#405: Penn Jillette on Magic, Losing 100+ Pounds, and Weaponizing Kindness

"One of the biggest challenges we face is staying kind with profound disagreement—and staying kind when a mechanism has been set up to make money and power out of hate." — Penn Jillette Penn Jillette (@pennjillette https://twitter.com/pennjillette) is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous, Emmy Award-winning magic duo and Las Vegas headliners Penn & Teller https://www.caesars.com/rio-las-vegas/shows/penn-and-teller. Together since 1975, Penn & Teller's live show spent years on Broadway and is now the longest-running headliner show in Las Vegas where it plays nightly at The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. The pair has been awarded Las Vegas Magicians of the Year an amazing eights times. As part of Penn & Teller he has appeared on hundreds of shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Billions. He recently co-wrote an episode of the Emmy-winning Netflix series Black Mirror. He co-hosted the controversial Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit! https://www.amazon.com/Talking-to-the-Dead/dp/B00EC8015K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=Penn+&+Teller:+Bullshit!&qid=1578536042&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=jhsbooks-20&linkId=9f01936a3f2cf967af819f7d08d9fe05&language=en_US which was nominated for thirteen Emmy Awards, won him a Writers Guild award, and was the longest-running show in the history of the network. He currently co-hosts the CW Network hit competition series Penn & Teller: Fool Us! https://www.cwtv.com/shows/penn-teller-fool-us/ which was nominated for a 2017 Critics' Choice award. Penn's latest book, The New York Times Best Seller Presto! https://www.amazon.com/Presto-Pounds-Disappear-Other-Magical/dp/1501139525/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=Presto!&qid=1578536143&sr=8-3&linkCode=ll1&tag=jhsbooks-20&linkId=b3e61492657c4d9d20021256d3bc3a7b&language=en_US takes an insightful and very humorous look at his recent weight loss journey. His previous book, God No! Signs You Might Be An Atheist and Other Magic Tales https://www.amazon.com/God-No-Already-Atheist-Magical/dp/1451610378/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=God+No!+Signs+You+Might+Be+An+Atheist+and+Other+Magic+Tales&qid=1578536189&sr=8-1-fkmr0&linkCode=ll1&tag=jhsbooks-20&linkId=832bc760b3ddbd26a0902cc165ff716e&language=en_US, spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list. His weekly podcast, Penn's Sunday School https://pennsundayschool.com/, was the number one downloaded podcast on Apple Podcasts during its debut week, and was named a Best New Comedy Podcast by Apple Podcasts. On the big screen, Penn produced the critically lauded 2005 documentary The Aristocrats https://www.amazon.com/Aristocrats-Jason-Alexander/dp/B07VQNWBLT/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=The+Aristocrats&qid=1578536238&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=jhsbooks-20&linkId=e8c64d066fd1322cd7e92586af6ded2b&language=en_US, which features over 100 of the biggest names in comedy telling their versions of the dirtiest joke in history. He produced Tim's Vermeer https://www.amazon.com/Tims-Vermeer-Martin-Mull/dp/B00K31E8NQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=Tim, which follows the journey of an eccentric inventor determined to solve one of the art world's oldest mysteries. The Sony Pictures Classics release was nominated for a BAFTA and was shortlisted for the 2014 Oscars. He has recently completed the documentary Gambler's Ballad https://www.amazon.com/Gamblers-Ballad-Legend-Johnny-Thompson/dp/B07HZ531C6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=The+Gambler profiling magic legend Johnny Thompson. Penn & Teller have their very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and triumphantly returned to Broadway recently with Penn & Teller On Broadway http://www.playbill.com/production/penn-teller-on-broadway-marquis-theatre-vault-0000014117, which was the highest-grossing non-musical for the entirety of its run. Please enjoy! *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Brave, the next-generation web browser. I love Brave. And if you haven't heard about it, here is the skinny. Brave was built by a team of privacy-focused, performance-oriented pioneers of the web, and I do mean pioneers. Brave was co-founded by Brendan Eich, E-I-C-H, and Brian Bondi. Brendan was previously the co-founder of Mozilla Firefox and the creator of JavaScript. Brave now has more than 10 million monthly active users, and I'm one of them. Why? Why would I use Brave? Because Brave gives you unmatched speed, security, and privacy. And when I say unmatched, I mean the difference is hard to believe. And here's why. Every time you download a webpage, when you go to any webpage,

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  you are not just downloading the text and images, you are also downloading web junk. This includes trackers and scripts that run in the background, slowing your downloads and wasting your time by an average of 5 seconds per page, while also draining your battery faster and costing you extra in data charges. There is a way to have the best experience a web can offer, and that is by using Brave. Brave is up to six times faster than other browsers, and it's truly incredible how much faster everything is. I have used Brave, for instance, to get on airplane Wi-Fi when other browsers crash. I have used it to watch YouTube videos when it's just suspended in loading forever on other browsers. It's not subtle at all. There's a huge difference.

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  Other browsers act like a vacuum cleaner for your data. So this is on the security/privacy side. You're being profiled and tracked across the web. "So what?" you might ask. Well, data collected about you can be used to manipulate both your decisions and country-wide decisions like elections. And if you want more on that, listen to my episode with Tristan Harris. Brave is a way to protect yourself and remove the surveillance economy. Brave also includes options, which I use quite often, such as "Private Window with Tor" for those seeking advanced privacy and safety. This browser feels intuitive. It's super easy to use. You can import your bookmarks with one click and all your favorite Chrome extensions are also available with Brave. And it doesn't have to be either or. You can use multiple browsers for different things.

• 2:34Tim Ferriss?

  Now, listeners of this show, The Tim Ferriss Show, can easily upgrade their browser for free. And all you have to do is go to brave.com/tim. That's brave.com/tim. I use Brave all the time and I strongly suggest that you at least test it out. So, go to brave.com/tim and give it a shot. 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,

• 3:19Tim Ferriss?

  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 subscription purchase. So, learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A-G-one, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. It's a new year, 2020. Time for clarity. A time when lots of folks are thinking about personal and professional growth, and in many cases, the growth of their own businesses. Big goals, necessitating good planning and good hires. If that's you, LinkedIn can help you find the right people who can set you up for a strong year. LinkedIn Jobs screens candidates with the hard and soft skills you're looking for, so you can hire the right person quickly. How is it that a person is hired every eight seconds with LinkedIn? And why is it that companies have rated LinkedIn Jobs the number one platform for delivering quality hires? Collaboration, creativity, adaptability, LinkedIn simply has more and better data.

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  They can look beyond pure work skills and put your job post in front of qualified candidates who match your business requirements perfectly. That's how LinkedIn makes sure that your job post is seen by the people you want to hire. People with the skills, qualifications, and interests that will help you and your business grow. So, find the right person for your business today with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/Tim to get $50 off of your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Well, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it

• 5:20Tim Ferriss?

  is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are exceptionally good at whatever they do, whether that is in the realm of business, the world of finance, or the military, or art, or magic, or truth saying, or skepticism. And we check a bunch of boxes for my guest today, who is Penn Jillette. Penn Jillette, I've wanted to have Penn on this podcast for many years now. Penn Jillette, J-I-L-L-E-T-T-E, is a cultural phenomenon, is a solo personality, and is half of the world-famous Emmy Award-winning magic duo and Las Vegas headliners Penn and Teller.

• 6:02Tim Ferriss?

  I've been watching and enjoying Penn and Teller for most of my life. Together since 1975, Penn and Teller's live show spent years on Broadway and is now the longest-running headliner show in Las Vegas, where it plays nightly at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino. The pair has been awarded Las Vegas Magicians of the Year an Amazing Eight times. As part of Penn and Teller, he has appeared on hundreds of shows. We could spend five minutes listing them, but I'll mention just a few. From The Simpsons to Friends and Billions, he recently co-wrote an episode of the Emmy-winning Netflix series Black Mirror as well, one of my favorite series. He co-hosted the controversial Showtime series Penn and Teller.

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  Bullshit exclamation point, which was nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, won him a Writers Guild Award and was the longest running show in the history of the network. He currently co-hosts the CW network hit competition series Penn and Teller: Fool Us, which was nominated for a 2017 Critics' Choice Award. Penn's latest book, the New York Times bestseller Presto, takes an insightful and very humorous look at his recent weight loss journey, which we dig into in great depth in our conversation. He lost more than 100 pounds in record time. And his previous book, God Know: Signs You Might Be an Atheist and Other Magic Tales, spent six weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list. His weekly podcast, which I recommend checking out, it's a lot of fun, Penn's Sunday School, was the number one downloaded podcast

• 7:27Tim Ferriss?

  on Apple Podcasts during its debut week and was named Best New Comedy Podcast by Apple Podcasts. On the big screen, this guy's everywhere, he does everything, Penn produced the critically lauded 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, which features more than 100 of the biggest names in comedy telling their versions of the dirtiest joke in history. He then produced Tim's Vermeer, which is one of my favorite documentaries, and we've spent some time on this, which follows the journey of an eccentric inventor determined to solve one of the art world's oldest mysteries. And if Tim, that's the eccentric inventor, who happens to be based, I believe, here in Texas, is listening, please let me know. Would love to have you on the show. The Sony Pictures classic release of Tim's Vermeer

• 8:11Tim Ferriss?

  was nominated for a BAFTA and was shortlisted for the 2014 Oscars. He most recently completed the documentary The Gambler's Ballad profiling magic legend Johnny Thompson. Penn and Teller have their very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and triumphantly returned to Broadway recently with Penn and Teller on Broadway, which was the highest grossing non-musical for the entirety of its run. You can find Penn on Twitter if you want to say hello, @PennGilett, P-E-N-N-J-I-L-L-E-T-T-E. You can find Penn's Sunday School at PennSundaySchool.com. And you can find links to all of these things and everything we talk about at tim.blog/penn,

• 8:53Tim Ferriss?

  P-E-N-N. So, all of that said, without further ado, please enjoy this very wide-ranging conversation with none other than Penn Jillette.

• 9:07Tim Ferriss?

  Penn, welcome to the show.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Very nice to be here. We have a lot of mutual friends. It would be pleasant to finally kind of sort of meet you-ish.

• 9:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. I feel like we've been sort of circling like electrons, never quite intersecting with this Venn diagram with a lot of overlap. And I want to give a thank you to Brian Koppelman for making the intro. And Brian, for those who don't know, is one of my more compulsively productive friends, co-creator of the hit show Billions, also part of the writing pair, the dynamic duo behind The Illusionist, Rounders, many, many other films. How did you get to know Brian?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Geez, I don't know. That's somehow lost in the fog of time. I know that he had seen our show and really, really liked it. And I don't know exactly how our paths crossed. It's funny because I consider him a friend. We've spent quite a bit of time together, but I don't really know how it started. I'm sure somebody does. Maybe he does, maybe his wife does, or maybe that information is lost for all time. And I don't think humanity's much worse for it.

• 10:22Tim Ferriss?

  Why are the two of you friends? What are the bonds, interests, eccentricities, anything that have helped you guys to be friends? I can imagine what they might be, or some of them, but why would you say the two of you guys have become friends?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Many, many of those, many of those questions are answered with one word, and that is Dylan.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  An interest in Bob Dylan and that kind of writing have brought me to everybody from, you know, Solomon Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens to Brian Koppelman. We talk a lot about Dylan. I think we, oh, I do know where we met. It was some sort of party for one of those Ocean numbers, Ocean's 11, 12, 13, one of those.

• 11:09Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Here in Vegas. And we were up at some big fancy party, and which I didn't want to be at. And he came over and started chatting with me. We started arguing.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Rather aggressively about religion and I'm happy to say that I, he came around to, much closer to my point of view over the years. But we talked about Dylan and we talked about God. Those two ideas almost interchangeable to any thinking person.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Except there is a Bob Dylan.

• 11:51Tim Ferriss?

  I think we'll definitely circle back to that. I want to bring up someone who's become really of great interest to me only in the last few years, which is somewhat embarrassing to admit. And it came vis a vis a documentary called An Honest Liar and that's

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, Randy.

• 12:10Tim Ferriss?

  James Randi. For people who don't know who James Randi is, could you describe who he is, but also how you came to be influenced by James Randi?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Well, Randy is, is, is, is so much to me that it's, um, that it's almost hard to give a, a capsule bio. I mean, personally Randy is maybe the most important person outside of my family in my entire life. I just, um, was with him a couple of days ago, um, for about an hour, which is about all he's, um, really has the energy for now. But, um, I was, uh, mentalism, fake mind reading, uh, changed my life rather profoundly. I, um, uh, a hack horrible, uh, mentalist named, um, Kreskin

• 13:09Speaker 03

  was on some, um, TV talk show when I was a child, when I was about 12. And, uh, it couldn't have been Johnny Carson because Johnny Carson didn't allow him on. Uh, and once again, I, I don't trust my memory. I, I keep an elaborate journal. So I, that's one way to teach yourself that you don't remember things properly. Um, but he had done a, uh, a magic trick on a television show that he passed off as science. He passed off as ESP. This is Kreskin. And I'm not from a wealthy family. My, my father was a jail guard. But I was very, very good in the sciences and very good in school.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  And so they bought me this ESP kit to study the science that I'd seen on television. And I spent a lot of time with my parents running these ESP experiments and doing all of this. And then because I was juggling at the time, I would go to the library. And as everybody who's familiar with the Dewey Decimal System knows, magic and juggling are very close together, under the arts nobody cares about. Right there with the trileism and mine. And arts that aren't really art. And I happened upon a book by Dunninger, who was a mentalist in the 30s and 40s, I guess.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  And therein it was a trick very similar to the one that Kreskin had done. And I realized that I had been scammed. And I was appalled that a scientist would lie to children. And my grades went from straight A's to flunking in everything. I hated science. I hated magic. I was very, very alienated. I went to rock and roll. And it wasn't until I was 18 and met Teller and Randy within a short period of time

• 15:11Speaker 03

  that I realized that it was possible to be moral and be a scientist and be moral and be a magician. The latter being harder, of course. And Teller and I started a conversation about how magic could be intellectual and magic could be polite and magic could be respectful and magic could be moral. All things that it wasn't in my experience. And then Randy wrote a book, Flim Flam, that I read before that, I think. Once again. I'm enough of a skeptic and I'm aware enough of the science around this that I do know

• 15:52Speaker 03

  that what I'm telling you here is emotionally correct, but probably not actually accurate. Because that long ago and that emotional, you conflate things and then every time you tell the story, you change it. So I'm aware of that. I'm aware that I don't know. So I want to make clear to you that I'm telling you a poetic and emotional truth. And Randy was so open and so giving and showed me, I mean, my entire career path. I mean, I could not have done magic if not for Randy. I could not have been a kind skeptic without Randy.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  I would not have the balls I have without Randy. And he became a guiding light from when I met him when I was 18, you know, 73, until, you know, this second. I have not given a bio of Randy. I've talked about myself personally. James Randy was a magician, an escape artist, a mentalist, and then realized that he was hurting people with his lies, his claims of mind-reading.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  And he became a crusader to let people know that parapsychology and the paranormal were, as far as we've discovered so far, nonexistent. He's one of the few people that has changed their career path that much. I mean, the other one, of course, was Houdini, and the other one, who we'll come back to over and over again, is Bob Dylan. But he was able to change his career from magician to skeptic. And Randy is also an autodidact. He did not go to college, which is something else I share with him.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  And therefore was not taken seriously at first by scientists and has since then made it very clear that when scientists are testing people who claim powers, they kinda need a magician on their team because scientists are not used to being lied to. There's an awful lot of study of scientists being aware that they lie to themselves. I mean, N-Waves and all of this other stuff that's come up. And there's a lot of things put in place in the scientific method to guard against that. But there isn't a lot in the scientific method to guard against people lying to you.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  I mean, test tubes don't change themselves from one place to another overnight. You know, radio telescopes don't give false information. That, you know, that is malicious. And Randy has been there and I think has done huge amounts for science in letting people know that, that people who claim psychic powers probably don't have them.

• 19:05Tim Ferriss?

  And one, one scene or segment of An Honest Liar, which I highly recommend to people because it's also very meta. I mean, I want to give away some of the biography of his that makes it such an interesting twist in the movie, but he demonstrates how at times conscious, but oftentimes subconscious self-deception can be in the sense that, or confirmation bias. I recall this segment in the film where he trains two young men who later go on to perform as mentalists and so on to deceive researchers who are studying phenomena under

• 19:48Tim Ferriss?

  the umbrella of parapsychology or ESP. And he then gives a list, effectively a checklist, to the researchers to defend against the types of deceit that could throw their studies or results sideways. And they do not follow them. Right? And it's really a fascinating study of, of human nature in a way. And I'm, I'm curious how you would suggest to people. If there are any approaches, tools, heuristics, whatever comes to mind that people can use to become less gullible or more skeptical and less susceptible to deceit.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Well, the first thing one needs to do is to work very hard to be skeptical without being cynical. Of the, of the seven billion people on the planet, if we round it off, about seven billion are good. I do not believe in God. I also do not believe in the existence of evil. I believe there's very little bad in the world. There's a lot of mistakes, but not people maliciously trying to do bad things. So your chances of coming across someone who is actually scamming you are fairly low. My rule of thumb is if you pick

• 21:17Speaker 03

  someone, you're really safe. If they pick you, you have to be careful. If I drive in front of a Starbucks with my brand new Tesla, and I run into the Starbucks and I say, listen, my, my wife is, is, is, is about to give birth. We have to go to the hospital. She's in an Uber. Here's the keys to my Tesla. Here's my phone number. Please, can you park it somewhere and then give me a call later and tell me where? Thank you. And I run out and I just throw those keys in the air and someone grabs them. My Tesla's really safe.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Really, really safe. If someone comes up to me and says, can I help you? I have to be very, very wary.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  That's because they have selected themselves.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  You want to, if random selects, or you select, you're doing okay. If someone selects you, you have to be a little cautious. So if somebody comes to you and says, if you go to somebody and say, "I want to talk to you about my problems. I want to be friends with you. I want to pour my heart out." Your chances are pretty good of whoever you talk to is going to be okay. If someone comes to you and says, "I can help you with your problems,"

• 22:52Speaker 03

  your spidey sense should tingle.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  I mean, that is a very different way of looking at it than I've heard other people say, but I think it's fairly useful. That being said, all the stuff that, you know, the generation before mine was kind of taught, like, "Don't try to get something for nothing," which is also known as, you know, second law of thermodynamics.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  "Don't try to get something for nothing. If something seems too good to be true, it is." And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't need a lot of evidence that the Starbucks around the corner is going to still be there tomorrow. I need a lot of evidence for perpetual motion.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  And those kinds of things work pretty well.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  The other thing is, if you desperately want to believe something, if something fills you with joy, sadly, you have to be a little careful of that. I mean, I remember when there were all sorts of stories about L. Ron Hubbard having pitched his exact Scientology as a science fiction novel, you know, the year before. And you hear that story as a skeptic and you go, "Boom, bang, boom." Uh, and you gotta be very careful of those things, you know, um, uh, people that I know who are, who are very, very, uh,

• 24:40Speaker 03

  anti-Trump and very distressed about that were thrilled to pieces that he hired prostitutes to piss all over. They love that story. And immediately, all their skepticism went away as to where that came from. And also the fact that Trump is not hip enough to do anything slightly kinky. Um, I mean, I would, I would dig him so much more if that story had a chance of being true. Um, but then again, it's very hard for me to imagine digging him less. But, um, uh, those are kind of my rules. I, I, I haven't given them, uh, you know, with, with the kind of bullet points and clickbait one would like to see them.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  But, um, those are, those are honestly the kinds of things I think about when I'm, when I'm assessing whether something is real or not.

• 25:32Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Uh, you mentioned journaling earlier and I know that Brian, for instance, uh, Koppelman, who came up earlier, does a lot of journaling and he has a very specific approach to journaling. He tends to use a format called morning pages, uh, which was popularized by Julia Cameron, sort of what he might call, or what she might call spiritual windshield wipers with sort of capturing stream of consciousness. But then you have all manner of different types of journaling. Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn or Josh Waitskin, the, uh, person associated with searching for Bobby Fischer, they all have different approaches. How do you journal? How do you use journaling?

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it was very funny. When I was, um, 30 years old, I regretted deeply not keeping a journal. And, uh, I can't read my own writing and, uh, my typing.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Is very, very fast, but I'm very bothered by any sort of mistake at all. Uh, and then I go back and retype it and uh, it's terrible. My mom was a typing teacher and taught me to type. So I've been typing since I was 12. Um, so there was no way uh, that worked for me, for me to uh, record things uh, before computers. Uh, when I was 30 years old, uh, we became uh, very successful off Broadway. And Teller and I had a very strong rule that we did not celebrate uh, successes.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Cause we'd seen friends, you know, get a record contract and then buy a car. And that seemed incredibly stupid. So when Teller and I had big things happen, we would, you know, celebrate with coffee and donuts. And that was the end, you know? Um, but uh, I had promised myself that if we got a good review of the New York Times, which in 1985 uh, meant something. It doesn't now, but it did mean something that, that um, and that our run off Broadway was going to continue, that I would buy myself a computer and uh, and a bass guitar. And uh, a good bass guitar. And that happened. And I bought myself a uh, my first computer.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  And uh, when I first sat down at the computer, the very first things I wrote uh, were published as short stories. I mean, I went from not writing to writing constantly. And then it's very funny to think of this, but at 30 years old, I thought, man, I haven't kept the journal. There was all this street performing and when I was homeless and living on the streets and all of that that I, I haven't recorded, nothing's going to happen from here on. But I guess just for the hell of it, I'll start keeping a journal.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  You know, and that was, you know, uh, uh, thirty-four years ago. And, uh, I guess it's not literally true that I haven't missed a day. There may have been a day that was I was unconscious, but it's certainly fewer than five days I've missed in thirty-four days. And I do not have a, um, any sort of particular system. I write the date, the time, where I am, uh, and then I usually write, I got up. Um, I then record the previous twenty-four hours. I take notes on every conversation I've had.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Uh, I, um, I write a book report on every book I've read. I write a movie report, every movie I've watched. Um, I write, uh, an art report on every museum or artistic thing I've experienced. And as I said, notes on every conversation. Uh, I don't know how much it is, probably five hundred to a thousand words a day. I should know how much it is. And then, and I believe this is the part that may be the most useful. Obviously not when I started, but since then, uh, every morning I read twenty years ago, ten years ago, and one year ago. Now, those numbers for how long ago have of course changed.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Um, you know, it used to be five, uh, but I find that maybe the more useful, the most useful part of my journaling because I time travel. So every morning, it's mostly morning, I, uh, I talk to myself twenty years ago. I talk to myself ten years ago, and I talk to myself last year. And, uh, I read that entry. And I will tell you, uh, back when I was dating, if you were a, um, a, uh, uh, uh, sexual partner of mine, and you happened to have the exact same argument one year ago

• 30:29Speaker 03

  that you had that day, I can tell you right now, it was over.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Because if I look back and see the same problem 2010 or one year ago, attention must be paid. I like to see different problems pop up. So that is pretty much my journaling and I usually also do something I found that's kind of nice in that I will pull parts out of my journal and send them to the people that are important. I mean, my friend Lawrence O'Donnell, who has a show on MSNBC, one of my closest friends, he insists that I am the only record that he's been on this planet.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Because I sent him my conversations with him from 20 years ago, 10 years ago and last year. And I sent him an email and he says, you know, there is no evidence whatsoever that this happened, except your journal. I remember nothing of it. But I do that and also just recently, which is, I think this is a crazy thing, just this month, I started adding pictures. And I don't know why it was just this month, but I just, I just started to. And I don't know how that's going to feel, but it seems good.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  And then what I did, my 14-day fast, I also did a video journal every day because I was interested in how I would look and how I would feel and how my voice would sound. But that's my journaling and since I started doing that, which I did not follow anyone's pattern on that. You know, I was just trying to be a, you know, 16-year-old girl with a diary. You know, that's all I was trying to do. But since then, I've found that there are many psychologists and therapists

• 32:37Speaker 03

  that use that reading the past thing as a, as a way of focusing one's thoughts. But I didn't know about it when I started and I wasn't following anybody's rules on that.

• 32:48Tim Ferriss?

  And would you say that the, are the main benefits that you feel, I mean, it is a habit that you've developed over time. So you may just have the momentum of that habit, but are, can you? Discern the benefits that you get from doing this on a daily basis? Is it a matter of purging things so that you feel that they're safely captured somewhere? Is it the benefit that you get from revisiting yourself at these various snapshots at time? What do you get from putting the time that you do into journaling?

• 33:24Speaker 03

  It's hard to say. It's a small amount of time. I mean, the whole process with reading the past and writing is probably 20 to 30 minutes. I am very ritualistic, very habitual. And we, you know, everybody that thinks about habits, which I believe is everybody, knows that the upside, the downside of being habitual are pretty well documented. But it's very hard for me to get out of a groove once a minute and very hard for me to get into a groove before I am.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  And, but I find the purging is very, very important. I find that I run things. And of course, this is, you understand this is circular because I know I'm going to write a journal, I run in my head what I'm going to write to the journal. So we don't have the, the control group of if I didn't keep a journal, if I would do this. But that being said, I, I find it very easy, once I've typed out what happened the day before, to completely forget it. It just goes away. The day before just goes away for me. And I also, as I go through my day, I act upon what happened in the past 24 hours, right?

• 34:48Speaker 03

  So I make notes for my podcast, what I'm going to talk about in Sunday School. Oh, that goes over here. And I say, oh yeah, yeah, I was supposed to write an email to tell her about this. Oh yeah, yeah. And that bit sucked last night. I have to talk to so and so about the prop. And, uh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, my car, uh, I have to, I have to talk to somebody about that. You know, it, it becomes a, uh, to-do list before the list happens. You know what I mean? I, as I'm going, I go, oh, yeah, what was it? What happened during the show last night? Oh, yeah, there's this, this and this. And then some of those things, many of those things, I don't write down.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  But the, um, the going through the, the past 24 hours, um, gives me the focus that, uh, reminds me of things I have to do. And then those get put into their proper files and, and dealt with their proper emails. Probably if I just sat down for 20 minutes every morning and thought about the day before and what I had to do, it would accomplish the same thing, but without the, uh, without the being unstuck in time. I'm very, very interested in time travel and how we can do that emotionally.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  So, um, when I was at Ringling Brothers, when I was, um, uh, hitchhiking, when I was off Broadway, I will take a moment, and there aren't many of them, there aren't many of them. I mean, I'm talking about 10, five or 10. I'm not talking about monthly or yearly. Um, I will just sit in a place and try to really be there and really burn it in so I can then go back to it. So I can go back to a side of a highway in Nebraska, uh, in 1974, the, the pebbles and everything around me I was looking down at and my sneakers and everything. I can go back.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  I have a very, very, very bad visual memory, um, to the point of, um, being studied by people. I, I can't imagine anything visually. So that's a very hard thing for me to do. Other people can visit stuff in their memories visually, um, easily, but for me, it's very difficult. Um, I have a...

• 37:11Speaker 03

  It's conceptual and verbal memory and not a visual memory at all. I cannot rotate objects in space. I cannot recreate any room I've been in. I cannot do anything. So that's a pretty important thing. And my journal is actually better than video to me because I don't react very much to visual. So my journal is really what I was thinking about and how the world seemed to be emotionally. It's my, it's my narrative. So the fact that it's not an accurate recording is actually a plus, but it allows me to move emotionally through my life.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  You know, Teller has said in interviews, I've overheard him, that the defining thing about me is how obsessed I am with the fact that time flies, that time is going away. I think about that all the time. And so that sense of that's what 20 years ago was is incredibly important to my personality and who I am. But all of that being said, it may be a justification after the fact. The truth may be that it's just a habit.

• 38:33Tim Ferriss?

  I want to come back to the weak visual memory because I suspect that a lot of people like me are surprised upon hearing that since one might assume, given the many aspects of your profession, that you would have an incredibly strong visual memory. How has having a weak visual memory made you good or better at what you do? Or you just developed compensating mechanisms to make up for it? Maybe that's part of the answer, I don't know. But has it helped you in any way to have a weak visual?

• 39:06Speaker 03

  My compensation is Teller. Teller has a phenomenal visual memory. And if you watch Teller and I work, you can very clearly see that I'm doing a radio show.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Uh, every bit that I write, I bring to Teller as me doing voiceover from offstage, uh, while stuff happens on stage. And then he moves me onto the stage and moves me as part of the action. Um, I, uh, uh, you know, we, we, we tend to oversimplify. Uh, you know, I have to make clear to people, it's not that I don't have visual memory, it's that I have a very bad one. Um, and it's not my go-to. Uh, when I was, um, hitchhiking and homeless, uh, I enrolled myself, uh, in the University of Chicago, uh, psychological testing.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  I passed myself off as a student to get five dollars an hour to do all these tests. And they discovered during that, that I was the furthest they've seen, in this particular study, these particular people. I've never been able to go back and find any of it, because of course I wasn't under my name. Um, I had the widest spread of intelligence they'd ever seen. My IQ, uh, is so low visually, that I would be in a halfway house if the rest of my IQ was that way. I have a very, very good conceptual memory. Uh, if I have ideas, I can hold on to them.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  I have a pretty good, um, audio memory. Um, uh, not in terms of texture, but in terms, once again, of concepts, I can memorize a script, um, very quickly. Uh, but if you give me, I mean, I, I can tell you how bad it is, and don't, don't be fooled by this by thinking I don't have, uh, face recognition, because I do have face recognition, it's just not good. But I prepare myself for who I'm going to see. So if I've met someone four or five times, uh, there's no chance of me recognizing them when I see them. Uh, almost no chance. Uh, I have to say, "Well, you know, I, I met Tim, and I'm gonna see him at Cyan's

• 41:39Speaker 03

  party, and I know that this is what he looks like, and I'll describe you to myself, and then I'm ready to see you as though someone told me about you." Uh, but I was doing a show in Boston.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  And I should say parenthetically that I'm a mom's boy. I was very close to my mom and very close to my dad as well. I was very close to my parents. And after the show, Teller and I have always met every person in the audience who wants to meet us. So there's people that come up and take pictures and sign autographs and so on and just talk to us. And that's often, you know, an hour or an hour and a half after an hour and a half show. And I'm not looking closely at people, but my mom, I didn't know she was going to be at the show, and she came up and asked for an autograph and I signed it for her. Wow. At which point she said, "I'm your mother."

• 42:39Speaker 03

  That's incredible. Now, I can imagine my mom, but it takes work. Therefore, if you come to my house, there's an incredible amount of art, and I look at pictures all the time, and I try very hard to throw myself individual stuff to compensate. But when they do these studies, I remember they thought I was lying, because they would show me a picture, a picture, you know, of a scene or a person, and then they would show me another five pictures, one of which was that person or scene from another angle, and ask me which one I'd seen, and no idea.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  And they would give me a grid of patterns, you know, and they would say, recreate this grid, and I could do it instantly. So what they were studying was how I was using conceptual memory to compensate for visual memory. But I mean, it's very, very funny, because we'll be sitting with a builder for something we're doing in the show, and they will sketch something and say, "Well, this is a overhead view, and if you just rotate it like this, you'll see what it's from the front." And, you know, the crew and Teller will all look at me and just go look back at the person and go, "A pen can't do that."

• 44:07Speaker 03

  You have to draw it from the other angle for him.

• 44:11Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a long list of things I'm keeping note of, just for people listening who are like, Ferris, I can't believe you let that go by and didn't grab it. So I want to talk about, we're going to talk about the fasting. I am going to ask you about the homelessness. But before we get there, I want to ask you about dreaming. If you have dream recall, what, what does the content of your dreams look or feel like?

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Well, here we have the problem of, you know, seething across the ships in a storm. You know, we, we, we don't know what it's like, you know, our, our theory of mind.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  We don't know what it's like to be someone else. Right? So it takes a very long time to realize, you know, I'm, I'm very good friends with Renee French, who's a wonderful artist, who can draw everybody in her kindergarten class from memory. Right?

• 45:08Speaker 03

  She can sketch anything she's seen. And we sit around, Renee and I, and study each other. Like she will say to me, does your prop person that you see every day, does he wear glasses?

• 45:27Speaker 03

  And the truth of the matter is, if we haven't talked about glasses, I don't know.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  And then I'll say to her, you know, you've, you know, you've heard, I am the walrus, a thousand times in your life. What's the third verse?

• 45:48Speaker 03

  And she'll say, I know no lyrics to I am the walrus, except I am the walrus.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  It's my entire knowledge of the lyrics of that. And we'll talk about, you know, she's, she's, she's very, very good at math. And she'll talk about how she sees numbers as colors and spaces that can manipulate them. And I have no idea what she's talking about. So this is all coming around to the dreams. I experienced my dreams the way I experienced my life. I actually dreamed that, in a very surreal way, that I was, I was talking to you. And it was this weird interview situation. And I can tell you what that felt like.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  And I could tell you that I knew where people were standing and so on. But I cannot, even if I could draw well, I could not sketch a picture of that. It's, it's all, uh, as though it were elaborately described to me. Um, you know, when you talk about, I do meditation and when in the Sam Harris meditation, he talks about bringing someone's face to mind. Uh, the struggle that is, is amazing. When people talk about horrific images they've seen and how they flashback on them, I don't really know what that means.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Um, now, when I say I don't know what that means, you know, I, it's just that I am trapped like you are inside of myself. So, um, you know, uh, I know that I, my memories involve me in the third person, like most peoples do. Uh, our manager Glenn, uh, all his memories are, don't have him in it. He sees his hands, he sees what's in front of him, which I know is very unusual. But I, when I'm able to conjure up a visual memory, see it from a point of view that I never saw it at. I see it, uh, I see myself in it. So if I picture myself, yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  So, uh, and I know that's, most people see themselves in it, but I just don't see it, I don't see it clearly. There's also the thing is I've been partners with Teller for 44 years. So, um, things that I might have developed, anything Teller's really good at, I am not good at. It's just atrophied. And anything I'm good at, Teller's not good at, cause it's also atrophied. So as we, as we become more symbiotic, you know, we've, we've, uh, so the thing is, we don't know, yeah, well, I wouldn't have chosen to be a magician if not for Teller. So that's, that's, that's a, that's a silly thing, but, um, I don't know if I would have developed.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Any sort of visualization skills better if I didn't have a partner that was so good at it. You know, I don't, I don't pay any attention to lighting. I pay no attention to set. I pay no attention to anything. Now, if I were doing a solo show, some of that would be required. You know, I, I, we would probably guess that I'd have someone else that I trusted that would do some of that. But, um, you know, once again, we don't have a control group.

• 49:11Tim Ferriss?

  I have to scratch the itch on the homelessness. Why were you homeless and for how long?

• 49:15Speaker 03

  It was for choice. Um, homeless, there's really isn't a word for it now.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Because homeless has become synonymous with, um, with mentally ill or poverty stricken. But, um, when I was 18, I was obsessed, as I am now, with Bob Dylan. And Bob Dylan had left home, hitchhiked, jumped, hopped trains, uh, worked at a carnival, and traveled all over the country. Uh, turns out none of that was true, but I believed it. So all the stuff that Bob Dylan says he did, I actually did.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Including hopping trains. Now, when I say I was homeless, I called my mother and father every day to tell them I was okay.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  That is not what you picture for a homeless person. I, at all times, had a hundred dollars sewn into my backpack. Also not true, you know, for, for homeless people. Uh, I've never had a sip of alcohol or any recreational drug in my life. Uh, very unusual for especially homeless youth. I had a passport with me and a notarized note from my parents.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  But I did not have a place to live and I did not have a job and I hitchhiked and hopped trains all the time. How did my parents allow this? I have no idea. The capacity they had for love and support and freedom is beyond my understanding. But my mom dropped me off at the Rotary, as you can tell from Massachusetts, the Rotary near our home and I got on Route 91 and I hitchhiked. And during that time, I would stop and stay with friends. I would stop at colleges and find a sex partner that I could stay with and take classes, you

• 51:24Speaker 03

  know, audit classes, walk in. It didn't make any difference. I was, I was 19, you know, I had hair down the middle of my back. I was indistinguishable from a college student. So I could go and, you know, go to whatever college I wanted to and sit in on classes. I would juggle, I would tell jokes, I would pass the hat, I would make money. I was, I was thin, you know, I didn't need to eat that often. There was nothing to spend money on. Hitchhiking was, I still don't understand why it's not more common nowadays, since the world is safer. But I think that because of information, we think the world is more dangerous, but

• 52:08Speaker 03

  it's, you know, it's, it's certainly an order of magnitude safer by any measure than it was when I was hitchhiking. And it was very, very safe when I was hitchhiking. Country's a really safe place. I don't have any fear of it. And I hitchhiked probably, I don't know, five times across the country widthwise.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  You know, four or five times lengthwise up through Canada. And then during that time, I also was at our Brigham and Brothers, Born and Born, the Greatest Show on Earth clown college. Uh, I was street performing, uh, occasionally work at a fair or carnival. And, uh, then finally, when I, uh, when I teamed up with Teller, um, you know, I started living in an apartment, but it was, it was a gradual thing. And, um, I was very happy that way. The other thing is that, um, very shortly, uh, I became a successful street performer. So by the time I was at the end of my homeless period,

• 53:17Speaker 03

  I was making several grand a week, street performing, that was all in cash. So it was, uh, I was a very wealthy homeless person.

• 53:28Tim Ferriss?

  What was your, what constituted your street performance at the time?

• 53:32Speaker 03

  I would do, uh, crowd gathering. Now, Teller still claims that the greatest thing I've ever written was my street act. He thinks, thinks I haven't come, I haven't hit that, uh, in my, in the rest of my life. I would gather a crowd using techniques that are still used, that I created. I would gather a crowd of, I mean, three or 400, maybe 500 people. And I would, uh, the crowd gathering itself would take about five minutes. The, um, uh, collection of money would take about five minutes and I would do five minutes in between. It was about 15 minutes, only five minutes of which were the show. The rest was, I guess you would call meta.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  And, uh, uh, I would juggle and I would juggle, uh, balls and I would juggle knives. And, uh, I was a, uh, at that time, very good juggler. At my absolute peak of where I was juggling, when I was practicing eight hours a day, uh, six days a week with Mike Motion, you know, MacArthur Grant, genius juggler. We were practicing all the time at our absolute best. And we were among the best in the world. We would not even be considered bush league nowadays. Um, it's just amazing. Uh, one of the things that, as far as I know, nobody predicted is that the internet would make juggling better.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  You know, it's amazing. I mean, really, a um, a thirteen year old who's been juggling three years would now be better than I was at my best, at my peak.

• 55:10Tim Ferriss?

  If I could pry a little bit on the techniques that you created for gathering groups of people, could you give one example of one ingredient of what you might do?

• 55:24Speaker 03

  I would walk over to three or four people and say, hi, I'm gonna be doing a juggling show here in a few minutes, and it'll be stupid without a crowd. So um, I need to get a crowd here, and I need you to help me get a crowd. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna do nothing, and then you people cheer and applaud a little bit, even though there's only four or five of you. And then other people around will see you, and they'll think something's happening, and they'll come over here, and of course, nothing will be happening, and you can turn around and laugh at them. Uh, I said, this is just gonna be kind of a joke we'll play. So I would do that, and I would do aggressively, nothing. I would just stand there, no jokes,

• 56:06Speaker 03

  nothing. They would do that. And by that time, first time around, I'd be working like uh, Head House Square in Philly, or I would only work places where it was illegal. I refused to sign up anywhere. Um, and that would get me to a couple dozen people. Then I would do a much bigger version of that same thing. We're gonna see if we can get a hundred and fifty people over here uh, within the next minute. And then I would go to full out screaming, maybe someone's been hurt, get over here, you don't wanna miss it, there's a big thing happening. And then you would have about a hundred people laughing at about a hundred people that were running, now running towards me.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  And then we would get all those people in and I would do that once more. Until the original people that started were now in an enormous crowd, which they found, you know, supernaturally funny. It was just so meta and so goofy. And then I would end my show by saying, you know, you people in the very back row, uh, you didn't get to see any of the show. I don't expect any money from you at all. That would be foolish for you to give me money when you haven't seen the show. What I do expect you to do is hold hands and let nobody out who has not given me money because they did see the show. You people are now my theater.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, and then I had a lot of stuff that, that went there. And I also had all sorts of rules that I followed. Um, I would not look in any way needy. Um, the best dressed I've ever been, most expensively, was when I was doing street performing. Um, I wore a $3,000 watch. Um, my idea was that, uh, people should be ashamed to give me less than a 20. Um, and, uh, I also, uh, you know, you're talking to me in the morning. You hear me clearing my throat and coughing. Uh, working outdoors with no training for

• 58:18Speaker 03

  500 people and screaming, uh, covered my, uh, my larynx with scar tissue and made it so that for years I was, you know, coughing up blood and drinking chloraseptic, um, for an anesthetic on my, on my throat. And the sound of my voice now is the sound that, uh, you get from doing years of street performing and, and, and blowing it out every day. Cause you know, if you're going to be out, outdoors in the wind and you've got 500 people listening to you, to be heard in the back, uh, takes every single thing you have. I mean, uh, a 15 minute show was completely exhausting.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  So it sounds like even though you say it was five minutes of performing and really the gathering and asking for money, all of it was a performance.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. There's no doubt about that. I didn't, I didn't mean to misrepresent that. Yes, it was a 15 minute show. There was no doubt about it. And every single person was aware of that. Uh, no one thought like, oh, the juggling's over. I guess there's no fun coming. Everybody knew that the collection of money was going to be more fun than the juggling. Everybody knew that. I mean, it was, uh, it did not take, um, it did not take any sort of insight to go, oh, what this guy's doing is doing a show about street shows.

• 59:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this genius. Did you, did you take anything from that period of vagabonding aside from the development of the street performing that then led to things that came later? Were there other realizations or anything else that came from that period that informed your life in a significant way?

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, everything. Uh, I got to, uh, uh, be phenomenally trusting. Um, I believe that atheism and libertarianism, uh, come from pathological optimism, which I have. Uh, I found myself, you know, at, uh, at two in the morning, uh, rest stops where I could easily be beaten to death. Um, I found myself in inner city places. And, um, I even, and I mean, this is saying exactly the opposite of what I should be saying, but

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  I don't know how it fits in. I had, you know, guns pulled on me, knives pulled on me. And, uh, I was in the, the worst kind of situation and it was okay. And I came out of that very trusting of people. I also came out of it, uh, being incredibly good at deescalating hostility. Um, uh, very odd thing happened to me where, um, I did two tours of duty on Celebrity Apprentice. Um, and, uh, I was on there with people who were, uh, volatile and, uh,

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  There was one time, after it aired, you know, there's that big lag in television. So it was like six months after it happened, and I don't ever watch myself on TV, so I hadn't seen the show. But we got a call from an FBI guy at our office. And the FBI guy wanted to talk to me, and of course, the first reaction you should have when the FBI calls you is to lawyer up. And our manager said, "Why do you want to talk to Penn?" And they assured him it was nothing criminal, which the FBI does even when it is something criminal. So we were still a little wary.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  But the guy then got my email address and wrote to me, and said that he had watched an altercation between me and Lou Ferrigno on Celebrity Apprentice, on the television show, on TV. And that Lou Ferrigno was becoming very aggressive to me. And the guy at Quantico said, "It's really interesting that you followed all that we teach our FBI guys on how to diffuse a situation. Your eye contact, your body language, your calmness, without backing down." He had a whole list of things.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  He said, "You do every one of them in order, and you diffuse the situation completely." And he said, "We want to know where you studied this." And I said, "Well, you know, I lived hitchhiking for quite a while, and you'd find yourself in a biker bar, you know, with long hair and wearing eye makeup, and you'd find yourself with somebody that didn't like that." And I said, "I've never hit anybody in anger in my life, ever. I am completely a pacifist. I'm completely nonviolent, and I have been around very violent people. And I've never wanted them to go a step further."

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  And he said, "Would you come and speak at Quantico about defusing?" I said, "No, you asshole. I'm a magician, you fool. I don't know anything. You go and study this and teach clean-cut people with guns to do it." But I... I said, I think being a clean cut person with a gun makes this harder to do, actually. But, um, uh, no, but I'm so flattered. It's, it's so amazing. So I think that I carried that through life, you know, I have done, uh, some very transgressive performing and, uh, I don't get beat up much.

• 1:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's, let's jump into that for one second, because this is a very valuable skill. Could you give an example of how you de-escalated a situation and, and what the steps or, uh, strategies were that you used? Could be with Lou, could be with anyone, but just an example of how you de-escalated a situation?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Well, I don't really, because I didn't learn it, because I, I developed it trial and error. I don't really have a checklist I go through, but I can tell you one story. I was in, uh, somewhere like Nebraska and, uh, this is early on hitchhiking. I was, you know, 18 maybe and, uh, did not have a lot of money at that point. And I did have very long hair and very eccentric clothes. And I, I mean, I was a hippie and it was, uh, it was 73. Uh, and history hasn't shown it, but the 60s actually happened in the early 70s, you know, um, 68, uh, there, you know, it wasn't until 70s that the hippie movement

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  hit the rural areas really. And there were still, uh, a lot of, um, fear and aggression towards people with long hair, even as late as 73. And, um, I was in a diner and I was flirting, uh, with the waitress and it was the, uh, I'm sorry, server. It was the middle of the night and, uh, a little counter, little tiny diner. And I had ordered a milkshake and a piece of pie, which was my entire diet for weeks then. And that was all the money I happened to have at that point was to buy a milkshake and a, and a piece of pie and leave a tip, which I always did because I was a street performer.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  And um, so I put my whatever that was, three dollars down for that. Uh, you know, you gotta figure what inflation's about. Add a zero to it, so that's about thirty dollars nowadays. Um, I bought my milkshake and I had it, it was one of those really good ones. It's in the can and the whole thing, when it used to be a frap. The best. The best, yeah. And uh, two um, guys driving a truck, two separate trucks, came in. And they were uh, uh, not in the mood to see a hippie. And they were um, also, you know, that was also tied in at that time

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  with uh, sexual preference, you know, they're, they're, they're gonna call me things like uh, uh, homosexual slurs and so on, and they're gonna confuse the, the politics and the sexuality. Um, and uh, so they're, they're, they're getting very, very aggressive and they're also showing off in front of the server, who was attractive. Um, and they're coming in towards me and uh, they're very, very clearly uh, going to uh, hit me. It's escalating very, very quickly. And uh, so I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  And I picked up my milkshake, the glass in one hand and the metal container in the other, and I poured them over my head in front of them. Just picked them up and poured cold, sticky milkshake over my head. And they then said, and I'm gonna use another slur here, please forgive me. They then said, he's just retarded.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  They weren't gonna hit somebody who was covered with milkshake. It wasn't gonna make them appear macho. Um, so they actually just grabbed their coffee to go and got in their truck and left. And um, the server was rather impressed. Um, and I said, yeah, I, I, I did diffuse the situation, but now I'm covered.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  In milkshake and then I had to go in to the restroom at this little diner and try to clean my clothes and my hair and everything of milkshake in a dirty sink. And then came back out and she was very, very kind. The guy who was a short order cook in the back came out and they gave me another piece of pie and another milkshake on the house. And I remember smelling the milkshake in my hair for about forty eight hours. But that is a clear case of how you can stop someone from hitting you. Now you have to, you know, have no ego involved in this at all.

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  You can't say, I want to prove, well, actually that's not true. I feel in telling this story, in my narrative, I proved I was a genius, but to them, I didn't prove that. Right. Yes. Wow. I want to talk about. One of the ways to diffuse the situation is very simply to give the other side everything they want. I mean, right? Yep. Yes, I'm a dirty filthy hippie. I'm an awful person. I, you know, I'm this, I'm that. If, if you don't have, if you don't fall into the macho trap of, I have to prove something

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  to a stranger about my, my, my intellect, my morality, or my sexuality, if those just go away and aren't important, you have diffused, what, seventy percent of those situations? And if you're not drinking, you've diffused a hundred percent of them. Yeah, yeah, you're really. You know, if, if you go to any trauma unit and ask them what percentage of people in here have alcohol or drugs?

• 1:10:07Speaker 03

  Part of their problem, they will tell you 100%. If you move sober through the world, you have this huge advantage, right? I mean, just remarkable advantage. Because you can make kind of rational decisions and you don't have, um, certain, certain parts of your thinking reduced, you know?

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  So I've, I've read about your abstinence from alcohol and drugs and so on. And the, the, you can't believe everything you read on the internet, of course. But the, the line that popped out at me, maybe true, maybe not, is that you feel you have an addictive personality and therefore you didn't do these things. Has that always been the case? And how did you, if that's true, how did you come to that conclusion to begin with?

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Well, I have five or six narratives for the not drinking and not doing drugs. Um, that are, you know, I, I don't have access to why I really do stuff any more than anyone else does. I do know that I come from a long line of teetotalers. And if you look at any sort of data, parents not doing drugs and not drinking is the biggest indicator of offspring not doing drugs and drinking. Now, a lot of that's tied in with a certain sort of cults and so on, fundamentalist things. Um, so that, that data is confused. But the fact that my mom and dad never mentioned drugs or alcohol, that it was never in the house, they never told me not to do it. It just did not exist in my world.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Uh, I remember talking to, um, uh, my buddy, Christopher Hitchens, who drank a lot. And we had, there was a lot of discussion over that, being friends, one of whom drank heavily and one who drank not at all. And one time I said to him, uh, and it seemed pretty heavy. I said, when you think of someone drinking, who do you picture? And he said Winston Churchill. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And he said, who do you picture? I said Ronnie Pronto. And Christopher Hitchens, who knew everything, went crazy trying to figure out, trying to remember who Ronnie Pronto was. And I said, you know, you don't know him. He wrapped his car around a tree when I was in high school.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  So the first people I saw drink, the first people I saw drink were 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds vomiting on themselves. The first people, other people saw drink, were adults interacting in a sane way. I think that's part of it. Uh, the other part of it is I've always wanted to be smarter than I am. And when I saw people doing drugs and alcohol, they didn't seem like they were smarter than they were. Uh, they seemed stupider. Um, I now know that you, you can make the argument, and Joe Rogan can make the argument, and Sam Harris can make the argument, there were certain psychedelics that may not be true, but let's, let's not go there in this answer. Um, and then, uh, the other thing was, I was obsessed.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  All I wanted when I was in junior high and high school was to be Jewish, gay, and live in New York City. That's all I, um, but I was a big dumb farm boy, you know? I wanted to be, I wanted to be 5'7", 5'8". I wanted to have an enormous nose. I wanted, and I, and I wanted to talk with a lisp, and I wanted to live in the village. That's all I wanted. And I loved Lenny Bruce. And then Lenny Bruce was dead before I knew about him. I only knew the records. And my understanding of him was that drugs killed him.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  I loved Hendrix, and drugs killed him. And I wanted... To pursue a life in the arts, which I'd never met anybody in the arts in my little town, never met one person in the arts, but I wanted to do that. And I felt that people with my personality seemed, and this, I realize this is incredibly pretentious and presumptuous, and forgive me, but my self-image was such that I tried to find parts of my heart that overlap with Lenny Bruce. I'm not saying now that I'm at that talented a level, but as a child, I wanted to be that.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  And I thought, boy, if I want to be that, that sure kills a lot of people that have this personality type. And I also knew that I did not respect moderation in any way. I wanted to be all or nothing on everything. And I just thought, um, if I had one sip of alcohol, I would be mainlining heroin within a week. I really felt that.

• 1:14:59Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, you have a lot of proof points for that, for the intensity at least, that dislike of moderation, right? I mean, this is not unfounded.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:15:08Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have to ask because people are gonna want to hear about, and I want to hear about it. Just kind of segueing from the dislike of moderation, let's talk about your weight loss, exceptionally hardcore. And I believe, but I want you to correct me if I'm wrong, that this, this really sort of had rocket fuel poured on it late 2014, something like that. But how much, just, just as a starting point, how much weight did you lose over what period of time?

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  If you want, uh, the real, uh, metrics, I lost, uh, an average of point nine pounds a day for, uh, four months.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Um, that's the average, point nine, which is pretty amazing. If you look at the whole thing, you know, we, we tend not to weigh ourselves at the heaviest. So I don't really have the metric, but uh, I know that I have an actual data point at like three thirty-five, you know, uh, three forty, you know, I have that actual data point. Uh, I probably was higher than that. I probably was maybe ten, maybe fifteen pounds higher than that. And at my lowest, uh, which was on my birthday, you know, Cray Ray, Ray Cronis, you wrote a chapter in your book about him.

• 1:16:41Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Uh, this is all Ray, or Cray Ray, as I call him. Uh, this is all Cray Ray. And in what I believe is as difficult, uh, mathematics as landing a man on the moon, he was able to predict my weight four months in advance to within two tenths of a pound.

• 1:17:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, but he also says that, uh, in his experience, uh, I am the only one that has followed, uh, every rule without one deviation point for the whole time.

• 1:17:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So let's pause for one second because I want to give people context on Ray. So Cray Ray, I didn't realize you called him that. Ray Cronis, C R O N I S E, former NASA scientist I met a long time ago, something like two thousand seven, two thousand eight at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. And I wanted to talk to him because a mutual friend had described experimentation he had done using cold exposure to accelerate fat loss. And you mentioned thermodynamics earlier. Ray knows a lot about thermodynamics. Uh, and he then became the profile for a chapter in the four hour

• 1:18:01Tim Ferriss?

  body about using cold exposure to accelerate fat loss and body recomposition. What were so, but his, his thinking and his approaches have developed over time. Uh, and he's, he's added a lot more to the toolkit. What were some of the rules that, that he had you follow?

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  Bueno, Ray y yo somos ateos y escepticistas. Y hicimos algo muy interesante.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  Cray Ray dijo, "Sabes, sabemos que hay cosas que funcionan al unirnos a una cultura. Y también sabemos que podemos acceder a cosas que sabemos que son incorrectas para modificar los comportamientos." Así que dijo, "Vas a decidir unirte a mi cultura durante este tiempo. Y vas a seguir las reglas de la cultura, y ambos sabemos que son broma. Pero lo estamos haciendo solo para divertirnos." Dijo, "No vas a hablar con nadie sobre lo que estás haciendo. Vas a cortar a tu familia y amigos de esto. Vas a hacer lo que yo diga absolutamente y sin duda.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  Y vas a lidiar conmigo como si yo tuviera poder total." Ahora, tú y yo sabemos, Penn, que al menos la mitad de lo que pienso sobre esto es incorrecto. Solo no sabemos qué mitad, no sabemos qué partes. Así que vas a seguirlo y vas a usar toda esa cosa de la cultura. Esto es lo que vas a hacer. Las dos primeras semanas, no estás comiendo nada más que patatas. Y eso te va a deshacer de tu comida social. Y eso te va a hacer sentir lo que es la hambre. Y eso te va a hacer ver cómo se ve la publicidad. Eso te va a deshacer los ojos. Y vamos a añadir comida, y esto es lo que vas a comer todos los días hasta aquí. Y no se te permite nada de esto, esto, esto, esto o esto.

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  Y supongo que quieres escuchar lo que es eso. Así que hice patatas por dos semanas. Luego agregamos some beans, chili, some rice, and vegetables, and salads. Y fue cuatro meses antes de que tuviera un sabor a fruta o nueces. Y él me permitió no pensar...

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  That uh, this was gonna be forever. You know, oh, you'll have a steak again. You'll have steak, you'll have all that, but for right now, we're just gonna do this. And he also, and I, I can't stress how important this is. And I think you've discovered this a lot in, in your work as well. But every time I tried to lose weight before, every fucking doctor, every article of the New York Times had always said, uh, this is an easy way to weight loss. This is the easy way to weight loss. And it was like a, as Brando says, an apocalypse, like a diamond bullet in my forehead. When I, a simple exchange with, uh, Ray, and I said to him, so I can, I can lose like forty pounds easily?

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  He went, no, it's gonna be really, really hard.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  And I went, oh, no one had ever said that to me before. No one. Yeah. That always said, you're gonna cut down your portions a little bit. You'll have a smaller bit of dessert and you'll lose a pound a week over the next hundred and fifty years. You know?

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  We're gonna do it nice and slow and easy. You won't even notice, Ben. You won't even notice. And I, and he said, oh, it's gonna be really hard. And I realized in that instant, that nobody brags about walking up a grassy slope. They brag about climbing Everest. You know? Um, I have never, ever wanted to do anything easy in my life. Why with my health was I deciding that that was the thing that had to be easy? And I realized that I, not only do I not respect moderation, I don't respect people who have moderation. You know, I, I want, you know, I mean, wanna quote the Kerouac here?

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  I want the people that, the, the mad men who, who burst into flames. That's who I wanna, uh, you know, who, who I wanna love. And um, and so, uh, you know, he had me do contrast showers, you know, hot to cold, back and forth. Um, uh, he had me, um, he had me eat potatoes whenever I wanted, but then I went down to very strict amounts of time. And there were things that, um, I think were probably borderline irresponsible. We cut down my calorie intake enough that I was lightheaded, uh, probably too much of the time, but, uh, it was okay, you know, it ended up alright.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  And, uh, what we really do, you can always do the arithmetic, you know, uh, Krayra doesn't care at all about calories, and I don't count calories, and I don't care at all. But if you want to do the arithmetic, you can say what point nine pounds a day in terms of calories are, you know. So we can probably say I was eating four to five thousand calories a day, and we cut it back to probably six hundred. You know, uh, we're talking about very, very, uh, but here is the thing that, um, I'm most embarrassed about, and also kind of like you often are with embarrassed things, most proud of having learned. Um, being an atheist,

• 1:23:48Speaker 03

  I did not believe in mind-body duality. I did not believe there was a spirit. Uh, I believed that I was my body, and that all my thinking, and all my love, and all my awareness, and all my consciousness, although nobody knows what consciousness is, but all of that did have an organic, uh, uh, place. I, I believed that completely, or so I thought. And when I started losing the weight, and my mood started changing, I mean, there were psychological changes in me. I became, uh, gentler, kinder, and let's underline this and put it in all caps,

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  happier. And this is from someone who was not depressed, who was very, very happy. Who didn't have any problems. I wasn't violent, I wasn't any of that. But still, wherever you are, you can go further, you know? Um, and I realized that I did not believe the organic view of humanity completely. I had this sense that there was a homunculus driving myself behind my eyeballs. That was kind of my spirit that didn't care that it was functioning in a fat body. Uh, and as I started to lose that weight, I went, oh yeah, I get it.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  I mean, in a certain sense, I'm thinking and feeling with my whole body. It's not just this lump of brain inside my head. And that was a phenomenal thing to realize how wrong I had been. You know, there was, there was a weird thing, you know, I went on the vomit comet also because of Gray Ray. Cause you brag about knowing him in 2000s. I, I knew him in the nineties. Um, I went on the vomit comet. Uh, so I went from weightless to double my weight. Uh, in approximately 30 second intervals, like 26 seconds or something. And I did a lot of parabolas. I did, uh, cause I was, I was on an illegal flight.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  Uh, and, uh, it was, it was all very illegal. And we were doing, so we did like, you know, 40 parabolas. So I was weightless for a long time and I was heavy for a long time. I was heavy at that time. I was fat then too. And I went to twice my weight. And what I remembered later was that when I went to twice my weight, my mood changed. It's incredible how you can, you can learn what weight loss will do to you emotionally. By going in the vomit comet and going from, as I was going from zero to 600 pounds. Back and forth in one minute intervals. And, uh, it's amazing how when you're heavier, you get sadder.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  Now, I don't know if this directly maps onto it. This may be more poetic than scientific. I don't want to make claims I don't really understand. But, um, I, as I lost weight, I lost weight. Um, I lost concerns. Things were lighter. Things were easier. Uh, I didn't have to, um, think about wanting to play with my children. You know, oh, I should do this. I just did it. And, um, it was really, it was really remarkable, remarkable changes in my life, you know? Uh, and I have also, uh, you know, since then, I, I've done a two-week fast. Uh, I, I guess I have to underline medically supervised.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  Um, and, uh, because I don't want anybody to think they can just do that. Uh, it's not safe. And, um, three days you're safe, but over three days, be careful. And, um, I've also gained weight since then and, uh, I'm now, now I'm going down again. But, um, I have made, uh, you know, the magic moment is two years. Everybody gains back their weight in two years. And if you don't gain back the weight in two years, you are in this very small percentage. Set different studies say different amounts, but two to 5% of people keep it off, uh, after two years. And what Gray Ray's discovering, um, which someone of your build does get to discover

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  this, but, um, the faster you lose the weight, the more likely you are to keep it off, which is contrary to everything that we believed five years ago, you know? So, uh, it's worked well for me.

• 1:28:28Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, you, you mentioned the extended fast, the 14-day fast. You've, you've also found a place for, uh, as, as we mentioned before recording, people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere would call intermittent fasting, but it, it sounds like your current default when you are behaving is roughly 23 hours of fasting, one hour of feeding per day?

• 1:28:53Speaker 03

  Yep. And I will tell you that if you were to sit down with me during that one hour of feeding, you would be appalled.

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  The actual volume of food that I eat is phenomenal. I mean, I eat a salad the size of your head, you know, gigantic salad. I eat probably six servings of brown rice or some whole grain, you know, of farro, one of those things. I try to eat a little less brown rice. It's a little less healthy. It's my favorite food in the world. You know, chili bean stew, you know, maybe even some fat stuff like guacamole. My wife is an incredible vegan cook and follows, I follow the Fermin thing absolutely,

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  credibly low salt, credibly low oil, really very little processed. And then the amount of fruit that I have for dessert is, you know, those containers of blueberries, like five of those and like two cups of pomegranates seeds on top of those. I mean, a gigantic bowl would not fit in any bowl you have. Has to be like an industrial bowl that I'm eating out of. Just a mixing bowl. Like Michael Jordan eating banana pudding. You know, it's that amount of food. And then usually a few squares of incredibly dark 90% chocolate.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  And that is really an hour of eating. You know, my children join me for supper about 15 minutes in and leave before a half hours. I still have a half hour to go. And, you know, it's one of the reasons I can't eat at restaurants is I can't get the volume of food I want. We're really talking about the equivalent. I mean, to put this in terms that are kind of easy to visualize, I probably eat the equivalent of like eight baked potatoes, you know? It's a huge amount. But then again, if you're looking at caloric content or fat content or any of that, it's really low.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  And what my body is trying to do is to desperately get, you know, whatever I need a day, you know, whatever that is, fifteen to two thousand calories, trying to get that out of incredibly, not nutrient-rich, but not calorie-rich food. And also, I'm very fortunate, I mean, I, we give a lot of credit to Cray Ray, but also my wife, who's been, you know, not eating mammals for years and years, and is, takes cooking very seriously, and really enjoyed the Furman Challenge. I eat really different food every single night, and it's always gourmet quality.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  And, you know, Dr. Clapper has had supper with me, and Cray Ray's had supper many times with me, and they're just blown away. They just go, you know, with this kind of food delivered to you every night, anyone can do this. There's nothing required, it's just incredibly, incredibly good food, that's, you know, labor-intensive. And when I go on the road, and I go down to just eating, you know, you know, ten containers of watermelon, and, and, and rice, and beans and stuff, plain, it's, it's, it's fine. But then again, that's, that's rare for me. And then, you know, there is all I really want to eat, which is peanut butter.

• 1:32:39Speaker 03

  If I had my way, I would eat nothing but peanut butter, all day, all night, all the time. The other thing that blew my mind, and, you know, you read these books on habit, and I read this book, One Bite, or First Bite, I think, really great book, and this woman set out to find what scientists believe that food desires were innate, and what scientists believe that food desires were learned, cultural and habitual. And she couldn't find any scientists that believed it was innate. It is incredible how I thought that foods that I absolutely loved are now repulsive

• 1:33:23Speaker 03

  to me, just because they're out of habit. You know, uh, things, I mean, my favorite foods, I now look at and go, even uncomfortable watching other people eat them. And my new comfort foods have just changed. You know, there's a lot of stuff, we don't know anything about this, but you know, your microbiome changes over three or four months. Uh, there's certainly feedback to the brain for the microbiome. We know that, although it's in its infancy. And all of that stuff, you know, when you read those scientific articles, all of that stuff completely maps over my firsthand experience. Please don't allow me to, to claim stuff I don't know. I, I'd like very much to talk

• 1:34:05Speaker 03

  about how the microbiome changed my personality and all of that, but I can't prove that. I have no evidence. So don't let me go there. But, uh, what I feel about is that my diet has changed me profoundly. But of course, at the same time, I started meditating and other stuff changed in my life. So we don't, we don't have that control. We never have a control in our own lives.

• 1:34:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's one of the big challenges of a multifactorial life outside of the laboratory. It's, uh, it's tough. And I, I want to, I really congratulate you on, on the weight, not just the weight loss, but also inspiring people to pursue better health as an example of what can be done. Uh, it's, I, I know that a lot of people have lost a lot of weight after seeing you so publicly, uh, take better control of your health. So it's, it's, it's really remarkable.

• 1:34:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's very gratifying. I also want to say, and this is the, the part that, uh, you might quibble with, and I'd be interested. Um, uh, Cray Ray also allowed no exercise whatsoever during the time I was losing weight. He believes that weight loss and bodybuilding fight each other and that, uh, you should not be doing great exertion. You should be sitting, you should be doing very little when you're, when you're doing weight loss. And people have misunderstood that as, you know, Penn's miraculous, just eat potatoes and don't exercise diet, which, uh, you know, very well, but I want to say it.

• 1:35:41Speaker 03

  It's very contrary to what I did. I eat a full rounded, full meals. For two weeks I did potatoes as a stunt to teach myself things about food. It was not done as a healthy diet. It's not done for a lifetime. It's done for two weeks. And the not exercising was not done for a lifetime. It was done for that time while I want to take a lot of weight off and then exercise starts back in.

• 1:36:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. So let me, let me respond to that because Ray and I meet eye to eye on a lot of things and I don't think we're as far away as, as one might suspect. The, I do think that exercise can act as a lead domino that then causes, just through cognitive dissonance, better behavior when it comes to diet. But Ray is right, I think, and I don't want to speak for him, but I can only speak to my position and that is you cannot outwork your mouth. And there is one of the common consequences.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  If you want to quote him exactly, it's you can't outrun your mouth.

• 1:36:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm just, yeah, I'm not even necessarily quoting, but it's, it's very common mistake that when you take someone who is accustomed to overeating, who then layers on exercise that is not necessarily building muscle mass, but gives the, creates the illusion of great energy expenditure, say certain types of cardiovascular exercise, that they compensate by rewarding themselves with 10 times the number of calories that they, they would have burned in that given session. So I, I do think there's a place for resistance training. I don't think it has to be frequent, but that in the beginning, it is really important to make the primary focus dietary. So people understand that you, if you want to change.

• 1:37:38Tim Ferriss?

  The musculature that is attached to your skeletal system, you do that by lifting weights. If you want to really lose body fat for body recomposition, it is 90% plus diet. And you have to prove that to yourself. And a very effective way of doing that is taking exercise off the table for a short period of time, in which span you can prove to yourself quite easily that you lose pounds in the kitchen, not primarily in the gym. So I do agree with him. I think in principle on that.

• 1:38:15Speaker 03

  Well, everything you just said is right in line. I think that there was certainly a way. The other thing is that I should say that I stopped exercise, but I didn't stop doing the show. And Ray strapped on one of those calorie counters, you know, that goes, takes all your breath and everything, and had me do five minutes of our show at full volume, and full energy, and was astonished by the amount of calories I was burning. So he said, you know, you're kind of doing a run every night. So my no exercise thing is kind of sort of bullshit.

• 1:38:57Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great point. Great point.

• 1:38:59Speaker 03

  So you have to remember that although I tell you I was sitting during that time, I was going out on stage and jumping and running and yelling for 90 minutes every night.

• 1:39:10Tim Ferriss?

  And that's even even at a lighter version of Penn. That's still quite a bit of mass to move around.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  You're moving a lot of meat. You're moving a lot of meat.

• 1:39:20Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's talk about, this is a bit of a left turn, but that's okay. I'd like to talk about one of my favorite physicists. And I certainly never had a chance to meet him, but it sounds like you did. And that is Richard Feynman.

• 1:39:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38Tim Ferriss?

  I've been fascinated by Feynman for decades, and actually recently ended up buying a set of his encyclopedias that he kept in his office.

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:39:49Tim Ferriss?

  But never had a chance to have any interactions. And I was hoping you could describe

• 1:39:56Tim Ferriss?

  Your interactions with Richard or and anything that you might have taken from those those encounters with him?

• 1:40:03Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, um, I met him a very long time ago. Uh, it's funny because, uh, there was a show on television called Numbers. Uh, it was, uh, actually spelled num threeers, you know, it's they had a three in there. And the premise was a mathematician who solves crimes. And, uh, they had a scientist who was the consultant for the television show. And I came on playing myself and, uh, one of the script writers had written in a line for me where I talked about being friends with Richard Feynman. And the scientist, uh, who was consultant on the show flagged it and said, I don't think

• 1:40:47Speaker 03

  you want to do this line because there is really, it's a real stretch of the imagination to believe that Penn Jillette could, could have known Richard Feynman.

• 1:40:55Tim Ferriss?

  And I said, well, I did.

• 1:40:59Speaker 03

  And he went, oh, uh, I said, well, I did. So it's a stretch of the imagination, but not for me. It's a memory. So they let that line go. Um, I, I think read, maybe it was surely you're joking as soon as it came out. And, uh, I was a big fan of Richard Feynman. And we were doing a show, uh, at the, uh, Los Palmos, uh, the, the LA Stage Company is called now in Hollywood, about a 500 seat theater. And we had done this list in our program of people we'd like to see the show. It was a funny kind of idea we have.

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  It was a list of like 50 names that included, you know, Samuel Beckett and, um, George Romero and Richard Feynman and Debbie Harry and Lou Reed were on this list of people. It just said, people we'd like to have see our show. That was it. And Feynman was on the list and Crispin Glover was on the list and, um, Feynman came to the show and we ended the show at that time with my favorite monologue I've ever written and my favorite to do, which is the thing we call ten in one, which is what the carnival sideshow is actually called among the carnival people is ten in

• 1:42:22Speaker 03

  one, where I describe the physics of fire eating, the biology of fire eating, I teach fire eating, then perform it. And during that time, I talk about how we think that skeptics are against the mystery, whereas it's religious people are against the mystery. Religious people see a mystery and they want to have an answer. This is how things happen. And so I do it much better with the real monologue, but I can't get into it this way. And scientists are willing to say, I don't know. And that's embracing the mystery. And lo and behold, Richard Feynman came up to me after one of the shows and said that I had said something

• 1:43:05Speaker 03

  in that monologue that he had never been able to say that clearly. And that he had brought his wife and he had said to her afterwards, see, that's what I mean. And she'd understood something that she hadn't understood before. I mean, a mind blowing thing to have said to somebody, you know, I was pretty, pretty much fell apart. And then, over the next run of the show, he came back to the show several times. And at one point, he brought

• 1:43:41Speaker 03

  five, count them, five Nobel laureates with him to see the show. We may have had the highest concentration of Nobel laureates outside of Stockholm at the LA Stage Company.

• 1:43:59Speaker 03

  Became friends, I think, would be exaggerating. But I had his home phone number, and we went out to dinner a few times, and I met Murray Goleman and talked with him. To show you the clash of cultures, Murray Goleman once said to me, "I've heard there's a television program on late at night hosted by David Letterman that might be a good move for your career for you to go on." He'd never seen it, mind you, he'd never seen it. This David Letterman. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  And so, the story I tell that makes science friends of mine bang their head against the wall is I would pick up Feynman's books on physics, and I would realize that I, because I got out of high school on a plea bargain and didn't really graduate, I didn't know the algebra for. You know, he would explain something and I wouldn't get it, so I would call him up. I would say, "Hey, Richard, I'm reading your book here, this whole paragraph here, I get trouble with it." And he would say, "Well, that's just your high school algebra, Ben." And I said, "Well, I didn't have high school algebra."

• 1:45:27Speaker 03

  And he would say, "Okay, get a piece of paper and a pencil, and let's go through high school algebra." Amazing, that's so incredible. And I'd be on the phone with him for like, you know, an hour and a half, where he'd be going, "So you cancel out the a on that side of the equal side, you cancel it out over there," you know? And then, I mean arithmetic, he was teaching me arithmetic. And I'd get through his book, and I'd call him up and say, "I get a few questions about vectors." And he'd go, "Okay, shoot."

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

  And then perhaps the funniest was Teller and I wanted to do a bit on Letterman with liquid air. We wanted liquid nitrogen, you know, and the gag was we're gonna drop things in and freeze them and smash them and then uh Teller's hand was gonna go in and we'd smash his hand and then we'd drop a mouse in and then show the mouse was okay, then the mouse would would jump in and that was the gag. So we needed to have a lot of liquid nitrogen and we needed to play around with it. And at that time, I mean, it's amazing how stupid I was, other than the eighties, uh, I didn't know what what you could do with liquid nitrogen or where to get it. So Teller said, well, we gotta find a physicist to get on board to help us with this liquid nitrogen thing. And uh, I said, well, I I'll

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  call Feynman. So I I called Richard and I said, listen, man, uh, we want to do this bit on Letterman. Uh, we want to do liquid nitrogen. We want to do a liquid air show. And he went, oh, fuck, I I haven't dealt with any like real physics in fifty years. I I don't know. I I don't know. Uh, uh, I said, well, I don't know. I don't know what to do. And Feynman said, well, let me get on it, you know. And like an hour later, professor called me from a community college in Brooklyn.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  And he said, yeah, I speak to Penn, Joliet, please. I said, yeah, this is Penn. He said, I know this is a gag. I know this is a practical joke. But someone claiming to be Richard Feynman called me. And asked me if I would call Penn of Penn and Teller to set up a liquid air show on Letterman. I know I'm the brunt of the joke. I just don't know what the joke is. Who is this and who called me?

• 1:47:59Speaker 03

  I said, well, this is Penn, and it was Richard Feynman that called you. And he just went, I get a call from Richard Feynman? I said, yes. He said, where'd he get my number? I said, maybe there's like a directory of physicists. I don't know. He said, I teach at a community college. I said, good. So we got together with that guy and we worked with him for three weeks and did the liquid air show on Letterman, which was a bit that went very well. And the guy brought a ton of liquid nitrogen and we said, you know, tell us the stuff you do when it's not in front of school classes, the stuff that's a little bit too dangerous and a little bit too crazy and let's play with it.

• 1:48:41Speaker 03

  So we played with liquid nitrogen and even liquid oxygen and all sorts of stuff for weeks and did a bit on the show that went very well. But when I try to tell science friends of mine that to get liquid nitrogen, I called Richard Feynman, they just go, we knew you were an asshole, Penn.

• 1:49:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right. And then I called Picasso to ask him where I could buy some number two pencils, right?

• 1:49:06Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's exactly that level. Exactly.

• 1:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  And you mentioned a book I just want to underscore for people because it's such a fun read. Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman, F E Y N M A N is a fantastic read for people who want to understand why I get so giddy talking about Richard Feynman, why I'd be so interested in him, not just as a physicist, but also as a teacher, right? I mean, he was such an incredible teacher and.

• 1:49:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, but more important than either of those two is he was a person that you want to be. I mean, Bob Dylan sings, "To live outside the law, you must be honest." And Richard Feynman had found a way to live outside the law that was phenomenal. He would not fall into any cliche whatsoever. You know, my friend, Tim Jenison, who is how I know Ray Cronis, we did a movie about him called.

• 1:50:12Tim Ferriss?

  Tim Vermeer.

• 1:50:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Tim Ferriss?

  Spectacular movie, by the way.

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  Tim, thank you. Tim said to me that when he's meeting somebody, if he learns two things about them and can guess the third, he's really uninterested. Like if he finds out that they're vegan and they like The Grateful Dead, and then he finds out they're against nuclear power, he says, "I'm kind of done. I kind of know that kind of person." And it's really interesting to look at oneself and say, "If someone has two cliche data points on me, can they guess the third and be absolutely right?" And Feynman was the perfect example

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  of that. You know, you, you, you could say, uh, Nobel Prize winner, you know, professor drummer. He wasn't like a guy who listened to opera. You know what I mean? He was a drummer. Uh, he was a, uh, you know, South American style music drummer. He was, uh, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, you could not guess what the other thing was going to be. And it's, it's one of the ways, probably unfairly, that you can decide how close you want to be to somebody is just if they can tell you something really early

• 1:51:40Speaker 03

  on that surprises you. You know, as we build, as we build our theory of other minds, we get these points, and then we guess the other points. And if you can't do that, that's someone you want to fall in love with.

• 1:51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. And, and you, I was planning, this was actually the next point was related to Tim's Vermeer that I wanted to bring up, because it relates to Feynman also in, in another respect, and that is in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, or it may have been one of his later works, uh, Richard talks about learning to paint and having a debate with his painter friend about who can better appreciate the flower, right? The person who only sees the extrinsic beauty of observation, or the person who has a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the biology, the botany underlying the flower itself. And Richard would argue for the latter, having Additional layers of appreciation for this thing there, that painting.

• 1:52:38Tim Ferriss?

  And one of the aspects of your work and your work with Teller that I so appreciate is not just the beauty of the trick or the gag, but also the beauty of what comes behind it. And I'd love to hear, because you have an infinite number of projects you could choose from, how did you choose to put the time into Tim's Vermeer? It is one of my favorite documentaries of the last many years, and I highly recommend everybody check it out. But maybe you could, I'd love to hear you explain how you decided to pursue that.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  Oh, well, because I couldn't, I couldn't find another way. I didn't want to. I did not have the time, and it was not on my agenda to get done. But I had young children, very young children, and I realized that I had not had a conversation with an adult that I was not, outside of my family, that I was not being paid for in a year. That really distressed me. So I called up Tim, and I thought it was a social call. He remembers it as an emergency call. And I said, "Hey, Tim, you know, I just gotta talk to someone." And he said, "Okay, I'll fly in."

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  So he flew into Vegas, and at that time, we were both eating meat, which we don't do now. We went to Texas, did Brazil, and sat down. And I said, "Tim, tell me something I can't possibly make money on, I can't possibly use in my show, and I don't know about." And he said, "How much you know about Vermeer?" And I said, "First two paragraphs of Wikipedia, and I'm out." And then Tim sat there and then he pulled out audio visual aids. At that time, you didn't do that with a cellphone as easily. He had an actual video camera with him, with a little screen on it.

• 1:54:46Speaker 03

  And he showed me his early experiments with Ramir. And I said, "Boy, Tim, you have fucked up royally." Because this is something that's involved in my business. This should be a documentary. And Tim said, "No, nobody cares about this at all." I said, "No, no, the world will care about this, Tim." He said, "No, no, nobody cares about this. This is one scientific paper. No one cares." I said, "No, no, this is a movie." And then I said, "Let's find you somebody." So I talked to a lot of producers and a lot of directors. Tim and I flew to LA. We flew to New York. Actually, I was a hindrance because people thought that his extraordinary claim was a gag because I was with him, you know?

• 1:55:30Speaker 03

  That I was doing some sort of, this is some sort of hidden camera gag. But, you know, BBC was a little interested and I had a couple of good directors that were a little interested. And then I sucked Tim into my horrible show business world in meetings, in meetings with people that go nowhere, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.

• 1:55:52Tim Ferriss?

  I've had a few.

• 1:55:52Speaker 03

  As Jesse Dillon says, "Every meeting in Hollywood is a month of your life." And finally, I was, we had finished like four meetings in New York. We were at some coffee place. And I said to Tim, "You know, Tim, fuck it. Just, I don't want to deal with these people anymore. Forget about it. Let's just do it." And he said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Just let's put the money up, make the goddamn movie." And I said, because I would rather spend the money than take any more of these meetings

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  with dipshits. I can't do it. And Tim said, uh, Tim said, okay, let's go. And he said, uh, you're gonna direct it. I said, I'm not gonna direct it. I can't direct. I can't visualize things. I can't direct. Uh, and I'll produce it. I'll put it all together. And Tim said, okay. And he said, I can do the tech on it and I'll just buy the cameras. I said, okay, good. And I said, let's find a director. And I mean, this is, this is embarrassing, but of course, Teller and I are very frank with each other. Teller was my fifth choice to direct it. Um, and finally, we went through a few people that didn't like him, it didn't seem right, they didn't get it, they didn't have time. And

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  finally, Teller knew nothing about any of this. We approached Teller, uh, Tim and I together, and said, uh, Tim's doing this crazy thing. We think it should be a movie. What do you think? And then we started on this, you know, five-year journey of, uh, Tim painting the Vermeer, which he tells everybody over and over again, he would have never finished if not for the movie. Uh, he says, the moment his blood ran cold was when he said to Teller, um, you know, I, I may not be able to finish this. And then

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  the, then there's no movie. And Teller went, oh, oh, there'll be a movie, Tim. And, and Tim said, it was just the most complete terror he's ever felt. Oh, man. So I really tried very hard. My plan on Tim's Vermeer was, uh, after that night to hand it off to a company and a producer and a director and just stand on the side and cheer. And, uh, I, I just, I just couldn't find someone that was easy enough to do that. And, you know, Teller's plan was for this to be a pen project he'd have to worry

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  about, and he got sucked in too. And now I, I mean, I have to, I have to change the spin. I did not want to do it. I am incredibly proud and happy that I did do it. I, I mean, I don't want to add that. I don't, I don't want to leave without adding that, because that would be disingenuous.

• 1:58:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and, and please, please correct me if I get any of this wrong, but just to, pun intended, paint a little bit of a picture for people who aren't familiar with the film. So Tim Vermeer tracks your friend, Tim Jennison, who's a very good engineer, also an inventor, a general tinkerer of high intellect, who became interested in Johannes Vermeer, who was this broke period painter who achieved photorealistic effects in his paintings that that kind of defied belief, and follows Tim's attempt to determine how he made those paintings and to replicate one himself. Is that a fair description?

• 1:59:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, yes, very much so, yeah. And it's, it is, it's, it's a really fantastic portrait, also pun intended, of not just Tim, but also obsession and so many things that, that tickle my fancy. I saw it in the theater, something, I suppose, quite a few years ago now, and just, just loved it. So I know we've, we've had a pretty long conversation thus far, so I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but this has been so much fun for me. Yeah, it's been a blast. Glad that we finally got to connect. It's been a blast, yeah. And I have, I have, I have a whole slew of other things I'd love to ask you, so

• 2:00:19Tim Ferriss?

  maybe another time. Sure. But I, but, but I'd like to ask just a few quick closing questions, and these are, these are questions I ask pretty often. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but the question is one of what you would put on a billboard. This is metaphorically speaking. If you could put anything on a billboard, non-commercial, could be a question, quote, statement, image, anything, to get something out to billions of people, let's say, is there anything that, that comes to mind that you would put on such a billboard? Jesus had a swimmer's body.

• 2:00:58Tim Ferriss?

  Can you explain why that's what you choose?

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  For some reason, I've actually looked into pricing to put that billboard up. It makes me laugh so much. It seems like the perfect, absurdist thing that seems to have a great deal of poetic depth to me. So not, you probably ask this question to people hypothetically, but I actually, within the past six months, have looked into crisis for a billboard in Vegas that simply says, "Jesus had a swimmer's body."

• 2:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  How did this occur to you?

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  I don't know. It just struck me. It seems to be just pure, pure poetic view of love of life and atheism.

• 2:01:47Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. That's enough. That's enough. Do you have any, any, any parting comments, suggestions, anything you'd like to say before we wrap up? I'll link to everything we've talked about in the show notes for people at tim.blog/podcast. So certainly they'll be able to find you on Twitter.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I do, I do a podcast called Penn Sunday School every Sunday where I talk like this. You know, I don't know, you know, I, in the age of Trump, I've, one of the worst things, you know, they, they say, and I hate to follow, you know, Godwin's Law here, but they say one of the worst things about Hitler was he turned his enemies into him. And I know Trump very well, and one of the worst things Trump has done, and the one that I was the farthest from predicting.

• 2:02:51Speaker 03

  Was what he's done to the other side. The people that really, really dislike Trump for, I will add, very good reasons. Uh, have become so unkind and so angry. And you have stuff like, uh, if you're a Trump voter, I don't want to talk to you. If you're a Trump voter, you know, I, I was told, uh, by, uh, uh, what's his name? Frank, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the big pollster. That they had had the largest number of thanks giving dinners canceled. Because relatives did not want to talk to each other because of the Trump thing. I've been trying to do this thing, which is impossible, by the way. And if I'm successful, I will simply go mad.

• 2:03:34Speaker 03

  But I've been trying this, uh, thought experiment of trying not to use the words us and them. I've tried to say the sentence, those of us who voted for Trump, which is a very difficult sentence to say. But if you say it, it's, it's very profound. Because it is those of us who voted for Trump. It's not them who voted for Trump. It's us. And, uh, I also have been trying very hard to think that my only, the only team I can belong to. I have two choices. I can be Penn or I can be one of seven billion. And seven billion is being conservative.

• 2:04:17Speaker 03

  I'd actually like to do a hundred and eight billion for everybody that's ever lived. And I might want to start adding primates and maybe other mammals into there. But I don't want to see teams anymore. I don't want to see us and them. And I think the biggest challenge we face, even with climate change, uh, on the table. One of the biggest challenges we face is staying kind with profound disagreement. And staying kind when a mechanism has been set up to make money and power out of hate. And I want to believe all the cliches about, uh, love and kindness triumphing. And right now, um.

• 2:05:04Speaker 03

  Politically, that's not the case. Uh, they have found a way to weaponize hate in the social media that we thought was going to lead to utopia. And, um, that's heartbreaking to me. But I still kind of believe it. And I still kind of believe the mathematics, that if you want to change the world, you are better off with nonviolence. If you don't even care, if you even put violence on the table, nonviolent revolutions have been more successful, more often than violent ones. And, um, Martin Luther King and Mandela and Gandhi were not, as Obama portrayed them,

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  kind of silly, wide-eyed, wild-eyed people that it kind of happened to work for them, but it can't work all the time. That might not be true. They might actually be the scientists among us who have done proper social change in a way that is not morally right, but is also the most efficient. And my obsession right now is to try to find a way to, um, to use an insane phrase, weaponize kindness and to be able to see ourselves as not teams. And I mean teams in every fucking way, whether teams is atheist, whether team is Democrat,

• 2:06:29Speaker 03

  whether teams is sports fans, whether teams is I love Miles Davis and hate Kenny G, whether teams are anything. Uh, I know it's impossible, but goddamn it, we gotta work on that and we got bigger problems coming up.

• 2:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, agreed. That is an excellent way to close. Thank you so much, Penn.

• 2:06:50Speaker 03

  It was a pleasure.

• 2:06:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to be continued. I hope we have a chance to eat a bushel of blueberries together and continue, continue the conversation sometime.

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  Just spoon it there fast, you ain't getting anything.

• 2:07:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:07:49Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 2:08:09Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. It's a new year, 2020, time for clarity, a time when lots of folks are thinking about personal and professional growth and in many cases, the growth of their own businesses. Big goals, necessitating, good planning and good hires. If that's you, LinkedIn can help you find the right people who can set you up for a strong year. LinkedIn Jobs screens candidates with the hard and soft skills you're looking for so you can hire the right person quickly. How is it that a person is hired every eight seconds with LinkedIn? And why is it that companies have rated LinkedIn Jobs the number one platform for delivering quality hires? Collaboration, creativity, adaptability, LinkedIn simply has more and better data.

• 2:08:52Tim Ferriss?

  They can look beyond pure work skills and put your job post in front of qualified candidates who match your business requirements perfectly. That's how LinkedIn makes sure that your job post is seen by the people you want to hire, people with the skills, qualifications and interests that will help you and your business grow. So find the right person for your business today with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/Tim to get $50 off of your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Brave, the next-generation web browser. I love Brave. And if you haven't heard about it, here is the skinny.

• 2:09:34Tim Ferriss?

  Brave was built by a team of privacy-focused, performance-oriented pioneers of the web. And I do mean pioneers. Brave was co-founded by Brendan Eich, E-I-C-H, and Brian Bondi. Brendan was previously the co-founder of Mozilla Firefox and the creator of JavaScript. Brave now has more than 10 million monthly active users, and I'm one of them. Why? Why would I use Brave? Because Brave gives you unmatched speed, security, and privacy. And when I say unmatched, I mean the difference is hard to believe. And here's why. Every time you download a webpage, when you go to any webpage, you are not just downloading the text and images, you are also downloading web junk. This includes trackers and scripts that run in the background, slowing your downloads

• 2:10:17Tim Ferriss?

  and wasting your time by an average of five seconds per page, while also draining your battery faster and costing you extra data charges. There is a way to have the best experience web can offer, and that is by using Brave. Brave is up to six times faster than other browsers, and it's truly incredible how much faster everything is. I have used Brave, for instance, to get on airplane Wi-Fi when other browsers crash. I have used it to watch YouTube videos when it's just suspended in loading forever on other browsers. It's not subtle at all. There's a huge difference. Other browsers act like a vacuum cleaner for your data. So this is on the security/privacy side. You're being profiled and tracked across the web. So what, you might ask?

• 2:11:01Tim Ferriss?

  Well, data collected about you can be used to manipulate both your decisions and countrywide decisions like elections. And if you want more on that, listen to my episode with Tristan Harris. Brave is a way to protect yourself and remove the surveillance economy. Brave also includes options, which I use quite often, such as Private Window with Tor for those seeking advanced privacy and safety. This browser feels intuitive. It's super easy to use. You can import your bookmarks with one click and all your favorite Chrome extensions are also available with Brave. And it doesn't have to be either or. You can use multiple browsers for different things. Now, listeners of this show, The Tim Ferriss Show, can easily upgrade their browser for free. And all you have to do is go to brave.com/tim.

• 2:11:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's brave.com/tim. I use Brave all the time and I strongly suggest that you at least test it out. So, go to brave.com/tim and give it a shot.