#327: Aisha Tyler — How to Use Pain, Comedy, and Practice for Creativity

Aisha Tyler (@aishatyler on Twitter https://twitter.com/aishatyler, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/aishatyler, and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/aishatyler) is an award-winning director, actor, comedian, bestselling author, podcaster, and activist. She’s amazing. If you enjoyed my episodes with Brandon Stanton https://tim.blog/2018/06/18/brandon-stanton-humans-of-new-york/, Debbie Millman https://tim.blog/2017/01/12/how-to-design-a-life-debbie-millman/, or Adam Robinson https://tim.blog/2017/02/02/lessons-from-warren-buffett-bobby-fischer-and-other-outliers/, among others, you will love this one. Whether you do any type of creative work, want to be too complex to categorize, or want to overcome rejection and beat the odds, this one has something for you. Aisha voices superspy Lana Kane on F/X's Emmy award-winning animated comedy series Archer https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/archer, which won four back-to-back Television Critics' Choice Awards. She is a regular on the hit CBS show Criminal Minds https://www.cbs.com/shows/criminal_minds/, now in its 13th season, for which she has also directed. Aisha continues to host the CW's hit improv show, Whose Line Is It Anyway http://www.cwseed.com/shows/whose-line-is-it-anyway/, and she is launching a line of bottled cocktails she created, Courage + Stone https://www.courageandstone.com, in Summer of 2018. Aisha was a co-host for seven seasons of CBS's Emmy-winning daytime show The Talk https://www.cbs.com/shows/the_talk/, which she departed in September 2017 to focus more on acting and directing. She is also well-remembered for her character arc on Friends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends, and she was the first African-American to have a long-standing role on the show. Her feature film debut, the thriller AXIS https://youtu.be/9RwHw8t9tGo, premiered 2017, and the won the Outstanding Achievement in Feature Filmmaking award at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival, then had a theatrical run at Arclight Hollywood, Landmark NYC and Alamo Drafthouse, Austin, Texas. A San Francisco native, Aisha graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Government and Environmental Policy. An avid gamer and passionate advocate (and occasional adversary) of the gaming community, Aisha's voice can be heard in the video games Halo: Reach http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002BSA20M/offsitoftimfe-20, Gears of War 3 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002I0H79C/offsitoftimfe-20, and Watch Dogs http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BI83EVU/offsitoftimfe-20. Aisha is a bourbon and hard rock fan, a snowboarder, and a sci-fi obsessive. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Teeter https://teeter.com/Tim/. 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Check out LegalZoom.com and enter promo code TIM at checkout today https://www.legalzoom.com/ for special savings and see how the fine folks there can make life easier for you and your business. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole-body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A-G-one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Why, hello, my darling little Marguerite. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, experiences, life lessons, frameworks, et cetera, that you can hopefully apply to your own lives. My guest today is someone I've known for quite a few years now. She's incredible, Aisha Tyler. That is A-I-S-H-A-T-Y-L-E-R on Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and beyond. She is an award-winning director, actor, comedian, bestselling author, podcaster, and activist. She does just about everything. And if you've enjoyed my episodes with, for instance, Brandon Stanton, Debbie Millman, or Adam Robinson, among others, you will

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  love this one. Whether you do creative work, want to be too complex to categorize, want to overcome rejection and be the odds, despite the fears and insecurities we all have, this will have something for you. Aisha voices super spy Lana Kane on FX's Emmy award-winning animated comedy series Archer, which won four back-to-back Television Critics' Choice Awards. She is a regular on the hit CBS show Criminal Minds, now in its 13th season, for which she has also directed. Aisha continues to host the CW's hit improv show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? And she's launching a line of bottled cocktails she created Courage and Stone in summer of 2018. Take a breath, sit back. That's not all. Let me get a little

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  bit more in, just to give you a taste. And man, this doesn't even capture a small fraction, but here we go. Aisha was a co-host for seven seasons of CBS's Emmy-winning daytime show The Talk, which she departed in September 2017 to focus more on acting and directing. She's also very well-remembered for her character arc on Friends, where she was the first African-American to have a longstanding role on the show. Her feature film debut, the thriller Axis, all caps, A-X-I-S, premiered 2017, and won the Outstanding Achievement in Feature Filmmaking Award at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival, and then had a theatrical run at ArcLight Hollywood, Landmark NYC, and Drafthouse in my home of Austin, Texas. Alamo Drafthouse,

• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

  so much fun. A San Francisco native, where I also spent a very, very long time, Aisha graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in government and environmental policy, which you might not have known. She is an avid gamer and passionate advocate, and occasional adversary of the gaming community. And her voice can be heard in video games like Halo, Reach, Gears of War III, and Watch Dogs. Aisha is a bourbon and hard rock fan, a snowboarder, and a sci-fi obsessive. And we cover so much ground in this episode. It's very wide-ranging. She's hilarious, and I really, really, really enjoyed the twists and turns in this particular podcast

• 4:13Tim Ferriss?

  episode. So without further ado, please enjoy, and you can find more to enjoy at aisha tyler dot com, of course. The namesake of aisha tyler dot com, Aisha Tyler.

• 4:27Tim Ferriss?

  Aisha, welcome to the show.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Tim, hello. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. This is our away. It's a very long home and away for us.

• 4:37Tim Ferriss?

  It is. It is. And you are partially to blame slash credit for me having a podcast in the first place, because I recall when you interviewed me for Girl on Guy Podcast in San Francisco at my place, and I had so much fun speaking with you and fielding some fantastic questions, one of which I'm going to bring up, and then we'll backpedal.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  But the question will not be surprising to you, I don't think. And I'm going to ask you to bring it up. But the conversation that we had in part contributed to me deciding to take a break from writing books, which had completely burned me out, and in turn helped birth the show. So thank you for helping to send me on this path, because it's become one of the most gratifying and fascinating things I could possibly imagine doing. So thank you for that.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  It's so thrilling to hear and really, really gratifying. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I think podcasts are wonderful and terrible beasts, but like really satisfying, even when they're like punishingly difficult to manage, they're still so satisfying. So I'm really happy. I'm happy that you're enjoying it.

• 5:59Tim Ferriss?

  And you have, we're not going to get into this right now, although we can, you have a book titled Self-Inflicted Wounds, subtitle, Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation. And Can you maybe repeat or even paraphrase the question that you would always ask guests on your show?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, that came, the name for that book came from this part of my show, Self-inflicted Wounds, which is some, you know, tell me a story about something that's gone wrong in your life that's your own fault. Like, you know, you can't blame anyone else, you know, not your, not your ex, not the bullies in your school, not the man, you know, you did it to yourself. And it was, it was really, it was really a way of initiating a conversation about risk and failure because I feel like people see people who are successful and assume that a part of that success or the reason for that success is that they haven't made any mistakes and they haven't failed, that they've got a charmed life in some way, or they figure some kind of formula out. And, you know, the, the, the most successful people are people who in, not, don't just

• 7:05Speaker 02

  manage risk, but engage in risk and, and, and court failure actively. And I, so I always love to, you know, have people listening, see that someone that they admire and that they think is really accomplished has really shit the bed at some point in their lives, maybe multiple times, because I just think it's, it's instructive. I think people don't start because they're afraid they're gonna fail. And, and, and there's just no way around, you know, the, the path to success is through failure. You just can't get around it.

• 7:36Tim Ferriss?

  So, there's so many different directions I could go with this, and I want to, to go way back as maybe a, like, sort of a montage flashback that we could have as a visual overlay as you're, as you're saying some of these things. And that is to your dad, and I've, in the process of doing homework, read about your dad's favorite saying or, or question that he would ask. And I was hoping you could, you could explain this or share this with people who are listening because I think it's kind of amazing.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, well, I was raised, you know, my parents divorced when I was ten and um, and my father, my parents, you know, I always joke that like, you know, it's only rich people that can afford to fight about custody, you know what I mean? Poor people just do whatever they have to do to like manage. And my parents, neither of them could really afford two kids and also neither of them could afford to pay child support. So, you know, just each of them just took one of us. And um, I was older, so I went with my father. And he was like, you know, which, which one can wash itself? And then that was the one that he took. And he, you know, my father is the king of the, like, the, the very terse and pointed

• 8:54Speaker 02

  motivational speech. Um, so I would leave for school in the morning and uh, we lived, I grew up in San Francisco and uh, and at one point, we lived upstairs in a Victorian. So I'd go down these very steep stairs and he'd lean over the railing and he'd go, whose day is it? And I'd have to say, it's my day. And then he'd say, what are you gonna do? And I'd have to say, grab it by the balls. And then, what are you gonna do? And I'd have to say, and twist, and twist. But, you know, it's funny because it was like, my dad was just, uh, he was such a great dad. He was a really engaged guy. But, you know, I mean, he was a, he was a single father and relatively young. So maybe there, there were a few boundaries of propriety

• 9:39Speaker 02

  that he danced along. But um, but he just encouraged me, you know, um, he just encouraged me to be aggressive. You know, he was one of those, I think, it's very hard for, for single parents, period. And I think it's very hard for fathers and daughters because, you know, I just think if you're a dad, the world just looks like, you know, a field of broken glass and potholes and molten lava. And then you've got this little kitten and you're just like so terrified to put the kitten down. So either they grip very tightly or in my father's case, they throw you up in the air.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  You know, and expect that they've given you the skills to land. And that was definitely his strategy.

• 10:16Tim Ferriss?

  Now, you mentioned the divorce, which I have read was amicable. And it ended up resulting in you going with your father. And you have one sibling?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I have a younger sister.

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  Younger sister. Stayed with your mom. Was that hard? Or did it not even occur to you to be hard? Because it just is what it was? Or was that difficult? And did you have constant contact? Or what was the dynamic like?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting, because I think it was more the second for me. Like, it just was what was happening. And I don't ever remember. I don't ever remember struggling in any grand way with the way that things were going. I, you know, it's. And look, maybe that's my nature. I do my, I know my parents worked very hard to be loving and available to both of us. And I had like lots of access to my mother. And I talked to her all the time, and I called her for advice. And when she got to kind of be the fun mom or the advice mom, you know, she didn't have to discipline me. And she could just be the person who was there when I needed like emotional support. I do know that like, one of the things that resulted in, at least when we were younger, was my sister and I, but we weren't super close.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  But, but I, you know, lots of siblings aren't super close in their kids. Whether they're living in the same house or not, they're fighting and they're competitive. But I, but as we got older, I became like wildly protective of my sister. And, and like my relationship with her is so intensely loving and affectionate now. And I don't know, maybe if we lived in the same house, driving each other, you know, nuts all the time, we wouldn't be as close as we are now. I mean, we spent the formative years of our lives living in different houses, but we liked the same stuff and, and we care about the same things and, and our connections are really deep. So I, you know, I can't, I don't ever remember kind of sitting up at night, feeling any kind of agony about the fact that my parents were divorcing. I did watch them try very hard to stay together.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Like, I do remember that when they got a divorce, I was like, they really gave it a shot. You know, I can see that they really like, you know, I just, they would break up, and they'd get back together, and they'd break up, and they'd get back together. And I remember I'd like walking on them, they'd be making out on the couch. I was like, they are really giving this a go.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  When they decided when they said it was over, I was like, okay, yeah, I don't, I don't ever, I don't ever remember it being like a point of agony. It just things changed, you know, and,

• 12:43Speaker 02

  and maybe as a result, I tolerate change better than I would otherwise, or maybe I even crave change. I don't know.

• 12:50Tim Ferriss?

  Has it been your demeanor to generally look at things through a positive lens like that, where you would frame what other people might try to frame as a very difficult, agonizing experience into something that was, or at least is framed as something positive that you benefited from? Or have you had more of the time, a tendency to frame things negatively?

• 13:15Speaker 02

  That's a really good question. And I, I think about that a lot because I think that my, my attitude or my point of view about things is half biochemistry and, and half like child rearing. My father is just like a, like a preternaturally optimistic person. Like it's, it's extraordinary. I always make this joke that if my father's house was on fire, he would like get a stick and marshmallows. Like he just cannot be deterred. You know, I've never seen it, you know, he's just never down. And I, and so I think that I inherited that. And I, maybe it's attitude. No, I think I just probably make up the chemicals in my brain that kind of keep me typically upbeat. You know what I mean? And, and, and I think it's important because I think a lot of times when people, when people are,

• 13:58Speaker 02

  or if they have a hard time seeing the world positively, or if they're struggling with depression, people are like, we just need to look at it a different way. But I think that I probably just make more of the chemicals that enable me to, to be optimistic. I just, you know, I've never, I've never really been depressed. But my father also was just a walking off dad. He just did not feel sorry for me. And, you know, and, and I was not allowed to feel sorry for myself. And so when things went wrong, and this is definitely sustained until I was an adult, I just, I just get up and I keep going. And, and that was because of, you know, my father was raised, he lost his father when he was very, very young. He's raised by a single mother and, you know, like tumble down Pittsburgh with the very few opportunities for a black man at that time. And he just never felt sorry

• 14:42Speaker 02

  for himself. He was just like, look, I can complain about the situation, or I could just keep moving. And, and I, and I, so I think I've been nurtured in that way as well, which is the world is unfair. There, you know, it's shot through with assholes. I still have to get up in the morning and make a life for myself. And, and so it's probably a combination of those two things.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  Were you, would you say, good at following his advice of not only grabbing life by the balls, but twisting, which is a whole new level? Those are two really like, you can, yeah, like you can gently grab balls. You can't really gently grab and twist balls.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  The twisting is an elevated, yes, that's a very elevated form of aggression. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, it's hard to say, like, oh, I'm nailing it. That's not how I feel. But I do think that like that attitude of like, you know, just kind of go. And I wrote about it, a lot about it in my book, like the idea that like my parents raised me to be brave. And in some ways, maybe too brave, but the result has been like a relentlessness. And in the pursuit of the things that are important to me. And that's not the same as like, I'm winning. I don't really think about things that way, but it's just if I want to do something, then I do it.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  And I don't really worry too much about whether it's going to go my way. Not because I expect it to go my way, but because it doesn't matter if it goes my way. Because it's the engagement that's most meaningful to me. It's the effort.

• 16:12Tim Ferriss?

  I got it. So the engagement, you mean sort of the dogged persistence that you're developing?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  The engagement in your, in your personal goals. Like, if I want to do something, whatever, I don't know. Let's pick something really innocuous. Like, if I want to like hike every day for a month, or if I want to start meditating. If I don't dial it, it's not as important to me as, as, as not looking back and saying to myself, ah, I should have done it. Like, it's, it's, it's the doing for me that is the reward. And then sometimes things go my way and sometimes they don't. But the thing I find most upsetting is, is regret.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that's, that's something I have control over in the sense of like, if you didn't do it, you have nobody to blame but yourself, you know?

• 16:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right, you can always attempt. You can't predetermine success.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't predetermine the outcome, but you can predetermine the effort. Because the effort is, is the only thing that you own. You don't, you can't own results. You can only own, you can only own initiative.

• 17:14Tim Ferriss?

  Do you recall any, you mentioned your dad being a walk it off dad. I want to explore that a little bit. Do you remember any? While you were still under his watch, or not, early disappointments or self inflicted wounds? And how your dad responded, or mistakes?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this isn't, this is, this isn't exactly a good example of a disappointment, but it's, it's a perfect example of his attitude. I am, I was going to camp, I was, I was going to camp, I must have been about eight or nine, no, I'll say nine, and I was going to like, you know, jujitsu camp. And this was still, this was still during the free range parenting era, where you just got up in the morning and you left at home and you came back later. And that stuff was your responsibility.

• 17:59Tim Ferriss?

  Did you say eight or nine and then jujitsu camp?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I was really into martial arts when I was a kid, so.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's making me think of the movie Hannah, where this Eric Bandit trains his daughter to be a super killer.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I wish I was that good at jujitsu. Fortunately, that was not one of my strong, my strong areas. But, but as I, as I pointed out, it wasn't the result that was important, it was just the effort. So I would, I would ride my bike to camp every day and ride at home. And it was a good, you know, it was a good ride, it was like a five mile ride to camp. And I fell one day coming down like a hill, you know, kind of, I don't know, you know, free, this is like, this was like no helmets, this was a long time ago, I'm very old, like, you know, no helmets, just like willy nilly, your backpack on and you know, you're not signaling. And I fell and I hurt my arm very badly. And I went, I can't remember, but I contacted my dad and he's like, I'm not going to come get you, I can't leave work,

• 18:57Speaker 02

  you have to get home on your own. And, and I, so I rode my bike back from camp, you know, like another three, four miles, and my arm was broken, it was definitely broken, I had broken my arm. And I got home and my dad was like, eh, your arm's not broken. I mean, you see, you need to stop complaining. You know, it was just sore. And the next day I woke up, it was like black and swollen and I had to like, you know, like lift it off the pillow. And he finally took me to the doctor and it was absolutely like compound fracture. The bone hadn't come through the skin, but it was a multiple fracture. But my, I think at the time it felt cruel, but I think my dad's larger attitude was like, no one is coming to save you, you have to save yourself, you have to find a way every single day to save yourself. And.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  And as a result, I think that, you know, as an adult, I just don't spend a lot of time like anguishing over what's been done to me, you know? And I was fine, I did ride my bike home and my arm was broken, but I still got home on my bike and, you know, then the next day I got a super dope cast. And I think we just raise like these, I mean, I know I sound like everybody's mom, but I just feel like we're just, we're curating young people's experiences so aggressively nowadays that they just don't have any way to discover things about themselves. They don't develop not just self-sufficiency, but like a curiosity about themselves and their abilities and what they can tolerate and what they can do if left alone, because

• 20:27Speaker 02

  they're just never left alone.

• 20:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  And I was just, I had a lot of time alone when I was a kid and, and I still really liked being alone as an adult.

• 20:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and also, it strikes me that if you're so protective of your child and your child's ego, that you effectively disallow them to fail or engage with risk, that the delta, the difference between their actual competencies and abilities for self-preservation and their overinflated sense of their capabilities is actually a huge disservice.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. And, and their sense of, like, you need to know what it feels like to fail and then what, what, what comes next. Because what comes next is, what did I learn? How can I adjust? How do I pivot? How do I move forward? And just, most people don't develop those mental skills. They just, they're crushed by failure and it's, it's just an unavoidable element of life. And, and, you know, there's so many people that I know who's out of real, I mean, you know, genuine love, parents like, I just don't want to see my kid in pain, but like, how are you gonna, how do people move through the, the planet? How do people move through life without pain? That's, that's, that's a, that's a false theory. It can't be done. It just cannot be done.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  And so people just become incapacitated the first minute they hit any kind of a speed bump in, in their lives and they just don't know how, they don't know how to navigate disappointment. Whereas I was just deeply disappointed throughout my childhood, so I know exactly what it feels like.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I was just like a next, I'm like, oh, that didn't go my way, moving on, you know?

• 22:09Tim Ferriss?

  Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it makes me conjure in my mind the image of this, this increasing sort of amplitude of pain consequence over your life from like childhood to adulthood, where the consequences grow potentially greater and greater. Where in the beginning, like when you're a child, you're basically engaging with, with pain and, I shouldn't say pain, but failure in many cases, not all cases, but many cases where you're effectively in one of those like birthday party blow up sumo suits, do you know what I'm talking about? And it's like, all right, you could, so you can, you can sort of engage with failure that way. And if you get knocked on your ass, it doesn't, there aren't really real consequences. And then, then you get, you get to high school, college, and it's like, okay, you're out

• 22:54Tim Ferriss?

  of the sumo suit, but you've got big kind of blow up boxing gloves on and huge piece of headgear. And then you, then when you get out into some aspects of the real world, it's just a bare knuckle brawl. And so if you haven't had the chance-

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Permanent consequences-

• 23:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you haven't had the chance to get whaled in the face with the sumo suit, you're not going to be ready for the blow up boxing gloves and the headgear. And if you, certainly if you don't get whacked in the face a few times doing that, you're just going to be crippled when you get out into the real world and get, you know, drop kicked in the face by, by someone who doesn't follow the same rules.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  And, and, and crippled in that way that, you know, and I know you've interacted with people like this, in that way where, you know, when something bad happens, their, their whole monologue is like, why me? Like, why did this happen to me? You don't understand what I'm going through. It's like, you're not, you're not special. Everybody is experiencing the same thing. Everybody, everybody's heart is being broken. Everybody isn't getting the job they want. Everybody isn't getting to sleep with the, with the hot person they want. Everybody is experiencing the same failures, these same injuries, but you just don't know how to tolerate them. You are not special. And that's not the same as saying you don't have the potential for being special. You know, you, you, there's nothing anybody's doing now that hasn't already been done and that won't be done in the future. And I, those,

• 24:13Speaker 02

  those kinds of personalities drive me crazy because they just, they're, they're so stuck and boring.

• 24:23Tim Ferriss?

  What did, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up, when you were in high school or college?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Oh God. In high school, I, it's so interesting because I was like super academic. And I think I was, thought I'd be an attorney. I was really, I was like, you know, I was like a big activist and I organized and marched and did all that stuff. And I was, I was like in really, you know, the outing club and I rock climbed and all that stuff. So I thought I was going to be like an environmental lawyer. Um, either an environmental lawyer or an environmental engineer. And then I got to, and I wanted, I really wanted to go to a school that was like, like really grounded and like a relationship to nature. So I was applying to like, you know, Marlboro College and Reed and, and Bard and these schools that were like out in the woods. And I ended up going to Dartmouth, which is, you know,

• 25:15Speaker 02

  in, in New Hampshire and has this big land grant around it. And, uh, and I thought I would be an environmental engineer. And I think I just took like the first prerequisite math course for engineering. And I was like, yeah, okay. It's not, it's not going to be, this is not for me. I, I always love, I always loved science, but, um, I'm just a person of letters, I guess. And I, I didn't have the appetite for it. It wasn't as glamorous as I thought. I think when I took my first engineering, I did, I think I got through the math class, like did fine. Like I applied myself and I got a good grade. And then I went into my like, you know, an introduction to engineering, uh, three. And I, it was about like building like a fecal matter treatment plant. And I was like, this isn't feeling like hugging trees at all, man. We're just talking about poop all day. Um, I've lost my appetite for that really quickly.

• 26:00Tim Ferriss?

  So, so then what? Did you just have this great access existential angst? Or did you sort of shift to something else immediately following that?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I was always doing kind of like performing things on the side like I I went to a high school that had a performing arts kind of like magnet or like a pocket school within the the the regular school called the J U Dean McEachran School of the Arts. So I was kind of doing my regular classwork and then doing like improv and stuff and and sketch on the side. And then I went to Dartmouth and I was just doing some of the same stuff like, you know, I was in one of those infernal, you know, Ivy League a cappella groups that have been popularized since then by shows like Lee. And so I was always kind of doing that as a hobby because it just never felt like a real job. And I graduated and I was I was living in San Francisco and I was working for a conservation organization that

• 26:56Speaker 02

  was like a killer. It was like I got like my dream job. It was a a group that purchased like blighted urban land and turned it into parks and underserved neighborhoods that didn't have any outdoor space for kids to play. And, you know, it was like the mission was great because it was it wasn't just kind of conservation for conservation's sake. It was like conservation focused on engaging underserved communities and it was the grooviest. And I was just miserable. And I just

• 27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Why were you miserable?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Because I just I didn't know. It was a really good question. You know, it was like, why, why, if I have my dream job in the city of my birth, why am I so unhappy? And I just did a lot of soul searching and I realized it was because I, for the first time in my life, I wasn't doing anything creative. I wasn't performing. And so I I'm I'm a problem, I'm a I'm a problem solver. I'm a matrix builder. I was like, well, how can I solve this problem right now? And I looked at all the ways that I could get on stage and standup comedy was the only thing I didn't need to know anyone for, have an agent or a or a band or connections. I could just do standup right away. And so I started

• 28:07Speaker 02

  studying and watching the precursor to Comedy Central, which was this network called Ha, a very short-lived network, and make taking notes. And then, you know, after a while, just kind of screwed up the courage to go and do an open mic. And then that was it was just transformational. I was like, oh, this is what I want to do with my life.

• 28:26Tim Ferriss?

  Was the thinking immediately on how to

• 28:31Tim Ferriss?

  Turn performance into a career? Or did you, did you expect that you would continue doing your job and doing stand up on the side? Was it a career move from when you first built The Matrix and decided on stand up? Or was it, you know what? This is gonna be great. I'll continue doing this job and I'll scratch my creative performance itch on the weekends with open mics.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it, it's so funny because like, I don't think I even realized that stand up comedy was a job. Um, you know, I was like a really bookish kid and I, you know, a lot of guys will have these stories about how they grew up, you know, with like Red Fox, you know, on vinyl that they listened to hundreds of times or, you know, following, you know, Letty Bruce or, you know, these idols or Bill Hicks. I just, I didn't, like, I remember seeing Live on the Sunset Strip when I was a kid, but like, I, I just thought Richard Pryor was an alien. Like, I, you know what I mean? Like a magical person who came down to do this thing. It just, the idea that that was like a vocation was just not in my head.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  So, um, I remember seeing stand up at Dartmouth when I was like a sophomore and coming out of a show and being like, like, do you got, like, do people know that this, like, you can go and have this feeling for an hour? Like, this is insanity. Like, I just remember, like, everything hurt from laughing, my face and my stomach. And I just never experienced live comedy before. So it, it, it, it, it didn't dovetail into like a, a job at first. It was just something I was gonna do for fun. I kept my day job 100% and I kept it for a long time. I, I also didn't want to be like one of these kind of like miserable, you know, sweating stand ups who are like gripping their, you know, kind of inky notebook and sleeping on their buddy's couch, you know? Like, I was in a relationship and, and I had a job that paid great and I could make

• 30:17Speaker 02

  flyers for my shows at work, embezzling, you know, copy paper, uh, and, and push pins as, as, as aggressively as I could. So, uh, I, I, I was, I, I was, and I still am of the opinion that like you should absolutely keep your day job, uh, which I know is not the most popular.

• 30:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm of the same, I'm of the same opinion. Absolutely. Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think it gives you a freedom. People think it traps them, but I think it gives you this incredible freedom to just pursue art for art's sake.

• 30:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  And let a job pay for it and, and do it for so long that everything you do is just for joy and, and it changes the way that you, it changes the way that you approach your art. You know, I would like get up and I'd go to work at like seven and I'd six or seven in the morning and I'd work until four and then I'd jump in the car and I'd drive two hours to Sacramento to do, you know, a set and I'd come back at midnight. I'd do it all over again. But I could do that. And then it was just purely about the experience of performing and not about whether I was getting paid or not. So I did that for a long time before I finally quit my job.

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  Now, for those people who don't know the geography of Northern California, where I lived for 17 years, and coincidentally, the high school that you went to, is that now the Ruth Asawa School on O'Shaughnessy?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Um, it's on O'Shaughnessy, yeah, up there at the, they're at the, the nexus of-

• 31:35Tim Ferriss?

  Twin Peaks slash Glen Park Canyon.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:38Tim Ferriss?

  So I literally lived for five or six years about a quarter mile from that school.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 31:46Tim Ferriss?

  It was right there.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  It's not a big city, even though I think when you feel, when you live there, it feels like it. But it's like, it's an intimate place.

• 31:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's an intimate place. And, and given the density of San Francisco and the fact that it is, well, I'm not going to go so, I don't know if people would consider it a comedy town, but there's certainly clubs and so on.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a comedy town. It's a comedy town.

• 32:09Tim Ferriss?

  So why would you go all the way to Sacramento? Sacramento is not, for those people who don't know the area, it's not like a 10-minute drive away from San Francisco.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  It's far. Um, it's always had, San Francisco's always had a reputation for being a comedy town. Like, the big comedy towns in the United States, from comedians' perspectives, are San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York. LA is not, I mean, LA is a company town, but it's not a comedy town. And San Francisco was always one of those places that people saw as like a real crucible for kind of original comedy. You know, it was like where the alt comedy movement happened. And, you know, where Marc Maron and Janine Garofalo and these kind of alternative comics, Brian Posehn, came out of. And it was a comedy town. But when I started doing comedy, it was like the beginning of the contraction

• 32:59Speaker 02

  of, of the comedy economy. So there was a period of time when there were just hundreds of comedy clubs everywhere and you could make a living doing stand-up. You could kind of go from place to place and you could get a gig and you could get paid and- I started doing stand up at the beginning of the end of the comedy bubble. So when I started doing stand up, the club community was contracting and some of the big clubs in San Francisco were closing. I think at one point there were maybe like five or six active clubs. And then by the time I was working consistently, there were only two. And there was just a lot of competition for stage time. And to get good at comedy, you can't just do it like once a weekend. You know, you need to be on stage like every night. It's, it's, it's like being a high diver. You know what? It's, it's literally like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  And you're not going to get 10,000 hours of stand up hanging out in San Francisco. Like you have to go everywhere and, and take every single opportunity to be on stage that you can get. So I would drive to Sacramento. I would drive to Fresno. I would do these terrible, you know, like bar shows in Menlo Park and, oh God, I don't even remember some of the places. Cupertino and Martinez. I mean, you would just go anywhere that you could get six minutes on stage. And there were a hundred other people trying to get those same six minutes. So it was really competitive. The culture, I think, was pretty supportive. Like comedians were supportive of each other, but it just, there just wasn't enough stage time. So you just do anything and go anywhere to get it.

• 34:24Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to ask about this comedy contraction.

• 34:31Tim Ferriss?

  We won't spend too much time on this because I don't want to take us completely off the reservation, but what happened? I mean, it was like Beanie Babies? Like people were like, really? The Beanie Babies? It's like, no, comedy isn't cool anymore. And then like all the clubs closed? Was it just a macroeconomic downturn? I mean, what happened?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  I think, I think it was, there were three factors. One factor was just, there was just a glut. There just, you know, it, for live comedy, in, in some ways in the seventies and eighties was kind of a new thing. And it's not like people hadn't been doing stand up prior to that, but. The proliferation of stand-up comedians in the, in the, in the culture really started happening at that time. And what that was fueled by, I honestly don't know. Like, why were there so many more comics doing stand-up in the seventies and eighties? Maybe because that was the period where there were these superstar comics that were kind of, you know, I'm trying to think of who would have been really popular besides like Bill Hicks and.

• 35:29Tim Ferriss?

  I could see that, though. Maybe it's analogous to like celebrity chefs in the last fifteen years.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, but part of the reason why there are so many more celebrity chefs is because there started to be celebrity chefs on television.

• 35:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  And so if you think about that in terms of comedy, what you, what you see is, oh, that's a job. I can make money at that. Whereas people weren't really encountering live comedy if they didn't go to a live comedy show. And so you start to see these guys on TV and you think, and honestly, when, when Ha, the precursor to Comedy Central started, they needed, like, they needed comics and they needed opportunities, they needed clubs, they needed, they needed content. It was a twenty-four-hour network. So there were, there were some good comedians on that station and there were some really, uh, some really shitty ones. They're really bad.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  And so a lot of people watching probably thought, well, I can do that, you know? I also think about guys like, you know, Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay. There was kind of like a golden era in that time and we were seeing all those people on TV. Then we were seeing a lot of people that were like really subpar and a lot of people were thinking, well, if that guy can write, you know, five crappy minutes about an airplane, I can. Then you couple that with this explosion in comedy clubs, which were a relatively new phenomenon. I mean, when Joan Rivers was doing stand-up, she was doing stand-up in, in strip clubs. There were very few comedy clubs and, and comedy was kind of a part of a vaudeville approach. So you'd, you'd hire a singer and then you'd hire a comic, but there wasn't a, there weren't places dedicated to comedy. So these comedy clubs opened.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  It was a really easy way to make money because comics, comics weren't that expensive. And, you know, you had a two-drink minimum. People would come in, they would get wasted. You'd have huge margins on your booze. So all these comedy clubs started proliferating. And then there just, there was just peak, there was just peak clubs.

• 37:22Tim Ferriss?

  Saturation.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it became unsustainable. So they started to contract because of, of market saturation. The economy started to contract in the eighties and people could watch comedy on TV. The proliferation of comedy on television affected people going out to see it in a club. So there were like kind of those three factors all, all kind of intersecting. And when it happened, it was really aggressive. Like I said, I think there were maybe like five or six comedy clubs in San Francisco when I was in high school. And then by the time I was doing stand-up in my twenties, there were two.

• 37:57Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  And so you, you, you would do, and you know, and they were attracting like, you know, like high-end, like peak talent. So, for example, this club's still there. It's called The Punch Line.

• 38:07Tim Ferriss?

  Punch Line. I've been there a few times.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  And there was The Punch Line and there was Cobb's. And those are still the, the only two clubs. And maybe there's some minor clubs that have sprung up since then. But, you know, they would book these big headliners. So the, the only time you could go up if you were an amateur, like a young comic, was on a Sunday or a Wednesday. And there'd be 20 other guys trying to get on, you know, as well. And it would be wildly competitive. And you wouldn't be getting paid, you know. And, and then you'd be super anxious because you'd be like hoping, okay, I, I need to go up and I need to destroy because I want this club owner to hire me again. So I can't go up and I can't work out. I can't, I can't fail in front of this guy. Because he won't see this, like, you know, when you watch like

• 38:52Speaker 02

  an Olympic skater during practice and they're falling. I mean, that's, that's what practice is for. You know, practice is for like finding your weak spots and, and reinforcing them. But when you're up in front of a comedy club owner and you, he's, it's been six months that you've been trying to get out of this club and you finally get five minutes, it's gotta be a monster five minutes. And, and so there was just no way to improve. You can't improve, you can't.

• 39:16Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna say, how do you, how do you get in your rough drafts then? I mean, how do you work on the material?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Drive to Martinez.

• 39:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see, I see. So you'd write, work out the kinks with

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:28Tim Ferriss?

  The, the, the crew at the such and such casino and god knows where Turlock and then

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Foo bars or Rooster Teeth feathers or, you know, one of these other places that, yeah. Um, and, and there was this, um, you know, it's different than being an author or an athlete or even a musician because there's an autonomy to comedy, absolutely, but you need other people. You, you can't do it. You can't just sit around your place practicing. You know what I mean? Like with music, you know, you know, if you're sharp or flat, you know, if you hit all the notes, you know, if the tempo is right. But with comedy, the only way it works is in front of an audience. Um, and so you're very dependent on, on stage time. And that's, it's everything when you're a young comic is stage time.

• 40:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, do you remember your early content? I mean, what kind of, what was your approach early on? Uh, do you, do you remember the first, and maybe, I mean, a different way to approach this, you could take it, answer it however you like. Do you remember the first time that you bombed? Or the, what is your first memory that comes to mind of bombing?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Oh God, I bombed so many times. It's just, it all seeps together into an inky blackness. Um, any comic, any comic who tells you they've never bombed is lying. And, and, and again, the only way to get funny is to bomb. You know, one ever, no one ever gets funnier after they kill. You know, they just walk and they're like, follow that bitches. And they drop the mic. You know what I mean? They go off and do shots with their friends. I mean, you really need to, you really need to bomb and bomb hard to get funny. Um, I remember doing this one show, oh God. So there was, there was an open mic in a laundromat.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Um, in like, like South Market, around the police station there. So what, maybe like, you know, eighth and Mission or something like that for people from San Francisco. Uh, I think it was called Brainwash. I think the, the place was called Brainwash. And they would have this open mic in the back of this laundromat. And comics know, you know, with these open mics, with these local open mics, that typically there are no actual audience members in the audience. It is just a room full of comedians waiting for you to be done so that they can try out their material. You know, look, all of them looking at their notebooks, not listening, not laughing. And you're just kind of trying to gut it out and, and pause where you think the laughter might occur if you were in front of actual human beings. And, um, I just did, I did a set where I just, I did not get one laugh.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  And I remember that what not even like, not even like a cursory titter. And I remember just silence, just like, like, like, just a wall of silence. And I got off, I, I was even thinking about it now. It's so funny to me. Like, I called a friend, I talked to a girlfriend afterwards. I was like, oh, my God, like, I, I couldn't even call that bad set. I don't know what that was, but it was so funny to me that I didn't get a laugh. Like, I, it was, it, it, there was this, there was this, like, bulletproofness that I got from that set. That just made me impervious to anything ever going wrong in my, in my life or career again. And, and every, like, even when I'm talking about now, it's like, there's a huge smile on my face because it was so funny.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  How, how little, how, how little I was able to elicit out of that audience. Um, but, but it made, it made me, it just made me so mentally strong.

• 42:41Tim Ferriss?

  Was that the immediate response that you had? I mean, or were you in the middle of the set? When you're like, in the back of your mind, thinking, wow, no one is laughing. Was there, did you go from like, pan, was it like the reverse of the five stages of grief? Or like, what? Or did you just go straight to like, yeah, motherfuckers, this is great. Like,

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Just full acceptance.

• 43:04Tim Ferriss?

  This is gonna make a great story, however many years from now, on Tim Ferriss's podcast.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Well, one thing comedians love is, is agony. I mean, it's, we dine out on it. It's definitely like our, our stock in trade. So a comedian very quickly transitions from, oh, my God, this is the worst night of my life to, oh, my God, this is gonna make a great story. That happens almost instantaneously. Um, so, so we, we have a little bit of a, we have some armor in that regard. Because, you know, you could just, we could wake up like naked and shivering on the side of the road with like, no money and no phone. And, you know, and not speak the local language. And you'd be thinking, okay, if I live, this is gonna make a killer story. Uh, so I think in the moment, I just thought, I, I had watched a couple of other people go up and not do very well either. I was prepared for it not going my way. And I just thought, I'm just, and I think also, there's a discipline to comedy.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  That if you're not a comedian, you can't understand, which is that you've got to get up and do your set. There is, there is no, you don't get to tap out. Like tapping out is, tapping out is true failure. You know, if you, if you went up and you had a bad set, well, you just need to write new jokes. But if you go up and you give up. That's true failure for a comedian.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And, and there, there are some really famous examples of this online. I don't know if you know the comedian Bill Burr, but.

• 44:19Tim Ferriss?

  I, so I interviewed Bill Burr about a year and a half ago and I played the video, which he had never seen, or he claimed to have never seen.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Some real, he has, still has some psychic, he has some, he has some trauma. He has like some.

• 44:30Tim Ferriss?

  So can you, for people who don't know the story, can you please describe it? Cause it's just.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  It's so.

• 44:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's amazing.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Right, it's insane. So he was, he was doing like one of those big like radio, you know, those radio station concerts, like the Jingle Ball or whatever. And I don't remember, it was called the Weenie Roast? I think it was the Weenie Roast. So it's one of the shows at like some local station, you know, K-Rock, 97 Point Rock, K-Rock, you know, like one of those shows. And it's like, you know, I don't know, Weezer's too cool of a band. It would be like Nickelback and, you know, some other band that sounds like Nickelback. And then an opening band you've never heard of. Anyway, and, but they paid, uh, they, they, I don't know why people still do this, but you know, if you're a comic and someone offers you money, you take it. So they would hire a comic to kind of warm up the crowd, you know, early in the day. And, and, you know, no one, no one pays to see Nickelback and then wants to sit through 15 minutes of stand-up.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  You know, everyone's drunk and undrugged and they're not even facing forward. You know what I mean? It's just like the work, like there's nothing, the only thing worse than performing in front of an outdoor audience is performing in front of people who are eating.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, this was like, this was like a tailgate at like 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. or something. Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Every, everybody's been, you know, everybody like busted out their like, you know, their marijuana brownie recipe for the year. They're all like completely looped, you know, like one of their eyes is completely dilated and the other one is like falling out of their head. Nobody cares about your jokes about your mom and your family. So they could not muster compassion if they tried. So he starts doing stand-up and he just immediately starts getting booed. And, and it's just this, this like, this tidal wave of, of, of disdain. And he knows if he doesn't finish, he will not get paid.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  But it's not like, it's not like silence you can tolerate, right? But like, people are screaming at him to get offstage. And he, he makes it very clear to the audience, you have to watch it because I'll never be able to do it justice, but he makes it very clear to the audience that he is not leaving the stage until he does his 10 minutes, that he does not care how they feel about him. And he's, and he's counting down the minutes.

• 46:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, every minute, he's like, nine minutes, you fucking fucks.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. He says something really outrageous, like, I hope your mother gets cancer in the center of her asshole. Seven minutes! It's just so, it's, it's, it's so, um, it's a, it's just a demonstration of tenacity. You know, he, he later, you know, he was embarrassed by it, but every comedian understands, you know, this kind of, this kind of blood battle that you sometimes have with an audience where, you know, you're not, they're not going to scare you, and they're not going to drive you away. You're going to deliver the, the material that you were hired to deliver, you're going to make your money, and then you're gonna go off and spend it on light beer and chicken wings. But, uh, but no one is, you will not be deterred. And so, um, so I think

• 47:21Speaker 02

  because you understand that as a comedian very early on in your career, no matter what happens onstage, uh, you know, I, I, I will not be moved. So I just, I had material to do, and I did it. And I think, I, I remember I thinking almost immediately, well, okay, I'm not going to get any laughs, I'm just gonna kind of like, listen to the set and see what it feels like, see what the words feel like, see what might play in front of actual people. But, but it started to get really delicious. And I think if you watch the Bill Burr video, you'll also see that he starts to really enjoy it. It starts to be like, this kind of, like savory masochism towards the end, where he just, he's so powerful in his, in his, in his lack of caring. You know what I mean? Like, and, and, uh, and

• 48:02Speaker 02

  I, I, you, you watch it, and it's, it, it is to be studied, because he goes from kind of anguish to rage to this kind of delightful detachment by the end of the set. Uh, and I've seen, I've seen some other guys do similar stuff, and it's always really fun to watch.

• 48:17Tim Ferriss?

  So, a couple of, a couple of things that I want to use as teasers for people who should watch this video. I think, I think it was in Phil-, I'm almost 100% positive it was in Philadelphia.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Philadelphia, I think, I know, either that or Jersey, but it'd be-

• 48:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think it was Philadelphia, because he started- Ridiculing Rocky and he said, "Your hero is a fictional person" and just tearing into them. And he basically for the, for half of his set, just decided to abandon his material and just attack these people in the town. And

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Which way is a no-no generally?

• 48:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, which is a no-no generally.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, like if people hate you, like, you know, there's, I mean, there are like these unwritten rules of comedy and one of them is like, you don't, if some of the people in the audience hate you, like, don't turn all of them against you.

• 49:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  And this is just a sidebar, but don't forget what you were gonna say. There's another very famous video, very famous, and it happened at the Punch Line in San Francisco, where there's a, there's a guy playing, he's a guitar comic, and a guy's heckling him. And it's kind of just combative back and forth, but nothing too extreme. But then the guy gets up and he comes towards the, uh, the stage, you know, whatever, to defend himself or the girl he's with, something like that. And the guy just hauls off and hits him in the head with a guitar.

• 49:32Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry, sorry. Not funny. It's tragic, but Jesus Christ.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Everybody lives. But what happens is, up until that beat, the whole audience has been on the comedian's side against this guy. And it is a, it is a hairpin turn from them being like, "Yeah, shut up." Because, you know, the comic's like, "Hey, you know, people can't enjoy the show because you're talking. Keep, you know, keep it down." And then he hits this guy and the whole audience just turns on him, just like instantaneous, like, you know, Frankenstein's monster mob, just the pitchforks come flying out. And so, one of the unwritten rules of comedy is that, you know, you, you just don't, you want to try to at all costs avoid turning everybody against you, which, so, so Bill broke a bunch of rules, but, but he just, he, he never gave up, you know, which I think it becomes this, you know, it's like the Rudy moment at the end of the movie, like, "Man, that sucked, but you sure sucked in there."

• 50:21Tim Ferriss?

  And he got a standing ov- well, I mean, everybody was already standing, but he got massive applause from the audience at the end, which is just Because they're just like, "What the fuck?" Like, it didn't even fit into like, any mental charistic of comedy that they could expect.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  It was, it was straight prison, that was straight prison yard dynamics, right? Like, nobody, you know, you don't, you know, that's the line from Out of Sight, right? Just like the yard, nobody backing down, nobody's backing down. And he just, you know, I think they, there was like a thousand of them to one of, or probably like 10,000 of them to one of him. And he just did not back down, you know? So he got, he got the slowest speck clap at the end of the show.

• 51:02Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God. So I wasn't gonna go to heckling, but why not, since we're already here? Do you have any memorable heckling stories? Did you recall the first time you got heckled?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Um, God, yeah. I mean, again, there's, I mean, I started doing stand-up like 25 years ago, so at this point, like, all the sets have just kind of blended, but, um, and heckling can be lots of different things. It doesn't always have to be like the conventional kind of you suck heckle. One, I, I, one time where this woman, and this kind of dovetails perfectly with the old, like, don't turn the audience against you, where this woman was talking to me, she was sitting in the front row, and she was talking to me the entire show.

• 51:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Just loud enough that I could hear her, but not really loud enough so the audience could hear her, except for the people right around her. And it was driving me crazy.

• 51:54Tim Ferriss?

  That's awful.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  It was like a bee in my ear, and as a result, I just seemed insane. You know what I mean? Stopping to yell at this person that no one could hear, and it looked like I was coming to break down, you know? It was a very effective heckle, because she just completely derailed my show. Uh, and I just seemed like a dick, because I was yelling, like, shut up, lady, and, but no one could hear what she was saying. It's like, what's wrong? Nice lady in the front, trying to enjoy the night, you know? And it really, I mean, that was, I remember that, I really went off the rails last night. And I generally have a rule with hecklers, that unless they're really disruptive to the entire room, I just never address them. Because what you do is, again, you've derailed a show for 500 or 1,000 people to deal with one person, and, and, and everyone's never gonna really understand what's going on unless that person's so loud that they're, that they're, they've affected everybody else's

• 52:39Speaker 02

  enjoyment of the night. Um, but, but sometimes the affectionate hecklers are the worst, because, because they don't like, you know, typically hecklers just wanna be a part of the show. And so, you know, they say something, you slam them a little bit, they shut up, because they, they think they're helping you out. It was, the famous line is, they'll come up and be like, hey, you like how I helped you out? I'm like, buddy, I came with jokes, I don't need this. Like, I don't, I don't have a box jumper in my act, all right? I showed up ready to go. But, um, but... When people are affectionate, you can't insult them. And they're the most unmanageable kind of heckler.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  Now, by affectionate, you mean someone's like, "I love you, I love you."

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. "I love you." I had this one girl at one show in San Francisco, just so drunk, I'm just cross-eyed. And for the 90 minutes I was on stage, just, "I love you, I love you so much, I love you." And I was just like, lady, like, you're what, like, all you're doing is making me want to hit you in the head with this microphone stand. Your affection is not welcome here. And everybody else is like staring at this woman. But she, this is a genuine expression of emotion for this person, that is destroying my joy completely. So, you know, I really have a habit of just not talking to hecklers.

• 53:50Tim Ferriss?

  What did you do in that case? Did you ignore her?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  I think that I kept saying like, "Thank you, that's super sweet, shut the fuck up." That was like, like, you know, clearly you weren't hugged enough as a child. I mean, I just eventually got mean, because it was just like, I couldn't get this woman to stop talking. And I think the people around her got embarrassed, and they eventually kind of shut her up, which was nice. And I'm trying to think of any other really good hecklers that... Oh, I had one guy, and it's a mental discipline too, because, you know, like, again, like, it's your show, you have the microphone, you're in control. You know, I think the audience thinks they're in control, but they're not. I mean, the Bill Burr scenario is a perfect example. The person with the microphone has all the power. And as long as they, as long as they cannot be moved, they will eventually win.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  But I had this one guy who was sitting like really close to the stage, it was like a group of 12 people, and they were all like laughing their asses off. And then he was just, arms crossed, just looked like he just had just eaten a big scoop of fecal matter. And I, it just, I was all, he was all I could see, like, you know what I mean? Like, the whole audience had disappeared, and it was just like, straight vignette on this guy's like sourpuss face. And I couldn't, it was just wrecking my whole night. And I finally said, "If you don't want to be here, just fucking go, man, I'll give you your money back." I cannot look at your face for one more minute.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  And I meant it. It wasn't even a joke. I was just like, get out. And you are harshing my mellow so hard. And he left. And I didn't feel bad about it. And then I went on with the show and his girlfriend goes, he had a bad day. But what was great was, nobody else at the table wanted to leave. They're all like, you know, good riddance to bad rubbish. And he went on and the people enjoyed their night. So but again, that was me. That was my, you know, I should have been disciplined enough not to be distracted by, you know, old sour puss. But I just, I'm only human. You know what I mean? If the Grinch is sitting in the front row, you know, something must be done.

• 55:48Tim Ferriss?

  When you were just getting started, how did you get better at comedy? And what I mean by that is, you're very smart. You, like you mentioned, matrix capable. Did you do any type of post-game analysis? Did you watch video of yourself? Did you watch video of other comics? How did you hone your craft? Or maybe a better question is, what helped the most in honing your craft?

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Right. That's a good question. You know, it's interesting. Like, I think that there's a definite math to comedy. And then there's also a secondary kind of like ineffability. You know what I mean? And I guess what I mean is like, you can learn how to be a better comic, but you can't learn how to be a comic. Or even a different way. I really wanted to be an engineer. And I could have really suffered and struggled through like the high, like the elevated math that would, I would need to become an engineer. But it would never be effortless for me. And I think with comedy, there are people who very workmanlike can learn how to do comedy. And then there's some people who

• 56:58Speaker 02

  are just naturally comedic, and they still have to work to be better at it. You know, like, you say Bolt still has to train, even though he was born with, you know, more fast switch muscles than everybody else, he still has to train to become a champion. So I feel like with comedy, there, you know, people can be the class clown, or they can be that guy who's naturally funny. There's still a methodology, and there's still a mathematics to becoming a comic. And then, at the same time, if they have this ephemeral, ineffable kind of understanding of the math of comedy, they're going to be able to do something magical with those skills. So, for me, I don't know that I thought I was a funny kid, but I was an observer, and I was really nerdy and a little bit of a social pariah. So storytelling became a way

• 57:42Speaker 02

  to make friends. You know what I mean? Like to like aggraciate myself. I would, I, you know, I would kind of like try to talk my way into situations. Or if I was in a social situation, talk really fast to try to keep myself engaging, not be rejected. So, like, that was what I brought to it, was like that combination of being an outsider and an observer, and then, and then using those skills to try to kind of connect with people. But with comedy, like, I never took any classes, I never read any books. You know, there, there's definitely people who can say, oh, you know, there's a total methodology to comedy. It's, you know, the rule of threes and, you know, stretching the, stretching reality to the point of breaking, but not past it. I mean, there, you know, some specific kind of-

• 58:22Tim Ferriss?

  What's the rule of threes?

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Oh, the rule of threes is that, um-

• 58:27Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, definitely maintain your train of thought, but I-

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Right. I probably won't even be able to articulate it properly. It's, it's just that, like, if you're going to do a series of jokes, or a series of builds to a punchline, it needs to be three.

• 58:38Tim Ferriss?

  I get it, I get it.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  And also, if you're going to do any kind of a diversion, if you're going to lead people in one direction, then snap around to a different kind of absurdist result, you can't do that in, you can't do that in two. It has to, it has to be, it has to be, the pace of it has to be three.

• 58:54Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  And then past three, you're starting to, you know, draw things out too long. But two doesn't give people enough of a time-

• 59:02Tim Ferriss?

  Of a belt.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  ... to be lulled into a false sense of security before you kind of pull the rug out from under them. And as soon as you start explaining the math of comedy, like, none of it makes any sense. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's those two things. You know, someone who's really gifted at physics, they're, they know that there are rules, but still, they see things that other people can't see. You know what I mean? They, they see the world as numbers and data, and the rest of us are just like table, chair, water, sex. So, I guess the way that I did it was that I-

• 59:37Speaker 02

  I'm also really an undisciplined comedian and what I mean is like, like there's a documentary about Gary Shandling out right now, which I haven't watched, but I'm sure that this is in there because he was very famous for being a really disciplined writer. Like he would get up and he would write every single day and sometimes it would be pages and pages of material without fail. Other comics would be like, hey, let's get a beer and be like, no, I have to write. And every day he would write, like, you know, on this like legal, this is probably true and apocryphal at the same time, on this like legal line about this tiny handwriting, he would just write and write and write and write. I do not do that. I've never worked that way. I just get on stage, I try a bunch of stuff, I keep what works. I know what works. I already know right away what works. I'll run off stage, I'll write down the things that I knew hit, I'll write down the things I know

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  didn't hit, and then I'll go back and try it again, dropping the stuff that wasn't good and putting new stuff in. I record my sets, but I never, I cannot listen to my own voice, so I have hours and hours of material on tape that I just have never listened to. So I don't know why I still engage in that behavior when it's clearly not useful to me. But, but I, I, I think the more you do it, the more you intuitively understand, oh, this is a rich area, people are connecting with this, this other stuff. There's also something you learn as you move through comedy, which is, it's not just important to get a laugh. Like, does this material say something specific and personal about me? Because when

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  you're a baby comic, every joke is meaningful to you because you only have like eight jokes, right? And so even if they're stupid, or juvenile, or unsophisticated, or, or, or valueless, or, or coreless, you'll still do them because that's all you have. And then as you get older, you start to think, okay, like, I want to have a body of work here. Does this hang together? Does it have a strong point of view? Does it have an identity? And then those other jokes start to fall away. And then the material really becomes about trying to tell some kind of a story about yourself and the way you perceive the world. And then that's how you shape it. And so sometimes things that are really funny go away. Things that are less funny stay because they, they're more impactful. Does that make sense?

• 1:01:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, does make sense.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:01:40Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. I think that's true for musicians. I think it's true for... Many different artists.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Writers, too, probably for writers. It's like, I'm gonna find a space that's, that really says something about like my accumulated understanding and knowledge of the world. And it's not just enough to say something. Like, I need to say something that's uniquely mine, you know, and as something you can only do with, by being prolific, because you need to be able to let things go in order to figure out what should stay.

• 1:02:10Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a certain volume to it, or thinking of it almost as a funnel. And, you know, I think, and I certainly hope, for the sake of our, not to sound like an old man, but I guess that's what I'm turning into, for the sake of our

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  That's what we're all turning into.

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, society in general, I would hope, just seeing the number of hatchet jobs and the amount of yellow journalism and clickbaiting with pieces that have not been fact-checked and so on, and take down pieces of folks who are otherwise doing actually a lot of good in the world, but people feeling no compunction about running pieces that get a lot of clicks, because that's the only metric they're focused on. At some point, go from, you know, what, what can I write that will get the most clicks, to what can I write that I will be proud of, that may or may not, and I think you can figure out

• 1:03:07Tim Ferriss?

  a way to make it a non-binary decision. In other words, you can figure out something you can be proud of that is simultaneously likely to have, to find some type of sizable audience, right? And I think in the beginning, there's a temptation, particularly if you have quit your job and you're like, where's my next rent check coming from? How can I appeal to the widest number of people possible? And that's a very precarious position or mindset to put yourself into if you're hoping to do anything creatively.

• 1:03:45Tim Ferriss?

  Evergreen.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Right, right. And I also like it's interesting like, you know, like when I went to school, you know, we had, we had the, you know, the honor system and, and, and you were just expected to hold yourself to a high standard because that was what was right. That's what you did. You know what I mean? You just, you were going to be, you were going to be called upon to stand behind your work. And, and so you, you tried to work very hard to make sure that you could defend it. I think that, I don't think that it's like we're any less ethical than we've ever been. It's just, like you said, our metrics have changed. Like, and I think that people value fame for fame's sake rather than for the, like, the foundational reasons that people become famous. And, and I think that's the problem. And I don't think it just exists

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  in journalism. I think, I think that people value infamy, or they can't distinguish between fame and infamy. And, you know, with a 24 hour news cycle, like, you know, a, a bright burst is as meaningful as a slow burn. And I don't really know, I don't, I actually don't really know what we do, or what, what should be done, or what should happen to counteract that, other than people start to maybe get hip to it and start rejecting, you know, baseless journalism and, and, you know, it's just, it's just so hard to, I don't know, I find it, I, let me take that back. I find it very easy to distinguish between things that seem like they've been thoroughly vetted and, and things that are bullshit. But I think that people are working very hard to make it harder for the rest of us

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  to distinguish between the two. So there are, you know, without me sounding like a crazy person, there are nefarious, you know, forces at work trying to make it very hard for us to figure out what's real and what's not real. And I think we have to start to raise people who are just more critical thinkers, but it's hard to be a critical thinker when you're just scrolling through your Instagram feed, looking at like butts and cupcakes all day long.

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  Have you been, have you been watching my, my feed? Are you looking over my shoulder? Are you one of the nefarious forces?

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  I'm following you and I know, I know what you're into.

• 1:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, God. You know, I have to, I'll admit, there was a day, and you would think supposedly being a tech investor and all this stuff for 10 years, that I would figure this out. There was a day when I was scrolling through cupcakes and thongs and I looked up at my, at my profile and I was like, wait a minute, people can see what I follow?

• 1:06:14Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, oh, fuck.

• 1:06:19Tim Ferriss?

  You know, fortunately, I've systematically dismantled and deliberately tarnished any semblance of any reputation I might have very deliberately, so that I feel... So that I don't feel...

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  I want to start interviewing you now. This is so interesting.

• 1:06:34Tim Ferriss?

  So that I don't feel I have any, you know, Stepford Wives polished persona to preserve, right? It's like, yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  That's so good. And that's so interesting to me. And it's different than just being a slob. What you're saying is I refuse to create a box within which I will be kept by others. And I, I think like, that comes also from a curiosity about the world. I actually think that like people who are trying to remain perfect all the time are, are fear driven. Like, that's not, that's not, that's not a, that's not a position of strength. You're not, people think they're maintaining a position of strength when they're trying to maintain an appearance of perfection, but that is by its very nature, a posture of fear, which is I cannot be seen to have imperfections. I cannot be seen to have flaws. There can be no chinks in my armor. And I, and that's, I am, I am terrified of being judged. But there is something very liberating, and I think it comes from age as well and from

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  experience. I don't mean experience like a resume, but like just having experiences to realize how little you know and how the only way to learn is to constantly be like skinning your knees. And that that doesn't go away. Like, the older you get, the more you know that you know very little and that you cannot learn if you are constantly trying to maintain a posture of perfection.

• 1:07:55Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And...

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  That's why I'm a total mess. Woo!

• 1:08:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if you don't, if you don't practice skinning your knees, just to like really bleed the metaphor for all it's worth, if you don't practice skinning your knees, you're not going to develop the callus for sort of increasingly painful grades of sandpaper. This is really awkwardly overextended now, but the, the point being, if you operate from a place of fear and want to please this nebulous majority more than you want to please yourself, and that's not to say that I'm always, I've always viewed my entire life and all my decisions as a singular locus of control in the palm of my hand, and I care what no one thinks. That's not true, because that's not how humans have evolved. But if

• 1:08:45Tim Ferriss?

  you are, if you are deferring to others, your perception of what others want on the small things, then it's going to become harder on the medium things, and then impossible, and then it's going to become harder and impossible on the big things. And for that reason, I, I find it very valuable to deliberately expose yourself to different types and levels of discomfort, so that you can actually stand up for the important stuff when it matters. Because if you don't practice on the smaller stuff, for instance, like if I'm so humiliated by the fact that I like gorgeous female asses, I'm like, oh my God, and I put something

• 1:09:27Tim Ferriss?

  up about, I put up this picture. So this is what I do occasionally, when I'm like, you know what, I think I'm getting a little, a little fat and happy and complacent, and maybe I have too much FOMO or something like that. I will, I remember at one point, I this, I put up this photo of this gorgeous, like, Latin ass, and female, and, and it said like, "Nalgofilia," and it had this, in Spanish, this explanation of this fake condition, which was nalgofilia. Anyway, I think it was nalgofilia. Anyway, las nalgas is like ass in Spanish. Anyway, so I put this up on Instagram.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  So it was Spanish for ass man, is what you're saying?

• 1:10:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. It's Spanish for like, ass man, ass man syndrome, right? Or ass man disorder. And I put it up, and as to be expected, there is immediate outrage. I mean, there are, there are plenty of people who think it's kind of funny, plenty of people are like, yeah, high five. And then there are plenty of other people who are just completely outraged.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Disgusted with you.

• 1:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  Disgusted with this fact that I find attractive women attractive. And

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Yes, outrage is contagious.

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's so, but I left it up because I like to call my audience, number one.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Yes, if you don't want to be here, please, I invite you to unfollow.

• 1:10:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like the sourpuss in the front row. It's like, let me give you, like, you look, you look like you're unhappy, but you're still here.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:50Tim Ferriss?

  And let me give you, like, let me give you another reason to leave if I'm not your thing, because go find something that's your thing.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Their opinion is valuable to you. Like, I think there's a freedom in saying, I don't need everybody to like me. That's, you know what I mean? I think, I think that, like, there is something very meaningful in saying, like, this is who I am, I'll defend it, but I'm not here to be savaged by you. And honestly, we don't know each other. I don't care what you think, anyway, you know? Or maybe that person makes you think more critically about what you did, and then you take the big booty picture down. I don't know. But, but I think you put it up purposefully to see what you were gonna get back.

• 1:11:29Tim Ferriss?

  I totally did.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Entertaining.

• 1:11:31Tim Ferriss?

  And there are, now, there are, there are cases, just so I don't sound like a complete dick, there are other cases where I put something up without really thinking about it, and I do get feedback and realize, you know what? That's actually a really kind of insensitive thing to put up, and I didn't think it through, take it down. And there are cases when I do that, and people give me, hopefully, constructive feedback that isn't just spitting acid into my face. And, and I take it down. So I do pay attention. At the same time, I try to keep in mind advice that I was given years ago. I don't remember who gave me this advice, but they said, the advice was, it's not about how many people don't get it, it's about how many people get it.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:16Tim Ferriss?

  So, so as long as you have a certain critical mass, whatever that means to you, and there's an article called 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly that everybody should read to this effect, if you're creative, but as long as you have a critical mass, and it could be a very small number, of people who love your stuff,

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's all that matters. That's like a pass fail, right? As long as you have that pass, like you're green. And instead of focusing on the vast majority, you hate your shit. It's like, look, there are millions of people who hate like Christopher Nolan stuff. There are millions of people who can't stand Wes Anderson. It's like, look, some people just aren't going to fucking like Wes Anderson.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So this is really interesting also because I think if you're an artist specifically, this is a really important conversation to have with yourself, which is like when I first started out at stand up, you know, this was like kind of the period when like Def Comedy Jam was really popular. And, you know, and, and for, for lack of a better way of articulating it, like black comedy had a very specific like look and feel and style and tempo. And I just wasn't doing that kind of comedy. And I wasn't ever going to be able to do that kind of comedy. It wasn't who I was. It wasn't experientially what I was doing. And I didn't want to lie. And I knew there were comedians who were kind of falling into that stylistic approach to comedy. And it was really very false. You know, they'd kind of be one way off stage and then kind of fall into this character on stage. And there's nothing wrong with trying to connect with an audience, but I just didn't want to copy other people to try to get people to like me. And, you know,

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  for a long time, I really struggled. And then eventually my tribe found me. But I was able to stay, oh, now I sound like a self-help book, but like true to who I was, because that was the only way forward. The only way forward as an artist is to be, is to be truthful. I, in the end, your work is not going to be interesting or meaningful if you are trying to emulate somebody else, or trying to figure out what people want from you, or what they like, or what's popular. Meaningful art only lasts, it only connects if it's, if it's authentic, and if it comes from, you know, your own personal experiences. And if, and until you figure that out, like what that is, it's never going to be interesting. It's never going to be good. And I always tell people it's not, being funny is not really

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  actually the most important part of comedy. Being truthful is. Because if someone sees a good show, they go, that guy was really funny. But when you tell the truth about yourself, people go, oh, my God, holy shit. That guy like spoke to me or about me or was so vulnerable in that moment. Like, that was amazing. And that's the difference between good comedy and great comedy. Or between good art and great art, or writing, or anything.

• 1:14:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's truth. That's, that's advice that I've also heard for screenwriting and many other things. It's like, yeah, I'm so glad you said that and reminded me of that.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  You have to please yourself. I mean, you just have to please yourself, period. Because it might not go your way anyway. But the worst thing is creating something, trying to figure out what people want, and then creating some piece of shit, some like crass, you know, glib, solicitous piece of shit, and people don't buy it anyway. Why not make something you love and then people don't buy it? At least it was something that you loved and you're not embarrassed by it.

• 1:15:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And you, you said, you know, it may not work out. And if you're in the creative game, at least from what I've seen, particularly in the beginning, most things are not going to work out.

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing ever goes your way.

• 1:15:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So, so you might as well have one person who's happy about the process and.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:15:30Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  That was what I was saying about engagement. At least the experience was satisfying.

• 1:15:36Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I would also, I feel like I'm talking too much, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Don't talk, stop.

• 1:15:44Tim Ferriss?

  But the, the, the other, the other thought I might underscore for folks that is

• 1:15:54Tim Ferriss?

  kind of practical, tactical from a competitive standpoint, if you're trying to play someone else's game by taking on a persona, someone who is actually, for instance, in the Def Comedy Jam example that you gave, right, if somebody's onstage and they are playing their game, that is who they are, you are never going to be able to take on like the cognitive load and the fatigue of pretending to be that type of person and beat someone who is good at that game. You're just not going to. So.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  You're not, you're so right.

• 1:16:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're just not gonna win. So it's like you have, you, you will not ultimately, in any field that is competitive, which is effectively every field that people get paid for. Uh, the only, if you want to be the best, you actually, you have to harness your latent abilities and, or you're fucked. Like you can't, like you mentioned, uh, on the engineering front. I mean, there's so many places where, for instance, in writing, it's like, I could try to be, uh, John McPhee, who writes for the New Yorker, or one of these folks, but I, I can't be those people. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to ever be the wordsmith that say a Tolstoy was. But, uh, do I like teaching? Do I obsessively think about teaching

• 1:17:14Tim Ferriss?

  and, uh, deconstructing things that are complex? I do. So I can use books as a medium for teaching and thinking of it, think of it that way. Because if I try to be, if I try to out McPhee McPhee, I'm going to get my face ripped off.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:17:29Tim Ferriss?

  And, um, well, you know, uh, this is, we're talking about creativity and creative pursuits, which by the way, almost everything is, even if you're, uh, if you meet people who are the top of their game in accounting, the top of the game, I'm not talking about shady, uh, money laundering shit. I'm just saying, in accounting, in, uh, technology, there's an element, there's certainly an element of creativity. If you're looking at the people who are really at the top and innovating in any way, doing exceptional work. You have done so many different things. Acting, comedy, directing, writing, activism. You've been

• 1:18:10Tim Ferriss?

  a host, you've done voiceover, you have, you've engaged in so many different acts of creation. I want to talk about short films, films and so on. I want to talk about movies. Uh, because as long-term listeners will know, I've been, uh, sort of teasing with the idea, which by the way, just means procrastinating of.

• 1:18:41Tim Ferriss?

  Writing some short films and I'm still at step zero and I'm ashamed of that. But.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  No, no shame. There's no shame.

• 1:18:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So how did you, how did you decide to get into film and why? I mean, film is hard. Film is hard. Why do it?

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  It is tough. Yeah, like, so that's a really good question because I feel like there's the, you know, that like really humiliating kind of, you know, clam about, you know, well, I'm an actor, but what I really want to do is direct and, and it feels very cliched. I feel like it was more organic for me because I, you know, I, again, I wasn't someone who kind of, I didn't go to film school and I also don't think I had the hubris to think like, oh, I've done this a couple, for a couple of years now, I can direct. It was, I had written some, I love movies, like, you know, we were talking earlier, I was raised by a single dad and, you know, I was one of those kids who like, I'd go, I'd go with my dad to see like Die Hard or Road Warrior and, you know, way too early in age, like super inappropriate.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  You know, or like, by the time, you know, like when I was in, in high school, I'd seen Terminator, like the first Terminator from like 20 or 30 times. Like, I, I just loved movies. I'd go to the theater, I'd buy a matinee ticket and I'd stay in the theater until like eight o'clock at night and I would just like watch movie after movie after movie. And so it just came out of a, like, a real end user's love for film. Like, I was just someone who was transported by movies. And then when I, when I left Talk Soup, I had been writing on that show and, and like there was a void and I wrote a script that I was developing with a, with a company and, and I just kept talking about how I thought it should look and how I thought it should feel. And, you know, it was just so much more specific than being a writer and they, they were like,

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  you know, you should direct, this is clearly like a movie that you should direct. And I hadn't really thought about it, but I was just so intertwined with the material and what I wanted it to feel like because I know what I, what movies that I love make me feel like, that I wanted that, someone to create that experience for other people. And I just realized like I didn't, I wasn't, I couldn't, I didn't know what directing entailed. I didn't have any idea about what that was going to be like. And I just went away to, and started trying to learn about directing. And so I kind of would call people that I knew that were directors. If I was working on something, I would ask to come back to set when I wasn't working so I could hang out and shadow, which is where you just kind of hang around behind a director and watch them work and. Ended up shadowing with some really incredible people. I ended up spending several

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  days on The Wire in its last season.

• 1:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just got to just be on the other side of a process that can be relatively opaque when you're an actor. You just kind of show up and say your lines and leave. And then I started making shorts and I, and I guess this is going to sound very glib, but, uh, because I'm sure I have the resources available to me that lots of people don't. But I do feel, I do believe in it, like I just believe in personal aggression. Like I just believe in doing stuff.

• 1:21:39Tim Ferriss?

  Said, "personal aggression"?

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  Personal aggression. Like, I just believe that, like, if you want to make a movie, just start making a movie. And I don't mean, like, go get a camera and start shooting it, but what I do mean is, like, be, be hard on yourself. Like, learn, read, learn, watch, study, think critically, ask people questions. And then make a movie and then let it be shitty, and then make another one and let that one be shitty, and keep doing it until you get better at it. Like, the first short film I made was, and it's an abomination and will be never seen the light of day. I had no idea what I was doing. But that did make me not want to be a director. It just made me realize I needed to learn more. And then I, uh, I started to feel like I was more ready and I, I was like, I need to make some stuff. So, first thing was I did a Comedy Central special and I took the

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  money that would have been my salary and I, I used it to make a, like, a little short music video that, like, opens the comedy special. It wasn't anything that was mandated by the network. I was like, I want to do something different. So I wrote this song and I performed it and I made a music video and, and that was the kind of the first thing I directed. I just used the crew that was already working on the, on the special and shot this video with them.

• 1:22:40Tim Ferriss?

  That's really smart. So, I would imagine, not, not to interject, but you piggybacked on something that was in your main line of business, so to speak.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:22:50Tim Ferriss?

  And I imagine you saved a lot of costs by doing that, right?

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, like, like, the, the crew was already going to come up the day before and leave the day after to shoot the special. Um, and we'd already rented the cameras and everything like that. Uh, but I had to, still had to pay them for the extra work.

• 1:23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  I took my, I took my fee and I used it to pay everybody else. Um, and then, and then because I didn't have any more money after that, I, I learned how to edit it. I edited it myself and I delivered it to the network because I couldn't afford to, to pay for additional edit time. Um, and then, after that, I thought, okay.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  I want to do more of this. So then I rented a camera, I rented like a can of 5D. And I had some friends who were in bands. And again, like, it sounds fancy, but everybody probably knows somebody who does something. You know, just because I had some friends who were in a famous band doesn't mean that people out there don't have friends who are in bands. So I just called some buddies of mine that were in bands. And I said, hey, if you let me come on tour with you, I will make you a free music video, just a piece of fan art. You can use it however you like. I'm not going to charge anybody any money for it. But just, I want to make something, and I want to make something for you. And so I ended up going on the road with Silver Sun Pickups for a couple of dates, and then spending a day with Clutch when they were performing in Anaheim. And then I just gave them, I just cut music videos and delivered it to them. And so then I just started to

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  have like examples of what I could do.

• 1:24:14Tim Ferriss?

  Why music videos instead of something else?

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  It just felt like a way to get more people to see it. I had done that first music video for my Comedy Central special, which was really like a comedic video. But then I was like, oh, I really like working in this space. And a lot of directors come out of music video, because you can be kind of radically creative in that space. You don't need to have any like narrative linearity. You can experiment, you can be radical, it could just be like a series of images. And I also thought, well, people who like this band, and I love this band, will want to see something about them. And it'll be a great way for people to see something. And then hopefully, I can tell a story at the same time. So I did three of those. And then I did a little action short. Like, I just kind of kept making stuff. You know, every time I did it, I learned something. Every time I did it, I took a bigger risk creatively.

• 1:25:01Tim Ferriss?

  How long are these shorts?

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Like, three to five minutes.

• 1:25:06Tim Ferriss?

  Three to five minutes. Can you think of any particular lessons that you took away from any one of those?

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I think a lot of it was just skill building. Like, how do you frame up? And how do you make choices? And how do you do coverage? And, you know, and then how do you edit? Like, a lot of it was just really tactical, as you would say, practical, tactical.

• 1:25:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh God, I have my pet phrases. This is also my weakness.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Never heard that. I'm like, I'm gonna steal it. Stealing it from Tim.

• 1:25:35Tim Ferriss?

  My pet phrases, oh God.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  And then, um, and then a lot of it was just caught, like just getting confident with my own ability and, and my ability to articulate what I wanted, uh, from other people, you know, just how, how do the other jobs on a set work? Who does what? What do I need? Oh God, this didn't work. You know, I didn't work because I didn't have this kind of a person on set. Like there were, you know, we, I was shooting digitally and then on one show, uh, on one of my things that I shot, like we didn't have, um, a, like a tech on, on, on set to like, to help me make sure that it looked the way that I wanted it to look, like that the levels were set properly. So when I got home to edit it, like I had some problems, but like it wasn't, they weren't, they weren't catastrophic problems. They were just because, because I, you know, I wasn't making Star Wars. You know what

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  I mean? I was just able to be like, well, this is what it is and I'm gonna make this and move on. And, and then, um, I was getting ready to, I really wanted to do a feature. I, I didn't, I had some material I'd written, but it was kind of gonna be an expensive movie. But I was still shadowing. So I had a friend who had a show, uh, called Petty Dreadful. Uh, I love John Logan, who created Petty Dreadful. I'd met him at Comic Con. I'd hosted the panel for that show. And he was like, hey, why don't you, you love the show? You should come visit us in Ireland. And I remember thinking like, to myself, people always say that, then you always say, yeah, then you never do it. I was like, I'm gonna do it. I'm fucking going to Ireland, man. That's, I'm gonna be cool. I'm, I'm getting, I want to, I want to, I'm gonna be a cool kid for once in my life. And, uh, and so I ended up going over, visiting Petty Dreadful and Vikings

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  shot right up the road. So I got them to let me visit that set. I just hung out. I like passed out sandwiches and, you know, lifted stuff and asked questions and watched them work. And, and then while I was over there, I met a bunch of Irish actors and, and, and one of them, two of them actually, one was a, was a, was an actor, composer, one was a writer, a screenwriter and an actor. And we ended up making a short film together in Ireland at the end of 2014. That was my first narrative short, my first kind of story driven short. Uh, and it was, it was just great. It was just like, I was like, oh, this is like totally who I am. This is what I want to do with my life.

• 1:27:38Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you film in Ireland?

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  In Galway, which is the

• 1:27:42Tim Ferriss?

  Beautiful town.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, such a great place.

• 1:27:45Tim Ferriss?

  I lived there for a month in 2005. Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  Amazing. Oh, that's so cool.

• 1:27:50Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible arts festival there. It's a really beautiful spot.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's like it's like the art center of Ireland, you know. They've got a beautiful film festival in the summer. They've got an arts festival, you know, like local theater and it was just a great experience.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  And, you know, things went wrong and things went right, but, you know, we got it in the can in three days and it was just super cool and personal. And then that same writer who had written that short had a feature he had already written and he asked me if I wanted to take a look at it and it was just a perfect first film and that's the film that became Access.

• 1:28:27Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so I want to dig in to Access, but before we get to that, you're taking these trips, doing these music videos. During that period, are you, did you save up for that period noting, knowing that you would need to work out of your savings? Are you depending on royalties and other streams to pay your bills? How are you covering the necessities of life as you're handing out sandwiches and doing all these various things?

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Well, it wasn't, it wasn't as prolonged of a period as it sounds like. I was on hiatus. So like I was, I was working on, I was working on the talk at the time and we get a month off every year. So I went in that month. But I think if I was talking to a layperson who didn't work in television, I would, I would say like, you know, if, if what you want is to grow in whatever field you're interested in, like just create a space for that, like, you know, make that your vacation. You know, like I didn't, it wasn't like I like was like riding around in a limousine. Like I just flew over and I hung around, you know, for like a week and watched people work. And it wasn't any more or less burdensome

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  than taking a vacation. But I, but one thing I was more interested in doing as I got older, and we started with this in the beginning, it's like, you said it, and I, I think we kind of went past it, but it's so interesting to me. It was, I just, I was more, I just really wanted more discomfort in my life. I, I, I was like, You know, it's just very easy, the older you get to be like, uh, you know, get in car, go to work, eat bag lunch, get in car, go to gym, go home, eat food, watch TV, go to bed. And then you just think like, am I, am I growing? Like, is, is like, any of this interesting? Am I gonna, you know what I mean? Like, I, I have one life and I'm just spending it in this like torper. And so, um, for that, I was going to a place where, I mean, I knew, I knew one guy at, at

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Petty Dreadful, but I didn't know anybody at this other show and I just kind of cold called them and said, you know, can I, can I come visit? And they were super gracious.

• 1:30:31Tim Ferriss?

  What, what, I'm, I'm so curious, just to interrupt you yet again, what does that, what does that email say?

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  Uh, it says, um, hi, uh, and again, I, I understand that maybe this is gonna feel a little rarefied. Hi, I'm an American actress. I, I, I've worked on these shows. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm shadow, I've been shadowing to direct for a long time. I would be really grateful if I could come and visit your show for a few days and shadow. Um, and I will be as unobtrusive and, and, um, and invisible as I possibly can. Uh, and I'll be here these days and, and, um, you know, I understand if you can't accommodate me, but I, I would really be grateful. And I think it helped in my particular case because I had tweeted a lot about how much I loved Vikings. So they kind of knew that I was a big fan of the show and I, and I did some tweeting

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  from set, you know, I kind of, I kind of like paid my way in, in, uh, in, you know, like flacking their show for them, but, um...

• 1:31:31Tim Ferriss?

  Which can, just to, I, I, I'm not over-caffeinated, I swear to God. I'm just, you're making, you're making so many important points that I just want to pause and help, uh, well, as much for myself as anyone else, just people to reflect on. So what you did in terms of tweeting, people might say, well, I don't have a verified account and nobody's gonna pay attention to one tweet in the, the, the Twitter feed of 10,000 if it's a popular TV show. But I can tell you from personal experience that you could, for instance, write something for Medium or for fill-in-the-blank outlet that has a high Google, in other, in other

• 1:32:15Tim Ferriss?

  words, page rank, and... To and that many of the producers, actors and so on will have Google Alerts or other alerts set that deliver to their inboxes relevant media that mention, say, the show or the actors. And you do not need to be a famous actress or an author or any of those things to do that.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  All you need to do is, is, is work at the highest possible caliber of quality that you can. I mean, I think you also touched on this about the idea that people are like more interested in being expeditious than they are in, in being good. I think that, you know, that this holds very, very true for this business. A lot of people have gotten, have, have made headway because they did something that nobody saw, but when they, when people asked them what they did, the thing they were able to show was extraordinary. And I don't mean like expensive extraordinary, I just mean unique and personal and, and crafted with care. And so if that's something that you wrote, or if it's something that you made, if you made, you know, the, the number of, I mean, this is not the best example, but it's a, it's a good one.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Twenty years ago, there was this videotape going around Hollywood of these guys in an apartment, and it was a VHS tape, that's how long ago it was. And people were dubbing it and sending and giving to friends of these guys in apartments, these three black guys where the one guy goes up and hits the little inner comma goes was ah, and then the other guy goes was ah, and the third guy goes, that was a short film that some guy made on like a digital camera. None of them were famous, they were just some guys in New York. That ended up being that Budweiser campaign.

• 1:33:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy. I had no idea that was the origin.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  I mean, it was a short film and it wasn't, it was, it was a two and a half minute short film that was just funny. You didn't know who was, you didn't, we didn't know these guys. No one knew who they were. And, and they didn't have any connections. And I think it was just about doing something that felt original and personal. And I get it, just comes back to like, don't try to figure out what people want, just do what's interesting and important to you and then keep doing it until you come up with something extraordinary and that will be your calling card. It may not happen as fast as you want or as aggressively as you want or as expansively as you want, but in the meantime, you're doing cool shit, which should be your primary goal in any event.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  You know, when I made Access, honestly, I just wanted to make a movie to show people I could make a movie. I wanted to make the best movie I could, and I was very rigorous in leveraging the resources that I had to the best of my ability. But I don't know that I had a lot of expectation that a lot of people would see it. It's just because I made the best movie I could that, you know, it got all of this attention. But I don't think I was going in like, this is gonna be a massive hit. I was like, I'm gonna make this little movie. And then for the next one, when people say, well, what have you done? I could be like, look at this little thing I made, you know? So I think you have to always be focused on the results, not the result, on the thing and not the result. Because the result is directly tied to the quality of the thing. So it's not about infamy, it's about fame, and fame is based on quality of your work.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  So just be doing excellent shit all the time. And eventually, one of those things will connect with other people.

• 1:35:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, not to sound like a fortune cookie on top of all of that, but like, the only uncrowded market is great. Like, there's always a fucking market for great.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:35:31Tim Ferriss?

  And...

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. And to like, be radically great, like, don't be like, I saw 10 things like this, let me do the 11th thing. Like, be brave enough to court failure, that's probably when you're going to do something great.

• 1:35:46Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely, and if you get, if you are really in love with something, and I'll give two examples. If you're really in love with, say, screenplays and film, or if you're really in love and impassionate about, maybe is a better word, possessed by, right, technology investing, early-stage technology investing. Two phenomena, two companies, at this point certainly, that are worth looking at and just investigating the stories of,

• 1:36:17Tim Ferriss?

  demonstrate very clearly what you can do if you are just rejected by the establishment, or if you want to not operate within the existing power structure. So the two examples are the blacklist, look up Franklin Leonard and the blacklist.

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  Example, absolutely.

• 1:36:34Tim Ferriss?

  And then the second is, and we don't have to get into both these right now, the second is, just by coincidence, also has the list at the end, but Angel List and Naval Ravikant, and people can look up...

• 1:36:46Tim Ferriss?

  The ever, well, the avenging angel was the title of his interview in his alumni magazine at Dartmouth, in fact. But I get excited when I, when I hear these types of stories, so they should check them out. And this, so let's come back to, let's come back to Axis. What is Axis? And did you, did you have anybody try to talk you out of doing Axis?

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  Um, that's such a good question. Well, so Axis is a thriller about, about an expatriate Irish actor living in Los Angeles, who has had a lot of success, kind of explosive success in his youth and has really just used all of his resources to just wreck his life. You know, he's, he's a drunk and he's a drug addict and he's terrible at relationships and he's a dick to everybody. And, and, and when we, when we meet him, he's trying to turn his life around. And, and, and it's really about a guy who's not a bad person, but he's done, done some

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  bad stuff, which I think almost every human being can relate to. You know, I mean, we all, we all have a little bit of a demon inside of us. And I think this is just a guy who's been, he's, he's, he's been frail in the past, but he's really trying to be a better version of himself. But slowly, over the course of an afternoon, and the movie takes place in real time as he's driving through Los Angeles, his, his life starts to unravel. And it's really about him trying to hold things together, trying to be a better person, trying to be a better person in his relationships, with his family, with people that he works with. Just trying to, trying to be better. It's really dark, it's very funny. I, I happen to think, and I'm sure I'll get some letters about this, but I happen to find that addicts are really entertaining people.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  And I don't mean they're funny, like laugh at them. I find that they, that typically people who are, who have broken, who have broken themselves down are just more honest than people who are trying to be perfect all the time. And so, you know, he's just, he's, he's a guy who's self-aware. He's aware of the mistakes he's made. So it's a very darkly funny movie. And then it's very twisty. It's a thriller. So it's got a lot of secrets. And it, the most unique aspect of the movie is that the whole thing takes place in real time, inside a car as he's driving through Los Angeles. So the, the lead actor is the only actor on screen and all the other actors are, are voice actors on the phone with him.

• 1:39:16Tim Ferriss?

  What was your, how would you describe your experience of being involved with this film?

• 1:39:21Speaker 02

  It was so wonderful. You asked if people tried to dissuade me from doing it. And the short answer is, in, in Hollywood, the way that people dissuade you from doing stuff is just by not do, not helping you, just by not engaging with you. You don't even get no, you just get like silence.

• 1:39:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  But, but this happened very quickly. So I didn't have a traditional kind of like discouraging period of frustration with trying to put this movie together because I read it in like Septem, August or September of 2015. And I was kind of at peak engagement at the time in terms of work. Like I was on four shows and I really only had a little bit of time off in 2016. And I realized if I didn't make the movie in this one single week in, in May of 2016, that I wasn't going to be able to make it at all in, in that year. And I'd have to push to the next year. And so then it just became about hitting that target. Like, how can I hit this target? So I never even went like the traditional way of trying to find like people to finance the movie in a studio because they were going

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  to say like, we don't know who this actor is. Like, he's unknown. Can we put somebody famous in this role? Can it be Ryan Gosling? And then can it not be with just him on camera? Can we have other actors in the movie? And then can we, can we make it not in a car? Can we make it? I mean, like, we're just gonna, you know, the whole kind of concept of the film was gonna unravel. You know, it's very typical in Hollywood where people are so risk averse that they take all of the edge and, and, and like singularity out of a project. So very quickly, I realized that I was going to have to probably crowdfund the movie if I wanted to do it my way and on my time, on my timeframe. So.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  In about, in, in, in, in March of 2016, I had my like first exploratory conversation with like the people around me and with Kickstarter. I was able to, you know, they have people over there who are kind of like around to like help you kind of figure out how to put a project together. I built the campaign in three weeks. I launched it in April. And one of the rules about crowdfunding and Kickstarter specifically, it's not a hard and fast rule. It's not like in rules that they enforce, but it's just like a rule of thumb that if you raise half of your money in the first week, you'll probably fund fully. So we had raised half of our money in that first week and then I started hiring people on the film. Um, and we rea-, we did raise a lot of money for a feature. It was about $200,000 that we raised.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  And so that was what we had to make the movie. Um, and so originally it was, we were gonna make it in nine days, but I realized if I made it faster, I'd have more money available to me like daily. I'd have like my daily resource load would be higher. So we cut the schedule from nine days to seven days, which is incredibly aggressive for a feature. Whenever I tell people I made it in seven days, they ask, well, how, is it a short? But, um, so we had to be really aggressive. So everything, we know, we, we ended up doing it in this way that was so terrifying and so breakneck, but so exhilarating. Which is that we shot the first 15 pages of the movie in the first day. And then we shot the next 65 pages of the movie.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  It was actually, you shot about 17 pages on the first day, about 67 pages on day two through seven. Uh, and that meant that the actor had to do 67 pages of dialogue a day. Uh, for people that don't know, typically on a movie, you do like between three and six pages of dialogue a day. So he was essentially doing the entire movie all the way through every day, locked in a hot car with no air conditioning in, in, in May, the, the beginning of June essentially in Los Angeles. Uh, and it was just so intense, but we shot three cameras. So by day three, we essentially had the entire movie in the can because, you know, we were doing the whole thing all the way through from three angles. So by day two, we had six angles and we had the whole movie on, on, uh, you know, not on wax, on the digital version of wax.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  And so then the next four days were just about kind of creative play. And, and I think that what the result is, is this. I made a movie in a week. Um, it's experimental, it's unusual, it, it, it's transporting and strange. And going in, I thought, I'll never make a movie this way again. But now I, I would make a movie that way again because um, I just didn't have any time to be, to be afraid or feel death. You know, I mean, I just, there was no time to be, to, to be anxious. I just had to go. It was really, it was, it was wonderful. It was, it was like one of the seminal experiences of my life.

• 1:43:47Tim Ferriss?

  There's definitely some magic in the ether when you have a hyper aggressive deadline. There's just something that happens to like the space time continuum and what you can achieve.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Tim Ferriss?

  When everything gets compressed that intensely.

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  Certain things just come to the surface, like certain, certain things are thrown into relief. And it's not like you can't make mistakes, but I think you get a clarity sometimes because you can't dither, right? You can't, you can't, there's, there's no time for paralysis by analysis. I am making this decision, I'm making it definitively. It may be the wrong one, but I'm going to lean all the way into it and we're going to see what happens. And also because we shot the whole movie all the way through, if, if there were errors, I had the next day to recalibrate in a way that you don't get when you typically make a movie. For people, again, who don't know, like on a, like on, you know, I'm an actor as well. So like when I'm on a TV show or I'm doing a movie or whatever, I'll leave at the end of the day and go, ah shit, man, I wish I'd done this with that scene. I wish I'd tried this.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  But every day, the next day, we got to wake up and go, you know what? We have a whole new bite at this apple. We're going to do it a whole different way today.

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  And so at the end, I really felt like we, we really fully explored the material, which would not have, we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd been making a movie in seven days and not doing it like with this kind of volume approach that we had.

• 1:45:15Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm looking at text in a book that you contributed to, happens to be

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  This is a book of men?

• 1:45:24Tim Ferriss?

  This fantastic book. Oh, let me see. Here it is. For those of you who get the For those of you who get the what about Bob reference, there's this groundbreaking new book. Oh, yes, here it is. And there's an entire shelf of the therapist's own book. Richard Drivas. In any case, the question to what you would put on a gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message to millions or billions of people. In this case, what you selected was a Jack Canfield quote, "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." And many of the stories that you've told so far illustrate that certainly. What are

• 1:46:02Tim Ferriss?

  you afraid of now? Or what fear are you hoping, say, in the next year to get on the other side of? Does anything come to mind?

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  That's a good question. Well,

• 1:46:18Speaker 02

  you know, it's interesting because like I think like the one that feels the most obvious is like, I'm afraid I won't get to make another film. But I I'm not really legitimately afraid of that because I feel like I'm just going to put this next movie together and make it like, you know, like I think now that I've done one, like no help and no assistance from anybody, like the next one's going to be cake. Um, I mean, I had help. I had my team, but I didn't have the kind of traditional Hollywood help where I had like a team of like of agents kind of, you know, making magic. Like, it was really just like a scrappy little group of filmmakers, you know, doing this film with me, the lead actor and screenwriter and and my creative executives. It was a small group of people, you know, outside, completely outside of the system. Um, but what am I afraid of? God, that's a really good. And then it's not that I'm fearless.

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  It may just be that the things that are interesting to me now don't engender fear the way that they used to.

• 1:47:12Tim Ferriss?

  I can also, I can also, I think, tackle this from a different angle, which is, what do you currently, what is one of your greatest struggles right now? What do you struggle with?

• 1:47:25Tim Ferriss?

  If anything.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  You know, my main struggle is just always being as effective as I want to be. You know what I mean? I'm just super ambitious. I have like highly developed. I don't mean like I'm good at it. I mean, like it's like very far advanced, like workaholism. I mean, like, like I have pathological workaholism. It's, it's like a sickness. And when I tell, whenever I say I'm workaholic, people always laugh and I go, look, like it's a problem. You know, I don't know how to rest. I don't, I don't, it's, it's not that I don't like to play. I do like play, but like I don't think I have any time to, to rest.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  And, and I worry that it makes me, it, it, it could result in me not being an interesting artist, because I think you need to play and to daydream and to rest and to experience things to be able to tell interesting stories. You know, no one wants to hear about, you know, your daily trek from your home to your office. It's just not compelling.

• 1:48:25Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I remember, you know, I think it was Amanda Palmer who said this. I apologize to whoever said it if I'm misattributing, but the Amanda Palmer, creative musician extraordinaire. And she said, you know, I think it was her who said in order to have.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  She married to Neil Gaiman?

• 1:48:40Tim Ferriss?

  She is, yeah.

• 1:48:41Speaker 02

  Great thought of all time.

• 1:48:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. For those of you.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  To you and after me.

• 1:48:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. I will, I will bow at the feet of Neil Gaiman as a writer. And everybody should listen to his audiobook of the graveyard book narrated by him. He has also the most soothing voice imaginable, but I digress. What the fuck was I saying?

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  So Amanda Palmer has a quote about.

• 1:49:05Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes, that, you know, if, if life, if, if art imitates life, in order to create art, you have to have a life.

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And, and like.

• 1:49:16Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm paraphrasing and it's butchered, but makes a point.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  Like you can't, you know, I'm sure there are other theories. There's, there's a very famous French writer, it's not South, but it's, it's, uh, it's somebody anyway about like, have a bourgeois life and be radical in your work. But I actually don't think, I, I, I actually think that you, you need to be fully engaged in your life in order to be an interesting artist. Because, you know.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  You need to be alive to be able to speak about the human condition.

• 1:49:47Tim Ferriss?

  So if you have if you have advanced early onset workaholism, right? You've you've really turned this into a default mode. What are you doing anything to to try and manage that? Or create more slack in the system for the daydreaming and so on?

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  I mean, it's like, that's my daily practice. That's my like, that's my one day at a time. It's like just constantly trying to remind myself to rest. I engage socially a lot more than I used to.

• 1:50:27Tim Ferriss?

  And by socially, you mean out in the real world?

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, like out in the real world, like I go out and I and I, you know, I try to not just be like, you know, I just had a period of life where I was just like up, gym, work, sleep, you know, and I just, I just remember one day I was like, I'm gonna die, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna die of boredom. I'm bored, I bore myself, you know what I mean? And so, you know, like I, I think I try to court danger in a safe way. It's not like I'm jumping out of play with no parachute or bullfighting or, you know, bare knuckle brawling in an alley, you know, filled with needles. But I but I am trying to just like be be not always have my head in my computer. But but look, the reason that people are workaholics. Well, there's lots of reasons, I'm sure, social pressures.

• 1:51:10Speaker 02

  But for me, I just get this big like serotonin release. Is it serotonin with the brain? What's the satisfaction drug?

• 1:51:18Tim Ferriss?

  I would say dopamine, perhaps?

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  Dopamine, that's it, dopamine, serotonin sleepy sleepy time. Yeah, dopamine, I get a dopamine release when I when I complete tasks and I just, you know, I get I get higher and higher the more that I execute. I find executing in and of itself really enjoyable. So I'm just trying to apply that aggression to like, like leisure. Like, can I get the same satisfaction from it? If I if I make a to do list and one of the things is have fun, will I get the same dopamine release? If I had a lot of fun?

• 1:51:51Tim Ferriss?

  How can I turn fun into work most effectively?

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  And then be like, ah, I don't know about you guys, but I just fucking crushed my to do list.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  You know, I I I realized that like I I, even though I can feel very harried, it's interesting to me to be. Feeling like a part of being on this planet are like fully engaging and doing everything I can do and everything I'm interested in. And uh because I don't want to look back and be like, man, I should have tried that. I'm happy to look back and say, man, I tried that and it went terribly for me. That's a, that's a perfectly comfortable space for me to be like, man, I tried that and I completely shit the bed. But, but, but what I find very uncomfortable is the idea that I, I, I always wanted to do something and I never did it. And so that's what I fear. What I fear is, what I fear is not, is not trying, not experiencing all the things that I want to experience.

• 1:52:45Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think you, yeah, how, how do you think your life, because you, you have, you live so aggressively. You milk the most out of the hours that you have. How would you or your life be different if you didn't have exercise as an element, do you think?

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting because I really, I really love working out. Uh but there's a constant battle for me between like being effective, like with work and like, you know, I, I'm, I'm the queen of like getting up at like 5:00 AM to work out, putting on my workout clothes and then being in front of my computer at four o'clock in the afternoon and I haven't moved. Like I, I mean, that's just like my, that's just a normal day. Like didn't, didn't move, didn't eat, didn't do anything, just been in front of the computer for like 11 hours. Um but it just, it's just such a great stress manager. And I also think that there's another thing there, which is it just, again, like puts you back in your body. You know, this like thing that's carrying your brain around and making you effective and, you know, I'm,

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  I think that with everything, the, all of the stimulus that we, stimuli that we experience nowadays, all the pictures and the images of perfection that are coming in at a much faster and more voluminous pace. It's really easy to fall into like a, like an abusive relationship with, with exercise, either doing it so much that, you know, uh you're hurting yourself or not doing it and then. Engaging in that inner monologue about how you're like worthless and you can't get your shit together. And I don't have either of those things. I just know I'm happier and better when I work out. But I don't, I don't, I don't do, I've finally dropped the monologue about like, you know, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not a good person if I don't like, if I don't crush a workout. I just try to do it every day because I know I'm better mentally. And I also cheat completely.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  Like I have my phone, I took a hike today. You know, I have my phone with me and like I stopped every 10 minutes to like write something down. So, you know, I'm not really like fully, I'm not being in the moment when I'm working out. A lot of times I'm stopping like hundreds of times to make notes and remind myself of stuff I have to do or put stuff on my calendar.

• 1:54:52Tim Ferriss?

  Do you still use Concept 2 or a rowing machine?

• 1:54:56Speaker 02

  I still use my ergometer, my Concept 2 ergometer. I have had it since 2000. It is 18 years old. I have never had to repair it or replace any parts. It's, it's the best, it's the single best piece of equipment that I have. My whole gym now, I have my whole gym in my place. I have a TRX bodyweight system. I have two kettlebells, a 25 and a 35. I have my ergometer. I have battle ropes that are attached to my dining room table. And I have one big power step that I just use to do like pistols and stuff like that. And I get everything done with those five things.

• 1:55:27Tim Ferriss?

  That is fantastic. So pistols for people who don't know, those are one-legged squats. And they can be very, very difficult, depending on how you go about it.

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  But adventurous step can help you because it could just kind of do like single leg step downs until you build up your, your quad and your glute strength to do pistols.

• 1:55:44Tim Ferriss?

  What, could you describe for us a recent workout or what a prototypical workout of yours might look like?

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  Um, well, I, I hiked today. That was just like a 90 minute hike, which was just more about like feeling groovy. But, um, right now I'm obsessed with my ergometer. Uh, I like, I kind of go through periods of like not rowing and then periods of rowing really aggressively. And, uh, this is, this is going to be right up your alley, Tim.

• 1:56:10Tim Ferriss?

  I'm ready.

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  It's, this is like center, this is like bullseye for you and your audience. I, I, I started going to a naturopath, so I'd be like supplementing differently. And I started taking glutathion. And I'm rowing like faster now than I did in my twenties. Like I just keep getting personal bests on my rower. It's confusing. I'm a lot older than I am. I'm a lot older than I was when I was rowing competitively. And I just keep like knocking like 30 seconds and then 45 seconds and then a minute and 10 seconds off my rowing time. So now I'm just obsessed with like hitting personal bests every time I row.

• 1:56:43Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, let's dig into this. So the glutathione, how is it, for those who aren't familiar, glutathione is thought of, a simple way to think of it, or the way it's often described as a master antioxidant of sorts. How are you having it administered? Is it being?

• 1:57:04Speaker 02

  Sometimes I get, oh, this is so inside baseball. Sometimes I get IVs. I get IVs if I really like, if I'm wrecked, like if I travel a lot, or I went to Coachella.

• 1:57:12Tim Ferriss?

  And is that, is that pure, is that, is that, is that pure, is that just glutathione? Or are you doing that at the?

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  B vitamins. I could do it at the end of my IV. I'll get like B vitamins and like, you know.

• 1:57:22Tim Ferriss?

  And a glutathione push at the end?

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But you can get, you can get like fat soluble, we can get this like fat soluble glutathione that you just take. You just like gulp down. It tastes like axle grease.

• 1:57:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I, I, wait, is this the, is this, what is this company? Lip, it's lipospheric, that's the name, lipospheric glutathione?

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Liposporic glutathione, yeah.

• 1:57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  I'm just attributing it to the glutathione because before the glutathione, I was rowing slow. And now I'm just like a jackrabbit. So it could be something else, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it's the glutathione.

• 1:57:56Tim Ferriss?

  I will warn people in advance. I had some of this lipospheric glutathione at one point, and I gave it to a friend of mine. And I think it might have been, for those who know my buddy Kevin Rose, since I like to mention him, even misattribute things to him just for fun. I think I gave him one, and he said something like, what is this horse semen? It does have a weird, has a very weird consistency and.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  It's terrible. No, my father calls it axle grease. That's what he's like, give me this axle grease. Cause I gave it to my dad. I was like, I think this would really help you. And, and you're supposed to take it in liquid, but he's just been eating it on a spoon. He's a, he's a, he's a better man than I.

• 1:58:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I just like squeegee it out of the little packet.

• 1:58:35Speaker 02

  Into your mouth?

• 1:58:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to my mouth.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  I take it, I take it with like about two, like two ounces of kombucha in the morning. So I don't have to think about it. But you're like, I take so, I mean, I'm sure you're like this, or maybe, maybe after all of that experimentation on yourself, you just get up and have a bowl of like. Frosted Flakes in the morning, Tim, but you know, it's like I do that and I have my bowl of supplements, that I have my fish oil, then I have my curcumin, and then I have my turmeric. And like by the end of the morning, like I, I've just, I've supplemented, it's like a banquet. Like I don't even need to eat. I've taken so many crappy tablets.

• 1:59:09Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Just do, just hit pause again. So you, is the exercise before breakfast? Is it the first thing you do? What is your first ideal morning? What's the first 90 minutes? 60 to 90 minutes look like?

• 1:59:24Speaker 02

  Um, espresso shot, glutathione.

• 1:59:27Tim Ferriss?

  What time, what time do you wake up?

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  It depends on the day, like, you know, between like six and seven.

• 1:59:32Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  I used to pick up a lot earlier, but I, I let one of my shows go. So I don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn every day anymore. So it's like between like, you know, like six and seven o'clock.

• 1:59:39Tim Ferriss?

  And then?

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  And I have to work out in the morning or I won't, I won't, I won't work out at all.

• 1:59:42Tim Ferriss?

  So you wake up, you have espresso shot? Glutathione with?

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  I always have coffee before I work out, like without fail.

• 1:59:49Tim Ferriss?

  And then the glutathione with the kombucha? Any particular type of kombucha that's your preferred axle grease mixer?

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  Ah, I like better Buch. Um, and I like, was it life aid? I think is one of the other. I love kombucha. I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm very, I'm very slutty when it comes to kombucha. I'll drink any kombucha. I'm a big kombucha fan.

• 2:00:11Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So then, then you, then you buckle down to workout and I, this is, it's gonna sound like I'm just looking for opportunities to plug, which maybe I am, but the, you described your, your, the, one of your workouts, the concept to like mid distance 5K rows punctuated by short distance 2K HIIT sprints, high intensity interval training, or yeah, high intensity interval training with, with a 10K long distance row once or twice a week. Is that, would that be a current workout?

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's typically my workouts. And then I'll do like, I'll do like, like a set of five, five by 25 kettlebells sets. Like, you know, like I'll get up one morning and just do 125 kettlebell swings in front of the television. And then sometimes I'll do a TRX workout, uh, because I didn't have really a way to simulate pull ups. So that was like, that was why I got the TRX. So I could do, that was like the one thing I didn't have in here was a pull up bar.

• 2:01:01Tim Ferriss?

  Is the TRX attached to a, to a door? Is it?

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's such like a railing, like I have like a, like a, an upstairs railing and it just hangs off of the railing.

• 2:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  And that's it. I mean, I try, I try to keep it like relatively simple so that'll do it.

• 2:01:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  Um, I don't really train with anybody because I just can't, I, I can't, I can manage the hour workout, but I can't manage the, the, the transit between a, my home and a, I don't have enough time to do that too. You know what I mean? Like I've got the hour. I don't have two hours. So I, I just, I don't go to a gym anymore because I just, I just would be, I wouldn't have the time for it.

• 2:01:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the transit time that.

• 2:01:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, transit time was what killed me. You know, it's like, I, I have an hour to work out, but I don't have a half hour on either side of that to, to go, go to the gym.

• 2:01:44Tim Ferriss?

  Do you still watch shows when you row?

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:01:47Tim Ferriss?

  What do you watch? What do you, what any, any recent favorites or what are you watching currently?

• 2:01:51Speaker 02

  Just like fantastic junk. Uh, I mean, some good stuff like I love, I, I watched Walking Dead, Fear of the Walking Dead. Those are always really good workout shows. Right now I'm watching The Magicians, um, but during my workouts. And then when I finish that, what will I watch after that? Sometimes I watch stuff that's on streaming services because I hate to have to, when I'm rowing, I don't want to have to watch commercials and I can't stop to fast forward because I'm trying to beat my previous row time. So, uh, like I'll stream, like stream stuff on Hulu, like, uh, X-Files or Handmaid's Tale, or I just watched a show called Deutschland eighty-three. That was pretty great. Um, it has to be something that I can kind of watch, which is why I'll typically watch something that's like not too mentally demanding.

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, so I don't, I can't, I can't pay attention too closely to plot points.

• 2:02:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Uh, do you make New Year's resolutions? Do you have any routines or rituals around New Year's? We're, we're talking just for people who may be listening to this at another time. We're chatting at the end of March.

• 2:02:53Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:54Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  Like make any this year?

• 2:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  Uh, I make the same one every year, which is to rest more. I mean, it's, it's the same resolution every year, rest, rest.

• 2:03:03Tim Ferriss?

  So how are you going to do that this time?

• 2:03:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, I should just give up. I should stop making resolutions and then I won't have to not not accomplish them. I mean, look, maybe, maybe, maybe a part of success or like, like success at being you, like figuring out being you is like understanding what your strengths and your weaknesses are. You know, like my strength is, my strength is, is my aggressive work ethic. And, and it was when I, like when I was a young comic, I would be like, oh, I should be writing every day. I should write. I should be like this guy. Well, like, that's just not my, that's just not how I operate. So I think once you accept like what your own

• 2:03:37Tim Ferriss?

  This is why, you know, this is why you watch the Terminator thirty times.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:03:42Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, like this, this is my people. Right?

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, I mean, I have definitely have OCD. I'm definitely an obsessive personality. But like, once you accept like, this is my, how, these are my strengths. This is where I excel. This is how I excel. Uh, rather than try to force yourself into someone else's like workflow, like figure out what yours is. You know, I, as a writer and, and, and you've written lots of books. I've only written two, but with both books, I had this huge lead time. And it wasn't that I was lazy or procrastinating, like the book wasn't there yet. And then just one day the book was there. And then I sat down and I wrote the entire book in a few weeks. But it, it just needed to gel. It needed to synthesize. And if I had been trying to sit down and kind of write a little bit every day, it would have just been like this, like big agglomeration of glop. But just one day I was like, oh, the book is in it. The book is in me now. The book is in me. And then I got it out, you know?

• 2:04:28Tim Ferriss?

  God, I wish that, I wish I had that experience, man. I'm so jelly.

• 2:04:32Speaker 02

  Oh, but everybody's different. You know what I mean?

• 2:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  A long time I would have wanted to be more like you, like disciplined and sitting down and because, you know, there's, there's, there's a panic that, that ensues when you are seven weeks from your deadline and you had nine months to write a book.

• 2:04:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  You've got to write the whole thing. But it's just like that, for me, certain threads have to connect and that requires like rumination and, and time and, and, you know, I, I can't, just can't do it any other way. So I don't.

• 2:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  I think, I think my strength is eating, like every day trying to eat a wheelbarrow full of glass and shit out diamonds or something like that.

• 2:05:07Speaker 02

  Good one. That should be a tattoo.

• 2:05:13Tim Ferriss?

  Well, speaking of eating glass, so what I this is this this might be predictable, but I'm OK with predictable. I would like to start to wrap up with a handful of questions. And the first one I'm going to ask is, and you actually give people a head, a heads up on this with the self inflicted wounds. So you usually say at some point I'm going to ask you about X, but I'm sure you've had time to think about this. So do you have any favorite stories of self inflicted wounds of your own that you could that you could share?

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, the book is just a collection, not even a comprehensive one, but but but quite detailed of many, many mistakes that I've made. I'm trying to think of something that's happened recently. It's interesting. I see my mistakes differently now than I did when I was younger. They just feel like an aspect of being human versus like some kind of tragic.

• 2:06:09Tim Ferriss?

  Flaw.

• 2:06:10Speaker 02

  Flaw. Exactly. They just they just seem like an unavoidable aspect of being alive. But I'm trying to think that there's if there's one like and then I'm thinking ones that recently that don't feel like that cataclysmic. So like they're like lame, like lame stories.

• 2:06:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you could pick a classic also, like the the greatest hits. Like if you're watching TV 15 years ago, and it's like hits from the 80s, we could, we could take one of those as well.

• 2:06:35Speaker 02

  Of that. Oh, God. It's interesting. Like I was talking about that short film that I made that that was like the one that will never be seen by any human being. Actually, I think it's been destroyed, where it was just like, I just thought that I could just charm my way through this short. And I had a bunch of friends kind of show up. And it was such an odd, it was such an odd idea. It didn't even make any sense. It was about a guy who flashed women. And

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  He flashed women, and I can't remember why he flashed women, but it was something to do with bravery. It was like a metaphor for bravery that this guy would flash women. And also maybe like hubris, like the idea that people were going to be super excited to see this guy's penis, and he would kind of like try to use it as currency, and it would never kind of go his way. But it just made no sense. It just ended up being like a series of vignettes about a guy like revealing his penis to strangers. I just remember at the end, like literally thinking, it's one thing to think like, people don't get me. I was like, I don't get myself. I don't accomplish here. And it was, it just never, ever coalesced.

• 2:07:56Speaker 02

  But, but it was, it was fine, because it was like, I remember kind of enjoying the process of making it, and then being really kind of surprised and delighted by what a piece of shit it was. Much like that set where nobody laughed, I thought, well, man, that didn't work at all, okay. I need to go back and figure out what to do next. And I think, like, I think every artist, you know, I think Quentin Tarantino has a famous story about his first film being unwatchable, you know? I think, I just think, you know, sometimes if your personality is to be really aggressive and kind of dive in, you're bound, you're bound to make some spectacular failures, you know? And, and you just have to have a high tolerance for that, and, and not take it personally, and keep moving forward. But yeah, I literally was like, I know you guys don't get it. I don't get it.

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  I don't know what, I can't explain it to you. I have no idea what I was thinking. Thank you for putting yourselves in my hands. It was a terrible mistake on your part, but you're very gracious to have trusted me with your lives.

• 2:08:52Tim Ferriss?

  What is, what's the name of the shirt?

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  It was called The Whipper.

• 2:08:55Tim Ferriss?

  Conjures all sorts of images.

• 2:08:59Speaker 02

  That makes no sense whatsoever.

• 2:09:01Tim Ferriss?

  When have you been extremely proud of yourself? Could be any point in your life. Can you, can you think of a standout point? Where you're like, goddamn, like, good for me, fucking A.

• 2:09:15Speaker 02

  I hate, I hate to have it be about this because it sounds like it's super self promotional, but I really am proud of this film and I, for a variety of reasons, I think because it did, it did.

• 2:09:25Tim Ferriss?

  Access.

• 2:09:25Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, access, because it was such a, I mean, I was lucky that I was brought a great script and I had a really talented actor, but we put this movie together like so quickly.

• 2:09:38Speaker 02

  And I knew, and I had a vision for it, but I also was, because we were moving so fast, feeling my way through the dark in some aspect. And I think one of the reasons why it came together the way that it did was because I was, I was both, I both had a vision for the film, but I was open to modulating. And I think that's really important in anything that you're doing, no matter what field you're in, is that you have to both, we prize vision and kind of rigidity in this, in this culture. But I think that being able to pivot and be nimble is way more important than being kind of a rigid visionary. You have to be able to look at data and interpret it and then apply it to your situation, or you just, you're just going to keep banging your head against the wall. So, you know, we made this movie, we, we got into the very first, second day of filming,

• 2:10:23Speaker 02

  we started really late, we lost our light, we had to kind of pivot that day, ended up having to throw all that footage away. Another day, we lost light and had to get back up at five in the morning, kind of shoot dawn for dusk, but we just kept pivoting, we just kept, nothing was catastrophic, okay? Like, and I think that's something I got from my father, it's like, okay, this isn't working, okay, so we're going to do this, okay, that's not working, we're going to do this, rather than, oh my god, this is the end of the world, what are we going to do?

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  And then in post, I had very little money for post and very little time to cut the movie together and about four weeks in, the editor that I had cutting the movie, he was a great guy, really talented, just wasn't connecting with the material, wasn't, wasn't able to assemble the movie, it was an unusual movie, it's one guy in a car, and I, I had to let him go and then I had to learn Avid, the Avid system, and start cutting the movie myself. But again, I wasn't like, what am I going to do, I don't have an editor, I'm going to die, I just thought, okay, well, like, the answer here is that I'm going to learn this skill set and I'm going to keep moving forward. And then, you know, I made this little film. It was, you know, strange and atmospheric and dreamlike and, you know, it didn't get into Sundance and everybody always wants to get into Sundance, but then it got into eight other festivals and won two awards and got

• 2:11:28Speaker 02

  picked up for distribution. And the result has been much better than I ever could have anticipated. And, and I'm, I'm really proud of it because it, I mean, I made, made it for what is typically the catering budget on a, on a regular Hollywood movie. You know what I mean? It, it, we made it for just no money and in no time. And, um, and I think it also says something. I think what I'm also proud of is that the movie actually does have a strong point of view and a strong visual personality and a strong style that is my own. When I look at it, it, I don't think I'm trying to emulate anybody. I feel like this is, this is something that I made. It's my, it's my little lumpy ashtray from shop class and, and I, I really love it.

• 2:12:13Tim Ferriss?

  Good for you. And, you know, there, there, there's this, I, I think it's easy to not, not, I'm not saying you, but for humans to look at the people who are showcased on the covers of magazines or on the front pages of popular websites and think, wow, they've figured out all the secret sauce, or they have the, the keys to the kingdom and they're able to show up and just hit home runs every time they step to the plate. And when you

• 2:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  look at the origin stories of some of these incredible creations that people are familiar with, whether it's Jaws or the company Alibaba is one example, Jack Ma, the founder, I think he's the richest man in China or certainly one of the top few at this point. And he said, I'm paraphrasing, but we had a huge advantage in the beginning and that was we had no experience, no money and no plan. And it forces you to really think outside of the box. And even if that project

• 2:13:28Tim Ferriss?

  Doesn't succeed by outside measures. The confidence that you develop in exploring areas outside of the box can then transfer to future projects. I remember there's this fantastic documentary, gonna butcher his name. Well, it's fantastic mostly for the message, not for all of the content, which I hope makes sense, but it's called Yodawarski's Dune, and it's the story of this attempt to make a movie about dune. And the thing is a complete unmitigated disaster, like complete unmitigated disaster. But the talent that was assembled went on to just do incredible things.

• 2:14:07Tim Ferriss?

  And if that disaster hadn't happened, one could argue that if you'd stepped on that butterfly, these other careers wouldn't have lost them in the way that they did, and you wouldn't have the Geiger design of the alien that people now know as the alien of aliens and so on. So it's, I just love.

• 2:14:30Speaker 02

  You know, this, no one ever learns from success. I mean, you can kind of, you can kind of do a postmortem and say, oh, this stuff worked. But failure is where, is where you have explosive growth, where you really have to reconsider all of your assumptions. And, and it's, it's so much more powerful than success is at making you eventually successful.

• 2:14:49Tim Ferriss?

  So be aggressive.

• 2:14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, be, be aggressive.

• 2:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  B E aggressive, A G G R A S S I V E.

• 2:14:58Speaker 02

  Totally. Yes, that's, that's, that's my life philosophy, be aggressive.

• 2:15:03Tim Ferriss?

  Be aggressive, and we want you around for a long time, so take your cat naps at the very least.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  That's my goal.

• 2:15:11Tim Ferriss?

  And do you have anything you would like to say or ask of the audience, suggestions you'd like to make, anything at all that you'd like to, to say before we wrap up?

• 2:15:26Speaker 02

  Other than watch my movie.

• 2:15:27Tim Ferriss?

  Other than watch your movie. Exactly.

• 2:15:31Speaker 02

  God, that's interesting. I mean, I, I mean, I guess like I, like when I, when I did my podcast, you know, like thematically, the stuff that we've talked about was always stuff that I talked about, which is like, it doesn't matter what you're, what you want to do, like, you know, and again, it sounds very greeting card, but like.

• 2:15:50Speaker 02

  The barriers are, they're imagined, you know what I mean? And, and, and maybe you're gonna have to start small and maybe you're gonna have to start close to home, but like, the, the greater regret will always be not having started. And, and, uh, this, it's, I'm always trying to find a way to be more bold in my life, and hopefully, share the things that have helped me do that with other people. So, it is exciting to be having the conversation with you, because I think that's a lot of what you've done, is you've kind of, you know, lived these experiences, so that the things that you learned could be shared with other people. Uh, and it is, you know, just go out and do awesome shit.

• 2:16:31Tim Ferriss?

  Get your hands dirty.

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  Get it dirty.

• 2:16:36Tim Ferriss?

  The, yeah, the rough drafts are not a clean business.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 2:16:42Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, Aisha, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 2:16:47Speaker 02

  It was a pleasure.

• 2:16:49Tim Ferriss?

  So much fun.

• 2:16:50Speaker 02

  With you, I know, super fun. And now that I know where you are, I will track you down the next time I'm in your neck of the woods.

• 2:16:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Barbecue, music, whatever it might be, in, in Austin Tejas, come visit. And, people can visit you, is the best, uh, best site, aishtyler.com?

• 2:17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, aishtyler.com, but you know, who spends time on a website anymore? Just follow me on, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff is just Aisha Tyler, one word.

• 2:17:15Tim Ferriss?

  A-I-S-H-A-T-Y-L-E-R.

• 2:17:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 2:17:21Tim Ferriss?

  And, everyone, I'm sorry, you were gonna say something?

• 2:17:25Speaker 02

  I don't know when this is gonna post, but, uh, I post stuff about all the stuff I'm doing, um, the movies out on the 10th of April, on Video and a Man, iTunes, all that stuff. And then Archer starts, I think, on the 24th of April, and all the others, I don't know, TV, whatever, you can find me online, I don't know when you're gonna listen to this, but you know, just come say hi to me on, on, uh, on socials and, uh...

• 2:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  For days and weeks and months and years and millennia to come, hopefully, we'll see.

• 2:17:50Speaker 02

  Cockroaches will be listening to this on their tiny cockroach computers when the rest of us are dead.

• 2:17:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's exactly right.

• 2:17:57Tim Ferriss?

  Cockroaches remember us fondly. And for you non-cockroaches, actually, if cockroaches are listening, you're welcome also to check out the show notes where I will provide links to everything that we've talked about, including Axis. And you can find all of those at tim.blog/podcast, along with the show notes for every other episode. And Ayesha, thank you so much one more time for being so goddamn entertaining and inspiring at the same time. It's a rare combo. So I really appreciate it.

• 2:18:26Speaker 02

  Always great to talk with you. Thanks, Tim.

• 2:18:28Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. And to everybody out there on the interwebs, be safe, maybe, more important, be aggressive, get out there. If you're dreaming of doing something, creating something someday, just get out a shitty first draft, because guess what? All the first drafts are really fucking awful. It's very rare that someone, just as I was alluding to, shits out diamonds on a daily basis. It starts with putting something out there into the world, and hopefully, at least it makes a market of one happy, and that is you. So I will close there, and thanks to everybody for listening.

• 2:19:14Tim 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,

• 2:19:54Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. 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.

• 2:20:15Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom, which more than 2 million Americans have used to help start their businesses. Past guests even, such as WordPress lead developer, CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, now valued at more than $1 billion, have used LegalZoom to help with their business needs, specifically in his case, to form his company. But LegalZoom isn't just for launching your business. Their services include everything from helping you to manage changing tax laws, reviewing contracts, creating NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, important stuff, handling lease agreements, and assisting with really any other legal challenge, hurdle, inconvenience that typically takes time and effort away from running your business. The best part is that you won't get charged by the hour because LegalZoom isn't a law firm.

• 2:21:00Tim Ferriss?

  So they won't be running the clock up and spinning circles just to raise your bill. Instead, they just ask you to pay one low upfront price for whatever it is that you're looking to get à la carte style. So visit LegalZoom.com and check out their business section for all of their services. And if you want special savings, that's the terminology in the copy that they suggest. I don't know what the special savings is, folks, but it's titillating. If you want special savings, enter promo code TIM, T-I-M, at checkout. Capital T, lowercase i-M. Again, take a peek, LegalZoom.com and enter promo code TIM. This episode is brought to you by Teeter. I am so thrilled to have connected with these guys

• 2:21:45Tim Ferriss?

  because I've used Teeter products for many, many years. I've traveled around the country and the world with Teeter products. And I'm sitting about 15 feet in my home from one of their inversion tables. And we're going to talk more about all of that. One of my rituals is hanging. And I should say, not really that, it's a maintenance and performance program. I hang not just in the morning potentially, but particularly after a day of bearing weight, whether that includes weight training, and Jersey Gregorik, world record holder, insists on this type of inversion therapy after training, or just wearing a heavy backpack around. A few minutes goes a long way towards... Better sleep in my case, less back pain, neck pain, leg pain.

• 2:22:28Tim Ferriss?

  It's not a panacea, obviously, but inversion therapy, which uses gravity and your own body weight to decompress the spine and relieve pressure on the discs and surrounding nerves, seems to help with a whole slew of conditions. And just as a general maintenance program, it's one of my favorite things to do. So, what to say about that? Teeter, why Teeter? Teeter is the best-known name in inversion tables. Since 1981, more than 3 million people have put their trust in Teeter. Teeter is also the only inversion table brand that has been both safety certified by Under Registered Laboratories, that's UL, for you people in that industry, you will recognize it, and registered with the FDA as a Class 1 medical device.

• 2:23:09Tim Ferriss?

  And, they're giving a very special offer, just to you guys, my listeners, for a limited time, you can get the Teeter Inversion Table with bonus accessories, which I have a bunch of, again, in the room next to me, and a free pair of gravity boots, so that you can invert at home or take the boots with you to the gym. So these gravity boots, I have three separate pairs of gravity boots, bought with my own monies, in three different cities, that I've had for a very, very long time, because I don't want to travel with them necessarily. They look kind of like ski boots, but without the foot portion, and they hook you upside down, so you can take them really anywhere you want to go. To get this deal, which is a savings of over $148, it's very specific, so maybe it's $149,

• 2:23:52Tim Ferriss?

  you have to go to teeter.com/tim. That's teeter.com/tim, T-E-E-T-E-R. You'll see a free shipping, a 60-day money-back guarantee, and free returns, so why not try it out? Remember, you can only get the Teeter Inversion Table with bonus accessories and a free pair of gravity boots by going to teeter.com/tim. So if you're thinking to yourself, "What the hell is this thing that he's talking about? I can't even envision it in my head." Well, take a look at the photos. Go to teeter.com/tim.