#757: Matthew McConaughey and Aisha Tyler

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode features segments from episode #474 "Matthew McConaughey — The Power of 'No, Thank You,' Key Life Lessons, 30+ Years of Diary Notes, and The Art of Catching Greenlights https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/" and #327 "Aisha Tyler — How to Use Pain, Comedy, and Practice for Creativity https://tim.blog/2018/07/16/aisha-tyler/." Please enjoy! Sponsors: Momentous https://livemomentous.com/tim high-quality supplements: https://livemomentous.com/tim (code TIM for 20% off) Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra https://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: https://eightsleep.com/tim (save $350 on the Pod 4 Ultra) LMNT https://drinklmnt.com/tim electrolyte supplement: https://drinklmnt.com/Tim (free LMNT sample pack with any drink mix purchase) Timestamps: [00:00] Start [04:58] Notes about this supercombo format. [05:51] Enter Matthew McConaughey. [06:19] The words forbidden in Matthew's house growing up. [08:58] The book that changed the course of Matthew's life. [17:27] Matthew's 10 goals in life (circa 1992). [22:20] Why take more risks? [26:04] The evolving purpose of keeping a diary. [29:48] The art of running downhill. [33:56] Learning to say "No" to rom-com typecasting. [47:50] Enter Aisha Tyler. [48:19] Aisha's role in The Tim Ferriss Show's existence. [49:43] Aisha's trademark podcast question. [51:06] Aisha's unorthodox childhood and family relationships. [52:06] How did Aisha answer the questions "Whose day is it?" and "What are you going to do?" every morning? [55:34] From where does Aisha get her general sense of optimism? [57:25] Following father's advice and views on regret. [59:22] Free-range parenting vs. modern overprotection. [1:03:33] Having a bad day? You're not special! [1:05:27] Young Aisha's career aspirations. [1:06:52] Why was Aisha miserable at what she thought was her dream job? [1:08:51] Why did Aisha pick standup comedy to break into show business? [1:10:08] What it was like to keep a day job and do standup comedy as a hobby. [1:11:50] Commuting for comedy in San Francisco. [1:14:03] What made the comedy club bubble of the '80s burst? [1:18:11] How did Aisha practice to get better at standup? [1:19:01] A memorable set Aisha bombed and the gift it gave her. [1:22:22] Dealing with hecklers Bill Burr and Kenny Moore style. [1:28:20] Aisha shares some of her own heckler stories. [1:32:31] Aisha's academic approach to the math of comedy. [1:34:43] What's the Rule of Threes? [1:35:36] Gauging comic evolution. [1:36:46] Comedians compared to other artists. [1:38:04] Changing success metrics and creative traps. [1:40:41] How fear-based people-pleasing affects creativity. [1:43:52] If one likes big butts, one cannot lie — even if it might tick someone off. [1:46:03] Sometimes constructive feedback does make me change my mind. [1:46:33] Pursuing authentic, meaningful work. [1:48:32] Comedy's core beyond humor. [1:49:04] Expecting failures in creative beginnings. [1:49:52] Why it doesn't pay to emulate a master of a craft in their own field. [1:51:51] Aisha's transition to filmmaking. [1:54:47] Aisha believes in personal aggression. [1:55:28] How Aisha piggybacked resources for her first music video. [1:56:30] Learning filmmaking through short projects. [1:58:03] What lessons did Aisha learn from these projects? [1:59:06] How visiting the sets of Penny Dreadful and Vikings in Ireland led to making AXIS. [2:00:52] Financing the Ireland trip. [2:02:35] The email Aisha sent to visit the set of Vikings. [2:03:18] The impact of fan appreciation. [2:04:50] Budweiser's "Whassup" campaign origin. [2:05:38] Why Aisha made AXIS. [2:07:06] Resources for aspiring screenwriters and tech investors. [2:08:06] What is AXIS, and did anyone try to talk Aisha out of making it? [2:09:53] AXIS production experience and methods. [2:12:00] The magic, intensity, and clarity of operating on an aggressive deadline. [2:15:00] Aisha's current fears and goals. [2:16:33] One of Aisha's current struggles. [2:17:24] "If art imitates life, in order to create art, you have to have a life." [2:18:33] As a workaholic, how does Aisha manage to live a life that influences her art? [2:20:58] How would Aisha's life be different if she didn't have exercise as an element? [2:22:47] What equipment does Aisha use to work out? [2:23:36] What does a prototypical workout look like for Aisha? [2:23:53] How does Aisha take her glutathione, and what does it help with? [2:26:40] Morning routine and exercise timing. [2:27:40] Aisha works out at home to save transit time. What does she watch when she rows? [2:29:39] Does Aisha make New Year's resolutions? [2:32:17] Aisha likens her first (unwatchable and destroyed) short film to the standup set she bombed. [2:34:58] When has Aisha been extremely proud of herself? [2:37:46] How confidence transfers across projects. [2:39:46] To grow from failure, you have to be aggressive. [2:40:24] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://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 https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://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 https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://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/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, 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 Momentus. Momentus offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few that I use constantly. One of the things I love about Momentous is that they offer many single ingredient and third-party tested formulations. I'll come back to the latter part of that a little bit later. Personally, I've been using Momentous Mag3, Nitrates, L-theanine, and Apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now, the Momentous Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  I've also been using Momentous Creatine, which doesn't just help for physical performance, but also for cognitive performance. In fact, I've been taking it daily, typically before podcast recording, as there are various studies and reviews and meta-analyses pointing to improvements in short-term memory and performance under stress. So those are some of the products that I've been using very consistently, and to give you an idea, I'm packing right now for an international trip. I tend to be very minimalist, and I'm taking these with me nonetheless. Now, back to the bigger picture. Olympians, Tour de France winners, Tour de France winners, the US military, and more than 175 college and professional sports teams rely on Momentous and their products. Momentus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world-class

• 1:27Tim Ferriss?

  products to market, including a few you will recognize from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. They also work with Dr. Stacy Sims to assist Momentous in developing products specifically for women. Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested, which in this case means informed sport and/or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. And trust me, as someone who knows the sports nutrition and supplement world very well, that is a differentiator that you want in anything that you consume in this entire sector. So, good news. For my non-US listeners, more good news, not to worry. Momentus ships internationally, so you have the same access that I do. So check it out.

• 2:09Tim Ferriss?

  Visit livemomentous.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout for 20% off. That's live momentus, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash TIM and code TIM for 20% off.

• 2:27Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. I have been using Eight Sleep Pod cover for years now. Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I'm excited to test it out. Pod 4 Ultra. It cools, it heats, and now it elevates automatically. More on that in a second. First, Pod 4 Ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature, keeping you and your partner cool even in a heatwave. Or you can switch it up depending on which of you is heat sensitive. I am always more heat sensitive, pulling the sheets off, closing the windows, trying to crank the AC down. This solves all of that.

• 3:11Tim Ferriss?

  Pod 4 Ultra also introduces an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame and adds reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding experience. And for those snore-heavy nights, the pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop you or your partner from snoring. Plus, with the Pod 4 Ultra, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand. You won't need them because these types of metrics are integrated into the Pod 4 Ultra itself. They have imperceptible sensors which track your sleep time, sleep phases, and HRV. Their heart rate tracking is just one example, is at 99% accuracy. So get your best night's sleep. Head to eightsleep.com/tim and use code TIM to get $350 off of the Pod 4 Ultra.

• 3:54Tim Ferriss?

  That's Eight Sleep all spelled out, eightsleep.com/tim and code TIM, T-I-M, to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.

• 4:09Speaker 01

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

• 4:16Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be seen appropriate time.

• 4:20Speaker 02

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

• 4:32Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on, that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two-for-one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and passed 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names,

• 5:17Tim Ferriss?

  the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser-known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life, and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle. Perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim.blog/combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy, and thank you for listening.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  First up, Matthew McConaughey, Academy Award-winning actor who has starred in Dazed and Confused, Dallas Buyers Club, Interstellar, and HBO's True Detective. Producer, director, businessman, philanthropist, and the number-one New York Times bestselling author of Green Lights and Just Because. You can find Matthew on Instagram, @officiallymcconaughey.

• 6:20Tim Ferriss?

  Was it true in your family? I read this, of course. You can't believe everything that you read. Two things. Number one, that your parents were divorced twice, married three times. So they ended up getting up one more time, then they got knocked down.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:31Tim Ferriss?

  True. Number two, that saying "I can't" was forbidden or highly advised against.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Very heavily, heavily, heavily. I remember cuss words. You could say shit and fuck and damn, and even occasionally maybe get away with the Lord's name in vain. But you weren't really. That was on the line. But the real words that we got, like... Either punished for or war forbidden, or hate and can't. And I remember my dad, I remember one Saturday morning when I was about 12, my Saturday morning chores, where you know, mow the lawn, weedy, shine his shoes and sweep the porches and get the cobwebs out of corners. Well, I'd get up very early on a Saturday morning to do that, so I could have my Saturday afternoon to play. And I went out to try and start our push lawnmower and it wouldn't start.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Pull again, wouldn't start, pull again, wouldn't start, check the gas yet, it's got gas, what the heck's going on? Damn it, it won't start. I remember going into my dad inside and I go, Dad, the, I can't get the lawnmower started. And he kind of slowly turned his head to me and I saw his molar's meat and kind of start to grit his teeth. And he goes, you what? And I knew enough right then to not say the word again. And I said, I, and he got up and I didn't finish my sentence. He slowly walked with me out of his bedroom, through the kitchen, through the garage, around the back to the shed, where this lawnmower was that I was not getting started. He, without saying a word, he knelt down, looked at it, checked the gas, da da da.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Anyway, he found the little tube there where the gas was not transferring and it had been disconnected. So he reconnected that, pulled a few times and it started. And there over a run, now running push lawnmower, he looked at me, put his hands on my shoulders. And for the first time since I said, I can't get it started, he put his hands on my shoulders, looked at me and very sternly said, he goes, you see, son? You were just having trouble driving this lawnmower. And boom, you know, and I remember from that day, that lesson was like, oh, even if you're unable to do something on your own, you can still go seek help or get assistance.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So you're still only having trouble, even if you on your own cannot do so. That was a, saying those words, still to this day, if I let him slip, I kind of have to look over my shoulder like, uh oh, dad gonna get me?

• 8:58Tim Ferriss?

  So there are many different forms of influences. I'd like to ask you about one that is not your parents, it's not your siblings, it's a book that I've read you came across that had an impact in your life, and that is The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino. Could you explain for people listening, why that book was impactful, or what impact it had?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've never been a big reader, and growing up, didn't read much, and never really liked, even in school, being told, hey, you gotta read this book, you gotta read this. Just the fact of being told I had to read something in school, or by someone else, sort of made it feel like it wasn't mine, and I was not gonna have a subjective view of it. And plus, I just don't really like being told what to do. But this came to me, this book, and I always say this, I didn't find it, it found me, and I'll tell you how and why. It was between my sophomore and junior year in college at University of Texas at Austin. Now, at this point, I was always on the track to become a lawyer. I was gonna become that defense attorney. You know, get us some oil and meat money, you know what I mean? Get the family some oil and meat money.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  I was a good lawyer, I took good stances, it started off in the family, they're like, geez, oh man, you know, I would take the table and win arguments with the family, and they'd be like, ah, damn it, you gotta become a lawyer, you gotta become the family lawyer. So that was always the plan. But between my sophomore and junior year in college, which is about the time when all those general liberal arts credits that you're getting, need to have, start having some focus, or you're gonna lose them.

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  So I'm start not sleeping well with the idea of becoming a lawyer. But I'm doing the math, I'm like, I'm not sure it's what I wanna do, I gotta get out of here, I go to law school, then I get out, then I start maybe get an intern. I'm really not gonna be rolling in my vocation until I'm in my 30s. And I was like, I don't really wanna spend my 20s. Just learning, or so my twenties, just in school. Now, I'd been writing a lot, been keeping a lot of short stories in my diaries and a lot of them which are in this book, Green Lights, but I didn't have the confidence to think that maybe I wanted to get in the storytelling business until a good friend of mine, Rob Binler, who I think at the time was at NYU Film School, who I'd been sharing some of these short stories with, one night on the phone goes, "Hey, you should think about

• 11:15Speaker 01

  getting in front or behind the camera. You tell great stories. You got good character yourself. You know, you're a good writer. Try this out." And I was always like, "Oh, no, no, no. I mean, that's like too avant-garde. It's too European. It's too... the artsy. I can't do that." But he gave me the confidence to really consider it. Now, I go to my fraternity house, the Delt House, into that sophomore year for sophomore exams. I'm a studier. All right, I'm making, I got a 3.82 GPA. I like making my As. And any amount of time I've got to study, I will use it every single minute. There's never enough time for me to study. I go to the Delt House and right behind it, in a little bungalow, is one of my Delt brothers

• 12:00Speaker 01

  and I eat lunch and I sit on his couch and I've got three hours before my exam and I open up my books studying for my psychology exam. For whatever reason, for the first time in my life, I shut them and I go, "McConaughey," to myself, I go, "You got this. You don't need to study anymore." First time I'd done that. I got three hours to kill. I then put on the TV. I love sports. ESPN, I'll watch cricket, the strongest man competition. I'll watch, you know, two grasshoppers race. For whatever reason, I just, I'm not interested. I turn on the TV. I look over to my left, there's a stack of magazines, there's Sports Illustrated, some Playboys, and I'm like, "Jeez, I like sports. I like checking out naked ladies in the Playboy. Let's check that out."

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I pick up a Playboy, flip their thumb through that, half-agerly, and all of a sudden lose interest in that. And I'm sitting there going, "Okay. What am I supposed to do here? Got two and a half, about three hours to kill." Well, I start peeling back those magazines, Playboys and Sports Illustrateds and everything else, and about seven deep in that stack of magazines, to the left of the couch where I was sitting, I see this white paperback with this beautiful red cursive writing on it, and it says, "The Greatest Salesman in the World." And I remember reaching for it and aloud to myself saying, "Who is that?" And I pick up the book and I start reading it. Again, I'm not a reader, but I start reading this book and all of a sudden I lose track of time and I've gotten past the whole prologue

• 13:28Speaker 01

  to the beginning of this first scroll in this book, which is, "I will form good habits to become their slave." Now, what this book had just told me and just taken me on a journey and said, "You will read each scroll, there's 10 scrolls in this book, each scroll three times a day for 30 days until you move on to the next scroll." So it's basically a 10-month read and I had gotten to the first scroll and I now understood that the greatest salesman in the world was whoever's gonna read that book. So I was like, "Oh, that's me. He's talking to me." Well, bam, I look up, "Oh, my exam's in 15 minutes. I gotta go." All right, head out, go to my exam, my psychology exam. I ripped through that exam. I didn't

• 14:13Speaker 01

  care if I failed it. Something in this book had told me, "No, this book is what you need to be into right now. This book is gonna give you confidence to go do what you need to do." I ripped through that psychology exam and immediately go, "I'm going to film school. I'm calling dad tonight. I'm not gonna go to law school anymore. I've got the confidence. This book found me. This is a seminal moment in my life. I don't know how or why, but it is and I'm gonna get the courage to call my dad and go." And that night, I remember thinking about it. I'm gonna call my dad at 7:30. He'll have sat down, maybe had his first cocktail, already had dinner and he'll be in a good mood for me to say, "You know, dad, I wanna go to film school." I think. Well, I call him. 7:30, 6:00 PM. "Hey dad,

• 14:56Speaker 01

  hey, what's up, son?" Listen, I don't really, and I was nervous and I said, "I don't think I wanna go to law school anymore. I wanna go to film school." And that was hard for me to say, 'cause I thought he was gonna go, "You wanna do what, boy? What the hell?" And I said, "Dad, I wanna go to film school." There was a long pause on the phone, about five seconds, and he says, "You sure that's what you wanna do, son?" And I said, "Yes, sir." There's another five-second pause. And then he said, "Three of the greatest words I've ever been told: Don't half-ass it."

• 15:31Speaker 01

  I remember going, huh, don't half ass it. And I remember my eyes just, I lit up and I was like, oh my gosh. One, my dad not only approved, he gave me a responsibility. He gave me freedom. He gave me more than a privilege. He like sent me a flight and ending it with like, not only do I agree and say, that's okay, son. I'm saying if you're gonna do it, you better damn well go do it well and don't half ass it. And I went down the next day, changed my course schedule. My GPA got me into film school. Cause I had a 3.8 too. I didn't have any sort of art to show them. And I started off behind the camera and then ended up as I am now in front of the camera as well. But that book, that day, that book finding me and me feeling like it was my secret and it came

• 16:15Speaker 01

  to me and no one told me, here, you need to read this book. It'll be good for you. Hey, you're supposed to read this. This is your, for school or even a recommendation. It was not reg, it found me. And I read that book. I did exactly what it said, morning, noon and night. And I read, I've read it three times now that way. But the first time, I didn't miss one reading of that. I mean, and I had many a day where I went out in the morning on a Saturday and my day of whimsy took me to a place where all of a sudden it was 10 o'clock at night and I was like, an hour and a half from my house. And the book was back at my house. And I'd be like hanging out, partying

• 16:58Speaker 01

  and going like, oh geez. And I would stop, eat something, get some coffee, drink a bunch of water, wait till whatever, 1:30 in the morning when I was time to drive and I would drive back to my place, grab that book and either read it and go to sleep in my bed or drive back to where I was hanging out with the book and read it. I didn't miss one single read for 10 straight months. And that book is the most instrumental piece of literature and motivation I've ever read for me in my life.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  And now you've produced Green Lights, this book, which as you've described it, is not a traditional memoir or an advice book, but rather a playbook based on adventures in my life. And I want to hop to a particular portion of this book, which is also a scrapbook of sorts. It's very multimedia in that respect, even though it's in 2D and book format. I want to ask you about a note. And this will segue into the practice of writing, since you've kept a diary for somewhere between 35, 40 years at this point, I believe.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:02Tim Ferriss?

  There's a note towards the end of Green Lights from 9/1/92.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Tim Ferriss?

  So 10 goals in life. This blew my mind.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Mine too.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to read these 10, and then I want you to kind of place us in your life when you wrote these 10. And then I want to zoom in on a few of them, but let me just read these 10 first. So 10 goals in life. This is in 1992. One, become a father. Two, find and keep the woman for me. Three, keep my relationship with God. Four, chase my best self. Five, be an egotistical utilitarian. That's going to be my first follow-up question. Six, take more risks. Seven, stay close to mom and family. Eight, win an Oscar for Best Actor. Nine, look back and enjoy the view. 10, just keep living.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:50Tim Ferriss?

  Where were you and when were you when you wrote these 10 goals?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  I was in a top bunk in the Delta, I'll Delta house. I believe my roommate was Monty Wills, whom I'm still friends with today from Montgomery, Alabama. I was in the top bunk. I think I just probably, it was the end, it was the end of the night, it was about 9:30. I was just getting, nestling in for, for a good night's sleep. So I'd just started. What was the date, 93? What was the month and the, the month and the day?

• 19:23Tim Ferriss?

  That was September 1st, 1992.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  September 1st, okay. Yeah, so I'd just done Dazed and Confused.

• 19:30Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Yeah, it was two days after finishing.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'd just finished it. A job, a summer hobby, a thing that, there were three lines written in a script.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  That I got cast in because I went to the right bar at the right time, met the right guy, read for it Richard Linkletter said, come on and started throwing me in scenes. So three lines turned into three weeks work. I loved it. Was getting paid $320 a day. People were telling me I was good at it and I was running around going like, is this legal? It's so fun. And I finish it. My father had just passed away like two weeks earlier. Yeah. August 17th of that year. So I just finished a job that was a hobby that became a career. I had just finished that. Think about it. If you do the math, I didn't think about it till now. I just finished that Og Mandino, 10 months of reading that book. Wow. Father had just passed away. I was just going through what that meant to me, what I felt like

• 20:29Speaker 01

  that should mean to me. And that's where the just keep living comes from, to keep his spirit alive, even though he's physically not here, keep things alive that he taught me that to keep me incentivized throughout my life, even though I couldn't rely on him personally being here to back me up with him. And so I remember writing those goals down. And the thing is that when you start off this conversation going, I don't know what your adjective or adverb was about it, but I found that just less than a year ago in my diaries and I'd never looked at it or remembered that I had written it since the day I did. That date on that list, I never looked at that list again. I wrote

• 21:08Speaker 01

  it that night and forgot about it, or at least I thought I forgot about it. I didn't. And that's the wild part because somewhere subconsciously, I obviously did remember it because so far I've accomplished those goals and there's some very specific ones on there that I'm like, what? I always thought even the acting part, win an Oscar for best actor. This is a time I'd just finished days confused. I didn't know I was going to end up being an actor. I still thought, didn't have the courage to even think I could pursue it as a career. At that time, I thought it might just be a hobby. I had a hobby for a summer, but obviously when I look back, I'm like, oh, you did want to be. You did want to be an actor and you wanted to be a damn good one. So I could admit it on my journal page, but I couldn't admit it to myself. Hell, I couldn't even admit it in my

• 21:53Speaker 01

  dreams, but I could admit it on my journal pages. So that's where I was. Those are so, those are three big things going on in my life. And I'd say the most, you know, the biggest shapeshifter was father moving on, but that with finishing days and with finishing The Greatest Salesman, that's when I wrote that.

• 22:11Tim Ferriss?

  That's quite a Venn diagram as far as a snapshot in time goes with those three sort of momentous changes, those transitions. Why take more risks? Did you feel like at the time you weren't taking enough risks? Was it something you had learned about risks from your parents or other people? Why take more risks?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  I think I was at that time seeing risk that I'd take really pay off. The risk to in the bar at the top of the Hyatt that night to go down and introduce myself to Don Phillips, who ended up being the casting director of A Day's Confused, who four hours later, at the end of the night, after we got kicked out of the bar, says, "Hey, you ever done any acting? You might be right for this part." The risk to go and read for that part. The risk for Richard Linklater to say, "There's nothing, you're not supposed to be in this scene. You're not written in this scene, but you think Orson would be in it?" The risk for me to go, "Oh, yeah?" And just hop in the middle of the scene and improvise and play. Those risks were paying off. I was also beginning to feel, you know, the

• 23:13Speaker 01

  risk that I took reading that damn book, The Greatest Salesman. It was the first book I ever read, cover to cover, and it's a thin paperback. Mind you, it takes 10 months to read, but that was a risk for me. And I was feeling very confident with who I was. I was also thrown upside down by my dad moving on. Now, I don't know, you know, if you've lost a parent, but as a son losing a dad, you want to talk about forced into identity? You know, my dad being this sort of crutch, just because he was alive and above government and above law, was now gone. I had no crutch. I had no safety net. All of a sudden, I remember this very clearly, this coming to me, besides the "Just Keep Living," with keeping his

• 23:56Speaker 01

  spirit alive. I remember one of the first lessons of him moving on was I was, and I carved this in a tree. I remember carving this deeply in a tree for about three hours one night. Less impressed, more involved. And that leans into taking more risk. Cause I was like, after dad moved on, I was like, oh, all of these mortal things in life that I have a reverence for, even this point of just finishing acting and maybe having, you know, dreams of fame. Wow. All these things that I revered that were mortal lowered down to eye level. And at the same time, everything that I noticed that I was condescending or looking down upon

• 24:40Speaker 01

  or snubbing my nose at or going, ah, that's crap or oh, they're no good. I was like, they raised up to eye level. And I remember going, oh, the world is flat. Your dad's moved on, you better look the world in the eye. And by seeing the world flat, I saw further, I saw wider, I saw more clearly, I had more courage. I lost reverence for the mortal things that I had reverence for. I still respected them, but I lost reverence for them. So that gave me courage and I lost this sort of snub nose look at things that I thought were beneath me and I empowered them and they raised up to eye level. So all of a sudden, you know, that was a version where the I met the we for me. That was a version where what I looked up to maybe too much met what I was looking down

• 25:24Speaker 01

  on and it was right in front of me. And that was how I was also taking more risk. I lost a lot of fear. I, I still had fear, but I, I gained a lot of courage to go meet my fears and I didn't give enough credence to things that I probably shouldn't fear or have too much reverence for because they were mortal. And I was like, well, what's that? That's, you know, reverence for fame or not taking a chance to go get what you want. That's a mortal fear. That's like putting a limit on yourself, McConaughey. Why would you do that? I even called it a sin at that time, not to take certain risks and would feel guilty if I didn't and feel like I didn't meet my quote that day in God's.

• 26:04Tim Ferriss?

  What is it that you've gotten from having a diary? And maybe it's changed over time.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's evolved. I mean, my diary started off like I think most people's diaries do. You write things down when you're not in a good place or you're lost. My early diary entries were the, the why, what, where, when, how's, you know? The existential questions of what is going on? Does it matter who am I? Oh, my God, this shit. So my girlfriend broke up with me. I lost it. Started off with that. So I noticed that I started writing down when I was in times of distress or disillusion. And then I started to say, well, wait a minute. You got a, just like that Og Mandino book. By hook or by crook, you read it three times a day. I was like, well, we're gonna write my diary every day, McConaughey. And so when do most of us, including me, not write in our diary?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  When things are going great. Oh, I got it figured out. I'm not gonna need to take time to go be introspective and write down my thoughts. Everything's a green light. It's great. Well, no, I said, hang on a second. If we're gonna spend our life, a diary, the original use of a diary is to dissect failure or disillusion. I think there's some prudence in let's dissect success. Let's dissect what's going on when things are going well. Let's write in this diary when you feel like everything's clear and you feel strong and confident, significant, and you feel like yourself. So I started writing in my diary when things were going well. And then started to map out certain things about, found that what that did is when I

• 27:36Speaker 01

  would get in a proverbial rut later, I could go back to that diary and look at what was I writing and what was I doing when I felt like everything was lickety-split and I had it everything handled. And I found consistencies. I found it from what I was eating to who I was hanging out with, how much sleep I was getting, to beauties in the world that I was noticing and really were affecting me, how I approached people, how I was approaching the day, how I was approaching conflict, how I was approaching and taking in things that work, success. And I found consistencies. And so sometimes going back in those diaries, reading what I was writing when things were going well, would help get me out of a rut later on in life when I wasn't doing so well.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  And I remember this early on in college, it's a reason that my buddy, as I mentioned earlier, Rob Bellner, said you should go into storytelling business, is I was writing short stories, but I was also writing things down, idiosyncrasies of myself.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I was really trying to get to know myself. I would always, when I'd be in a movie theater, I always laughed. I thought the funniest jokes, I'd laugh, I'd be the only one laughing in the theater. And I'd never thought the stuff that everybody laughed at was funny. The collective laugh, I never even giggled at. I was like, that wasn't very funny. But I'd laugh, howl at it. And I was like, and no one else laughed. I was like, no one else thinks that's funny? I'd say that in the theater. I cried at things that other people didn't cry at. Like, I've never really cried at death. I weep at birth. The beginnings always have made me cry more than proverbial ends. So I started writing these things down, and at first was feeling like, are you weird? I'm kind of, hey, is this odd? Is this, is this okay? Can you be this kind of a person?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  And got the comedians to go, yes, you can. It's okay. But let's write down those things. Let's write down what makes you laugh, what makes you happiest? What makes you sad? What makes you angry? And don't worry if it's the collective choice of the majority. What does it mean to you? And write those things down. And so that led to character, I believe. It led to my own character. It led to me being able to maybe go play different characters, to understand, then empathize with different people and have, how different people have different things that turn them on and turn them off at different times. What is the art of running downhill? Okay. So I get successful.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I got major fame very quickly after A Time to Kill came out. The film I did in 96. And I mean, from the Friday afternoon before it came out to the Monday after the weekend it came out, my whole world was, whoop, inverted. The world all of a sudden was one big mirror. I never meet strangers since that day. It was inverted. I mean, that Friday afternoon before Time to Kill comes out, there's a hundred scripts out there. I want to do all of, are you kidding me? I'll do any of them. Well, 99, no, you can't. One of them, yes, you can. Well, in a matter of two days, after that film opened that weekend and did well,

• 30:40Speaker 01

  that hundred scripts, it was yes, you can do 99, one, no. So I was like, whoa, two days ago, I would have done any of these and could only do one. And now, it's only two days later, but you're telling me I can do 99 of them. Help me discernment, discrimination, can I make a choice? Who am I? Geez, what I want to do? There's only 24 hours in the day, is last I checked. I need more. So I was a little, you know, imbalanced, overwhelmed, didn't have my feet, my soul on the ground. And there were times that, and also, remember that same lawyer I talked about in the oil of ink story, Jerry Harris, I remember him telling me, he reached out, I hadn't talked to him for years. He reached out and he goes, hey, Matthew, you're from a small town, you're out of Texas.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  You know, you came in through Longview, Texas, now you went out there, now you're a famous Hollywood star, and you got all these things. He goes, make sure you don't suffer too much from the non-deserving complex. That happens with some people that get real successful from sort of humble beginnings. And it made a lot of sense to me, because I was noticing that, you know, in the name of obstacles being the way, I was creating obstacles for myself, some of them very unnecessary. Meaning, here's my life, I'm successful, I'm rolling, I am catching green lights, I'm rolling downhill. I very less than gracefully handled some of my success. I would become belligerent at times, I didn't become belligerent.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Trying to, you know, at the end, I always say this, it's okay to have a point to prove, just don't always be trying to prove a point. I had many times where I would try to prove a point, you know what I mean? And it was my own insecurity, it was my own self trying to find some balance in this. It was me, I was seeing the mendacities of, of all these people in Hollywood, all of a sudden saying, I love you. And I'm like, man, I've said that to four people in my life. And everyone says it out here, say, ah, they're, they're full of shit. It was, I was taking things personally, even, and sort of sabotaging some of the red carpet wine and caviar that was being handed to me. You know what I mean? And I was slipping to some of my more banal self at times.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  And doing a proverbial face plant. Meaning I'm running downhill and this is all easy street. I need resistance, so I think I'm gonna trip myself and face plant and break my right into the concrete so I can break my nose so I can go, ah, there I go. Now I'm earning it. Now I feel it. Now I've earned it. Now I deserve it. Well, that can be a little foolish. There's an art to going downhill. And so what I noticed was, oh, hard times are gonna come. It's gonna get dry. You're not gonna be able to do whatever script you wanna do. I've had hard times. Or in a relationship, we go through. It doesn't go well. Or someone gets sick in the family.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  A real uphill battle enters our life. And so the art of running downhill is about, hey, enjoy it. When you're going downwind downhill, don't trip yourself because that uphill's coming. It's gonna come whether you want it to or not. So don't trip yourself and face plant right now because you're gonna have to work your ass off here very shortly anyway.

• 33:56Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about perhaps an uphill, perhaps a pause, perhaps something else, which I'd love for you to comment on, which did come later. And that was a decision which I'd love to explore, to say no to quite a lot of opportunities for a period of time. It seems like at one point you were very successful. You became very famous, like you said, practically overnight. You're being offered opportunities you couldn't have imagined a week prior. And you have a string of successes. And then you realize, well, wait a minute here. I might be getting painted into a corner and you start to say no.

• 34:37Tim Ferriss?

  You start to turn down, say, action film opportunities with big paychecks, things like that. Was that hard to do? Did other people say that you were doing the right thing and encourage you? Could you walk us through and just tell a story about that experience?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Love to. So this is around. I don't remember the year. I'm guessing it's around 12, 13 years ago. I was rolling with the romantic comedies. I had taken the baton from Hugh Grant and was the male lead rom com go to guy. Rom coms are mid level budgets, 30, 35 million. They offer a good front end paycheck to me. They go make 60 million. I mean, the studios don't have to overspend and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make them. You get a good female and a male lead that have good chemistry. People love to go escape to them. My rom coms are doing well. They were my bank. They were what Hollywood banked on me to be in. At the same time, I'm living in Malibu, learning to surf, got my shirt off. And the paparazzi or Discovery Channel is like almost documenting this.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you're damn right, document it. This is the life I'm living. I love it. I worked and earned to get this life. And those romantic comedies that I get paid so handsomely for actually pay the rent at the house on the beach that I live in, in front of this water that I'm surfing in. So I was full on shaking hands with gun. Yes. At the same time, I did notice that any other dramas I wanted to do, or even the way people sort of, when I said don't meet strangers anymore, even way this sort of people thought of me or approached me or talked to me or about me. It was like, Matt Cona is the shirt and rom com guy. And I was like, yeah, I am.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  And I'm, but there only I could answer that second question of, and I'm, like, only I could continue that sentence. No one else could. They were like Hollywood for sure. It's like, no, nothing else. And so any dramas I wanted to do or other pictures, no one wanted to make it with me. And I remember we had just had Levi, Camilla and I just had our first son. And my life was so vital. Man, I just had a newborn. I've, I've, I've met the woman that I love and want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm laughing harder. I'm crying harder. I'm happier than ever. Life is very vital and I'm in it. My real life is.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  But my work feels like, eh, yeah, I could do that tomorrow morning. Just give me the script tonight, let me look at it, I could do it tomorrow morning. It wasn't really challenging me. And the rom coms weren't challenging me. And my lifestyle was one big green light. And, you know, if it's all green lights, if it's all sugar and candy, well, it'll make tyrants out of anybody. So I was saying, oh, I really want my, I wish my work could, I remember saying this, at least, I remember looking in the mirror, actually, going, okay, McConaughey. So if your life is more vital and true to who you are than your work, well, it's gotta be one or the other. That's a good thing because I know a lot of people that their work is more vital than their life. So I said, that's a good thing.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  I said, but jeez, could I just get some work that might challenge the vitality of my life and the man I am in it? Where I can get some work where I can be more me in it?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Well, those roles were not being offered to me. Nothing. Nope, not a chance. No studio will bank you in this drama role or this other role you want. I had control of Dallas Buyers Club at that time, but no one wanted to make it for me, nor did anyone finance it. So I decided that if I couldn't do what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was not being offered to me, it would be prudent for me to just stop doing what I had been doing and what was in the pipeline continually coming to me, which were the romantic comedies. I called my money manager, said, all right, look, I'm gonna stop doing the only work I'm getting offered. And I don't know how long it's gonna be till I work again. How am I doing with my money? He says, you've invested well, conservatively, you're fine. You can take time off. I remember calling my agent, Jim Toth at C A.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Jim, I don't wanna do romantic comedies more. I remember this conversation, he goes, great. And I go, wait, whoa, whoa, what do you mean, great? He goes, great. And I go, how do you say that so quick? What are you gonna say Monday morning when you go into your superiors in the office and say, McConaughey's not doing romantic comedies? And McConaughey's been bringing a nice chunk of 10% commission into you guys with these romantic comedies for years now. And he said the coolest thing to me, he goes, I don't work for them, I work for you. That's a good line. It's a good line, right? So then it was, I went to Camilla, my wife. And I'd been, you know, I'd shed quite a few tears with her going through this. Am I feeling fraudulent in my work? Do I feel a lack of significance in my work? Is it okay to be feeling this?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  I mean, like I said, remember, I'm the, as we said earlier, I'm kind of going running downhill. Why would you sabotage not doing the work you're getting offered when you can get paid so handsomely to do it? But she understood that my soul was shaken and needed some recalibration and that the work I was doing wasn't a true sort of expression of who I was in my life. And I was, I told her, I said, I want to hold out for some work that can challenge the vitality of the life that I'm living with you and our son Levi. And she repeated the lines to me. She goes, okay, you're gonna get wobbly. I've been around you. You gotta work, Matthew, and you love to accomplish. You're gonna get wobbly. You might start reaching for a little sip of something to drink earlier in the day too. And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  She's like, she goes, days are gonna be longer. We don't know how long this will last. How long will be in this? She called it a desert. How long this will be a desert? She goes, but if we're gonna do this, if you're gonna do this, we're not gonna half ass it. She repeated my dad's line to me. And I went, yes, ma'am. Gave her a hug, put some tears on her shoulder. And we said, starting today, no more rom coms. Well, rom com offers came in to my agent for about the next six months, but nothing but rom com offers. And I didn't even, unless it was a major offer. Well, I just said, no. And they just stopped at my agent's desk, Jim Todd, no. And then one of them came through that was like a gargantuan offer for it.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And my agent said, it's a pretty damn good script too. And so I said, well, send it out. Let me read it.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  And I remember this, the offer was like for eight million dollars and the script is pretty good, but it was still a code of a rom com. And I remember reading it and going, no, thank you. I remember feeling sort of emboldened and strengthened by saying, no, thank you. Great. Sticking to my guns. No rom coms. Six months into this drought. Nope, not caving in now. Don't have to ask him. So they come back with a $10 million offer. No, thank you. They come back with a 12.5 million dollar offer. Now I go, dot, dot, dot, ellipses, ellipses. Nah, no, thank you. Now they come back with a 15 million dollar offer. Wow. You know what? Let me have another reread of that script.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And I reread that script. And you know what? At 15 million dollars, the same script that I've been offered for eight million dollars, the 15 million dollar offer script, which was the same exact words as the eight million dollar offer script, the 15 million dollar script was better. It was funnier.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  It had possibilities. It had angles. I had ideas. I could make this work. You know, I mean, this could work.

• 42:09Tim Ferriss?

  Now I'm imagining at this point, Jim is like, man, this saying no thing is really working out.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  He's in and he's over there teetering like, I know what we said, $15 million dollars. And it's not like, it's a pretty good script. I know it's a rom com. It's a pretty good script, but I said, uh, no, no, thank you. Well, that got the signal across Hollywood that McConaughey was taking a serious sabbatical. And so don't even send him a rom com. It got around.

• 42:42Tim Ferriss?

  So that was kind of the crucible then. I mean, that was like the crux move in a sense.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  In a way, that was, that was a, yeah, I called an audible six months in and they had them thinking I might cave. I might just be posturing and come on back, McConaughey, we love you. And I said, no. And when they had pumped the money offer up so much and people knew in the industry what that offer was, it became very clear. Oh, oh shit. Okay. McConaughey, I don't know what he's doing, but he ain't doing this stuff. He's not doing any more rom coms. And it became clear. So for the next two, 12.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  14 months, nothing came in, nada, zilch, not an offer for anything. I mean, I checked, talked to my agent every couple of weeks. It'd just be like, nothing came in, nothing. So now we're 20 months into this desert period. I do have my son to raise, which, you know, being a father has always been the most important thing to me. So that, that's got my compass at least directed in a place that I, I go just trust in this. If you, if it has something to do with raising your son and being here on the land with your family, even if you start to wander, just trust that that's always going to be in the asset section, McConaughey. You can't go wrong with that. So I stuck to that and I was now fine with not doing work.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I didn't know what I was going to be, didn't know if I was going to change my career, if I was going to become a teacher, a coach, or go back to being a lawyer. I didn't know, I didn't think so, but I was writing more. I was talking about forced winters. I had put a forced winter on myself and I was pretty content. I wasn't, you know, waking up every morning going, did an offer come in? Did something new come in? I was past that. And then all of a sudden, 20 months in, 20, 21 months into this desert, I start getting some offers that are interesting things. William Friedkin, Killer Joe, Lee Daniels, Paperboy, Jeff Nichols wrote mud for me, Steven Soderbergh called, Magic Mike, Richard Linklater and I go do Bernie together, True Detective

• 44:43Speaker 01

  comes around, all of a sudden Dallas Buyers Club, no one still wants to put a bunch of money up for a 1980s period drama about AIDS, but all of a sudden, McConaughey, all the directors were, no directors would do Dallas Buyers Club with me. They wanted, they wanted the script, they loved the script, they didn't want to do it with McConaughey. All of a sudden, we find Jean-Marc Vallée, who wants, who says, no, I'd like to do it with McConaughey. So what happened was that 22 months or that drought, that desert, I unbranded.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I didn't rebrand, I unbranded. Me being away, me being in Texas, not being on a beach, getting pictures of me shirtless on a beach, not being in rom-coms. I was out of the world's view. I was out of the industry's view. I was not in your living room. I was not in your theater. I was not in any of the places that the world had become expectant to see me and how to see me. Where was I? I was gone. Where is McConaughey? Well, you're gone long enough. All of a sudden, I became a new good idea. Which I was not a new good idea at any time earlier than that, at the end of that 20-month period. And then all of a sudden, the things came to me that I wanted to do. And I remember saying, you know what? Fuck the bucks.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I'm going for the experience. If I read a role that shakes me in my boots and challenges the vitality that I feel in my own real life and challenges me the man I am in my own real life, that's what I'm going after. And man, they came in. Come in, and I looked at each other, shed some more tears, and we said, let's get after it. And I just started hammering them. The family came with me everywhere I went and just started laying down work that really, really turned me on.

• 46:34Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious, sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet. So if you're on a low carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role in relieving hunger, cramps, headaches, tiredness, and dizziness. Sugar, artificial ingredients, coloring, all that's garbage, unneeded. There's none of that in Element. And a lot of names you might recognize are already using Element. It was recommended to me by one of my favorite athlete friends, three Navy SEAL teams as

• 47:15Tim Ferriss?

  prescribed by their Master Chief, Marine units, FBI Sniper teams, at least five NFL teams who have subscriptions. They are the exclusive hydration partner to Team USA Weightlifting, and on and on. Get your free sample pack with any Element purchase at drinklmnt.com/tim. Be sure to also try the new Element Sparkling, a bold 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Again, check it all out. Drinkelement.com/tim. Drinklmnt.com/tim.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  And now, Ayesha Tyler, a star of the hit television show Criminal Minds, a comedian and the host of the CW's top-rated improv show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? An award-winning director, bestselling author and activist, and co-founder of the new premium margarita brand, Losophy. You can find Ayesha on Twitter and Instagram, @AyeshaTyler.

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  Ayesha, welcome to the show.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Tim, hello. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. This is our away. It's a very long home and away for us.

• 48:28Tim Ferriss?

  It is. It is. And you are partially to blame slash credit for me having a podcast in the first place because I recall when you interviewed me for Girl on Guy Podcast in San Francisco at my place. And I had so much fun speaking with you and fielding some fantastic questions, one of which I'm going to bring up and then we'll backpedal.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:58Tim Ferriss?

  But the question will not be surprising to you, I don't think. And I'm going to ask you to bring it up. But the conversation that we had in part contributed to me deciding to take a break from writing books, which had completely burned me out, and in turn helped birth the show. So, thank you for helping to send me on this path because it's become one of the most gratifying and fascinating things I could possibly imagine doing. So, thank you for that.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  It's so thrilling to hear and really, really gratifying. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I think podcasts are wonderful and terrible beasts, but like really satisfying, even when they're like punishingly difficult to manage. They're still so satisfying. So, I'm really happy. I'm happy that you're enjoying it.

• 49:43Tim Ferriss?

  And you have, we're not going to get into this right now, although we can. You have a book titled Self-Inflicted Wounds, subtitle, "Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation." Can you maybe repeat or even paraphrase the question that you would always ask guests on your show?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, that came, the name for that book came from this part of my show, Self-Inflicted Wounds, which is some, you know, tell me a story about something that's gone wrong in your life that's your own fault. You know, you can't blame anyone else, not your ex, not the bullies in your school, not the man, you know, you did it to yourself. And it was, it was really a way of initiating a conversation about risk and failure, because I feel like people see people who are successful and assume that a part of that success or the reason for that success is that they haven't made any mistakes and they haven't failed, that they've got a charmed life in some way, or they figure some kind of formula out. And the most successful people are people who don't just manage risk, but engage in risk and court failure actively. So I always love to, you know, have people listening see

• 50:47Speaker 02

  that someone that they admire and that they think is really accomplished has really shit the bed at some point in their lives, maybe multiple times, because I just think it's instructive. I think people don't start because they're afraid they're gonna fail. And there's just no way around, the path to success is through failure. You just can't get around it.

• 51:06Tim Ferriss?

  There's so many different directions I could go with this, and I want to go way back as maybe a, like sort of a montage flashback that we could have as a visual overlay as you're saying some of these things. And that is to your dad, and I've, in the process of doing homework, read about your dad's favorite saying or question that he would ask, and I was hoping you could explain this or share this with people who are listening, because I think it's kind of amazing.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Well, I was raised, you know, my parents divorced when I was 10, and my father, my parents, you know, I always joke that, you know, it's only rich people that can afford to fight about custody, you know what I mean? Poor people just do whatever they have to do to like manage. And my parents, neither of them could really afford two kids, and also neither of them could afford to pay child support. So they just, each of them just took one of us. I was older, so I went with my father. And he was like, you know, which one can wash itself? And then that was the one that he took. And, you know, my father is the king of the very terse and pointed motivational speech. So I would leave for school in the morning, and I grew up in San Francisco, and at one point, we lived upstairs in a Victorian, so I'd go down these very steep stairs and...

• 52:20Speaker 02

  He'd lean over the railing and he'd go, whose day is it? And I'd have to say, it's my day. And then he'd say, what are you gonna do? And I'd have to say, grab it by the balls.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  And then what are you gonna do? And I'd have to say, and twist, and twist.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  But, you know, it's funny because it was like, my dad was just, uh, he was such a great dad. He was a really engaged guy. But, you know, I mean,

• 52:45Speaker 02

  he was a, he was a single father and relatively young. So maybe there, there were a few boundaries of propriety that he danced along. But he just encouraged me to be aggressive. You know, he was one of those, I think, it's very hard for single parents, period. And I think it's very hard for fathers and daughters because, you know, I just think if you're a dad, the world just looks like a field of broken glass and potholes and molten lava. And then you've got this little kitten and you're just like so terrified to put the kitten down. So either they grip very tightly, or in my father's case, they throw you up in the air and, you know, and expect that they've given you the skills to land. And that was definitely his strategy.

• 53:23Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you mentioned the divorce, which I have read was amicable. It ended up resulting in you going with your father and you have one sibling?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I have a younger sister and she stayed with-

• 53:36Tim Ferriss?

  Stayed with your mom. Was that hard? Or, or did it not even occur to you to be hard because it just is what it was? Or was that difficult? And did you have constant contact? Or what was the dynamic like?

• 53:49Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting because I think it was more the second for me. Like, it just was what was happening. And I don't ever remember struggling in any grand way with the way that things were going. Look, maybe that's my nature. I do my, I know my parents worked very hard to be loving and available to both of us. And I had lots of access to my mother and I talked to her all the time and I called her for advice. And when she got to kind of be the fun mom or the advice mom, you know, she didn't have to discipline me and she could just be the person who was there when I needed like emotional support. I do know that like one of the things that resulted in at least when we were younger was my sister and I, we weren't super close, but I, you know, lots of siblings aren't super close in their kids, whether they're living in the same house or not, they're fighting and they're competitive.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  But as we got older, I became like wildly protective of my sister and my relationship with her is so intensely loving and affectionate now. And I don't know, maybe if we lived in the same house, driving each other, you know, nuts all the time, we wouldn't be as close as we are now. I mean, we spent the formative years of our lives living in different houses, but we liked the same stuff and we care about the same things and our connections are really deep. So I, you know, I can't, I don't ever remember kind of sitting up at night feeling any kind of agony about the fact that my parents were divorcing. I, I did watch them try very hard to stay together. Like, I do remember that when they got a divorce, I was like, they really gave it a shot. You know, I can see that they really like, you know, I just, they would break up and they'd get back together and they'd break up and they'd get back together.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  And I remember I'd like walk in on them, they'd be making out on the couch. I was like, they are really giving this a go. So when they decided when they said it was over, I was like, okay. I don't ever remember it being like a point of agony, just things changed, you know, and, and maybe as a result, I tolerate change better than I would otherwise, or maybe I even crave change, I don't know.

• 55:34Tim Ferriss?

  Has it been your demeanor to generally look at things through a positive lens like that, where you would frame what other people might try to frame as a very difficult agonizing experience into something that was, or at least is framed as something positive that you benefited from? Or have you had more of the time, a tendency to frame things negatively?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  I think about that a lot because I think that my attitude or my point of view about things is half biochemistry and, and half child rearing. My father is just like a pretty naturally optimistic person. It's extraordinary. I always make this joke that if my father's house was on fire, he would get a stick and marshmallows. Like, he just cannot be deterred. You know, I've never seen it, you know, he's just never down. And so I think that I inherited that, maybe it's attitudinal, I think I just probably make up the chemicals in my brain that kind of keep me typically upbeat, you know what I mean? And, and I think it's important because I think a lot of times when people... If they have a hard time seeing the world positively, or if they're struggling with depression, people are like, we just need to look at it a different way.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  But I think that I probably just make more of the chemicals that enable me to be optimistic. I've never really been depressed, but my father also was just a walk it off dad. He just did not feel sorry for me, and I was not allowed to feel sorry for myself. And so when things went wrong, and this is definitely sustained until I was an adult, I just get up and I keep going. And that was because, you know, my father was raised, he lost his father when he was very, very young. He was raised by a single mother in tumble down Pittsburgh with the very few opportunities for a black man at that time, and he just never felt sorry for himself. He was just like, look, I can complain about the situation, or I could just keep moving. So I think I've been nurtured in that way as well, which is the world is unfair. You know, it's shot through with assholes. I still have to get up in the morning and make a life for myself.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  So it's probably a combination of those two things.

• 57:25Tim Ferriss?

  Were you, would you say, good at following his advice of not only grabbing life by the balls, but twisting, which is a whole new level? Those are two really like, yeah, like you can gently grab balls. You can't really gently grab and twist balls.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  The twisting is an elevated, yes, that's a fair, an elevated form of aggression. I don't know, like, it's hard to say, like, oh, I'm nailing it. And that, you know, that's not how I feel. But I do think that like that attitude of like, and I wrote about it, a lot about it in my book, like the idea that like my parents raised me to be brave and in some ways maybe too brave, but the result has been like a relentlessness. And in the pursuit of the things that are important to me. And that's not the same, he's like, I'm winning. I don't really think about things that way, but it's just if I want to do something, then I do it. And I don't really worry too much about whether it's going to go my way. Not because I expect it to go my way, but because it doesn't matter if it goes my way.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Because it's the engagement that's most meaningful to me. It's the effort.

• 58:30Tim Ferriss?

  I got it. So the, by engagement, you mean sort of the dogged persistence that you're developing?

• 58:36Speaker 02

  The engagement in your personal goals. Like, if I want to do something, whatever, I don't know, let's pick something really innocuous. Like, if I want to like hike every day for a month, or if I want to start meditating. If I don't dial it, it's not as important to me as is not looking back and saying to myself, ah, I should have done it. It's the doing for me that is the reward. And then sometimes things go my way and sometimes they don't. But the thing I find most upsetting is regret, you know, because that's that's something I have control over in the sense of like, if you didn't do it, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right. You can always attempt. You can't predetermine success.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can't predetermine the outcome, but you can predetermine the effort because the effort is the only thing that you own. You can't own results. You can only own initiative.

• 59:22Tim Ferriss?

  Do you recall any, you mentioned your dad being a walk it off dad. I want to explore that a little bit. Do you remember any while you were still under his watch or not, early disappointments or self inflicted wounds? And how your dad responded or mistakes?

• 59:38Speaker 02

  This isn't exactly a good example of a disappointment, but it's a perfect example of his attitude. I was going to camp. I must have been about eight or nine. No, I'll say nine. And I was going to like jujitsu camp. This was still during the free range parenting era where you just got up in the morning and you left at home and you came back later. And that stuff was your responsibility.

• 59:59Tim Ferriss?

  Did you say eight or nine and then jujitsu camp?

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I was really into martial arts when I was a kid, so.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's making me think of the movie Hannah where this Eric Bandit trains his daughter to be a super killer.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  I wish I was that good at jujitsu. Fortunately, that was not one of my strong, my strong areas. But as I, as I pointed out, it wasn't the result that was important. It was just the effort. So I would ride my bike to camp every day and ride at home. And it was a good ride. It was like a five mile ride to camp. And I fell one day coming down like a hill, you know, kind of, I don't know, you know, free, this is like, this was like no helmets. This was a long time ago. I'm very old. Like, you know, no helmets, just like willy nilly, your backpack on and you know, you're not signaling. And I fell and I hurt my arm very badly. And I can't remember, but I contacted my dad and he's like, I'm not going to come get you. I can't leave work. You have to get home on your own. So I rode my bike back from camp, you know, like another three, four miles and my arm was

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  broken. It was definitely broken. I had broken my arm. And I got home and my dad was like, "Your arm's not broken. You just need to stop complaining." You know, it was a sore. And the next day I woke up, it was like black and swollen and I had to like lift it off the pillow and he finally took me to the doctor and it was absolutely like compound fracture. The bone hadn't come through the skin, but it was a multiple fracture. I think at the time it felt cruel, but I think my dad's larger attitude was like, "No one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. You have to find a way every single day to save yourself." And as a result, I think that as an adult, I just don't spend a lot of time anguishing over what's been done to me. And I was fine. I did ride my bike home and my arm was broken, but I still got home on my bike and you know, the next day I got

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  a super dope cast. And I think we just raise like these, I mean, I know I sound like everybody's mom, but I just feel like we're curating young people's experiences so aggressively nowadays that they just don't have any way to discover things about themselves. They don't develop not just self-sufficiency, but like a curiosity about themselves and their abilities and what they can tolerate and what they can do if left alone because they're just never left alone. I had a lot of time alone when I was a kid and I still really like being alone as an adult.

• 1:02:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And also, it strikes me that if you're so protective of your child and your child's ego that you effectively disallow them to fail or engage with risk, that the delta, the difference between their actual competencies and abilities for self-preservation and their overinflated sense of their capabilities is actually a huge disservice.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  And their sense of... Like you need to know what it feels like to fail. And then what comes next, because what comes next is what did I learn? How can I adjust? How do I pivot? How do I move forward? And just most people don't develop those mental skills. They just, they're crushed by failure. And it's just an unavoidable element of life. And you know, there's so many people that I know who's out of real, I mean, you know, genuine love. Parents like, I just don't want to see my kid in pain. But like, how are you gonna, how do people move through the planet? How do them people move through life without pain? That's, that's a false theory. It can't be done. It just cannot be done. And so people just become incapacitated the first minute they hit any kind of a speed bump in their lives. And they don't know how to navigate disappointment.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Whereas I was just deeply disappointed throughout my childhood. So I know exactly what it feels like.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  I was just like a next, I'm like, oh, that didn't go my way. Moving on, you know?

• 1:03:33Tim Ferriss?

  It makes me conjure my mind, the image of this increasing amplitude of pain consequence over your life from like childhood to adulthood, where the consequences grow potentially greater and greater. Where in the beginning, like when you're a child, you're basically engaging with pain and, I shouldn't say pain, but failure in many cases, not all cases, but many cases where you're effectively in one of those like birthday party blow up sumo suits. Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's like, so you can sort of engage with failure that way. And if you get knocked on your ass, there aren't really real consequences. Then you get, you get to high school, college, and it's like, okay, you're out of the sumo suit, but you've got big kind of blow up boxing gloves on and huge piece of headgear.

• 1:04:16Tim Ferriss?

  Then when you get out into some aspects of the real world, it's just a bare knuckle brawl.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Permanent consequences.

• 1:04:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you haven't had the chance to get whaled in the face with the sumo suit, you're not going to be ready for the blow up boxing gloves and the headgear. And if you certainly, if you don't get whacked in the face a few times doing that, you're just going to be crippled when you get out into the real world and get, you know, drop kicked in the face by someone who doesn't follow the same rules.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  And crippled in that way that, you know, and I know you've interacted with people like this in that way where. When something bad happens, their whole monologue is like, why me? Like, why did this happen to me? You don't understand what I'm going through. It's like, you're not special. Everybody is experiencing the same thing. Everybody's heart is being broken. Everybody isn't getting the job they want. Everybody isn't getting to sleep with the hot person they want. Everybody is experiencing the same failures, the same injuries, but you just don't know how to tolerate them. You are not special. And that's not the same as saying you don't have the potential for being special. You know, there's nothing anybody's doing now that hasn't already been done and that won't be done in the future. Those kinds of personalities drive me crazy because they're so stuck and boring.

• 1:05:27Tim Ferriss?

  What did you think you were going to be when you grew up? When you were in high school or college?

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  In high school, so interesting because I was like super academic. And I think I thought I'd be an attorney. You know, I was like a big activist and I organized and marched and did all that stuff. And I was like in the, you know, outing club and I rock climbed and all that stuff. So I thought I was going to be like an environmental lawyer, either an environmental lawyer or an environmental engineer. I really wanted to go to a school that was like really grounded in a relationship to nature. So I was applying to like Marlboro College and Reed and Bard and these schools that were like out in the woods. And I ended up going to Dartmouth, which is, you know, in New Hampshire and has this big land grant around it. And I thought I would be an environmental engineer. And I think I just took like the first prerequisite math course for engineering. And I was like, yeah, okay, it's not, it's not going to be, this is not me.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  I always loved, I always loved science, but I'm just a person of letters, I guess. I didn't have the appetite for it. It wasn't as glamorous as I thought. I think when I took my first engineering, I did, I think I got through the math class. I did fine, like I applied myself and I got a good grade. And then I went to my like, you know, an introduction to engineering three. And it was about like building like a fecal matter treatment plant. And I was like, this isn't feeling like hug and trees at all, man. We're just talking about poop all day.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Lost my appetite for that really quickly.

• 1:06:52Tim Ferriss?

  So then what? Did you just have this great existential angst? Or did you sort of shift to something else immediately following that?

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  I was always doing kind of like performing things on the side. Like I went to a high school that had a performing arts kind of magnet or like a pocket school within the the regular school called the J U Dean Macatee School of the Arts. So I was kind of doing my regular classwork and then doing like improv and stuff and sketch on the side. And then I went to Dartmouth and I was doing some of the same stuff. Like, you know, I was in one of those infernal Ivy League a cappella groups that have been popularized since then by shows like Glee. So I was always kind of doing that as a hobby because it just never felt like a real job. And I graduated and I was living in San Francisco and I was working for a conservation organization. I got like my dream job. It was a group that purchased blighted urban land and turned it into parks and underserved neighborhoods that didn't have any outdoor space for kids to play.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  And, you know, it was like the mission was great because it wasn't just kind of conservation for conservation's sake. It was like conservation focused on engaging underserved communities. And it was the grooviest and I was just miserable. And I just-

• 1:07:58Tim Ferriss?

  Why were you miserable?

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  I didn't know. It was a really good question. You know, it was like, why, if I have my dream job in the city of my birth, why am I so unhappy? And I just did a lot of soul searching and I realized it was because I, for the first time in my life, I wasn't doing anything creative. I wasn't performing. And so I'm a problem solver. I'm a matrix builder. I was like, well, how can I solve this problem right now? And I looked at all the ways that I could get on stage and stand up comedy was the only thing I didn't need to know anyone for, have an agent or a band or connections. I could just do stand up right away. And so I started studying and watching the precursor to Comedy Central, which was this network called HA, a very short-lived network,

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  taking notes and then, you know, after a while, just kind of screwed up the courage to go and do an open mic. And then that was, it was just transformational. I was like, oh, this is what I want to do with my life.

• 1:08:51Tim Ferriss?

  Was the thinking immediately on how to-

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Turn performance into a career? Or did you expect that you would continue doing your job and doing stand up on the side? Like, was it a career move from when you first built the matrix and decided on stand up? Or was it, you know what? This is going to be great. I'll continue doing this job and I'll scratch my creative performance itch on the weekends with open mics.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  It's so funny because like, I don't think I even realized that stand up comedy was a job. You know, I was like a really bookish kid. A lot of guys will have these stories about how they grew up, you know, with Red Fox, you know, on vinyl that they listened to hundreds of times or following Letty Bruce or, you know, these idols or Bill Hicks. I just, I didn't, I remember seeing Live on the Sunset Strip when I was a kid. I just thought Richard Pryor was an alien. Like I, you know, like a magical person who came down to do this thing. It just, the idea that that was like a vocation was just not in my head. So I remember seeing stand up at Dartmouth when I was like a sophomore and coming out of a show and being like, do people know that this, like, you can go and have this feeling for an hour? Like, this is insanity.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Like, I just remember like everything hurt from laughing, my face and my stomach. And I just never experienced live comedy before. It didn't dovetail into like a job at first. It was just something I was going to do for fun. I kept my day job 100% and I kept for a long time. I also didn't want to be like one of these kind of like miserable, you know, sweating stand ups who are like gripping their inky notebook and sleeping on their buddy's couch. You know, like I was in a relationship and I had a job that paid great and I could make flyers for my shows at work. I was like embezzling, you know, copy paper and push pins as aggressively as I could. So I was and I still am of the opinion that like you should absolutely keep your day job, which I know is not the most popular.

• 1:10:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm of the same, I'm of the same opinion, absolutely.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  I think it gives you a freedom. People think it traps them, but I think it gives you this incredible freedom to just pursue art for art's sake.

• 1:10:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  And let a job pay for it and do it for so long that everything you do is just for joy. And it changes the way that you approach your art. You know, I would like get up and I'd go to work at like seven and I, you know, six or seven in the morning and I'd work until four and then I'd jump in the car and I'd drive two hours to Sacramento to do. Set and I come back at midnight, I do it all over again. But I could do that. And then it was just purely about the experience of performing and not about whether I was getting paid or not. So I did that for a long time before I finally quit my job.

• 1:11:16Tim Ferriss?

  Now, for those people who don't know the geography of Northern California, where I lived for seventeen years and coincidentally, the high school that you went to, is that now the Ruth Asawa School on O'Shaughnessy?

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  It's on O'Shaughnessy, they're at the nexus of.

• 1:11:33Tim Ferriss?

  Twin Peaks slash Glen Park Canyon.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:11:35Tim Ferriss?

  So I literally lived for five or six years about a quarter mile from that school.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 1:11:44Tim Ferriss?

  It was right there.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  It's not a big city, even though I think when you feel, when you live there, it feels like it's an intimate place.

• 1:11:49Tim Ferriss?

  It's an intimate place. And given the density of San Francisco and the fact that, I don't know if people would consider it a comedy town, but there's certainly clubs and so on.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  It's a comedy town.

• 1:12:01Tim Ferriss?

  So why would you go all the way to Sacramento? Sacramento is not, for those people who don't know the area, it's not like a ten minute drive away from San Francisco.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  It's far. San Francisco's always had a reputation for being a comedy town. Like the big comedy towns in the United States, from comedians' perspectives, are San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York. LA is not, I mean, LA is a company town, but it's not a comedy town. And San Francisco was always one of those places that people saw as like a real crucible for kind of original comedy, you know, it was like where the alt comedy movement happened. And, you know, Marc Maron and Janine Garofalo and these kind of alternative comics, Brian Posehn, came out of. And it was a comedy town. But when I started doing comedy, it was like the beginning of the contraction of the comedy economy.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  So there was a period of time when there were just hundreds of comedy clubs everywhere and you could make a living doing stand up. You could kind of go from place to place and you could get a gig and you could get paid. And I started doing stand up at the beginning of the end of the comedy bubble. So when I started doing stand up, the club community was contracting and some of the big clubs in San Francisco were closing. I think at one point there were maybe like five or six active clubs. And then by the time I was working consistently, there were only two. And there was just a lot of competition for stage time. And to get good at comedy, you can't just do it like. Once a weekend, you know, you need to be on stage like every night. It's like being a high diver. Like, you know what? It's, it's literally like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours. And you're not going to get 10,000 hours of stand up hanging out in San Francisco.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Like, you have to go everywhere and, and take every single opportunity to be on stage that you can get. So I would drive to Sacramento. I would drive to Fresno. I would do these terrible bar shows in Menlo Park and, oh, God, I don't even remember some of the places. Cupertino and Martinez. I mean, you would just go anywhere that you could get six minutes on stage. And there were a hundred other people trying to get those same six minutes. So it was really competitive. And the culture, I think, was pretty supportive. Like, comedians were supportive of each other, but it just, there just wasn't enough stage time. So you just do anything and go anywhere to get it.

• 1:14:03Tim Ferriss?

  I want to ask about this comedy contraction. We won't spend too much time on this because I don't want to take us completely off the reservation. But what happened? I mean, it was like Beanie Babies? Like, people were like, really, the Beanie Babies? It's like, no, comedy isn't cool anymore. And then, like, all the clubs closed? Was it just a macroeconomic downturn? I mean, what happened?

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  I think it was three factors. One factor was just, there was just a glut. Live comedy, in some ways, in the seventies and eighties was kind of a new thing. And it's not like people hadn't been doing stand up prior to that. But the proliferation of stand up comedians in the culture really started happening at that time. And what that was fueled by, I honestly don't know. Like, why were there so many more comics doing stand up in the seventies and eighties? Maybe because that was the period where there were these superstar comics that were, I'm trying to think of who would have been really popular besides, like, Bill Hicks and...

• 1:14:55Tim Ferriss?

  I could see that, though. Maybe it's analogous to, like, celebrity chefs in the last 15 years.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And, and part of the reason why there are so many more celebrity chefs is because there started to be celebrity chefs on television.

• 1:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  So if you think about that in terms of comedy, what you see is, oh, that's a job. I can make money at that. Whereas people weren't really encountering live comedy if they didn't go to a live comedy show. So you start to see these guys on TV and you think, and honestly, when Ha, the precursor to Comedy Central started, they needed comics and they needed opportunities, they needed clubs, they needed, they needed content. It was a 24-hour network. So there were some good comedians on that station and there were some really, some really shitty ones. They were really bad. And so, a lot of people watching probably thought, well, I can do that. You know, I also think about guys like, you know, Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  There was kind of like a golden era in that time and we were seeing all those people on TV. Then we were seeing a lot of people that were like really subpar and a lot of people were thinking, well, if that guy can write, you know, five crappy minutes about an airplane, I can. Then you coupled that with this explosion in comedy clubs, which were a relatively new phenomenon. I mean, when Joan Rivers was doing stand-up, she was doing stand-up in, in strip clubs. There were very few comedy clubs and, and comedy was kind of a part of a vaudeville approach. So you'd, you'd hire a singer and then you'd hire a comic, but there wasn't, there weren't places dedicated to comedy. So these comedy clubs opened, it was a really easy way, way to make money because comics weren't that expensive. And, you know, you had a two-drink minimum, people would come in, they would get wasted, you'd have huge margins on your booze. So all these comedy clubs started proliferating. And then

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  there was just peak clubs.

• 1:16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Saturation.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it became unsustainable. So they started to contract because of market saturation, the economy started to contract in the eighties, and people could watch comedy on TV. The proliferation of comedy on television affected people going out to see it in a club. So there were like kind of those three factors all kind of intersecting. And when it happened, it was really aggressive. Like I said, I think there were maybe like five or six comedy clubs in San Francisco when I was in high school. And then by the time I was doing stand-up in my twenties, there were two. And, you know, and they were attracting like high-end peak talent. So, for example, this club's still there, it's called The Punchline.

• 1:17:13Tim Ferriss?

  Punchline. I've been there a few times.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  There was the Punch Line and there was Cobb's and those are still the only two clubs and maybe there's some minor clubs that have sprung up since then. But, you know, they would book these big headliners. So the only time you could go up if you were an amateur, like a young comic, was on a Sunday or a Wednesday. And there'd be 20 other guys trying to get on as well and it would be wildly competitive. And you wouldn't be getting paid. And then you'd be super anxious because you'd be hoping, okay, I need to go up and I need to destroy because I want this club owner to hire me again. So I can't work out. I can't fail in front of this guy because he won't see this. You know, when you watch like an Olympic skater during practice and they're falling. That's what practice is for. You know, practice is for like finding your weak spots and reinforcing them.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  But when you're up in front of a comedy club owner and you, it's been six months that you've been trying to get out of this club and you finally get five minutes, it's gotta be a monster five minutes. There was just no way to improve.

• 1:18:10Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna say, how do you get in your rough drafts then? I mean, how do you work on the material?

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Drive to Martinez.

• 1:18:17Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see, I see. So you'd write, work out the kinks with

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:18:22Tim Ferriss?

  The crew at the such and such casino in god knows where, Turlock.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Foo bars or Rooster T feathers or, you know, one of these other places that, yeah. You know, it's different than being an author or an athlete or even a musician because there's an autonomy to comedy, absolutely. But you need other people. You can't do it, you can't just sit around your place practicing. You know what I mean? Like with music, you know, you know if you're sharp or flat, you know, if you hit all the notes, you know if the tempo's right. But with comedy, the only way it works is in front of an audience. And so you're very dependent on, on stage time and it's everything when you're a young comic is stage time.

• 1:19:01Tim Ferriss?

  Do you remember your early content? I mean, what kind of, what was your approach early on? Do you remember the first, and maybe, I mean, a different way to approach this, you could take it, answer it however you like. Do you remember the first time that you bombed? Or the, what is your first memory that comes to mind of bombing?

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  Oh God, I bombed so many times. It's just, it all seeps together into an inky blackness. Um, any comic who tells you they've never bombed is lying. And again, the only way to get funny is to bomb. No one ever gets funnier after they kill. You know, they just walk and they follow that bitches and they drop the mic. You know what I mean? They go off and do shots with their friends. I mean, you really need to, you really need to bomb and bomb hard to get funny. I remember doing this one show, oh God. So there was, it was an open mic in a laundromat south of market around the police station there. So what, maybe like, you know, eighth and mission or something like that for people in San Francisco. And I think it was called Brainwash. I think the, the place was called Brainwash and they would have this open mic in the back of this laundromat.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  And comics know, you know, with these open mics, with these local open mics, that typically there are no actual audience members in the audience. It is just a room full of comedians waiting for you to be done so that they can try out their material. All of them looking at their notebooks, not listening, not laughing. And you're just kind of trying to gut it out and, and pause where you think the laughter might occur if you were in front of actual human beings. And I did a set where I just, I did not get one laugh. And I remember that one, not even like, not even like a cursory titter. And I remember just silence, just like, really, like, just a wall of silence. And I got off, even thinking about it right now, it's so funny to me. Like I talked to a girlfriend afterwards and I was like, oh my God.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  I couldn't even call that a bad set. I don't know what that was, but it was so funny to me that I didn't get a laugh. There was this bulletproofness that I got from that set. That just made me impervious to anything ever going wrong in my life or career again. Even when I'm talking about now, it's like, there's a huge smile on my face because it was so funny. How little I was able to elicit out of that audience. It just made me so mentally strong.

• 1:21:05Tim Ferriss?

  Was that the immediate response that you had? I mean, or were you in the middle of the set when you're like in the back of your mind thinking, wow, no one is laughing. Was it like the reverse of the five stages of grief or like what? Or did you just go straight to like, yeah, motherfuckers, this is great. Like

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Just fully accepted.

• 1:21:25Tim Ferriss?

  This is gonna make a great story, however many years from now on Tim Ferriss's podcast.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Well, one thing comedians love is agony. I mean, it's we dine out on it is definitely like our our stock in trade. So a comedian very quickly transitions from, oh, my God, this is the worst night of my life to, oh, my God, this is going to make a great story. That happens almost instantaneously. So we have a little bit of a we have some armor in that regard because we could wake up like naked and shivering on the side of the road with like no money and no phone and not speak the local language and you'd be thinking, OK, if I live, this is going to make a killer story. So I think in the moment, I just thought I had watched a couple of other people go up and not do very well either. I was prepared for it not going my way. And I think also, there's a discipline to comedy that if you're not a comedian, you can't understand, which is that you've got to get

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  up and do your set. You don't get to tap out. Like tapping out is true failure. If you went up and you had a bad set, well, you just need to write new jokes. But if you go up and you give up, that's true failure for a comedian. There are some really famous examples of this online. I don't know if you know the comedian Bill Burr, but

• 1:22:26Tim Ferriss?

  So I interviewed Bill Burr about a year and a half ago, and I played the video, which he had never seen, or he claimed to have never seen.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Some real he still has some trauma. He has like

• 1:22:35Tim Ferriss?

  So can you for people who don't know the story, can you please describe it? Because it's just

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  It's so amazing, right? It's insane. So he was doing one of those big like radio, you know, those radio station concerts, like the Jingle Ball or whatever. And I don't remember it was called the Weenie Roast. I think it was the Weenie Roast. So it's one of the shows that like some local station, you know, K-Rock, 97 Point Rock, K-Rock, you know, like one of those shows. And it's, I don't know, Weezer's too cool of a band. It would be like Nickelback and, you know, some other band that sounds like Nickelback and then an opening band you've never heard of. Anyway, I don't know why people still do this. But, you know, if you're a comic and someone offers you money, you take it. So they would hire a comic to kind of warm up the crowd, you know, early in the day. And no one pays to see Nickelback and then wants to sit through 15 minutes of stand up. You know, everyone's drunk and undrugged. They're not even facing forward. You know what I mean? It's just like the work. Like, there's nothing. The only thing worse than

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  performing in front of an outdoor audience is performing in front of people who are eating.

• 1:23:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this was like, this was like a tailgate at like 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. or something. Yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Every, everybody's been, you know, everybody like busted out their like marijuana brownie recipe for the year. They're all like completely looped, you know, like one of their eyes is completely dilated and the other one is like falling out of their head. Nobody cares about your jokes about your mom and your family. So they could not muster compassion if they tried. So he starts doing stand up and he just immediately starts getting booed and it's just this tidal wave of disdain and he knows if he doesn't finish, he will not get paid. But it's not like, it's like silence you could tolerate, right? But like people are screaming at him to get off stage and he, he makes it very clear to the audience, you have to watch it because I'll never be able to do it justice, but he makes it very clear to the audience that he is not

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  leaving the stage until he does his 10 minutes, that he does not care how they feel about him and he's counting down the minutes.

• 1:24:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every minute he's like, nine minute, you fucking fucks.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. I hope, he says something really outrageous, like, I hope your mother gets cancer in the center of her asshole. Seven minutes. It's just so, it's so, it's just a demonstration of tenacity. Later, you know, he was embarrassed by it, but every comedian understands this kind of blood battle that you sometimes have with an audience where they're not going to scare you and they're not going to drive you away. You're going to deliver the material that you were hired to deliver. You're going to make your money and then you're going to go off and spend it on light beer and chicken wings, but no one is, you will not be deterred. So I think because you understand that as a comedian very early on in your career, no matter what happens on stage, I will not be moved.

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  So I just, I had material to do and I did it. And I think, I remember I thinking almost immediately, well, okay, I'm not going to get any laughs. I'm just going to kind of like listen to this set and see what it feels like, see what the words feel like, see what might play in front of actual people. But it started to get really delicious. And I think if you watch the Bill Burr video, you'll also see that it's, he starts to really enjoy it. It starts to be like this savory masochism towards the end where he's so powerful in his lack of caring. You watch it and it's, it is to be studied because he Goes from kind of anguish to rage to this kind of delightful detachment by the end of the set. And I've seen, I've seen some other guys do similar stuff and it's always really fun to watch.

• 1:25:51Tim Ferriss?

  So a couple of things that I want to use as teasers for people who should watch this video. I think it was in Phila- I'm almost 100% positive it was in Philadelphia.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Philadelphia, I think. I know either that or Jersey, but it'd be.

• 1:26:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think it was Philadelphia because he started ridiculing Rocky and he said, "Your hero is a fictional person" and just tearing into them. And he basically for the, for half of his set, just decided to abandon his material and just attack these people in the town. And

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Which way is a no-no generally?

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, which is, which is a no-no generally.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  Like if people hate you. I mean, there are like these unwritten rules of comedy and one of them is like you don't, if some of the people in the audience hate you, like don't turn all of them against you. But this is just a sidebar, but don't forget what you were gonna say. There's another very famous video, very famous, and it happened at the Punch Line in San Francisco, where there's a guy playing, he's a good guitar comic, and a guy's heckling him. It's kind of just combative back and forth, but nothing too extreme. But then the guy gets up and he comes towards the stage, whatever, to defend himself or the girl he's with, something like that. And the guy just hauls off and hits him in the head with a guitar.

• 1:26:56Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry, sorry. Not funny. It's tragic, but Jesus Christ.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Everybody live. But what happens is, up until that beat, the whole audience has been on the comedian's side against this guy. It is a hairpin turn from them being like, "Yeah, shut up." You know, the comic's like, "Hey, you know, people can't enjoy the show because you're talking. Keep it down." And then he hits this guy and the whole audience just turns on him, just like instantaneous, like Frankenstein's monster mob, just the pitchforks come flying out. And so the, one of the unwritten rules of comedy is that, you know, you, you just don't, you want to try to at all costs avoid turning everybody against you, which, so Bill broke a bunch of rules, but he just, he never gave up, you know, which I think it becomes this, you know, it's like the Rudy moment at the end of the movie, like, "Man, that sucked, but you sure sucked in there."

• 1:27:39Tim Ferriss?

  And he got a standing ov- well, I mean, everybody was already standing, but he got massive applause from the audience at the end, which is just, because they're just like, "What the fuck?" Like, it didn't even fit into like any mental heuristic of comedy that they could expect.

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  It was, it was straight prison yard dynamics, right?

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  The line from Out of Sight, right? Just like the yard, nobody backing down. Nobody's backing down. And he just, you know, I think they, there was like a thousand of them to one of her, probably like 10,000 of them to one of him. And he just did not back down. You know, so he got, he got the slowest clap at the end of the show.

• 1:28:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God. So I wasn't going to go to heckling, but why not? Since we're already here. Do you have any memorable heckling stories? Did you recall the first time you got heckled?

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  I started doing stand up like 25 years ago. So at this point, like all the sets have just kind of blended. But and heckling can be lots of different things. It doesn't always have to be like the conventional kind of you suck heckle. One, I, I, I, one time where this woman, and this kind of dovetails perfectly with the old, like, don't turn the audience against you, where this woman was talking to me. She was sitting in the front row and she was talking to me the entire show. Just loud enough that I could hear her, but not really loud enough so the audience could hear her, except for the people right around her. And it was driving me crazy.

• 1:29:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's awful.

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  It was like a bee in my ear. And as a result, I just seemed insane. You know what I mean? Stopping to yell at this person that no one could hear. It looked like I was having a breakdown, you know? It was a very effective heckle because she just completely derailed my show. And I just seemed like a dick because I was yelling like, shut up lady. And but no one could hear what she was saying. It's like, what's wrong with you? Nice lady in the front, trying to try the night. And it really, I mean, that was, I remember that I really went off the rails last night. And I generally have a rule with hecklers that unless they're really disruptive to the entire room, I just never address them. Because what you do is, again, you've derailed a show for 500 or 1,000 people to deal with one person. And everyone's never going to really understand what's going on unless that person's so loud that they've affected everybody else's enjoyment of the night.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  But sometimes the affectionate hecklers are the worst because typically hecklers just want to be a part of the show. And so, you know, they say something, you slam them a little bit, they shut up because they, they think they're helping you out. It was the famous line is they'll come up and be like, hey, you like how I helped you out? I'm like, buddy, I came with jokes. I don't need this. Like, I don't, I don't have a box jumper in my act, all right? I showed up ready to go. But, um, but. When people are affectionate, you can't insult them. They're the most unmanageable kind of heckler.

• 1:30:13Tim Ferriss?

  Now, by affectionate, I mean someone's like, "I love you, I love you."

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  I love you. I had this one girl at one show in San Francisco, just so drunk, I'm just cross-eyed. And for the 90 minutes I was on stage, just, "I love you, I love you so much, I love you." And I was just like, "Lady, all you are doing is making me want to hit you in the head with this microphone stand. Your affection is not welcome here." And everybody else is like staring at this woman. But she, this is a genuine expression of emotion for this person that is destroying my joy completely. So, I really have a habit of just not talking to hecklers.

• 1:30:45Tim Ferriss?

  What did you do in that case? Did you ignore her?

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  I think that I kept saying like, "Thank you, that's super sweet, shut the fuck up." That was like, like, you know, clearly you weren't hugged enough as a child. I mean, I just eventually got mean because it was just like, I couldn't get this woman to stop talking. And I think the people around her got embarrassed and they eventually kind of shut her up, which was nice. And I don't think there are any other really good hecklers that... Oh, I had one guy... It's a mental discipline too, because, you know, like again, like it's your show, you have the microphone, you're in control. You know, I think the audience thinks they're in control, but they're not. I mean, the Bill Burr scenario is a perfect example. The person with the microphone has all the power. As long as it cannot be moved, they will eventually win. But I had, um, this one guy who was sitting like really close to the stage, it was like a group of 12 people

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  and they were all like laughing their asses off. And then he was just, arms crossed, just looked like he just had just eaten a big scoop of fecal matter. And I, I was all, he was all I could see, like, you know what I mean? Like the whole audience disappeared and it was just straight vignette on this guy's like sourpuss face. And I couldn't, it was just wrecking my whole night. And I finally said, "If you don't want to be here, just fucking go, man. I'll give you your money back. I cannot look at your face for one more minute."

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  And then I meant it. It wasn't even a joke. I was just like, get out and you are harshing my mellow so hard. And he left. I didn't feel bad about it. And then I went on with the show and his girlfriend goes, he had a bad day. I was like, but what was great was nobody else at the table wanted to leave. They were all like, you know, good riddance to bad rubbish. And he, you know, he went on and the rest of the people enjoyed their night. So, but again, that was me. That was my, you know, I should have been disciplined enough not to be distracted by, you know, old sour puss, but I'm only human. You know what I mean? If the Grinch is sitting in the front row, you know, something must be done.

• 1:32:30Tim Ferriss?

  When you were just getting started, how did you get better at comedy? And what I mean by that is you're very smart. You, like you mentioned, matrix capable. Did you do any type of post-game analysis? Did you watch video of yourself? Did you watch video of other comics? How did you hone your craft? Or maybe a better question is, what helped the most in honing your craft?

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting. Like, I think that there's a definite math to comedy. And then there's also a secondary ineffability. I guess what I mean is like, you can learn how to be a better comic, but you can't learn how to be a comic. Or even a different way, I really wanted to be an engineer and I could have really suffered and struggled through like the elevated math that would, I would need to become an engineer, but it would never be effortless for me. And I think with comedy, there are people who very workmanlike can learn how to do comedy. And then there's some people who are just naturally comedic and they still have to work to be better at it. You know, you say Bolt still has to train, even though he was born with more fast switch muscles than everybody else, he

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  still has to train to become a champion. So I feel like with comedy, you know, people can be the class clown or they can be that guy who's naturally funny. There's still a methodology and there's still a mathematics to becoming a comic. And then at the same time, if they have this This ephemeral, ineffable kind of understanding of the math of comedy, they're going to be able to do something magical with those skills. So for me, I don't know that I thought I was a funny kid, but I was an observer. And I was really nerdy and a little bit of a social pariah. So storytelling became a way to make friends. You know what I mean? Like to like aggraciate myself. I would kind of like try to talk my way into situations. Or if I was in a social situation, talk really fast to try to keep myself engaging. Not be not be rejected.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  So that was what I brought to it was like that combination of being an outsider and an observer. And then using those skills to try to kind of connect with people. But with comedy, I never took any classes. I never read any books. There are definitely people who can say, oh, you know, there's a total methodology to comedy. It's, you know, the rule of threes and, you know, stretching reality to the point of breaking, but not past it. I mean, there are, you know, some specific kind of.

• 1:34:43Tim Ferriss?

  What's the rule of threes?

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  I probably won't even be able to articulate it properly. It's just that like, if you're going to do a series of jokes or a series of builds to a punchline, it needs to be three.

• 1:34:52Tim Ferriss?

  I get it. I get it.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  And also, if you're going to do any kind of a diversion, if you're going to lead people in one direction and then snap around to a different kind of absurdist result, you can't do that in two. It has to be, the pace of it has to be three.

• 1:35:06Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  And then past three, you're starting to draw things out too long. But two doesn't give people enough of a time to be. All into a false sense of security before you kind of pulled a rug out from under them. As soon as you start explaining that, the math of comedy, like none of it makes any sense. You know what I mean? Like it's those two things, you know, someone who's really gifted at physics. They know that there are rules, but still they see things that others people can't see. They see the world as numbers and data. And the rest of us are just like table, chair, water, sex. So I guess the way that I did it was that I, I'm also really an undisciplined comedian. And what I mean is like. Like, there's a documentary about Gary Shandling out right now, which I haven't watched, but I'm sure that this is in there because he was very famous for being a really disciplined

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  writer. Like, he would get up and he would write every single day. And sometimes it would be pages and pages of material without fail. Other comics would be like, hey, let's get a beer. And be like, no, I have to write. And every day he would write on this, like, legal, this is probably true and apocryphal at the same time, on this, like, legal line about this tiny handwriting. And he would just write and write and write and write. I do not do that. I've never worked that way. I just get on stage. I try a bunch of stuff. I keep what works. I know what works. I already know right away what works. I'll run offstage. I'll write down the things that I knew hit. I'll write down the things I know didn't hit. And then I'll go back and try it again, dropping the stuff that wasn't good and putting new stuff in. I record my sets, but I never, I cannot listen to my own voice. So I have hours and hours of material on tape that I just have never listened to. So I don't

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  know why I still engage in that behavior when it's clearly not useful to me. I think the more you do it, the more you intuitively understand, oh, this is a rich area. People are connecting with this, this other stuff. There's also something you learn as you move through comedy, which is, it's not just important to get a laugh. Like, does this material say something specific and personal about me? Because when you're a baby comic, every joke is meaningful to you because you only have like eight jokes, right? And so even if they're stupid, or juvenile, or unsophisticated, or valueless, or coreless, you'll still do them because that's all you have. And then as you get older, you start to think, okay, like, I want to have a body of work here. Does this hang together? Does it have a strong point of view? Does it have an identity? And then those other jokes start to fall away.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  And then the material really becomes about trying to tell some kind of a story about yourself and the way you perceive the world. And then that's how you shape it. And so sometimes things that are really funny go away. Things that are less funny stay because they're more impactful. Does that make sense?

• 1:37:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, does make sense. Absolutely. I think that's true for musicians. I think it's true for... Many different artists.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  Writers, too, probably for writers. It's like, I'm gonna find a space that's, that it really says something about like my accumulated understanding and knowledge of the world. And it's not just enough to say something like I need to say something that's uniquely mine, something you can only do by being prolific, because you need to be able to let things go in order to figure out what should stay.

• 1:37:59Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. I mean, there's a certain volume to it, thinking of it almost as a funnel. And, you know, I think and I certainly hope for the sake of our, not to sound like an old man, but I guess that's what I'm turning into, for the sake of our

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  That's what we're all turning into.

• 1:38:13Tim Ferriss?

  Society in general, I would hope, just seeing the number of hatchet jobs and the amount of yellow journalism and clickbaiting with pieces that have not been fact-checked and so on, and take down pieces of folks who are otherwise doing actually a lot of good in the world, but people feeling no compunction about running pieces that get a lot of clicks because that's the only metric they're focused on. At some point, go from what can I write that will get the most clicks to what can I write that I will be proud of, that may or may not? And I think you can figure out a way to make it a non-binary decision. In other words, you can figure out something you can be proud of that is simultaneously

• 1:38:59Tim Ferriss?

  likely to find some type of sizable audience. I think in the beginning, there's a temptation, particularly if you have quit your job and you're like, where's my next rent check coming from? How can I appeal to the widest number of people possible? And that's a very precarious position or mindset to put yourself into if you're hoping to do anything creatively evergreen.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Right. And also, like, it's interesting. Like, when I went to school, we had the, you know, the honor system and you were just expected to hold yourself to a high standard because that was what was right. It's what you did. You know what I mean? You just, you were going to be called upon to stand behind your work. And so you tried to work very hard to make sure that you could defend it. I don't think that it's like we're any less ethical than we've ever been. It's just, like you said, our metrics have changed. And I think that people value fame for fame's sake rather than for the foundational reasons that people become famous. And I think that's the problem. And I don't think it just exists in journalism. I think that people value infamy. They can't distinguish between fame and infamy.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, with a 24 hour news cycle, like a bright burst is as meaningful as a slow burn. I actually don't really know what we do, or what should be done, or what should happen to counteract that, other than people start to maybe get hip to it and start rejecting baseless journalism. And let me take that back. I find it very easy to distinguish between things that seem like they've been thoroughly vetted and things that are bullshit. But I think that people are working very hard to make it harder for the rest of us to distinguish between the two. So there are, you know, without me sounding like a crazy person, there are nefarious forces at work, trying to make it very hard for us to figure out what's real and what's not real. And I think we have to start to raise people who are just more critical thinkers, but it's hard to be a critical thinker when you're just scrolling

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  through your Instagram feed, looking at like butts and cupcakes all day long.

• 1:40:49Tim Ferriss?

  Have you been, have you been watching my, my feed? Are you looking over my shoulder? Are you one of the nefarious forces?

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  I'm following you and I know, I know what you're into.

• 1:41:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, God. You know, I have to, I'll admit, there was a day, and you would think, supposedly being a tech investor and all this stuff for 10 years, that I would figure this out. There was a day when I was scrolling through cupcakes and thongs, and I looked up at my profile and I was like, wait a minute, people can see what I follow?

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  Oh, that would work.

• 1:41:26Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, oh, fuck. You know, fortunately, I've systematically dismantled and deliberately tarnished any semblance of any reputation I might have very deliberately, so that I feel, so that I don't feel...

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  I want to start interviewing you now. This is so interesting.

• 1:41:44Tim Ferriss?

  So that I don't feel I have any, you know, Stepford Wives polished persona to preserve, right? It's like, yeah.

• 1:41:54Speaker 02

  That's so good. And that's so interesting to me. And it's different than just being a slob. What you're saying is, I refuse to create a box within which I will be kept by others. I think that comes also from a curiosity about the world. I actually think that like people who are trying to remain perfect all the time are fear driven. That's not a position of strength. People think they're maintaining position of strength when they're trying to maintain an appearance of perfection, but that is by its very nature, a posture of fear, which is I cannot be seen to have imperfections, I cannot be seen to have flaws, there can be no chinks in my armor, and that's, I'm terrified of being judged. But there is something very liberating, and I think it comes from age as well, and from experience, I don't mean experience like a resume, but like just having experiences to realize how little

• 1:42:39Speaker 02

  you know, and how the only way to learn is to constantly be like, skinning your knees, and that that doesn't go away. Like, the older you get, the more you know that you know very little, and that you cannot learn if you are constantly trying to maintain a posture of perfection. That's why I'm a total mess.

• 1:42:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if you don't, if you don't practice skinning your knees, just to like, really bleed the metaphor for all it's worth, if you don't practice skinning your knees, you're not going to develop the callus for increasingly painful grades of sandpaper. This is really awkwardly, uh, overextended now, but the point being, if you operate from a place of fear and want to please this nebulous majority more than you want to please yourself, that's not to say that I'm always, I've always viewed my entire life and all my decisions as a singular locus of control in the palm of my hand, and I care what no one thinks. That's not true, because that's not how humans have evolved. But if you are deferring to

• 1:43:40Tim Ferriss?

  others, your perception of what others want on the small things, then it's going to become harder on the medium things, and then impossible, and then it's going to become harder and impossible on the big things. And for that reason, I find it very valuable to deliberately expose yourself to different types and levels of discomfort, so that you can actually stand up for the important stuff when it matters. Because if you don't practice on the smaller stuff, for instance, like if, if I'm so humiliated by the fact that I like gorgeous female asses, and I'm like, oh my god, and I put something up about, I put up this picture, so this is what I do occasionally, when I'm like, you know what, I think I'm getting a little... A little fat and happy and complacent and maybe I have too much FOMO or something like

• 1:44:24Tim Ferriss?

  that. I will, I remember at one point I this, I put up this photo of this gorgeous Latin ass and female and, and it said like Nalgophilia and it had this in Spanish, this explanation of this fake condition, which was Nalgophilia, Nalgophilia. Anyway, I think it was Nalgophilia. Anyway, las nalgas is like ass in, in Spanish. So anyway, so I put this up on Instagram.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  So it was Spanish, Spanish for ass man is what you're saying?

• 1:44:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. It's Spanish for like ass man syndrome, right? Or ass man disorder. And I put it up and as to be expected, there is immediate outrage. I mean, there are plenty of people who think it's kind of funny. Plenty of people are like, yeah, high five. And then there are plenty of other people who are just completely outraged.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Disgusted with you.

• 1:45:05Tim Ferriss?

  Disgusted with this fact that I find attractive women attractive and.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Yes, outrage is contagious.

• 1:45:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's so, but I left it up because I like to call my audience, number one.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Yes. If you don't want to be here, please, I invite you to unfollow.

• 1:45:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like the sourpuss in the front row. It's like, let me give you, you look like you're unhappy, but you're still here.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:29Tim Ferriss?

  And let me give you, let me give you another reason to leave if I'm not your thing because go find something that's your thing.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  Their opinion is valuable to you. Like I think there's a freedom in saying, I don't need everybody to like me. I think that like, there is something very meaningful in saying like, this is who I am. I'll defend it, but I'm not here to be savaged by you. And honestly, we don't know each other. I don't care what you think anyway. Or maybe that person makes you think more critically about what you did and then you take the big booty picture down. I don't know. But I think you put it up purposefully to see what you were going to get back.

• 1:46:00Tim Ferriss?

  I totally did.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  Entertaining.

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  And there are, now there are other, there are cases, just so I don't sound like a complete dick. There are other cases where I put something up. Without really thinking about it, and I do get feedback and realize, you know what? That's actually a really kind of insensitive thing to put up, and I didn't think it through. Take it down. There are cases when I do that, and people give me, hopefully constructive feedback that isn't just spitting acid into my face, and I take it down. So I do pay attention. At the same time, I try to keep in mind advice that I was given years ago. I don't remember who gave me this advice, but they said, the advice was, it's not about how many people don't get it, it's about how many people get it. So as long as you

• 1:46:44Tim Ferriss?

  have a certain critical mass, whatever that means to you, and there's an article called 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly that everybody should read to this effect, if you're creative, but as long as you have a critical mass, and it could be a very small number, of people who love your stuff, that's all that matters. That's like a pass fail, right? As long as you have that pass, you're green. Instead of focusing on the vast majority who hate your shit. It's like, look, there are millions of people who hate like Christopher Nolan stuff. There are millions of people who can't stand Wes Anderson. It's like, look, some people just aren't going to fucking like Wes Anderson.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  So this is really interesting also, because I think if you're an artist specifically, this is a really important conversation to have with yourself, which is, like, when I first started out at stand-up, you know, this was like kind of the period when like Def Comedy Jam was really popular. And for lack of a better way of articulating, like, black comedy had a very specific like look and feel and style and tempo. And I just wasn't doing that kind of comedy. And I wasn't ever going to be able to do that kind of comedy. It wasn't who I was, it wasn't experientially what I was doing, and I didn't want to lie. And I knew there were comedians who were kind of falling into that stylistic approach to comedy, and it was really very false. You know, they'd kind of be one way offstage and then kind of fall into this character onstage. And there's nothing wrong with trying to connect with an audience, but I just didn't want to copy other people to try to get people to like me. And, you know, for a long time, I really struggled. And then eventually, my

• 1:47:59Speaker 02

  tribe found me. But I was able to stay, oh, now I sound like a self-help book, but like true to who I was, because that was the only way forward. The only way forward as an artist is to be truthful. In the end, your work is not going to be interesting or meaningful if you are trying to emulate somebody else, or trying to figure out what people want from you, or what they like, or what's popular. Meaningful art only lasts, it only connects if it's authentic, and if it comes from your own personal experiences. And until you figure that out, like what that is, it's never going to be interesting. It's never going to be good. I always tell people, it's not, being funny is not really actually the most important part of comedy. Being truthful is because if someone sees a good show, they go, that guy was really funny.

• 1:48:41Speaker 02

  But when you tell the truth about yourself, people go, oh, my God, holy shit. That guy like spoke to me or about me or was so vulnerable in that moment like that was amazing. And that's the difference between good comedy and great comedy or between good art and great art or writing or anything.

• 1:48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's truth. That's, that's advice that I've also heard for screenwriting and many other things. I'm so glad you said that and reminded me of that.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  You have to please yourself. I mean, you just have to please yourself, period, because it might not go your way anyway. But the worst thing is creating something or figure out what people want and then creating some piece of shit, some like crass, you know, glib, solicitous piece of shit and people don't buy it anyway. Why not make something you love and then people don't buy it? At least it was something that you loved and you're not embarrassed by it.

• 1:49:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right. You said, you know, it may not work out. And if you're in the creative game, at least from what I've seen, particularly in the beginning, most things are not going to work out.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing ever goes your way.

• 1:49:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So you might as well have one person who's happy about the process and.

• 1:49:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. Exactly. That was what I was saying about engagement. At least the experience was satisfying.

• 1:49:44Tim Ferriss?

  And I would also, I feel like I'm talking too much, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I saw it.

• 1:49:51Tim Ferriss?

  But the other thought I might underscore for folks that is kind of practical, tactical from a competitive standpoint. If you're trying to play someone else's game by taking on a persona, someone who is actually, for instance, in the Def Comedy Jam example that you gave, right? If somebody's on stage and they are playing their game, that is who they are, you are never going to be able to take on like the cognitive load and the fatigue of pretending to be that type of person and beat someone who is good at. That game, you're just not going to. You're not, you're so right.

• 1:50:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're just not gonna win. So it's like you will not ultimately in any field that is competitive, which is effectively every field that people get paid for. If you want to be the best, you actually, you have to harness your latent abilities. And or you're fucked. Like you can't, like you mentioned on the engineering front. I mean, there's so many places where, for instance, in writing, it's like, I could try to be John McPhee, who writes for the New Yorker or one of these folks, but I can't be those people. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to ever be the wordsmith that say a Tolstoy was. But do I like teaching? Do I obsessively think about teaching and deconstructing things that are complex?

• 1:51:14Tim Ferriss?

  I do. So I can use books as a medium for teaching and think of it that way. Because if I try to out McPhee McPhee, I'm gonna get my face ripped off. And well, you know, this is, we're talking about creativity and creative pursuits, which, by the way, almost everything is, even if you're, if you meet people who are the top of their game in accounting, the top of the game, I'm not talking about shady money laundering shit. I'm just saying, in accounting, in technology, there's an element, there's certainly an element of creativity. If you're looking at the people who are really at the top and innovating in any way, doing exceptional work. You have done so many different things, acting, comedy, directing, writing, activism.

• 1:51:58Tim Ferriss?

  You've been a host, you've done voiceover, you have engaged in so many different acts of creation. I want to talk about short films, films, and so on. I want to talk about movies because as long-term listeners will know, I've been sort of teasing with the idea, which by the way, just means procrastinating of.

• 1:52:25Tim Ferriss?

  Writing some short films and I'm still at step zero and I'm ashamed of that. But

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  No shame, there's no shame.

• 1:52:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. How did you decide to get into film and why? Film is hard. Why do it?

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  It is hard. It is tough. So that's a really good question because I feel like there's the, you know, that like really humiliating kind of clam about, you know, well, I'm an actor, but what I really want to do is direct. And it feels very cliched. I feel like it was more organic for me because I, you know, I, again, I wasn't someone who kind of, I didn't go to film school and I also don't think I had the hubris to think like, oh, I've done this a couple, for a couple of years now, I can direct. It was, I love movies, like, you know, we were talking earlier, I was raised by a single dad and I was one of those kids who like, I'd go, I'd go with my dad to see like Die Hard or Road Warrior and way too early in the age, like super inappropriate. You know, like when I was in high school, I'd seen the Terminator, like the first Terminator from like 20 or 30 times. Like I, I just loved movies. I'd go to the theater, I'd buy a matinee ticket and I'd stay in the theater until like eight o'clock at night.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  And I would just like watch movie after movie after movie. So it just came out of a, a real end user's love for film. Like I was just someone who was transported by movies. And then when I left Talk Soup, um, I had been writing on that show and there was a void. And I wrote a script that I was developing with a company and I just kept talking about how I thought it should look and how I thought it should feel. And, you know, it was just so much more specific than being a writer and they, they were like, you know, you should direct. This is clearly like a movie that you should direct. And I hadn't really thought about it, but I was just so intertwined with the material and what I wanted it to feel like. Because I know what movies that I love make me feel like, that I wanted that, someone to create that experience for other people.

• 1:54:09Speaker 02

  And I just realized like, I didn't know what directing entailed. I didn't have any idea about what that was going to be like. And I just went away to, and started trying to learn about directing. And so. I kind of would call people that I knew that were directors. If I was working on something, I would ask to come back to set when I wasn't working so I could hang out and shadow, which is where you just kind of hang around behind a director and watch them work. Ended up shadowing with some really incredible people. Ended up spending several days on The Wire in its last season.

• 1:54:35Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just got to just be on the other side of a process that can be relatively opaque when you're an actor. You just kind of show up and say your lines and leave. And then I started making shorts. And I guess this is going to sound very glib, but because I'm sure I have resources available to me that lots of people don't. I do believe in it. Like, I just believe in personal aggression. Like, I just believe in doing stuff.

• 1:54:57Tim Ferriss?

  Said, "personal aggression"?

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  Personal aggression. Like, I just believe that if you want to make a movie, just start making a movie. And I don't mean like, "Oh, get a camera and start shooting it." But what I do mean is like, be hard on yourself. Learn, read, learn, watch, study, think critically, ask people questions. And then make a movie, and then let it be shitty, and then make another one, and let that one be shitty, and keep doing it until you get better at it. Like, the first short film I made was, and it's an abomination, and we'll be never see the light of day. I had no idea what I was doing. But that did make me not want to be a director. It just made me realize I needed to learn more. And then I started to feel like I was more ready, and I was like, "I need to make some stuff." So, first thing was, I did a Comedy Central special, and I took the money that would have been my salary, and I used it to make a, like, a little short music video that opens the comedy special. It wasn't anything that was mandated by the network. I was like, "I want

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  to do something different." So, I wrote this song, and I performed it, and I made a music video. And that was kind of the first thing I directed. I just used the crew that was already working on the special and shot this video with them.

• 1:55:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's really smart. So, I would imagine, not to interject, but you piggybacked on something that was in your main line of business, so to speak.

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:56:02Tim Ferriss?

  And I imagine you saved a lot of costs by doing that, right?

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, like, the crew was already going to come up the day before and leave the day after to shoot the special. And we'd already rented the cameras and everything like that. But I still had to pay them for the extra work. I took my fee, and I used it to pay everybody else. And then because I didn't have any more money after that, I I learned how to edit it. I edited it myself and I delivered it to the network because I couldn't afford to to pay for additional edit time. And then after that, I thought, OK, I want to do more of this. So then I I rented a camera, I rented like a can of 5D and I had some friends who were in bands. And again, like, it sounds fancy, but everybody probably knows somebody who does something. Just because I had some friends who were in a famous band doesn't mean that people out there don't have friends who are in bands. So I I just called some buddies of mine that were in bands and I said, hey, if if you

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  let me come on tour with you, I will make you a free music video, just a piece of fan art you can use in it however you like. I'm not going to charge anybody any money for it, but just I I want to make something and I want to make something for you. And so I ended up going on the road with Silver Sun Pickups for a couple of dates and then spending a day with Clutch when they were performing in Anaheim. And then I just gave them, I just cut music videos and and delivered it to them. And so then I just started to have like examples of what I could do.

• 1:57:15Tim Ferriss?

  Why music videos instead of something else?

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  It just felt like a way to get more people to see it. I had done that first music video for my Comedy Central special, which was really like a comedic video, but then I was like, oh, I really like working in this space. And a lot of directors come out of music video because you can be kind of radically creative in that space. You don't have need to have any like narrative linearity. You can experiment, you can be radical, it could just be like a series of images. And I also thought, well, people who who like this band, I love this band, will want to see something that about them and it'll be a great way for people to see something. And then hopefully I can tell a story at the same time. And so I did three of those. And then I did a little action short, like I just kind of kept making stuff. Every time I did it, I learned something. Every time I did it, I took a bigger risk creatively.

• 1:57:58Tim Ferriss?

  How long are these shorts?

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  Like, three to five minutes.

• 1:58:01Tim Ferriss?

  Three to five minutes. Can you think of any particular lessons that you took away from any one of those?

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I think a lot of it was just skill building. How do you frame up and how do you make choices and how do you do coverage? And and then how do you edit? Like, a lot of it was just really tactical, as you would say, practical tactical.

• 1:58:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh God, I have my pet phrases. This is also my weakness.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  Never heard that. Like, I'm gonna steal it. Stealing it from Tim.

• 1:58:27Tim Ferriss?

  My pet phrases, oh God.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  And then a lot of it was just getting confident with my own ability and my ability to articulate what I wanted from other people. You know, just how do the other jobs on a set work? Who does what? What do I need? Oh God, this didn't work. You know, I didn't work because I didn't have this kind of a person on set. Like, you know, I was shooting digitally and then on one show, on one of my things that I shot, like, we didn't have, like, a tech on set to, like, to help me make sure that it looked the way that I wanted it to look, like, that the levels were set properly. So when I got home to edit it, like, I had some problems. But like, it wasn't, they weren't catastrophic problems. It were just because, you know, I wasn't making Star Wars. You know what I mean? I was just able to be like, well, this is what it is, and I'm gonna make this and move on. And, and then I was getting ready to, I really wanted to do a feature. I had some material I'd written, but it was kind of gonna be an expensive movie.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  But I was still shadowing, so I had a friend who had a show called Penny Dreadful. John Logan, who created Penny Dreadful. I'd met him at Comic Con. I'd hosted the panel for that show. And he was like, hey, why don't you, you love the show, you should come visit us in Ireland. And I remember thinking, like, to myself, people always say that, and then you always say, yeah, and then you never do it. I was like, I'm gonna do it. I'm fucking going to Ireland, man. That's, I'm gonna be cool. I want to, I want to, I'm gonna be a cool kid for once in my life. And so I ended up going over, visiting Penny Dreadful, and Vikings shot right up the road. So I got them to let me visit that set. I just hung out. I, like, passed out sandwiches and, you know, lifted stuff and asked questions and watched them work. And, and then while I was over there, I met a bunch of Irish actors and one of them, two of them, actually. One was a, was an actor, composer, and one was a writer, a screenwriter and an actor.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  And we ended up making a short film together in Ireland at the end of 2014. That was my first narrative short, my first kind of story-driven short. It was just great. It was just like, I was like, oh, this is like totally who I am. This is what I want to do with my life.

• 2:00:10Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you film in Ireland?

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  In Galway, in Galway, which is the far.

• 2:00:14Tim Ferriss?

  Beautiful town.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, such a great place.

• 2:00:16Tim Ferriss?

  I lived there for a month in 2005. Oh, yeah.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  Amazing. Oh, that's so cool.

• 2:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible arts festival there. It's a really beautiful spot.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's like the arts center of Ireland. They've got a beautiful film festival in the summer. They've got an arts festival, you know, like, local theater, and it was just a great experience. And, you know, things went wrong and things went right, but. You know, we got it in the can in three days and it was just super cool and personal. And then that same writer who had written that short had a feature he had already written. And he asked me if I wanted to take a look at it and it was just a perfect first film. And that that's the film that became Access.

• 2:00:52Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I want to dig in to Access, but before we get to that, you're taking these trips, doing these music videos. During that period, did you save up for that period, knowing that you would need to work out of your savings? Are you depending on royalties and other streams to pay your bills? How are you covering the necessities of life as you're handing out sandwiches and doing all these various things?

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  Well, it wasn't it wasn't as prolonged of a period as it sounds like. I was on hiatus. So like, I was working on The Talk at the time and we get a month off every year. So I went in that month. But I think if I was talking to a layperson who didn't work in television, I would say like, you know, if if what you want is to grow in whatever field you're interested in, like, just create a space for that. Make that your vacation. It wasn't like I like was like riding around in a limousine. Like, I just flew over and I hung around, you know, for like a week and watched people work. And it wasn't any more or less burdensome than taking a vacation. But one thing I was more interested in doing as I got older, and we started with this in the beginning, it's like, you said it, and I I think we kind of went past it, but

• 2:02:01Speaker 02

  it's so interesting to me, is I just really wanted more discomfort in my life. It's just very easy, the older you get to be like, you know, get in car, go to work, eat bag lunch, get in car, go to gym, go home, eat food, watch TV, go to bed. And then you just think like, am I growing? Like, is it like, any of this interesting? Am I gonna, you know what I mean? Like, I have one life and I'm just spending it in this like torpor. And so for that, I was going to a place where, I mean, I knew one guy at Petty Dreadful, but I didn't know anybody at this other show. And I just kind of cold called them and said, can I come visit? And they were super gracious.

• 2:02:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so curious, just to interrupt you yet again, what does that email say?

• 2:02:40Speaker 02

  It says, hi, and again, I understand that maybe this is going to feel a little rarefied. Hi, I'm an American actress. I've worked on these shows. I've been shadowing to direct for a long time. I would be really grateful if I could come and visit your show for a few days and shadow. And I will be as unobtrusive and invisible as I possibly can. And I'll be here these days and I understand if you can't accommodate me, but I would really be grateful. And I think it helped in my particular case because I had tweeted a lot about how much I loved Vikings. So they kind of knew that I was a big fan of the show and I did some tweeting from set. You know, I kind of paid my way in like flacking their show for them, but.

• 2:03:18Tim Ferriss?

  Just to, I'm not over caffeinated, I swear to God. I'm just, you're making so many important points that I just want to pause and help, well, as much for myself as anyone else, just people to reflect on. So what you did in terms of tweeting, people might say, well, I don't have a verified account and nobody's going to pay attention to one tweet in the Twitter feed of 10,000 if it's a popular TV show. But I can tell you from personal experience that you could, for instance, write something for Medium or for fill in the blank outlet that has a high Google, in other words, page rank.

• 2:03:57Tim Ferriss?

  And that many of the producers, actors and so on will have Google alerts or other alerts set that deliver to their inboxes, relevant media that mention, say, the show or the actors. And you do not need to be a famous actress or an author or any of those things to do that.

• 2:04:17Speaker 02

  All you need to do is work at the highest possible caliber of quality that you can. I mean, I think you also touched on this about the idea that people are like more interested in being expeditious than they are and being good. I think that this holds very, very true for this business. A lot of people have made headway because they did something that nobody saw, but when they, when people asked them what they did, the thing they were able to show was extraordinary. And I don't mean like expensive extraordinary, I just mean unique and personal and crafted with care. And so if that's something that you wrote, or if it's something that you made, if you made, you know, the. The number of, I mean, this is not the best example, but it's a, it's a good one. Twenty years ago, there was this videotape going around Hollywood of these guys in an apartment.

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  And it was a VHS tape, that's how long ago it was. And people were dubbing it and sending and giving to friends. Of these guys in an apartment, of these three black guys, where the one guy goes up and hits the little inner comma, goes, was a, and then the other guy goes, was a, and the third guy goes, that was a short film that some guy made on like a digital camera. None of them were famous. They were just some guys in New York. That ended up being that Budweiser campaign.

• 2:05:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy. I had no idea. That was the origin.

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  It was a short film. It was a two and a half minute short film that was just funny. We didn't know these guys. No one knew who they were and they didn't have any connections. And I think it was just about doing something that felt original and personal. And I get it, just comes back to like, don't try to figure out what people want. Just do what's interesting and important to you and then keep doing it until you come up with something extraordinary. And that will be your calling card. It may not happen as fast as you want, or as aggressively as you want, or as expansively as you want. But in the meantime, you're doing cool shit, which should be your primary goal in any event. When I made Access, honestly, I just wanted to make a movie to show people I could make a movie. I wanted to make the best movie I could and I was very rigorous in leveraging the resources that I had to the best of my

• 2:06:09Speaker 02

  ability. But I, I don't know that I had a lot of expectation that a lot of people would see it. It's just because I made the best movie I could that, you know, it got all of this attention. But I don't, I think I was going in like, this is gonna be a massive hit. I was like, I'm gonna make this little movie. And then to the next one, when people say, well, what have you done? I could be like, look at this little thing I made, you know? So I think you have to always be focused on the results, not the result, on the thing and not the result. Because the result is directly tied to the quality of the thing. So it's not about infamy. It's about fame and fame is based on quality of your work. So just be doing excellent shit all the time. And eventually, one of those things will connect with other people.

• 2:06:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, not to sound like a fortune cookie on top of all of that, but like the only uncrowded market is great. There's always a fucking market for great.

• 2:06:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. Be radically great. Like, don't be like, I saw 10 things like this, let me do the 11th thing. Be brave enough to court failure. That's probably when you're going to do something great.

• 2:07:05Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And if you are really in love with something, and I'll give two examples. If you're really in love with, say, screenplays and film, or if you're really in love and passionate about, maybe is a better word, possessed by, right, technology investing, early-stage technology investing, two phenomena, two companies, at this point certainly, that are worth looking at and just investigating the stories of, demonstrate very clearly what you can do if you are just rejected by the establishment, or if you want to not operate within the existing power structure. So the two examples are the blacklist, look up Franklin Leonard and the blacklist.

• 2:07:44Speaker 02

  Example, absolutely.

• 2:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  And then the second is, and we don't have to get into both of these right now, the second is, just by coincidence, also has the list at the end, but Angel List and Naval Ravikant. And people can look up, The Avenging Angel was the title of his interview in his alumni magazine at Dartmouth, in fact, but I get excited when I hear these types of stories, so they should check them out. Let's come back to Axis. What is Axis? And did you have anybody try to talk you out of doing Axis?

• 2:08:16Speaker 02

  Well, so Axis is a thriller about an expatriate Irish actor living in Los Angeles, who has had a lot of success, kind of explosive success in his youth, and has really just used all of his resources to just wreck his life. You know, he's a drunk, and he's a drug addict, and he's terrible at relationships, and he's a dick to everybody. And when we meet him, he's trying to turn his life around. And it's really about a guy who's not a bad person, but he's done some bad stuff, which I think almost every human being can relate to. You know, I mean, we all have a little bit of a demon inside of us, and I think this is just a guy who He's been frail in the past, but he's really trying to be a better version of himself. But slowly, over the course of an afternoon, and the movie takes place in real time as he's

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  driving through Los Angeles, his life starts to unravel. And it's really about him trying to hold things together, trying to be a better person, trying to be a better person in his relationships, with his family, with people that he works with, just trying to be better. It's really dark, it's very funny. I happen to think, and I'm sure I'll get some letters about this, but I happen to find that addicts are really entertaining people.

• 2:09:22Speaker 02

  And I don't mean they're funny, like laugh at them. I find that typically people who have broken themselves down are just more honest than people who are trying to be perfect all the time. And so, you know, he's a guy who's self-aware, he's aware of the mistakes he's made. So it's a very darkly funny movie, and then it's very twisty. It's a thriller, so it's got a lot of secrets. And the most unique aspect of the movie is that the whole thing takes place in real time, inside a car, as he's driving through Los Angeles. So the lead actor is the only actor on screen, and all the other actors are voice actors on the phone with him.

• 2:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  How would you describe your experience of being involved with this film?

• 2:09:57Speaker 02

  It was so wonderful. You asked if people tried to dissuade me from doing it, and the short answer is, in Hollywood, the way that people dissuade you from doing stuff is just by not helping you, just by not engaging with you. You don't even get no, you just get like silence.

• 2:10:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  But this happened very quickly. So I didn't have a traditional kind of like discouraging period of frustration with trying to put this movie together, because I read it in like August or September of 2015, and I was kind of at peak engagement at the time in terms of work. Like I was on four shows, and I really only had a little bit of time off in 2016. And I realized if I didn't make the movie in this one single week in May of 2016, that I wasn't going to be able to make it at all in that year, and I'd have to push to the next year. And so then it just became about hitting that target. Like, how can I hit this target? So I never even went like the traditional way of trying to find like people to finance the movie in a studio, because they were going to say like, we don't know who this actor is, like he's unknown, can we put somebody famous in this

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  role, can it be Ryan Gosling? And then can it not be with just him on camera, can we have other actors in the movie? And then can we make it not in a car? Can we make it? I mean, like, we're just gonna, you know, the whole kind of concept of the film was gonna unravel. You know, it's very typical in Hollywood where people are so risk averse that they take all of the edge and singularity out of a project. So very quickly, I realized that I was gonna have to probably crowdfund the movie if I wanted to do it my way and on my time, on my timeframe. So in March of 2016, I had my like first exploratory conversation with the people around me and with Kickstarter. They have people over there who are kind of like around to like help you kind of figure out how to put a project together. I built the campaign in three weeks. I launched it in April.

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  And one of the rules about crowdfunding and Kickstarter specifically, it's not a hard and fast rule. It's not like in rules that they enforce, but it's just like a rule of thumb that if you raise half of your money in the first week, you'll probably fund fully. So we had raised half of our money in that first week and then I started hiring people on the film. And we did raise a lot of money for a feature. It was about $200,000 that we raised. And so that was what we had to make the movie. So originally, it was, we were gonna make it in nine days, but I realized if I made it faster, I'd have more money available to me like daily. I'd have like my daily resource load would be higher. So we cut the schedule from nine days to seven days, which is incredibly aggressive for a feature. Whenever I tell people I made it in seven days, they ask, well, how, is it short?

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  So we had to be really aggressive. So we ended up doing it in this way that was so terrifying and so breakneck, but so exhilarating, which is that we shot the first 15 pages of the movie in the first day and then we shot the next 65 pages of the movie. It was actually, you shot about 17 pages on the first day to about 67 pages on day two through seven. And that meant that the actor had to do 67 pages of dialogue a day. For people that don't know, typically on a movie, you do like between three and six pages of dialogue a day. So he was essentially doing the entire movie all the way through every day, locked in a hot car with no air conditioning in, in May, beginning of June, essentially in Los Angeles.

• 2:13:01Speaker 02

  And it was just so intense, but we shot three cameras. So by day three, we essentially had the entire movie in the can because we were doing the whole thing all the way through from three angles. So by day two, we had six angles and we had the whole movie on, on wax, on the digital version of wax. And so then the next four days were just about kind of creative play. And I think that what the result is, is I made a movie in a week. It's experimental, it's unusual, it's transporting and strange. And Going in, I thought, I'll never make a movie this way again. But now I would make a movie that way again, because I just didn't have any time to be afraid or feel death. You know, I mean, I just, there was no time to be anxious. I just had to go. It was wonderful. It was like one of the seminal experiences of my life.

• 2:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  There's definitely some magic in the ether when you have a hyper aggressive deadline. There's just something that happens to the space time continuum and what you can achieve.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:58Tim Ferriss?

  When everything gets compressed that intensely.

• 2:14:03Speaker 02

  Certain things just come to the surface, like certain things are thrown into relief. And it's not like you can't make mistakes, but I think you get a clarity sometimes because you can't dither. There is no time for paralysis by analysis. I am making this decision. I'm making it definitively. It may be the wrong one, but I'm going to lean all the way into it and we're going to see what happens. And also because we shot the whole movie all the way through, if there were errors, I had the next day to recalibrate in a way that you don't get when you typically make a movie for people, again, who don't know, you know, I'm an actor as well. So like when I'm on a TV show or I'm doing a movie or whatever, I'll leave at the end of the day and go, ah, shit, man, I wish I'd done this with that scene. I wish I'd tried this. But every day, the next day, we got to wake up

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  and go, you know what? We have a whole new bite at this apple. We're going to do it a whole different way today. And so at the end, I really felt like we really fully explored the material, which we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd been making a movie in seven days and not doing it with this kind of volume approach that we had.

• 2:15:00Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm looking at text in a book that you contributed to, happens to be this.

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  Is it a book of men?

• 2:15:09Tim Ferriss?

  This fantastic book. Oh, let me see. Here it is. For the, for those of you who get the, for those of you who get the what about Bob reference, there's this groundbreaking new book. Oh, yes. Here it is. And there's an entire shelf of the therapist's own book. Richard Drivas, in any case, the question to what you would put on a gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message to millions or billions of people. In this case, what you selected was a Jack Canfield quote, everything you want is on the other side of fear. And many of the stories that you've told so far illustrate that certainly. What are you afraid of now? Or what fear? Are you hoping, say, in the next year to get on the other side of? Does anything come to mind?

• 2:15:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting because like I think like the one that feels the most obvious is like, I'm afraid I won't get to make another film, but I I'm not really legitimately afraid of that because I feel like I'm just going to put this next movie together and make it like, you know, like I think now that I've done one, like no help and no assistance from anybody, like the next one's going to be cake. I mean, I had help, I had my team, but I didn't have the kind of traditional Hollywood help where I had like a team, like of agents kind of making magic. Like, it was really just like a scrappy little group of filmmakers doing this film with me, the the lead actor and screenwriter and my creative executives. It was a small group of people, you know, completely outside of the system. But it's not that I'm fearless. It may just be that the things that are interesting to me now don't engender fear the way that they used to.

• 2:16:33Tim Ferriss?

  I can also tackle this from a different angle, which is, what is one of your greatest struggles right now? What do you struggle with, if anything?

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  My main struggle is just always like being as effective as I want to be. You know what I mean? I'm just super ambitious. I have highly developed. I don't mean like I'm good at it. I mean, like, it's very far advanced workaholism. I mean, like, I have pathological workaholism. It's like a sickness. And whenever I say I'm a workaholic, people always laugh and I go like, look, it's a problem. You know, I don't know how to rest. It's not that I don't like to play. I do like play. I don't think I have any time to rest. And and I worry that it makes me, it could result in me not being an interesting artist because I think you need to play and to daydream and to rest and to experience things, to be able to tell interesting stories. You know, no one wants to hear about, you know, your daily trek from your home to your office. It's just not compelling.

• 2:17:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I remember, you know, I think it was Amanda Palmer who said this. I apologize to whoever said it if I'm misattributing, but the Amanda Palmer, creative musician extraordinaire. And she said, you know, I think it was her who said in order to have.

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  She married to Neil Gaiman?

• 2:17:39Tim Ferriss?

  She is, yeah.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  Great daughter of all time?

• 2:17:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. For those of you.

• 2:17:43Speaker 02

  After you and after me, then him?

• 2:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I will, I will bow at the feet of Neil Gaiman as a writer. Everybody should listen to his audio book of the graveyard book narrated by him. He has also the most soothing voice imaginable, but I digress. What the fuck was I saying?

• 2:17:59Speaker 02

  So Amanda Palmer has a quote about-

• 2:18:00Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes, that if art imitates life, in order to create art, you have to have a life, right?

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And like-

• 2:18:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm paraphrasing, it's butchered, but makes a point.

• 2:18:12Speaker 02

  Like, you can't, you know, I'm sure there are other theories. There's a very famous French writer, it's not South, it's somebody, anyway, about like, have a bourgeois life and be radical in your work, but I actually don't think, I actually think that you, you need to be fully engaged in your life in order to be an interesting artist. Because you need to be alive to be able to speak about the human condition.

• 2:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  So if you have advanced, early onset workaholism, right? You've, you've really turned this into a default mode. Are you doing anything and manage that? Or create more slack in the system for the daydreaming and so on?

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  I mean, it's like, that's my daily practice. That's my like, that's my one day at a time. It's like, just constantly trying to remind myself to rest. I engage socially a lot more than I used to.

• 2:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  And by socially, you mean out in the real world?

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, like out in the real world. Like, I go out and I, and I try to not just be like, you know, I just had a period of life where I was just like, up, gym, work, sleep. I just remember one day, I was like, I'm gonna die. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna die of boredom. I'm bored, I bore myself, you know what I mean? And so, you know, like, I, I think I try to court danger in a, in a safe way. It's not like I'm jumping out of play with no parachute, or bullfighting, or bare-knuckle brawling in an alley, you know, filled with needles, but I am trying to just like be, not always have my head in my computer, but the reason that people are workaholics, well, there's lots of reasons, I'm sure, social pressures, but for me, I just get this big serotonin release. Is it serotonin? What's the brain? What's the satisfaction drug?

• 2:19:47Tim Ferriss?

  Dopamine, perhaps?

• 2:19:48Speaker 02

  Dopamine, that's it. Dop- dopamine. Serotonin in sleepy, sleepy time. Yeah, dopamine. I get a dopamine release when I complete tasks. And I just, you know, I get, I get higher and higher, the more that I execute. I find executing in and of itself really enjoyable. So I'm just trying to apply that aggression to leisure. Like, can I get the same satisfaction? If I make a to-do list and one of the things is have fun, will I get the same dopamine release if I had a lot of fun?

• 2:20:14Tim Ferriss?

  How can I turn fun into work most effectively?

• 2:20:18Speaker 02

  And then be like, ah, I don't know about you guys, but I just fucking crushed my to do list. What? I realized, even though I can feel very harried, it's interesting to me to be feeling like a part of being on this planet is like fully engaging and doing everything I can do and everything I'm interested in. Because I don't want to look back and be like, man, I should have tried that. I'm happy to look back and say, man, I tried that and it went terribly for me. That's a perfectly comfortable space for me to be like, man, I tried that and I completely shit the bed. But what I find very uncomfortable is the idea that I always wanted to do something and I never did it. And so that's what I fear. What I fear is not trying, not experiencing all the things that I want to experience.

• 2:20:58Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think your life, because you have, you live so aggressively. You milk the most out of the hours that you have. How would you or your life be different if you didn't have exercise as an element? Do you think?

• 2:21:16Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting because I really, I really love working out, but there's a constant battle for me between like being effective with work. And I'm the queen of like getting up at like 5am to work out, putting on my workout clothes and then being in front of my computer at four o'clock in the afternoon and I haven't moved. Like I mean, that's just like my, that's just a normal day. Like didn't, didn't move, didn't eat, didn't do anything, just been in front of the computer for like 11 hours. But it just, it's just such a great stress manager. And I also think that there's another thing there, which is it just again, like puts you back in your body. You know, this like thing that's carrying your brain around and making you effective. And I think that with

• 2:21:58Speaker 02

  everything, the, all of the stimuli that we experience nowadays, all the pictures and the images of perfection that are coming in at a much faster and more voluminous pace. It's really easy to fall into like an abusive relationship with exercise. Either doing it so much that you're hurting yourself or not doing it and then engaging in that inner monologue about how you're like worthless and you can't get your shit together. And I don't have either of those things. I just know I'm happier and better when I work out. I've finally dropped the monologue about like, you know, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not a good person if I don't crush a workout. I just try to do it every day because I know I'm better mentally. And I also cheat completely. Like I have my phone, I took a hike today. You know, I have my phone with me and like I stopped every 10 minutes to like write something down. So, you know, I'm not really like fully, I'm not being in the moment when I'm working

• 2:22:41Speaker 02

  out. A lot of times I'm stopping like hundreds of times to make notes and remind myself of stuff I have to do or put stuff on my calendar.

• 2:22:47Tim Ferriss?

  Do you still use Concept 2 or a rowing machine?

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  I still use my ergometer, my Concept 2 ergometer. I have had it since 2000. It is 18 years old. I have never had to repair it or replace any parts. It's the best, it's the single best piece of equipment that I have. My whole gym now, I have my whole gym in my place. I have a TRX bodyweight system. I have two kettlebells, a 25 and a 35. I have my ergometer. I have battle ropes that are attached to my dining room table. And I have one big power step that I just use to do like pistols and stuff like that. And I get everything done with those five things.

• 2:23:20Tim Ferriss?

  That is fantastic. So pistols, for those who don't know, those are one-legged squats. And they can be very, very difficult, depending on how you go about it.

• 2:23:29Speaker 02

  But a adventurous step can help you because it could just kind of do like single leg step downs until you build up your quad and your glute strength to do pistols.

• 2:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Could you describe for us a recent workout or what a prototypical workout of yours might look like?

• 2:23:42Speaker 02

  I hiked today. That was just like a 90-minute hike, which was just more about like feeling groovy. But right now I'm obsessed with my ergometer. I kind of go through periods of like not rowing and then periods of rowing really aggressively. And this is going to be right up your alley, Tim.

• 2:23:54Tim Ferriss?

  I'm ready.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  This is like bullseye for you and your audience. I started going to a naturopath, so I'd be like supplementing differently. And I started taking glutathione. And I'm rowing like faster now than I did in my twenties. Like I just keep getting personal bests. I'm a rower. It's confusing. I'm a lot older than I, I'm a lot older than I was when I was rowing competitively. And I just keep like knocking like 30 seconds and then 45 seconds and then a minute and 10 seconds off my rowing time. So now I'm just obsessed with like hitting personal best every time I row.

• 2:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, let's dig into this. So the glutathione, how is it, for those who aren't familiar, glutathione is thought of, a simple way to think of it, or the way it's often described is as a master antioxidant of sorts. How are you having it administered as it being?

• 2:24:41Speaker 02

  Sometimes I get, oh, this is so inside baseball. Sometimes I get IVs. I get IVs if I really like, if I'm wrecked, like if I travel a lot or if I went to Coachella.

• 2:24:49Tim Ferriss?

  And is that, is that pure, is that, is that just glutathione? Or are you doing that at the?

• 2:24:54Speaker 02

  B vitamins. I could do it at the end of my IV. I'll get like B vitamins and like, you know.

• 2:24:58Tim Ferriss?

  And a glutathione push at the end?

• 2:25:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. You can get like fat soluble, we can get this like fat soluble glutathione that you just take. You just like gulp down. It tastes like axle grease.

• 2:25:09Tim Ferriss?

  I, I wait, is this the, uh, is this, what is this company? Uh, lip- it's lipospheric. That's the name, lipospheric glutathione.

• 2:25:17Speaker 02

  Liposporic glutathione, yeah.

• 2:25:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I remember.

• 2:25:19Speaker 02

  I'm just attributing it to the glutathione because before the glutathione, I was running slow and now I'm just like a jackrabbit. So it could be something else, but I'm gonna say it's the glutathione.

• 2:25:28Tim Ferriss?

  I will warn people in advance. I had some of this lipospheric glutathione at one point and I gave it to a friend of mine. And I think it might've been, for those who know my buddy Kevin Rose, since I like to mention him, even misattribute things to him just for fun. I think I gave him one and he said something like, what is this horse semen? It does have a weird, has a very weird consistency and.

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  It's terror. No, my father calls it axle grease. That's what he's like, give me this axle grease. Cause I gave it to my dad. I was like, I think this would really help you and, and you're supposed to take it in liquid, but he's just been eating on a spoon. He's a better man than I.

• 2:26:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I just like squeegee it out of the little packet.

• 2:26:06Speaker 02

  To your mouth?

• 2:26:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to my mouth.

• 2:26:09Speaker 02

  I take it with like about two ounces of kombucha in the morning, so I don't have to think about it.

• 2:26:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:14Speaker 02

  But you're like, I take so, I mean, I'm sure you're like this, or maybe, maybe after all of that experimentation on yourself, you just get up and have a bowl of like, Frosted Flakes in the morning, Tim, but you know, it's like I do that and I have my bowl of supplements, that I have my fish oil, then I have my curcumin, and then I have my turmeric. And like by the end of the morning, like I, I've supplemented, it's like a banquet. Like I don't even need to eat. I've taken so many crappy tablets.

• 2:26:37Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Just do, just hit pause again. So is the exercise before breakfast, is it the first thing you do? What is your first ideal morning? What's the first 90 minutes, 60 to 90 minutes look like?

• 2:26:49Speaker 02

  Espresso shot, glutathione.

• 2:26:51Tim Ferriss?

  What time, what time do you wake up?

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  Uh, depends on the day, like, you know, between like six and seven.

• 2:26:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:26:57Speaker 02

  I used to pick up a lot earlier, but I, I let one of my shows go, so I don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn every day anymore. So it's like between like, you know, like six and seven o'clock.

• 2:27:03Tim Ferriss?

  And then.

• 2:27:04Speaker 02

  And I have to work out in the morning or I won't, I won't, I won't work out at all.

• 2:27:07Tim Ferriss?

  So you wake up, you have espresso shot, glutathione with.

• 2:27:11Speaker 02

  I always have coffee before I work out, like without fail.

• 2:27:13Tim Ferriss?

  And then the glutathione with the kombucha. Any particular type of kombucha that's your preferred axle grease mixer?

• 2:27:21Speaker 02

  I like Better Bootch and I like, was it Life Aid? I think is one of the other. I love kombucha. I'm very slutty when it comes to kombucha. I'll drink any kombucha. Big kombucha fan.

• 2:27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, so then you buckle down to workout and this is gonna sound like I'm just looking for opportunities to plug, which maybe I am, but the, you described your, your, the, one of your workouts, the concept to like mid-distance 5K rows, punctuated by short-distance 2K HIIT sprints, high-intensity interval training. Yeah, high-intensity interval training with, with a 10K long-distance row once or twice a week. Would that be a current workout?

• 2:27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's typically my workouts and then I'll do like a set of five, five by 25 kettlebell sets. Like, you know, like I'll get up in the morning and just do 125 kettlebell swings in front of the television. And then sometimes I'll do a TRX workout because I didn't have really a way to simulate pull-ups. So that was like, that was why I got the TRX. I could do, that was like the one thing I didn't have in here was a pull-up bar.

• 2:28:17Tim Ferriss?

  Is the TRX attached to a door? Is it?

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such like a railing, like an upstairs railing and it just hangs off of the railing. And that's it. I mean, I tried, I tried to keep it like relatively simple so that I'll do it. I don't really train with anybody because I just can't, I can manage the hour workout, but I can't manage the transit between my home and a, I don't have enough time to do that too. You know what I mean? Like I've got the hour. I don't have two hours. So I don't go to a gym anymore because I just, I just would be, I wouldn't have the time for it.

• 2:28:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the transit time that.

• 2:28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, transit time was what killed me. You know, it's like, I have an hour to work out, but I don't have a half hour on either side of that to go to the gym.

• 2:28:51Tim Ferriss?

  Do you still watch shows when you row?

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:28:54Tim Ferriss?

  Any recent favorites or what are you watching currently?

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  Like fantastic junk. I mean, some good stuff. Like I love, I, I watched The Walking Dead, Fear of the Walking Dead. That's always really good workout shows. Right now I'm watching The Magicians during my workouts. And then when I finish that, what will I watch after that? Sometimes I watch stuff that's on streaming services because I hate to have to, when I'm rowing, I don't want to have to watch commercials and I can't stop to fast forward because I'm trying to beat my previous row time. So like I'll stream, like stream stuff on Hulu, like X-Files or Handmaid's Tale. Or I just watched a show called Deutschland 83. That was pretty great. It has to be something that I can kind of watch, which is why I'll typically watch something that's like not too mentally demanding. I can't pay attention too closely to plot points.

• 2:29:37Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Do you make New Year's resolutions? Do you have any routines or rituals around New Year's? We're talking, just for people who may be listening to this at another time, we're chatting at the end of March.

• 2:29:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:29:51Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 2:29:51Speaker 02

  Like make any this year?

• 2:29:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  I make the same one every year, which is to rest more. I mean, it's the same resolution every year, rest.

• 2:29:59Tim Ferriss?

  So how are you gonna do that this time?

• 2:30:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. I should just give up. I should stop making resolutions and then I won't have to not not accomplish. I mean, look, maybe a part of success or like success at being you, like figuring out being you is like understanding what your strengths and your weaknesses are, you know, like my strength is my aggressive work ethic. It was when I like when I was a young comic, I would be like, oh, I should be writing every day. I should write. I should be like this guy. Well, like, that's just not my, that's just not how I operate. So I think once you accept like what your own methodology and what

• 2:30:29Tim Ferriss?

  This is why, you know, this is why you watch the Terminator thirty times.

• 2:30:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:30:33Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, like this, this is my people. Right?

• 2:30:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, I have definitely have a CD. I'm definitely an obsessive personality, but like, once you accept like, these are my strengths. This is where I excel. This is how I excel, rather than try to force yourself into someone else's like workflow, like figure out what yours is. As a writer, and you've written lots of books, I've only written two, but with both books, I had this huge lead time. And it wasn't that I was lazy or procrastinating, like the book wasn't there yet. And then just one day, the book was there. And then I sat down and I wrote the entire book in a few weeks. But it just needed to gel. It needed to synthesize. And if I had been trying to sit down and kind of write a little bit every day, it would have just been like this, like big agglomeration of glob. But just one day I was like, oh, the book is in it. The book is in me now. The book is in me. And then I got it out, you know?

• 2:31:15Tim Ferriss?

  God, I wish I had that experience. Man, I'm so jelly.

• 2:31:19Speaker 02

  Oh, but everybody's different. You know what I mean? Like a long time I would have wanted to be more like you, like disciplined and sitting down and because, you know, there's, there's this panic that ensues when you are seven weeks from your deadline and you had nine months to write a book.

• 2:31:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  You've got to write the whole thing. But it's just like that for me, certain threads have to connect and that requires rumination and, and time. And I can't, just can't do it any other way. So I don't.

• 2:31:42Tim Ferriss?

  I think my strength is like every day trying to eat a wheelbarrow full of glass and shit out diamonds or something like that.

• 2:31:49Speaker 02

  Good one. That should be a tattoo.

• 2:31:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, speaking of eating glass, this might be predictable, but I'm okay with predictable. I would like to start to wrap up with a handful of questions. And the first one I'm going to ask is, and you actually give people a heads up on this with the self inflicted wounds. So you usually say at some point, I'm going to ask you about X, but I'm sure you've had time to think about this. So do you have any favorite stories of self inflicted wounds of your own that you could share?

• 2:32:25Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, the book is just a collection, not even a comprehensive one, but quite detailed of many, many mistakes that I've made. I'm trying to think of something that's happened recently. It's interesting. I see my mistakes differently now than I did when I was younger. They just feel like an aspect of being human versus like some kind of tragic.

• 2:32:42Tim Ferriss?

  Flaw.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  Flaw, exactly. They just seem like an unavoidable aspect of being alive. And then I'm thinking ones that recently that don't feel like that cataclysmic. So they're like lame, like lame stories.

• 2:32:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you could pick a classic also, like the greatest hits. Like if you're watching TV 15 years ago, and it's like hits from the 80s, we could take one of those as well.

• 2:33:03Speaker 02

  It's interesting. Like I was talking about that short film that I made that was like the one that will never be seen by any human being. Actually, I think it's been destroyed, where it was just like, I just thought that I could just charm my way through this short. And I had a bunch of friends kind of show up. And it was such an odd idea. It didn't even make any sense. It was about a guy who flashed women. And he flashed women, and I can't remember why he flashed women, but it was something to do with like bravery. It was like a metaphor for bravery that this guy would like flash women. And also maybe like hubris, like the idea that like, we're gonna be super excited to see this guy's penis. And he would kind of like, try to use it as currency. It would never kind of go his way. But it just made no sense. It just ended up being like a series of vignettes about a guy like revealing his

• 2:33:48Speaker 02

  penis to strangers. I just remember at the end, like literally thinking, it's one thing to think like, people don't get me. I was like, I don't get myself. I don't accomplish here. It just never ever coalesced. But it was fine, because it was like, I remember kind of enjoying the process of making it and then being really kind of surprised and delighted by what a piece of shit it was. Much like that set where nobody laughed. I thought, well, man, that didn't work at all. Okay. I need to go back and figure out what to do next. Like, I think every artist, you know, I think Quentin Tarantino has a famous story about his first film being unwatchable, you know? I just think. Sometimes if your personality is to be really aggressive and kind of dive in, you're bound to make some spectacular failures, you know, and you just have to have a high tolerance

• 2:34:32Speaker 02

  for that and not take it personally and keep moving forward. But yeah, I literally was like, I know you guys don't get it. I don't get it. I don't know what, I can't explain it to you. I have no idea what I was thinking. Thank you for putting yourselves in my hands. It was a terrible mistake on your part, but you're very gracious to have trusted me with your lives.

• 2:34:49Tim Ferriss?

  What's the name of the shirt?

• 2:34:51Speaker 02

  It was called The Whipper.

• 2:34:54Tim Ferriss?

  Conjures all sorts of images.

• 2:34:56Speaker 02

  That makes no sense whatsoever.

• 2:34:58Tim Ferriss?

  When have you been extremely proud of yourself? Could be any point in your life. Can you think of a standout point where you're like, goddamn, like, good for me, fucking A.

• 2:35:09Speaker 02

  I hate, I hate to have it be about this because it sounds like it's super self-promotional, but I really am proud of this film and I, for a variety of reasons.

• 2:35:17Tim Ferriss?

  Access.

• 2:35:18Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, access because it was such a, I mean, I was lucky that I was brought a great script and I had a really talented actor, but we put this movie together like so quickly. And I had a vision for it, but I also was, because we were moving so fast, feeling my way through the dark in some aspect. And I think one of the reasons why it came together the way that it did was because I was both, I both had a vision for the film, but I was open to modulating. And I think that's really important in anything that you're doing, no matter what field you're in, is that you have to both, we prize vision and kind of rigidity in this culture, but I think that being able to pivot and be nimble is way more important than being kind of a rigid visionary. You have to be able to look at data and interpret it and then apply it to your situation or

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  you just, you're just going to keep banging your head against a wall. So we made this movie, we got into the very first, second day of filming, we started really late, we lost our light, we had to kind of pivot that day, ended up having to throw all that footage away. Another day we lost light and had to get back up at five in the morning and kind of shoot dawn for dusk, but we just kept pivoting, we just kept, nothing was catastrophic, okay? And I think that's something I got from my father, that's like, okay, this isn't working. Okay, so we're going to do this. Okay, that's not working, we're going to do this, rather than, oh my god, this is the end of the world, what are we going to do? And then in Post, I had very little money for Post and very little time to cut the movie together. And about four weeks in, the editor that I had cutting the movie, he was a great guy, really talented, just wasn't connecting with the material, wasn't wasn't able to assemble the movie. It was an unusual movie. It's one guy in a car. And I had to let him go.

• 2:36:45Speaker 02

  And then I had to learn Avid, the Avid system, and start cutting the movie myself. But again, I wasn't like, what am I gonna do? I don't have an editor. I'm gonna die. I just thought, okay, well, like, the the answer here is that I'm gonna learn this skill set and I'm going to keep moving forward. And then, you know, I made this little film. It was, you know, strange and atmospheric and dreamlike. And, you know, it didn't get into Sundance, and everybody always wants to get into Sundance. But then it got into eight other festivals and won two awards and got picked up for distribution. And the result has been much better than I ever could have anticipated. And I'm really proud of it because I mean, I made made it for what is typically the catering budget on a on a regular Hollywood movie. You know what I mean? We made it for just no money and in no time. And and I think

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  it also says something. I think what I'm also proud of is that the movie actually does have a strong point of view and a strong visual personality and a strong style that is my own. When I look at it, I don't think I'm trying to emulate anybody. I feel like this is something that I made. It's my little lumpy ashtray from shop class. And I really love it.

• 2:37:46Tim Ferriss?

  Good for you. I think it's easy to, I'm not saying you, but for humans to look at the people who are showcased on the covers of magazines or on the front pages of popular websites and think, wow, they figured out all the secret sauce. Or they have the keys to the kingdom and they're able to show up and just hit home runs every time they step to the plate. And when you look at the origin stories of some of these incredible creations that people are familiar with, whether it's Jaws, or the company Alibaba is one example, Jack Ma, the founder, I think he's the richest man in China, or certainly one of the top

• 2:38:31Tim Ferriss?

  few at this point. And he said, I'm paraphrasing, but we had a huge advantage in the beginning. And that was, we had no experience, no money, and no plan.

• 2:38:42Tim Ferriss?

  And it forces you to really think outside of the box. And even if that project doesn't succeed by outside measures, the confidence that you develop in exploring areas outside of the box can then transfer to future projects. I remember there's this fantastic documentary, gonna butcher his name. It was fantastic mostly for the message, not for all of the content, which I hope makes sense. But it's called Yodaworski's Dune, and it's the story of this attempt to make a movie about Dune. And the thing is a complete unmitigated disaster, like complete unmitigated disaster. But the talent that was assembled went on to just do incredible things.

• 2:39:27Tim Ferriss?

  And if that disaster hadn't happened, one could argue that if you'd stepped on that butterfly, these other careers wouldn't have lost them in the way that they did. And you wouldn't have the Geiger design of the alien that people now know as the alien of aliens and so on. So it's, I just love.

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  No one ever learns from success. You can kind of do a postmortem and say, oh, this stuff worked. But failure is where you have explosive growth, where you really have to reconsider all of your assumptions. And it's so much more powerful than success is at making you eventually successful.

• 2:40:01Tim Ferriss?

  Be aggressive.

• 2:40:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, be, be aggressive.

• 2:40:04Tim Ferriss?

  B E aggressive, A G G R A S S I V E.

• 2:40:09Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah, that's, that's, that's my life philosophy, be aggressive.

• 2:40:14Tim Ferriss?

  Be aggressive. And we want you around for a long time. So take your cat naps at the very least.

• 2:40:21Speaker 02

  That's my goal.

• 2:40:22Tim Ferriss?

  And do you have anything you would like to say or ask of the audience? Suggestions you'd like to make? Anything at all that you'd like to, to say before we wrap up?

• 2:40:35Speaker 02

  Other than watch my movie.

• 2:40:36Tim Ferriss?

  Other than watch your movie. Exactly.

• 2:40:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess like I, like when I, when I did my podcast, you know, like thematically, the stuff that we've talked about was always stuff that I talked about, which is like, it doesn't matter what you're. What you want to do, it sounds very greeting card, but like the barriers are, they're imagined. You know what I mean? And maybe you're gonna have to start small and maybe you're gonna have to start close to home, but like the greater regret will always be not having started. And I'm always trying to find a way to be more bold in my life and hopefully share the things that have helped me do that with other people. So it is exciting to be having the conversation with you because I think that's a lot of what you've done is you've kind of lived these experiences so that the things that you learn could be shared with other people. Just go out and do awesome shit.

• 2:41:22Tim Ferriss?

  Get your hands dirty.

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Get it dirty.

• 2:41:25Tim Ferriss?

  The, yeah, the rough drafts are not a clean business.

• 2:41:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 2:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, Aisha, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 2:41:37Speaker 02

  It was a pleasure.

• 2:41:38Tim Ferriss?

  So much fun.

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  With you, I know, super fun. And now that I know where you are, I will track you down the next time I'm in your neck of the woods.

• 2:41:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Barbecue, music, whatever it might be. And Austin Tejas, come visit. And people can visit you. Is the best, uh, best site, AishaTyler.com?

• 2:41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, AishaTyler.com. But you know, who spends time on a website anymore? Just follow me on, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff is just Aisha Tyler, one word.

• 2:42:04Tim Ferriss?

  A I S H A T Y L E R.

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. I don't know when this is gonna post, but I post stuff about all the stuff I'm doing. The movies out on the 10th of April on Video to Man iTunes, all that stuff. And then Archer starts, I think on the 24th of April and all the others. I don't know, TV, whatever. You can find me online. I don't know when you're gonna listen to this, but you know, just come say hi to me on, on socials and.

• 2:42:27Tim Ferriss?

  For days and weeks and months and years and millennia to come, hopefully.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Cockroaches will be listening to this on their tiny cockroach computers when the rest of us are dead.

• 2:42:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's exactly right.

• 2:42:39Tim Ferriss?

  Cockroaches remember us fondly. And for you non-cockroaches, actually, if cockroaches listening, you're welcome also to check out the show notes where I will provide links to everything that we've talked about, including Axis. And you can find all of those at tim.blog/podcast, along with the show notes for every other episode. And Aisha, thank you so much one more time for being so goddamn entertaining and inspiring at the same time. It's a rare combo. So I really appreciate it.

• 2:43:09Speaker 02

  Always great to talk with you. Thanks, Tim.

• 2:43:11Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. And to everybody out there on the interwebs, be safe, maybe, more important, be aggressive, get out there. If you're dreaming of doing something, creating something someday, just get out a shitty first draft, because guess what? All the first drafts are really fucking awful. It's very rare that someone just, as I was alluding to, shits out diamonds on a daily basis. It starts with putting something out there into the world, and hopefully, at least it makes a market of one happy, and that is you. So I will close there. And thanks to everybody for listening.

• 2:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's 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

• 2:44:35Tim Ferriss?

  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, 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. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. I have been using Eight Sleep Pod Cover for years now. Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like fitted sheet, you can automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed. Eight Sleep recently launched their newest generation of the pod, and I'm excited to test it out. Pod 4 Ultra.

• 2:45:20Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:46:05Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:46:49Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:47:33Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:48:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:48:57Tim Ferriss?

  That's livemomentus, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash TIM and code TIM for 20% off.