#411: Richard Turner — The Magical Phenom Who Will Blow Your Mind

Richard Turner — The Magical Phenom Who Will Blow Your Mind | Brought to you by Nulo http://nulo.com/tim and Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/. "Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." — Richard Turner I am very, very excited to introduce this interview, as I've been wanting to meet today's guest, Richard Turner, for almost two years now. I first came across Richard Turner (richardturner52.com https://richardturner52.com/, youtube.com/richardturner52 https://www.youtube.com/RichardTurner52) in the documentary Dealt https://www.amazon.com/Dealt-Richard-Turner/dp/B076HDLY9W/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=dealt+documentary&qid=1582137992&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=7fb6ddc77de663e98a678b6468739411&language=en_US, directed by Luke Korem. I can't remember the last time I finished a documentary, only to want to watch it again immediately afterward. I also can't remember a doc that made me as emotional as Dealt did, pushing me from laughter to tears. It has 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dealt and won the 2017 Documentary Feature Audience Choice Award https://variety.com/2017/film/news/sxsw-2017-audience-award-winners-1202011563/#article-comments at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Everyone should watch it. But back to my guest: Richard Turner is regarded as the best card mechanic and among the best up-close magicians in the world. He has entertained millions of people, including notables like Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Secretary of State Colin Powell, actor Brad Pitt, sports legend Muhammad Ali, and many more. His skill with a deck of cards has been featured on television shows around the world, including a performance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us https://www.cwtv.com/shows/penn-teller-fool-us/, in which Penn Jillette https://tim.blog/2020/01/09/penn-jillette/ admitted, "Richard Turner is one of the finest sleight-of-hand artists who has ever lived. He fooled us with every single move he did!" Note: Toward the end of the interview, you will hear Richard performing card tricks. He did them in front of me, and he absolutely blew my mind. I highly recommend checking out the interview on YouTube, as I made sure to have video from multiple angles for this episode. Just go to youtube.com/timferriss http://youtube.com/timferriss. Not to sound like a mullet-wearing Long Island boy (which I've been), but this footage is simply fucking amazing. Oh, and did I mention that Richard is completely blind? That's right. You're in for a ride, my friends. This episode is brought to you by Nulo http://nulo.com/tim. Our pets bring out the best in us and are you doing your part to bring out the best in them? Nulo http://nulo.com/tim is an independently owned pet food company based in Austin that delivers the very best pet nutrition with high-meat, low-carb recipes for dogs and cats. In fact, it's what I feed Molly, my own best friend. When I switched Molly over to Nulo http://nulo.com/tim a couple of years ago, it not only made an immediate difference in the way she looks — her coat is softer and shinier than ever before — but in how she behaves. I can't imagine feeding Molly anything else at this point. If you have a dog or a cat and you're wondering how much of a difference upgrading their food quality can make, go to nulo.com/tim http://nulo.com/tim and use promo code TIM for 50% off your next trial bag and $10 off Nulo in store with your purchase! * This episode is also brought to you by Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/. Ever since I wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, I've been frequently asked about how I choose to delegate tasks. At the root of many of my decisions is a simple question: "How can I invest money to improve my quality of life?" Or "how can I spend moderate money to save significant time?" Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/is one of those investments. They are a turnkey solution for all of your customer care needs. Their team answers more than 1 million customer service requests each year. They can also interact with your customers across all platforms, including email, phone, social media, text, and chat. Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/ removes the logistics and headache of customer communication, allowing you to grow your business by focusing on your strengths. And as a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off your start-up fees and costs waived by visiting Inktel.com/tim http://www.inktel.com/tim/. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start 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 NuLo Pet Food, an independently owned company out of Austin, Texas that delivers the very best pet nutrition with high meat, low carb recipes for dogs and cats. I am super stoked about this sponsor. I had no idea they were based in Austin. But I found NuLo through a number of friends of mine and veterinarians. It's what I feed my own dog Molly. And when I switched Molly over to NuLo, that's N-U-L-O, a couple of years ago, it not only made an immediate difference in the way she looked, her coat for instance is much softer and much shinier. I could also tell it made a huge difference in how she felt and performed day to day. So I have NuLo all over the place. There's a bag of NuLo about 30 feet away from me in the office where I sometimes feed Molly when she comes here.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  I have NuLo at home. I have NuLo in gallon sized bags for travel. NuLo is always with me and Molly. She loves how it tastes because NuLo Pet Food has a lot of meat in it. And I can't really imagine feeding her anything else at this point. If you have a pup and you've been thinking about upgrading their food quality in 2020, check out nulo.com/tim. That's N-U-L-O.com/tim to see some of Molly's favorite products. By using the promo code TIM, T-I-M, you'll also get 50% off any trial size bag on their site. So two things to remember, nulo.com/tim and then promo code TIM. As good pet parents, it's up to us, it's up to you.

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  Doggy parents, cat parents, to get the nutrition piece right for them. So check out nulo.com/tim and commit to feeding your pets better food this year. They'll love you for it and you'll love what it does for them. So one more time, that's nulo.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:06Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by InkTel. And I've used them personally. Ever since I wrote The Four Hour Work Week, I've been asked over and over again how I choose to delegate tasks, how I do 80/20 analysis, and so on. At the root of many of those decisions is a simple question, actually two questions. Number one, how can I invest money to improve my quality of life? I use that in investing as well. The second, how can I spend a little money or moderate money to save significant time? InkTel is one of those investments. They're a turnkey solution for all of your imaginable customer care needs. I used InkTel during the launch of The Four Hour Body, which was very, very involved, and they provided 24/7 customer service for my Land Rush campaign

• 3:50Tim Ferriss?

  because it was critical for me to take care of every person who purchased my books and participated. This allowed me to focus on the things that I am better at, my strengths, like the marketing plan that we'd worked on for six months, implementing that. InkTel trains their experienced customer service reps to know your business and your products inside and out and make your customers raving fans. They answer more than a million customer service requests every year, and they can do so across all platforms, including email, phone, social media, text, even chat. Leaving your customers with poor service or just mediocre service, which by the way, in a competitive pool is a huge liability,

• 4:30Tim Ferriss?

  long wait times or unanswered messages carries a massive cost and risk to your business. InkTel removes the logistics and headaches of this type of communication, allowing you to focus on your strengths and grow your business. It can be a real competitive advantage, and I see many, many e-commerce companies and tech companies thinking of customer service as a good enough checkbox or an afterthought. And just like Airbnb used design and innovative ways to be a competitor and to win, you can do the same thing with customer service. So as a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off,

• 5:10Tim Ferriss?

  that's a big discount, $10,000 off your startup fees and costs by visiting inktel.com/tim. So check it out. For more info, go to inktel.com, I-N-K-T-E-L.com/tim.

• 5:27Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs. This is your host, Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm very super excited to introduce this interview. I've been wanting to meet today's guest, Richard Turner, for at least two years now. And...

• 5:45Tim Ferriss?

  I really expect that he will blow your mind for a bunch of reasons. I first came across Richard Turner, richardturner52.com, you can find him, youtube/richardturner52, in the documentary Dealt, D-E-A-L-T, directed by Luke Coram. I can't remember the last time, well, I suppose I can, in this case, it was this documentary, but I can't remember the last time prior to that I'd finished a documentary only while the credits are still rolling, wanting to watch it immediately again. I also can't remember a doc that made me quite as emotional as Dealt did, pushing me from laughter to tears. It has 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, won the Audience Choice Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival, yada, yada, yada, everyone should watch it.

• 6:28Tim Ferriss?

  But let's get to my guest. Who is Richard Turner? Richard is regarded as the best card mechanic, we'll explain what that means, and among the best close-up or up-close magicians in the world. He's entertained millions of people, including notables like Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Secretary of State Colin Powell, actor Brad Pitt, sports legend Muhammad Ali, and many, many more. Richard has received all sorts of accolades, won all sorts of awards, including the Close-Up Magician of the Year Award, which is the magic industry's equivalent of the Oscar. His skill with a deck of cards is just, one could argue, unparalleled. Really just incredible. People consider it greatness, grace, it is, it is hard to even comprehend.

• 7:13Tim Ferriss?

  He's been featured on all sorts of television shows around the world, including a performance on Penn and Teller Fool Us, in which Penn Jillette, also a recent guest on this podcast, admitted, quote, "Richard Turner is one of the finest sleight-of-hand artists who has ever lived. He fooled us with every single move he did," end quote. Richard is also a six-degree black belt, and we'll get into all of that and more on the podcast in the conversation you're about to hear. One very quick and important note, towards the end of the interview, you will hear Richard performing card tricks, and he, he walks through it and talks about things as he does it, so you can get a lot just with the audio, but... He did all of this in front of me and absolutely blew my mind. I highly recommend checking out the video that we captured on YouTube as we made sure

• 7:57Tim Ferriss?

  to get multiple angles for this episode. You can find that at youtube.com/timferris, two R's and two S's. And not to sound like a mullet-wearing Long Island boy, which I have been, but this footage is simply fucking amazing. It's incredible. In part because of something I didn't mention, and that is that Richard is completely blind. So, you're in for a ride, my friends. So without further ado, please enjoy my wide-ranging conversation with Richard Turner and the video, which you can find at youtube.com/timferris.

• 8:34Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just gonna start at the beginning. Richard, welcome to the show and thanks for coming to Austin.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Tim, I'm honored to be here. It is very much my pleasure.

• 8:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I was mentioning this before we started recording. I have had you at the top of my list for people I want to spend time with because I find just about everything about you fascinating and have wanted to ask so many questions. And I thought we would start maybe in a place that would be unexpected for people listening. I'm not gonna start way at the beginning. In childhood, we'll probably get there, but let's start with the Magic Castle. What is the Magic Castle?

• 9:15Speaker 03

  The Magic Castle is to magic what the grande opera is to country western music. It's the premium place for magicians to perform around the world. And they have what is the equivalent of the Oscar, the Academy of Magical Arts Awards, AMA Awards. And, but we, it's a 27,000 square foot Victorian mansion built in 1907. And there's, you go in, strictly for adults, 21 or over, must have ID. Back to the old days, you have to have coat and tie. You cannot overdress. If you're underdressed, they don't let you in. They don't like what you're dressed, they don't let you in. And, and it's by invitation only, but it's just a very, very fun venue and place to perform.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  I just got returned from performing at the castle.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Night before last. I just flew it last night.

• 10:07Tim Ferriss?

  You have one of the busiest schedules I've ever heard of and I've met some very, very driven, busy people. The Magic Castle has been this vision in my head, or it was, I should say, for many years, and I had the opportunity to go there for the first time just last year with a member and it just blew my mind to see the variety of skill and the level of skill in the various rooms because there are these these different rooms for different performers and different types of performances. Could you speak to, and I hope I'm getting this name right, Di Vernon?

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, you got it right.

• 10:53Tim Ferriss?

  So who is Di Vernon and how did you first meet?

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Well, Di Vernon, first of all, was born in 1894. He lived to be over 98 years old. My wife, my beautiful wife, Kim, and I threw him his 98th birthday party two months before he passed away. And he was known as the man who fooled Houdini, and that took place 100 years ago this year.

• 11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  100 years ago. And Houdini had a book that he could, if he solved the same trick three times, he could figure it out. Vernon did it for him five times, couldn't figure it out. And so he was known as the man who fooled Houdini and for over a half a century, he was the best in the world with a deck of cards. And there's different types of magic. There's the big, what we call furniture movers, the big illusionists, and most of those things, that type of show, is really money more than talent. You just have to pay $200,000 to buy this big illusion that turns a cat into a person, you know, inside of a cage or whatever. And then there's the parlor magician where the link rings and make eggs come out of their mouth or whatever, something along those lines where a smaller audience, but

• 11:59Speaker 03

  that's called parlor magic. Then there's the close-up magician, who will do stuff right in front of your eyes, like they'll make coins jump from one hand to the other and... Or they'll do card tricks. But the most difficult of all forms of sleight of hand is the work for the card table. The gambling work. And that work is the most closely guarded information of all sleight of hand. Nowadays with the internet, just about everything is exposed. And Vernon, wanting to know about more about the moves of the gamblers, first read a book written in 1902 called Expert at the Card Table by S.W. Erdnase. And nobody knows who Erdnase was. And at that time, the magicians, the nineteen teens and twenties, they, oh, we don't care about

• 12:44Speaker 03

  that book, that stuff's too hard to learn. And Vernon had it mastered by the time he was like 12 years old. And so he spent his life hunting down hustlers. He's the first one that found Alan Kennedy in 1930, 31, who supposedly could deal cards from the middle of the deck, which no one thought that was possible. And so that, and that information was the most closely guarded pieces of sleight of hand that you can get a hold of if you get a hold of it. He had passed on just special people like Charlie Miller and a few others. And he, I met him in 1975. I'll tell you a quick backstory.

• 13:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it doesn't have to be quick.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:28Tim Ferriss?

  Please go ahead.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I was working with a guy named Bob Yerkes, Y-E-R-K-E-S. He was just at my show on Sunday. He's gonna turn 87 next month. He's been in stunts, he's been in stunt business for 73 years. His first movie was in 1947 with Elizabeth Taylor. And he's doubled everybody under the sun, literally thousands of stunts in, on television, thousands of stunts in film. Like the movie Earth, Towering Infernal, or Earthquake, he died seven times in Earthquake. No, died multiple times in Towering Infernal. And on and on, he was on the move recently with Tom Hanks on Angels and Demons. He was the minister that was being burned alive and they forgot to turn the fan on to blow him out.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  And Tom Hanks says, well, at least he didn't have to act, because he wasn't acting, he was screaming, turn the fan, I'm out, I'm hot. Anyway, but anyway, so I was working with him, we were training, it was a show called Circus of the Stars, where we trained celebrities to do circus acts. And I was, for better or worse, I'll just call him my, his gopher. And, but I lived with him and he's a dear, dear, dear friend for a husband for 50, almost 50 years. And And so we were trading for the Circus of the Stars and lending Carter show called Wonder Woman. And I, Di Vernon, heard I could do some very difficult moves with the cards. I just turned twenty-one and I thought, and I was gonna meet him at the Magic Castle.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  And I thought of the night before I had to have a suit to get into the castle. At that time, I couldn't afford a suit. I didn't have a suit. And so I thought, okay, I had my gambling money. I always had a, you know, at that time, stacks of twenties, which was a lot of money for me. And, uh, and so I went to the Northridge Shopping Center, set my deck of cards on a coat rack, started thumbing through coats. The sales guy comes up to me and says, "I'll cut you a high card for that coat." I thought to myself, "This is my lucky day." I said, "Okay, I'll go for that." And he goes, and he backs off and says, "No, no, I'm just kidding." And I said, "Tell you what." I took out two twos and a queen. I said, "Come over to your desk here." I moved him and I said, "If you tell me where that queen is, I'll pay double for the coat I picked out. If you get it wrong, you give it to me for free." And he goes, "Really?" And I said, "Really."

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Well, I threw those cards and darn if you didn't miss it. I said, "Tell you what. I bet the coat against a pair of pants. Give you a chance, get your coat back." And he goes, "Okay." Lost again. I said, "Take what, coat, pants against a shirt and tie." He said, "Okay, but this is the last one." And, uh, he lost again. So I walked out of there, dipped with a brand-new suit, didn't pay a dime. And if I would have known he was gonna, uh, go for it, I wouldn't have picked out the cheapest coat in the place, which was a tan corduroy piece of crap that I still have today because it's how I first met Vernon. And so I still have it as a souvenir. But anyway, so I get to the castle and, um, and he, Vernon, there was two guys in the room.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Di Vernon, and this was in the library, which was separate, closed off to the public. And, uh, and another guy named Tony Giorgio, who's best known as the actor in the movie Godfather. He played Bruno Tuttaglia, which was Vito Colion's toughest head spin. There's a scene in the movie where a guy takes a knife and stabs his hand in the bar. Yeah. The guy with that knife, that was Tony Giorgio. That's Tony. And he was a bust-out man back in the forties and fifties. What does bust-out man mean? A bust-out man is somebody who a casino will have on hand. "Oh, hey, that's Tim Ferriss. He's got some money." "Okay, Tony, take him out fast." So a bust-out man means they're gonna take you down, they're gonna take you down quick, get that money from you.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Or, if it turns out that, "Man, that Tim Ferriss, he was just too lucky." "Okay, Joe, you're out of here. Tony, you're in. Get that money back." And getting back? Means bust you out fast. Using card technique? Yeah, using sleight of hand, using card techniques, exactly. Gambling moves. Whatever, whatever his artifice was. Probably, in that case, a peek with a second deal. Say that one more time? A peek, that was, he would peek the top card, he would know what the top card is, and then he would deal the card under the top card. So you can see that card on top, what's that card? That's five of hearts. Okay, and as, as he would deal to the other players. See, that top card is not moving. It's, for the, for those that can't see what we're doing,

• 17:48Speaker 03

  I'm dealing the cards in slow motion, and the top card is not moving as the second card comes out. But it looks as though it's the top, and like, like here's even with one hand. Now, and of course, when the card's face down, I turn it face down. Now you're watching, and you can't tell that you've been swindled. So he would take him down, and so then he became an actor in the sixties. Yeah. And, um, anyway, so at the table was Di Vernon and Tony Giorgio. And Giorgio was, you know, he was about six foot four. Mean, nasty mafia hitman. I play, I always used to say, "He never had to act, he just played himself, mean nasty mafia hitman."

• 18:28Speaker 03

  And, uh, because we had battles for altogether thirty-eight years, but we battled each other for twenty years. And at first I was no threat, but anyway, I'm showing Vernon my moves. And he goes, Vernon goes, "Well, now that's alright, but, but I don't care how fine you breathe. When you're moving your hand like that, it's unnatural. It's a, it tips you off and every time I did anything, Giorgio, chippiced from the other table, not involved in our little private get-together, would yell, "Won't get the money, won't get the money." And then I'd show him something, "Won't get the money, won't get the money."

• 18:59Tim Ferriss?

  What did he say? Won't, won't get the money?

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Get the money. Well, not get the money, but it was, "Won't get the money." Which is, in other words, it's not good enough for the card table.

• 19:08Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  And so.

• 19:09Tim Ferriss?

  So that's just, that is sleight of hand smack talk.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yes, that's smack talk. Won't get the money.

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  That is like your mama type of line at the card table.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Exactly. Won't get the money. You get a double banger, you're shot twice. And, and so, but Vernon, then I showed him the move I just showed you and that technique. He thought that was kinda clean, it was more natural. And so I remember what he said and I went home and I practiced what he said. "I don't care how much you move your hand, no matter how fine that brief is, it's unnatural action." So naturalness, and that's what I learned from Vernon, naturalness. You have to be natural in your execution. And, and so I practiced it. The next time he saw me, he goes, "Now that's better, that's better." And he took, and he took a liking to me, because he would see that I would put in, I practiced at that time, and this is, and it's not an exaggeration,

• 20:03Speaker 03

  even though I almost wish it was, because I, I would practice average of 14 hours a day. That was my average time practicing. But sometimes it might be only 10 hours, because I spent extra time in the gym, because I was training for some kind of a fight. Or other days, I got up at 6:00 in the morning, went to bed at 3:00, and I might have, may have practiced 20 hours that day. But my average practice time was 20, it was 14 hours. And that was sustained for 26 years, seven days, seven days a week. And Vernon saw this obsession in me, and so he took me on as, well, a student protege. And to cut to the chase, I became the recipient of a century worth of his most guarded card table artifice.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  The techniques that he traveled the world, finding down these hustlers and learning their moves. And, and I still have things today that only he and I know. And I've created things today that only he and I know, and he's not telling anybody. I think it was Benjamin Franklin said, "Three people can have a secret, but you have to kill two of them."

• 21:09Tim Ferriss?

  So, if we talk about your practice, because your practice and work ethic, it struck me when I first saw Delt, it struck me as I've done homework in preparation for this meeting.

• 21:28Tim Ferriss?

  What makes good practice? Because there are people who practice a lot, they put in a lot of hours, but their skills don't improve, or improve much. So, what makes good practice for you?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Very, very, very good question, Tim. First of all, I say, "Practice does not make perfect." Do they say, "Practice makes perfect"? No, practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

• 21:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  You can practice something wrong, when you're done, it's perfectly wrong. And I see it in my industry all the time. They'll practice a second deal in some awkward fashion where, the most common one is a strike second, and I'll give a visual clue. Picture, the card is turned face up on the deck. They'll hold, first of all, usually they hold the deck in real tight, what's called a mechanic's grip, or a real deep grip. And I'll widen up the grip a little bit. And then, when they go to take the card, they'll bypass the card they're taking, so they can hit the second card and deal it out. And this is the standard second deal that you'll see people do. But it has all kinds of tells.

• 22:34Tim Ferriss?

  It has a lot of tells.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  First of all, you're pushing the top card over to receive it with the other hand. So, why is the right thumb bypassing the left thumb? And this because, so there's exposure of the top of the deck, where that second card is, to get a hold of it. That is a totally unnatural action, but you'll see it all the time. And then, you don't have a dead deck. One of Vernon's students, and who became a peer of Vernon's, was a guy named Charlie Miller, who I had the privilege of spending time with. And they grew up all through the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And Miller talks about a dead deck. When you're dealing the top card, everything below it, there's no movement. And so, if there's movement being made,

• 23:19Speaker 03

  when you're taking the second card out, and the top card is going back, You don't have a dead deck. You have movement of two different movements. The second card coming out, the top card going back. Now, watch my second deal. There's, there's no, I'm not crossing the thumbs at all. And my left thumb is, uh, uh, there's no leaking of the card. Right. At the other, other corner. And I'm not going anywhere near the top of the deck. And this, um, that particular second deal, I have practiced. Well, I've done it in front of a live audience about five million times. And in practice, I've done it over a hundred million times. That one move.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  And I, I proclaim, I say that it's probably the most difficult move in all of sleight of hand. Because there's only two, three other people that are getting it down. And one guy's been working on it after he, after he watched my videos for thirty years now. And, uh, but it just takes a long time. But anyway, get off, off a track. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Same thing with, in the martial arts. You know, you throw a sidekick. You know, the people that swoop, they kick up as they go. You lift it and you shoot it in like a, like a, like a blade. Like a pistol. You practice it wrong, you sit there practicing it wrong, and you're done. It's, it's not wrong, it's perfectly wrong. Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Okay, and then, and then there's another thing I, I, I like to say. Um, uh, uh, discipline breeds discipline. Uh, they say, how do you put in time? And when I'm telling people when they want to train or something, I say, the more you do something, the more you can do of it. Discipline breeds discipline. You do something, and then the more you're able to do it, and the better you do it. And so, and then they say, well, I just can't run a marathon. I say, don't run a marathon. Right now, I want you to just walk down the distance of two houses and walk back. Make it so easy, you can't talk yourself out of it. The next day, walk the distance of three houses, come back.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Then the next day, jog down the distance and come back. And then eventually, your body starts adapting to the habit. And those endorphins start getting released. And then after a certain period of time, it's like, will you get back in the house? Does it have to be a marathon? You know, so discipline breeds discipline. I love that. And perfect practice makes perfect.

• 25:45Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about your physical practice, the training. And I have so many notes here in front of me. It's an embarrassment of riches. As I have written down here, CBS producer David Rubin, Turner's life story is too incredible for fiction. And there's a lot to that statement, we'll get back to. You mentioned the stunt work. You've flown on a trapeze, tightrope walks, you have...

• 26:12Speaker 03

  High falls.

• 26:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, high falls, you've done it.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Cliff diving.

• 26:15Tim Ferriss?

  You've done an incredible amount of physical cultivation. And I have a line here. So on March 5th of this year, you will have not missed a workout in 49 years.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  True.

• 26:29Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Why is training important to you? Why would you go to the trouble, as I have down here? In the 70s, there were no gyms when you were on tour. So you traveled with a wooden briefcase with 120 pounds of weights inside. Sounds like a workout in and of itself. Why is it so important to you?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Well, part of it is when I was growing up, I was always the second smallest or second smallest in my class. And I would get beat up or I'd get pushed around. And then we watched, and then we haven't really got off on this point yet.

• 27:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  At nine years old, I started losing my sight.

• 27:10Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  My sister Lori, who I call my genius sister because she's brilliant, and we both got scarlet fever. I was nine, 1963, she was five. And that caused, for me, within a matter of moments, I'm fourth grade, watching this chalkboard. And all of a sudden, it just went blurred. It was like someone took the chalkboard and smeared the chalk.

• 27:36Tim Ferriss?

  It was that sudden?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  It was that sudden. And the same thing with my sister. One minute, she went from full sight to legally blind. And so now, we were forced in second, third, and fourth grade to watch a movie called Lord of the Flies. And I to this day don't know why they made kids watch a horrifying movie like that. And what it was about was a group of kids stranded on an island. And a group of boys, they were all like between probably eight to twelve years old, somewhere in that age frame. And there was one boy called Piggy. And he was a chubby boy, and he had to wear glasses, and he had asthma.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  And they found out that they could use his glasses to make a fire. And because he was chubby, they called him Piggy. And so he was picked around, and he had asthma, and then when at ten years old, I found out that I had asthma, all of a sudden I'm just definitely sick. Because we were very poor, our house literally was a structure sat on a ditch. About a six foot, a foot ditch, and my dad poured concrete down in that ditch to make my bedroom. And during the winter, I'd, my bed would have four, five, six inches of water under it. Which means mold, and I was definitely allergic to molds, and I would just get extremely ill. And so I was, now I'm blind, had asthma, and I was skinny.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  He was chubby, Piggy was blind asthma, and he was chubby. And so I thought, I don't wanna be a piggy, I don't wanna be a coward. And I was afraid I was gonna be a coward, because I was afraid, and I was afraid of getting beat up. And I was afraid when I'm walking down the street, a guy named Leland, you know, picks a fight with me and, and, and I get hurt. Doug Ferguson beat me up, and others, anyway, so I, I didn't want that. And then there was another show that affected my, what kind of caused me to go off the charts the other direction was called Lost in Space. And there was a little boy on there, Billy Mummy, played Will Robinson. And there was the man on the show, Dr. Smith.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Who was the man, the coward, hiding behind a rock while this goofy looking monster made out of paper mache would come walking up and Billy Mummy would save the day, the little kid. And I thought, he's brave, and I was afraid of turning out like Dr. Smith. And then the third thing was Tarzan movies. You'd see them walk across a, a tree spanning two cliffs that maybe a hundred feet down, thousand feet down. And then there was always the guy that'd turn around and say, whatever you do, don't look down. And then the next guy would be, the coward would look down and, ah! Goes screaming to his death. And I was afraid I'd be that coward that would look down and and and panic and fall down.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  So I started just taking things to the outer limits as far as pushing myself. And I and and growing up, I had three, three movies on the other side that affected me. One was Ben Hur, starring Charlton Heston. There's a scene in the movie where he's pulling the oars with his big bulging biceps. And that image of strength, you know, made me want to be stronger. I want to be strong. I want to, I want to be strong like him. And another one was The Green Hornet, starring Bruce Lee as as Kato.

• 31:06Tim Ferriss?

  Kato.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  And, you know, and I thought, I want to kick like Kato. And and the third one was was the one that really probably set my life on fire was James Garner in Maverick. He was the cool, slick gambler, and I want to be a card shark. So those are the three things, but that's really what started me off on taking things to the extreme. Whatever someone else did, whatever they benched, I was going to bench more. Whatever their split was, I got to where I could do a 200 degree split. In fact, there's even video out there, I'm stretched across two chairs and I'll touch my head to the floor.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  And so anyway, I always, I just had this thing of whatever someone else did, I had to top it. Not that I was able to top everybody, which I was not, but I, and the top people in the top 1% and I've trained with some very world-class athletes, you know, and I either trained them or trained with them. And and people had a hard time, frankly, keeping up with me.

• 32:12Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, you're you're still an extremely fit guy. You told me before we started recording that you worked out of five this morning.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you understand this because you're an athlete yourself.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  You know, that's, that's another thing I, I, I do. Cause it, it wakes me up. It gets, it gets the adrenaline going, the endorphins shooting and, and uh, cause I had, I had shows all week last week, every day. And uh, and I flew in last night at nine A, at nine P M. And I've thought, okay, I need to be on my, on my best game. Cause I'm meeting Tim Ferriss and we're gonna be talking for two hours. And I have been, my voice was already worn from all the shows I've done. And uh, what's the best way? First person says, rest, relax, get ready. Uh uh. I was in the gym and then all of a sudden I started at five and I went, it's eleven minutes after seven.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  I've been in here for two hours and eleven minutes. My ride's gonna be here in forty-nine minutes. Dash to the, down to fish tacos that my wife made. She makes the best fish tacos anywhere on the planet, my wife Kim. And I down those things and then shower and here we are.

• 33:22Tim Ferriss?

  And here we are. And uh, as, as you mentioned, we, we hadn't covered and hadn't talked about cited uh, or the, the other CBS, the uh, is it?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

• 33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  That's French and English is Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  Especially in Texas.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:44Tim Ferriss?

  And uh, and I didn't, and I, and I didn't bring it up earlier very deliberately because I want people to understand that your incredibly deft technical mastery of what you do stands on its own head to head against anyone, period, full stop. So I wanted to make that.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 34:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's true. And that's certainly been recognized by many people. And I, so I didn't want to, I certainly want to chat about the, the Charles Bonnet Syndrome. But I didn't want to lead with it. But, but since, since it came up, uh, and, and uh, we, we chatted very briefly about this before we started recording. Could you please talk to me about the red and blue spectrum? Because I've heard you and I've read you say that you can see things or you see things that other people don't see.

• 34:51Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd love to just know what your sort of experience of reality is like.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  My world that I live in.

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  Your world?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. First, let me explain what CBS Chalobine Syndrome. It's first documented in seventeen sixty by Charles Chalobine. And it's a very rare condition. And Dr. Oliver Sacks, he's a bestselling author, and I'm sure you-

• 35:12Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing author.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm sure you're familiar. He has two books, one called Hallucinations, the other one called The Mind's Eye, where he goes into specifics on CBS. And he's probably documented more cases than anybody. And up till nineteen ninety, there was only six documented cases.

• 35:28Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, only six up to nineteen ninety?

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Nineteen ninety, uh-huh. And then he's documented a few others.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  And I'm the most extreme case on the planet. Most people, first of all, let's kind of give you a picture view of what CBS is, Chalobine. And that's where a person that's blind and should see nothing will see sporadic colors or splatters or pieces of images or just some visual things, almost like hallucinations.

• 35:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  And they're sporadic. In my case, it's one hundred percent twenty-four seven. And it's not just part of my vision. I see a one hundred and sixty degree kaleidoscope of beautiful, vivid colors, patterns, shapes, every subconscious image you could imagine. And I don't see them in the back of the brain like when you're dreaming or imagining. I look at them. I see them in front of me. I see them in external space, just like you're seeing me in external space.

• 36:32Tim Ferriss?

  They're like an object that you perceive.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  There's something. I'm looking at it. Right now, I'm in the blue spectrum. And to explain the difference between blue and red, I have a neuroscientist that was doing some, interviewing me for some projects and stuff. And he said the red spectrum, which is more geometric shapes, it's everything is, first of all, there's a grid. It's usually a grid like layers of bricks. And they're always perfectly aligned and they're perfect rectangle bricks laid out just like a brick. This is in the red or in both? This is the red. This is the red. Okay, and then it's always maroon, which is my favorite color, one of my favorite color in the red spectrum. So the brick, what would be the gray mortar is actually maroon.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  And then the red bricks, and in those bricks are all, every geometric shape, circles, squares, triangles, stars, just every geometric shape you can imagine. And in those shapes will be any, every subconscious image that's floating around in my, in my brain. Okay, that's the red spectrum. He said that's the, if I remember, that's the lower part of the brain. And, um, and then the blue spectrum, which is, I call it the right brain, the analytical. The other is the blue spectrum, which is very artistic. There's no random, it's not, it's totally random. If you picture, I call it like breast strokes, breast strokes. I like breast strokes. Well, but there's only two breasts that I'm allowed to stroke. And they belong to Kim. Okay.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  And I don't want any slaps from you. Okay, so. All good. Brush strokes is what I. Brush strokes, yeah. I guess you can see where my mind is right now. I just got in a week, week, week in front of my beautiful wife. Okay.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  So breast, I did to get brush strokes. I've been making Freudian slips all, all week. And the more Freudian, the better it is. So, so in the blue, you have these brush strokes. Brush strokes, and then, and then royal blue to blue to turquoise blue to sky blue to emerald green to lime green, all the way down that, that, that, that spectrum. And they're just random strokes and, and then floating around is, like I said, every subconscious image you can imagine. And just picture yourself underwater in a pool with the light coming in and the light spectrum breaking down like a prism. Right.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Breaks down the light spectrum. So all these colors just floating around is, all the images are two dimensional, but they're layered three dimensionally. If you can picture that, so. Like panes of glass. Yes, it's just back and forth, your depth, forward. And, and the thing about it is I can take any particular image. Um, and I, I probably, I'm, I'm, I won't get slapped, but she might go again. Like I take a picture, a image of my beautiful wife in her bikini. And I can, you know, take it, zoom it in, rotate it, you know, or, or where I use it most is if I'm create, uh, designing, I, I built, designed and built my own homes. And, or like a patio deck.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  And my wife Kim will tell you, I'm sitting in my, my chair and I'm watching in full three dimension. Like virtual reality, I basically live in virtual reality. And so my whole, my, my spectrum is my own computer. So I wanted to design a, a, a deck and I built this three level deck. And I would say, okay, I need a four by twelves, post that, four by twelve across there and then that two by six is the anchor in there. And you'll watch me looking back and forth, engineering this giant projects with a giant project with a thousand cuts. It was three levels, stairways, hanging swings, built in, uh, flower, flower beds. And, um, without a single piece of paper. And I'd tell my dad, okay, he was my cutter.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  I said, this board has to be one hundred ninety-two and a quarter inches. And, and I, and my dad is a genius. My dad was a worked, uh, well, he was one of my, my role models. But, uh, but I can't tell him or my wife what I'm going to do because I can't explain a thousand cuts. What I'm doing is this all in here. And so then we'd start putting it together and then he'd watch this whole thing come together. He goes, now I understand what you say, what you were talking about doing. So that's, uh, one of the ways that I'll use it. And probably the thing I use it all mostly, uh, is like I want to remember phone number. I can write the number down in the air. I'll see it floating in the air, just like you'd see it on a computer screen. My mind takes a picture of it and I have what's called an adetic memory and then I just files away. And I, I bring it back up.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Or, uh, would I practice it with cards? I will, and I do this every time I'm at a restaurant or when I'm people and I, I'll have the table and I'm watching them move and I'm analyzing something I'm doing and I'll see it. And my mind will create the image and it's not flesh like you have. It's more of a conglomeration of all kinds of, of, um,

• 41:36Speaker 03

  geometric shapes or images to create the image of an arm.

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  The image of the cards, so it's not flesh and blood colored the same way you would see it. But I will see the thing, the image of the constructed within my mind, what I'm looking at. And then I'll analyze it and I'll be in the, and I'll see everything going on. Yet there's a solid object between me and what I'm looking at.

• 42:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  But yet, here's the interesting thing, if I turn like this, can't do it.

• 42:07Tim Ferriss?

  If you turn your head?

• 42:08Speaker 03

  If I turn my head, I have to be looking at the object. Like my medicine cabinet is an example, I have a friend who's a writer. He thought this was interesting. My medicine cabinet, I'm going, where is that camp of phoenique? And I see everything in my medicine cabinet, I'm going down, ah, there it is. And I'm seeing everything, yet the door's closed.

• 42:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Okay, but now if I turn like this way, I have to see it in my mind. I can't see it in front of me.

• 42:32Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Isn't that kind of interesting?

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's fascinating.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  And, but anyway, so I, I, I consider it a real blessing that I have this strange condition. And, cause I use it all the time.

• 42:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  And, like I said, I, I, I consider myself very, very blessed. And, and within seconds, you know, I can shake someone's hand and I usually I can tell their height, weight, um, characteristics about them and my mind will create an image of what I think they look like. And I'm sometimes I'm totally out in left field, but, um, it'll create my own impression of that person. And then when they're talking, I will see some strange looking conglomeration, mouth moving, um, even though it's not necessarily flesh colored, but it, or flesh looking or human looking.

• 43:24Tim Ferriss?

  But it's a representation?

• 43:25Speaker 03

  But it's a representation, yeah, of movement and motion.

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if you think about it also, for those people who are sighted, I mean, what they are perceiving, they consider reality, but it's, it's, they have their own lens, you have your own lens. And it's, it's, they're, they're both representations in a way, if that makes sense. And.

• 43:48Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted to ask a few follow-up questions with the the adidic memory, the photographic memory. Is that something that you had partially or fully before losing your sight? Or is it something that was developed over time? A bit of both?

• 44:04Speaker 03

  It was something I had beforehand. I remember when I was five years old in kindergarten. And we were finger painting class. And I had a picture of a National Geographic image that I saw of a seascape. And so all these other kids are just doing their finger painting, their nose and their ears and their hair and their table. And I come up with this seascape. And to this, to this day, what is it, 60 years later, over 60 years later, I can still see the exact thing that I created 60 years later. And it was, you know, it started off with the the ground and then I had seaweed. No, sorry, I touched your deck.

• 44:44Tim Ferriss?

  God forgive me.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Okay. And seaweed going up and there would be in this corner, I had a jellyfish with the things coming down and a shark in the middle and just different things that I that I replicated from an image I saw in a National Geographic book. And so from ages five, six, seven, eight, I was the best artist in the school. And I could, like I said, see a picture and I could pretty much replicate it. And, and then the problem, and then when I, you know, nine and I had scarlet fever, then I started losing that ability to paint and draw.

• 45:23Tim Ferriss?

  With, with, that must have been, that must have been really difficult, I would imagine. I mean, how?

• 45:33Speaker 03

  That was very difficult. And that was probably where some rebellion took place. I was shipped off to a special school where they had what was called a VH room back then, visually handicapped. And now you say visually impaired, you know, politically, much more polite than visually handicapped. And I hated the word handicapped. And I despised the word blind when I was, you know, had to go to the school. My sister Lori, she only went there one year. She got, she rebelled so much, she said, put me back in a regular school. She refused to continue to go. But my vision was worse than hers at the time. And so she was able to get away with it, I was not.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  And so, at the school, the best artist was a girl named Sharon Coleman. And she was the best artist, where I was always the best artist at Naranja, in first, second, third, and fourth grade. Now all of a sudden, nobody knows who I am, nobody cares. I'm Sharon, she's the one that does the best artwork. And so, there was a guy in the VH department, there was about a dozen of us, and we'd go to, it was a regular school, but they had a VH department, Visual Handicraft Department. And one of the guys in the VH room was a guy named Ruben Corral, who, because he was from Mexico, was like twice my size, and he was two, three years older than I was. But we were in the same grade, because he didn't have the opportunity to go to a special school.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  And he would just scribble. He couldn't draw at all. So, and he got, "Hey, look at that, Ruben's stuff good." So he got attention for just doing crap. And so I started doing crap. I started showing my skills with the best I could. I started going the other direction and just scribbling. Although I did do one three-dimensional project, that Dr. Sam Cumby, who was the teacher. I did a sculpture, and I still have it in my office, you can still see it today, of a Buddha monk, and a bald head, and anyway. And it was all, what would the word?

• 47:43Speaker 03

  It was all properly proportioned. And I got an A in that, for that project. And that's one of the few things that I do, I still have from that. But that was a three-dimensional thing. Why did you keep that? Because I got an A. Because it was, actually... Not saying you shouldn't, I'm just curious. Because I did a good job, but here's, that's also an astute question on your end. Because I, there was other pieces I did. And in high school, I did a collage, and...

• 48:14Speaker 03

  And I I was just rushing through my art classes because I could I could do stuff. And if you got seven and a half points, you got an A. And I could have my art projects done within the first month of the semester. And I already got my A, so I could mess around after that. And I did this one project, and I don't even know what was to this day, I don't know what was so good about it. But we had a my teacher was Mr. Swennis. His assistant, don't remember his name, but he went to San Diego State University. He took my art project and entered it into a statewide college competition. And it got first place. And he gave me the ribbon, the blue ribbon for first place.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  And they just put it on display in the hallway at the at the high school. Yeah, on these little slide with the locked doors, little locked windows and they. And and then when I said, oh, can I get my art project back? And they went there and it was it was gone. No breaking, there was no glass broken. So we we figured the the student that claimed it to be his that entered it obviously went off with it. But but other projects after that.

• 49:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Um, I started, I would I'd get my A, build my project, you know, especially the three dimensional ones. I was good at. And then I would purposely sabotage them because you fire them in a kiln.

• 49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  And and if you have something that has air in it, it's completely sealed, it'll blow up. So I'd make my project, get my grade on it. And then when I'd go have it fired, I'd purposely put in either a ball of clay with a hole in it.

• 49:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  With sealed air in it or build something in it. So when it was fired, it'd blow up.

• 49:52Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you do that?

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Because I just I I I was I was angry that I lost. I was I was losing my vision and losing my ability to paint and draw. And so this was just one of the ways I was being ornery and um just rebellion against my my loss.

• 50:09Tim Ferriss?

  So I I would love to ask you about, and this is from the very first moment that I saw the documentary. I've I've wanted to ask you about anger and rage. Because one of my first thoughts upon watching the documentary, which was very emotional for me, to be honest, was that any woman who ever dates me should have to watch this movie because it'll give her a better understanding of how consumed in a different for different reasons. But consumed I was by. Anger, or driven by it at the very least. How did you, how did you relate to anger? Or what purpose did it serve for you then? And how do you relate to it now?

• 50:56Tim Ferriss?

  And that's a big question. So you can break it up into any.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Segments, yeah. At the time, I tried to just describe how I dealt with some of my anger. And that was self-destructive. And I had gotten into other self-destructive behavior. And I, it was late 60s, beginning 70s. And so for about three years, drugs was a part of that as an act of rebellion. And purposely not trying to do my best. The only thing I did, worked at, worked at was cards. And I would play cards with people and I would take their money.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  And my drug, my drug dealing partner named Doug Ferguson, who died from hepatitis from dirty needles. And he would have me, he would have me play cards against other drug dealers and to cheat them or trick them out of their money. And that's how we, we supported ourselves. And we, well, we made our money to buy and sell.

• 51:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  And so that was kind of, actually, that was kind of a power, the only power that I had. The rest of the time, I was laughed at.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  And there would be times where we would be doing something, drugs. And then when I'd come, come out of a stupor or blur, they'd be laughing at me. And, and they were, they were, at first, they were the only people that accepted me. Cause the, you know, I was.

• 52:27Tim Ferriss?

  This is the drug dealing crowd?

• 52:28Speaker 03

  The drug, the drug crowd accepted. They don't, we don't care if you can't see, you know, come on over. And where the, the regular students were, were more discriminating towards some of us in the V H rooms. And then, and so the drug people, they didn't care. But then when it got right down to it, it was more of, I was more of a tool of, of their, of amusement for them. And. Then I met a guy and now we get off on another little tangent here. There was a verse in the Bible that said, "God created us in His image."

• 53:11Speaker 03

  And that always fascinated me, in His image. And so I thought, okay, I'm in the image of God. What did God take dirt and made a person? God took dirt and made eyeball. God took dirt and made a brain. God took dirt and made a bird. And I remember watching an episode of Kung Fu and they said, "Who will teach me about the universe? The universe will teach you." And I thought, well, that's like saying the wall would teach me. But who built the wall? Who built the Statue of Liberty? It wasn't the Statue of Liberty, didn't build the Statue of Liberty. So then I started thinking, what? Me in the image of God, okay, God created a bird.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Man took dirt and created a jet. God took dirt and made eye. We took dirt and made a camera. They're staring at us all over the place. God took dirt and made a brain. We took dirt and made a computer. What's the chipping of who's? They sand dirt. Just about everything in this room, in one fashion or another, came from dirt. And so I thought, okay, that means I can create. And so I went another direction. I got heavily into the martial arts. Started in March 5th, 1971. And my karate instructor was a man named John Murphy.

• 54:37Tim Ferriss?

  May I pause you for one second? So what precipitated that 90-degree turn or that 180? Was there a conversation or a particular day? Or what catalyzed?

• 54:52Speaker 03

  What catalyzed that turn was I was with some friends and they wanted to watch a movie called Fantastic Voyage, which was a movie about shrinking down a ship, a submarine, and then sending it into a guy's body to go into his heart to try to fix it. Okay? And they said, "Hey, Fantastic Voyage is on. Let's get some angel dust and watch the movie." And then they end. And so I, I realized, I gotta stop this. And there was something out there saying, you need to stop it, or you're gonna end up dead like Billy McHome. And I had a half a dozen, well, that's a dozen friends who have now OD'd and were dead.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  And, and I thought, if I don't stop this, I'm gonna be next. And I realized, I need some help. Anyway, so I went to, I went to these people at this park, Wales Park, and I asked them if they had any angel dust. They said, we have something better. I said, what's that? They said, a relation with the creator of everything you see. I said, you mind if I sit down and tell me what you know? And they're the ones that told me that we're not here by accident. We're here by design. And if there is a creator. And so it was at that moment that I said, I was gonna change my direction.

• 56:05Tim Ferriss?

  Turn around. And then you mentioned the martial arts.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 56:09Tim Ferriss?

  And John Murphy.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  That was, that was, that was, I'm a very, I can, every moment of my life is like a, a video I can watch and pin on every, any exact image or moment. And that was February 13th, 71. You know, three weeks later, you know, March 5th. My brother, who was seven years younger than me, he was nine, and he was taking karate. And, and I wanted to take karate because I was tired, I would get, I'd get beat up. I, I'd get off on a little tangent. I entered another art competition when I was 11. And I was, I had to have my nose like two inches from the canvas as I painted these three vases, vases, with proper shadow lights coming in.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  It got first place. These two boys didn't like it. This blind kid got first place. And they called me Mr. Magoo. There was a cartoon out that time, starring Jim Bakus, called Mr. Magoo. It was this kind of this goofy, sight impaired person that just went through life jolly, just missing trains and planes, trains and automobiles. And that was me. And so they would say, they'd put the bird in front of my face and say, hey Magoo, how many fingers am I holding up? And while I was distracted, his friend picked the wallet out of my back pocket, then dangled it in front of my face, said, "Hey, Magoo, got any money?" And when I grabbed for my wallet, he then threw it over my head to his friend behind me in a cruel game of keep away. And they kept, every time I turned around, grabbed it, they'd just keep going back and forth over my head.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  And then finally, one of them started literally slapping me across the cheeks with my own wallet, saying, "Got any money, my blind boy?" And the other kid jumped on my back, drove me to the ground, kicked me in the ribs, and they ran off laughing, saying, "Thanks for the hot dog, Magoo." Because I had three dollars in there. For me, three dollars was a ma- that was all my entire life savings, card play and everything all rolled up into three bucks. And so I was so upset about that. And so that jumps forward to, uh, the martial arts, is that where we went? Yeah. And, um, and, uh, anyway, so my brother was taking karate,

• 58:22Speaker 03

  and so I wanted to go down, and they, they gave him warning, "Well, you know, this guy can't see." And Murphy, he didn't care if you're blind, deaf, or dumb. He beat, he beat everyone equally. He was my sensei. Sensei John Murphy. He was a year ahead of Chuck Norris. He was a class of fifty-seven. Norris was started in fifty-eight. And he opened, Murphy opened up his school in Tijuana in nineteen sixty. And he was the first white guy, who was called white guy Caucasian, he was Irish, to get a black belt in Japan, um, in this particular system, Wado Kai, which is a kind of a cross between shodokan and taekwondo, where, you know, it combines hands and feet, where shodokan, six shodokan, which is the number one style, was really mainly hands.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  Anyway, he, um, said, "We'll take him, we'll take him." And at first, he told him, "Don't hurt him, and the girl, at first, and the girls. I'd get beat up by the girls. I'd be get beat up by the old ladies. Ladies that we were, Noel, who would be the driver, you know, old enough to be my mother." And it was all I could do to keep from, ended up on the, ending up on the floor. And so I realized, "Okay, I gotta, I gotta start."

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Getting better at this and at that time I weighed one hundred and ten pounds and I had my full height of five nine and Murphy said, okay, I want you to start taking, uh, you need to start lifting weights because you got to put some meat on those bones. So I started punching, pushing weights and I went to Gene Fisher's gym and Fisher, um, he held the world's record for the curl at that time, nineteen sixty-three, two hundred and twenty-one pounds, uh, two hundred and twenty-one pounds recorded and two hundred and twenty-six unrecorded. And, and of course, he was in the two hundred pound category. And so at that time I weighed a hundred and thirty, well, a hundred and thirty pounds. I got to a hundred and thirty pounds and a hundred and thirty pounds, I could pull down two twenty and he would have to pull me down, lock me in, do my reps, lift me back up.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  I could, uh, I was about two fifty on the bench at that time at a hundred and thirty pounds. And, uh, um, and, and then Murphy would say, push me to the point where I could do five hundred pushups in twelve minutes, nine seconds, which is my record, but it usually is five hundred pushups, maybe fifteen minutes, which, um, was actually world, world-class time, record at that time.

• 1:00:42Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think I could do five hundred pushups in fifteen days.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know that is a bluff on your end. Everybody out there that just listened to Tim say that. Tim is an athlete. Tim is probably just as crazy as I am. He's being modest right now. I'm just telling you because he doesn't want to speak for himself. Listen to what I'm saying, everybody. Tim, I, I felt Tim out when we first got together and, and I mean that in a nice way. Check those forearms, his forearms. Popeye, I know jealous. Popeye, you're jealous. Olive oil, he's over here.

• 1:01:16Tim Ferriss?

  So five hundred pushups. Thank you for saying that.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but average would be fifteen.

• 1:01:20Tim Ferriss?

  Earning, earning the twenty that I slipped you earlier before the recording.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  The world record at the time was nineteen, twenty, nineteen hundred in hours. So I was world, I was world-class time, uh, you know, fifteen in, uh, in one quarter of the time, uh, one fourth and quarter of the time. So it was, and then, um, and that's when I'd travel around with that, uh, briefcase with a hundred, uh, twenty pound, twenty pounds, uh, in dumbbells that would be broken apart, put together on the road, do my exercises. And so on. Anyway, so then Murphy says, you, he need more weight. And so he said, I want to take vitamins, vitamins, everything. So I started taking vitamins. And he said, protein powders. So I've from for the past fifty years, almost forty nine years. Every morning I'd throw everything under the, I even throw my vitamin tablets in the blend and blend them up with the, with the protein powder.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  And then I came up with the best drink for, if you wanna, you have two choices. Burn up or work out like a madman. And I call it Liquid Hell. All right. And what it is, you take water as your base. Yeah. And I'd put it in Shift's Brew yeast, which really is tasty, tastes bad. Yeah. I put a half a banana for potassium and three to four to six jalapeno peppers. Blend it up and it, it, you had two choices. You either worked out or you just, sweats just started pouring out your head. And my, my workout partner, Jim Blowers, who, who you probably saw and dealt, he was the one that was talking about riding on the back of my motorcycle, telling me where to go.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  And he said, when he first started college, I said, okay, you have to have some Liquid Hell. And the first time he did, he threw up in the sink. And I said, you're not wasting that Liquid Hell. You drank the rest of that. And so he got it down and it, and, and he couldn't go through a final without having his Liquid Hell because it stimulated his brain and his body. Anyway, so, uh. But it's not for sissies. I'll just say that. Anyway, so that's what I would drink to, to just boost the, the energy level. And, uh, anyway, so I, I finally put on some weight. And then I remember nineteen eighty is when I broke a hundred, I broke a hundred and sixty,

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  got to a hundred and sixty pounds. And then I kept pressing and I got up to, I, I worked out with at, uh, Doug McNoly, who was Mr. Universe at his place. And, uh, um, he had, I got up to three forty on the bench. That's where I topped out at. And I weighed in at one sixty eight. And, and today, when I got my first black belt, my first degree black belt, and Murphy wanted the hardest test, and it was considered the hardest test at the time. You had to fight a ten round bout with a fresh fighter each round, ten three minute rounds. And he didn't care about, he didn't want to deal with lawsuits.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  So most of the testing and training took place across the border of San Diego and T1. So that's where his school, he had to school in the States and another main branch.

• 1:04:19Tim Ferriss?

  Quick question for you. Is it true that you were offered an honorary black belt?

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:25Tim Ferriss?

  And you did not accept?

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  No, to get my first belt, I had to fight one round, three minutes and plus all the katas. And the thing about katas, because of my adetic memory, I could memorize them in one day.

• 1:04:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and in fact, when I, when I got my fourth degree black belt, I had a six degree black belt kata that I learned in one day. The guy went through it and then the next thing he sees it on film, he goes, "I can't believe you did it." We just, you just, I just showed that to you, blah, blah, blah, you know, just days before, you know?

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  And for those people who don't know, kata is a predetermined sequence of moves that you perform alone.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Exactly, doing punches, kicks, blocks, counters, and yeah, it's like a martial arts dance.

• 1:05:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right, so a six degree black belt kata would be like someone being shown a sort of extremely complex halftime performance at the Super Bowl dance routine and then being able to replicate it shortly thereafter.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Perfectly, perfectly explained, exactly, Tim. And so I get the katas and all that stuff down overnight, right off the bat. It was the fighting because to let you understand how I was seen at the time. Cause I had some vision at that time, my teens and twenties. My vision was measured at 20 over 400, 20 over 450 with no center vision. Cause my macula, which is the center of the eye, was gone. Okay, so there's no macula, that's your forward vision. So if you just picture yourself, there's a hat in front of your face. Wherever I turn my head, there's a hat blocking that part of vision, okay? With me? Out of the corner of my eye was 24, 450. So 2200 is legally blind.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  2050 is, you have to have at least 2050 to drive. So out of the corner of my eye, that's where I'd see the images or shadows of my opponent. And so I'd always be looking at you like cockeyed.

• 1:06:21Tim Ferriss?

  I was wondering about that because I noticed that in the footage from the documentary.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, yes.

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, got it. So you're looking at your peripheral vision.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Yes, because I had no forward vision at all. And that's how I know when I'm looking at people at that time. Now I have no vision at all.

• 1:06:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  But at that time, if I couldn't see anything, I knew I was looking right at you.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Which was... Anyway, so because my first belt, yellow, was one fight. Green belt, I had five two-minute rounds, five rounds with a fresh fighter, two-minute rounds. And on a scale of one to 10, I trained, I practiced, and I thought, okay, I figure it's gonna be maybe a four, five, or six. It turned out to be a 20. It was beyond my worst nightmare. And it was August 2nd, 1972, and it was over 100 degrees outside. And our dojo was in Tijuana, as I said. And it was a solid block, brick, cement block building.

• 1:07:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  No windows, no air conditioning, not even a fan.

• 1:07:28Tim Ferriss?

  Ugh.

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Wood floor, scratched-up wood floor. And whenever they would have tests, all the, it was like blood sports, like cockfights.

• 1:07:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  And so all the sadistic people would come out to watch whenever they hear that the gringos are gonna be coming up and there's gonna be some fights. And so John Douglas was testing for his black belt that day, and I was testing for my green belt. And I was the, I was the pre-show before the big show.

• 1:07:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right. The warm-up act.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  I was the warm-up act. And so I get out there thinking, and it was because we were all crammed into these little things. The humidity factor was in the 90s.

• 1:08:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  So before I even started, I'm pouring...

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  I was gasping for air as soon as I did my first set of caddo.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  Then I did my defense moves. I was already gasping. Then I start my first round and right before we started, Murphy's. The rule was we would respect each other's head. If you don't hit me in the head face, I won't hit you in the face. Bodies, open target, no limit. Okay, groin shots, everything. We would respect each other's knees. No knee shots. Everything else was open. If you hit me in the face, then the face becomes an open target. And so, um, Murphy said, now if these guys start hitting you in the face, don't think about it. Just keep fighting. And at that time I thought, what? I thought we were gonna mark our shots to the face. And within the first three, first few seconds of the first round, bam, bam, bam, three shots, bam, bam, bam, right in my face.

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  And I'm going, oh my God, that, you know, I'm, I was fighting for my life because they didn't like us gringos down there. And everything was just set in, you know, discriminated against. They had the black clam, which were the black fighters, Black Federation and the, and the, and the Mexican fighters and the gringos.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  And, uh, and so I, you know, the first round, I'm just casting for air. Second round, this guy watched the Bruce Lee movie of Enter the Dragon. I know it was before that Fist of Fury where he does a step up heel hook, spins around with the other heel hook. And I catch the one, like, wow, I blocked that. Boom, only get nailed with the, with the other one coming around the other way. And third round, this guy would like knees. I kept getting knees in the groin. Fourth round, um, the guy was even stands, he switched stances on me, grabbed my front hand, went right by me and bam, right in my left eye, caught an Orozco right hand punch. And it pretty much knocked me out. And now, now I see enough, I'm just seeing stars. And Murphy says, wipe off the blood. Don't think about it. Keep fighting.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  And I'm just holding myself up against the bathroom and I could, I couldn't even hold my hands up because at that, by this point. And, uh, so then the fifth round was probably my best round because I was really a standing, I was just a standing. I, I was virtually unconscious. And then they yelled, Rosemary's wife yells, tempo, which means time in Spanish. And the second she wrote tempo is when I hit the ground. So I got it by one second and then I was so exhausted. And have an asthma attack. I I I had to, now I had to stand up because I had to bow out. As soon as I bow out, I hit the ground again. Now everybody wants to congratulate me. I'd stand up again. And we weren't allowed to have water. And so I crawled to the bathroom.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  And John Douglas would tell this story, but Murphy's probably gonna be mad at me for telling it. And when he came to, he says, that's not the sink you're drinking out of. That's the toilet. I'm drinking out of a TJ toilet. TJ toilet. And and I go, I don't care. I was so dazed. And I got gonorrhea. Oh, no. Yeah. But anyway, so that was green belt. So then I then the brown belt was ten two minute rounds. And then, of course, on that one, I oh, I trained like a mad dog because I wasn't going to have that at last experience. So I made that. And then from brown to black was such a jump. It took me another ten years before I was able to take on the ten fighters. And just to give you a quick rundown of what my workout looked like to prepare for it,

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  I'd warm up with a four hour weight workout. Four hour. Four hour. And I would start minimum weight, all the way up to maximum weight. And I'd do as many, I would get to the maximum, I'd lift as many times as I could with a few seconds, many times as I could. And then I'd slowly off just five pounds at a time from three hundred, from three hundred pounds, three ninety five, two ninety five, two ninety, all the way down to where I had just the bar, which was a forty five pound bar. And and then that and then I'd do that with every muscle group. And then I would do five hundred kicks on the heavy bag, you know, ten roundhouse kicks with this leg, ten with this one, ten, ten, do a hundred of that. Then I'd do ten side kick with this leg, ten side kick with

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  this leg, ten side, another hundred, ten back turning kicks, ten side, whatever, step across side kick, but just did five different kicks, five hundred times. Then my trainer, he would have a, it would look like a motorcycle seat, with a bag, and he would hold it and and with his hand. And then I would have to do a hundred kicks in three minutes. And so simulate in the three rounds. So I'd just bam bam bam bam bam, punch kick, punch kick, mainly kicking. That exhausts your oxygen supply faster than punching. That's why in kickboxing matches, you they're required to throw a minimum of, I think, six kicks or eight kicks. And that's because after you start getting tired, you just want to punch. Takes a fraction of the oxygen does to take to lift these big muscles up in the air.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  And so I do that and I take a first, I take a twen- ten second break, do another hundred, ten, another twenty second break. Hundred, I do a thousand, I do it ten times, it would be another thousand kicks. From there, I would do a five mile run, and I lived in San Diego, and there was here, they had big hills there. And I would, one of the hills was a mile and a half down, mile and a half back up. And when I got to the top, I would sprint the distance of a house and then run the distance sprint, run sprint. And then I would do ten, uh, quarter mile wind sprints, and then I'd throw up. And then I'd go do my shows, then I'd go perform, I'd perform at night. Then every other day, I would go rounds, you know, Murphy Douglas would have me, uh, go, you know, to, uh, five rounds, you know.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  Five rounds, building up to it, and sometimes two on one, because you don't have time to, to rest at that. And but that's, that was, and I, I sustained that particular, uh, discipline for eight months. And Douglas said I overtrained, you know, I went too long. But my problem was asthma, because, uh, you know, uh, being asthmatic, uh, you know, if I, uh, sometimes fear can trigger an asthma attack. And that's what happened on that greenbelt that I described, uh, you know, and you can't fight if you can't breathe. And so I had to train my mind to not become afraid, you know, fear can paralyze. You know, we can be so worried about doing the wrong thing that we do nothing. There's actually an English proverb that says, a man that's afraid to make a mistake is unlikely to make anything.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  In other words, totally worthless, fire the bomb. Fear of failure, when left unchecked, can actually lead to the failure we fear. Yeah. And so, um, I, I just started, like I said, putting myself in positions and conditions to help my mind overcome those effects. And I did things, uh, we just talked about the physical. I did mental things like eating live cockroaches, live grasshoppers, um.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  The most absurd thing is rotten fish guts sat in the sun for a week to in doubt you saw the right it chopped down on the eyeball of the mahi mahi. And the thing is, if you don't have, if you if you can't take it, your person would throw up. Yeah. And some people that were watching almost throw up. One one of when I did the guts, they did throw up. Don't try this at home, kids. Don't try this at home. This is a closed track with a trained professional. Yeah, but it was just to train my mind to be able to take whatever is being dished out. And if I could control my mind and body, then I I could make it. And and that triggers another thought real quick. I'm gonna go back to the Charbonne syndrome, Charles Bonnet.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  And how how that can create strength. One of the ways I use it the most, and we haven't even mentioned, is in training. As what I I can do tremendous numbers of reps. When I took my fourth degree black belt test, I was in my late four, I was forty seven or forty eight. I lifted two hundred and twenty two thousand eight hundred eighty eight pounds using three thousand one hundred ninety reps. And the twenty four year old, two hundred and twenty pound black belt who trained alongside me could not do fifty percent of the number of reps or weight. And that's because I don't get lactic acid buildup, because I would combine the mind with the body. Now you'll see weight, people do this, those who

• 1:16:12Speaker 03

  you know, they're trying to convince their body to do it. You follow what I'm saying? Yeah. When you combine mind and body together, they're not doing that. And what I would do is when I'd get to the point of exertion, and I would then transfer, I'd use my V CBS. I like on a bench press, I would see a cable on the bench press. I'd see a cable going up, across of it, across two pulleys. On the other end is is grill a shape thing on Arnold Schwarzenegger and grill it together, pulling on that thing, pulling that weight up. And I would focus on that image, pulling the weight up. And during that moment, I would no longer feel the stress as my muscles continue to press. And I have exercises for every, I have a mental visually exercise I'll use for each exercise.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  Like the quadricep extension, you know, you're you're in exertion when you're straightening your legs, right? Uh huh. And so what I would see in front of me is a big giant rubber band. When the brand is stretched down, when the when the weights are down. And then it would, when the it would, when the it would, the rubber band would go up and it would just go wide. And that's when it's pulling the weight up. So I'd watch it and I would see it pulling the weight up. So what I'm doing the exertion is when I feel it the least. Another image, like when I'm doing a hammer, like I'm on my back doing a tricep. I would see a hammer falling, okay? And when the hammer's falling, it's the least amount of effort, right? Yeah. Cause the hammer, the way the hammer's going down. But when I'm like this, so I'd see the hammer falling and but that's that's when the tricep is being engaged. Yeah.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  And I taught my wife, I, uh, when I taught my wife this. And and within a month's time, what she would do, I say, well, look at yourself in the mirror, your reflection. And when you get to exertion, like a, like a bench, uh, military press. Yeah. At the point of exertion, so you're, you wanna do, we'd always do sets of fifty two reps. And when you get to forty eight, then transfer that, see that image of that reflection, pulling those weights up. And then, and she got to the point where she increased her muscular endurance thirty percent in a month's time. And she was already in top shape. Oh, so. And and if I, now I can give you an example of that. If you, if we were standing, if you wanted to stand up. Uh huh.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  Um, but I would like, I, and of course now I'm, it's almost sixty six. So I don't know if I, I, I used to have a demonstration that I would do. Where I would bend the arm of the person. And that is not, there's only one person's arm I was not able to bend and do it, doing this demonstration for forty years. And no one has ever bent my arm. But if you wanna stand up, I can, uh, I don't know if this is. Sure, let's try it. So, but I'm not gonna try to bend your arm because I'm, because of surgery, just get on this side of me. Alright. And see, you, look at those muscles. We're all. Now, I know, usually I put myself up against the back, so I'm pinned in. Now I'm gonna have you put your hand on right here. Okay. Your other arm here. Yeah. Okay, not on the wrist, I wanted to put wrist. And and your job, you, you, you, this is what you, all you're gonna do is just bend this little elbow here.

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  Alright. Okay? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead and look, I'm not, I'm not using. Go, come on, come on. It's not gonna happen. I'm not, and I'm not doing any, I'm not using any strength. Look at my hand. Totally relaxed. Yeah. I'll tell you how I did it. Okay. It's, it's, once again, it's creating mind and body together. What I did is I envisioned my arm as a fire hose. Yeah. Shooting out that fire hose is a thousand gallons of water a minute. You can't bend a fire hose, I'm sorry. Yeah. Right? If you're to think about a fire hose, when the fire's, when the wa- water's shooting, you're not gonna bend a fire hose. So I get that image in my mind, I'm just shooting that fire hose. And, uh, and I've never had anyone ever bend my arm. And yet, without that, until I showed them, they get, they learn how to do that, then I can't bend their arm.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  But before, but anyway, that's just kind of a little side, side note. But how I've used my CBS to create a lot of strength. And I also used it in my training with the cards. When I would train, when I, when I analyze moves and break them down. And, and what I would do, I'm, I'm just kind of transitioning into something else here randomly. But what I would do, and why I was able to put in so many hours is I would analyze the move. So, okay, I wanna, I wanna second deal a certain way. So I'd analyze the move, okay. Okay, I want the, I want the, I want no leaking. And so I'd analyze what I wanna do, and I'd practice it in slow motion till every exact

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  element of the muscle memory was firmly embedded in my brain. Okay, then I would turn it into a subconscious habit. We all have habits where we're tapping the pan, right? Tapping our feet. That's idle energy wasted. It's like an engine of a car running, going nowhere, just idling. That's still energy expelled, right? So what I did is I turned, I learned to take all that energy and funnel it into just my hands and what's in my hands. And so that's why I would, I would take it and I'd turn it into a subconscious habit. And that move, I would then sit there and practice it hundreds of times. Uh, I'd do it thousands of times, tens of thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  Then maybe two or three years later, I'll be done, go, "By golly, I got it." And then, and then some of the things Vernon would say, "That's not possible to do." And, and, and, and so I would figure it out, analyze it, show it to him, and then, and then he'd go, "I don't understand how you can do that."

• 1:21:37Tim Ferriss?

  Well, what I loved discovering in the process of prepping for this conversation, and I want to put a button in the black belt test in a second, but that Vernon would describe to you the ideal of how something would be performed, even though in reality, he hadn't seen it executed that perfectly, and you, with your powers of visualization and the way that you would digest his teaching, would then go and develop the ability to do what he thought could not be done. At least, that's my understanding.

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. And he did that for, I had the privilege of being with Professor Vernon for seventeen years. In those first five, six, ten years, like you said, he would describe to me, he'd say, "Richard, this is the way it has to be done. Your hands have to be natural. You don't want this deep grip when you're going to deal a second or a bottom. Your fingers need to be on the sides because it's more natural. That's more the way you're going to see your general person in the public, hold a deck of cards. And so you don't want to create any unnatural suspicion by your actions." And so he would tell me, "Okay, you have to be able to do it with those fingers on the side." And so, "Okay, fingers on the side." And you don't want, you don't want any of this action here. So I'd practice

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  with my hand on the table without moving it. And so, I would take the pieces of what he said, and I would practice. And he would actually tell me, he'd say, "Feel my hands. Feel the position my hands are in." I'd feel his hands, "Okay, got it, got it. Okay, oh, okay, I got it." So I'd see the picture in my mind of what his hands were showing me, but he never did it because it's an action. I really couldn't see him do the action because then my hands would get in the way of him executing the action. But I knew the action of what he was showing. So in my mind, I would see his hands, visualize what he said, "This is the way it should be done." And then I would come up with it and create it. And then the next time he would see me, he'd go, "Hey, hey, come here, watch this, hey,

• 1:23:43Speaker 03

  watch this. Look at this, watch this action. Perfect action." You know, he'd get all excited. He'd have all the other card guys come over and, "Watch it, perfect rhythm, perfect rhythm." Anyway, that was one of my critics at the time. But we became good friends, same with Tony Giorgio. And, um, but so that's what he would do is he tricked me. And it was only till years later that he told me he made them up. He just wanted to see what this obsessed kid would come up with.

• 1:24:10Speaker 03

  And that's why my work is kind of as most, 99.9% of the gamblers and card men out there will tell you, it's, it's unique and separate from the way any other person handles the cards.

• 1:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I, I want to tie up one, one loose end with the black belt test just to flash forward because we, we covered a lot of it. But 10 fresh fighters, 10 rounds, you end up with a broken arm at some point.

• 1:24:40Speaker 03

  So seventh round.

• 1:24:41Tim Ferriss?

  In the seventh round, so you're fighting with a broken arm. There's footage of this, of course, in the documentary, which I encourage everybody to see. And you get your black belt. There was coverage of this experience. Of course, there were, there were some cameras, but also there was a piece in, was it the LA Times?

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  LA Times.

• 1:24:59Tim Ferriss?

  Now, why did you, my understanding is you did not, you did not like the piece or you did not like the headline? Why is that?

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  Well, because they used the word blind man earns black belt. And at that time, I was very stubborn and, um, I was just stubborn and probably self-absorbed. And I wanted my work to stand on its own. And I wanted to earn it the way Terry Crook, John Douglas and the other, his top other black belt fighters did. That's why when they offered me an honorary black belt, he says, he said, you put in your time, you put in your lumps. I said, no, I want to do it the way you did. And then that's when I started the training, like I described earlier, but it took me 10 years and, 13 years and three months and five days from when I started to when I finally got it from beginning to super nuts. And, um, but anyway, um.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  The fact that they had to put the word blind man earns black belt. To me, it was like, I don't like the theme handicap makes good. I want the theme, okay, I just made good because I did it. And to be perfectly honest with you, I kept telling people, I wanted to do it the way they did it. And people would say, but you didn't. And I go, yes, I did. And it was literally, Tim, within the last six months, if someone said something that I understood what they said. When they said, I didn't do it the way they did it, I did it the way they couldn't have done it. They weren't sight impaired when they did it.

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  I was, I never understood what they were saying because I was so pig headed about, I wanted, I wanted to do it the way they did it. But then when you flip it, I finally got the message. I did it in a way that, that they, it was very unlikely that they or anyone else would have had a hard time doing it if they could have done it at all.

• 1:26:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, probably next to impossible, if not impossible. And I want to dig into the visualization because this seems to be such a superpower. And I might ask you what you consider to be your superpowers. But this visualization and the CBS and the adetic memory that you mentioned really seemed to coalesce to give you some incredible abilities. Whether that's the feats of strength or work with the cards.

• 1:27:27Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned earlier that the way you see things when you're scanning or planning the construction, the design and construction of a three-story patio or a deck, for instance, is different from dreaming. And so that begets the question, what is dreaming like for you?

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  Ah, very good, very good question. Because like you were saying, I see my subconscious in external space. So, and it's just a constant.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  stagnant situation of all these colors patterns just there until I want to bring them into play. And it doesn't matter if it's day, night, if my eyes are open or closed. I see the exact same thing with my eyes covered up in a vault. I'll see these vivid, bright colors when there's absolutely no way of light getting in. Now, when I dream, in my dreams, I'm never sight impaired. And I see, I dream in full color with audio and visual, and I see perfectly. And everybody I see in those dreams is perfectly clear. Which, you know, that, uh, someone brought that to my attention in some questions that I was asked. And, uh, and I thought, well, I, I guess that's kind of unusual.

• 1:28:46Speaker 03

  But yeah, I'm, uh, I'm never, like I said, part of the dream is never that I'm part, uh, sight impaired. Nor do I see any of the CBS symptoms in any of my dreams. Now, if I wake up in the middle of the night, say, um, and I had to take some Tylenol or something from some surgery, I've had 24 surgeries from all my high impact living. And, um, medication when I wake up will turn everything into a metallic colors. And usually a lot of times it's purple.

• 1:29:20Tim Ferriss?

  This is if you wake up in the middle of the night?

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  Middle of the night on, after taking some kind of medication from some kind of an injury that I'm, uh, on medications, turn it metallic and it turns it, uh, usually a purple, which is not, is not a pretty purple to me. I don't like it.

• 1:29:37Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned maroon was one of your favorite colors?

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  And then roe blue on the blue spectrum.

• 1:29:41Tim Ferriss?

  What other favorite colors do you have? And did you have them before losing your sight or did you develop them afterwards?

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  Uh, I probably wasn't aware of favorite colors before.

• 1:29:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Um, so much as I am now because I see them all the time and, and the different shades depend on the time of year, depending on the particular day. Uh, sometimes it's just really vivid blues and I just, it's just beautiful sometimes. When I'm out walking with my beautiful wife, Kim, and, uh, I, my, my CBS will create a skyline. Okay. In other words, the things will be darker here and I like that's the skyline. And then it'd be lighter, uh, shades to give the image of, uh, you know, earth, sky.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  Okay, and then, and then I go in and I have to ask my wife, is it still light out? Because it, it will stay there and sometimes it's late into the night and I can't get that, I can't get it, sometimes it does, can bother me because I want that to go down because it's now nighttime. So there are, there are some times that it will be a bit of a distracting sign.

• 1:30:53Tim Ferriss?

  What I have as a note to ask, I didn't want to get any of the details beforehand, but a note to ask you about your experience of wind.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  Ah, that's a, I, I can see the wind blow. Whenever I'm walking down the street with my, with Kim or whatever, if the, of course, I automatically see the images of, of trees, but they're more like clouds and there'll be green shapes and colors to replicate, give the image of, of trees, okay. But whenever the wind blows, everything, all my, all my visualization, things that I see, will go with that wind, it will gust, if it gusts, they'll move a little bit more. If I do this, everything just now just went, oop.

• 1:31:39Tim Ferriss?

  If you tap.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  If I tap my tie, tie aside of the head, everything just jerked over and went back straight. Just weird little things, like when I go, I'm in a pool, my eyes are closed the whole time. Because I know, I know, I don't have need to need, I need my eyes open. When I'm swimming, I don't have to worry about the chlorine and stuff.

• 1:31:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:31:56Speaker 03

  And so when I'm above the pool, there, there's a certain hue. In other words, a, a level of brightness of the color. When I go under the water, I actually see myself going underwater and the hue changes. It deepens like putting on sunglasses.

• 1:32:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:32:13Speaker 03

  Sunglasses off, sunglasses on. And even as I made that image, my eyes are closed, I just all of a sudden things went darker and lighter. I can pretend that I'm opening and, when I open and close my eyes, it will, the hue is like pulling down a shade that has a, a sunblock, not a sunblock.

• 1:32:31Tim Ferriss?

  Like a solar shade.

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  Sunglasses would be the best way to describe the, it's what, the hue changes. And then now if I just pretend that I'm, my eyes are closed the whole time, I'm pretending I'm opening and closing my eyes, it'll do the same thing. I don't know what relevance that had to anything, but it's just these little games.

• 1:32:48Tim Ferriss?

  This is just a conversation between friends. Nobody, nobody listening or watching. So I'm just following my own interest. And I want to talk about

• 1:33:01Tim Ferriss?

  the enjoyment of not relaxing. That's more said with a smile, but when we took a little break to have some water, you said to me relaxing is not relaxing. And you talked about how being told to relax or asked to relax is like being punished and put in the corner for misbehaving at school for you. In that case, given your obsessive compulsive dedication to training, to card mechanics, to movement, how do you replenish? What, what activities do you find recharge your batteries?

• 1:33:44Tim Ferriss?

  And maybe you could just elaborate on to me relaxing is not relaxing.

• 1:33:48Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah. And I'm gonna bring up a friend of mine who's like a brother. His name is Luke Korem. He was the director of the film Dealt that you mentioned. And, and I'll just say something quick about the film. If it wasn't for Luke, in particular, probably I'd say 80% Luke, and then Bradley and Russell, the producer and the writer. But Luke was the one that just had the creativity. If, if I, if they would have, if they would have listened to me and they listened zero to me, they did, I would have screwed up the film. The brilliance of that film is I, I lay at the feet of the director Luke.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  And he would tell me, and he actually lived with me, he had his own place in my house when, at certain times Luke's room. And I never have, many times I didn't know if the cameras on or off. And he would say, well, let's chill, you know, which I found was a word for relaxing. And chill? I don't want to chill.

• 1:34:45Tim Ferriss?

  What is this chill?

• 1:34:47Speaker 03

  And I said, relaxing? For me, relaxing is not fun. Relaxing is like when I was a kid and I was being punished. And my, my parents, as a pleasure, I'd have to stand in the corner for an hour and just stare at the corner. To me, chilling is not fun. Chilling, relaxing is not fun. To me, relaxing is adventure. And I, I would tell people and I'd tell Luke, I'd say, Don't worry about the end result. When the film is done, it's gonna be a piece. It'll be what it is and it will be finished. Enjoy the journey. Okay. And look at every obstacle and every challenge and every hurt and pain that you come across as part of the adventure of the journey.

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  When you read a book, you don't want a book that, oh, he went and he entered this, uh, rush anyone and he entered that one, no trouble one, and he climbed this mountain anyone. Uh, that's boring. You have to have antagonists, protagonists, and you have to have challenges. You have to have things that you have to overcome. So I would tell people, whatever the situation is, look at it as part of the adventure. I, on my livelihood, we almost came to an end five years ago. Well, multiple times. Like I said, I've had 24 surgeries. I had to recount them just last week going, what am I, 23, 22, 23, or 24? I realized I've had, I have two steel knees from all the years kicking. I took a shot here, roundhouse kick here.

• 1:36:14Speaker 03

  Uh, at first I did surgery and finally had to be replaced and just, you know, millions of kicks, just finally did them in. I've had five hernia surgeries. I've had, I did a back flip off my front porch, landed on my fifth disc on my, on my back on the brick, drove it out my belly button. I've had three back surgeries and, uh, and then fortunately what finally, and they, and that's so complicated, they just, doctors, it's just, they have a hard time with backs. And then I, they have this thing called a neural stimulator, Medtronic makes, and I have that and it short circuits the pain from the back to your brain. Amazing. Ever since that, like my wife said, give our life back.

• 1:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  We have, we have this table available. We have some cards. Uh, would you like to, like to show anything or do anything?

• 1:36:59Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You have a deck of cards there for yourself, right?

• 1:37:01Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 1:37:02Speaker 03

  Shuffle them out.

• 1:37:03Tim Ferriss?

  All right. We'll see this, how amateur the shuffle can be here. I can barely shuffle two hands.

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  Well, then use one.

• 1:37:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Speaker 03

  I just showed you how.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  Alright. Okay. Alright, we're good to go. Switch decks with me. Alright. Okay. Here you go. Now, in poker, you've heard of like wild cards like deuces are wild. Baseball have multiple wild cards. Yes. Other games, so just cut a card, that'll be the wild card. Just cut off half the deck. I'm gonna move, there's one card left over here. Oh, please. Put it on my deck? Yes. Yeah, alright, there you go. Okay, just cut the deck in half here. Alright. Tell them when you got it. Okay, and just to make it more random, just say any random number, three, four, five, seven, anything you want. Six. Six. One, two, three, four, five, six. What's that card? Queen of diamonds. So the queens will be the wild card, okay?

• 1:37:52Speaker 03

  Now, you just shuffle these cards, right? I did. Now, have you ever played poker for money? And let me ask this, have you ever played in a casino? Or have you ever wondered, when I play in a casino, am I getting conned? I have lost in a casino. Okay, so that thought has crossed your mind, am I getting conned? Yeah. Now, I'm gonna show you. You just handed me a random ice deck, and I'm gonna do this in an interesting way. In the high state games, I'll cut between every shuffle, because that buries the top and bottom halves of the deck. I'll give the deck a little riffle, and then people like to cascade the cards into them. You have a cut. So I'm telling you what I'm doing as I do it, and I shuffle. Did everything look legit? Looked legit. And not a move you saw was. So you're already in trouble. Now, I'll show you. Not a move I saw.

• 1:38:37Speaker 03

  Was honest. Not a one, okay. Not a one. Now, I'll show you how fast I can uncut that deck. What's that card? That is the two of clubs. The two of clubs. So they'll pass the deck to the right to be cut, and now the deck is no longer cut. So it's still on top. Watch again now, watch again. I'm showing you how fast I can uncut the deck. The deck is no longer cut. Yeah. And that was about a half a second. Yeah. Now, you've heard of Texas Hold'em. I have, yeah. Okay, what do you like hand of Hold'em? And in Hold'em, they have what's called a cut card or a burnt card. They put a card, the deck on a face-up card. Now, after the fact, you're gonna tell me, keep everything off the table here, give me a full table here. Alright. After the fact, you're gonna tell me how many people step up to my Hold'em table? Let's pick a number, five or six, because we don't have a lot of room. Uh, five. Five players. One, two, three, four, five.

• 1:39:22Speaker 03

  One, two, three, four, five, burn, and we have what's called the flop. And what are those three cards? We got the King of Hearts, the Two of Hearts, and the Queen of Clubs. Deuces are not wild, but we did, the Queens was your card. So that means there's a pair of Kings on the table. There's a burn and a turn. What's that card? That's a King of. Burn, turn. So right now, we have three Kings because the Queen is a wild card. What's that card? That's a Queen. Right now, we have four Kings. Let's get rid of our burn card. And you're my partner, sitting over here in hand number five. Let's see what you have in the pocket. What's that? That's a Queen. What's that? That's a Queen. So in the poker, you would have five of a kind, five Kings, or you'd have a royal flush,

• 1:40:06Speaker 03

  depending on how you wanted to play the hand. In other words, you kill them. Slot it them, beat them, whip them big time. Amazing. Now, shuffle that deck. Okay. I'll do, I'll show you how far I can push the envelope. Alright, so I'll shuffle this one. And I think, I think we got two cards that got turned up on that one. Okay, that's your job. Make sure that one's all legitimate. Yep. Okay, and then I'll switch with you.

• 1:40:32Speaker 03

  Alright, there you go. Okay. And you can make sure everything's legitimate on that one. Yep. Alright, we'll give the deck a cut, and we'll play my favorite game, Seven Card Stun. And this will take a couple of minutes to unfold, but it's interesting. Now, we have a deck of cards shuffled by Tim. Now, we'll, we'll save with the same number of players. Well, listen, you choose, four players or five. You choose. Four. Where do you want to sit? Number one, number two, number three, or number four? I'll be number one. Number one, right out of the chute. I'm getting ready, I'm dealing a card in slow motion to hand number one. Before I continue, take these deck, this deck, mix them up. Don't give me the whole deck back. Just pull out any random part of that deck and put them in my hands. Just do something quick and just put a stack. Just a couple of cards? No, well, more than a couple, but enough to get around. Just a stack.

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  So I'm gonna work with whatever you give me, okay? Tim just handed me back a random stack of cards. We're playing, dealing a card to play on hand number two, player number three, and player number four. You're number one. Slow motion, watch carefully. There's your card. And we go player two, three, four. Now, we have what are called the door cards, which means the face-up cards. What's that card? Jack of Spades. Jack, one, player two, player three, player four. You're number one. What's that card? Ace of clubs. Two, number three, number four. You're number one. What's that card? Ace of diamonds. Okay, mix them up, mix them up, mix them up more. Mix up the entire deck? Whatever, you're the boss. Okay. And just have me any part of that deck you want.

• 1:41:59Speaker 03

  So you're doing everything you can to screw things up. Okay, and you just, okay, that's like five cards less than the last time you had me. Okay, we have player two, player three, player four. And so far, we have three cards faced up, yes? That's right. And what's that card? It's queen of diamonds. Wild card. Well, do it again, mix them up, have me any part of the deck you want. So you're shuffling, cutting, you choose how, you chose how many players, you chose where you want to sit, you had me any random part of the deck, oh my gosh, getting stingy. Now the six cards, player two, player three, player four, and we have what's called down and dirty. I'm now dealing a card off the top to Tim's first position. Two, three, four, put that with the rest of the stack. Okay.

• 1:42:42Speaker 03

  Now let's see what you have in your hand. We're playing seven card stud, high Chicago. That means high spade and the whole splits the money. Alright. So let's see what you have. What's that card? Queen of diamonds. That's a queen, a wild card. So we'll put it over here, what's that? Ace of diamonds. That would be a pair of aces, because the queen's wild, what's that? Ace of clubs. That equals three aces, what's that? This is a jack of spades. Jack, what's that? That's a ten of spades. Ten, ten, jack, ace, what's that? That is the queen of spades. Another wild card. So right now, you have four, two aces and two queens, right? That's right. So you're right now, that would equal four aces.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  And the best possible hand in wild card is five aces. We're playing high spade and the whole splits the pot, what's that? Ace. Ace of. Ace of spades. Five aces, the best possible hand you can get in poker is five aces. You shuffled, you cut, you chose how many players you wanted, you chose where you wanted to sit, and you kept mixing them up, and you didn't even give me a full deck. You can honestly say, that Turner doesn't play with a full deck. That Turner does not play with a full deck. And yet, I dealt you the perfect hand in poker. That's incredible. That's regrettable? It's incredible. Oh, that's mad. Yeah, yeah, incredible. That's incredible. Amazing. All right, but that shows you how far I can push.

• 1:44:06Speaker 03

  And that particular thing to be, and I know this, and I don't mean to sound boastful. Because it's hard to talk about, when you're asking people, asking questions about yourself. It's hard to talk about yourself and not sound bad. But Vernon, when he first saw me do that, I said, "Professor, what do you think about combining this and this and this?" And he goes, "Raj, you can't do it. It's not possible. It can't be done." And I said, "Oh." He said, "You can't do it because, three reasons. One, your brain can't respond that fast. Your hands cannot be that sensitive. And you would break rhythm." Put those, put those all cards back together from this deck. Okay, he said, "That's not possible." And I, I were at the Magic Castle, and for 10 minutes, I sat there.

• 1:44:48Speaker 03

  But he's sitting at the bar, and I was standing next to him, and I was depressed. For 10 minutes, I sat there going, "This is the ultimate. This is the perfect way. This is the..." And I thought, "And he said it can't be done." Then all of a sudden, I remembered, "But I can do it." I said, "Professor, come watch my show." And he came out, the show after, he goes, "Raj, what the hell are you doing in there? I don't understand what the hell you were doing." I said, "Remember when you said you can't combine this and this? That's what I'm doing." "All right, then how the hell you can do that?" And he goes, "Max, Max, come here, watch this, watch this." And everybody, for the next 18 months, every time I was there, he'd have me, "Set up the cards. How many players you want? Where do you want to sit? Watch this, watch this," and over and over. And two years later, he goes, "Still don't understand how you can do that." And he knows exactly what I'm doing, and exactly how I'm doing it.

• 1:45:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's amazing. I, uh, so I have these, all the cards are faced in the same way. They're, I guess, two decks worth of cards. I don't know how they're split up.

• 1:45:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll just give them 52, 52, it's the same.

• 1:45:43Tim Ferriss?

  Great, great. So I think, who knows how many? Roughly, roughly 52 over there, I suppose. All right. Ah, wonderful. So you, now you, uh, just, just because it's just mentioned before we start recording. You, uh, audit cards. Is that right?

• 1:46:01Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not.

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  Or you, what's the right term? Analyze.

• 1:46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, US Playing Card Company is the largest, uh, maker of cards in the United States. And they just merged with, uh, Card Monday, which is the biggest card maker. They've been starting making cards 18, 17, 65. And US Playing Card Company since 18, they've been around for, for 150 years. And Bicycle is the most recognized pack of cards in the world. It has been for over 100 years. And in 1990, 1988...

• 1:48:59Speaker 03

  You know, but I just had these random numbers that I'd put down in my report. My son Asian would tell me, well, this one, that is J seven, five, two. This one is, uh, six, seven, J, four. And which meant absolutely nothing to me. And then I'd find out the six, seven, J, four, and they, they were the match. And so I'd have to pair them up, match them up, and then analyze the snap, the embossing depth, the cut, the caliper, um, the, what I call the right period, and all these things, and which one is a better card. And to help, and they would take that information and fine tune their machines to, uh, help, you know, make the cards that, uh, that, uh, that they make, which are by far the finest cards you can buy.

• 1:49:41Tim Ferriss?

  They're no use. So I know we have, um, just a little bit of time left, um, and, uh, we're practically neighbors, since you're in San Antonio. We're very, very close by. Uh, I'm, I'm curious to know, and this, uh, this, this is sometimes a difficult question, but, um, I'll just, I'll ask one or two more questions. Um, if you could put a message, a quote, anything non-commercial on a billboard to get a message out to millions or billions of people, is there, is there anything that comes to mind that you might put on that billboard?

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. In the, in America, we have opportunities. Success depends upon the use we make of those opportunities.

• 1:50:26Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:26Speaker 03

  That would be one. Another would, would be not going down.

• 1:50:31Tim Ferriss?

  Not going down.

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  Not going down. Another one would be, um, consider every obstacle, as I mentioned, every obstacle, challenge, hurt, pain in your life is part of the adventure of life. That's what gives life, gives life spice. You know, we, uh, oh, and then, and circling back to, um, when I was talking about the surgeries, and I, my career was almost at an end. I was at Penn and Teller's Theater. I was going to be on their show, uh, their fourth season. And the third season, and I was in the gym, the real gym, where else, with my friend Doug Gorman. And I said, okay, I paid seventeen dollars for my workout.

• 1:51:15Speaker 03

  And that's a ridiculous workout purse. And so I was, I, soon as I got in there, one of those benches that you set them up, up, up, like this, to, like you're doing standing curls. Right. Or, you know, you're sitting curls, or you can recline it back for like, you know, triceps, or lay it all the way back. Like you want to do sit-ups on there. Right, adjustable bench. Yeah, adjustable bench. And it was propped like this. At about forty-five degrees. Yeah, forty-five degree, and I couldn't, I pulled that pin, I couldn't get it to go down. And I felt up, it was butted up against the wall. And so I took that bench and I moved it over like this and wham! My thumb was here, and, and it was, you know, those commercial great benches.

• 1:51:55Speaker 03

  The steel bars that went around here, and the steel bars that, that was the frame of the bench just came down and crushed my thumb. What did I do? I know he's crazy, and your people that are listening and watching say, yeah, he's a little on the crazy side. And, oh, okay, don't let me get off track on here, but did you know I'm a cer- I'm a certified oddball? Certified oddball. I am certified. I did, I did see your card. Yeah, yeah, well, I'll explain. You've heard of Ripley's Believe It or Not, right? Yes. In nineteen eighty-four, I was on the TV series Ripley's Believe It or Not, hosted by Jack Pounds. I'm also an exhibit in the second largest Ripley's in the country. And I'm in the twenty fifteen issue of Ripley's Believe It or Not Book of Eye-Popping Oddities.

• 1:52:38Speaker 03

  I received a certificate, certified, I am a certified oddity. So you might be an oddball, Tim, I'm certified. You're certified. I'm a certified oddball. Okay, so this, so this contraption comes crashing down. And I called Doug, I said, bring me a bucket of ice and don't ask any questions. And I figure I saved seventeen dollars for this workout, I'm not gonna, so I had ice for three minutes, worked out for three minutes. Ice for three minutes, worked out for three minutes. Finished with my workout. Oh my gosh, my thumb was as big as my big toe. I go, I ran upstairs, grabbed my cards and went, oh my gosh. I can't feel so, I called the producers, Lincoln and uh, Lincoln and Andrew, they were the executive producers of the show. I said, Mike, um, I had a little trouble, um, a bench crushed my thumb.

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  I think I could do the first and third part of what we rehearsed, but I don't think I'd do the second. And he said, get down here. He says, you're going to the emergency room. And they sent me to the emergency room and they got in there and uh, the first thing they did is they poked a hole in it. They said a fountain of blood shot out. I ended up having to go into surgery. And you, and because I thought this may be the end of my career. And Luke and the boys were flying in to get some footage with Penn and Teller for Delt.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:51Speaker 03

  And they were in air when this happened. So they land thinking they're coming into film Penn and Teller and about, you know, whatever they were gonna ask them, only to find out that I just got crushed. And uh, instead they're filming me showing my thumb that's every shade of black and blue, but the color is supposed to be. Anyway, so I ended up in surgery and I thought, okay, if this is the end of my life, I don't wanna be out. I told the surgeon, do not, I don't wanna be out, I wanna be, I want fully conscious. I've went through multiple surgeries and I'll just shuffle the cards with my other hand while you work on this one. And that'll just, that'll, that'll be my anesthetic.

• 1:54:34Speaker 03

  And so he thought I was nuts and you can watch it, it's, and I, and I said, I wanna film it too. So if this is the end of my career, I want footage. And uh, so they said, okay, well you just put our anesthesiologist out of business, he can film it. And you can go on YouTube, it's Crush Dealing Thumb feature and Crush Dealing Thumb. One is the short version, one's long, but longer, which is, it's on YouTube. Crush Dealing Thumb is what you'd look it up. But after one, it's graphic because he, he takes a spoon, he takes a spoon and pops my thumb open like a hood of a car, then he takes it, he cuts it open and he's Screen the butt and we're talking the whole time back and forth and I'm shuffling cards and they

• 1:55:16Speaker 03

  they go back and forth shuffle and and the thumb and and we're talking about this and and I said, man, this is so cool. And he goes, why don't people want to do do this? He says, they go schizoid. People go schizophrenic when they see you say go through something like this. He said, I had to be totally unconscious before I did it. I just had a hang now bruise. This is the hand doctor talking. Anyway, but uh but I that that gets back to, yeah, I am a certified oddball.

• 1:55:41Tim Ferriss?

  So you so you have your thumb popped open like the hood of the car and we'll we'll link to those videos in the show notes at tinder blog so people will be able to find all of those videos. And uh what happened after that? Did you meet with Penn and Teller?

• 1:55:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I went, yeah, Lincoln Andrew, Lincoln Andrew said, you'll come back for our fourth season. Don't worry about it right now. Take care of your thumb. It literally took to the day before my thumbnail came back because they didn't know if it was going to take or I'd go and do a grow out another one or I was going to end up with no thumbnail at all. Fortunately, I grew out a new one and it was literally Friday before that my manicures finally got the last part of the wiggly woggly looking thumbnail to be matched up. And I went on and I started filming on the following Monday. So it took almost a year to the day. And um and so I I got on the show and had a blast. It was uh and I fooled them faster than anybody in the

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  history of their show because you know, and and it was really fun and I and Penn and Teller are just amazing performers. They are just top notch. And and Penn and Teller is so funny and people don't realize it. And if you watch it on the show, and I I I I'm told this afterwards, he was staring staring at what I'm doing and and he's trying to say, go bring down the trophy now. And over the headpiece, he's been told, don't bring that trophy. We want Richard to do his entire act. And then and then beforehand, they said, Richard, you got to tell us how you do this so we can make a judgment. This is their judges, Johnny Thompson and and Michael Close. I said, well, you know, Vernon and I are the only ones that really knows this stuff. We know that we got to make some judgment. I said, okay, watch. I showed him in slow motion.

• 1:57:22Speaker 03

  What I was doing a show and they go, my God, it really is impossible. And so then what Penn hears over his head, and this is what I was told, is don't, uh, he stood up. They were supposed to, I was supposed to have a six minute interview with Allison. While they discussed how to do it, and then of course they edit down to one minute, uh, when it broadcasts. And they go, um, uh, they said over their head, but don't ask us, we don't know how Ali did it. And so then Penn turns around and says, we have nothing to say, you fooled us. And then the fun, the cool part was, I walk off stage with Penn and I hear this. And this is exactly how he talked. Richard. F F F F. I said, who's that? It's me, Teller.

• 1:58:03Speaker 03

  He said, it was so wonderful to be so completely and thoroughly astonished. I've never seen anything like that in my life. And I thought, and they said, let's get some selfies. And then, and then the really fun thing was at midnight, I, I get a call. They tell, they said, Teller wants to know if we could come up, get a signed deck of cards from you. I said, this is backwards. I, I was supposed to ask enough for autographs from them. And I said, does Penn want one too? They said, oh, would you, Penn would love it. Anyway, so that was, that was kind of a cool, really cool thing. And, and like I said, they're extraordinary, extraordinarily talented and extraordinary talents.

• 1:58:43Speaker 03

  And I was so honored that, uh, that they like dealt and that they, Teller actually wrote one of the, on the film posters.

• 1:58:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:50Speaker 03

  That were the theaters, yeah.

• 1:58:52Tim Ferriss?

  Very well earned.

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the entire story, I mean, this is, this is a perfect way to wrap up. Because that entire story makes me think back to Tony Giorgio. Early on, and what, what was he saying? Don't make the money.

• 1:59:08Speaker 03

  Won't get the money.

• 1:59:08Tim Ferriss?

  Won't get the money. Now later though.

• 1:59:10Speaker 03

  Later though, two thousand.

• 1:59:12Tim Ferriss?

  What did he say?

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  In two thousand one, I just finished my show at the castle and there's Tony. And he and I battled each other for twenty years, twenty-five years. And they said, Richard, Tony's here to see you. And there was what's called the Vernon seats, where Vernon had one corner, and that's where Tony was seated because Vernon had passed away nine years, ten years before. And they had one seat across, waiting for me to sit down. And all these top card guys are standing there waiting. They want another battle between Giorgio and Tony, Giorgio and Turner, Giorgio and Turner. They always have these showdowns like gunfighters. And so I didn't want to have any part of it. And I said, no, I'll just stand. They, for an hour, they said, they finally said, Richard, Tony was waiting. And then finally, I thought to myself, you know what?

• 1:59:56Speaker 03

  Tony was mean and hard on me, but I have to credit at least half of my accomplishments to him being my antagonist. And I thought, and I thought, okay. And I said, Tony, I just want to thank you for all your years of encouragement. You were hard on me, you were divisive at times. But people respect you because you knew the real work and you could do the real work. And because you pushed me hard, you made me better. And I wanted to thank you for that. And he goes, why, thank you, Richard. That's very nice of you. Did you ever get that center deal down? And of course, he knew I did. I said, would you mind showing us? So now I sit down now for the next two and a half hours. We're doing what everybody wanted to see.

• 2:00:41Speaker 03

  And after every thing, he turned to us, that'll get the money, that'll get the money. And then he actually wanted to, he actually proposed, he said, we have the perfect scam, the perfect threesome. He said, I'll tell the people you're a high-stake gambler, and, but you can't see, but you would love to play hold'em. I'll be the person that reads the cards to you. He said, there's not five people in the gaming world that understands your work. He said, we have a third agent, third part of the crew that you'll deal the good hands to. And so from the guy who said, never get the money, actually proposed us putting together as a team and hustling together. And then I actually have a handwritten letter, five-page handwritten letter.

• 2:01:25Speaker 03

  It's one of my best treasures from Tony Giorgio. And then emails that say, love, Tony. Amazing. So it went from, won't get the money, to just talking nasty and mean. And times at the castle, he'd have to be taken out of the castle in ways he wasn't. Pleasant to him, uh, to, uh, to becoming a very dear friend. And I actually have the privilege of writing one from one of the magazines, his obituary. Because I had a thirty-nine year relationship with him from, from fighting to, to earning his respect. And really quickly that came from my first director, a man named Steve Terrell, who was a TV and movie star back in the fifties and early sixties.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  And he was, I was in the theater company called The Lamp Players from nineteen seventy-two to seventy-eight. And one of the things he would tell me is he would, well, on stage, he'd watch me and I'd be looking out of the corner of my eye, remember we talked about that? So I had no forward vision, so I'm talking to my character and I'm looking over here. He said, "Richard, you need to, it looks odd for you looking off to the side. I know that you can't see where the shadow is unless you turn your head to the side." He said, "Just look at the voice." And he taught me how to square my head towards the voice and give the impression that I could see them. He said, "You've seen an actor who played the part of a blind person. You flipped the roles. You're a blind person, you played the part of a sighted person."

• 2:02:51Speaker 03

  And, uh, and he said, and if you, he says, he was watching me practicing before and after every scene. He says, "You love cards. If you become the best card man in the world, you will earn the respect of your worst enemies." And, uh, and then that was the case with Tony Giorgio. He was a guy who was an enemy. He was my big, it was my nightmare every time I went to the castle. If we ran into each other, to becoming a very dear man.

• 2:03:18Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, I mean, that's, that sounds like a, another billboard. So if I could put, if I could put up a billboard for you, that's what it would say. That'll get the money.

• 2:03:27Speaker 03

  That's very nice of you.

• 2:03:28Tim Ferriss?

  That'll get the money. And, uh, this has been so fun. We didn't even get into your hustling stories and, uh, uh, this, this entire prep has been an embarrassment of riches. So I hope this isn't, uh, the last time that I see you. Hopefully we get to spend some more time together.

• 2:03:43Speaker 03

  You name it, or where, if I'm up here, I'll let you know I'm coming. Anytime you want to visit or do something again, I'm at your, it'd be my honor and privilege to hang out together, even if it's to go have. Protein shake.

• 2:03:57Tim Ferriss?

  Protein shake, or maybe I can just get my ass handed to me in the gym, or maybe a bit of both. And what a pleasure to spend time with you, finally, in person, which I've wanted for so long. And people can find out all about you, RichardTurner52, the number 52, RichardTurner52.com, on social, and I'll link to all of these in the show notes as well. Youtube.com/asaT52, that's A-S-A-T-52. And then also Youtube.com/RichardTurner52, we'll link to all of this. For speaking, you're repped by APB Speaking Bureau.

• 2:04:34Speaker 03

  American Program Bureau, APB, and that's one of my favorite things to do now is, for some reason, people are inspired, and my wife says, "People want to hear your story." And I always wanted to just be an entertainer. But I have to say, I am really blessed that I have the privilege of speaking and entertaining some of the most amazing companies on the planet.

• 2:04:55Tim Ferriss?

  And I can't wait to see what you do next. You are also, of course, featured in Delt, which has, at least last I checked, a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. And it is one of my favorite documentaries I've seen in certainly the last five years. It's just spectacular. And I am greatly inspired by you, slightly terrified of you. And I look forward to watching your further ongoing adventures and hope to have a protein shake in the near future. But thanks very much for coming, really appreciate it.

• 2:05:38Speaker 03

  It's my pleasure, Tim. It was a pleasure to be with you, and I'm honored as well. Thank you, sir.

• 2:05:42Tim Ferriss?

  And for everybody watching or listening, we will have a lot to link to in the show notes and many resources. We also have, of course, the video, if you're listening, via audio, which you can check out at Youtube.com/TimFerriss, or just go to Tim.blog and you'll find it there. And for the show notes, all the links, just go to Tim.blog/podcast, type in Richard Turner, and bam, lickety-split, you'll have what you need. And until next time, be safe, train hard, practice perfectly if you're going to practice, and thanks for listening, thanks for watching.

• 2:06:18Tim 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.

• 2:07:00Tim 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 InkTel. I've used them personally. Ever since I wrote The Four Hour Workweek, I've been asked over and over again how I choose to delegate tasks, how I do 80/20 analysis, and so on. At the root of many of those decisions is a simple question, actually two questions. Number one, how can I invest money to improve my quality of life? I use that in investing as well.

• 2:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  The second, how can I spend a little money or moderate money to save significant time? InkTel is one of those investments. They're a turnkey solution for all of your imaginable customer care needs. I used InkTel during the launch of The Four Hour Body, which was very, very involved. And they provided 24/7 customer service for my Land Rush campaign because it was critical for me to take care of every person who purchased my books and participated. This allowed me to focus on the things that I am better at, my strengths, like the marketing plan that we'd worked on for six months. Implementing that, InkTel trains their experienced customer service reps to know your business and your products inside and out and make your customers raving fans.

• 2:08:25Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:08:36Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:09:17Tim Ferriss?

  So as a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off. It's a big discount. $10,000 off your startup fees and costs by visiting inktel.com/tim. So check it out. For more info, go to inktel.com, I-N-K-T-E-L dot com forward slash tim. This episode is brought to you by NuLo Pet Food, an independently owned company out of Austin, Texas, delivers the very best pet nutrition with high meat, low carb recipes for dogs and cats. I am super stoked about this sponsor. I had no idea they were based in Austin. But I found NuLo through a number of friends of mine and veterinarians. It's what I feed my own dog Molly. And when I switched Molly over to NuLo, that's N-U-L-O,

• 2:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  a couple of years ago, it not only made an immediate difference in the way she looked, her coat, for instance, is much softer and much shinier. I could also tell it made a huge difference in how she felt and performed day to day. So I have NuLo all over the place. There's a bag of NuLo about 30 feet away from me in the office, where I sometimes feed Molly when she comes here. I have NuLo at home. I have NuLo in gallon sized bags for travel. NuLo is always with me and Molly. She loves how it tastes because NuLo Pet Food has a lot of meat in it and I can't really imagine feeding her anything else at this point. If you have a pup and you've been thinking about upgrading their food quality in 2020, check out nulo.com/tim.

• 2:10:43Tim Ferriss?

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