#597: Morgan Fallon — 10 Years on the Road with Anthony Bourdain, 9 Emmy Nominations, Lessons from Michael Mann, Adventures with Steven Rinella, High Standards, Wisdom from West Virginia, and More

Brought to you by Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses, and Gravity http://gravityblankets.com/tim weighted blankets. Morgan Fallon (@diamondmofallon https://twitter.com/diamondmofallon) is a nine-time-Emmy-nominated executive producer, director, and cinematographer. He was born and raised in New England and studied film at Emerson College in Boston. After graduating, he spent three years working for his mentor, director Michael Mann, and in 2007, he began a long-term working relationship with producers Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia and their New York-based production company, Zero Point Zero Productions https://www.zeropointzero.com/. Through his tenure at ZPZ, Morgan focused primarily on work with ZPZ creative partner Anthony Bourdain on several episodic series and documentaries produced by Bourdain, including the Emmy-winning Mind of a Chef https://www.amazon.com/Noodle/dp/B00BCWN15G/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, the theatrically distributed documentary The Last Magnificent https://www.amazon.com/Jeremiah-Tower-Last-Magnificent/dp/B071K7HFXV/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, and the Emmy-, Peabody-, PGA-, TCA-, and ACE-award-winning series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown https://www.amazon.com/Myanmar/dp/B00F2CYESK/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, which Morgan shot, directed, and produced throughout the series’ one-hundred-and-three-episode run. Currently, he is a director and executive producer for the Emmy-winning series United Shades of America https://www.amazon.com/Behind-the-Walls/dp/B07R2DDGRD/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 with W. Kamau Bell. He lives in California with his wife and production partner Gillian Brown https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3834836/ and his two children. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Gravity https://gravityblankets.com/tim! I place sleep at the top of my list for optimizing health, energy, and performance. If good sleep is in place, it helps everything else; if not, it hurts everything else. I’ve had sleep issues almost my entire life, which is why I’m always experimenting and adding great sleep aids. One of my new favorites is the Gravity Weighted Blanket https://gravityblankets.com/tim. 72% of Gravity users have reported better, more restful sleep, and 76% have reported falling asleep faster and feeling more rested in the morning. Gravity has been named “Best Weighted Blanket” by CNN, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, and many more. Gravity is offering my listeners a special discount: order a blanket of any size or weight and receive 15% off your order. Just go to GravityBlankets.com/Tim https://gravityblankets.com/tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. * This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep http://helixsleep.com/tim! Helix was selected as the #1 overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix http://helixsleep.com/tim, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete http://helixsleep.com/tim—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim http://helixsleep.com/tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * [04:19] How has Morgan’s decision to take up endurance mountain biking in his mid-40s been going so far? As someone who’s still recovering from injuries sustained years ago, am I one to make a judgment call? [10:52] After being on track to further develop his talent in ceramics, what compelled Morgan to study film at Emerson College, and how did he get in after his application was initially rejected? What did he take away from his time there? [16:47] Who is Michael Mann, and how did Morgan come to work with him? What made him such a rare cinematic force in the early 2000s when they met? [29:24] How did Morgan go from dining with the rich and famous at Nelson Mandela’s house in Mozambique to living in his parents’ New Hampshire basement, and what did he do to regroup after this detour and find his niche? [33:52] How did Morgan connect with Chris and Lydia at ZPZ, and what did he do to make himself indispensable to the projects he was lucky enough to land during this time? [39:48] As someone who worked with and knew the late Anthony Bourdain fairly well, what did Morgan think of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain? Is there anything about it he wishes had been handled differently? [43:46] On going into the wild with conservationist, hunter, writer, living encyclopedia, and former guest on this show Steven Rinella, what it means to get “cliff hung,” and the transferable skills Morgan picked up from documenting their wilderness treks for television. [59:38] How did Morgan get the call to first work with Anthony Bordain in Egypt, and what moderately reckless stunt endeared him to Tony and secured a place for him on future runs? [1:04:14] Morgan talks about that time he traveled to Ethiopia with Anthony Bordain and Marcus Samuelson to direct an episode of Parts Unknown during a tuberculosis outbreak. How did he prepare for it, what did he do to manage the anxiety disorders he experienced while there, and why will he probably never watch a John Wick movie? [1:14:17] What are the responsibilities of a director of photography (DP), and why does Morgan tend to drive them crazy? [1:15:39] On Tony’s high standards, why Morgan appreciated them, and the different types of standards one might expect to encounter over the course of a career in Hollywood — or fine dining — depending on the caliber of the people in charge. [1:25:54] What Morgan knows about that time Tony went snorkeling with dead cephalopods in Sicily and how it was made into a hilarious scene for the viewing audience while simultaneously bringing the man himself to the brink of a nervous breakdown. [1:30:52] Why Morgan’s house is filled with memorable detritus. [1:34:20] What tools has Morgan found to be most effective for dealing with the symptoms of his own bipolar disorder? Are people in his line of work prone to coping with similar struggles, and might the condition carry certain benefits for the creatively inclined? [1:39:05] Why did Morgan stop drinking when Tony died, and what’s been his most effective therapy for staying on the wagon? [1:45:17] Morgan explains how he and another cinematographer used two cameras to “dance with geometry” and make scenes more dynamic for The Tim Ferriss Experiment. [1:59:57] What advice would Morgan give his younger self regarding the journey from DP to director to showrunner and transitioning from a narrowly creative role to a broader creative role with more managing responsibilities? What has he learned about delegating constructively — rather than destructively — during his time in this field? [2:05:48] Why was the West Virginia episode of Parts Unknown so special to Morgan? [2:12:51] How does Morgan choose the projects he works on now? What prompted his involvement with United Shades of America? [2:19:06] What’s next for Morgan? [2:19:48] How has Morgan successfully navigated working with his wife? [2:25:42] The best day of Morgan’s career, appreciation for being able to do the work that keeps him constantly in awe of the world, and other parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Gravity, makers of the original weighted blanket. Listeners of this podcast know I place sleep at the very top of my list for optimizing health, energy, and performance. I've had onset insomnia and all sorts of sleep issues almost my entire life. It does not come easy for me, which is why I'm always experimenting and adding new sleep aids to my roster of experimentation. This is currently my number one priority because it's the basis, the foundation for everything else. If that's in place, it helps everything else. If it's not in place, it hurts everything else. One of my new favorites is the Gravity weighted blanket. My girlfriend is also a fan. You might recognize Gravity from some of my interviews on this podcast with superhuman athletes.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  A number of them use Gravity weighted blankets and have mentioned them, which is how I picked up the thread and ended up testing them out. Seventy-two percent of Gravity users have reported better, more restful sleep, and seventy-six percent have reported falling asleep faster and feeling more rested in the morning. For me, the falling asleep faster is the key piece. Better, deeper, uninterrupted sleep is key for brain function and cognitive abilities, as well as everything from cardiovascular health to immune function. You know this, and if you do any form of training, it's also the cornerstone of recovery. Gravity is the leader in weighted blanket technology. They have all sorts of other products as well, which you could check out, and they have been named the best weighted blanket by CNN, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping,

• 1:30Tim Ferriss?

  and many more. And now Gravity is offering you guys, my listeners, a special discount. Order a blanket of any size or weight and receive 15% off of your order. Just go to gravityblankets.com/tim and the discount will be automatically applied. That's 15% off at gravityblankets, gravityblankets.com/tim to get your own original weighted blanket, gravityblankets.com/tim.

• 2:00Tim Ferriss?

  This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end all be all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress

• 2:44Tim Ferriss?

  for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side in like a super soft bed, no problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is

• 3:22Tim Ferriss?

  offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off. So, check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim.

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  No, this is an appropriate time.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:19Tim Ferriss?

  So you started mountain biking a couple of years ago?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Actually, right after Tony died, I quit drinking right after Tony died and started mountain biking a lot. I tend to overdo it with everything. So mellow like trail mountain biking on the fire roads quickly turned into like enduro charging on these like DIY kind of ridiculous enduro courses that they build around here that are totally unpredictable, like really unpredictable lips on the jumps and stuff like that. And I ended up just hammering one of these things and had just a horrific crash. I broke my nose. My nose was sideways. It was all torn up. I made my way back to the main trail and these two Russian guys actually helped me out and

• 5:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know, you're in bad shape when the Russian guys have to help you out.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah, exactly. But the difference, the profound difference in like having not fall at 44 as opposed to the last time I had ridden when I was young is it's unreal. I'd never broken anything. I'd never even hurt myself. And it's like I just shattered on the ground. It was like dropping like a china plate, you know?

• 5:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, so bad. It's so bad. So you are or at points have been and have also self-described as a very physical shooter. And if I'm remembering correctly, please, please call BS on me if I'm misremembering, but you told me a story about running, I want to say on a football field while filming. Yeah. Could you just briefly tell that story to give people an idea of what physical shooter means? You might give an additional example after that, but I just remember almost losing my lunch with that one. So why don't we start there?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Well, this was kind of the depressing example. But yeah, we were, we were shooting a documentary, me and my longtime friend Todd Lubin, who I'm still in contact with. We're shooting a documentary in 2003 on a football team in South Carolina, Coastal Carolina, who's gone on to become like D2 like champions. I mean, they're like players in the NFL and stuff. It's a really good program now. But I was trying to run sprints while holding the camera sideways along with, you know, the players as they were running sprints. I started with like the O line and it's like the O line guys, you can keep up with the O line guys, right? So I got all cocky feeling like I was hot shit running with the O line guys who were 15 years older than. Now I started, I tried to run with the, uh, the running backs. It was like I was racing

• 6:48Speaker 02

  a Ferrari in a shopping cart. Yeah. So I'm running down the side and I, and yeah, I stepped in a hole and just, uh, obliterated my knee, just blew it to shreds. But the dumbest thing I did was I went, I flew to New Hampshire. I got an MRI and flew back and finished the show. I shot another two months on the, on the knee before getting surgery and I regret it every day. I mean, it's just a disaster now. I didn't know that everything's amplified when you get older, you know? And so it's like, you ever climbed up the top of a mast on a sailboat when you're out at sea?

• 7:23Tim Ferriss?

  I wish I could say yes, but I haven't.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Well, I've done this more than once, but it's kind of mellow when you're on the deck. You're kind of rolling and stuff. And when you realize you're at the top of a 60 foot mast, those, the little bit of rolling there is like these massive 20 foot swings back and forth and you just get shredded. That's what growing old is with injuries. It's like at the point of injury, it was like, it was, it was kind of mellow, you know? I was like, ah, I can roll with this. I'm tough, you know? I got tons of hormones still producing in my body and I can do anything. I just didn't realize that at 46 now, the effect of that would be so amplified that I basically spent my life limping around.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you and me both, you and me both, but I feel like you have, you have better stories to tell. Most of mine are just from terrible decisions and questionable circumstances. But before we get any further, let me just read this bio, which was fun to read because I don't know if I've actually read a bio of yours before. Obviously we've spent some time together, but let me just jump into this. Morgan Fallon on Twitter, at Diamond Mo Fallon is a nine-time Emmy nominated executive producer, director and cinematographer. He was born and raised in New England and studied film at Emerson College in Boston. First question is probably going to be what you learned and did not learn in your film courses at Emerson. After graduating, he spent three years working for his mentor, director Michael Mann. And in 2007, he began a long-term working relationship with producers

• 8:44Tim Ferriss?

  Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia and their New York-based production company, 0.0 Productions. Through his tenure at ZPZ, Fallon focused primarily on work with ZPZ. Creative partner Anthony Bourdain on several episodic series and documentaries produced by Bourdain, including the Emmy-winning Mind of a Chef, the theatrically distributed documentary The Last Magnificent, and the Emmy, Peabody, PGA, TCA, and ACE award-winning series Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, which Fallon shot, directed, and produced throughout the series 103-episode run. Currently, he is a director and executive producer for the Emmy-winning series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. He lives in California with his wife and production partner Gillian Brown and his two children.

• 9:28Tim Ferriss?

  You can find him, like I mentioned, on Twitter @DiamondMoFallon, Instagram @Fallon.Morgan, and I'll include the Facebook and everything else in the show notes. And the website for 0.0 is 0.0.com. And now we're back.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 9:43Tim Ferriss?

  So Morgan, AKA Mo, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 9:48Tim Ferriss?

  You have seen me read a lot of scripts and look into a lot of lights. Maybe we'll cover some of that.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And do a lot of stuff.

• 9:58Tim Ferriss?

  We did a lot of stuff.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Talk about physical shooter, like, you know, you were headlong into that project.

• 10:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, you want to talk about like things that you roll with and then you realize now you're at the top of the mast in a squall. That parkour episode, which was the first episode. I am still fixing injuries from that episode.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Oh, 100%.

• 10:23Tim Ferriss?

  Of the Tivarese Exorment. Oh, God. And it just seemed like such a great idea at the time.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I know, but you're jumping in with people who had been doing that forever. Those kind of athletes, when they get to that point, they're like a purpose-built race car, you know?

• 10:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  That's, that is what they are designed for. And to jump into that was, yeah, that's a lot. You did it, though.

• 10:43Tim Ferriss?

  That is one of the more generous ways to put it. Yes, I did it. And, you know, slowly rebuilding my body, however many years later. So Emerson College, studying film.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:56Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you choose to study film? And what were the most important things that perhaps you learned, if any? And the most important things that you did not learn? And we could take a piecemeal also. We don't have to answer all of it.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the story for me is like a lot of people in creative fields. It goes back, you know, far beyond college to my initial introduction to school and education and kind of figuring out my brain style didn't really jive with what people were asking me to do. So academic portion of school was always really difficult for me. And then I found art. And so art was always a huge part of my life. That goes up through high school. I was actually, I was originally, I was going to do ceramics. I was like headed to Alfred University and I wanted to do ceramics and did that a lot in high school and actually had like pieces in the National Art Show and stuff. So I'm still pretty proud of that. But at some point I started doing math and ceramics, you know, listen, no shade on ceramics.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  And like you climbed to the top of that ladder, like any other ladder, you can make a lot of money, but it's not exactly like the best life plan, I guess. And the other thing is I wanted to do something, I wanted to be in a medium that had power, that had power to tell stories, to inform people. I grew up with two kind of bleeding heart liberal teachers in my family. And my mom was a writing teacher and she focused on teaching writing through using film. So she was using like Pink Floyd, The Wall, Deliverance, Apocalypse Now, you know, do the right thing.

• 12:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's a, Deliverance is intense.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, right? She was using pretty heavy stuff with high school students to grow ideas and to teach critical thinking.

• 12:39Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right. I'm glad you mentioned the timeframe. Like high school, I'm imagining like teaching little Timmy in third grade how to do his cursing with Deliverance.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Age appropriate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, age appropriate, age appropriate stuff. Well, I mean, kind of age appropriate. I don't know. Deliverance, like, I don't know. Some high school students, maybe some high school students, maybe not. But that introduced me to film and introduced me to the idea that film could be more than just the art form or the money-making enterprise, that it could be like actually a way to talk about issues that are going on in our culture, a way to reflect on ourselves as humans. And I wanted to be a part of telling those stories. So I just pivoted from ceramics, which was the original goal, to filmmaking. I mean, I had Jaws. This was, I, I love that movie and I had Jaws on VHS tape. I recorded it off of HBO, right?

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I watched that movie so many times, I broke the VHS tape. So there was like a love for like the, the art form before I even knew what the art form was. And I wanted to chase that. So I went to Emerson. It's the only school in the end. It was the only school that I actually sent an application to. They denied me and I got in my car because I lived in New Hampshire. I got in my car and I drove down to Boston and went to the admissions department. I was like, why'd you deny me? And they put me in a room and I talked to someone and at the end of the meeting, she left and she came back in and she said, cool. You want to come to Emerson? Come to Emerson.

• 14:08Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I couldn't believe it.

• 14:10Tim Ferriss?

  What was, so after you, after the, I can't believe you denied me. Why'd you deny me? What, was there a plan going into it? Why do you think they let you in? Was it just the sheer fact that you were there in person and wouldn't leave?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  I think that's exactly it. You know, we work in an industry where like tenacity is kind of the key ingredient, right? I was a total fuck up, you know, in so many ways. And I didn't know my, you know, my ass from my elbow, but I was, I was tenacious enough to go down there and basically demand that they save a bed for me. I do think in the meeting at some point, I said, you better save a bed because I'm showing up. And, uh, and I, I just think she likes that, you know? Uh, it was great. I wish, I wish I knew who that was. I wish I knew that admissions person because I do have to kind of thank them.

• 14:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  So yeah, they saved me a bed. It was great.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  They read the tea leaves correctly too, you know, in a sense.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Couple, uh, turns I didn't expect in the road there, but like, yeah, for sure. No, no doubt.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  Did you learn what you were hoping to learn in school?

• 15:15Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, going into college, I'm not even sure I knew what I wanted to learn. You know, I, I had like these really weird conceptions of what the industry was. I pictured it in terms of, you know, I kind of want to crawl out of my small town context and live in some big glitzy kind of space, you know? And I think that's what I thought Hollywood was. And so like, that was, that was kind of the goal originally. And you like quickly learned that.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  That's not really how it rolls. But here's a, you know, here's the thing about Emerson College and like it is a really great school in a lot of ways. They put you on set. And so Emerson's kind of known for building technicians. And what I learned that I don't know that I went in wanting to learn, but was the most valuable thing is I learned how to be on set. I learned how to use everything on set. And I learned how to do everything on set. And that's a rarity, you know, a lot of film school is just theory. This was like hands on. And that allowed me to go out and like actually start doing stuff. And little did I know that my particular little niche of this industry in the end would require me to know how to do everything. So I learned that. I guess I

• 16:24Speaker 02

  kind of believe in that. I believe in that aspect of, you know, going to college. And, you know, I know there's a lot of people out there think you don't have to go to film school. And I guess I would kind of agree with that, too. I think that you can go out and you work in the industry and you'll learn what you need to learn.

• 16:41Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of different ways, different paths to approach it. And post-graduation, all right, you spent three years working for your mentor, Michael, director Michael Mann. Now,

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:51Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe for people who have no context, A, kind of explain in brief who Michael Mann is now, and then at that time, who Michael Mann was and how that actually came to be that you were working with him.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  I was extremely lucky because I mean, like, literally going out of school, I was like, I want to work for Michael Mann or Terrence Malick or Martin Scorsese. It was like, this thing just fell into my lap. Who Michael is, is, and I think the most important thing to note about who he is and who he was then is Michael was one of the few truly powerful directors that was left in Hollywood. There's obviously a few now, but the age of the Peck and Paws, you know, these incredibly powerful juggernaut directors is kind of like come and gone.

• 17:39Tim Ferriss?

  What is, I will admit, what is Peck and Paws?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  I don't know. Like Sam Peck and Paws, like a very famous director, like think of like the Wild Bunch, you know? Very like these very, very powerful, huge personalities that can drive a set with 300 extras and explosions and massive camera teams. And think of the big seventies kind of films, you know, and these directors who were so just so big and so powerful that they could drive all of that. Well, Michael was that. And even at the time that I started working for him, which was in 2000, you know, and so he still had the power to go against the studio.

• 18:19Tim Ferriss?

  When you say power, I'd love to hear you elaborate on that in terms of like leverage because of past performance, just sheer personality and stubbornness where people will fold and allow him to do what he wants to do. I'd love to hear you describe.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Little bit of all of those things. I think what he did really well and was really smart about was he always had the talent on his side. Actors felt safe with him. His track record was obviously just incredible. I mean, you think of a film like The Insider and what he was able to do with Russell Crowe, who's obviously a brilliant actor, but like, look at that character in The Insider and look at what Michael was able to build, you know? And so he had the trust of actors. And when you have the trust of actors at that level and the actors are like people like Russell Crowe and Will Smith and Tom Cruise, you have a lot of power. So that's one thing he had. But he also, and I think this is

• 19:17Speaker 02

  like a thing that people don't understand a lot about directing. It takes a level of discipline and drive and energy and fortitude that is not within the scope of normal human existence to make these films. So to pilot a $150 million film, a $200 million film, to be in charge of something that is so big and so sweeping and epic. And I worked with Michael on the making of Ali. So we were, what, I think 130, something like that was the end budget. But we had nights. I mean, we had a night in Mozambique where we had 15,000 extras. And think about that. And he's at the helm of all that. And he has

• 20:00Speaker 02

  to hold all that together and he has to, you know, keep. Keep focused, keep straight, keep drive, keep the actors in there, keep the crew in there, you know, all of that stuff. That takes a truly unique person, usually takes a total fucking tyrant as well. And he would fall into that category also. But those kind of directors are kind of less and less because the studios have quite a bit of control now. And so the studio, it's, it's more kind of decision by committee now. You know, you have very powerful studio heads, you have very powerful executive producers within the studios. And so I think that there's fewer and fewer of the directors. I mean, I guess

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Paul Thomas Anderson would be like a modern kind of example of this, who can go in and say, this is the film, this is the story, this is my vision, this is what we're going to execute, and you're not going to fucking touch it. And that's rare. And Michael had that.

• 20:57Tim Ferriss?

  How did you get the job with Michael? And actually, two questions, maybe we can back up. So you said, I want to work for Michael, Michael Mann, a name I didn't recognize, or Martin Scorsese?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Terrence Malick.

• 21:10Tim Ferriss?

  Who is Terrence Malick? And why those three, in your mind?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Terrence Malick is Thin Red Line. He just has a way of making these incredibly articulate films that almost feel like visual poems, you know, but a very powerful director and someone who was able to really exercise the medium of film and use all of the tools and spend like, anyone who works in the industry will know, it's like how hard it is to get like 45 seconds of silence into a film or into a television show or into everything where you can just absorb the natural space or absorb the characters going through something. Or it's like, you constantly need to be packing action and you constantly need to be packing information. You constantly need to be feeding and feeding and feeding, right? And what I

• 21:58Speaker 02

  really loved about his films, like if you watch his films, he has these beautiful little detailed nuanced moments within the film that Just hard to achieve. I mean, Martin Scorsese is Martin Scorsese. He directed probably the greatest American film ever made, which is Goodfellas, I believe. I think it was Tony's favorite as well. It's, I agree with him. It's, you know, it's a masterpiece. And then, but Michael, I really, I loved Insider and I loved Heat. I think that the last sequence in Last of the Mohicans is one of the masterpieces of filmmaking. It's technically perfect.

• 22:36Tim Ferriss?

  I just rewatched Last of the Mohicans recently because I read the book for the first time.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that's cool.

• 22:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Isn't it amazing? So that's Michael. You know, so Michael did Last of the Mohicans and it's a good film. I like, I like the rest of the film, but from the moment that they leave the village where they burn the, I forget his name, the British soldier, and he chases them up into the hills. It's perfect. It's perfect. He doesn't miss a beat in that.

• 23:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's beautifully, really beautifully conceived and beautifully shot and also creatively deviates from the book in a bunch of really interesting ways. And so at some point, I would love to talk to like the screenwriter and I mean, this is a fantasy, right? Sit at dinner, have some wine with like the screenwriter, Michael, be like, I know it was a long time ago, but let's talk about it. All right. So how did you get the job with Michael?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  It's totally random. I just got, I got a phone call one day.

• 23:31Tim Ferriss?

  What? Well, why did they know who the hell you were?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Cause I, it was, I got a call from someone who I had known at Emerson and it just said, hey, they need a temporary office assistant for three days. I can't take the job. It's Michael Mann's office. Do you want to do it? I was like, you fucking kidding? Yeah, absolutely. And I got in that office and I look back now and I'm like, they must've all thought I was just totally out of my mind. Like I didn't leave. I left at like 11:30 at night or something. I stayed. I like stayed after. I like cleaned the whole copy room. I like organized the fridge. I like, I just did anything I could. I was like, I'm doing anything I can to stay in this office. And I did. And at the end of the three days, they're like, yeah, we got a film coming up. Do you want to be a P A on the film? I was like, of course.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  So I took that. Where it really turned though, is that, you know, Michael had an assistant and I was there and I was like the runner and the office, you know, lackey. But I knew stuff because of Emerson. Like I said, I, I knew how to run cameras. I knew how to run systems. I knew how to do a lot of stuff. And I had a solid base of understanding filmmaking. And the other thing I did is when I got in there, I, I asked for the research material and was like, hey, read this book, read this book, read this book. And I just went and read them all. And so I knew how to do all these things. And eventually I'd start, you know, I started setting up the rentals on cameras and stuff like that. Right? And then, you know, their video cameras, none of these cats know how to use them.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  These older like filmmaking cats like Michael and his generation, they didn't fully look at a video camera. It's like, they had no idea what to do with these things, you know? And so he's like, oh, you know how to run it? And I'm like, yeah, I know how to run all this stuff. And he's like, okay, come down to the gym where we're training with Will and you can help me set these things up and stuff like that. So I would basically just set these cameras up and hand them to Michael. And every once in a while, lift my head up and be like, oh my God, I'm standing in a room with Will Smith and Michael Mann. And, you know, and then eventually Ali came by, like hanging out with Ali. And then Darius Kanji, who's a very famous cinematographer is there. And I remember one day Darius Kanji, who I was like, these cats are like my idols when I'm in film school, right?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Darius Kanji shot Delicatessen. Darius Kanji came up to me. He's like, he's like, hey, man, he's like, don't tell anyone, but I have no idea how to use this camera. I'm like, I'm like, oh, okay, cool. They're like dialing it in for him. I'm like, you're all good, man. Just ask me. By doing that stuff and reading the research material, like eventually Michael kind of pulled me more and more in. And then I remember one night, I still feel kind of bad for this kid, but it was such a bad call. He had this assistant and the assistant went to a Roger Waters concert and left me alone with him. I'm like, dude, you just. You just left the fox in the hen house, man. Like, he closed the door behind you. Like, I am gonna fucking destroy you. So I stayed and I stayed and eventually Michael comes out and he's like, he's like, where's, you know, so and so.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  And I'm like, oh, he went to a concert. And he's like, oh, he went to a concert. I was like, yeah, yep, I'm here. And he's like, yeah, but you don't know any of the stuff. He's like, I need this quote from the David Remnick book. And I was like, actually, I read that book and I know right where that quote is and I'll get it for you right now. And I went down and made the photocopy and like, I don't know, a week later, that kid's moving his shit out of his desk and I'm moving into his desk. And it was that cold. And I went on this incredible ride with him.

• 26:53Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. I was gonna ask you how the research materials came in. Wow. So from the three day office assistant, that has to be a world record pull vault into like, a whole different stratosphere of responsibilities. That's just incredible. I mean, what a story.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  It was amazing. And he handed me also, like, being his assistant, he handed me responsibility over all the creative materials. So, listen, I, Michael's, he's a very, very difficult person. He can be cruel. He can be incredibly cold to people who have been loyal to him for years. There's a lot of ugliness there and a lot of stuff that eventually I was like, you know, I don't want to be that kind of person. And I still feel that way. But I can't but respect him to the highest degree as, as a creative. I've never seen someone with so much creative energy and so much drive. It was like, all of a sudden, just being in a different universe, you know, where like,

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I at 24 was using every ounce of energy I had to keep up with this man who is 60. And like, that's the difference. That's the difference, you know, with someone like him. But he handed me this, like, he would keep these running notes that were thousands of pages long, these huge volumes, huge three ring binders, where he had thousands of pages of, of creative notes that he had made on every scene. And he handed me responsibility for all that stuff. And so a lot of what I was doing was a look into someone who's operating at the very highest level, who's arguably a master of their craft.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  It was incredible. I mean, it was, it was amazing. And I was next to him for every second of it.

• 28:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible. The research materials. So I see how the research materials ended up being helpful. Did you request the research materials because you thought there might be an opening like that? Or was there a different reason for you requesting?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  I was like, I'm, I have a foothold here and I am going to live and breathe whatever I can that this man lives and breathes. Just because I'm here and I'm 24 and I got just like full of energy. I swear, I do think that they probably thought I was a like a speed freak though. I think they probably thought I was like either a cokehead or a speed freak. I wasn't. But I was just so charged up and so full of energy that I just did all these things.

• 29:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just total immersion.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 29:24Tim Ferriss?

  How did television enter the fray, so to speak? How, how did you then become involved with television?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  My career took a very weird kind of turn. I finished working for Michael. What I had done while I was with him, they, they handed me a video camera. So they're like, well, you're here for everything. So just keep the camera on you, film what you can.

• 29:45Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of like a behind the scenes type of thing?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. I ended up filming quite a bit of that and they were producing a documentary for HBO on the making of the film. And it ended up being that like 50% of the footage and the end result was mine and.

• 30:00Tim Ferriss?

  Which film was this? Just, uh, you may have already mentioned, but which?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Ali.

• 30:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that was Ali.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was the film. The film was Ali. Yep. And so I had filmed all this stuff. They ended up using a lot of it. The producer came up to me and she said, Hey, listen, like we get a lot of footage from assistants and it's, it always sucks. Your footage is actually really good. We use quite a bit of it. You might think about this as this is a skill you have. At the same time, like I, you know, young in Hollywood, there's a lot of temptation.

• 30:32Tim Ferriss?

  I might need you to elaborate on that. What does that mean? Just the vices of Hollywood?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. In the end, I got pretty deep on just alcohol and partying and, you know, a lot of stuff got a like caught a DUI, broke up with my girlfriend at the time, stopped working for Michael. Things just kind of fell apart a little bit, but I always had the camera. So I ended up, picture this, I'm like, one day I'm flying around in Gulfstream fives with Michael and Will Smith and like, I had dinner at fucking Nelson Mandela's house in Mozambique. Like, picture that. We were 24, hanging out with Nelson Mandela.

• 31:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Tim Ferriss?

  Quick interjection.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:08Tim Ferriss?

  Correct me if I'm wrong. So you grew up partially leased in West Virginia in an old farmhouse with no electricity. Am I making that up or is that legit?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  That's true. That's true. When I was much younger, though. Yeah.

• 31:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I'm just painting the contrast since you're mentioning flying around in a G5.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  It's a good thing to paint because, um, West Virginia comes full circle in this, uh, this story of my life, too. West Virginia, that still has a place in my heart. I'll elaborate on that in a bit. So yeah, one day I'm flying around in Gulfstream and, you know, hanging out with Nelson Mandela. And the next day I'm like in my parents' basement, back in the middle of winter in New Hampshire, like a broke ass bombed out alcoholic, like dude, you gotta put your life back together. And so I ended up teaching a film class for my dad, who ran summer programs at this private school that I grew up at, and saved up enough money to buy a camera. And then I just started shooting from the very bottom, you know? And I just started again.

• 32:04Tim Ferriss?

  What did you start shooting?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I was literally shooting like America's most fantabulous homes and stuff like that.

• 32:10Tim Ferriss?

  Were you finding the gigs in New York or how did you find the gigs at that point?

• 32:15Speaker 02

  My friend, the same friend that I shot the documentary on the football team with, my buddy Todd Lubin, reached out to me and there's a number of times in my career and in my life that Todd reached out to me and was like, hey, you should come do this. A couple of life-changing kind of moments. So he reached out, he hooked me up with these gigs, you know, making not much money. I didn't have a license. I lived in New Hampshire. Most of the jobs are in New York. I'd have to like take a bus to like South Station in Boston with all my equipment and all these huge Pelican cases, get on the train, go down to New York, shoot these things, get back. I was hustling, you know? And eventually rebuilt it and you know how it is, like you get better and better projects. You get kind of known for things. You meet people, your network starts to spread.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  The time with Michael was almost like, just like an appetizer, like an amuse-bouche. And then the real work came of like, building something from scratch again. Building from the bottom, but that taught me how to be tough and it taught me how to shoot and it taught me how to be scrappy. And most of all, and the thing that ended up paying off the most when I got down the road with Tony and stuff is, I learned how to make something out of nothing. You know, because if you're like with Michael and on the projects like that, you got all these resources, huge budgets, like, you know, huge, huge stuff. When you're working on the kind of stuff that I do, it's a knife fight. You're intentionally small. You don't operate with big crews. You operate with small crews. You don't want to freak people out. I don't work with actors, you know? I work with people.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  You gotta have a light touch. You gotta go in, you gotta figure out how to pull the most value out of things with the fewest amount of resources.

• 33:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. How did you then end up connecting with Chris and Lydia at ZPZ?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Again, in, in kind of working my way back up through the ranks by like 2000 and I guess this is 2006. I had shot this show in Buffalo called Tough Love. It was a dark, like romantic comedy about a matchmaker set in Buffalo. I lived in Buffalo for six months in the winter, which is, I mean, hats off to anyone in Buffalo. You are, you are tough people. And the DP on that show was someone named Zach Zamboni, who is absolutely just a phenomenal gifted DP, who understands this genre better than anyone else I know. And to say this genre, I mean, like the Verite documentary genre.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  He ended up giving my name to Chris and Lydia because he had been working for them and was at that time, working for Tony on No Reservations. They hired me for a couple of jobs and that's how I got in with them. And so I owe a tremendous amount to Zach. I still talk to him all the time as much as possible. And what can you say about him? He's the master.

• 35:00Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds like a mensch too, along with, along with Todd.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:04Tim Ferriss?

  Question about working your way back up. So if we do now, just a mini flashback.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

  You're taking a- All sorts of different projects. Now I'm tempted to say whatever you, okay, so anything, whatever you can get. However, I know you're also a very smart guy. One could say what happened with Michael Mann was one part luck, but it was also like many other, required many other ingredients for that to actually coalesce into what it did. As you were working your way back up, was there any particular strategy about how, let's say past the halfway point before you get to ZPZ about how you chose projects or anything like that? Or was it really just throw as much against the wall and hope there's some synchronicity?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  It was definitely throw as much against the wall as possible, but I think that a marker of many people's careers is certainly not my philosophy or anything like that. But I'm like, kind of like a trapdoor spider or something. You know, you sit there like you're kind of like patient, you're grinding out the days. And like, when the cricket comes by, you grab it. And that's the moment. And I think that that has been-

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

  When the, when the assistant goes to the concert.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Gotcha bitch.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Come on, man. Rules of engagement.

• 36:17Tim Ferriss?

  That's legitimate. That's terrible. That is like a, that is a terminal move that he made. I agree. I mean, who does he think he's working for?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  It was stunning to me that he allowed that opening. And for Roger Waters, which like, respect, but like, you know, it's not the, it's not Pink Floyd.

• 36:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  I think that it's just knowing those moments and like, there are career changing moments and it's sometimes just a phone call. It's out of the blue. And you're like, oh, this is the moment. This is the thing. This is the project. When I got turned on to ZPZ and Chris and Lydia, that was like, very clearly it. And I was very aware of Tony and no reservations at that point and was like, that is what I want to do. I want to do that. And so when they came into the picture, I was like, oh, you, yeah, I'm going to do anything that it takes. Put me on any project you want and I will prove to you that I deserve to be on that ride and working with Tony. And that's what I tried to do.

• 37:15Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you go about trying to do it? What did the first date look like?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  The first thing I did for them was a show for PBS called Diary of a Foodie, which was a great show. It was a beautiful show. And so, you know, what did I do? I show up on time, work your ass off, shoot good footage, don't be a pain in the ass, keep your head low, figure out the lay of the land, don't come in like you own the place. I don't know, the basics.

• 37:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Luckily learned how to do that shit from my dad. You know, he taught me how to work hard. And I don't think that I've been like someone in my career. I mean, there are people, a lot of people in this industry that are just way more calculated and Machiavellian about how they go about. They see it way, way down the road. They know where they're headed. They know the strategy to get there. That's impressive to me. I can't do that. I see the thing come, I grab it. That's what happened with that. I knew that I wanted to work with Tony. I saw a window and I just was not going to leave. So, I mean, that's, I guess that's it. Same thing with showing up at Emerson and telling them that I'm coming regardless of whether they have a bed for me or not, I guess.

• 38:27Tim Ferriss?

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• 39:11Tim Ferriss?

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• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  So part of what prompted me to reach back out, and I think I said this in the text, was I had an international flight and I watched Roadrunner, this documentary about Anthony Bourdain, Tony Bourdain, and I thought it was, to the extent that I could even assess it because I didn't know him. But I thought it was well done. It wasn't, it didn't seem one dimensional in the sense that they really approached it from many different perspectives. I would be curious to know what you thought was, if you have any opinion, like what you thought was important for them to include that they included, and then perhaps what you would have liked to have seen more of or mentioned.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I'm stoked to talk about Roadrunner. We should back up at some point on the ZPZ stuff because there's a bunch of stuff that happened in between there, which is Steve. And we should talk about Steve.

• 40:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. We're definitely going to do that.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  So Roadrunner, it was directed by Morgan Neville, who's one of the great documentary filmmakers out there right now. By the way, I should like specify, there were a lot of people that worked for Tony and a lot of people that were really close with him. It is, in no way am I the person or, you know, a singular kind of thing there. There was a lot of people that were really close to Tony and went on the ride with him. And I'm sure a lot of them have different opinions about Roadrunner. For me, when I watched the film and I've only seen it once, I may only ever see it once, it's hard. It's hard for me to watch it again. What I saw, I think that what they did was as good a job as you could do.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  With that subject without having been on the inside of it, which I guess is in some ways, I mean that in as kind of the greatest compliment I can give because I think that there were things that were missed, but I think that there are things that you kind of had to really be there and know him and have gone through that experience to really fully grasp and understand. And I think they did a really good job of getting who he was and getting what that journey was. And as far as things I wish they had leaned into more and away from more, I do wish they had gotten a little bit more of who Tony was in terms of his relationship to people and

• 42:07Speaker 02

  the way he approached people, the way he approached the world. Yes, he was, he was a champion of the underdog and they mentioned that in the film, but it was more than that. Tony really, really deeply felt, I think, a connection to people whose environments he was walking into and he felt that connection as a guest. But he was the kind of person who was like weighed into a room and pick up a baby and sit in someone's living room and like really actually kind of be there and be with them and be with them on their terms. And that was one of the kind of the intangibles about him.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  He was a very connected person to the world. For someone who is like as strangely agoraphobic as he was, he had an amazing ability to be truly like connected and in the moment and see the beauty in things that are often passed up in the, like the beauty in people and in the small nuances and details of their life. And I guess that a little more of that and a little less of the kind of whodunit aspect of Tony's suicide. I understand going down that road for sure. And who am I to talk? I'm like, I contributed as much to that as anyone else through my interview, you know,

• 43:31Speaker 02

  but it is not the defining characteristic of who Tony was. There are so many others that, that I feel could have, I guess, played a little bigger. It's well done, though.

• 43:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, makes sense. And we'll, we'll certainly come back to Tony. So you mentioned ZPZ. Let's talk about ZPZ.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:50Tim Ferriss?

  And Steve. So who is Steve? And what do these chapters look like?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  So I came in on Foodies and then did a couple of No Reservations with Tony. Those were great. So the first one, I got called to replace someone on the Egypt show with Tony, and I got along with him, which was kind of amazing, I guess. I didn't know at the time. I didn't know it was anything special, but I got a call after from Lydia and she's like, he knows your name. This is a benchmark moment. I was like, oh, okay, cool. So I went to Egypt with them and we'd had a great show. I did a few other No Reservations, was like getting to know Tony. But then they called me. I was working at the time, again, for my buddy Todd, who was showrunning Biggest Loser.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  And I had shot 96 episodes of Biggest Loser, which is real formatty reality TV with a little more puking than normal reality TV. But I had gone in like, I'd done that for three years and really I learned like how to shoot on that thing. Cause you're just grinding out. You have a camera on your shoulder for like 10 hours a day and you are just grinding out shooting. It's the same stuff over and over again, but you're like, you'll really learn it. I got a call and they're like, we have this guy, Steve Rinella. He's got a really interesting story. He lives in Brooklyn, but he hunts for his food. He's a conservationist and a hunter and a writer and he's a really smart guy and

• 45:16Speaker 02

  you should meet him. I think you'd get along with him. And so I go and meet Steve in a parking lot in Michigan and within 35 minutes, I am this deep in a swamp, you know, up to my shoulders in a swamp, holding the camera above my head as Steve sets turtle traps. And it was just like this moment of like, oh my God, this is, this is it because this is like super experiential. It's super visual. He's incredibly smart, just a fountain of information, as you know, from hanging out with him.

• 45:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, encyclopedic.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  It's just unbelievable. And so it had all of, everything was there. You got all of the information. You got something that's really smart. You got a philosophy behind it that makes sense. And yet you're doing stuff that's highly physical, that's really cinematic, that's really kind of gripping and kind of hits on like a root human level. You're out doing it. You're out like getting food, you know? So I met him in that swamp and just started a journey with him. We went on to film eight episodes of a show called Wild Within, which was a early attempt to make a hunting show and figure out what a hunting show could

• 46:31Speaker 02

  be in terms of also telling a story and having a narrative progression. It was really unique in that we were just actually doing the stuff that we said we were gonna do. I remember early on, like a producer came on, they're like, okay, where's the line item for the animal wrangler? And Steve's like, fucking animal wrangler? It's like, there's no animal wrangler, dude. We're going to Alberta to hunt moose. And he's like, well, how do you know you're gonna be successful? He's like, I don't. It's hunting. We don't know if we're gonna be successful.

• 47:01Tim Ferriss?

  Who's dropping off the moose? No one's dropping off the moose.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  To present that to a network and be like, how are you gonna assure us that you come up with something here? We're not. We're gonna go out and actually do it. That was a lot for a network to get their heads around, but it allowed us to, to be genuine about what we were doing, you know? And I, I really believe, like, when you, when you watch these shows, people know, they know when they're being bullshitted and they know when it's honest. The bullshit is fun to watch. I get it. It draws numbers and people enjoy it.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  But if you want to build a legacy, you want to build one of these legacy shows, you got to be honest with your audience. That's what they will come back for year after year after year. That's what they're looking for. And that's what Steve provided. And so we went and we did this show that was really unique. And I felt like we had moments that were unlike anything I had ever seen on TV before. We're in it, man, hunting pigs in Hawaii, having the pigs run up this cooley and get in this little, they got in this little stream there where we found them. They're like in a fight to the death with the dogs that had run them down. Steve's like in there with a knife trying to stab pig and not dog. There's blood, there's screaming, there's

• 48:18Speaker 02

  mud and shit flying all over the place. And I know that that can be very difficult for some people to hear and understand. But for me, I had this moment where I was like, I feel incredibly connected to like, the human experience, to the natural experience, I feel like a part of kind of the whole dynamic. And we ate pig, and we used all of it. And we, you know, we were responsible about it. And so I could kind of, from a philosophical standpoint, I felt like I could get my head around it and like, understand, oh, this is why this person does this.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  Had you ever hunted prior to that show or been involved with hunting?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Not at all, never. What I realized is like, growing up in New Hampshire, I felt like I was outdoorsy. And then I went with Steve to Alaska. And I was like, oh, I'm not outdoorsy at all. I've never been off a trail. I've never been off like a well marked trail. And all of a sudden, you're standing in the middle of like Prince of Wales Island with Steve. It's fucking pouring rain. You're freezing cold. You're cliffhung because it's Steve and something always happens.

• 49:27Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by cliffhung? What does that mean?

• 49:31Speaker 02

  What is cliffhung? So cliffhung, if you're, if you're, I think it usually happens when you're descending, but basically you're, say you're descending through heavy cover and you get out to a cliff and you make a decision, which is like, I can get down this thing and you go down a drop that you can't come back up. Then you realize that the drop, the next drop is in 15 feet, it's 60 feet. Then you're cliffhung. Oh shit. So. That's, that sounds like a great situation. Yeah. And you gotta figure it out, but figuring all that stuff out was like, was incredible. Again, just, I was just like, I'm just a dude. I didn't come from any kind of special background. I'm not a green beret, you know?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  I was dropped into this thing with no understanding of what my capacities were when I was put into an environment where you have to rely on like your natural instincts and your ability to do shit and your ability to like, not get yourself fucking killed when you're out in the woods. And at first I was like, I can't do this. And by the way, I've got a 50 pound pack on and a camera all the time. So I got one hand. Everyone else got two hands. At first it was terrifying. I remember that first time we got a little bit cliffhung and I'm like, where's the sat phone? Let's call the coast guard. And they're like, they're like, dude, we don't call the coast guard over this. Trust me, you're going to be okay. And it was an incredible, an incredible realization to be like, oh wait, I am going to be okay.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  I've got all the, all the stuff is innate in being human that I need to like survive this and to figure it out and to deal with it. Whereas I think a lot of my career up to that point had been like, how to navigate the human world. The constructed world. Yeah. That's right. I had never connected with the natural world. And I had no idea that within me and within all of us was this ability to navigate the natural world by simply connecting with stuff that we are born with.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Steve brought that out of me. And once I realized that, then the whole world opened. And you're like, oh, my God, I'm in the middle of this highly dynamic, highly visual thing that we can just run with and we can like, no one's, I don't want to say no one's ever done that style, you know, of production before, but truthfully, honestly, in the hunting world, they did a lot of like, and you know what it is, they sit in a blind, they shoot a bear over a 55 gallon drum of donuts. I find all that shit disgusting. A lot of these shows won't even finish the episode unless they get a good kill shot. And we were like, fuck kill shots. I don't give a shit about the kill shot. We were doing something that just

• 52:11Speaker 02

  felt so raw and real and unproduced and unscripted that it was very refreshing. And once kind of figured out, oh, this, you put your feet here, you walk this way, you hold the camera like this, this is how you don't get yourself killed. This is how you don't get yourself hurt. Once we figured all that shit out, or once I figured all that shit out, then you were left with just this incredible canvas to paint on. And I think we did something really special. I think we really put people in that sensory environment, what it feels like to be out there and to be a predator and to be part of this whole dynamic that's always going on around us, but that we have largely excised ourselves from. And we were there with a camera to capture it.

• 52:54Tim Ferriss?

  I'll be the, the first to concur that Steve is as legit as I've seen, certainly having spent time with him for one episode.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:05Tim Ferriss?

  In the Brooks Range, which was incredible.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  You got thrown into the deep end.

• 53:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that was, that was exciting. Yeah. Having the barren, barren ground grizzlies charging the camp. Oh my God. And Steve, I remember when, uh, when one charged the camp and it's running because Yanis spotted it. But Yanis, is that, is that right? Am I getting his name right?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 53:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, so Yanis nickname, I thought, what do we, like the bear whisperer? I think on that trip, ended up at some point, he was just unpacking some gear or something. And then he kind of sat up and he's like, wait a second, grabbed his binoculars and then lo and behold, he spotted this bear that was on its hind legs smelling some of our

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:46Tim Ferriss?

  meat. And it just comes galloping, that's probably not the right term, but like loping towards us around this lake.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Barreling is usually the way I feel about bears.

• 53:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, barreling. That's yes, absolutely barreling. And I remember Steve is being summoned, right? We're all like, Steve, Steve, because half of us are muggles who have never dealt with bears before. And Steve comes out of his tent and he's so pissed off because he had left his cellphone in the corner of his tent and this mosquito kind of deet liquid had pooled in that side and destroyed his cellphone. And so he's like ranting and raving and fuck this and fuck that. And he's so pissed as this bear is running, he's completely unconcerned. And we're all like, uh, Steve, bear, uh, Steve, bear, Steve, bear. And eventually he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he like shoots a shotgun in the air and like waves at it and it runs

• 54:40Tim Ferriss?

  off and turns around a quarter mile away and just sits there staring at us. And I'm like, now, now what do I do? But he is absolutely

• 54:48Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 54:49Tim Ferriss?

  able to walk the talk.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. In every part of that story, including him destroying his cellphone, it rings so true to Steve. But that's exactly right. I mean, he, to be with Steve Rinella is you're with someone who is so, so sure footed and so competent in their environment. It is really something to behold. And I, he kind of shrugs it off when you try to compliment him, but that is one of the toughest, smartest, most solid people I've ever met in my life.

• 55:17Tim Ferriss?

  I was just gonna add incredible human. And also for those people who are like, oh, isn't that the hunting guy on TV? He is also an incredibly talented and not just talented executive and furs. He's born with it out of the box. Maybe some of that is true, but skillful writer. I mean, American Buffalo.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 55:33Tim Ferriss?

  Many other books. Excellent writer.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  That's earned. I mean, sure, like born with a predilection for writing. Sure. I'm sure that's true, but he's a writer. I mean, he writes from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon every day. He does the job and it has made him a great writer. And I would say that his voiceover and his writing is some of the best in the industry. He's just excellent. And has built that initial show Wild Within went on. I mean, of course, it was canceled in the first season because like no network was ever going to be able to really wrap their head around what we were doing. And so we launched a self-financed endeavor, which was Mediaator, which has now grown into this big company that Steve owns or partially owns

• 56:17Speaker 02

  or whatever. I don't know exactly what the ownership structure is, but it's grown into this big thing. When we actually went out and did that, that was like the fully formed version of the show. I feel like Wild Within, we were just kind of like learning how to be outside and how to make TV and how to not bullshit people. And trust me, we did a little bit of eye rolling bullshit in Wild Within. But by the time we got to Mediaator, we weren't bullshitting anymore. We were just going out and doing it and grinding and we got really good at it. And I just have watched recent episodes now and they're beautiful and smart and just excellent, high quality TV and like very, very proud of that, that that, that something I was involved in, like on that ground level has maintained that

• 57:01Speaker 02

  kind of quality is like incredibly rewarding.

• 57:05Tim Ferriss?

  What do you feel like, aside from what we've already discussed, what skills did you develop or what did you learn from that show, that experience on the show? That has ended up transferring to other things, helping with other things later. Does anything come to mind?

• 57:25Speaker 02

  The psychological game is everything. I think we have a tendency to shut down when we feel defeated or to shut down when we feel like we've reached an impasse. And what's amazing about being in the natural environment like that and really doing it is that you're forced to face the landscape. You're forced to face the elements. You're forced to face weather. You're forced to face all these things that are incongruous with producing television and achieving your goal.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  And you don't have the option because you're out alone. I mean, you know, you know how, I mean, from the Brooks Range show, you get dropped off by like a Piper Cub in the middle of nowhere, and they're not coming back for 10 days, or however long you were out. And so you got to figure all that shit out in between. And yeah, we go out with like a lot of tools and stuff, but it's hard not to feel defeated when you're freezing, when you're soaking wet, when you roll out of your sleeping bag in the morning and the reality you're facing is that you got to put on your soaking wet wool underclothes that have been out in 40-degree weather all night. And it's gonna suck, and it's gonna hurt, and it's gonna be miserable,

• 58:40Speaker 02

  and cold, and depressing. And you got to push through that anyways. I think for me, and I don't know that this is the same for everyone else, you know, but I think for me, that was the greatest thing that I took away from that is keeping your headspace, keeping your mood elevated, keeping the possibility of something amazing and beautiful and brilliant happening, and keeping grinding is the way to do this specific line of work. Because, again, we don't have the resources to control all the variables, and we're working with real people in all the work that I do. So you're kind of at the whim of a lot of dynamics, and you got to learn how

• 59:25Speaker 02

  to see the things that get in your way as gifts. You know, you got to learn how to take them and operate around them and move off of them and use them. That's what I learned out there with Steve.

• 59:38Tim Ferriss?

  So let's try a segue into the world of Tony. And this may or may not make sense as a segue, but let's, let's try it. And then we can go anywhere you want to go. The first time working with Tony in Egypt, this is sort of the, what was the term you used? Trap spider moment of sorts?

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that definitely was. Yeah.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  Let's have you describe. What happened in Egypt?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got the call I was waiting for, which was, hey, you know, one of the shooters can't go to Egypt. I think he got sick or something and is your passport up to date? Can you go like next week? And I was like, you know, absolutely. There's no way I'm missing that. So I went to Egypt. I kind of jumped in, you know, that show had been going already for a while. And so they had ways of doing things. Tried to do my best to assimilate to the ways they were doing things and bring what I could to the table. But the thing that changed it all, and like Tony was not like everyone that came in the door. It was like, hey, how's it going? You know, he's, he plays it cool. And, and the other thing is like, if he doesn't like you, like you are just simply not going anywhere on that show. And there's a lot of people he didn't like.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  He had pretty kind of like particular. I think if you were honest, I think if you weren't a dick to people, I think that if you carried yourself in a respectable manner, I think that if you saw that you worked hard and I think that if you saw that you could like hang out and I have to admit, there was a lot of drinking on the show. If you could hang out and not become just like a sloppy drunk, then you were kind of cool and you could hang out. But initially he wasn't going to give you anything. The thing that changed it for me with, with Tony was we were going out. We were going to go out and spend a night out in the western desert with the Bedouin. And we go, we drive, you know, a few hours outside of Cairo.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  We meet them in the desert and you're like on a paved road with just sand on both sides. We meet this group of Bedouin, all in their late seventies Toyota Land Cruisers, which is the car of choice in the western desert of Egypt. And we're just going to go drive off into the desert. And I was like, well, okay, so we're driving across the desert. I should get up on the roof of one of these cars and just film a bunch of car to car stuff. Like we're driving across the desert. How bad can it be? Five minutes later, we're going like 80 miles an hour across the desert. I am absolutely terrified. I have one hand on the camera and my other arm, my right arm was around a four post bed that for some reason they had strapped to the roof of the car. And so I have my arm.

• 1:02:14Tim Ferriss?

  Now by four post bed, this is like a bed with a huge canopy above it. Is that what you mean?

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  One of those things?

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Broken down into pieces. They had broken it down into the pieces and strapped it to the roof of the car. I think that they thought that Tony would want to sleep in a four post bed. Like out in the desert, which is absurd. You know, and like Tony, if you know Tony, like all Tony wants to do is go off and like pass out in the sand. So anyways, they had this ridiculous thing on top of the car and it saved my life because I was able to hold on to the car. I this whoever the driver was must have been like, I am going to show this white boy, you know? And, uh, and so they go barreling off across the desert and it is harrowing. And I see Tony looking out the window at this big ridiculous grin looking at me and like, oh yeah, look at the new guy suffer. You know, like this is great. Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  I got great footage and also what I think did it for me is like, by the time we got to camp, I had a hematoma the size of like a small Nerf football on my bicep where I was holding on. It was like deep purple where I'd been holding. That's how hard I was holding on to this thing. And that's the kind of beating that you took up there. And I think that that act of he's like, oh, this is a cat who's like, likes it. I mean, I'm a physical shooter. This is a cat that's going to throw himself completely into this. And it's like a light switch went off. I landed in camp. He's like, hey, all right. I was a pretty rough ride. I was like, oh yeah, look at this. I showed him the bruise and from that moment on, Tony liked me. I got called after that.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Like I said, Lydia was like, this is a benchmark moment. He actually knows your name after one show. Do you want to come back? You want to do another? I was like, I'll do as many as I can for as long as I can. And that's what I did. So that was the introduction to Tony. It just took a act of. I don't know. I didn't have kids at the time, so I don't consider it too selfish, but I wouldn't recommend it to any young shooters.

• 1:04:15Tim Ferriss?

  What were some other pivotal moments or episodes for you with Tony? I'm thinking one, and we could do something chronologically that happened sooner, but you're like Ethiopia.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Ethiopia was huge. Yeah.

• 1:04:30Tim Ferriss?

  So we could, we could jump into that if you want to just describe.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  So when I came on the show, I was just a camera operator and then worked my way up where I was like the lead camera and a DP on the show. And then I was like, if I don't take the opportunity to try to direct this show and produce this show and do everything that I can on this show, I'm going to regret it. And so around, I guess it was around like 2014, I started asking and being like, I really want to direct the show. And I did a season of Mind of a Chef with Magnus Nielsen in Sweden, which was a show that Tony produced.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  That allowed me to really like showcase like, hey, I can go out there. I can make eight episodes. I can like lead a show. I can get it done. And it turned out really well, partly because Magnus is like a absolute genius and one of the most fascinating people you can hang out with. He's like with Steve, just an incredibly dynamic person. I mean, someone who had created like one of the best restaurants in the world out of a, what was a moose fondue restaurant in central Sweden. Imagine, imagine what he started with, created one of the best restaurants in the world by his mid twenties and was already a master som at that point. So, you know, that's who Magnus Nielsen is.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  It's incredible. But I did that. Tony saw it. Tony liked it and agreed to let me direct and it was Ethiopia with Marcus Samuelson. So if you know Marcus, Marcus.

• 1:06:04Tim Ferriss?

  I know of him. I don't know him personally, but certainly know of him.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  He's, you know. Does every, he's on tons of cooking shows, you know, he's, he's incredibly magnanimous, huge smile, wonderful person, tons of energy. But Marcus's story is that he was born in Ethiopia and during a, oh God, I want to say it was a cholera outbreak. It was an infectious disease outbreak in Ethiopia, tuberculosis, tuberculosis. And Marcus's mother walked he and his sister, when they were just, you know, little, little kids, like something like 75 miles from her village into Addis and got them to an orphanage and then died. And so Marcus and his sister

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  were adopted and grew up in Sweden. So this was, this show was his return to Ethiopia and he had been there before, but like it was, also his wife Maya, who's just an absolutely incredible person and just simply one of the most gorgeous human beings you'll ever meet, was also from Garage and from one of the more prominent tribes in Ethiopia. And so it was a return to her village. It was a return to find his father and reconnect with his father. It was a big show and I was, I was terrified. I don't even, I don't even know why. It seems irrational at this point, but it was, I was totally terrified. What were you terrified of?

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  I don't know. You know, it just, I just respected Tony so much. I love the show so much. I, I, you know, and I'm someone, I suffer from anxiety disorders. I, you know, I'm bipolar. I, you know, I have a few things, you know, in my bag, like everyone does to kind of deal with. And it set those off pretty good. But, you know, I went, I did it. We, we had this incredible show. Ethiopia is just a totally extraordinary place, like so many places in Africa, totally misunderstood. One of the more dynamic environments that you can step into. It's got a young population there that is just totally plugged in, totally driven, super

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  hardworking. You know, it's one of those places where you're like, man, if the corruption at the top can ever get out of its own way, these people are going to just kill it. It was amazing experience, amazing experience to like go and go back into Maya's home village to find Marcus's father. The funniest part of it was, For all the shit that Tony ate through his career, he just cannot handle Ethiopian food. I love Ethiopian food.

• 1:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  Of all things.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Of all things. He said he found his kryptonite. And so he was basically starving to death during the show.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  I'm begging him to eat Cliff bars and stuff like that because he wouldn't need anything. It was just like wasting away. But that was amazing. That was the first show I directed. It was a huge moment and Tony was very kind to me. He gave me the benefit of the doubt.

• 1:09:06Tim Ferriss?

  How did you prepare for that? And what is, I know this is going to seem like a really elementary naive question, but I've seen you in action with the camera. Right? And we're going to talk more about that just because the, the kind of dance involved, especially when you have multiple shooters.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Tim Ferriss?

  Is incredible. I mean, it's such an amazing craft and so much geometry. So we're going to get into that, but directing in a situation like this seems to represent other skillsets that you not exercised perhaps as much. So how did you prepare for this? You don't seem like the guy to just wing it.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Directing is like an interesting word to use for these because like, and you typically think of a director, you're working in narrative and so you're, you're working with actors, you're working with the crew.

• 1:09:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yes. Storyboarding it out or whatever. Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Very, very precise endeavor. This is different. What we do on these shows is initially starts with like a ton of research, right? So we're just trying to get our head around the environment. We're trying to understand the dynamics of what's going on. Trying to understand what we can and can't do. And we have to be also in a place like Ethiopia, especially you have to be sensitive to the environment. That is a totalitarian government that is 100% watching everything you do. And the people that we work with there are going to be left with the repercussions of what we do and how we behave there. So you, you know, certain things off the bat where you're like, there's certain stuff that we're not going to do. There's certain boundaries. We're not going to try to push.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  And I, again, hats off to all the people that go and do do that. I hope they do it carefully and with respect to the people that they're leaving behind. But we were going to be very careful going into an environment like Ethiopia. Cause I don't want to end up that my PAs or my drivers or my fixers is sitting in some dingy prison because of something we did. And that's a reality there. So. It's going in and assessing what you can and can't do, assessing what the boundaries are, knowing the landscape, and then starting to pull out, okay, so this is this very interesting thing. There's this culture of these Asmari there, and they are basically minstrels, right? Play this very kind of old fashioned kind of music. It's kind of like a rap where they'll

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  freestyle stuff from the room. They used to travel around from village to village. But what's really interesting there is they use the Asmari as a way to have these kind of coded political discussions, right? So they have all kinds of nuance and intricacies in the way that they do their freestyle rap that is actually talking about politics in an environment where you can't talk about politics, right? So we know we're gonna, this is a cool thing. We're gonna do a scene with them. Okay. Where are we gonna do that? What's that gonna look like? So you're finding different Asmari, you're looking at the locations, you're pulling people in. Okay, so we're gonna do the Asmari, but we need some, you know, we want to bring some dancers in. There's another

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  dance troupe over here. We can get them to work together. This is a good environment, you know, this particular place to shoot it. What you're actually trying to do is set up an environment that is simultaneously real and authentic and also constructive. And in a way that we know that the apparatus of television making is gonna work. We're actually gonna walk away with something that works. The sound's gonna be workable, the lighting's gonna be workable, you know, we're gonna be able to control the environment and not have other kinds of background pollution or other things that are out of our control infecting what we're trying to do.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  I think Zach Zamboni, who I referenced before, said it best, and he said, like, when we make a show about Vietnam, Vietnam doesn't look like that, but Vietnam doesn't not look like that either. These are real things, but they are filtered through our process of trying to set them up in a way where we can then kind of just give the ship a little push and hope that it crosses the lake. And that's what we're really trying to do is pull those elements together. And that's the directing in terms of if you're going to go in and direct Tony, like you think you're going to direct an actor, that was never going to happen. You maybe can get him to ask a couple of questions. And if he spends 45 minutes of his hour long interview talking about John Wick 2,

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  you're going to have to kind of like suck it and deal with that, you know? Which happens a lot. So like the amount of shit that I've heard about John Wick, I've never even seen it. I actually won't watch John Wick because I've heard Tony talk about it so many goddamn times in moments where I'm like, dude, I need content here. Like we're dying here. I don't have anything to put this scene together and you're talking about fucking John Wick. Like I won't watch the movies and I hear they're great.

• 1:14:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  That's basically the process of what we're doing. And then you're talking to the, the DPs about how we're going to shoot it and what style elements we're going to use, what that's going to look like, et cetera. You know, and this was a show where we had a lot of film references that we were trying to pack in.

• 1:14:17Tim Ferriss?

  What makes someone a DP? Maybe we should also just spell out what that stands for. And did you interact as a director? Did you interact with the DPs differently than most directors interact with DPs?

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Definitely. I'm sure it drives them crazy because I have really high expectations because I was a very accomplished DP before. So a DP is a director of photography, cinematographer, you know, shooter, kind of go by all those names. I did really well. That was my thing. I was really good at it. I did really well. And I was known, known for it again, in my little kind of subgenre. So yeah, I interact to interact with the DPs differently because I can see the shots. I have a real advantage in that. My wife is a director as well. She doesn't come from a cinematography side. So I spend a lot of time working with her on like how to see things from a photography standpoint, and it gives you a real advantage when you can. It also will drive your fucking

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  DPs crazy because I'm breathing down their neck all the time. I'm like, yeah, is that the best shot? Maybe stand over there a little bit more, you know, move over that way a little bit tighter. You know, they're like, dude, I'm trying to find it. So yeah, I think I've probably ride them a little harder, but uh, I'm right. So it's okay.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Most of the time.

• 1:15:39Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like to double click on high standards.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:43Tim Ferriss?

  Because this is fertile territory for all sorts of conversations.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So I want to read something. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but in the course of doing research for this conversation, I found something on CNN. I'm going to read it and then we can explore it. Would Morgan Fallon, director, cinematographer, and producer of Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, misses most about working with Tony is the pressure. In a recent phone call with CNN Travel, Fallon described Tony's exceedingly high expectations and awe. Indeed, he may have been smiling on the other end of the phone when he explained the editing process for Parts Unknown. "You could get absolutely gutted in a rough cut," Fallon said. "In other words, Bourdain didn't sugarcoat it, and this approach was appreciated by Fallon and other crew members." This celebrity chef and star producer, quote, "was never going to accept anything mediocre," end quote, said Fallon, who was pleased with the workflow. "I felt good when Tony was happy with the show," he added.

• 1:16:35Tim Ferriss?

  And I was watching, hey, we don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but this doc that in some ways prompted me reaching out, you know, Roadrunner. You know, Tony is so human and so nuanced and like so loving in so many ways and has really fucking high standards, right? And I remember at one point when in that doc, they're talking about the rough cut and they said something like more than once Tony, Tony told an editor to unfuck themselves or something like that.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  We got told to unfuck ourselves all the time. I got told that on a daily basis.

• 1:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Unfuck yourself. Okay.

• 1:17:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So, so let's talk about different types of high standards. Could you elaborate on Tony's particular species of high standards? And if you have any funny stories, that's always great, but you know, any, any stories that come to mind are also super helpful. And just so you know where this is going, I'm wondering like how it contrasts with say a Michael Mann. Or I don't think you've had experience with like James Cameron, but like James Cameron, another person is really famous for having extremely high standards. And you know, where the line is between being like brutally direct and turning into something else. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to explore that because this is something I struggle with also.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  So speaking at the very high end, you were speaking about the Michael Manns, the James Camerons, the level of expectation is never achievable. It's never good enough. They do not have a level where it's good enough. It can always be better. You have to be that way. Yes, they are assholes. I will say it straight up. Michael Mann is an asshole and he's known that way in the industry. But he has to be. That is the only way that you get that caliber of project done. You want to get through a Titanic? You are going to have to be an asshole 100%. And the same is true in high caliber kitchens. You want to run a high caliber kitchen? There is only one way to do it and you are not friends with your crew.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  You are in charge and it's your responsibility. And, and I think that Tony, Tony approached it from that perspective, at least initially. He had extremely high expectations that I think were based on his history of knowing how to run an effective kitchen. And at the same time, he had all kinds of his own neuroses and stuff that bled into that. And you see it in Roadrunner. I actually, one of the parts I really liked was when he talks about, hey, I'm not going to stop for the cameras. You guys learn how to get fast. You get fast, I do what I do. And that was, I love it because I could do it. I was fast and I loved working fast like that.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  So yeah, super high standards. With Tony, though, different than like Michael and James Cameron. And I have not worked with James Cameron. I know a number of people who have, though. I don't think you're ever going to get that moment with Michael or with someone like Michael Mann or someone like James Cameron, where you're like, sitting down and drinking beers with them out in the desert and talking about like life and things that really mean something. And like with Tony, you did, and that was the difference. He was actually, he was a friend, and a very, very important friend, who I miss every single day. He was not those guys. He wasn't an asshole. He could be an asshole. He could be an asshole all the time. He could be incredibly frustrating to work with. But there was something under it.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  There was something very loving there. There was something very caring. And once you were kind of in his sphere, he really did care about people. So from that perspective, it was different. From the work perspective, though, he wasn't going to mince words in the same way that he wasn't going to mince words when a dish isn't right in the kitchen. Like, you can't. It doesn't work that way. Unless you want 20 fucking risottos sent back, you better get the first one right. And if someone fucks it up, you better let them know that they fucked it up big time, right now, immediately, and correct the problem. And that was a lot of the process with Tony, in post, for sure.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  In the field, it was more like things that were cumbersome or inconvenient. Tony, he didn't like messiness. He didn't like sitting around. And like, you know that when shit goes south on a crew, I mean, my God, we just look like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off, running around, trying to make shit happen or trying to make shit work. And there's a lot of reasons that that can happen, you know? He didn't like any of that. And you'd hear about unfucking yourself quite a bit in those moments. But when it came to posts, like, that's a much more calculated thing. And like, I would send him rough cuts, and everyone has been through this. I would send him rough cuts where, from the very beginning, he's like,

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  "What possible reason do you have for presenting me with this piece of garbage? I didn't work so hard..." Dot, dot, dot. In full caps, "You didn't work so hard to have your work flushed down the toilet by this asshole editor."

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  And you're like, oh, okay. Are we gonna, like, are we gonna go in a constructive direction? Like, what do you, you know? But he would. And that's the, that was the thing about him is that the good ones are right. You know, Michael Mann, as much of an asshole as he was to people, like, you'd have to kind of be like, well, he's right, though. You know, he's right. He knows. And he's right. He's not wrong. With Tony, I also, like, 90% of the time, he was, he was right. And it wasn't up to the standards. What was cool about Tony is that then he would go on and work the material. You would start reforming it. You'd start working with him. He'd give constructive notes. And that's

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  something that I tell people or try to explain to people. And I think that people should know about him. And something I do, you know, kind of wish they had said in Roadrunner 2. Tony was, you know, he's like, you go on his Wikipedia, and it's like, celebrity chef. And it's like, yeah, that's not how I think of him. And he wasn't that great of a chef.

• 1:22:48Tim Ferriss?

  Also, just that label doesn't, and I didn't know him at all, but the label doesn't make any sense. Sounds so hollow to me, given the breadth of what he did.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Right. 100%. To me, what he was, more than anything else, within my sphere of working with him, was he was a absolutely incredible television producer. And he understood story. He understood story's structure. He understood cinematography. He understood using the tools of film to make something that was cinematic. Even though we were on, you know, making our little show on TV, it was like, it always wanted to be a feature film. And so we were using our limited resources to get as close to that benchmark as possible. It should look beautiful. The framing should be great. The lighting should be great. The music needs to be great.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  The editing, the pace, the buildup, the way that you present subjects, you know, all of that stuff needs to be like at the highest level. And that's what people are seeing. I think when they respond to the show and the kind of response that the show has gotten, which is really incredible. They're seeing a couple of things. Authenticity, because we never did shit twice. We never faked anything. That's all real. Everything you see is real. We didn't set up shots. We didn't call cut. We didn't call action. We got fast. We did what he told us to do. We got fast. You see authenticity and you see just a very, very high level of production value given our resources. And I think it's something that, something that I constantly want to

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  point out to people is like, look at the weight classes that we were punching in. We were way out of our group. We're going out on shows where we're shooting for seven days in the field. We had a $3,000 external equipment rental budget. And we're getting cinematography nominations. My last cinematography nomination was up against Free Solo. It was up against Free Solo. We're punching way out of our class. And that was because of the very high standards and that can only come from the top. We were down with it because over the time, he was powerful enough and the, the show was magnetic enough to pull in people who were very talented, who were gifted, who really wanted to do

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  like good work and push the genre as far as they could. But that comes from the top and that was Tony. That's what you get from that impeccable nature of like, no, everything needs to be good. And also you just, Tony was so fucking cool that you like, you, you really wanted to please him. On my wall, I have framed the best email I ever got from him. It was when I sent him the first act of the Nigeria show that we shot in Lagos and it just says out fucking standing with two exclamation points and then under it says couldn't be happier. And I framed it and I put it up my wall. So maybe that, I mean, that's like the highest moment of my career. So.

• 1:25:54Tim Ferriss?

  You know, there are two things, and there are many others, but two things that jumped to mind as I'm listening to you describe all of this. You know, the first is that when you watch Roadrunner, and I'd never seen any of this archival footage, but it took a while for Tony to find the path to express himself authentically in front of cameras, right? It wasn't immediate. It wasn't automatic. It took some screwing around and throwing a lot against the wall to get there. And when I think of some of my favorite episodes,

• 1:26:36Tim Ferriss?

  and I don't know if you were on this particular episode I'm going to reference, but there are many examples of this.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Tim Ferriss?

  The authenticity of things going totally sideways and him being really fucking pissed off and having the writing chops to actually make it into a super entertaining scene.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Are you talking about the Sicily show?

• 1:26:58Tim Ferriss?

  I think it was Sicily with the octopus and the guy throwing the octopus. Can you, okay, tell, you know, that's funny. You and I have never talked about this and you knew exactly what I was thinking about. Okay. So please tell this story because it's so fucking hilarious. Oh, my God.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  It wasn't there. It was directed by Sally Freeman, who's an incredible director and one of my like favorite fucking people in the world. She is just this ass kicking salty Brit who doesn't take any shit from anyone. She's the only person I've ever seen be able to refer to Tony as shitcakes to his face without being summarily fired, which in and of itself is a tremendous achievement. I literally saw her in Finland in the hotel lobby say to the group, where's shitcakes with Tony standing right behind her and then turned around and she says, oh, there you are. So.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Hats off to Sally.

• 1:28:00Tim Ferriss?

  She must have been good at what she did. Yeah.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  She was directing that and I don't think that that wasn't premeditated on her part. I mean, they were gonna go out, they were gonna dive for octopus, but I think she, as I recall, she said that like she kinda knew they were fucked when they got there. Cause it's like a, it was like a popular beach. It was like tons of people in the water. It's like this whole thing. The guy shows up, you know, they go, they're putzing around in the water looking for octopus. Or of course, there are no octopus there because the, you know, water on that beach was probably 20% urine. And, uh, and, and all of a sudden, so the way Tony described it, and we talked to him, we were in Tokyo with him like right after this happened. And he's telling us this story, we were sitting in the bar of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, right

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  where Bill Murray was in Lost in Translation, soaking up, just being in that space and being like, this is the spot where Bill Murray was. And Tony's saying like, you wouldn't believe it. I was in Sicily, I'm underwater. All of a sudden, this dead fucking octopus floats down to the bottom of the ocean and I realize what's happening. Cause the other diver goes and claims the octopus, the dead limp octopus off the bottom of the ocean and goes to the surface and holds it up as if he's found the octopus, you know? And so it was a total setup. And I think it was actually like a really miserable moment for Tony. Cause he was not when, we got to Tokyo, it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna write this thing and it's gonna

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  be great and we're gonna figure it out and it's gonna be funny. He was like, that was the worst fucking moment of my life. He went into like a hole of existential angst. He, as you know, in the show, he goes and he downs like six Negronis after that, you know?

• 1:29:42Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah. He's just, he's like, he just fucks off and walks down the beach and just gets beyond hammered. Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  He was genuinely bummed. And the reason he was genuinely bummed is because he felt like it was a breach of.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  Of exactly what we were talking about of that authenticity, you know, and the thing that had really been the most important trading capital of the show up until that point was, well, not up until that point. I mean, there are other examples of that. That certainly didn't break that. But he was bummed about it. I think it's also a testament to Sally that she was able to say, hey, no, this is, there's something here that's like really funny and really worth exploring. And then he wrote to it and it ends up being this iconic scene. Lots of people talk about it, but what you're seeing there is a real response from Tony. He was genuinely bummed out.

• 1:30:32Tim Ferriss?

  So let me come back to the quote framed on your wall for a second. This is going to be a bit of a non sequitur from what we were just talking about. The plop, plop, plop, as I recall the voiceover was something like plop, plop. And then I realized what was happening.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:30:46Tim Ferriss?

  These poor dead octopi are being thrown into the water around him.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:52Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular quotes, poems, books, memorabilia, it could be anything that you have found to be meaningful enough to revisit more than once? Could be anything. I'm just thinking about this letter on your, this email on your wall, right?

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  What did I keep around my house?

• 1:31:10Tim Ferriss?

  Do you keep around your house or that you keep inside your head? Could be anything.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  It's full of stuff. It's full of shit. This is the piece of paper that he was typing. We needed a scene of when we did the Tangiers episode, we needed a scene of him typing. And so he's typing and we're just filming him type. And this is what he wrote. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Call me Ishmael. This is the saddest story ever told. Jackie Brown at 26, with no expression on his face, said he could get some guns. You're watching CNN. You're watching Mind of a Chef. You're watching Tremé on HBO. You're watching The Layover. You're watching repeats of No Reservations. So this is him just freestyle typing. I don't know why I picked it up. It's on my wall. My life is

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  full of these things. I have shit everywhere from just stuff that I picked up when we were on the road with Tony. We have like an adobe brick from Martha.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  Muzzle break from West Virginia, you know, I have a lighter that Josh Homme gave us when we did the show with Queens of the Stone Age, you know? Just collected crap everywhere.

• 1:32:21Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'll narrow it down. So let's assume family, any pets, photo albums, all of that is in the clear, but house is burning down. You can take three to five of these many items that you have.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  Fuck it, let it burn.

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let it all burn. Okay.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  I think it's more in the spirit. More in the spirit of Tony. I'm probably grabbing the Emmy.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  I don't know, man. It all means, you know, honestly, all jokes aside, it all means something to me. Like, these are the things I decorate my house with. These are the things I want around. This is the greatest thing I ever got to do in my life was be with Tony, to travel the world with Tony, to see a world that a tiny handful of people get to see because the price of admission as a civilian, as someone who just wanted to go out and do those things would be so extraordinarily high that you just, you can't achieve it. It wasn't like we got to go on some sweet vacations. It wasn't like, oh, I have the money to go to the Maldives and stay in like a sick resort. It wasn't like that. We had

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  access. We had things that no one else will ever get because of who Tony was. And that is why this shit is special to me. You cannot do this again. This is not replicable. And I think it's actually a lesson that the TV industry needs to learn because I hear a lot of, it's the Bourdain of this, it's the Bourdain of that, it's the Bourdain of that. And you're like, no, it's not because the first word you're using is Bourdain and that is gone. And it's not coming back. We got to stop trying. This was a singular experience. And I think we're all very aware of that. So yeah, I decorate my house with the detritus of traveling the world with Tony and I'm fucking proud of it. Junk all over my house.

• 1:34:21Tim Ferriss?

  So Tony, and we don't have to explore this, it's going to segue to a question about you. Tony obviously had things in his sort of psychological, psychoemotional bag.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  As I think you mentioned earlier, you do.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:36Tim Ferriss?

  And we all have our demons of different types, you know, battles we're fighting that no one knows about, or maybe only a few people know about. For the anxiety and bipolar disorder and so on. What have you found to be most effective in terms of tools or behaviors or anything at all for helping with those things for you?

• 1:35:02Speaker 02

  So work in progress bipolar, I mean, you can, I'm still trying to go unmedicated. I don't want to go on a, on a mood stabilizer. They're pretty, pretty heavy. Consistency is, is really important. It's a hard thing to do when you're traveling the world is, is have a consistent schedule. You know, but having a consistent schedule, I have no proof of this. This probably gets into your world and your expertise a lot more than mine. But I find techno, I listen to a lot of techno. A Bluetooth head and I will listen to seven, eight hours of techno straight while I work. And it's like a metronome for my head. It keeps me planted on task, clean, you know?

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  So those things, exercise, eating, right? Those are the ways that I'm trying to deal with, with my bag. But yeah, we all have them. Tony definitely had plenty of them, but I also think that most of the people on our crew did, you know, we kind of like were a, a collection of like minds. And I don't want to speak for anyone, but I think what we found in the end, when we kind of looked around the room and these are the people in my life that I like, I hold with like the highest regard and like the greatest value that we were all people who had strong creative capacity and were all

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  kind of for some rea-, one reason or another, kind of, I don't want to say that island of misfit toys because it's so corny. But it's, you know, it's got kind of an element of that, you know? Everyone was kind of had like a thing that was broken and a thing that they were struggling with. And you kind of knew those things, but those, that brokenness and, and the kind of pain that comes out of that, I think was critical. In terms of looking at the world through the lens that we were trying to look at the world through, where we were trying to see everything, we were trying to see the beauty, we were trying to see the pain, we were trying to see all of it. That's not a formulaic show. That's not a show that everything's gonna end happy every time. It's not a show where you're gonna hit happy beats every time. It's not like an upbeat travel show where

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  we're like, oh, today we're, you know, it's not. It was an exploration of the world in all of the permutations of what that means. And if you don't understand pain, you don't understand fear, you don't know those things, you are never gonna be able to see it. You're not gonna be able to see it. And I don't mean to be dismissive of anyone, but I remember we, you know, at one point we had a new editor coming on for a show, and I talked to him for 10 minutes on the phone. And I asked him a few questions. What's your favorite shows? What's your life like? You know, what do you do for, what are your hobbies and stuff like that? And I called my, you know, our showrunner Sandy Zwig, and I said, I'm sorry,

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  this isn't gonna work. And she's like, why? And I was like, he's too fucking happy. His life's too good. Everything's okay with him. And he's not gonna get it. And he didn't. And that wasn't prophetic on my part. It was just knowing that we had to embrace those things. And so, you know, you get to the end and what happened, happened, and all those things. And there's a lot of different ways to analyze that. But what's, I think, important to note is that those things, that experience of pain and dealing with those things was a critical part of making the show. And it came with a lot of shit that we were kinda

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  all hot to trot on at the time. But I, that I look back and I'm like, ugh, you know, a lot of alcohol, Tim. There was a lot of like, and I'll speak only for myself, there's a lot of, almost daily, I mean, yes, daily, just drink yourself to sleep, wake up in the morning, hammer fucking coffee. Go on adrenaline and caffeine as far as you can and then start drinking again and come down. And that was, that was the rhythm of the gear shifts every day. And that's kind of how we got through it.

• 1:39:06Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you stop drinking when Tony died? Is it because you felt that was maybe a contributing factor? Was it for other reasons? And I'm not asking you to speculate. I'd just love to hear, hear your thinking, you know, what your experience was.

• 1:39:19Speaker 02

  I want to be careful about not speculating. I want to be respectful to everyone in Tony's sphere. I will say this, it is impossible for me to separate alcohol from Tony's death. And that's kind of a reality for me is like, and I feel like other people on the show felt that way as well. Again, I don't want to speak for them. There's a lot of people involved in this. There's a lot of people that have their own journeys. There are people who are a lot closer with Tony than I was. But I was fairly close with him. And after he died, I could not separate alcohol from his death. I don't mean that he died because he had been

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

  drinking. I just mean that that was part of the calculus. For sure. It was in there. And it's a dangerous drug and it's severely underestimated in our culture. I just couldn't do it anymore. I like couldn't. And I went hard for a long time.

• 1:40:16Tim Ferriss?

  What did that process look like for you?

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Stop drinking.

• 1:40:20Tim Ferriss?

  Removing that. Was it easy? I mean, was it hard?

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  It was frantic at first. I stopped drinking. I got a mountain bike and like, I swear for the first couple of months, I was riding every night. I was riding 20 miles a night up on the fire roads outside of my house. And this is in the months after Tony died. And I would ride from my house up to the Nike station on Dirt Mall Holland and back. And this, it's, you know, 10 miles each way. It's not the hardest 10 miles. I'm not like, I don't think I'm Lance Armstrong. I'm definitely not Lance Armstrong. But like, that's where, that's where I was. And I was alone at night riding. You know, and just trying to, I don't know, trying to make sense of shit. It got, it was dark right after, like the, the month after he died, I went pretty hard.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  I woke up on my lawn one night.

• 1:41:12Tim Ferriss?

  You mean went hard drinking?

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I drank like a bottle of tequila, woke up on my lawn, scared myself. I have two young kids. And I was like, this is, this, this must end.

• 1:41:22Tim Ferriss?

  Good for you, man.

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, a lot of people do it, you know, and then, and, and they all need credit, you know? It's a hard thing to, uh, to do.

• 1:41:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let me ask you a related question. As I watched Roadrunner, I thought it was well done. I'm sure it's imperfect, but there were some takeaways that seemed to, takeaways or perspectives that seemed to be shared by more than one person. And one of them was that when Tony was doing jujitsu, seriously, he was in one or perhaps in one of the better places. Yeah, definitely. Emotionally speaking.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Tim Ferriss?

  And parallel with that, I'm thinking about something you said earlier in this conversation that I, I just want to highlight. Cause I'm not sure people understand just what it requires. And that is running through the wilderness with a 50 pound backpack.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Tim Ferriss?

  With a camera on your shoulder, being able to use one hand. And maybe the technology has changed, but when you and I were, uh, spending time together and I was able to watch you film. This is not an iPhone that you're using to film. And this is a, this is a significant rig on, I don't know how much it weighs. I mean, what, what, what would you say at the time? I don't know. 20, 20 plus pounds for sure. I would imagine.

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

  Probably 20 plus pounds. We were on slightly bigger cameras for Tim Ferriss experiment though, than what we use like with MeatEater. MeatEater was slightly smaller cameras, but it doesn't really matter.

• 1:42:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's incredibly physical.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very physical. There were days we were doing 15 miles of backcountry. That may not sound like a lot. That's a fair amount when you're doing it day to day, when you're in snow, when you're in environments that you're not on a trail, you're in backcountry. Again, I'm not trying to pretend like I'm super rugged, but it definitely took some doing.

• 1:43:06Tim Ferriss?

  You're pretty rugged, man. I mean, I don't wanna, you know, overstate it, but you're pretty rugged. And where I was going with that is, you know, you've been very physical. You know, I'm speculating, but I would imagine that's been good medicine for you to be that active.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Yeah.

• 1:43:26Tim Ferriss?

  What are your versions of jujitsu? Like the activities that seem to nourish you? And counterbalance maybe some of these things that you're carrying in your bag, right? The anxiety, the bipolar, et cetera. When would people say you are at your best? What type of activities?

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  What are my hobbies?

• 1:43:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  Surfing, mountain biking, and I was really into racquetball for a long time, but I, my knee is a kinda, my knee has been a little tough on me with racquetball. Those things for me, when you're doing them, you're not doing anything else. Surfing's got a solitary element to it. It's almost like meditation. Doesn't even matter if you're really catching waves. I mean, that's like a bonus, but you're sitting there. You have the rhythm of the ocean, you're thinking, you're processing things, but you know, you're on liquid, you know, and you're staring out at the ocean, waiting for waves. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's very, very centering. And there's a reason that there are stereotypes of surfers, you know, it's true. You get a surfer moment to you.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  I like mountain biking because it's really physical. It's like a real grind. It really pushes your heart rate. But when, also when you're doing like, you know, like I said, I like the kinda enduro style stuff. You know, you got a lot of shit coming at you fast and you're making a lot of calculations, a lot of decisions. I like that. It's very dynamic and I tend to like solitary kinda sports. Racquetball is just fast and for anyone who knows racquetball, it's a killer game. You're looking for kill shots. You're playing strategy, you're playing geometry and looking for opportunities to execute kill shots and it's a blast. I don't know. I like aggressive shit and I like shit that like keeps your heart rate way up.

• 1:45:17Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'm gonna use the door that was just opened by the use of the word geometry. And then we're gonna go to muzzle break in West Virginia, cuz we made a promise earlier to come back to West Virginia.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:29Tim Ferriss?

  But I mentioned the dance and watching, and this is segwaying into the geometry, and you really need kinda two players in the game, maybe, to fully visualize this. Right. At least, which is why I wanted to mention Marcus Lehman, who was also working on Tim Ferriss Experiment. Great guy, very skilled. And watching the two of you guys dance with geometry was so fun, to the extent that it was almost, not distracting, but I was so intrigued.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  And almost just puzzled by how you guys could pull it off. So for someone who has no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, could you just explain how geometry plays into what we were doing, or what you would do with Steve, and so on?

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  So if you picture it in a, in a basic sense, right? Say you have two characters who are talking to each other. They're standing in a room and they're facing each other. This is like, very simple setup, right? We are not a scripted show. There is no script. We need to capture as much of that conversation for the edit as possible in real time. When you're on a scripted show, you can shoot one camera on one angle of that conversation, and then you can move the camera to the other angle of that conversation and shoot the other side. So you're shooting one character first, and you move and you shoot the other character. When we're doing documentary stuff, you can't do that. You need to get it in the moment. So we have at least two cameras, right?

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  And so one camera is shooting one angle on character A, and one camera is shooting the other angle on character B. Now, that's the basic setup, and you could just stand there and you could be in one frame size and whatever, and you could cover the conversation, and the editor will cut back and forth between those two cameras as they see fit, but it's gonna be boring. You want to add dynamics, so you're gonna need to add movement to that scenario. You're gonna need to move your characters around the room. You're gonna need to allow them to go on some kind of endeavor. They need to accomplish some goal. They need to do whatever. So they start moving, and now the geometry is always changing. Now you need to be shooting both sides of that interaction. You also need to be shooting your insert shots.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  You need to be shooting wider shots to give you a context of the environment. You need to be shooting all of the supporting footage that tells you where you are and what those characters are doing. And you need to have that in your head and you can't talk out loud. I mean, I can talk on the walkie a little bit to the other camera operator, but when you're really doing it well, you know, and I guess, again, there's a million different ways to do this. So there's all kinds of different ways that people achieve this. But when you're doing it really well with someone who really knows what they're doing, you know inherently, I know because of the action, because of where the other camera is standing, I know what their shot is. I know where their lens is. I know where their background is.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  I know where not to cross into their shot. I know what they have. So you're simultaneously watching them and understanding what they're covering and where they are. And you're reacting to that or you're establishing your shot and they're reacting to you, right? When it's really good, it moves that way without conversation. And after you shoot with someone for a while, you really get into a rhythm where you both know what the other person has. You know what the other person's shooting. And as your characters move around the world, as they do their, you know, thing, you know how to move together to maintain that coverage.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  There's a variable in that which dictates a lot of this, which is called the 180 degree rule. So picture this, there's a car moving along a bridge and you are shooting from a helicopter out on the passenger side of the car, tracking along with it, right? You can picture that? Got it. Again. The direction of the car then, if you're doing that, is moving from frame right to frame left. That is the way that the action moves. If you then cut to a shot from the driver's side.

• 1:49:48Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wait a second. Could you say that one more time? So I'm imagining in my head. I'm in the helicopter. It's so much easier when you can draw it out. Passenger side is on the right-hand side of the car.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Passenger side is on the right-hand side of the car and you're moving along with them and the car is going along. And so when you see that shot on the screen, the car is moving in a direction that is from the left-hand side of the screen.

• 1:50:13Tim Ferriss?

  Left side.

• 1:50:14Speaker 02

  Left side. I messed it up. Left, left-hand side of the screen to the right-hand side of the screen, right? The car is pointed to the right. Now, if you go and you switch over and you shoot from the driver's side,

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  what direction is the car going when it goes on screen?

• 1:50:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's going the opposite.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  It's going right to left. You've crossed the 180-degree line. A lot of these rules are just set up to be broken, right? So there's a lot of variables in there, but in a basic sense, you are confusing your audience because the car that was going left to right is now going right to left. And that is confusing when you're following the continuity of an edit. The same thing with a conversation. If you have two characters and the cameras are standing on the same side of those characters, you have one character which is looking screen direction left, and then you have one character that's looking screen direction right, and you're cutting in between those. If one of those cameras crosses that line, you now have

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  two characters either looking screen direction right or screen direction left. And when you try to cut between them, it won't make sense because they both look like they're looking away from each other.

• 1:51:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. When it's done well, you don't notice it, but when it's screwed up, you really notice.

• 1:51:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:51:31Tim Ferriss?

  I was watching a super high budget scripted show.

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not going to mention the name and they messed this up. It was like a bunch of royalty seated at a long table on one side, having a conversation. And it was so confusing.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:51:46Tim Ferriss?

  To my brain that it was uncomfortable.

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  I think what people don't appreciate a lot is that you need to establish the geometry of your environment in order for people to understand what's going on in a physical sense. When you're in a scene. There's a lot of tricks to doing that. And there are some things that you can do that break that. And that's one of the things that you can do that breaks that. But now picture, you have two characters who are now like, I keep thinking of the one we did in Vegas, right? Where you're basically, what did we call that episode? It wasn't the gambling one. It was.

• 1:52:19Tim Ferriss?

  We did two in Vegas. We did, uh, we did the poker, the heads up poker, and then we did the evasive driving.

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  Yes, that.

• 1:52:26Tim Ferriss?

  Or evasive tactics, right? Because it was also on foot. It was getting on zip ties and.

• 1:52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So you have two characters moving around in a dynamic environment there and they're constantly crossing each other. They're constantly crossing the line. They're constantly moving around. Now you need to know where that 180 degree line is all the time. And both your cameras need to be tuned up enough to move with that line and reestablish that line without thinking about it and without talking. And that's the dance that you're seeing. So when you talk about the dance, the dance is really maintaining that coverage in a way that is going to make sense for the editor and ultimately makes sense for the audience. And it is difficult to learn. And once you do learn it, like with anything else that's

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  fun to do, it's a blast. It's really cool to work with someone that understands how that works.

• 1:53:19Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know if this is the schedule we had was was normal. If it is, I don't know how the hell you guys do it for so long. Pretty normal. We had, yeah, I, yeah, I remember we had whatever it was, like 13 weeks of shooting and it was like five or six days of shooting, a half day to a day of transition to another location if necessary, and then you're right back into shooting. Yeah. And then I was reviewing rough cuts and so on at night, which was just a really incredible introduction to the velocity of that type of production. Yeah. But what I was gonna say is it also makes it sometimes hard to remember because they're removing pieces and sometimes people wouldn't be available for a week or two. Were you on the New York City episode with Josh Waitzkin and Maurice Ashley? Yeah, that was amazing.

• 1:54:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I want to mention one scene because it's, A, it's a super fun scene, but it also demonstrates how well shooters can dance this dance in a complex environment. And you probably know where I'm going, but this is Grandmaster Maurice Ashley playing this hustler, the trash talker. I loved it. Oh, my God. Those are favorite things I've ever seen. Yeah. Oh, it's incredible. And people can find this clip actually on the YouTube channel for Grandmaster Maurice Ashley. And I'm wanting to see how many views it has now. It's got, yeah, nine million views. This is just such an incredible scene in Washington Square Park. Yeah, it was amazing. So maybe you could just walk us through, since this is a real world example, right?

• 1:54:51Tim Ferriss?

  If you recall, just what were some of the considerations? What was happening? Because we're sitting in Washington Square Park. It's freezing out. Like, people are wearing their winter clothing. And this is where, A, you know, Josh Waitzkin, who was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, both the book and the movie, Yeah. Played as a little kid. It's where, in the details from Maurice Ashley, it's where the, the late, great Vinny Livermore used to beat my ass at the same table. This is from him. Yeah. Maybe you could just, if you remember any of the experience, just kind of walk through it. Because this is complex. This is, this is, it seems to me at least, like, hard to get right. And it just came out so, so well.

• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so I don't remember the specifics of the blocking. I remember it was one of the coolest things that I've ever seen because you had this grand master chess player sit down with a New York City street hustler. And listen, I don't know shit about chess, but I know that those New York City street hustlers are damn good chess players and they play fast. They can play. And we watched a grand master sit down and devour this cat as if he just didn't even exist. And also return fire with shit talking in equal measure, right? That's right. And called him out when he tried to knock the pieces over and hustle him. Yeah. It reminded me, there was a famous quote, I forget the name of the Crow Scout who was

• 1:56:12Speaker 02

  working with the US Cavalry when Custer was decimated at Little Big Horn, but they asked him after how long it took and he said, about as long as it takes a hungry man to eat a sandwich. And that's how he described Custer getting taken down at Little Big Horn. And that's how I would describe that grand master running through that cat. He fucking devoured him. It was so satisfying to watch. Not because I have anything against the street hustler, by the way, but just to see someone that proficient at something was incredible. I don't remember the specific blocking, but this is what I would say in remembering that scene and in thinking about how I would go into that, right? So you know, a couple of things going in. You know that it's going to be all about the energy between them, right?

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  And so you're looking at tight shots of eyes. You're looking at establishing their connection, establishing the board. You have two things going on. The connection between them and the shit talking and all that stuff. And then what's going on in the board. And you've got to cover what's going on on the board, too. And then you have the crowd around them. I'm getting to that part, right? I'm getting to that part because you, in their dynamic, you need to cover the game, right? You need to cover the game, but you need to be quick enough to know that you got to get up to the two shot. You also got to establish the environment, right? And part of the environment and it's part of what you know is going to tell the story is the reaction of the people that are standing around. So you got to get out to those wide shots, got to see where the crowd is, got to see where, where, you know,

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  kind of everyone is placed, right? Got to get in on the details of the game, got to get in on their rapport, and then you got to start. Searching the audience, that crowd that was standing there for the telling reaction shots. And so when I'm standing in an environment like that, I'll be doing my coverage, looking around. And any moment I get, I'm looking up and I'm like, who's the most expressive here? Who's the person that's going to come out with the big line? Who's the person that's gonna? And I think I remember that day, someone being like, eventually to the street hustler guy, like, like kind of patting him on the shoulder and being like, do you know, do you know who this is? Am I right about that? I feel like he like at one point, someone was like-

• 1:58:20Tim Ferriss?

  There was, there was definitely a moment. Yeah, there was.

• 1:58:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so it's looking for that and understanding in two cameras, you know, you know, that the people that are on your side of the line, the other camera is going to have them. And the people that are on the other side of the line, you have them and you're kind of those. That's how you divvy up the responsibility. But if you miss it, you miss it. And remember, these are not actors. You cannot go back. You cannot get those original reactions again. You have to get it in the moment. And that's where it gets back to Tony. And when he said, you be fast. And he was, he was right about that. And it pissed a lot of people off. A lot of people come onto the show and be like, this is fucked. We don't get time to set up. We don't get some to do that. And I'd be like, dude, you are not cut out for this show.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  Or not just dude, a lot of women, you know, in our line of work too. But you're not going to make it here. Because what you don't understand is that you're fucking it up by trying to get it right. You gotta learn how to not miss it the first time. And it might not be perfect and it might not be pretty, but you gotta get it. That's how I would think about a scene like that. The most important element being that it doesn't happen again, it happens once.

• 1:59:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 100%. And what made that scene also so gratifying is that Maurice is-

• 1:59:40Tim Ferriss?

  Like a handsome charismatic.

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:43Tim Ferriss?

  Morpheus.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Tim Ferriss?

  In a black leather jacket.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  Morpheus, yeah.

• 1:59:46Tim Ferriss?

  And can also just murder people on the chessboard and trash talk really well. So it's so fun. We'll put a link in the show notes.

• 1:59:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's worth watching.

• 1:59:57Tim Ferriss?

  So what I'm pulling up, you may never guess who I texted. So I texted, uh, John Bedolus and Chris Vivian.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, John.

• 2:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, so John directed a ton of these Tim Ferriss Extraordinary episodes. And so I, I asked him what topics and questions he thought might be fun to explore. So.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  Okay, this is gonna be interesting.

• 2:00:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, he has some good ones.

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll start with, and there are many different ways we could go here, but like from DP to director, showrunner, what skills or habits do you find help most in transitioning from a more narrowly creative role to a broader creative role with more managerial responsibilities? So there, there are many ways to approach this. I mean, I suppose the, the simplest way would just be to say, what advice would you give to someone who is really technical and good at one thing, right? They deliver, they're really exceptional, and they hope to embrace, or they're being asked to embrace, a role that is broader with managerial responsibilities. Like what advice would you give to your younger self as you were doing that? Or to someone else who's in the similar, uh, in a similar position?

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Get ready to relinquish control because if you don't, you're gonna smother the people who are working under you. You need to trust them and you need to be able to work with the people who need work in a proactive manner to get them to the place where you need them to be. Because you are not going to be able to control everything anymore. When you have the camera in your hand, you have this tiny little world in the viewfinder and you can control every aspect of it. As you start to climb the ladder up to directing and then to show running, you need to depend on other people. So part of that is bringing good people in. The other part is understanding when you need to let people do their job.

• 2:01:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's get super specific. So this, I would imagine, is super hard for people who are very. Proficient in something they are now supervising, right?

• 2:01:56Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 2:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  Like you were talking about with the DP is right? And yours is like, you sure that's my shot? Like, why don't you move over a little bit? Yeah, I think maybe, why not maybe a little tighter? So does it mean just picking your battles well and like letting things go that you can let go, but holding a really strong line on certain quality decisions where you need to push a little bit? I just love to hear, because it doesn't sound easy to just like flip a switch.

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  I don't think it is easy and I think it took me some time and I had times when I blew up at camera operators or DPs that I really regret because it was like exactly the wrong way to go about things. I had a DP who I really, really respect. We had a pretty vicious exchange in the field one time and he came to me after and he's like, dude, he's like, you took what was just a lovely delightful day where we were getting great stuff and you fucking murdered it over a detail and you've ruined the whole vibe of the day in the shoot. And that was really profound for me and I thought about that a lot, you know? For what? Because like he missed a shot that I knew was there. I know I was right. I know the shot was there.

• 2:03:05Speaker 02

  I knew the shot would make the edit. I knew it was important. Why I had to rip his head off about it? I have no idea now. I don't do that anymore. So I think that, you know, one aspect is just finding ways to approach what you need to get in a way that's positive and proactive. You know, we worked with Angelo Dundee when we were doing Ali. Angelo Dundee's, to just fill everyone in, who doesn't know Angelo Dundee was Ali's trainer. He's one of the great boxing trainers of all time. So you want to talk about a level of expectation and perfection? I mean, that is operating at the very highest level of that. But he wouldn't come in and be like, your jab sucks and like, what the fuck? Why am I wasting my time and you know, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff?

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  He would come to Ali and he'd be like, hey, you know, I was watching your jab. You're doing really good with that jab. I love the way that you're doing this, even if it was something that Ali wasn't doing. He was trying to point out something to get a response, to get him to focus on a particular aspect of that movement. And I think that that's really important and in finding ways to work with people and say, get what you want in a way that is a little smarter than just coming out and just hammering folks.

• 2:04:22Tim Ferriss?

  So what might you have said to that guy, the newer version of you? How might you have handled that situation?

• 2:04:29Speaker 02

  In retrospect now, I think the number one thing is I would stay calm. I didn't stay calm in that moment because I was kind of dying because I knew I needed a shot, but I think I would stay calm and say, hey, listen, like this is happening right now. You need to break off, let go what you're doing. Don't worry about the shot that you're on. We're fine on that. I got it in post, but we need this right now. I think that's a pretty easy explanation.

• 2:04:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:54Speaker 02

  But we tend not to do that because we're so controlling that in the moment, it feels like you're losing control and that's not the truth. You know, I think that as you get older, you get more experience with management, unless you're going to be a Jim Cameron or a Michael Mann, unless you're going to be a tyrant, which trust me, that's 20 hours a day of work, hard work. I'm not that and I'm not going to do it and I never was, and I don't want to treat people like that. And listen, no shade on them. What they do is unbelievable, but you know, I think I know myself enough now to know that that's not how the style and how I'm going to accomplish what I need to accomplish. I think it's building people up now and saying like, I trust you.

• 2:05:39Speaker 02

  Think about it this way. Think about it this way. Try this. I know from experience, I can tell you, you know, that this is going to work, but being willing to work with people.

• 2:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Let's come back to that muzzle brake on your shelf.

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:54Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe you could explain what a muzzle brake is to people and then let's talk about the return to West Virginia. And why it matters.

• 2:06:03Speaker 02

  A muzzle brake, first of all, is a way to dispense the energy of the bullet coming out of the gun. It can provide accuracy and, and safety by pushing the energy of firing the bullet out to the sides. This muzzle brake was made by J Mac Customs in West Virginia, which is cool because they're an independent operation, which takes people who, you know, were laid off in coal mines and various other extractive industries that have left West Virginia and puts them to work and trains them as machinists. And they do high quality work. I'm not particularly into guns, but I respect what they're doing. And I'll probably

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  get a little bit of commentary online about my understanding of the dynamics of muzzle brakes, but.

• 2:06:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's what the internet's for.

• 2:06:54Speaker 02

  Yep. West Virginia, for me, you know, and this is a very personal story. So if everyone can bear with me, like, West Virginia for me was the most important thing that I ever did. And when I say West Virginia, I'm like talking about the parts unknown episode of West Virginia. I had lived in West Virginia when I was a kid and my family went through a pretty tough time when we were there. My parents were kind of on the rocks. West Virginia can be a tough place, especially in that time. It's a place that's been hit really hard by the dynamics of extractive industries and capitalism. And listen, I'm not bitching about capitalism. Like, I believe in capitalism, maybe not our particular form of it, but for the most part, I believe in it. But you have a state that was really

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  predicated on the coal industry. And as soon as they found easier, cheaper coal in China and in Wyoming, they just dropped those people like they didn't even exist, you know? And so it created a tough environment. And I grew up to some degree in West Virginia in an environment that was kind of tough. We didn't have running water, electricity, et cetera. There's also some things I remember about it. They were very fond, but it was like a. Really formative moment in my life and had really bad associations with West Virginia for a long time and wouldn't, you know, I would just wouldn't think about it, wouldn't go there. I went back in 2003 after I stopped working for Michael Mann and I happened to

• 2:08:19Speaker 02

  be there in Southern West Virginia when there was really bad flooding. And I saw these people and had this moment where I was just like, you're talking about the heart and soul of America. They are, especially when you get down to Southern West Virginia, that is a mixed group of, you know, white folks, black folks who came to that area to build lives for themselves and in the process built this country. And we basically shit on them. We engage in these ridiculous hyperbolic stereotypes of who they are. We've considered them to be uneducated. And I mean, how many jokes do you know about hillbillies?

• 2:09:02Speaker 02

  It's not true. These are like the hardest working, most independent, rugged, self determining people. And that's the reason they went to those mountains in the first place. They are the heart of who we're supposed to be as a country. And I think we've seen, and I don't want to dive into politics here, but I think we've seen the result of what happens when you shit on those people and you ignore them. They get fucking angry and they got a right to. I always wanted to go back and make a show from what I saw there and the hardships that those folks were going through. And so we were in Antarctica with Tony and I pitched him on a West Virginia show and he was stoked on doing it. And so

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  we got to go back to the town of Welsh in McDowell County. McDowell County is the highest percentage population loss in the United States for any county over the past 50 years. The place has just been like decimated. It's always number two or three on the most impoverished counties list in the United States. And we went there and I had this moment where I was like, taking Tony to a place where there's no restaurants, there's no food. It's like literally a food desert. Is he going to connect with this place? Is he going to like see what I feel like I saw, which was what I feel like we were kind of always looking for to some degree in the show, which was like the beauty that's underneath that surface level.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, and we went there. We, we go through the first couple of days of shooting and then Tony starts tweeting like these tweets like, nothing moves me like this place. He, it just all these like really beautiful, wonderful. And I had this moment where I was like, yeah, dude, like it's Tony, man. Of course he gets it. Of course he gets what, what you're trying to show him. Of course he gets like these people in this place. And I think it was so important because it showed, you know, on a show called Parts Unknown, we're going to like, central Appalachia in the United States. I think it showed his ability to walk into a context and environment. This is right after Trump was elected, by the way.

• 2:11:05Speaker 02

  You know, to walk into a context and environment and see people for who they really are, not what our perception of them is, not based on his political feelings, not based on anything but the evidence of sitting down with someone and saying like, what, what are your values? What, what does life mean to you? What do you want? You know, what are you looking for? And as soon as he saw who they were, he, he responded to it. We made this beautiful show. It was one of the few shows that we got to do where CNN gave us extra time. They gave us an extended episode. The show won an Emmy. And I sent the Emmy back to Welsh and it's in Welsh. It's someone's house. Oh, that's amazing. How cool.

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  And it was just for me personally, for me professionally, in every way, it was like, this is full circle. This is how you make peace with something that's painful in your childhood. You go and you confront it and you, you find out what's really there beneath the surface and then you try to be benevolent about what it is. And I guess that's in part, now I'm kind of making a, this a little bit of a leap, but you know, looking for, like we said earlier, looking for the gift in something. Here's this thing that was really painful for me as a child, but there was this tremendous gift in it, which was like an understanding of this place and a connection to it that allowed us to go and do something

• 2:12:29Speaker 02

  within our own country, looking at ourselves at a time when we critically need it because we are fucking falling apart, if you haven't noticed. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who hasn't noticed, man.

• 2:12:46Speaker 02

  But we need to, we need to connect with each other. We need to talk to each other. We need to be good to each other.

• 2:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  How are you choosing the projects that you work on now? And how did you end up becoming involved with United Shades of America?

• 2:13:00Speaker 02

  I mean, this was like, again, this is like one of those lucky moments where you're like, oh, well, obviously I'm gonna do that. We had taken Kamau Bell to Kenya on Parts Unknown. And CNN wanted to do a crossover show. Kamau has a Kenyan name, though I don't know what his genetic descent is, but probably, you know, West African, not East African.

• 2:13:23Tim Ferriss?

  For those who don't know, who is Kamau?

• 2:13:25Speaker 02

  Kamau is a comedian from Oakland, black comedian from Oakland, who has, you know, really, I think carved out like a niche for himself, dealing in identity and cultural issues in the United States, but from a comedic lens. And has been someone who's like, really been willing to sit down with the other and have honest conversations with them, but do it in a way that is not so heavily laden. He's really kind of brilliant at that. Again, I mean, one of these people that I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to work with because he's, he's super smart, super dynamic, and is doing something at a time in America where I like really believe we need it,

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  where we are talking about these things head on. His current project, which I had absolutely nothing to do with, is the four-part documentary on Showtime on Bill Cosby. And I think it's really brave of Kamau to come out and like be willing to have that conversation. A lot of people weren't. That's who he is. We took him to Kenya, simply because his name is Kenyan. Kamau in Kenya is like Dan here. You know, you look at the phone book and it's like half the people in the phone book are Kamaus. We went, we shot this awesome show there. It was so cool. Went on safari, we were like three feet from lions, you know. The safari was black rhinos, white rhinos, hung out with the Maasai, hung out Nairobi, which was incredible, incredible city.

• 2:14:54Speaker 02

  Again, with like a really young. Really vibrant, really hardworking population that is another place that is just driving this kind of like, how does one even say it? I mean, Africa's on fire right now. And I believe it's the next real growth place. I mean, with some hot centers around like Lagos and Nairobi and Accra and other places, but shot this great show. And at the end of it, I kind of with a little bit of scumbaggery producer ness, said, Hey, listen, like, if you're ever dissatisfied with your production company, or if you ever just want to make a change, I shouldn't say dissatisfied, because I don't want to put words in his mouth, we'd love to work with you. And

• 2:15:37Speaker 02

  we got a call a year later. And, you know, he wanted to try something new. So we've been lucky enough to do that. And like, it just, I feel, again, I feel very, very lucky in that, because at a time when we're bleeding, man, this great incredible country that we have, we're hurting. We got to be able to talk about these things with each other without ripping each other's heads off. And more and more, it feels like we're just ripping each other's heads off. So whereas my life was really focused on like, the external world, you know, the world outside of the United States for so many years with Tony, I felt like at a time when we really needed to look inward, like I got a chance to, you know, I have gotten a chance to do that with

• 2:16:17Speaker 02

  Kamau. And it's been amazing. Learned a tremendous amount about who we are, and have seen some shit that I can't unsee. I feel like it's so hard for us as white Americans to get a glimpse into what it's like to be black in this country. And I will never know that. And I know that I will never know that. But I've been able to see with much clearer resolution than I think a lot of people get to see what that experience is like. And I can't unsee it now, for whatever that's worth. Like, anyone in black America gives a shit what I have to say about anything. But,

• 2:16:55Tim Ferriss?

  well, I mean, be that as it may, as you mentioned, these are hard conversations to have. But if the conversations aren't had, we're

• 2:17:05Speaker 02

  What are we gonna do?

• 2:17:06Tim Ferriss?

  I mean,

• 2:17:07Speaker 02

  What are we gonna do?

• 2:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, then what? What's plan B in that case?

• 2:17:13Speaker 02

  And we know what plan B is. Like, all you got to do is read history. You know what plan B is. Plan B is blood, man. Plan B is not good.

• 2:17:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so better to go with Plan A. And I was struck, I didn't know about this, but when you mentioned that Kamau was working on this, you said mini series for Showtime?

• 2:17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, four part series.

• 2:17:35Tim Ferriss?

  Four part docu series.

• 2:17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:37Tim Ferriss?

  On Bill Cosby.

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:39Tim Ferriss?

  That is, and I don't know the content, I don't know the angle, I don't know him, I'm not referring to Bill, but referring to Kamau.

• 2:17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:47Tim Ferriss?

  But that is a ballsy move.

• 2:17:51Speaker 02

  Very.

• 2:17:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's a bold move and it's, I applaud that, however people may feel about Bill Cosby. Like it's, to make a character study and a historical study of that, I think.

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:03Tim Ferriss?

  It seems important, right? It seems important.

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  And we have to talk about it. We want to fix these issues. You have to talk about it, you know, but again, for Kamau, and I don't want to speak out of turn here, but as a black comedian, I look at what Bill Cosby did. I mean, Bill Cosby broke more goddamn barriers, you know? Uh, what he accomplished was amazing. And I, and that's why I think that what ended up coming out about Bill Cosby, which is pretty irrefutable, you know, despite the fact that he is now walking the streets free, that is soul crushing. That is hard to face. That is hard to deal with. When you've looked at this as a person who has been able to transcend a lot of the boundaries that have, have held you down. So I think

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  as a black American to do that and to take that on head on is damn gutsy. I think you should be applauded for that regardless again of how you feel about, um, about Cosby and in the cases surrounding Cosby in particular.

• 2:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  So what's next for you? What are you most hoping to do or looking forward to doing in the next few years?

• 2:19:13Speaker 02

  Oh man, I'm just waiting for crickets to walk by.

• 2:19:19Tim Ferriss?

  Waiting for crickets. You seem to have

• 2:19:21Speaker 02

  You know when you know, right?

• 2:19:22Tim Ferriss?

  uncanny ability to wait in the right spots and to pick the right crickets. I must say, you are an excellent spider. You're a fantastic, fantastic spider.

• 2:19:31Speaker 02

  I don't honestly know, Tim. I mean, like, you know, you want to keep progressing, right? You want to keep building and keep, you know, you want to see how far you can go. I think that I'm open, man. I'm like, open. I want, you know, I want new challenges, just like everyone else. And we'll see where that goes.

• 2:19:48Tim Ferriss?

  I have another Bedola's question.

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:51Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm gonna read it exactly as he texted it to me because I love the brevity. It's almost like a haiku. So I would probably reword this just because I'm a different person, but I love it in its current form. So I'm going to read it. Here we go. You work with your wife, period. Potentially loaded situation, period. How do you deal? Question mark. So this is though, I think a question that applies to a lot of people. How have you navigated or made rules around or figured out how to coexist and collaborate with a spouse?

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  Honestly, be willing to lose and be honest about what is right in a particular situation. I think a lot of times in relationships, we've spent so much time trying to prove that we're in control and competent. I think, again, it is giving someone the respect to give them space and allow them to take control of a situation, you know? I mean, we do that at home with the kids. We do that, you know, in our household. We do it at work. And I don't know, I came up with this concept. I didn't come up with it. What the fuck am I talking about? I tapped into an age old concept that I feel like has some wisdom to it, which is like

• 2:21:07Speaker 02

  this idea of like strategic loss. Be willing to lose some fucking battles. What are you trying to prove? It's your wife. She's not, I mean, she's not going anywhere. You know, I hope I needed to do a couple of things to make it all work. This is the life I want. I want to work with my wife. I want to travel around the world with my wife. I want to be as much a part of helping her build her career as I want to build my own, you know? But it took for me coming to the point where I had to be like, you are going to have to learn how to lose, not be right about everything, give her space, let her learn, you know, let her teach you and follow through on the shit that you say you're gonna do. And that to me is like,

• 2:21:52Speaker 02

  number one relationship killer, right? If we're just talking about the relationships. You say you're gonna do something, do it. Don't not do it. You're breaking trust, you know? And when it came down to my wife going back to work after she raised the kids and went through two home births without medication, I have to mention that because she's rugged as shit.

• 2:22:16Tim Ferriss?

  Match made in heaven for a mo.

• 2:22:18Speaker 02

  That's right. I, I, I said to her, like, if you go back to work, I will learn how to do this stuff. I promise you, I will follow through on my end of holding up the family, my end of the household.

• 2:22:32Tim Ferriss?

  Learn how to do this stuff. You mean handling, handling the kids and so on?

• 2:22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:36Tim Ferriss?

  That was perfect timing.

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:39Tim Ferriss?

  Cute kid audio.

• 2:22:44Speaker 02

  I think that that's gonna be okay.

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  In the house.

• 2:22:48Speaker 02

  Is it daddy long leg in the house?

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  No, I'm painting.

• 2:22:54Speaker 02

  I'll come handle it, sweetheart. I just got to finish this up though. So give me 10 minutes, okay? Give me 10 or 15 minutes. Don't have to worry about that. I need, I do need some space there, love.

• 2:23:07Speaker 02

  You say hi to Tim? You say hi to Tim?

• 2:23:10Tim Ferriss?

  Hello.

• 2:23:15Speaker 02

  You can come play with it after, sweetie. I love you. All right, I'll be in in a sec.

• 2:23:19Tim Ferriss?

  I'm, I'm so glad I slipped her that 20 to make that appearance and talk about spiders. It was perfect.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

  But for, I mean, for me, it was like realizing that, you know, anyone who doesn't think that taking care of kids in the household isn't like a full-time professional job is like, he just has not done the work and does not understand what goes into it. It is a full-time gig. If my wife was gonna go back to work and we were gonna have this future where we could work together, I had to be willing to ante up. I did. And like, it made all the difference. But what a dream, right? You know, I mean, Yeah. just to put this in perspective a little, and I, uh, sure, I don't want to cry on my own violin here, but when Tony died, Gillian and I had just finished co-directing, co-producing

• 2:24:07Speaker 02

  the second Parts Unknown that we made for him. And it was in Florence. It's a show that has not aired. It was never finished. We shot it a week before Tony died. And we were sitting with Tony on the last day and he turned to Gillian and, uh, he, you know, he gave her his seal of approval. He said, I like this. I like working with you. We're gonna do this a lot more. I just signed another three years and like buckle up, get ready. And that was the last interaction the three of us had together. And Jill and I went home that night and we looked at each other like, we did it. You know, we did it, man. We did. This is the dream. We're on the coolest fucking show on TV. The best ride you can possibly go on

• 2:24:52Speaker 02

  if you're, uh, you know, a sensualist who wants to see the world. This is it. Doesn't get better than this. We're doing it together. We're able to bring our kids. The next show that we talked about potentially doing was in Kyoto. It's like, you know, who doesn't want to do that? We had the dream, you know, and we had worked really hard to get there. And a week later, that was gone. And that was a tough blow. And so we've just focused in on like, okay, cool. How do we get back there? And that's, I mean, man, that's so important to me. She's also super, super good at what she does. So it makes it easy. Yeah. Now she's outgrowing me though, because everyone wants her.

• 2:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Well, quality problems and it sounds like you have, it sounds like you both have great co-pilots for kids and daddy long legs and everything in between.

• 2:25:41Speaker 02

  Going pretty well.

• 2:25:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, Mo, let me, uh, let me do this because I know, um, you have a lot going on over there and we've already been gone for almost three hours.

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  Had so much fun.

• 2:25:50Tim Ferriss?

  This is so great, man. It's so wonderful to see you and I'm so happy to see you doing so well with the family. And is there anything else you would like to say, share, any requests you'd like to make of the audience, any complaints about the podcast you'd like to state publicly? Anything at all that you'd like to add before we wind to a close here?

• 2:26:11Speaker 02

  There's so many things, like when we were going to do this, I was just going through all this, these incredible experiences in my mind and it's too much to get into one thing. But I did want to talk about one day that I felt like it was, you know, really the best day of my career. And I feel like really got to typify like what the whole experience was about. And I don't know if this will make the cut or anything. Anyone wants to hear my anecdotes, but we did this, this show in Antarctica, which was a huge show for us. And I think was really like showed, it was a real expression of what I was talking about of like, you can't buy this ride. You got to earn this with something special like that show. We get invited to go down to Antarctica. You know, now you've been, you know, you've,

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  you've fly, fly to Christchurch, hop a C130 to McMurdo. And then from McMurdo, we hopped another C130 to the South Pole. Like we had our own C130. Like how ridiculous is that? Me and Tony and the rest in the crew, it was actually, the show was directed by Eric Osterholm. So I got to like give him mad props for getting us down there and produced by Josh Farrell, who was like, also just like a great producer and co-DP on that was Fred Minot, who's a gifted cinematographer. And, uh, we also had Josh Flanagan, who is, uh, you know, one of our other DPs is also just gifted on the show. So we have this incredible crew. We had our own frigging C130 flying around. And we did this thing where we went

• 2:27:37Speaker 02

  out to a place called Dry Valleys, which is, it's kind of like the get. If you go to Antarctica, you hang out in McMurdo. Dry Valleys is interesting because they've had no precipitation for like 10,000 years. So you're in Antarctica, but it looks like you're in the desert. People don't know this. There's places in Aranariko where there's no snow. Where we were was kind of mixed. You get glaciers and you get rock. So we go, have this incredible meal, this crew that's there. We're drinking whiskey out of ice that's these little shot glasses they make out of the ice there that's 50,000 years old. Ice in our drinks that's 50,000 years old. There's a beach there next to the, so we're like sitting on the beach.

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  Tony's playing music as he always would. He would be like the DJ. We'd drink, shoot a little, play frisbee, shoot the shit, talk, just kind of soak it up. It's like, you know, bright sunlight, 12 at night. He was playing specifically, he was playing Gin and Juice. I remember that.

• 2:28:38Speaker 02

  And we're all just having a great time. We go to sleep, camp out next to the glacier there and wake up the next morning. And the next morning, we were just going to shoot B-roll. And we get picked up by a helicopter, right? Uh, an A-star. This piloted by a pilot who had been flying Apaches and Cobras in Afghanistan and then, you know, got to go down and, and be one of these pilots on the ice. But when you're a pilot down there, basically all you do is you either pick up human waste and shuttle it back to McMurdo from these, uh, substations, or you're like ferrying scientists and samples back and forth. Like you don't really get to do a lot of fun stuff, but then we're like the rock and roll crew that comes in. And we get this pilot who's just hot to trot and you want to go see some shit?

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  And we're like, yeah, we want to go see some shit. And just took us on a tour of all the craziest shit that he could get to within fuel range of that substation. And, you know, we're flying through these canyons and no one's ever been in. You know, fly you up to a cliff that's 2,000 feet high. The scale of Antarctica cannot be described. You'd be like, we'd be on this cliff that's 2,000 feet high, looking down into a valley where you could easily fit Manhattan with room left. No one's ever touched and standing in a place where no human being's ever been. Hop back in the helicopter and then he'd do some crazy drop off the cliff where you're like weightless for a second.

• 2:30:04Speaker 02

  Go fly around and going through canyons and just everything you ever wanted to do. If you ever had a helicopter and a Apache pilot to yourself, you know? And we're filming and filming and filming and. Eventually, we need fuel. We stop at this refueling station. There's intermittent refueling stations around and we're sitting there and, you know, surrounded by 55 gallon drums of jet fuel. And these three folks come out and they are the people who work at the refueling station and their job is to be out there all season long, refueling choppers. Pretty lonely, you know, out there. You, I mean, you are literally, at that point, you are living on hoth. And they come out with these pulled pork sandwiches, like they've

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  made pulled pork sandwiches for us. And so we're sitting there, drinking warm coffee, eating pulled pork sandwiches, over a 55 gallon drum of jet fuel, the helicopter's still hot, and just had this moment of like, this is it, man. This is the top. For this particular thing that I'm gonna do in my life, this particular journey, nothing is gonna get any cooler than this. Nothing is gonna get any more singular, inaccessible, or like, amazing to be able to do those things and see those places. And to hope to be able to capture enough of that in an organic enough way, that it would translate some of what

• 2:31:34Speaker 02

  that journey was to people at home who like, will never be as lucky as I've been to stumble into this thing and to be able to hang out and hang on and, and get to that place. That was it, man. I don't know, it feels kind of selfish to tell that story in a way because, oh, look at the, you know, look at the awesome fucking thing that I got to do. But I actually don't mean it that way. I actually mean like, I hope that what we did at the end of the day was be able to bring some of that back and show people what is out there. It is vast and beautiful and extraordinary and so much bigger than our little daily, you

• 2:32:17Speaker 02

  know, kind of day to day context. And not trying to belittle or trivialize that, but there's something very freeing about the humility that comes with like, those massive spaces and being able to say like, no one's ever stood here. This ice is 50,000 years old, or this is timeless. This goes so much deeper and beyond me. I hope that maybe everyone gets to experience some degree of that at some point in their life because I think it's really important to be able to feel small and ultimately that is what the show did, I guess, for me in like the best way is give me a perspective on what this world really is. FYI, we should fucking take care of it and don't be so goddamn afraid

• 2:33:01Speaker 02

  of other people. I keep telling people what I saw out there, seven continents, 70 countries, and a lot of hairy moments, you know, and a lot of beautiful moments and a lot of whatever. 99% of the people that we encountered were just beautiful, awesome people that wanted to take us into their homes and feed us and share their life with us and tell us who they were. And that's the truth of what's out there. There's a lot of othering that goes on in this world and like they're not same concerns, same people, all of them. Same shit we're trying to do.

• 2:33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Same, same.

• 2:33:39Speaker 02

  I don't know if that makes sense.

• 2:33:40Tim Ferriss?

  That is, that makes perfect sense and that I could not have scripted a better place to end and I'm glad that there's no scripting involved, man. It's the perfect place to wrap up. Mo, it's so nice to see you again.

• 2:33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, it's great. Hopefully we can hang out in person at some point here, too.

• 2:33:59Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I would love that. I would love that. And people can find you on Twitter at Diamond Mo Fallon and I already got the Mopart, F A L L O N, Instagram, Fallon dot Morgan, Facebook, Morgan dot Fallon dot three, one and zero point zero. You can find all spelled out, zero point zero dot com.

• 2:34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, come be another one of my disappointed and frustrated social media followers.

• 2:34:25Tim Ferriss?

  I don't do great on social media. Oh, that is the perfect way to get people to look at your social. Brilliant.

• 2:34:33Tim Ferriss?

  Genius, absolutely genius. And really appreciate you and what you do in the world and the ruggedness and rigor that you bring to what is both incredibly artistic, but and I saw this when we were working together, also very tender and, and human. It's a gift that you help bring to the world. So, thank you for doing that.

• 2:34:56Speaker 02

  Shit, Tim. I mean, that's an incredible compliment coming from you and everything that you do and, and bring. And I think you bring that same humanity to everything that you do. A real marker of your success. So, I mean, listen, I'm humbled, man, by the whole thing. So, thank you.

• 2:35:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Thanks to you, man. And we'll, we'll get together, have some coffee, maybe go mountain biking on something that isn't like a, you know, 45 degree single, single track. And I'll let you get to the daddy long legs. And for everybody listening, for links to everything we discussed, everything we talked about and more, I will put that all in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be just a little bit kinder than you think is necessary. And thanks for tuning in. 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

• 2:35:56Tim Ferriss?

  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 kind of 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 podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So, if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,

• 2:36:37Tim Ferriss?

  a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

• 2:36:53Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:37:36Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:38:18Tim Ferriss?

  two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off. So, check it out one more time. Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim.

• 2:38:49Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Gravity, makers of the original weighted blanket. Listeners of this podcast know I place sleep at the very top of my list for optimizing health, energy, and performance. I've had onset insomnia and all sorts of sleep issues almost my entire life. It does not come easy for me, which is why I'm always experimenting and adding new sleep aids to my roster of experimentation. This is currently my number one priority because it's the basis, the foundation for everything else. If that's in place, it helps everything else. If it's not in place, it hurts everything else. One of my new favorites is the Gravity weighted blanket. My girlfriend is also a fan. You might recognize Gravity from some of my interviews on this podcast with superhuman athletes.

• 2:39:34Tim Ferriss?

  A number of them use Gravity weighted blankets and have mentioned them, which is how I picked up the thread and ended up testing them out. Seventy-two percent of Gravity users have reported better, more restful sleep, and seventy-six percent have reported falling asleep faster and feeling more rested in the morning. For me, the falling asleep faster is the key piece. Better, deeper, uninterrupted sleep is key for brain function and cognitive abilities, as well as everything, cardiovascular health to immune function. You know this, and if you do any form of training, it's also the cornerstone of recovery. Gravity is the leader in weighted blanket technology. They have all sorts of other products as well, which you can check out, and they have

• 2:40:14Tim Ferriss?

  been named the best weighted blanket by CNN, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, and many more. And now Gravity is offering you guys, my listeners, a special discount. Order a blanket of any size or weight and receive 15% off of your order. Just go to gravityblankets.com/tim and the discount will be automatically applied. That's 15% off at gravityblankets, gravityblankets.com/tim to get your own original weighted blanket, gravityblankets.com/tim.