#133: Edward Norton on Mastery, Must-Read Books, and The Future of CrowdFunding

This episode, I sit down with Edward Norton (@EdwardNorton http://www.twitter.com/edwardnorton). Edward is an actor, filmmaker and activist. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in Primal Fear http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117381/, American History X http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120586/?ref_=nv_sr_1, and Birdman http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2562232/?ref_=nv_sr_1. He has starred in scores of other films, including Fight Club http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/?ref_=nv_sr_1, The Illusionist http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443543/?ref_=nv_sr_1, and Moonrise Kingdom http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748122/?ref_=nv_sr_1. Unbeknownst to most people, Edward is also a serial startup founder (e.g. CrowdRise https://www.crowdrise.com/edwardnorton; here's my current campaign https://www.crowdrise.com/timferriss), a UN ambassador for biodiversity, a massively successful investor (e.g. early Uber http://uber.com/), a pilot, and deeply involved with wilderness conservation http://www.maasaiwilderness.org/about-us/our-team/. In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including: His beginnings in acting, and what early mentors taught him What separates great actors from mediocre actors, as illustrated through an early Marlon Brando story Edward's physical preparation for American History X (and camera trickery) The importance of surfing His favorite books, documentaries, underrated films and filmmakers, and essays (The Catastrophe of Success, etc.) His advice to his 20- and 30-year old self And much more... And here's a bonus, another favorite book he remembered after we stopped recording: Buddhism Without Beliefs http://amzn.to/1TR3eQG. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim.

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of original designs from designers around the world, give your feedback, and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So check out some of my competitions in designs and some of your competitions in designs from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  design. So check it out, 99designs.com/tim.

• 1:13Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra-wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second.

• 1:54Tim Ferriss?

  I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I I would, you can set it and forget it, and here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, et

• 2:39Tim Ferriss?

  cetera, can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.

• 3:22Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account, but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free, there's no downside that I can think of. Now, I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer. Wealthfront, Inc. is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure. So, check it out, guys.

• 4:07Tim Ferriss?

  This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim.

• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the routines, habits, influences, books, etc. that you can use or apply to your own life. And in this episode, I sit down with Edward Norton, @EdwardNorton on the Twitters. Please say hello to him. Edward is an actor, filmmaker, and activist. Of course, he's been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in Primal Fear, American History X, and Birdman. He has starred in scores of other films, including the iconic Fight Club, The Things You Own End Up Owning You, The Illusionist, and Moonrise Kingdom, among many, many others. Unbeknownst, however, to many people, Edward is also a serial startup founder.

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  He is a UN ambassador for biodiversity, a massively successful investor, for instance, very early in Uber and perhaps a half a dozen other unicorns, a pilot and deeply involved with wilderness conservation. And as luck would have it, at this exact moment, I am involved with one of his startups, CrowdRise. I have a campaign on there with Johns Hopkins, supporting some fascinating psychedelic research. Check it out. It is to address treatment-resistant depression. It's fascinating. So go to crowdrise.com/timferriss to check it all out. And we have a very wide-ranging conversation. We cover a lot, including his beginnings, what early mentors taught him, some cool Marlon Brando stories, his physical prep for American History X,

• 5:50Tim Ferriss?

  surfing, favorite books, documentaries, underrated films and filmmakers. That reindeer bell sound is Molly doing a little jig in the background. And there are also some cats in heat outside my apartment for some reason. So excuse the extracurricular sound. Catastrophe of Success would be one of the essays, for instance, his advice to his 20- and 30-year-old self, and much more. One bonus, a book that he recalled, one of his favorites, after we stopped recording, which I wanted to include, is Buddhism Without Beliefs. And without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with the incredible Edward Norton.

• 6:29Tim Ferriss?

  Edward, welcome to the show.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 6:32Tim Ferriss?

  I am sitting here looking out at the surfers and I know we got to start today because you had a session earlier this morning and it seems like surfing is a big part of your life. I know this is maybe an odd place to start, but how long has that been the case?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  It's definitely my most positive addiction. I think I started, I actually, my father lived in Indonesia from like 2005 for about seven years and I was making a film in China called The Painted Veil and toward the very end of the film, I got chucked off a horse doing a shot and I broke my back in three places. Fortunately, didn't hurt my spine at all, just cracked three vertebrae and was really lucky. But my back was like a, my

• 7:32Speaker 03

  back was like an oak table with no articulation in it between my neck and the bottom of my ass. And so I, I couldn't twist, I couldn't like bend, you know, I was really, really racked and locked up. And when the film ended, my dad had just moved to Indonesia. So I went down there for a couple of months to hang out with him and just try to recover a little bit. And, and I was like swimming and doing yoga and getting massages and things like that. And I, there was a surf school on one of the beaches there and I'd always

• 8:15Speaker 03

  wanted to do that and started realizing that it, you know, it forced you into a reversed kind of bowed position. That was exactly what I was having trouble doing. And so initially, I started doing it, just taking a big padded board and paddling, you know, just to try to. Increased my endurance at having my back arched and and from there it just I got completely hooked on it.

• 8:39Tim Ferriss?

  It seems to undo a lot of the sort of posturally induced problems of people who use computers too often, right? I mean, you have this sort of protracted rounded back and then when you're forced into that thoracic extension, even for, you know, a half a minute of pad or half an hour of paddling or a few hours of paddling, it just seems to undo and balance all of that out.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  It's um, it's great, it's great physically, it's, it's actually great aerobically, it's um, it uses muscles in really weird ways. And you have to be nimble and retain your ability to like hop up, you know, and you have, you know, you read, you're looking at moving water all the time. And I always say like, trying to figure out the micro variations in waveforms and the way they're moving at you and where you should position yourself on them is better than any video game. You know, it's, it's, there's no video game that's more complex than, than trying to read the nuances of moving water and put yourself

• 9:47Speaker 03

  in the right place. And it's just, I actually, totally not facetious, I, it's, it's an addiction. I think it, it, I have friends who were serious addicts, heroin addicts, you know, really struggled with things, who have replaced that with surfing because it, it, it hits parts of the brain, I think, that are completely, you know, it's like dopamine and serotonin all at once. And you, you come out of it so blissed out and kind of, you know, we talk, we were talking about this earlier, like, like, it's like a reboot on the.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  On this, on your stress, on your crowded mind, on all of it. I just, I just think I should meditate more than I do, except I do surf and I feel like that's, I combine, I get the meditative value out of surfing.

• 10:44Tim Ferriss?

  I think that the mindfulness aspect of it is, and I'm not a good surfer, although I enjoy surfing poorly, but the, the fact that the terrain is always changing, like you said, makes it very distinct from something that you might think of as similar, like snowboarding, right? You constantly have to be in a present state, have a present state awareness of where you are relative to your surroundings, where you are relative to other people. It's just a, it's a necessity that you're paying attention to what's happening in the here and now.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great. It's, it's, I, it also, you know, it makes me play hooky more than I do otherwise. I, I, I'll, I'll suddenly find myself, you know, more able to, to be confident that I can push other things to the side. I can't explain it. I, it recalibrates my sense of urgency around my to-do list, you know?

• 11:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it sort of alleviates the manufactured emergencies somewhat.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah.

• 11:54Tim Ferriss?

  What, what other morning rituals do you have that you find helpful or have you had?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  I wish I had better ones is the honest answer. I'm, I wish I, I think I would benefit from, from creating more ritual morning routines that are positive, be it like exercise first thing when I'm not surfing, or meditation, or anything that sort of, you know, as a matter of practice starts the day in a...

• 12:42Speaker 03

  In a mindful way, or however you want to put it. You know, I too often just let the day begin by opening up the cascade of emails or things I think I'm supposed to do. Or, you know, it's not the right way to jumpstart the mind. And I, it's probably, probably, that's a category I should do better on.

• 13:13Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm obsessed with routines, of course, different types of habits. Maybe we could, I've wanted to ask you this. I'm actually astonished I haven't asked you this before in our previous conversations. But when you were getting ready for the role on American History X, what type of training did you do for that? What did your training regimen look like?

• 13:35Speaker 03

  It was, it was pretty specific, it was pretty specific to building mass. Like, I'm not, doing that film created the strangest distortion of perception on me. And I know that's a weird thing to say, but like, it was, it's unbelievable the degree to which that film and the magic of camera and art and black and white photography and all these things made a lot of people think that I was a larger and tougher person than I am.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Like, people who know me, I think, almost couldn't believe what was going on after that film. Because like, you know, I'm like, six feet tall and I weigh 160 if I'm, you know, not in great shape. Like, I have thin wrists. I'm not, I'm not a big.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  I'm not naturally big, so it was a challenge for me to put that kind of weight on. And so I just did many things you'd be more familiar with than almost anybody. You know, I calorie loaded, a lot of lifting. For the first portion of it, really just didn't concern with like leanness at all. Just tried to get muscle mass on. I wish I'd had your book back then, but I didn't.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  You know, I didn't, probably would have helped me out, but I did my own version of it. Increased diet, increased protein, all that stuff. And then I did it sort of the old fashioned blunt force way, mostly just a lot of, probably much more than had I read your book, sort of, you know, your minimum effort kind of maximum. I was probably going way beyond the bell curve in terms of effort required to get the result, but that's what I did. And then as we approached the film, I moved into kind of like, you know, just fat burning

• 15:58Speaker 03

  mode and I was running, I was doing everything I could to lean out because the camera is a magical thing. It doesn't actually see absolute scale. It really only sees things relative. So you don't know how tall Al Pacino really is unless he's standing next to, you know, Schwarzenegger or whatever. And you don't actually know how big a person is and lots of people.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  You know, I had, I had gym rats come up to me and go like, would you, you know, did you weigh two bucks on that? Did you weigh a buck ninety? Like, whatever. And I was like, no, I wasn't that big. You know what I mean? But we, but if you get form and definition, the camera sees that. And if you put people around you, which we did very conscientiously, who are smaller. So like, the actor guy, Tori, who played the, um, the guy in jail, the black guy in jail, who he becomes friends with, we, we cast, he was terrific, but he was also really, really small. And it made me look really, really big. And those things, those things, um, inflate the perception of how big you've gotten. But, um, it was hard. It was hard, but I really enjoyed it.

• 17:12Tim Ferriss?

  Was the eating more challenging or the training more challenging?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  The, the eating was more challenging. I, I, I had trained. I was, you know, um, I rode, I rode crew in college and-

• 17:25Tim Ferriss?

  That was lightweight crew or?

• 17:26Speaker 03

  No, I rode heavyweight crew. Yeah.

• 17:28Tim Ferriss?

  What is heavyweight? What's the?

• 17:30Speaker 03

  There's not, nothing. It's lightweight has a cutoff, but heavyweight doesn't. And I shouldn't say, like, I was not like a varsity. I, I rode my freshman year and I rode my sophomore year. Um, but frankly, I probably should have rode lightweight because I, I, I was, you know, at my absolute maxed out. I was, I probably weighed one seventy five when I was really, really big and strong and nineteen years old and everything. And, you know, and the guys who were true, like varsity A-class rowers, they were like two, two fifteen, you know, guys. And it was a whole other thing. But I loved it. I loved it. And, um, and, and so training, I was a runner. I did one kind of ultra marathon

• 18:15Speaker 03

  kind of thing. I, I wasn't, uh, training hard wasn't, um, a new thing for me, but, but building bulk was.

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  And did you, was that self-directed or did you hire someone to help you with that?

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Um, I did a lot on my own, but no, I did. I had a guy, um, whose name is eluding me right now. I never, I never worked with him again or had contact with him again after, but he, Tony, uh, he was terrific. Yeah. He designed, designed-

• 18:43Tim Ferriss?

  The protocol for you.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Designed it for me and, um-

• 18:48Tim Ferriss?

  When were you introduced to acting? Or how did that come to be? And I did do a fair amount of reading and for whatever reason wasn't able to pin it down exactly. I mean, the summer camp came up, but I don't know where things began.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  I mean, mostly, you know, my, um, my mother was an English teacher. She was a high school English teacher and was a real theater aficionado. Both my parents were theater aficionados and film lovers and stuff like that. And, um, but my, they exposed me very early on to, to theater and plays. And I, I, I had a strong pull toward that.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  From the time I was five years old even, I started, I, I, a babysitter of mine went and I signed up, at the theater, at the theater arts program outside of school that she was involved in. And that's how, that's how I got involved in it. And I, you know, I went through ebbs and flows. I loved, I loved it. It wasn't, it wasn't like I knew I wanted to be an actor. I just liked doing it and I loved writing stories. I, I wrote, I made up my own comic books and I made little VHS camcorder films where you use the pause button to, as your cut, you know what I mean? And, um, uh, just all that stuff I loved, not exclusively, not in a way where I knew it was my life, as an adult. And then I, and then I got really self-conscious about it in high school.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Like I didn't, I went to a public high school. It didn't seem cool to me at all. I was doing my athletics and things, but, um.

• 20:23Tim Ferriss?

  And the athletics were at that time, what?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  I did a lot, I played, I played tennis, I played baseball, I played ice hockey.

• 20:31Tim Ferriss?

  Where was that?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I ran track in Columbia, Maryland. Yeah, it's like, like half an hour south of Baltimore.

• 20:38Tim Ferriss?

  And who were your first then mentors in the world of theater?

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Well, the woman, um, the woman who created this, this local theater arts school in our community and in Columbia, Maryland, her name was Toby Ornstein. And it's crazy to say, but she really was, um. I still think she's one of the great minds I ever encountered on theater, the craft of theater, the craft of acting. She was not a regional theater hobbyist. She was like, she was my Stella Adler, really, like when I was young, and infused us when we were really young with, I don't know, a sense of seriousness about it and of, you know, crap,

• 21:28Speaker 03

  like when you're young, and, you know, told us to read and told us to like be erudite on plays. And it was, it was really interesting. And then, like I said, I got kind of, in my teens, I got kind of self-conscious about it. And then I saw, I saw Ian McKellen do a one-man show in Washington DC when I was about 17. And it was, it was so, it had such a huge impact on me that I, I thought, I thought, wow, this is something you could actually do as a, as an avocation. You know, I mean, this is something that you can do as an adult. And it's, and it's like big and important and meaningful. That's how I felt about it.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  And, and then I still didn't really have a notion that I was going to commit myself to that until a couple of years after college even.

• 22:18Tim Ferriss?

  Couple of years after college? What was your major in college?

• 22:21Speaker 03

  I studied history. I got a degree in history. With a focus on Asian studies and languages and stuff.

• 22:28Tim Ferriss?

  And the, if we go back to, and I'm blanking, I apologize. What was her name again? The first woman, the-

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Toby Ornstein.

• 22:36Tim Ferriss?

  Toby. What, could you tell a story or give an example of what type of things she would emphasize when she was working with you guys? Or any particular memories of her?

• 22:48Speaker 03

  She was a great director, a great-

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Mostly, I think, you know, I think a lot of people would say that someone in their early life, there's always, if you're lucky, you have someone when you're young who doesn't talk down to you, who doesn't, who, who speaks to you as a serious person and exhorts you to be, to take something seriously, to take work seriously, you know, and

• 23:18Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  And if a person does that in the right way, you feel elevated. Like, as a young person, you feel elevated. You feel like someone is, someone's saying to you, "Hey, you want to be taken seriously? Then take things seriously. Do the work, you know, don't coast," you know, and, and, and I'd say that's what she gave. Later, when I was in New York, I had a teacher named Terry Schreiber, who ran a terrific theater studio in New York, acting studio in New York, and he, I would say, I've often said about him, that the thing I admired most about him was that he was like a pluralist, and

• 23:58Speaker 03

  by that, I mean, he, he was, he basically kind of, he basically, you know, rejected this notion that, that has infused, I think, a lot of the training of actors, that, that a methodology is a, is, you know, that like, one methodology holds the key to anything. He was like, basically like, all of these things are like what a forehand, a backhand, a volley, a serve are to a tennis player. That is, you know, the Lee Strasberg method, the Stella Adler imagination focus, the Sandy Meisner, you know, exercises. He, he

• 24:42Speaker 03

  basically just said, "If, if you don't get yourself conversant with a lot of shots, you're just not going to be great." Like, you're not gonna, you're not going to be able to address material with diverse skillsets as called for." You know what I mean? And, and I thought that was, that really resonated with me, because I was really turned off by dogma.

• 25:04Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Sounds like the Bruce Lee of, of acting and performance, and this sort of the, yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:11Tim Ferriss?

  Accept what is useful, reject what is useless, and that what is uniquely your own type of

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. I, I never thought of it that way, but that's, yeah, I, I agree.

• 25:19Tim Ferriss?

  I am, I've always been insecure onstage. And I still pace around like a nervous wreck before every time I get up to give a keynote or whatnot. I'm actually taking, I wasn't planning on asking you this, but just came to mind. I'm actually taking my first acting class as an adult at the end of this month. It's a three-day, I think it's gonna be focused on improv. I don't know exactly what the curriculum is. But what advice would you give? And it's not that I plan on acting per se, I just thought it would be a helpful exercise to get over my fear of doing this type of thing. What, what advice might you give me?

• 25:59Speaker 03

  It's, it's, um, I always, uh, I always think that one of the most interesting things about the challenge of representing behavior, which is basically what acting is, or representing emotion, representing whatever you wanna call it, is, um, that, like, everybody does this all the time. Like, very few people are, very few people are perpetually speaking in their authentic voice, you know, like, like the Dalai Lama might. But I, but I bet he's got his moments where he's sort of playing the role of a monk, you know what I mean?

• 26:43Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, of course.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  As well. And we just, we put on faces, we put on, we put on postures, we, we adapt who we are depending on the circumstances that we're in all the time, and people do it seamlessly all the time and, and unselfconsciously. And yet, the minute that you tell someone that other people are gonna watch them do anything, definitely, I think, when you put a camera on someone, the effect of self-consciousness is so profound on the, on people's inability to do that which is completely natural to them at all ti, at most times in their lives. And, and I almost think, like, as soon as you put someone onstage, or you put a camera on someone...

• 27:30Speaker 03

  It's like if there's a circle and on one side of the circle is naturalistic, you know, behavior, as soon as you throw someone a stage, it hurls them to the other side of the circle and they immediately become wooden, unnatural, they make, they make, they become unable to, and a lot of that has to do just with tension and, and a sense of urgency, nerves, you know, I, I think like the old fight, fight or flight thing, like I think, this is a weird thing to reference, but you know, there's these, there's these great, like, there's this European show that was like a candid camera type show, it did

• 28:15Speaker 03

  a lot of things like where they, you know, they were scaring people or setting up a situation of, you know, a ticking suitcase in front of a, of a train station. And, and what's amazing is how paralysis is actually the most common response. Like people imagine in their minds what their behavior is going to be when presented with certain stimulus or, or circumstances, but the truth is, is that people go into a stone cold freeze in many, many situations, you know, and there's a lot of studies on this and like the, you know, the behavior of crowds and all that kind of stuff.

• 28:53Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure. Right. The woman getting stabbed in the street and you have 40 people who all expect someone else to do something.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Right. And, and also just because I think it's, it's something deeply biological, like there's a lot of safety in freezing, you know what I mean? But I think that it's very hard for people to find a comfort, a relaxed comfort, let alone a sense of pleasure within the idea that they're, they're performing in front of other people, right? And, and so they start to, they stop listening, you know, they stop.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  They they start doing what I would call up the middle choices like they start. They start painting in the color blue instead of doing the little things that um that that the I can't explain it in a moment would actually call for the. One of the best stories I ever heard about young people in an acting class and um. You know, the difference between sort of what happens to people typically and what a a real authentic kind of genius is is that Harry Belafonte. Harry Belafonte talked about being in an acting class with Marlon Brando when they were both like literally like nineteen or twenty years old in Greenwich Village.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  And I think he said that there was a that it what they said was, OK, one person is in a one person's in his apartment and the other one enters. You're the person who's on your couch in your apartment. The other one enters, scene ensues, you know, just like run, just run with it. And all these people were doing all these kind of um, you know, sort of forced conversations or trying to create a scenario or something. And supposedly, Marlon was sat on the couch and started reading a magazine and whoever it was with him walked in his door and he looked up and jumped up and grabbed the guy by the shirt front and threw him out the door and slammed the door. And everybody was like, what are you doing?

• 31:08Speaker 03

  He was like, I don't know who that fucking guy is. Like, he just walked into my apartment, like scared the shit out of me, you know what I mean? And it's like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, there probably wouldn't be a scene, there probably wouldn't be a conversation, there'd be a like, like, who are you?

• 31:21Tim Ferriss?

  Super awkward confrontation.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Exactly, like, get out. And I and I the most obvious, true thing that you would do, which is one, you know, and.

• 31:31Tim Ferriss?

  What would the up the middle choice have been in that scenario? Or what is that like, what is another example of that? Because I love to get a better understanding.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  I don't know, there's a great, you know, I I.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  I think that, you know, when, put it this way. There's an argument and there's something about the writing of a scene that indicates the lines, or it indicates stress, or it indicates anger. But the thing is that people, so then the up the middle choice is to raise your voice and be angry. But, but what we all, I think, know on some deep level when we watch people performing who, who really grab us is that they, they, they have an intuition for the choices that

• 32:26Speaker 03

  reflect the way that those things actually manifest themselves sometimes. Like people who are angry, you know, sometimes laugh. They laugh, they laugh, or they, or they go into silence, or they go into slow burn. Like, like anger doesn't mean volume, but, but, but if there's an exclamation point on the end of the sentence in the script, they'll go with that exclamation point as opposed to, um, there's a great, there's a great, um, there's a, there's this, a film I love called The French Lieutenant's Woman. The French Lieutenant's? The French Lieutenant's Woman, yeah, it's Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  I think it's, I think either Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard wrote the script, but, um, the, there's a scene toward the end when Jeremy Irons. Excuse me. It's okay, Jeremy Irons' character has, I'll say it again. That's all right. There's, um, there's a scene toward the end where Jeremy Irons' character has been looking and looking for Meryl Streep and he, he finds her after literally years of searching and he's become angry and, and they, they go to have a conversation and he's so angry and overwrought and he goes to leave and she moves to stop him and he takes

• 33:50Speaker 03

  her and sort of in anger and seizes her by the shoulder and sort of pushes her out of the way and.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  And it's one of those things, the camera's set three steps down in a low recessed room and they're up these three steps and clearly it was a planned thing where he's throw her and she did a staged fall down sort of right into the camera and very dramatic and then he's struck by his violence and he goes to pick her up and the scene continues on. And if you watch, I remember watching it and suddenly realizing that if you watch it closely, he throws her down and she strikes her head on the floor. You can see that she hits her head on the floor and you can see if you look carefully

• 34:38Speaker 03

  that her reaction, she really hits her head and you can even see it more on Jeremy Irons that he realizes she's struck her head and his reaction is so alarmed, he is broken totally out of the scene for a moment, runs to her, picks her up and if you watch it really closely, you can see that he is checking in with her, the actress, for a second and is about to open his mouth, I think, and just stop and say, "Are you okay?" And she puts her hand up over his mouth like as though to say, "I'm not, we're going

• 35:17Speaker 03

  on" and he realizes that she's still in it and covers his own mouth with his hand to stop from smiling and what she does in this moment where you would think, you know, the whole thing is very melodramatic and she does this laugh in that thing. And I used to watch it because it's the strangest, it's just the strangest, most wonderful choice, but it's so true because she's just like, it's completely absurd, she's just laughing at the absurdity of it all and laughing at these things and then the scene sort of settles and they go into this gentle conversation and everything, but it's amazing, it's why she's like one of the great, great, greats of all time because she like...

• 36:02Speaker 03

  I think it's a completely counterintuitive choice and it's a great example of like two great actors and one of them is even about to break out of it because like, oh, something's happened that wasn't supposed to happen, so we should stop. And she's like, no, that's real, you know, something's happened that makes it really, really interesting now. So let's not stop. And it's beautiful.

• 36:25Tim Ferriss?

  That level of judgment under duress, it makes, if it's just thinking of a battlefield medic or something like that, I mean, having the presence of mind to put the hand over the mouth, I'll have to watch that. I haven't seen that.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good. I asked them both about it and got confirmation that that's what happened. So I know I'm not like imagining it.

• 36:45Tim Ferriss?

  If you were, say, directing a film and you had the opposite experience, you had a novice actor who was intimidated, say, by the people around them and they were paralyzed for whatever reason, or being too robotic, what would you do or say to kind of knock them out of that?

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Hmm, it's tough.

• 37:05Tim Ferriss?

  And if it's a bad, it could be a bad question too. I'm out of my depth.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  It depends on the situation. I mean, I think it's, the thing that makes that work interesting so much of the time is that it's just, it's a chemistry, there's a chemistry between the people involved that's unique every time. It's, the dynamics are unpredictable and fluid and very unique to the people involved. And you have to, you really have to find your way, like every time. I think one of the things I like about it is that I, if I walk

• 37:50Speaker 03

  on, if I walk into those situations feeling confident, I think I've probably been working too much. You know what I mean? Like, I almost think it's, it's almost better to feel at sea. If it's good, if it's complex, it's a, it's a lot of uncertain discovery in the beginning. And that, that.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  The sense that you're at a loss, or you're finding your way, and you're, you know, means that you're involved in something worthwhile, I think. If you're cruising and it's a thing, then it's probably not that interesting.

• 38:34Tim Ferriss?

  If, I mean, you've spent, obviously, a lot of time honing your own craft. You've spent a lot of time with masters in many different fields.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  I'm curious if you have any impressions or recollections of Hicks and Gracie when you were filming The Incredible Hulk. Were you able to spend any time with him?

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, a little bit, not as much as I would have liked to.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  It's funny, I started, when I was in college,

• 39:08Speaker 03

  I started studying Aikido.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  And, you know, that was the era, that was exactly when

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Hoyce-Gracie won the first

• 39:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it must have been like 92 or somewhere around there.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  And maybe I started, but I, you know, and like I said, I'm not a huge person. I'm tall and everything, but one of the things that drew me to Aikido was that it had a lot of, it was one of the first things I experienced where understanding physical leverage really persuaded me that a smaller person could, I don't want to say defend themselves, but that this technique actually worked on a smaller person who was with a larger person. I always felt like with certain things I had studied that ultimately, like, if a person's bigger and stronger and faster, they're just gonna, they're gonna, you know, steamroll you.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  And Aikido was one of the first things I ever experienced where much smaller people were commandingly over, you know, overmastering much bigger people. And when Hoyce-Gracie won that UFC, I mean, it was, it was, it's hard to overstate the impact of that. Like, I mean, if you're interested in these types of things. That rewrote people's sense of what the priorities in martial arts should be. That you had, after that, you had to be a grappler. You had to be a jiu-jitsu artist. You couldn't just be like a striker. And they were, so they were legend.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  And I was interested in Japanese studies and things like that. So I was, the whole thing of the Gracies and their form of jiu-jitsu was like, I was very interested in all that. So I wrote into the script that he's doing breath training with someone in Brazil. And I wrote in parentheses, like Hickson Gracie, but you're like one of the Gracies, but you'll never get, we'll never get them. I think it was in parentheses in the script. And then we found out he was down there and everything. And it was amazing. Those guys are magicians.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  You know, they're really, really, like Ricky Jay is to magic or Kelly Slater is to surfing. It's like when you're with someone who's got that level of alpha over everybody else. It's really, really, really neat.

• 42:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for those people listening who don't know who Hickson Gracie is, it doesn't, of course, cover it completely, but let's check out the documentary Choke. I don't know if you've ever seen that. It's a great introduction to not only Hickson, but also gives a decent dose of Japanese culture. You spent time in Osaka, is that right? How long were you there?

• 42:23Speaker 03

  I was there for a long summer between my junior and senior year in college. I had a job over there.

• 42:32Tim Ferriss?

  And what attracted you to Asian culture or Japanese culture?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  I was interested in, I mean...

• 42:44Speaker 03

  I wish I could say it was something more evolved than than the Richard Chamberlain mini-series of Shogun, but I think it was that.

• 42:53Tim Ferriss?

  Some good mini-series.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I saw, when I was a kid, I think the Shogun was on, then that I went and read Clavel's book and then and then I, you know, devoured a lot of his Asia sort of historical novels and thought they were really neat. And and then it, you know, it it kind of grew from there and then I became interested in Buddhism, you know, history of Buddhism and stuff like that. Japanese aesthetics really appealed to me and the idea of Zen really captivated me

• 43:33Speaker 03

  when I was like in my late teens and stuff like that and I I that that was all just what pulled me into it. And then then I love spending time over there and stuff. And then, you know, and then one of my advisors, one of my professors was one of the great Chinese, modern Chinese historians, Jonathan Spence, and he wrote like to me the definitive book about modern Chinese history called The Search for Modern China and just Death of Woman Wong, To Change China, all these great, great, great books.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  And he was a phenomenal, he really activated history, you know, he really like was one of those people who I thought, his lectures were just fantastic and and that that drew me into that interest.

• 44:29Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you decide to major in history?

• 44:35Speaker 03

  Because I realized my freshman year that I had no natural Mozart-like talent for math and so that my dreams of like being Carl Sagan or a great astrophysicist were probably going to be hampered by my by my poor grasp of even, you know, complex math, let alone like physics. And so I so that became a hobby and a passion, but not, you know, and I realized I probably was a humanities major.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  But I know, I really, I've always really liked reading. I've always really, to me, like, studying history and travel are almost like the same thing. It's like I having a sense of like, you know, how things became the way they are and how people became the way they are is really interesting to me.

• 45:35Tim Ferriss?

  Humans of New York. So I've had quite a few fans ask me to explore this a bit. Can you explain to people your, how you came to be, what is Humans of New York and how did you come to be involved with it?

• 45:50Speaker 03

  I'm not involved with it. To be clear, I, my sister turned me on, yeah, my sister turned me on to the site. And I think a couple of my friends in New York mentioned it to me. And it just, I liked it. I thought the site was really, I don't even know what to call it, a blog, a portrait series, you know, it's a,

• 46:14Speaker 03

  it remind, not to be too academic, but the, there's a great, there's a great American cultural anthropologist, Studs Terkel, you know, and he, Studs Terkel was like the great chronicler of American working man and the common man kind of, you know, he was the, the depression era version of, of that. And and I feel like, I feel like what this guy's got going with Humans of New York is like a modern day Studs Terkel kind of thing. And it's, it's just great if you're a New Yorker or anybody. It's a, it's a really, really cool vantage on, on just people. And, and so, actually, again, my sister

• 46:59Speaker 03

  just flipped, said, have you seen this series he's got going? And he had, he had just launched this series of profiles that he was calling the Syrian Americans about, about, he'd gone to Turkey to photograph and interview and profile people who were getting asylum in the US and were coming, you know, as though to say, okay, like, let's, let's meet who these people really are and get out of the demagoguery of it all and just sort of see. And I, and you know, if you, if you looked at any of them, they are incredibly, incredibly affecting stories.

• 47:35Tim Ferriss?

  And how did that intersect then with Crowdrise?

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Well,

• 47:43Speaker 03

  CrowdRise, just last year, about this time last year, we made the decision to expand from hosting only peer-to-peer fundraising projects and crowdfunding projects for registered nonprofits and charities to also letting people raise direct assistance for other people. People who wanted to raise medical costs for a friend who had had an accident, or a friend who'd lost their house.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  So we decided to support fundraisers where people could help friends or loved ones with medical costs, crisis, education costs, tuitions, things like that. Partly because so many people who use CrowdRise were asking us that they preferred to keep using their CrowdRise profile pages and mount those types of projects rather than have to go offsite to these frankly, in my opinion, fairly shitty exchange utilities, as I call them, like places that are just transactional platforms with no real strategic support,

• 49:03Speaker 03

  no long-term capture of your personal philanthropic narrative, and that charge, in my opinion, way, way, way too much. So because CrowdRise, on the charitable, on the charity side, had already pioneered kind of mechanisms for delivering donated dollars through at an incredibly reduced rate compared to other platforms, often we're able to offset even the credit card fees. So charities were already excited about and benefiting from being able to get their donation dollars through at cheaper than they can on their own websites. And as I was looking at the sites that support

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Direct assistance fundraisers and I was looking at the rates of charge. I was just like, screw this, man. We need to, we need to make, we need to make our pricing model available to people who are trying to help their friends and family. And so we did. I hadn't used that, I hadn't even used that functionality on our own site. And when I saw that story, I decided I was gonna do my first, you know, direct assistance fundraiser to help that family. And, and if we raised enough to help a couple of the families in the series. And how did the campaign do?

• 50:21Speaker 03

  The campaign was tremendous. It, it raised, it raised the first 300,000 in, in like 30 hours. I mean, it really, it really went fast. And then, and then it climbed toward, I think we're at, you know, 460,000 or something like that across the next day or two. And what's fascinating, I think, just, you know, to give huge credit to Brandon and who's the founder of Humans of New York and the photographer and writer. And he, we, I didn't even, we didn't put it out in any kind of crowd rise, social media or mine or anything like that. We just, Brandon, I set up the page and Brandon posted on Humans of New York.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  And a huge increment of that was driven in very short order. And I think donations that averaged 26 bucks or 27 bucks just from the Humans of New York reader base. And then we expanded it. We let some media be done on it and stuff like that. And I think when all is said and done, we'll probably get up to half a million. But I loved it. You know, I, I loved seeing, I loved seeing that, you know, for the price of three venti frappuccinos.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  People could, without putting any kind of a dent, or making any kind of a stretch in their own capacity, just make the emotional gesture of responding to a story that touched them and demonstrate that, in aggregate, if people will do this, you can generate transformative impact as a crowd. And that's the essence of why we set CrowdRise up. And I think it was pretty thrilling. Like, we had a lot of people on the CrowdRise staff, and Brandon at Humans of New York. We were all just like, you know, we were all pretty emotional about it.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  It was really cool to see it unfold. And I think, by the way, again, that wasn't... It really was not a function of anything particular to my public profile at all. It really wasn't. It was driven, I think it was driven almost exclusively by the authentic passion of the Humans of New York reader base, who also were responding to the story and just were happy that someone had created the vehicle to all gather around and respond together. And I think that, you know, I think that that's available to all of us. That's what I like about it. I don't think, I think, you and I were talking about this earlier. I think, you know, we're in this very strange time

• 53:08Speaker 03

  where like, resource concentration is a real, you know, it's a real thing. Like, people can say whatever they want, but the relative share of national wealth is being held by, in larger and larger increment, by fewer and fewer people. And at the same time, we're cutting, you know, aspects of the social safety net and food stamps, as our friend Tony Robbins points out. And I think that, you know, one of the things that's exciting about the networked world and the sort of, the distributed, the empowerment of a distributed culture of people outside of government agencies, outside of corporate constructs, outside of everything, to be able to assemble and rally together

• 53:53Speaker 03

  is that people can proactively...

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Address things like that. We can move resources without anybody else's say so. We can decide, you know, we can decide that we want to get together around things and, and assemble resources and make things happen like in with incredible speed, like incredible speed. And I think that's really, really exciting.

• 54:17Tim Ferriss?

  And what you mentioned also, which I think is worth underscrying, part of the reason I've been so excited by crowdfunding of many different types is like you said, you, you can not only affect change, in some cases massive change with incredible speed. You can do it without any given individual suffering a decrease in their quality of life.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:38Tim Ferriss?

  Or discretionary income or anything else.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:40Tim Ferriss?

  Because you have just a thousand tiny movements that build this groundswell that can then sort of get something to escape velocity. And I've had a fantastic experience working with the GradRise team. And for those people interested, and you mentioned Tony, Tony's also behind this. I think that depression and sort of the mental health research in the US has a long way to go. And particularly with the classic compounds that could be called entheogens, they could be called psychedelics. But I'm working with a team at Johns Hopkins, Roland Griffiths, and we're looking at, or we will be conducting

• 55:22Tim Ferriss?

  a pilot study using psilocybin for the addressing of treatment resistant depression. So depression, major depression that in subjects that has not responded to SSRIs or other types of therapy. And preliminary data would suggest that one dose has a rapid, substantial and sustained effect. Some, in some cases, up to six months with antidepressive effects. And so we'll be not only conducting the administration of the psilocybin, but also using things like functional MRI to track and analyze it. So we can hopefully determine how to safely best administer psilocybin or some analog of that. And what's so cool

• 56:05Tim Ferriss?

  about it is it takes, the study would cost a lot less than people might expect, $80,000, and have a roster of thought leaders from different areas who are in support of this, including Tony. So for people who want to check that out, and also just check out GradRise as a platform and, and see how well. The entire page is put together, you can go to crowdrise.com/timferris, whether you know how to spell it or not, any misspelling will probably go to the same place, so crowdrise.com/timferris, and I'll link to that in the show notes. Is there anything else you'd like to mention about?

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Well, no, I think, I do, I love that we're gonna, we're gonna work with you on this, because I also think that, I was having this conversation with Tony Robbins yesterday, because he, like you, has a terrific community of people that rally around the ideas and, and that you, that you share and pull together and source for people, and I think, I do think it's, again, it, to me, what you're doing, and the notion, that it doesn't matter that Tony could write a check for it, or you could write a check for it, or whatever,

• 57:22Speaker 03

  the notion that, that you can open up a serious conversation about a blind spot, you know, a blind spot that we've got about, you know, the potential in something being taken off the table as an opportunity for people, because it's gonna get, you know, lumped in to a category of, of drugs viewed as negative, you know what I mean? And, and, it's just, it's so, it's, it's crazy, but the idea that, you know, there's

• 58:01Speaker 03

  actually, in many ways, I think there's much more potency in the idea of, of people of common mind about the rationality of something, rallying to the tune of 25 bucks apiece, to collectively say, "Let's, let's make this happen, like, let's make this happen. We don't need a foundation, we don't need a rich person, we don't need a, you know, say-so from the NIH, we're gonna make this happen." I think it's, I think it's- Like actually kind of like a 21st century expression of like if you go back and read

• 58:43Speaker 03

  de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, you know, he's this French guy visiting America in the 1830s or whatever and commenting on like, what is it? Like, he basically, one of the most notable things he says is he goes around and says like, "These people just start organizing, they just get together and get things done," is basically what he's saying. He's like, he comments on all the civic groups and all the community organizations and all the trade, you know, he basically is amazed by what self proactive self-organization Americans do. And this is, you know, nearly 200 years ago. And I think, and I love it. I think this is exactly what you're doing is exactly that. It's like saying, "Hey, in

• 59:25Speaker 03

  this forum that you've got, we can get this done. Let's rally together and do it." And I think that's, I think we've only really scratched the surface of the potential in rallying crowds of people around needs, ideas, you know, businesses. It's, we're in the earliest, earliest infancy still, maybe not the earliest, where people who poo-pooed it first have now had to acknowledge that it's a force. But I think it's still, I think

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  it's still gonna mature and become an even bigger part of our, of our kind of cultural practice, almost.

• 1:00:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I agree. And I think that the reason, just to build on what you said, the reason that I'm not just, say, funding this one study is that I really believe, having just observed millions of people now on my various outlets and on the blog and so on, for almost 10 years, it's hard to believe, next year's the 10th anniversary of the first book, it's insane, but is that most people do not attempt great things because they don't believe they can perform or achieve great things. Because I think in part, the word "great" implies something of massive magnitude that engenders a lot of self-sacrifice. And I think with the technology that we have now...

• 1:00:58Tim Ferriss?

  What I want people to experience firsthand is that they can participate, make a very small chess move themselves, say moving that pawn forward one square, that collectively, with everyone else doing the same, wins the equivalent of like the World Series and puts a real positive dent in the universe. Like with this study, it's a chance for people to become potentially part of history. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it could really be an Archimedes lever in reinventing how we look at treating depression and doing so with fewer side effects. And to do that, participate, even if it's $1, $25, or just

• 1:01:40Tim Ferriss?

  say hypothetically $0, but you tell 10 other people about it.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:44Tim Ferriss?

  And in that way, participate.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's, that's part of what you're talking about in terms of leverage is what, it is also, I think, a part of the, almost like the philosophical conviction we have at CrowdRise, which is that people's capacity to affect change is not a function of their financial capacity. It's that everybody in the world we're living in has in a dozen, a dozen assets they can leverage, that their, you know, their Facebook page, their social networks, their, you know, their friends and family, their schools, their institutions, their companies. Everybody's got networks now. It's not just the Rolodex anymore. It's

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  now, there's a mini network effect around everybody and available to everybody. But they have their energy, they have their creativity, they have their passion, and they have, there are tools now that let so many more people from the comfort of their couch exert their brain, their creativity, without like massive logistical and cost constraints on them. And so, we're, we're saying it all the time. Like, you know, it's, it's not even a question of whether you've got even the capacity to donate 25 bucks to a psilocybin study. It's like, if you believe in it, almost everybody can ask 20 friends for 10 bucks and, and

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  donate 10x their personal capacity, you know? It's like you can, anything that you care about, you actually can affect now. And I think, uh, one of the reasons like we, we set CrowdRise up as a As not a kind of a use and drop evaporative platform, but a place where like a Facebook or a Twitter, it's a permanent staging ground for a certain type of activity that you're doing is that we think people get proud when they do these things. They're proud to participate. They're proud of the things they've done. And so we give them the opportunity to stage multiple projects over time and capture the aggregate narrative of everything they've done year over year. You know, that's why we'll do this with you and then you'll do

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  something else and we'll do it again and we'll do it again. And soon it won't just be the individuated success of these projects that sort of evaporate. It'll be like Tim's impact page will show the total, you know, it'll be a way of looking at the totality of what you've done over time. And I think that's really, really, that's the difference in a true platform versus what I would call just a payment utility.

• 1:04:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, and this to me is, and this has a lot of, for those people who've heard my podcasts with James Fodderman or Dan Engel and Martine Plank, I mean, this, these types of compounds have had a huge impact in my life in ways that I couldn't have imagined possible. And so it's, it's less a transaction or even a campaign in my mind than the beginning of a movement. And so I felt like it was, it was the right match.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, you want stickiness, you know, you want, you want recurrence, you want like, you want a micro platform turnkey made easy for you that, that becomes something that can sustain, you know?

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  Do we have some time for a few more questions?

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  When you hear the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  My dad is up there. My dad, my brother.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  You know, I'm not sure, I'm not sure.

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  It's about people who spring to mind so much is that like, I definitely find that almost in that childlike way of like, role modeling. Now in my life, when I meet people who seem like they've got, they've got their aspirations and their engagement in balance with a lot of

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  time for contemplative time, family time, personal health, physical health. I tend to look at that and go, wow, like, I want to be like that guy or that woman. You know, that, that, they, I, I definitely have seen more than enough people with success as defined by notoriety or money or whatever, who look like, like the specter of, you know, despair to me. Like, I, I've seen, I've seen, as I'm sure you have, like, lots of people, you know, with the albatross of success around their neck,

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  that seem like an intense cautionary tale to me, like, I'd rather, you know. So, so it's more, I, you know, I, my sense of like, what constitutes a health, a, a successful person is probably more defined now by what looks like a healthy person.

• 1:07:16Tim Ferriss?

  How do you prevent yourself?

• 1:07:20Tim Ferriss?

  From becoming intoxicated by the sort of culture or cult of personality that seems to be so prevalent in the world, so say entertainment, or that obsession with material wealth, I mean, it seems to be, that type of albatross seems to be very common. What if, what has helped you to not succumb?

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  You know, like, I think, I think everybody's got to constantly, like, sort of do battle with like, the voices in your head that, of ego and, you know, I mean, that's what Birdman was all about. That, literally, I think that the beauty of what Alejandro took on in that film was being honest about the degree to which voices in your head, like, just hammer at you and hammer at you and hammer at you about what you don't have and what, what you ought to be aspiring to and mattering, you know, in the world. And, and I think that

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  anybody, very few people are really free of that. But, but I think that living in New York helps me oddly, just because it's not, it's not a film industry town. It's not, there's so much going on there and there's so many things I'm interested in and involved in. It, it keeps my life diverse. And when I'm out here where we are, like, I, I do find that, like, you know, like, being in the water and being able to hike and, I'm a pilot, so flying, you know, flying and there's just things that take you out of your, things that take me out of my head help a lot, are pretty key. But I, you know,

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm ridiculously fortunate. And I think I have more than enough. And I, I think that.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Sometimes it's even getting a little bit of a taste of how much like, you know, material possessions can really be a trap. It's like there is that, you know, the things that you own end up owning you kind of maximum. And I think that they, the, I do think it's really, really true. I think, I think you start realizing how much lighter you feel when you dispense with a lot of that stuff, then that becomes a positive snowball, you know?

• 1:09:53Tim Ferriss?

  What books or book have you given most as a gift to other people?

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  That's a good question. Um,

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  there was a period where I, I really liked Antoine de Saint-Exupery's book. It's called Wind, Sand and Stars.

• 1:10:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I haven't read that one.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  That's, that's,

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  that's like a great, great one.

• 1:10:25Tim Ferriss?

  Were you interested in him because he was a pilot or did?

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, both. I was, I was reading a lot of books about flying, but-

• 1:10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Real innovator in, I guess, what postal delivery?

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was flying the mail from like the Sahara to Paris and, and from Patagonia to Paris, which is, you know, from-

• 1:10:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's-

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  I mean, crazy.

• 1:10:43Tim Ferriss?

  For those people who don't recognize the name, also wrote The Little Prince.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  The Little Prince, yeah. But, you know, he's, I mean, Wind, Sand and Stars is like, it's, it's, it's, it's as much a book about a philosophy of life as it, and, and as it is about flying. It's, it's like zen in, zen in the, in the craft of flying. But it's, it's just beautiful. Um,

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  we were talking about this earlier. I really liked that book, The Black Swan.

• 1:11:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  I gave that to friends of a certain type.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  What, what type?

• 1:11:21Tim Ferriss?

  I really enjoyed that book.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I think it's, it's an extremely like, it's, if you, if you absorb it right, it's, it's, it's, it's got a really amazing capacity to prick certain bubbles of delusion or, or help you realize bubbles of delusion that we all operate in. And it's, I think it's really, really cool.

• 1:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  How not to fool yourself.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, um-

• 1:11:49Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned two essays, and we don't have to go too deep into the, I'll just name them and then link to them in the show notes, but there was Second Wind.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Second Wind, yeah.

• 1:11:59Tim Ferriss?

  Which was by the former Czechoslovakian president, I'm not going to get his first name right.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Vaslav Havel.

• 1:12:06Tim Ferriss?

  Havel, H-A-V-E-L. And then The Catastrophe of Success, and the author is?

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  Tennessee Williams.

• 1:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  Tennessee Williams. Any context that you'd like to provide for folks for those two?

• 1:12:15Speaker 03

  Just great. The Catastrophe of Success is like one of the great essays by a creative person about exactly what you're just talking, the traps, the traps that follow on achieving anything really that you were aspiring to achieve, and then what happens after that happens, you know? And Second Wind is sort of the same, from a different perspective, more like, how do you have the courage to kind of not repeat yourself, put yourself out of your comfort zone, in a creative sense, but also in a life sense? And I think what

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  I like about Second Wind is, as a playwright, he was sort of saying like, that you kind of disgorged like, a point of view, and you can keep doing that, but at some point, if you don't stop and go back into like, absorption mode, you're gonna be repeating yourself, and you have to dare to like, you have to dare yourself to stop, listen, live, absorb, and then try again from scratch, you know what I mean? That's like, it's a great essay. It's really, really great.

• 1:13:32Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite documentaries?

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Many.

• 1:13:39Speaker 03

  I won't name ones that probably, I love Bennett Miller's film, The Cruise.

• 1:13:47Tim Ferriss?

  The Cruise?

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, Bennett, people know, he directed Capote and Moneyball and Foxcatcher, brilliant filmmaker, but I think almost my favorite film of his is a documentary called The Cruise.

• 1:13:59Tim Ferriss?

  What is that about?

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  It's about a guy who's a tour, he's a tour guide, host on the open double decker buses in New York City, who's a poet and who, you just have to see it, it's great.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  And I really like that one.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Other ones people might not have seen, I really like, I really like Adam Curtis's films. Great British documentarian, he's got that four-part film called The Century of the Self.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  And then a three-part one called The Power of Nightmares. I think those are, those are absolutely brilliant, brilliant, brilliant films, like dense, but really eye-opening.

• 1:14:50Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other underrated movies that you think people should, should see that are not necessarily documentaries? Any particular movies that come to mind for you?

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  Of late, I think, I'm a, I'm a huge, huge fan of this French filmmaker, Jacques Audillard, who I think in the last few years, he put up, he put up a hat-trick of films,

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  The Beat My Heart Skipped, and then A Prophet.

• 1:15:21Tim Ferriss?

  That is one, okay, so that is one of my favorite films, amazing.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  I personally put A Prophet as one of the three best gangster films ever made.

• 1:15:30Tim Ferriss?

  So good, oh my god.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  I think for me, The Godfather, Goodfellas, and A Prophet are, are at this point my three. If I had to pick three gangster films, I think they're the best ones.

• 1:15:39Tim Ferriss?

  If just, yeah, if for those people who haven't seen A Prophet, it's, I don't speak French, but it's Un Prophet, and the the poster, if you're looking at it on Netflix or Amazon or iTunes or whatever, it's red and black, but it's about, I want to say a Middle Eastern.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  Algerian.

• 1:15:55Tim Ferriss?

  Algerian.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Tim Ferriss?

  That's right, Algerian, young male who goes to prison and about his ascension.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  What happens.

• 1:16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God, I won't say anything more.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  And and then after that, Rust and Bone was his next film, and it's like, it's just a brilliant film, Marion Cotillard, it's like one of the great performances in the last few years, and I love those, all those films. And then, and I think, you know, excusing the fact that I happen to be in one of them, but the, but I think Alejandro Iñárritu's last three films in a row, Beautiful, Beautiful was an extremely, extremely underseen masterpiece. It was Iñárritu's film prior to Birdman, and it's a masterpiece.

• 1:16:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's just called Beautiful.

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, spelled, spelled wrong. It's a masterpiece, and it's, it's absolutely brilliant, and, again, one of the greatest performances of in a long time, and, and his, the third in his triptych, I think, is The Revenant, out right now. I think The Revenant's one of the great films I've seen in the last many years. It's like, it's an absolute unqualified masterpiece. It's just, it's just, it's like a Native American spirit myth, or straight out of a Joseph Campbell myth or something. It's just, it's just a magnificent, magnificent piece of filmmaking.

• 1:17:27Tim Ferriss?

  We could have a whole separate conversation about, about Birdman, which we won't do today, but also one of my favorite films of the last few years. Three more questions. If you could have a billboard anywhere that said anything, what would you put on it?

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  I might put Pray for Surf.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  I, um.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  I don't know, I might put the name of certain people from high school like and just say like so-and-so comma how you like me now.

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  That would be very unevolved. That would be very, very unevolved.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  But, uh, no. I, I, I don't know. I don't know what I would put on it.

• 1:18:18Tim Ferriss?

  We can come back to that too.

• 1:18:19Speaker 03

  You know what I, you know what I, no, I'm changing my answer. I would put, uh, I would put Paul Rudd's cellphone number on it.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  It would complete, it would complete a long-running

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  series of jokes that would just be perfect.

• 1:18:38Tim Ferriss?

  See if we can, we can-

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Paul Rudd's actual number. Please call.

• 1:18:42Tim Ferriss?

  We'll do, we'll do a separate crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the billboard rental.

• 1:18:48Tim Ferriss?

  What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self and could you just place where you were at the time?

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, yeah, I know. I was, I was on the last two days of shooting a film I was directing when I turned 30 and um, I, I think I might tell myself at that phase to um, commit myself to a few fewer things than I did at that time that I'm still,

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  that I'm still feeling obligated to and that maybe I wish I had a few less of those things. Like I think my aspir- my aspiration and my sense of my own energy and time was like limitless at that time and now, um, some of that has become a, a cage of obligation that I would like to uh,

• 1:19:51Tim Ferriss?

  Unlock?

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  Unlock, yeah. But I'll get there.

• 1:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  Senior year in college, what advice would you have given yourself?

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  I might, I might have told myself to go live abroad right then. Should have done it right then, like for a year or two. I, I had lived abroad a little bit. I should have gone and... That's like when you think everything's about to get started and it's not. And I should have, I, you know, I should have gone and lived. I should have gone somewhere and lived somewhere, you know, interesting or different that I would be much harder to do later.

• 1:20:35Tim Ferriss?

  Where would you, where would you choose for yourself?

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:20:37Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:20:39Tim Ferriss?

  We should take a trip to Japan together, get you back to Japan. Uh, last, last real question is, do you have any ask or request of the audience? People listening, things they should do, ponder or otherwise?

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  If you're gonna, um, if you're looking to, uh, if you're looking to raise financial support for a friend or family member, do it on CrowdRise, not on other sites, because much more of the money will go through to them. That's my, uh, that's my, you know, uh, entrepreneurial hat. And then, um,

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  um, I think, uh, I'd say, and I'm not even joking. I think like, um, you know, stay tuned into communities like this. I think, I think it's, uh, I think these things are really cool. I think, um, you know, maybe in a, in a simple, put simple, put more simply like just participate, you know, in some, what I think's cool about what you've assembled is I think it's, um, it's, it's driven by people's desire to like, uh, not hack life, but, but, but be proactive and participate and not be apathetic. And I like that. I think that's, I think that's a, um, that's a positive community.

• 1:22:00Speaker 03

  And I think, um, I think, uh, we all, we all get really tired, you know? I think people, modern life is stressful and tiring and confusing. And I think it's, um, I think, uh, you know, Nietzsche has that great thing, that idea of self-overcoming of like that, that the overman is not like a, a perfect person. It's, it's actually the person who is perpetually trying to, uh, self-overcome. And I really like that idea. I think, I think, um, I think, uh...

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  Like staying, staying engaged in the idea of evolving yourself is really cool. So I think it's, it's awesome that you've got this many people kind of linked up together around those ideas.

• 1:22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I, I really hope people listening, no matter how small you might feel or isolated you might feel, I know not everyone out there has a community like you or I might have in New York or SF. You can make this year the year that you astonish yourself with what you can do or be a part of and, you know, look back on December 31st of this year and just hope to say, holy shit, I can't believe I was part of X, or I did X to yourself, because I don't, I think it's a lot easier than people might think. Edward, where can people find you on the interwebs, on social to say hello? Keep up to date with what you're involved with?

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not great at it. I, I, you know, I throw tweets out now and then, mostly about things I've seen that, like, like you were talking about, things I've seen or read that I think should find a wider audience or that people will appreciate.

• 1:23:46Tim Ferriss?

  What is your handle on Twitter?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Just my name.

• 1:23:50Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  But I'm, I'm, I'm not cutting edge on, I'm not as, I'm not as cutting edge. I am on the crowdfunding stuff, but I'm not as, I'm not as cutting edge with social media as I, as I maybe should be. I am, or, or I don't know, maybe it's a good thing.

• 1:24:07Tim Ferriss?

  Probably means you've melted less of your brain.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think about it, you know, I think about like, like, expanding on, you know, more robust ways of kind of do, like, like what you're doing in a much smaller way, but building up more of a, of a forum of, of interactive conversation, but I'm.

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta finish. I gotta finish things I started.

• 1:24:42Tim Ferriss?

  Might be a cage within a cage.

• 1:24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I gotta finish things I started.

• 1:24:46Tim Ferriss?

  This is always fun. I enjoy hanging out and I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:24:52Speaker 03

  Definitely. No, it's super fun. I really, I've, I've, I've really enjoyed your books. I've enjoyed the kind of, I've enjoyed them as a resource and, and I think, uh, learned a lot. And, and, and I think it's, I really do think it's cool that, that what you've cultivated is, people who are, people who are interested in, in, in continuing to explore, you know, like, like, I think it's, it's, um, that idea, ongoing education, ongoing discoveries, the, you know, that's the zest and things.

• 1:25:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you don't, you don't necessarily find yourself, you create yourself one little step at a time. So Edward, thank you again. And to everyone listening, check out crowdrise.com/timferris to see what mischief, productive mischief I'm getting up to. And as always, you can find the show notes, links to everything we talked about, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  Thanks. Have a good one.

• 1:26:05Tim 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, the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my

• 1:26:45Tim Ferriss?

  Close friends, for instance, 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 Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management.

• 1:27:29Tim Ferriss?

  In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should

• 1:28:13Tim Ferriss?

  be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month. To invest a $30,000 account, for instance.

• 1:28:57Tim Ferriss?

  Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you.

• 1:29:39Tim Ferriss?

  Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. Now, I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer. Wealthfront, Inc. is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure. So, check it out, guys. This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim.

• 1:30:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number-one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of original designs from designers around the world. Give your feedback, and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So check out some of my competitions and designs, and some of your competitions and designs, from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design.

• 1:31:08Tim Ferriss?

  So check it out, 99designs.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.