#706: In Case You Missed It: October 2023 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship, my very own email newsletter. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=monthly-recap, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. This is a special inbetweenisode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can easily jump around to get a feel for the episode and guest. Based on your feedback, this format has been tweaked and improved since the first recap episode. For instance, @hypersundays on Twitter https://twitter.com/hypersundays/status/1496997636846780416 suggested that the bios for each guest can slow the momentum, so we moved all the bios to the end. See it as a teaser. Something to whet your appetite. If you like what you hear, you can of course find the full episodes at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=monthly-recap. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by 5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship, my very own email newsletter that every Friday features five bullet points highlighting cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship. * Timestamps: Arnold Schwarzenegger: 03:14 Morgan Housel: 10:18 Apollo Robbins: 14:03 Guy Laliberté: 17:38 Rich Paul: 25:21 Dr. Mark Plotkin: 31:36 Full episode titles: Be Useful — Arnold Schwarzenegger on 7 Tools for Life, Thinking Big, Building Resilience, Processing Grief, and More (#696) https://tim.blog/2023/10/02/arnold-schwarzenegger-be-useful/ Morgan Housel — Contrarian Money and Writing Advice, Three Simple Goals to Guide Your Life, Journaling Prompts, Choosing the Right Game to Play, Must-Read Books, and More (#702) https://tim.blog/2023/10/31/morgan-housel/ Apollo Robbins, The World’s Most Famous Pickpocket — Pickpocketing the Secret Service, Manipulating Attention, Famous Con Artists, The Psychology of Deception, Self-Defense Techniques, The Secret Language of Thieves, and More (#699) https://tim.blog/2023/10/19/apollo-robbins/ Guy Laliberté, Founder of Cirque du Soleil — The Power of Belief, Street Gangs, Wild Tales from Las Vegas, The Dangers of Nurturing Fear, and Dancing on the Cliff (#700) https://tim.blog/2023/10/25/guy-laliberte-cirque-du-soleil/ Rich Paul — The Power Broker and Superstar Agent Behind LeBron James, Draymond Green, and Others (#697) https://tim.blog/2023/10/09/rich-paul/ Dr. Mark Plotkin on Coffee, the World’s Favorite Stimulant — Chemistry, History, and More (#698) https://tim.blog/2023/10/13/story-of-coffee/ * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors 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. 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/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/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/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:27Tim Ferriss?

  If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you.

• 1:44Speaker 01

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

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 1:54Speaker 03

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

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life. This is a special in-between-isode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. Features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  app, or, as usual, you can head to tim.blog/podcast and find all the details there. Please enjoy.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  First up, Arnold Schwarzenegger, legendary bodybuilder, actor, businessman, philanthropist, and 38th governor of California, and bestselling author of Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life.

• 3:17Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about one of the roles, never think small. You seem like the walking archetype of not thinking small. You've lived multiple lifetimes compared to most people. How would you suggest people think of never think small, or what stories come to mind that, from your life, exemplify that?

• 3:36Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Just the very beginning. I mean, for me to go and say, I want to compete in the Junior Mr. Europe competition, rather than just in the Mr. Austria competition. I trained just as hard as everyone else in the gym. Their goal was just smaller. They said, I want to be Mr. Austria. And I said, I want to be Mr. Europe. So I'm going to start with Mr. Junior, Junior Mr. Europe, the best built man of Europe. I'm going to go to this competition. And I was thinking bigger, and I was training as hard as they were. Everything was the same. But then, when I won that competition, because I had a very clear vision, that's what I want to win, that immediately launched me into getting a job, become a trainer. In Munich in a bodybuilding gymnasium. Now imagine, how in heaven is that?

• 4:21Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You're a young bodybuilder, you're eighteen years old, you just won your first international competition. You win some local competitions in Austria, you win some powerlifting competitions, some weightlifting competitions. But now you're junior Mr. Europe and you have this trophy. And now you're getting a job to train in the second biggest gym in Munich. So that was like absolute heaven. So with nineteen, I started training, become the trainer in the gym. So now I had the opportunity to train day and night. When I wake up, because I was sleeping in the gym, I was waking up and I was training. I was taking a nap in the afternoon, I was training before going to sleep at night after dinner, I was training, I was training day and night.

• 5:06Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So this is a dream, but it was all because I felt big. They were still stuck working for some bath house in Austria or for the government or being a trash collector or being a teacher or something like that. They were still stuck in the same job. I was already moving on to Munich and I was already a trainer in a bodybuilding gymnasium. Making this the launch pad to America, which was my ultimate dream. So this is what I'm saying. So it didn't take more work to think big. It's just thinking big makes you bigger. And what my point is, is it takes just as much effort. And I learned again from bodybuilding, from that kind of thing, I learned that don't hold back.

• 5:49Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So when I went within the age of nineteen, I was the youngest Mr. Universe competitor. I competed in the Mr. Universe contest, I placed second, I placed runner up. So that a year later, I went back with the age of twenty and won Mr. Universe, the youngest Mr. Universe ever. But this is all because I was thinking big. I was not saying, oh, maybe in a few years from now I go there. Or I shouldn't go there right now or something, or it's too early or this. And then it's just, so I think that either way, I'm gonna go for the second Mr. Universe next year. I'm gonna go to America, I'm gonna go and make Joe Weida aware of me and, you know, make sure that they win another competition. Position and roles. So I was driven bigger and bigger and bigger. And even when I got into acting,

• 6:30Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I didn't look at it as kind of like I'm gonna get some character roles. I wasn't interested in character roles. I wanted to be another Steve Reeves or Reg Park. They were the stars of the Hercules movies. Clint Eastwood was the star. We always cleaned Eastwood, you know, in a fistful of dollars. Cleaned Eastwood in a dollar, a few dollars more. Cleaned Eastwood in this movie. Whatever it was, it was like, that's what I wanted. Charles Bronson, I wanna be like Charles Bronson. I wanna be like Warren Beatty. I wanna be like these guys. They were the top stars. And that's what I saw myself. And they said, well, this ladder is very hard to build or to climb up to. I said, well, then I build my own ladder. I built my own ladder and then I know exactly how to get up there. That's exactly what I did.

• 7:14Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I created my own way of getting up there. I took five hours that I learned in bodybuilding. I did five hours every day of working my ass off to train and to train and to train and to pose and to pose and to do all the stuff that I needed to do. I said, I'm gonna do the same five hours, but I'm gonna go and learn English. I'm gonna learn acting, speech lessons, voice lessons, accent remove lessons. Well, I should get my money back for those.

• 7:46Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  But in any case, I took all of those lessons, one hour every day, and I was grinding it out. And then I remember eventually it happened. People started hiring me. And the great thing was that I felt that I should not be financially vulnerable. So I first got into real estate and I worked my ass off in real estate. My first million I actually made in real estate before I really got into acting. And that helped me because now when they came to me with stupid parts and says, you wanna play a bouncer? I said, fuck no, why would I play a bouncer? They say, well, what about a Nazi officer? You have a great, you have the German accent. I said, no, I don't wanna be a Nazi officer. I say, I want to be a star. I want to be a leading man. I want to get rich and famous.

• 8:31Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Just like King Steve, Charles Bronson. And they said, you're crazy. It would never happen. Well, I applied the other rule, which is don't listen to the naysayers. So I worked my ass off. I did exactly what I did in the bodybuilding. I did in the movies. Eventually it happened. I started doing the Jane Mansfield story. I started doing the, with Kirk Douglas and Anne Margaret, the villain. I was doing Streets of San Francisco. I was doing Stay Hungry and Pumping On, all in the seventies. And even with Lucille Ball, doing Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. So I did all of those kind of things. And then that led to the big role. And now I've arrived, starring Roy and Conan the Barbarian.

• 9:14Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, when John Millia saw me, he says, if we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger, we would have had to build one. So all of a sudden, the body that everyone said would ever, ever become famous in the movies, because the movies, nobody sees muscle movies anymore. All of the opposite came true. My accent became very welcome. When they did Terminator, they loved the German accent. They were Jim Cameron called, Schwarzenegger is talking like a machine. That's why I worked the Terminator. So things like that. So all of a sudden, the things that they said would never make it in Hollywood. The accent, the name, the body. All of the things became big blessings and it made it.

• 9:58Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So that's my own ladder that I built. That's why it's important. You know, don't just worry about climbing a ladder that someone else has built. No, build your own ladder. You know, just don't wait for anyone else. So that's what I did.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  Next up, Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money and his new book, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes.

• 10:31Tim Ferriss?

  What we didn't cover in our last conversation was how you draft your first drafts or your rough drafts, because you have these ideas, you're at the grocery store, you're out on a walk, you're in the shower, whatever it might be. What does it look like when you put first words on paper or screen? Because that is where I often procrastinate, facing the empty screen, the blinking cursor. What's your move there?

• 10:58Speaker 06

  I first need to disclose that what I'm about to say is probably the worst writing advice you could give someone. So if you are a new writer or an aspiring writer, like, plug your ears and fast forward this. But I've always been-

• 11:07Tim Ferriss?

  That'll be in the headline.

• 11:08Speaker 06

  I've always been-

• 11:09Tim Ferriss?

  Including the worst advice for writers.

• 11:12Speaker 06

  I've always been like this. I don't think it's a good strategy, but it's been my strategy. I'm kind of a first draft and published writer. I think the best way to write is to write a shitty first draft, get it done, and then go back and edit and clean up and rewrite and whatnot. I've always been one sentence at a time, and when I'm done with that sentence, it's final. So by the time I get to the bottom of the article or the bottom of a chapter, it's pretty much done. But that's not because I can write a perfect first draft. It's because I'm not going to leave this sentence that I'm writing until it's perfect. I'm not going to move on to the next sentence until every word is perfect. So that's always how I've been.

• 11:48Tim Ferriss?

  I believe Kurt Vonnegut talked about swoopers and plotters. I may be getting the wording wrong, but swoopers are the vomit of first draft, refine, refine into a diamond. And then the plotters are the line at a time, one small facet at a time, and then they're kind of done. I tend to err on the side of being closer to that myself. However, that doesn't seem to work unless you have a clear idea of what your structure is going to look like, or at least of where you're going to start. So that you're not then endlessly swapping things around or scrapping the first half, in which case you're edging more towards that refine, refine, refine. So how do you figure out the structure of a piece? Or what your lead is going to be?

• 12:33Speaker 06

  When I start an article or a chapter even, I really, I have no idea where it's going to go. It's not like all the ideas are in my head and I just need to put them out on paper. And I feel like the process of writing is the research process for me. And so that's kind of where the plotter style comes in, which is I write one sentence and I sit there and stare at it. And it's like, oh, that reminds me of this. Oh, like that prompts another thought that I had. That paragraph I just wrote reminds me of something else I can pull in. That's really where it comes from. So coming up with a, with an idea, honestly, I think most blog posts, I start with a headline. And I'm like, I want to write an article called everything is cyclical, whatever it might be. And let's just run with that, like that idea, like, because everything is cyclical. And I'm sure I could put together a story about why that is and a couple of examples of that.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  So let's just start there and see what happens. And I just start throwing things on, on the page. And usually within the process of a blog post or a book chapter, I'll go for three walks around my neighborhood. And during that walk, I'm 100% focused on what I'm writing and thinking about, what did I just write? Is that true? Oh, and actually that reminds me of something else. So that's always a process. If I'm sitting at my desk, I really can't get my brain to work as well as it is, is when I'm getting up and walking around. So very often too, if the weather's bad outside in the middle of writing, I'll like get up and fold the laundry or get up and do the dishes, get up and just walk around the house. It's just like, I think movement is really critical to forming new thoughts and moving the piece along, which is so critical when you don't know where it's going to go when you've started writing it.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Next up, Apollo Robbins, the world's most famous pickpocket.

• 14:15Speaker 07

  I knew that I could figure out how to put something inside of a bag of M&Ms and then reseal it in real time without anybody noticing. And I thought, what could I do with that? Let's just find out.

• 14:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 07

  And that's where it started to become a jazz. So this interaction with this guy Jamal, when he came up, he says, so you can steal something from me? And I said, I don't really know. What was your name? He goes Jamal. I said, how do you spell that Jamal? And he said, J A. I said, could you write that down for me? And he pulls out his pen and goes to write it down. His pen wasn't working. And as we've heard before.

• 14:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 07

  And up to this point, my stuttering, the break of my speech, the break of my sight lines with him has been very low status.

• 14:56Tim Ferriss?

  Break of your sight lines, meaning eye contact?

• 14:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, I didn't keep straight eye contact with him very much. I asked him about his suit. That's really fancy. It was all low status. And then everything just changed. Then it's this thing, I said, would this help you out Jamal? And it's straight eye contact and it's the refill to his ink pen. And he had way underestimated and stepped way too close, he realized suddenly. And when that moment happened to him, you saw him holding his pen with one hand, his refill with the other, and he was just looking and he's stunned. He's in this cycle of trying to make that, because the only solution it could be is the one he didn't want to accept. Right? So he's canceled out the truth. So where is he going to go from there?

• 15:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 07

  That I had stolen it, taken apart, put it back together and put it back on him? Couldn't be that. So what else could it be? Pausing time, time travel. So in that, now at that moment, while he's in that bewildered state, I just said, well, at least you didn't lose your money or your wallet. And when I did that, I just glanced down, because I noticed he has a watch on his left wrist, so he's probably right-handed, so he's probably going to keep his wallet in his back right. So I just glanced back toward his back right pocket. And he jumped on that big, he reached in, pulled out his wallet real quick, checked to see if he had everything still in his wallet. And I laughed. And I saw his attention shift back to the pen. And I pushed down his hand and I said, you still have everything. And he put it away. And he says, you've got to do this to Lisa. I said, yeah, great to meet her. And I just looked over his shoulder to where I thought Lisa might be. And he took off to go get Lisa.

• 16:15Speaker 07

  Comes back and he shoves this lady towards me and this agent.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  Dance monkey dance.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I have, I'm having, well, I'm there to perform.

• 16:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, I know, I know.

• 16:23Speaker 07

  And I'm talking to the agent, I have a drink, and this is an important thing, the drink, because it's a part of the style. It's not alcohol, it's just water, but it's the, I don't need anything from him, I'm not being validated, and a lot of performers will try to spoon-feed the audience, but it's letting them bring a thing to them, letting them have a reaction without you needing to feed back off of it, and letting people have this experience for themselves. And so when he pushed the lady up, I didn't quite look at her at first, I said, "Sorry, it's nice to meet you." I looked over and I said, "What was your name?" She goes, "Lisa." And so she hadn't quite come close to me at all. I said, "What's happening?" I said, "Sorry, Lisa, he wants me to steal something from you." She says, "What?" I said, "Do you like chocolate?" She says, "Chocolate?" I said, "Yes, there's some chocolate in your purse." She said, "What?" She opens her purse and she finds a bag of M&Ms in her purse.

• 17:07Speaker 07

  And he's reacting very strongly to this, and he's watching this third party, he thinks. And then she said, "How did those get in my purse?" I said, "The same way Jamal's driver's license got out of his wallet." Now, he's jumped back into the equation, he rips his wallet out again, rolls his license is missing, and he goes, "Where in the fuck is my driver's license?" And I said, "It's in the chocolate." As I take a sip of my water, I just walk away. So I let them piece it together themselves, she tears over the M&Ms, and she finds the license in her thing.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Next up, Guy LaLiberte, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, and founder of One Drop Foundation, and Lune Rouge.

• 17:53Speaker 08

  I still had played business, I had a fun playing business, because it was always about the game. And I was like, "We come from nothing, so what was the worst situation? Go back to nothing. I couldn't live that. That's where I come from." And while I was seeing successful people failing, because they were starting to nurture, to not having tomorrow what they have today. And start to nurture fear and it is like no.

• 18:17Tim Ferriss?

  Could you explain that a bit more?

• 18:19Speaker 08

  I've seen a lot of successful enterprise. There's many things that kill success, right? The first one I've seen is about, once you have success, you get a lot of reward financially, economically. And then you're starting to nurture the fear of not having tomorrow what you have today.

• 18:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 18:37Speaker 08

  And then change your entire way of addressing things. So suddenly you're not the same person. You don't address your business the same way. You don't address your vision and things because you nurture fear. Okay. So my say or that is like danger, there is. But please evaluate danger, don't nurture fear. Because of the moment you nurture fear, there's a good chance that you call your fear and the result of the fear. So that's one thing. And I've seen a lot of entrepreneur shifting their way of being, shifting or transforming what they are and deny where they come from. So at the end, not being themselves and having a business or success, changing their soul, their way of doing things

• 19:20Speaker 08

  and become other people, which again could affect the result of company. And the other one is more recognizing or realizing that at a certain moment, you're not the person to bring your business or your baby to another level. To be able to step out when you realize that you maximize for different reason, your contribution to the success of your enterprise.

• 19:44Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about the first part of that, just a little bit longer. Because I lived in Silicon Valley for 17 years and I have a lot of friends from that period of my life. Many of them have shifted, I would say, into trying to defend what they have or have experienced more fear because they don't know who to trust, etc. I mean, there are many stories about it.

• 20:04Speaker 08

  Yeah, trust is a big factor also.

• 20:05Tim Ferriss?

  So what else would you say to those people? They're people you care about, you see them maybe changing or feeding the fear. What else would you say to them?

• 20:13Speaker 08

  You mentioned something about trust. There's a thin line between wasting time or doubting versus trying to see the best side of a person and work toward making emerge of a person this best side. And this is a conversation I still have, whatever with my kids, with my ex in the actual business, is this notion of to which level you trust without compromising the fundamental. And this is very difficult to conclude because I've lived the two spectrum of that life. I got some of the best reward by trusting people and focusing on their beautiful soul versus their dark side. And that has been very rewarding.

• 20:56Speaker 08

  Then I provoked the observation that people have sometime when you have give them trust, they will fell in the trap of falling in the greed, ego and power side of life versus the love, respect and trust side of life, which is what we had built our things with. And that brought me a lot of deception to people I really trust that I believe that we had enough experience together and they fell in that part. And again, it happened in my own little ethos, but look what's going on in the world. You know, we're driven by this tension between the two sides of it. And obviously, the people are driven by greed, ego and power. Every morning they wake up and then thinking about how they could be better.

• 21:41Speaker 08

  Us, you know, on the side of the love, peace and love and stuff like that. We get it on the face. Ah, we look at the sun, we meditate and we're a little more slow to react to that. So I guess we have to be a little more organized.

• 21:53Tim Ferriss?

  If I'm understanding you correctly, I mean, it sounds like you're suggesting maybe defaulting to trusting people and expecting sometimes you're going to get punched in the face. But that's just the tax you pay for being optimistic. Or are there other ways that you protect the fundamentals?

• 22:09Speaker 08

  No, I would say at the end, there's more success than failure. But the failure are more touching than the win of trust because it's usually attached to deception. So I'm talking more about the deception. You know, you're in business, you win, you lose, you make good decisions, you do bad decisions. That's part of it. Nobody's perfect. And nobody's perfect in the choice of who you work with, who you trust or not. It's part of doing business. It's more deep than that what I'm saying. It's just like, so this is why I guess as much honest conversation at the beginning to establish, not the contract. This is why in my contract, I always not put just the legal part. I always start the first page by the assumption, the spirit of how a deal is done.

• 22:53Speaker 08

  Because my wish that if there's conflict, before going on the legal battle, you look at what the spirit of the deal was. And if you have sensitive people, intelligent people, they will relate to this foundation, version, the word of the legal things.

• 23:09Tim Ferriss?

  And that's actually a page in the document that has the contract.

• 23:12Speaker 08

  It's a page in the contract. It's a page in the contract where the first page is not about legal stuff. It's about the philosophy, the spirit of why we're doing the dream. What had brought us to that deal? What is the spirit of the deal? Okay, I made a mistakes to forget that sometime. And this was the most chaotic things because I'm telling you is like, if you're not attached to the spirit and it's just legal, we're living in a country, you know, not America, especially in the States, hit and me will make me happy, making mistakes and not clear. It's much more difficult for a person to deny the spirit if it's been written down. It was denied to say it's not what I say.

• 23:54Speaker 08

  Because when you try to bring the spirit in an oral conversation, they will always find a way to justify that it's not what they say.

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's smart.

• 24:01Speaker 08

  Right, the thing, it's very difficult for them. Then it's betrayal. You understand? Then you know it's a betrayal, it's not a misunderstanding.

• 24:10Tim Ferriss?

  Is that first page, I'm very interested in this. Is it almost just like regular text? Like it's paragraphs or is it bullets?

• 24:18Speaker 08

  It's understanding that we desire to conquer planet March. We will do everything to, you know, it's like very poetic sometime, very philosophic. It's very mission oriented. You know, we all do document in business, a mission and vision and stuff. Why are we not putting those principles right in the contract when two parties do things? Because this become a new mission, this is built on new value. And I think this is, I believe, an antidote against persecution or a legal process.

• 24:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's very smart.

• 24:55Speaker 08

  Well, I've not been that smart all the time because I made some case that I forgot to put it or my family office, I forgot to put it. But now, I'm telling you, this will be from now on, even with experience, I did forget to put it because I guess I even trusted more than I believed that I should not put it in it. And that became the biggest betrayal in business I ever did. So now, it's there forever.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Next up, Rich Paul, power broker and superstar agent behind LeBron James and Draymond Green.

• 25:35Tim Ferriss?

  You said in a GQ interview, which had a great title, so Rich Paul, power broker of the year, that the biggest obstacle or one of the biggest obstacles for young players in learning how to become a pro or be a pro is establishing infrastructure. What do you mean by infrastructure?

• 25:51Speaker 09

  Most guys, that's athletes especially, they've come from an environment to where everyone along the way has made it about them. And so if you have the mentality that it's only about me, then you're not going to value other people and what their capabilities are, what their expertise is. But if you're a walking corporation, we can't name one corporation that does not have infrastructure. Organization, they have an organizational chart, they have people that do certain things and there's clarity within that infrastructure. But it comes with the costs. And so most athletes don't want to do what? They don't want to pay anybody to do anything because along the way, everyone has did things for them for free. But it wasn't really for free.

• 26:37Speaker 09

  It was to be able to be standing there next to them at a time where there was actually something to gain. So I'll sacrifice this now, when you're an amateur, to be able to stand next to you to get some crumbs or whatever the case, when you become a pro. And whatever their aspirations were, if it was to hang out, the girls, to travel, whatever it is, the money, whatever it was. But you see what they did. Basically, you created something that ultimately became your own demise because upfront, you taught them wrong. You taught them, oh, I'm doing this out of love. I'm gonna pick you up, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, all to turn it around on them when they start

• 27:19Speaker 09

  making money and say, remember when I did this or I did that? Well, that's not fair to the player. And it's also not fair to yourself. What the conversation should be like is, look, I understand you don't have the ability to pay for anything. And if you're a parent, I'm doing it out of love. I love you. You're my kid. But if you're somebody else, just be honest with it. Hey, look, I'm gonna do all I can to help you get to where you need to go. Once you get there, if there's an opportunity for me, then I'm gonna do all I can to position myself to where if you give me that opportunity, I can then be of value to you. Very simple.

• 27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the when free isn't free, right? It's an unclear prepayment for things to come later. That's when it seems like things can get extremely messy. How do you help them when they say sign with you? Or even just start to develop a relationship with you? To take the first steps for building out infrastructure? What are some of the first steps that you might recommend?

• 28:21Speaker 09

  I would say checks and balances, really getting the proper financial team in place. And that's everybody from a CPA to the guy who manages your investment portfolio or the company that managed your investment portfolio. Really having somebody monitor that because that's a very fragile thing there. But at the same time, deciding what it is that you want. I like to live a certain way now that I understand better on how to live. And so if you are a single man with no family, do you really need a 20,000 square foot home? Probably not, right? You're not gonna be home half the time. Do you really need to fly private? Probably not. So there's different ways to go about it.

• 29:06Speaker 09

  But what's most important? Should you hire a chef? Yes, you should. Should you take a shortcut on that? No, you shouldn't. Do you know the difference between a chef and a cook? You should find that out because this is very important. Your chef should then go and sit with your nutritionist on your team and figure out, you should do all the testing, everything you need because your body ultimately is the engine that keeps you running.

• 29:30Speaker 09

  That's how you make your money.

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the key ingredients for sort of emotional support and stability? I'm just imagining young athletes who are suddenly in the limelight. They have all the temptations. They have a lot of pressure. There must be, and I've been, I know a few professional athletes who've gone through these periods, periods that are very challenging and certainly after retirement or the end of their playing years, some very challenging times. What have you seen in terms of the best ways to support? That could be from your side. It could be other ingredients, player health on that side of the ledger.

• 30:08Speaker 09

  Nowadays, I think there needs to be someone that players need to talk to and be open minded to having a therapist to get stuff off their chest. They deal with a lot. They deal with a lot. I think it's also important for players to not feel entitled to do things. You know, oftentimes they feel like they have to take on all of this onus to do something for other people, and that's not real because when it comes down to it, if you ask probably 80% of the players that aren't in the position they used to be in and ask them who can do for them, it's not going to be many, if any, for that matter.

• 30:41Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning people who are willing to help them?

• 30:43Speaker 09

  Yeah, of course. Yeah. And then how are they positioning themselves to where when the ball stops, it's not about just having a ton of money. Like, how can I do something else? How can I be perceived while playing as someone who can transition and do something else? There's this idea that I made a lot of money. I don't have to do nothing else. Well, that's not true because you made a lot of money, but you didn't diversify your portfolio. Unless your money is making money for you and you live a lifestyle in which your 8% or your 10% or whatever it is, return each year is able to pay your bills and your taxes on your home and stuff like that, then you gotta go to work. You have to go to work.

• 31:26Speaker 09

  And it's a big difference when you, when you made $50 million this year and then next year you made nothing. It's just tough.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  Last but not least, a special episode all about coffee, featuring ethnobotanist and author of Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, Dr. Mark Plotkin.

• 31:52Mark Plotkin?

  About the same time that coffee was being introduced into South America, the Dutch East India Company began importing large shipments of coffee from Java, then in the Dutch East Indies, now part of Indonesia, into Holland in the year 1711. And, as had happened in the Muslim Middle East, demand for coffee soared in Christian Europe. Artists, writers, and composers began singing the praises of coffee, sometimes literally. Johann Sebastian Bach composed the "Kaffeecantata", one of his most beloved pieces. As part of the libretto, he wrote,

• 32:33Mark Plotkin?

  "How sweet coffee tastes, lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter than muscatel wine." Henri de Balzac, the famous French playwright and author, penned an essay entitled "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee." I believe Balzac provided the best explanation as why artists fell so deeply in love with Mocha Java. "Once coffee hits your system, ideas quickly march into motion, like the battalions of a great army." This underscores a point I've been emphasizing throughout the Plants of the Gods podcast series, that these substances are ideogens, not just hallucinogens.

• 33:18Mark Plotkin?

  Ideogens, they help create new ideas and concepts. To repeat Balzac's quote, since it is so fundamental, "Once coffee hits your system, ideas quickly march into motion, like the battalions of a great army." Much of Balzac's prodigious output was turbocharged by his coffee consumption. According to some reports, the Frenchman was downing fifty cups a day. His death at the age of fifty-one might in some part be due to his coffee addiction. After all, one must wonder how the poor man ever got to sleep. Yet his countryman, the philosopher Voltaire, was even more addicted and more prolific.

• 33:59Mark Plotkin?

  The author of over twenty thousand letters, two thousand books and pamphlets, he was said to have consumed as many as seventy-two cups of coffee a day. To understand why coffee had an even more profound impact in Europe than it did in the Middle East, two topics merit a bit of discussion. The first is potable water. As the human species began to relinquish the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, people began to live together in greater numbers and in greater proximity than ever before. With no understanding of hygiene or the germ theory of disease, once pristine water sources like streams, rivers, and lakes

• 34:39Mark Plotkin?

  became ever more polluted, if not just outright toxic and poisonous. This at least partially explains why beer was invented at the same time and in the same place as agriculture, the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia about eight thousand years ago, in what is now Iraq. Because the preparation of beer, and later coffee, involves boiled water, microorganisms are reduced or killed. And because beer and wine were alcoholic, microorganisms were reduced or eliminated. Hence, beer, wine, and coffee were much safer to drink than water. Prior to the advent of coffee in Europe,

• 35:22Mark Plotkin?

  and given the absence of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol, many Europeans drank the equivalent of near beer all day long. The result was a population which lived and worked in what was essentially a constant state of mild befuddlement. The advent of coffee proved to be a revelation. Thanks to the caffeine, coffee, in moderation at least, enhances alertness, concentration, cognition, and productivity. In the words of Anthony Wild, they, quote, "exchanged a state of permanent inebriation for a state of permanent caffeination."

• 36:03Mark Plotkin?

  I love that quote. Not only was coffee safe to drink, but consumers could think more clearly and work better, harder, and longer hours. The increasing availability of coffee and the growing number of coffee houses in which it was consumed and new ideas were proposed and debated has been hailed as "a brain explosion", none unlike what most certainly happened when our pre-human ancestors first consumed magic mushrooms, fermented fruits, and coffee beans in East Africa. As had been the case in the Muslim world, coffee houses became wildly popular and proved to be a meeting of the minds and different classes and cultures with endless conversations,

• 36:46Mark Plotkin?

  literally fueled by a botanical stimulant.

• 36:53Tim Ferriss?

  And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today doesn't really need an introduction, but I'll lead into it this way, and I'm going to keep my preamble short. The world's greatest bodybuilder, the world's highest-paid movie star, the leader of the world's sixth-largest economy, these are all the same person. Sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And for those who don't know, he is an Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor, businessman, philanthropist, bestselling author, and politician. He served as the 38th governor of California. His new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, is out October 10th, and his daily newsletter,

• 37:34Tim Ferriss?

  that's email newsletter, Pump Club, recently passed 500,000 subscribers and is growing quickly as a positive corner of the internet. Schwarzenegger has made it his mission to give back since his time in the governor's house. He's been working heavily to combat climate change, antisemitism, ensure fair voting practices, help youth work with veterans, and inspire healthy living, among other things. Now, if you want, in addition to all of that, some footage of his incredible accuracy with killing flies, his shepherding of various animals around the property, including pigs and dogs, you can go to my YouTube channel, that's youtube.com/TimFerriss. You can find him on social at Schwarzenegger, that's on Twitter, Instagram.

• 38:18Tim Ferriss?

  TikTok is at Arnold Schnitzel, on YouTube Arnold Schwarzenegger. The website for the book is beusefulbook.com, and the newsletter is arnoldspumpclub.com.

• 38:33Tim Ferriss?

  Today, we have a repeat guest, and good lord, did his last episode do well. It did spectacularly well. You guys loved it. So back by popular demand is Morgan Housel. You can find him on Twitter @MorganHousel, H-O-U-S-E-L. He is a partner at The Collaborative Fund. His book, The Psychology of Money, which we really dug into in depth last time, has sold more than 3 million copies and has been translated into 53 languages. Didn't even know there were that many languages. I'm kidding, of course. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sydney Award. I might be jealous. I might be jealous. In 2022, MarketWatch named him one of the 50 Most Influential People in Markets. Good

• 39:16Tim Ferriss?

  friend to have. He serves on the Board of Directors at Markel. Morgan's new book is Same as Ever, subtitle, A Guide to What Never Changes. You can find my first, and as I mentioned before, widely popular interview, and very tactically dense interview with Morgan at tim.blog/morganhousel.

• 39:36Tim Ferriss?

  Going meta, very briefly, for those who have not listened to the show, this is a show about deconstructing world-class performers across many different disciplines to tease out the habits, routines, frameworks, et cetera, that you can borrow and apply to your own lives. And sometimes you find gems in the most unusual of places. And today's guest may be an example of that. Apollo Robbins. Apollo Robbins is often referred to as the gentleman thief. He first made national news when he pickpocketed the Secret Service while entertaining a former US president. And we will get into that story. Forbes has called Robbins, quote, "an artful manipulator of awareness," end quote, and Wired has written

• 40:19Tim Ferriss?

  that, quote, "he could steal the wallet of a man who knew he was going to have his pocket picked," end quote. And that is an understatement, a vast understatement. And if you want to get an idea of what that looks like, you can also check out the video that we took for this podcast on my YouTube channel at youtube.com/timfaris. So listen to the audio, but definitely all Also check out some of the visuals. Robins entertainment credentials include the Warner Brothers film Focus with Will Smith and Margot Robbie, along with appearances in Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the TNT series Leverage. He was a producer and co-host for National Geographic's Brain Games, which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series.

• 41:00Tim Ferriss?

  Robins applied his expertise in magic and misdirection beyond entertainment, pulling back the curtain to show how the principles behind these illusions can enhance strategic thinking and decision-making. And we get into how much of what he has cultivated can transfer to other areas. And that really, at its core, is what this podcast is about, to train you to see those hidden threads or those through lines. His contributions to attention and perception research have been published in Scientific American Mind and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. He has delivered lectures at Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Society of Neuroscience. He has been profiled by The New Yorker, which is an amazing profile, and featured in The

• 41:42Tim Ferriss?

  New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Robins TED Talk, The Art of Misdirection, is ranked in the 20 most-watched TED Talks of all time and has been hailed by the TED editors as a revelation in the flaws of human perception. You can find all things Apollo Robbins at apolarrobbins.com, and you can find him on Twitter at Apollo Robbins. My guest today is Rich Paul. Rich Paul is the CEO and founder of Clutch Sports Group, the powerhouse agency representing some of the biggest athletes across major professional sports. Paul founded Clutch Sports in 2012 in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where he forged

• 42:25Tim Ferriss?

  a unique and personal approach to representing top NBA talent, putting athletes first and empowering them to build careers and brands on and off the court. And some of his numbers are just unbelievable. And we get into stories from negotiations and much more in this conversation. In 2019, Clutch Sports partnered with United Talent Agency, otherwise known as UTA. Paul serves as UTA's head Head of Sports and is an agency partner and he was appointed to UTA's Board of Directors in 2020. In 2019, Paul was also named GQ's Power Broker of the Year and dubbed the Kingmaker on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In 2021, Time recognized Clutch Sports on its first

• 43:07Tim Ferriss?

  ever list of the Time 100 Most Influential Companies and Variety recently named Paul to their Variety 500 list of the most influential business leaders shaping the global media industry. Paul is also credited with driving the reversal of the so-called Rich Paul Rule, which would have banned agents without a college degree from representing NCAA student athletes. In 2021, Paul and three former Nike executives formed a company called Adopt, a creative agency focused on sport, wellness, nutrition, tech, and other consumer-facing products. In 2022, Paul joined the Board of Trustees of Lacma and the Board of Directors of Funko and Designer Brands. And this year, in 2023, he joined the Board of Directors of Live Nation. He is also

• 43:48Tim Ferriss?

  a minority partner of the Spring Hill Company. His latest book is Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds. You can find him on Instagram @RichPaul and on Twitter @RichPaul4, that is the number four.

• 44:05Tim Ferriss?

  My guest today has been in the works for a long time. I'm thrilled to have him. And if I'm not mistaken, this is his first long-form podcast ever, Guy Le Liberté, who is the founder of Cirque du Soleil, One Drop Foundation, and Lune Rouge, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. My apologies for the French, which I do not speak. He was named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential personalities in the world and has been recognized as one of the most creative and innovative minds by Conde Nast. An artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Guy is a three-time winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, which included World Entrepreneur of the Year. He is a Knight of the National Order of Quebec and an inductee of the Canadian Business

• 44:47Tim Ferriss?

  Hall of Fame. Guy has been granted the insignia of the Order of Canada, the highest distinction in the country, and in 2010, received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Guy now dedicates his time to his company, Lune Rouge, and his international nonprofit. One Drop Foundation, which aims to ensure sustainable access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene for communities everywhere through innovative partnerships, creativity, and the power of art. This is a wild conversation full of a lot of unbelievable stories. And we take a few minutes to warm up, but definitely stick around. There's a lot to learn. There are many, many negotiation tactics, philosophical tenets, and more that

• 45:28Tim Ferriss?

  you can pick up from this conversation. You can find him on Instagram at Guy La Liberté DJ. And you can find his new projects, which are brand new projects. And they will contain descriptions of some different projects that we allude to at the end of the conversation. And that is frugues, F R O O O G S dot com. And you can get to the English with slash E N. So frugues dot com slash E N. This is going to be a slightly different episode. This time around, we have a special edition featuring my friend, Dr. Mark Plotkin, famed ethnobotanist. Mark takes over my duties

• 46:11Tim Ferriss?

  as host for this episode and shares an episode of his Plants of the Gods podcast, but you are hearing it before anyone else. You are hearing it before even his own podcast subscribers. So this is a Tim Ferriss Show exclusive. But let's back up. Who is Dr. Mark Plotkin? Mark, you can find him online on Twitter at Doc DOC. Mark Plotkin is an ethnobotanist who serves as president of the Amazon Conservation Team, which has partnered with roughly 80 tribes to map and improve management and protection of roughly 100 million acres of ancestral rainforests. He is best known to the general public as the author of the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, one of the most popular books ever written about the

• 46:53Tim Ferriss?

  rainforest. His most recent book is The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know. And you can find my interview with Mark, where we dig into his history, his mentors, including Richard Evan Schulz, the legendary Richard Evan Schulz, and so on, at tim.blog slash Mark Plotkin. This episode, however, this tightly packed episode explores all things coffee, which is the most widely consumed, mind altering plant product in the world. And it gets into all different aspects of coffee, many of which I think will surprise you.

• 47:30Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1.5 and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. Kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 48:12Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So, if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.