361 Larry King: What 60,000 Interviews Taught Him About What Really Matters

"I never learned anything when I was talking." - Larry King If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/361 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Episode number 361 with the legendary Larry King.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to a very special interview on the School of Greatness podcast. We have the legend himself, Larry King, here in the Greatness Studio in Los Angeles, California. Now, for those that don't know who Larry King is, he is a world-renowned radio and TV talk show host, who has won numerous awards throughout his lifetime career. He was the host of Larry King Live for over 25 years on CNN, and now hosts Larry King Now on his own web series. He has interviewed the biggest celebrities and world leaders throughout his career, and has received several honorary degrees. He's also an author, a heart disease survivor, and incredible philanthropist.

• 1:19Lewis Howes?

  Now, I had the pleasure of connecting with Larry a couple times earlier this year, but then met his stepson, actually, who plays Arena Football League as well, and we had a lot in common. And his stepson's actually the one who helped me get Larry in. So we brought him in here to the Greatness Studio. We had an incredible time. And here are some of the main things that we talked about. First off, I didn't know how funny Larry actually was until I met him recently. So Larry shares with me two of his favorite jokes that he's got recently that I think you're gonna love. Also, we talk about why Larry doesn't text. He doesn't have a smartphone, and there's a reason behind it. What Larry learned from all the world-class athletes that he interviewed, the common theme that they all had that made them great.

• 2:03Lewis Howes?

  The story that gave me chills from one of Larry's favorite interviews, and who that was. Person that Larry wants to interview, but he hasn't yet been able to? Why Larry doesn't want to die and the story behind that? Also, the big question that Larry would ask God if he knew he'd get an answer? This was a wealth of information for me. It was an incredible honor to sit across from Larry, someone who's been doing this for 60 years, 60,000 interviews and just continues to be a curious mind, to be someone who's curious to learn about other people, no matter how big or small their results or success

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  is, or how old or young, doesn't matter the race, where they come from. He is curious about human beings and he brings that curiosity out in every moment. For me, it was an incredible honor to, to learn from someone who, who's doing what I'm doing and has been doing it for many years. And for me, I want to be able to have that curious mind as well. So, loved this experience and such a, such a great time connecting with Larry. If you guys are listening or watching this right now, make sure to share this out. LewisHowes.com/361. Tweet it out, post it on Instagram, share it on Facebook and let me know what you think as you're listening to it as well. So tweet it out and let me know @lewishowes and let Larry know as well.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  He's @KingsThings on Twitter. And again, the link for this is LewisHowes.com/361. And make sure to stick around to the very end because one of the final questions that I asked Larry, his answer may inspire you more than you think. So I hope you guys enjoy this one. I hope you cherish it as much as I enjoyed connecting with Larry and conducting this interview and kind of flipping the tables on him. And again, be sure to share this out. LewisHowes.com/361. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only, the legendary Larry King.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited we have the legendary Larry King in the house. Thanks for being here.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Hey Lewis, happy to be here.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited. We, we met at John Astoroff's dinner party a couple of months ago. I don't know if you remember this, but it was at Wolfgang Puck's place.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I remember very well.

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  Espago, right? Is that the place?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had that dinner and you were, you were one of about

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  10, 12 people. Yeah, and we got to ask you a lot of questions.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a nice booking.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  It was great, yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  He paid me.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  There you go, to have dinner.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  How would you like, I'll give you this, and you'll come and sit and have dinner, and 10 people sit around and ask you questions. I said, that's what I do every day.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I remember thinking

• 4:51Speaker 01

  That was fun.

• 4:51Lewis Howes?

  It was fun. I remember thinking, I wish I had my podcast set up to record this whole thing because the conversation was incredible.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  It was very funny and it was

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  It was great, yeah. And Wolfgang came in and said hi and told stories about what you guys used to do back in the day or whatever. So, um, first off, thanks for coming on and, uh, I want to acknowledge you for the incredible work you've done. You've inspired me so much and you've inspired every interviewer in the world, so.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Well, I can't, I tell you the truth, John, I can't believe it myself. I, uh, no, I do. I pinch myself a lot. Uh, you know, next May 1st, I will have been on the air 60 years.

• 5:25Lewis Howes?

  60 years?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've done 60,000 interviews. I, uh, I always wanted to be a broadcaster. I used to dream about it when I was a kid, when I was five years old. Other people wanted to be in a doctor's, lawyers, firemen. I wanted to be on the air. I didn't think I'd be an interviewer. I finally got into it in Miami in 1957. Uh, I thought I would be a sportscaster, you know, I loved going to Dodger games and, but, uh, it worked out that I went from being a disc jockey into doing a show at, uh, a restaurant and started interviewing people and I loved it. I was so at home.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't have, we didn't have any guests booked, so I never knew what would happen. Every day was a surprise and I just, people coming in. One day Bobby Darin walked in, Jimmy Hoffa walked in, Danny Thomas, and I got to interview these people. I didn't plan. I didn't know they were coming. So I got to like the immediacy of it. I loved working live and I

• 6:21Lewis Howes?

  Not planning it.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Not planning. I couldn't plan.

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  And then it went into television and we started booking guests and then I did radio and television. Always did both my whole career. Always did radio. Started the first national Talk radio show on Mutual Broadcasting that was in nineteen seventy-eight. And then in eighty-five Ted Turner came and hired me for CNN. And then I did the first worldwide talk show. So I was kind of like a pioneer and then uh. Four years ago, I hooked up with Carlos Slim. One of the richest men in the world at the time, he was the richest. And he financed our site called Larry King Now on Aura and it was my wife's idea. And so we got this talk show on the internet, just started our fifth year.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I do a podcast with my wife. Which we will have you on.

• 7:13Lewis Howes?

  Love to.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And then um. Just I saw I'm gonna be eighty-two years old in November and I can't, I can't believe I don't feel eighty-two. I don't know where it all went. I mean, where did all the years go and all the people I've interviewed and I think of. People come up to me and say, you know, I heard your interview with Count Basie. Uh sixty years, wow, Count Basie, yeah, I interviewed Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, all those people. And seven, eight presidents, you know, and it's still.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  Interviewed eight presidents.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's still. It's still a hoot to me. I still love, still love doing it. I still love asking questions. I also love comedy. When I do a speaking, I only speak and tell funny stories. I do not speak seriously. Uh I worked a lot of conventions.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  Tony Robbins is where I first saw you.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I worked on Tony Robbins. I worked on other of those self-help things and I always go on and say, what am I doing here? I don't have any books to sell. I don't have nothing to sell. And I just tell stories. And Tony's wild to work with. And Tony used to introduce me by. Starting on the stage and taking L, give me an L, give me, and then he'd run through the audience, go up to the balcony. Run across the balcony, you know, spelling out my name. Until he got down, until finally Larry King and I, I said that I think we ought to put a rocket up his rear and shoot Tony up to the clouds. He will not be happy until we

• 8:46Speaker 01

  sort of blast him off to Jupiter. But I had a lot of fun with Tony and so I like doing this. In fact, that's one of my favorite things. To go out on a bear stage, there's nothing like the high you get when you can make people laugh, when you can walk out cold, nothing behind you, no script, no play, no guest, just go out. So I did a comedy tour two years ago. We worked Boston and Miami and all over the south and it was just great, just going out on stage. We, we knew where we were going with it. It was directed, but the lotteries would be ad lib and I, I just loved it. I loved going out there. A

• 9:31Speaker 01

  lot of my friends are comics and I've always admired comics. I love interviewing comics. Comics see the world differently. They see things funny. You know, so what is, what is not funny to most people can be funny to comics. And I've learned a lot from that. I learned timing. You know, I learned, you know, like certain, certain cities, like Mel Brooks told me, there's certain cities that are funny. What's the funniest city? Albuquerque is funny. Really? Why? Albuquerque, it's funny. Chicago isn't funny. Oh, just the sound. Albuquerque. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Is funny, you know? Houston is funny. Dallas isn't fun. I don't know why. I'm just, you don't even have to agree. Sure, sure. It's just part of the whole makeup.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  What's the, what's your favorite joke that you love to tell? Uh, I've got thousands. If you could only tell one joke, what's the one you would want to tell? It's some of the most recent ones I've heard. Well, I'll give you two. Yes. Uh, there's a train that goes every night from New York to Chicago. It's an all Pullman train, all sleeper, leaves New York at one in the morning and gets to Chicago at 10 in the morning. Guy checks into his compartment and suddenly the door opens and a woman checks in. Now normally Amtrak would not sell. Single woman, single man to spend a night together, but the was the last seat on the train, the woman insisted she had to be in Chicago. So they said, okay, and she got into the lower berth, the man got into the upper berth,

• 10:59Speaker 01

  and the train began its trek. After a little while, the man leaned over and said, I'm a little chilled. Could I borrow a blanket? The woman looked up and said, you know, we're never gonna see each other again. We're on this train for one night, going to Chicago. We've got nine hours together.

• 11:19Lewis Howes?

  We need to snuggle up a little, huh?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Why don't we, why don't we play man and wife? You and me, man and wife. Guy says, sure. She says, good, get your own goddamn blanket.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  That's a good one.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And the other one was, uh, those are funny.

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Uh, this, uh, in Oregon, this, uh, company that chops down trees is hiring people to chop down trees. The foreman is interviewing people, and a one-armed midget shows up. A midget with one arm, applying for a job as a tree cutter. And the foreman says, you gotta be kidding. He says, no, I can chop down trees. He says, okay, here's an axe, go out there, and there's a bunch of trees chomping down. The midget goes out, carrying the axe along the ground, picks it up, and whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, knocks down twenty trees in a minute, whack! He comes back, the foreman says, you are the greatest tree cutter I have ever seen. You're hired, you're unbelievable, you're a one-armed midget, but you're hired. Where did you work last?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  He says, I worked the Sahara Forest. He says, you mean the desert? He says, well, now.

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  See, that's funny, the timing.

• 12:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Even going this way, going that way, that's funny.

• 12:29Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I love jokes.

• 12:31Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Who was the greatest comedian you've ever interviewed, who made you just was so fascinating?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Well, I have so many great, you know, from the Don Rickles to the Bill Cosby in his prime, was a phenomenal comedian, Jerry Seinfeld. But if I had to pick one guy to be really funny, it's Mel Brooks. He's ninety now, but he did The Producers, he did, you know, that great western movie, he did Young Frankenstein, but his mind.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  He did this Two Thousand Year Old Man, which is the funniest comedy album ever made. I was sent at first when I was in Miami and I got to play it first. And I never, I didn't know who Mel Brooks was. I knew Carl Reiner. And it was about, an album about a guy interviewing a guy who's two thousand years old. And all of it was ad lib. And I put that on and I fell on the floor. And I used, I, I would play it with Mel when I was with him, you know. Two thou-, you'd ask him anything about two thousand years. Your guy lived two thousand years.

• 13:32Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And I started to listen to it. He said, you're a, he says, we're here at Idlewild Airport and a man is arriving who claims to be two thousand years old. Not yet. So I'll be two thousand, October twenty third. What was, uh, what was your first language? The rock language. The rock language. Can you give me an example of it? Yeah. Hey, don't throw that rock at me. Are you crazy? And it went all the way to talk about Shakespeare and all. Anyway. He's still that funny. His mind is that quick. So I would say, he's a, Rickles puts me on the floor too. It puts me on the Rickles. My wife opened for Rickles in Vegas and Atlantic City.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  And he's just, he's been kidding me for fifty-five years.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. What is it about people that still fascinates you? Sixty thousand interviews later, why are you still fascinated?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Uh, the word, I guess the word I would use would be passion. I have a passion for curiosity. I am, I'm not the kind of person you wanna sit next to on an airplane.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  If you wanna sleep.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause I wanna, I wanna just ask questions all the time. And that has never left me. Which is why I love sports so much because I feel sorry for people who aren't sports fans.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Because when I get up every day, like tonight, there's 15 games in baseball. I don't know who's gonna win. The wonder of it, who's gonna win, what they do, what he do, what he do, what happened? Who got traded? Wow. So I love sport, I love asking questions, but I also love the curiosity. Who's gonna win the election? It's pretty fascinating right now. Yeah, but the whole thing is, is a wonder. I know everybody involved, you know, that's part of it. You've interviewed both of them, I'm assuming, many times. Oh, many times. You know Donald really well, I'm assuming, yeah. Very well, I know Hillary very well. I know, I know, so all the, but the curiosity. I flew, that's six months ago, from New York to LA. And on the plane was the president of Audi, the motor car company.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I drove him crazy. I learned more about cars, building cars, how cars are sold, what they want you to do when you buy a car. It was unbelievable. I'll give you some things, ready? Sure. Always find out the day your car was made. And never buy a car made Monday or Friday. Because on Friday, they're anxious to go home, and on Monday, they just got back. Best day is Wednesday. Middle of the week, they're totally into making cars. Sharp, they're in the flow. If you're buying a car, the best way is to have cash. They want you to buy on time, because they, the dealer makes half the money on the interest. The bank makes half the money, and the dealer gets half the money, and they're charging like 4%, 5%.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  They don't wanna pay. If they want, they, you know, you're gonna buy. So you go in and tell them you're financing. You know, you're gonna, you might need 48 months, maybe 56 months. Okay, so this price is 53, I could bring it, I, oh, I could bring it down to 47,000 for you. You're gonna do 48 months, so it's 40, it's 47 the price? Cash!

• 16:49Speaker 01

  You beat them, you know, but these are all little things I I I would I would ask him about my why are why are there lemons? How come cars now there's the anti lemon law, which never was before. You know, we have an anti lemon law.

• 17:02Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  You get a lemon, a car, you get a new car.

• 17:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:06Speaker 01

  If they can't fix it, they've got to get you a new car. That never was in the past. They get they keep trying. They give you a loaner.

• 17:12Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Now they got to fix it. They got to fix it or give you a new one.

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I like that.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  These are little things I learned in the passing of life.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  By asking questions.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  You know, so I never learned anything when I was talking. That was my motto on the air. So I asked short questions. You got to be a good listener. Often an answer brings a question.

• 17:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And if you're a good listener and you stay focused and you're naturally curious. Interviewing is a great way to make a living.

• 17:43Lewis Howes?

  And you don't really prepare for your interviews. You never did.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Well, I what I do is I'll go over some notes, you know, naturally with CNN, you're doing a worldwide interview and you're having a senator on, you'll go over some notes. But no, prepare. I don't do six hours or sit around.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  Watching videos.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Because I never wanted to ask a question I knew the answer to. So if I read so much about you.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  You already know everything.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I already know everything. It's the opposite of the criminal lawyer. The criminal lawyer never wants to be surprised in court. So he wants to thoroughly know what's going to be. If he's surprised, he's done something wrong. I want to be surprised all the time.

• 18:20Lewis Howes?

  Where did that curiosity come from?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Don't know. My uh my brother's a lawyer. My father died when I was uh nine and a half years old. He he was a a refugee from Austria. He tried to enlist. He couldn't enlist, so he was working in a defense plant. He was very funny. I remember that. I got it from him. I remember him being very funny. And my mother was a a housewife, a wonderful woman. He died when he was, so I don't know where I got the curiosity from. But I I always had it. I had it in school, even though I wasn't a good student, I impressed teachers. I wasn't a good student because I I didn't like being tested.

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  I hate this.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I I was a pretty good student before my father died, and then after that I sort of coasted.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  Who was more influential in your life growing up or the most influential person, your mom, dad, or someone else?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  The radio. The radio was my life, so I, I listened to all the Arthur Gottfried's who I later got to know and the broadcasters and the Edward M. Murrows and the newscasters. I listened to the timber, their voice. It had a great effect on me because it was a, every day, we didn't have television. Television came in like forty-nine. I was born thirty-three, so I was sixteen. When we got our television set, I was seventeen. So everything I got was through the mind and through the ear. So I was very attuned to voices. Still, I, I hate texting. Right. I wanna hear.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  You got the old school flip phone. That's what I have. Can't really text that easy on that thing. I don't text. I can receive a text. Right. But I, I, to me, it's, I know it can be important emergencies, but it's mostly a cop-out. Yeah. You can say no, you know, you don't have the answers. I, to me, I'm, I'm a, I'm a communicator. And I love the art of community. That's what I do with my course. I have a course called The Art of, uh, what's, what's the title?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  The Secrets of Great Communication. Brendan Burchard, right? Yeah, Brendan Burchard, and it's called Larry'sCourse.com. You can go to Larry'sCourse.com. It's ten, ten different courses. Cool. All based on my book, How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, which is still in print. And, uh, so I try to help people through this course. Yeah. Learn how to communicate, because the biggest fear, the biggest fear people have is public speaking. Biggest, that's bigger than any other fear, flying, fear of getting up in front of an audience. Were you ever afraid to speak in front of public, or? The first time until I learned. I learned my first day on the air. Right.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  How, how to use it. And it was, it was so simple to me. I was nervous as hell. My name was Larry Zeiger. I had wanted to be in broadcasting all my life. I'm in Miami, living with my uncle. And I get a job at a small radio station. Very small. What year is this? Nineteen, nineteen fifty-seven. Okay. Be sixty years next May. Wow. And they hire me and they say, you're gonna be a disc jockey. Play music and you'll do news and sports in the afternoon. You gotta work all day, fifty dollars a week. And I'm starting on a Monday. And the whole weekend I can't sleep. I mean, I'm up and I'm planning my records, what I'm gonna play, what I'm gonna say.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I'm looking in the mirror, good morning, good morning, unbelievable. Now it's the first day, May first, nineteen fifty-seven. It's quarter nine, didn't sleep all week, weekend. I'm up, ready to go. And the general manager calls me in, Marshall. Marshall Simmons, great guy. And he said to me, Larry, this is your first day on the air. We wish you the best of luck. It's a great, great business to be in and we got a, you got a nice voice. We think you can make it. I said, thank you. He said, now, what name you gonna use? I look at the clock, it's ten to nine. I go on at nine, what name you gonna use? I said, well, he says, you can't use Zeiger. It's too ethnic. People won't know how to spell it. You need, now they would, now you, now you'd have the name.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  If Engelbert Humperdinck could have the name, I could have it, so. Schwarzenegger, you're right. Yeah, of course. So, uh, he says, your name is Larry King. And you know how he got it? He had the Miami Herald open and there was an ad for King's Wholesale Liquors. And he says, how about Larry King? I said, okay. I later, I legally changed it. And now I go in to go on the air and I queue the record up, Les Elgar's Swinging Down the Lane. Da, da, da, da, dum, dum, dum, da, da. I still remember it. Hot May day in Miami. Records playing, I just lower the music down, turn the mic on and nothing comes out. I bring the music back up. I bring the music back down and I look at the clock. I remember it was like three minutes after nine.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  And I'm saying to myself, all my life I wanted this. And I'm scared and I can't, I can't do it. I'm too nervous. So the whole thing is blown. And Marshall Simmons, the general manager, kicked open the door to the control room. And he said, this is a communications business. Damn it, communicate. I turned the record down, put the mic on and I can almost remember it verbatim. Good morning. My name is Larry King. That's the first time I've said that. Cause I've just been given that name. All my life I wanted to be in broadcasting and this is my first day ever on the air. And I'm scared to death. You said this on air. Tell them. So I've got a new name. I've got a show to do for three hours. First time on air.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  We'll do news in the afternoon. So please bear with me. Now, later, such greats as Jackie Gleason heard that story and all that got free Johnny Carson. They all said, you discovered that day what the secret is. What's the secret? There's no secret. Be yourself. If yourself is gonna work, it's gonna work. You can't grab the microphone or the camera and make them like you. I can't make someone listening to us now continue to listen. So all I can be with you is direct. Answer what you ask. Try to be conversational and hope that that works.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  If it works, now I've had 60 years, so something had to work, right? But I didn't go on planning that, boy, this is gonna work or that's gonna work. I just trusted my instinct and every great broadcaster through the years that I've known, interviewed, admired, read about, trusted their instinct. Edward Almiron, World War Two, unbelievable. Being London during the bombing. And I could, this is Edward Almiron. This is London. And you'd hear bombs in the background. And that's what I love about radio, cause radio, you can paint a picture that no one.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Rod Serling once told me, the guy did Twilight Zone. He directed and produced all of Twilight Zone. And he used to write for radio. And I said, "Well, what's the difference?" He says, "Well, when I write for radio, I could write, there is a long, dark castle at the top of this winding road that seemingly leads to nowhere. Little organ music behind you. And you can picture that castle any way you want. Absolutely. You can picture that road any way you want. If I do the same writing for television, they say, "Okay, Rod, what kind of castle you want? We'll put the three-pointed castle, one point, you want a flat castle?"

• 26:12Speaker 01

  So it become, your imag- the imagination of radio is unmatched. Because you can use the power of the voice to do anything. And I could take you anywhere. Arch O'Blair, the great director of Lights Out. Lights Out was a great scary radio show years ago. I had him on my radio show. And he, I said, "Give me a description of radio." And he started to describe an insect crawling up my arm with seven legs and a green face.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Little hissing sound coming on. He's at your elbow now.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  He's climbing up the back of your neck. All he had to do was that. Right. And he was sitting there and I got scared. You know, you're at home. He used to do a show, Lights Out, it began this way. Sunday night, ten o'clock. Crawl under your couch.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Turn down your blinds.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Shut off the radio. And turn your lights out.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Those were incredible days and I benefited from all that. I benefited from all the drama, all the news, all the sports. When I listen to Red Barber doing baseball, I listen to Vin Scully's first game. Scully learned baseball from Barber. I learned baseball from, I see Vin all the time at Dodger games. He's eighty-nine years old. He's been doing it for sixty-seven years. I remember listening to his first broadcast. So there's something about, and that's radio, baseball on radio. You can create the drama because you got pacing. Other sports don't give you the pacing, you know, football.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  You got timing in between, yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got that to build, you know, the.

• 28:11Lewis Howes?

  Anticipation.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Red would tell you about the city he was in, what's in Cincinnati and where the clouds are in the sky and you know, the crowds coming in and the turnstiles.

• 28:23Lewis Howes?

  Really painted a picture, yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  That's what you do. You paint a picture. And so I can almost, Marty Glickman was a great basketball announcer. He was so good, I could see the game.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I could see the game.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  You didn't need TV.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Didn't need it. He got every pass right, where the player was, who the player was, what was, I just, he just knew it and I.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  Did you do sports broadcasting ever?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I did, I did, I did Dolphin football for six years, I did color. I did the perfect season. And I knew the Greecies and the Kicks and the Warfields and Manny Fernandez and Nick Bonacani and Don Shula's a friend and.

• 29:08Lewis Howes?

  Who was the greatest, uh, your favorite sports athlete that you ever interviewed?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  There'd be a few. Ali would be way up at top. Ali was the best.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  Did you interview him in his prime, or?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  In his prime, when he was, I interviewed him when he won the Olympics. It's Cassius Clay. He was not the heavyweight champion, he was the light heavyweight champion. Of the Olympics in Rome in nineteen sixty. He trained in Miami. So I was doing a local radio show, he came on. Then he came on my television show. Then he was banned from the sport when he changed his name. I remember the day he changed his name. I was at the weigh-in when he fought Liston.

• 29:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And he was acting crazy. I mean, he was going nuts. Yeah, you gotta fight me now, fight me now. And I met the medical examiner. And I said, I don't think he's gonna show up because he looks, you know, crazed. Medical examiner said his blood pressure's normal. It's all an act.

• 30:03Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  It's all, his blood pressure was one twenty over eighty.

• 30:06Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Um, he was, I put, I put him way up there, but a lot of others too. Joe Namath. Was one of my favorites because he was always himself.

• 30:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Joe was great at that, but I, I've been fortunate to talk to Sam Muziel. Lot of football players, lot of football quarterbacks. I learned a lot talking to sports people because, well, the athlete has something we don't have. Their career ends when ours begins.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  As Joe Namath, there was a book about Joe called When the Cheering Stops. I was with Joe two years ago in Cleveland, they had all the Hall of Famers there. He goes into a restaurant now, some people recognize him. But my kids wouldn't know. The cheering stops. So you get to be thirty-five, thirty-six years old, it's over. Whereas, you know, my career started to blossom when I was forty-three. You know, most of the, but, you know, and the athlete faces another thing that we don't face. Winning and losing. We do not have a daily final score.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  We don't have it. You could have ratings, but they're every six months. But the athlete, you go out to play.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  Every week there's a game.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Every day in baseball. What was the final score? You could have all these, was it six, three you lost? They got six, you got three.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  It sucks. Every day you feel great or bad, right?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  That's what I love about, Schuler told me once, he couldn't be a, he loved baseball, but he couldn't be a baseball manager, because he couldn't stand in the best of teams, losing fifty games. But the other side is you come back tomorrow. Football, you gotta wait a week.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  It's miserable.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  So that's misery.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  Hurts.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  For a week. You're a football player, right?

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Football player, yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  The pain of football, I got to know it hanging around locker rooms and seeing pain, seeing, seeing concussions, which they now, of course, football's in long-range trouble. I wouldn't want my kids to play.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  I'm happy they play baseball.

• 32:15Lewis Howes?

  I'm glad I got out, I'm glad I got injured my wrist and not my head when I got out.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  My stepson Danny, he still plays in the Arena League. And the fear is, you're gonna get, I hate to see bodies getting hurt. The difference is, in baseball, if anything violent occurs, it's an anetma to the game. The guy gets hit by a pitch, blood is drawn, you feel terrible.

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Football, you see that whack? Did he hit him? Whoa, what a shot. Both helmets went to the ground, he hit him helmet to helmet. Whoa, great.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  Get back up and do it again, right?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  That's right. Let's get back up and do it again.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay. Who was the most fascinating interview of all time, if you had to choose one, or the most interesting person?

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Impossible.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  They're all interesting, right?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  No, they're not all interesting, but when you get to people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Frank Sinatra, all the presidents, um, people who are just everyday people. People who are fascinating. Uh, people fascinate me.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Because everybody has something, I'll tell you, I haven't told this in a long time. I'm in New York, doing my television show, Larry King Live.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  And someone recommends you ought to book this New York City cop on. He's a captain, he's in the public relations area. He doesn't, he doesn't walk a beat. He goes around, talks to schools and groups. So, okay, we'll have him, I figure it'll be another PR kind of thing, you know. And he comes in with a beautiful wife and a little son. Except he's paralyzed from the neck down.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  He's in the wheelchair, paralyzed, neck down. And we're talking, you know. He stays, his father was a policeman, his grandfather's a policeman. He would love his son, who was only two or three, to be a policeman. He can't feel his son. His son can kiss him on the cheek, he'd feel that, but he can't hold his son. So we get around to, look at this, how he got paralyzed. He was in New York City cop. And they work in Central Park.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  And they've had a lot of bike robberies. They report, so the captain tells him that morning, look out for bike robberies. This tells a lot about our society, relates to right now, too. Relates, this story relates to right now. So he's in the squad car. They're driving through the park, and they see a black kid with a brand-new Schwinn. Schwinn bike. They pull over. The driver stays in the car, he gets out to approach the kid. About the bike, and the kid shoots him. He remembers the puff of smoke going up.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  The ambulance comes, they give him last rites in the car, and he goes in, and he recovers, except he's paralyzed. For life.

• 35:09Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Neck down.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  His child was a month old, his beautiful wife.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  He loves cops so much, he wanted to stay, so he's doing PR in a wheelchair. And one day, he says, I'm very... I really want to meet the kid that shot me.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow. They catch the kid, or?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, he was right there, he had a cop arrest.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  The kid surrendered.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  And he goes to visit the kid, the kid's in jail, I think he got 10 years or something, attempted murder.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  And he visits him. Goes into his cell, and he says, "Why'd you shoot me?" And the kid said...

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I'm an A student. My brother was a bad kid and he'd left town to go to Philadelphia and he said, "Hold my gun." I was just holding it. I didn't even know how to shoot a gun. I was just holding it. And I saved money delivering groceries for five years to get my Schwinn bike.

• 36:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  All I wanted was my Schwinn bike. And you were the 12th cop to stop me that day.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  So he says, "Can I ask you a question? Would you have stopped me if I were white?" And the cop said, "I had to admit, I would not have stopped him." So the kid just reacted out of anger. And then the end of the story, you could cry as the cop gets the kid paroled in his stead. And that kid became a cop.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  No way. Oh my gosh.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  So this could relate to today, blacks and whites and things. But his realization.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  That what you understand about this kid had a new bike, which is all he ever wanted. They kept stopping him. So what I always try to do is put yours, and what he did, put yourself in the other guy's shoes.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Now, I don't say shoot everybody. But in that moment of frustration, a feeling, "My God, I worked for five years, saved up to get this bike? And they can't believe that I, a black kid, could have a bike." It's a good lesson.

• 37:27Lewis Howes?

  Powerful, yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  So that's what I mean by learning.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Every day I learn. I've interviewed so many people with some blind people. What's it like to be blind? It's fascinating to me. George Shearing is a great blind pianist who didn't want to see.

• 37:43Lewis Howes?

  He didn't want to see?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  He was blind from birth. And he said, "I don't want to see because every girl's beautiful."

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Every girl's beautiful, every color is bright.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  All days are sunny.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  In his world, right?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  In my world, he creates his own world.

• 38:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  My own colors, I don't have to, I can envision what red is, or blue, or black. Now Ray Charles was different because he had seen, he wanted it back. He knew what he was missing.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  You interviewed him as well?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've interviewed everybody.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Is there anyone you haven't interviewed that you wanted to?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Fidel Castro, I would love to. I went down to Havana some years back and we tried to get him. Because he fascinates me, because he's had his, he's led his country for over sixty years. I think he's the longest running leader ever.

• 38:37Lewis Howes?

  Sixty years.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  So, um, forget politics, somebody must like him.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  You can't last that long.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  And then he took on a country ninety miles away, thousand times bigger than his. He was embargoed. And tell you what I discovered, see, you could look at things differently. Havana is a fantastic city. The people are so happy, they're poor.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  But music is through the street, you walk down the street and there's music, the hotels are jammed. People from Spain and Canada and Mexico, beautiful hotels. The airfield, the airport is gorgeous. The cars are all nineteen fifty-seven cars, man, it's really funny to see. But they'll build hotels, so Havana will be a major tourist stop. They'll wind up with a major league team in fifteen years. Got a big population.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  Of course, they got great, great athletes.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Number one sport.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Baseball.

• 39:31Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is the biggest lessons you learned about yourself over the last sixty years during this? From all the people you learned?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Well, I tell you what I learned, as Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher, Nobel Prize winner, when he was ninety-five years old, they were having a dinner in his honor, and someone said, "Dr. Russell, what do you know? What do you know?" And he said, "All I know is that I don't know." And so I would say that to you. I don't know.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  The more I ask, I mean, I'm wondered by all the things, but I don't know.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  I don't know what's out. We don't know if there's life on other planets. I don't know if there's a God. I don't know. I don't have faith because I can't accept something. I've asked too many questions. I never got good answers. I respect all the religious leaders I've interviewed. I respect them, I respect them, but I've never got an answer to the question of, explain the Holocaust. If you're omnipotent, you could have stopped it. Explain the children dying. So, and the typical answer is, we can't explain the ways of the Lord, which is a total cop out. You're speaking for the Lord. Answer me. You're his representative.

• 40:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So that bugs me. But that's part of not knowing. I don't know, and I admire people that know. I'm married to a family that knows where they're going. They know they're going somewhere after they die. It's amazing to me. I wish I had that. I can't make that leap. It just makes no sense.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  Right. Huh.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  It just makes no sense to me. It makes, there's no logic to it. But it's a belief.

• 41:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  And you can't argue a belief. I can't make them believe, they can't me, make me believe.

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  They have to, it's a choice.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I can't make them not believe. It is a choice.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  And you make that choice, and it's part of the world. More problems have been caused by religion than of religion.

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot of, lot of pain and suffering and war.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And everybody believes that way. The, you know, the guys who took that plane in nine eleven?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  They're believers.

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Weren't they?

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Of course. They believe they were right and that.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  We call them fanatical. They didn't think they were fanatical. So they believed. How do we know they're not somewhere? I don't think they are.

• 41:54Lewis Howes?

  Right. But they believed they were.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So all of, life is a mystery to me. To have the answer to that mystery is amazing. I don't have the answer.

• 42:03Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, here's a question. I've always been curious about people who've had this experience. I, my father is still around, but he had a very traumatic car accident when I was about twenty two, twenty three years old. That essentially he's not the same guy anymore. He's, I can't have a really emotional conversation with him. You know, we had to teach him to read and write. He just has amnesia. He can't remember things. It's always the same conversation. It's just, it's not the support that I had growing up. He's there physically, but it's, he's just not the same guy and he can't work anymore, but he's getting better, but it's just still not the same. And when that happened, I kind of always had this idea of after playing professional football, I would have like,

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  my dad to be there for me and this backup plan. I'd go work with him and I'd have the support. And when he was essentially gone, um, I kind of had to figure it all out on my own and I had to, it was like, I didn't have a backup plan and I was very driven from that point and none of this would have been created in my life without that experience because it made me be like, I've got to step up. I've got to figure this out. I've got to do it now. Essentially on my own. I had support and mentors, but I don't think I would have been this driven in my life if my father was still around, if without that experience of losing him essentially.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  So you used a tragedy.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  I, I use it to, to become better, to learn, to grow, to master myself, to figure out how to make money and things like that.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  What did, now I'm going to interview. What did that teach you?

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  Um, that's a good question. Well, the question I was going to ask you was, do you feel like that affected you when you lost your dad to be this driven, to be this driven and where would you be without that?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I, I always wanted to be in radio even when I was young and that, but sure, maybe it, it, it drove me.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  But.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you'd be here now?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Had I not gotten radio, I don't know what I'd have been because I had no skills. I mean, well, I could talk well, like, but had I not found radio, I probably would have been a stand-up comic. I had no college. Uh.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  Do you think, so you thought you would have still been in radio even if your dad was around?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  Still be in it?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'd have been a success, you know, that you never, well, that's, that's the old action we talk about all the time. Left turn, right turn. I went out of the house one day and went into Manhattan. And a friend introduced me to a guy named James Sermons, who was head of announces at CBS. And I said to him, I really break into radio, Mr. Sermons, what do you recommend? He says, go to Miami. It's a big city, a lot of stations, no union. So there's either old guys on the way out or young guys on the way up. You're not gonna run into a forty year old great talent. You're twenty two. Knock on doors.

• 44:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  I went out, now, the question is, what if I didn't run into James Sermons?

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  Then what?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Where would I have gone?

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  How much longer would have taken?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  How much longer would have taken, would, what, what, would there have been another, now, someone told me.

• 44:57Lewis Howes?

  What would be your name, what would be your last name?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  That's right, someone told me there would have been a different Miami. But if you have talent, you will out. You will make it if you have talent and passion for what you do. Someone asked me, what's the one trait all successful people have is passion.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  They have a passion for what they do.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  How do they find it?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  We, I, that I don't know. And they love getting up and going to work. In other words, they, they can't wait for the day to start.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  What about the people?

• 45:27Speaker 01

  I love the morning.

• 45:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you do personally?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I love morning.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we had breakfast one morning.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. My wife spells morning with a U. She don't get up in the morning, she mourns morning.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  She sleeps.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I like the morning, I like the day ahead, I like, I like having something to do. I hate it if I got a day, what do you do? Nothing.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  What is, what is nothing?

• 45:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Nothing to do, I love, I love work. I love the feeling of accomplishment. I love the whole ball of wax. And I don't wanna, I don't wanna die.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Don't wanna die.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  If I could, well, yeah, my wife said, well, if you were, if I were frozen, you know, cryonic. You, you come back in two hundred years, she said you wouldn't know anybody. I said, I'll make new friends.

• 46:15Lewis Howes?

  Start asking questions.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I like living.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Because of curiosity, who's gonna win the World Series? Who's the next football championship? How's Kevin Durant gonna do in Golden State, right? Get Pittsburgh Penguins repeating in hockey? Who's gonna win the election? Who's gonna?

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  You're curious.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  If you die.

• 46:38Lewis Howes?

  You don't know.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  You don't know, and you don't exist. You don't exist.

• 46:43Lewis Howes?

  Just your legacy exists, right? That's it.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but for example, Sid Young was a dear friend of mine. He was a great, I grew up with him, and he died last year. We just had a dinner for him the other night. Fourteen guys sat down and had dinner. We've had one chair empty. It was for Sid. And we talked to Sid. We talked, right? So technically, we're keeping Sid alive. And that made us all feel good until I said, you know, Sid doesn't notice this happening.

• 47:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  We're keeping Sid alive, but Sid ain't alive.

• 47:12Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  But he's not feeling pain, but to not exist, and picture not existing for eternity.

• 47:20Lewis Howes?

  Never coming back. In this shape, form, whatever, yeah.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  You ain't coming back. If there's another life, you don't know it.

• 47:26Lewis Howes?

  You don't know, yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  And by the way, if you think there's another life, you can never be wrong. Because there is another life, or you die and never know it. So you can't be proved wrong.

• 47:35Lewis Howes?

  Never know. It sounds like you're, you don't know the answers to a few questions.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  So I'm curious, if you could know 100% certainty of whoever, God, whatever, it's like, this is the answer to that one question. What would be the one question that you would die to know the answer for?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Do I go on? Sure. Because again, I wanna be around. I wanna be curious. I love to be a spirit. If I had one power, I'd like to be invisible.

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, oh, oh. Leave it at that.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay, okay.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Leave it at that.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  I could play shortstop. I could be standing behind a shortstop. I could fly in jet planes, right? I could visit actresses' homes. I'm, I'm, yeah, think about that. Being, to be invisible is enormous power. You have all the money in the world. You go in the private meetings and find out what stock they're buying.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  That's true. To make it happen.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Go to Vegas, take money.

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  There you, there you go.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Put it in your invisible pocket.

• 48:39Lewis Howes?

  If you, if you did know that we went on, would you do anything differently? If you didn't know that you lived on after this, or?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I'd be happy to hear it. I wanna know, how do I go on as, you know, what am I? Am I a spirit? Am I in a body?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  You know, what happens to my body if I die? What happens to my body? Where is? There's so many unanswered questions. And for somebody who knows. So if I could know that, but there's no way I know I could know it unless someone who has died came visit me. Haven't had that happen. I've never had that, you know, near death. I had bypass surgery. I had no near death experience.

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  No see the light?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  I didn't see no light coming through the wall. I just, I don't, I wish I could.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  Who's the person you interviewed that you felt like knows the most or has the most answers? Or is the smartest?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Probably, uh, the British guy.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Who has Lou Gehrig's disease. He's lived the longest with it. What's his name? Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking. With the black theory and the, he was fascinating to me. Because he types out all the answers, you know, because he can't speak. But he's, you know, he's a genius. And I asked him, Stephen, what is something you know nothing about? And he said, women. And that is the universal truth.

• 50:10Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  This I believe, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna hurt anybody out there because I mean this lovingly.

• 50:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  I'm, please believe me, I mean it lovingly. All women are nuts. Including my mother?

• 50:23Lewis Howes?

  You say it lovingly.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  No, you gotta be honest. My mother, my daughter. Everyone I know, they're all. If they could be more like men. I mean, men could be nuts, but extreme, but the average guy ain't nuts. He ain't nuts. You know what I mean?

• 50:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  If my friend, if my friend forgot my birthday, who cares?

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  And they have, I know that Venus and Mars theory, I accept that theory. That's the biggest puzzle to me. Is women and the way they think. Because they have, I know they think with a different part of the brain than I think, and it's really. Uh, logic is not their word. Logic makes, makes no sense.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Okay.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And I like, here's the worst thing you get from a woman. All women do this. No man does this. No man does the following. You walk into your house and there's your wife and she looks sad, glum. What's the matter? Nothing. No man would say nothing. A man would say, let me tell you.

• 51:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Will you tell me, there's nothing the matter. Well, you look like you're, stop it. I told you there's nothing. Don't speak to me.

• 51:39Lewis Howes?

  What are you supposed to do in those situations? Have you figured out that answer?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  One of the answers someone told me is when you get up every morning, just turn over to your wife and say, I'm sorry.

• 51:47Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  And you cover yesterday and today.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  I'm sorry for everything I did and what I'm doing.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Cause whatever it is, she's got something.

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And say, I'm sorry. So the, the, the whole world is fascinating, isn't it? And you, you, you're looking for greatness. What is greatness?

• 52:03Lewis Howes?

  My definition? Cause I'm gonna ask you here in a second, that's the final question I'd ask in the, in all my interviews. My definition, I think it changes over time. I think when I was a, uh, in high school, it was to get a girl to like me and play college sports or whatever, but I think now, uh, as a thirty-three-year-old man, is to discover and pursue my dreams and make the maximum impact in the world in that pursuit. That's what it is for me. I think it's different for every person. It's not about how much money I make, but, uh.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  I never sat down and examined it. I mean, I've been called, you know, I got a lifetime achievement from the Emmys. I won Peabody Awards, which is our Pulitzer. And I know I'm good at what I do. And people have said, you're great at what you're doing. I think greatness is to, in your chosen profession, exceed at being the best you can be. So you can be a great delivery man for a milk company. You never miss your rounds. The milk is always there.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  You have, you've never hit anybody? You can be a great garbage man. You clean up the streets, you get it done. Another person could say, "I'm a great husband." That counted more than, "I'm a great family man." That counted more to me than anything else in life, to be a great family man. But it's a word that gets bandied around a lot, you know? Everybody's great, he's great, he's great, he's great.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's a good definition, I think, yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  And Jerry Jeter said to me, "There are a lot of phony legends." "You're a true legend." That was a big compliment.

• 53:49Lewis Howes?

  That's nice.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  To me. The biggest compliment I ever got was Norman Chad in the Washington Post,

• 53:56Speaker 01

  who wrote, "To say that Larry King is better on television than he is on radio is like saying Marco, Mark Angelo." Michelangelo was a better sculptor than he was a painter. Which I, that, that really.

• 54:09Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  But, it's great being with you, Lou.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  You have a great podcast.

• 54:13Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  You're very thoughtful.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. I've got a couple of questions left for you, is it okay?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Okay, Lou, you said forty-five minutes, we have done almost an hour, but I understand Lou because you're, you're totally ingratiated with me and you feel.

• 54:24Lewis Howes?

  I'm fascinated by you.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  I can tell.

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  Fascinated. I can't get enough of you.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  All right, what else, Lou?

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay, a couple of questions left, I promise, I'll make them quick. Biggest mistake you've ever made in your life?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Smoking. I never should have started smoking. My father smoked, he died of a heart attack. I smoked the same cigarettes he used to smoke, Philip Morris. If I could have one day back in my life, it was the day I started smoking. Had a heart attack from that. Had bypass surgery, stopped smoking. The day I had the heart attack, I was fifty-three, so it's almost thirty years that I haven't smoked.

• 54:58Lewis Howes?

  Congrats.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  And I loved smoking. Oh, I loved it. I smoked three packs a day. It felt good, it was very sensual. The feeling was great. I'll tell you how, and I understand addiction. All people who are addicted, I understand completely. Addicted to drugs, addicted to drink, I understand addict, because I was addicted to cigarettes. There was one night, I'm a single, living in Virginia. Northern Virginia, and I woke up in the middle of the night, a snowstorm, no cigarettes. I'm hunting, I'm on my feet, on my knees crawling along, going through the garbage in the house to see if there were any cigarette butts, and there weren't any.

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  Crawling on the ground.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Crawling on the ground. I put on all the clothes I could. It was three in the morning.

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  I got addicted.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  And my car can't get out of the garage because the snow has backed up the electric thing.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I go out of the building, the Prospect House in Virginia, and I walk three blocks down a hill to the 7-Eleven, which is open 24 hours. I go into the 7-Eleven, go behind the counter, take out a pack of cigarettes, open up, light them up before I paid. Shaking to light that cigarette up, the wind blowing in my face, my feet getting wet from walking in the snow, to have that cigarette. So I understand addiction. So I had a day back, it was the day I started smoking.

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Thing you're most grateful for in your life recently?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Uh, kids. The fact I got three grown, I got a great stepson in Danny, and I got two kids who are seventeen, you know, in my age, seventeen and sixteen. I always tell the same joke, when people see me and my wife together, there's an obvious age difference. You know, they look at me, they look at her, and I know what they're thinking, you know? They look at me, they look at her, and I always say the same thing, if she dies, she dies.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  You know, life goes on. But to have, to have two young boys, seventeen and sixteen, they're both driving cars now, I can't believe it.

• 56:54Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Because they're still... See, when I see friends that I grew up with, and I have close friends that are still my friends that I grew up with, they look seventeen to me. I don't see them at eighty-two. They're seventeen, you know what I'm saying? So when I see my kids, they're five and six, I'm taking them to their first Dodger game. And when I see them drive off in these monster cars, going somewhere with all that engines and these kids. I I taught him, I showed him how to drive.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  It's it's it's crazy.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, huh? I don't have kids yet, so I can I can only imagine, but.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  There's nothing like kids.

• 57:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Nothing, there's nothing in your life because suddenly you have the only thing in your life that is unrequited love. Unrequited. Your kid don't have to love you. Your kid can leave you.

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  But you love your kid. You love him more than the wife, more than his brother. You can't, you can't, there's no love like it because it's unrequited. As I've often said. John Kennedy's mother had a lot of pain. The same pain that Lee Harvey Oswald's mother had. One shot, one receive the shot. Both mothers have the same pain.

• 58:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Right?

• 58:18Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Poor child, can't, losing a child has to be.

• 58:23Lewis Howes?

  The worst feeling, probably.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  I could not imagine, I've interviewed many people who've lost children. It's it's not right. Steve Lawrence lost his son at age twenty-three and and lost his faith, lost his religion, never got it back.

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  It's tough. Could break you, yeah. Okay, I have one final question and I want to make sure I respect it. Uh, but where are we promoting people to right now? The course?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:50Lewis Howes?

  Larry's course.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  You want a great course, Larry's course dot com. You'll get a course on on.

• 58:55Lewis Howes?

  Communication.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Secrets of good communication.

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  Interview skills, all those things.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  You not only get ten courses, you get individual interviews. I've done with special people every month, you get a new one. You, it's a great learning process. It's a lot of fun, it's funny. And at the same time, you learn. So you go to Larry's course dot com. You will not be disappointed.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  I guarantee this.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  And also, are you on social media anywhere personally?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Well, I have

• 59:21Lewis Howes?

  Twitter.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  I have two million nine hundred thousand Twitter followers.

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  There you go. At Larry King.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  At Larry K- at King's Things.

• 59:28Lewis Howes?

  King's Things.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I think it's called King's Things.

• 59:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  I don't even know what it's called. I have, I have-

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  We'll link it all up for you.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  I have this flip phone.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  Can I see it? Can I? I haven't held one of these in ten years.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  It's heavy.

• 59:38Lewis Howes?

  Look at this thing. I'm gonna open it. Look at this thing.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you why it's great.

• 59:41Lewis Howes?

  This is amazing.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Know why it's great?

• 59:43Lewis Howes?

  Why? Cause you can't text.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  It's a phone!

• 59:45Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  You put it up to your ear. You don't have a phone. You're talking to a box.

• 59:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  And another thing, I know addiction. My wife, totally addicted to-

• 59:54Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  -her iPhone.

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  That's good. Oh yeah, she's addicted to her iPhone.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  She's on it all day. I see her sometimes sleeping, holding it in her hand. Open her eyes and start, start texting.

• 1:00:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  It, I don't ever want, see cigarettes control me. That escapade of walking down that, they control me. I didn't control them. I gotta go get big- iPhone controls people. I don't want that.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I don't want that. I have to look at something. I'll learn. If something happened, you'll tell me.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Know what I mean? I don't have, I don't need that.

• 1:00:27Lewis Howes?

  Look at it constantly, yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  And I don't want something that, that controls my li- I saw- My wife and I were flying to Vegas once. True story, Danny. We're in the car, we're coming into the airport. And she goes, "My cellphone. What about it? It's home." Well, we're only going for two days.

• 1:00:49Lewis Howes?

  Freaking out.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  "Oh, no, no, no, no, no." Start shaking. I said, "Well, I've got a phone." "I've got a phone."

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  It's not the same thing.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  "If you have to make a call." It's not to make it a call. "I gotta go home." I said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" She says, "You go to Vegas, I'll take a plane."

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  She went home to get the phone.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  She went home, take a plane two hours later.

• 1:01:07Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  I went to Vegas by myself.

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  Well, addiction, yeah. Uh, okay, I wanna ask the final question.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Now, you keep lying.

• 1:01:14Lewis Howes?

  Nah, I didn't ask the final question.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  That's part of the secret of good communicating. If you could lie.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  That was to promote everything you had going on.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Okay, that was good, thank you.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay, now, the final question, before I ask it, I want to acknowledge you Larry, for a moment.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:01:28Lewis Howes?

  I want to acknowledge you for inspiring so many people in the world, for your incredible curiosity, and for being a seeker of truth. I think you've opened up so much truth to so many people in the world through your questions, through your curiosity, through your generosity. I think listening and asking the right questions is very unselfish of you and very generous of you, as opposed to making it about you in every interview, you make it about everyone else, so.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Don't use the word "I", thank you. I don't use the word "I".

• 1:01:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, so, I want to acknowledge you for your incredible gift of showing up 60 years and constantly giving and giving and giving and still having a youthful energy, and for being here, it just makes the world.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Thank you for your kindness, Lou.

• 1:02:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And since you've said that, it's about time I start getting back. How much do I get paid for this?

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Lou, there's no money?

• 1:02:17Lewis Howes?

  No money, I'll give back.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  People pay me lots of money to do it now, Lou.

• 1:02:24Lewis Howes?

  How much you want? How much you want?

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Alright, for you, seventy-five thousand.

• 1:02:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay, give me a discount.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Sixty thousand.

• 1:02:31Lewis Howes?

  Got it, okay.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Listen, you got a dollar for parking?

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Thanks, Lou.

• 1:02:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay, final question though. That was to acknowledge you. That was to acknowledge you, okay. This is what I asked at the end.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  What is the answer?

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  What is the answer? This is the three truths question. At the end of the day, all of your interviews are erased and gone, and you get to write down three things you know to be true about everything you learned in this experience of life. Three truths that you would give to the world, what would you say are your three truths?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Three truths. Nothing is given to you. You have to earn it. That's my truth. Of course, if you have inherited wealth, that's not your truth, but my truth is, nothing's given to you. I was very poor. I was on relief. New York City bought my first pair of glasses after my father died. So I never forgot poverty, and we were in poverty. So nothing's given to you. Number two.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Things will work out. What goes around, things will work out. Things look bad.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  Always work out.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  They work out. I don't know why they work out, but they work out. I have incredible belief in man. Man and woman, the human. Nothing's given to you. Things will work out. And to quote Mel Brooks, "Don't chase a bus, there'll always be another." Think about that.

• 1:04:02Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  You run down the street, chase a bus. You miss the bus. You fall down. You get wet. There'll be another bus.

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  There'll be another bus.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  There'll be another bus. Thank you, man.

• 1:04:11Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. There you have it. Wow. What a mind explosion and incredible experience that was for me to connect with Larry and really get to turn the tables on him and ask him the questions that he asked so many incredible people over the last 60 years. Such a grateful experience for me and I appreciate you guys being a part of this with me. Again, the School of Greatness hits episode 361. So make sure to share this out with your friends on Twitter @lewishouse and @KingsThings. Let us know what you thought. LewisHowes.com/361. Click the share button on the link or just tweet it out or you can go directly to your

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  podcast app on your phone and just share it out right from iTunes on the podcast app. And let me know in the comments, on the blog, or on the YouTube channel, or on Twitter, or social media. Let me know the thing you got out of this the most. The most insightful thing that you took away from this interview with Larry King. That would mean the world to me and I'm sure Larry would want to hear that as well. So make sure to share that out. And if this is your first time at the School of Greatness podcast, then welcome to the community. Welcome. We get over 1.3 million downloads a month and it's because of people like you who subscribe, who share, who review on iTunes as well. All those things help bring in more incredible people that are looking to change and optimize their life and take it to another level.

• 1:05:41Lewis Howes?

  On all Areas of your life. So if this is your first time here, thank you again, welcome, and make sure to click the subscribe button over on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and stay connected. We do this every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I love you all very much. I'm so grateful to be able to continue to do this podcast and connect with these individuals. It's all because of you and for you. So thank you. I love you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.