#368: Amanda Palmer on Creativity, Pain, and Art

"I'm just so fundamentally optimistic, and I barrel forth in life with this attitude that everything is going to be absolutely fine and go my way." — Amanda Palmer Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer https://twitter.com/amandapalmer/) is a singer, songwriter, playwright, pianist, author, director, blogger, and ukulele enthusiast who simultaneously embraces and explodes traditional frameworks of music, theatre, and art. She first came to prominence as one half of the Boston-based punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls http://dresdendolls.com/, earning global applause for their inventive songcraft and wide-ranging theatricality. Her solo career has proven equally brave and boundless, featuring such groundbreaking works as the fan-funded Theatre Is Evil https://shop.amandapalmer.net/products/theatre-is-evil, which made a top 10 debut on the SoundScan/Billboard 200 upon its release in 2012 and remains the top-funded original music project on Kickstarter. In 2013 she presented The Art of Asking https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking?language=en at the annual TED conference, which has since been viewed over 20 million times worldwide. The following year saw Palmer expand her philosophy into the New York Times best-selling memoir and manual, The Art of Asking: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let People Help https://www.amazon.com/Art-Asking-Learned-Worrying-People/dp/1455581089/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=The+Art+of+Asking:+How+I+Learned+To+Stop+Worrying+And+Let+People+Help&qid=1555459506&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=721f6b6c3e236c12ac73f6056d341b41&language=en_US. Since 2015 Palmer has used the patronage subscription crowdfunding platform Patreon https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer/ to fund the creation of her artwork. This has enabled her to collaborate with artists all over the world with over 14,000 patrons supporting her creations each month. Palmer released her new solo piano album https://apalmer.lnk.to/NoInterAS and accompanying book of photographs and essays https://shop.amandapalmer.net/products/there-will-be-no-intermission-the-artbook, There Will Be No Intermission https://apalmer.lnk.to/NoInterAS, on March 8, 2019, followed by a global tour. Recorded in late 2018 with grammy-winning Theatre Is Evil producer/engineer John Congleton at the helm, the album is a masterwork that includes life, death, abortion, and miscarriage among its tentpole themes. Please enjoy! Click here for the show notes for this episode. https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description *** This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions https://LinkedIn.com/TFS, the go-to tool for B2B marketers and advertisers who want to drive brand awareness, generate leads, or build long-term relationships that result in real business impact. With a community of more than 575 million professionals, LinkedIn https://LinkedIn.com/TFS is gigantic, but it can be hyper-specific. LinkedIn https://LinkedIn.com/TFS has the marketing tools to help you target your customers with precision, right down to job title, company name, industry, etc. Why spray and pray with your marketing dollars when you can be surgical? To redeem your free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com/TFS https://LinkedIn.com/TFS. *** 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. I also love reading the reviews! 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. 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• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on-demand, which is what I do, we'll come back to that. So you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I, for instance, have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home, and it's one of the first things I do many mornings. I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20-minute ride in my undies, hard to do that at the gym, take a shower, and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's really convenient and has become something that I look forward to. So you have a lot of options. For one, if you like, you can ride live with thousands of other riders across the country

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  on an interactive leaderboard to keep you motivated. There are also up to 14 new classes added every day with more than 8,000 classes on-demand, and you can pick based on length, 45 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, music, hip-hop, rock and roll, or say, low-impact versus high-intensity or interval. You can pick the class structure and style that works for you. And in my case, I quite like Matt Wilpers, and I tend to do on-demand and listen to a lot of and watch many of the same classes over and over, but I'm kind of promiscuous and also enjoy classes from a lot of the other instructors. They have Peloton, an amazing roster of incredible instructors in New York City with a whole range of styles and personalities, so you can find what you're in the mood for. You also get real-time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time,

• 1:54Tim Ferriss?

  and that will help, I would say catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now, that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada, yada, yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very impressed. impressed with how motivating it was and it worked tremendously to keep me pushing, which quite honestly takes a fair amount. I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So, check it out. Discover this cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings a studio experience right to your home. Peloton is offering listeners of this podcast a limited

• 2:34Tim Ferriss?

  time offer. Go to onepeloton.com, that's O-N-E peloton, P-E-L-O-T-O-N dot com, and enter the code TIM, all caps, at checkout and get $100 off of accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. So, get a great workout at home anytime you want. Check it out. Go to onepeloton.com and use the code TIM to get started.

• 3:01Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, the go-to tool for B2B marketers and advertisers who want to drive brand awareness, generate leads, or build long-term relationships that result in real business impact. Could be all of the above. I've had Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, on this podcast a number of times, often called the Oracle of Silicon Valley for many different reasons. And he, among other people and friends of mine, have made me more and more interested in LinkedIn as a platform, as an ecosystem, in the last few years. And it's very nuanced. It's very subtle, but can be used in some very powerful ways. With a community of more than 575 million professionals, LinkedIn is gigantic,

• 3:42Tim Ferriss?

  but it can be hyper-specific. You have access to a very diverse group of people, all searching for things they need to grow professionally. That is explicitly the purpose of LinkedIn. And four out of five users on LinkedIn are decision-makers at their companies. So, you can build relationships that really matter, that can drive your business objectives forward, that can also have a high LTV, lifetime value. LinkedIn has the marketing tools to help you target your customers with precision, right down to, among other things, their job title, company name, industry, etc. This is important because better targeting equals a message That your customers actually care about. And it also means your advertising is more effective and cost effective.

• 4:27Tim Ferriss?

  So why spray and pray with your marketing dollars when you can be surgical? It just makes sense. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com/TFS. That stands for Tim Ferriss Show. So that is LinkedIn.com/TFS. Check it out. That's where you can go to get your free $100 ad credit. LinkedIn.com/TFS. Terms and conditions apply.

• 4:57Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello, my sexy little meteors and lads and lasses and all things in between. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job and pleasure to interview world-class performers of all different types to tease out their lessons learned, habits, routines, favorite books, you name it, I try to get it out of them. And this episode, we have Amanda Palmer, a multi hyphenate. She is a singer-songwriter, playwright, pianist, author, director, blogger, and ukulele enthusiast who simultaneously embraces and explodes traditional frameworks of music, theater, and art. She is one hell of a character, and this is not the first time we've met.

• 5:40Tim Ferriss?

  She first came to prominence as one-half of the Boston-based punk cabaret duo, yes, that's right, Reed 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly. The Dresden Dolls, you might have heard of them, earning global applause for their inventive songcraft and wide-ranging theatricality. Her solo career has featured such groundbreaking works as the fan-funded Theater is Evil, which made a top 10 debut on the SoundScan Billboard 200 upon its release in 2012, and it remains the top-funded original music project on Kickstarter. In 2013, she presented The Art of Asking, that's the name of the talk, at the annual TED Conference, which has since been viewed more than 20 million times worldwide. That is a lot of views.

• 6:24Tim Ferriss?

  The following year, she expanded her philosophy from that talk into the New York Times bestselling memoir And manual titled The Art of Asking subtitle, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help. It is a fantastic book. In fact, I upgraded my life after an afternoon of reading that in a bunch of different areas. So very, very wholeheartedly recommend. Since 2015, Palmer has used the patronage subscription crowdfunding platform Patreon, that's P A T R E O N, to fund the creation of her artwork. This has enabled her to collaborate with artists all over the world with more than 14,000 patrons, i.e. fans, supporting her creations every month. Palmer released her new solo piano album and accompanying book

• 7:08Tim Ferriss?

  of photographs and essays titled There Will Be No Intermission on March 8th of this year, 2019. And it will be followed by a global tour. It was recorded in late 2018 with Grammy winning theater's evil producer engineer John Congleton at the helm. You can find Amanda on Twitter at Amanda Palmer, on her website, amandapalmer.net, and on Patreon at patreon.com/AmandaPalmer. This is almost certainly one of the rawest and most emotionally intense episodes of this podcast that I've recorded. And we will cover a lot of topics and a lot of extremes in different areas. I really enjoyed it. I found

• 7:50Tim Ferriss?

  it very powerful in person, and I hope you find that to be the case as you listen. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Amanda Palmer.

• 8:02Tim Ferriss?

  Amanda, welcome back to the show.

• 8:04Amanda Palmer?

  I am so happy to be back on the show.

• 8:06Tim Ferriss?

  It has been almost four years since we last spoke, and there is so much that we can talk about. The interview that we last did seems simultaneously like it was yesterday and also seems like 1,000 years ago.

• 8:21Amanda Palmer?

  Like life.

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  Like life. And we've, we've been chatting offline before recording. And I thought we'd start somewhere light, which is with books. And

• 8:35Amanda Palmer?

  Books are heavy.

• 8:37Tim Ferriss?

  Books, literally heavy, sometimes thematically less so. And there's a book that you had mentioned also very kindly in Tools of Titans. So thank you. Well, I suppose it was Removed from the audio, but nonetheless, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, which is a book by an author whose name I still don't know how to pronounce.

• 8:55Amanda Palmer?

  Sung Sung San.

• 8:57Tim Ferriss?

  Sung San, Korean Zen monk that you have gifted to many, many, many, many people. And could you give us just a very brief explanation of why that is? And then any new books, and I suspect I know one that might come up, that have had a large impact on you, your thinking or anything else?

• 9:20Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, sure. So I, I read Dropping Ashes on the Buddha when I was twenty-four, I think. My mentor Anthony gave me his copy. Um, and he gave me a lot of books and it was, it was one of those coincidences where who knows? There was probably a pile of books. I was going on a trip to Australia as a street performer. This is before I was a musician professionally at least. And, um, I remember being in Australia. It was a very difficult trip. I wasn't making much money and that trip actually wound up being really, uh, like catalyzing in a lot of ways that I wouldn't fully realize until later.

• 10:06Amanda Palmer?

  And I remember lying on the, the beach, this shitty beach in, uh, outside Adelaide, where I was at the fringe and reading this book.

• 10:18Amanda Palmer?

  And just looking around and going, oh, wait, like, I, I get it.

• 10:26Amanda Palmer?

  Does, do these people get it? Like, just having, you know, there, there's, there are few moments in your life where like things actually really just seismically change and all of a sudden you're a different person. And it wasn't like I got hit with a ton of bricks because I read one sentence.

• 10:44Amanda Palmer?

  But the book did do a kind of a, a number on me. And then I was actually really fortunate. I've actually, I don't know if I've ever told this story. I got to actually.

• 10:58Amanda Palmer?

  Grab all the lessons from this book, which were basically just the lessons of Zen Buddhism. Non-attachment, uh, being able to just sit with what is. The inability, you know, the, the, the ability to not freak out and to just watch it, watch life pass. And I got arrested right as I was finishing the book.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 11:30Amanda Palmer?

  For shoplifting when I wasn't really shoplifting, but sort of I was. So here's the weird story. The weird story is I was street performing, uh, a, a living statue character. I talk about it in my TED Talk called The Eight Foot Bride, where I'm like, you know, dressed all in white, white gloves, white face paint, white dress, black wig. And I showed up in Australia and I had forgotten one of the tools of my trade, which was a wig cap to put on, to gather all my hair up so I could put this black wig over it. And I was like, oh, fuck, I don't have a wig cap. It's a weird thing to buy. They don't sell them in your average store. Usually in Boston where I lived, I would go to this bizarre hair salon store.

• 12:15Amanda Palmer?

  And I was like, oh, where am I gonna get something like this? I went to Woolworth's. I bought a ton of other stuff, you know, whatever, sixty, a hundred dollars worth of other items. And then I noticed there was a, a display of stockings of nylons that was like half torn apart and it kind of had this thing that I needed just hanging off it. So I took it. And I left the store and the cops came and they arrested me. And there I was, arrested in Australia. I was twenty-three, twenty-four, whatever.

• 12:53Tim Ferriss?

  Like a five cent.

• 12:55Amanda Palmer?

  For a five.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  Piece of material.

• 12:56Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah. And it was weird because like I hadn't stolen an item for sale. I had just kind of taken this thing that looked like no one was using it, right? What I did was definitely wrong. It's not the sort of thing that as a more responsible forty-two-year-old woman I would do. I'm not that stupid anymore. And, you know, I had my sort of indignant feeling, but I also knew I wasn't an idiot. I was like, you did something wrong. That was stupid, Amanda. Oh, my God. Now, here you are, being interrogated by the police. And everything that I had just read in this book by this Zen Buddhist monk flooded into me.

• 13:38Amanda Palmer?

  And I felt like in that moment, if I've ever had a cataclysmic human change, in that moment, I found myself acting like a different human being than the human being I had been up to that point. Because I think the human being I had been up to that point would have been defensive and explanatory and kind of freaking out and like trying to convince the... And I just like, I remember just sitting back and going like, what would Sung San, the Zen monk, do? And I just remember looking at the cop and saying,

• 14:16Amanda Palmer?

  "I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. What I did was incredibly stupid. I hope that you can understand that I didn't feel that I was stealing, because I just, I had all these other things I was purchasing. And if you need to put me in jail, you should.

• 14:36Amanda Palmer?

  But I'm very sorry. And I'm not just saying I'm sorry, don't put me in jail. I'm just saying I'm sorry that I have inconvenienced you in this way." And the cops were like,

• 14:48Amanda Palmer?

  "Oh.

• 14:50Amanda Palmer?

  Okay, you can go."

• 14:54Amanda Palmer?

  And I was like, "I'm a Jedi master." I walked out of there and was like, "But, I mean, we laugh about that, but that is..." You know, Star Wars really hits people deep for a reason.

• 15:09Amanda Palmer?

  The Jedi lessons, the lessons of Yoda, are the lessons of Zen Buddhism. Non-attachment, you know, non-attachment to the outcome, sitting with what is, knowing that the power is not coming from some outside authentication.

• 15:26Amanda Palmer?

  And...

• 15:29Amanda Palmer?

  You know, and all of these things, the Lessons of Zen and the book and Anthony, my mentor in life, they all sort of flicked me along that path.

• 15:38Tim Ferriss?

  That's an amazing story.

• 15:40Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, thanks for letting me tell it.

• 15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, thanks for starting, kicking off the conversation with it. So that is one book.

• 15:51Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Tim Ferriss?

  That's had a big impact. In the last four years, are there any others that come to mind? That perhaps you've gifted to other people?

• 16:01Amanda Palmer?

  Hmm.

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Or not?

• 16:04Amanda Palmer?

  Well, there is a, there's a book I'm absolutely obsessed with right now, so it's hard to think of any other books because I'm having a passionate affair with this one.

• 16:15Amanda Palmer?

  It's called Why We Sleep, and it's by Matthew Walker.

• 16:21Amanda Palmer?

  I had never heard of him. I saw the book in a bookstore and just picked it up because I thought that looks interesting. And it, it feels again like this seismic, you know, life-altering.

• 16:42Amanda Palmer?

  The information that's coming at me in this book is literally, physically, technically changing my life on a day-to-day basis. And I really want you to read it.

• 16:54Tim Ferriss?

  I will. I, I, I will, and you should read the book.

• 16:58Amanda Palmer?

  It's, it's just unbelievable. And the, you know, I'm not a person who reads constantly about self-improvement. I mean, I'm interested in it. I, I, you know, I, I read a lot of nonfiction. But this, this book is just a collection of sleep studies, basically, and what this, this researcher has taken away as a sleep scientist from whatever, you know, 25, 30 years of doing sleep studies. And also, you know, what we've learned about other mammals, how they sleep, why we sleep, what happens when we are asleep.

• 17:42Amanda Palmer?

  And I mean, I, I find myself, I've, I've now bought a dozen copies of this book because I want everyone I love and I care about to know.

• 17:54Amanda Palmer?

  That this information is available. And I mean, it feels a lot like waking, no pun intended, like it feels a little bit like waking up from a bad dream where

• 18:05Amanda Palmer?

  it occurred to me, I was, I was lying in bed this morning. And I was actually thinking about some stuff that was quite dark. And I was like,

• 18:15Amanda Palmer?

  human beings have been a lot, have been alive as a species, doing this thing for so long.

• 18:25Amanda Palmer?

  It's astounding to me that, that we on planet Earth right now are so fucked up, that we haven't just been on this ever increasing curve of more knowledge, you know, more understanding, more compassion. Like, we haven't been on some linear march of progress as mammals. And it, it just astounds me that I learn the simplest things and look back at the entire, the entirety of my life. And I'm like, no one told me about this? Like, human beings have all of this knowledge, all of this other knowledge, and no one told me about this?

• 19:10Amanda Palmer?

  And I felt this, I felt the same way about a lot of reproductive female issues. Like, I live at, you know, I'm in the 1% of Western civilization and no one taught me about this? And people know, the studies are out there, the knowledge is out there. There's also, you know, knowledge that's been handed down from generation to generation to generation. Like, you're trying to tell me that it really is just stopping now? That we're sharing information, that we're doing it right? That we're actually taking care of each other? How, how did this happen? And the sleep book is kind of making me feel like that. Like, you know, mammals have been pretty good at this. Human mammals have been pretty good at sleep. And then everything got pretty fucked up.

• 19:54Amanda Palmer?

  And we're just, you know, we're just sort of like, it's like pulling up the rug and looking at the insane creepy crawlies of how we've damaged our mental health, our emotional health, our physical health.

• 20:07Amanda Palmer?

  By doing something as simple as not ever sleeping right. It's insane.

• 20:13Tim Ferriss?

  I am going to read it and I should say for people who are wondering or skeptical, maybe, uh, uh, possibly as I am often.

• 20:24Tim Ferriss?

  I looked at the back of the book, you might remember this, and I saw a name on the back under one of the blurbs, Adam Gazali, who's been on the podcast, who is a neuroscientist out of UCSF, one of the sharpest and also most skeptical people I know, who, uh, had a glowing review, which tells me that the, the, the science and the descriptions of the science are highly, highly, highly credible.

• 20:48Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, it's a very credible book and it's, it is also beautifully readable and, um, and it's, it's, you know, there's no woo, it's, it's pure science, which, for a skeptic.

• 21:02Amanda Palmer?

  I can handle a little bit of woo sprinkled in my books, but mostly I'm, I have a woo allergy.

• 21:10Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's talk a bit about interviews. And this is going to be a segue. Well, I think this, this will be a segue into a lot of fertile ground. You said something to me before we began recording, which is,

• 21:27Tim Ferriss?

  I've done many, many different interviews, you've done hundreds, probably thousands of interviews, and you recently had one of the most, I think the word you used was profound interviews, uh, with a German radio host?

• 21:41Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I just mentioned that because that was the interview that happened this morning. Uh, I've been having profound interview after profound interview for three weeks since I started doing promo on this new record.

• 21:58Amanda Palmer?

  And I mean, I've been putting out music for a long time and doing a lot of interviews in cycles, the way you do when you put a book out, you know, you've got your media cycle, you talk about the thing you made, you go away, you make another thing, you talk about it. This, this record that I just made, I didn't even think about it, but going into the media part, um, and the, the interview part.

• 22:24Amanda Palmer?

  I mean, this is the most personal and most direct record by a long mile I've ever made. I talk about the death of my friend, my best friend, from cancer. I talk about abortion. I talk about miscarriage. I mean, it is a balls-to-the-wall, unapologetically-open, vulnerable record. So you can imagine being the journalist on the other side who gets sent this album and then has to do an interview with me, or gets to do an interview, you know, depending on which way you're looking at it. And it has been a fascinating process to be the person on the other side of the phone.

• 23:07Tim Ferriss?

  Can I pause you for one second?

• 23:09Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Tim Ferriss?

  Can you repeat what you said to me, maybe it was an hour or so ago, about your metric?

• 23:17Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, I said to Tim, "The metric that I am using to measure the success of this record is not in numbers or stars granted to me by magazine critics, but it is number of human beings crying when they hear it or see me play it," which is a way more satisfying way to judge the worth of a record, and it's working. So I've had two kinds of interviews. I've done interviews with journalists who just keep it very light and superficial. You know, "So tell me about your record. What kind of space were you in when you wrote

• 24:00Amanda Palmer?

  these songs?" You know, and quite a few of the interviews have been kind of unprecedented in my experience of just doing music interviews with journalists. And I've found, weirdly, especially European interviews, a German-Austrian, I think Austrian journalist the other day, he was talking to me about the record, and he told me about the miscarriage that he and his wife had gone through and what it felt like. And I don't think he's gonna include that in his piece, but he wanted to tell me, talk to me about it.

• 24:43Amanda Palmer?

  And I did an interview with a German radio station this morning, and I was like, ugh, god, radio station, like, it's gonna be very fluffy and superficial, it's the radio, those are never good. And, um, and this German journalist, sort of just talking to me about vulnerability and the shamelessness of the record, and what it feels like to share this kind of material. And she told me that she found out she had breast cancer, um, chose to have a double mastectomy. And she talked to me about, you know, in Germany, there's a lot more nudity, there's what they call freikultur, uh, freikörperkultur, you know, the idea that we shouldn't be ashamed to be naked, which is great, I agree.

• 25:28Amanda Palmer?

  Um, and she, she talked about being in saunas and going to lakes where, you know, everyone has their tits out, and how she feels when she emerges from the water and people see that she doesn't have any breasts and she just has these scars. And then I expected her to say something different than what she actually said. She said, "I actually think it's a lot of fun. Do you?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know if I would call it fun, I'm not sure if she said spaß." It's like, I'm not sure that that's really the word. But there is definitely something kind of delicious about, like, baring your neck,

• 26:13Amanda Palmer?

  baring your pain, talking about your abortion, talking about your miscarriage, talking about your grief, showing your scars, that doesn't, it doesn't feel narcissistic. Actually, if you do it right and you're in the right place, it actually feels like a generous act. Because you act as a reminder to the other human beings when you're getting out of that lake, uh, that any shame they may be feeling is unwarranted, unnecessary, really. And, and if they're feeling discomfort and you're not made uncomfortable by their discomfort, you can offer them a gift.

• 26:55Amanda Palmer?

  And being able to do that with music is, you know, feels like my job right now, like the ability to, like, get up there on stage and kind of bare my throat.

• 27:06Amanda Palmer?

  As a kind of a gift.

• 27:09Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's a huge gift. I think that by sharing or showing scars, whether they're physical or emotional, you give people permission to do the same. Even if that is someone who only trades with another person, like the journalist you mentioned, who finally felt free to divulge what happened with a miscarriage.

• 27:37Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Tim Ferriss?

  I think there's tremendous, tremendous value in that.

• 27:41Amanda Palmer?

  And the more you get to know people, all people, they're all carrying something. Everybody, you know, maybe not right at that moment, but there just isn't anyone out there who isn't going through some kind of a suffering or has or will.

• 28:01Tim Ferriss?

  If you don't mind, because I really want to underscore

• 28:08Tim Ferriss?

  how much has happened, and this isn't an exhaustive list, but this is in a book in front of me, which I've been, I've been reading since you gave it to me. There will be no intermission. But just to put in perspective what has transpired the last few years.

• 28:25Amanda Palmer?

  You're gonna ask me to read my book.

• 28:26Tim Ferriss?

  Would you mind reading this portion? Just because we're gonna, we're gonna dig into, uh, we're gonna dig into some of it.

• 28:33Amanda Palmer?

  So this book is kind of written to, to be a performance. It says, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. This performance will last seven years. And actually, um, this piece gets read as a recording before my show, before I am seated at the piano when I tour this stage show, and it's read by Neil.

• 29:01Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 29:01Amanda Palmer?

  Um, and it's, you know, it's also sort of my way of bringing him with me on the, on the tour.

• 29:09Tim Ferriss?

  For those who don't know.

• 29:10Amanda Palmer?

  He's my husband.

• 29:11Tim Ferriss?

  Neil Gaiman, one of the most hypnotic voices you shall ever hear.

• 29:16Amanda Palmer?

  He's got good radio voice.

• 29:17Tim Ferriss?

  He does have a good radio voice.

• 29:19Amanda Palmer?

  This performance will last approximately seven years. You will experience two abortions, one out of your control, another totally your choice. The death of your best friend after a four-year dance with cancer. You will hold him in your arms as he takes his last breath two months before your first child is born. The unexpected death of another beloved friend. You will stumble across him, sitting there on his favorite chair in the living room. You will hold his cold, dead hand in your own. One ex committing suicide with a handgun. One childbirth, a 24-hour labor in the woods with no drugs.

• 30:03Amanda Palmer?

  Parenthood during which your baby will fall from a shelf, a few beds, and other high places. One miscarriage, alone in a hotel room on a very cold Christmas night. Strobe light, smoke, and other special effects may be used. There is adult content and graphic language. There will be no intermission.

• 30:25Tim Ferriss?

  So that's a lot.

• 30:28Amanda Palmer?

  Just some light reading for you on a Sunday.

• 30:32Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, which of those, and it may not be clear, was most difficult for you? If that's even a decent question. I don't know if any stick out.

• 30:44Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, Anthony's death, for sure.

• 30:47Tim Ferriss?

  Anthony, the same mentor who gave you the book we discussed.

• 30:51Amanda Palmer?

  He was. Yeah, Anthony, um...

• 30:57Amanda Palmer?

  Anthony and I had a really unique blessed relationship. He came into my life when I was nine. I lived in a leafy green suburb, you know, with my very, you know, pretty normal household. My sister, my older two step siblings would come over sometimes. They didn't live with us. My stepdad and my mom. And Anthony moved in when I was nine and he was probably thirty-five. He was a grown up.

• 31:38Amanda Palmer?

  And he and his new wife, Laura, it was his second wife, didn't have children and opted not to have children. And Anthony and I kind of adopted one another. And he became to me, you know, first nice grown up neighbor friend, then mentor, then, you know, important confidant, best friend by the time I was in my twenties. And he, you know, he opened a bunch of doors that would have been

• 32:23Amanda Palmer?

  otherwise completely unopened. Because, you know, in Lexington, Massachusetts, I just wasn't stumbling upon this kind of stuff. My teachers weren't really showing me the way. My parents weren't really showing me certain ways. And I cannot imagine what my life would have looked like if this guy hadn't moved into that house. And when he, our, our relationship was so...

• 32:59Amanda Palmer?

  Fundamental to me that if I ever needed to make myself cry for a project, for theater, whatever, all I would have to do is cast my mind into the possibility that he might die and I would be brought to weeping. And then, right around the time of my, right before my Kickstarter, so around 2011, he started having all sorts of strange health problems, one bizarre symptom after another, until finally, he was told that he had a very rare form of leukemia and had six months to live.

• 33:39Amanda Palmer?

  And then, then it was a shit show because it was second opinions, third opinions, no, you're gonna be fine, no, you're gonna die in six months, no, yes, this, that, the other thing. Ultimately, he died about four years later. It was a very rough ride to the end. He was on steroids, heavy steroids, and you probably speak steroid, he was on 100 milligrams of prednisone a day. Ugh. Which is crazy making. Yeah. I feel like I lost my friend, not even to death, but to steroids because his attitude

• 34:24Amanda Palmer?

  towards life and towards me and towards everything became so vicious and that was almost harder to see than death. And I changed my life. Neil and I were completely uprooted, we had sort of had a plan, our relationship was still quite new. We uprooted ourselves, we moved to Boston and I nursed my friend. I took him to chemo, I watched him die.

• 34:52Amanda Palmer?

  And in the midst of all that, I had an abortion and I got pregnant and I, you know, I was seven months pregnant when I had to let go of Anthony. They were, you know, I was this close. And, you know, nowadays, if I want to make myself cry, you know, I can't think about Anthony dying anymore. He's gone. That ship has sailed. But I can really get myself going, thinking how close I got to being able to introduce Anthony to my son, to Ash. They'd never got to meet. And Anthony would have been so incredibly

• 35:30Amanda Palmer?

  proud to see me incarnated as a mother. And, um, but I also, you know, he was my teacher and almost feels like the last huge teaching that he gave to me was his death and sitting with it and absorbing it and being okay with it and letting him go and not attaching. Grieving, weeping, but not, not regretting.

• 36:01Tim Ferriss?

  How did you feel the day after that?

• 36:04Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, I, I let myself get hit with the full weight of mourning. I woke up. It was so interesting. No one's ever asked me that question, actually. It's such a good question. Neil and I had raced home to be there at his deathbed because things got very bad, very fast. And we flew home from London. We were there, we were working on something or other. I don't even remember what. And we, we raced home and then we sort

• 36:41Amanda Palmer?

  of sat, you know, we sat deathbed for about two or three days with Anthony's wife, Laura, and a few other really, really close friends. And, um, he died at night. And it was right around the time of the, um, the June equinox. I think it was the day before the longest day of the year. And he went at night. And I mean, I...

• 37:20Amanda Palmer?

  I had never really sat and just watched someone die.

• 37:27Amanda Palmer?

  Because it's a process, it's a physical, physiological process. I had never watched someone die, and there was someone else in the room, our friend Nicholas, who had watched his wife die.

• 37:43Amanda Palmer?

  He had lost her a few years before, and he had sat by her deathbed. And he had the knowledge. He knew that certain things happened in a certain order when someone is just slowly checking out what happens with your eyes, what happens with your breath. And I was like, wow, like, once again, like, no one, no one ever told me any of this. Nicholas knows because he just went through it, but all of this hidden knowledge that I'm sure people who work in hospice must have down pat because they're taught. And he went at night, Neil and I went to bed together. We were all exhausted because we had basically been up for a few days waiting for this moment

• 38:28Amanda Palmer?

  to happen.

• 38:32Amanda Palmer?

  And I also felt a really strange kind of peace. And I woke up without an alarm the next day at dawn. And Anthony's body was still there. And I went, I was, I slept at my parents' house, you know, across the driveway. It's just like childhood in reverse. And I walked, snuck into Anthony and Laura's house. Anthony was just laid out in his hospice bed. And I, and I sat there, and I looked at his dead body, and I thought, why are, why are we told to be so afraid of this?

• 39:18Amanda Palmer?

  I just remember feeling like, oh, wow, like, I'm just, there's no fear.

• 39:25Amanda Palmer?

  There's this whole like narrative about like death and dead bodies and it's also creepy and gross and scary and I just felt an incredible kind of peace and I sat down um and I started to meditate and then our friend Nicholas, the one who had buried his wife, he had also woken up. It was bizarre, it was like six in the morning, you know, five thirty, six in the morning and I never wake up early and he came in and he didn't say anything to me. Uh, and he picked up a guitar and he started playing and um, and I just spent the rest of the day with my phone off, as much as off as I could make

• 40:09Amanda Palmer?

  it and I was like, I know enough about fucking life at this point. I know that my only job right now is to feel, feel this grief as deeply as I can. This is not something I want to defer or repress. I spent the whole day crying. I fucking, you know, I went to downtown Lexington, I went into Pete's Coffee crying, I went up to get a coffee crying. The guy behind the counter actually knew Anthony, he started crying. Everyone cried all day, but it didn't, you know, it, it felt really natural, it felt really normal. And, you know, not to skip too far ahead, but it, it actually isn't until now, talking

• 40:54Amanda Palmer?

  to you, that I realized that that experience resonated right along with how I felt when I had a miscarriage. It was the same sort of experience and also that same feeling of being kind of, feeling like I'd been kind of gypped by culture, that, you know, no one told me that these things were so natural and that we come equipped to deal with them and that there's nothing scary about it. Um, and that you don't need anyone to protect you from it. Actually, taking it in is a lot better for you.

• 41:29Amanda Palmer?

  The end.

• 41:30Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm just listening.

• 41:34Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for sharing that.

• 41:36Amanda Palmer?

  You asked.

• 41:39Tim Ferriss?

  Well, not everybody. Not everybody gives the real answer. And so, thank you for giving the real answer. Would you like to say anything more about the miscarriage? I mean, to people who have experienced it, maybe felt shame, maybe never told other people.

• 41:56Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Tim Ferriss?

  There's been, there's been a fair amount of that in my family. Not that I've experienced directly, but I've seen it, just kept secret for years, decades.

• 42:05Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah. Uh, I mean, there's, there's so much I could say about it. And I mean, I could talk about it for hours, but I,

• 42:14Amanda Palmer?

  I found out that I was gonna, I was very happy to be pregnant. I was, I was coming up on three months. Ash was two. And Neil and I were, we were over the moon. We were a little scared, but we were really excited.

• 42:32Tim Ferriss?

  Why were you, why were you scared?

• 42:34Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, because we were just barely holding it together, juggling kid number one. Um, because the two of us, if you haven't noticed, we are like relentlessly workaholic and productive. And, you know, figuring out how to do the dance with one child was just starting to feel workable. And I was like, okay, well, if I also believe the parents around me, this is going to be a game changer. Like, a lot of parents will tell you, having a second child isn't like multiplying. You know, it isn't one plus one, and then you've got two, and it's just twice as much work. It's like 10 times as much work. You have to change the whole ecosystem if you want to support two children.

• 43:17Amanda Palmer?

  And I, and I buy it, and I've seen it firsthand, and I think that's true.

• 43:22Amanda Palmer?

  And Neil was in London. And I went for, uh, I went for, uh, um, what do you call it? Ultrasound. And there had been a little bit of, maybe things aren't totally okay, because the baby's heartbeat had been a little slow, so it was already a bit on edge. And,

• 43:48Amanda Palmer?

  so actually, it's worth adding a part of this story that I'm not sure I've told.

• 43:54Amanda Palmer?

  I remember walking from the ultrasound with the midwife down the hall of this clinic. And I was like, I'm just so fundamentally optimistic. And I just, I barrel forth in life with this attitude that everything is going to be absolutely fine and go my way. And I just had that feeling. I just felt this like gut instinctive certainty that things were good. And so we're walking down the hall of this clinic and the midwife looked at me and she said, "What? Why are you smiling?" And she didn't say it in a mean way.

• 44:38Amanda Palmer?

  She was really curious, like as if I had just thought of some funny joke that I was gonna tell her. And I looked at her and I said, "I'm just waiting for my good news, which I know is coming." And five minutes later, she told me, "I'm really sorry, but the baby has no heartbeat." And I have to say, one of the things that occurred to me in that moment wasn't just, "Oh, my God, I'm not gonna have a child and I'm having a miscarriage." I remember thinking in that moment, "Oh, my God, am I going to become the kind of person now who does not move through the world with optimistic certainty?

• 45:20Amanda Palmer?

  Like, is this gonna be my other game changer where I just move with a different kind of certainty or something? You know, is this gonna make me bitter?" I remember thinking that in that moment. And Neil was off in London at Terry Pratchett's funeral, his friend who had just died. And I called him. And this was a few days before Christmas and, you know, the...

• 45:56Amanda Palmer?

  The midwife, you know, gave me a bunch of information and she said, "You're gonna start, you know, this is sort of what the process is gonna be like. You're gonna start bleeding. As soon as you start bleeding, here are the numbers to call. It's Christmas. Things are a little weird. You might need to do this. You might need to go to a hospital. You know, if you haven't started bleeding and, you know, within six days, we're gonna need to do a DNC, which is basically where they just go in and take everything out." And I'm being told this, you know, 10 minutes after getting this news and my head is just like swimming in grief and confusion and all of the plans I had made in my life, literally collapsing

• 46:35Amanda Palmer?

  in one moment. And Christmas happened and I, I had a really, you know, I had a really rough Christmas morning. It was me and Neil and his kids and I was, they all knew what was happening and it was, you know, it was kinda hard, as you can imagine, to deal with like the joy of Christmas and let's all do this when you literally know that this is happening and about to happen. And I had, I had bought myself two nights at Kripalu, which is like a yoga hotel in western Massachusetts, as a gift to myself, Christmas night and the day after. And I was gonna go there, it was like an hour and a half drive from

• 47:17Amanda Palmer?

  our house. I was gonna go there, be alone, do some yoga, sit in a sauna or, you know, and sit in a, you know, in a whirlpool or whatever. Probably wasn't gonna sit in a whirlpool because I was pregnant. I was just gonna do some self-care. And I had scheduled two pregnancy massages. And I just really wanted to get away from everyone because I was overwhelmed by feeling like I had to host all these people and be cheerful and be hosty. So I told Neil, "I'm splitting. I'm still gonna go. I'll be back in a day." So Christmas Day, I drove over to Kripalu. I checked in. I went to my seven o'clock pregnancy massage. I hadn't called to say, "Hey, by the way," and this woman met me

• 48:01Amanda Palmer?

  in the lobby and she was so beautiful. And she came up to me and she said, "I'm so excited to massage you and your little one." And I was like, "Ah."

• 48:15Amanda Palmer?

  Let's not talk about it right here, but when we get to your room, I have a conversation I need to have with you. And we got into her treatment room and I said, "Listen, I probably should have called ahead. I'm going through a miscarriage right now." And she looked at me and she said, "This may sound weird, but I'm really relieved because I just had a miscarriage and I was not looking forward to this appointment." And she laid me on her table and she cancelled whatever she had next. And I said, "Just,

• 48:53Amanda Palmer?

  just take care of me." And she, she found every labor-inducing spot on my body. She just, she just treated me, you know, like her sister. We wept together. She gave me this enormous hug. She wished me well. I went back to my room. I fell immediately asleep and about an hour or two later, I woke up in labor, having a miscarriage. And I was like, "Oh, right." All of those things the midwife told me, like, do I, I'm on a mountain in western Massachusetts. It's Christmas night.

• 49:36Amanda Palmer?

  Am I really gonna call hospital right now? Or can I do this myself?

• 49:44Amanda Palmer?

  And I had been through a natural childbirth two years before. I, I know what it means to give birth to a child, whether, you know, alive or dead. And I didn't know exactly what to expect because no one had really told me. But I also, I imagined what it would be like to pick up the phone and call an ambulance. Or, I, you know, I was like, "I guess I could get in my car, but I'm not in good shape. I'm in labor and I'm bleeding." And I just projected forward what that would look like and what it would feel like. I was like, I would get in an ambulance. I would be treated

• 50:26Amanda Palmer?

  a certain way. I would be surrounded by all these strangers. I would be taken to a hospital. I would be strapped into things, like, or I could just stay here in this room.

• 50:36Amanda Palmer?

  And deal with whatever is about to come at me. And probably face some very dark images.

• 50:45Amanda Palmer?

  But I actually know that I'm equipped to do this, and I know that women have been equipped to do this for tens of thousands of years. This is not news. And, you know, and nothing bad is happening to me. I'm not in danger. So I walked the halls of that yoga hotel all night,

• 51:09Amanda Palmer?

  ran a bath, had a miscarriage

• 51:14Amanda Palmer?

  with blood everywhere, stared death in the face, went to bed, and woke up actually feeling like the most powerful version of myself I think I have ever felt. And it's so weird saying this to people, and it's so weird explaining it because

• 51:35Amanda Palmer?

  miscarriage is incredibly dark, and I don't, I don't want to say that my miscarriage was fantastic.

• 51:43Amanda Palmer?

  But it was also, it really was one of the most powerful experiences of my life because I,

• 51:55Amanda Palmer?

  because I really centered myself and did something very brave. And, and again, like, felt that sense of,

• 52:08Amanda Palmer?

  like, loss for everybody else, like, we're, you know, in health class as women, you know, you sit there in seventh grade and you're told that you're equipped to have a baby and that you should use a condom, and that's pretty much it. But there's so much more, and there's so much wisdom about the human body, what we're capable of containing, what we're capable of containing emotionally, all the other things that happen. And no one tells us, no one teaches us. Which is, when you think about it, and given what we, what we all go through, it's absurd. The knowledge is there, it just doesn't get passed along.

• 52:49Tim Ferriss?

  Have you found anything in particular after that experience to be, to be helpful in any way?

• 52:58Amanda Palmer?

  Talking with other women. I mean, sharing, sharing this story. All you need to do is, is mention to almost any woman, anything about reproductive drama, abortion, miscarriage, stillbirths, you know, problems with pregnancy. And most women have a story. And most women don't talk about it openly. But the minute you invite them, they will tell you. And I mean, I, now that I'm talking about this stuff openly, it's like the floodgates have opened.

• 53:41Amanda Palmer?

  I had a miscarriage in a gas station bathroom. I had a miscarriage in my car with my kids in the backseat and I had to deal with all of it at the same time. I've had 10 miscarriages and, you know, I mean, it's just rampant. It's everywhere. But we're really scolded by society to keep this stuff under wraps because it's not part of the cultural conversation. And I mean, it is, it's part of culture. It's happening every day as we speak in these buildings.

• 54:17Amanda Palmer?

  And sharing anything, sharing any kind of grief, trauma, loss, sharing any kind of experiences, you know, that's how I heal. I share. I mean, and I do it through art, I do it through conversation, I do it in cafes and pubs, I do it over dinner parties. Like, I will, you know, I'll talk to anyone about anything. And I, I find it really gratifying. I find it constantly healing.

• 54:46Tim Ferriss?

  So, I'm listening to you.

• 54:49Amanda Palmer?

  Is this exactly what your podcast interview with Neil was like?

• 54:56Amanda Palmer?

  Just asking.

• 54:57Tim Ferriss?

  Highly complimentary and not overlapping.

• 55:02Tim Ferriss?

  But this, this has become more and more, in a way, what this podcast is about. In the sense that I want to talk about the things that people are dealing with, whether or not they choose to deal with them. Does that make sense?

• 55:16Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, yeah. You don't get to choose.

• 55:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like you're going to have to metabolize it somehow, and you can do it in a proactive, hopefully healthy, constructive way that leaves everyone better off, or you can stuff it down.

• 55:31Amanda Palmer?

  You can repress and deny.

• 55:33Tim Ferriss?

  And you will deal with it nonetheless.

• 55:37Amanda Palmer?

  Well, and it will, it will come out in, in way less pleasant.

• 55:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 55:43Amanda Palmer?

  Ways.

• 55:43Tim Ferriss?

  It will metastasize and rupture in ways that are very unpredictable.

• 55:50Amanda Palmer?

  Anthony, Anthony had a great saying. I don't know if it was an Anthony original, or he picked it up from someone else, but he said,

• 56:01Amanda Palmer?

  "If you don't deal with your demons, they go into the cellar of your soul and lift weights."

• 56:11Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good one.

• 56:12Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Tim Ferriss?

  That is a really good one. That is a great, that is a great one. And so this, this actually brings up

• 56:21Tim Ferriss?

  a question, hearing you speak so candidly about all these things, and you just said, "I'll talk to anyone about anything."

• 56:28Tim Ferriss?

  There's a woman named Tara Brock, who I haven't spoken with in years, but she wrote a book called Radical Acceptance, which I found very powerful, which was referred to me by

• 56:40Tim Ferriss?

  a female neuroscientist who is even more skeptical than the atom I mentioned earlier. They're, they happen to be friends also. And so it does, based on the book description, have a fair amount of woo, but nonetheless, she found it very powerful. And I can't remember if it was in that book or in separate conversation with her when she mentioned to me, and I think this is probably apocryphal, but that there was a wise sage who at one point said, "There's really only one question that matters, and that is, what are you unwilling to feel?" So my question for you then is, historically... Maybe you've figured it out, maybe even still today. Has there been a particular emotion or anything that you've been unwilling to feel?

• 57:25Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, that's a really good question.

• 57:30Amanda Palmer?

  I used to be very afraid to be alone.

• 57:40Amanda Palmer?

  And I'm not, I'm not anymore.

• 57:48Amanda Palmer?

  But I, I think if there's an answer to that question, it's somewhere in there.

• 57:56Amanda Palmer?

  You know? I think, you know, we always hide in plain sight, right? You're not doing this podcast for no fucking reason. And I don't do the work that I do for no reason. And Neil didn't pick science fiction, fantasy and Sandman for no reason.

• 58:15Amanda Palmer?

  And I think, you know, my,

• 58:20Amanda Palmer?

  the course of my career and my work to find

• 58:25Amanda Palmer?

  deep, passionate, you know, unbridled connection with others belies my, my fear of being alone. And,

• 58:38Amanda Palmer?

  you know, I, and, and one, and in the department next door,

• 58:44Amanda Palmer?

  and, and I know that it's, it's true because even saying it makes me uncomfortable. I have a very deep-seated fear of, of feeling unbelieved.

• 58:57Amanda Palmer?

  And I think, you know, the, the spots where I'm still uncomfortable to sit and the stuff that I'm still uncomfortable feeling lies in there. Actually, I can tell you one of the things I'm grappling right now that probably answers your question. There's a journalist out there uh who writes for a paper that I regard very highly and read uh and she hates me. She just hates me, hates everything I stand for, has done nothing but criticize me and just state openly that she thinks I'm a terrible, awful narcissistic person. You have these people, I'm sure.

• 59:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I've, I've, I have, I have more than a handful, more than a handful myself.

• 59:44Amanda Palmer?

  I, I have these two, but this, this woman is authenticated uh because she's, you know, she's not just a, she's not just a shitty YouTube comment. She's a journalist at a really respected outlet. Uh, and she's uh, she's cock-blocked my record. It won't ever be written about or reviewed in this paper. And I'm obsessed with her. I can't stop thinking about how I want to win her over and change her mind and force her to love me and connect with me and see the light and da-da-da. And it's almost bordering on a mental obsession. You

• 1:00:29Amanda Palmer?

  know, I found, I found this out, whatever, eight, nine days ago, and it's plagued my thoughts every day, even as the record gets critically hailed, even if it is, you know, like, every other review is great, everyone is crying, every tear is shed, every show is sold out, like, none of it matters because I have been unable to capture this one person's love and acceptance and attention. And my, like, the fact that that's my Achilles' heel, that like, that's the, the bear trap that my leg is in right now, speaks a lot about

• 1:01:11Amanda Palmer?

  what I am unwilling to, to feel. Like, I'm unwilling to feel unloved by everyone.

• 1:01:20Amanda Palmer?

  But I'm also way better at it than I used to be. You know, I can at least sit here and pontificate about that, examine it and go, oh, hey, that's that thing that you do. That's cute. Enjoy that, you know, wait, wait a couple of weeks, it'll go away.

• 1:01:37Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned, or I should say, used a phrase just a few minutes ago.

• 1:01:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I can't remember the exact wording you used, but something about being unbelieved. With any of these, whether it's the fear of being alone, the fear of not being believed.

• 1:02:02Tim Ferriss?

  Is there, do you have any memory? Do you have an earliest memory of feeling that way?

• 1:02:07Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, it's my first memory. I even write about it at the beginning of The Art of Asking.

• 1:02:14Amanda Palmer?

  And it actually, it was only thanks to a yoga retreat that I was on in my, probably in my early 30s. We did an exercise,

• 1:02:28Amanda Palmer?

  a really beautiful exercise as a group. You know, there's maybe, whatever, 50 people at this retreat.

• 1:02:38Amanda Palmer?

  It was actually, it was a retreat specifically for yoga teacher training, but I was just there as a civilian.

• 1:02:47Amanda Palmer?

  And the

• 1:02:51Amanda Palmer?

  the question, we had gotten into a very quiet place and everyone was, you know, feeling very connected with themselves. And I think this was an exercise that we did at night. And the question was, when was the first time in your life

• 1:03:10Amanda Palmer?

  that you felt that things were not okay? That was the way it was phrased. And I was like, I remember. It was the first thing I remember, which was, I was...

• 1:03:26Amanda Palmer?

  Probably around Ash's age, probably around three years old. And we lived in this, we lived in this teeny little house. And there was a, there was a long wooden staircase that connected the second to the first floor. And I, I was at the top of it and slipped at the top and tumbled down the entire staircase, like a cartoon, like bum bum bum bum. And also, like a cartoon, was actually fine at the bottom, but completely freaked out. Like I had just literally fallen down a set of stairs. But, you know, I was three and bouncy and chubby and whatever. I, you know, there was no blood, there were no broken bones.

• 1:04:10Amanda Palmer?

  But I was shocked, I had the wind knocked out of me, I was disoriented, I was terrified. And I ran straight to the kitchen. And I don't remember exactly who was there, but, you know, probably, you know, my family, my mom, my stepdad, my older brother and sisters. Whoever was there, it was like them, the big people. And I told them what had happened in whatever way a three-year-old does that. And they didn't believe me.

• 1:04:49Amanda Palmer?

  And, and I remember the degree of pain that I felt not being believed was, was pretty seismic compared to the pain of falling down the stairs. It was, that was shattering. Like, all of a sudden, things are not okay.

• 1:05:17Amanda Palmer?

  Like, I just, my, my world was blown apart.

• 1:05:22Amanda Palmer?

  And, um, I remember being in this yoga retreat and thinking like, I think I literally laughed out loud, like belly laughed, when I started thinking about that incident and then the fucking line of work I chose, which is to get up in front of thousands of people and scream about my pain to paying customers. It's like, nailed it!

• 1:05:52Amanda Palmer?

  But, you know, it, it's not, not connected.

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, do you, I, I would say you're completely right. Uh, do you feel like you have overcome or addressed that? And if not, do you not want to address it deliberately? And the reason I ask is that I've, I've, I've met in particular comedians or as stand-up comics, but also quite a few artists in different disciplines who are afraid that if they take their pain away, they will not be able to create.

• 1:06:28Amanda Palmer?

  Yes. That is such a tyrannical and destructive myth.

• 1:06:38Amanda Palmer?

  I think Neil believes that. And I spend a lot of time trying to convince him that it doesn't work that way. I think a lot of artists and writers and stand-ups and whatever, they, they think that, you know, if you pull on the thread of self-knowledge and, and healing, then the entire artistic architecture of their life will just fall and disappear.

• 1:07:07Amanda Palmer?

  So you, you actually, you have to take a bizarre faith-based leap and just believe that that's not true. But, you know, as, as mammals, you know, in our...

• 1:07:21Amanda Palmer?

  In our habits and in our like, in our, in our small minded way, if we've done something and it's worked, we're just gonna continue to repeat that. We're not gonna try some new combination and try to, you know, fuck with the chemistry. And, and this is a, this is a real problem in our culture. Because, because of the, is profligation a word?

• 1:07:51Tim Ferriss?

  It sounds believable. I think that's a word, but then again-

• 1:07:53Amanda Palmer?

  Let's say proliferation. Because of the proliferation of this myth, artists suffer. And they should not. We should be taking care of our artists the way we take care of any other valuable cultural tool. Artists are really fucking necessary for us to make it through this veil of tears. Uh, and if we don't take care of them and the art that they make and the music that they make, we all collectively suffer. And I, I mean, I believed in that myth for a really long time.

• 1:08:35Amanda Palmer?

  I was a super self-destructive, uh, self-styled artist bohemian weirdo in my teens, twenties and well into my thirties and, you know, I still have my moments, but I really bought it. I was like, I need to have a dangerous, destructive life of sex, drugs and rock and roll so that I can be awesome and have great things to write about. And my pain is valuable. Um, and I feel like if you're an artist, may, maybe if that's the door you come in through, great, that's step one. Yes, your pain is valuable. Good. Like, starting kit.

• 1:09:18Amanda Palmer?

  Um, step two, your pain is valuable to others. That's like, master level. Um, and-

• 1:09:30Amanda Palmer?

  You know, the interesting thing about being not believed and going into this line of work is I, you know, I didn't go in thinking that music was a service industry. I went in thinking it was what I needed. I needed to express myself and be believed by these people. Will you believe me? Great, you'll buy the ticket, you'll buy the CD. You will understand this pain? Great, this is a job I want to do. But it did not take long for, you know, the next curtain to open and for me to see that the people in the audience and the people buying the CDs,

• 1:10:12Amanda Palmer?

  they weren't just validating my pain and they weren't there to validate my pain and to believe me.

• 1:10:21Amanda Palmer?

  They were having their own experiences.

• 1:10:26Amanda Palmer?

  I hadn't really totally clocked that. I mean, of course, I subconsciously knew because I had listened to music all my life. I knew that other musicians had done it for me. But I think I was too, you know, I think I was too... What's the word I'm looking for? Not scared, but like, I didn't ever believe that I would be that person for someone else.

• 1:10:52Tim Ferriss?

  Intimidated?

• 1:10:53Amanda Palmer?

  Intimidated. Yeah, I just felt too...

• 1:11:00Amanda Palmer?

  I felt too small. You know, I know that The Cure did this for me, the legendary Pink Dots did this for me, Leonard Cohen did this for me. I'm not sure I'll ever be doing that for anyone, but I know that I want to be like them. I know that I want to write music about my pain. But then, like, it was kind of like a magic trick. Then it worked. Then people were crying at my shows. Then women were coming up to me and telling me about their pain, their abusive relationships, their rapes, their struggles. And men of all ages, sizes and genders. And I thought, oh, like, I guess this is the way it works.

• 1:11:44Amanda Palmer?

  And I stumbled into this job.

• 1:11:48Amanda Palmer?

  Um, now I guess I do it. And I, and I learn how to get better at it. And one of the things about this record is that it actually, it, it sort of feels like my final exam in songwriting.

• 1:12:08Amanda Palmer?

  It's the, it's the most raw, unedited, you know, offering from a place of grief, but also like empowerment and enlightenment that I could offer up to anyone out there who would need it. It's, in a, in a way, it's like, it's the most medicinal

• 1:12:30Amanda Palmer?

  record I've ever made, and I know because I needed it. If, and if I needed this medicine, it's probably gonna work on other people. Here, you try it. Is this gonna work on you? And that's been what it is.

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to underscore a few things I, I think I heard you say. Because, because they strike me as very, very important.

• 1:12:56Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I'll use, I'll use my words because I'm not gonna, I, I don't have the memory to repeat what you said verbatim, but the, the first is that

• 1:13:07Tim Ferriss?

  you can use your pain without always allowing your pain to use you. In the sense that

• 1:13:16Tim Ferriss?

  we could tie it into the experience you had on the beach before your shoplifting, and even during and after. Which is, for using a metaphor from meditation, if your pain is, say, if experiencing your pain and being driven by your pain and being reactive to your pain is being inside the washing machine,

• 1:13:43Tim Ferriss?

  you can actually do a better job of seeing what is inside by zooming out 12 inches and being outside of the washing machine.

• 1:13:50Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  And that allows you to use the content of your suffering, to use the content of your pain while having a better understanding of it

• 1:14:03Tim Ferriss?

  and being able to shape it like a sculptor so that you can better wield it and impart it to other people.

• 1:14:10Amanda Palmer?

  You befriend it, almost. One of the...

• 1:14:17Amanda Palmer?

  One of the most powerful lessons I have had

• 1:14:22Amanda Palmer?

  in the pain department and the understanding what we're calling pain was

• 1:14:33Amanda Palmer?

  going through a natural childbirth, which, when people ask me to describe it, the best thing I can come up with, and it is not necessarily analogy that works for all people, but it's like an acid trip.

• 1:14:50Amanda Palmer?

  You have to let go of the wheel, or you will really suffer. And

• 1:15:00Amanda Palmer?

  what gets in the way a lot, I think, when women go in to have babies, is that they are told that this will be extremely painful.

• 1:15:13Amanda Palmer?

  But there's a difference between the kind of pain that is childbirth and the kind of pain that is someone just sliced your arm open with a razor blade. One is

• 1:15:29Amanda Palmer?

  danger. You are in danger, and your pain is sending you a very, very specific, loud message that you are in danger and you need to take action. And the other kind of pain is really more describable as a kind of a discomfort. But it's not danger.

• 1:15:51Amanda Palmer?

  And the more I think about our bodies and the messages they send us, because our body, any kind of pain or discomfort is always a message from somewhere.

• 1:16:07Amanda Palmer?

  As soon as I really, you know, as soon as I was in labor, when I was having Ash, and my labor was 24 hours, as soon as I went into labor, I really...

• 1:16:23Amanda Palmer?

  Clocked and took on board the idea that this wasn't dangerous pain. And because I was sort of able to flick a switch in there and have a conversation with myself and my own body in which I said, "Self, you're not in danger. This is just uncomfortable." It didn't really feel like pain. It felt like discomfort. And that made me much more able to just sit with it and deal with it. But so many women, when they go into the experience of having childbirth,

• 1:17:04Amanda Palmer?

  are just frightened to death by people, by doctors, by narrative, by whatever like bullshit TV dramas they've seen on your average soap opera where there's a woman shrieking in agony, being wheeled on a gurney with six people around her with a baby inside of her, that like you are going to be in pain and pain is bad and you need to stop this pain. Which is why most women will just race to take drugs and get an epidural, which winds up being very, very, you know, negative and with a knock-on effect for both baby and mama. And what a classic metaphor for our entire fucking society.

• 1:17:48Amanda Palmer?

  If you're feeling pain, just stop the pain. Don't think about why you might be in pain. Don't think about where it might be coming from and why you might need to feel it or feel this discomfort. Just fucking get rid of it. And we have a handy product for you that we're willing to sell you at great expense to yourself to just make that pain go away. But as you said earlier, you know, that's never a sustainable option, ever.

• 1:18:22Tim Ferriss?

  The polar opposite also isn't sustainable, which we've been talking about as it relates to a lot of artists, but not just artists. And that's the fetishizing of pain. And using pain as... Sexy pain. Sexy pain or creative pain, which exists, but you don't want to be a...

• 1:18:49Tim Ferriss?

  A vessel or a hammer looking for a nail.

• 1:18:52Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Tim Ferriss?

  Everywhere. Uh, because you're gonna end up hammering a lot of screws and that doesn't make a whole lot of fucking sense. And I, I would say also that as someone who's, who has or had for decades fetishized pain. And I took great pride in having a very, very high pain tolerance. That, uh,

• 1:19:16Tim Ferriss?

  it's

• 1:19:19Tim Ferriss?

  important, I think, if you identify strongly with pain, if that is a primary driver in your life. If it's something you romanticize or fetishize or view as your friend, which it sometimes is when it's giving you a message. Ask yourself, am I putting pain in pole position because I'm unwilling or unable to feel other things? So I just want to feel something.

• 1:19:43Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, well, because pain can become a kind of a muzak.

• 1:19:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Amanda Palmer?

  That drowns out, uh,

• 1:19:53Amanda Palmer?

  the, the other conversations that you should maybe be listening to.

• 1:19:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, because pain can be annihilating and annihilation can feel great.

• 1:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Amanda Palmer?

  If you're annihilating other things.

• 1:20:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Amanda Palmer?

  You know?

• 1:20:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, there, there are different ways to numb yourself. One is by taking away the pain, using different agents. And the other is to turn the, to use pain so frequently. Uh, or to make the volume so loud that it drowns out other things.

• 1:20:21Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Tim Ferriss?

  And, um, for those people who feel like they might in some way identify with what I'm saying. The, the book I mentioned earlier, Radical Acceptance is very, very, very helpful for this.

• 1:20:34Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, I had a, I had a thought flash through my head that day that I, um, woke up from the miscarriage. And, um, it was, it was also minus five degrees on the mountaintop, uh, that night and that day. It was the, it was that sort of like, you don't even go outside kind of cold.

• 1:20:58Amanda Palmer?

  And I remember, I remember walking outside and thinking, ah, my, my relationship to pain and discomfort has, has been permanently altered. Something has been rewired. And I also found myself thinking,

• 1:21:18Amanda Palmer?

  I found myself thinking about women and men, and what we come equipped to endure and what we do endure.

• 1:21:30Amanda Palmer?

  And I found myself thinking, men, you know, there's, in the, in the male narrative, especially recently, and when I say recently, I mean, like, whatever, the past few thousand years of patriarchy, there's this real,

• 1:21:45Amanda Palmer?

  there's this real machismo and this male narrative around violence and war and strength and the ability to withstand pain for a noble cause and

• 1:21:58Amanda Palmer?

  bloody battle after bloody battle and, uh,

• 1:22:03Amanda Palmer?

  I thought about all of that. It was sort of like I had this, you know, this flash, like the montage of male violence through recent history. All the wars, all the battles, all the bloodshed, all of the comrades. And while holding that image in my mind, I thought about being up in the hotel room alone, like, as a woman, uh, surrounded by blood and holding this dead baby and thinking,

• 1:22:32Amanda Palmer?

  no man has ever done that, gone through that particular battle. And that is one deep fucking battle to, to, to grow, to grow life and then hold it in your hands and say goodbye.

• 1:22:54Amanda Palmer?

  And I thought, one of the reasons that we are

• 1:23:00Amanda Palmer?

  not doing so hot as a culture is this thing that women

• 1:23:10Amanda Palmer?

  Are fundamentally equipped to do and are really quite good at when we are given the space to do it and create it and share it. And the thing that men are, you know, come just equipped with DNA wise, and I don't want to get into gender politics because things will get very dangerous. But we're so bad at taking care of each other in these departments, at supporting, at supporting each other. And the strength that women have had for thousands of years to deal with the dark side

• 1:23:47Amanda Palmer?

  of reproduction and to deal with the real, like visceral, bloody life and death of periods and stillbirths and abortions and dead babies, you know, it's, it's not nothing. It is badass. It requires an incredible fortitude and strength of body and mind to, to go through experiences like that. And women go through it, but they don't really get a ton of credit.

• 1:24:28Amanda Palmer?

  And, and they're also, you know, they're disempowered at every turn by men taking charge of the narrative and infantilizing women, patronizing them, you know, and taking charge of things that women could very well do for and by themselves, for and with each other as they have for millennia until doctors marched in the room and said, "Step aside, ladies, we, we have a better plan and it's going to cost you a lot of money." P.S. Fuck capitalism.

• 1:25:01Tim Ferriss?

  I think it's, I think it's important to, and feel free to disagree, but to, to recognize that there are exceptions in the sense that it's not all men, right?

• 1:25:15Amanda Palmer?

  Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm making a cartoon big man.

• 1:25:18Tim Ferriss?

  There are the bad guys and there are the, the bad girls and the men and women, there's no monopoly on bad behavior. I've seen some horrifying behavior on both sides. Men certainly have more than...

• 1:25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Then have their fair share. But in part, if I'm looking at it from my perspective, this is stuff I wanted you to talk about, right? And I think that speaking from the vantage point of someone whose own family would not talk about these things.

• 1:25:47Amanda Palmer?

  What do you mean?

• 1:25:48Tim Ferriss?

  For instance, miscarriage, right? There's, these are experiences that I think many people, men included, are very open to hearing, but they just, it's, it's not part of the cultural conversation. And there is a lot of social pressure, one way or another. There's a lot of censoring, and there's a lot of self censoring also.

• 1:26:16Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:26:17Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, you know, one, one thing that's become so clear to me in the last handful of years, especially since I've written publicly about family and personal struggles with major depressive episodes and near suicide in college. I mean, the most important thing I've ever written is some practical thoughts on suicide, which is a blog post about that. And much like your experience putting out this record and this book, I suspect, and even before that, but I think especially with this, you realize that everyone you bump into, every

• 1:26:59Tim Ferriss?

  person you see, you know, we're up here on a high floor in a high rise, looking down at these thousands of ants, and every single one of those people is fighting a battle we know nothing about.

• 1:27:14Amanda Palmer?

  Yes.

• 1:27:15Tim Ferriss?

  And the scale and depth of suffering, the experiences, male and female and everything in between, that people have endured or suffered or had inflicted upon them is...

• 1:27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Enough to boggle the mind. I mean, it's, it's, it's, and it's, it's so valuable to have you sharing your experiences and to have other people, in a few weeks, I'll be having someone from the special forces come on to talk about a lot of what is

• 1:27:54Tim Ferriss?

  suppressed or not openly discussed, even in those worlds, when it comes to PTSD and

• 1:27:59Amanda Palmer?

  I believe it.

• 1:28:00Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of the, a lot of the struggles.

• 1:28:02Amanda Palmer?

  They should read the sleep book.

• 1:28:03Tim Ferriss?

  The sleep book, yes. This is a longer conversation. Actually, there's, there's a Kirk Parsley, separately for people who are interested in sleep, is former special forces who focuses on sleep specifically, for those people who want to Google that later. But the, the, without rambling too long, I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that the way we all become more comfortable talking about pain and simultaneously recognizing the courage and the capabilities and the incredible strength that people can bring to bear in this situation, certainly including women, is by talking about them.

• 1:28:45Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, and it sort of gets back to what I keep seeing, the major theme nowadays with everything, politically with feminism, here, there, with art, which is that

• 1:29:00Amanda Palmer?

  it feels like a paradox, especially given the cultural Kool-Aid that we've all been raised with, but vulnerability is incredible power. And we're, we're hammered so hard with the opposite message that it can be very hard to really believe that.

• 1:29:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Amanda Palmer?

  Until you do it, and do it again, and do it again, and practice doing it, and realize that actually, the knock-on effect and the

• 1:29:30Tim Ferriss?

  What is the knock-on effect? I actually don't know what that is. You mentioned it earlier?

• 1:29:34Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, well, by the knock-on effect, I just mean the, the effect, period. When you actually take the plunge and make yourself vulnerable, whether that means discussing your suicidal thoughts, or being open with your community about your abortion, or admitting to a paralyzing fear, or whatever your bag is.

• 1:30:01Amanda Palmer?

  The, the effect of that, you know, we're taught that that's such a terrifying thing to do.

• 1:30:11Amanda Palmer?

  And we've, you know, we fear whatever is waiting on the other side of that ridicule or rejection or, you know, just being dismissed or whatever. But my personal experience has taught me that there is, there's just an immense amount of bounty on the other side of that every single time. And I've now been practicing it for long enough that I don't have to believe it anymore. I just know.

• 1:30:42Tim Ferriss?

  And at least in my experience, one thing I realized not too many years ago is that when you keep, when you put armor on and you keep it on long enough, it's true that that can keep a lot of scary things outside, but it also can keep a lot of scary things inside.

• 1:31:03Amanda Palmer?

  And, and it's heavy to wear around?

• 1:31:05Tim Ferriss?

  It's a barrier. Uh, how has, and this is something that I know you're, at least based on our conversations, quite passionate about, but how has moving to a fan-supported

• 1:31:22Tim Ferriss?

  model changed you or your art or both?

• 1:31:27Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, it's changed both and it's, and it's impossible to discuss the life without the art and the art without the life at this point. Um, I was actually pretty blindsided at how profound the effect on my life, on my day-to-day life, on my artistic life, switching to a Patreon model was. I thought that it was going to be like a good, convenient, you know, nice, sustainable way of giving my fans an avenue to, to, to pay me, you know, once and then kind of not be bothered because I would have their credit card and I could

• 1:32:11Amanda Palmer?

  charge them at will instead of bugging them every 18 months with a crowdfunding scheme.

• 1:32:19Amanda Palmer?

  And I knew that I would appreciate the predictability of having a certain amount of money every month and that they would appreciate not being assaulted with an NPR style fundraiser that was going, that was gonna irritate the hell out of them once a year. And I also knew that like, my fans are my fans. It's not like I'm gonna find a new batch of 25,000 people the next time I do a Kickstarter. It's those people. It's one community. So going back and going back to the well every year to do another, to Kickstarter another record just seemed like it was gonna be exhausting on both sides. So when Patreon came along, and for those, for people who don't know what Patreon is,

• 1:33:01Amanda Palmer?

  it's basically a kind of a sustained subscription to an artist. So I have 15,000 people right now backing me at about $3 a month just to work, to do what I need to do, to podcast, to release demos, to write, to film. And I, and I offer back a lot. You know, there's, there's basically a channel of my work and I, you know, and I blog and there are little perks here and there, but mostly it's, it's a nonprofit, you know, not a nonprofit model, it's an NPR model. You're just paying for me to broadcast and I will send you my broadcasts personally, you

• 1:33:43Amanda Palmer?

  know, with a, with a bow tied on them if you're my patron and everyone else in the world basically just gets to tune in. But I, I did not get, I did not understand how disorientingly liberating it would feel to all of a sudden not have to have the second thought every time I had an artistic thought of, how am I going to sell this? How am I going to market this? You know, this idea is pretty good, this idea is genius, this song is great, this album is great. And every artist grapples with this tightrope between art and money constantly.

• 1:34:32Amanda Palmer?

  And it's such a bizarre combination of things to think about. You know, here you are, writing a song, bearing your soul. That's thought number one and activity number one. And then activity number two is, okay. How are you, how is this thing going to pay your rent? How are you going to get this thing, you know, from your soul out into the marketplace? Into the hands of someone who will authenticate you, sell it, and then give you a paycheck? And I actually hadn't realized that, you know, being part of the major label system, which I was, and then being an independent artist, which I was, but still out there doing like the daily grind

• 1:35:13Amanda Palmer?

  and the daily hustle to make sure that there was money coming in so that I could pay my staff and make my work and pay my recording studio bills.

• 1:35:23Amanda Palmer?

  I just did not realize how much of the pie chart in my brain was the hustle versus the art. And even though I still do the hustle and I still need to run my Patreon, as soon as thousands of people said, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, just relax. We've got your back. We're gonna pay you. So take your time. Say what you need to say, sing what you need to sing. And we're in. We've already bought the song. Now tell us what you have to say.

• 1:35:57Amanda Palmer?

  It was almost like, it was almost like being punch drunk.

• 1:36:03Tim Ferriss?

  When did, when did that become real for you? Because right, you, you, there's, there's, there's a shift at some point where you're like, ah, maybe I'll try this. Maybe this will be a thing.

• 1:36:14Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Tim Ferriss?

  And where, where, where, where did the, where, where did it hit the boiling point where you're like, oh, wow?

• 1:36:21Amanda Palmer?

  Well, I mean, it's, the boiling point's a good metaphor because like everything else.

• 1:36:28Amanda Palmer?

  In my career, it wasn't like one day I woke up and said, "Oh, my God, crowdfunding has liberated my artistic voice." It's been a, I've been in a, I've been in a long-term relationship with my community of listeners, readers, audience for 20 years. And I have experimented with every dial in that relationship. And I went through, you know, crowdfunding independently off my website. I went through using Kickstarter as a model. Now I'm using Patreon. And the platforms and the tools keep changing.

• 1:37:10Amanda Palmer?

  But the fundamental is that I, I think that when we can divorce art from money, and when artists can just let go of that lever.

• 1:37:23Tim Ferriss?

  And by divorce, you mean not have to think about money?

• 1:37:26Amanda Palmer?

  Not have to think, not have to think about it so much. The, there's a, there's, there's a great blog out there by a woman named Wendy Ice, who crowdfunded a book of her husband's. He was a fantastic illustrator and he, he did, he did a book of illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, like a new illustrated version of it that publishers wouldn't take, but people wanted it.

• 1:37:54Tim Ferriss?

  Wendy Ice, I C E, E I, okay, I C E.

• 1:37:56Amanda Palmer?

  And I forget the name of her husband, it's escaping me.

• 1:37:58Tim Ferriss?

  We can, we'll put it in the show notes.

• 1:38:00Amanda Palmer?

  And I'll summarize her blog because it's a little bit of a tangent, but it's really important. And enough people convinced her to, to, to go to Kickstarter and do a crowdfund for this book, and she was very scared. You know, because they were used to working in the world of publishing where everything was authenticated, and there was a system, and there was an order of things. But they just weren't, the book wasn't getting picked up, so they, they went to their community. And they did this crowdfund, and they were, they were overwhelmed and overjoyed with the amount of support that they got. And then her husband got cancer.

• 1:38:37Amanda Palmer?

  Shortly after that happened. And she was very afraid to go to her Kickstarter backers and say, "Things are gonna be held up. Something very bad has happened." And then her husband died. And she said she had never felt more supported emotionally by a community than she felt from these Kickstarter backers who were purportedly there to get a book, but were actually really there to support the artistic entity behind the book.

• 1:39:18Amanda Palmer?

  They wound up supporting her family, they wound up supporting her, they supported her journey. And she talks so succinctly, in a way that I have never managed to do, about what it feels like to be held by a community like this, and how it actually feels safer sometimes than the community of your own friends and the community of your own family, because it is an unconditional love that asks nothing in exchange. And I feel that way so often about my patrons. They're just there for me.

• 1:40:00Amanda Palmer?

  They ask very little in return, but they're very happy for what I have to give them. And we do not have any entanglements, there's not a whole lot of passive-aggressive behavior. There just is this kind of unconditional acceptance and love for what I do and what I have to offer. And it's such a beautiful, delicious, uncomplicated relationship. And if I want a complicated relationship, I've got my marriage, I've got my parents, I've got my family, I can go there anytime, that channel is open. But when it comes to art, which is so fragile and doesn't, sometimes just needs an unconditional support system.

• 1:40:42Amanda Palmer?

  Oh my god, like having 15,000 people who are there with a giant net to catch me in my spectacular failings as an artist, or my successes, or whatever they're gonna be, feels like the, it feels like the apex of artistic freedom.

• 1:41:04Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so happy for you.

• 1:41:06Amanda Palmer?

  I know. I'm, I'm, I'm doing it. And who knows, you know, it might change. Platforms change, companies get eaten by Facebook. You just never know. But the, the point is actually not the technology, not the platforms, not the companies, not Patreon, not Indiegogo, not Facebook. It's what human beings are capable of doing for and with each other. The platforms, whatever, they'll change, they'll evolve, they'll be more or less helpful in our endeavors.

• 1:41:45Amanda Palmer?

  But what I am exhilarated by right now and really inspired by right now is that Kickstarter seems to have kicked down the door for people understanding that this kind of support and patronage was available and started to chip away at the stigma. And now Patreon is kind of picking up where Kickstarter, at least for me, kicking up where Kickstarter left off. And, you know, now thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are out there thinking that it's totally okay to just support an artist because you want to hear what they fucking have to say, not because you want an object or a piece of plastic to put in

• 1:42:26Amanda Palmer?

  your Discman, but because you want to hear what Tim Ferriss has to say about the world and you want the message out there and you want to see what music Amanda Palmer is going to make. And it's worth it to you for $3 a month to just have it exist. That's amazing. That feels like artistic evolutionary progress happening very fast right now in the world.

• 1:42:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'm excited for you and happy for you. I think this is, I think this is also if we're just looking at one example of the output that is enabled by that type of support. I think, I think this is really important. I don't say that, I don't say it lightly. Like how sweaty my palms are, just having this emotional conversation, it's wild.

• 1:43:07Amanda Palmer?

  My, the sweat is all over the death book.

• 1:43:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's this, this is important.

• 1:43:15Amanda Palmer?

  I gave this talk at South by Southwest a couple of days ago, talking about I never, ever, ever, in a billion years, would have had the fortitude to make a record like this. If I had known that somewhere in there, I would have had to walk it up to Steve in marketing and say, "This is what I've got." Because I know Steve for marketing, and I know what the response would have been, which is, "You've got to be fucking kidding us, and this is not going to play well at radio." And what do you mean, "Your first track is 11 minutes long"? Back to the drawing board, lassie.

• 1:44:00Amanda Palmer?

  And instead, I just got to, you know, sail over, under, and around all of those hurdles and just say, "This is my, this is my offering."

• 1:44:10Tim Ferriss?

  Where can people find your offering? Where can they learn more about all of this?

• 1:44:15Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, well, this is the vinyl. Most people don't have vinyl, but I mean, the, the album is available on vinyl and on CD and pretty much any, anywhere on the internet where you get music. And one of the things that my patronage-

• 1:44:29Tim Ferriss?

  Amanda Palmer, for those people who are not watching but listening-

• 1:44:32Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Tim Ferriss?

  There will be no intermission.

• 1:44:35Amanda Palmer?

  There's boobs on the cover.

• 1:44:36Tim Ferriss?

  There's boobs.

• 1:44:36Amanda Palmer?

  And full frontal nudity, sorry. Sorry, grandma. Um, uh, one of the things that the Patreon makes possible is my ability to keep my music very cheap for the public, for people who don't have a huge budget to spend on music. Um, so this album, which is clocks in at about 80 minutes, is a dollar on Bandcamp. And you can pay more on Bandcamp if you want, it'll come directly to me because I own my own fucking music. Um, but when you go and if you download this record for a dollar at Bandcamp, keep my patrons in mind because it's their funding that made it possible for me to put a giant, expensive, really well-produced record on Bandcamp for a dollar and feel no pain.

• 1:45:22Tim Ferriss?

  The Army of Medici for the modern artist.

• 1:45:25Amanda Palmer?

  Exactly, yeah, the crowd Medici.

• 1:45:28Tim Ferriss?

  Where can people find you on the interwebs? Say hello. Anything that you'd like to suggest people perhaps take a look at? What's your website?

• 1:45:42Amanda Palmer?

  Well, if I'm gonna send people to me, my community is mostly hanging out on Patreon right now.

• 1:45:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, how do they find you?

• 1:45:50Amanda Palmer?

  Patreon.com/AmandaPalmer, or you could just Google Amanda Palmer Patreon. I have a big website with a lot of information on it that's easy to find, AmandaPalmer.net, and I'm on all the socials at Amanda Palmer. I tend to respond and discuss the most on Twitter. I am trying to wean myself from the evil bloody tit of Facebook.

• 1:46:20Amanda Palmer?

  I'm just not a fan, sorry, Facebook. You're scoring low marks in my book right now, and you have been for a while. And I'm, you know, I'm around, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Tumblr. But chances are, if you want to chat with me, find me, wave something in my direction, I'll see you on Twitter and I'll shout back.

• 1:46:42Tim Ferriss?

  And don't be dicks, people, be nice.

• 1:46:45Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah, just don't be a dick. That's our office, that's our office team logo and mantra, just don't be a dick.

• 1:46:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, try being nice. It's, I'm very lucky that my audience, I feel really blessed with the audience. I've somehow managed to have form around these ideas that I borrow from other people and share and blend together and put out there. They tend to be very, very, very supportive and mostly constructive. Except for that one guy on Twitter today who's like, "Shut up, Farid, go away." And I'm like, "You follow me."

• 1:47:24Amanda Palmer?

  Listen, if everybody loved what you did all the time, I would say you're doing something very wrong.

• 1:47:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that would be

• 1:47:32Amanda Palmer?

  You know.

• 1:47:32Tim Ferriss?

  Cause for greater concern.

• 1:47:34Amanda Palmer?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Tim Ferriss?

  Amanda, this is so much fun.

• 1:47:37Amanda Palmer?

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:47:38Tim Ferriss?

  So lovely to see you again. And is there anything else you would like to say, suggest, ask? Any closing comments before we wrap up?

• 1:47:48Amanda Palmer?

  Uh, I don't think so. I mean, maybe it's actually worth mentioning to your people specifically that I'm starting my own podcast.

• 1:47:56Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:57Amanda Palmer?

  Um, to have conversations mostly with artists about process and about asking and about how we do what we do, but I'm also having conversations with people from every possible field. Um, I talked to David Eagleman, who's a neuroscientist. I'm gonna be talking with people from Planned Parenthood. I'm gonna be talking to social scientists and, um, you know, any, anyone who has anything interesting to share, I, I wanna hunt them down and chat with them. And I'm, I'm calling it the art of asking everything. Um, and I'm, I'm figuring

• 1:48:36Amanda Palmer?

  it out right now, but if you want my voice in your head, if you can handle more, just stay tuned to whatever channels of mine. It will, it will probably be hard to avoid when I launch it.

• 1:48:48Tim Ferriss?

  (laughing) Step into the Palmer verse.

• 1:48:51Amanda Palmer?

  The Palmer verse.

• 1:48:52Tim Ferriss?

  And you shall hear the noise and the news.

• 1:48:55Amanda Palmer?

  There will be no intermission. I'm also gonna start a death metal band. Uh, well, my death metal band will write the theme song for my, for my, uh, Happy Hippie podcast.

• 1:49:05Tim Ferriss?

  (laughing)

• 1:49:06Amanda Palmer?

  (mimicking a drum beat)

• 1:49:08Tim Ferriss?

  Amanda, thank you for making the time.

• 1:49:11Amanda Palmer?

  I think you are an awesome human being, Tim Ferriss. Thank you for existing and doing this.

• 1:49:15Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Amanda. And I, I hope we have many more conversations. We will be having more conversations, in fact. Uh, things coming up. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything we talked about in the show notes, as always, at tim.blog/podcast. Just search Amanda's name and it'll all pop right up. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:49:44Tim 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.

• 1:50:26Tim 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 LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, the go-to tool for B2B marketers and advertisers who want to drive brand awareness, generate leads, or build long-term relationships that result in real business impact. Could be all of the above. I've had Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, on this podcast a number of times, often called the Oracle of Silicon Valley for many different reasons.

• 1:51:07Tim Ferriss?

  And he, among other people and friends of mine, have made me more and more interested in LinkedIn as a platform, as an ecosystem in the last few years. And it's very nuanced. It's very subtle, but can be used in some very powerful ways. With a community of more than 575 million professionals, LinkedIn is gigantic, but it can be hyper-specific. You have access to a very diverse group of people, all searching for things they need to grow professionally. That is explicitly the purpose of LinkedIn. And four out of five users on LinkedIn are decision-makers at their companies. So you can build relationships that really matter, that can drive your business objectives forward, that can also have a high LTV, lifetime value.

• 1:51:52Tim Ferriss?

  LinkedIn has the marketing Tools to help you target your customers with precision, right down to, among other things, their job title, company name, industry, etc. This is important because better targeting equals a message that your customers actually care about. And it also means your advertising is more effective and cost-effective. So, why spray and pray with your marketing dollars when you can be surgical? It just makes sense. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com/TFS. That stands for Tim Ferriss Show. So, that is LinkedIn.com/TFS. Check it out. That's where you can go to get your free $100 ad credit. LinkedIn.com/TFS.

• 1:52:36Tim Ferriss?

  Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, which I've been using probably for about a year now. Peloton is a cutting-edge indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You can also do on-demand, which is what I do, we'll come back to that. So, you don't have to worry about fitting classes into a busy schedule, or making it to a studio or gym with a hectic or unpredictable commute. I, for instance, have a Peloton bike right in my master bedroom at home, and it's one of the first things I do many mornings. I wake up, I meditate for a bit, then I knock out a short 20-minute ride in my undies - hard to do that at the gym - take a shower, and I'm in higher gear for the rest of the day. It's really convenient and has become something that I look forward to. So, you have a lot of options.

• 1:53:20Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:54:05Tim Ferriss?

  You also get real time metrics that you can use to track your performance over time. And that will help, I would say catalyze you to beat your personal best. Now that all sounds good, right? Gamification, yada, yada, yada. I didn't think that it would work for me or in any way incentivize me, but they really 100% hit the nail on the head. I was very, very impressed with how motivating it was. And it worked tremendously to keep me pushing, uh, which quite honestly takes a fair amount. I can get quite lazy, particularly with anything that edges on endurance, which is kind of more than five reps of anything for me. So check it out. Discover this cutting edge indoor cycling bike that brings the studio experience right to your home.

• 1:54:47Tim Ferriss?

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