#424: Brian Koppelman on Making Art, Francis Ford Coppola, Building Momentum, and More

Brian Koppelman on Making Art, Francis Ford Coppola, Building Momentum, and More | Brought to you by Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim and "5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship" “A lot of growing up is learning to shift the responsibility from the other to the self.” — Brian Koppelman Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman https://twitter.com/briankoppelman) is a screenwriter, novelist, director, producer, and host of The Moment https://shows.cadence13.com/podcast/themomentwithbriankoppelman podcast. Prior to his hit show Billions http://www.sho.com/sho/billions/home, which he co-created and executive produced (and co-wrote on spec), he was best known as the co-writer of Rounders http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00AYB1EY6/offsitoftimfe-20 and Ocean’s Thirteen http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ZOW96Y/offsitoftimfe-20, as well as a producer of The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones. He has also directed films, such as Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas. Consider getting Brian’s The Royale https://theroyalebk.com/ mug (all proceeds go to Food Bank for New York City), and join the community using hashtag #TheRoyale https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheRoyale on Twitter when you have your first cup of coffee in the morning. Please enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim. I started sleeping on a Helix https://helixsleep.com/tim in 2017, and they’ve been one of my top choices for mattresses ever since. Take their two-minute sleep quiz https://helixsleep.com/tim, and, based on body type and how you sleep, their algorithm will identify and match you to your perfect mattress. Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim offer a 100-night trial and free shipping and returns. They’re manufactured in the USA, and because they ship it directly to you and cut out high-margin middlemen, they cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars less than comparable mattress-store options. To personalize your sleep experience, visit HelixSleep.com/TIM https://helixsleep.com/tim and you’ll receive up to $125 off your custom mattress. This episode is also brought to you by “5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship,” my very own email newsletter, which every Friday features five bullet points of cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:25Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Last year, I focused on dramatically improving a few things. Surprise, surprise. Most notably, the quality of my sleep, which seems to affect just about everything. This led me to revisit, you name it, my daily routine, morning routine, exercise, diet, all the way to what I slept on. And I ended up getting all-new beds here in Austin, Texas, including mattresses from Helix Sleep. Helix has built a sleep quiz that takes two minutes to complete, and they use the answers to match your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress. Whether you're a side sleeper, hot sleeper, cold sleeper, or you like plush, you like firm, with Helix, there's no more guessing or confusion. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim,

• 1:10Tim Ferriss?

  take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. That is their promise. For couples, Helix can even split the mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side. They have a 10-year warranty, and you can test-drive your mattress for 100 nights, risk-free. Right now, Helix is offering up to $125 off of all mattress orders. So check it out. Get up to $125 off at helixsleep.com/tim. That's helixsleep.com/tim for $125 off your mattress order. Take a look. helixsleep.com/tim.

• 1:55Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free,

• 2:39Tim Ferriss?

  it's always going to be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out, tim.blog/friday.

• 3:23Tim Ferriss?

  If you listen to this podcast, very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food supplements. Nutrients in a single scoop AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut and immune

• 4:08Tim Ferriss?

  system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it is my privilege, pleasure and obligation to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types. And my guest today was, in fact, I believe, the 10th ever guest on this podcast and I had to have him back. He was so nice, we had to do it twice. Brian Koppelman, on Twitter, at Brian Koppelman, B R I A N K O P P E L M A N, is a screenwriter, novelist, director and producer. He is prolific. Prior to his hit show Billions, which he co-created and executive produced and co-wrote on spec, he was best known as the co-writer of Rounders and Oceans 13, as well as the producer of

• 5:20Tim Ferriss?

  The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones. He has directed films such as Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas. Brian also hosts the very popular The Moment podcast. Brian, welcome back to the show.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Such a pleasure, Tim. I, you know, always so happy to talk to you, man.

• 5:36Tim Ferriss?

  And you are also, I would consider, aside from being a friend, a mentor of sorts. I have sent drafts of various things to you for feedback and you are a real master of your craft and I appreciate your help when I need the help. And I recall, just as a quick personal anecdote, when I sent you a draft of one of my blog posts, I can't recall which blog post it was exactly, but you said, "I will give you feedback because I believe you actually want feedback," or something along those lines.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  It was the first one, because... First of all, this is great and it's something that I'm really eager to talk about, which is the importance of connection, but also how, how to, how to expand your reach. Because you know, Tim, you asked me a question last night because, and I think I like to declare this kind of thing on a podcast. I mean, you and I are friends, like we're, we've been in touch for a long time and we text and talk and like we can lean on each other for stuff. And last night you said, hey, let's try to not just ramble since we, you know, the danger of having someone you're friends with on a podcast is it can ramble and suddenly just be for the two of you. So, but I was thinking about the last 10 years

• 6:54Speaker 03

  because that is a great sort of prompt you gave me. You said, think about between 2010 and 2020. And one thing that occurred to me is it's super important to me to expand my world. And because that's the way that I learn and grow. But in order to expand my world, and you do the same thing, the key, a key thing is to improve myself so that I have something to offer as I try to expand my world. So that by doing work on

• 7:33Speaker 03

  myself, by trying to grow, by trying to read more and learn more, I then am prepared to engage when I reach out to somebody I admire. So you might say I've been a mentor of sorts to you. Obviously, even though you're younger than I am, you've been a mentor to me in various areas too. And part of that is because each of us are trying in whatever way to do the work on our own so that when we meet again, we're meeting as versions of ourselves that are in a place of momentum, not inertia. Now, sometimes you're in a place of inertia and if you've built real relationships, you can then go

• 8:15Speaker 03

  to somebody and say, hey, I'm stuck. Help me figure out why I'm stuck. Help me figure out how to move forward. But that, for me, I've Realize that can't be the only place that I'm in and the reason that I've come to know that is as you have, I've spent years feeling stuck at various points in my life and so tried to find ways to unstick myself, expand my world so that I can have helpers to help me unstick myself. And when you sent me, it was your first of these new blog posts and you'd sent a note, I think, to a few of your friends.

• 8:48Tim Ferriss?

  I think it was, I think it was single ply. It might have been where in your life are you still using single ply?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  That's correct. It was. And it was, you said, I'm doing this new thing where I'm going to start blogging more in a certain way. And you were like, would you be willing to give me notes? And I remember where I was. I was actually heading to the airport and in LA coming back to New York. And I knew you were coming to me as a professional, that you were a professional, and I would define that as somebody who just, whether you're making money on it or not, didn't matter. That's not what I mean by professional. And this, I'm using more Seth's, God's definition of it, which is, you know, you were taking this work seriously. You were trying to communicate for other people something you're trying on the page to figure out your strongly held belief and then to share that with other people.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  And I could tell what you wanted was a gut check. Am I communicating cleanly enough? Is it, am I entertaining enough to get the message across? And when I receive something like that from a fellow professional, it's an honor, man. You feel like, what a joy to be able to, because then, you know, I knew I would give you feedback. I knew you would be able to throw out the stuff that didn't apply, but I knew you'd be able to take, because I gave you some harsh notes. I was like, you can cut this section. An amateur, or even someone who gets paid to do this work, but who isn't in a professional mindset, defaults to, instead of hearing the notes they asked for as from a peer or a mentor or someone trying to help,

• 10:17Speaker 03

  they make that note as though it came from the teacher who hated them the most, or the parent who they could never please, and so they react emotionally instead of from a place of professionalism and

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Quality check. And so, yes, I was in the middle. I mean, I was so busy when you sent me that thing. Meaning I was on a trip that was a 24 hour trip to California. We were in the middle of making the show. I was, um, had gone out there for a specific, uh, to do Bill Simmons's two, three podcasts in two days with Bill while still writing billions. And you sent me that thing and, and I thought, oh, well, this is really a valuable thing to do. Because Tim is actually in the middle of trying to grow, right? You said, I'm trying to reshape the way I think about my posts. And I was like, well, this is great. I'm so fucking proud and happy for Tim.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  And I know my, this is the key. I know my efforts won't be wasted. I know if, if I dig into this as though I wrote the piece, Tim is going to react to it in kind. And, and that is exactly what I'm talking about, about expanding your world and, and growing. And it's the kind of thing, although, um, you've written many books and I've done the things that I've done. I believe we would have in, interacted in the exact same way in the moments before our professional successes happened. And, and I think that's part of why we were able to manifest and have some professional success be, because of that desire to get the work right. Does that make sense to you? Is that tracks?

• 11:57Tim Ferriss?

  It makes perfect sense. And, uh, you are also, not to turn this into like a,

• 12:04Speaker 03

  No, don't.

• 12:05Tim Ferriss?

  Whatever, whatever it might be, but you are, and I, I think this is really important to underscore for folks who perhaps want to explore different creative paths. And, uh, whether that be professionally in the paid sense or not, as you said, the professional mindset is one I think you reflect in, in so much as you, you take feedback extremely well and unemotionally, uh, as does Seth Godin, who you mentioned earlier. And I, I really find that to be a hallmark of someone who can make a lot of progress, uh, in terms of their creative endeavors or otherwise.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  Let's, but let's take a second and slow down. This is such a crucial point. Um. And it's one that I've given a tremendous amount of thought to because I don't take feedback well in the instant it's given. So what happens privately, and I think, I think it's like when you watch an Olympic athlete perform, even though part of your brain knows all the years of practice, all you really think is geez, Michael Johnson's fast. And yeah, so here's what I'd say. When I get feedback sometimes, my initial reaction might actually be all the things I just said to avoid. My initial reaction might be rage, might be sadness,

• 13:34Speaker 03

  might be self pity, might be wanting to beat myself up. And I'm not exaggerating. I might have 12 really bad hours where I go through a range of purely emotional responses where what I want to say to the person giving me the feedback is go fuck yourself. But when I was younger, I did say go fuck yourself, right? Now, what I, and by the way, we all have bad days where we could say the wrong thing. But what I now know, because I've trained myself to notice it through meditation and journaling, is, okay, this is you shaking off the bad reaction to the feedback. You're not going to do anything with that material

• 14:19Speaker 03

  or that approach until you've shaken this emotional response off enough that you have intellectual clarity. And then you can look at the feedback and say, okay, these three things make a lot of sense. I know what to do with them. That fourth thing, I see what that means. I can address it a different way. And this bundle of things over here, while that's really the person giving me the notes issues, I don't think that makes it better. But until I can get to that place, I won't even deal with it. So like, we went through this process, and I'll talk about this more later, with COVID and when to leave New York City, you and I had three or four conversations. And I had to get to a place

• 15:01Speaker 03

  where I could take my emotional response out to get to my pure intellectual response. And that process, the more one can learn to accelerate the process, so that if I've had this experience, someone will, will call me, someone I know, and they'll say, Will you look at this cut of something I've just shot? Or will you look at this thing I've just written? Or will you listen to this song? Because, you know, I made records for a long time as a producer and an art person, right? And they will, they will want feedback. And so the thing I said to you, I now have learned to say to somebody, describe the kind of feedback you want. Is this finished?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  If it's finished, Penjollet said this to me once, where he said, if you tell me it's finished, all I'm going to say to you is congratulations, because you can't do anything about it and I don't want to. And this is important, right? But I'll say to someone, is it finished? If they say, right? Because if I show you something and it's finished, a finished movie that I've just made, but it's not out yet, honestly, what is your feedback? Really, all I need at that point is a pat on the back for accomplishing something, right? But if somebody should, the first thing I say to somebody is, what kind of feedback are you looking for? Now, you preempted that because your initial note, you said, I want harsh feedback. That's great. So I'll say to somebody, do you want the kind of feedback I will give to a peer? Because when I, the feedback I give to a peer has very little positive in it,

• 16:28Speaker 03

  not a lot of praise. It's, it's, right? Because we don't need that. If I, if I send my friend Craig Mazin, the, you know, the great creator of Chernobyl on HBO, if I send Craig, if I'm going to waste Craig's time and ask him to read a script, I don't need him to also spend a half a page of response to me telling me what I've done well. What I need him to do is tell me where the thing has fallen short, right? So I will say that to somebody. Are you prepared for that? If you are, I will give you those notes, but you have to be willing to do something with them. So before you ask for feedback, you have to get yourself in a mindset that is open to taking action based on the feedback.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  This is in any area of life, except if your partner asks you if they look good. If they ask you if their sweater fits them well, they are not asking for this kind of feedback. So I just want to be clear about that. That is an entirely different feedback loop that you have to figure out. For yourself, but because the answer can widely vary, the response. But this is one of the keys, I think, to becoming successful in any area of the arts, but I would expand it to in any area of business. How to ask for feedback and how you respond to that feedback when it's given. That's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about, and it's something that I think all of us

• 17:54Speaker 03

  should think about because it's an incredible shortcut to growth. Because if you take the feedback the right way, you don't only improve the thing you're working on, then you improve the next five things you're working on because that feedback has led you to understand how to iterate the next thing.

• 18:13Tim Ferriss?

  Makes perfect sense to me, and I want to, I want to jump back to a few things you mentioned and then ask a follow up question. You mentioned meditation and journaling. We don't have to go into great depths with that because we spoke about it in our first conversation on this podcast, but transcendental meditation and morning pages à la Julia Cameron are both arrows in your quiver. I want to talk about the, the initial response to feedback. So if you have the, say, up to 12 hours of rage, denial, sadness, whatever it might be, in the moment, if someone delivers that feedback to you, not in writing, but verbally or on the phone,

• 18:56Tim Ferriss?

  do you, are you, are you responding like the ice skater in the Olympics who falls down and just steps back up and has a huge shitty grin on your face? And you sort of play nice until you get off the phone? Is there something you say to get off of the phone so you can buy yourself time and a clean exit? So you can experience your emotions?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  That's a great, that's a great thing to think about because. What that really is, is a great aspiration, right? And it's important to keep that aspiration in mind. Now, I have a creative partner, David Levine, and so when I think we're gonna have a call with somebody who's gonna give us feedback and I'm concerned that my emotions are too engaged, sometimes I will say to David, "Hey, man, I think you should do most of the talking on this phone call because I can feel myself amped up." So, part of that is taking stock of your... Look, a lot of success in interpersonal relationships involves understanding your own complicity in how the engagement is gonna turn out.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  So, a lot of this growing up is learning to shift the responsibility from the other to the self. That doesn't mean, "Oh, I'm responsible for my own success." What it means is, instead of saying, "That dick treated me poorly and it made me feel a certain way," before the interaction, I try to prepare myself so that I'm gonna react in the right way in the moment because I've learned to know myself probably through the meditation journaling, also honestly through the relationship I have with my wife. We celebrate our 29th anniversary in two days and she's also a writer and filmmaker

• 20:46Speaker 03

  and we talk about this stuff all the time and have, and we're very good at being honest with one another. And so, Amy will, as the Brits like, as the Brits, she's not British, but as the Brits say, you know, she'll pick me up on that stuff and to help teach me. But I can be a total asshole if I'm not ahead of time prepared to have those conversations. I often say, you know, people who listen to my podcast have, they're listening to the most understanding version of me, the me trying to be that ice skater where I'm so directed, outwardly directed on being there to listen to the other person. I'm incredibly patient, I'm fully engaged in their journey, I've taken myself out of

• 21:31Speaker 03

  it, and I try really hard to be that person in all the interactions that I have. But as you know, that hour that you're doing this...

• 21:43Speaker 03

  You're able to manifest it. It's really hard to manifest it at the end of a long day when you failed during the day, because we all fail during our days sometimes. When you've had to manage four flame-ups on set that happened for a variety of reasons. A director that you're, you know, for me in my life making our show, you know, there could be an issue with a director. A cut, I could have given notes on a cut, the editor could have done what I wanted. I got the cut back. I made four different mistakes. The cut's taken a step backwards, not a step forwards. And then I have a notes call at seven o'clock at night. And I've had a day where I've felt like I've been in, in, in the ring with Mike Tyson and someone says the wrong thing.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  And I could absolutely tell somebody, somebody I respect, like, uh, value. I could absolutely, in the way that I take their note, make them feel shitty and ruin their night. And I, I've really worked hard not to do that. But you know what? We, I will say, one thing I've learned is, if I do that, if I, if someone gives me feedback and I think it's stupid, let's say someone gives me feedback, it's actually a bad note. Because I'm, you know, and, and, uh, it's a note that I know won't help and I know why and it's something I've thought of before. Dave and I have gone down that road. And if I do react by saying, "Just occurred," nah, that's not gonna work. Which is, by the way, the worst I'll be now. You know, I never would call someone, I, I would never, um, actively insult somebody.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  But as you know, we pick up on, on con, when someone's condescending. And so, let's say I'm, uh, and this is something I think few of us do and we should do much more frequently. Let's say I am a little bit of a dick and I'm like, "Nah, that's not gonna work. Nope, sorry." Ten minutes later, I'll fucking pick up the phone and I'll call and I'll go, "Listen, uh, I reacted. I know how I reacted and I know that that probably made you feel bad. Sorry that I reacted that way. I've had a weird day today and, uh, I'm gonna take those notes and think about them. And tomorrow I'll respond." And I'll, I am so willing to own my behavior. And that's something that I've, I've learned too. Again, I wanna be super clear because I don't wanna paint myself, uh, worse than I am.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  I'm really close to the guy that I have on the podcast and I'm, uh, as I say, I would never insult anybody. But I've become much more aware that, again... We all have a responsibility, if we can, to protect the feelings of those that we're interacting with. We can be truthful without being an asshole. We can be constructive and corrective without making someone else feel worse. And so if I can find a way to not leave somebody that I've engaged with feeling worse, I'm gonna do it. Sometimes it's impossible. Kevin and I run a writer's room. Sometimes we have to say no to 10 ideas in a row from the same person. Nobody feels good hearing their 10th idea rejected, no matter how much

• 24:39Speaker 03

  you take the time to listen to it and make them feel better. So sometimes in all of our interactions, we're going to, no matter what we do, leave other people feeling a little bit worse. But where you can fix that, it's incredibly worth it to fix it.

• 24:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's something that I've tried to work on a lot in the last handful of years since I've definitely thrown some Molotov cocktails unnecessarily into the mix. I remember a few years ago, I was doing my first handful of experiments with extended fasting, and I realized after the fact that if you're doing a long fast, on day two is not when you should be sending a lot of very nuanced emails. And as one of my employees put it at the time, he woke up and checked his inbox and said, "Holy shit, you guys

• 25:41Tim Ferriss?

  are throwing haymakers." And that took a lot of cleanup. But cleanup, you're not always gonna be your best self, so it behooves one, at least it behooves me, to become a practitioner of the art of cleanup. I wanted to ask you about being stuck. You mentioned that you've been stuck many times in your life. Could you tell a story of one time when you were stuck and how you got to the other side?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Absolutely, man. There are a few of them, in various different...

• 26:16Speaker 03

  In various different ways. You know, and I think it's important to talk about it not just in terms of the arts. Because momentum and inertia are these counterforces. You could probably define the terms better than I could in terms of, you know, what they exactly mean. Also, everyone can just, you know, Google it on your phone. But I can even look at it in terms of, so certainly in terms of writing, like I've been stuck and spent a lot of my life stuck before I became somebody who did this stuff for a living. But, you know, Tim, I mean, two months ago, I was 250 pounds.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  And that was, and today, I'm 230. Now, 230 for six feet is still too big. But it's a, I can't tell you the difference between being 250 and 230 in terms of the ability to move around and also the momentum of moving in the correct direction. And I was so stuck at where I was and it was a feedback, it was an awful feedback loop because at 250, you can't sleep well. So you can't sleep well, so your discipline is less, so you're feeling, you have a headache all the time. And I, I felt helpless to change it, even with someone like you on my speed dial, where I could ask you, because I had to find a way to make an internal change. And I'll tell you actually what it was.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  I say 250, but it really was stepping on the scale of being 249.4. And I hadn't stepped on the scale in a while intentionally because when you're someone who rests with weight, you kind of instinctively avoid the scale sometimes. But I was journaling and in my journal, I remember writing about

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Not sleeping well, knowing that I probably had sleep apnea from being too fat. Uh, I'm someone who loves playing sports. I'm exercise fiend, like sports in particular. I wasn't playing sports because my knees and ankles hurt too much and because I was so big. And I was like, you have to get on the scale. And I got on the scale and I saw that I was 249.4. And I just sat down on the edge of my bed. I just said, Brian, if you go over 250, there's a real chance you're going to be one of these assholes who hits 300 pounds. And the thought of that, even that's an artificial line. The 250, the thought of it, Tim, was so painful to me.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  And the picturing myself at 300 pounds. And right around that time, um, uh, so about a year and a half ago, I lost a lifelong friend to opioid addiction, a late in life opioid addiction. Um, this is someone who was like a brother to me. Uh, David and I dedicated the first episode of last season's Billions to this person. His name's Dennis Shields. And, um, uh, Dennis was someone who had never had a drink. And then in his 40s, went for back surgery, became addicted to opioids and was dead by 50. And his daughter had posted, right around when I got on the scale, like within a day. His daughter had posted something about missing her dad.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  And I looked at the picture of, and it was a picture of Dennis, and I looked at the picture of Dennis. And I read Tyler's post, Tyler's the daughter, who's like a niece to me, you know, and I read Tyler's post. And then I thought about my kids. And then I thought about the fact that I was 249.4. And I was absolutely trapped and stuck and had been stuck. And I just, right then, uh,

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Made the decision and called a couple of my friends and I um did a few different things. One, uh I went and found um a, so I took steps, right? I read a book, call, I wrote you or called you and said to you, um, what do you, where do you think I should start? And you said, slow carb, uh, that, you know, I said, should I do keto or slow carb? And you said, here are the reasons, I think, for you, slow carb right now. Uh, I got rid of the carbs and I saw, uh, I started seeing a food addiction therapist. I took these steps and immediately just began to get a momentum, the first couple of days

• 30:44Speaker 03

  of not eating uh carbs, very difficult. Also, the failure that I'd had over and over again was just on my mind, that self criticism, right? You know, of, of, well, this isn't gonna work because it's failed in the past. So I was hearing that voice. But I then, because I journal and because I um meditate and because of this thing I started with, which is trying to expand my world, I made a decision a bunch of years ago that a lot of the stuff we keep very private, I don't want to keep very private anymore. I want to be able to

• 31:24Speaker 03

  fail in public or succeed in public, to live as I am, to be come as comfortable in my skin as I can be, meaning to not, to try to have very little difference between the public and private version of who I am, which meant that I could tell people in my life I was struggling with this. They knew, they could see that I should get bigger sized pants, right? But by engaging in that conversation with people and by, by then taking the step of saying, okay, I, so I called this um food addiction person who someone I know had gone to, she's a nutritionist and food addiction specialist, and I'm not gonna say her name now, she doesn't want me to until we're done with this, um, because it's a therapeutic

• 32:08Speaker 03

  practice. But um, she said to me, we're gonna have to talk once a week. And you're gonna have to commit to once a week for a year. And because I, you're gonna have these ups and downs and you're gonna have to, this has to be important enough to you that you make a verbal commitment to me. And I made that commitment because I was so stuck. I needed a force of momentum. And that once a week check-in, I knew it was gonna be momentum because one week was gonna become two, was gonna become four, was gonna become six. And ten, I've lost at least a pound a week, every week. And it's been steady and constant. And more than that, I feel better about myself. So I now have this momentum in that area.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Where I was stuck for two, for honestly, a year and a half, I was stuck at just gaining weight, knowing it, going to bed, disliking myself. Now, that feeling, which you can get, I had that feeling when I was a blocked writer. I've had that feeling at various times in my life where I would go to bed at night, knowing things I had hoped to accomplish that day, I didn't accomplish. And in fact, not only didn't I accomplish them, but I went backwards. As soon as I really started dealing with the food, meaning tracking every single thing, I take a picture of every single thing that I eat now. Literally, if I take a bite of, one slice of an orange, I take a picture of it, and

• 33:32Speaker 03

  I record it, and I share it with the person that I see. And each time I do something like that, I am creating this momentum and I'm fighting inertia. I'm moving myself forward toward the goal. And it's really hard at the beginning, but then the amazing thing about momentum, and I'm sure you understand why this is the case scientifically in a way I don't, but the power of momentum is so great that it stops being hard. In fact, it just starts being the way that you live. And that's what I found with journaling, and that's what I found with meditation, and that's what we find when we start exercising, and that's what I find when I start eating better.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  I would love to ask you about the, I have so many follow-up questions. This is, uh,

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Please do it.

• 34:17Tim Ferriss?

  This is fertile territory. Uh, the, first of all, I'm extremely sorry about your friend and the opiate addiction and premature death.

• 34:30Tim Ferriss?

  My, I don't know if you

• 34:31Speaker 03

  It's the worst.

• 34:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's the worst. Yeah, I don't know if you knew this, Brian, but my best friend from childhood, almost identical story, never did any drugs, had a hangover from alcohol. He did drink and a friend of his who was already an opiate addict gave him a synthetic opioid, well, fentanyl, very powerful.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  And said, this will help with your headache, took a nap, never woke up. And my, that was just a few years ago. And my aunt also died of Percocet and alcohol about a year and a half ago. So, dangerous, dangerous things, topic for another time.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Well, it's actually, no, it's worth spending one minute on it. Let's spend one minute on it because, so I had to, I had to get a root canal two days ago, or half of a root canal, because you only, the emergency part was just getting the nerves out. I can finish the root canal in a month. They said they can, but I, this, I saw, it was, I swear to you, the worst pain I've ever been in by, by a factor of any factor you want, like the kind of like writhing around on the ground pain before I went to, so I had to go to the dentist. It was so bad, I couldn't live. It was really that bad. But the first thing I said in the very first, so I found this dentist, I texted with him, and the first thing I said is, I don't want Vicodin and I don't want Percocet. I need to be out of

• 35:52Speaker 03

  this pain without taking either of those things. And the reason is, and I've taken those things, I'm not, you know, some people have the gene for it. My gene is for addiction to pizza and donuts. I don't have gene for addiction to opioids, but I still don't want to fuck with those things. I want to find a way to deal with this without, you know, I'll have a drink. I'm not, I have no issues in that area. But I think those substances are so powerful in ways we don't understand, that some percentage of the population is, they're just built to be addicted to them. And those things should be prescribed unbelievably rarely, and they're still prescribed way too frequently. After the root canal, the doctor

• 36:37Speaker 03

  gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3, which is Tylenol with codeine. It's far, far less powerful than the synthetic opioids.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  I took one Tylenol three and I threw the bottle out. And that, there were 12 pills. My, literally, my friend Dennis, really and truly, we would go to dinner and he, he was like a state champ wrestler in high school. We would go to dinner our whole lives. He would order four ginger ales. Everyone else would be drinking, he'd have four ginger ales and uh, he was not a drug or alcohol guy. He really didn't drink and then the opioids started and there was nothing anybody could do. So, you know, he was dead in two years. So, that stuff is so powerful and, and I miss the guy every, every fucking day in my life. So, um, yeah, I, it's never a mistake to tell people to be careful with opioids.

• 37:23Tim Ferriss?

  You should be very, very careful. You don't know also in advance what your molecular kryptonite is going to be. So you, you may say, I've never been addicted to anything and I know a lot of people have become addicts. Starting with that type of overconfidence. Uh, that's also why I'm so involved with, say, opioid dependence studies at places like Johns Hopkins. And looking at psychedelic compounds for treatment of addiction. Uh, but I want to talk about your check-ins. We've been talking about creating positive momentum in behavioral change. What is the nature of the weekly check-in?

• 38:08Tim Ferriss?

  What is the format? What does that look like?

• 38:10Speaker 03

  When I, so well, it's, it was until this, it was an in-person check-in. I would go, uh, like a therapy session, right? So I would go to her office. So even if I was not, now, this all created an import to it, right? Because I don't, this is also very useful, I think. It is amazing how much more time you have than you think you do. Times finite, it's our most, this is not a cliche, right? It's our, the most valuable thing that, that we have. Um, but one of the things is I committed, uh, that I was going to go in-person to see this therapist. Once a week. So that might mean.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Being at a rehearsal on set in Brooklyn, getting in the car, you know, uh, being driven to the city, going to the therapist in Manhattan, spending forty-five minutes talking about, I'll tell you what we're talking about, talking about the food that I ate that week, what I was feeling like around eating the food, what, uh, in the beginning, you know, what it felt like not to eat the things that I was dependent on, right? For me, not eating sugar and flour, because that's her, her, her sort of, her sort of insight, um, is that sugar and flour are, uh, for people who are food addicts in a certain way, that

• 39:33Speaker 03

  sugar and flour are these real triggers. So eliminating sugar and flour completely from, um, my diet, you know, that's a huge change. And so figuring out how that felt. So that's part of the checking is, all right, were you angry this week? Or did it, did you feel deprived? When did you feel deprived? Did you want to, uh, eat something wrong? And then also, Tim, um, getting, uh, the, so getting the volume of food also under control, because as you know, you start, one starts with the idea, like, I loved in the slow carb thing, your initial one pager, and then, once someone buys into that, it's

• 40:16Speaker 03

  like, well, okay, but now let me just give you a few more ways that we ought to be thinking about this. So it's the same kind of thing. It's like, right, no, but that's really important, right? Because what you're doing is, you're getting, it's all about momentum, Tim. It's like, okay, you do these five things, you're gonna actually improve. This is gonna be better. Now, if you're, if, if I've now gotten you, um, engaged, let me tell you how to really amp this up. And so she did the same thing, right? It was, let's eliminate flour and sugar. And then we did three weeks of that, and it was great. And then she said, well, now we have to talk about volume. And I was like, well, you're changing the rules on me. What do you mean, volume? And she's like, well, uh, I mean, you know, right? She's like, well, you know.

• 40:59Tim Ferriss?

  You hit a gallon tub of almonds yesterday. Let's talk about that.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  So we gotta talk about volume now. I mean, you, so then it's like, yeah, you know, listen, maybe, maybe the right amount of steak is six ounces, not 12 ounces. And, and I'm like, well, what do you mean? A New York strip steak is 16. If I'm eating 12, it's a win. And, and but, but the process of that conversation and of changing a core belief, right? A core belief I had, all right, we'll get granular because everyone cares about this food thing. And I'll expose myself because that's part of the thing. So I immediately was like, okay, if I'm not having flour or, or sugar, so no ketchup. By the way, eliminating ketchup is a huge thing. And I, I highly advise people to eliminate ketchup if they want to lose weight. Uh, because it, I, I,

• 41:47Speaker 03

  you know, uh, you will just eat less, but, uh, I would get turkey burger for lunch, right? So I said, well, if I'm not getting a turkey burger, let's say I'm going to get two turkey patties. And I really couldn't with a salad, like a big salad and two turkey patties. And I really, I swear to you, Tim, I couldn't believe that I could just eat one turkey patty. I was like, that seems ridiculous. Like one turkey patty for lunch. And she said, okay, well, what if you try it tomorrow? Uh, and just see if this belief, if you're certain that you're going to be so hungry, order two turkey burgers, save one for later the next day, put it in the fridge, have one and see how you are an hour later. And it changed. And I'll tell you, I had certain core beliefs about the amount of food I had to eat. And of course, it turned out not to be true.

• 42:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now. Turkey burger dogma.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  He, the, the, and I'm, I'm loathe to even talk about this because I could, I know like an alcoholic, I could backslide at any moment. I will say that I've been in this quarantine now for three weeks and I've been eating perfectly. And, and I'm so glad that I started this 10 weeks ago because I know if I hadn't, the momentum the other way would be, I would be pounding like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I would be eating, figuring out ways to get pizza. And I would be obsessed with food during this. And instead, I've been able to just be completely responsible about it, which means my mindset is able to be calm, which means I'm able to go to bed at night.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Feeling like I don't have to hate myself and and going to bed at night feeling like you don't have to hate yourself is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. And so the ways to do that are like contributing, like you know them, we've talked about them before, but they're all valid, right? It's like finding a way to do for others, being responsible for your own behavior so that you're not a dick to other people, and not letting yourself down on your core values. And so this is for me is a huge area that I'm able to handle in that way. And I'm really grateful that I I found this person who's been helping me and that I'm in my journaling and meditation, I wasn't able to hide from myself to get full circle.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  The reason I do the morning pages originally was to become a creative person, meaning to work, to be able to live professional life from my most creative place because I felt that was that was the way I was going to feel right. But now these things serve as ways to keep myself honest. There's no way you can meditate for 20 minutes twice a day and journal in the morning and not check in with yourself. So I had enough days of being mad enough that I made myself get on the scale, that I saw that I was 0.6 pounds away from being 250. And in that instant, it was like I had to take action.

• 44:45Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned, I think it was maybe a few years ago, that you decided to close the gap, if there was one, between your public life and your private life, to share more of the things that we tend to feel we cannot share. What led to that? What catalyzed that? Why? How did that come to be?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  I think it's, I think it has to do with, well, one, it has to do with the podcast and then being on so many podcasts, right? It has to do with. Wanting to connect as deeply as I can when I'm connecting with people. And I would prefer that if someone knows me, they know who I really am. Now, there are certain things, it's harder and harder, like, um, there's a fine line between putting on Instagram the, uh, nice car you might be driving. That's not what I'm talking about, right?

• 45:49Speaker 03

  I'm not talking about like putting in your face, um, success or anything like that. But I, what I am talking about is allowing my own insecurities, my, the way, allowing the way in which I grapple with my own insecurity, or my own fear, or my own anxiety, or my own imposter complex, should that surface, that if I can grapple with that publicly, it's a service to other people. You know, I often think about Francis Ford Coppola making The Godfather. And I think about that because it's, I think The Godfather 2 is the greatest movie ever made. Uh, I think The Godfather is the most important, probably, in American cinema.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  And I think about the fact that he was racked with doubt throughout. When we watch The Godfather, we see a masterpiece. But what we don't see is all the days that Coppola thought it was going to be a failure, that he was a failure, that the dialogue that was written the day before didn't work. Uh, all that stuff, um, that's not there, makes The Godfather seem not only like a masterpiece, but makes it seem as though it showed up fully formed. And a large part of my life is about disambiguating that stuff, is about looking at that stuff and saying,

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Well, how did that come to be? And I think so part of that is if we could have followed Coppola when he was making it. If Coppola was on Twitter then. Because people have a lot of different thoughts about Twitter, but to me Twitter is the most amazing creation. You know, it's the icing on the cake of the internet because it allows us to get right inside of all these different processes. We can reverse engineer by looking at somebody who accomplished something. We can track what the process was that got them there. And so, I want to be able to say to people, you're watching Billions now and if it's your favorite show, damn, that makes me so happy.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  But if you go through my Twitter feed, you will be able to see how hard it was to get to a place where we were able to make that show. And I'm really happy about that, that that's there for people, that they can see when I felt lost, that they can see when I felt like it might go a different way, or when I felt like a failure before that, the movie Runner Runner, which was a terrible disaster. When that movie bombed, how I felt. They can look at the vines that I did, where I was making these six second vines, you know, 60 million loops on those things, Tim. Because I was talking to people about the creative process and giving themselves permission, and I was really talking to myself about that.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  And I found through doing that, a few things happened. One, I started getting letters from people about how in seeing what I was going through, it allowed them to go through something similar without beating themselves up. And look, you're, more than anybody, you understand how seeing that stuff drives you forward to do more of it. And so, I feel like the more I'm just who I am, also dude, faking it's hard and sucky. And the more you can just be like, hey, this is who I am. I mean, that's why like, you know, I do this thing in the morning, I know you're gonna ask me about it, but I do this thing in the morning over this where I named the first

• 49:26Speaker 03

  cup of coffee of the day, the Royale, because it's so, I feel like the first coffee of the day is such a special thing, that it deserves a special name. And so-

• 49:35Tim Ferriss?

  And over this, we're talking about quarantine.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:39Tim Ferriss?

  Or self isolation.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Yes, so, so I had named it the Royale a long time ago and then a friend of mine-

• 49:44Tim Ferriss?

  That was just for yourself? You named it the Royale?

• 49:46Speaker 03

  I named it the Royale for myself. Then I would talk about it on the podcast, you know, and um, online and people would, other people really liked it and started talking to me about it. And then a friend of mine named Tom Kretschmar is a great guy. Um, he said, you know, you should, I bet you people, oh, he was having coffee and he sent me a picture and he said, this is me with my Royale. And he said, I bet you people would want to share their pictures of them drinking their first coffee of the day. And I was like, so I quote tweeted Tom and I said, and I posted my own picture of me having the Royale in the morning. And I said, something about us all being isolated and this is a way to connect. Let's have our first coffee of

• 50:27Speaker 03

  the day together. And uh, hundreds of people started posting their responses to me. Um, they would either send me, message me pictures, send them on Instagram or post them on Twitter. I started retweeting them. And suddenly, all these people started telling, and I'll say the first, this is one of those examples. The first couple of days of it, I got super self-conscious. I lost probably 300 followers because I was just tweeting picture after picture of somebody drinking their coffee with the Royal. And so I did, I flaked off like hundreds of followers, you know, it doesn't ma- I did it, but I noticed it. Um, again, living honestly, you know, you notice if you lose 500 followers or 300 followers, like you're like, oh, what the fuck? Maybe I shouldn't do, you know,

• 51:10Speaker 03

  because you're like, well, that's, but then I just thought, no, I want to do this. And these people who were sending me these pictures, because they started telling, so then, like two, three days later, I started getting all these tweets from people saying, hey, I haven't posted my picture, but I want you to know, I go to bed at night thinking about the pictures I'm gonna see in the morning and it makes me feel less alone. Now, if even just one person had said that to me, it'd be worth losing hundreds of followers, because that is one of the ways I think about the world, like, holy shit, if you could just, if doing something stupid and simple can actually make somebody alone in Kansas City feel even 2% better for one hour, what a fucking powerful thing that is. Like that, uh, that is honestly what like fires me up.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Then dude, so many people started telling me that and sending me emails. So I just decided if I lose 10,000 followers, but the 100,000 people who are there are getting something out of it, I'm doing it. And then someone else said, hey, you should make a mug. Someone actually designed it. So this is one of those things, I had nothing to do with it. Someone on Twitter said, there should be a mug with your face on it that says The Royale, that we can have our coffee and then give it to your favorite charity. And I tweeted like, well, that sounds fun. And then some other dude goes, how's this designed? And he just designed it and sent it to me. And so then I made, I made the mugs and you can get a mug at theroyalebk.com.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Just the Royale, T H E R O Y A L E B K dot com. And all proceeds go to my favorite charity, which is the Food Bank of New York, which is a, uh, uh, the, the food bank that feeds every food pantry in the city. And for a long time, what I would do is when I would go to dinner in New York, because going out to dinner is expensive, um, I would try, whenever I could, I would try to kind of give the same amount to the food bank. And, and it's a great charity. They, I love them. I've spent time with them. I know that they're the real deal. And, um, so now, um, all these people have ordered these mugs and it's become, so that, that's one of those things where I named it The Royale because to me it was special. I talked about it, someone else responded. And then through this openness, as you've experienced many times with your stuff, but

• 53:20Speaker 03

  through this openness, suddenly I, I had nothing to do with it. This, my community of people came up with the idea to share the mugs, to share our pictures, came up with the idea that I should have a mug and then came up with the design of the mug. And, um, that's for me, the reward of this idea of trying to live without being self-conscious, just trying to live as close to who you are, uh, in, in public. It also, um, allows you to create real relationships with people online. Again, thinking about between 2010 and 2020, that the things that have changed the most and this idea of trying to expand my world.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  By talking about my enthusiasms, by talking about what I care about, I, people from those worlds have reached out to me so that when I was a kid, man, I was such a big NBA fan that it was like, you know, the most important thing to me. And now I have many friends who are like running NBA teams or on NBA teams. And that all happened just from doing the work that I do, being on Twitter, talking about it, connecting in a real way with people. And I, I think one tangible thing, and this is gonna sound crazy, this is true, is um, everyone makes fun of, or not everyone, that's not true, uh,

• 54:45Speaker 03

  it's kinda hip in some communities to make fun of people on Twitter who have blue checkmarks. But I do think if in your area of the world, if within whatever you do, you can find a way to make a goal for yourself, to be somebody that Twitter verifies, it is a, it's one of the biggest value adds that you can have in the world. It is, it's, it may not be fair, but we have to accept that it's real. So I'm willing to say it's not fair, but it is, it is a gigantic advantage. It enables you to surf Twitter in the way that the best board and lessons from the best surfer would give you. Because it immediately allows um, people of note to notice you.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  And so uh, even though it's a weird kind of goal to have, I actually think it's worth having it as a goal.

• 55:35Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, let's talk about, so I wanna mention a few things. One, behind the scenes, and that is uh, it's a story from my own experience with you and in observing you, and that is, you have uh, maybe we call it facilitated serendipity. Right? So you have these, these moments of serendipity where someone designs a mug for the Royale. And I really encourage people to see this hilarious mug. The RoyaleBK.com, check it out. That's for Brian Koppelman, not Burger King, by the way. And so people should just check that out, but that was, that was facilitated by you. Does that make sense? Like there, there was a lot of serendipity, but the,

• 56:19Tim Ferriss?

  and I can't remember who first used this phrase, but the surface area upon which luck could stick was increased by certain actions you took. Similarly, with Billions.

• 56:30Tim Ferriss?

  And possibly other projects that you've worked on, you've been very proactive about reaching out to people you might want to get to know. And even before that, thinking about how you might say integrate them, like Jocko Willink, for instance, Deontay Wilder. And you're very proactive in using your craft as a vehicle for expanding the

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:00Tim Ferriss?

  Your circle of friends.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:02Tim Ferriss?

  And your circle of influences, right? So people who can

• 57:05Speaker 03

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And let me say, so I'm so glad you brought this up. So Jocko, right? So this is, this is a great sort of example of this. You write your first book, because we didn't talk about this on any of the podcasts. So you wrote your first book and you were writing your second book. And I read the first book and I loved it. I just thought you were, you know, it was just so smartly written and that your worldview was so fascinating. And I remember, I wasn't in a particularly hot time in my career. I mean, we could both figure out what year it was. It was a long, it was a long time ago now.

• 57:40Tim Ferriss?

  It was, yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Well, when did you write the second book?

• 57:42Tim Ferriss?

  Second, second book I would have been writing in 2008, probably last part 2008, 2009 was published in 2010. So the first book was Four Hour Work Week.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 57:51Tim Ferriss?

  That came out 2007 and then Four Hour Body came out in 2010.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  So this is before Body came out. So I wrote you a letter to somehow, and I knew, you know, in the book, you made it clear it was hard to reach you. And I, and, and this is something that I always, always have done. So I was like, you know, this guy, I think maybe there's a movie or a TV show in his life, but more than that, I thought, I want to meet this guy. And I think that we would have kinship of some sort. And so I wrote you a letter and I don't remember what it said, I could probably find it, but I wrote you a note and I, and I said, hey, I'd love to talk, or I wrote it to your assistant. I had the thing you get, you know, you had a virtual assistant or whatever. I wrote to whoever that was. And I didn't just write a note because I get, as you do every day, can I take you to coffee? I did not write a can I take you to coffee note.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  Because can I take you to coffee note is useless. Um, uh, I wrote you a note that was sort of like, here's who I am, here's what I do, here's what I got out of what you did. I think maybe there's something in this in movies and if it's not that story, there's something. And we set up a call and we got on the phone and then you came through New York, uh, right as you finished the book and, um, the second book and we went and had lunch together with Dave. And, um, so then you and I had a correspondence and like friendship that began then before you had a podcast, before I had a podcast. We had connected. I wrote you, I wrote a, a note that was, uh, I, I thought about the note that I wrote, right? That's another thing. I didn't just write you, hey, let's have coffee. I thought about, well, I read this guy's book.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  I think we'd have a kinship. I'm going to write a note that might express that so that when he reads the note, he too might think there's some value in this. Not in a transactional way strictly, just like, oh, this might be an interesting person to meet. So then we met. Then years later, when I, um, had, we had this idea to have Jocko on the show. I, it wasn't that you and I just had that one meeting. We then stayed in touch, checked in with each other, hung out in different places, uh, became friends. When I was interested in having Jocko on the show, I, uh, I called you or wrote you and I was like, hey, dude, I, I want to invite Jocko on the show. Will you connect us? You connected us to Jocko. You connected me with Jocko. Then I got to know Jocko a little bit.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Jocko comes on the show and this was huge. So this is the precursor and I want to point this out about momentum.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Uh, right around that time, I had also, um, through Twitter, met someone who invited me to, um, I don't want to give away the event, an event that involved, um, athletic endeavor. And I, it was three months away and I was worried that I was in such bad shape. And I sat there on the set talking to Jocko because Jocko was there, right? Jocko, one of the foremost authorities on a certain kind of physical fitness. And I explained to Jocko what I was going to have to do. And Jocko said, you should start doing these exercises. And you should do this kind of cardio. And so even though I was two fifty and horrible, from that day, Tim, I've done exercise four to five days a week and haven't stopped. From the day I sat with you and Jocko on stood with you and Jocko on set outside that boxing ring.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Like I started doing those exercises because I picked Jocko Willink's brain and I decided if I'm gonna bother Jocko to tell me these things, I'm gonna do them. And that's another part of what you're talking about, the serendipity. So it wasn't serendipity. But like I definitely put that stuff in motion, but I didn't put it in motion so that Jocko Willink would give me an exercise plan. I

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  The long con. Yeah, no, yes, for sure.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Right. But when, when I was standing there with Jocko Willink, I was then gonna say to him, hey dude, look, I know I'm a fat fuck and I'm never gonna do your thing. I'm never gonna be you. But I have to go do this thing in three months. What would you suggest? And he looked at me and he and, and similarly to what I said to you, he's like, all right, you really want me to tell you? And I

• 1:01:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, I remember that very, I remember that conversation very, very clearly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he did. He did say effectively the same thing that you said to me.

• 1:01:57Tim Ferriss?

  In reviewing the blog.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Which is you're gonna do.

• 1:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  He's like, do you really want feedback?

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  You're gonna do this?

• 1:02:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you really want me to tell you what to do, I'll fucking tell you. But and, and I will say, I then have checked in with him at various times. He then, so he doesn't follow me on Twitter, but he checks in. Because once in a while, somebody, because he was on my podcast and once in a while, he'll, he'll tweet something about me keeping it going. And so like a month ago or two months ago, I was home and I really didn't want to go work out. And I was like whining. I said, okay, this is what I mean about living who I really am. I just really wasn't in the mood and I just put on Twitter like, oh, I've had a shit day. I'm tired as fuck. I don't want to go exercise. And somebody in Twitter, um, at mentioned Jocko and they were like, Jocko Willink, take a look at this.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  And then. Like, I knew, so I saw that somebody did that and I like immediately just put on my sweats and went out. And then a day later Jocko wrote, "I'm watching," you know, with eyes on it. And then I got to write back, "I did it. I went to do the exercise." And then Jocko texted me or something like, "Good man." Well, that's all silly, of course, and unnecessary on one level. But on another level, the fact that I'm just like, uh, willing to be, uh, expose myself as being too lazy to go to the gym, but also, as you're saying, that I took a whole bunch of actions ahead of

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  that, right? So that in some weird way, Jocko Willink, the toughest, most fit, most uncompromising motherfucker in the world, is sort of loosely paying attention to whether I'm getting my reps in, is the perfect combination of what you're talking about. Setting a thing in motion and then letting serendipity do its part, right?

• 1:03:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Is that a good example?

• 1:03:49Tim Ferriss?

  It is. And that's, that's also why I asked about the check-in format with your, I suppose, food addiction therapist, because accountability works. You don't have to rely purely on some internally generated willpower, which will have moments of frailty. It's, it's helpful to develop that. Discipline equals freedom, as Jocko would say. But that discipline can also be reinforced and cultivated through accountability. And I very, you know this, Brian, I very rarely would say what I'm about to say, but for those people who are interested, I mean, The Four Hour Body does cover how to engineer that kind of accountability. And

• 1:04:33Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure a bunch of it is available for, for free on the blog as well, tim.blog. But the, the accountability, the power of it is really hard to overstate. Now, you mentioned the food bank earlier, and that is a perfect segue to talk about process. But before we get to your process with the monologue.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  Because I want to talk about the monologue. Before we get there, do you have any favorite books or?

• 1:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  Websites or documentaries that come to mind for you as showcasing the messiness of process. For instance, to buy some time, I remember seeing this documentary about Spielberg. I think it might have just been called Spielberg, actually. And they talked about, A, how he effectively, seemingly had a nervous breakdown slash heart attack, or had those multiple times in the making of... Oh, that might have been Lucas. That was Lucas. Lucas was killing himself and hospitalized during Star Wars. And then Spielberg during Jaws created the iconic buoys slash barrels on top of the

• 1:05:44Tim Ferriss?

  water imagery for the shark, because the goddamn animatronic shark they were going to use broke. That's how...

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Right, oh, of course. No, I know.

• 1:05:58Tim Ferriss?

  So, do you have any favorite movies or documentaries or anything?

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, there are three. There are three. The documentary about Apocalypse Now that Christopher Coppola's wife made is amazing. You should find it and watch it, because Apocalypse Now, which is clearly more and more of a masterpiece every year, and sort of incredible because it's still an unfinished work, like Coppola released, I think, the best version of it last year. Five years ago, he released another version of it, but the one from last year is really incredible, and purports to be the final version. But that movie was impossible to get made, and it is truly an artistic masterpiece and worth watching.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  The documentary and the movie together, I would say that Steven Soderbergh's book about The Making of Sex, Lies, and Videotape is... Spectacular for anyone interested in any of these things. He takes you through from its inception as an idea, starting with other ideas that he had, through the inception. I'm not sure it's an easy book to find, but it is worth it. That's a book that's worth overpaying for. And he takes you through every day of production, post-production, Sundance, selling the film, and then the script for the film is in there. You could only read that book and you would be in great shape. The two more things.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  One is a book I read about once a year called Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, which brings you through each part of the process from a true master, one of the greats who ever did it. And then, I've mentioned this book before, but I try to mention it every chance I get. And that book is what I talk about when I talk about Running by Haruki Murakami, who is my favorite living writer of fiction. But that book is not fiction. It is a book about running, but it is really a book about the discipline it takes to become great. And it's all about process. It's about the process of figuring out what the most useful breakfast you should have

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  is if you want to write 10 pages and run 40 miles in a day. And it is a stunning, a stunning short book that is incredibly easy to read and is the most empowering book I know of about trying to live as an artist.

• 1:08:26Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible. All right, taking a lot of notes here for myself. My, my goal is always to-

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Have you not read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running?

• 1:08:33Tim Ferriss?

  I have not. I've read, I think Hardboiled in Wonderland, or I've read one of his-

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, Hardboiled is a great book. That's fiction and it's great. His fiction's amazing. Tim, you'll freak out. There's so much of you in that book. You'll freak out. You gotta read it. You'll freak out from it. Like you'll blog about it. It's, it's so amazing what this guy did to, to turn himself into, because he was very late in life when he became a writer. It's really, really worth reading.

• 1:09:00Tim Ferriss?

  I'm in.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

• 1:09:01Tim Ferriss?

  I'm into it. I'm into it. I'm reading a really incredible novel right now, which is gonna take me a little bit of time to get through. It's it's Little Big. I don't know if you've ever seen this novel. It's Little, comma, Big. And I'm blanking on the author's name. I'm embarrassed.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  I haven't read it. I have the book, but I haven't read the book.

• 1:09:23Tim Ferriss?

  It is one of those fiction books. It is one of those novels that is so complex and the prose is so painstakingly beautiful and subtle and, quite frankly, difficult at points that you have to finish this book. You cannot put this book down for a month and just pick it back up, in part because there's a very complicated family tree to keep track of. But once I finish that, then I will, I'll check out some more murk.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  I've just had that experience. I've just had that experience reading Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

• 1:09:59Tim Ferriss?

  So good. Oh, my god. Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  That, I mean, the long novel in the middle of it is just one of the greatest feats of imagination, isn't it? Just incredible.

• 1:10:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If anyone is looking for, they vary tremendously in length, but if anyone is looking for an incredible collection of short stories that, and we're talking about fiction here, somewhere between or a blend of science fiction and fantasy, Ted Chiang, C-H-I-A-N-G, Exhalation is his latest, his latest collection, is just incredible. And for those of you who may have seen Arrival, the movie, which is one of my favorite movies the last many years, in part because it focused, the hero is a linguist who studies this very,

• 1:10:53Tim Ferriss?

  this sort of orthography-based alien language that ends up relating to the nature of time itself. That was based on one of his short stories in his previous collection. So that is a top recommendation. So let's talk about a personal example of process. This, and tell us about the monologue, which is fucking amazing. I just watched it this morning because it just came out. I mean, it was just put up. But could you just walk us through the origins and the process?

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'd love to, because it was, it's, it's sort of a perfect encapsulation of all this stuff, and also something that would have been impossible. Ten years ago, in 2010, the whole confluence of events would have been impossible. And also, it wasn't the way, like, the business we even worked where people were willing to sort of do this, right? I mean Vincent is doing, so what we're talking about, sorry, let me set the table here, is that Vincent D'Onofrio, one of the world's great actors, I mean, that's literally one of the greatest actors of our lifetime.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Vincent D'Onofrio, during the coronavirus quarantine isolation time, has started posting monologues of himself reading some Shakespeare and some old classic plays, just little two and a half minute bursts. And he's just doing it to give people something to amuse themselves, to feel connection, and probably to do his work, like he's, this is the work that he was born to do and he loves doing it. But the other day, I, and this was right when I was having this terrible tooth pain, which it matters because when you're doing the work that really matters to you, everything receives, including pain.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  So Vincent and I are not close friends or anything like that. We know each other professionally, we've always liked each other, we've always wanted to work together, but have never quite been able to have it come together. And he messaged me and he said, "Hey, I want to do something for the food bank. What I want to do is I'm going to ask three writers to write me a short monologue. I'm going to perform the monologue and encourage people to give to the food bank. I'm going to put the monologue up on Twitter." And the thing we haven't talked about, Tim, and part of the thing of, we talked about it on the first podcast, so people should go back to it, is I really was a blocked writer for a very long time.

• 1:13:25Speaker 03

  And most of my life until I was 30 was filled with the disappointment of not being able to complete a creative assignment, not believing I really had it in me to pull something like that off. And so Vincent was like, "I would love to have this monologue from you like in a day, if I could, if you're up for it." So I instantly wrote him back and said, "Yes, I'll do it." And I, I will tell you that I had no panic.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  I had no panic because of everything we're talking about. This idea of process, this idea of being willing to live as openly as I can. Because I, suddenly a word popped into my head, because you asked about process. So, a word popped into my head. The word was reputation. The word popped into my head because I was thinking about Vincent. I was thinking about the way an actor can have a reputation as being a perfectionist, or as being difficult. I was thinking about all of our reputations online, because I knew I was writing this for Twitter, right? I knew what I was writing this for. It had to be a contained two and a half minutes, that if you knew nothing going in, would be compelling. I knew Vincent would crush it.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  I had to do something that would turn Vincent on artistically, and that would have some kind of throw, power, weight to it, that would make you want to keep watching. And I thought, well, even though, and I thought Vincent doesn't really address this stuff in life. And by the way, I didn't talk to him about any of this, right? We had no conversation. I didn't say, "I'm gonna write about reputation." So the word popped into my head. Suddenly I had three lines. I was in a car, so I got to the house that I'm in. I was just getting gas in the car. I got to the house. I immediately opened my laptop and I said to myself, "Just do it.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  Just write this thing. Go with it." And Tim, I just blasted out. At first I thought, do I say Vincent? Or, this is the way a writer thinks about this kind of thing, because I'm writing for an actor now, right? So, I realized it would be different if I wrote under the name of who spoke, Vincent or a man. And so I decided to write a man. So Vincent could make the choice about how close to him this was or not. And then I wrote this piece. And I wrote this piece, it was like a page and a half. And I finished it. I worked on it, let's say, for an hour and a half straight. And for an hour and a half, I was just in it. The world, when I'm in that kind of a state,

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  process-wise, the world disappears. Nothing else exists. I'm just in this place that's in between, that's like hyper-present, but also kind of floating in the air, and you're kind of tethered to the page. So I wrote this page and a half. I reread it. I walked around. I took like a mile and a half or two-mile walk. I came back. I looked at it again. I made a couple of changes of words. Then I sent it to my creative partner, David Levine. And I said, "Hey, D, Vincent asked me to do this thing. I wrote it. Everything is written by the two of us. Take a look at it. If you think you can make it better." And I said, "And even if you don't make it better, if you don't feel like you have any

• 1:16:57Speaker 03

  ideas for it, or you think it's okay, I'll just put both our names on it, because everything's from the two of us." He wrote back and he said, "No, you nailed this, dude. Don't put my name on it. There's no reason. You wrote it. Do it." Which is, you know, I could do a long podcast about successful partnerships, but like, that whole thing of me sharing it with him first, before anyone in the world saw it, him appreciating it, writing me back about it, telling me not to put his name on it, even though it would have been my pleasure to do it, him wanting to give me that for myself. Like, all that stuff was really beautiful, incredibly generous of Dave. And like, because he could have totally just rewritten it, added six lines. It would have been written by the two of us, but he wanted, he was like, "No, no, no. Come on. You did this thing. I'm not

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  gonna take partial credit for it." So I sent it back to Vincent. He immediately wrote me back and said, how pleased he was with it. And, but then, he said, "Hey, but I think this won't fit in the two and, we only have 220, because I don't want to put it on YouTube. I want it on Twitter, and I'm limited by 220. Can you cut it? If you can't, do you want me to try to figure out how to cut it?" So this is one of those notes things, right? I really liked what I'd written. I really thought it could work. Now he's saying, will you cut it? I immediately said, of course, I can cut it because you can always make cuts. You can always cut to make something better. So then I started cutting it, but I'll tell you what else I did. I wrote two additional monologues that night.

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  So I cut down the monologue, sent it back to Vincent. And then I thought, you know, I want to give this guy real choice. So then I wrote two more monologues. I spent four hours, knowing that in all likelihood, they would be for nothing, right? They're not going to be for billions because they're very specific things for Vincent D'Onofrio. But as a professional, I wanted to give, once I decided I was in this with Vincent, I wanted to give him the option to like, hey, man, I don't want you. So I wrote him two more monologues. He, but by the time, and I sent them, by the time I'd sent them, he had recorded the version of the real thing that he was going to post. He sent it to me, he's like, I'm really happy with this. Do you like it? I loved it. And, and I said, I can't wait for you to post it. This seems great.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  So it, it was an amazing process, but I, it was an, I, it was, here's the thing. There's nothing professional about it on one level. Vincent's not getting paid. I'm not getting paid. You, you have, I'm someone who's under contract to Showtime. I make shows for Showtime or CBS only. Vincent's on his show on Stars or on Epics, I think is the godfather of Harlem. Vincent's in his movies. Years ago, there's no way that this could have come together. But because we're both on social media, we're both put ourself out, ourselves out there. We were able to do this thing.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  And now we put the thing into, into the world and got to have a day of watching Vincent D'Onofrio. An actor I've wanted to work with for over 20 years. I got to see him do this monologue that I wrote for him. I got to see people show me their receipts of money they gave to the food bank. It was an amazing thing that Vincent also thought of the food bank, which is my charity. He didn't do that. That's his own, on his own, that's his charity that he loves to. And so it was this great, like you're, I guess this is exactly what you're talking. Somehow this fits into what you're talking about where it was serendipitous, but also all the groundwork had been laid, right?

• 1:20:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. And for people who want to see it, they can see it if they go to Vincent's Twitter account. So that would be at Vincent D'Onofrio, which if you want a mnemonic is like do no frio. Vincent D'Onofrio. And if you don't recognize that name, you will recognize his face and voice. Certainly early, early on, although he probably had many, many, many years prior to this. People may have seen him in, for instance, Full Metal Jacket as Private Pyle. Who, uh, who had, uh, had quite a memorable role in that film and so much more. He's just spectacular.

• 1:21:15Tim Ferriss?

  I was, uh, I was really, really, uh, impressed with the monologue and wanted to ask you about the, the process. And I, I also want to ask you, when you, when you put together your first draft, did you do that by hand? On computer, if computer, what kind of app? And then when you made the changes you made, you said a change of a few words. Yeah, go ahead. And then when you, when you made your, when you made your changes, what, do you remember what any of those changes were? Might be too my, my micro, but I'm curious. So final draft is how you drafted it?

• 1:21:51Speaker 03

  Yes. Final draft. I go to final, yes, I opened final draft. Well, and in fact, someone yesterday asked me if I would post it. I want to let it live this way for a week or so, meaning let, let, let Vincent's interpretation of it be the thing that's out there in the world. But then next week, I'll probably put up on my blog, like the script itself, so you can see what, what it looks like when someone writes a monologue for an actor. I think that might be useful to people, so I'm gonna put that up. But, um, yes, Tim, it was, it was, uh, when I went back to it, I think there were just some phrases that I felt were lazy, or like, often what'll happen is I'll find I use, I ha, it is a particular quirk. I don't like, if, if the same word is used a few times in a piece, I want it

• 1:22:35Speaker 03

  to be used, uh, uh, really for a purpose. Uh, I don't like how it sounds if a word is repeated without there being a real clear reason for it to be repeated. So often, I'll go through and just try to spot where I've sort of fallen into cliche or repeated myself. And so I probably went through and, um, cut some of that stuff. And then often, when I go through something a second time, I'll be able to find where the breaks in it are, where the natural moments. So like in it, when Vincent kind of interrupts himself, it's written that way. You'll see when I do it, when, when I post it. And, and then I probably added a line of description, just to give the actor something to think about in that, in that space. You know, and that's just from years and years and years

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  of writing for actors now, right? I've been writing for actors for 25 years. So part of that is that the first blow at it is the artistic inspiration. And then each, each draft after is the sort of craft.

• 1:23:30Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. We've covered a lot of ground, my friend. This is, this is fantastic. I,

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Good.

• 1:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm having fun. I have tons and tons of notes. I'm gonna have to pick up Murakami also. That's.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  I have to say one thing lastly, which is I, I know you don't like praise, but if you cut this out of the podcast, I'll be mad at you, which is. You, I'm just gonna say it quickly. I just want people to know that you are who you say you are, that, that the person you are on the podcast, even if you don't quite live as publicly as I do, I will say, um, you called me when I was wrestling with the COVID question. I was in New York City and I was trying to decide what to do. Um, you, uh, cause I was very early on it. I posted a list, January 31st of all the smart scientists on Twitter. I told people this was gonna be a problem, but I had an emotional problem with leaving New York because I was making the show there. I love New York City. There were all sorts of ways I was trying

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  to bargain with myself. And you called me twice and you were like, Brian, you go, you basically called and you were like, here's what I'm seeing. Here's the, the problems. I thought you were calling me to calm me down and you were calling me to do the opposite. And I said, well, dude, make sure when you really feel it's like the time I gotta get out, you tell me. And you go, this is that. This is the call. I'm making the call to you. I was like, definitely tell me when it's bad. And you go, it's bad. It was great. But that I will say, and then you posted it. This is the thing. You didn't hoard that or keep it to yourself. You posted it that night. Um, or the next morning was when you released your, your post to people about, um, the seatbelt. And so you are in real life who

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  you purport to be, um, in this stuff. You're on top of things. You're taking the actions that you want people to take. And you were a good friend to me and I really, uh, I appreciate it. So, all right. I've said the nice thing. Now we can move on. We can be done.

• 1:25:17Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate that. Yeah. It's, uh, what a journey. And, uh, it's, uh, we find ourselves in exciting times and it's gonna be-

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  Oh, I know, I know. The old Yiddish curse, right? That's an old Yiddish curse. May you, may you live in interesting times is an old Yiddish curse. It is.

• 1:25:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. And-

• 1:25:40Speaker 03

  So let's, um, Tim, I, I, I thank you so much for, for this. You know, I, I, uh, I love talking to you and somehow talking on a podcast, you do get to get to very, um, deep and real and directed stuff. So this was very valuable to me. I'm, I did have to go see the dentist three days ago, so my quarantine was broken. So, uh, I may reach out to you to help fix me up if, if I somehow caught it. So.

• 1:26:07Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will do my best to not lie to you. So I will, yes, I will, I will not improvise. So I will, I will fully explain the limits, parameters past which I'm deep in the ignorance pool. But happy to help anytime.

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  You can reach out to, here's the thing, if I really am in that state, I will ask you to reach out to Peter Attia for me, and you will do it.

• 1:26:35Tim Ferriss?

  I will, I will, I am happy to help my friends.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  Alright, thanks dude.

• 1:26:39Tim Ferriss?

  Alright Brian, awesome to hear your voice. People can find you @BrianKoppelman on Twitter, The Moment Podcast, anything else you'd like to mention? Of course, theroyalebk.com.

• 1:26:49Speaker 03

  I want to see, I want to see people drinking their coffee in the morning. Let's have coffee together. The Royale and go to theroyalebk.com. The money goes straight to the food bank.

• 1:27:01Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome, and for everybody listening, you can find links to everything we've talked about, the docs, the books, the this, the that, and the other thing in the show notes, as per usual, at tim.blog/podcast. And thank you for tuning in. Thank you, Brian.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Bye, Tim, great talking to you.

• 1:27:19Tim 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 world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:28:01Tim Ferriss?

  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 Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets,

• 1:28:42Tim Ferriss?

  new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. It's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun.

• 1:29:27Tim Ferriss?

  Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out, tim.blog/friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Last year, I focused on dramatically improving a few things, surprise, surprise, most notably

• 1:30:11Tim Ferriss?

  the quality of my sleep, which seems to affect just about everything. This led me to revisit, you name it, my daily routine, morning routine, exercise, diet, all the way to what I slept on, and I ended up getting all new beds here in Austin, Texas, including mattresses from Helix Sleep. Helix has built a Sleep quiz that takes two minutes to complete and they use the answers to match your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress. Whether you're a side sleeper, hot sleeper, cold sleeper, or you like plush, you like firm, with Helix, there's no more guessing or confusion. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. That is their promise.

• 1:30:55Tim Ferriss?

  For couples, Helix can even split the mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side. They have a 10-year warranty and you can test drive your mattress for 100 nights risk-free. Right now, Helix is offering up to $125 off of all mattress orders. Check it out. Get up to 125 off at helixsleep.com/tim. That's helixsleep.com/tim for $125 off your mattress order. Take a look. helixsleep.com/tim.