Ep 43: Margaret Cho on Comedy, Bisexuality, and The Slow-Carb Diet

Margaret Cho is a polymath. She is an internationally acclaimed comic, actress, author, fashion designer and singer-songwriter. Perhaps you've seen her on the big screen, or in TV series such as Sex and the City and 30 Rock. But well before she was on Dancing with the Stars (yes, she's done that, too), she decided on her comedy career... at the tender age of eight. The stage has been her constant companion ever since. In this episode we delve into her comic influences and approaches, bisexuality, slow-carb adventures, and much more. Please indulge me as we dig deep into the lesser-known tricks of the Slow-Carb Diet http://fourhourworkweek.com/2012/07/12/how-to-lose-100-pounds/. Margaret had a lot of detailed questions (she's followed it for ~3 months), and the answers might help accelerate your own fat loss. (If you want more, here are several case studies http://fourhourworkweek.com/2012/07/12/how-to-lose-100-pounds/ -- with pics -- who've lost 100+ pounds.) Enjoy! All links and show notes 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

  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?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, where does seem appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  you have tons of designers around the world who compete for your business and submit different ideas and designs and drafts. You have an original design that you love, or you pay nothing. It is fantastic. I have used it. I have mentioned it before, including in The 4-Hour Workweek as a resource. Check it out, 99designs.com/tim. And if you use that link, you'll be able to see what I've done on the platform. You will also get $99 as an upgrade for free, which will get you more designs, more submissions. So, check it out. Exoficio... Boy, where do I begin? I have a long history with Exoficio. Exoficio makes clothing. And as far back as 2007, 2008, I had a hit video that went viral called "How to Travel

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  the World with 10 Pounds or Less," and I talked about Exoficio underwear. Exoficio underwear is lightweight, ultra-lightweight, quick-drying, and antimicrobial. Why is this important? Well, I've gone through 20-plus countries with two pairs of underwear before, both from Exoficio. And I'm not alone in this. This might sound crazy, but a lot of executives, for instance, will take... Take this underwear, they'll wash it in the sink or somewhere else, roll it up in a towel like a burrito, step on it, and a few hours later, they are completely dry, completely clean. You don't have to just have two, and yes, they have to be comfortable for all day wear, but check out their clothing, as well as their underwear. You can go to exofficio.com/tim, that's X-E-X-O-F-F-I-C-I-O dot com forward slash tim, and you can see

• 2:35Tim Ferriss?

  this video, which has a bunch of other packing tips, but this underwear, this clothing, is not just for the gents. Ladies, you have choices too, and they really have an incredible collection of high-quality products that I've used for almost 10 years now. So check them out, exofficio.com/tim.

• 2:57Tim Ferriss?

  Wakka, wakka, wakka, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show. For those of you new to the program, this is the forum through which I try to dissect excellence, to find the tools and tactics, or approaches that you can use. And that ranges from billionaire investors, to chess prodigies, to mega-platinum musicians, to, in this episode's case, comedian. A comedienne, E-N-N-E-A-N, or stand-up comic, depending on the terminology that you prefer. Margaret Cho, she has an illustrious career, and is a prodigious talent, and she is also a polymath. She's not only a very celebrated stand-up

• 3:39Tim Ferriss?

  comic, but she's been a fashion designer, singer-songwriter, she's been in feature films, of course, and TV series, including Sex and the City, and 30 Rock, she's been on Dancing with the Stars, and we don't have time to go through all of her accolades. But this particular conversation digs into her inspirations, tricks of the trade...

• 4:01Tim Ferriss?

  Different practices that you can borrow, sexuality, including bisexuality, and her topics of choice, her different challenges, addiction, and we also delve deep into the slow carb diet. So I hope you can indulge me on that particular segment of the program, but it goes into some nitty gritty details because Margaret had a bunch of questions. She's followed it and is a fan of the protocol. So perhaps it'll help some of you out there. And as always, you can find the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast for links and further resources, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And we're using new audio equipment in this introduction. So let me know what you think. Be very curious to hear

• 4:45Tim Ferriss?

  your thoughts. Without further ado, please meet Margaret Cho.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I am very excited for this episode because I have someone that I have admired for a very long time, been a fan of for a very long time, joining us today, and that is Margaret Cho. Margaret, how are you?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  I'm doing great. Thank you very much. That's wonderful.

• 5:12Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. I was, I was having one of my many nights of insomnia, which I've, I've dealt with and improved on. And I was sort of scanning through Twitter and I came across your profile because I'm a huge comedy fan. And I saw also follows you and my eyes just about popped out of my head. I was, I was so taken aback and reached out and we connected. And, and here we, and here we are. But where, where are we finding you at the moment? I know you travel a lot.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Today, I am in West Palm Beach, Florida. There is a, something of a big storm outside. So that's thunder. But I'm, I'm always on the road. So that's, I'm doing a show here today.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  Very cool. And I know we have some precious time with you before you take off. It is hard for me to know even where to begin because you've done so many different things. And it seems like lived so many different lives. You've had television, books, film, obviously, the, the stand up. When you meet someone who's unfamiliar with your work, doesn't recognize you, if they ask you, what do you do? How do you even respond to that?

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Oh, well, usually I just, I think I identify mostly as a stand-up comedian. And, uh, thank you for your kind words. I, I, I, uh, was excited to, um, connect with you too, as I'm a big fan. And I think, uh, but comedy is really, um, what I would say I do. I think probably you're the same in that you are quite a multi-hyphenate in the different things you write about and the different things you talk about. And so, how would you define yourself besides, would it just be author? Or would it be, um, chef, or body expert, or, or thinking expert? Or, um, multi-hyphenates are, are kinda tricky, because it's, you know, so as you are an author, I guess I, I am a stand-up comedian.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  You know, that's the basic place where we start from, but there's so much more.

• 7:13Tim Ferriss?

  No, for sure. It's, it's something that I've, I've had trouble with for a very long time. Uh, depending on who I'm talking to and how badly I want to kill the conversation, if I think they're just being polite and trying to get through the three or four cocktail questions so they can glance over my shoulder and move on, I'll say something like, you know, professional dilettante comes to mind. Uh, drug dealer was one I used to use.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Oh!

• 7:38Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, turns out it's a great way to get people out of your house at a dinner party if you ask them if they wanna do heroin, or, you know, there, there are a lot of sort of

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah!

• 7:48Tim Ferriss?

  Tricks of the trade, depending on where you are.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  That's a great, that's a great idea.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  Now, the, uh, the, the, the stand-up comedy side of things, uh, I'm, I've, I've had the good fortune of, uh, occasionally having the chance to chat with people when I've gone to live shows, for instance. And I'm always interested to know, and if, if you've been asked this question a thousand times, feel free to answer a different question, but what compels you to do comedy? And is it the same now as it was in the beginning?

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Um, it uh, it's exactly the same. The, what compels me is a need to be heard and a need to make people laugh and a need to express um, what I think, things that need to be said and also to, to just have a good time, you know, and, and I've had that impulse, I think since I was about eight years old. I, I've always wanted to be a comedian and um, you know, it, it, it's the impulse to do it, the, the, the, you know, intention, everything is the same. There's nothing has altered and I think this is, this is probably the same for most comedians out there. Um, there are quite a lot of people who do develop

• 9:07Speaker 03

  a kind of aversion to it after doing it for say thirty, forty years. They really feel like they need to retire, but I'm more on the side of, I, I think I need to do it more actually as I get older. So, I'm fortunate in that it, it sustains me that it's the way that I make a living, but it's also my social life and, and a great pastime and a great, great, great thing to do.

• 9:31Tim Ferriss?

  Ned, the um, the aspect of uh, my career that a lot of people ask about is writing and I've, I've noticed there are different breeds of writers. Uh, this is, this is gonna come back to the stand-up question, but a lot of writers, and I would say myself included, have a, have a, a need, almost a therapeutic need to write at points, no matter how hard the process is, uh, almost as a, a way of, of self-medicating and, and getting neuroses out of their heads. Um, and I'm not projecting here, but this is, this is for me, there, there are many times when I will, I will write in the morning, uh, the material I know

• 10:14Tim Ferriss?

  is pure garbage. It's just completely self-indulgent morning pages, but it's, it's my equivalent of taking my psyche and sort of uh, whacking the rug to get the dust out of it before I move on to my day so that I don't have all of the gremlins in my head. And I'm curious if, uh, at least in the stand-up world or the comedy world, uh, it seems...

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  It seems that people have different drives and different things that keep them going. And I'd be curious to know if you could comment on what it is for you.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Well, I think that I have the equivalent of a morning pages sort of thing because I work almost every day. I mean, I perform almost every day. There are different things that I do, but as a stand-up comic, it is really a daily effort. And so, you know, you kind of burn off all of those kind of like ideas that are like like floating on the top and then you can get to the real need of it. So I guess I have that kind of a meditation too. I wish that I had more of that as a writer, you know, as an author. For me, you know, that's something that I would like to pursue more, but I still don't have the intent need for it that I do as a stand-up comedian.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  When did you do your first professional stand-up? And when did you decide that you were going to do it professionally?

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Well, I decided that I was going to do it professionally when I understood that I was going to become an adult and that when at some point, you know, that this would be my job and my identity. As soon as I understood what the job of stand-up comedy was, then I became very committed to doing it. And that's, I think, an unusual thing maybe for somebody to choose a profession at eight years old. But I knew that it was actually more than a profession. It was really a kind of a calling. And then I really started early. I started doing professional performances at 14.

• 12:17Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  I was touring. By 15, I was making a pretty great living. By 18, and then I was on television by 20. So it was a, it was a very, very important thing for me. And it was really destiny.

• 12:35Tim Ferriss?

  Who were some of those, the early inspirations and role models for you that you look to as models, if that were the case at all, in the very early days?

• 12:49Speaker 03

  The main model for my early years and then, of course, pretty much until now, was Joan Rivers. And that's been a very difficult, you know, right now, a lot of comedians are feeling the loss of both her and Robin Williams. And it's a really, it's a terrible time in comedy because it's like we lost our, the king and the queen, you know? And now it's like, who is the heir apparent? But mostly, it's the sorrow and mourning. So it's pretty terrible.

• 13:25Tim Ferriss?

  And what made Joan special? Obviously, she had just an incredible career in longevity and endurance, I mean, my god. But what was it that, of all of the people out there, really appealed to you about her when you were getting started?

• 13:44Speaker 03

  I think that she was so unafraid. She was so, just her fearlessness, and she was a woman, and she was just so mighty. And, you know, as a live comic, you know, like the stuff that she would do in clubs and at night, like not, you know, not including like the Emmy, those red carpet stuff and the Oscar stuff, she was so filthy. I mean, she was so, I mean, to the very end, you know, just the most raunchy comedian you could even imagine. And she would shock us, you know, the most unshockable people. She was incredible.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  And also, the reason why she and I were close is that she really taught me a lot about gratitude, you know? She had intense and immense gratitude for everything in her life and wanted me and all these other comedians that she would foster in a way that she wanted to instill that in us, that this was a really magical thing, this gift that we were given, and that we should be really grateful for it. And that's the most... valuable lesson I've ever learned from anyone. So she was really culmination parent like a mother and whatever like Mr. Miyagi, like Pat Morita from Karate Kid. Like she was a really, um,

• 15:08Speaker 03

  she was a great mentor and a great woman.

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular ways in which you practice gratitude? Is that part of your schedule in some way? Or is that just a general philosophy?

• 15:25Speaker 03

  I don't think so. I should. I mean, it would be really great to have that as a practice to make a gratitude list, or something like that. But mostly, it's just an attitude every day. Like, I'm really happy in what I do. I really love what I do. Um, it's a really great feeling to do what you love. And, uh, you know, for me, it's about making money, of course, but that, I would still do stand-up comedy without making anything. I put just as much effort into every show, no matter how much I'm making, or whatever. It's something that I always wanted, and I'm so

• 16:08Speaker 03

  happy that I get to do it. And I think that, um, it's just wonderful. So I don't actually have a practice, but that might be something nice to implement later.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  If we're looking at your, uh, your schedule or your rituals, um, actually, before we even get to that, you mentioned fearlessness. And there are very few things I can imagine that would strike complete panic into my heart more than getting up on stage and doing stand-up, where you really have to, you really are not going to be given any mercy laughs by most people. I mean, you have to stand on your own merit. What are some of the, when have you, what are some instances where you have been most afraid on stage?

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Um, there were a couple of times where I lost my voice and then I had to uh figure out how to do shows without having a voice. So I utilized um some voice software in my computer and then I also brought people on to the stage who would act things out from, or I would actually act them out and they would read them from behind. So it was like a puppet or something. Um, so that was helpful. But it was really terrifying to not have the um capacity to deal with a heckler, which I'm very good at. It's one of my specialities.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Or deal with like, you know, kind of the immediacy of live performance. You know, it took away my spontaneity. It took away um just a lot of the uh kind of freshness and the the it the unpredictability of what live performance instead of comedy is, which to me is the greatest part of it. So that was really terrible. Um, and then I've, you know, that bad show, I mean, I I I probably have uh the worst shows of anybody in my category, you know, in in in the level that I am as a comedian. Because I'm so committed to taking risks as a performer, I can really do terribly.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  And sometimes that can be really scary if you're uh say in um different countries, like in England or Scotland where it it it's like there's a high anger factor if you don't do well in comedy. And you know, that that that I've had really bad fights and, you know, a couple of instances where I was really scared for a physical harm because I I really was not um, I give it to people. I really let them have it if I'm backed into a corner. And so um it's it can be, it can be really nuts. People can get really angry.

• 18:56Tim Ferriss?

  When you said uh, and I'm just paraphrasing here, but I'd love for you to expand a bit on on what you what you just mentioned related to sort of having the potential to do worst in your category or class of comic. Why do you have sort of higher um crash and burn potential? Um, or what's what's the uh, why do you have the added risk factor?

• 19:22Speaker 03

  I think because I I will come off of anything scripted and I will go with the flow and then I will um really engage with an audience um in a very personal level like I'm not the kind of artist that can go on autopilot which actually happens much more than people realize.

• 19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Like I don't have, I don't really have that ability. So I build it from the ground up and I I build it from scratch every time from from the beginning and so that in itself is a huge risk when you're not necessarily relying on the tried and true and things that you know work and you're going into everything with it popular that that you you really are um you're plugging into something divine but that divinity is not always reliable because we're human. So it can be really just very scary um and I think that uh that's the energy that I thrive off of. That's what I love but that that in in in in a way is is kind of um a risky behavior.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. Right. Yeah. You can be knocking for the muse and they might not be open for business uh that particular evening. Uh talking about hecklers. So this this I would love to dig into a little bit. What are your favorite ways of dealing with hecklers? I mean, is there a sort of a uh you know, Margaret Cho playbook? Do you have any any particular responses? If you're just like, you know what? I don't want to deal with this guy right now. I need to cut him off at the knees. What are some of the fastest ways of dealing with with hecklers? And you know, maybe there are different types of hecklers. I'm sure there are, but I'd I'd love to hear a little bit about that.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Well, there's um different types. Um but the best thing to do is to really just out and out engage somebody and really try to find out what they're trying to say. And and so there's no set. Like plant, there's no set lines or there's no scripted idea of what to say to shut them down. It's really going deeper and finding out why this person was choosing to disrupt a performance that everybody has paid for, that everybody is there and agreed to sit for. Why does somebody want to rebel against that? And so I, I, you know, I'm curious about it. And I usually give them quite a lot of time.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Like if I have a, because there's a potential to create a whole show around them. And this is something I learned from, oh, it's great.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  I learned from Paula Poundstone, who's an absolute genius at that. I mean, she will, uh, she'll do a show and if somebody gets up to go to the bathroom, she'll go to their chair, she'll go to their chair and she'll take their jacket and put it on and go through their pocket. And really just, I mean, she is so fearless when it comes to talking to an audience. And so I learned that from her. I mean, it doesn't have to detract from your performance. It can really be an incredible journey that will only be taken one time. And, um, you know, it's not to encourage acting at shows, but sometimes it's really inevitable. So my, my goal is to just try to take that road as it presents itself.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  If it doesn't work, if, usually if the, the only reason it doesn't work is if the person is too drunk, then I'll just have them kicked out.

• 22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  So, and that's a whole nother thing.

• 22:46Tim Ferriss?

  Now, if they're, if they're not excessively drunk, uh, what type of question might you ask them or questions if they're like, oh boo, you know, and you can tell they're not totally drunk, they're just being an idiot? What, what type of, what type of question might you ask them or what might you say to them?

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Well, I'll ask them, you know, why they're yelling out or what the, what the purpose is or what they need, you know? And then I can ask them like about who they're with, I can ask the person they're with. About why they're saying that, like, why are they like that? Are they like this all the time? Is this a special thing? And then I'll get an explanation from the partner or whatever. It's very interesting. You know, and then you can also talk to other people around them, like people that are seated next to them, like, what was this person like before the show? And what were they saying? And what, you know, like, what led us to this? And then somebody from another part of the room will complain about it, and then you go over there and do the same thing. But it can be very, very interesting, because you just utilize what they're saying and you incorporate it into what you're doing.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  And then if you have an encyclopedic knowledge of your jokes and therefore, you know, you can call on anything that you might have that would be relevant. But I love that immediacy. I think it is really, what is great about stand-up comedy is that there's that potential to do anything.

• 24:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's part of, part of why I enjoy going to live shows. You just, you really don't know how the movie's gonna end. I mean, you don't, you have no idea how things are gonna develop. Uh, let's see here. Are there any particular, I'm just trying to think here, uh, non-stand-up influences? So, people who are not stand-up comics who have affected, and this could be movies, books, anything, or people, but outside of the realm of comedy, who have impacted how you perform, how you present, how you develop your material?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Oh, I think Madonna is great. I love Chrissie Hynde. I love a lot of, like, female rock singers. Like, I am a musician also, so I get a lot of inspiration from Bjork and, you know, like, just, uh, music is always really inspiring and, and, you know, just like the performance style of somebody like Janis Joplin I would love to capture as a comedian. That would be my ideal, if I could be a comedian that is, what is Janis Joplin as a singer, that would be great. So, singers are incredibly influential, and I think it's because a long, long, long

• 25:19Speaker 03

  time ago, I happened upon a pet psychic who, um, there was a, I had a dog who I loved very much, and, you know, she, it was like this television show about pet psychics. So, I was doing it, I, I was talking to her, and she said that my dog thought that I was a singer, because dogs don't understand what stand-up comedy is. So, I thought that was the sweetest. Of what I do. He thought I was singing. You know, for him it is.

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  You know, that's, uh, that's really, what type of dog?

• 25:53Speaker 03

  He was, uh, he died, but he was a big Shepherd mix, like a big, like fluffy guy that you would get at the pound. It was kind of every dog at once, but he was the best.

• 26:03Tim Ferriss?

  I, uh, it, it makes me think of very, very early on for me, uh, when my first book had just come out in 2007. I was, uh, headed to South by Southwest for the first time to give my first real keynote and I was extremely nervous. I was just a sweaty nervous mess, even days beforehand. And I had no real way to rehearse in front of people. So I ended up going to my friend's garage. He had three chihuahuas of different sizes. And I realized that if I focused on presenting to them that I assume they didn't understand a word. But if my actual style of presentation was not really dynamic, they would get bored and walk away.

• 26:46Tim Ferriss?

  But if, if I was, if, if I was really animated, they would sit there kind of bug eyed and look at me. So I used the chihuahuas as my test audience for, uh, for developing my material for that first keynote. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  That's so perfect.

• 27:02Tim Ferriss?

  And it was, uh, it actually worked out extremely well because my, my tech failed. My, my laptop had some type of glitch and the, the projector wasn't working. So I had to go off, I had to go off script and I had to, to work without the tech. The, the, the question of, of fearlessness and being nervous on stage. You, you are not shy, at least as people know you now, about talking about race, gender, sexuality. I mean, you really cross into all sorts of different worlds that, that many people I assume would avoid because they're, they're perceived as sensitive topics. Were you ever nervous about broaching those types of subjects early on?

• 27:47Tim Ferriss?

  Or have you from the very get go?

• 27:50Speaker 03

  No, it's a nerve-wracking thing because, you know, you wanna have a semblance of privacy and then sometimes when you reveal things on stage that, you know, are pretty that can it can be kind of weird, you know, like I I think that but I I think that privacy is really overrated though because i- i- it's just a kind of a social construct that doesn't really mean that much because all human beings are we felt all the same things. We've had all the same heartbreaks and tragedies and dumb things and stupid things and, you know, we really are not no none of us are a stranger to that if you've lived it all, you know. So, um, you know, it's not like anything I say, it's not like something we haven't

• 28:32Speaker 03

  everybody hasn't felt, but still things can feel odd and weird. Um, but so I was more conscious of it when I was younger. Um, that like I'm bisexual and I was really scared of revealing that for maybe the first, uh, ten years of my career, um, because I was told by my management then that, uh, it would be really bad to be gay in any way and that I should not express that. And so that was a really scary thing because, you know, in relationships with women and and stuff and I I I I had to hide that which always felt odd and weird, um, that I could have fine relationships with men and show that, but

• 29:13Speaker 03

  with women it was somehow wrong. And and so I I I really gave up trying to pretend that I was anything but myself very early.

• 29:23Tim Ferriss?

  When did you when did you make that leap? What was the the this the year roughly? I'm just trying to think of it in terms of the kind of cultural and political climate. Uh, when did you come out, so to speak, publicly?

• 29:38Speaker 03

  I think probably about ninety-five or ninety-six, something like that.

• 29:41Tim Ferriss?

  Ninety-six.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  So, pretty early.

• 29:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, pretty early on.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Um, but then women are now I realize and I look back on, you know, women that women's sexuality, women's bisexuality is a lot more.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's a lot more easy to, or to deal with, or people have a harder time dealing with men and male sexuality and fluidity there, but what's hard is women who are just, like, who justify as lesbians, they think they have a harder time as opposed to women who are bisexual. There's some, there's some kind of glamour and majesty attached to bisexual women that I'm not sure is true, but it certainly existed as a kind of archetype or stereotype even.

• 30:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure. I mean, I think that, you know, even in, I live in San Francisco, I've been there for ages, and, I mean, it's sort of joked that bisexual women, no matter what, which is ridiculous, of course, but are, you know, often referred to as unicorns. And, you know, I think there's that, there's that, it sort of holds, occupies a very unique place in the mind space of even mainstream America, for whatever reason. But, have you ever, have you ever had, disclosed anything onstage that, at least for a period of time, you regretted?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Um, well, I think that I, earlier, I'm working on a show that's really about mental illness and addiction, which is part of the, sort of, trajectory of the thing that I'm trying to explain. So I'm talking a lot about prescription pill addiction, which I had a really bad case of it for, I stopped about a year ago, but before that, it had been about five years, where I was really having a problem. But, you know, it's like one of those things where, you know, that addiction is really strange, because it's so deadly and destructive, just in the way that a heroin addiction would be, but, you

• 31:54Speaker 03

  know, it's prescribed by a doctor, and I was actually getting it from my actual doctor, and it was that, you know, that there was all of these levels of legitimacy to it, and then secrecy as well, and so disclosing that is very, it's very weird, because, you know, it really shatters a lot of these illusions of, I don't know, maturity and...

• 32:20Speaker 03

  You know, being sane, like sanity and stuff. So, you know, that's a whole nother thing. Like, it's, it's hard to disclose, but it's also important to you because that honesty keeps me not sober, because I, I, I still drink red wine, but I, I think it, it keeps me sort of more sane than I would, because it's a really crazy addiction to have.

• 32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think it's very insidious, uh, like you mentioned also, because it's extremely common, uh, even among doctors themselves, extremely common.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:54Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, but it's not, uh, talked about nearly as much, uh, in detail as you pointed out, for instance, uh, compared to heroin addiction or something like that. Um, what type of, what type of, uh, medications, just out of curiosity?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Oh, everything like Percocet, um, you know, you can get, oh, you know, like you could get, oh, this is weird, but, uh, you know what lean is? Or scissor, which is like hydrocodone cough syrup?

• 33:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, sure.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Um, that, or, um, even to morphine or methadone or anything kind of op, any opiates, like that, that, that, that was really my problem. Um, and it, it was really, really destructive. But at the same time, you don't exactly feel high. So it's almost a cheat, like you're actually not really high. You're just not sick. After you get properly addicted to those drugs, they really are no, they have no use at all.

• 33:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  As a kind of a high, they, they really only serve to keep you from being sick.

• 34:00Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Which is a really bad thing.

• 34:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just you need it to get to baseline, to not have the physical withdrawal symptoms. Um, speaking personally, I think I've been, uh, very fortunate in a lot of respects, of course, but one is that hydrocodone, Vicodin, et cetera, um, all make me extremely nauseous. Uh, so the, all of the sort of opioid derivative drugs make me very, very sick. And, uh, I learned that after shoulder surgery, I was given all these painkillers and I couldn't really take any of them because they made me so sick, which I think is, is a blessing in disguise in a lot of ways, because my likelihood of abusing those things is very, very low. Uh, do you, do you find, uh, at least within the world of comedy?

• 34:44Tim Ferriss?

  That people tend to, if they have addictive personalities, and I have no idea if addiction is more or less common in stand-up comics than the general population, of course, a lot of the tragedies are highlighted, which I think might skew the public perception, but do people tend to be either addicted to depressants and opiates or stimulants? I mean, do people often end up addicted to both, or do they tend to fall on one side or the other?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  I think they tend to fall on one side or the other. I mean, I myself can speak that. I'm much more of a depressant. I'm much more like a downer.

• 35:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Like, I've never been at cocaine or whatever, you know, that's never been my thing. But then there's people who just want everything. And then stand-up comics in particular, like, our job is really to obsess on things. That's what stand-up comedy is, is just obsessing over a topic.

• 35:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  You're just going crazy on something. And, you know, that's fine in the context of stand-up comedy, but it's terrible if you're just living in the world. And so, you know, the connection with comedy, comics being depressed and self-destructive and suicidal, it goes with the territory because the job requires that kind of thinking. So it can be pretty difficult to manage that. And then if you add drugs on top of that, it can be really, really hard. And then the lifestyle also, because it's very solitary.

• 36:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  You're traveling all the time, your sweep schedule is off, it's weird, there's a jet lag, and then also press and shows, so it's a very, it's a destructive and very difficult lifestyle, almost like being in a band, but you're not with anybody else, you're the only one. So, you know, as musicians are very, legendarily known to be very self-destructive in the same way, at least they have a community with them on tour, even if it's just a few guys on a, in a van, you know, so we don't have that, as comics, we're just alone, and it can be really messy.

• 36:53Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely, and I think that perhaps to a lesser degree, you see, you see some, some very similar symptoms of problems surfacing in a lot of writers as well.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:06Tim Ferriss?

  Particularly writers who develop a habit of, I mean, number one, they're going to be isolated almost by definition, and that's part of the reason that I'm taking a break from writing books, quite frankly, is because three, three years at a stress, uh, at three years at a stretch inside your own head is sometimes a scary place to be.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:26Tim Ferriss?

  And particularly those writers who develop a late night writing schedule, which is something that I have, I think are prone to bouts of depression and darkness. And I mean, of course, there's a sort of long history of people like Hemingway who end up not at a very positive punchline, you know, at the, at the end of things.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:49Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, personality wise, do you find that there are certain characteristics that are common among the people, the people, the stand-up comics who are addicted to stimulants versus depressants? I mean, do you find that there's, you could, you can kind of guess which people are going to go one way or the other?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that people who are really, um, um, ADD, you know, who are really kind of scatter brains and their, their, their minds are everywhere. I think that just like hyperactive kids are given Ritalin and Adderall. I think they're really helped or they, they tend to crave stimulants because it focuses them.

• 38:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  And, and then, um, I think that people who are pretty focused but depressed and kind of moody, um, minor chord, like down, downward gazing, bummed out people are really helped and lifted by opiates because they offer this injections of, these injections of endorphins, which is something that they're either lacking, like their serotonin's messed up or whatever. They're just not getting it and then the positivity that or the burst of positivity that an opiate can give you, of course, which is countered by terrible depression, which is actually worse than your baseline, makes everything way, way worse. Um, you know, but

• 39:11Speaker 03

  I can see why that that that would be attractive. I mean, that's what I have, you know, I'm kind of, I, I, I, I have that kind of a downward sort of thing. I, I, I take some effort to look for positivity and also for gratitude, which is why I'm so grateful for like my own gratitude and why I need it so much.

• 39:32Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. Uh, how did you, how did you, what was the catalyzing moment that led you to start taking your prescription drug addiction seriously? How did, and then how did, how did you end up kicking it? What was, what did that look like?

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Um, well, I just really, uh, I, I, I just really had no idea how much I was taking. I really had no idea what I was taking. I didn't understand that contraindications, like in a con, the, the complete like crazy, um, you know, uh, thing, things that I was doing like to myself. And then I was taking like all this Ambien, which is another thing, which I think is actually very, very dangerous drug that, um, people, many, many people are very dependent on.

• 40:21Tim Ferriss?

  Agreed.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  But I also have a very, it's a, I have a bad insomnia problem and so, um, but that in combination with opiates is a deadly thing. You know, my friend Anna Nicole Smith died from that. And, um, really it was that kind of suicidal behavior of taking so much pills and not knowing if I would wake up and not really thinking I would wake up. I think that that was really, it, it just became really apparent. So I just kinda. I threw everything away and then, you know, I told everybody around me, my circle, and my work, and I was talking about it on stage, and I made it very clear that this is a problem that I was going through. And I think just making that, making it not a secret anymore was really what it was all

• 41:07Speaker 03

  about. When I wasn't having to hide being sick or talk, you know, if I talked about it, then it really resolved the situation. I fortunately was able to just walk away, and I was very sick for a time because it's the natural, you know, that's what happens when you take those drugs. But afterwards, I was much better and I didn't have a kind of a need to go back to it, or a sense that this was going to be repeated. So, you know, it wasn't like I went to rehab and it wasn't like I sought treatment, which most people should.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  But I just was able to escape, fortunately.

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, well, the day that you threw out all of your medication, why that day? Was there, did you scare yourself somehow? Was there a conversation? Did you look in the mirror and see something you hadn't noticed before? Why that day?

• 42:09Speaker 03

  I just think that there were so many patches in my memory that I didn't understand why I didn't remember and I didn't understand, like, I could feel the, whatever, the degeneration of my brain. I could really feel it. I could really sense that, I don't think I'm gonna get that part of my brain back. Like, I really felt an emptiness, like I cleared out, like I had deleted files that I didn't wanna delete.

• 42:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yikes.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  And that was so terrible. You know, when you just have, like, a blank space when you should have something there and evidence that things that were not going wrong, like room service I don't know that I ordered, and, you know, like, weird photos on my phone that I don't know who these people are and why I have them.

• 42:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  And weird sexual situations that were like...

• 43:04Speaker 03

  I should not, like, who, who, who am I talking to in this manner that I don't remember even meeting? Like, what, what is going on? Like, all these things at once.

• 43:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  And you go, I, I have to get out of this. Like, this is really a weird space, because it's almost like somebody takes over your body for you. And drives it.

• 43:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  And that's really strange.

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agreed. And I've seen, just speaking of Ambien, I've been on trips before with friends where I've seen them come downstairs after going to sleep, like the walking dead on Ambien, go crazy, doing all sorts of ridiculous things for hours, go back to their bed and have no recollection of any of it the next day. And one of my two best friends growing up, about, I'd say, a year and a half ago, died of an accidental contraindication. He was, he'd had a lot of alcohol, never took any, never took any illicit drugs or recreational drugs, and he was complaining to a buddy of his about a headache,

• 44:10Tim Ferriss?

  and his buddy gave him a very strong prescription depressant, and he took it, never woke up, and that was it. It just took one shot. So, yeah, people need to take the alcohol interactions really seriously.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that's, that's a ma, that's a major, major problem with alcohol and Ambien, and also opiates, too. I mean, the whole thing wrecks your liver, but on top of that, you, you, it's a judgment that goes completely out the window. Like, you don't know what you're doing. There's something that alcohol does in that, it just really messes everything up.

• 44:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. Well, I think it's just a very important sort of topic to explore for folks, but to switch gears a little bit, because I'm, I'm, I'm constantly impressed with just how prolific you are and have been. What is, what does your process look like for developing material? So let's just say that you've just finished, you've just finished a special, or you just finished, you basically aced whatever you'd been working on for the last X period of time, and it's time to, it's time for you to start over, you have that feeling. What does the process look like? How do you come up with your material?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Well, usually, um, uh, you will probably involve a trip to San Francisco, actually.

• 45:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Um, where, uh, I, I just started it, um, recently, you know, I came back to the city. Yeah, and I hung out with old comedian friends, you know, I haven't seen for a while and, you know, there's a lot of little shows that happen. There's like the deluxe on Haight Street.

• 45:51Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  And then there's like, um, you know, a bunch of different kinds of nights that happen usually from like Sunday to Wednesday, which is for comedians are days off. And so that's when I'll start to go to these like little kind of clubs in, in the city and work things out. So I'll like kind of put together just everything new, you know, uh, just out of notes that I have. And, um, I'll do that and I'll do that in different cities and then I'll work them into my larger performances where I will have some like level of prepared material, but then I'll also work on the new script from new thing and also improvise where I am. And it just grows, you know, but usually it's built from

• 46:33Speaker 03

  a small, um, you know, maybe two or three jokes and it'll grow into an hour of comedy that would be ready. It would take about maybe a year to make it really perfect because I would take it internationally and make sure that it is, is great. And then I will actually commit it to either a special or album or, or something like that.

• 46:54Tim Ferriss?

  Now, do you take it international before you test it on the main stage in the U.S.? Is the, do you use internationals?

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  So that's really interesting. That's the first I've heard of that. And, uh, you know, a lot of folks may not realize that e- even companies like Nike, for instance, will do tons of testing in places like New Zealand, uh, smaller English-speaking, uh, countries to refine the products and marketing and positioning and everything that they then bring back to the U.S., but they don't want to have their debutante ball in the, in the major leagues. That's really interesting.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, it's great because what's great about going internationally is part of the the joy of performing there, the audiences are so grateful that you came, that they will give you some, they'll give you some slack, you know, like it's a great thing because you can actually um negotiate a kind of like a nice workshop with them because they they're they they know how far away, they know you don't have to tour there, but they they know you from whatever different thing and they're so glad that you're there. So for me, it's it's a great, great thing and it's not something that a lot of comedians from America do. Um, so I for some reason have the ability to travel and I I get to

• 48:12Speaker 03

  do many, many countries in Europe, except the only countries I haven't done shows in are like Italy and Spain, which um it just gets the the market gets very different there. But um every place place else has been really fantastic and and Australia also. I had to cancel a New Zealand tour because I've I've got a I was doing like a TV show, but I definitely look forward to going back there. But international markets are really wonderful for me um to work out what I want to do in the future.

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  What what makes Spain and Italy so different? I'm very curious.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  I think because of the Catholicism that makes it difficult for women to talk about sex in the way that I do.

• 48:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  You know, I I'm very, very um like this is a joke that I'm telling you. I don't even know if I should tell this joke, but I it's just like I haven't had sex in a really long time, not a really long time, but I was upset because Robin Williams died and Joe Neres died and I can't I couldn't, I don't want to, you know, and I I just didn't feel like and um so I was out to dinner in San Francisco um not long ago and I was with two gay guys, which is my way. I love gay men. These guys I love. We're at the House of Prime Rib, which is excellent.

• 49:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, I know exactly where it is.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Good. It's really good. And we're eating and then the sommelier is so cute, you know, I'm talking to him and then I thought he was so adorable and then he's really young too. And we left and um. Then my friends are like, well, you know, they're trying to encourage me like, you should talk to him because he really likes you. I was like, oh, he's too young and I don't want to. And they, one of them went back and gave the guy my phone number. And I was like, whatever. And then so anyway, I went back to my hotel and it was like one in the morning and the guy actually called me, which is amazing. I thought it was so brave. So he came over and it was wonderful. It was so great. I like, it was like a therapy dog.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  So I don't think you can tell that joke, and it's not a joke, it's true story. But I don't think you could tell that joke in Italy. I don't, you can tell that joke in Spain without some kind of repercussions of people getting really angry. Like, what are you doing? Like, how can you just do that? You know, I'm, I'm a 45 year old woman. I, I, I'm really, you know, I have no right to maybe. He was much younger than me. I really should have had sex with his father, which was not right, but it was really what I needed. So.

• 50:42Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I, I wonder about that. I mean, given, given the intensity of porn that comes out of Italy, not that I would know anything about that, but just, I'm astonished that they would be so judgmental to people on the stage. But I guess there is the, the public facing laughing and then there's the private porn viewing and maybe those are two different mentalities. Go figure.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  I think that's two different things. And also, you know, it's also the language too. And also, just that, just that, I think it's hard for American comedy just in general, but especially somebody that's really brash and talking about sexuality and, and how it it, it isn't a shameful thing. It's kind of, it's a little bit much, you know, for that. So those markets have always been a little bit hard for me.

• 51:27Tim Ferriss?

  What, which markets on the flip side, which countries respond best to the brash sex talk and everything else?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Sweden, France is incredible. Germany is probably the best, but Finland, definitely Norway is amazing. All of Scandinavia is so down with it, you know, they're so excited.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Just Denmark is incredible. I think they've traditionally been very, very sex positive. I mean, their history in porn is pretty amazing. So that's a great place to go too. But a lot of, like, you know, kind of sort of northern, kind of colder countries. But I think Germany maybe will be the ultimate place because there's so much liberal thought there. So much of kind of ease about sexuality there that is really amazing.

• 52:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Denmark. Those are my people. That's probably half my bloodline. That's why I have that big blockish sort of Lego head as courtesy of my Danish genetics. I didn't get the height, though. That's kind of a ripoff. I got the, you know, I got the gigantic head. The sort of sponge pants, square bob or whatever his name head, but without the height, so it goes.

• 52:49Tim Ferriss?

  When, just to jump to a different type of question. When you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Well, I guess it would be Steve Jobs.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  But that would be that, you know, somebody that's so successful beyond and also visionary that could become kind of a legendary being that was like beyond human. So I think that would be my definition of success. Somebody that sort of like crosses a line from like business to art to, I don't even know what that is, you know, that kind of visionary. Pretty profound.

• 53:38Tim Ferriss?

  Do you feel successful? I think a lot of people would consider you successful. Do you feel successful yourself?

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. I know that I am. You know, I'm very grateful for that. And I know that that's um, an achievement, uh, that there's much, much higher levels of success I would like to achieve. But then, you know, uh, I know slouch, especially because I'm probably of, of my peers, the one who's sustained it the longest, you know, that, that I have been pretty active and out there, you know, very, very visibly for the last 20 years. And so that's the good thing.

• 54:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's hard to make, it's hard to string it together for that long, for sure.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:18Tim Ferriss?

  If um, if you could change or improve one thing about yourself, what would that be?

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Oh, I would like to have um, a lower percentage of body fat, which is why I'm doing four hour body.

• 54:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I

• 54:31Speaker 03

  It's going well.

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Well, you know, you mentioned before we started recording that you had some, some, some food questions. I'm happy to answer those, obviously.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Well, when you talk about your cheat day, um, I almost dread mine because I am physically sick. Every time I over, I've been eating um, now, in a four hour body for, very religiously now, for about maybe several months, four or five months. And it's a big difference. But I, I try to go for the free day, the cheat day, and I dread it, like I'm afraid of it. It doesn't feel good to me because it's any kind of flour or um, excessive amounts of sugar, anything, they taste so good, but they don't feel good in my body. And I wonder

• 55:21Speaker 03

  if there's a way to manage um, I have a better digestion during that time. It's um, but it just doesn't, it doesn't feel good to me.

• 55:31Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. No, I can comment on that. The, so the cheat day is designed to do a few things. Uh, the first is based on the assumption that people are going to cheat no matter what, and you can contain the damage if you schedule it in advance. So that's sort of principle number one. Principle number two is that by spiking caloric intake once a week, you can help to prevent a lot of kind of downgrading of the metabolism, whether that's thyroid or otherwise. Uh, there are uh,

• 56:04Tim Ferriss?

  There are people out there who say, for instance, "Well, I'm only gonna have one cheat meal instead of a cheat day to limit the damage that I do." I only recommend that to people if that means they won't succumb to cravings later in the week. So by being disgusted once a week, it's not mandatory, but typically what happens is exactly what you're describing. So people start to dread overdoing it on cheat day and they naturally start to dial it back a little bit. And in the beginning, when people are most likely to quit any diet in the first two to three weeks, that cheat day is so overdone, they're just so disgusted that that evening

• 56:47Tim Ferriss?

  and the following day, they can't wait to get back to a cleaner type of eating because they just feel better. Yeah. There are ways to cheat, so to speak, to spike the caloric intake without having some of the digestive issues, if that is a problem. For a lot of people, for a lot of people, that means simply avoiding gluten, among other things. So for instance, if I am training for athletics, or I know that I have to have a lot of work done on a Sunday or a Monday, just the day after a cheat day, I will focus on, say,

• 57:25Tim Ferriss?

  carbs or carb-rich foods like sweet potatoes, or brown rice, or even white rice, as opposed to getting it from wheat, flour, things of that type that are, I know, going to just put up a huge fight going through my digestive tract. So there are definitely ways to do it and minimize some of the discomfort while still checking the boxes that prevent you from cheating later. Another recommendation is that...

• 57:55Tim Ferriss?

  You can make the first meal of the day a slow carb compliant meal. And a very easy way to do that is to just this, for instance, you could have a, a small amount of lentils out of a can. I mean, literally, this is something I'll do oftentimes is I will have, and there, there are a lot of reasons for this, but the fiber and which is important for kind of gut flora and bacterial balance in the GI tract. You could have just spoon out of a can, literally, lentils in the morning with maybe one or two eggs. And that will, that will naturally inhibit your appetite later in the day.

• 58:37Tim Ferriss?

  So you'll be able to cheat, but you'll be less prone to put, you know, to ingesting the last 2,000 calories of, you know, rocky road ice cream with Snickers on top or whatever.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:48Tim Ferriss?

  Because it's usually, I think, for a lot of people, they, they do cheat day. They get to a point where they're like, holy shit, I am about to explode. And they look at the clock and they're like, but it's 10 o'clock. I have two more hours to go. I can't, I can't let cheat day end without giving it one last hurrah. And it's just, it's, it's that last extra serving or that last Guinness or whatever that just takes them from about to explode to just complete insulin coma.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:18Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the, the slow carb compliant meal early in the day can help. The grapefruit juice plus caffeine early in the day because of the noregina and all of that can also help because it will stabilize somewhat your blood sugar and your insulin response. So those are, those are a few recommendations. There are lots of ways to customize cheat day, but the most important, I think, the most important thing to realize about cheat day is that you should not, you should not feel like you are restricting yourself on cheat day. That's the most important thing. So some people will try to do a healthy cheat day, but then they have a to eat list of all these things that they don't want to give up.

• 1:00:03Tim Ferriss?

  And they end up cheating on a Wednesday night or a Thursday night. And like most people who do that, they say, ah, fuck it. I already had one cookie. I'm gonna have, now I'm gonna have the rest of all these Girl Scout cookies because I already fucked up. And then they back, then they backslide and they don't stick with it. So as long as you, as long as you don't feel like you are.

• 1:00:24Tim Ferriss?

  You have secret cravings that you're not satisfying during cheat day. You can pretty much do whatever you want.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Well, what's interesting about the diet or the just the way it is in my body is that I don't have any cravings, but I just don't. I don't actually care. I do the cheat day because it tastes good, but it's not because out of craving, you know, it's out of just I do it because it's gonna help my help my overall process.

• 1:00:51Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  Um, which is, I think, I think that's what's the best thing about it for me is that I don't have that need for pasta or bread that I did before, although it still tastes really good when I have it. Um, that's just the need for it. I, you know, the things that you think you can't give up before you started, I mean, you started and then your idea about food changes.

• 1:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. Yeah, definitely. And, and it's, it's very much a combination of biochemistry and psychology, right? I mean, you have a certain shift where I think the, the biochemical changes and the physiological changes precede the psychological realization that you don't need certain things. So you have a certain chemical dependency, just like getting off of prescription medications. You have a certain chemical dependency which could be related to, uh, the types of refined carbohydrates that people are accustomed to eating for breakfast, which sets the stage for the rest of the day and makes them fall asleep at 1:30 or 2:00 PM. But when you start, when you start to add in the protein, the fat

• 1:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  and fiber, then those type of dramatic, uh, glucose swings start to level out. And as your sort of like, uh, your pancreas becomes resensitized, or at least you develop some degree of insulin sensitivity again, uh, your body stops having to work so hard and it prevents a lot of the roller coasters. And then, like you said, about a week into it, two weeks into it, you're like, wow, I don't crave those foods I thought I would crave forever. And, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's really fascinating. And the, the entire diet is really designed to have the highest compliance rate possible. And I think this is sometimes lost on, say, uh,

• 1:02:43Tim Ferriss?

  Paleo or vegan purists who want everyone to convert to a very inconvenient diet on day one. And my point is, the good program you follow is better than the perfect program that you quit. And the slow carb diet is a great gateway drug, in a positive sense, for getting people to eliminate the vast amount of garbage that they consume.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:03:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's how I think.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  It's really, it's very helpful. I think the strangest thing that it's that I'm really not hungry.

• 1:03:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  It's a really weird thing, because I was starving all the time. And I'm like, why do I, I mean, obviously, there's reasons why, but it's like, I don't have that. If I, I just don't, I'm never really hungry, ever. Even when I haven't eaten for several hours, it somehow sustains my system. It just burns.

• 1:03:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  And I'm not desperate for food.

• 1:03:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a really cool, I think, for a lot of people, a very cool realization of self-sufficiency, that people do not experience hunger in the same way. It becomes a very different experience. And part of that is you're using things like cheat day, and you're using, in some cases, supplements, but certainly not necessary at all, to change how your brain and your body produce and respond to hormones like Graylin and all sorts of other things. And what's really cool about it, recently, I did a seven-day water fast.

• 1:04:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I went seven days with nothing besides water, with no supplementation, no electrolytes, no anything. And because of the indirect training of the slow carb diet, and effectively readying my system for that type of experience, it really wasn't terribly difficult. And I'm not recommending anyone do that without medical supervision, but the body becomes very, very resilient. And the, one of the questions that I get before people start

• 1:04:54Tim Ferriss?

  Things in the four hour body, particularly this low carb diet is what do I eat for snacks? And my answer is if you're eating enough and you should be eating enough at your meals, you're not going to be hungry. You don't need snacks.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  And typically, what people realize is that the snacking is a compulsive habitual behavior. It's not because they are hungry, right? They're basically feeding their pancreas, not their stomach, if that makes sense, because their insulin response is so out of whack. And once you fix that, it's like, oh, I want to have a bowl of fill in the blank crap next to my computer because that's my habit, but I'm not actually hungry.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  Right. And then it puts into question, what is food for anyway?

• 1:05:44Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  You know, like there's a, you know, it's a cool thing.

• 1:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. And my, you know, one of the ways to modify cheat day so that it's more rewarding and less disgusting, although I think that getting people to the, oh, my God, I'm so disgusted with myself point is actually very valuable in the first few weeks.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Tim Ferriss?

  But when you graduate from that, you're like, okay, I've covered the I'm disgusted with myself checkbox. Like, I want to be more functional towards the latter third of my cheat day. You can start to set rules for yourself, such as, you know, the food either has to be really good for me, or it has to be fucking delicious. And the fucking delicious part is important because people on cheat day will often just shovel whatever shitty food is in front of them or around them right into their maw. And it gets really gross. So when you, and I would say, you know, in the same way that you're looking for high

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  quality, if you choose to eat meat, and I eat meat, then you choose to try to find high quality meat, right? So if I'm in San Francisco, I'm going to look for grass fed beef, I'm going to look for so on and so forth. Similarly, if you're cheating, you can do the same thing. And you can say, all right, I'm going to have pasta, but I want pasta made from fresh ingredients from da, da, da, da, da. So I'm going to go to, you know, Flower and Water, and this is just a restaurant in San Francisco, and I'm going to get pasta there. Or I want ice cream and I want high quality ice cream. I'm not just going to go to Safeway and eat five gallons of the cheapest crap I can find. You know, I'm going to go to... Buy right, or whatever, and it might be a little bit more expensive, but I'm gonna get

• 1:07:24Tim Ferriss?

  higher quality raw ingredients, I'm gonna have cheat meals, but I'm gonna have fewer preservatives and artificial sweeteners and all that shit. So there are definitely ways to make your cheat day a little more regal.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's better.

• 1:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  It's a, you know, it's a, it really is, then it's a real treat and a real luxury, but, you know, like, I've avoided my last couple of cheat days because it just really made me sick, and, you know, um, the food program reminds me a bit of, when you go to Overeaters Anonymous, there's, um, a, a very specific, there's two sects, kind of sects of Overeaters Anonymous, is one is called How, and one is called The Cambridge Group, where, um, it's, it's just a food plan that you cannot deviate from, it just, you just can never deviate from, but this gave people a lot of freedom from the addictive properties of eating, and, um, so, you know, in a sense, it reminds me of that, in that, like, now that the food

• 1:08:26Speaker 03

  is out of the way, the obsessing about food is out of the way, now I can actually, like, live my life, which I think is really a wonderful thing.

• 1:08:33Tim Ferriss?

  No, I mean, and that makes me, I mean, that makes my day, it makes my week, just to hear that, it's, it's, it's, it's a liberating point for people to reach, and what I've found is that a lot of behavioral, a lot of systems of behavioral change, uh, that have existed for many decades are completely just scientifically off-base, they haven't really been tested, so the idea that you can take someone who's accustomed to eating a horrible diet, and put them on a strict vegetarian diet, and they're going to adhere to that, it will have less than a 10% success rate, you can't start there, it's very difficult, and if you want, if you want 500 out of 1,000 people to succeed, instead of 100 out of

• 1:09:16Tim Ferriss?

  1,000, then you provide them with sort of a graduated approach, and I, I think there's, I think there is an incredible tactical application of excess, right, so people will say, "Well, everything in modern" Moderation, I'm like, actually, I don't think that humans are good at moderation. So that's why it's easier to go a month without alcohol than having one drink a day if you're an alcoholic. It's, I actually, you know, and there are many examples of this, but my, you know, my mom was cured of smoking at one point because her, her parents, and I'm not saying this is a great in general parenting approach, but they said to all the siblings, they said, oh, I found out that one of you likes to smoke. Well, here's a box of cigars

• 1:10:00Tim Ferriss?

  and you guys can have all of the cigars and when you're done, then you can come upstairs.

• 1:10:06Tim Ferriss?

  And man, they did not touch anything for a very, very, very long time. And again, not, not recommending that very old school, but in the psychologically, the cheat day for the first two or three weeks is achieving something very similar.

• 1:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I mean, I'm thrilled that, that you've been, been with it for a few months. Obviously I'm always happy to, to answer questions. I never get tired of talking about this stuff. Unlike email auto responders and all that stuff from the first book, which kind of bores me to tears at this point. The physiological stuff is so rewarding and because it's, it's a tangible, visible result, right? And, and when people go on it, I mean, you do get immediate feedback. And it's really, really awesome. And for those, for those, this is particularly true for certain nationalities. And I mean, there's obviously genetic differences,

• 1:11:04Tim Ferriss?

  but for, for a lot of women out there who might get discouraged early on, part of the reason for the first, say 10 to 14 days that some women in particular do not see a, a dramatic weight change on the scale is because they're increasing their protein intake and they're actually losing a lot of visceral fat, number one, so organ fat. And number two, putting on muscle, which is a, which is a very positive thing in almost every case.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, and then they start to see. The the subcutaneous fat, the you know, the fat under the skin, which is more visible in the mirror, obviously, start to drop off in sort of weeks two and three. And that's why it's so important, I think, for a lot of people to to really take stock of how they feel. Like you noticed the impulse, sort of the the desire to to the the hu- the unnecessary hunger going away. To take to take note of those things and instead of looking at the scale, because it's such a blunt instrument and it can be very misleading.

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Tim Ferriss?

  So those.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't weigh myself at all. I can see the changes in the way that my clothes are fitting differently and wearing much more smaller sizes. And I can tell in the way that my the the just the way that I look and I don't really need to see it. I know that when my exercise, when I'm exercising more, that it's definitely a much more visible. But and also when I'm like delaying off, and sometimes I'll get lazy and I'll just eat like beef jerky or something like that, which is not the best of all the stuff in it. But you know, there there's like when I when I really take the time to make make

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  my own food and stuff, that that's when I can really see a huge difference. It's it's that when I get lazy, like, you know, there's like the salad dressings and stuff like that, which probably have hidden sugar in that, you know, so I I can definitely backslide there, but not that much either. You're not eating anything that was in breading or anything like that, you know, or like sausage with flour, then that's not too bad. But it can be really, you can't you can actually have pretty luxurious kind eating on on program, not even on a tea day.

• 1:13:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, definitely. And most people, if I go out to a meal with almost anyone at any restaurant, they never ask. Me about my diet because they don't realize that I'm even on a diet generally.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:13:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's very flexible.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:13:40Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I would say to, to people out there also who, who are thinking of going on any type of diet, and here's the thing, even if you're not on a diet, you're on a diet. I mean, diet is really, in the scientific sense, just the, the food that you habitually consume. So you're on a diet, one or the other. But you, you have to rig the game in the beginning so that you can win, right? At least for the first few weeks. And so, for instance, I, I would like to say that I'm, you know, whipping up Food Network Worthy Meal every meal and just, you know, slicing and dicing and it's, you know, it's, it's worthy of recording for posterity, but it's not. I'm lazy, like everybody else. And so if you were to look in my refrigerator right now, literally, I have, I have single

• 1:14:25Tim Ferriss?

  serve guacamole and single serve black bean hummus from, I think, BJ's or one of these discount clubs. I've got some like leftover chicken wrapped up in some plastic foil and a handful of other things. And then I have a few supplements that are on hand, like glutamine and whatnot, so that I do, I have done no cooking today and I'm not hungry. And that's totally okay. It's totally okay.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Tim Ferriss?

  There are other, I, there are readers who have literally, I kid you not, lost, you know, fifty to a hundred pounds and the only beans that they consume, and you don't have to eat a ton of beans, but the only beans they've consumed are refried beans.

• 1:15:07Tim Ferriss?

  It doesn't, it doesn't have to be fancy. So, um, in any case, I am, uh, I'm, I'm thrilled that you're, that you're making progress and obviously I'm happy to, to help anytime. But let me, let me ask you on the meal side of things. So if, if you had your, your last meal, you know, you're, you're in death row, what are you gonna go out with? What's, what's your last meal?

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  Oh, I think I would, I would really wanna have, um, uh, the farfalle with salmon and vodka, you know, the, or the Penneella vodka, that's my favorite. The salmon and vodka cream sauce with the pasta is so good. And, uh, so that's probably that and then maybe, um, some kind of a bread thing.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  Not so many sweets, I guess, maybe a little, but I don't really, I don't know. The pasta is the, the thing.

• 1:15:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  But, you know, again, it's like, I don't really, I so don't crave it like I used to. Like, I used to have to have it once a day. At least, like pasta salad, or, you know, some kind of thing, breakfast pasta. Oh, that's so, you know, geez, to have breakfast pasta. But, I mean, it's like, so weird how I just don't, um, have an, um, I don't, I don't want, I don't even care. You know, it's really weird.

• 1:16:25Tim Ferriss?

  It's crazy, it's crazy when that, yeah, when that type of shift happens. Uh, do you have a favorite curse word? Is there any one sort of curse word or insult that you're like, God, that, I love it. It just, it rolls off the tongue. This is really, this is really a keeper for me. It just like resonates.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Uh, I think the one that I always use is, is a fuck, a fuck. A fuck, a fuck, fuck. That's like the one that I think I use the most, which is probably, um, the one that everybody uses the most, I think.

• 1:16:56Tim Ferriss?

  It's very, it's a very flexible word, you know, it can, it can, it, uh, it can take many different forms. I think that's part of why it's so useful.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like positive and negative, and then it can be romantic, which is really funny.

• 1:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  You know, it can be actually like the most romantic thing that you can say. And it's totally weird, like, it could be really the most horrible thing you could say to somebody. But the best thing, too, so, I, I, I really love the, um, user-friendly quality of the word.

• 1:17:27Tim Ferriss?

  Of the word fuck.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Of the fuck.

• 1:17:30Tim Ferriss?

  There's a, there's a wonderful little book called, uh, English as a Second Fucking Language, and it talks about all of the uses of the word fuck. Because you think about it, it's actually very, very particular, right? Because you can say, that's, that's, uh, fucking incredible, that's,

• 1:17:46Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:47Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, but you can't say, that's incred-fucking-bull. Like, you, there are ways, very specific ways that you can use it or not use it. That's, you know, unbelievable fucking bull, nah, it doesn't really work, right? So, you, you, uh, you really have to, you've, you've sort of developed a fluency at a certain point as a native English speaker with that word. I find the Australians are, are, uh, really fond of it. Um,

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 1:18:11Tim Ferriss?

  But, uh, yeah, just an observation.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Uh, But it's a great word, it's, uh, it's my favorite, yes, a good one.

• 1:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  So if you could, I wanna be, I know you have a show coming up and that you probably wanna do some prep for that. Speaking of which, just a few more questions, but if you look at your best performances, in the, say, hour before you go onstage, what are the commonalities? Like, what gets you in the zone? What rituals or routines do you have?

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  Um, usually, it's just a nice meal. Sometimes I'll have a book. Sometimes I'll just be reading backstage, which is a really nice thing to do. Sometimes, um, it's very busy. You know, you can never really predict. There's no, I have to perform so much that there's no way that I can regulate that hour before, because it's always a different situation. You know, different city, or different social situation, different social setting, I'm coming from something else. So, there's really no way to gauge, but I like to have, you know, sometimes a bit of wine, a bit of red wine.

• 1:19:24Tim Ferriss?

  Any particular type of, any particular type of red wine?

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  I like a, something like a Shiraz or a Shiraz, probably, or a Malbec.

• 1:19:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yes. Good choice.

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  Dry, not sweet, just something kind of, kind of, that's very hearty, but flavorful, but not like juice, like a grape juice, like very, very, a good, intense wine. So that'd be nice.

• 1:19:56Tim Ferriss?

  If you're able to read, what type of book would you choose?

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  Um, oh, I love biographies, and, um, so I'm reading right now, How to Be a Movie Star, which is like all about Elizabeth Taylor. I think it's really fascinating. Um, I love movie star biographies, and the way that Hollywood was like to people, like Liberace and Elizabeth Taylor, and, you know, these kinds of figures who were very flamboyant and symbolic of the time, but led pretty tortured lives, too. So, that to me is really interesting. So I like that kind of stuff.

• 1:20:40Tim Ferriss?

  Is it, do you know people who are... Operating at the higher level in Hollywood who are not tortured? It just seems like it's a tortured town in a lot of ways. But are there, are there people who come to mind who are very successful in some capacity in Hollywood who are not tortured? And if so, why are they not tortured?

• 1:21:05Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know. I think that there is a high level of people who are tortured. But then, there's also a lot of, you know, a lot of people who have done, taken, taken measures to help themselves, like whether it's through sobriety, or some kind of program, or even some kind of religion that makes things a little bit better. But I do see happiness out there. You know, I do see a lot of joy in regards to work. But you know, sometimes the more brilliant somebody is, the more crazy they are too.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  So, we don't really have a really good handle on people in real life. The most well-adjusted person, the nicest and well-adjusted and famous and successful was probably Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. He is the most sunny individual I've ever met, and so generous and kind, and really one of the most fantastic artists of all time.

• 1:22:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, he's incredible. Yeah, just phenomenal. What, now, do you think that, that, why do you think he is that way? Because of course, I mean, he's seen some dark things, no doubt.

• 1:22:25Speaker 03

  He's seen some very dark things. I think he allows himself to just be, you know? And I think that part of it is also drummers tend to be very positive people. And I think it is the physical activity. I think it is that high-intensity interval training that is drumming that makes him like that, you know?

• 1:22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. No, that's a great observation. I never really thought of it that way. But that, that actually makes perfect sense to me.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Tim Ferriss?

  Interesting. I need to get a hold of him.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  He's very positive. Yeah, get a drum kit.

• 1:22:53Tim Ferriss?

  I need to. Well, I have some hand drums, I gotta tell you. It's like, the, the difference between a day of even 10 minutes of drumming and a day of no drumming is very, very stark. I mean, it's, it is, I think, the physical movement and using the hands for something other than pecking at a keyboard, for sure.

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Tim Ferriss?

  So on that note, I'll let you, I'll let you get off the phone, but where can people find more from you, learn more about you, where can people check out what you're up to?

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  Well, my website is margaretshow.com and that's where all my tour dates are. I have some blog, blog stuff up there. I have kind of everything, photos and, you know, just like kind of an overview of what I do. And then I have, I'm on Twitter at @MargaretShow and I'm on Facebook at @MargaretShow. And that's, I do a bit of Instagram. It's @Margaret underscore Cho. But yeah, that's, that's all my stuff. And I'm very active everywhere there. You know, I really enjoy that too. So, you know, I, I get a lot. It's funny how it's much easier than life is when you can verify people on Twitter.

• 1:24:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:24:07Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Because it's like, it's like, oh, you know, it's like, oh, yes, it really is that person. It's like, it's like you can really see them. So makes life much easier.

• 1:24:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it certainly does. And thank you so much for making the time. Hopefully next time you're in SF, we can share a glass or two or three of wine.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  I would love to toast, toast to my four hour body, which is, you know, you, you will see me and I think that you will be really excited because you, from my photographs, from like stuff that I've done, you can really tell the difference. And I haven't had like a photo shoot or anything. So I look forward to that so that you can see what things have, things have done. You know, it's also given me a lot, made me feel a lot younger too, which is I appreciate. So thank you.

• 1:24:53Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for putting the words into action. I just write a, write a bunch of stuff down on a couple of pages. But now this, it really makes my entire week. And we, we can decide whether it's going to be a cheat meal or a, or standard compliant slow carb meal. But either way, I would love to, would love to join you for a bite or drink. And thank you so much for the time. So I'll let you get ready for your gig, everybody. Check out Margaret online and I'll put a bunch of links in the show notes as well. And until next time, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:25:26Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 1:25:34Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show. 99designs, which is your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. Go to 99designs.com/tim to see the projects that I've put up, including the mock-ups and drafts of the book cover for The Four Hour Body. Ex officio. Ex officio and I go way back. Exofficio.com/tim. You can see the clothing that I've used for traveling through 20-plus countries, including the underwear. By the way, that's about half of my underwear drawer right now. Exofficio.com/tim. You can also see the viral video that I put out, which shows you how to travel the world with 10 pounds or less. As always, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and you can find all of the links

• 1:26:17Tim Ferriss?

  and resources from this episode, as well as every other episode, by going to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. Spell it all out. Or you can go to fourhourworkweek.com and just click on Podcast. Feedback? If you have feedback, I would love your thoughts, anything at all, who you'd like to see on this show. Ping me on Twitter, @tferriss. That's twitter.com/tferriss. Or on Facebook, at facebook.com/timferriss, with two R's and two S's. And until next time, thank you for listening.