#223: Calming Philosophies for Chaotic Times -- Krista Tippett

Krista Tippett (@KristaTippett https://twitter.com/kristatippett) is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts the public radio program and podcast On Being https://onbeing.org/ and curates The Civil Conversations Project http://www.civilconversationsproject.org/, an emergent approach to the differences of our age. She received a National Humanities Medal in 2013 https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/national-humanities-medals/krista-tippett from President Barack Obama at the White House for "thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom." Krista was a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin and holds a Masters of Divinity from Yale University. Her books are Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594206805/offsitoftimfe-20, Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143116770/offsitoftimfe-20, and Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters -- and How to Talk About It http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143113186/offsitoftimfe-20. In this conversation, we cover many things, including: Krista's morning routines Zen versus striving -- compatible, incompatible, or other? Defining "spiritual" and "wise" The role of prayer for her, and what she focuses on Overcoming depression The skills of good interviewing Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run... This podcast is also brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email and enter "Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email" in the "how did you hear about us" section.

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.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, we're just in an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I went the contest route. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something, late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem. Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create the cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, this was a very important project to me, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  you can check out The Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is now the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid fast, which basically describes the core needs of most entrepreneurs and freelancers. The product was recently relaunched and rebuilt from the ground up, focusing on simplicity and speed. It's an awesome service, and many of you recommended it to me, which is how they came to be a sponsor. Now, I can't cover all of the many, many features, but for example, you can take pictures of receipts on your phone using FreshBooks iOS mobile app, or connect your bank account or credit card to FreshBooks and watch your expenses automatically import into your account every day.

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  And if you have any questions whatsoever, a real live person answers in less than three rings to help you with all of your needs. So, to claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial, that means no credit card needed, and see how the all-new FreshBooks can change your freelancing game, go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIM, T-I-M, in the "How did you hear about us?" section. That is, freshbooks.com/tim, and then put TIM, T-I-M, in the "How did you hear about us?"

• 3:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where I dig into the details of world-class performance and attempt in each interview to tease out the thought systems, beliefs, habits, lessons learned from people of all walks of life to give you small, little things or very big things that you can test yourself. In this episode, we have Krista Tippett, who's been requested many times @KristaTippett, K-R-I-S-T-A, Tippett, two Ps, two Ts. Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts the very well-known public radio program and podcast On Being and curates the Civil Conversations Project, an emergent approach to the differences of

• 4:07Tim Ferriss?

  our age. She received the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House for, quote, "thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence." On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom, end quote. Krista was a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin and holds a Masters of Divinity from Yale University. Her books include Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, and Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It.

• 4:48Tim Ferriss?

  We cover a lot in this conversation, including Krista's morning routines, Zen versus striving. Are they compatible, incompatible, something else? Defining the words spiritual and wise, the role of prayer for her and what she focuses on, overcoming depression, and the skills of good interviewing. There's much more to it, but I will leave my intro at that. And without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Krista Tippett. Krista, welcome to the show.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  I'm glad to be with you.

• 5:19Tim Ferriss?

  I have, I suppose, like many people, heard your voice quite a lot, and I've read your words quite a lot, and I thought we might start with one of my favorite sentences of yours. And it is, "Anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public." And this has been a mantra of sorts that I've adopted to help me sustain the battle-weary feeling that I get on the internet at times. Could you explain the context of that quote?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Well, I guess, I guess the context of that quote, or how I walk around with that thought, is it's such an important context and kind of piece of perspective to dealing with the level of emotion in our public life right now. And, you know, it's in politics, but it's really everywhere. And we, we take things at face value that we would be wiser to not take at face value. We would be wiser to be taking more breaths and understanding that things are true of

• 6:32Speaker 02

  other people that are also true of us, that when we're upset, often the thing we say and do is really a deflection of what we're actually upset about, or how we're upset. And, you know, in terms of our public life right now... This way we have of reacting to each other's surfaces is getting in the way, among other things, it's getting in the way of us grappling with all the very real things we need to grapple with that actually are of our shared interest and have to do with our common well-being.

• 7:10Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And it's seemed to me also that anger is often what fear sometimes looks like when it shows itself in public. And I've heard you say before that your father was fearful. And I was hoping you might elaborate on that. And in doing so, just give us some context for your childhood.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yes. And, you know, maybe that's part of the reason I'm I have a sensitivity to this, because I think my father had had a terrible first three years of his life, which we didn't know then, but we know now is so completely formative in terms of how people handle the rest of their lives. And I'm not sure exactly what happened to him. I think he was possibly abused. It was possibly violent. At best, it was severely neglectful. And my father was this kind of larger-than-life character. And that's how he presented. And of course, he was my father. So, you know, he was this huge, powerful character. But

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I think even from a very, very young age, I sensed that underneath he was very frightened. And, um, yeah, I hadn't actually thought recently about how that may be helping me imagine that inside the political dynamics in America right now.

• 8:42Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you grow up?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma.

• 8:47Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good wrestling state, that much I know.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Really? The only thing I the only sport I knew growing up was football. I was the only person I knew who was against football.

• 8:56Tim Ferriss?

  Against football? So I can't say I'm against wrestling because that was my the only sport I could be half competent at growing up. So I idolized John Smith, who was just this incredible savant slash superhuman athlete in the world of wrestling from Oklahoma, who then turned into an amazing coach. Well, why were you against football?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  I was, I was against, I don't know that I was always against football. I just felt like I got too much attention. And then when I got older, I had this enlightened moment, kind of in high school, where I, where I, I was a debater. I did drama and debate. And that's actually what kept my, kept my brain alive, um, growing up. And, and I found out that the high school football team had a $50,000 budget, which included steak dinners for all the players after every game. And I, that was, this is one of my first introductions to injustice in the world. And I protested that and it absolutely colored my view of football.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  And that was a lot of money. I mean, it's a lot of money now, was a huge amount of money in 1960s, 70s.

• 10:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's, yeah, it's, it's a money machine, as, as a lot of people know. And do you feel, you, you mentioned drama and debate. And I, I know that, uh, there, there have been a lot of formative moments, as for all people, in your childhood and then throughout high school and college. Would, do you, looking back, do you think drama and debate were good training for what you do now? Or was it really just a manifestation of what you were already good at?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  No, I, I, it's so interesting to get to be in your 50s, which, you know, I have to say, when I turned 50, I found that, I don't, I've never cared about birthdays and have basically found every decade to be more interesting than the last. But this one, I, I didn't like, I didn't like the number 50. I didn't like crossing it. But, uh, it, it, you know, now that I'm in it, it's, um, it, there's, you have a certain perspective on your life. And, and I, I do feel, uh, not that I ever would have planned or, um, you know, foreseen what I do now. I mean, until, you know, even a few years before I did it. But it does, it does feel like it pulls on all these threads, um, all these many things that I, that I did in my life.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And, and what's interesting to me is that it actually does pull on that, that drama piece, which, um, you know, I went away to college. I never did that again.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  And kind of here, here late in life and, and what turns out to be. I guess my big career. There's a presentational piece to it, and so I'm really grateful for that.

• 11:38Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned college, and I have a lot of friends, many, many of my closest friends who went to Brown, and I've heard you describe it as moving to Mars.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:49Tim Ferriss?

  Now, the question that I'd like to pose is, if I were to talk to your closest friends and ask them what your superpowers are, how would they answer that?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  My closest friends in college?

• 12:03Tim Ferriss?

  No, your closest friends now, or in college, because the follow-up question is, were those superpowers present in college?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, it's such an interesting question. I mean, I did feel like I had moved from one planet, which was my small town in Oklahoma, you know, Bible belt, to this very different world. And, you know, I'll tell you something interesting. I ended up spending most of my twenties in divided Berlin. And after the wall fell, I got my Stasi files.

• 12:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  The East German Secret Service, Stasi, had kept files on me from the time that I went to East Germany on a Brown exchange program my junior year, which included reports on me from East German students who came to Brown through that same exchange program. And then later in the years, I spent in Berlin, and it's so fascinating. It's like this malevolent observer, malevolent, however, you know, like kept folders for me of me in my twenties. And so in my Stasi file, like, all the letters I wrote home to my parents from my semester abroad, all the letters my parents wrote to me, the letters back and forth between me

• 13:23Speaker 02

  and my boyfriend, and also the observations of these East German graduate students about me at college. It's so fascinating. So one day, when I'm no longer doing this radio show, I will write this book.

• 13:41Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of their observations?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's suffused with paranoia because they always assumed that I was working for the CIA, which is just so ridiculous because 19-year-old college sophomores don't work for the CIA. So it was like observing me through this lens of paranoia. But they saw me as so competent in a way that I think I didn't see myself. You know, like, one of them came to Brown after knowing me in East Germany, where I was just so much in learning mode and soaking everything up mode. And I guess that would be one of my superpowers,

• 14:27Speaker 02

  that I, you know, if I get curious, if I give myself over to an experience, I really give myself over to it, and I guess I'm a good learner. And so that was the way they had experienced me, you know, full-time, that semester I spent there. And then this woman came to Brown, and she said, to her, I was like a different person. She said she knows everyone, which I never thought of myself. I never thought of myself as someone who knew everyone. And she saw me as very outgoing and gregarious and a strong personality. I mean, I don't know, I look back at my college self, I look back at myself in my 20s, like many of us, I think, and I only remember all the self-doubt and the confusion.

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think the principles of good learning are? By all accounts, and certainly my impression is that you are a fantastic learner, what do you think the principles or elements of being a good learner are?

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Well, I guess two things come to mind. One is good questions. And what I would also say about that is that I think, you know, learning is a process. So even if it's something I'm spending an hour learning about, I'm going to expect that my questions are more refined at the end of that hour than they are at the beginning of that hour. So it's being able to formulate good questions going in, but then not just letting your answers or what your understanding be shaped, but letting your questions evolve, that your questions get better and better.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  And then I guess the other thing about learning, I think, is it kind of gets back to where you and I started about seeing what looks like anger, seeing what is expressing itself as anger, but understanding that there's something very more, being interested and open to knowing that there's something more complicated and perhaps something quite other, deeper than what is showing itself on the surface. And I also think that's a quality of learning is, you know, pushing for that, that deeper thing, that what's beneath the surface.

• 16:43Tim Ferriss?

  So I have always been, and this is not a good thing, quick to anger. And I could point to family influences, I could point to all sorts of things to absolve myself of responsibility, but it's been, it's been in some respects, maybe an aid, a level of aggression, but it's also been very damaging. And I remember being told a few years ago, and I don't recall who gave me this advice, but they said, "Do not ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence." And I've, I've since realized that incompetence can be replaced with a lot of things. Busy. They might just be busy. Just because they gave you a one-line email response to your mini novella that you sent them, doesn't mean that they're spiteful

• 17:25Tim Ferriss?

  or angry. Maybe they just have 10 times more stuff on their plate than you do. If, if anger is the emotion that I historically have been quick to, that I'm trying to learn to work with in a more constructive way, what, what emotion are you quick to?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I have to say that I'm a redhead and I, I also am, well, you know, and I, it's, it's, I think I'm going to say this kind of proudly. I mean, I don't, I don't act out the way I used to, but people who've known me at other parts of my life would certainly say that I, you know, I had a huge temper and I, I do righteous indignation really well. I just, I do it less often than I used to.

• 18:15Tim Ferriss?

  Well, so Brown, Brown was just like jet fuel on the fire. I, my cousin went to Brown, I have so many friends who've gone to Brown. I think I probably would have been happier there than Princeton, quite frankly. But yeah, righteous indignation. That's

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm good at that. I, you know, I, I think one thing about having children, it kind of gets to what you're talking about is

• 18:38Speaker 02

  you see how children, you know, if you, and this, this is interesting because it's, you know, I've read your books across the years and, you know, if, if they haven't eaten enough, or they're not eating the right things, if they haven't gotten enough sleep, you know, they get cranky, they're miserable, and it's all out on the surface. And I mean, so much of, I think, our bad behavior, or the behavior that we look back later and say, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. It's also about just these elemental things about being creatures and bodies, and being tired, and being hungry, and not taking care of ourselves. Yeah, I mean, sometimes people, we're just, we are, a lot of us, we're tired, we're stressed out.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  But somehow, as we go through life, we get less good at wearing that on the surface, and sometimes saying that and stepping back rather than giving into, you know, the fit that might be another way to work out our stress, or our tiredness.

• 19:37Tim Ferriss?

  And this reminds me of an anecdote that was shared with me a few months back, which was that Bill Clinton, so President Clinton at the time,

• 19:49Tim Ferriss?

  when he was having a meeting that would lead to some type of negotiation, the first thing he would do when people came in is ask them if they'd had anything to eat or drink, and make sure that they were not thirsty and not hungry before the negotiation. And for myself, at least, I've realized, and I would like to talk about

• 20:10Tim Ferriss?

  Some of the depressive periods that you've worked through, because that is something that I've... I hesitate to use the word "suffered from" because it makes it seem... I don't want to seem like I'm victimizing myself or playing the part of victim, but it's something I've learned to have to work with. And I've noticed that very often when I'm trying to sit down and think my way out of some type of funk. And I'm coming up with all sorts of sophisticated or seemingly insightful reasons as to why I'm unhappy at the time or just in a low-energy state. The truth is staring me right in the face. "No, you haven't eaten for five hours." And I'll sit there and I'll journal for 10 pages.

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, "No, idiot. You just need to go have an orange and you'll be fine." For yourself, and I know you've spoken about this porn, written about it, but going through depressions, and let's say, I think it was a few years ago, that you went through depression. Can you identify or explain for people what triggered or catalyzed that? And then what helped you to get over that episode of depression?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I probably had my first episode of true depression when I was a sophomore in college. But nobody had that vocabulary back then. And it did not... I did, I would, I used the language with myself that I'd fallen into a black hole. And the way it felt and the way it still looks to me like now, I almost visualize it, is that I clawed my way out of that black hole. And in fact, it was a formative...

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Experience that I emerged with a lot of courage and a lot of determination. I mean, I kind of set a plan for my life, which included how much sleep I needed every night. And I look back and I think, well, that was very intelligent because those are the kinds of things that matter. But also, I think that I, well, I would say at this point, I know that, I think I come by this honestly, I think, you know, living, I think my father was depressed, although that never showed on the surface. I also started at Brown, I had never really exercised. It's crazy because I'm not that old, but I grew up in a, in the culture I grew up in, girls didn't do sports, really.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  I mean, there were girls who did, but they were unusual. So I'd never really used my body in that way, but I started, I started, I started this very faithful practice. I swam, right? Like, I mean, everywhere I was in the world for 25 years, and I was a few places in those years, I swam at least every other day. And looking back, I think I, that was a way that I was, that was a form of self-care. And so, actually, that summer before this major depression set in, I had stopped swimming. I was doing something else. I was rollerblading. But that was a little bit different, and so I changed that.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  But I think the big answer is that I had, you know, I was in my early 30s. I literally led a few lives at that point. I'd, I'd put myself through all this change. I was always very hard on myself, which, you know, got me a long way, but it was, it was not, it was much too hard to be me. And I had, you know, I had had this career in Berlin, being a journalist and being a diplomat, and then I'd taken myself away to write a novel, and then I'd gotten married, and I'd lived in England, and then gone to divinity school, and then had a baby and moved to Minnesota.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And honestly, I think this depression had been waiting a long time to happen. And as often is true of us in life, I think at the moment at which I was kind of settled enough to allow it to happen, it just took over. I had just started to see a therapist. Like, I'd always thought of myself as somebody who had a happy childhood and would never see a therapist and didn't need that. But somewhere, you know, in myself, I think I got ready for this. And that was really a depression where I stopped being able to sleep at all. And, you know, all the classic things, lost 15 pounds for no reason. And eventually, just, you know, went to bed and couldn't get out.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  What helped me, I was very fortunate to take well to the medications and to have a great therapist who I saw, you know, just once a week. It was hard for me to afford that therapy at that time. In fact, a friend helped me afford the therapy. But for a few years, saw this person. And I always say, I never want to romanticize something like depression. And in the moment that someone is depressed, the last thing I would want to insist, you know, or say is that this is good for you and you will learn from this and it's valuable. I do think that 10 or 20 years later, if we can walk through these things and survive

• 25:38Speaker 02

  them, I would absolutely say that the course of my life was changed for the better because of what I had to face. The truths I faced about the things that, you know, the ways I was wounded, right? The pain I was carrying around, the ways I had been so hard on myself, so much harder than I needed to be. And I was able to start living differently over a long, you know, over years. It's kind of a long answer, sorry.

• 26:09Tim Ferriss?

  This is a long podcast, so long answers are a good fit. What were some of the changes, if you're able to talk about them, that you made?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, it's this classic stuff. I, again, it's interesting because I definitely was one of these people who...

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Wasn't sure that I thought, you know, that I wasn't sure what I thought of anybody who went to therapy. And it was okay for Woody Allen to do it, right? But um.

• 26:34Tim Ferriss?

  Guilty, guilty as charged over here as well.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I just thought, that's not me. I don't need that. And boy, did I need it. I mean, it's, it's like, it's these classic things of learning how I survived my childhood with a father who was, who didn't mean to be cruel, but was. I kept ahead of his sarcasm. I kept ahead of his teasing. You know, I could get positive approval when I blew him away, right? Like, only if I did something that was so smart, or that he had so not thought

• 27:17Speaker 02

  of, I would have these moments of it being okay. And so, and so that's what I did. So I pushed myself really hard. And I got through my childhood and I, you know, I went, I went to amazing places on that same kind of energy. But it, it was not a way to live. And it was not a sustainable way to be human. And at that point in my 30s, you know, if I hadn't found a way to, to treat myself more gently, then I think I would have just gotten smaller after that.

• 27:50Tim Ferriss?

  So I've, I've not done a deep dive on this yet, but for, potentially for myself, and certainly just as an area to explore, I've become very interested in CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:05Tim Ferriss?

  And particularly its roots, or some of at least the core tenets being similar to Stoicism, which I read constantly, for better, for worse. I think mostly for better. I guess for neutral, if we're talking about Stoics. But the, the type of therapy, I've never done any type of consistent therapy. I have hired. What would call, people who would call themselves coaches, which may in fact

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Tim Ferriss?

  Offer a very similar support role, but what, what, what type of therapy was it that you found most helpful? Or what were the characteristics that were helpful?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  I just want to say that one of the favorite interviews I did across the years, it was a long time ago now, so you probably haven't seen it, was with Jennifer Michael Hecht, who's a philosopher and a poet, and she wrote a book on Dao, which is just masterful. And she talks about the origins of Stoicism and cynicism and how they, they meant, there's, she talks about them as graceful life philosophies, right? We think of them almost as stances against, you know, or neutral. But anyway, so I just want to say, I don't think Stoicism is just neutral.

• 29:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's not, it's not. I'm really being facetious because I think that Stoicism, for most people, brings up the image of a cow standing in the rain or something like that.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  But it's, it's, it's much more than that. I mean, I've, I've, I've done a lot of work with publishing and recommending Stoicism as something to explore, but the, there are many different types of therapy. And for some people, I've, I've spoken with friends, for instance, who really just need to talk, but they don't want to do it with their friends who are biased in one way or another, or they feel guilty because their friends have many different things to do. And you go down the list, there are a million different variations. What, what did you find most helpful?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't do anything, you know, I didn't do anything fancy or exciting sounding like Jungian, Jungian therapy. I had this, I was living in Minnesota at the, at the time, and I still am in.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  I had this just really good therapist who probably I would say Family Systems was where he was coming from, but I'm not even sure I knew that language then. And I would say, and I think this was, you know, this was kind of part of my survival stuff from my childhood is I'm not somebody who ever talked to anybody about any of this. I wasn't. And one thing I've invested so much in, and I think that, that going through my depression and my therapy has opened up this whole part of my life in the last 20 years is investing in my friendships. It's not that I didn't have friends, I did, but I didn't lean on people back then. And I think I didn't, I didn't think it was safe too.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  So, so this was really the first time that I had just kind of told the truth. You know, I had somebody ask me questions about what it was really like to grow up in my body, in my house. And things that I had never said to myself, you know, being the answers. And it's just like unpeeling these layers. And then there's this, there's this terrible moment, which I'm sure everybody gets to kind of, I don't know how far it in, in it was six months or a year, where you, where you peel away enough layers that you're actually making progress, but you haven't,

• 31:49Speaker 02

  you've, you've had, and you have to do that to get into a new place, but that moment where you've learned things about yourself that are hard and true, and you get vulnerable for the first time, and you have not yet started to create the foundation for this new way you will live. And that's, you know, I remember that moment in therapy as just despairing, because I just, where I just felt like, I think I said this to my therapist, I, I am damaged good, right? You know, that's never the way I had allowed myself to think about myself, or certainly anybody else to think of me.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  But then, I don't know, I kind of, he kind of helped me walk out of that. Because that also wasn't the whole story and the damaged part wasn't, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all of me. And it kind of helps you live into other places in yourself that you haven't been able to live into because you were so catering to that fear. Does that make sense?

• 32:50Tim Ferriss?

  No, it does make sense. And I think there's, there's also, at least in my own depressive periods, the acute feeling, and this is not speaking for you, but speaking for myself, the acute feeling of being alone or uniquely damaged.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:07Tim Ferriss?

  Whereas maybe we can take solace in the fact that we were, we were all dinged up by the full contact sport that is life. And there are very few people who go through great old degrade, fully intact, like a porcelain doll, tends not, tends not to happen. You, you mentioned a few questions and I'd like to talk about questions. What are the interviews or episodes or experiences that have helped you to grow most as an interviewer?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know that I've thought about that. Honestly, I feel like I've grown as an interviewer by doing it. And that sounds really simple and it's very straightforward and it's something we know more about through science now, right? But it, for me, it was, it's been a departure. Like, I can't believe that I've been doing the same thing now for over 12 years. I mean, it's more like 15 years, if you think about the early days when I was creating the show. I, I guess, doing the same thing over and over again, but in this, in this constant, constant mode of learning.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  I think when I was younger, when I was in my twenties, I would have been really resistant to the idea of doing the same thing for a long period of time, right? That would have felt like stasis to me, like kind of not growing anymore. But I, I do think that this...

• 34:45Speaker 02

  You know, and I never thought of myself as an interviewer until I kind of created this job. And it's, I, I still, I, I still consider myself to be kind of a newcomer and an interloper in the world of media, which I know is ridiculous at this point.

• 35:04Tim Ferriss?

  I'd say it's pretty ridiculous.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  I'm realizing it's ridiculous because that's not the way other people see it. But, uh, so, so, so I think that clearly, you know, I do feel like I'm doing something I'm good at. I know how to do this. I have, I have a good set of skills and instincts that lend themselves to this. But I truly would say that what's, what I, how I've gotten better is doing it over and over and over again. And that is such a thrilling thing to get, to get better at something over time.

• 35:37Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the mistakes that you made early on as, as an interviewer? Because I can think a lot of, I'm still making mistakes, but I can think of a lot of mistakes that I've made. They fall into a handful of categories. What were, what were sort of mistakes you made early on or common novice mistakes?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I suppose I learned at some point early on that I was better when I could stop, that, that I was better when I was really planted in the fact that it wasn't about me, that I was, you know, that the point of the interview was drawing out this other person. And when I could get out of the way. And that, that doesn't mean, you know, like I'm, I'm an essential person in the interview, right? Like, you know, you and I having a conversation. I actually think your job right now is harder than my job because, you know, you are creating this narrative arc. You're hosting this experience. Right? So I'm not, I'm not belittling the role I had to play.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  I still had to ask those good questions. I still had to listen well. I had to be able to go with the conversation. But as clear as I could get about the fact that it was about them and not about me, I would, I would be better. I used to, I used to have this experience that I would do all these rituals, right? Like to be, to be, to have good energy. And at some point, early on, I realized that, that sometimes when I went into the studio for an interview and I was tired, for whatever reason, I hadn't been able to get to sleep, right? Or I hadn't, you know, I hadn't been able to drink the right amount of caffeine. It was a better, it was, it was a better experience for me and for them. And, and that, you know, that was one of the signals for me, that when I, even, you

• 37:27Speaker 02

  know, by force, had to surrender, that that actually was, was part of what made it good.

• 37:33Tim Ferriss?

  How did that manifest itself in the conversation? Was it longer pauses, more silence? Was it just a, a greater degree of, of focus because you were summoning every ounce of strength that you had after an all-nighter to, to look at, look them in the face and actually hear their words? What, how did the, that surrendering manifest itself?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I guess it did manifest as a, a calm. I mean, you know, I was worried about it as tiredness, but it also, it took an edge of energy off, which in fact was helpful to letting the other person's energy be what drove the conversation. I think it made me more porous, right? Because I wasn't able to gear up the way I thought I should, right? That in fact I was letting more in.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  What habits, I probably should have asked this at the beginning. What habits of other interviewers annoy you? I can't, I really, I will have to laugh if it's like four or five things I've been doing repeatedly in this conversation.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 38:48Tim Ferriss?

  Is there anything that?

• 38:49Speaker 02

  It's such an impo, I feel like it's an impo, my answers are impolitic.

• 38:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's okay.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  There's a lot, there's, most of what, most of what I see, that's a big statement, much of what I see. That calls itself interviewing, at least, let's say, in news. I mean, there's so many interesting things happening. There's so many new platforms, right? And this is one of them. Although, I'll say, you know, I'll say, in podcasting, what can happen? Because it is so easy. I mean, I had to actually start a public radio show, which was much harder than it should be. Right? It took years, and it was like being hazed for years. And, you know, and I can't even believe it happened, because it was so difficult. But that was the only way I could get this thing out there. And that's not true anymore. You can, you can start your podcast.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  But, but the danger of that is, is not to understand that there's a craft, right? Not to put any rigor into it. Because there is a craft to making, to creating conversational space that is, that is listenable, and that goes somewhere, and that might, and that will be affecting for the person who's being interviewed, as well as the people listening. Anyway, but, but, so that's new. That's a new phenomenon. But, um, I mean, you know, even in public radio, which I love, the, the nature of

• 40:18Speaker 02

  the, of the experience and of the way things work is that people who we hear as interviewers are, have been handed a list of questions by producers, which they pose, and then they move on to the next question. And that's, I mean, that's just not a conversation, to me. Right? It's, the, the, the, the interview proceeds without any reference to what's just been said, for the most part. So it's something almost scripted, or it's scripted on their end. And, um, and that drives me crazy. And there are just a lot of lost opportunities for revelation. And I, but I guess the other thing that drives me crazy is that when people are going for

• 41:03Speaker 02

  revelation... It's often in the form of making their questions sound tough. It's about how they sound and how they present. And, you know, we actually reward and laud interviewers who push their subjects into corners and embarrass them,

• 41:28Speaker 02

  who put people on the defensive and then they strike out. And then that creates the conversation we talk about.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  I just don't, I, I think, I don't think that, I think that rarely accomplishes anything

• 41:45Speaker 02

  aside from something entertaining, something that demeans both of the people in the conversation and demeans us by enjoying it.

• 41:53Tim Ferriss?

  I agree. I think that it's, it's adding division to

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:59Tim Ferriss?

  a world that is already divisive enough

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Tim Ferriss?

  in a lot of respects. Here's, here's a bit of a gear shift, but this is a, this is a question from one of my dear friends who is a huge fan of your show, as are many, many people, of course. He would love to know what you read to your kids or have read to your kids.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Well, my kids are now 18 and 20.

• 42:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So, so before that, before that, when, when you were reading to

• 42:30Speaker 02

  I don't know that I read. I mean, I remember reading to my kids was just one of the, well, it was both beautiful and exhausting. I mean, I also remember the nights where they would say, read me another story. And I was, oh, please let me go to bed. But the, but it's also true that those were such special moments. But, you know, I read Margaret Wise Brown, I mean, the kind of Good Night Moon in that genre. I mean, I, I am a huge library user. And so I took my kids to the library all the time and we would walk away with stacks and stacks of books, more than like buying books. And actually, I mean, I didn't have a lot of money to spend when they were really little.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  So we just, I would just say we read everything. What I also did as my kids got older is that I would read,

• 43:23Speaker 02

  when they were kind of a little bit too old for the For the children's books, but liked, liked being read to at night, even just to fall asleep. Like, I would read New Yorker articles or pieces from this New York Times book review that were just educational and enjoyable. And I really liked that period when they allowed me to do that.

• 43:47Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to sprinkle in questions from fans of yours and fans of mine as we go through this. This is another fan question, and I'm paraphrasing in part, but trimming them down in some cases. So I appreciated her interviews with Mary Oliver and other, and poets. What are top three poems she'd recommend? So for someone who is, I'll just rephrase this a little bit. For someone who is allergic to poetry or has never viewed themselves as liking poetry, for whatever reason, maybe they just had a bad teacher or a bad day in school.

• 44:25Tim Ferriss?

  What are three poems or poets that you would suggest they start with?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Well, I have to say, I think that's a daunting question because I, I probably won't give the best answer. You know, I, I do interview so many poets these days, but I, and I, and I meet people who tell me that, you know, they discovered poetry through my show, and that just thrills me. But, you know, honestly, I'm just like everybody else in that poetry has eluded my attention, you know, for a lot of my life, and I, I love it. And yet it, it, it kind of hurts going in and I have to force myself to read it. So I think I'm fortunate to be in this position where, you know, I get paid to like draw out, to go sit with Mary Oliver and, and soak up poetry. I, I would say, I'm just so, I'm, so what comes to mind? These are just the three poems that come to mind right now.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I do actually think Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese, is incredible. I think it's a poem that has saved lives.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  There's a line in there that actually comes to me. At interesting times, and it's not unrelated to some of the things you and I have been talking about. You know, let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. And sometimes that's such an important thing to be able to tell ourselves.

• 45:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's beautiful.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  It is beautiful. And another poem that I found really important this year, I interviewed a poet named Naomi Shihab Nai.

• 45:49Tim Ferriss?

  You know what? I literally just pulled up her name because I was going to mention her. Please continue.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So she has this poem called Kindness, which she wrote after she was... She may have even been on her honeymoon. She was with her husband. I think they were in Colombia. Something happened. They were robbed. I mean, they had this really traumatizing experience so that she's like in a different country, you know, sitting by the side of the road. Her husband takes off to find help. But she actually wrote this poem called Kindness, about what happened after that experience. And it's a reminder. It's just beautiful. It tells a story, but it's also... It's kind of...

• 46:37Speaker 02

  It's lines that you can carry around with you that are a reminder that we each of us have so much power in any given day to make the day of a lot of people, right?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  And there's so many things for us to feel powerless about, but that's huge. So I like it, and it is about kindness, but it's unromantic, right? There's nothing fluffy, touchy feely about it.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  I guess the other thing I just recommend is a book. Rilke is probably the name, if there's one name of somebody else who's not alive, that's come up more often in my show. I mean, most often it's probably Rilke. And there's a book, a translation of his Book of Hours, which is called The Book of Hours: Love Letters to God. And it's translated by a Buddhist teacher named Joanna Macy, and a friend of hers who's also Buddhist, who's a psychotherapist named Anita Barrows. And I've interviewed both of them across the years. And I... Rilke's German, because I lived in Germany for seven years. And... For some bizarre reason, there's part of my brain that is in German.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  So I'm very fluent in German. And Rilke's German is exquisitely beautiful. It has, it bears no relation to the kind of guttural German that is in all of our ears from movies. And it's almost like he has his new, his own language. And Joanna and Anita have translated, have turned that into English. And it's a book that I return to again and again, the poems in there.

• 48:18Tim Ferriss?

  And given that you speak both languages, you feel like it captures the essence of, of Rilke's German?

• 48:26Speaker 02

  I, I do. And, but it does it, like, I've never been happy with any of the translations of Rilke, any of the others out there. There's one translator of his Letters to a Young Poet that I like, which is an older translator, Herder Norton. But this poetry, it's a, it's a creative work, right? Like, they have not tried to translate every word as it appears. They, they have, they have done something creative and, and that, that veers away from the text in a way that captures what it really does in another language.

• 49:08Tim Ferriss?

  I'll have to check that out. We won't, we won't get into it, but I lived in Berlin for a while myself in 2005.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Oh, you did? When was that?

• 49:17Tim Ferriss?

  This was 2005. I lived in Prenzlauerberg for about three months and spent a bit of time in East Berlin for boxing. And it, it was incredible how, even at that time, how different. You crossed a line and architecturally and

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:36Tim Ferriss?

  just culturally, everything was different. I had a, I had a fantastic time. German, unfortunately for me, is, maybe it's due to the noun cases and whatnot, but I, it is the one language that I lose like sand through the fingers faster than any other. It's really a shame, but because I love the language. But, ah, can't win them all. So a few things I wanted to mention. So Naomi Shieb and I was the first poet. And I was introduced to her through a friend who felt compelled, for whatever reason, this doesn't happen to me often, to read a poem to me. And I thought, when I read her work, oh, I can actually understand this, because in previous encounters with poetry,

• 50:21Tim Ferriss?

  my overwhelming thought was, and it was often presented in an academic environment, where the less, the more incomprehensible it was, the more valuable it was seen, and I just didn't get it. There's another book that I picked up about a year ago. I've been trying to focus less on being obsessed with productivity all the time, and part of, part of that is trying to focus on beauty that doesn't necessarily have a point, for the sake of beauty.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I love that, yeah. So that's what, that was one of my learning curves.

• 50:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like that last 5%.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  I'm still working on it.

• 50:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's like that last 5% that's gonna make you a miserable wretch, and maybe not worth it. So I picked up this book because of the title, which I don't do that often, but a very thin book of poetry called Night Sky With Exit Wounds. I just loved the imagery that that conjured. And I will warn people, it is very sexually graphic, so if you were sensitive to that, beware. Ocean Vuong, I don't know if I'm pronouncing the Vietnamese last name properly, but V U O N G. Really thin, and I committed to reading one poem per day in the morning.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good.

• 51:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, which I'm doing right now with the Tao Te Ching, which is the book that probably is in the top four that have come up most often with, in my own podcast. You mentioned love letters to God, and I'd like to talk about language for a second. The word God is tricky for a lot of reasons, as you are well familiar. And I'm not gonna focus on that right now, but I will ask, this is actually a question from a fan, if you were to choose one word, common or uncommon, which is most important to humanity, what would it be? And that's a huge question, but I'll let you.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Well, okay, I'll just say it would not be God.

• 52:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's, or important for us in this modern epoch?

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the word God is too small. And it's too overused and misused. And, um, oh, I don't know. You know, honestly, I would probably say something, uh, that might sound cheesy because it's another overused word. But I, I think the word love is, uh, I mean, you know, it, it, I, I'm, I've been writing and talking a lot about this over the last couple of years that, that, that the word love is so watered down and, and, and kind of ruined. Uh, and yet, um, it's just all, it's the, it's the only thing big enough, um, if we can recapture it in all of its

• 52:57Speaker 02

  complexity for our life together. And again, if we can recapture it as something practical and not merely romantic, um, passionate. I think we need to keep the passion to it. And it is, you know, love is kind of an amazing word because, um, even though it is completely ruined. And I, just yesterday, I, I interviewed Alain de Boitton about love and sex and marriage, this philosopher. And, uh, and we talked the whole time, you know, the, the language of falling, right? That we use, that is used something you fall into and fall out of. Um, and yet, uh, there's only ultimately one way to say, I love you. And those are some of the most incredible words and

• 53:41Speaker 02

  the most affecting words that any of us can ever hear at any moment. So I think even though it's ruined, that might be my choice if I had to choose one.

• 53:54Tim Ferriss?

  So I have, I have had, and maybe this is from, I blame it on the language learning and having studied, whether, whatever it is, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, et cetera, that I'm, I get very anxious. Maybe this is also my OCD at work with, uh, amorphous or nebulous words. If something's not well defined for me, I, I don't like to use it. So I've avoided using a lot of words whenever possible. Success, I don't like to use very much or successful.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  I, I do the same thing. There are lots of words that are just messed up.

• 54:27Tim Ferriss?

  What, what other words do you try not to use? Or do you think people should use less?

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, I do this all the time, but of course, now you're asking me. And I

• 54:38Tim Ferriss?

  We can come back to it, too.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, I actually think I work a lot with words like justice and privilege. We're just doing a show on whiteness.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  And it's like, some of the things that we need to have big conversations about together. And, and I mean, actually, just have to start like with baby steps. We're so far from knowing how to have certain conversations, especially around race. But I think the whiteness conversation, even with white, among white people, is a big one. But we, we've loaded down. You know, there are these words and these phrases that are attached to those conversations that just are conversation stoppers.

• 55:23Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  That, that are very meaningful for the people who are using them, right? That have a lineage and have substance, but illicit, immediate defensive reactions are immediately polarizing to the extent that they are counterproductive. And I feel like there's a whole, there's a whole lot of that around race. And, and even words like peace and justice. I don't, I don't use words like that. Social, what is it? I like to, what is it? What is so, um, I like to talk about, um, you know, social healing rather than social activism.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  There are a lot of words we use that we act like have inherently positive connotations, like innovation or progress. Don't, right? I mean, there's, there's a lot of things we do in the name of progress and innovation. Which are impulsive, or which are so bounded by what we can see at the moment, that are going to have terrible effects 20 years from now. I mean, I think the best example of this is like what we did with food in the latter half of the 20th century and how when I was growing up, you know, my mother being able to make dinner by opening a box and a

• 56:53Speaker 02

  can was progress. And in fact, you know, we have just systematically messed up our bodies, our agriculture, and our planet. And so I think we need to be really wary, especially, I mean, success is a good one. You're right, especially about these words that we kind of reflexively think are good. We need to question a lot of that. We need to be more thoughtful.

• 57:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, even happiness can fall into that category.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Oh, terrible. Yeah, I don't think happiness is a word I use very much. Flourishing, I like that word.

• 57:30Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to mention a few things. The first is that the same friend, or I should say, one of the friends, so Matt Mullenweg, who's just a brilliant entrepreneur, very thoughtful, soulful guy, who's, I suppose, thought of typically as the lead developer of WordPress, which powers 26%.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. He's amazing. I've been so honored that he, I think he quoted me in his

• 57:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, he's a big fan.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Speech. He's so amazing.

• 57:57Tim Ferriss?

  He's a big fan. And his New Year's resolution assignment to me was to have you on the podcast. And I've given him his own New Year's resolution, which explains the Twitter back and forth with him.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  To do a silent retreat.

• 58:12Tim Ferriss?

  To do a silent retreat. But he introduced me to a book years ago, and I believe it's called Words That Work. And it's by Frank Luntz, who is, I believe he was a Republican political strategist. And putting any partisan feelings aside, it makes, it's, it really underscores the importance of the words that you use and how the words you use affect your, they affect, or perhaps just are, your thinking. And then that, of course, affects everything else. And

• 58:47Tim Ferriss?

  It's so critical. I mean, you mentioned the whiteness episode. You should have a thumbnail of my head. I look like American history acts. I'm the palest human you've ever seen. But putting my hair loss issues aside, I found that, and I won't spend too much time on this, but it's a very worrisome or worrying trend that I'm observing, which is in, say, a conversation about race, there is a tremendous, and I think it's both self-induced and contributed to by outside factors. I mean, I can't do a Q and A anywhere without getting

• 59:27Tim Ferriss?

  some scoffing comment about white privileged male, and it shuts down the conversation. There's so much self-loathing among, for instance, people who are white, and that is a really broad category, right? I mean, they could be recent immigrants from Albania. They could be, fill in the blank. But I do think that it's important to realize, and this comes back to the point you made about interviewing, if you immediately put someone on the defense and shut them down, even though you might get the cheap applause for that, it is not, in the long term, constructive. And in fact, I think it's very, very, very, it sows the seed of later destruction in many, many ways.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:00:11Tim Ferriss?

  All right, shifting gears, getting off of hardballs with Chris Matthews, and let's move to eastern practices and philosophies, just to temper it. This is a question from a fan. "Sometimes I find eastern practices to be demotivating. How can you reconcile Zen and striving for success?" This is a sentiment that I've heard a lot of type A folks, myself included, talk about amongst friends, related to even meditation, like, "I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my edge," type of concerns. How do you think about that?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I do want to say one thing. I think also, it's like Zen, I mean, you can be an incredible meditator and be very narcissistic, right? So first of all, it's not like any of these things magically change you or make you a better person. But putting that aside.

• 1:01:05Tim Ferriss?

  I'm meditating to become more narcissistic. Am I doing it wrong?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we'll have that as another conversation. Well, you know, honestly, I think I'm like them. I think that I, as I say, I've always, I get a lot done. I personally, even after I started to vicariously benefit greatly from the conversations with Buddhists and contemplatives, just couldn't do it myself, which is crazy because, you know, I was saying to somebody recently, meditating is in fact, one of life's few instantaneously rewarding activities. I mean, I really, I mean, I have had, across the years, just these one-off experiences

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  of putting myself in that place, or being in a setting where I was put in that place. And it is transformative, even in some ways that stay with you. And yet, I could not force myself to keep doing it every day. So I guess, one thing I would say, I think this matter of spiritual practice, and what spiritual practice works for us, it gets to be personal. You know, we are, we are different. And so, what actually changed for me, I mean, I at some point decided that I just, again, even though I'd had these amazing experiences and utterly believe in it, I just thought it's not for me. It's when I started doing yoga, that I started to let this into my life.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  And what I told myself, and this is, I think, true, but it's also, it's also kind of my narrative, right, is that I needed, it needed to be active. Like, I needed my body to be moving to calm my mind down. And I do a very kind of athletic kind of yoga, and I love that. I will say that very gradually, I have held it, I have held these spiritual technologies in high regard. I have continued to speak with teachers, I've continued to have these kind of one-off experiences. And I have very gradually developed a really modest practice, where, you know, I spend

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  10 minutes every morning, and that's up from six last year. And that's while my tea steeps, so it even, I'm even like, killing two birds with one stone. But, and it has calmed me down. I think I was ready to be calmed down.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  I, it will change you. I, I think whether it takes your edge off depends on how, how much in charge you are of change, of like how you're moving through the world to begin with.

• 1:04:00Tim Ferriss?

  I think it also, at least where I've landed, not everything needs to have an edge, right? So if you're, if you're looking for a scalpel to cut something effectively, yes, you want an edge. But if you're trying to sleep, you don't want to lay on a bed of razor blades. And I've, I've also noticed oftentimes, for me at least, having only meditated consistently for the last two or three years, that it allows me to be, be more observant of my own thoughts and therefore more precisely determine what I need and want so that I'm not using an edge to charge through brick walls in a direction that I don't need to be heading in the first place.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Right, right. I think it, um, one of the things that I find really fascinating is how it changes one's experience of time. And, um, you know, I've, I've thought a lot over the years, I know from my conversations with scientists and from the, the kind of study I did of Einstein, you know, that time is an illusion. I mean, it's like the way we're experiencing it is the way our senses are experiencing it. Um, so for example, so, so we walk around with some illusions, like you're, just as you're saying, you know, that, that certain things are a certain way and we have to manage them that way, that in fact, aren't reality based. And so I used to, um,

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  And I think this is very much the question you're asking. Like, I get a huge amount done in the first hour to hour and a half that I'm awake in the morning. Like, I'm a little bit OCD about my email inbox, and I can't stand for it to be more than one screen. And I have to act on everything before I can get rid of it. But like, you know, I am on top of, I'm on top of a lot of things. But the way I used to work is that I'd get up early and I would just be clearing through correspondence. And like, my colleagues would get into the office and, you know, their inboxes would be full of all this stress from me.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  And what I had told myself forever is that this is how I got everything done. This is how I stayed on top of all these jobs I'm doing. This is how I was productive. So then, when I committed myself to sitting quietly before I opened my inbox, you know, before I did anything like that, I didn't get as much done before seven o'clock in the morning. But it all got done, right?

• 1:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  So, you know, and this is a strange feeling, that I felt I was, by some matter, less productive, but that did not mean that there wasn't time in the day. And it was much less stressful. And it was less stressful for the other people on the other end of my emails.

• 1:06:58Tim Ferriss?

  And then there's also the question of what are you being productive for?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Tim Ferriss?

  If it's to improve your quality of life on some level, then you're in fact being more productive by being less productive, if that makes any sense.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  So, here's a question, and it, I think, reinforces for me the importance of defining one particular word. And this may be what you just described, so you don't have to repeat that if that's the case. But one of the fan questions is, what can one do daily to begin a small but marked increase in spiritual awareness? So I'd like to pose that question, but I'd also like you to define "spiritual" for us, because this is one of the words that I've dodged myself, for the most part. And, living in San Francisco, you can only imagine how many different ways this word is used.

• 1:07:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I mean, you can barely walk down the street without tripping over a didgeridoo and someone doing acro yoga and so on. So the spiritual in, how would you define spiritual? And then if you'd like to take a stab at this question, what someone can do daily to begin a small but marked increase in spiritual awareness?

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think practices are important and I do think that everybody gets to find what works for them, where it works for their personality type, what works for their life. I mean, you know, it's the same thing like if you're talking about prayer. So I mean, there are a lot of people who pray, but there are so many forms of doing that and, and they don't all work for everyone. So, so I do, I think, what I think is important in human life that our spiritual traditions have always known is ritual, right? So in a way, what we're talking about, I mean, you could say that your meditation practice

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  is also a form of ritual. It's, it's setting aside time when you are recollecting yourself, right? And, and now we know from science, you're also calming yourself. You're doing all these great things for your wellbeing on every level. But what I would want to say also about spiritual practice, beginning a spiritual practice is, so I think ritual is really critical because I just think as creatures, we need it too. I think it's a human need and spiritual life benefits from that. But also I, I don't like to think of spiritual life as, as a compartment of life. I, I think that it's how you move through

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  your days. And I think those rituals actually can help, can help you internalize that. It's, it's as much about kind of how you are, you know, how you are present to whatever you are doing. That's also spiritual practice. And then something else I would say about that is that it's not about being perfect.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  It is, but it is about intentionality and it's about forgiving yourself and it's about being gentle with yourself and others. And it's a gentle thing. It doesn't have to be something you wear on your sleeve or that you could wear on your sleeve. I mean, one of the conversations I've had with Sylvia Borstein, who's a Jewish Buddhist teacher, and talks about spirituality can be folding the towels, sweetly. I mean, some of the great mystics, Brother Lawrence wrote this book, The Practice of the Presence of God. And he talked about washing the dishes as an act of prayer. And Thich Nhat Hanh does that, too. How you wash the dishes. So that's important. And then

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  the final thing I would say that is actually included in those kinds of ways of being that I just mentioned is that it's embodied, it's bodily. At this point in my life, I'm really not very interested in anything that is merely spiritual. And it's getting, doing yoga, getting into my body. And also, it's in our bodies that we encounter other human beings. This has deepened my spiritual life as much as any other, any kind of technically

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  spiritual activity. So part of this is about us giving ourselves permission to see what is ordinary as spiritual practice. And that is a real relief.

• 1:11:40Tim Ferriss?

  If you couldn't use the word spiritual, would it be a combination then of empathy, presence? I'm just wondering what the components are. For instance,

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good question.

• 1:11:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'm thinking of a very, you know, a good friend of mine, Sam Harris, certainly controversial, but very well spoken and very thoughtful in many, many respects. He has an extremely well-developed meditative practice.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Tim Ferriss?

  He's very present when you talk to him. And I think he has a, he does enjoy

• 1:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  Is able to enjoy the small things. And so he, from that perspective, checks a lot of the boxes, but I don't, he's a certainly a non believer when it comes to religion and would consider himself an atheist more so than spiritual. But is he spiritual? I guess it depends on how we define it. I'm just curious, what words you might, might use that are the, the, the preconditions or the components of that. And again, it can be a very personal definition. I'm just wondering.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, spirituality is one of these words that I, I try not to overuse because it is amorphous. I also think you can't, you can't avoid it. I, so, so I know that for, for, for people who are atheist or agnostic, you find different degrees of comfort with this, with the spirituality language. And I, so let me just say this, I, I don't think that you, anybody stops having a spiritual life because of the absence of a belief in God. I think an atheist can have a spiritual life. And I think, you

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  know, every atheist I know has a spiritual life. I also acknowledge that some of them wouldn't like that language and I, and I, and I would honor that. So it's not, it's not about faith. I would say inner life, interior life is one way to approach it. It doesn't, that doesn't quite get at spiritual, but it gets pretty close to me. And again, there are as many ways of doing inner life and interior life, you know, as there are people.

• 1:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. Do you, here's a, here's a different question, which is, this is from a fan. What do you think about the notion that wisdom comes with age? And if so, how can we become wise beyond our years?

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  So I think wisdom does not necessarily come with age. You know, some people, some people get old and wise and some people just get old.

• 1:14:29Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd love to hear how you define it. I mentioned Sam. Sam has jokingly said before that wisdom in some capacity, and I'm paraphrasing, is, is learning to follow your own advice. Something along those lines, which I liked quite a bit, but yeah, how do you think of this?

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  About the definition of wisdom?

• 1:14:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  But I would, I want to say that to me, wisdom, to me, every stage of life, there, there, there's a capacity for wisdom at many different stages of any life, I think.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  So, so yes, there is something very special about a person who has lived a long time and accumulated wisdom by way of experience, the fullness of the human experience, by how they have moved through that and what they've internalized as they've moved through, what they've integrated into their wholeness, like how they've integrated what has gone wrong into their wholeness.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  So that's, but that's just one kind of wisdom. I, you know, there's a, there's a wisdom of young children that can be uncanny, right? They're, you know, four-year-olds say things and ask things that drive to the heart of the matter. There's a wisdom of, of teenagers and of people in their twenties. There's this, there's this ability to kind of see the world whole and to have a whole vision of, of change and this, you know, this fierceness, this urgency about that.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  So I think there are these flashes of wisdom at, you know, at different stages of life and that it is, it is something that's accessible that we can, that we can practice and aspire to, like we practice and aspire to other skills. How I define it.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Contradicts that a little bit because ultimately, and you know, it's interesting because I wrote a whole book about wisdom without defining wisdom. So as soon as I was out talking about the book, this is one of the first questions people would ask me, how do you define wisdom? And I realized I'd never done that. I mean, you could say that it was a few hundred pages about it. But what I think distinguishes wisdom from, you know, knowledge or accomplishment or intelligence, I think, you know, a wise person can have all those things, but it's not a possession. It's not like you look at someone, you know, as like you can, they are smart, they are intelligent, they are accomplished.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  The measure of wisdom is the imprint a life makes on other lives, on the world around it. And, you know, with a wise person, it's just, it's almost something that's palpable. It's something you can see. That's kind of where I've come.

• 1:17:33Tim Ferriss?

  I like that.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  With the definition.

• 1:17:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm jumping from one big concept to another, but I think these are worth exploring. So here's a question. So Krista herself is very calming, very good at finding meaning. Can you ask her how she does it? How does she consistently see the best and most meaningful things in the world around her? This is, and this is something, just out of pure self-interest, I'd love to hear you answer because I'm very, I can sometimes get so trapped with blinders on that I find it difficult to see the best and most meaningful things in the world around me. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  Well, I, I don't want to burst anyone's bubble. I mean, what people's experience of me are, you know, are these, these...

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Very intense containers in which I'm fully present to another human being and have immersed myself in who they are. And it is, you know, I am there, that's right, to absolutely draw out the best of them, to help them put words around something maybe they never put words around, and that we're all present while that happens. Now, I'm actually, you know, I'm gonna be kind to myself, and I'm gonna say that at this point in my life, I am, I am actually getting to the point where I, I, I live that way a lot of the time. But I couldn't have said that for the first 50 years. I mean, really, the short answer to that question is practice, you know? At some point, about 15 years ago,

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  I, I started walking in this direction. And I, and I was fortunate to, to, to create this job that allows me to do this with an intensity and a primacy in my life. But I, you know, I, I, I don't think you have to have this job to be doing this. I've, I keep putting myself in this position. And, um, whatever, you know, anytime you keep putting yourself in a certain place, in a certain position, practicing certain things, year after year, it changes you, and this has changed me.

• 1:19:50Tim Ferriss?

  What is the position that someone else could put themselves in if they, if they wanted a homework assignment?

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I just, I think you could do this in, you know, you can do this in terms of how you, how you interact with your colleagues in the workplace. I mean, you know, this is one of the things Adam Grant writes about, right? Givers in the workplace change everybody. And, uh, and I also know, and this is just, has been, is true across this my career as anybody else is, that the workplace can be, you know, one of the most stressful places to do that. Like, I always wanted to do a show, well, we were a big, part of a big media organization until three years ago, and I always wanted to do a radio show called The Problem of Evil in the Workplace,

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  which I thought, like, evil is so much greater in workplaces than, you know, much, that was much more devastating than. Whatever, if my fear of earthquakes or fires.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  So, you know,

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  where you work, where you live,

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  with your children, with your, you know, with your family, becoming a neighbor in a different way. I mean, and I just, I feel like the great challenge that is before us now as a country is to, to figure out what common life means, to reimagine it. I, I think we actually have to reinvent it. I think even if our political life weren't so fractured, we'd have to reinvent it. And maybe this is one reason our political life is so fractured. It's just not going to look like the same thing in the 21st century as it did in the latter half of the 20th century.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  And, and that is about, in very practical ways, kind of getting to know our neighbors who have become strangers. And, I mean, that is, that is a calling, right, for now. And so anytime any of us do that, in whatever small way in our communities, that is practicing presence, right? And practicing real curiosity. And working on asking better questions. And caring to find out details and nuance and complexity. You know, those are ways to talk about what I do in this work I do.

• 1:22:28Tim Ferriss?

  And also not to respond too quickly to

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:32Tim Ferriss?

  statements. Another quote of yours that I like, and you can correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can't disagree with your experience. And I think that there are so many problems. In this world, in this country, certainly because people confuse the two. And if someone is telling you a factual recounting of something that happened to them, that is very different from saying, I think you should, or

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Tim Ferriss?

  Providing an opinion, those are two very, very different things. And it's, it's a, keeping that in mind is very helpful to mitigate overreacting emotionally to other people in, I suppose, the, uh, the stoic sense that is very practical and applicable, less than the trying to remain Spock at all times. And

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:23:26Tim Ferriss?

  I've, I've really found that, that quote of yours, that concept at least, very helpful to think about, like experience, opinion, those are two different things. So you can provide your experience without also an even preface it. And I've done this before and say, I can only comment on my personal experience. I don't want to give you much of opinions, but here's been my experience. This is what has happened to me, or something along those lines. And it diffuses a lot of these potentially volatile situations.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it hu- it humanizes. Um, we, we, we have all these ways we think we know each other, or we think we know what each other are about. And they're, they have to do with positions and issues, right? Or, you know, how somebody voted. We don't know, we don't know each other on a human level. I mean, I've been thinking since the election about, um, um, I, I learned, I started, you know, my vision for, for doing this and kind of a bit of my methodology started in this project I did for some Benedictine monks back in the late nineties.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  And they, they were a cuminists, which, which when they started doing it was a completely revolutionary thing.

• 1:24:39Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna plead ignorance here. Could you define that for me?

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  What, a cuminism?

• 1:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, please.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  Well, it was like inter-Christian, um, inter-denominational conversation, which, you know, we forget that in the 1960s, it was absolutely radical when Catholics and Protestants started talking to each other.

• 1:24:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  And then when they added Jews, you know, it was amazing. Um,

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  So it's and you know, the difference between Armenian Orthodox Christians and Nazarene holiness Christians is as vast as the difference between, you know, different faiths. So that's what this place was about, but they would take up big theological questions and big theological divides by posing a question and asking people to answer the question through the story of your life, which actually you still got to really big, heady places in the discussion, but you humanized it as you got there. And I've been thinking since the election, I think this would work. Like, I don't know how it would be structured,

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  but what if we could have, create these experiences where people got together in trustworthy spaces where they could be safe, they were safe, and you just, you had people start talking about, you know, why did you vote for Donald Trump? Or why did you vote for Hillary Clinton? Answer the question through the story of your life. And then we would actually start talking about eventually the things we need to start talking about, you know, including economics and our children's future and the fact that we have a shared stake in all of our children's future.

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'm glad you brought that up because it's, it's a, it's a very, I didn't ever put this together because I hadn't heard you say that before, but it's also intensely practical to, to say, answer the question through the story experience of your life because it has full context, it's not abstract. And in fact, in, there's an organization called the Entrepreneurs Organization and they have chapters all over the country and regional and citywide groups of entrepreneurs who want to help one another. And I'm going to probably get this slightly off because I'm not, I've spoken at a number of EO events, but I'm not a member myself. Since I live in Silicon Valley, I can't escape entrepreneurs.

• 1:27:08Tim Ferriss?

  But the rules, as I remember them, are that you, the group, the chapter is split into, I think they're called forums, which are groups of, say, four to five people. And I'm sure my fans will correct me if I'm getting this wrong. But when someone in the forum, that is your social accountability group and primary cohort, when someone asks a question, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out how to franchise in this following state. What should I do? Or I'm trying to solve this particular problem with hiring, or going public, or fill in the blank." You cannot use conjecture in answering the question.

• 1:27:51Tim Ferriss?

  You can only answer the question through a story or experience that is from your personal life.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And the only thing, so it's very practical. It's something anybody could do. The only thing that we'd have to start, that we'd have to create, that we don't have now is we don't, like, is, and this is a big order, is space and time, right? We would need to create to somehow have spaces, as I say, that are trustworthy, where it would be reasonable to invite people in and expect them to be, to show some vulnerability and tell some truth. And it wouldn't actually be reasonable to ask people to do that in most of our political spaces, in a lot of our public spaces now. So that's something we'd have to make happen.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  And also, time, right? That you, because like with these monks, with these gatherings in Collegeville, they would have five days. So like, everybody would spend 45 minutes or an hour answering that question on the first day. And then that was an incredible foundation. And it's hard for the next few days, and it's hard to imagine us carving out that kind of time and space, but I think we could figure this out if we wanted to.

• 1:29:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I think also, going into, thinking about these larger, polarizing issues with the expectation that the conversations are going to be very uncomfortable. And that none of the biggest problems you'll face in your own life, in the lives of others, as a community, a country, fill in the blank, are going to be comfortable. And when you have these stakes involved, and that...

• 1:29:35Tim Ferriss?

  It's if I could implore anyone listening to this to do one thing, certainly in the US and elsewhere, is to regularly practice exposing yourself to uncomfortable conversations that you can get better at navigating them without vilifying the other person or emotionally overreacting. It requires practice, just like negotiation, just like playing tennis, just like anything else. And if you wait for the big, big, big topic, whether it's some aspect of race or otherwise, to debut your conversational skills with discomfort, you're going to make huge mistakes that are going to be counterproductive and probably destructive.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the other thing I think goes along with that is question the reflexes you have about how you walk into those encounters and what you're going to talk about. Because we basically were on all these, we have all these kind of dead end, these like built-in instincts about, you know, the debate we will have, or how we will present or defend our position, or be advocates, or change someone's mind, or we go in with all kinds of assumptions about them. And so I really don't think this is rocket science, but part of what we have to work through are all the instincts we're carrying that don't serve

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  us well. And then, you know, the other thing is, so, and this is connected to that, we don't, if you want to talk to people across difference, you don't probably start with that, right? Like, we just think we have to do everything head on, you know? We're Americans, we have to accomplish something. We've got an hour here. And so I'll tell you one of the most hopeful stories. I have been talking about this over, I've heard, like, that I think a good model for this is, I was in Iowa like the week after the election, and there was this woman who talked to me about how she and a group of parents who she knows,

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  who were pretty much split down the middle in terms of who they voted for in the election, share a concern about the effect the corrosive public speech and the corrosive campaign had had on their children, their children's imaginations. And so they were gathering.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Across these divides of politics with this shared entry point of all of them caring about their children and, you know, whether whoever they voted for being able to have this really constructive conversation that was that was meaningful to all of them about what they're going to teach their children, how they're going to talk to them, the realities they want to create moving forward. And, you know, I think they'll get really, you can get really far down the road with that without ever having to talk about who you vote, why you voted for, who you voted for. And yet it creates a possibility of relationship,

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  which creates all kinds of other possibilities, kind of coming at this from a sideways direction.

• 1:32:51Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. I think that the, sometimes the most directly impactful approach is the oblique approach.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:59Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  The slant, coming at the slant, coming at a slant.

• 1:33:04Tim Ferriss?

  And one of the books that helped me a lot to navigate my own emotions so that I could less trigger other people's emotions, so it's a win-win, was Radical, it still is. I reread this book on a fairly regular basis, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Oh, I haven't read that.

• 1:33:26Tim Ferriss?

  I found it hugely helpful for me personally. What books, other than your own, have you gifted the most to other people?

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  I have, I have gifted that Rilke book.

• 1:33:39Tim Ferriss?

  And who are the authors again? This was Love Letters to God.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  It's Joanna Macy, M-A-C-Y, and Anita Barrows. It's, Rilke's Book of Hours, and the subtitle is Love Poems to God. I have gifted Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart. That's kind of a sacred text that I carry around with me at all times because things are always falling apart. Like, that's a book I feel like I can pick up anywhere at any moment and read a paragraph, and it will be redemptive.

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  I also love Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. I give that to young people. And it's not really about poetry. It's about life. And there's some wonderful things in there about love and the facile understanding of love that we walk around with and and the idea of giving yourself time to grow up and grow into what love can be.

• 1:34:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's a good selection.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  At other times in my life, I gave away all the books I loved. And as a result, I don't have many books.

• 1:34:57Tim Ferriss?

  If you were, say, given the opportunity, or maybe the assignment, to teach a lecture, not a lecture, a seminar, it's an ongoing class, with either college freshmen or college seniors, which would you choose and what would you teach?

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, college freshmen or college seniors?

• 1:35:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  Gosh, I don't know how I would choose. I do spend a lot of time with people that age. I love it. I guess I would choose college seniors, just because I think, you know, you're so much under formation in those years and still as a college senior. What would I teach? Oh. They're, they're growing up into this world of disarray now. I don't, I don't, I don't know if this is a teaching subject, but I'm, I'm thinking a lot about the, the narrative that we all walk around internalizing and working with, which is the narrative we receive from,

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  you know, whatever was in the New York Times today, what it was in the headlines of NPR, whatever our media, chosen media is, BuzzFeed, or, you know, whatever it is we're reading. And how that is not the whole story. And how, when we walk around too shaped by by that narrative, it's overwhelming. It actually is very paralyzing. And it doesn't, it does not tell or give people to work with other realities, like generative realities, the things that are actually saving us,

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  the things that are growing us up. And that also, like focusing on that and focusing on a long view of time as opposed to this 24/7 instant view of time, which makes us small. Taking seriously, treating as a data point, the beautiful and noble people and projects you see around you, you know, not, that doesn't refute the hard things that are happening, but it's also true.

• 1:37:15Tim Ferriss?

  What exercises might you have those students do? Or readings that you would assign to help them with this?

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  I would just want them to get a big view of time, you know, to see this as a moment within a much larger canvas of time. And to see what we internalize as the news, which we too often internalize as like the whole of, you know, the kind of a snapshot of reality. You know, to be able to create some skills to put all of that into perspective and to ask what might really be important that's not, that we're not talking about. I don't know, if I had to teach skills, I suppose, which is really your question. I think these days, I would love to do, and I actually, I did, or I didn't do Create a Course,

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  but U Demy, is that how you say that? They created a course on, or did something through Acumen, which is a course on listening and conversation. And I would love to, to teach just about, you know, the art of conversation, the practice of listening, like practical tools, as well as the kind of presence, the intentionality that needs to go into that.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  These are practical skills. I think listening is a, you know, basic social art. And it's not just that we have to relearn them and that we haven't kind of learned these things. It's that the things that we have very actively learned work against them. So we've all really been trained in the tools of advocacy, presenting, representing our position. And, and those, and we need those skills, but we actually need to kind of retire them. Also, we need to learn, we need to, we need to dampen those, those as reflexively the only things we know how to do. And so I think that could be fun, like to, you know, to, and to, and the art of asking better questions.

• 1:39:19Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. I mean, the quality of our questions determining the quality of our life, or lives, as Tony Robbins would say, I think it's reflected, not only in the questions that you ask others, but the questions you ask yourself, which is part of the beauty of what's been so fun about slowly trying to strengthen my Bambi legs and interviewing myself, is becoming better at asking questions in my own head. Who are some of the best listeners you know, or have known?

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  Well, sometimes people say to me, oh, you know, you're a professional listener. You must have grown up with great listeners. But I'm, I'm the other story. I'm the story of the person who grew up surrounded by people who didn't listen. And so, in, in the absence of that, I felt my need of it. So I didn't, I didn't grow up with a lot of models. And I don't, you know, while there are certainly many good journalists and hosts, you know, as I say, I don't really take my models from kind of traditional media.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  I mean, the good listeners I know are not famous people.

• 1:40:41Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay. They don't have to be famous.

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  They're my, they're, they're my friend Nell, who's in her 80s, who is just one of the wisest people I know and one of the dearest people I know and the person who encouraged me to, to work on this project that sounded pretty farfetched when I first had the idea. And she's just, you know, she really cares. She's really curious and she's also a joyful person. And, um, and that joy is infectious. Um, and, you know, so she's a great listener.

• 1:41:25Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite documentary or movie, favorite documentaries or movies?

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  I'm so bad at these questions about favorites. Like, everything goes out of my mind. And in fact, you know, people, a lot of people ask me, what is my favorite interview? And in fact, I just had this exchange about a week ago where I was a little bit frosty with somebody because they said, who's your favorite interview ever? And I said, I, you know, I can't choose. I said, I love them all. And who's your favorite interview this year? And, and, um, and I always say my favorite interview is the last one I did. And, and they said, well, you're being very diplomatic. And I said, no, I'm not being diplomatic. It's true. So like, I would say my favorite movie would probably be the last one I watched,

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  except I watch a lot more TV than movies these days. I love how we're, how we're relearning storytelling and doing it well on TV.

• 1:42:21Tim Ferriss?

  Some incredible writing.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:24Tim Ferriss?

  And, and otherwise on TV. What do you, what are you watching currently? Or what's the last memorable TV show that you watched?

• 1:42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think I watched a lot of things. I loved this. I loved, um,

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

  I loved The Night Manager. I loved, you know, I was, I've been reading John Lecary in all my years in Germany and I love that kind of thing. I love those thriller stories. I, I loved True Blood. I loved the vampires. I, this is so, there's so much TV that I like right now. I'm watching The Affair.

• 1:43:03Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, The Affair. Alright, so just as a quick side note for The Affair.

• 1:43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of it, or a good portion of it, takes place in a restaurant called The Lobster Roll out on Long Island in Montauk.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  Is that a real place?

• 1:43:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's a real place and my second ever job was as a busboy at The Lobster Roll.

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  Are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying the show?

• 1:43:26Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't seen the show. In fact, I haven't. My, I know a few people I grew up with, fellow townies on Long Island, who have said it's very surreal to watch because I remember getting yelled at by rich city people and having to clean up their messes.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  That's so funny. That's so funny that it's a real place.

• 1:43:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Very much a real place. If you had one gigantic billboard, you could put a short message on it to get it out to millions of people, what would you put on that?

• 1:43:57Speaker 02

  I think I'm really bad at these questions.

• 1:43:59Tim Ferriss?

  I can, I can, I can zig instead of zag here and we can do different types of questions. But if anything comes to mind, let me know. Otherwise, we can, we can table it and come back.

• 1:44:08Speaker 02

  Maybe, you know, maybe that, maybe that line that you started with, right now, that, that, you know, that anger is what fear and pain look like when they show themselves in public, you know? I think that would be a good thing for people to reflect on even briefly.

• 1:44:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. You talked about, a little bit about your morning. You mentioned the, I guess it was meditation while your tea was steeping, if I remember correctly. What is, what is the first, say, 60 minutes of a good day for you? What does that look like?

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, a good day is like... I've had a pretty good sleep. Love my sleep. I get up and I do, I start, I make my tea and then I-

• 1:44:49Tim Ferriss?

  What time do you wake up and what kind of tea?

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  I wake up about 6:30.

• 1:44:53Tim Ferriss?

  What's your go-to tea?

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  Uh, it's Yorkshire Gold.

• 1:44:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yorkshire Gold, is that a black tea?

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is what is, is what makes good, strong, black tea in Minnesota. I think everywhere you are with the water, it's, it's different. Yeah, I sit for about 10 minutes and I, sometimes I read a little bit, like I read a little Thomas Merton, or a little Pema Chodron, or a little Rilke, and then I, I actually have started adding prayer back into my meditation. I realize that's my mother tongue, and that's kind of been a revelation for me to start doing that again.

• 1:45:30Tim Ferriss?

  What do your, as someone, I'm, I'm not, not particularly religious, what type of, I was just speaking to a very close friend of mine who is recently about this, what, what are your prayers like? What, uh, what are you-

• 1:45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's, it's an interesting question. I mean, I, I, for a long time, I used to have a, a book of common prayer, and I used to like read the complim, um, these complim services, these ancient services, very poetic, and

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  recently, I have never talked to anybody about this, this summer, I, I got quiet and rested for the first time in about 10 years. It was amazing. I was on Big Sur. It was incredible. And one thing I did is I actually wrote a prayer. It was like the prayer of my life right now. And it was such an incredible thing to do. I'd never thought of doing that. Because, but I think the thing is, and this is where I've been saying, you know, I think spiritual life is a very, like, we all have personality types, and so you have to find what works for you. And, um, I grew up Southern Baptist, which is all very free-flowing, and you know, like when the minister was praying, you were supposed to be praying your own prayer in your head, and there's something about me that likes, I like liturgy, I like rituals, so, um,

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  and I, but I think previously I would have thought that even writing my own poem, my own prayer would be, um-

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Would be not as good as a prayer that had been around for hundreds or thousands of years. But somehow I managed to write something that is a really good way for me to move into the day. And so I say that, and I also have some time of silence and just breathing and sometimes kind of a mantra. And all of this in 10 minutes. Isn't that incredible? I'm so productive. And of course, just like everybody else, I will be distracted for six of those 10 minutes. But I think that's why having a bit of liturgy that you

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  have to stick to, right? Like having something to hang with and on. And then I do make my tea and put my milk in it. And I get to email. If I have writing to do, I do that in the mornings, just when my mind is clear. And then I'm happy if I've kind of prepared the day with important correspondence, or with getting some important ideas out. And then eventually I go to work about 9:30 or 10. And usually I have something to record in the morning.

• 1:48:07Tim Ferriss?

  I have to ask, because my fans will certainly ask me why I didn't ask you. And you don't have to share. But would you be open to sharing your prayer? Or is that something you'd prefer not to discuss?

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  You mean now?

• 1:48:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  Well, I can tell you what it's... I mean, maybe I can tell you... Gosh, can I even... It's funny because I've learned it.

• 1:48:33Tim Ferriss?

  Or what it's about. However, I know people would love more details, because it's so valuable to you.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  In a way, yeah. So in a way, it reflects what I've been learning about myself, like what I need to work on my inner life, my spiritual work, right? Like, it's... The thing that I've been... I pray to keep learning, to open my heart.

• 1:49:01Speaker 02

  And keep learning to let go of the kind of resistance and protectiveness that saved me when I was growing up. And that doesn't, that, you know, that became an armor around my natural love and trust and softness. That's kind of my life work, right? And I'm so much better. I mean, just the fact that I can say it that way means I'm getting somewhere. But it's still my life work. And, you know, I pray that, you know, it's like when I'm inclined to ambition to know,

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  to know, to take delight in that what I fear, you know, that I might welcome. And I pray about blessing that, you know, constantly knowing the difference between intentions and consequences. Because I think there's something, you know, mysterious about, you know, what becomes of our actions that we don't control. And that that's actually largely a wonderful thing. But it doesn't necessarily converge with kind of my American can-do accomplishment mentality. So lean into that, that, you know, you do the right thing for the right reason.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  And to some extent, you have to let go of what becomes of it. And, you know, that's kind of some of the big ideas. Of course, again, I say it every morning. And now I, you know, I spent some time last December in Austria with Brother David Stendel-Rost. I don't know if you heard that interview. He's just, he's, he's a Benedictine monk. He's Austrian. He's one of the great people in the world thinking about gratitude. And that's probably one of those words I avoid a little bit, too, because it's just been on too many Hallmark cards.

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  What I like about him is that, you know, he lived through the fascist occupation of his country as a teenager. Like, he's really known, he knows how gritty the world is. And one of the things he says is that it would be absurd to say, for any of us to say, that you should be grateful for everything that happens to you. That you should, we don't say that, but you, but that you can be grateful in every moment. And that's really stuck with me. And so that's like, that's how my prayer ends. Like, teach me to be grateful in every moment. And that's a really, that's a practice that helps me.

• 1:51:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's extremely powerful. And thank you for sharing. I'm glad you did. I think that's gonna be, I think that's, I think that many pieces of that will be extremely helpful for many people. So, thank you.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  First. Well, I certainly did not expect to talk about that.

• 1:52:03Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't expect to ask you about it. And it makes me also want to go find wild geese. You mentioned earlier, on top of that, well, I, just one or two more questions, and then I'll let you get back to your day. And we're, this is basically the tail end. I'd like to ask you if you have any, and then I'll ask where people can find you and so on. But first, do you have any requests of my audience, of the people listening? Anything that you'd like them to take away, anything you'd like them to try, anything you'd like them to consider or otherwise? Any parting words for the people listening?

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  As I, as I said a minute ago, I'm just intensely aware of how many messages we internalize. And I feel that that gets in the way of people really knowing how much power they have in terms of how they move through the world, you know, the world around them, the people they can see and touch. The, the, you know, the small and large interactions they have, like, we, we live in this bizarre moment where the places we have wanted to look for modeling and leadership and, you know, the way forward are very dysfunctional and, and partly because of our technology.

• 1:53:22Speaker 02

  You know, we're turn of century people. We're in this moment where we were, the, all of us who are adults were, were, were born in one, in one world of assumptions and institutions that made sense. And we are growing up or growing old in a world in which

• 1:53:43Speaker 02

  Most of our disciplines, you know, the way things have been done, don't make sense. And we're, we have to create the changed realities and it's not going to happen from the top and that's not the way our techno, our, our, our digital world works anyway. But I think we have more, more power, more agency to do that than we are made to feel. And, you know, it's, it's a wonderful calling and, and I think we have to like, keep, you know, keep each other company, accompany each other in, in keeping that sense. So that would be my encouragement. Somebody was talking to me yesterday about a phrase, social courage. And that's, I think, that's a good way to talk.

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  I think that's, that's something I want to invite people to and call people to and just make clear that that is available to us.

• 1:54:34Tim Ferriss?

  I think that I can't think of any time when that has been more important. Certainly in my lifetime that I'm consciously aware of than, than right now. Being socially courageous, which I think also means probably presenting and potentially defending important views or perspectives or experiences that are very unpopular.

• 1:55:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, I, I think in terms of the different callings of this moment and, and some of us are going to have to defend and some of us may have to put our bodies in the way of, of danger that is coming to, to some people who are on the front lines of vulnerability. And I, I also think there's a calling for many of us to be calmer of fear.

• 1:55:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  I think there's some very quiet callings right now that can also make a huge difference.

• 1:55:32Tim Ferriss?

  Krista, this has been so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time and I'd like to encourage people to check out your work. Where can people say hello? Where can people find out more about you? And? If you have any recommended starting points, I'm not going to ask you the favorite interview question, because I don't like getting that any more than you do.

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:57Tim Ferriss?

  But where can people find you and what would you suggest perhaps they start with if you have a recommendation?

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so the website is onbeing.org and we also have something called the Civil Conversations Project that we're going to be building out. There's also civilconversationsproject.org website. It actually has a little guide that I wrote that we're calling Better Conversations. But we have the On Being app in the App Store and of course you can find the On Being podcast in iTunes or wherever you get podcasts. I am not on Facebook for some reason, it just makes me break out in hives, but I do actually love Twitter. And I mostly go there to just kind of, I kind of correspond and communicate with people who reach out to me there.

• 1:56:46Speaker 02

  So that's a good place to check in.

• 1:56:49Tim Ferriss?

  At Krista Tippett.

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, just at Krista Tippett, two Ps, two Ts.

• 1:56:55Tim Ferriss?

  You have to do that as much as I do. Double R, double S.

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

  But Tim, I just, I want to thank you so much. Also, I was really tired today. Here we are, isn't it Friday the 13th?

• 1:57:06Tim Ferriss?

  It is Friday the 13th.

• 1:57:07Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's Friday afternoon and I'm so tired today and I've just, it's been really energizing and you have built something amazing and I'm just, I'm so amazed that you're listening to On Being and I'm really grateful to be, to meet your audience, your people like this.

• 1:57:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's really fun and meaningful for me to have you on and I think, and I hope this is not the last conversation that we have.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we have to, we'll get together sometime and talk about Berlin.

• 1:57:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, and I would love to do that and you can listen to my mangled German, but that's okay. Ein Fuß nach dem Mandarin. It's one little step after the other as I butcher yet another language. So, thank you so much. And to everybody listening, as always, you can find show notes, links to everything that we discussed at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out, as well as every other episode. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:58:15Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:58:58Tim 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 FreshBooks. FreshBooks is now the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid fast, which basically describes the core needs of most entrepreneurs and freelancers. The product was recently relaunched and rebuilt from the ground up, focusing on simplicity and speed.

• 1:59:40Tim Ferriss?

  It's an awesome service and many of you recommended it to me, which is how they came to be a sponsor. Now, I can't cover all of the many, many features, but for example, you can take pictures of receipts on your phone using FreshBooks iOS mobile app, or connect your bank account or credit card to FreshBooks and watch your expenses automatically import into your account every day. And if you have any questions whatsoever, a real live person answers in less than three rings to help you with all of your needs. So to claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial, that means no credit card needed, and see how the all-new FreshBooks can change your freelancing game, go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter TIM in the "How did you hear about us?" section.

• 2:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  That is freshbooks.com/tim and then put TIM in the "How did you hear about us?" section.

• 2:00:29Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I wanted the contest drop. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem.

• 2:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create the cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, this was a very important project to me, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all of this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind.

• 2:01:52Tim Ferriss?

  99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So you can check out The Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.