#184: Shep Gordon - The King Maker on His Best PR Stunts, Hugest Failures, and Practical Philosophies

Shep Gordon (@SupermenschShep https://twitter.com/supermenschshep) has been named one of the "100 most influential people" by Rolling Stone magazine. He is the man behind some of the biggest names you've ever heard. If you like the storytelling and lessons of Cal Fussman http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/08/31/cal-fussman-the-master-storyteller-returns/, you're going to love this one. Shep has worked with, and befriended, some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Salvador Dali, Luther Vandross to Teddy Pendergrass. He is also credited with inventing the "celebrity chef" phenomenon, which revolutionized the food industry and turned the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. He has worked with Nobu Matsuhisa, Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Vergé (and many others, including his holiness, the Dalai Lama.) Anthony Bourdain, a huge fan of Shep's, released a memoir detailing Shep's life and adventures, titled They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass To The Amazing World Of Film, Food, and Rock 'N' Roll http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062355953/offsitoftimfe-20. I've been reading it, and it's fantastic. Imagine it like Animal House https://youtu.be/q7vtWB4owdE meets Harvard MBA https://youtu.be/BQOZsRz4y7U. In this episode, we discuss how he made clients famous, and some of his biggest PR stunts (and flops). Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by MeUndies http://meundies.com/tim. Have you ever wanted to be as powerful as a mullet-wearing ninja from the '80s, or as sleek as a black panther in the Amazon? Of course you have, and that is where MeUndies http://meundies.com/tim comes in. I've spent the last six months wearing underwear from these guys http://meundies.com/tim 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. Their materials are 2x softer than cotton, as evaluated using the Kawabata method. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous, like the camo). This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today. Enjoy. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. If I'm not going commando, I'm in MeUndies. I have been testing these underwear for three to four months now, pretty much every day, and in fact, threw out a bunch of my other underwear this morning. And on the road, in the house, they are extremely comfortable. They look good, feel good. They are made of micro modal, two times softer than cotton, as scientifically tested using the Kawabata method. Sounds very fancy, of course. And I get a lot of compliments from the ladies for these. You don't get diaper butt, you don't get the tired elastic band. They look great, and they have underwear for both men and women. Check out meundies.com/tim and you can see everything I've been wearing. The ridiculous, the sublime, everything in

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  between, including my favorite, which is called out. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention their lounge pants. This is a new thing. And I've been wearing their lounge pants when I record podcasts. I've been wearing them out and about when I'm walking the dog, meeting people for coffee. And they are extremely comfortable. They're made from the same material as the underwear, but some of them, like the blue ones I have, have pockets so you can walk about without seeming like you're off of your meds and completely crazy. So that is awesome. And if you're not happy with the first pair you try on, I assume that refers to the underwear, they'll refund you completely and you can keep the pair you tried on for free. But if you're that kind of person, you should be ashamed, because that's disgusting. MeUndies.com/tim, check it out.

• 1:55Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for years. I love audiobooks and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. The only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing. You will thank me. The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became The Four Hour Work Week. So, all you need to do to get your free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim, and you can choose one of those two books, or you can choose from more great options than you can possibly imagine.

• 2:38Tim Ferriss?

  So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class. It's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim. That's audible.com/tim and grab a book. Enjoy.

• 2:53Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, kittens and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, the best of the best, in many different worlds, whether that be chess, military, or in this case, entertainment. Now, I've wanted to get Shep Gordon on this show for probably a year and a half, two years, and it'll be very clear within the first few minutes of this conversation why. He has been named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Rolling Stone Magazine, and he is the man, he is the icon behind the icons, behind some of the biggest names you've ever heard. You can say hello to him on Twitter and Instagram, @supermenshep.

• 3:35Tim Ferriss?

  If you like the storytelling and lessons of Cal Fussman, you're going to love this episode. Shep has worked with and befriended and has some incredible stories about, and hilarious stories, which you're going to hear, some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Salvador Dali, Luther Vandross to Teddy Pendergrass, and his job was, in effect, he had many jobs, but to make them as famous as possible. And we dig into how he did that, the PR stunts, the biggest successes, the biggest failures. There were quite a few that blew up right in his face. On top of that, he is credited with inventing the celebrity chef phenomenon, which revolutionized the food

• 4:20Tim Ferriss?

  industry and turned the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today. He worked with all of the first wave of the now known as celebrity chefs, Nobu Matsuhisa, Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Verge, and many others. And then on top of that, he's done quite a bit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and it doesn't end there. Now Anthony Bourdain, a huge fan of Shep's, has released a memoir detailing Shep's life and adventures titled They Call Me Super Mensch: A Backstage Pass to the Amazing World of Film, Food, and Rock and Roll. And I've been reading this and enjoying every page because it is hard to conceive of how many stories and life lessons Shep

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  has. It is like the most titillizing, titillizing, is that a real word? The most raucous, drug-infused party story combined with the best MBA you could possibly receive. So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Shep Gordon.

• 5:26Tim Ferriss?

  Shep, welcome to the show.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Aloha. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, Tim, for having me on.

• 5:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's my pleasure. And I was mentioning before we started recording that about a year ago, I took my family on a trip for Christmas and we all sat down and we watched Super Mensch. And the collective thought was, at some point in time, you need to connect with this Shep character. So I'm very excited to have you on the line. And could you place for the people listening where you are at the moment?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm on a beautiful white sand beach called Kiabakapu Beach on the southwest shore of Maui. You might be able to hear some waves rolling in the background. And I'm sitting on my porch, which overlooks the ocean, and feeling very, very lucky.

• 6:14Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you end up in Hawaii? Because I know it's a very important place to you. And not only that, but your home has been a refuge of sorts for many, many people, including notable folks for decades now. But how did you end up in Hawaii?

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Like many things in my life, partly by accident, partly by taking action. I wanted to quit smoking. This was back in the early seventies. And I had read about a house that Colonel Tom Parker, who was Elvis Presley's manager, had rented in Honolulu and brought his office over to, a big spread. And Colonel Parker was a hero. I said, oh, my God, if I could sleep in Colonel Parker's bed and quit smoking, what a cool thing to do.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  I rented the house, it was in Kahala in Honolulu, and brought a bunch of people from my office over. Sadly, we weren't environmentally conscious in seventy-two, and I remember we all threw our cigarettes out the window driving in from the airport.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  And I just got in with the wrong crowd in Honolulu. It wasn't working at all. My spiral was sort of going deeper, and I decided I had to leave Honolulu, go to an outer island. I had a friend who had a tour going to the outer island, and in those days, I had a hydrofoil. I took the hydrofoil, put one foot on the dock in Maui, and turned around to my friend and said, I'm living here the rest of my life, and I just feel different in my skin here. It's been very magical.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  Now, if we were to look at rewinding the clock and a shift in location, how did you get your start in the music business for people who do not know the backstory?

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Another great accident, and I have great accidents. I was always a child of the sixties, a liberal, Jewish, socialist-leaning activist, very active against the war, active against Rotse, and always had a vision of myself as a young man, as like a savior on a white horse, charging into trouble. And so I took a job as a probation officer. I had long hair. I was using psychedelics, and I thought, what a beautiful thing to bring love and peace to a probation hall, young kids. It was the Reagan era. I thought they were being, you know, misused, misguided. And I went to California, got a job as a probation officer.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Didn't work, sort of got beat up by the kids the first day.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  And realized I was not going to change the system by being a probation officer. And drove into Hollywood, late at night, didn't have a lot of money. There was a small motel that had a vacancy sign. Checked into the hotel, had a balcony, it was exactly Hotel California. It was two stories around the swimming pool, palm trees, a life I didn't know. And, you know, went out on the porch and took a little psychedelics, you know, felt a little sorry for myself, having just been beat up at a jail, but also felt amazingly empowered to be on my own, in California, free, healthy.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  And I heard someone screaming down at the pool, a girl, and having just come from a jail, my brain for some reason went to violence and I thought she was being raped. And I ran down to the pool and separated these two people. And the girl got very mad, punched me in the mouth, they were making love. I took the wrong guess. And in the morning, when I went down to the pool, the girl was Janis Joplin. And around the pool was sort of the Hollywood wax museum, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison would come and go, the Chambers brothers, who were very big in those days, and I was big fans of.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  And my journey began one day, Lester Chambers said to me, what else do you do for a living? Because I had started selling some psychedelics to everybody at the hotel. And I said, I don't really know. And he said, are you Jewish? I said, yes. And he said, you should be a manager. And he introduced me to Alice Cooper. And I've managed him for 47 years.

• 10:36Tim Ferriss?

  So I have, I'm replaying the documentary in my mind, and it seems like, as you mentioned, you've had some fantastic accidents, but you've also...

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  Created some incredible things in your life and you seem to be a master P T Barnum of sorts and I was hoping you could discuss some of the, some of your favorite stunts that you've put together because the one that, the one that jumps to mind and I'd love to hear about a few of them, but at least one that comes to mind was the, the broken down truck in London, but you can tackle them in any order that you'd like, but I just think these are so genius. I'd love for you to explain a few of them.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  I start with Piccadilly. My philosophy was that you didn't have to wait for history, that you could create history. And we were in the entertainment business. So different than maybe in politics where you create history. There are, there are really victims. So I always felt good about creating history in an entertainment sense. And the key to really managing an artist was to try and understand what, what is it that appeals to their audience? What is, if you can get it down to a word or two words or three words,

• 12:10Speaker 03

  sex appeal or rebellion appeal or there's, there's broad categories that if you can tap into, you can pick up a big audience. And with Alice, we realized very early on it was hatred of parent, that every child at some point in their life rebelled against their parents. I lived through it now. My kids came home with hip hop music and it's like, what are you doing? And I knew hip hop music would be gigantic because that's, that's the way life works. It works that way in clothes. It works that way in everything. So I knew my focus. My focus was getting parents over the breakfast table to tell their children, if you dare buy an Alice Cooper record or go see him, you're grounded.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  If I could accomplish that, so I never really cared about the music magazines. I cared about Muse Week time, um, the network TVs. I cared about the things the parents watched, not the kids. Um, because I didn't really know how to get the kids, except for paying. This was the payola period. It was paying for hit records and we didn't have money. So we start making some progress in America. It starts working. We start pulling stunts off Alice. We get very lucky with, um, the chicken incident where I threw a chicken on stage. And the press thought that Alice bit its head off. And said this hot, these horrible stories about him, which broke him wide open in America. And I assumed it's great thing.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  When I get to England, there's no ticket sales. And I'm now trying to figure out, how do I, in a matter of 10 days, get every parent in London to hate Alice Cooper? That's not an easy task. And, um, so I go in and there was a brilliant guy at working in Warner Brothers. Who, who was the, uh, the fifth Beatle, Derek Taylor. He was their PR man and he was brilliant. And he said, tell me about this Alice Cooper. He had never heard of Alice Cooper. And I told him and I told him what I was thinking. We started talking and I said, is there anything that all the parents in London watch or do or see? And he said, well, the morning shows are gigantic because everybody checks into the traffic before they leave home.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  There's helicopters and it's, it's really big. It's like, um, our TV in Britain is very boring, but this is something that gets a lot of views. Then hmm, and what's the, uh, what's the busiest traffic in the morning at rush hour? And he said, Piccadilly Square. It's always backed up. And out of that developed this, we had just done a photo shoot with Abaddon, which was Alice naked with a snake covering his genitals. So I said to Derek, you know, we just had this great shot and I took it out and said, what do you think about putting it on like a flatbed truck and breaking it down at Piccadilly? Would that piss everybody off? And he said, you can't come on. And I said, we could do this. And he said, you know, we can. And he found a driver and he paid for the truck through Warner Brothers. And we asked the guy to break it down two or three times until they arrested him.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Cause we knew they would arrest him. Um, but that was our story. And it it hit the morning news. It was helicopters. Traffic was backed up thirty miles. We had, you have to remember, this is seventy two or seventy three. We had girls on the flatbed truck in hot pants giving out flyers for the concert.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  But it sold out. There's also many things that didn't work. Because when you live on the edge like that. There's so many things that don't work. And and I think. I just, I just gave a talk to a bunch of DJs and business guys in that world. And and what I tried to get across is that the failures are almost more important than the successes. That's really what separated Alice and I from so many other managers and artists. And what made his career go so long is because we were both allowed to fail and we supported each other. So here's a great failure story. He gets his first stadium show, Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  And I'm trying to think, what do I do? It's a baseball stadium. We have to do something really Alice Cooper-esque. Cause everything's going to be so small on a tiny stage. Even in those days, I don't even think they were using screens in concerts. Um, this was really early days. And it was, I think, the first stadium show, maybe other than the Beatles at Chase Stadium. There were very few stadium shows. So I said, I got it. Shoot them across the stadium out of a cannon. How cool would that be? Alice Cooper going through the stadium. So I go to Warner Brothers who built all our props. They did the guillotine and they did the the gallows and.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  The guy there was so nonchalant about it, he said to me, after I explained to him what I wanted, he said, "What period cannon?"

• 16:56Speaker 03

  "You gotta be kidding me." He said, "No, World War I, World War II, Revolutionary War." And I said, "Give me your best cannon." And he went to a drawer and he took out blueprints for a cannon with someone in it to get shot across. He didn't say stadium, but it was, it was the trick. It was a shallow bottom. The trick was Alice would crawl in the cannon, go into a, a, a bottom that was pitless. There was a dummy already dressed like him, looking like him. He would run, he would crawl out of the cannon, run around, get driven around to the other side of the stadium. We would do some shtick, you know, with flames, getting ready to blow up the cannon. When he got there, bingo, and it would go across the stadium and Alice would come out triumphant.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Well, we did it the first night for rehearsal in the cannon, which was forty feet long and six tons. The dummy came out and it went maybe one foot.

• 17:50Tim Ferriss?

  Just flopped out.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, just flopped. It was the worst thing I ever saw, but Alice couldn't see it, he was in the cannon. He had fallen around the side. So he said, "How was it?" I said, "The worst thing I've ever seen in my life." And I made a very rookie mistake, which I never made again, which was advertising what we were gonna do.

• 18:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  So we ripped the stadium, they're on the radio going, "Watch Alice get shot out of a cannon, watch out." And we sold out. And we had press coming in the night before to send stories back to the news. Cause that's all you had was like the six o'clock news and they wouldn't have been elegant. So, um, so now, what are we gonna do? I said, "Go to sleep, I'll figure it out." He wakes up and in the hotel where, um, fire extinguishers, it had foam. So he said, "What are we gonna do?" I said, "It's gonna be a giant penis." These two balls on it. Filling it up with this foam. You get on it and rub it and lick it and just masturbate it to death and the foam will come out forty, fifty yard, you know, Rose, it'll be fantastic.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  And I'll figure out what I tell Pittsburgh. So he gets in and he rubs it. He works so hard and it drips out. It's worse than the night before.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  And now this is a time when most managers and artists would be choking each other to death. That is the point I want to make out of the story.

• 19:11Tim Ferriss?

  Now, why, why is that, though? Why?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Because I've now, I'm a manager. I've thought of it. I put him on a stage in the most embarrassing situation.

• 19:18Tim Ferriss?

  I got it. Right.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  As a normal human being, not to mention even an artist, you would tend to give the guy grief who put you in this horrible situation. It's horrible. And it was all on me, a hundred percent on me. I write the shows with Alice. He lets me do everything. It's a hundred percent on my shoulders. Instead of it, he said, can you cover it? And I said, yeah. He went to sleep and I stayed up all night and I figured out, okay, how do I turn this disaster into a gigantic win for Alice Cooper? What would be even bigger for Alice Cooper? Because we're sold out, so that's okay. Even bigger for him than getting shot out of the cannon. And here's what we did. He showed up the next night. The cannon blew up. He was in the cannon

• 20:03Speaker 03

  when it blew up. The TV crews were there. They watched him getting taken off into the ambulance. We announced from the hospital that he wasn't serious and that he was going to come and do the show. And we did the show with him in a wheelchair and nurses and doctors, everybody giving him plasma. Nothing happened to him. It was all a setup.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  The front page paper was about how great Alice Cooper was. What other artist in the world would come and put a show for his audience from a wheelchair?

• 20:36Speaker 03

  So you, you know, out of that failure came even a stronger bond. And I, I think, you know, that's one of the important lessons to learn from, from that is that if you're, it takes a family to make a business as much as a family, as a, as it takes to make a family, you know, it takes a, a group, a town, a village and the people you work with, you need to allow them to fail or they'll never really win because they're both tied so closely together in the creative world.

• 21:05Tim Ferriss?

  Now you, you, so I want to underscore a few things and ask a follow-up question. The first is, you talked about aiming to upset the parents in, say, London or, or the UK. So in a way, you're doing almost the opposite of, for instance, the founding editor of Wired magazine talks about 1,000 true fans and trying to find your 1,000 true fans, but you did it indirectly, almost by trying to find, targeting your 1,000 true haters. I mean, finding the people who would do your advertising for you by disliking you, which I think is just so interesting.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  For a very specific reason. I think that art is a very narrow window when it comes to personal choice. The largest entertainment figures of our decade all had one thing in common, hatred of parents. The Beatles were horrible. The Rolling Stones pissed on gas stations. Bob Dylan, Pumphy, jazz guys with dopers. It's, there's only a few things that every single person goes through. They go through rebellion. If they don't go through it, they end up on a rooftop killing people. So my attempt was to pick up, rather than get a thousand people who loved Alice for what Alice did, if I could make him the, the face of rebellion, I had

• 22:25Speaker 03

  a huge audience to pick from. And in 72, it was the biggest tour of the world.

• 22:29Tim Ferriss?

  And before we started recording, we were chatting a little bit about, and we didn't get into it because I, I've, speaking of rookie mistakes, I've learned that it's best to talk about it when you've hit record. But we have a mutual friend, maybe others, but at least one mutual friend in Rick Rubin. And he's, he's said to me before, you know, the best art divides the audience.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's such a, that is such an educated statement.

• 22:59Tim Ferriss?

  And I think we'll definitely come back to Rick. You mentioned the rookie mistake of announcing what you were going to do before you did it. Are there any other particular rookie mistakes that you made or that you see managers making? And this might be a good time, just for people who are outside of the entertainment and music worlds, to define what a manager is exactly. What does a manager do?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  I think it's, you know, it's, it's not a curriculum profession. So I think it's a wide range for me as a manager. I always envisioned my job was to get an artist so he didn't have to use his second name. That to me was my focus, to make him an internet, you know, no one that says Alice who or Luther who or Groucho who or Raquel who, who are my clients. There are other managers who are very, very dollar orientated, who can squeeze the blood out of a dollar. There's other managers who are great at getting Coca Colas.

• 24:03Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning actually fetching the beverages for the artist?

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Yes. It's really an artist driven profession for the most part. It's what they're looking for and what they're need and what they're willing to share. And it's a very wide range. I think this, for me, the really talented managers are the ones who get ahead of their client by six months or a year and go, come this way. And notice a pothole right here, be careful. Who really have a vision of, of what the audience is, what the attraction is, how to put it in a picture frame that doesn't compromise it, doesn't make the artist chase the flavor of the month, but knows how to promote the essence of what they are, which gets so much to what Rick Rubin's comment was.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  That once you have the success and you have your audience, you're never going to keep them out of rebellion because they're going to drop off in five or six years. Rebellion goes bye bye. So it's a matter of taking that and taking the essence of what this artist has creatively that makes them a great artist and putting that in the picture frame that the people who pick them up by these broad strokes say, yes, that's, that I can relate to. I want to stay with that. So what he said is so brilliant. I never really thought of it like that. I always say it's from the other side. Is it you pick up your broadest audience by social revelations rather than art because that's obscure, but what he's saying is perfectly right. So each

• 25:33Speaker 03

  one of those artists, depending on what they want to do with their art is very different. Some making the most money is the most important, some being the most famous is the most important, some not being told what to do is the most important. So different than a doctor or an accountant, there's no real curriculum and nowhere to really learn to be a manager.

• 25:53Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to come back to the rookie mistakes question, but I have to bring up because it was it was one of the most hilarious portions of the doc with Mike Myers, which was a flashback dramatization, a reenactment of getting one of your clients to agree to have you as a manager. But there was a competition of sorts. And I was just thinking to myself, this is not the type of thing when you said there's no curriculum. This is probably not the case study that would be used in an MBA program about music and entertainment management. But I'm guessing that you you remember which example this is. Could you please replay this for folks?

• 26:35Speaker 03

  It's funny because it's in some ways not my proudest moment.

• 26:38Tim Ferriss?

  I was impressed. Nonetheless, proud or not.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  But it's something I never would have ever talked about if Teddy, it's in regards to artists named Teddy Pendergrass. And he was a very macho Afro-American artist. I would have never talked about this if he hadn't actually written it in his book, which amazed me that he would admit it. It was early on in my career. I was very successful and had a great reputation, which didn't exist in the management business at that time. And one of my clients was Groucho Marx. And the executor of Groucho's Marx's estate was a gentleman from CBS named Goddard Lieberson. And he was very good to Groucho and he was a legend and my armpits got sweaty every

• 27:24Speaker 03

  time I went to see him. You know, he was a living legend. And he had someone in CBS reach out to me to ask me if I would manage, go look at, meet with Teddy Pendergrass to manage him. He was a very important artist to the label and they would like me to be involved and you couldn't say no to Goddard. So I went to Philadelphia. I didn't really like the show, but I realized that the fellow named Teddy Pendergrass was actually the lead singer of Hal Melvin and the Blue Notes, who were one of my favorite groups. So I went backstage. It was a long line of Jewish managers. There were all these great characters. Sid Scheinberg, who had all these companies. His name was Sid Arthur, I think it was Arthur. And it was S A S, so he had Sasco, Masco, Fasco, Dasco.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  His letterhead was fantastic. He managed BB King and a bunch. But there was all these great Jewish managers backstage. So I didn't even bother going in. I went home. About a week later, they called me up. How was the meeting? Didn't take the meeting. Please, Mr. Lieberstein would like you to take it. Would you go back down and take the meeting? I go back down, pull up to his driveway. He's a white Rolls Royce with license plate Teddy. I go up to the penthouse. This beautiful girl, like a lingerie, opens the door. Then this most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life comes walking in. And I completely dropped everything I was gonna say and I decided this is, I don't really, this is not gonna happen and let me just get out of here. So I said, listen, man, there's

• 28:51Speaker 03

  not a lot of things I know in life, but there's one thing I know for sure. You have no credentials whatsoever to figure out which one of us fast-talking Jews is telling the truth. You had the best group in the bunch and there's no way you're gonna know who's telling the truth. So here's what I suggest. Let's get together for a weekend. Bring the best drugs you have. Bring the best women you have. Bring the best booze you have. And let's just party. And if you drop before I do, I'm the wrong guy for you. I mean, if I drop before you, if you drop before I do, I should be a manager, because when you collapse, I'll be able to take the money from the giga out of your pocket and save it.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  And he looked at me like I was completely out of my mind, as he says in his book. But then he said, yes, and oh shit, now I gotta do this. And we met in New York at a hotel. And we did what we said we were gonna do. And he collapsed a couple of days later. And I managed him the rest of his life. Without a contract. And by the way, never collapsed again.

• 30:02Tim Ferriss?

  And there were, there were at least a few, I suppose innovations, we could call them, that came of that collaboration.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  I think for me as a manager, that may have been the, the crowning point of creating history. Cause it was so focused. And it was, I had an artist who was big enough that I had the luxury I could do it. And I had an artist who completely, completely trusted me. Cause all we hit were headwinds. But the concept was, I was trying to, Teddy's sex appeal was unbelievable. The amount of panties we would get on stage and bras with phone numbers. The reaction of even old Jewish women. But unbelievable, the sex was just unbelievably strong. Songs, his producer, they allowed us all to really drive it.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  So we produced a stage show that went to that. We produced songs that went to that, Close the Door, songs like that, that really highlighted sex, not romance, sex. And then I was trying to say, how do I tell this to the public? How do I really get across that this is a black Elvis? How do I get, I have every black person in America, how do I get the white audience to see it? And really get it and understand it? And I came up with this concept out of a very angry moment at one of his first shows where I had to wait backstage while this bevy of women went into his dressing room. And I was really angry. And I said to him after I got to see him, I said, you know, this is crazy, man. We should do shows for women only. That's it, so that I have a chance. Let me be in the, in the house with the women.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  And we both looked at each other and said, can you do that? And I said, I can do it. And everybody fought me. They lawyers from the halls called me up. It's, you know, it's bigotry. I said, no, no, we'll sell tickets to women. We're just gonna say for women only. And that's what we did. We devised an ad. We did concerts across America. Radio City Music Hall in New York, Greek Theatre LA. We did concerts for women only. We had a hundred percent women. I don't think one man showed up at any of them. We gave out chocolate teddy bear lollipops to the public, which was so hot. And then we got to, well,

• 32:21Speaker 03

  we went to advertise and I got to a challenge point, which was, there is a line between saying what you are and being arrogant about what you are. And when I saw the ad with this picture on it, I said, for women only coming out of Teddy is a little arrogant. So we ended up not using his picture. We got a stuffed little teddy bear that every girl loves. And we put an old note on it that said, come spend the night with me. Love, Teddy. To really soften it up. And it sold out in like a second and they were fantastic shows. And then I was managing Luther Vandross and I said, okay, how do I apply that same set of principles to Luther, who's not sex? Luther was romance. Luther was all about

• 33:06Speaker 03

  whining and dining and the anticipation and how beautiful romance is. So what I did with him, which I thought was not as focused as Teddy, but the same highway, which was, we gave out to the top radio stations in America, a contest where you could win Luther marrying you on the air. So it really drove romance. And I think weddings, if you look at statistics, Luther's music for that decade was probably the most played wedding songs. So anyway, that's, and that's how you have fun and that's how you develop an artist. But all those things, to get back to failure, take an artist and a manager trusting each other to go out on a limb.

• 33:47Tim Ferriss?

  The question of failure, the question of mistakes made, are there any other rookie mistakes that you see a lot of people making in the position of something like a manager or that you made that come to mind? Any particular sort of archetypal or critical mistakes?

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's less a list of mistakes than it's, it's a mistake of intentions. What I see at least, from the people I See and talk to is they're not in the business really for service. They're in the business for greed and out of greed, you just do stupid things and your visions blur. If if you're in it for service to your artists, which is really a manager. I mean, again, there are different types of managers. There are managers who are power guys who I get it. They build empires off it and they're great for their artists. But I think, you know, I have an assistant who has a daughter who's being sought after by everybody in the music business, record companies, managers, publishers. She's a beautiful 21 year old girl, Lily Miola.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  And I see the difference between the phone calls that come in for her and the things that I do for Alice. Like I wake up for Alice. And I think about how am I going to enhance his career? How am I going to, you know, right now we're running Alice for president. We wrote into the show a piece where Hillary beats up Donald Trump in the show. And we have a Alice Cooper president, we're selling T shirts, we're going viral. And it's fun, it's funny for us, but it's me waking up and thinking, what can I do to add to Alice's career? And most of these young people I see coming around it when I sit and talk to them, they ask for advice. They're not asking you advice for their artists.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  They're asking advice for them. How do I get more clients? How do I, how can I get a piece of publishing? How can I, I think it's a general rule, maybe for humanity. It is as our civilization moves along. But I think it's motivation more than actual things wrong. Cause I think, again, there's no school for management. So every manager is going to make lots of mistakes.

• 35:54Tim Ferriss?

  It reminds me of a story I've heard you tell. I think it was in a commencement speech, actually, I might be misplacing that. But you were talking about a guide to cooking rice from, I want to say some type of.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  From His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

• 36:11Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly, and 90% of it or more was about the intention of when you select the rice, when you boil the rice and and only perhaps 10% of it was was technical. Let me ask you, how do you maintain that orientation? Or how did you come to have that service orientation? Because of course, I would imagine all things equal. You want to be financially successful as a manager so that you can do the things you want to do and so on. And I guess it's a byproduct of making your clients financially successful. But how did you maintain that lens of service over greed? Did it ever get the best of you and then you correct course? Or did that, has that not been the case?

• 36:56Speaker 03

  You know, it's a very timely, great question because I really thought my life was completely random. And I couldn't understand any of the decisions I made. I never questioned my decisions. You look in the mirror and you say, why would you possibly do this? Doesn't make any sense. And things like, as a manager, you have a right to commission the life of the projects you work on. So I worked on Beatles anthology record, for example, I have a right to collect commissions on that. I always chose not, if I'm not working with the artist, I didn't want to take their money. So I chose never to do it. Which when you look in the mirror, you say, what are you, a schmuck to yourself? But if you have a

• 37:39Speaker 03

  strong foundation, and you can feel that foundation, which is, you know, I shouldn't really be making money off these, they're going out, living their lives, their life, it's not my life. You go back to, and I always thought all those choices were just random. Like, maybe I was, it was ego, thinking I was a good guy. Or I don't know what the motivation. And when I wrote the book, I realized that I'm actually living my father's life. And he was a man of pure service, pure service to me and my brother. And he really gave up almost everything else in his life, but was joyful. Because he was serving us. And as I met mentors along the way, Roger Verge, in particular, I saw how, he was the

• 38:23Speaker 03

  first person I really met, who was very successful and very happy. Most of the people I would meeting, I would say 99% of the people I met in show business, who were the kingpins, were miserable. They were cheating on their wives, they were alcoholics, they were, they were just miserable, they were just drowning the pain. And I think that those kind, my dad first, and then seeing the mentors, made me think, you know, you're gonna die with the money, enjoy the moments you're here on the planet. And if service is a way to enjoy it, and comes naturally to me, I don't want to fight it by falling into the traps of, all those normal traps of greed. Stuff I'm good enough at what I do that I can make a living.

• 39:07Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I've heard, and I want you to correct me here, but that it took something like 10 to 12 years for Mike Myers to get you to agree to do the documentary. Maybe you can give me some, some color there, but the follow up to that is going to be, why a book? Why do a book?

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I am, I've always cautioned my clients when I started working with them that if I do my job perfectly, I have a good chance of killing them because I will make them so famous that they can't survive. So I've always had a very corrupted view of fame. I realized that's what I do for a living and I'm good at it and it can provide great stuff for people, but they have to be prepared that they're gonna take a fall and hopefully get up from that fall. So the last thing I really wanted to do was test myself. Why would I really want to, you know, didn't make any documentaries aren't financial. I didn't view it as being of service to anybody or anything except my ego and I didn't want to have to deal with fame. I just didn't want to have to flirt with it.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  I saw too many people I love fall victim to it. So I said, no, and laughed. And then I had some near death experience and didn't know it luckily. I mean, it was beautiful and I woke up in a hospital room, very drugged out. And by the second day realizing I was very alone, that my life was fairly isolated. I was in a hotel room, I just, I mean, a hospital room, I just almost died, feeling very high and I think very starting to feel really sorry for myself, which is unusual to me because I'm usually feeling how lucky I am. And right in the middle of that, Mike called.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Hey, Shep, how you doing? And I said, you know, I'm really doing miserable. It's one of the few times in my life I can't find the footing. I'm like, sort of kind of lost a little bit. And he said, well, how about doing the movie now? Now we have like a really dramatic moment to go to. And I think my ego probably said, cause I was feeling sorry for myself. I said, yeah, yeah, maybe that's a good way to come out of this thing if I live. Let's do the movie. So I got well, got some good help from my friends and maybe a month later remembered that I had told them we would do the movie. So I called them up. Hey Mike, how you doing? Great. I said, you know, did we have a conversation when I was in the hospital? I said, do the movie?

• 41:27Speaker 03

  And he said, yeah, you said, go ahead and do it. I staffed up, I got six people working it.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Okay. And I really assumed that like my cousin in San Diego would see it. Uh, or that he would abandon the project or I, I didn't. It was hard for me to think of it as real. And I, I knew Mike socially, I didn't know him professionally, except enjoying his talent. And I didn't realize how driven he was. And he spent the next year of his life, seven days a week, 24 hours a day on this thing. I, I did nothing. But I remember about 11 months into it, I got to New York and I, he invited me up for a cup of coffee and say hello. And I went up and I walked into his apartment, it was like walking into CSI. It was pictures of me every part of my life, all over every wall.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  You know what CSI, they had the criminals.

• 42:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  So, uh, and, and movie came out and, um, at first I was really embarrassed, especially with the name.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  I couldn't look anybody in the eye. When they'd say, oh, oh, I hear you got a movie, what's it called? And I would feel my eyes go down to the floor and I would say, super mensch.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Could not look anyone in the eye.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  The film company asked me to come out for a screening somewhere in the Midwest. It was the first time I had seen it with the audience. It was at some film festival. And I was really embarrassed, I mean, like a truly embarrassed, super mensch, like, oh my God, this is, this is so egotistical. Uh, so now what, it's so not what my vision of myself is, but, but, so I started questioning my vision of myself. But anyway, as the movie's over, I walk out into the lobby and it's very Aryan couple. They almost looked like the top of a wedding cake.

• 43:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  We're standing there and the woman had tears in her eyes. And they just stood in the corner. They waited for everybody to take pictures, you know, the things that happened after a screening. And I walked over to him at the end, said, oh, so glad we wanted to talk to you. We just moved here from St. Thomas and our children had grown up and they're, we were empty nesters and we came back. We realized we have so much to be blessed for and we just don't do enough good stuff. And watching the movie made us realize we have to change that in our lives. We'd love to start with you. And we don't have much, but we're hunters and you said you like to cook and eat. We have a lot of venison in our freezer. Can we give you some venison?

• 44:08Speaker 03

  And I went back to the house, got the venison. It turned out my roommate in college was their next door neighbor at St. Thomas. They had a picture of him.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  When I saw the effect it had on those people, and then I came back and I started getting emails and calls. We spoke about Rick Rubin before. That's how we reconnected. Out of nowhere, I hadn't seen him in thirty years. He got ahold of me and said, can I fly over to Maui and spend some time with you? I saw the movie and I really could use some time with you. And he came over. I hadn't seen him in thirty years. So it affected all, like, the first thing I packaged, I got when I got home was a, this beautiful birdcage, came from Africa and it had like fifty white silk flowers in it and one pink one. And this four page letter from a girl, nineteen year old girl who said, listen, I'm not different

• 45:01Speaker 03

  than the other flowers, but I know if you would let me out of the cage, I could really help my people. But, you know, just these things coming from every corner. So that was sort of a side note. And I had a friend, Roy Choi, a chef, who had a book signing in New York when I was there. He's on Anthony Bourdain's imprint and I never met Anthony and I was a huge fan of him. At the book signing, he walked over to me and he said, hey, I want to do your book. Hmm, maybe this is a moment where I can try and figure out what motivated me and maybe if there's anything and what motivated me that other people can use, maybe some techniques that I never was aware of, but that I can find by looking backwards.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  And that's really the exercise and they agreed that if I didn't want to put out the book, I could give them back the money and we just ended. So that was the journey for me was to try and see is it Mike always said there are these interconnections and I always thought of my life as random to see are there are there connectors that could help other people along the way and hence the book.

• 46:04Tim Ferriss?

  And what impact would you like the book to have?

• 46:06Speaker 03

  I would like people to realize how lucky they are. I end the book with maybe the one of the things that maybe I can add to some people's lives, particularly here in America, which is just where you drop out of the womb, you won the game. You win it, you won it already. You're in America, you have a chance. You can get clean water, you get food, hopefully you get some love, there's not a bomb dropping on your head every second. That alone is something to meditate on every day, how special you are and how rarefied it is to be born into something like this. And then maybe the second thing is to try and see the miracle in everything so that

• 46:44Speaker 03

  when you see somebody who your your initial reaction is hatred or you see a snail walking on the ground and your initial reaction is kick it out of the way, to try and see the miracle in it. If you see the miracle in it, because everything is a miracle, you're not going to be able to hurt it. You're going to have a different attitude towards it. To the person you hate, you're going to feel sorry for, that they don't see the miracle in themselves. And sorrow is a much better emotion than hatred, selfishly for yourself. And in there, there's also practical, you know, how you try and make business into compassionate business, how you try and make it a win-win, not winners and losers.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  And I talked a lot about how you create history, things like guilt by association, taking a non-famous person and putting them next to famous people, the fame starts to bleed off. And we live in a fame-driven world, so for commerce, fame is important.

• 47:40Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to ask you about regular practices in your life related to Buddhism and appreciation in just a minute, but since you brought it up, could you describe what you did for Anne Murray that pertains to your last example of that fame by association?

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah, Anne was a great example of guilt by association. She's a wonderful singer, one of the purest voices I've ever heard. She was a schoolteacher in Toronto. Went on a TV show for the summer and sang a song called Snowbird, which became a number one record around the world, huge impact. But she was very, very, very Canadian white bread. And but she wanted to make it. She wanted to be on Midnight Special, which was a big show there. She wanted to play in Vegas. She wanted to do all the things that stars do. But she wasn't a star. She was a girl who had a hit record that nobody really knew who sang it. So she came to me for management.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  And one of the first things I did with her was try and because the song was so big and so strong. I knew that I could include her and stuff if I had her with important other people. So I booked her. At that time, Alice Cooper had a group called The Hollywood Vampires, a drinking group. And it was John Lennon, Harry Nielsen, and Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees. Big faces at the time, particularly John Lennon, who was in his dark era and was not being seen at all when he left Joko for a while. He was in California. Everyone knew he was there, but nobody was seeing him. And the press were anxious to see him. So I booked her in California on Thanksgiving, which I thought was very funny because she was Canadian.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  I tried to make it all as absurd as I possibly could. And I got the guys. I went to see the guys and I said, I got that on my hands and knees. And they all, I used to drive them all home at night because they all got too drunk to drive and nobody could afford cars. So I was the designated driver. So I got that on my hands and knees and I said, guys, I'll drive you all, all the time, but you gotta come help me with this girl from Canada who was so opposite from you that if you guys would stand next to her, I could help make her famous and I'll drive her forever. And they came down. And we got this great picture of Anne Murray, John Lennon, Harry Nielsen, Alice Cooper, Mickey Dolenz, which went out around the world.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Immediately Midnight Special called up to have her host the show. And oh, by the way, you think she can get John to come with her? Well, we'll try.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Rolling Stone called up for a big interview. She made a bunch of covers with the picture. And for the next year or so, we sort of dangled a little bit that maybe John or Alice or somebody would show up. The rest is sort of history. She got a long-term contract in Vegas and life went well for her.

• 50:37Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't know the contrast aspect of it that you thought through because when I looked at the photograph, she does pop out almost like she's superimposed on top of the photograph. She really pops out. Oh, man.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  I don't know if she ever forgave me for doing the picture. She thought she was compromising her career.

• 51:00Tim Ferriss?

  Seems to have worked out pretty well. Now, you mentioned Roger Vergey and a lot of people associate you with music, but you're also very widely credited with creating the celebrity chef phenomenon and movement. How did you meet Emeril Lagasse?

• 51:18Speaker 03

  I met Emeril on a trip to New Orleans. I'd started to become a little bit of a foodie because of my association with Mr. Vergey. And down in New Orleans, there was a chef named Paul Prudhomme, who was very famous, the only really famous chef. And I had a friend of mine who had just taken over a large record company, EMI. And we went down for Jazz Fest and it was his birthday. So I got ahold of, I think it was Mr. Vergey or somebody who made reservations at Paul Prudhomme's for the two nights we were going to be there. And we went the first night and it was not a good experience. So we decided to go somewhere else the next night. We went to a very touristy, but well-respected operation called Commander's Palace.

• 52:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, very famous.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  But served thousand meals a day. And we had a reservation. We get there, a little guy with like half glasses, doesn't look at us at the major D stand. Says 45 minute wait, take him to the bar. And to get to the bar, you walk through the kitchen. And I caught this guy's eye and he came over and gave me a big hug. I had never been there. And said, you guys taken care of? And he said hooked up, I think was the words he used. I said, no, as a matter of fact, we gotta go stand in the bar. So he took us to the bar. He poured a champagne, came back in five minutes, took us to the A table and proceeded to bring every course up to the table with with the help. And every time he'd leave, we'd say, who does this guy think we are? And he's treating me like I'm his best friend for life.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  But we didn't want to blow our cover. When the meal's over, I said to him, okay, who do you think I am? And he said, you know, I have no idea. Um, I didn't know if he knew about Virge or not, which was always like an underpinning. Maybe he knew I was Virge's friend. But he said, um, it's boring here. Once a month or once a week, I pick someone coming through the kitchen who I think wants to go on a ride.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  I take him on a ride and he took us on a ride. And then he gave us a note to go to Tippettina's to see the Neville brothers, which was sold out. And poured a old bottle of cognac into four paper cups for us to leave.

• 53:21Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  And maybe a couple of years later, maybe a year later, a year and a half, two years later, I ended up in a unique situation with um, fifty or sixty great chefs um, who asked me to manage them. Wolfgang Puck, Nobu, um, a whole, and Paul Prudhoe, and a bunch of, a whole big group of chefs. And I remembered Emerald and how he treated me. And um, I said, you know, I'll do it, but I have one guy in New Orleans. I want to bring him Emerald and Gassi. And they'd all heard of him. I didn't realize at the time he had just opened his own restaurant. That's why they had heard of him. And I called Commander's Palace to tell him what I was doing and see if he wanted to join. And they said he opened his own restaurant, it was Emerald's. And our journey began.

• 54:05Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. I mean, we could go into so many different rabbit holes with all these stories, but I'd love to talk about some of your practices, uh, current practices. So we were talking about recognizing the miracles and by extension, appreciation. What practices do you have in your life?

• 54:23Tim Ferriss?

  To help cultivate that and maintain that perspective.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say that I have a discipline. I'm not a practicing Buddhist and I don't really practice any hard and fast disciplines. What I try and do in my life is Joseph Campbell always talked about going into a quiet room for 20 minutes and doing what makes you happy. And what I try and do is schedule. I know things that make me happy. I know being in a jacuzzi makes me happy. I don't know why, but I get in a jacuzzi, I sort of leave my body, I space travel, I deal with issues that I don't deal with when I'm in my body, or you know, perceived

• 55:07Speaker 03

  to me to be in it. And that 15 or 20 minutes, I usually say is like a tuning fork. I do that. Cooking for me gives me that same headspace. So when I get to a point where I'm starting to get confused, I'll go to the kitchen and cook for a half hour. And that sort of brings me back to a place of thankfulness, consciousness, focus, just brings me back to where I want to be. And I think for me, those are the two that I really use as my foundation when I'm truly lost. I go to those two and I try and... But I think, you know, I think if you're lucky

• 55:48Speaker 03

  in life, you find, you find those things that get you back to what's important. Because there's so much fool's gold, there's so much noise, that to really stay focused on what's important and what makes you happy and what is compassionate is difficult. And I think needs constant retuning.

• 56:08Tim Ferriss?

  What have you noticed? I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned the dangers of fame and how a lot of these celebrities just become moths who are consumed by the flame, so to speak. What separates the people who get killed by fame versus the people who do not?

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Well, I think, you know, the one thing I always say fame and I realize that I I need to put a qualifier on, which I didn't do in the movie or really in the book. I need to qualify by saying that the fame that I've dealt with for most of my life was fame attained by people who were in front of large audiences in real time. So ninety percent of my artists who achieved fame had a live people applauding in mass amounts. Mm-hmm. As opposed to film stars, as opposed to authors, as opposed to people who got fame in other ways.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  So mine is fairly slanted and I think, so for me, my, until I really wrote the book and started to think about these things, my, my saying those words was because the people in front of me were normally trying to be headliners in stadiums. And for that subgroup of people, I think rejection is so gigantic to get to a place of success, that there's normally something driving them, some hole somewhere in their life, something that they need filled. Maybe it's love from other people, maybe it's, I don't know, in each person, it's different. Um, maybe they, they don't have a personality, so that's their personality.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  But when you get to filling a thirty thousand seat hall, for the most part, whatever that hole was, doesn't get filled. And that's when the real problems begin. And that's what you see in artists. When they're selling three hundred and four hundred seat halls, they're, they're fine. They may have it drunk, but when they're headlining stadiums, now they go to rehab. It's part of the tour. Let's see, well, two, sixty-five days, then we'll go to rehab. So I think my view of it is very slanted, but I think there's, you know, so many common things about it. I was talking to, um, my, my first glint of fame was, uh, they were playing the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival and Michael Douglas was doing a talk with me.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  And I was walking to it and... Walking for me is one of the things like the jacuzzi or the cooking. When I'm walking, I don't put headphones in, I sort of space travel and deal with issues. You know, I'll deal with the topic that's been on my brain. And I love that. That's what I love about walking. I walk five miles a day here. I walk in New York a lot. And it's quiet time. Cause I'm not famous, so nobody stops me, nobody cares. So I'm taking my walk and the very nice lady said she worked at CNN. They had just screened the movie, that I have a few minutes to talk to her. I stopped for a minute, she explained that she had been trying to get into management and production.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  She had had problems as a child at home. She wanted me to talk to her about how I overcame those insecurities of youngness to become who I am. And my instinct would be to be thankful to be able to help her. Those are the moments you want in life. Where you can, you know, help somebody who needs help. And, um, but I couldn't, I had to get to be at, at the theater. And as I was walking, I started, I explained to him, really sorry, I gave him my email. As I was walking, I started thinking about someone like Michael. Who I've walked with a million times, he gets stopped by every single person.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Wants a picture, wants to tell him a story about how he met his father, wants, all great stuff. But you completely lose your own path in life. You're now on someone else's path. I'm sure it happens to you many times. And it's weird. That's a weird thing to cope with.

• 1:00:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's really, uh, I don't know if you've, if you experienced this that time, but it's, it's really sad and frustrating also because the person who you told you had to leave to go to this meeting may or may not have even believed you, right?

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Correct. Oh, no, I realized, no, you, you know, I like to think of myself as a Johnny apple seed of joy. And you, so anyway, my question to Michael when I got there was. He started, I said, "Before you ask me a question, I gotta ask you a question."

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  I said, "I just, the last thirty minutes of my walk, I got stopped by this girl. And for the last thirty minutes of my walk, all I thought about was how horrible it is that I couldn't give her what she needed, and it was so simple. And was she angry, was she not angry, would she ever contact me? And Michael, that, what goes through your..." He said, "I'm the guy who's put up his arm for thirty years to keep people from you. What goes through your brain when there's a guy in a wheelchair? And we walk by him, and you know he wants to stop you for a second. It's important to him. And we're just walking by him. And you've been doing this your whole life. What is that effect?" And he said, "You know, it's horrible, but you get numb to it." He said, "I hate to admit it.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  I hate that it happens to me, but you realize that you only have twenty-four hours in a day to get through life. And you have to make some choices. And it's horrible, because it takes an edge off who I'd like to think I am."

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  So, those kind of things build up, you know? That's just one little part of fame, where if you're a conscious, good person, all of a sudden you start hating yourself for what you have to do all the time.

• 1:01:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't know if this is, it's maybe completely unrelated, but I heard from a mutual friend that someone came to your house recently, wanted to share a record, but that you didn't have any type of music system and haven't had a music system for twenty-plus years. Is that, is that true? And if so, why is that?

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  Rick Rubin came. I have no idea why, except that I, I almost feel cheated if I don't hear the ocean. The rhythm of this ocean, like I'm hearing it now, is just so beautiful. And so, the rhythm of life, and I feel so blessed to be on it and hear it, that I almost, it almost felt like an intrusion so many times.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  So Rick Rubin came, and I think I mentioned it before. We had a nice lunch, and we talked. And then he wanted to play me something. I said, "I listen to my car.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  I don't really have stuff to listen to here." So he outfitted my house with Sonos. Which I must say, I am really happy I have because I use it a lot. And I do realize that music was sort of missing in my life. And it really has heightened my, my life here.

• 1:03:10Tim Ferriss?

  What type of music do you currently listen to the most?

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  I would say 90% of the time, I listen to Teddy Pendergrass Radio on Pandora.

• 1:03:17Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding, I'll have to do that. I use, I listen to Pandora on my Sonos every day while I'm writing. So I'll see, see how, how Teddy treats me.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  It really makes me feel good. I, I love Teddy. And it just makes me feel good. Like, like makes me smile every time his voice comes on. Plus I love his music.

• 1:03:36Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to ask just a couple of short questions. And the answers don't need to be short, but these are some of the questions that I love asking everybody that I have on the show. And you can certainly punt if one doesn't provoke anything in you. But what book or books, you know, besides your own, have you gifted most to other people?

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Joseph Campbell, many, many years ago. Couple of the Dalai Lama books. Most recently, Norman Lear's book.

• 1:04:07Tim Ferriss?

  The, is it a biography of Norman Lear?

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  It's a biography. It is just the most brilliant thing I've written, I've read. Keith Richards book, I gave away a bunch of those because I thought it was, his voice was so pure.

• 1:04:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've heard tremendous things about that as well. I haven't read it yet myself.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Sent it to a lot of artist friends of mine saying, if you're ever going to write a book, you want your voice to sound, to be as clear as his voice was, it was him. And Questlove's cookbook.

• 1:04:35Tim Ferriss?

  Questlove, that's right. What is it, what is it called?

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Innovative Cooking.

• 1:04:39Tim Ferriss?

  Innovative Cooking. Yeah. He, he is the nicest guy.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  He was just here for a week.

• 1:04:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, is that right?

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had a really nice time. He was another one who reached out, saw the documentary and said, I, I really would love to speak to you for a while. And he threw a little dinner party for me in LA. And then he came out here for a week, which was really nice.

• 1:05:01Tim Ferriss?

  He's a, he's, he's an extremely nice guy. I, I met him years ago. And believe it or not, at, at one point at least, and he's spoken about this, uh, lost, I think it was 50 to 70 pounds following the slow carb diet, my second book.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he mentioned that to me, actually.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding. Yeah, he's.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  He told me to do the slow carb diet.

• 1:05:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he's such a sweetheart of a guy.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  You know, he's a real artist.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  I don't meet that many pure artists anymore because I'm not living in that world.

• 1:05:33Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  But everything he touches, I went to see, he was doing a DJ thing. I had never been to a DJ show and he did one here and it was brilliant. But his, the cookbook is brilliant. It's completely different than anything you've ever read.

• 1:05:49Tim Ferriss?

  Great cover too.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, great cover.

• 1:05:54Tim Ferriss?

  If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say?

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  Help.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  You know, if I had it today, if I had a gigantic billboard, I would, would be completely different to probably any other time in life. And I don't want to talk to politics, but I think everyone has an obligation to try and highlight how filthy this has all become and how disastrous and how long. So I think, although I normally would say I would use it for something completely different, like climate change or right now, I just really scared to see the direction of our country. A country that I love, that's given everybody such great opportunity.

• 1:06:41Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have a quote or any quotes that you live your life by or think of often?

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, not really. I think my professional capacity get the money. I definitely have to force myself to think of that. But not really, I'm very lucky. I'm really thankful. I live a very simple life at its core. So no, I don't really, there's no real, every second of my life is just, I'm really blessed. I'm lucky.

• 1:07:08Tim Ferriss?

  Who are, I'm just arbitrarily pulling out a number here, but three people or sources that you've learned a lot from or followed closely in the last year or so?

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  Let's come back to that one.

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  We'll come back to that one. What is the best or most worthwhile investment you've made? And by investment, it could be money, time, energy. For instance, there's a woman named Amelia Boone. She's one of the world's top endurance athletes who is on this podcast. And for her, it was paying her first $450, which was a financial stretch at the time, to enter a competition called World's Toughest Mudder, which she ended up winning. And it created this whole path for her in life that she never would have anticipated. Does any particular? Investment of money, time, or energy?

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  My investment of money, time, and energy was for the four children I raised. To see the effect it can have on a human's life, and that I could be helpful on it.

• 1:08:06Tim Ferriss?

  And did, and all of, are all of your, all of your children are adopted?

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I never quite, you know, I never adopted them. It was, they were all, they were a family. From Newark, three sisters and a brother. And in the days when I, when their mother died, it was a huge safety net for children without parents. The government provided huge benefits. And although we didn't partake of any of the benefits, I never really, I'm not an accumulator. So I could have been broke at any time. I lived by making money, but I wasn't an accumulator. And I didn't want the responsibility on my head of, once I adopted them, they lost the entire safety net.

• 1:08:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see, just the, the change in legal status.

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  Your legal status changed everything. The consequences to me were that it couldn't be a tax deduction.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  I see. Now, by accumulator, does that mean that you historically, or even still currently, don't save?

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  I save, but I'm not, you know, I'm not a, I, I, I don't, I'm not a billionaire.

• 1:09:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Well, most, most people aren't.

• 1:09:18Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, I'm at a point now in my life where I can maintain my lifestyle. I feel confident for the rest of my life, I can maintain my lifestyle, probably more than my lifestyle. But in 1970, 19, whatever year was it I thought, 1992? I think we got together, when I was 26 years ago, whatever that is.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  I didn't know if I, I didn't know that I would be able to keep my lifestyle. It was only dependent on being successful.

• 1:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  And I just didn't want that on my head. It was easier for me to pay the taxes on the money. And that was really the only dividing line?

• 1:10:00Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:10:03Tim Ferriss?

  What advice would you give to, I have at least three friends who have brand new infants right now, or are going to have their first kids in the next several months. What advice would you give to them as first time parents?

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  Spend time with them, provide them with all the tools they need, as little TV as possible, and lots of love, just love and compassion. And see that if they see the miracle in that kid, every time they look at it, they will never get annoyed at them crying or screaming or pissing on the floor. It'll all become a miracle and beautiful. And that's what it should be.

• 1:10:41Tim Ferriss?

  I remembered, yeah, I mean, it's, it seems like something that might be easy for people to gloss over with the, the spending of time, but it's, it's something that was emphasized to me also by Seth Godin, who's an author, among other things. And he said, you know, you're in effect, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said to me that your kids are getting homeschooled from 3pm to say 10pm, no matter what. And it's up to you to choose whether it's by watching TV, they're getting homeschooled, or by interacting with them. And he has conversations with them over dinner a lot of the time. That's his, one of his rituals, because it offers sort of a, a very informal, semi distracted environment in which

• 1:11:26Tim Ferriss?

  they can tell him the truth without having a serious feel to it, if that makes any sense.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I think it's, you know, I think the thing to remember is that they, they only have one path. And it's, it's, so if you, if you make a path for them, it's compassionate and reasonable and makes sense, that's the only path they know. If you give them a path of neglecting them and letting TVs teach them everything, they're going to live in an alienated world.

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  So I promised I would, so I'm going to come back to, but we can skip this one if need be, the people or sources you've learned from, learned a lot from. And you know what? You mentioned mentors earlier. This could be way back in the day. Doesn't have to be recent.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  Right. I think some of the most significant people in my life, for sure Roger Berge, who was a great French chef, considered maybe the godfather of all the chefs.

• 1:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who want to look him up, how do you spell his last name?

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  B E R G E.

• 1:12:26Speaker 03

  He, through his kitchen came people like Daniel Baloo, David Roulai, Alan Ducasse, Hubert Keller, some of the great chefs of our time came through his kitchen. And, and what he taught me is you can be successful and happy, and you do it through service. And it's a hard concept sometimes to get in your brain, but when you, when I got to spend time with him, I could see in some ways how selfish he was, because he became so happy, making someone else happy. And then I had the unbelievable luck and honor of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama and cooking for him on a number of occasions.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  And the same thing, it's service. Makes him so joyful, he giggles every second, and he lives his life of service. For me, those were probably my two greatest mentors, and then someone like Michael Douglas has always been an amazing inspiration to me. He has the work he does quietly for the UN, for Israel, for anybody who needs him and things that he feels are important. He's been on an anti-nuclear kick for as long as I know him, probably thirty-five years, before anybody was talking about it. He's been an ambassador for the UN. He never says no to helping people, and he has a fun, lives his life, creative, he's

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  productive, doesn't take security with him, lives his life, and, and is of service. I'm doing a, a benefit in New York in September for Chef Roger with the CIA and twelve great chefs. And Michael's coming and talking just because I asked him to. And there was a time when I was trying to make the chefs famous, I wanted guilt by association for the chefs, so I asked him if he would host dinners with all the famous people in LA who would come if he invited them. With my chefs, with Mr. Vergey, and we had these dinners where Michael would, you

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  know, present Vergey, in the room would be Stallone, Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and Anthony Quinn, you know, and guilt by association work, as you could tell, they are celebrity chefs now. So I think he's been a big inspiration. I've been very lucky to have a lot of people.

• 1:14:52Tim Ferriss?

  And yeah, I mean, you've passed that on also. I mean, if you just look at the culinary world as one example, I mean, you, and for people who want to check it out, I mean, you gave a great, I think it was a commencement speech at the CIA, which I should probably explain for people is not the Central Intelligence Agency.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Tim Ferriss?

  It's the, yeah, the Culinary Institute of America. And you mentioned that, you know, before the celebrity chef phenomenon, in a way, sort of paved the highway, I think, as you put it.

• 1:15:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  The people at the top of their game, I mean, these are the A-Rods or the Derek Jeters of their sport, so to speak, in the cooking, in the world of chefs, were making like a hundred grand a year. And now you can come out of culinary school, and some people will get entry level, or I should say first jobs, that are a hundred thousand dollars. So it's, it's really opened up a world of opportunity for those people as well.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  And a world of caution, as I said in the CIA speech, if they, if their only focus is making meals that people pay a hundred dollars a piece for, they're in for a big crash, them and the culinary arts.

• 1:16:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  They have to, they have to start feeding them. I said in, you know, I told the killers, you're going to graduate, you're going to get a job for a hundred and a quarter, you're going to be in a restaurant that's four hundred dollar meals, and you're going to walk outside the restaurant, look to the left and look to the right, and there's going to be homeless, hungry people. And if you think your only job is feeding those diners, you are in for a really rough life.

• 1:16:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely. And I want to give credit to somebody you mentioned earlier. In fact, Roy Choi. So he and a friend of mine named Steve Jiang, who's involved, and also Daniel Patterson, who has quite a few restaurants, one of which Alta SF I'm involved with in San Francisco. Great guys. And they have started, I believe there are at least two locations now, a low-cost, healthy food local, L O K, L O K O L. And I went to their first location opening in Los Angeles. And so he's doing really good work, I think, in trying to give it back.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  He's, he's, he's the real deal, Roy. He is the, a fellow from England, Jamie Oliver, who really, in my opinion, was the first really conscious chef out of this celebrity chef movement. I think they're all, I don't mean to say that any of the other ones aren't conscious. He was a fellow who understood that it was important for him to use his fame to not only do hundred dollar meals. And Roy Choi has picked up the gauntlet here. It's, I, I, I got very lucky to know him well. And he is the real deal, boy. He really gets it. I mean, he wants to make money. He wants to send his kids to college. He wants to do all the things that we all want to do for our families. I'm sure he

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  wants to be famous, like everybody else. But he completely understands that we all have to travel together. This is not a one-person journey.

• 1:17:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, definitely. He did a, did a hell of a job training Jon Favreau for chef as well.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I always saw that shoot a lot. It was a really fun shoot. I went to it a lot.

• 1:18:07Tim Ferriss?

  So I, just a, just a couple of last questions. And hearing the sound of the waves is making me want to get outside and go for a long walk.

• 1:18:17Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I can definitely hear it. It's making me want to chase daylight to go for a hike with my dog.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  Isn't it? I mean, there is that rhythm that exists all over the planet, whether it's the breeze coming through the trees or the sound of the waves or, you know, the snow, the ice melting or this, those sounds that just, you sort of know your home.

• 1:18:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's, uh, it's, it's meditative, very meditative. So one question I have to ask is for, for all the people out there who may one day end up cooking for the Dalai Lama. Should you have yak milk tea? On the menu, maybe you could provide some, if you have any experience.

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  Yes, I do. So, uh, I was really fortunate. They accepted, uh, he was coming to Hawaii and they accepted my offer to cook for them. And, uh, again, I'm not a practicing Buddhist and I didn't know a lot about his holiness. And I did some research and I assumed he was vegetarian. I couldn't get anybody, Tibetan people are so beautiful and so gentle. When you ask them, what should I make for his holiness? They would never, it's so aggressive for them to tell you what to make.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  All they would say is, oh, he would love anything you make. Um, they're completely of service. So I couldn't really find out. But I, in the research, it said that the only real staple in Tibet is yak. Yak is a cross, I think, between like a goat and a cow. And they live high in the mountains. There's no vegetables really there. So everything's made from yak. It's yak stew. Yak milk, yak butter, yak cheese, and the most popular thing is yak tea. So I have a friend who does tours of Tibet, wonderful guy named Kenny Ballard. And, um, I asked him if he could get me some yak butter to make yak tea.

• 1:20:15Speaker 03

  So that I could have yak tea for his holiness for his first breakfast, thinking I was, oh my God, how cool is this? I'm so cool.

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  And I get the yak butter and it's the smelliest thing you've ever smelled. It's in a jar.

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  Still smelled up my whole house. It was, it's so smelly. But I had it. And I get there and the only, the only requirement for cooking for him, they asked me no questions. They didn't ask me if I could cook.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  All they said was, you can't have expectations. If you have an expectation that you're going to meet his holiness, then you shouldn't cook for him. So we got, I went to my crew, we got all those expectations out of our brain. You have to assume you're not going to meet him, we're going to cook the meal, someone's going to deliver it to him. You're doing this for service, not for a photo op. And the first morning, they asked me to bring him his meal. Now I'm completely shocked. Cause I assume I'm not even meeting him and it's five o'clock in the morning. And one of the things on the tray is the yak tea. So I put it, they have you cover your mouth, if he is holiness, I cover my mouth. And I go up the steps into his room and I walk in and he's uh, in his robe with top down.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  So his chest was bare and he's brushing his teeth, looking in the mirror and gets a big smile, looks, oh hello. Big smile, hello your holiness. I'm so nervous, I could hardly, I can hardly speak. I tend to get nervous in front of uh, power figures, particularly at that point in my life. Now I've sort of adjusted. But that was, it was almost overwhelming. I just didn't want to faint.

• 1:21:57Speaker 03

  And he takes a whiff of tooth and he goes, oh yak tea. And I said, I, I got so proud. It's like, oh my God, chef, you pulled this off. It's so amazing. It was worth all the effort. All the smell. You are the coolest guy in the world. And I hear him say, and I'm telling myself this, his second line is, oh, that's why I leave to bed. It smells so bad.

• 1:22:32Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man. Well, we could, we could go on for days and I don't want to keep you for days. But I, I, I, I want people to hear your stories and to learn from you. What is the title of the book? Where can people find it? What would you suggest people do who want to learn more?

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  It's called The Backstage Pass. I'll have to look up the title.

• 1:22:57Tim Ferriss?

  And I can, I can certainly link to it also in the show notes for people who just want the convenience.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it is the name. They call me Super Mensch, A Backstage Pass to the Amazing Worlds of Film, Food, and Rock and Roll. And it's, um, it's, can be ordered through Amazon or through any of those services. It's published by Anthony Bourdain through Echo. I'm really proud to have Anthony as the publisher. And I hope everybody enjoys it.

• 1:23:29Tim Ferriss?

  And for those people listening, I will, of course, link to everything in the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And Shep, any last words, any requests of the audience for them to take with them and consider or act on? Anything else that you'd like to, to say before we, before we wrap up?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  This is so out of my wheelhouse, but the only thing I really have to say is please go vote.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  We need everybody to vote their conscience and think about their children and about what kind of world they want to live. Then make a choice, but, but this isn't a critical time. We need to vote.

• 1:24:08Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. Here, here. Well, Shep, I hope we do get to meet in person sometime and

• 1:24:15Speaker 03

  There's so much here.

• 1:24:16Tim Ferriss?

  This has been a blast.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  On your show, I listened to it. It's amazing. Thank you.

• 1:24:21Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I, I think you're doing important work and we didn't even have a chance to, to skim the surface really of a lot of what you're doing right now. But I will add, I will-

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Howie will do another show.

• 1:24:35Tim Ferriss?

  Will do another show. Maybe I can have one of those papayas. And, uh, thank you so much for the time. I really, really appreciate it.

• 1:24:43Speaker 03

  Thank you. Mahalo, as we say in Hawaii. Have a great day.

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And to everyone listening, as always, thank you so much for joining us. And until next time, pay attention, experiment often, be nice, and pay attention to the miracles.

• 1:25:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

• 1:25:42Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for years. I love audiobooks and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. The only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing. You will thank me. The Graveyard Book.

• 1:26:24Tim Ferriss?

  The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became The Four Hour Work Week. So, all you need to do to get your free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim, and you can choose one of those two books, or you can choose from more great options than you can possibly imagine. So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class. It's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim. That's audible.com/tim and grab a book. Enjoy.

• 1:26:57Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. If I'm not going commando, I'm in MeUndies. I have been testing these underwear for three to four months now, pretty much every day, and in fact, throughout a bunch of my other underwear this morning. And on the road, in the house, they are extremely comfortable. They look good, feel good. They are made of micro modal, two times softer than cotton, as scientifically tested using the Kawabata method. Sounds very fancy, of course. And I get a lot of compliments from ladies for these. You don't get diaper butt, you don't get the tired elastic band. They look great, and they have underwear for both men and women. Check out meundies.com/tim and you can see everything I've been wearing.

• 1:27:39Tim Ferriss?

  They're ridiculous, they're sublime, everything in between, including my favorite, which is called out. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention their lounge pants. This is a new thing, and I've been wearing their lounge pants when I record podcasts. I've been wearing them out and about when I'm walking the dog, meeting people for coffee. And they are extremely comfortable, though they're made from the same material as the underwear. But, some of them, like the blue ones I have, have pockets, so you can walk about without seeming like you're off of your meds and completely crazy. So, that is awesome. And if you're not happy with the first pair you try on, I assume that refers to the underwear, they'll refund you completely and you can keep the pair you tried on for free. But if you're that kind of person, you should be ashamed, because that's disgusting. MeUndies.com/tim, check it out.