Ep 59: How to Create a Blockbuster Podcast (Part 2)

(Part 2 of 2) How do you create a blockbuster podcast? This episode explores the tips, tricks, and best practices of a master. My guest is Alex Blumberg, who cut his teeth on the king of all radio shows (This American Life) and recently co-founded Gimlet Media. Gimlet swiftly conquered the iTunes rankings with two blockbuster podcasts: Reply All and StartUp. Podcasters everywhere asked: how the hell does he do it? This episode provides some answers. (This Part 2 also includes a sample of my upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger episode!) Show notes and links mentioned can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. 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. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form. 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/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/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 is Tim Ferriss and welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show. What you are about to hear is part two of a two-part conversation with Alex Blumberg, best known for his work with This American Life as co-host of Planet Money and also co-founder of Gimlet Media, which has produced two blockbuster podcasts at the time of this particular episode, namely Startup and Reply All. He is a true master of storytelling, crafting narrative, radio interviewing, and much more. If you didn't catch the first part, you might want to do that before venturing in, but you can certainly listen to this independently. This second part is an excerpt from a masterclass that he taught on creativelive.com.

• 0:41Tim Ferriss?

  I think it costs about $99 and it is phenomenal. Specifically, in this portion, we are going to look at the art of the interview and how to craft and find the perfect question. So I hope you enjoy it. And with that further ado, please enjoy part two of The Tim Ferriss Show with Alex Blumberg.

• 1:02Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  No, this is inappropriate.

• 1:12Arnold Schwarzenegger?

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

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole-body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase.

• 2:05Tim Ferriss?

  So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A-G-one, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  What we're going to be talking about in this segment is... The art of the interview. And what I'm going to be covering today, what I'm going to be covering in this section is, first of all, like, sort of the most basic question, which is, what are you going for when you're interviewing somebody? What are you trying to get out of it? What is the thing that you want to, what does a, what does a good interview look like? Right? What does it feel like when it's happening? And as part of that, I'm going to go through what to ask, how do you come up with the questions to ask. And I'm going to be talking a little bit about the power of the right question. And then I'm also going to be talking about nuts and bolts.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  So that's coming up. So, what are you going for? So the first thing that you're, that you're going for is what we, what we talked about in the last section, which is authentic moments of, you know, sort of authentic moments of authentic emotion, authentic sort of realization, authentic moments of humor, something that feels like a real emotion. Like, those, those are golden moments in an interview, and that's sort of, that's one of the things that you absolutely want to go for. And we talked a little bit about that before, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. But the thing that I want to focus on now is, the other thing that we're talking about is stories.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  And this, and I have a, I have a sort of a very specific meaning when I, when I say what an actual story is. But I'm going to, but I think the first thing to do is to, is to, sorry, stories. I think the first thing to do is to play you a little bit of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about a story. So, I'm going to play you a little piece of tape. So, this is a story that was on This American Life a while ago. And the setup is that it's this actor, Tate Donovan. And Tate Donovan is, was a sort of a character actor, he'd been, you know, sort of on a couple of different shows, but he didn't get recognized very much. And then he had like a stint on Friends, and all of a sudden he was starting to get recognized. And...

• 4:28Speaker 04

  It was really exciting for him to be recognized because he finally got to be the celebrity that he always wished that he could be. The celebrity that he would have wanted to meet before he was famous. So when he got recognized, and so one, and this story happens when, one night, he was out at this Broadway show, and a lot of people were coming up to him and being like, "Hey, I saw you." And he was able to, like, talk to people and be very magnanimous and say, "Thank you so much, it really means a lot." And he was, like, posing for pictures for people. And it was at the show, it was happening over and over and over again.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  I was, I was, I was exactly how I wanted to be. I was doing it, I was doing great. And then, the kid with the camera came along.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  This nervous kid, I don't know, he must have been 16 years old, he's in a rented tuxedo, unbelievably, like, shy and awkward, and he's got, like, acne, and he's got a camera in his hand. And underneath the marquee is his date, who is literally like a prom dress, and she's got a corsage, and she's really, you know, nervous and sort of clutching her hands. And he sort of comes up to me and he sort of mumbles, you know, something like, you know, something about a picture. And I'm like, I just feel for him, so I'm like, "Oh, absolutely, my gosh, sure, I have no problem, my god, you poor thing." And, and I go up to his, to his girlfriend, I wrap my arms around her, and I'm like, "Hey, where you from?

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Fantastic, uh, going to see the play, it's great." And the guy is sort of not taking the photograph very quickly, he's just sort of staring at me, and he's got his camera in his hands, and it's down by his, like, chin, you know, and, and, uh, she's very stiff and awkward, and, you know, I don't know what to do, so I just lean across and I, I kiss her on the cheek. And I'm like, "All right, come on, take the picture, hurry up."

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Do you guys want to find out what happens next? Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  That's a story. When you want to... So, what... That is the power of a good narrative. So, when I talk about... I'm talking about like those two basic things you're going for. Emotion and narrative. We, as humans, are hardwired, I believe, to listen to narrative. And it's a very simple... Sort of the mechanics of narrative are very simple. There's like a sequence of actions and there's sort of rising action and it's culminating in something. And you are in the middle of that sequence of actions and you were about to get to the culmination and I stopped it. And it's frustrating. And you really want to know what happens next. And you would never, if you were listening to this, have turned off that podcast or that radio story at that moment.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  And that is a good story. And that's why you want to operate in stories. That's why when you're interviewing people, you want to get their stories out of them and you want to get them talking in stories. Because stories are what we want to hear. And so, when you're working in an audio format, you need to operate in stories. The other thing we want to hear, as we heard before, is emotion. So, those are the two things you're going for in a good interview. So, moving on. Actually, do you want to hear what happens next? All right. All right. I'll rewind it again and then we'll have it play out.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  You know, I don't know what to do, so I just lean across and I kiss her on the cheek. And I'm like, "All right, come on, take the picture, hurry up." And finally, he sort of like snaps it. And I'm like, "Okay, it was really wonderful to meet you." And he just like stammered over to me and was like,

• 8:07Speaker 05

  "Could you take a picture of us?"

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  And the whole time, he just wanted me to take a picture of him and his girlfriend underneath the awning of the play. He didn't want a picture of me. He had no idea who I was.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Got a little emotion in there, too?

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  So that is what I'm talking about when a story... So very simply, and we're gonna be talking a lot more about what story is in the next session, but very, very simply, it is that. It is a sequence of actions that culminates in something, some sort of revelation, some sort of punchline, some sort of joke, some sort of realization.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  And more to the point, it's something that you don't wanna turn off, that you don't wanna stop listening to.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  And so that is the thing that's in your mind when you're going out and doing an interview with anybody. You want to ask questions of the interview subject that are gonna either elicit an honest emotional reaction or they're gonna elicit them telling you a story.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  So, and there's a lot of things that you can ask that will... So let's talk about that. So what to ask, right? So first, if you're trying to ask questions that will elicit a story,

• 9:29Speaker 04

  first of all, you don't wanna ask ever really yes or no questions. I mean, you gotta get some facts out of the way, but you don't wanna ask a yes or no question because that is not, that's the end of a story, right? And so how you phrase the questions is very, very important. You wanna sort of ask questions... I often sort of say, "Tell me about the time when," right? Something, you know, you were just like, you want them to tell you. You use words like "tell me." So they're automatically starting to talk to you in story language.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  "Tell me about the time, tell me about the day when you..." blah, blah, blah. "Tell me about the moment when you realized that this was what was gonna happen." "Tell me about the time in your life when you were going through this thing." Another question that works really well, "Tell me the story of..." Just ask them, straight up, right? "Tell me the story of this, how did this happen? Tell me the story." Sometimes that works.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Another thing that you, when you're on the right track, you know when you're on the right track is when people are actually sort of like talking to you in dialogue. If somebody is saying, "Well, first I said, and then she said, and then I said." That's really, that you know you're on the right track here. So often, I will tell people, you know, describe the conversation, where blah, blah, blah. And, because if you get people sort of telling you like, "He said, then she said, then he said, then she said," that's great. You know you're on the right track, that somebody is telling you a story, right then. Because they're quoting dialogue to you. Again, tell me about, like, often what you're going for is a moment of realization. So a story has to culminate in something.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Often, the thing it's culminating in is a moment of realization. So you want to say, "Tell me about the day that you realized," whatever it is that we're talking about here. Another thing that really works well is if people can sort of talk through a process of, you know, there's often steps that led from one situation to the other situation. What were the steps that got you from one thing to another? What were the steps that got you from, you know, your career in the Army to your career as a celebrity florist? Or whatever, right? So, anybody here have that career trajectory, by the way? So, so you want to ask that, like, sort of, what were the steps?

• 11:50Speaker 04

  If you can get people breaking it down into steps, and often each step is its own story. So often, step one will be, "Well, I was, you know, I was, I was, you know, I had my career in the Army, and this one thing happened when I was, you know, in the Army. This day happened that I wanted, that made me want to change." And so they'll tell you that, and that's a story. Each step can be its own story, but that sequence of steps is also a story. So, these are all sort of questions that will elicit stories. You want to have people back up, you want to do all that stuff. All right. So that's one whole set of questions. And often, when you're doing...

• 12:29Speaker 04

  So that's a whole set of questions. The other set of questions, so what do you ask? If, there's a whole other set of questions that are built around eliciting sort of honest reflection and emotion. So that's the other stock and trade. That's the other thing that you're going for, right? Pretty simple, two things. So what do you, so what do you ask when you're trying to get people to tell you, you know, tell you how they feel? One question is, how did that make you feel? It's pretty straightforward. There's a, there's a, I often joke that like doing a good interview for audio and having a good sort of therapy session look very similar.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Because what you are trying to do is get people to articulate their emotions in words. All you have in audio are words. That's all you have. You have people's words. And so if they're feeling something, it's like if something happens and you're not shooting it, it didn't happen. If they're feeling something and they don't articulate it, it also didn't happen. So you need them to articulate the way they're feeling. And so a lot of what you're doing is you're in the audio, you're in the interview and you're like, "I noticed feeling in your voice or in your manner, and I want you to articulate that feeling." And so, so that's one thing. And so that's like, "How did that make you feel?" is a big, is a big one. Often, you also want to encourage that kind of reflection.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Some people just aren't very naturally reflective, but they've gone through something sort of momentous and you want them sort of like getting that, getting the emotion in there. So one good trick I've, I've known is sort of like if the old new could see the new you, what would the old you say? Because often you're going, you're interviewing about something that has happened to them. They've gone through some sort of transition and you want the, you want that moment, you want them to be able to articulate what that transition meant to them. And these are all tricks we're going to use, by the way, on one of our audience members, Anne, coming up. So we're going to do a live interview coming up in another section. So, so these are all, so take notes because we're going to have to employ this, you know,

• 14:41Speaker 04

  use this in action. So.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  A lot of what emotion is around is around internal conflict. So, a lot of... And this is one of the things that I love about audio, which audio can do uniquely well, is that it can give voice to interior, sort of interior drama. If there's, you know, on television, you can sort of see people looking pensively, or you can sort of like, you can sort of, you can get across an internal life, but stuff has to happen on, you know, on tape, you know, it has to be happening. And with audio, you can, if you can give people, if you can get people to give voice

• 15:28Speaker 04

  to the, to the internal conflict, it has the power of any kind of real drama. So, what I often say to people is like, I'll often say, like, so conflict, you're going for conflict, but it can be conflict within a person. It can be a person feeling conflicted about something. And so, a big question that I use a lot, which is sort of like, just if you had to describe the debate in your head, over this moment, over this act that you took, what was one side saying, what was the other side saying? You know? And it's just getting people to sort of like, voice this, the feelings that they're having. And often, our feelings are contradictory, right? And so, you want that, and that's great. If people have a conflicted feeling, when you're interviewing them, that's a wonderful thing, too. That's what you want. Because that's a way of breaking out of what you were talking about, Anne, which is the canned thing.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Part of what being canned is, is just sort of, just having like a, you know, sort of like, a very, very straightforward feeling about it, that you don't necessarily believe, but you can't shake people out of. And so, what you want is to sort of like, get at like, you know, what, what was the conflict? Was there ever a point where you didn't feel so confident about this? Was there ever a point where you like, felt differently? You know, sort of like, you know, and sort of, and sometimes it can be just as simple as sort of like, you seem very confident right now, was that always the case? You know, and if they say, "No," then just zero in on that, like, zero in on the weakness, the emotion, right? Like, that's what your, that's what your job is, right? Another, another question that I would...

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Often happens in an interview, I bet you this will happen to you as you're doing your interviews. Somebody will say something and it feels like very important to them. Like they've said something that you know is meaningful. You know, and like, you know, you're talking to like a, you know, a rail yard worker and they'll be like, well, you know, and then the boss gave us like, you know, extra hours. And they say it like, and you're like, wow, the boss gave you extra hours? You're saying it like it's important and I have no idea what it means. But it means something to you. There's emotion in the voice, right? Like, what does that mean? And so, and often you, and I would always flub this thing.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  I would know that there was something that they were getting at, but they weren't articulating it to me. And then, and then I reuse this question, use this question all the time. And it's a really great question and it's super straightforward. It's just sort of like, what do you make of that? And so I say it all the time now because like I'm often, I just need them to tell me the reason that there's emotion in the thing that they just said. So what do you make of that is a really, a really, a really important question.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  The other thing that I think one of the most important things that we, which is, you know, sort of like part of the what do you make, what do you make of that question? Again, you sort of ask, what do you make of that? And then you're, it's sort of a dumb question. You sort of feel like an idiot for asking it. It's like, sort of like basic and weird. And like, it's not a question that you actually ask that often in normal conversation.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  And so, and this gets to the point of sort of like, are you having a real conversation? Are you having a staged conversation sort of to elicit certain things? And you're doing a little bit of both, right? And the what do you make of that is very much like a staged sort of therapy conversation. You know what I mean? And so, but really important is to then shut up. I can't get across enough the importance of shutting up. And like, early on in my career, I would come back and I would just be talking so much and people would start to be telling me interesting things and I would be talking over them. And, and it was all because I was nervous and I was worried about like, sort of making them feel uncomfortable. And you sort of want them to feel uncomfortable. A little bit, not totally uncomfortable, so that they're not going to be like talking

• 19:15Speaker 04

  to you. You want them to feel, you want them to feel safe, but you want them to feel like they're saying something real, which is often uncomfortable. So you want it to be safe, you're not judgmental at all. You never want to be judgmental, but you want to be asking real questions. You want them to be thinking real, really about it. So another, another just sort of, you know, good, good question that sort of gets at this is the, why is the story meaningful to you?

• 19:46Tim Ferriss?

  Coming up, the power of the right question and how to craft it to get honest responses, deep responses, including plenty of clips. But first, a short word from our sponsors.

• 20:00Tim Ferriss?

  The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products for years. If you look in my kitchen, in my garage, you will find AlphaBrain, chewable melatonin for resetting my clock when I'm traveling, kettlebells, battle ropes, maces, steel clubs. It sounds like a torture chamber, and it kind of is. It's a torture chamber for self-improvement. And you can see all of my favorite gear at onnit.com/tim. That's O-N-N-I-T dot com forward slash tim. And you can also get a discount on any supplements, food products. I like Hempforce. I like AlphaBrain. Check it all out, onnit.com/tim.

• 20:41Tim Ferriss?

  The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is your one-stop-shop for anything graphic design-related. You need a logo, you need a website, you need a business card, or anything else. You get an original design from designers around the world who submit drafts for you to review. You are happy, or you get your money back. And I have used 99designs for book cover ideas, for The 4-Hour Body, which went to number one New York Times, for banner ads. And you can check out some of my actual competitions at 99designs.com/tim. You can also get a free $99 upgrade if you want to give it a shot. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 21:23Tim Ferriss?

  And now, back to the show.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  So just to sort of get across like sort of like the power of like sort of what this question, you know, asking the right question, I want to, I want to play a couple clips of tape here. And this first one is like a story that we did on, so this first sort of like illustration of the power of asking the right question and getting people, you know, to reflect honestly. It's a weird story. It was a sort of, this really conceptual story that we did at This American Life a while ago. And it was this reporter named Davy Rothbart, and I was the producer on the story, so I went, went out with him and asked all these questions. And the conceptual story was this. Davy lived on this block in Chicago. It was sort of like a, sort of a block in transition.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  There was like some sort of yuppies moving in, but it had been sort of like a poor, it was, there were some gang problems there, and it was like a sort of, it was a neighborhood in transition. And he lived on this block, and there was all these problems that with the neighborhood was having with each other. Like, different neighbors were like having different conflicts with each other. And there was like a neighbor in his building who was complaining about his loud music and was constantly banging on the floor. And then there was another neighbor that had thought that like, that somebody else stole her dog. And then there was like, you know, so there's all these things. And, and the idea was that Davy was, the idea of the story was that Davy was going to sort of like collect all these problems, interview all the people in his neighborhood, and then take the problems that were happening in this neighborhood to an expert on neighbor relations.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  Call it 540 for round figures.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Whoops. I set up the wrong piece of tape. I mean, sorry. Crap. Oh, there it is, right there, in my notes. I missed it. I'm going to set up a different piece of tape. This is, this is another piece of tape. This will be very quickly. Sorry. Keep all that in your mind for a second. And there's two, there's two stories I'm going to play. I'm going to play the first one now, in order. So, so, so this is a different story. This is one that I did on the housing crisis. This is a story from 2008. And it was one of the more famous stories I did. It was called "The Giant Pool of Money." And it was about the housing meltdown, basically. And back in 2008, there was all this stuff happening with subprime mortgages.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  And a lot of the coverage was about our, you know, like, who's at fault? Is it like, were deadbeats taking out loans that they knew they couldn't pay back and then, like, ripping off the banks? Or were, like, poor people being victimized by evil banks that were now foreclosing on their homes? And that was the sort of the narrative. And neither narrative really ever made sense to me. And I kept on thinking, like, there's like, there's something else going on here, something bigger and more systemic that's going on than just like, either people ripping off banks or banks ripping off people. And I wanted to get at the heart of it. And there was like, this question. So we found this guy who was, you know, who was going through foreclosure.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  And he was telling the story of how, of how he got this loan, this enormous loan. And in the middle of this clip, you'll hear the question that I'm talking about. The question that I felt like turned the whole thing and sort of set up the entire show, as a matter of fact, but sort of got him talking in a very different way. So, this guy's name is Clarence. He'd taken out a huge loan, almost over half a million dollars. At the time of that loan, he had three not very reliable part-time jobs. He was making about $45,000 a year. And on the loan that he took out, they didn't ask him anything about his income.

• 24:57Speaker 06

  Call it 540 for round figures.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  You basically borrowed $540,000 from the bank, and they didn't check your income?

• 25:05Speaker 06

  Right. It's a no-income verification loan. They don't call me up and say, you know, "How much money?" They don't do that. I mean, it's, it's almost like you pass a guy in the street and say, "You lend me $540,000?" He said, "Well, what do you do?" "I got a job." "Okay." I mean, it's, it's, it seems as if it's that casual, even though there are a lot of papers that get filled out and stuff flies all over with the faxes and the emails and all like that. Essentially, that's the process.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  Would you have loaned me the money? I wouldn't have loaned me the money. And nobody that I know would have loaned me the money. I mean, I know guys who are criminals that wouldn't lend me that money, and they break your kneecaps. So, you know, yeah, I mean, I don't know why the bank did it. I'm serious. I mean, $540,000, a person with bad credit.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  So I love that piece of tape because it was the first time, in my experience, that anybody... First of all, Clarence is at the center of the problem. And I'm asking him how he feels about... Like, that question enabled me to sidestep the whole "whose fault is it?" in a way. And it just got to a very honest reaction from him, which was sort of like... Like, there's all sorts of other ways to phrase that question. Did you deserve that money? Should the bank have given you that money? Blah, blah, blah. And all that would have led to a defensive answer. It would have led to not the right answer. But then, when I was in the middle of it, I remember thinking like, "Oh, that's the question." And when I asked him, "Would you have loaned you the money?", it forced him to be honest.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  There was no way to not be honest about answering that question. And it got a really wonderful, honest response that then set up the entire hour, basically. So, like, why were other people lending money to people that those people themselves would not have lent to them? So, like, what was going on there? And that question set up the entire thing. All right. So I teased this next piece of tape mistakenly. So, going back, cast your minds back to when I set this up before. So, anyway, Davy Rothbart, getting all these questions from his... All these questions from the people in his neighborhood. And all the problems that he's running it by an expert in neighbor relations.

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  Here's the bridge.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Anybody know who this is? Mr. Rogers, yes. Mr. Rogers, who's since passed away. Fred Rogers. So, like I said, it was a weird conceptual story. We're taking these problems from this, like, sort of like, rough block of West Augusta in Chicago, and then bringing them in front of Mr. Rogers and asking him to sort of pronounce judgment on what these neighbors should do. It was weird, there's a backstory that I won't even get into. But, uh, but it was, I bring it up all to sort of talk about because there was, this was one of these moments where, like, the question really brought us to a different place. One of the, one of the things that, like, so there was this, so one of the problems that Davy had identified, I'm gonna play one more piece of tape and then we'll get to the tape with the question. So, one of the problems that Davy had identified in his neighborhood was that there was this

• 28:31Speaker 04

  fear, right? That was one of the big things. So, there was, like, the people banging on the floor, you know, and the music playing too loud, there was a kid, there was a guy whose neighbor thought he'd stole her dog. And then, but mainly, there was, like, a lot of fear. There was, like, the fear of, like, the yuppies moving into, into the neighborhood were afraid of the kids who were in the gangs. And, uh, and so Davy talked about that. And you'll hear Davy, and then you'll hear a kid named The Mouth, who he's interviewing.

• 28:56Speaker 07

  "Who exactly are you afraid of?" I'd ask. They all answer the same way. "The gang bangers, the kids in baggy jeans and basketball jerseys who cruise the neighborhood with their stereos bumpin'." "The gang bangers," they said, "those are the bad neighbors." I guess it's no surprise, The Mouth had his own idea about who the bad neighbors are, the ones who fear and distrust him.

• 29:17Speaker 08

  There was a neighbor in the neighborhood that, he didn't agree with what we did so much, so he'd, he'd stand in his house with a video camera and record what we were doing, try to bring it to the beat meetings, you know? He used to follow us around with cameras, literally follow us around the neighborhood with cameras, you know, and say, "I'm gonna call the cops on you," and, you know, "Well, for what? We ain't bothering you," you know? That's what I think the worst neighbor is, you know?

• 29:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 09

  They come in here fearing us, saying that, you know, maybe thinking that we're gonna do this and do that, but we'll talk to you, you know what I'm saying, bro? We ain't, you know, we ain't animals, bro, we're normal people like you.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  All right, so that's The Mouth and his friends, who are sitting on the street drinking Heinekens. And so we bring that to Mr. Rogers. And so Mr. Rogers is a wonderful, lovely man. Meeting him was a thrill. He's got this strange sort of power when you meet him. It was crazy. He would like, when we went to meet him, his assistant said, we were trying to set up the interview, and his assistant was like, "Well, Fred likes to be nearby a piano." So we had to meet him in his studio, so that he could play the piano every once in a while. He literally, he had the bag of puppets, and he would bring them out sometimes to make a point and start talking in the puppet voices while we were talking to him. And yet somehow it was like, moving and real. I don't know.

• 30:34Speaker 04

  He was an amazing person, amazing. But he was giving us a little bit of canned answers. Like, when we were answering, sort of, "What should this neighbor do?", his answer was always sorta, sort of the same. Like, you know, "Well, I hope I would be brave enough to go and talk to them."

• 30:51Speaker 01

  I would hope that I would be brave enough to visit. It's so easy to condemn when we don't know. And if I would visit you and find out that you are a reasonable person, I could tell you about my sensitivities and see if it would make any difference to you.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  It's funny, a lot of the things, like, you know, you said if you were in Davey's neighbor's situation, you said that you hoped you would have enough courage to go down and visit. And a lot of what you were finding when you were talking to people had to do with that same sort of notion. And I'm wondering, like, what is it that we're afraid of, do you think?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that, oh, there maybe are people in this world who I can't ever communicate with. And so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that that we would give up

• 32:29Speaker 01

  on any other creature who's just like us.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  So, um, what are your thoughts about that? I'd love to hear what you like, what was going on in your mind? Anybody respond?

• 32:46Speaker 10

  That was Mr. Rogers. Like, that was so powerful. And you could hear the flutter in his voice, which was his emotion, you know, rippling through his vocal cords. And it was amazing. And it was such an interesting contrast to think of Mr. Rogers. And like, he sounded like the Buddha.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. He's very Buddha-like in person, yeah. But it was like, but that was one of the, that was the, that was the most honest moment in that, in that interview. You know, and it, and it came out of like, there was this question that was sort of hovering over it, and he was giving slightly, he said, I hear this, and I wonder if you do too. Like, in the beginning, he sounded more canned. And then after I asked the question, right, you can hear it. All of a sudden, he's actually pausing, and he's actually thinking, and he's actually trying to figure out what is the emotion. And he's trying to voice that emotion. And all of a sudden, it becomes real, and it becomes authentic, and you connect to that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 11

  I think the fact that he is Mr. Rogers carries particular weight.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 11

  We're used to hearing him and we're used to hearing him do those canned, simple, solutions oriented, "Just do this and it'll all be great." For me, that moment of real darkness, when he identifies the greatest fear is, "I will never be able to communicate with you."

• 34:02Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 11

  And as a listener, I can extrapolate that out to the neighborhood. It's like, I can see how that person would think that about that person. And he just took me somewhere so hopeless.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 11

  When he's usually someone who's all about hope and positivity and it's gonna be great. So that juxtaposition of what I expect to hear from him and then what I hear from him is incredibly powerful.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Right. And I think, but I think that's a really great point because I think that's what you're trying to do with it. That's what, that's what an honest moment will do with anybody, whether it's Mr. Rogers or not. If you hear people talking, and the way we all talk, we're all sort of like, you know, going through, we're putting up fronts and lying to ourselves in various ways as we go through our day. And, you know, nobody's gonna notice that I actually screwed up the order of my table, for example. But, you know, that, when they break, when you break out of it, even if you're not Mr. Rogers, that's what comes through. That's the thing that comes through. Yeah, go ahead.

• 34:56Speaker 12

  I was just gonna say that he really took something that maybe many of us could not relate to, like living in a project. And when he answered that, when you asked that question about fear, it made it so personal that I immediately was thinking to myself, "What am I fearing?" And he took this kind of out there thing and brought it deep.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 12

  And so because it was personal, then it was more important to me, like you said earlier in the day, right?

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 12

  And then, and I engaged with that immediately.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Right. And he was identifying something, I mean, again, that's also sort of like identifying, putting words to a feeling that we have that is sort of undiagnosed or unsort of explained, that is sort of a definition of profundity, a little bit. You know what I mean? When you can actually... Give voice to, but you know, put that in words, the feeling that we share. And that's what he did with, I like, oh, that is our fear. That is the fear, right? We're afraid that people, that we are going to encounter somebody who is, who we can't connect with as humans. Yeah, yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 13

  I think it's also incredible because he uses his own language. He doesn't break out of being Mr. Rogers. You know, he actually manages to remain himself and still go to this really different place for him. And that's how, that's how at least I could tell it was really honest was that he, like, you also get to know Mr. Rogers honestly.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 13

  In his language.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you can see why, like, Mr. Rogers of all people would find that an especially horrifying thing, you know? Yeah, that like, oh, the people, that there are bad people in the world is just like such a, you know, it's like, it's more poignant for Mr. Rogers than any of us. Yeah. Morgan, yeah.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Just going off of that, at the end, he uses the word creature instead of like another human. It's like, we're all just these beings that need to like connect with another being. It's not, you know, it's not within our organism.

• 36:53Speaker 14

  We have a few more that came in from the chatroom. Jennifer says, of all people, coming from someone who so genuinely and innocently sees the beauty in people, acknowledging that core fear is really powerful. And Claudia says, you can feel how carefully he's thinking about the question, and that makes it very authentic.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely. Like, you can hear, for the first time, he didn't have a ready answer.

• 37:14Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 04

  You know, and that was, that's important, too. And so, and again, like, I don't think that moment would have happened, you know, I often feel like there's like, in every interview, or in a lot of interviews, there's like this, there's a question that's sort of hanging over the interview, that if like, you can just figure out what that question is, what's the one that's gonna like, sort of like, what are we talking around? And can you, can you, can you figure out what it is and sort of present it to people? It gets, it breaks through often. Like, again, the therapy language, you have a breakthrough a little bit, you know? And that's what you're sort of going for. Jeff?

• 37:49Speaker 15

  I'm wondering if both of those clips ended up in the final cut? And whether or not you like, including that transition when, when you get the right question, and that person changing from their canned response to, to the more personal, honest one?

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, because you have to, yeah, no, those are both pulled from the actual final version. So like, that's, the music was there and everything like that. That was the, that was, I just... Downloaded the clip off of iTunes and put it in. Yeah, that was like the, yeah. But was that your answer or was that?

• 38:17Speaker 15

  Well, I was wondering if you had gotten the second answer first, if that would have satisfied you. Or if you'd like capturing that moment when you kind of break someone.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  Oh, that's interesting. Like, did you need the drama of him giving a canned answer first and then to like break through? There's something nice, I mean, there is something about that where it's nice to, like, it was the same thing that happened in the Dave Ramsey thing, where somebody is not being totally honest and then there's a question that sort of confronts them. I don't know, that's a good question. I think it helps, I think, because it also sort of tells a story. It's like, I feel like it's like a chord resolving in music when you're just like waiting for the chord and then finally the power chord comes and you're like, ah. That's how it feels a little bit, you know, where like, where like, somebody is sort of like wrestling with it, they're not being honest, they're not being honest, and then there's a question that breaks them out of it and then they acknowledge. There's a nice feeling to that as well. But I think it could have worked either way.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Like, we'll have, we often will use the answer without using the question. And it often is just as powerful. You know, you don't need to include the whole thing. You know, it's just how it works.

• 39:23Speaker 14

  Alex, we had a couple of questions come in that I think tie in nicely to these clips that we just heard. So I'd love to get your opinion on this. So in that clip, you were talking about getting that location, that street in Chicago. So this ties into a question that Braden had, who says, "When you're reporting on a town or a location or with Mr. Rogers, a neighborhood, do you have a methodology for getting to know that town or that place?"

• 39:43Speaker 04

  God, that is tricky. Do I have a methodology? No, I don't. I think, and I think, my methodology is try to find somebody who knows it better than me. Is to sort of like go and find, ID the person who is, ID the person who is the exemplar of whatever it is. Like, if there's somebody, if it's a town and there's like somebody who's in that town who sort of represents sort of the mainstream view of the town. And then identify the outsider, the goth kid or whatever, who can sort of like have a more anthropological view of the town. And if you get both of those people, generally you're sort of circling around some sort of authentic picture of it. But you're always like, that's the biggest difficulty of being a journalist, is sort

• 40:28Speaker 04

  of like parachuting in some place. Trying to pretend, trying to get as much as you can about the place, but you never know. You never know as much as you wish you knew, and you never have time to figure it all out entirely. Generally, when I'm reporting on a topic, when I find that I have, that I'm getting the same answers from enough people, like then I feel like, okay, well, I've done enough reporting now that I'm getting similar answers.

• 40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Coming up, a sample from my episode with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one and only coming soon, but I'm going to give you a preview. But first, just a short word from our sponsors.

• 41:08Tim Ferriss?

  The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products for years. If you look in my kitchen, in my garage, you will find AlphaBrain, chewable melatonin for resetting my clock when I'm traveling, kettlebells, battle ropes, maces, steel clubs. It sounds like a torture chamber, and it kind of is. It's a torture chamber for self-improvement. And you can see all of my favorite gear at onnit.com/tim. That's O-N-N-I-T dot com forward slash tim. And you can also get a discount on any supplements, food products. I like Hempforce. I like AlphaBrain. Check it all out, onnit.com/tim.

• 41:49Tim Ferriss?

  The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is your one-stop shop for anything graphic design-related. You need a logo, you need a website, you need a business card, or anything else, you get an original design from designers around the world who submit drafts for you to review. You are happy, or you get your money back. And I have used 99designs for book cover ideas, for The Four Hour Body, which went to number one New York Times, for banner ads, and you can check out some of my actual competitions at 99designs.com/tim. You can also get a free $99 upgrade if you want to give it a shot. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 42:31Tim Ferriss?

  And now, back to the show.

• 42:36Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  In those days, there was no money in bodybuilding. And so, when we didn't have enough money, we literally had to go to work. And so Frank and I, since Frank's talent was to be a bricklayer, and a very skilled bricklayer, and learned that in Italy and in Germany, we were able to go and start thinking about the idea of putting an ad in the LA Times, creating a company, and calling it "Europe in Bricklayers and Masonry Experts", "Marble Experts", "Building Chimneys and Fireplaces", "The European Style", and this was also a time where everything that was European was huge in America.

• 43:19Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So we benefited from that, you know, Swedish massages and everything had to be kind of a foreign name, or Japanese this and this. So Europe and Japan and all these places, you know, were used, the names were used because for some reason the other people just thought that was better. And so we used that in the ad. And we put the ad in the paper and literally a week later, we had the big earthquake in Los Angeles. And I mean, the chimneys fell off the apartment houses and all this stuff, and it cracked walls and all this. And so Frank and I, as a matter of fact, one of the friend of ours, wife, who was very smart and she worked in a supermarket,

• 44:03Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  she did answering the phones and calling people back and all this, just to make sure that our English doesn't get all screwed up with talking over the phone and all this. And so she gave us then the addresses and then we got to do the estimates and I was kind of like set up to be the math genius. And that figures out the square footage and that Frank would play the bad guy and I played the good guy. And so we would go to someone's house and then someone would say, "Well, look at my patio, it's all cracked. Can you guys put a new patio in here?" And I would say, "Yes", and then we would run around with the tape measure, but there would be a tape measure with centimeters and no one in those days could have...

• 44:44Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  All figure out anything with centimeters and we will be measuring up and I say what this is you know uh four meters and eighty two centimeters and they had no idea what we're talking about and this is so much and then we will I'll be writing up formulas and the dollars and amounts and and and square uh centimeters and square meters and all this stuff and then I will go to the guy and I said well I said um it's five thousand dollars and the guy will be in a state of shock and he says it's five thousand dollars I said this is outrageous I said I mean that I didn't think that this is well what did you expect that the basis I thought maybe it's like two three thousand dollars is about five thousand

• 45:24Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  it's this I said I said let me talk to my guys is because he's really the major expert I said but I can beat him down for a little bit yeah let me soften the meat and then so I will go over to Frank and we was talking in German you know this is eine Schweinerei du kannst nicht so viel verlangen das ist ein Blödsinn wir arbeiten hier in Amerika and this will be going on and he was screaming back I mean Italian and some some stuff and then I will be then all of a sudden he calmed down and then we go to the guy I said

• 45:54Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  okay here it is I said I could get him as low as three thousand eight hundred dollars I say can you go with that and he says thank you very much he says you know I I I I really think that you're a great man blah blah blah and all this stuff I say okay I say give us half down right now we go right away and get the cement and get the bricks and everything that we need for here and we get started working I said a month and the guy was excited he gave us the money we immediately ran to the bank cashed the cheque to make sure that the money is in the bank account and then we went out and got the cement and the wheelbarrow and the order the stuff that we needed and and went to work and so we worked like that for two years I mean very successfully as a matter of fact and we had various different jobs where we employed like sixteen

• 46:39Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  different bodybuilders all the laziest bastards that you can ever hire but never the biggest they all were interested in working outdoor and getting a tan at the same time for their bodybuilding competitions

• 46:57Tim Ferriss?

  If you enjoyed this episode, you are going to love what I have coming. All sorts of crazy experiments, incredible guests, and you can very easily not miss any of it. Just subscribe on iTunes, or you can check out all of my guests, as well as my blog that has 1 to 2 million readers per month, at 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, 4hourworkweek.com. That's where I chronicle all of my insane self-experimentation. And I would love to hear from you, so please, reach out to me on Twitter, twitter.com/tferris, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, or on Facebook at facebook.com/timferris, with 2 R's and 2 S's, of course. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.