh LeBron or you know Different. You know, like I said, different different personalities bring about bring about different things. When you look back on what uh what Ray said to you If you can play the blues, you can do anything.

1:04:34 If you Had to Translate that for your own kids. Let's just say. If you can do X, fill in the blank, you can do anything. What would you put in that blank? I I would say this. It's a it's a couple of things when you have kids who grow

1:04:50 Up around Hollywood. If you can stay Motivated. And if you can Not do some things.

1:04:59 Not be jaded. Not be entitled. Not be spoiled. Not do drugs. not get into all the bad stuff because it's the you know, our kids live in a elevated space.

1:05:13 So what I try to do and and Ricardo sees this all t Ricardo sees this all the time, and so does Justine. We don't play around when it comes to discipline as well. Like when the kids are here and all of our friends Size of the house means nothing.

1:05:29 to if you don't do the right thing. you're gonna get in major trouble and you're gonna get in Texas trouble. You know what I'm saying? Like how my grandmother disciplined. So it's a it's a it's a it's a different thing when it comes to kids that are live in a privileged situation. Luckily my daughters are very, very

1:05:48 Uh, especially my oldest daughter. My oldest are never even asked me for money. Never asked for the new car. Never asked for a plane to ride coach. I mean, you know, so I think she really, really has Uh

1:06:02 a great head on her shoulders. I remember I got this Rolls Royce. And I went to go pick my daughter up in the Rose Royce, thinking that's gonna be you know Pick her up in the Rose Royce. Drop the top. Try it! What up, da.

1:06:15 So I'm riding, go to pick her up at school. She won't get in the car. I said, baby, what would you do? Look at the top. It comes up. She says, Dad, I'm not getting a car. Calls her mind and said, could you come pick me pick me up? So what you doing? I'm not getting you you goofy. You made me you make me look stupid in front of my friends. I was like, Oh Yeah, she's really

1:06:33 And that's stuff that she has on his youngest daughter is a little different. She wants to ride in the rain in the Rolls Royce all the time. Daddy, let's take this car. We riding down Sunset Boulevard. She playing Rihanna. You know what I'm saying? With her shades on. So she's a little different in in in in that sense. And I remember telling her, I said, Well we'll well Annalise, we can't ride around in LA

1:06:55 in the in the limo in the in the Rose Royce with the top down. You know, we're on our way to the Soho House and it's sort of finicky up there. So I gotta at least put the top up. She's like Why? Just I said this, let me ride until I get to Soho House and then I'll put the top up. As we get there. Okay. So we ride up in the Soho House.

1:07:13 We're in the valet and all these, you know, celebs and people are coming out. And she yells out, Jamie Fox in the house. And I'm like, Hell no. So I'm trying to Pull the top down all the other celebrities. Look at this motherfucker being arrogant and shit. He's so gaudy. And he's got the kid.

1:07:32 Announcing them. So so you know, it's a lot of things you can tell your kids, man, and then and then you just have to hope for the best and and and be there. What uh What is your birthday? Eric Marlin Bishop. And how did Eric Marlin Bishop become

1:07:48 Jamie Fox. Man I was Eric Marlin Bishop. Graduated high school, eighty six. I get out to California and I start doing

1:07:59 You know, I'm I'm I'm in college in in in a um Doing the music. But I will go up. On these Open mic nights for comedy.

1:08:08 So I go I do really well. Did I g get like standing ovation. And then I I came to LA got a stand in ovation. And then when I came back every week I wouldn't get called up. I was like yeah what

1:08:19 Why can't What's going on? But what I noticed the how does the open mic work? What is it? What you do is you put your name on a list. Put your name on a list and they pick from the list and they say, Okay, these are people that are going up. So I went up and had a great set then for the next three, four weeks I didn't they never called my name. I said, Yo money, you see my name, Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You were on the list, but we we we got other people. But I found out that the comedians were actually running the list. So the comedians that had been here for a while was like we we don't want him on here'cause he's showing us up.

1:08:48 So I was like fuck. So I ended up going to this Evening at the improv. The improv like in Santa Monica.

1:08:58 And so I had never been there. So I wouldn't notice that a hundred guys would show up. Five girls would show up. The five girls will always get on the on the show because they needed to break up the monotony. So I said, hmm.

1:09:12 I got some. So I wrote down on the list all of these unisex names. Stacey Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Fox. And now the guy chooses from the list. He says, uh is uh Jamie Fox, is she here?

1:09:28 She'll be first. I was like, No money, that that's that's me. Uh. Oh okay. All right. Well you you're gonna you're the fresh meat. So what's that? They were shooting evening at the improv, this old sh old comedy show back in the day. See, you'll be the guy that will just throw up to see if you get a laugh or two. You know, it's gonna be a tough crowd.

1:09:45 Fresh meat. Fresh meat. I said, Cool. So I go up in between two of the guys get a standing ovation. People like who's the kid? Is he on the show? Fresh means. Am I sure. So then they started yelling my name, yo Jamie. Yo, Jamie.

1:10:01 Hey Jamie, but I'm not used to me So now they think I'm arrogant. This motherfucker thinks she's not even listening to us. So I I I took that name. And it's stuck. And then I started building everything uh off of it. I uh back in the day people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had Sly as a dot dot dot.

1:10:22 Uh Coming to the foxhole, foxhole, you know, things like that. I'm gonna grab a little something eat. Yeah, sure thing. Okay. We are back after a little food break. And uh We talked about

1:10:36 Some of your comedy starting third grade. Maybe earlier we talked about Uh grandmother. And What I'd like to talk about a little bit more is fear. So you mentioned on the other side of fear.

1:10:47 By the time you got to Doing the open mics. Getting up on stage. Were you nervous? Were you afraid or were you over it?

1:10:59 I went to Open Mike Night and saw the guys, I was like, Man, these dudes are terrible. And uh so when you go on stage And your whole life is not I wanna be a comedian. I went on stage like yo, I'm gonna just

1:11:14 Fuck around. So if I hit, cool. If I miss, I wasn't trying to be the anyway. You know, I wanted to do more music, but But when I went on stage it was just like it was it was just natural. It was a uh I you know, I I belong here. So I think that's the thing too, when it comes to entertainment. Uh there's a certain like oh I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do. How successful I've

1:11:39 that's something out of my hands, but I do know that this is where I belong. And that's with anything and anybody. Like when you can When you can sort of listen to that voice in your head, or what's in your heart. and you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do. That alleviates

1:11:57 A lot of the fear. surgeon or lawyer or something. You know, something you know, it's something that I'm not you know, versed in or something like that, then maybe there will be more You don't have w I don't have those types of fears. And and uh as I've gotten older in the business

1:12:15 I sort of simplify things. Like No. I just Execute.

1:12:21 I have to ask people like Ricardo, Justin Justin. What should I ask execute? So the fear of a celebrity or or or an artist now is how do I get my art off?

1:12:34 In a world where it's Uh uh the the s the social media driven Sort of uh Um

1:12:44 ridicule and critic criticism. Like I always say like this, like a person like Prince or person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world. Because in the in the day of the Internet and where everybody has a voice. Most of the voices are hateful voices. Or not understanding like like if you saw Prince with

1:13:05 Uh um A guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed. You know, people would meme the shit out of it. You know. So

1:13:14 Now it's a uh it's it's not a fear, but it's just a A question that I have to always ask them, like Yo, is this is this the cool shit to do or not the cool shit to do? So What I learned is when it's just executing something

1:13:28 when it's either executing a song or executing a joke or executing Things within the Within uh entertainment. It's cool. But then you have to wonder like How do you get it off? Like how do you Like even now when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke, back in the day we just tell the joke.

1:13:45 Now you gotta be like okay, I gotta tell the joke in a way that it's still funny, it still keeps the bite on it, but you know, so those are the Different like For Me as a uh entertainer.

1:13:59 Where there's not fear. It's just like, you know Questions. Does that make sense? Make sense. No, it does make sense. The considerations. When you when you uh Have you bombed on stage before? Oh yeah. Okay. When you are bombing, what is your internal dialogue or response and then second dialogue is boy you stink

1:14:21 Well you bombing. Uh I bomb and it it wasn't a lot. I only bombed like Twice.

1:14:30 Do you remember your first? Yeah, yeah. I I did this this show. For this guy named Lattimore. Old blue singer. I'm twenty one. What was his name? Lattimore. Lattimore. Sounds like Voldemort. Yeah, Lattimore. Lattimore.

1:14:43 So This guy saw me at this other club and say, Hey man, you know Lattermore's performing around the corner, man, what you gonna open them up Whatever. I said, How much you pay? He said, fifty dollars. I said, I'm there. Fifty bucks. I need it. So this is like N eighty nine, ninety.

1:14:57 So I get there. And I don't know who Lattimore is, I just know it's a lot of older people. Like I mean like oh I'm like oh shit Where the people that these other people.

1:15:09 So I'll go up. And the setting was different. It was like the chairs and stuff were way in the it was like a boop banquet setting. And it's in the middle of the hood, you know, Crenshaw. And like the tables were like from here to where like twenty feet away. thirty feet away from me, so I don't have that

1:15:25 And I Oh you didn't have that proxy. And I hadn't been doing stand up comedy that long. I've only been doing it for like a year. So I had If I'm funny, I got an hour. If I'm not funny, it's about ten minutes worth of shit,'cause I would just take a joke and just keep Spinning it, spinning it. So

1:15:41 First joke they didn't get, second joke they didn't get. I said shit, I'm damn all the jokes. So I said, Well let me do this before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar. Like oh shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly cotta, but before I could say that, I looked around Everybody has a butterfly collar. This is what they really want to look like. And so uh

1:16:10 I just said, Hey man, I you know, I don't know what else y'all want. And uh Pretty soon Latimore's gonna come up. You guys ready for Lattermore and I just so do not say I'm gonna take a break. So I get off stage.

1:16:24 And the dude that was Washing the dishes. Takes his apron off and goes, Man, I got it. As a mic. I have you.

1:16:32 And he started doing these old stock jokes. Kills. And so I said, Okay. Now I know what it is. You gotta have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned on how to tell jokes for everybody because at first my jokes was geared towards women, it was singing and so what I started doing from that from that day on, I would go to like Des Moines Io. Davenport, Iowa.

1:16:57 Boys of Idaho. Where it's all white, Gunners in Colorado. Oh white. And I would go do like forty minutes of all black material. To see what they

1:17:09 understood what they didn't understand. So if I go to these all white places, if they understood fifteen minutes I log that fifteen minutes. I can go to any place where it's just all white. And and you would have to do it. Or I would ask, y'all know who this is? Uh and so I would tell the joke. If fifteen minutes they understood it, I can go to any place in the world.

1:17:33 Then I will go to my chocolate city, Chicago, D C Oh Florida. And do all of my Uh political highbrow. Stuff. And see what the see w see what the black folks understood. Man, what the fuck you talking about, dog?

1:17:46 Now they understood fifteen minutes. Now I got fifteen to thirty minutes to forty five minutes, that wherever I go. No matter what age They'll understand no matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand this forty five minutes. So I had to learn how to Use the formula.

1:18:04 In order for you to be Funny. And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people In the highest way. Like in the like if you look at uh Like if you look at the arc of a Kevin Hart.

1:18:19 Like Kevin Hart. Takes that art. Takes the same formula. I'm not for sure how he put it in his in his in his mind, but he's doing the same thing to where he's going to all of these places. All over the world. Implementing his comedy.

1:18:34 And if they get it. He's he's gathering all that so that now When people see Kevin Hart no matter where in the world They're gonna laugh. You know, so it's the th the you know, p becoming a great comedian is also having a

1:18:49 formula going on in your head because if you If you paint yourself into a corner like you're only the black comedian or you're only the Hispanic comedian, whatever that is, then It's hard for you to become universal. I mean Eddie was Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity through Saturday Night Live to get it to everybody.

1:19:06 But uh uh it's definitely a a formula to not bomb it. So What would you say to yourself so that was the first bomb. You mentioned two. Yeah. What was the second? Second one if it if it's too if it's hard to recall the the

1:19:20 The follow up question is gonna be What is the Post game analysis when you step off the stage after bombing So the second time. Well, you gotta when I'm bombed the second time was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes. But I don't like to work out jokes.

1:19:36 And tell people I'm working out. I like to actually do a show. Come and do the show. Right. So you don't tell people you're working on the

1:19:45 I think I think that's cheating and I think you you get bad habits. So I I do a show in Irvine, California. First show I killed. It was just ready for him. I'm like, oh man, everything works. Second show. Bomb. Because

1:20:01 I didn't take time to dig out the jokes and then So but when you bomb you go like okay, all right, let's go, let's check it out. So I got a team of my my guys, I say, Let's go. Okay, that didn't work. No, you gotta put this in front of that. You gotta put that behind this'cause that's gonna kick this off. People didn't know what that was, so maybe we don't say that. So you know, you have to You when you take the bond when you take the L It's not like you're not funny.

1:20:24 What's the L? Like you take the loss. Oh, okay. When you take the loss, it's not like you're not funny. It's just like, okay, you just didn't put the shit together. So that's the other thing, too. When you do become funny, It's gonna be harder now. To make people laugh. Because you set the bar.

1:20:39 So watch this. The hardest part For Chris Rock. Was after He had done something great.

1:20:50 And stand up. Because now You gotta top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy. 'Cause he wants to come out and do stand up is how do I top

1:21:01 That In your head. The hardest part is coming. for Kevin Hart in the fact that You s you smashed'em.

1:21:10 Now You gotta you gotta You know what I'm saying? You gotta know how to you you gotta know how to refresh. Because When you do something like I I would look at my stuff and go like I gotta quit doing that. Because that shtick that I'm doing, people are catching on.

1:21:27 And they're like, Okay, motherfucker, we've not already seen that shit So that that's the other thing. You gotta have great material. And you gotta have you gotta know You gotta know how to move. Cause like right now is the perfect time for Eddie Murphy to come out and do stand up. Because it's been so long. It's nostalgic. It was thirty years ago. So now you can catch a new young

1:21:47 Uh, you can still excite the older, you know saying so being a stand up comedian is tough. And you've seen a lot of funny guys not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at the Jim Carrey, you go like okay, man, where you at? Where you at? You know what I'm saying? You know? D don't give up the funny. Uh, Oh, you look at Chris, I always look at Chris Tuck and be like, motherfucker, where you at?

1:22:07 Don't don't leave don't leave us. Because Being a stand up comedian is an interesting thing. Most stand-up comedians want to look good. In what way? We just wanna look good. Think about this, when Eddie Murphy started doing stand up

1:22:22 He was funny. But then he started doing, you know, the wear the leather suits and it was the fly shit and the rings and They don't want to look good. Joe Piscopo. Started working out. But the muscles. You know what I'm saying?

1:22:34 So As a standard comedian, we gotta be careful. Not to look too good. Because people start going, What the fuck are you doing? You ain't cute, nigga. We just wanna laugh. You know what I'm saying? But when we started, you know

1:22:47 We start getting into our shit, that's when we look'cause I did that. Like Like I got to uh my thing was it After and live in color. The show Call to Live and Color that it did. I I felt like I had made it.

1:23:01 So I wasn't necessarily on the good looking ship but I was on the I've made it jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes. Just got that range rover. Anybody else?

1:23:11 It's crazy out here. You know, they're so finicky, right? Motherfuckers are looking at me like, what the fuck is you talking about? And then uh I was talking about you know the square footage of the house, man, when they get a certain square feet, man, that shit is crazy and maintaining, you know Motherfuckers is like motherfucker if you don't get off the goddamn stage, I'd lost it. Right. I lost it and I walked off stage and all of a sudden Th I I walk upstairs, they'll give it up for Jamie Fox, and I'm thinking they're going crazy. Yeah, yeah. Oh thank you. Thank you so much.

1:23:37 And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy. I'm like, what the fuck they doing? I just went on stage. What the fuck are they laughing at? And I opened the door and there was a kid. Skinny. Little tank top on, barely fit. His name was Chris Tucker.

1:23:52 He was m smashing. He was No one has been that funny within fifteen minutes. I've never seen I've never seen and I watch'em all. I've never seen a stand up.

1:24:05 What people were laughing so hard, like I said he's gonna kill somebody. Like when he says last night, how was your I killed it's gonna be true, somebody gonna have a fucking heart attack. And I sat down and said and I went, I can't do that. I lost that. So I left, went to another club that night, bomb. Like it wasn't just you know So finally I went over to Okinawa where the troops were. I started doing stand up over there for the troops to sort of get back. It was my rocky moment, like you know, I started running up the steps chasing chickens and shit. Trying to get back.

1:24:38 And uh uh for a stand up comedian that's the one thing you can never let go. You can never stop being Excuse me. A certain goofiness to you. And so and like when you talk about fear or when you talk about bombing It's uh uh It's different when you when you when you've done it for a long time.

1:24:54 You know, and when you do bomb. You just gotta get right back up in it. And you gotta acknowledge it. Okay, I stunk, nigga. Like today's world, it ain't you can't do nothing in today's world without somebody letting you know nigga, you fucked that up. Yeah. What are the sources or where do most of your best bits come from? When you look back at the stuff that just Killed. Is it

1:25:19 It must be shower, the the thing that bugs you three times, so you write it down. I mean w how do you develop your materials? Observation. And like you know, I do jokes with them, you know, it's just sort of like observation. Uh You know, early on it was the black and white thing, you know, black folks do it this way, white folks do it, which was the way we were doing comedy in in in the eigh late eighties and nineties. Oh, the average white man's heart. It has it no, it has to do with the heart. The average white man's heart beats like this. Well, the average black man's heart beats like this.

1:25:49 Ha ha You know, lady, that's why you have a choice. Would you rather make love to somebody like this? Or would you rather make love to something like this?

1:26:01 I mean that was the jokes, you know, at the time. So it was observational. And then it was personal. Like you do your observation first and then it was personal. My grandmother Who was uh um

1:26:13 You know, we live together, you know. And when she first heard like Uh on television, what age was. being old, she didn't know what it ac exactly meant. She just knew that it was bad, but she thought that since she's always on me anyway, then I'm gonna catch AIDS. But it was for the wrong reason. Like she would say, Boy, you don't

1:26:33 It's six in the morning. You gonna wake up, shit, half the day done gone. I said granted. What you mean is it's six? Shit, I'm not sleeping. Anybody sleep that long got to have AIDS. It's a great

1:26:45 I don't think that's No, I saw it on TV. You sleeping too long. You got A. I said, man, I don't think that's how they exactly what And then like I would use her towels like You know, you know old Southern women had them there was a towel used and it was a nice tile, so I used the nice tile. Yeah. Well, I know you ain't used my tiles. You're gonna put the A's on the tiles. You ain't used everybody's tiles. Anybody use a towel like that? Got to have A's. I said, Granny, I don't

1:27:11 You know, so it was opposite and then this was what she was actually saying. So when I did that joke on stage, people were just, you know would die. So it's observational, then it's personal. And then some of the comedians are great politically. I'm not necessarily a political guy. My thing was the impersonation of the politician, like Bill Clinton. Uh. You know uh

1:27:35 I did not have sex with that woman. Things like that. But uh It's so many different ways and so many different guys out there that you that that you look at and go, Ooh Like when I would look at a young Chris Robb. The way he was a technician, just me. Or you look at Jay Leno, or you look at Uh even Arsenio Hall when he would work out, or you see Eddie working out a joke.

1:28:00 Uh you know, it's they are or or watching George Lopez who knows how to And just really bring you into his world and stuff. So it's some It's some uh Some guys at Sarah Silverman.

1:28:14 Uh Just I mean a technician. Amy Schumer. Watching her on a just a Saturday night live when she's, you know, working her shit out. Uh a young Whoopi Goldberg at the Met.

1:28:27 There's so many people that you can watch and see how To How to f you know Tap into your own skill set. You know, but uh I try to look at all of them and try to just, you know, not steal from it, but just get inspired by it all. Who are some of the most underrated.

1:28:44 comedians who come to mind or people who you think d haven't had their do, haven't been appreciated. I wouldn't say underrated, but I I I think they were just they were just like warriors that never got that shine. Oh, there was a guy named T K Kirkland. Who was a warrior. But he never got to shine it. T K had a colorful past, you know. And he'll let you know he said, you know, he was he was a crazy motherfucker, but TK had jokes like And Juan Dunn's Curtis the Frog always say Hi ho, hi ho. Is he a pimp?

1:29:14 And what And why do fat people wear leather pants do they think that shit is cute? And why do people in wheelchairs tie their motherfucking shoes? Do they think they gonna trip? Oh man, it was just He was just amazing. And and his delivery, you know what I'm saying? He say uh

1:29:33 Uh he says. Cause I'm T to the motherfucking K. That's the type of motherfucker I am. Don't play me, play Lotto. You got a better chance. And he's he he played he He made he made he made himself a character on stage. Yeah.

1:29:49 That was just You know, you guys are too young f to to to know this joke, but the bugle boy jeans Bugle Boy Juniors used to have a commercial where a girl would Pull up in the car and says. Excuse me.

1:30:03 Oh those bugle boys she she would say this to a guy, like he's walking on the street with his jeans, he says Excuse me. Are those Beagle Boy jeans you're wearing? Why yes they are. She get in the car, man. TK had a joke, man, that was so funny, he said, Man, let man let that motherfucker be a motherfucking black girl in the motherfucking car. Excuse me. Are those bug boy jeans you're wearing? Yeah. Get in a car, motherfu I mean people would just go The dude has so many like levels. And uh

1:30:33 He just, you know, you he's he's a underground guy. Uh Who else? It was a lot I mean a lot of people. Earthquake.

1:30:45 Amazing. Uh uh Earthquake is amazing. Uh what's my other dude's name? Uh Tony Roberts. Amazing. Tony Robers, man, I've never laughed. So

1:30:56 He says uh he said uh Oh man, I I had to dig out some of his jokes. But he talks about uh It's very physical, but he talks about being on a plane and the plane is going down. And he says he says he was on a plane and he thought the plane was going down. So he says, So I wanted to fuck everybody before you know, I wanted to fuck before he says, So while the plane's going down he's fucking everybody, you know, he fucked the he fucked the uh he fucked the nun, he was fucking everybody and then the plane leveled off. Oh I'm sorry, y'all.

1:31:24 Just hilarious, man. And there's a there is there's so many, man. So many. Not a lot of new comedians now that are actually Uh that's funny, right? That are actually dangerous now. We don't have dangerous comedians. We don't have dangerous The dangerous comedian that we have right now is Amy Schumer. She's dangerous. In what way? Like like she she'll say it. Like It'll be hot button. You know what I mean? Have you uh have you ever heard uh

1:31:56 I saw this guy on a I actually heard of him through uh a guy named Evan Goldberg, who's Seth Rogan's writing partner. And uh and so Gerard Exactly, that was good. So Gerard Carmichael Oh yeah. His special. Oh my God. It's like I would never make a rape joke. This is more of a rape question. Oh my god. He's dangerous. Well he's dang and it's not a lot of that anymore. It's not a lot of dangerous comedians. And I think that's where we sort of go like You know, where's that danger? Like you when you when you when you see Amy Schumer, you see like I saw her in a room Talking about catching a dick. In front of the

1:32:35 Robert De Niro. Like we're at the American Uh film awards whatever like that. And she's just I mean Hardcore dance, which is what Cyrus Silverman started out as, you know. So but Amy looks like she's rounded the corner and is now, you know

1:32:51 Really making it. You know, making it dope for herself. W if you look back at uh in Living Color and I I watched the show and it just if in retrospect it seems like Such uh Such a magical combination of people.

1:33:07 So how did that group Get assembled. Uh Uh I mean what made that

1:33:15 Team. So special because I mean you look at the list, right? I mean you've got Chris Rock, you've got Jim Carrey, you've got the Wayne, you've got it just goes uh Jennifer Lopez, you've got like you go down the line. It's just it's an all star roster. Well at that time Keenan Ivy Wayne's was uh he he put it all together. And he was able to grab all of these incredibly talented people. And make them get along. And

1:33:41 figure out how to squeeze all of this talent into twenty two minutes of programming. Sure.'Cause it was only it was a thirty minute show, so it's twenty two minutes. But he was very disciplined in how we make jokes.

1:33:56 You were not allowed. To come in and be half assed. He pull you to the side and say As a black comedian. You cannot be half assed. You're either great.

1:34:07 Or you don't exist. So And he says, Don't take the racial part of that. Any kind of way, that's just the way it is. Because He wrote for Eddie Murphy. He was around the greatest. He says, I'm around the greatest all the time, so that's what we gonna do.

1:34:22 So when you see Damon Wins come in. And I just got hired, like they had already been doing the show for like a year or two years. So when I saw Damon walk in and Jim walk in, it was like It was like fucking Jurassic Park. It was like fucking T Rex and fucking

1:34:42 And the way I got on the show was was crazy too because it went From the auditioning process, it was a hundred comedians. Down to fifty. Down to twenty five. Down to ten.

1:34:53 Down to five. I was part of the five, but I was losing. I wasn't doing well within the uh improv of it. Because I just wasn't catching Catching the right shit. And then Keenan says something incredible. He says, Well, I dig this, but I want to see y'all on stage doing stand up because I want to have stand up comedians. I was like, Oh shit, that's my shit, that's my shit. And the other four people

1:35:14 Didn't do stand up. It was only one other girl that did stand up. God bless her, Evette Wilson. But the other three didn't do stand up. So I was like, Oh man. So that night. Everybody's going to the Laugh Acty which was just starting.'Cause at the at that time the comedy store was dominating. Laughter was just and and they begged can we please have the audition in the Laugh Act. So I show up late on purpose. Because I wanted to be last. Uh smart. So I show up late and tomorrow while we

1:35:41 Oh, who was the producer on that? What are you doing? You're late. Oh my God. Why aren't you here? We're supposed to go on up early. You're supposed to be first, Jamie. Oh my God, you're gonna kill me. I said, Oh damn, well we're gonna can I can I just go up last yes, you have to. But. So go ahead. Now this was interesting for me because I was in White World. I was like on the mainstream. I did all my jokes in the hood at that time. You know what I'm saying? I was the hood guy. So I was like, oh shit, you know.

1:36:14 Uptown, you know what I'm saying? It's like everything's clean and shit, you know, ain't no weed in the air or nothing, you know what I'm saying? Ain't nobody s snuck no drinks in and shit. And it's an audition thing. So I'm watching the the guys, and you know, God bless them. They they just had never done stand up before. So I had my cassette tape, but I knew what I was coming up to. I'm coming up to heavy decent effect with my bounce to the ounce. So I give the dude my tape. He's like, What's this? That's my tape. Uh you gotta go on with music. You know, up there they didn't go on with music. They just went over hand clap. I said no man, I gotta I gotta come in with heavy decent effect. With more bounce to the bumps. I need the crowd going.

1:36:49 Okay, sure. So he's standing there with the tape. And then Sean Wayans gave me a great tip. He he walked up, he said, Yo, Jamie, just go up and do your act, man. Just stop worrying about don't don't worry about the characters. Just do your act. Yo, Marlin, Marlin, come here, tell Jamie, just do your act. I was like, Oh, really? Just do my act? Do my act like I do in the hood? Yeah, do you act like you're doing in the hood. I said straight. Cool. So I go up They don't play the music.

1:37:12 I'm waiting on them, like oh you got my music to do is over there. I said, Well, I'm supposed to have some music. And I said, If s if this shit goes wrong, you will actually see me working across the street at the gas station. And I went into a character. Man, I was in there with Keenan and all of them, dog. And it just isn't. So I did this little character and then I went into my act. And uh I gotta stay innovation at night.

1:37:37 And I remember seeing Jim Carrey. King. Fly girls like on their feet. Oh man, this is great. And that's how I got on the show. And during that show I did this character called Wanda where I said all the good looking ladies clap your hands.

1:37:56 I said now all the ugly ladies, let me see you can make some noise. It's quiet. I say ain't that a bitch and all the ugly days I thought Hey, for real though, he ain't talking about me. So we did this character. Keenan was like I want you to do that character on the show'cause I think that's where you'll

1:38:11 you'll uh you'll really b uh flourish. And when we did that sh when I did that character, that's when everything sort of changed because I was trying to find my bearings on the show because we got on the show. But we were there for a trial basis. But when I did that character, it was like it was like it was like playing football and I was like the punt returner and I was the rookie and I ran it all the way back the first day.

1:38:33 Uh so nobody really knew who I was, but they knew that this character was was was was slamming. And so they sort of gave me like my stripes because Uh these guys were jugging us. I watched I watched Keenan. I said Keenan, these jokes ain't funny, that the writes that the the writers wrote. He says get on your feet. Everybody get up. Let's do this. So he was like, There's never a joke that's not funny. You just gotta work and find it.

1:38:55 So he taught us the formula of finding the jokes and he was right every single time. And so uh Like I said, to be there watching Jim Carrey. Like create pet detective onset.

1:39:08 He's writing pet detective as a way. I said, What's that you write on? Hey man, just uh, you know. Working on some stuff. You know, just got some stuff I'm working on. So what is that? Pet detective. I said, Sound funny. And was he developing it for the show at that time or for much later? Well. I gotta make one phone.

1:39:26 No problem. Alright, so we're we're back. We took a little took a little breather. But uh Catch us up. What were we just talking about? We're talking about how nowadays is that you don't get a chance to control your own narrative.

1:39:38 Like we were talking about is there's two different people. Some people think that the tech world and the and social media and things on the internet has taken us to a great place. And then there's people who think that it's a horrible place. I had I spoke with a um A young lady who had been burned bad. Bad by the press. Bad to where she lost her job.

1:39:59 And what was interesting about her job was that what they were scolding her about was Like me knowing her, I was like You're not like that at all. I can't. Nanak do Everybody thinks so.

1:40:12 And they took Something like they went through emails and Through our personal emails and all of something else. So what it was. But it was just like You're not like that at all. So when I was on the phone talking about it, she was like, They're saying this and Ah, don't worry about it. You're you're cool. Like you're not like that. I don't give a fuck. But I hadn't

1:40:30 I'm bowling. I'm like I don't I don't even have I don't even need to read it. What could they possibly say? And when I look, it was a national story. I went. What the fuck? She lost her job. Yeah. And so like even Like you'll do something where you think that it's

1:40:46 Either you're making fun or you're having fun. Yeah. But they'll take whatever it is that you say. And make it what they want it to say. Yeah. Or craft it where like if you do a joke, it's not about being a joke anymore. Jamie Fox slams Caitlin Jenner

1:41:03 Jamie Fox trounces like No, I'm a comedian. We Do do but everything is something that they control. Yeah, and it's It it's tough because

1:41:15 When I say Justin Bieber, what do you think? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Be honest. Yeah. But what do you think? But what do you think? Something about a kid who's can't get it together. When I say Chris Brown, what do you think? It's something negative. When I say Jennifer Anderson, what do you think? What do you think of cover of Rolling Stone photograph black and white?

1:41:34 You think what? Cover of Rolling Stone magazine, black and white naked, laying on a bed. That's hilarious. What the average person would think of not what they do. Right, but the impression at the subliminal image they got at the checkout counter. Yeah, it's not it's the headline. If I say if I say Jennifer Anderson, you automatically because Nowadays they control we don't control our own narrative to where it's like

1:42:03 Which I thought was sad. Because Usually When you see a a a a a story about black lives matter or anything black, it's usually the same black folks with the koofy who's trying to be heard. And they're absolutely right. They're absolutely

1:42:22 It's so much wrong on in black world. There's black on black crime, then there's the the the divide that is because of social media. But uh that is going on between the police officers and black folk Police officers are On the whole

1:42:40 A great folk. I know'em. I got I should I know a gang of police officers, but the one or two that have been caught on social media. Makes it look Paint the picture. That it's all of Now granted, we've known for a long time.

1:42:54 That Blacks and police officers have always had a divide. We've done music. We've done movies about it. We've done books about it. It just is the way it is. Now my take on it.

1:43:05 Is because I call it Residue. It's slave residue. Meaning that slavery for three hundred years, you saw a person of of color a certain way for three hundred years. You've always saw him as a slave or the criminal or what something that you didn't value. So therefore coming out of that

1:43:23 Of course, there's gonna be a divide when it comes to police. And when it comes to blacks and when it comes to that's always been that way. So Take that off the table. But in today's world of how do we Bridge that gap.

1:43:38 I've gone to Quantico in Virginia, saw what it what a police officer sees, I've talked to police officers that how can we bridge the gap? I've suggested that you go get a white police officer who you think might not like black folk. You know what I'm saying? Get that person to go into the hood. And throw a picnic. for a kid that's eight, nine, ten y years old who's African American, so that he can see another Another side. Another side.

1:44:05 Of the police officers because right now social media. Or immediate period. the stories that are the most salacious where it's the the the black person the the black cop being k the black guy being killed by a cop. It's hard to erase those images. I'm a black man. When I see that, I have to react to that. Because I'm like wow.

1:44:25 You know, I that that troubles me, but then I have to sit down and think. Okay. Let me not think of the worst thing to say. But let me think because I know how media s tries to Make things

1:44:38 Or heighten it. Right. How do I bring The headline. What people don't understand is that when you keep showing the images

1:44:50 Of the black guy being killed by the By the cop. That does something to you. Oh yeah. That's like whatever you believe in, if it if it was a Jewish person, if it was a gay person, you cannot sit and not be bothered by that. At the same time, that cop when he sees

1:45:06 The other side of it. When it's saying All you guys ain't shit. Which that's not what's really being said. Most of the time it's

1:45:15 with the individual cop. Now the cop sees the sword. In his mind now, well fuck it. Well it's a problem now. So now imagine that cop who's watching the story. Driving on the street. That young black kid.

1:45:29 Who's watching the story? Walking on the street. What happens? Dynamite. Because we can't get it we can't we can't get anybody responsible. On the media side.

1:45:41 Let's stop. Interviewing people and putting labels on them. Let's interview this man and this woman, but don't say that they're Democrat. Don't say that they're

1:45:51 Republican, don't say that they're a cop. Just have them talk. Because when you see it When you're watching TV and you see something that you agree with, you agree with them only, and you can't hear the other person. That's the first thing. Two Like when I look at Quentin Tarantino. To demonize this guy.

1:46:08 Can in just because people might be listening to this for years, could you catch people up on the confusion. Quentin Tarantino Who Is up. Purist. When it comes to

1:46:22 His opinions and his emotions. Even if Even if You could go I could go to Quentin Tarantino and say something, man, I think you know as a black person and so on, so and so and so. He say, Well Ca d stop doing that. Stop hanging it just on black.

1:46:35 Hanging on things that are substance. First, And then let it be h I mean so I've I've heard this guy speak When there's no cameras, I said, Wow, you know what? You make a lot of sense. So Quentin Tarantino Uh

1:46:47 Sees the Black Lives Matter campaign. A police officer Head Killed the person who was unarmed.

1:47:01 It touched it. The reason I thought that was an impactful because You seldom see The White superstar.

1:47:11 Go and stand. With the black folk. who just trying to be heard. Even high end black guys. Don't go stand with the black folks that's trying to be heard.

1:47:24 when it comes to like especially Hollywood,'cause you know, people in Hollywood are so scared of oh they won't see my movie or they won't go see my song if I stand if I stand up for anything of substance. So when I saw this dude do that, I was like, wow, that's great. But then the misinterpretation of his words where he says I'm standing here with the murdered.

1:47:46 Quentin Tarantino speaks that way. He speaks. If you've read any of his bo uh movie or saw any of his movies, he speaks in those terms. He says, I stand with the murder. When I see someone being murdered, I call it what it is. It's a murder. Though that's a murderer that killed this This person.

1:48:06 However the story got spun was that Quentin Tarantino is a cop hater. He hates all cops, and all cops are murderers. And I was just like, oh, here we go again, man. Here's a person who's willing

1:48:22 And I'm gonna speak like willing to put aside his white cushy Hollywoodness. He could live on in his on his mountain. And never give a shit about anything. He came and said, Man, I felt something.

1:48:37 And now They paint it so bad. And now you got the you got the New York cop. So we got so for his ass. Now it's a beef. Now it's That's not what we we trying to do, but you can't Do anything right now.

1:48:52 Because The media story if it's Not salacious. We don't want to report it. We we have to do it. No, I do. And it's it's it I mean they if it bleeds it leads, right? So they put the salacious the the visually viscerally impactful stuff up front because it gets the clicks or the purchases that exceed the advertising.

1:49:15 The only I suppose flip side to that And I have a very specific question for you that uh uh from a fan I'd love to ask related to um some some of these race questions, but The good news is If you can look at it in these terms, is that The necessity for new is so high.

1:49:31 That if you starve a story of oxygen It'll often die on its own. Yeah. Because they can't regurgitate the same thing if there's no response. Exactly. And so you you can let it kind of die on the vine. Uh but

1:49:44 Um we were talking about this before. I mean I've had instances and I won't bitch and moan too long because I think the question is more interesting than my bitching, but I've had instances where these these formerly I would say Outlets of record, you know, very prestigious outlets. Uh magazines. I'm not gonna mention them by name because it's but I was interviewed and profiled by a magazine at one point, very, very highbrow magazine. Uh there were six or seven misquotes. or uh erroneous facts in the piece and I corrected those with the fact checker and went to press with no corrections. What do you do in that situation when those things then end up in Wikipedia. So you have to develop a sort of um strategy and I mean this will get even more interesting.

1:50:25 Once we have, you know, smart stadiums, once we have uh facial recognition like you see on Facebook, once that's implemented across the board, it'll get very interesting. But I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole and instead I'm going to uh bring up a question that I'd love to get. Well before you go into that's the problem. Back in the day. If there was a misquote. And you went to that entity and said, Hey, you you quoted me wrong. Oh.

1:50:53 We'll release a statement. Saying that we misquoted you. And it erases. The problem with today's world Once it's out there, you can't get it back. Yeah. You cannot change. Yeah.

1:51:05 Because it's gonna stay there. Yeah. When I punch up your name. That's the first thing that's gonna come up. Or the second thing that's coming up. You can't get rid of it. And when you talk about the regurgitating or the uh uh or the uh uh or or Just letting it die. You could let it die, but the problem is

1:51:22 You have to at least Once it starts give another hopefully that you can give another side of it that people may see a little bit. Sure. They don't wanna see it what's crazy about our society right now, no one wants to see anybody reconcile. No one wants to see anybody can't come together or say that

1:51:42 Like when I when I think about Quentin Tarantino, I spoke and said I back you as a friend and skeep keep speaking the truth and don't worry about the haters. Meaning Speak the truth from you. Not whatever the comment was. But whatever you're saying in your truth, you say that because you ain't out there

1:52:03 You could be promoting your movie. Mm-hmm. You could be trying to make money. You actually trying to see how you could get how you could go. I know the way he thinks. I'm gonna go talk to them. If they are wrong in what they're saying, I'm gonna tell them. But if they all right, he says I I'll be the one that can go to the cops and say that and now

1:52:22 Look look at how it is. It it's so quite go ahead. I think you're right. People want gladiatorial games. And we don't have gladiatorial games, so they use the front page for gladiatorial games. But But speaking of sort of conflict resolution, so this is this is a question from uh fan TJ, my wife is pregnant and we're moving to a very non diverse neighborhood. We are kind of worried on how it will go. She is black and I am white. What is some advice he can give to a young couple raising a child of color in today's world? I'll say this. I'll say the I I'll I'll say this about America.

1:52:55 Let's use America as an example. To me America is the most incredible civilization. That has ever been created. Hundreds of years from now people will look on this look at this place.

1:53:08 And marble. There's the bitch and the complain. I don't Where everybody bitches complains about every single thing. But the one thing about America that is incredible is

1:53:20 The evolution of freedom. The change. When I talk about slavery that happened, it was three hundred years of it, look at the evolution. We come out of it. We have a black president.

1:53:33 People. Or more welcoming now. Oh We used to live in a world not too long ago where

1:53:44 It was frowned upon, it was tough, it was this. What I would say to people like that, just live your life. Like I live my life in places where At p at times it was definitely racial misunderstanding. But I would talk to that person.

1:53:58 I would make sure that person understood who I was as a person. I'm not gonna compromise who I am as far as a black man. But I'm also gonna give you another Another version of it. Not the version that you necessarily see on television, the version that you see on the internet. I'm gonna give you me. And most of the time

1:54:15 We are alike in so many different in so many uh instances. So when he's saying moving to that non diverse place It's different, man. Look at the look at the I hate to say this, but listen to the kids, bro. But when you talk about the kids, the kids today. I I I'm I'm at the gym last night, twenty four hour fitness. Kid is playing Future. Why it?

1:54:39 Where your ass is that when I white kid. When I first moved into my neighborhood years ago And I felt like I made him I'm in the white neighborhood now. I'm here. Oh, I'm so I've made it.

1:54:50 And I hear NWA blasting. Look out there with these kids that was sixteen years old. So times are changing, man. And You have to start giving people the benefit of the doubt that they'll get it right. And for all those people that were here back in the old days and that are are now fifty and sixty and seventy years old.

1:55:08 That's dying out. the way of thinking is dying out. You may be looking at a uh situation where you may have the first female president. It's the evolution of uh of it's the evolution of freedom. Think about how we treated women at one point. No voice, no rights, no nothing. I've heard people say, I'd rather have a black person tell me something to do than a woman anything. But now it's So we are On the right path, man. Love who you wanna love, be where you wanna be, because we are evolving.

1:55:41 Man, that that was that's huge when you when you talking about people in the Bible belt and the you know how they felt. So if If those things are now Like my my daughter taught me like when she was thirteen. She's twenty one now. She was thirteen and it was this was this was nine years ago and it was talking about gay rights and things like that and And And I asked her friends, I said, What do you think about it? She don't think about it.

1:56:07 I said that's that's you guys. That's a good answer. She said that's you guys. She said that's old people. She said, That's why we're turned off from religion sometimes. That's why we're turned off from all of these different things'cause old people argue about where you from, what you do, what you look like. We don't give a shit. And so Thank God for the youth.

1:56:26 Thank God for that couple. Because what they're doing is they're showing the new world. And she said, Dad, if someone was doing something somewhere that was straight, gay, black, white, or brown somewhere else, does it affect you at all? Does your air change? Does anything around you change because the people are living the way they wanna live as long as they're not breaking the laws like you know what, you make great points. She went on to my radio show and talked about it. So Oh we are in a new day. What we gotta do though is

1:56:54 We gotta stop. I said, like like I was telling Justine, I said, we gotta make sure it's to say, let's put let's put media out of business. We gotta quit allowing them to control the narrative. Those people like with with with Quentin Tarantino or the Black Lives Matter or or people that speak up on something that is broken or that is wrong. You don't give them a chance. by painting them in a in a bad situation.

1:57:20 Are you gonna do another comedy tour? Yes, I'm gonna do another comedy tour, but my I'm gonna start it organically, like uh Maybe a hundred people, two hundred people. Start it organically and just sort of grow it. Uh, I got some great jokes. And that's the thing, like when you when you're uh when you're when you're a comedian it's like you have to pray that the jokes will open up.

1:57:39 So I got some great like jokes that people will get and understand. And then just the stuff that's been going on with me, you know. uh you know, getting older, you know uh not realizing you the OG, you know what I'm saying, like you know the young Like the young hip hop guy. What's up, OG? Yeah, that's right. You know? I mean just just Just

1:58:01 It's just some funny stuff. It's it's some funny stuff that's uh and and that's what any comedian would tell you that it's hard to be funny when there's nothing funny happening. But there's been so much funny shit happening. Uh, for like my mom who you know adopted and who d who gave me up for adoption in seven months and she comes back to live with me and as she's living with me, she walks down the first day she's here, she walks down uh the steps and says, I want a phantom. I'm like, uh bitch of the opera? What are you talking about? She's talking about a phantom uh Rolls Royce, right? And it was just funny that j just certain things that The fact that everybody lives in my house. The fact that my mom, my dad lives here, my two sisters, my dad still dates. You know, and my mom is going on his side of the house when she when he has a date.

1:58:47 You know, just assessing, like just being in a way like Mm oh hey, hi, I didn't know you had company, George. I mean just And then they've turned they've turned in the kids. So you know my dad to come to my room, uh uh uh uh uh uh uh could you tell her not to come on my side of the house when I got a date? And I'm like, Now parents. So you know it's funny things are happening. Yeah, so it's organic now. So we got funny. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind? And why?

1:59:15 On the bigger picture. Because I witnessed this in two thousand eight. To si President Obama. Become president to me. Two thousand eight.

1:59:30 Not talking about after he became president, because everyone will have their views on on that. I know what it meant to me. To see him. Stand up there. Put his hand on that Bible and say, you know. And become the president of the United States.

1:59:46 That is success in so many different ways. And it also It jars you. For every person that says, Oh man, just'cause I'm black, I'm just Maybe you can't use that all the time? 'Cause this man now

2:00:02 Shows you. And what Every side you end up on,'cause it's not a political thing. To see that. And the reason that it means so much to me to see an African American man like do that. Like and literally when uh when when when he was this was interesting and this is how we connect it. When he was thirty points down for the nomination.

2:00:23 Thirty points down. No one knew who he was. I get a call from Oprah Winfrey. Hi Jamie Fox. It's Oprah. Hi, Jimmy. I was like, what's going on? There's this guy named Senator Obama. I think he's gonna be the next president. Then I got a call from Norman Lib. Jamie, it's Norman Lynn. S The Senate's on fire.

2:00:41 So who is he? Senator Obama. But he's thirty points down. So no one knows. The reason they're calling me is because we have a radio show that was reaching everybody, especially the the huge urban market. So I go on my show and I say, uh I'm voting for this guy named Senator Obama because he's black and I go to commercial. When I go to commercial, my phone lines light up. We're all black people saying that we will not vote for this guy just because he's black. Don't treat us that way.

2:01:09 So we ended up educating everybody about him. He gets the nomination and he goes on and he wins. And to me, it was all odds against him. And I thought That that That type of success. Regardless of where you come from, like I said, whatever side you stand on, to me, that was something monumental. When we talk about where this country has come from, when you talk about the greatness of America evolving.

2:01:36 And evolving to that type of freedom and him taking advantage of being in America and becoming um Uh a president to me that's just success. That uh he redefined what it is. What historical figure do you most identify with?

2:01:54 Who do I diff Five with historically. Uh when it comes to entertainment, Sammy Davis Junior. is a person that I look at all the time who I go on the internet and watch him play the drums, or watch him sing, or watch him dance, or watch him uh do jokes, or watch him do a movie, or watch him spin guns, to me he was just the ultimate uh In a in a

2:02:14 Yeah, full stack entertainer, as one engineer said. That's what they that's what he called you. Oh man, that's great. And then there's there's other s sides of me too. So like the the sports side Like I was a Magic Johnson. Like you know, the person who was who loved being competitive but also want to get everybody else involved and you know, the way he played. Basketball.

2:02:39 When it comes to social consciousness. May I interject for a second? Yeah. So This might seem like a funny question, but do you feel like you identify more with Magic Johnson than Karim Abdul Jabbar? Yeah.

2:02:51 The reason I feel m more than Kareem Abdujabbar is because Magic smiled and it was fun, he was happy, you know. Not to say that Kareem wasn't, but Kareem was more serious guy, you know. If you ever met him, he's Completely serious. I'm more the fun dude. You know, when it comes to social consciousness and social issues, that's where I I I draw from a lot of different people. I think going I I think watching Martin Luther King And going to Atlanta and seeing

2:03:22 What he did and how he did it, when he did it. When I look at The bravery Of him? It's beyond'cause I I I look at social issues today, how

2:03:34 we're so afraid to step out on anything like oh oh my my car is in my My wealth and my money are And and not to say that I've thought this way all my life. Like literally, like it just happened not too long ago where I was like We gotta sp sp we gotta s step up more more socially. We gotta be on social kind. Even if it even if some of the people say, Oh fuck it, I ain't gonna your to your movie Okay, fine, you weren't gonna go anyway. But we have to step up a little bit more social social wise and when I

2:04:02 went to see where Martin Luther King came from and what he did and how his house was he actually came from middle class, big nice house, but it was right across the street from poor from poverty. And it's sort of Taught him how to deal with other cultures, taught him how to deal with other uh uh financial groups. He says I don't want to see people hurting. He says I want everybody. You know, so I I I think like that. I've always thought like Uh, even when we talked about earlier the Jews and the Palestinians in the uh in the student center, you know, the rest of the story was I befriended both of them. And we all became friends because I call myself sp Spackle, which is the stuff that goes in between the bricks. Yeah. I'm I'm Spackle.

2:04:41 I get along with all religions, get along with all people and try to bring'em all together. And so that was the so when I think about it socially, it is the Martin Luther King thing because I think sometimes we overlook that the world is big enough for all of us to live on it. It's big enough for all of us to to to get along. And uh Sometimes I I I question

2:05:01 Why is it so tough to get along? You know, which is what Martin Luther King question says I just don't I don't get it. And I and I won't stand by so A little and like I said, I've only thought about like that, you know, here in the past few years after watching Harry Belafonte go on stage before I was supposed to get a lifetime achievement award and he goes on and says something so prolific, he says

2:05:23 Uh They were talking about violence and he said the the violence that's happening in America is mostly black violence and you black entertainers. Sit here mute. And we laid all of this groundwork down for you guys and you guys are disrespecting and and not picking up so You know, uh that's the one reason I said I think more socially.

2:05:44 I mentioned Karino Dul Jabar because I saw just by chance a fantastic documentary uh called Minority of One. Ah and it's so good. And it detailed in particular and I'm not I'm not at all well versed with basketball. So it was also a glimpse into that world for me. But his relationship with Magic Johnson, which was fascinating. Do you have any particular favorite documentaries or movies that you just feel are Must watches for human beings.

2:06:10 That's a big question. That's that's why. I think documentaries On Cultures are important. If you get a chance to see a doc any documentary about

2:06:22 Jews. What they went through. Watch it. Any document. Documentary about

2:06:29 Palestinians and what they've gone through. Watch it. blacks and what they've gone through, watch it. Women and what they've gone through, watch it. The reason that I say it is because If we're talking about the human aspect of it. Like I didn't get it. Until I watched it

2:06:44 It was actually the pianist. Yeah. And I just went shit. Oh, I didn't know it was like that. You know I didn't know that.

2:06:53 And so, you know And then when I listen to some of my friends who like, you know, live in the Middle East and they're going through those things, I said, Shit, I didn't know it was like that. So I think any time you get a watch Get a chance to watch people and where they come from or culture and what they went through. Uh you could even look at it it uh uh whites breaking away from the I mean the thirteen colonies breaking away from from England. You go, Oh shit.

2:07:18 I didn't know you went through that. So it's like when you do that, you you you come away with a sense of Okay, I get you now. Right. Yeah. It helps build your compassion because You y you only live in your own world.

2:07:33 You know what I'm saying? And unless you get a chance to see what it is. uh a lot of times your views will be will be narrow and just watching documentaries like that to To open up your views are just amazing. When you look at When you look at the story of of uh like I said, the story of slavery. There was a book that I just showed these young guys called Without Sanctuary.

2:07:55 Without sanctuary. It's a book where A guy, a photographer, went around the south during the times of slavery and documenting lynchings. And he would document the lynching. And take

2:08:09 And make postcards because at that time, see we go oof. But at that time it was commonplace. Yeah. It was a party. So people get their food. This is where they got picnic from. They will get the food. Drinks or whatever, and they'll go down and watch the lynching. And so there was a postcard that said, Here's the lynching of nigger Charlie Uh, hope you like it, hope everything is well. So that was something that was mind blowing because

2:08:33 It was commonplace. You know, so um when you get it like I said, when you get a chance to see cultures and history, you understand what what's going on Today. The Harrison Act was

2:08:50 An act about taking drugs off the street. And making them illegal. Because it Uh at a at the time in our culture we were able to, you know, use whatever drugs that was out there was available. But the government sort of didn't know how to get it off the streets, so they ran a story, Black man gets high on cocaine and fights cops. And people's like, so we gotta re get rid of drugs. People like fuck that. Get rid of our drugs. Get bigger guns.

2:09:14 Give cops more jurisdiction. Finally they run a story, Black Man gets high on cocaine, rapes and kills Caucasian woman. That's when the Harrison Act. 'Cause well, we don't want that. But because of that Harrison Act with the jurisdiction of a cop.

2:09:31 That plays into a little bit of what we're dealing with today. Because it was sort of set that way in a time where it was commonplace to see slaves. It was commonplace to see blacks as second or third class citizens. So and it's not to incite anything, it's not to make you feel anything angry. It's just a

2:09:53 It's just a peering into someone's Genesis to see where we are. Today so that you can understand to Or try to have the compassion for Um

2:10:05 All of us who live here in this country because like I said, it's It's the best in the world. And beyond. I remember a friend mentioned to me I was watching Planet Earth and he said there's a companion of some type which uh I really want to see called. I think it's humans of Earth, and it actually profiles different civilizations, different cultures around the world, and it shows you have humans have adapted. You know, Mongolians using falcons for hunting and all this and whatnot. But the um Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that Yeah, c a culture is a set of

2:10:35 beliefs and behaviors, you have to in a way be taken on that sensory experience to develop the compassion. You don't get it through text alone, necessarily. Uh If you could have a billboard Anywhere. Oh.

2:10:49 What would it say? Mm. Man. It will constantly change. It would be those new sneaky answer. I like it. It would ha it would be the bo Bill Wood saying. Ball out, dog.

2:11:02 Have a great time. Go to church. Love somebody. Teach somebody. Get angry a little bit.

2:11:10 It would just change, you know, because you know, these guys know me. I'm all about Heaven. And at the end of the last one will be have as much fun as you can. Because In a blink of an eye.

2:11:23 A hundred years compared to infinity is Nothing. I talk to my sister all the time. Why she be like, What's wrong? I said, girl, you better get you better start having some fun. We gonna be gone in a minute. You can look back and say like shit I should have been laughing.

2:11:38 And now I'm dead. So Yeah, my billboard would change constantly'cause I I think we all change. You said get angry a little bit. Many, many years ago. Uh asked him at an event, I was sitting in the crowd, and I said, What do you do when you get writers block? And he said, I write about what makes me angry. And uh if you ta if you were teaching a Ninth grade class. Yeah. Mixed race, mixed gender. What would you what would you teach that class about? Like what would what would you teach?

2:12:09 Wh what do you think the most important things skills Or otherwise that you could teach. Ninth graders might be. Well, like I said, it would have to be different tiered. Yeah. If it's the ninth grader of today.

2:12:22 I would teach'em as much as you can interact with actual humans. Uh, you know, the toughest thing in the world is like looking at my daughter and We're in Paris and generate thumbs. Yeah, they're on their they're on their They're on their cell phones. So I said as much as you can interact with people. 'Cause people

2:12:42 It's the best interaction because there's all types. And there's discretion when it comes to people. Like there's no discretion when it comes to thumbs and what you can say on the internet and that's why you get drugged down by it. Because it doesn't take anything If the if it's an anonymous person and they say you're ugly and you're this and you're that and you're this There's no discretion there.

2:13:05 So they can sort of get the venom off. if we're if we're in a surrounding I may feel something about something, but I wanna say it'cause I I don't wanna hurt somebody's feelings. I I don't wanna have to hurt my feelings. So That's the one thing, interact with people. The second thing is Interact with people from all over the world.

2:13:26 Because You become narrow when you're just All about my block. And just being about your block. In today's world is going to hurt us.

2:13:37 Because people don't understand global. We don't understand global market. We don't understand global things that how does something in the Middle East affect me in North Dakota. Mm-hmm. Because of the way we're set up like this. So it's like you have to

2:13:54 Get the education. I would bypass Well, uh no, I wouldn't buypass it. Get the education of people all the world. And then the last well last couple of things would be history. No history. No. why we're why we're here, why this especially when it comes to to to rules and legislation and things like that, know why Mm. Uh

2:14:16 While we vote, while we don't vote. Uh if you think about it. This wonderful country runs on It's just like a human brain. We only use a little bit of it. When it comes to the voting market. You gotta vote. Get out there and be active in that. A lot of times we just hey man, whoever's the president is the president, whoever's this one. So so that

2:14:35 And then uh um The last part that I would teach is Last two things. Hustle. Teach your hustle. Your hustle muscle is the but

2:14:45 Hustle muscle is the most important thing. Oh When you hustle and and and you go get it. A lot of times that alleviates your problems. When you don't hustle or you leave it to chance.

2:14:57 When you leave things to chance. And you didn't give it all that day? Now you start to argue or wonder about things, Bills, fuck, I gotta get that done. Oh my relationship is out of that. But if you hustle, for one, it's gonna take up a lot of m more of your time. So you don't have time to s To concentrate on just The worrying. The worrying.

2:15:18 If I put the work in, I got my check, I put it over there. And your check can be doesn't have to be monetary, it could be Anything. It could be I put the work in at the charity and this happened because of the charity. But whatever it is, put that hard work in. And now You could see things coming to fruition. And that takes n

2:15:37 Seventy percent of your were in a way. Because you did give it y you all. And then the uh The last part of it is W reflect.

2:15:47 Sit still for a minute. Because When you t work and work and work and work. I got it, I got it. that will strain you as well. So you gotta be able to decompress. You just gotta be able to chill. Whatever it is that you chill with, if it's your home, it's your friends, whatever like take time out to be like, you know what

2:16:04 I I If if If it's out of my hands, it's out of my hands. I'll get a better crack at it tomorrow. Colin Powell says something incredible. He said, I always feel like in the morning I got a brand new channel. And I'm paraphrasing, in the morning He said I I I love getting in the mo to the morning because it's a new opportunity.

2:16:23 But really take the time for yourself, you know, relax, chill. Whatever it is that you believe in, if it's God, Buddha, Allah, Hindu, all of'em. Whatever it is to get you on on that on that okay. You know, uh I did what I was supposed to do, let me relax now and then tomorrow or the next day get another What is uh what does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? Or what do you have any morning routines that are important to you? Morning routines

2:16:49 I wake up I uh I text the people that I dig and love. What do you say? I just send them encouraging like you know, there's a few you know

2:17:05 People that just, you know, really mean a lot to me. Wanna let them know I'm thinking about'em. Hold on. And then uh uh It varies, man. Sometimes I'll be like okay. I I put some work in, so I put in eight days.

2:17:18 So maybe these two days I could chill. Uh Get a little I do the uh just on the physical part, I get my uh I get my fifty pull ups in, hundred sit-ups. Yeah, maybe a hundred uh maybe a hundred

2:17:32 Crunches and it's easy. I used to not be able to do it. How many sets for the fifty pull up? So I do fifteen first. Fifteen pull-ups. This is what it is. I do fifteen pull ups. Fifty push ups.

2:17:46 Hundred sit ups. Then I go back and I do Fifteen different. Oh change. Yeah.

2:17:53 So that'll get me to thirty. Another fifty push ups that gets me the hundred push ups, I'm done with the push ups. And then I do Ten and ten. To the first grip.

2:18:04 And you don't have to do it every single day, you can do it every other day. Uh And then what you notice is the pull up bar. And Tyrant kept telling me this. Well, we I got a home retirement, he played Kane in Minnesota Society and he

2:18:18 I kept wondering how is he always in shape. He says man, I'm trying to tell you the pull up bars of everything. So uh So that and uh um And then just, you know, make the call and what I need to get done and make sure I'm, you know, in the right You know, position and get the kid. I don't drink coffee. I don't drink coffee.

2:18:41 I had to stop having stimulants. It's you and me. Earlier in my career I was It was all about the stimulus. So at a certain point I had to Ix nay on the ex Yeah, I've been I've been cutting that out as well. It's not good for me. People are like, Are you worried about depressants, alcohol? I'm like, No, no, no, no. Stimulants, that's what I need to work on. Yeah, because'cause when I tell people I'm trying to drink coffee after a while, you you you keep

2:19:08 You keep hitting that same muscle, you know, that in your in your brain to where you I g I know people right now who can drink four cups of coffee and go to sleep. Yeah, I used to do that person. Uh what is the red bull? Red ball. And then he won't understand why some days he'll just be like this. Yeah. So I had to stop and it was tough because I had to have coffee every day and I drank Like double expressos.

2:19:33 You know I was like I had to have the up. Yeah. But now I know how to go get it inside of my you know, I know how to go get it inside. Last last question here is um I'm gonna ask w advice you would give to yourself. Three different ages, twenty, thirty, and forty. Um so what advice would you give to your twenty year old self? Man, put the condom on.

2:19:52 Shit. Stop playing around. Important advice. And not the fishnet one either, put the real one on.

2:20:05 Okay. Uh Anything else for twenty or should we move to thirty? Twenty Twinies.

2:20:14 I had my daughter twenty six. So the advice I would give me was like Calm down. You know, it w it was like calm down and and just, you know. Make sure you're paying attention.

2:20:30 to your daughter and to the daughter's mom. Twenties was tough'cause I just got to LA. I was just You know, man, the whole world was opening up. So I'm like, Man, I'm you know, I'm trying to do All of it. And why I was like calm down and and luckily It was twenty six, so moving into thirty.

2:20:48 I was uh On my way to calming. If that makes it. Does make sense. So then you have thirty.

2:20:57 What advice would you give your thirty year old self? Uh it's gonna go fast. Yeah. In what way? It's gonna go fast. The time is gonna go fast. So just make sure that you uh

2:21:09 You start now planning For your future. And not only is gonna go fast, but Don't spend all your money. Don't buy the f the the jacket that's

2:21:21 Twelve thousand dollars. You know Relax. You know, just just you relax it because it it's g and forty is gonna come so fast. And you don't think that it is, but it's gonna come so fast. And would you say that because you would want your thirty year old self to

2:21:37 Pay attention to the present moment or do long term thinking or both. When you're thirty You got a kid. And you're in my business. And in any business.

2:21:47 All businesses are gonna especially when when you when you when you make my business is about me, though. So I have to be careful in my decisions socially. Uh And in plan for the future. It's not gonna be I remember uh

2:22:02 Uh Doing my television show. And it went five years went fast. And I would tell the people on my television show, it's gonna go fast, man. And if you finish at thirty five, but you live till seventy. You know, so you have to really think about

2:22:17 The future. A long game. Yeah. And then forty. Big four zero. Wow.

2:22:25 Forty. There are there are gonna be tough decisions that you have to make when it comes to business. 'Cause in your forty. When you're forty. In my business.

2:22:36 The window was closing. On certain things. So you have to be able to open those windows to other things. And some of the people that you've gone t w to to battle with till you're forty may not be the ones that you will battle And do business with. Toward fifty.

2:22:52 And Take a little bit of your uh personal feelings out of it. Because I'm very personal. Um

2:23:00 meaning like I would stay with someone even if I feel that they're Not up the part business wise, but you know, we have history. Take a little bit of the personal out of it. Still remain friends if you can with that person because now it's really pending. Like fifty about to be here. You know what I'm saying? So it's like you know. And

2:23:20 Uh I would tell my forty year old self Grow up in your mind, but not in your body necessarily. Mm. Meaning stay young in your body, but certain parts of your life

2:23:30 You have to grow up. And be be grown about things because now you got another kid. Your other child is You know.

2:23:39 Twenty she's twenty one now. Which is just Yeah, this past year, so But she was, you know. Thirteen, fourteen, and if when I was forty.

2:23:49 But now you gotta start living Um You would always live your life a hundred percent for you. But now that you have your kids and they're a certain age, it's gotta be Thirty to forty percent of you.

2:24:02 Sixty to seven percent. what you're gonna leave for them and how you're gonna leave them because like I said, it's It's flying. And that's it. Jimmy.

2:24:13 So much fun. I really appreciate taking the time. And uh where can people find what you're up to? Find you online. Learn me at I am Jamie Fox. On my periscope, am I right? I'm not saying this right?

2:24:27 Yeah, I got these young cats telling me what And then I'm Jamie Fox on Twitter also. I'm Jamie Fox on Twitter. I'm doing better on Twitter. I'm trying to do better. And Twitter you and uh the old fella trying to The latest album? The latest album's called Hollywood Story of a Dozen Roses. It's out I don't care how you get it, you can download it, bootleg it, steal it from a friend.

2:24:47 I don't care. I just want you to I just want you to hear the music. The song that's out right now is uh I'm supposed to be in love by now. I'm supposed to be in love by now. It's been so long for me, I don't know how. Been drowning me. The sea of broken vast

2:25:18 I'm supposed to be in love alone. I've been chasing my dream now, I'm chasing you Running hard, but my legs feel weak. I done played every part, I done played a fool, write the movie a beoli. I'm supposed to be in love. Girl you stole my heart take a

2:25:54 In love. So make sure you get that. Uh by now's out it's a song that my daughter made me She sort of made me do. She's like, Listen, stop with the club stuff, stop with and that's my my older daughter's like funny. She's like, Stop with the club joint. Stop you trying to be too young. Uh like even she'd even like I had on some shoes one day that she thought was just

2:26:23 I had too young of a shoe. She's like, Dad, what is that on your feet? I said, they're the new style, baby. You know, it's this new style. I had a zipper on it and a buckle and my name and grade and She's like, Stop it. She said, Dad, you have old feet. You have

2:26:41 Oh, it like you have you have feet for marching, like a civil rights. Yeah but Surprise. So uh but she said do a song that we know that is from you.

2:26:52 And and it's true, says I'm supposed to be in love by now. And so uh so that and uh jumping out of the window Uh And uh we just shot the In Love by Now video with George Lopez. Is the priest I guess stood up at the altar. George Lopez is the priest, Nicole Scherzinger.

2:27:12 Uh, and we all know her from the Pussycat dolls, but also her solo career and and everything. She plays my love ventures, which is great because she's a good friend and so we were able to like really get into some like uh You know, they don't do old school videos anymore. Like this actually has a bit of a story. My man Tank is in it and then all of my friends, my daughter's in it, my little daughter's in it. And uh my mom and dad is in it, and you know, so it's uh it's kinda cool. I was um Jamming to babies in love.

2:27:39 That's the type of music I listen to this to before I'm when I'm headed somewhere to to write, sit down, do some creative work. Solid. I think Justin Beaver's supposed to do that song first. And we were lucky enough to get it, but uh Babies and Love Kid Ink is on there. So, you know, got some good stuff going. And then uh later on uh Sleepless nights will be out at some point and then uh we'll start work on the uh Mike Tyson uh bio and uh and that's it. And then the the stand up comedy is coming'cause like I said, I got a lot of stuff that, you know, I gotta get off.

2:28:11 I'll get off my chair, so since you brought up Mike. W what would Mike say if you were here right now? Well I'm gonna say it like this, because Now that I'm about to do the the movie?

2:28:24 To do the Mike Tyson impersonation. Would be a little disservice. What I would say is that I met Mike when I was twenty one years old. I went on stage and I was doing my joke and I was getting my Mike Tyson joke and I went into it and no one laughed. Because Mike was in the audience. A guy was in the audience with Mike and said, Yo, Mike is in here, motherfucker. I was like, Oh man. The black girls in the front was like, What you gonna do, Jamie? You gonna tell your jokes? You scared of Mike Tyson? This is when Mike Tyson was knocking people out for nothing. I did and then the guy yells out, Mike said, do the joke. And that shit better be funny.

2:29:00 So I do the joke, it's a stand innovation. I come off stage and Mike goes, There he is, I want to talk to you. You're so funny. Come come hang out with me, you're funny, motherfucker. Go after come and get in the car with me. And we take off. And I started hanging out with Mike Tyson at twenty-one years old. It was the most incredible thing in the world. Mike was bigger than Michael Jackson at that time. He was just he was the biggest person biggest star in the world. Mike would be in a club, see a girl and say, Hi, how are you like BMWs? They're like, huh? Do you like B you like cars? Yeah. He would go open up the BMW dealership. They would buy he'll buy a car for a girl. That's how dope he was. And then all of his boys would go to all the different cities and pick up the cars that he bought for girls and say, Yo, come on, get the keys back. You know he's playing. So it was great to see it was great to see him during the times and it was tough to see him when he went through what he went through and then when we finally decided to do this movie, this is the Mike Tyson and I think people really be able to grasp is that when we show Mike Tyson older and I call Mike and I said, Mike, how are you?

2:29:54 I'll pray this to Allah, my brother. I'm happy. How are you? So I'm good, Mike, you know what's up, what's going on? I'm just happy, I'm happy because I don't have any money anymore, so I'm happy. S. Mike, what does that mean? No, it's just all the vultures that were around me the whole time. So I don't I don't have any money, so nobody wants anything from me, so I'm just so happy. And if you notice, his speaking voice, like what I told you with Bill Cosby, is completely different from when he's on stage, when he's getting ready to fight. So he was like, I'm just so happy. And

2:30:25 I could tell I said, Mike, that's the person we need to tell. That's the story. We always see the person who rises to the mountaintop, but we don't see the other side of the mountain and all the jagged edges and all the things and And and you're about to slip off of that mountain. So Uh Terry Winter who wrote You know, uh Wolf of Wall Street. Uh

2:30:45 Boardwalk Empire and uh Martin Scorsese who's gonna direct it, who hasn't directed a film about boxing since Raging Bulls. So fingers crossed if it all goes together, we'll be able to see Mike. Tyson in a different way and we'll be able to transform Uh to where I wanna be so good that it's Mike Tyson that I look so much like him and when I walk into his house, his kids would acknowledge me as a father.

2:31:10 Oh And then I want to be able to sit back and reflect. And here's what I'm trying to do with with a career. Characters.

2:31:22 In Living Color, it was Wanda. Hey, for real though. I rock your world. Then It was Willie Beeman any given Sunday. My name is Willie. Willie Beeman? I keep the ladies. Scream.

2:31:37 Hmm. It's Ray Char uh no, it's uh Bandini Brown from Ali. Muhammad Ali is a prophet. How you gonna be God's child as soon as you come out the garage you be number two. So Bandini Brown. And then it's Well, I got a woman well town that's good to me. Then it's Ray Charles. And then it's uh Jingo, you know. So feel very

2:32:00 Well, The Django experience, you know, working with Quentin Tarantino. Which was Mind blowing. Uh, to be able to go in and read for that. And I didn't know about that part.

2:32:14 I thought Will Smith was gonna do it and I was like, woo, Will Smith and Quentin Taylor's gonna be incredible. Incredible. It didn't work out that way. I meet with uh Quentin Tarantino. I told him I understand the script and I said, Not only that, I have my own horse. And so I ended up riding my own horse. And uh In Django.

2:32:30 And I knew that there was gonna be another character that's gonna change The game. And uh oh So they'll look at that, so they'll say Django? And then

2:32:41 Hopefully if everything goes right. Mike Tyson will sit with those characters. So that you'll be able to after a while look at a at a at a career where You transformed into a character. People know it. And were moved by it and

2:32:56 And hopefully uh um If it all works out it'll It'll be a great it'll be a great opportunity to look back and see like, wow, man, look at the things that you were able to do. Oh. In America.

2:33:10 It's an incredible canon already. And um My brother gave me Mike Tyson's autobiography from Christmas last year. And I sat down and I read it because when I was a kid. I would watch on the greeny VHS Mike Tyson's greatest hits over and over and over and you'd see his reception Japan. He was the biggest star on the face of the planet. But you read the autobiography and there are layers upon layers. I'm

2:33:34 A guy who just wanted to be in love, just wanted to It was more simple than we thought it would. Yeah. And uh I can't wait to see it. I hope it comes together. I hope so. Jamie, you are the Consummate.

2:33:47 Performer, and entertainer. So please keep creating. Amen. This has been uh such a such a gift. Uh thank you for your time. Thank you, buddy. And uh for everybody listening, you can find all the show notes, links to everything at fourworkweek dot com forward slash podcast. Uh you can just search my name and Jamie's and it'll probably pop right up. And as always.

2:34:06 Thank you so much for listening. Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I am extremely excited. to have a fellow

2:34:21 Geek in arms. Maria Popova. On the line with me, Marie, how are you today? Very well. Thank you, uh, thank you for having me. And I appreciate your coaching on the last name. I wasn't sure if it was Popova or Popova. I have friends who, for instance, Naval or Avakant has a friend. It's actually novel, but Americans can't really pull it off, so he goes for Naval. So I appreciate the the coaching and

2:34:45 I've as a country of immigrants, we have a surprisingly hard time getting people's original names right, right? Uh absolutely. It's um you know just the sort of anglicising of of such a uh criso like a a melting pot of different cultures and you know, at a at the same time I think it's a reflection of where I spend a lot of time, uh, which is reading. And

2:35:11 There are so many words I've embarrassed myself on many occasions that I've read dozens or even hundreds of times, especially in scientific literature, that I've never heard pronounced Oh yeah. I call this reader syndrome as somebody who spends the majority of her waking hours reading You run into that a lot, especially with um sort of cultural icons, last names, first names that are spelled differently than very differently than they're pronounced. It's kind of tragic comic when you actually find out how they're pronounced. No, exactly. Or it can be a real revelation. I remember when I was uh uh a young kid, I couldn't hit

2:35:51 Let's say democracy or aristocracy. I could only say because and I'd also read it. uh you know democracy, aristocracy. For whatever reason I couldn't get the emphasis right. Uh But coming back to the the reading and someone who spends most of their waking hours reading Mm. Uh If if someone asks you, and I'm sure occasionally it happens,

2:36:12 What do you do? For those people listening who may not be familiar Uh with you. But We'll start with the cocktail question. When someone asks you, What do you do? How do you answer that? Well

2:36:23 I've answered it differently over the years. In part because I think inhabiting our own identity is kind of a perpetual process, but Right now I would say I read. And I write.

2:36:35 in that order and in between I do some thinking and I think about How to live a meaningful life, basically. And if someone then were to go online, find your work, end up at brain pickings, and they're like, Oh, this is quite interesting. W and they look kind of looked over their shoulder because they happened to be doing it on their iPhone at the party and they're like, What is brain pickings? Wh how would you describe how do you typically describe that?

2:37:01 It's just the record of that thinking, my personal subjective private thinking that takes place between my reading and takes And and the writing. and takes form in writing. collection of very interesting things. Sometimes you know how I've got sort of simply put it to folks. And brain pickings for those people wondering. Is one of

2:37:23 the very few sites that I end up on Constantly. And uh when people ask me what blogs do you read, I I f I'm embarrassed, in some cases kind of humiliated. to answer that I don't go really to many blogs consistently. Um and I think part of the reason is so many of them Or Feeled.

2:37:45 To put out very, very timely of the moment material that expires within a few hours. And I don't like the feeling of Uh keeping up with

2:37:57 the Joneses when the Joneses are just sort of p churning out content. And I remember Kathy Sear at one t at one point told me that that you should focus on just in time information, not just in case information. Uh and Which I thought was very astute and really sort of profound. But There are there are two sites that come to mind. that I end up on quite a lot. Brainpickings is one, uh and Sam Harris's blog is another. Uh and I saw your your review of his latest book, Waking Up. Well not a review, I review I don't review books. I apologize. An annotated reading, if you will. Okay, so an annotated reading of uh and I I definitely want to dig into that. Annotated reading of

2:38:43 waking up, which I found really pro uh really um impactful for me in a lot of ways. It it put words to a lot of vague sort of feelings or observations that I had for a very long time. Uh Talking about reviews, so I've I I polled a number of my friends and my readers about different questions they would love to ask you. And a a close friend of mine, Chris Saka. Uh he he came back with what percentage of New York Times bestsellers can be attributed to your coverage?

2:39:13 And I'd be curious to hear you. answer that and then there's sort of a f a follow up, but you've you've built this incredible Power. Uh. uh an an outlet for your whether it's creative musings or observations.

2:39:28 And it has a a huge influence on what people read. So i if if you were to sort of think of that, how would you answer that question? Well, first of all, you you're very kind to put it that way as a scris, but I I think One big caveat to all of that is that The majority of books that I read and write about are very old.

2:39:50 out of print. Uh things that are not competing for New York Times bestseller. In fact I don't even know if I Ever really I mean perhaps um I don't know if the books that I read have any overlap in the Venn diagram of things with the New York Times bestsellers. Uh, but I suspect that the reason Chris asked that question is actually that I Met him

2:40:09 through his wife, who collaborated with Wendy McNaughton, the illustrator, whose work I love and I love Wendy, on a book about wine and That book ended up I and I wrote about it uh because it's lovely and sort of profound and Um challenges our existing ideas about sort of sensor experience and I like things that that take something very superficial and find something deeper and something unusual in it. Uh but in any case, so I wrote about that book and that particular piece on green picking s uh seemed to do pretty well and I think Perhaps that mm

2:40:44 Warped. Chris's idea of of how much Contemporary books. I really sort of am interested in the But but I would say that's a a minority.

2:40:56 Right, and for those people wondering, it's the essential scratch and sniff guide to becoming a wine expert. Which was written along with and the illustrations are are wonderful. Uh the Richard Betts was the Somelier who was part of that. And at one point I met with him because I wanted to try to uh deconstruct the Master Somelier test and he said, I can show you how to do it. And it was just the pared down, sort of hacked, if you will, version still of passing the Master Somelier test was so intimidating that I sort of put it on ice indefinitely. But at some point, Richard, we will talk again and uh and and and form a game plan. The So the the opposite, of course, of sort of putting out this material that expires as soon as it's out on the vine is Is Uh

2:41:42 putting out what I think you do very often and that is Sort of timeless. Timely and timeless, I've heard you call it. Material where you're sort of Pulling from old sources or older sources uh doing pattern recognition to pull from other areas to talk about, say, a a a theme or

2:42:02 Or or something that still affects people. And Uh I was I was doing research for this interview. And uh you know, we've we met briefly in New York at an event and I've I've been a longtime fan of your work.

2:42:15 And so I thought to myself, like, you know, how much how much digging do I really need to do? And good God, you have such An absolute canon of work out there. It is Astonishing. I mean it is really You're very fine. It's just the volume of time really. It's been, you know, I've been doing this for eight years coming up. Actually exactly a month from today it'll be eight years. So it's just that the accumulation, you know. And So I was I was I was I'm fascinated by routine and schedule.

2:42:48 And uh you know reading from, of course, not not the always accurate, but generally a good place to start Wikipedia. And Uh It says that brain pickings takes, you know, four hundred plus hours. of work per month, hundreds of pieces of content per day, twelve to fifteen books per week.

2:43:06 That you're reading. Uh How do you ach and I I'm I know I'm asking a handful of questions that you've been asked before, but uh sometimes the answers change uh and evolve or they always do. And which is why I I actually Mm don't do interviews very frequently because I find they they sort of

2:43:25 Yeah. tend to kind of cast this as the static thing that just stays there as some sort of reference point while we're really just the fluid process and we're constantly evolving. But in any case, No, definitely so Yeah. So so the question that you've I'm sure been asked many times, but I'll ask again is how do you choose

2:43:47 The books how do you find Slash choose the books that you read. This is a huge problem for me because I my my appetite for reading outstrips. the time that I have. And so I end up actually

2:43:59 Uh g s unfortunately sometimes finding myself Uh anxious because of the number of books I've taken on it at any given point in time. So I'd be curious how you Sort of vet the books that you read. Well

2:44:14 I guess it goes back to That question of well, let me backtrack and just say that I write about a very wide array of disciplines and eras and sensibilities because that's what I think about so anything from

2:44:31 Art and science to philosophy, psychology, history, design, poetry. You name it. But the common denominator for me is Just this very simple question of Just this

2:44:45 Illuminate Some aspect, big or small. of that grand question that I think we all tussle with every day, which is how to live well, how to live a good, meaningful, fulfilling life. Whether that's, you know, Aristotle's views on happiness in government Or

2:45:01 beautiful art from twelfth century Japan. Or or Sam Harris's new book. Anything. Got it. And

2:45:11 The I've I've read You citing. Kurt Vonnegut. uh before uh curvonegates one of my favorite writers of all time. I know. I heard your uh semicolon quote with the I think it was either the interview I did with Kevin Kelly or with Sam, but I actually have a counterpoint to the semi colin

2:45:30 Okay. No no it's a but go on. So I actually uh I actually I I brought up the semicolon quote partially t as a sort of wink wink. Nod. ribbing to a friend of mine, uh named John Romanello who has a a tattoo of a semicolon on his I think it's his forearm. He loves semicolons. He also has a molecule of testosterone on the other arm. He's he's a fascinating guy. But uh the

2:46:00 The quote that I heard you cite that I uh I wanted to dig into a bit was a curve vonegate saying right to please just one person. And So My question to you is when you write

2:46:14 Uh is that still the case? And if so Who are who are you who is that person that you are writing for? Hm. It is very much the case. I still write for an audience of one and that's myself. It's Like I said, it's just the record of

2:46:32 my thought process, my way of just trying to navigate my way through The world and understand my place in it, understand how we relate to one another, how different pieces of the world relate to each other and sort of create a pattern of of meaning out of seemingly

2:46:50 unrelated meaningless information and the sort of intersection of or transmutation of information into into wisdom really, which is what learning to live is. It's about wisdom. Um so I and and it's interesting too because I when I started brain pickings uh like I said, almost eight years ago,

2:47:11 It started Very much as a private record of my own curiosity and I shared it with seven co workers that I had at the time just as a little sort of email newsletter thing. Um And now to think that there are about seven million people strangers reading it every month. It's kinda surreal. Thank you. But and I'm not sort of number dropping for for scale or anything like that, but just to to try to articulate how surreal it feels to me that I still feel like I'm writing for one person, one very sort of, you know, inward person.

2:47:45 But there's also now the awareness that there are people looking on and interpreting and and just relating to this Pretty private act. And it it's a strange thing to live with and in no way a a a bad thing. I'm not complaining about it obviously, but it's just

2:48:02 Interesting to observe. how how one relates to oneself When being looked on by a few million people. You know? Definitely. And uh

2:48:14 Oh there's so many so many questions I wanna ask you. We might have to do a part two at some point because I know uh we have some time constraints, but The Uh Oh. Where to even begin? This is where my I start fraying at the ends as an interviewer. So the

2:48:29 The The the first question would be Related to that. There's so much temptation to dumb things down. Or to

2:48:40 go after kind of the tried and true Buzzfeed type headlines. Uh Do you ever contend with that temptation? And if if so, how do you resist it? And I and this is part of the you know s how do you respond to The

2:48:59 the expectations of the crowd or the seven million people looking on. And I I feel this personally sometimes'cause I have a blog it has uh certainly by no means the number of Monthly readers that you have, um you know, I'm somewhere between one and two million Uh uniques a month usually. Uh but congratulations Thank you. But even at that p even at that scale There are times when I I put out something that I feel is

2:49:22 Very Very important, but on on the dense side. And and then it will sometimes it takes off, but but sometimes it doesn't. And And there's a lot of temptation when, for instance, I know you use social media quite a bit and we'll get to that, where I look at, say, the the retweets of the favorites on something that's kinda dense. And then I'm like, oh God, I should just do like the the seven tricks you can you can actually teach your cat, you know, and get five hundred thousand retweets.

2:49:52 Um is that something that that you're that ever sort of crosses your mind and do you ever feel that temptation? Well, you know, it's interesting because you think anybody who Thin public, which is what writing is, which is even what art is. It's some sort of putting a piece of oneself out into the world. Anybody who does that.

2:50:16 struggles with this Really irreconcilable kind of tug of war between wanting To really stay true to one's Experience, you know.

2:50:29 And being aware that as soon as it's out in the world, there is this notion of the other. Audience. And you know, Oscar Wilde he uh very memorably said that um a true artist takes no no notice whatever of the public and that the public are to him non existent. And it's very easy to say, especially for somebody as Wilde who was very prolific, very public.

2:50:51 Almost performative in his public presence. It's very easy to call this out as a kind of hypocrisy and say, Well, you can't possibly not care about the audience given you make her living through it and sort of perform to it, right? But I I think that's a pretty cynical interpretation. I I think rather than hypocrisy, it's just this very human struggle to be seen and to be understood, which is why

2:51:17 Yeah. All art comes to be because one human being wants to put something into the world and to be understood for what he or she stands for and who he or she is. And so with that lens I do think it's hard to say well

2:51:31 you know, I don't care about what happens to it out there. even though I write for myself and think for myself. the awareness of the the other really does change things. But I think Perhaps Bruner Hurzog put it best. I I just finished reading this kind of six hundred page Um

2:51:52 interview with him essentially. It's a conversation that um a journalist named Paul Cronen had with him over the course of thirty years. And in one passage, um Herzog says Something like You know, it's always been important for me to Um Have my films ріch an audience.

2:52:08 I don't necessarily need to hear what those audience reactions are just as long as they're out there that they're touching that the films are touching people in some way. And I feel very Similarly. So With that in mind I guess to answer your question rather circuitously. I I don't

2:52:26 feel quote unquote tempted to make lysticles or to make Anything that I feel compromises my experience of what I stand for. And in part, I think the beauty of the web is that it's a self perfecting organism. But For as long as it's an ad supported medium.

2:52:47 the motive will be to perfect the commercial interest. So perfect the art of the Buzzview Lysical, the endless slideshow, the infinitely paginated article. And not to perfect the human spirit. Yeah. Of the reader or the writer, which is really what I'm interested in. Yeah, no, it's uh I think it's a a very virtuous goal. Um I um

2:53:14 You know, I I I really admire your site and obviously the newsletter and all these other aspects of it. Uh for a lot of reasons. Uh one of them is uh well I I feel a very sort of kindred spirit with a lot of the decisions it seems you have made. So for instance, I mean not doing the the slideshows to rack up

2:53:35 Page views for some type of CPM advertising. That stuff drives me insane. So if it drives me insane, I assume it drives my readers insane, so I'm not going to do it. Or like you said, that's so wonderful that you do that because I think So much of The cultural crap. that is out there, not just on the internet, just in general, comes from people Who fail to understand that they should be making the kind of stuff they want to exist.

2:53:58 So if you're a writer, write the things you wanna read. If you're an artist, paint the things you wanna paint you wanna see painted and I I think the commercial aspect is really warping that and I really one thing I really admire about your work in all of its permutations from your books to, you know, this podcast, the site everything is that There's just this sort of sense that you just want this to exist. It doesn't exist for any other reason than you want it to exist. And I think that's wonderful.

2:54:25 Thank you. I um That means a lot to me. And I Uh You know, coming back to the the right to please just one person, it's uh it I s I I

2:54:36 I think that it's it's related to that. So y i in a way it's you know, put the things out into the world that you would want to consume yourself or experience yourself, number one. Um secondly, just for those people who who haven't uh heard this anecdote. When I was writing the four hour work week as my first book, I've I still to this day find writing very challenging. And I wish I could say it's gotten easier over time, but for whatever reason it is.

2:55:01 Seems not to have. Uh the In the case of the four hour work week, I you know came out of undergrad at Princeton and uh many you know many years have passed, obviously, but when I wrote the first few chapters, it was really stilted and pompous and kinda Ivy League, you know, where you I was trying to use ten dollar words where a ten cent word would suffice and be a lot cleaner. So I threw out the first few chapters that I drafted and this was a major panic attack moment. I was on deadline and uh I remember I was in Argentina at the time. Uh, and then I went the other way and I said, No, no, no, I have to be loose, I have to be funny and so I wrote a few chapters that were completely slapstick ridiculous. I mean they it sounded like three stooges put on paper.

2:55:45 And so I had to throw out those few chapters. And of course I'm doubling down on my anxiety at this point, and uh decided at one point that I was just going to have a little bit of Yerba Mate tea, two glasses of wine, and no more than two glasses of Malbec, and sit down and start to write. What is that? Uh Malbec is just this wonderful varietal in South America. Uh best known in Argentina, but there's actually some really nice uh Malbec wines in Chile. they were br uh as I understand it, it was viewed almost as a garbage grape in Europe.

2:56:19 But it was brought by the Italians to Buenos Aires and has developed this worldwide uh fame because of its cultivation in Argentina. So there's there's a lot of sort of there's a lot of metaphor there that I also like, but drank two glasses of wine, sat down, and literally opened up an e uh an email client and started typing the four hour work week as if I were writing it to two of my closest friends. W uh one was uh

2:56:47 an investment banker trapped in his own job and he felt like he couldn't leave because his lifestyle was swelling to meet his income. And then the other was an entrepreneur sort of trapped in a company of his own making. And so th these two very specific guys of mine I started to write with just enough alcohol to to sort of take the edge off. And that's how Uh Yeah, I was writing in that case to please just two people. Uh but that's that's the only way I could make it work. Uh the Uh

2:57:16 Your schedule. So I've I I've read of your schedule, uh but I'd I'd love to hear. the the current iteration of that. It it seems like you you've had a fairly you have a fairly regimented schedule, which would make sense if you were putting the number of of hours into reading and writing that you do. So what is what is your current day look like? Well I'll answer this with a caveat the one thing I have

2:57:42 struggled with or tried to solve for myself in the last few years, couple of years. Maybe as this sort of really delicate balance between productivity and presence and Especially in a culture that seems to measure

2:57:58 or worth or marriage. Or value. through our efficiency and our earnings and our ability to perform certain tasks as opposed to Just the f fulfillment. we feel in our own lives and and the the presence

2:58:14 that we take in in the day to day and that's something that's become more and more apparent to me. So I'm a little bit reluctant to discuss routine as some sort of holy grail of creative process because it's just really It's a crutch. I mean routines and rituals help us

2:58:33 Not feel like this overwhelming messiness of just day to day life would consume us. It it's a control mechanism But that's not all there is. And if anything, it should be in the service of something greater which is being present with One's own life. So with that in mind, my day is

2:58:50 very predictable, um I get up in the morning, I meditate for between fifteen to twenty five minutes before I do anything else. What time do you wake up? Typically. Exactly eight hours after I've gone to bed. So it varies. Okay. Um, I'm a huge proponent of sleep. I think um

2:59:11 I When I write because what Or when I I guess try to think. What I do is essentially make associations between seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts and

2:59:23 in order for that to happen, you know, those associative chains need to be firing. And when I am sleep deprived, I feel like I don't have full access to my own brain. Um, which is certainly I'm not unique in that in any way. There's research showing that our reflexes are severely hindered by lack of sleep. We're almost as drunk if Yeah. we sleep less than half the amount of time we normally need to function.

2:59:46 And I think wear our ability to get by and very little sleep as a kind of badge honor badge of honor that bespeaks work ethic or toughness or whatever it is, but really It's a total profound failure of priorities and and of self

3:00:07 respect and I Try to sort of enact that in my own life by being very disciplined about my sleep, at least as disciplined as about as I am about my work,'cause the latter is a product of The capacities you know, cultivated by the former. Um so in any case, so I get up eight hours after I um have gone to bed

3:00:27 I meditate. Um I go to the gym where I do most of my um longer form reading. Uh

3:00:35 I get back home, I have breakfast and I start writing. I usually write between two and three articles a day and one of them tends to be longer and when I write I need uninterrupted time. So I try to get the longer one done.

3:00:51 earlier on in the day when I feel much more alert. Um so I don't look at email or any anything really external to The the material I'm um dealing with, which does require quite a bit of research usually, so it's not like I can cut myself off from the internet or from other books, but uh

3:01:11 I don't have people disruptions, I guess. So anything social. Um and then I Take a b a short break. I'm a believer in sort of pacing um creating a sort of rhythm where you do very intense focused work for an extended period and then you take a short break and then cycle back, you know.

3:01:28 Um, and then I I deal with any sort of admin stuff like emails and just taking care of errands and whatnot. And I resume writing and I write my other article or articles. Right. through the evening I try to have um some private time

3:01:48 um just later in the day, either with friends or with my partner, or just, you know. Time that is Unburdened by deliberate thought, although you can never unburden yourself from thought in general. And then usually later at night I either do some more reading or some more writing or a combination of the two. Got it.

3:02:10 So a number of follow up questions. What type of meditation do you practice currently? Just guided Vapasana very Very basic. Um, there's a woman named Tara Brock. who um she's a mindfulness practitioner

3:02:25 How do you spell her last name? B R A C H Got it. Mm, she's based out of D C and she Um was trained as a cognitive psychologist.

3:02:35 mm than the decades of Buddhist training and and Live in an Oshram and now she teaches Mindfulness but with a very secular lens. So Um, she records her classes and she has a podcast, which is how I um came to know her and every week she does a one hour lecture on sort of the philosophies and

3:02:56 cognitive behavioral, you know, wisdom of the ages, and then she does a guided meditation. Um, so I I use her meditations and she has changed my life perhaps more profoundly than Anybody In my life. So I highly, highly recommend her. Um Tara.

3:03:15 Brock. Right. Yeah. And all her podcast is free. Um she has two books out to um She's really wonderful.

3:03:23 Very generous person. I will have to check that out. And uh see you're listening then, you have earbuds in uh when you're d or you're listening you're listening to audio while you meditate. Yes. And it's interestingly, I mean she she puts one out every week, but I've been using the exact same one from the summer of twenty ten. It's just one that I like

3:03:43 and feel familiar with and it sort of helps me get into the rhythm. So every day I listen to the exact Summer two thousand ten. How does that start? How would people recognize it? How does the audio I think the title is it sounds cheesy, but i it is not cheesy. I think it's called smile meditation. Uh, and I'm sure she has repeated it in various forms through the years in other recordings. It just happens to be the one that I you know, have on and on my broken three G iPhone without any internet or cell service, which I just use as an iPod and that's on it. Awesome. That's a great answer. Um Gotta love I love digging into the specifics. When you go to the gym then

3:04:23 uh to work out are you still using an elliptical For that or or are you You are. I do sprints, time tense intervals on the elliptical for cardio and I do a lot of um weights and body weights to have too. You do, all right. But y when you're reading, is that on the elliptical? Yes.

3:04:44 And what type of Uh device if any Are you using For that reading. Well, I prefer electronics, so I use the Kindle app on the iPad or a any PDM viewer'cause I read a lot of archival stuff, but

3:05:00 The challenge of course is that because I read so many older books that are out of print, let alone having digital versions, that's not always possible in case it's rarely possible unless I'm writing about something fairly new. And so in that case, I just go there with my big tome and my sticky notes and pens and sharpes and various annotation

3:05:23 analog devices and I just Do that. Cool. All right. So that that leads perfectly into The next question, which is what does your note taking system look like? And how do you take notes? So for instance, Uh you're really good at using

3:05:40 Um Yeah. And I found myself asking as I was reading this, like how how are you gathering all of this so that you can Use it later. Um so what does your note taking system look like when you s i i in the case of digital and in the case of hard copy? Yeah.

3:06:00 So with digital, um it's very simple. I just highlight passages and I write myself little notes underneath Mm sure. um that are that have acronyms that I use frequently for certain topics or shorthand that I have developed for myself.

3:06:16 Uh but reading is really or understanding really, which is what reading should be a conduit to. is a form of pattern recognition. So when you read a whole book you kind of walk away with certain takeaways that are thematically linked and they don't usually occur, you know, sequentially. So it's not like You walk away with one insight from the first chapter, one insect from the second chapter. It's just sort of this pattern of the writer's thoughts that that that permeate the entire narrative of the book. And so

3:06:46 Especially As you if you read as a writer, so somebody who not only needs to walk away with that, but ideally wants to record what those patterns and themes are. that sort of reading is very different. And so what I end up doing with analog books in particular and it's I've sort of hacked some systems of doing it electronically, but they're imperfect.

3:07:08 is at on the very last page of each each book, which is blank usually. Uh right before the end cover. I create a a an alternate index. So I basically list out As I'm reading the topics and ideas that that seem to be important and recurring in that volume.

3:07:28 And then next to each of them I start listing out the page numbers where they occur. And on those pages I've obviously highlighted the respective passage and I have a little sort of sticky tab on the side so I can find it. Um but it's basically uh An index based not on Keywords, which is what a standard book index is based on, but based on key ideas. And I use that then to sort of synthesize what those ideas are once I'm ready to write about the book.

3:07:57 Okay, I have to geek out on this'cause I'm so excited now. Um so as it as it turns out, with analog books I do exactly literally exactly the same thing. Uh I usually start with the in front inside cover, but I create my own index and of course they don't have to be in order, so you can sort of list them in any in my particular case in any any order. Um I also will have sort of uh two A couple of of lines dedicated to PH. And PH just refers to phrasing. So if I find a turn of phrase or wording that I find really Oh, I do that too. Oh really? But I call it BL for beautiful language. Oh that's so cool. Okay. So there's that. And then I have um you know, g like Q or Q if I if they're quotes, so for instance, many books will have

3:08:48 uh quotes attributed to other people or just uh header quotes uh in some cases and so I'll have uh you know, quotes, I'll just write that out and then colon and then I'll I'll list all the page numbers for that particular sort of Category. That I'm collecting in the case of quotes. Uh So for when you're gathering this, you mentioned acronyms.

3:09:07 And uh shorthand. So besides beautiful language, what are some of the other acronyms that you use? Oh, they wouldn't make sen they're just very private. It's like too long to get into what they stand for. They're just literally my own system. Is there one other example that you just just if you could indulge me. One that is I guess not so much about the about its purpose is L J, which is

3:09:34 I have a little sort of labor of love side project called litter and jukebox, right? Sure. I've seen it. It's yeah, it's it's awesome. Thank you. But yeah, so I I do these pairings of passages from literature with a thematically matched song. And so Sometimes

3:09:50 w as I'm reading a book, I would come across a passage that I think would be great for that and maybe a song comes to mind. And so I would put L J next to it. But I wanna go back to what you said about the external quotes. I guess the author quoting another work.

3:10:05 I think those are actually really important and that goes back to your Question about how I find What to read and I mark those types of things. So for the for the annotations that are specific to that particular book.

3:10:21 All of my sticky tab notes are on the side of the of the pages. But when it there's an external quote, something referencing another work. I put a tab at the very top with the letter F, which stands for find if I am not from the with the word uh with the work or just no letter if I just want to flag a quote from something else that I know of. And I think that's actually very important because

3:10:45 W the the the phenomenon itself, not my annotations of it, because literature is really and I say this all the time, it is the original internet. So all of those references and citations and allusions, even they're essentially hyperlinks that that author placed To another work.

3:11:04 Um And that way, if you follow those, you go into this magnificent rabbit hole where you Start out with something that you're already enjoying and liking. But follow these tangential references to other works that

3:11:19 Perhaps you would not have come across that way. Uh I mean directly. And and in a way It's a way to push oneself out of the filter bubble. in a very incremental way. And I've often found amazing older books that were, you know

3:11:36 Five or six hyperlink references removed from something I was reading, which led me to something else, which led me to something else, which led me to this great other thing. Um so I think that's that's kind of a a beautiful practice. Yeah, it's uh the the serendipity of it. is uh

3:11:52 So beautiful when it works out and I'll I'll I'll uh give a confession. This is really embarrassing, but uh you know, since no one's listening. Uh I came across Seneca. So Seneca the Younger. who's had uh probably more impact on my life than any other writer.

3:12:14 Uh originally because There I I I was perusing a a a number of anthologies on minimalism and simplicity. And Seneca kept on popping up, quote Seneca, quote Seneca. And because it was always one word like Madonna. Or and this is gonna be really embarrassing, or like sitting bowl. I assumed that Seneca was a Native American elder of some type for probably a good lovely actually. I I assumed he was a Native American elder for a probably a good

3:12:47 year or two before I realized he was a Roman. I was like, Man first, you gotta do your homework, pal. You gotta dig in. And then at that point is when I really sort of jumped off the cliff into all uh a lot of his writings. Which I've I still to this day revisit on an almost month monthly visit. Um his um the shortness of life. So good.

3:13:14 Manifesto and I had hate this modern word, um, sort of buzzword, but I use it intentionally. So the best Manifesto for art. current struggle with this very notion of, you know, productivity versus presence and how much are we really mistaking the doing for the being, you know, and and and

3:13:34 It's amazing that somebody wrote this millennia ago, before there was internet, before there was the things we call distractions today and and yet he writes about the exact same things, just in a different form. Yeah. The exact same things and w the way that uh if I'm trying to use Seneca as a gateway drug into philosophy, I I I won't use the P word first of all with most people'cause philosophy smacks of

3:13:59 I think it calls to mind for a lot of people the sort of haughty pompous uh college student in um Uh Goodwill hunting in the bar scene who's like w reciting you know Shakespeare without giving

3:14:14 uh any type of uh. I actually I I agree with the notion that th those are its connotations today and people have a resistance, but I think that's all the more reason to use it heavily and to use it intelligently and to reclaim it and to get people to understand that philosophy Whatever form it takes. is the only way to figure out how to live. Everything else that we take away from anything

3:14:38 Is a set of Philosophies, essentially. I agree. No, I totally agree. So but I usually if I'm gonna lead people there, I try to to to uh lure them lure them in with with Seneca because I think he's he's very easy to read compared to a lot of, say, at least the Stoics, uh or or or that's actually not even fair, compared to a lot of philosophers who who have been translated from Greek

3:15:02 Uh uh most of his writing, I believe, is translated from Latin, which tends to be just an easier jump from English. So Um it's very easy to read and I what I tell people is you know, start off with some of his letters and you'll find that you could just as easily replace These Roman names like Lucilius and and s and uh so on with like Bob and Jane or you know, pick your contemporary name if uh of choice and it they're all as relevant now as they were then. Um So I I I'm gonna come back to the

3:15:35 sort of performance versus presence, which I think of Oftentimes as the sort of achievement versus appreciation. Uh Split or balance. Um Or maybe neither. But before we get there, I I want to

3:15:50 Put a put a bow on the note taking with your electronic No taking. So you're using the Kindle app, you're taking highlights. Where do you go from there? Are there any other what is what is the sort of workflow look like from there and are there any any uh particular types of software or apps or anything like that that you use

3:16:10 Often. I mean honestly I feel like that problem has not been solved. at all in any kind of practical way. So the way that I do it is basically a bunch of hacks using existing technologies, but I don't think Or perhaps I'm just unaware, but I don't think

3:16:26 there's anybody designing tools today for people who do serious heavy reading. Mm. There just isn't anything that I know. And so what I do is I highlight in the in the Kindle app on the iPad.

3:16:39 Um And then Um, Amazon has this function that you can basically see your kindle notes and highlights. On the desktop. Um on your computer.

3:16:50 I go to those, I copy them from that page. And I paste them into an Evernote file. Um to sort of just have all of all of my notes in a specific book in one place. But sometimes I would also Um take a screen grab of a specific

3:17:07 iPad. Kindle app. Kindle page with my highlighted passage and then email that screen grab into my Evernote email. Because Evernote has As you know, optical character recognition so

3:17:20 when I search within it, it's also gonna search the text in that image. I don't have to wait until I finish the book and export all my notes and And also it's But The formatting is kind of shitty on the on the

3:17:33 Kindle notes on the desktop where you can see all your notes. So if you copy them They paste into Evernote with this really weird formatting. Uh so it tabulates each next note indented. to the right. So it's sort of this cascading It's like an email thread, except there's no actual hierarchy. These are all you know, and so if you wanna go fix it, you have to do it manually. within Evernote and you know, I

3:18:05 I read you know, on on the Werner Herzog book, for example, which is six hundred pages. I have thousands of notes. So imagine thousands of tabulations until the last one is so narrow and long that that it's just like unreadable. So hence my point about just there is no viable solution that I know. Got it. Okay, so let me just because I I uh uh this may or may not help. For me it was a huge shift in how I manage Evernote'cause I mean I'm I'm looking at this list of questions, uh and I'm not reading entirely

3:18:39 off sc uh you know on script, but I have a collection of questions in Evernote right now and one one of the things I realized about formatting and transposing things from, say, the you know, my Kindle page if you if you log into your c your Amazon account through Kindle.amazon.com or Um copying pasting from many different places is going to I don't know if you've tried this, but edit and either paste and match style or paste as plain text and it tends to remove all of that

3:19:10 headache. Um I'd say nine times out of ten. So if you if the problem with that I did try that once, but But when you remove the style, it makes all the metadata look the same as the text. So on every highlighted passage I also have my own notes. I see. Got it. Plus plus, you know, Amazon's own Thing that says Add note. Read. Read at this location. Delete. And so it all merges it and becomes just hideous. God, you know, I wonder I wonder what to do there. Yeah, I used to take

3:19:41 notes and drop them into Text Wrangler, which is used for coding a lot, just to remove the formatting and then put it into Evernote. Yeah, I do that with coda. Yeah, it's true though there's gotta be a solution. And the thing is Evernote, I love Evernote. I've been using it for many years and I could probably not get through my day without it. But it has an API, which means somebody can build this, you know, and is there a way to like I even thought I mean I was at one point so desperate and so frustrated, which I think is the the duo that causes all innovation, you know, desperation and frustration. Um I I thought maybe I should just Save up some money and offer a like a scholarshi or like a

3:20:22 grand for a hackathon for somebody to solve this for me. That's a great idea. contemplating that. Okay, well we we'll talk about that separately. I think that's something that we we could absolutely explore and for all of you. programmers, coders out there, please take a look. This is actually not as rare an issue as you might expect. One question for you on the Kindle highlights, uh I've run into this. You mentioned the Werner Herzog book and having, you know, thousands of of highlights I've r have you run into instances where You'll you'll read an entire book, you're super impressed.

3:20:59 or not, but you regardless, you have hundreds of highlights and you go to look at those highlights and you're restricted to only seeing it. Like Two hundred highlights, eighty one available or something like that. Right. So how often does that happen to you? Because that's happened to me where I've taken so much time to meticulously highlight stuff and then I'm only able to see twenty five percent and it's so infuriating and I think it's a limitation that is determined by the publisher. Yeah. It is. And so I'll tell you why it hasn't happened to me much.

3:21:31 It happens to me occasionally, but that's a DRM thing, uh digital for listeners who don't like acronyms. Digital rights management. Uh Thing that has That is fairly new, so That is the case with more recently published books. But if you read, you know, the digitized version of, say, you know, Alan Watts that was published

3:21:50 originally forty years ago. there's no such problem unless the publisher now is like reclaiming rights and doing a whole new thing. But Because I read so Much Ле

3:22:03 out of sort of newly published material. I don't run into it often. But you know, there is a way to Very laboriously, you know, deal with it, which is you can still open that passage in your Kindle app. Um desktop. So Kindle for Mac for me.

3:22:20 And it will let you highlight and copy those passages. paste them into your Evernote in between the missing cards, but it's obviously not conducive. I have done that and it's so horrible because you you also get the like excerpt it from like three lines for everyone. So just publishers, if you're listening to this You are making it harder for people Like Maria, who have seven million unique

3:22:47 Share your stuff. So please up your threshold. Uh Do you have uh Anybody helping you with brain pickings or is it just you? Um, the actual reading and writing obviously is just me, uh but as of About

3:23:04 ten months ago I have an assistant, Lisa, who's absolutely wonderful and she just helps me with admin stuff that has to do with my travel or email or scheduling things that I feel Is weighing me down so much. I operate so much out of a sense of guilt for sort of letting people down or

3:23:26 And as you know, I'm sure when you get to a point where the demands are just and comparable with what you can even look at, then you kinda need to have help. in order not to either go insane or or live with a constant guilt over not addressing things. So And was there a particular

3:23:46 Oh, and I also have uh a copy editor This wonderful older lady I hired to do my proofreading Um She's great. I am That's all I can say. I think proofreading is really, really important and I'm constantly embarrassed if I have

3:24:00 A typo which, you know, as you know as a writer, you cannot Proof, your own work. It just your brain just does not see the errors that we made in the first place. Uh the majority of them. And so and people are kind of merciless. They think somehow that a typo makes you lazy or I don't even know. There's no kind of compassion for the humanity that produces something as human as a typo, right? Despite how mechanical the term itself seems, which is

3:24:30 sort of ironic. But in any case, so yes, I have my Assistant for admin and my copy editor for just proofing. And what what platform is is uh Brain pickings. Uh on at the moment.

3:24:41 What's the the technology behind it? I've heard you mention WordPress before. Is it on is it still on WordPress? Uh, it is on WordPress. I was gonna make a joke on how about how the technology is called corpus colossum, but uh the actual technology is Yeah. That was a very very Sam Harris uh friendly joke. Um the uh

3:25:08 The So when you're working with say uh your copy editor. Uh Do you give your copy editor

3:25:17 admin access to WordPress and she'll go in Proof read it. And then schedule or publish? What's the process? No, it's it's a very again super sort of hacked together process, which is Every night I email her the articles from the preview page on WordPress. I just copy that and paste it into a body email. And I send it to her and then she sends me the correction via email.

3:25:43 Got it. Not very I would say tech savvy. I mean I'm sure she's a wonderful learner, so I'm sure she would totally learn how to do it if I gave her admin access. But

3:25:57 between that and the fact that I write in HTML so I really don't like the WYSIWYG. I h I hate it actually. I think it's just easier to do it via email because then she can like highlight the word and sometimes she would make suggestions that are more stylistic and I I I would like to have the final say in those'cause very often I want to keep it the way that I have it because that's just my voice. Um so i I find email works just fine. Got it. Okay, no, I'm I'm always fascinated because I I will use well when I was When I was hosting WordPress elsewhere, I'm also in WordPress, I would use the share a draft.

3:26:35 Plugin? to share drafts with people. Uh I'm I'm now on WordPress VIP, which has a It has a sharing function where people can leave feedback in a sidebar that runs alongside the article itself, which is pretty cool. Oh, that's cool. I should I should look into that. I think that's what I have too, the WordPress VIP, the WordPress WordPress. I don't even know what the that function is. on the web. I'm I don't really Yeah, I sometimes only learn things through friends. Well I think yeah, that's that's how I learned about a lot of this stuff. And the the other option that I've used quite a lot is

3:27:18 And as much as I hate Word, and I really do, I love the track changes feature and I just find it more user friendly for a lot of folks than having them use something that's Cloud based, like uh Google Docs, just because I operate so much offline to try to get Anything done. See, uh yeah, I mean that's what a lot of people suggest and what Kai my appropriator actually asked originally, but

3:27:43 I do not own Microsoft products on principle and I just I'm not gonna just don't feel at it. Got it. What was what was the The sort of defining moment, the straw that broke the camel's back, when you were like, you know what? Like what was the day where you're just like, fucking enough of this? Like I need to get somebody stat. I mean what when did you actually make the decision?

3:28:10 It wasn't so much that I made the decision as the decision was very Um strongly, lovingly but strongly sort of pushed on me by my partner who one day said, You you are using so much time on things that are just so meni and you should not and'cause I was really String to a point of

3:28:31 just driving myself crazy. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm uh always have been very independent. I, you know, moved away from my parents' house when I was eighteen, paid my way through school, lived always by myself and I just had this Emerson like you know, sense of self sufficiency and self reliance that to a point of pathology where it was to my own detriment. And the notion of outsourcing

3:28:57 felt to me on some level Um Almost like an admission of weakness. Sure. Yes. It's ridiculous to feel like that. I know. And and it's the strange thing, the disorienting thing is that I think we intellectually know that's not the case. that it's actually a lot of strength to be able to

3:29:16 delegate and to sort of divvy up control according to a hierarchy of priorities. But on some sort of psycho emotional level it is just Death. to to consider that you cannot do something on your own anymore. And of course.

3:29:30 I mean It's interesting. In terms of how brain cooking's evolved, which has always been very organic So The the sort of

3:29:38 You know, eight year thing that has happened. It went from being A little newsletter that contained five links, no text, like five links to five things that I found. Very interesting.

3:29:52 Um And then it went to sort of Five links with a little paragraph about each about why this thing is interesting and important. And then it was You know, not a not a little paragraph, but a little like one page piece and then It became

3:30:06 Not one not five things every Friday, but three things every day of the week. Pretty long form in the thousands of words, you know. And I foolishly and naively thought that I could just have the same

3:30:19 sort of operational framework. Despite the enormous swelling of of just the volume of the writing. And that's unreasonable. It's completely unreasonable. Um so At one point last fall, as the sort of seventh

3:30:34 birthday of brain pickings is approaching. My partner was just like please like consider And uh Uh yeah. I Oh I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just I'm always curious to ask how did you how did you find

3:30:51 This parti the assistant that you ended up with. Uh well she's wonderful. She's a professional sort of personal assistant that's had this type of job for about twenty years. Uh She's just so wonderfully warm and and

3:31:05 just generous person, but also has such doggedness about things and just work ethic. It's Unbelievable. And you always have the sense that she's looking out for your best interest in in the most magnanimous kind of way. Towards you but also the most

3:31:23 warmly non no bullshit way outwardly towards the world demanding things from you. And having this buffer it it's really, really Great. Yeah. And did uh was she How did you track her down? How did the two of you get connected? Uh, just a recommendation. She's been working for

3:31:41 Um, somebody who's a very trusted dear person, um, for a long time. So now she works for both of us. And did that person reach out to you? Did you reach out to her? I'm always curious about the the specifics because the way that I found one of my first assistants and we worked together for many years was any time I had a really fantastic interaction with someone's assistant, I would say Hey, I know this is off topic, but you've been awesome to deal with. Do you have, you know, twin brother, twin sister Somebody who does what you do.

3:32:12 as well as you do it that you could recommend to me because I need some help. And I just did that over and over again and eventually one of them said, Well, actually I work for multiple clients, so we could talk about it and that's how we ended up working together. Uh but what what was the Oh, the introduction was made by the person. So we I I I I had met her, I at least in my assistant had met her just socially many times before. And so eventually when the time came for me to consider um Like

3:32:41 She just like we set up a meeting, we talked and she was really into it and she had been reading brain pickings and uh Um I asked made sure it wouldn't be too much on her plate'cause she's also I mean, she's superwoman, Lisa's superwoman, she is The mother of two kids, one of whom um is now her first year in high school and the other one his first year in college.

3:33:02 So she has that on her plate too and uh Uh, but she's very, like I said, very dogged, very sort of dedicated and she was like I can do it. And uh I'd like to do it. And I was like great. Let's roll. Onward. So with uh

3:33:18 With your assistant, w if you were to do an eighty twenty analysis of to the eight the you know the twenty percent of tasks that take up eighty percent of her time. What what are the types What would those look like? What is the vast majority of her time spent on?

3:33:36 So Mm. A lot of it is I guess coordinating travel and things, but I'm I'm trying to really I mean I have this new ish commitment to really not do any

3:33:52 Speaking it. commercial conferences anymore. But to speak to students because I think it's important and Um What it takes out of me, which is a lot speaking, takes out a lot of me because I'm a writer and I also don't really recycle talks. Um, I like to write something original.

3:34:09 And when it's a commercial conference, it just doesn't add up for me what I get out of it.'Cause I usually donate my commissions due to the local public library and whatnot, but With students it is worth my time if I this way even One Journalism student from

3:34:24 going into Buzzworthy land, you know, after graduation. Um That's worth it to me. And so Even though I've scaled back on the speaking speaking, I now'm getting like all these College. Request.

3:34:38 And so that takes so much time, especially organized by sort of student volunteers and they're kind of still learning what it means to you know, schedules and deadlines and advanced notice. And so Lisa is sort of mainling that. And another big porch and I should also mention that the

3:34:57 evolution of what I've been able to delegate has been has sort of organically happened. Originally I just really didn't know what to give her. I felt like I had to do all of it'cause I didn't know how to explain it to her to do and but it's she's a great learner and I'm learning to delegate more. But another thing, because my site runs on donations I wanna I I I sort of make an effort to send handwritten thank you cards to just at this point randomly picked

3:35:27 Donors every month. Um And so I have her sort of export those names and emails from me and just Give me like just prepare envelopes and all those types of things so that I could not spend too much time on the actual

3:35:41 admin of the mailing. And do you operate do you communicate exclusively via email or do you use uh soft other types of software oh email email and text. Email and text. Uh so no project management software at this point, no sort of base camp or sauna or anything like that.

3:35:58 Yeah. I don't I that would make it feel like of some sort of commercial organization, you know, I'm I still have so much resistance to the fact that I even have to deal with these things. No, back to the Oscar Wilde hypocrisy about audience or the humanity, I guess, of attention. I a couple of a couple of quick ones. So the first is when you when you lift, do you tend to have the same workout? What do what is your what does your weightlifting look like? It's changed a lot in the last

3:36:29 A year and a half I've prioritize body weight stuff. heavily, no pun intended. That was actually total inadvertent. This how language how we think in language. That's so funny. Uh but uh I I prioritize body weight stuff and so I do pull ups, push ups and that sort of thing. Um It also depends on

3:36:48 Where I do my work have my gym has my building has a sort of gym, like a you know, one of those residential gyms. Uh, but I also have a membership at a larger um Probably I think the best Gym in New York.

3:37:02 I love it. Uh, but I'm only there a few days a week. So it just depends on where I do it and what I do. And if if you had to pick one Besides the elliptical, if you had to pick one bodyweight exercise. to hold you over. Let's say you're traveling for a few months, you can only pick one body weight exercise. What would it be?

3:37:19 Well, it would be pull up, but you can't always find a place to do it. Uh so I just do usually elevated push ups, so my feet on a bench or bed or some like a step or something and just push ups. Cool. A great uh little hack for Pulling motions while traveling is putting your feet on a chair and going underneath a table to do basically inverted Bent rose with uh t you know what's actually very helpful for traveling is uh Plyometrics. Pliometrics and uh T R X is actually quite handy. There's a system. Not my thing. Yeah. It doesn't the thing is

3:37:59 Here's the thing. So if I am forced by circumstances to do a work out that is not my preference. I I very much like to be able to do something else while doing it, such as listening to podcasts, which is what I do while while I do weights at the gym anyway. Um, and there are certain types of movements that it's just a hassle to have the headphones and it's just like not great. So I actually carry a

3:38:23 Um, wait a jump rope with me when I travel. In case there's nowhere to do sprints, which is my Plan B for cardio. And then plan C is just jumping, skipping rope. Yeah.

3:38:37 You're intense. I love it. The uh I remember the the uh you know, I wanted to every time I meet and this is so silly, but I was so obsessed with uh Bulgarian Olympic weightlifters for a very long time that whenever I meet Bulgarians or people who in a at any point have lived in Bulgaria I want to talk about Olympic weightlifting, but it's nothing about them. I don't wake up when I was living in Bulgaria. No, exactly. It's kind of like uh Uh, you know, like, Oh, you're from Switzerland, let me talk to you about the guys in the Ricolo commercial. They're like, No, we don't talk about that stuff. Um, is that guy your cousin? Yeah, right. Right. You must know. Like no, I actually don't. Like I know I went to X, Y, and Z college, but

3:39:18 There are five thousand people per year. Yeah, it's doesn't doesn't always work out. You mentioned the donations. I wanna talk about the site. So Mm-hmm. Uh It appears and I and I dug around a bit, but it appears that you have no comments or dates on your posts. Is that accurate? I don't have comments. I do have dates. They're in the UL. The so the dates. Oh they're in the URL but they're not in the post they're in the URL structure, but they're not in the displayed post itself. Yeah, so the reason for that

3:39:47 Is because I I do think we live in an enormously new fetishistic culture and The reason I do what I do is precisely to decondition that because we think that if something is not news and it's not at the top of the search results or the top of the feed,'cause all feeds are reverse chronology and you know, there's an implicit

3:40:09 Hierarchy of importance to that. We think if it's not at the top, it's not important. And you know you would understand, you know, writing about Seneca Mm-hmm. It really doesn't matter what the date stamp on it is, but I think that this culture conditions us so much.

3:40:24 People when they see a date stamp They sort of think, oh this was like two years old. Oh and it's really, you know, two thousand years old. Uh but because a lot of academics actually use brain clickings to reference. So it I constantly get things, this is another thing that Lisa deals with, like requests from textbooks for citations or, you know, whatnot. And those people actually need the dates. So I've made it so that

3:40:49 If you actually look, it's kind of easy to to see or I can just tell them if when they write and ask me what the date is, look in the URL. But it's just not one of those immediate things that slaps you over the head like a newspaper front page, you know? Definitely. I d I actually have done the same thing for um quite a few years and if you if you go to any permalink, so if you go if you get linked to any of my posts directly on the blog, the date is there um in the URL, but also uh at the very bottom of the post after the related links. So for the same reason because there's so much bias against older material and I think some of my older stuff is

3:41:29 I I mean it depends on the person, obviously in the context, but um it's it's an easy way to have a high sort of abandonment rate is to to timestamp. The comments did you ever have comments or have you never had comments? I did originally and then I was like, you know what, I kinda feel like her dog does. I don't really care to hear. I mean, I do write for me. I'm I'm very gladdened by people who are in any way moved or touched. Uh but the comments I was getting I I was I've been fortunate enough not to really get any, you know, trolling or anything like that.

3:42:00 But they were kind of vacant or people trying to plug their own thing or spam. And it was taking more of my time than was worth, and so Instead I've made my contact information very easily accessible. So if someone has something of substance and urgency to say, which is I think the two things that compel people to reach out.

3:42:20 Uh they'll do it via email. behind their own name and not anonymously. And then I mean I do get a lot of a lot of Emails from readers. Uh And those are valuable, you know.

3:42:33 But I don't really care for comments. Flip side of that is that Now that I have the Facebook page having uh something mysterious happened with the Brain Chickens Facebook page last fall or it just started growing so fast, I've no idea why. You don't I was gonna ask you about that, because if you if you look at say that your Twitter follower growth versus your Facebook growth, the Facebook just kinda took off Yeah, it was in about October of last year and it went from two hundred fifty thousand to now I think I don't know I think point something million. Close to three maybe. So more than tenfold in less than a year.

3:43:06 I have no idea why. I've done nothing differently. I'm very I don't really enjoy Facebook. I do it reluctantly because I know I get a lot of emails from readers um elsewhere in the world To actually use Facebook as their primary thing and they're such sweet notes, you know, people who just are stimulated and inspired and moved in a way that perhaps they wouldn't be if they hadn't read that

3:43:28 piece about some random thing that I read and wrote about and I think it would be selfish of me to just Sort of disable Facebook because I hate it. But the the point of it is that you can't you have comments on there. And Lisa, my assistant, actually

3:43:43 That's something I delegated her a few months ago. uh just a completely deal with them. I can't I can't deal with them. I can't and and not for any other reason that I have complete Allergy To

3:43:56 People pronouncing their so called opinions without having actually digested or even engaged with the thing. So people would comment on the basis of like a thumbnail image or the title. Make really outrageously inaccurate comments clearly not having read the piece

3:44:14 And This kind of s snap reaction. thing that I think social media to a large extent perpetuate. I I can't deal with it. It just It it's like a psychic drain, like I can't even explain. It just I I can't. So anyway. So so that would explain, that would answer one of my questions, which is in your header picture on Uh Facebook.

3:44:36 You have this should be a cardinal rule of the internet, end of being human. If you don't have the patience to read something, don't have the hubris to comment on it. I don't care if it sounds like bitchy or anything. The point I mean You know, it's interesting because I think a lot about criticism and the notion of criticism and and why it's so hard for anybody. And I I don't think

3:45:01 That people have a hard time with criticism. Because Another person This agrees with or dislikes what they're saying. They really have a hard time when they feel misunderstood. Like the other person does not understand

3:45:15 Who they are. or what they stand for in the world. And ninety nine percent of the time And you actually touch on this in your conversation with Sam Harris, where you say that his ideas are not as controversial As

3:45:26 people think when they don't actually understand what they are. Right. But the the the main source of anguish is not being seen for who you are, not being understood. And this kind of reactive culture where people comment without taking the care to understand what you're expressing who you are and what you stand for. It is so toxic. It is so toxic to readers, to writers, to us as a culture. And I just don't know how to

3:45:53 get around it other than just having instructed Lisa to be just merciless about banning people and deleting comments that are just not Mm. There's no humanity, there's no patience, there's no thinking in them. So I mean the you know, an anybody who Right online.

3:46:12 I think feel similarly that this is kind of my home and if People come and be idiots in it. then they're not welcome there. So Yeah. No, I I actually use the exact same analogy. I say, look, I view my especially on my blog, I view the comments as my living room and if you come into my house for the first time and get raging drunk and like s take your sh you know, put your feet up on my table with your shoes on you're not gonna be invited back. You're gone, you know. Uh so is is your assistant's job as it relates to Facebook then primarily calling the herd and just removing the

3:46:45 The idiots or Uh, does she have a what are what are other instructions, if any? Are there things that she passes to you? Are there things that she responds to? No. I don't I don't really Yeah. Care. What people say again to the point that if people have something of substance and urgency, they will reach out. And I'm then very happy to hear from actual humans and engage in a human dialogue, which I do.

3:47:09 But I don't really care about, you know, the comments on Facebook. I just don't want them depressing me when I go on the page'cause I put my own things on them. You know, at least it doesn't put the actual postings. And I also don't want them creating a culture that is antithetical to the very reason why I do what I do, which is a kind of faith in the human spirit. I mean, that's where I come from. I I am

3:47:33 A cautious one sometimes, but an optimist about the so called human condition and Anybody who craps on that Without having even given a chance to the thought that that speak to the to to those ideals, which is what my

3:47:48 Articles are recorded. then I I will want them gone, you know, and So her instructions are just, you know, ban people who are offensive to others sort of in a vicious way as opposed to just having rational discourse of disagreement. Uh ban people who are ignorant and and have not read the thing and have some very scandalous or not even scandalous, sort of

3:48:11 Contrary sensationalist. Take on it. clearly not understanding the nuance because I mean a culture of news is I say off in a culture without nuance and

3:48:23 Um Yeah. So that that's basically it. Help me stay sane when I look at them. That's her That's her task. Does not make me lose my mind over exasperation when people's impatient. No, and I you know, I really respect that because uh another reason that I read Uh brain pickings as opposed to other sites, and I feel comfortable going there is that I feel it is sort of a stronghold of

3:48:50 Positivity and optimism. Uh in in a lot of respects. So Kudos. Uh the Email. Uh actually before we get to email, I've read that you schedule your Twitter and Facebook, which would make sense because you're prolific. Uh if if that if that's still the case, what do you use to schedule that social media?

3:49:13 I use buffer for um uh Twitter and I use just My hands. Facebook. Yeah. Um But again, I mean, this goes back to the same inner struggle of

3:49:26 I do wanna be reading and writing for myself, so why do I have the compulsion to put so much of it out there. And I I J Self. gladulate over that

3:49:37 'Cause on some level it does seem like a form of hypocrisy, but then I do think about the people that email me from India and Pakistan and South Africa and Korea and where wherever That actually that's how they connect. And I I think if I'm putting in the amount of time that I do into into what I do Even if I do it for myself, I might as well just harness that time anyway, if it benefits somebody else's journey, you know, and so I do it

3:50:04 Because of that mostly. Definitely. And I I think that While it's fine to write for yourself. If you If you keep

3:50:14 the value of what you write. to yourself when it could benefit a lot of other people, then I think that's actually It could be viewed as a selfish act, right? So the I think I think that there's a Particularly when you're curating in the way that you do and you're saving people thousands of hours of searching by distilling a lot of these concepts. Uh

3:50:36 Well I would argue that the benefit the value Is not even I mean what I do is kind of the antithesis of search. It's a discovery of things that Ideally one would not have come across within the usual parameters of one's

3:50:52 filter bubble, right? So sort of Mm. A lot of the people that that I hear from, for example, you know, just this week to to use the Seneca example, actually just this week, um I heard from This guy who was an IT person

3:51:05 uh trained as a physicist, ended up doing IT and Then The Seneca, the shortness of life peace. really look really put everything in perspective. I've never really read philosophy, never been interested in it, never looked for it, but it just cut in the middle of what I'm struggling with right now in my own life.

3:51:22 You know, and it's kind of it gives you pause to hear that from people. Definitely. Agreed. Um

3:51:30 On uh on email. The Uh. If you go to your contact page, you recommend email charter dot org.

3:51:40 And I'm very curious to hear If people actually follow The email charter. In terms of the the email that you receive Um do people actually pay attention to that?

3:51:55 Yeah, they do, and I'm so grateful and I mean but the majority of them do, you know. Some people who reach out with the intention of self promoting. Th there's usually, you know, laziness to people who self promote For the sake thereof, you know. So they don't they don't usually

3:52:13 um follow. But people who actually care to have a conversation and to engage are very Um, courteous and very sort of mindful of what I've asked, except for publicists who are never

3:52:27 Yeah, right. Well, I mean I suppose uh if they're flying on autopilot and just blasting out a template Dear blog dear blogger. Oh yeah, I love those the dear blogger. Yeah. Or you know what I get very often, which I think it's Actually hilarious. Uh

3:52:44 People who don't even bother to read the name of the site, so they address me dear Brian somehow from Brian and they and and and this the pinnacle of this was when last year at one point I opened my physical mailbox in my building, my home. And I found this bundle from the US PS. But like with an elastic band around it of of male For somebody named Brian

3:53:11 Pickens. Who lives in Long Beach CA or used to, I guess. And somehow that stuff got forwarded to me because I guess the guy either moved and the US PS like somehow look things up and I don't even know it was such a a sort of mystery and and metaphor for what I deal with online. I was like, Oh, if you ask you how can you ask a publicist not to? So I used to have a company ages ago called Brain Quicken. And uh I had a I got a telemarketing call one evening, I remember and uh

3:53:46 This guy goes, Hi, uh sorry if you're if I'm interrupting. Is this Brian? And I go, Excuse me? And he goes, Brian? Brian Chicken? And I'm like, Brian Chicken. Uh I was like, Uh no and take me off your list. Goodbye. Uh the um Oh god. On the On the uh on the email and pitching side of things or just on the pitch of things.

3:54:11 How on earth do you deal with Uh not just cold. Inquiries, but how do you deal with writer friends or acquaintances who are writers that you don't want to be rude to who want you to read their books? How do you polite decline that stuff? And maybe maybe you don't get a lot of it. I get a ton of it. And the fact of the matter is like not everyone is Is

3:54:33 able to put the time or effort into writing a good book. So inevitably if I get ten books from Some of them are gonna be terrible. Uh And I don't have the time necessarily or the inclination to read them all. How do you deal with that type of situation? Well, I guess the deal

3:54:52 First and foremost By controlling not the outcome but the the Cause which is your Circle of

3:55:00 friends and acquaintances I'm very selective about the people I surround myself with and I'm I I like to think friendly to Pretty much everybody that I meet. But my circle of actual friends is really close and really tight and people who are just

3:55:16 You know. But when the sky crumbles, they're gonna be there and we're there for each other and So with that in mind, I think there is a certain boundary that you have to put up. Beforehand

3:55:27 to to to I guess manage social expectations in a way. Um, and so for those people, my friend friends in large part I mean I should mention that the majority of my close friends, including m my partner too, Or people that I have met just through what I do, so there's already the self selection of

3:55:44 sensibility and ideals and you know, I I think we've become a centripetal force for the kinds of people we want to be and surround ourselves with those types of people. William Gibson has a wonderful word for it. He calls it personal microculture. Uh and even when you said early on the kinship of spirit, I think that's so important. So which is a long winded way to say that When and if Those

3:56:09 Inner circle people put a book out. It's a guarantee that I will like it because of who they are. And so then I'm more than happy to support it. I mean the The Book that we started with the Scratch a snip guide to wine.

3:56:22 Wendy the illustrator is precisely that type of person, somebody who I met through what each of us does, and she's now one of my closest human beings, you know? And so of course I'm gonna support her work, but not because I'm being Um nepotistic about it, but because That's the pre requirement that I and moved by her work and respect it and and love it and that's how we became friends.

3:56:44 But outside of that inner circle I don't I think acquaintances know That There's no such expectation and when I do get such requests, it's a matter of well

3:56:57 Did the person do their homework in knowing what I actually think and write about? Because very often I'm sure you get that too, you get pitched things that are just so Outside of what you do, in which case I don't even feel compelled to respond because if they didn't put in the time to understand what I'm interested in, why should I put in the time to explain to them why this is not a fit. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I need to embrace that more. I I think that's an area where I carry a lot of guilt. Guilt yeah. But guilt it's interesting because guilt is kind of the flip side of prestige and they're both horrible reasons to do things. So often we would agree as humans, not just you and me are just

3:57:37 anybody would agree to do things because they sound prestigious in some in some way, you know? And And equally avoid things because of the guilt thing, or do things because of the guilt thing, but sort of the whole Buddha thing about

3:57:52 Aversion of you know avoidance and aversion and making decisions based out of either fear, which is what guilt is, it's the fear of disappointing somebody and then feeling disappointed in yourself or out of Um

3:58:05 sort of grasping for You know, approval or a claim which is what doing things for prestige is. I think either of those or really bad reasons to do things and yet they they motivate us a lot or or at least they sort of lurk in the back of the mind constantly and it it is a real practice to try to decondition that. Definitely. No, I like I like

3:58:28 I like what you said about uh why put in the effort to explain why it's not a fit if they haven't done the homework to determine if it is a fit. I think that's a great way to put it. Um I wan ask, uh, and I I know we don't have too much time left, so hopefully sometime someday we can do a uh a follow up part two. I think that'd be a blast. I can I'll br I'll bring some all back if you actually drink wine. So yeah, can I can introduce you to it firsthand. But the the donations, I'm very fascinated by Uh the the ad free donation approach. And Uh just to just to uh to keep it simple, if you had to choose

3:59:06 Um say twenty percent of the options you're currently offering. which would you choose and why. In other words, you have No, no, so I'll I'll explain. Or two or three. So you so people can make one time offer, they can make a one time single contribution. Uh they can

3:59:26 Uh let me simplify that question. Or they can become a member and donate You know, seven, three, ten, or twenty five dollars a month. Um what I'm trying to ask without being impropriety or

3:59:40 uh making you feel uncomfortable is W what is working best? Uh when you're asking people for donations, you know, assuming that it's working uh if if someone were to offer one or two options instead of four options per month, or the the single contribution versus the membership, or the membership versus the single contribution, what would your advice be to people? Mm.

4:00:02 Well, I will preface this with a caveat that I use PayPal for donations And I can for the life of me figure out how to actually like look at the data and get any sort of real reason. All of it is so antiquated. They're export tools and such and I'm not that interested and I would siphon, you know, days into looking into it. So I can tell you sort of my intuitive interpretation of it. Yeah, great. Um

4:00:24 And by the way, the only reason these options are as they are also It is also the reason why I don't have an ad supported site, which is I just asked myself, what would I like to read as a reader? Well, I would like an ad free site and how would I like to support that well I'd like to have a few options, you know Just

4:00:44 I don't want to you know, be sort of confined to something. And so I just Just pull it out of the hat basically with these tears and I've just left them on since I put them on. They seem to work, you know, whatever. And Um

4:00:56 Originally My sense was that the one time donations accounted for much more, but I'd never actually analyze it because I think I I see the alerts that come from PayPal and sometimes people would send really large one time donations, like things that are totally humbling and enormously generous.

4:01:16 And I think those kind of You you kind of weigh them Somehow is more um than the cumulative sum of the smaller donations. So I thought the one timers were much more. But then and

4:01:29 And Pretty sure that Must have been the case earlier on. Right. Uh But

4:01:36 And I've had the recurring ones I've had the one time donations For as long as I can remember, for as long as I basically need it to start making money for the site because by the way, running the site cost me Several times my rent.

4:01:49 Like all the costs associated. Whether it's like crazy. So at one point I got to a point where I had to make money. I said, I don't want to do ads. I don't believe in that. I'll have just donations. And I didn't even think of recurring ones at the time. That was years ago. And then Um

4:02:04 My friend Max Linsky who runs longform.org or having tea and He said, Well, why don't you like push the recurring ones more?'Cause it's working really great for us. And at that point I had the option, but it was buried somewhere on my like donation about page or something. And so I was like, okay. So I put it in the sidebar. And that was I wanna say maybe twenty eleven. Um

4:02:27 And it started accruing slowly. And so this past year When I did my taxes, I very reluctantly went to deal with all the PayPal tools to get the data out, basically. And I actually had Lisa pull all the excels and whatnot, and then I did the tally to see And to my surprise, the recurring ones, which are very small individual amounts

4:02:49 Actually we're two to one ratio to the one time donation. Wow. And I don't know at what point it tipped over. Mm-hmm. But I think because of the scale And just how many people have these tiny, tiny donations that

4:03:03 they contribute every month. I mean that's such an act of commitment and it's so generous, you know, that they add up and I my guess is that as time goes on,'cause the recurring ones have only been available for the last like Two and a half, three years, whatever. they would become by far the larger sort of uh financial support.

4:03:25 Compared to the single ones. Sure, no, that makes sense. Uh The if you had to choose And of course this is hypothetical, but if you had to choose two of the amounts to leave in the drop down, so you have seven dollars a month, three dollars, ten dollars, twenty five, if you had to choose two of those to leave up, which would you choose? Oh, I have no idea. Probably

4:03:45 just the mathematical logical choice, the two middle is it the three and ten. Okay. Cool. No, just very curious about this kind of thing. I think uh I think you've approached the blog in a very authentic way with the content and I I can't emphasize strong strongly enough Mm.

4:04:06 what you just said, which is you You base what you do on what you would like or dislike as a reader in the case of you know something with with text. It doesn't have to be super complicated. It doesn't have to be doing tons of analytics for months before you make a decision. Just ask yourself, would this annoy the shit out of me? If so, don't do it. Would I love this? If so, try it out. And Every decision too has been that way. And actually in the last couple of years I've been getting really annoyed. I mean, brain picking is a pretty sort of lo fi site, as you can see it. Just very super simple, basic. But I've been getting annoyed that

4:04:43 It doesn't load very well on my iPhone when I want to look at something or pull something up to reference or iPad. And my friend Scott Belsky who runs Behands, he's a great guy and he's been sort of a very generous donor, just supporting and you know And one time uh He pulls me aside, that was like I think in February or March and she's like

4:05:03 You know how much I love brain picking, but like the site sucks. He didn't say it in that way, but he was super sweet about it and then he offered to connect me with this guy that he knew. uh that I could hire to do a responsive design. And I always have this resistance to making these sort of technological improvements because then I feel like I don't wanna be a media company, like I don't wanna be a Buzzfeed. But

4:05:27 At the end of the day, I as a reader uh and as a sort of engager with that experience was being annoyed by it myself. So now I'm in the middle of releasing like a simple responsive site that is actually Easy to read on your phone and so Yeah. Despair and frustration prevail again in innovation. It took me let's see, it only took me three Oh God. Seven years to get a uh a mobile

4:05:57 version of the site ready to go. Which I just launched a month or two ago. So better late than never, I suppose. Uh well Maria, this has been a blast. I uh I really appreciate you taking the time. Uh if if someone were to Want to explore brain pickings, uh what what are a few articles you might suggest that they start with? Um Or a few posts.

4:06:22 Well since we talked about it so much. The Seneca piece about the shortness of life. It's a fairly short piece. Um, there's a piece I did a couple of years ago which was less about it was not about a specific book, just sort of things that I've been thinking about for a long time. This disconnect between

4:06:42 purpose and prestige and why we do things and I Um I forget what it's called. I think it's called How to Do What You Love or some other how to find your purpose and do what you love. And it was sort of an assemblage of thoughts on that from various sources as well as my own. And perhaps most of all A piece that I wrote last fall as on the seventh seventh birthday really at the site.

4:07:04 Uh which was about seven things that I learned in those seven years of reading, writing and and living. Which is a great article. And I didn't want to replicate everything in here, so I I sort of uh bobbed and weaved around some of these subjects a little bit, but Just to reiterate something that you mentioned, and that's doing nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. And I just want to quote Paul Graham here, which you included, which is prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like. Which I think is so astute. And um In closing, is there any interject and say

4:07:44 Any Alan Watts piece. Uh not because my writing about it is So great or it's not coming from a place of check me out, it's coming from a place of check him out. Alan Watts has changed my life. I had written about him quite a bit, um, so highly recommend any of those articles. Cool. Brainpickings dot org is the site, guys. Check it out. Um

4:08:04 Maria, any Parting advice for for this uh episode this portion of our conversation uh before we before we check out. Any advice to the people listening out there, thoughts, parting comments? No advice per se

4:08:19 just I guess a comment and then and then and a hope, which is that That you know, thank you so much. Not just for having me, but for having the show and for doing everything that you do and I really hope we have. more people who operate out of such

4:08:35 a place of just I guess for lack of better word idealism and and conviction and Um Yeah. Thank you for setting an example that way. Uh well that means

4:08:46 a lot coming from you and I think I think you're a tremendous force for good out there in the world. So I hope people check out your work. I hope you continue to do what you're doing. I hope you continue to Add repetitions to your pull ups. And and uh we will uh we will talk again soon. Sank thank you so much for being on the show.

4:09:06 Thank you, Tim. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts.

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