#259: Lessons from 50,000 Interviews: Larry King and Cal Fussman

Cal Fussman (@calfussman http://www.twitter.com/calfussman) is a New York Times bestselling author and a writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, where he is best known for being a primary writer of the "What I've Learned http://www.esquire.com/what-ive-learned-legends/" feature. He has transformed oral history into an art form, conducting probing interviews with a long list of icons who've shaped the last 50 years of world history. I've been trying to get Cal to do his own podcast. Rather than overthinking it, I simply asked Cal to interview a friend who I would also love to have on the podcast: Larry King. This episode is the result of that request. Larry King (@kingsthings https://twitter.com/kingsthings) has been dubbed "The most remarkable talk show host on TV, ever" by TV Guide and "Master of the mic" by Time Magazine. Larry's been described as the Muhammad Ali of the broadcast interview, and he's been inducted into five of the nation's leading broadcasting halls of fame. He's the recipient of the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism, an Emmy, the George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, ten CableACE awards -- the list goes on. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Shopify https://www.shopify.com/tim. With the help of Shopify, many readers of my blog -- first-time business owners -- have ended up making millions of dollars each with their side gigs. Back in 2009, I helped create Shopify's Build a Business https://www.shopify.com/tim, which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. The goal of this competition is to entice would-be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen, and all you have to do to qualify is open a store on Shopify and start selling https://www.shopify.com/tim. Top sellers in each category then have the exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts like Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Seth Godin, Sir Richard Branson, and me a location like Oheka (aka Gatsby's) Castle or Necker Island. Listeners to this show can go to shopify.com/tim https://www.shopify.com/tim to sign up for a free, 30-day trial and get access to video courses that will help you get started -- including How to Quickly Start a Profitable Dropshipping Store with Corey Ferreira and some goodies from me. Check it out at shopify.com/tim today https://www.shopify.com/tim! This podcast is also brought to you by Kettle & Fire https://kettleandfire.co/pages/tim, which makes some of the best bone broth I've ever tasted. It came highly recommended by past podcast guests such as Amelia Boone and Dr. Dom D'Agostino. Kettle & Fire https://kettleandfire.co/pages/tim is the first shelf-stable (i.e. never frozen) bone broth that uses bones from 100% grass-fed, organically raised animals. They use longer cook times (20+ hours), which means more collagen and other nutrients. Visit Kettleandfire.com/tim https://kettleandfire.co/pages/tim and you can receive 20% off your entire order.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Cal Fussman?

  No, this isn't appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Shopify. I have known and loved Shopify just about forever. Back in 2009, when they had something like eight or 10 employees, now they have more than 2,000. I helped them as an advisor to create the Build a Business competition, which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. And many readers of my blog, first time business owners, have ended up making millions and millions of dollars each, many of them as side gigs to their full-time jobs. So, the goal of the Build a Business competition is to get would-be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen. All you have to do is open a store on Shopify and start selling.

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you can join in July or after July to be eligible to win. What does winning mean? You have to be one of the top performers, top sellers in a given category. And the prize, the reward, is an exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts. And in the past, that has happened at places like the Gatsby Castle, where we had Tony Robbins and Damon John and Seth Godin and so on, or on Necker Island, which is Sir Richard Branson's private island. It's nuts and super, super fun. I'm also involved. So, there's a special offer for people listening to this show. Go to Shopify.com/Tim and sign up for a free 30-day trial.

• 1:46Tim Ferriss?

  You will get all sorts of exclusive free video courses to help you along and to get started, including How to Start a Profitable Drop Shipping Business with Corey Ferreira. You will also get some goodies from me. That's all free. It's all exclusive to people who are listening to this podcast. So, check it out. Shopify.com/Tim. And remember to sign up for the free 30-day trial.

• 2:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Kettle and Fire, which makes some of the best bone broth and certainly the most convenient that I've ever found. And I have a big stack of them on my kitchen counter right now. I have one container every morning. And this first came highly recommended to me by past podcast guests, such as Amelia Boone, who's a four-time world champion in World's Toughest Mudder, Spartan Race, et cetera, and Dr. Dominic Agostino, the incredible Hulk of scientific research. You should check him out, too. But there are a few things that make Kettle and Fire special. Number one, they are the first shelf-stable, in other words, never-frozen bone broth that uses bones from 100% grass-fed, organically-raised animals. So you are what

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  you eat ate, if that makes sense. So it's very important that you understand, if you're consuming animal protein, what they consumed. They also use longer cook times, 20-plus hours, which means more collagen and other nutrients. For instance, they contain 19 times more collagen than one of their close competitors. And an independent lab confirmed this. I'll leave the competitor's name out of it, because I don't want to get sued, but that's the case. And it is not frozen. So thanks to many millions of dollars of packaging equipment, their bone broth doesn't require freezing or shipping with dry ice. So like I said, it's just sitting on my kitchen counter in these boxes, and then I can heat them up. They're basically ready to drink. Heat them up on the stove top or in a microwave,

• 3:39Tim Ferriss?

  and you are ready to rock and roll. And you also get a nice payload of glucosamine, glycine, along with the gelatin and everything else that I mentioned. So check it out. I have been hugely pleased with this. And like I said, I've been consuming it every morning. It gives you about, I want to say, 20 grams of protein, which is a nice little slow-carb diet boost, if that's what you're looking for. And I'll typically sip this out of a very large camping coffee mug as I do some writing or journaling. So there you have it. Check it out. It's delicious. I favor the chicken, but each to his own or her own. So check it out, kettleandfire.com/tim, and you can receive 20% off of your entire

• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  order. Take a look, kettleandfire.com/tim.

• 4:32Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is typically my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, whether they come from the worlds of chess, military, business, entertainment, sports, or otherwise. This time around, I'm doing an experiment and I want you to support a friend of mine. And there's not much involved, you just have to listen. Cal Fussman has been on this podcast, @calfussman, F-U-S-S-M-A-N, Fussman, @calfussman on Twitter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and was the writer-at-large for Esquire Magazine, where he was best known for being a primary writer of the "What I Learned" feature. What does this mean?

• 5:14Tim Ferriss?

  He has conducted interviews with icons who've shaped the last 50 to 100 years of world history: Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, the list goes on and on and on. He did his first long-form interview as the interviewee on this podcast. I interviewed him twice. He's an incredible storyteller and I've been trying to get Cal to do his own podcast since we first did that, probably a year and a half, two years ago. So this is what we did for this episode. I said, "Cal, let me take the pressure off rather than overthinking the podcast. Why don't you interview a friend of yours, who I would love to have on the podcast anyway, Larry King?"

• 5:55Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so this episode is Cal Fussman interviewing his friend Larry King. And if you like it, I would love for you to tell Cal, you can just hit him on Twitter, @calfussman, F-U-S-S-M-A-N, or on his website, calfussman.com. But hit him on Twitter and let him know what you think. Encourage him to do a podcast. My first podcast was a hell of a lot rougher than this one that he did with Larry. So Larry King, if you don't know who he is... Is on Twitter at King's Things, or the website you can check out is aura.tv/larrykingnow. He has been dubbed, quote, "The most remarkable talk show host on TV ever," end quote, by TV Guide

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  and "Master of the Mic" by Time Magazine. He has done more than 50,000, that's right, I think I've done a lot with 260, 270 podcast interviews. He's done 50,000 interviews throughout his half-century in broadcasting, including, let me try that in English, including exclusive sit downs with every US president since Gerald Ford. Larry King Live debuted on CNN in 1985 and ran for 25 years. He's been described as the Muhammad Ali of the broadcast interview. And Larry has been inducted into five of the nation's leading broadcasting halls of fame and is a recipient of the Alan H. Newheart Award for Excellence in Journalism and Emmy,

• 7:21Tim Ferriss?

  the George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, 10 Cable Awards. It goes on and on. He is also the author of several books, including his autobiography, My Remarkable Journey. And I mentioned the link just a bit earlier, but he is currently the host of Larry King Now, which is produced on Aura TV. You can find that at aura.tv/larrykingnow. So, without further ado, here is the conversation between Cal Fussman and Larry King. And if you think Cal should do his own podcast, then tell him to not overthink it and to get started. And you can hit him up on Twitter at Cal Fussman. And you can also check out his website at calfussman.com.

• 8:05Tim Ferriss?

  So, here you go. Enjoy, Cal Fussman with Larry King.

• 8:12Cal Fussman?

  All right. Here we go. This is Cal Fussman on his first podcast.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  The Fussman Factor.

• 8:23Cal Fussman?

  Can you believe that, Larry?

• 8:24Speaker 04

  You should name this The Fussman Factor. I'll bet no one has a podcast with a factor, because Bill O'Reilly is out of work.

• 8:33Cal Fussman?

  As you can tell, my first guest is another than Larry King.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  In person.

• 8:41Cal Fussman?

  Sixty years.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Sixty years on the air. Could you believe it, Cal Fussman?

• 8:47Cal Fussman?

  That I can believe. Twenty-five on CNN now, or a dot TV.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  In his sixth year now, already.

• 8:55Cal Fussman?

  Interviewed more than what, sixty thousand people?

• 8:57Speaker 04

  That's the best estimate in sixty, almost sixty-one years. It could be right, because I've worked radio and did five hours of radio a night, many, many times having multiple guests. And, and that was five nights a week, five hours of television every week.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot. Radio, television, reach track interviews. I did show afternoon shows, remotes. Sixty thousand's about right. I've had a, a full career of this.

• 9:28Cal Fussman?

  So this is my first time behind the mic. Thank you, Tim Ferriss, for giving me the opportunity to guest host the podcast.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  Oh, this is not your podcast.

• 9:38Cal Fussman?

  Well, it's my podcast, but Tim is being kind enough to set it off into the atmosphere.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  So this is kind of a Ferris wheel.

• 9:46Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man. Larry, Larry.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that. He wheeled it over to Fussman. Okay, I get it.

• 9:53Cal Fussman?

  Okay, so this is my first. Let's immediately talk about your first time behind the mic.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Well, there's a little backstory. I, I was in love with radio. As a kid, even I remember five, six years old, I would listen to the radio, imitate radio announcers. There would be shows like A Tale Well Calculated to Keep You In Suspense. And I would, at five years old, run into the bathroom and A Tale Well Calculated, The Shadow Knows. And I was fascinated. When I was a teen, my father died when I was nine and a half.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  And that threw a roadblock into a lot of things. I later couldn't go to college. I had to help support my mother. But when I was a teenager, I'd go into Manhattan. We called it the city. We lived in Brooklyn. We called it Manhattan. They said, go into the city. I would visit radio shows that had studio audiences. And I would watch announcers, you know, read off scripts and drop the paper down, look at microphones. And I said, boy, I want to do that. I really want to do that. I cut a bunch of odd jobs after high school. One of which was for the Associated Merchandising Corporation, whose offices were at 1440 Broadway on the third floor. On the 20th floor was WOR Radio. Later, when I had a nationally syndicated show,

• 11:20Speaker 04

  WOR was my New York affiliate. But I would take the elevator up to the 20th floor. And there were elevator operators then, you know. And I would say to the elevator operator, lobby, please, pretending I was an announcer. I fantasized as an announcer. I worked in, I worked for United Apostle Service. I worked for Hearns Department Store. And then I... So you knew this was your destiny? Yeah, well, I knew it was my destiny. I didn't know where I'd start. I'm 22 years old. My mother's now working. I had to help support her. My brother's in college. And I'm walking down the street and a friend, I forgot who it was even,

• 12:05Speaker 04

  introduced me to a guy named James Sermes, who was director of announcers at CBS. And I said to him, I would love to be a radio announcer. What advice do you give me? And he said, well, are you single? I said, yeah. He said, well, try Miami. It's a big market, a lot of stations, no union. And they might have people, older people on the way out and younger people on the way up. And you might be a shot. So my uncle, my, my mother's sister had passed away and my uncle, who owned a tuxedo store in New York, had retired down to Miami Beach. He had a department.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  And he said I could stay with him because I had no money. And I took a train down to Miami. I think I had eleven, twelve dollars in my pocket. And I went to stay with him. I arrived at the train station. First thing I saw was a water fountain that said colored and white, two water fountains. I drank out of the colored fountain. I'd never seen a thing like that growing up in New York, couldn't believe it. I get on a bus to go over to Miami Beach. I'm sitting in the back. The bus driver pulls over and asks me to please move up to the front. The back is for Negroes and the front is for whites. First day in Miami.

• 13:24Cal Fussman?

  Whoa.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  So I said, my father's Negro. I prefer to sit in the back. I mean, it just annoyed me so much. Anyway, I went over and I went around the radio stations and I got, they didn't, they wouldn't listen to me, you know, I was twenty-two years old.

• 13:40Cal Fussman?

  So you're just knocking on doors?

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, no experience, you have any jobs open. I went, WIOD was one of the first stations I went to where I later worked for nineteen years.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  So I went to this small station on Miami Beach, WAHR, went in, very small station.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  The general manager was Marshall Simmons, a nice guy. And he said, I'll give you a voice test. And he put me into a little studio, a microphone like this. And he gave me a news, a news analysis to read. And that's the first time I ever. And I, you know, I read it and he said, well, you have a nice voice and we have a lot of change over here, you know, we're very small, we don't pay a lot. If you want to hang around

• 14:28Speaker 04

  and watch the announcers work and watch how to get the news, if an opening happens, we'll give you a shot.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  So I hung around for maybe three, four weeks. I stayed there day and night. I watched the announcers, I watched them rip and read. I would go out with Sonny Hirsch when he did sports interviews. You know, I just was taking it all in. And one day, a Friday, Marshall Simmons, the general manager, called me and he says, "Well, Tom Bear's leaving." Tom Bear was in an unusual situation. He made fifty-five dollars a week and his alimony was sixty dollars a week. He figured out once that he could not make it on this. He used to live off coconuts, coconuts from trees. So he says, "You start Monday morning.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  You're on from nine to twelve in the morning and in the afternoon you'll do news and sports."

• 15:21Cal Fussman?

  So you got your whole weekend to prepare for this?

• 15:23Speaker 04

  I went crazy. The whole weekend I had, I went back home. I came back to the radio station Saturday morning, started picking out the music I'm gonna play, hung around there all Saturday, Sunday, practiced, went into the little studio. "Good morning, good morning, good morning, I just missed a record. Les Elgar swinging down the lane, I'm so excited." Now, it's Monday morning, May first, nineteen fifty-seven. I get there like six o'clock, I go on at nine. My uncle hugs me and kisses me the best. It was a warm, muggy, sunny Miami Beach morning. Eight forty, First Street, right opposite the police station. I would visit there last year, by the way.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  It's another station now. But anyway, I, I walk in, there's a secretary comes in at about eight and say hello to the all-night guy and stack up my records, I'm ready to play. And then Marshall Simmons says, "Come into my office," like quarter to nine.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  God rest him. Kicked open the door to the control room and said, "This is a communications business, damn it, communicate." He closed the door, I turned down the record, put the mic on and said, "Good morning. My name is Larry King." And that's the first time I've ever said that. Uh, 'cause I've just been given this name and, and let me tell you, this is my first day ever on the air. And all my life, I dreamed of this. When I was five years old, I would imitate announcers. I saw the story I just told you. I told the radio audience that day. My father died, I did this. And I've been ner- I'm nervous. I was very nervous here.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  So, please bear with me. And I played the record and was never nervous again. And later in life, that story I would tell to Arthur Godfrey, Jackie Gleason, others, and they said, "Well, you learn the secret of this business, which is, there's no secret. Be yourself." So what I did that day, not, I wasn't brilliant, I wasn't conceiving this. Carried through me for 60 years, which is, be yourself. If you're, don't be afraid to ask a question. Don't be afraid to sound stupid.

• 19:57Cal Fussman?

  What did that teach you about honesty?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Not just honesty. It's, yeah, it teaches you a lot about being open and honest on the air. But of course, what you do when you do that is you bring the audience into your circumstance. And when you do that, if they like you, you win them. If they don't like you, they're not gonna like you anyway. You can't make them like you. I asked Edward Bennett Williams, the great criminal defense lawyer, once, "What's the number one role of a criminal defense lawyer?" And he said, "Put one juror in my client's shoes."

• 20:36Cal Fussman?

  How would that play out?

• 20:38Speaker 04

  If you could put one client in your client's shoes, he'll never vote guilty. Because he would say, "I would have done that." Alright. So what I did that day was put the audience in my shoes. And I recommend that, I've done a book, How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, I do a course. If you're gonna be your first public speech, you're scared. Get up and tell them you're scared. They would understand, because they'd be scared too. Bring them into your situation. I was on the air when we had the earthquake here. I was on television. CNN. Cameras bouncing around, and I'm broadcasting the earthquake. We're having an earthquake, desks are flying.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  I'm over there, "I hope we're still on, if we're still on."

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Know what I mean? I was in a station alone during a hurricane. And I broadcast the hurricane. For example, we were out of money, there was a cigarette machine, and a candy machine, it was just me and the engineer in the station alone. No one could get there. I broke the machine on the air.

• 21:46Cal Fussman?

  They heard you breaking into the machine?

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I told them my situation, "I got no cigarettes and I got no food." I said, "You wanna hear what a hurricane sounds like?" We were the only station in the city, W R D, with a generator. An emergency generator. We were the only thing on the air. You had to tune to us. So I would go outside, lean the microphone out the window, and said, "Here's what it sounds like." And I broadcast the hurricane. I just ate it up.

• 22:17Cal Fussman?

  This is the power of storytelling, what you're talking about.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, well, the power is, I was always good at that. When I was a kid, they called me Zeke, like, short for Larry Zeiger. I was Zeke the Creek the Mouthpiece. Because I would, as Herbie said, I would go to a two-hour baseball game, and come back, and tell the guys about it, and take two hours. In other words, I was descriptive. I always had the ability, I thought I would be a baseball announcer. I thought that was my goal, to be a sports announcer. Because I knew I could describe things well, in front of me.

• 22:55Cal Fussman?

  Do you think that that's a learned skill, or is that something that you just had inside of you?

• 23:01Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I think... You could teach certain things. You can't teach a good voice. You could probably help. I never had a voice lesson. I had laryngitis maybe once in the 60 years. I've worked, I worked sick. I had a heart attack. I was only off the air 10 days. I think one of the reasons for my longevity is the love of what I do. In other words, I may have an unhappy day at home. Things may not go right. I can't control, but when that light goes on, I control my environment. And in this, how many people get to control their environment?

• 23:44Speaker 04

  So when I hosted a radio show every night or a television show every day or wrote a column, I controlled the question I would ask. I controlled my environment.

• 23:56Cal Fussman?

  You know, it's interesting you say that because when I was thinking of doing the podcast, one of the things that scared me was as a writer all those years, I had control of the content. And I can do an interview, but afterwards I could piece it together to create the story in the best way possible. When you're doing an interview that's being, that's certainly that's live, you don't have that.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 24:25Cal Fussman?

  And so I was gonna have to give that up in order to do this.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  You gotta trust yourself. If you trust yourself, if you say to yourself, I have never said to myself, can I ask this? I asked it. You know, I never, I never doubted myself. I don't have it in social circumstances. I don't have it in life. I don't have command of situations. But I trusted myself because I loved it. If you, if you loved, if you love communicating, a lot of writers aren't good broadcasters.

• 25:07Cal Fussman?

  Yeah, a lot of them are terrible broadcasters.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they're, they're, they're used to the comfort of the control and the typewriter and they write it. If they only said to themselves, you know, I control this too.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  I control it. You do control. You're controlling this podcast right now. Not me, you.

• 25:27Cal Fussman?

  You know, the interesting thing, and maybe we can set this story up together because it reminded me of a story that Al Pacino tells that goes back to The Godfather. I know you're good friends with him and you've heard about his arc through that movie in the very beginning.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  They were gonna throw him off.

• 25:46Cal Fussman?

  Yeah. You want to tell a little about that? And then I'll take it up to a point where he knew that The Godfather was gonna be great. And it speaks to this, what we're talking about.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  I'm trying to remember. I got so many memories.

• 26:03Cal Fussman?

  Okay, so Al started, and he wasn't like, I think, the top draft choice of the studio brass.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  They wanted Robert Redford.

• 26:11Cal Fussman?

  They went along with it. And then in the beginning, he was having a hard time grasping the part. And then I believe it was at a point where they were thinking of getting rid of him. And he did that famous scene where he goes into the bathroom to get the gun.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  Get the gun to kill the cop.

• 26:32Cal Fussman?

  That's right. And he.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Throws the gun away, which was his idea. And he had the confidence. And they kept him.

• 26:41Cal Fussman?

  That's exactly it. And so later on, the movie's proceeding, and they're doing the scene where

• 26:51Cal Fussman?

  The Godfather is gonna be buried. And everybody works through the scene all day. 6 o'clock, everybody's going home. They're all walking away, and Al's about to leave, and he looks over, and he sees Francis Ford Coppola sitting on a gravestone weeping. And he walks over, and Francis is bawling. And he says, Francis, Francis, what's wrong? Are you okay? And Coppola says to him, "They wouldn't give me another setup," meaning the brass wasn't gonna pay for him to be able to shoot it again. And Al knew this guy is gonna make a movie here.

• 27:33Cal Fussman?

  Because if you care that much and you have that kind of passion.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  See, now, I didn't know that story. So you are telling me that story. I knew the story of they were gonna throw him off until he finished that scene. I know Brando, I talked to Brando a lot about it. I know one of the great scenes in The Godfather was totally ad-libbed by Brando. And that's the scene right before he dies. He's sitting with Michael, his son, Al. And he's an old man now. The grandson is playing. That's where he dies, he falls over playing with the grandson. He's sitting and the waiter comes by, and this, the scene was, "Do you want anything else?" And they say, "No." He says, "Both say no."

• 28:24Speaker 04

  And he dismisses the waiter and they keep talking.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  The waiter comes by for the scene and the waiter says, "You want anything else?" And Brando, out of nowhere, says,

• 28:35Speaker 04

  "I'll have some wine." And he looks at Al Pacino and says, "Lately, I drink a lot of wine."

• 28:43Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  And lifted it, but it's so fit. You know, he's old now. He's not the mafia Donny once was. "Lately, I drink a lot of wine."

• 28:55Cal Fussman?

  And that, that, the passion that that must come from, whether you're Al seeing Copeland on the graves, the gravestone, or whether you are in, in that moment and this, these words just come out of you. It, it just seems central to what makes people great.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  You, you hit it a great word, moment. And what I've tried to do the whole career is be in the moment. So I'm always in the moment. That is, if I've interviewed Al Pacino yesterday.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  And Barack Obama tomorrow, but I'm interviewing you today. I'm totally into you today. I'm not thinking about yesterday. And once the show is over, I never think about it. I don't listen to it. I know what I did. I don't have to listen to it. I don't have to watch it.

• 30:02Cal Fussman?

  Wow. That's what I, that's what I need.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  Like, you won't have to listen to this podcast. You remember it. You know what you did. What are you gonna listen for? Unless you wanna judge it. I don't.

• 30:13Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  I never have in my life listened to myself. I know, once I've done it, cuz I know I've been in the moment. I trust. See, the word is trust. I don't trust myself off the air. And that's weird. I made so many mistakes, been in debt, many marriages. Life didn't always work out for me. Tried to be a good father, sometimes was, sometimes wasn't. But on the air, no one ever called me in, in my whole career, to say, what did you say yesterday?

• 30:46Cal Fussman?

  Well, there was one great story from back at first station in Miami. You gotta tell this. This is my favorite Larry King story.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Well, it's a great story. It's a true story. But management never really reamed me out. But, but what happened was, I had just started in radio. I was on the air two months. I'm working nine to 12 on in the afternoons. And I'm loving every second of it. I mean, I can't wait to get there. I can't wait to be on. I just, God, I loved it. And the general manager, Marshall Simmons, called me in and said, Al Fox, the all-night guy, is sick tonight. Would you do the all-night show? And I said, sure. He said, well, you'll be here alone. You know, very small station. We don't have an engineer at night. You just record the meter readings, play music and talk, and you're on from midnight to six.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  And then you'll hang around, you'll be on again at nine, and then get some rest. Oh boy, sure.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Now I'm alone in the station, I'm playing records, and I'm talking, and talking to people, and talking about the time, and the weather, and what's going on in the world, because I'm living every minute of this. And the phone rings, and I pick it up, and I said, "W A H R." And this woman's, I can tell you the truth, Cal, I can almost hear it now. This sexy woman voice says, "I want you."

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Now, remember, I'm 22 years old. I think the pimples on my face are from Hershey bars. I am a Jew in heat. And this girl, no one has ever said to me, "I want you."

• 32:32Speaker 04

  And I suddenly said to myself,

• 32:35Speaker 04

  "There are more than two benefits to being in this business." So I said, "Uh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you want?" She says, "Come over." "Come over my house?" I said, "I'm, uh, I'm on the air." She said, "Well, I get off at six, I'll be over at six." She said, "I only live 10 blocks away, and I have to go to work at six. So it's now or never. Here's my address. Try to come over."

• 33:11Speaker 04

  I got this moral dilemma now. My career, my radio, but no one has ever said, "I want you." So here's what the radio audience heard. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm just filling in tonight. So I'm gonna give you a particularly good time here. I'm gonna play the entire Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall album uninterrupted.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  I had twenty-three minutes, which is all the time I needed. And which is still true to this day. Anyway, I put the record on. We didn't have tapes then, which was the actual record. Zoom out to the car, drive to her house. There's the car, she described it in the driveway. I pull into the house, the light is on. Over the door, I go in, it's a little dark room. And there's this woman in a white negligee, sitting on the couch. She opens her arms, I grab her, I hold her around my cheeks against her cheek. And she's got the radio on. And I'm hearing Harry B. Belafonte, and he says, he's singing Jamaica Farewell.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  And he sings, "Down the way, where the nights, where the nights, where the nights." The record gets stuck. I place the girl back at the end of the couch. Run out to my car, Jewish masochism. I keep the radio on, all the way driving to the station. "Where the nights, where the nights, where the nights." I get in, all the lights are going, flashing from people calling in. I'm totally embarrassed. I'm picking up, I'm apologizing to people. And the last caller was an older Jewish man. And I just said, "Uh, WHR, good morning." And all I hear was, "Where the nights, where the nights, where the nights." I'm going crazy with where the nights.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  And I said, "Gee, I'm sorry, why didn't you just change the station?" And he said, "I'm an invalid. And I'm in bed, and a nurse takes care of me. She leaves at night, she sets it to your station. The radio's up on the bureau, I can't reach it. I'm stuck." I said, "Gee, can I do anything for you?" He says, "Yeah, play Havana Gila." But I didn't get, I didn't get fired for that. Another thing that I almost got fired, and this was, I don't know if you even know this story, Cal. I had to make a living, so I was making like sixty dollars a week from the radio station. And I was doing it, I first started on television, I was making a hundred from that.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  And I was also the announcer at the dog track. There goes Rusty, Miami Beach Dog Track. It was right near Joe's Stonecrabs. I used to walk in, look into Joe's Stonecrabs window and say, "Wonder if I could ever eat there." Anyway.

• 36:00Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  I was doing three jobs. And this was the New Year's Eve. So I taped a television show, did my radio show, and did the dog track. Now, the next morning, I'm on. I think it was on that shift, I was on eight to twelve, it was eight to eleven, whatever it was. So I'm dead tired, and it's New Year's morning. No one at the station, and there's a big, it's a new station, uh, WKAT. And there's big window doors leading in where you could look up and see the announcer in the station. And I'm so tired, and I'm just playing music and talking, and, "Oh, my God, please."

• 36:44Speaker 04

  And nine o'clock, Don McNeil and the Breakfast Club goes on. That's a show from Chicago. It was an hour every day syndicated. "Good morning, breakfast lovers, and howdy do ya." At the nine thirty point in that show, Don McNeil would say, "We'll be back in thirty seconds, this is the ABC Radio Network." And all I had to do was turn off his, that's, that mic, turn on my mic, and say, "This is WKAT, the big cat in Miami Beach." And switch that switch back on and go back to Chicago and turn mine off. But what I did was, he said, "This is the ABC Radio Network."

• 37:26Speaker 04

  And I turned him off, turned my mic on, and fell asleep.

• 37:31Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Now, I'm the only one in the station, and I'm snoring. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I guess. Well, anyway, all people at home here is, "Mmm, mmm." Right? So they panic. Somebody called the Miami Beach Police Department, and the fire department comes. They look in the window, and they see a guy slumped against the microphone.

• 37:56Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  And they figure, "I'm dead." So they take hatchets and break their way in through the window. And as they break all the hatchets in, I wake up. And you hear the fire, now you're listening on the radio, and the firemen are going, "Are you okay, sir, what is it?" I go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell's going on?" And all of this is on the air. And I look up and it's like a quarter to ten, I said, "Now back to the Breakfast Club."

• 38:22Speaker 04

  With Don McNeil.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  And the general manager of the station, Frank Katzen time, called me in.

• 38:31Cal Fussman?

  Did you think you were gonna get fired?

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Think, all he said was, "I know you're glib, and I know you're good, we like your work, but

• 38:40Speaker 04

  give me any reason why I shouldn't fire you." Any reason. If it's within reason, I'll accept it, because I like you.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  But I gotta fire you, by all rules of radio and ethics, I gotta fire you. I gotta fire. I said to him, "Okay, here's what I was doing." I was attempting to check the reaction of the Miami Beach Fire and Rescue Department. How quickly can they come to an emergency? They get there pretty fast. We could have a good report on this, I'll do a little special. And he said, "You son of a bitch."

• 39:23Cal Fussman?

  Get outta here!

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Get outta here, but I had to pay for the window. He took out ten dollars a week out of my salary till the window was paid for.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  But that, but those occurrences, and with the lady, uh, nothing ever happened, because management was asleep. I never got in trouble for something I said. I never cursed on the air. I never said something that would bring me into repute, you know, I just was, I loved the radio, and then now, I'm on the internet. And people curse on the internet. I've had guests say the F-word.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  I still can't.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  I can't bring myself to do it because I'm so cognizant of the microphone and the old rules.

• 40:18Cal Fussman?

  Well, first thing, are we hearing Biscuit the dog snoring?

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's fine. My dog.

• 40:25Cal Fussman?

  I'm just taking Larry's advice here on just describing what's going on, but.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Biscuit snores. You could take him and put him in another room. He don't care. He just. He's eight years old now. He's just an old dog. That adds to the, see?

• 40:40Cal Fussman?

  See, you're right.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Here's the beauty of the podcast.

• 40:42Cal Fussman?

  That's right. Now they know Biscuit.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Right. Now, in the old days, you would have been signaling the guy, you try to get him to.

• 40:51Cal Fussman?

  Cut it, cut it, cut it.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  Cut that, cut that, watch that, don't do that.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  What the hell?

• 41:00Cal Fussman?

  Biscuit the dog.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  It was scary. If you heard the sound, if you didn't hear it, okay, that's what he cut for. You did hear it, it's cute.

• 41:07Cal Fussman?

  And Tim's got a dog Molly, who he often has on his podcast and is a, always a great audience. One of the things about Tim's audience is they want to know how to be better in all aspects of life. What would you, what would you say, let's talk a little about curiosity, about speaking, listening, empathy.

• 41:32Cal Fussman?

  You are one of the most curious people I've ever met. Is that something that is ingrained? Or is it something that everybody has, but somehow you never lost?

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Good question, Cal. That's why this, the Fussman Factor podcast will be a success.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Truthfully, I don't, I don't know. I was always curious. I remember as an eight-year-old, nine-year-old, I'd get on a bus and ask the bus driver, why you want to drive a bus? My curiosity was endless. So it lent me into a broadcast booth that worked for me. That worked for me. My curiosity worked for me. I never got good grades in school except in things with oral projects like English, where I could ask questions of the teacher. So I always had that curiosity and managed to find a workplace that brought it to me. I don't know the answer to that, but I could give you rules.

• 42:42Cal Fussman?

  Sure.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  You know, like which is, listen, listening is as important as what you're asking. So don't worry about your next question. Now, that's risk-taking, but don't worry about your next question.

• 42:57Cal Fussman?

  Often you see, when people are in conversation, you can almost look at somebody carefully and see they're thinking about what they're gonna say next.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  Well, now that is natural. I react. You can't tell someone just starting. So someone just starting, if it's comfortable to you to make little notes to yourself, so you have a bridge to fall back on, do it. I mean, you wanna be good, but eventually get to be where you don't need those notes. Your curiosity works for you. And sometimes, the simplest question is the best. Like when we had the first war Kuwait, when we went into Iraq, we didn't go to Baghdad.

• 43:45Cal Fussman?

  That's a storm, right.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  We would have generals on every night and reporters, and I would hear people at other stations, you know, this happened today and this happened. My first question was, what happened today? Okay, now I'm getting their perspective of what happened today. Now, based on their answer, I'll have to have another question, and I would, whatever the answer was. Even if it was, well, today the troops advanced 10 miles into the enemy territory, right? That's the answer.

• 44:23Cal Fussman?

  Okay.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  Did that surprise you?

• 44:25Cal Fussman?

  There you go.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Here we go, go right with it. Why did they do that?

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Do you trust the information that your superiors give you? There's so many things. Like, I watched interviews today, they're nuts. I mean, people are terrible. Terrible. Especially after sporting events.

• 44:46Cal Fussman?

  What's the worst things that you've seen?

• 44:48Speaker 04

  Well, I see it every day. We have just seen a sporting event.

• 44:52Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  A guy just got his first major league homerun to win the game. One stupid question I saw was, "This was your first major league game, it was the ninth inning, the count was two and one, and you hit that homerun to right field." And they put the mic in front of him. What's the question? There's no question.

• 45:18Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  Or, second dumbest question. "You got a homerun and you're first at bat. What does it feel like?" Now, wait a minute. What if he's gonna answer terrible? I didn't wanna hit a homerun. I wanted a strikeout. I would go other areas, like, "When you played Little League, what were some of your baseball dreams?" And he might say, "To play in my first game, did you ever visualize hitting a homerun? First of all, what were you thinking when you were on deck?"

• 46:02Speaker 04

  We have parents here.

• 46:05Cal Fussman?

  And not only these unexpected questions, but they're easily answered. Yes, my parents were here. No, they weren't.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  No, but, and then, you know, feeling with them, get together, you can talk to them. In other words, put yourself, how, it's a lot of, "How would you be in that situation?" Except, you don't have to refer to yourself. You don't have to say, "I would have done." I don't use the word "I." I ask questions because I'm an observer. I'm present at the creation. I'm, I'm, I like to be there. Again, it's the moment. I like to be in the moment.

• 46:44Cal Fussman?

  Can what you do be used by anybody in, in their office?

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I would guess so. I do a course based on the book, How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. I've had some successful people tell me that the book helped them in their life. It's still in print. I saw it in Norway. Yes, you can, you, if, because in a communicating world, now, the big difference today is with modern technology, probably easier today, you could text. So people text today, which is, which is sad to me. So you don't need the art of phrasing. You don't need to use your voice well.

• 47:28Cal Fussman?

  What, do we lose something? You, you see people with their cell phones in their hands, looking down.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  Terrible.

• 47:34Cal Fussman?

  What do we lose when we no longer have eye contact with people?

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Intimacy. That's what I want in every show I do. An intimate relationship with the guest. If I can establish that, like Sinatra, I've got a letter here. Sinatra wrote to me after his last television interview. You make the camera disappear. Intimacy, trust. If the guest will trust you, you're home. Because they know you're sincerely interested in them. And therefore, you could go anywhere. You can go anywhere, depend how you phrase the question, how you feel.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  But if you can put yourself in their shoes and get their emotion. It's a good tip. Nobody thinks they're bad. Nobody. Hitler didn't comb his hair in the morning and say, "I am an evil person. I am doing good for my country. I'm a Jew, I'm doing good." So, if you're gonna interview Hitler, the stupidest first question would be, "Why'd you invade Poland?" The best kind of first question is, if I were interviewing Osama bin Laden, the stupidest first question would be, "Why did you kill 3,000 people

• 49:03Speaker 04

  on that September day in New York?" I would have asked him, "You grew up in the richest family in Saudi Arabia. Why'd you leave?"

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Now, that gets him to think about what he was, and he didn't think about him, so why he left that day. But now- You've made him curious about himself. Right, but he also knows I'm sincerely curious about him. I have made no judgment in that question.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  I don't bring an agenda. What do we want? We want to learn. All we want is information. Wouldn't you want to know the whys of Osama bin Laden? Wouldn't that help you understand when you're dealing with the Osama bin Ladens of the future?

• 49:54Speaker 04

  Why do you want to know? I mean, they- But this- All we want is infor- I remember once I had this great guy on, Swami Satchidananda, never forgot him, from India.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  And he was so calm about everything. I mean, he was the kind of guy, he says, I remember, he said, "When you wake up in the morning, when you open your eyes, did you deserve that day? Whether you believe in God or whatever, did Larry, did the Swami deserve this day? You woke up, it's a gift. You don't know where it came from. It's a gift, the gift of life, the gift you woke up. So what if it's raining? You've got the gift of the day.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  So what if the toast is burnt? Make more toast. You got the gift.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  I said to him, "Swami, what if I told you I'll pick you up tomorrow at 3 o'clock, take you to the airport, and I don't show?

• 51:00Speaker 04

  What would you do?

• 51:02Speaker 04

  I would call you and say, 'Larry, how are you? I know something terrible must have happened, because you weren't there. The shoe is on your foot.'" Then I asked him the world's greatest question. "Okay, Swami," I was being cute. "You come home, walk up into your bedroom, and your wife is in bed with another guy."

• 51:27Speaker 04

  And he said to me, "Well, what would you do?" And I said, "I would scream and yell, and that's right, that's what everyone would do, scream and yell, and the guy would run out, and the woman would be screaming, and pandemonium." But, what do you want in that situation?

• 51:44Cal Fussman?

  Information.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  Information! That was the best way to get it. Okay, this is very embarrassing, you two. I'm gonna go down and make some tea. Why don't the both of you come down to breakfast, then? Let's talk about this. Who owns that moment?

• 52:01Cal Fussman?

  You're in control.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Now, that's the hardest thing to do. But basically, that's what I would do on the air.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  "Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?" My curiosity would be there, no matter what the situation.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  And eventually, I would be asking Osama bin Laden, "Why did he send those people out that day in September?"

• 52:25Cal Fussman?

  You know, the more you're talking, the more I'm seeing the power of control in questions.

• 52:34Speaker 04

  It's all control. For most of my life in this great business,

• 52:41Speaker 04

  I have controlled my environment when working. And for a lot of time, when I did my national radio show, I did the first national network show, I was on from midnight to five. I was on CNN from nine to ten. I wrote a weekly column in USA Today. When I was writing the column, when I was on the radio for five hours, and when I was on television for the hour, I controlled all of that.

• 53:10Cal Fussman?

  So people could actually use what you were doing to gain a better control over their own lives, even if it's not in broadcasting?

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:21Cal Fussman?

  Just to use the question, like Swami said?

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. You could use it in... Unfortunately, I don't do as well in the personal life. You know, everyone has their... You know, a lot of comedians are very unhappy people.

• 53:35Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  And they see things funny.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  For an escape from their own reality. So I, I do very well in this circumstance, sitting here talking to you. But I couldn't hang a picture well. I, the nail, I've hit my thumb. I would, I'm not, I'm not a great, I try to be a good driver, not a great driver. You know what I mean? In other words, no one's perfect.

• 54:08Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 54:09Speaker 04

  But in areas where you can, especially in the work environment, where you can control something. Yeah, I could teach you how to do it.

• 54:17Cal Fussman?

  What about empathy? Because that seems to be a quality that you have. You can listen to anybody and you're making them feel.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  I'm not judgmental.

• 54:28Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  That I learned from broadcasting. What, what am I, what am I gonna judge? I'm there to learn. Let the audience, see, the audience makes up its own mind. I'm a conduit from me to you. I learn and through me you learn. But I don't make a judgment call, in other words, I'm not the kind of broadcaster who argues with the guest. It shows not my style. I am passionate politically, off the air, I have my, but I felt at best as a broadcaster that my role was as a journalist was to give you more. When you sat, at the end of an hour, you knew more than you did the hour before.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  When there's arguing, you don't learn. I don't like broadcasts where the guy just stands on a soapbox and talks for an hour.

• 55:24Cal Fussman?

  Well, there doesn't seem to be any empathy on TV anymore.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  That's, that's gone. The day of the long form interview is kind of gone. It's sad.

• 55:34Cal Fussman?

  Actually, it seems like the podcast is one way of trying to learn that.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  That's the last venue of the long form interview. This could not occur on television today. What you're doing right now could not occur. For a radio station would be rare. Because today, people want eat it up, speed it up, get it out, get it up. It's a spit it out business. Get it up, get it out. Can't get enough? Get right through it. Today, the rules are, you do an interview show today, the guest should be on tops 10 minutes. You don't want a half-hour interview today. They're gonna tune out because they've got 500 channels. And I think technology has added...

• 56:18Cal Fussman?

  What are we losing?

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Knowledge.

• 56:23Cal Fussman?

  So we're not getting the information? And like, when you look at everything that's going on politically, it seems like we're not getting any depth anymore.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  That's why this New York Times that I have right here is my bible. I learn more from it every day than I get from all of cable television. And they've got cameras and the New York Times doesn't. But they can write an in-depth article that continues on page 46. And I get more out of it. The sad thing is that newspapers have gone away.

• 57:00Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  That's all part of... You know, technology brings improvements, and they bring bad things too. When I spoke in Norway a couple of weeks ago, and someone was asking me about technology, here's the best and the worst thing about it. We know that somewhere in the world today, a guy is working on a cure for cancer. That's brilliant scientists. Another guy is writing a great play. And another guy is inventing a new kind of airplane that will exceed the speed of sound.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  And another guy is planning how to build a nuclear weapon that you can hide in your hands and get on a plane. He's doing that too.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  So the guy who's curing cancer, he's gonna succeed. But the guy with the little bomb, he's gonna succeed too. So this is what you face as we advance as a culture. We advance. Right? Remember the small grocer got overtaken? I like the small grocer. I like the guy who took the little pencil and added up on the paper bag and took the clipper and got the toilet paper down from the top of the rack. That's gone.

• 58:31Cal Fussman?

  The interesting thing to me, though, is that it seems like questions are becoming more important now because in this age of technology, you can like Google any answer. A six-year-old can Google any answer to any question in four seconds. But the right question? No. That six-year-old may not be able to come up with it.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  Ask more. Go through a day and see how many people ask questions rather than say things. My motto, my broadcast motto all my life was, "I never learned anything when I was talking."

• 59:14Cal Fussman?

  And that's interesting because you see TV and the idea is just to talk over somebody to get your point.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  At times you have to.

• 59:22Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  If I'm speaking, if you speak as you do, and I'm making comedy in front of a group, of course, I'm not learning anything.

• 59:29Cal Fussman?

  Right, right.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  But I'm entertaining.

• 59:31Cal Fussman?

  Exactly.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  That's different. You can entertain. If I'm telling a joke, I know the end of the joke. So I'm not learning anything, but I'm providing entertainment. If I'm making a speech, I'm not learning anything, but I'm providing knowledge. But if I'm a questioner, I never learned anything when I was talking. If I'm asking a question of you, it better be a question, not a statement, not a history lesson. Ask the question. There's so many people, I want to yell sometime, is, "What's the question?"

• 1:00:09Cal Fussman?

  I hear what you're saying. Is there like advice that you would give young people to better ask questions? Like, I'll sit down before an interview and I'll write out maybe 200 questions I want to ask.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  That's what works for you. Do what works for you. Never do what doesn't work for you. So if Larry King says, "Don't write out questions in advance," that would be stupid for me to say. I don't do it. I can't tell you what to do. Whatever is your comfort zone.

• 1:00:44Cal Fussman?

  But is there something about just the foundation of... I give these speeches, "Change your questions, change your life," to look at questions a different way, to look at the power in them. Step aside from where you are, look at yourself, and see how a different question could change your position. Is this something that you have done, or you're just constantly in the moment?

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  I never sat down and figured it out. I'm just in the moment. I don't... I didn't do self-analysis. I'm in the moment. I just... But I know that listening is as important as asking. Listening is as important as what you ask, because the follow-up is. You have to be in the moment.

• 1:01:43Cal Fussman?

  Is there advice, is there ways for people to improve their listening?

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  I guess, well, in this modern age of technology where you have instant information and where you can text people, "Listen" is a weird word. Listen. Think about the word "listen." What are you listening to today? You're reading stuff off your little iPhone?

• 1:02:16Cal Fussman?

  And often, people have their ears plugged to take in what they want to hear, so they're pushing away the outside.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  I'll tell you often, people, how people don't listen. We could test... I did this with Jim Bishop one day in Miami. He did a call on this.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  When you see someone that you know or pass on the street, how you doing? Right? Say, "I've got brain cancer." "How's the wife?"

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  If they don't listen.

• 1:02:45Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  "How you doing?" They don't wanna know how you doing. Don't stop them. "How am I doing?" I'll tell you how I'm doing. The bank called me today. The second mortgage payment. "You wanna know how I'm doing? Sit down, I'll tell you how I'm doing."

• 1:02:59Cal Fussman?

  Is there a way to break through that sort of cocktail party banter that means nothing?

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  Now, this I don't know the answer to. I have always had people respond to me.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  I've worked with women.

• 1:03:17Cal Fussman?

  So you just get genuine, sincere responses?

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. And as George Burns said, "If you can fake that, you gotta fake."

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  But I have always known

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  in interview situations, I've always known that I can get people to respond to me. I don't know, so I could use humor. But they know

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  that I really wanna know what they're thinking and why they did what they did. And people appreciate that. I don't know anybody that doesn't like to talk about what they do.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Except Brando, who didn't like to talk about acting.

• 1:04:00Cal Fussman?

  But that can be useful to anybody in any situation, in the office.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:04:06Cal Fussman?

  Just by looking into somebody and being...

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  And being sincere and zeroing in.

• 1:04:12Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  There's two questions, you're asking the same question. "Why'd you do that?" Or, "Why'd you do that?"

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  You're gonna get a better answer with the second.

• 1:04:22Cal Fussman?

  Right. I was doing some reading and they say that when you take in a question, 10% is only the words, 30% is the tone of voice, what you just illustrated.

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  Tone is very important, which you don't get with your iPhone.

• 1:04:36Cal Fussman?

  And 60% is the body language behind that question.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  Which you don't get with your iPhone.

• 1:04:41Cal Fussman?

  Yeah. And so, I guess this is something people can work on if they want to, to learn how to better communicate.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, we're trying all the time. How to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere, how to be better. We all wanna do. Better, you're always, you're always learning. And you always accept the fact that you're still learning.

• 1:05:04Cal Fussman?

  Well, if you're in sales, you gotta connect with people. If you're a leader of a company, you gotta connect with people. And basically, they're, they can use the same skills that you're using.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Of course. Anyone could use them. Presidents of countries can use them.

• 1:05:21Cal Fussman?

  I got some questions from Tim that he sent over.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  Okay, this is the Ferris wheel question.

• 1:05:27Cal Fussman?

  This is the Ferris wheel question.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  We've been going a long time here, Cal.

• 1:05:31Cal Fussman?

  All right, didn't feel that way to me.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  Well, we've been over an hour. I don't want to break it to you, Cal, but you're starting to get annoying. You know, you know, I want to tell your listeners, this is gonna be a great podcast. But there, there does hit a point with the Fussman factor where he gets annoying. And we're very close to that point now. Yes, what questions do the Ferris wheel want?

• 1:05:54Cal Fussman?

  This is from Tim. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why?

• 1:06:01Speaker 04

  A gigantic billboard anywhere. Let me think, good question, Tim. Slow down. Excavation point, or ban all guns.

• 1:06:18Cal Fussman?

  There you go. I was thinking the John Wooden line when you said, "Slow down." He said, "Be quick, but don't hurry." That's pretty good aphorism. What is the book, Tim asks, you've been given most as a gift and why?

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  I guess through life is Catcher in the Rye. I love that book. I read it at four different times in my life. Teenager, later.

• 1:06:45Cal Fussman?

  Does it change?

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, get different meaning from it. I get different reactions. For example, my son Chance, who's 18, hated Holden Caulfield. Thought he was a pompous, pompous spoiled brat. I never saw him that way. Didn't find him funny. That's what, interesting the way kids, that perspective. And that's, that's good writing. If you can react hostilely to him.

• 1:07:15Cal Fussman?

  Yeah, and then fifty years from now, he may have a very different look at it.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Like, for example, you read Dickens, "I like Scrooge." He wasn't a bad guy, Scrooge. Look at it this way. Crash it. He's a big complainer. He's a whiner. Come home, we got a sun-tinted tin. Take care of him. Stop with the crap. Do your work. Look at this dog.

• 1:07:39Cal Fussman?

  Baskett. Can you name one to three books that have massively impacted your life?

• 1:07:44Speaker 04

  Well, Catching the Eye would be one. A Quiet Hero, Life of Luke Garrig. And then most of the books I'm currently reading, Richard Nixon's biography is terrific, by John Farrell. I'm into their moment, or what I'm doing now.

• 1:08:01Cal Fussman?

  Okay. You know, you read like six books at once.

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  I read, what I try to do is a novel and true, nonfiction. And I can read those two at once. But I got three going now.

• 1:08:18Cal Fussman?

  What's the third?

• 1:08:19Speaker 04

  I got the Richard Nixon book, and I got Alec Baldwin's memoir, and...

• 1:08:25Cal Fussman?

  Oh, you were reading the Frankel...

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  I finished Al Franken's book, fantastic. Funny, on-the-mark, funny. And then I'm reading Shattered, The Campaign of Hillary Clinton.

• 1:08:39Cal Fussman?

  Pretty good title. In the last five years, what new belief or behavior has most improved your life? You have new beliefs in the last five years?

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  No, but the more I exist, the less I believe in something out there. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in... I don't believe in life after death. Most people get older and they find some belief. I get older and find less. I have no, this is it.

• 1:09:12Cal Fussman?

  You're just in the moment.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  Thing I fear the most is, is death. Because I can't imagine not existing. That drives me bonkers.

• 1:09:27Cal Fussman?

  We're talking about this at breakfast, that we're all energy.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know what you mean by that. We're all energy.

• 1:09:34Cal Fussman?

  That's what we are, we're energy.

• 1:09:38Cal Fussman?

  And so you're still gonna be floating around somehow.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  I'm floating around, do I know where I am?

• 1:09:45Cal Fussman?

  Well, you know, you're not gonna know it. Yeah, well, I can't make any guarantees on that. But I have a feeling that you never go away. And certainly you will be around for all of us who remember you. What about memories?

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, memory, you'll have tapes of me. I can exist. But I'm not there, you understand?

• 1:10:10Cal Fussman?

  Okay.

• 1:10:10Speaker 04

  Fussman, I don't exist. And that bugs me, that not exist. For example, who's gonna be the next president? Who's gonna win the pennant? Who's, who's, see, the, the Y person fears death.

• 1:10:24Cal Fussman?

  Because they're not gonna know the answers.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  It's the one thing. You know, like, my, I married into a family they all believe. The women's, they believe. I'm going somewhere else. And I say to them, you got no, you can't lose. You're in a win-win. If you die and you go somewhere else, you were right. If you don't, you don't know it. They can't lose.

• 1:10:48Cal Fussman?

  It's good strategy.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  Well, my strategy, it don't work for me. Cause I can't accept the fact. There's no heaven.

• 1:10:54Cal Fussman?

  You need a new strategy.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  There's no other plane. I'm not going to some planet.

• 1:10:58Cal Fussman?

  Stay here. What purchase of a hundred dollars or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or recent memory?

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Where did you come up with that question? A hundred dollars or less?

• 1:11:14Cal Fussman?

  Tim, I don't know, where'd you come up with that question?

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  That's a Ferris wheel. That's the kind of thing, if you're stuck on a Ferris wheel, you think of things like that. Ferris, if I'm stuck at the top of a Ferris, Ferris wheel, first, I'm panicked. I'm Jewish. It's never gonna start again, and I'm stuck on a Ferris wheel.

• 1:11:32Cal Fussman?

  So you got less than a hundred dollars.

• 1:11:34Speaker 04

  Less than a hundred dollars. Did I spend less than a hundred dollars on? That what? That did what?

• 1:11:39Cal Fussman?

  It had a positive impact on your life.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  As a child, it was a yo-yo. Because I never could master the yo-yo. It drove me crazy. And the fact that I couldn't master it drove me crazy. So I don't know why, I just thought it out.

• 1:11:55Cal Fussman?

  Well, it probably been like a Dodger ticket when you were a kid.

• 1:11:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I, yeah.

• 1:11:59Cal Fussman?

  Now they're more than a hundred bucks.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  When I was a kid, one of the biggest thrills of my life was a ticket to Ebbetsfield. I'd go down to Montague Street and buy reserved seats when you could afford them. Dollar seventy-five. Oh, and to hold those tickets and look at them. Now they don't know it's a piece of paper. You hand it in, you put it in your phone.

• 1:12:20Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  I don't do that. When I go to the airport, I want a boarding pass. And I'd like it to be thick, not paper. I don't trust going to the airport without a boarding pass. You can't get them. You can get a piece of paper. I'm very pissed. You got me very angry, Fussman.

• 1:12:38Cal Fussman?

  First annoyed, now angry. Okay, how about, what advice would you give to a college senior about to enter the real world? And what advice would you give a smart, aggressive thirty-year-old?

• 1:12:52Speaker 04

  No, to a college senior, if you have a goal, don't give up. If you want to do something in life and someone can tell you you can't do it, and if you believe that, then you can't do it. If you think you can do it, you can do it.

• 1:13:07Cal Fussman?

  That's great. That's actually great advice.

• 1:13:10Speaker 04

  If you think, and if you think you can't do it, you can't do it.

• 1:13:13Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 04

  And if you can do it, but you think you can't, you can't.

• 1:13:18Cal Fussman?

  You're cooked.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  You gotta think you can do it.

• 1:13:21Cal Fussman?

  What about a thirty-year-old?

• 1:13:22Speaker 04

  A thirty-year-old is almost the same thing. Thirty-year-old, you're at that bridge. That's why I love athletes. Athletes' lives, careers, and when most of ours begin. So they face winning and losing. They face the final score. They face cheering that stops. We don't have that. No one else in life has that. Most of our careers kick off around thirty-five, forty, and that's when they're done.

• 1:13:54Speaker 04

  And also to get paid for something that they did when I was seven years old and did it for more hours.

• 1:14:00Cal Fussman?

  How has a failure, or a parent failure, set you up for later success? You have a favorite failure?

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  Well, you learn from, you learn from loss. You learn a lot more from losing than from winning.

• 1:14:13Cal Fussman?

  Well, probably the two stories you told about Jamaica farewell and then falling asleep.

• 1:14:18Speaker 04

  I've had other failures too. Failure in marriage, wasn't good at it. That's because my job came first. See, again, my love for my broadcasting has hindered me in other areas.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  You know, because I'm driven by that.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  CNN and Mutual Radio were the number one things in my life, number one.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Children were better, but I was, I was a better worker than a father. I'm a better father now. Old age has, see, but the weird thing about old age, Fussman, for the Fussman factor, is I'm 83, but I'm 17. In other words, I know I'm 83 from the pains and the little tribulations of life, but I'm 17. For example, I, you know what keeps me going? I wonder what I want to do when I grow up. I like being called promising.

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  In other words, when I get a call like, "You've just been awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Emmys," which I got six years ago, lifetime achievement.

• 1:15:36Cal Fussman?

  That probably can make you mad.

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  Wonderful thrill, but at the same time, is that it? What do you mean? You mean it's over? Over?

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  You know, I look at my trophy room, and I have a trophy room right next door to this room. It's got all the accolades over the years and the awards. I go in there, it's my ego room. But I sit in there and I say to myself, "Who the hell did this? Who the hell?" I look around at pictures and people at me with people. "Who the hell? How the hell? How the hell did I do this?" You know, and it's just, you know, Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher, Nobel Prize winner, mathematician, was ninety-five years old. And they had a dinner party, and someone said, "Dr.

• 1:16:31Speaker 04

  Russell? You're ninety-five. Great mathematician, great writer, Nobel Prize. What do you know? What do you know?" And he said, "The only thing I know is that I don't know." And if I had to sum up everything about human nature, about war, about life, about love, about the meaning of things, I don't know. I've had a lifetime of discovery, I've learned a lot of things, but on the basic things of life, I don't know.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  I don't know about women, I don't know about someone looking after me, I don't know about things up there, I don't know. I guess I'm an agnostic, but I just can't make that leap. I can't make the leap of faith. It's too big a leap. And when people have it, there's a sense of envy, but at the same time, I don't mean to put them down, but a sense that they need a crutch. I don't have a crutch.

• 1:17:39Cal Fussman?

  Got a few more questions here from Tim. What are bad recommendations you hear in your area of expertise?

• 1:17:47Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. I've never heard people give bad recommendations. I mean, like, you know, a bad recommendation would be...

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  You don't need college. I think today you do. In my day, you didn't. Now you do. World is too competitive.

• 1:18:13Cal Fussman?

  What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

• 1:18:17Speaker 04

  An unusual habit? I have a habit of, um, little thought habits.

• 1:18:27Speaker 04

  I try to total up words in a phrase or a sentence and then divide it to see if I get an even number. Like, uh, true love divided by two is four. There's four words in each thing. True love is white four and four.

• 1:18:50Cal Fussman?

  Oh, the letters. I see what you're saying.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  So I don't want an odd number. I want an even number. But I do that a lot in my head.

• 1:18:58Cal Fussman?

  You're doing it while you're asking questions?

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  So, no, no, no. I try not to get distracted.

• 1:19:02Cal Fussman?

  Okay. Yeah, that'd be like having a calculator going off.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:19:07Cal Fussman?

  But that's okay. That is unusual.

• 1:19:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, everyone has a little unusual thing. For example, my pills, I take a lot of prescription pills and a lot of vitamins and have to be in order in the closet. And when I lay them out for the next day, I have to take them out in the same order. That's a rule.

• 1:19:36Cal Fussman?

  Well, that's control and organization. A lot of what we're talking about is about control.

• 1:19:41Speaker 04

  I'm very organized. And I hate, and I hate is a bad word. Disorganized people annoy me. Like people who... I told my wife this morning. We're having dinner at Wolfgang's tonight. You wanna come over, come over. Greg has come. I don't know who's coming. But we're having dinner at Wolfgang's tonight. Two hours later, I said to her, "Oh, we're going at 7:30. Where are we going?" "Wolfgang's." She said, "I don't listen to details like that." "You what?"

• 1:20:18Cal Fussman?

  Oh, you're in the moment. You're in the moment.

• 1:20:20Speaker 04

  She's not in any moment. Like, she doesn't know. She's got a plane tomorrow. She has no idea what time the plane's going.

• 1:20:29Cal Fussman?

  Well, I think there's a lot of people like that.

• 1:20:31Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:20:32Cal Fussman?

  What time?

• 1:20:33Speaker 04

  My plane's going a week from Friday.

• 1:20:35Cal Fussman?

  I got it. In the last five years, this is a good question, Tim. Have you become better at saying no to distractions, invitations, etc.?

• 1:20:45Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:20:46Cal Fussman?

  No, he is not. Larry cannot say no.

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  The hardest word in the English language is no, and that's where people with texts can get away with it.

• 1:20:55Cal Fussman?

  Because it's easy to type, no.

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  Easy to type, no.

• 1:21:00Cal Fussman?

  Why can't you say no?

• 1:21:04Speaker 04

  I guess it's, I don't like rejection, and I therefore don't like to reject others.

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  I know it's stupid, because eventually you cancel something. Because you don't want to disappoint them initially.

• 1:21:18Cal Fussman?

  So five people can ask you to go out to dinner on Wednesday night.

• 1:21:21Speaker 04

  Too much in the moment. So I have to give a satisfactory answer to each. It could drive you crazy.

• 1:21:27Cal Fussman?

  And then Wednesday night comes.

• 1:21:29Speaker 04

  Doesn't work off the air. A lot of things that work professionally.

• 1:21:34Cal Fussman?

  Don't work off the air.

• 1:21:35Speaker 04

  Don't work off the air.

• 1:21:38Cal Fussman?

  All right, what is the best or most worthwhile investment you've made? Could be in money, time, energy.

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  No, in my career.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  That paid off the most. The time I invested, the jobs I took, working radio, working the dog track, all those little things.

• 1:22:03Cal Fussman?

  I'm really getting also a sense of discipline, like.

• 1:22:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, in work ethic.

• 1:22:09Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 1:22:09Speaker 04

  Not in life ethic. Never handled money well. Still don't. I don't handle my own money.

• 1:22:17Speaker 04

  I keep a kind of a small checking account, but I have accountants in Boston that do everything. I've never seen a CNN check.

• 1:22:29Speaker 04

  Never seen it. Don't know what it looks like. Don't know what Ora TV checks look like. I don't, I keep a check in account.

• 1:22:37Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  But I don't know what paychecks look like. When I get speeches, they go right to the speakers bureau and they send it to Boston. I don't know what those check, I know. Be nice to see what a check looks like.

• 1:22:50Cal Fussman?

  Okay, the last question.

• 1:22:51Speaker 04

  Finally, with the Fussman factor. You'll do an hour. Well, Fussman. We're at an hour and thirty-five minutes, Fussman.

• 1:22:59Cal Fussman?

  Okay, well.

• 1:23:00Speaker 04

  This is the world's longest podcast.

• 1:23:02Cal Fussman?

  Longest first podcast.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  You're doing very well, Fussman.

• 1:23:06Cal Fussman?

  Well, thank you. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or you've lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? Maybe this goes back to the Swami. Just look for information? And maybe you have a.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Well, I get lost in the sports. I'm, uh, like, as we're doing this, I'm watching a baseball game. And I can do this and I know what's happening. So, sports is a great thrill to me. I feel sorry for people who aren't sports fans. Know why? When I get up in the morning, I have no idea who's gonna win the games that day. None. So I have wonderment every day. Who's gonna win? What's gonna happen?

• 1:24:00Cal Fussman?

  So you're talking and you're looking at the screen and your curiosity is at play, wondering, okay, what's happening?

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  Well, I can't see what that guy as player is saying, but I know the Royals have come here with the hottest team. The Dodgers are the hottest team in baseball by far. And the Dodgers just keep winning to my amazement. They just keep winning. So I'm amazed, and I love that. I'm amazed at it. I'm involved in it. And I, by the way, I still remain emotionally involved in the teams I like. And so I get a lot of, um, rewards out of being a fan of, uh, of the game, of games.

• 1:24:47Cal Fussman?

  You're still in the moment. Now, this is a bucket list request.

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  I got no bucket list. I'll tell you my bucket, my bucket list.

• 1:24:55Cal Fussman?

  It was gonna be my bucket list, but go ahead. You tell me your bucket list.

• 1:24:58Speaker 04

  Every Fussman factor goes back to Fussman. By the way, you're listening to the longest podcast ever. Fussman out to break world's records at all times. Fussman, Fussman's trying to write War and Punishment. What was the longest book ever written?

• 1:25:16Cal Fussman?

  War and Peace.

• 1:25:17Speaker 04

  War and Peace, well.

• 1:25:17Cal Fussman?

  Crime and Punishment.

• 1:25:19Speaker 04

  Crime and Punishment. Well, you got to combine two books. That's the world's.

• 1:25:23Cal Fussman?

  There you go.

• 1:25:25Speaker 04

  I would like to do a Broadway show, Larry King on Broadway as himself. It's like Larry King tonight. And you come and I tell my stories and take questions from the audience. An eight o'clock curtain with the theater bill. It's the one thing, I've done stand-up comedy. I do a comedy tour and everything, but to be on a Broadway stage as a theater group, that's something I would like to do. That's a bucket list. I'm not big on travel. I don't have to see the Great Wall of China. I've seen pictures. Like, we have a home in Utah.

• 1:26:09Speaker 04

  I don't like Utah. It's boring to me. They're beautiful mountains. Okay, I saw the mountain. I want to see it again tomorrow. So that kind of wonderment I don't have. I wonder about people, but I don't wonder a lot about places. See if I've seen pictures of Berlin. I don't have to walk down the street in Berlin, but you, Fussman.

• 1:26:36Cal Fussman?

  I gotta walk down the street.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  You're the wanderlust guy.

• 1:26:38Cal Fussman?

  That's right, that's right. It's very interesting, because you have given me a lot of bucket list stuff.

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:26:45Cal Fussman?

  Yes.

• 1:26:46Speaker 04

  That I could enhance your life is a great moment to me, Fussman.

• 1:26:50Cal Fussman?

  Because of you.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:26:52Cal Fussman?

  I now speak. Do you remember how I was when I first came to the breakfast table to help you?

• 1:26:57Speaker 04

  Shy, Fussman.

• 1:26:59Cal Fussman?

  Hardly ever spoke.

• 1:27:00Speaker 04

  Fussman did not speak. And now, now, I want to warn you of something. Do not become a bore. Sometimes, Fussman, you can overdo it.

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  Don't overdo it. You're not a bore fussing. You're a great man.

• 1:27:18Cal Fussman?

  I haven't overdone it yet, but it's the reason that I'm now on stage, speaking to companies, is because of you. Because I was sitting at the breakfast table every day, listening to you speak. And we'd go to your show at night. You'd put me off on the side of the camera. Nobody would see me. But I'm taking it all in.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  You're doing very well, I have to say. I've watched you. You're a great speaker. I'm very proud that I played a part in it. And I know that if I die,

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  maybe, maybe I'll meet a one that doesn't. Why not? There has to be a first in everything. But if I die, that I will carry on through you. That you will keep my name going, and your children, and my children. So I will exist in some form.

• 1:28:09Cal Fussman?

  As long as I'm here, that's for sure. So let's do the last bucket list.

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  And that is?

• 1:28:16Cal Fussman?

  This is my bucket list. There was a time when you were a kid, and you're listening to baseball announcer. And then he moved on to Florida. You moved on to Florida. And then you were both working together.

• 1:28:32Speaker 04

  Same station, Red Barber.

• 1:28:34Cal Fussman?

  Red Barber. And at the end of his report, he said, "Over to you, Larry."

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  And that was one of the great thrills of my life, still remains a thrill. Here's the guy I listened to from age seven, eight on up. The guy who taught Vince Scully how to announce. The best baseball broadcaster I've ever heard. He had a southern accent, came from Tallahassee, Florida. And I could always hear his voice in my head. As people who grew up in Los Angeles have Scully's voice in their head. So when he, I was sitting there, and I did my interview portion, and he would do the sports news. And he said, "That's the ladies in sports. Larry?" And when he said, "Larry", my God. Thing went through my head. Here's this little Jewish kid from Brooklyn. With his forty-eight-pound transistor riggo.

• 1:29:30Speaker 04

  Walking around on this Emerson radio to Coney Island, listening to Red Barber. Describe a scene. And to make that picture come alive, Red gave me the game. When I walked into my first game at Eversfield, shortly after my father died, my uncle took me, Arlene's father, Bernie, took me to the Dodge game. And I walked onto that field and I saw the grass and the dirt and the white lines. But I knew that field. Because Red gave me that field.

• 1:30:15Cal Fussman?

  And so then?

• 1:30:16Speaker 04

  To work with him and interview him and talk about Jackie Robinson coming into the league and what he meant to Red and... Go, give me the bucket list already!

• 1:30:25Cal Fussman?

  Give the bucket list! Over to you, Larry, now. If you will say, "Over to you, Cal."

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  Oh, you want to hear that?

• 1:30:32Cal Fussman?

  I want to hear. "Over to you, Cal."

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  "Over to you, Cal." Cal, take it. Cal, go ahead. It's your turn, Cal. Take the ball and run with it.

• 1:30:48Cal Fussman?

  "Over to you, Tim."

• 1:30:51Speaker 04

  "Over to you, Ferris wheel."

• 1:30:54Cal Fussman?

  Voila!

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  Hey, Tim, there's another guy coming that's gonna have his own podcast. Saul Rollercoaster. Oh, no!

• 1:31:05Speaker 04

  I think that's funny.

• 1:31:08Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:31:51Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Kettle and Fire, which makes some of the best bone broth, and certainly the most convenient that I've ever found. And I have a big stack of them on my kitchen counter right now. I have one container every morning. And this first came highly recommended to me by past podcast guests such as Amelia Boone, who's a four-time world champion in Gold's Tough Smutter, Spartan Race, etc. And Dr. Dominic DiAgostino, the

• 1:32:35Tim Ferriss?

  incredible Hulk of scientific research, which check him out, too. But there are a few things that make Kettle and Fire special. Number one, they are the first shelf-stable, in other words, never frozen bone broth that uses bones from 100% grass-fed, organically-raised animals. So you are what you eat, ate, if that makes sense. So it's very important that you understand if you're consuming animal protein, what they consume. They also use longer cook times, 20-plus hours, which means more collagen and other nutrients. For instance, they contain 19 times more collagen than one of their close competitors. And an independent lab confirmed this. I'll leave the competitor's name out of it, because I don't want to get

• 1:33:16Tim Ferriss?

  sued, but that's the case. And it is not frozen. So thanks to many millions of dollars of packaging equipment, their bone broth doesn't require freezing or shipping with dry ice. So like I said, it's just sitting on my kitchen counter in these boxes. And then I can heat them up. They're basically ready to drink. Heat them up on stove top or in a microwave, and you are ready to rock and roll. And you also get a nice payload of glucosamine, glycine, along with the gelatin and everything else that I mentioned. So check it out. I have been hugely pleased with this. And like I said, I've been consuming it every morning. It gives you about, I'll say, 20 grams of protein, which is a nice little slow carb diet boost, if that's what you're looking for. And I'll typically sip

• 1:33:59Tim Ferriss?

  this out of a very large camping coffee mug as I do some writing or journaling.

• 1:34:06Tim Ferriss?

  So there you have it. Check it out. It's delicious. I favor the chicken, but each to his own or her own. So check it out kettleandfire.com/tim and you can receive 20% off of your entire order. Take a look kettleandfire.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. I have known and loved Shopify just about forever. Back in 2009, when they had something like eight or 10 employees. Now they have more than 2,000. I helped them as an advisor to create the Build a Business competition, which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. And many readers of my blog, first time business owners have ended up making millions and millions of

• 1:34:51Tim Ferriss?

  dollars each, many of them as side gigs to their full-time jobs. So the goal of the Build a Business competition is to get would be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen. All you have to do is open a store on Shopify and start selling. And you can join in July or after July to be eligible to win. What does winning mean? You have to be one of the top performers, top sellers in a given category. And the prize, the reward, is an exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts. And in the past, that has happened at places like the Gatsby Castle, where we had Tony Robbins and David John and Seth Godin and so on, or on Necker Island,

• 1:35:34Tim Ferriss?

  which is Sir Richard Branson's private island. It's nuts and super, super fun. I'm also involved. So there's a special offer for people listening to this show. Go to Shopify.com/tim and sign up for a free 30-day trial. You will get all sorts of exclusive free video courses to help you along and to get started, including How to Start a Profitable Drop Shipping Business with Corey Ferreira. You will also get some goodies from me. That's all free. It's all exclusive to people who are listening to this podcast. So check it out. Shopify.com/tim and remember to sign up for the free 30-day trial.