AA Ep. 195 - Jayson Gaignard: Uncommon Commonalities

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show on the choose yourself network. I cannot believe it's been a 100 episodes since we did the 300th episode special. So, this is the 400th episode special, and I'm here with Steve Cohen, podcast producer extraordinaire. Hi, James. How are you? Yeah. Time flies when you're having fun. And Steve you know, when when did you start? You started, like, a year ago Yeah. A year 2 weeks ago. Yeah. No. It was amazing. Yeah. It was I think the first guest you brought in was, like, Tee from TLC. I we had T Boz. We had, maybe Nancy Cartwright from, Simpsons. You know? Was that the one? Even though I wasn't here. But you weren't officially on the job. You were still you that's the thing with you. You were bringing in the guests before you even officially started. You were you were overpromising and overdelivering. I was, like, super excited. You and overdelivering. I was, like, super excited, you know, to to begin working with you, and this has been the best year ever for me. So I I'm definitely very grateful, to be along this journey. It's been amazing. To just to happen, I'd kill myself tomorrow. So so I guess, and, Jay, are you've been an audio engineer on how many of these 100? Maybe 200, I think. But on in terms of of these 100, how many you were probably all 100? Yeah. Yeah. Probably all 100. And, just to discuss the format of this, what do I pick? Like, 15? And then they're gonna do the clips from those, or do I go through a 100? I think you go through a 100. I go through a 100? Yeah. But then they're gonna do the clips. Right? Or no? Yeah. They're gonna do the clip after. Clips from all 100? Yeah. Okay. So we we'll we'll blitz these out. Yeah. Let's do this. Because then the the we don't want the clips will take up. Also, it's sorry. My bad. It's 10 to 20 stories, so not 100. 10 to 20. So so Dan Harris was 301, and, you know, I had been on his. He, he had been on mine first twice, then I had been on his. And this is the 3rd time he was coming on, you know, to talk about, you know, his book again, 10 Percent Happier, 10 Percent More Happy, talking about his podcast. Which I thought was a great book. You know, 10 Percent Happier. And and just as a word to you, Dan, I'm more than 10% happier since I started with James. I'm, like, a 100% happier. Well, but but, do you are you meditating? I am definitely not meditating, and and I do and, you know, we've we also had him on about his second book, you know, meditation for fidgety skeptics. You know? But, I I think I should. I think in my own way, I meditate where, like, I have quiet time. That sounds really good. Exactly. The whole the whole I think the whole point is of meditation for skeptics is a lot of people say, I can't meditate. Sure. And the whole idea is meditation is is and and Dan explains this much better, and we'll let him explain this in the in the clip perhaps. But the whole idea is that anybody can sit still and observe their thoughts. Like, instead of just being angry and lashing out, for instance, at someone, you can take a step back and say, oh, an I notice I'm feeling angry. My body is feeling anger. My thoughts are angry. I'm obsessing on someone I'm angry about. And you could kind of meditation's about practicing for those moments when when normally your body or mind or thoughts would would lash out or or think something obsessively or uncontrollably. And meditation is basically practice for the other 23 hours of a day when you can train yourself to keep calm. And there's so much science that shows that when you build the awareness of your thoughts, your life really becomes better in every way, not just 10% happier, but 10% more successful and and so on. And and, you know, like many people on the podcast, Dan's turned into a friend, and I really highly recommend this stuff. And I really think, you know, understanding more about meditation and its uses and the ease by which you could start is so valuable. So here's the clip from that. The impact on her has been incredible to watch my wife I've known for years that my wife who has all these stressors in her life, her job is incredibly stressful. She's got had some family drama. She had breast cancer last year. She we we had an infertility crisis, then we had a baby, and so so many stressors in her life. And I've known for a long time that meditation could help, but I felt very powerless to talk to her about it because I knew that it would backfire. And to watch her be able to metabolize her own feelings without being owned by them as a consequence of this practice has been enormously gratifying. How what have you seen just with your eyes different about her since starting? So the way she handles the stresses in her life has changed. If you could really tell it, there's no BS. Yes. Yes. I can really tell because I didn't know she was meditating. I knew something was different. So so just to tell the story. So in the course of the book, we Jeff and I took an 11 or 12 day road trip across the country in a big orange bus. And we met people Like the Parsons family bus. Yes, except for less cool. And we, the conceit of the book is that we're gonna go out and meet people who wanna meditate but aren't, and we'll have them get over the hump. And so every chapter is a different obstacle to meditation, like I don't have time for this, I can't clear my mind, this is self indulgent. And in each chapter we meet, you know, like celebrities or cops from Tempe, Arizona or social workers from New Mexico, and they talk to us about what, you know, what's stopping them from meditating. And we get into the behavior change science. We teach meditation, blah blah blah. So at the end of the road trip, we took like 5 months to write the book. And then when we want to write the last chapter, we want to go to everybody we met to see if they were meditating. During that those 5 months, I never went and asked Bianca, are you meditating? Because I was afraid to do it. So but I I was noticing changes in her. Her handling of stress, the stress in her life, in particular during this time, there's a lot going on at the office. And I could see that, you know, one of the things I I I have noticed in my wife, but in all of us, myself too, is that we were very much the stars of our own movie, And sometimes these are sad movies. And, we get sucked up into the story of me, and the world constricts when that happens. It's like a sort of horse blinders. And, I could see that her cloud of woe was thinner and less gray and that she was not so stuck in the stories of, what was upsetting her. And that and that the that the upset about about tumult at the office wasn't at the hospital more specifically wasn't she just wasn't wasn't knocking her down the way her resilience was boosted. Well, I wanna I wanna ask you about that, and then you have your your 3rd. Yeah. First off, I wanna say, tumult. Is that how you say that? I I don't know. I think so. Tumultuous, so I think tumult. Anyway, I think it's tumult. Yeah. The hell do I You said tumult. I I just was anyway, so given that I like that phrase, you know, we're we're stuck in the movie of our lives, and hers was very often many people is very constricted by, oh, the office tension and this and that. Do you think as those walls started to dissolve, she was able to be more affectionate or compassionate with you? Did your communication with her get better? Yes. So I will I should say that my wife actually has a surplus of compassion. We are actually quite well matched, whereas I think one of my issues is is or has historically been and is the thing that I've really worked on to my great benefit, empathy and compassion is really boosting those muscles through meditation has been an enormous value add for me, but it was not something I came to naturally. My wife's actually the exact opposite. She's overflowing with compassion. But I I did notice sort of an availability that she's just more available because the things In what way? What do you mean by available? Maybe the better word would be lighter too. That, in the we used to have fights. This is when you asked me before what were our biggest fights, it was about this, That when she was stressed at work, it was so heavy. I could tell that she was just carrying this, like, big overcoat of anxiety, invisible overcoat, but kind of visible overcoat of anxiety. This big heavy load of, stress, and that it was very inner focused. And and so if I had a problem and I could shake her out of it, we could talk about it, but her default mode was to be kind of ruminating on things that she was dealing with at the office. And while she's ruminating and you're being self centered and not asking her, hey. How'd your day go? It makes it worse. Yeah. It makes it worse. Yes. Aaron Carroll, bad food bible. He's a doctor. He's also a food columnist for The New York Times. He basically, we basically talked about all the myths about food. Like, everybody writes their book. Like, oh, do, the vegan diet. Do the paleo diet. Do the slow carb diet. Do this, that. A lot of these diets work, but, you know, a lot of foods that we always think are bad or good are just myths. And Aaron Aaron and I go through his book Food by Food, and, you know, what was what was the if you remember, what was the biggest myth that was shattered for you? Did he talk a lot he talked about alcohol. Right? Yeah. Like, alcohol, of course, is not as bad for you as anything. Isn't as bad. You know? I think you talked about meat a lot. You know? So, I mean and he's an MD. He's based in Indiana. The book was very popular, and I thought you guys had a very good conversation because it's always like you're curious about what you could learn from that. And it's not a one size fits all about foods and all of these kind of mores in the food industry. They change. Steve, I'm gonna give you a piece of paper. Write down. We should have him on again. Oh, yeah. Aaron Carroll? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Thanks, Aaron. We'll see you soon. My nutritionist is, a 15 year old girl who's my daughter. Okay. I was gonna say you don't have a primary care doc, but you have a nutritionist. But okay. Good. No. No. She she watches all these YouTube videos, and she's become she's become, plant based and vegan. Like, she and she's very healthy. She she's been healthy since birth. I have to commend her. But, because it didn't come from me. Yep. And, but she her phrase to me is fat is called fat for a reason. And so so what's the story about that? No evidence that eating fat makes you fat. That is a total, total myth. And so, yes, animals have fat because that's one of the ways that we store energy. And we have fat because that is one of the ways that we store energy. But eating other animals fat is not what makes you fat. There's that that has been disproved again and again and again. So What makes us fat? Well, probably eating too that's where, like, you'll get into different people that argue about it's the number of carbs, it's the number of pathway. But in general, I would argue it's it's getting too more than we need. So you and and, again, just to just to restate it, your argument against carbs is not the carbs itself, which is the fact that it's it doesn't satiate us. Like like, eating a a bowl of broccoli Yeah. Might satiate you Right. Whereas a bowl of pasta might not, so you go for seconds. I drink apple juice, and I don't get full. Right. If I eat an apple, I will get full. Right. And apple juice might have 3 apples. It's pure sugar, and it's sugar. That's what apple juice is. It's the sugar in apple. No. Well, what's bad about sugar? Well, so added sugars are one of the few things I'm not gonna defend. Probably that and trans fats. So added sugars are so even apple juice is technically not added sugars, but I would argue that you're just getting concentrated sugar. That's what juice is, which is why I don't know why people often think that juice is healthy. You're just concentrating with it. Added sugars, the sugars that we add not just to soda, but the stuff that they throw into processed food all over the place to make it more palatable, not good. Empty calories, it's associated with a bunch of bad things, including heart disease and obesity and everything else, and there's no one that can make an argument that that is something that is good for you. So added sugars and added sweeteners that are sugars in general are bad, but that's not the same thing as carbs. They they make you gain weight. They can they can be they're they're linked to increased rates of, I think, eventually type 2 diabetes, although, again, it's not an exact causal pathway that you can just follow. They're linked to higher rates of obesity, higher levels of heart disease, and so, in general, not not good. I'm not gonna advocate for added sugars. Do you think sugar and I don't I've been reading about this recently that there's rumors that Alzheimer's is linked to diabetes. Do you think sugar is related to Alzheimer's? Not that anything is proven. I mean, I think all unfortunately, Alzheimer's is just one of those things we don't totally understand yet. It probably has a lot to do with, genetics and familial factors and perhaps environmental that we haven't figured out yet or some mix of the 2, but no one has conclusively shown yet that it's related to sugar. Although, you know, I've even heard as much as saying that Alzheimer's might be relay relabeled as type 3 diabetes. Oh, wow. They're really stretching it there. So that that's You haven't heard that? No. I mean, I've not only not heard there's there's no evidence for that. That's that's when we're getting also into all the the information. I mean, there are people that can make claims all the time about these kinds of things, but there's no conclusive links. And I this is also where I would also take a take a deep breath. This is the healthiest the human race has ever been ever. We live longer than ever before. People are dying of almost any disease you can mention at lower rates than ever before. This idea that somehow the food is poisoning us and we're all in mortal danger is is somewhat bizarre. We're doing great. And by the way, Dan Harris also he's always a welcome guest. Yep. One thing one thing we've learned in this podcast, and this is true for business, the best new customers are your old customers. So often, I have the most fun, and I get the most information from my older guests because now we have a comfort level with each other where we were relaxed, and we could talk more. It's it's it's fun. Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I'll tell you the main thing I learned from him. I wanted to know so Kareem Abdul Jabbar, obviously, is the best basketball player in history. Also, a a genius in his own right. Like, he's written not only a great memoir. He's written all these, books about Sherlock Holmes and specifically Mycroft Holmes. And just an an a renaissance man Like, who's Mycroft Holmes? Sherlock's brother. But, like, he was he was Arthur Conan Doyle, like, only used him in a few episodes. Like like, Liam was interested enough in that to wanna write a book just about that, like, a whole separate series about Mycroft Holmes. Which, by the way, we didn't even talk to Kareem about. We talked about his basketball career, and when he talked about his civil rights career, and we talked about turning to Islam and so on. But, let's have Kareem Abdul Jabbar back on. Kareem. Yeah. And we'll put him on with Maria Konnikova, who wrote the book, think like Sherlock Holmes. Yep. So Kareem But but We're gonna leave the light on for you with Tom Baudette. I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell, actually, just two things about Kareem. One is I asked him I wanted to kind of ask him something no one asked him before. And so I asked him why in all of the photos of him like, I watched his documentary. I watched I I must have looked at several hundred photos of him. He's never smiling. And he had a really kinda sweet answer, which is, you know, since he was in 8th grade, he was 7 foot 2, and so people were always looking at him. Like, people would stare at him everywhere. So it kinda like you know, he was an introverted guy. It kinda brought him into himself, and and, like, it's almost like he's trapped in this prison. And that that kind of keeps him from smiling. But I'm gonna also saw to say the second thing, which is in his memoir, he tells kind of a joke, which is, you know, he was good friends with or for a while. He was good friends with Wilt Chamberlain, who's also 7 foot 2, also one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And, he says he and Wilt Chamberlain win an elevator. Someone walks into the elevator, looks up at them, and says, hey. How's the weather up there? Wilt Chamberlain spits on the guy and says, it's raining, which I thought was a funny joke. And but let's let Kareem tell his story. Here's the clip. You know, I there's so many photos of you, and I've seen, you know, also the the documentary on HBO about you. And in a lot of the photos, you know, you're so serious. Yeah. And you're so it almost looks like people can't see you because you're in your head somehow. You're, like, deeply reflective. Why what what's, you know, what stopped you from smiling, all those in all these photos? Don't know if that's a dumb question or not, but No. That that's not a dumb question. That's actually a very good question. I I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I've been scrutinized so much because of my height, and I'm always feeling that people are watching me because throughout my life, they have watched me. I they see me first. So, I kinda have that, wariness of, somebody that's in in the, in the headlights all the time. It it's, it it can be, it can be daunting. And so and so, again, you are is this what I mean, even your documentary is the documentary about you is titled a minority of, you know, cream, a minority of 1. Do you feel do you often feel that, this scrutiny has led you to kind of just withdraw inward and and just be in your thoughts so you can kind of avoid all the people looking? Well, you you can avoid the people looking, but, it probably makes me feel that I need to be on guard more so than the average person who can disappear in a crowd. I can't do that, So I always have to be on guard. I think your experiences with coach Wooden, who you even wrote a book about, probably helped you figure out as well who you were in a crowd. So episode 312, skipping ahead a few episodes. Episode 312 was Jordan Peterson, who is like, that guy is on fire now. We were like, he it was sort of like the day his book was released, so he wasn't on fire yet, I feel. I mean, he was already known for kind of his controversial issues in Canada. But now He was hot, but he wasn't on fire. Right. Like, he's in inferno now. Now he's selling out stadiums. He's getting his YouTube videos get millions of views. I heard just last night his book, in just a few months since it's been out, has sold about 2,000,000 copies. Wow. And, which is kind of incredible in today's day and age. You know, the you know, the average book on the New York Times bestseller list sells about 3,000 copies. So 2,000,000 copies is quite a bit. And I've read the book now, I wanna say, 5 times, and it's a great book. I learn new things each time. Like, the guy's a genius. Rather than talking about anything I learned in that particular podcast, because you could listen to the clip, and it's great. And I encourage people to listen to that episode. It's episode 312. The thing that's most interest or the thing that was interesting to me about Jordan Peterson is that it seems like people on the left think he's alt right when he's just not. Like, he's total as far as I could tell, he's apolitical. He never mentions politics in his book. He never mentioned politics once in the podcast. I've never seen him mention politics in any of his YouTube videos, but people try to make him almost, like, outright when he just simply isn't. I mean, if you look at the chapters in his book, they're they're sort of like one chapter is called make your bed. The other chapter is called raise, your child as if you want them to be the person you would like. I mean, it's just really good advice, but he backs it up with mythology, religion, fairy tales that he gets, like, you know, insights from. And and he uses history as a backdrop for, you know, understanding many of the issues he feels strongly about. But he's just very smart, very nice. He gives me a lot I think what makes my podcast different with him than a lot of the podcasts out there is that he kinda gives we kinda get on personal issues rather than sort of macro global issues, which is what he's more known for. But that's a testament to you because I think you would ask him, and you well, most people kind of let people espouse their talking points and everything. You were like, what should I do? Okay. What do I need to do here? And do you I was I was sort of talking to him as you know, he's trained as a psychiatrist, and then he became a professor, and then he became this pundit. I was addressing him as a psychiatrist because I feel the book contains a lot of really good advice. By the way, he's another one. What's how are we Yeah. We have to have we have to have you back, Jordan. We'll also leave the light on for you. What's the latest? Like, what did you read? We've been in touch with his people, and I think, like, he'd be willing to come back. I mean, he was here shortly after we had him on in this stand up New York here, and he was at the Beacon Theatre, and he just didn't have time to do it then. But, you know, again, our best customers are repeat customers. So, please come back. Because now I've read his book an an extra four times. Yeah. And why why did you eat it 4 times? You know what? Because time. I I really I noticed the second time I read it, I just I learned a lot more. You know, normally, I read, and I read pretty heavily to prepare for each guest. So I read the first book. I took lots of notes. I thought of lots of questions. And then just for the heck of it one time, I I think I took it with me on a a vacation, and, I read it again. And I'm like, you know what? I learned a lot more the second time. So I read it the 3rd time, 4th time, and I'm actually in the middle now of reading it the 5th time. And I have so many more questions. Like, the book has so many layers of depth. It's great. It's like, you know, he's not in this 100, but, you know, Nassim Taleb's been on the podcast. It's like reading a Nassim Taleb book over and over again. So I've I'm on, like, my 4th time with Skin in the Game, Nassim's latest book. And so many layers, and I feel like my IQ goes up every time I read, one of these books again. So I think in some cases, you're right. They can come out of it. Yep. In some cases, they can't. Yep. And and not even the ones who are brutalized from early on. Sometimes people just fall apart midlife. Yeah. And they say, oh my gosh. Nothing nothing good is ever gonna happen to me. Because you're right. Life it's not just let's even let's even make it milder. It's not just that life is suffering with malevolence. It's just life is hard every and it's every single day. Like, it never ends. Well, we could add that to it too. It's grinding. It grinds away at you as well. Yeah. It's just chronic, low level, like, I gotta get up. I gotta the boss is gonna yell at me. Yeah. I gotta take care of the kids. Yep. I don't love my wife or husband or whatever. Yeah. So what again, a lot of these people, if you say to them, well, no. You can change things. Just start Yep. Making your bed better or whatever. They're gonna say no. No. The the initial reaction is to defend. No. No. They're gonna defend their limitations. You know, there's that saying, if you defend your limitations, then they're yours. Well, they they don't generally if you don't get accusatory. Like, so if I'm working with someone in in my clinical practice, I certainly don't say, well, look. Your life is miserable and it's your fault. It's like, I don't start with that at all. It's like, it's no bloody wonder your life is miserable. It's amazing that it isn't like that all the time for everyone. But but it's not the way you want it. So let's see if we can jointly discover ways that you can put things together. And then it's a matter of very, very careful problem solving. So what's what's an example where you helped where and, again, not just from the I mean, there's 2 problems. There there's 2 examples of problem solving. 1 is there's the people you don't know. So there's the periphery people who they watch your YouTube videos, and they indirectly received help from what you said. They started their own problem solving, and you changed their life, and they came up to you and said that. Then there's the, people you you see in your clinical practice where you're able to really put your ideas in practice Yeah. And help people. So so, again, what what what's a specific example where you've helped someone where it seemed inconceivable to them and they could be helped? And then what do you suspect also help these people on the periphery? Well, if you're if you're trying to help someone who's in a rough situation, let's say you're trying to help them with their relationship. You might say you ask them to start watching themselves so that you can gather some information. So that they call that collaborative empiricism. That's a behavioral psychology technique. It's okay. Let's take a look at your relationship for a week, and all you have to do is figure out when it's working and when it's not working. Just keep track of that for a while. Or when it's working horribly and when it's working just not too bad, maybe it never gets to good. Let's start distinguishing between those two things so that we have some some real sense of what happens when things are not good. Well, my wife ignores me at the dinner table, or my wife ignores me when I come home, or all we'd ever do is or something like that. We think well I think you just described all my marriages. Well, then then we start slow, small. It's like well, how would you like it how would you like your wife to greet you when you come home? Well, I'd like I'd like her to stop what she's doing and come to the door. It's like, well, ask her under what condition she'd be willing to do that and let her do it badly. It's like, say, look. Like, we're not getting along so well. And I got this idea. Maybe if one little thing we could do is just change the way we greet each other when we come home. You're watching TV. I'm watching TV. We walk into the house. Neither of us pays any attention. It's just it's not good. So let's let's try this for a week. Cause you make it small. Right? Let's try it for a week. When one of us comes home, just shut the TV off and say, like, how was your day? And listen for 10 seconds. Something like that. Let's see how that goes. And, like, you can you if you're willing Carl Jung said something very interesting that I really liked. He said that modern people can't see God because they won't look low enough. I really like that. And this is this this is this is a concretization of that. It's like Tell me what that means. It means that people underestimate the importance of small things. They're not small. How you how your wife says hi to you when you come home, it's not small because you come home all the time. Like, how does you what does your dog do when you come home? It's like it's happy, man. Comes to the door. It greets you. Wags his tail. It's like, hey. And you're happy. It's like, there's my dog. It's so happy to see me. But it and you think that's not such a big deal. It's it's just you coming home. No. You come home 3 times a day. So we could do the arithmetic. Let's say let's say you spend 15 minutes a day coming home, something like that. And then it's every day. So that's 7 days a week. So that's 70 105 minutes. So let's call it 90 minutes for the sake of the arithmetic. 90 minutes a week. So that's for 6 hours a month, 72 hours a week 72 hours a year. So you basically spend 28 2 40 hour work weeks a year coming home. That's roughly 25 let's see. That's 1 25th of your total time. It's about 3% of your life. You spend about 3% of your life coming home. Fix it. And you know it's interesting because Then fix 30 more things. This is the second time. Right. So this is the second time you brought up the fact that it's not any one moment or any one thought. It's the fact that these things add up and that and then that becomes your life. Well, and you just said too when when we were talking about this, you said, well, it isn't just that life is tragic and and miserable and miserable and malevolent. It's that it grinds away at you. Yeah. It grinds away at you 50 different ways. Okay. Fix them. Fix them. Like here here's an example. Let's say this happens to couples a lot. They don't sort out their their food preparation arrangements. So neither of them really take responsibility for it. The husband is aggravated and irritated because he feels he works enough and it's not really his job in the kitchen. It's sort of a feminine role. He feels sort of demeaned by it. He doesn't really know how to cook anyways. And the wife thinks, to hell with it. I'm not doing this because, like, it's a traditional role and I'm just being oppressed. And, and so fine. So then what? Well, so no one really buys groceries properly, or if they do, they buy second rate food. And then no one really cooks. And if they do, they serve it cold, badly prepared, and in a hostile environment. It's like fine, except that's 6 hours a day. Okay. So that's 42 hours a week or a 160 hours a month. It's like that's 4 it's 10% of your life is misery. It's like fix it. So then you think, well, how would I like the food to be prepared? Well, let's say it's good nourishing food served by someone who's pleased to prepare it to people who are happy to receive it. That would be nice. It's like say thank you for Christ's sake when someone makes you something to eat and mean it. And don't whine about having to cook in the kitchen because someone has to do it and you should get your act together so you can do it with some joy. It's like, really? Forty things like that and your life is fixed. But they're all they're all the trivial things that we do day to day. It's like the things you do day to day are not trivial. Your holiday. That's trivial. Your adventure. That's trivial. Your mealtime. That's your damn life. So then as Steve, this was to your credit getting this guest, doctor Oz. Yeah. He wrote, again, another book that kind of underlines sort of the mythologies of food. And what what food just in a real simple way, what food you need to have in your life to improve your quality of health and quality of life. And I always say health is is greater than wealth. Like and and, obviously, that's almost like a cliche, but you can't you can't make money if you're sick, and you can't enjoy the money you made if you're sick. So it's really important to focus on health. And food is the energy. It's the only energy the body uses. So, you know, literally, the body converts it into fuel. So, you know, one thing about that podcast that was interesting, and a lot of people wrote me and said, I can't believe you had doctor Az on. He says so many things that are x, y, or z. You know, and they were critical. But if someone's going on TV for an hour a day, you know, 250 days a year, and they have to talk about new interesting things, they're not gonna be a 100% dead on correct all the time. What we what we're watching when we watch doctor Oz's show is we're watching his curiosity and his passion for health and medicine and new innovations and new inventions, and we're watching his process of of researching and asking the right questions and and exploring things. And so I really appreciate that about him. I think he's an, an asset to society. And and we've seen, actually, in many of the future guests we've had or recent guests we've had, a lot of them have literally consulted doctor Oz about medical issues. So he's not just Yeah. A a celebrity TV guy. People we know go to doctor Oz about their health. He's our heart surgeon, and he's worked on some amazing people. And even, like, if you remember when, and I agree with him, he's not infallible like anybody else. And he, you know, seemed to be pretty forthcoming with a lot of blurbs or what you know, and maybe overexposed. And, but I do think when that woman who was, like, run over by a car, he went over there and helped her or you know? And he's like we said, like, a lot of people we do know, have gone to him, and we've always found him to be just incredibly bright and and caring and hardworking. I have very few complaints about people who selfishly make decisions. In fact, I think most of us should be a bit more selfish in in that we abuse ourselves at the expense of others, and that actually is a bad role model. Boy, why do you think that happens? Because I think there's a a set like, I'm happy to I've had a podcast about this recently also. I'm happy to tell you to take your pills, but it's really hard for me to take my pills. Why does it the individual have a hard time helping themselves? Yeah. I think a lot of this comes from parenting. You think about this. When you, as a mom or dad, do everything for your kids, what you're messaging to your kids is they have to do the same thing for their children and for their relationships. Give, give, give, give, give. And giving is a good thing. You wanna give, but not to the expense of yourself. And if you're on a plane and the auction goes out, right, you reach for the auction and put it on your face first. You don't put it on your child's face, not because you don't love your child, but you need to be awake enough to take care of your child. And too often in in traditional and otherwise healthy families and relationships, we sacrifice all for our kids, but the kids aren't gonna model that well, because kids aren't gonna treat themselves the way you treat them. They're gonna treat themselves the way you treat yourself. So if you give up your entire career, if you gain weight, if you don't manage the basic issues in your life effectively because your kids' soccer practice comes first, your kids are gonna do the same thing when they have to make that decision. I would argue take care of yourself, make sure you're in good shape, make sure you can actually play soccer with them, and then take them to soccer games. I think that there's almost concentric layers from that. There's yourself, then yours there's your relationships. Like, the, the parents should take care of their own relationship, even before they hug and cuddle with the kids, because the kids will model that later on in their relationships. And then and then out to health and to food and to medicines and to to every area, to career, which I might ask you about later after after we talk about the book. Well, the the the the best example of all is health. I mean, everything else comes out from that as well. But in in health, people will frequently abuse their bodies because they can't cope with the stress that's caused by a job obligation they have or relationship that they're in. They stress eat, which is, by the way, a very effective way of coping with stress. Why do people stress eat? It works. Very simply stated. Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't understand the signs of it. So I'm stressed. I feel like instead of eating, like, broccoli, I feel like eating chips. Yeah. Because broccoli doesn't actually hit your brain like dopamine the way sugar does. Really? Sugar hits your brain like crack cocaine. It's just max the dopamine receptors, it gets you feeling really good, it helps you cope, it works. However, it's maladaptive. So in a small little Meaning? Meaning that, you know, short term it'll do the d, but long term it's a bad problem. And it's not the right way to deal with the process. Because if you're stressed out by, let's say, a malevolent person in your life, go deal with the malevolent person in your life. Don't medicate with sugar, or or by the way, narcotics or any other medication. If you can't sleep at night, the best solution is not a nightly sleeping pill. It's to figure out what's ruminating that's causing you to not be able to sleep. What's going on deep inside your body, maybe because of the food you're eating that's preventing you from getting night of rest that you know is so vital to your well-being. And when we don't deal with the root cause of problems, which at its very core is what this book's about, then you end up putting layers of paint on. Listen, there's a crack in the wall in this beautiful studio we're taping in now. You don't just paint the crack. You fix the crack. Otherwise, the paint's gonna chip off anyway. So go to the root issue. Food was always how we fixed it because when you walk into a grocery store, you're walking into a pharmacy. That's exactly how our bodies receive that. Another guest, Annie Duke, famous poker player, maybe one of the most successful maybe the most successful female poker player in history. She wrote a book Thinking in Bets. And the idea is is that everybody in general is very concerned when they make a decision. Am I making the right decision or the wrong decision? And and then they measure the success of the decision by the outcome. Yeah. So if the outcome was good, then they think they made a good decision. If the outcome was bad, they made a bad decision. That is actually completely untrue. And people who do, who play poker understand that. People who do, let's say, statistically oriented investing or day trading understand this, but you have to think in terms of probabilities. So if I make a decision where there's, there's there I I won't explain her whole methodology. You know, you can listen to the episode or or her clip, but I'll give an example. I might make a decision that has a 51% chance of being of working out for me or a 49% chance of not working out for me. Well, I might make the decision because it's got the 51% chance. But, the 49 I I end up being in the 49% by the the luck of the draw, and it didn't work out for me. It's not like I could say that was a bad decision. I still made the right decision. It's just not every good decision is gonna work out for you. So you wanna make sure in life to make as many good decisions as possible, knowing that some of them, the outcomes might not be work out for you. But in the long run and and this is how poker players think. This is how investors think. This is how all decision makers should think. In the long run, you'll have a better life as a result in of thinking in terms of by the way, not just probabilities, but thinking in terms of the value of the outcome. So there might be a range of outcomes with different values. So sometimes you might wanna make a decision that only has a 1% chance of working out, but maybe Yeah. That's the important decision to make because the value of the outcome is so much higher than the value of the other 99%. And by the way, also, this this kind of goes along with the idea that your process of decision making is much more important than the outcomes that you're looking for. Again, it's just about making lots of good decisions. And and I anybody who's, you know, basically, anybody should read the book, is a very great understanding of of how to make decisions. We always think that right now, oh my gosh. This is which shoes should I pack for this trip? This is, like, really important. But, like, 5 years from now, it's not going to I'm never once gonna think about, and the importance of it will have no effect on my life whatsoever 5 5 years from now. Well, yeah. So I think the example that I give in the book of the importance of doing that kind of mental time traveling in order to be a more rational decision maker is that so we get really caught up in we really, really get caught up in the moment. And how we feel in the moment and the kinds of decisions we're gonna make and the way we're gonna process, what's happening in our lives really matters in terms of the how did we get to the moment that we're in, and then we just live in that moment. So let me give you a couple of examples that you'll you'll know from the book. So I say, okay. So let's say that you go and you play blackjack, and you you go with your friends and, you know, you're gonna play for, like, 2 hours. And in the first half hour, all you do is get blackjack. Just blackjack, blackjack, blackjack. You can't lose a hand. You end up up, say, $2,000. And it's just because everything went your way. But your friends are still playing, so you continue to play. And over the next hour and a half, you lose all but $100 back. You know, how are you feeling about that? Right. So you're feeling horrible even though you're up a $100. Even though you're up a $100. Now we can do the reverse. You start off the night, and you literally can't win a hand. I mean, it's just horrible, and you really wanna quit, and you're kind of sour about it because you're down $2,000 because the dealer has just, you know, hit 16, hits a 5. Hit 16, hits a 5, you know, just every single time. And you're down $2,000, but your friends are like, oh, come on. Come on. Let's keep playing. So you continue to play, and all of a sudden, you start getting blackjack every single hand for the next hour and a half, and you end up only losing a 100. How do you feel about that? And, you know, the drinks are on you. You're, like, super happy. And notice that that's really in the moment decision making. In in one case, you're very sad that you won a $100. And in another case, you're quite happy that you lost a $100. And that's, I think, a very it puts into very sharp focus how irrational we can be in the way that we process our outcomes when we're caught in the moment like that. Now if I got you to do a little bit of mental time travel, and I said to you, hey. Imagine it's it was a year ago that you went to that casino. Now which result do you prefer, the $100 win or the $100 loss if it happened a year ago? If it happened a year ago, you would just say $100 win. Of course. So what happens is that when you can take that extreme zoom lens off, where you're just zoomed in on the moment and kind of what's just happened to you, and you can put on a wide angle lens and and get that so that you can see it within the scope of time a little bit better and when within the scope of what the arc of of the way that your whole life goes, then you start to get much more rational about it. Because what we really are looking for is to think of ourselves like a happiness stock where we want the slope to have a general upward upward trend. And we understand that there are gonna be momentary upticks and downticks, but we don't wanna be yanked around by those too much because the more that we're yanked around by the momentary up and upticks and downticks, the less likely we are gonna have that upward slope because it's gonna cause us to make really silly decisions, like being super happy that we lost a $100, which is a little bit crazy. So and you So how often would you apply this method of decision making in your life? Like, does the decision have or or not decision making, but in terms of point of view, let's say, a type of this type of point of view. Does the does the kind of, intensity level of the moment have to be a certain level? Because you can't do this over, oh, should I boil the eggs or scramble the eggs? Like, you can't do it over everything. You know, is it something where only intensity level is so high? Or Well, I I think that you have to train yourself to think this way. Sure. I I think there's 2 things. 1 is when you're just struggling with a decision or you see somebody else struggling with a decision. So I use this with my children all the time when they're very like, they come home from school and they're really upset because they got in a fight with their friend, and I'll use this method all the time. I'll say, do you think this is really gonna matter in, like, a month? And they'll be like, no. Because they'll be like, yeah. Yeah. I see. Yeah. I've gotten in a fight with them before, and it's been fine. So, basically, what you're doing is you're transforming them into a different person, the person they'll be in a month Mhmm. And saying, is it important to that person? I'm getting them to have a conversation with the future version of them. So I'll I'll I'll give you something similar that that I do, which is almost similar to this. So let's say there are 3 types of decisions I normally make. 1 I'm bad at, 2 I'm good at. So let's say I'm bad making decisions on personal relationships, but I'm good making decisions on business relationships, and I'm good making decisions on advice for my kids. So if my so let so to take the exact same problem, my kid presents me with the problem, suddenly, the answer becomes really clear. Like, if I have the if I have the let's say I have a personal relationship issue, I might not have any clue what to do. Mhmm. But then if I if my kid comes to me with the exact same problem, I might a 100% know what she should do. Or if some or if somebody's interacting with me in a business situation, how I'm being interacted with in a personal situation, I might know a 100% what to do. So I kind of do a version of this, but instead of time traveling for myself, I do the Like situation traveling. Yeah. I do situation traveling. So I I love that. That's not in the book. I wish it were. Well, I'm gonna start using the time traveling, which I would love. Well, okay. So we'll exchange Yeah. Because I think situation traveling is also really good. Something more, like, in the same peer group for Yeah. To save you, Megan? I love that. Jim Cramer, such a great guest. So grateful he came on the show. I feel like that was a very personal discussion with Jim. Yeah. You know, it wasn't like just talking about stocks, which didn't wanna do, and we didn't do. We I don't think we talked about stocks at all. And you you go back a long way with, Jim. Yeah. Like, I wrote Jim a letter in 2002, and this was one of those situations where I was going broke. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And, I I decided, you know what? I'm gonna give advice to other people for free as a way of maybe maybe that is a way something can happen. So I wrote him, no pressures to write back. Here's 10 ideas for articles you should write. And I remember some of the articles Yeah. I pitched him. I won't go into them now, but I remember some of the article ideas I pitched him. And he wrote back, this is great. How about you, write these articles? And so he introduced me to the editor of thestreet.com. Took that editor 3 or 4 months to get back to me, but I was patient. I would just write every week. Eventually, I started writing for thestreet.com. But can you explain that whole because I know you've told me this. Like, when you're looking for something, you feel an accelerated anxiety about it, but they may not be feeling that sense of urgency. Right? So how did you how do you reconcile that over the years? Right. So so I call this the theory of business relativity, that when you're trying to do a deal with someone and it's really important to you, like, this is the main thing you have going on in life, but they have lots of things going on in life, lots of deals they're making, and it's not the the it might be important to them, but it's not the first thing on their to do list every day. You life feels very, very slow for you. Like, oh my god. Another whole day went by, and they didn't get back to me. And they're thinking to themselves, like, oh, I'll get back to them within the next month because the month's gonna go by fast. And They have the same urgency. Yeah. A month, it should be should be just in time for this guy. And I'm thinking, no. Like, next minute, I thought I was gonna start writing for you. So you have to recognize the theory of whenever there's a situation that's important to you, very important to acknowledge, oh, this is the and this goes back to, by the way, Dan Harris's meditation techniques. It's almost like a meditation. Oh, I could feel it in my body. I'm feeling anxiety about this process that's happening. It must be what James was just talking about, the theory of business relativity. So business time relativity. So when the theory of business time relativity takes place, the most important thing to do to not sabotage yourself is sit on your hands. Now I didn't always know that. So I remember during that time, the editor wasn't getting back to me because whatever. It was the summer of 2002, and he had other things going on. And Jim had many things going on. Everybody had many things going on. I was desperate because I had nothing going on. And I remember telling a friend of mine, you know, I was all indignant. I well, if they're gonna act like this, then I don't even wanna write for them. And this friend of mine, his name was Fred, he said to me, don't be an idiot. The editor is going to write back to you, and then you're never gonna talk to him again, and you're gonna be a writer for thestreet.com, and you'll begin your professional writing career. So my friend was exactly right. Like, that's what happened, is that I started writing, then I started writing books, then I sold a company to thestreet.com, then I started writing for the Financial Times because my initial editor moved to the Financial Times. Then another editor moved to the Wall Street Journal. I started writing there. Another editor, moved to Forbes. I started writing there. And I built my whole financial writing career, which led to a much more deeper self help writing career, which led to this podcast. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. And I think that, is something that's very instructive for people out there. Because was that something that was difficult for you to do, to just to say, okay, I'm gonna provide all this value to somebody like Jim Cramer, even though I'm not guaranteed of getting something, even though I have to invest time? And why? And what made you have that transition in your life? Like, what was the epiphany? Well, I there was 2 things. Well, one thing really, which is that I was scared. I was broke. I was I was scared. I was broke. I was losing my home. I lost all my money. And I wrote I I was ups at this point, I was back in shape as an investor. I probably had read 200 books about investing. I wrote software to model the stock markets. I was trading successfully even though it was a very horrible bear market, and I was keeping alive even though I had lost 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars, all the money I'd made from selling my first business. And I really I mean, I read so many investing books, and there are very there are very few good ones. But one of the best ones I read was Jim Cramer's first book, Confessions of a Street Addict, which was like a memoir of his. It was his memoir at the time. Such a great book. I hope he writes another similar style memoir. And I wrote to all my at this point, I knew every investing strategy. I had a lot of investing heroes. I understood the business. So I wrote to all my investing heroes, and I said, can I meet you and pick your brain? Nobody responded, which nobody should respond. I wasn't offering anything of value. So I completely switched gears. I really researched each person I was writing, and I came up with 10 ideas for their business, which showed that I put in the work and the effort about them. I was thinking of them only and not me. And I I never asked in that email, like, to Jim Cramer, for instance. I never asked for I never said, can I write this? I never asked, can I meet you? I never asked, can I do business with you? I just said, here's if you write these 10 articles, I would pay to read these articles. I even said I would pay to read these articles. Like, I would sign up for something to read these articles. You know, like, one of the articles this was a bear market, so there were companies that actually were trading for less value than the cash they had in the bank, which is something that almost never happens. Like, it happened then. It happened in 2009, and it happened in 1945 and, or 1940. So John Templeton, famous investor, became rich doing that strategy. And people were getting rich in 2002 doing this strategy. They didn't become rich till 2003, but I thought it would be a great article. So that's when he wrote back. And but I I so that was a valuable lesson for me, and I've been doing that ever since. So now it's 16 years later. I still write those emails all the time. Probably the last one one email like that I wrote to you. Yeah. You've been you've been amazing, and it's really changed my life too because I've learned how to do that. You know? And I think, you know, in, you know, in conjunction even with Annie Annie Duke, like, I also just focus on my actions, not my outcomes. And, you know, in the in the with the practice of Jim Cramer, you learned a lot by doing all of that regardless of whether he did anything or not. Like, you learned by, like, reading all those books and coming up with those ideas. Yeah. Like, the the ideas I pitched him were unique article ideas that I didn't see anywhere else, and I felt he would be the best writer for them after me, which he recognized as well. And so, I mean, that changed my life was that one email. If I hadn't sent that email, I don't know what I woulda happened to me. And then there was a couple other emails like that. And and ever since, look, you've been with me to Yeah. Google. I've flown out to Amazon. I've flown out to LinkedIn. I've met with people from maybe a 100 different tech companies and and other companies because of of these types of emails. It's so incredibly valuable to do that. But I applied it again during our podcast. In our podcast with Jim, we focus mostly Yeah. On his personal life. Yeah. 100%. And that was amazing. He never I've never heard him talk about it. And we had a great conversation, like a conversation among friends, which we've known each other 16 years. We are friends. And, one thing I see you know, I don't do these podcasts to be a journalist or to get, lots of downloads or to make a lot of money. Like, you know, the podcast does okay, but it's not like you know, unless unless you're one of the top 5 podcasts, you're not gonna get wealthy doing a podcast. But, I learned from each guest. So hundreds of episodes earlier, I had on Matt Berry, who is the fantasy sports anchor at ESPN. Now I'm not into sports at all. I'm not into fantasy sports, but Matt Berry's story of reinvention from Hollywood screenwriter to to being an anchor on ESPN fascinated me. And one thing I was listening you always listen to the podcast. And one thing I was listening to with Jim Cramer was he kept talking about the Philadelphia Eagles. Yeah. And I said to him, Jim, you have such passion for this. You know, why don't you if you called up the CEO of ESPN, he's gonna take your call because you're Jim Cramer, and just write an article about the Philadelphia Eagles for espn.com. They're gonna publish it. It'll be great. And, you know, we talked about things like that because I was you know, not that he should switch from writing about finance to writing about sports, but he should have outlets for his passions. He shouldn't, you know, lock himself into one thing. But the other thing is we also talked about, you know, he's we talked about, you know, his work life balance. You know, I've always known him to focus so much on work, but now as and I see this for myself. As I get older, the work life balance becomes a lot more important, and we talked about that. It's I love that episode. You were very intrigued by Jim Cramer also because just you're like, okay. You've been very successful. You seem to have made a lot of money. And what keeps you working 16 hour days? Right? You were very you were, like, very, you know, insistent on that aspect of it, and he was like, I love it. Right? I love doing what I'm doing. Yeah. No. It's interesting. And, you know, it's interesting to people I interview who don't seem like like, I love what I do, but I need downtime every day. I really feel like I need downtime or I can't function. I get very unhappy. Like, you've even seen me. Like Yeah. You'll schedule, like, 4 podcasts back to back, and I'll literally be crying, like because I know for each podcast, I've gotta prepare at least 10 hours, and I'm, like, crying. When am I gonna Yeah. Have, like, a spare moment to breathe? And but Jim Cramer seems like he can work 16 straight hours and then wake up and do it again. But we talked about that. Let me ask you this, though. You you mentioned a lot of things you like about the job. But what about do you think there's anything inside of you which is addicted to having a relevant voice? So you there's many voices out there, and the voice has changed. Yours has stayed consistent through the years and the decades. Do you ever get addicted to, like, I wanna still be I need to be still one of those top voices in the space. I still need the fans. Okay. This is really important because, on a 1 on 1. So I went to the I went to the Eagles, patriots game, the Super Bowl. And when you do that, you're with your wife. And at one point, my wife just said, you're really into the adulation. Because people are coming up to you. And I said, well, I'm into the kindness. She goes, no. You're individuation. You get a kick out of it. And I said, well, I do like that people like what I do. And she goes, but, you know, do you like what you do? Do how about you? Forget the verification. That's terrific. But do you like it, and will you always like it? Will you always wanna work this hard? And I came back with what she thought was a very shortsighted thought, which I said, I like it now. She goes, no. No. No. Really thoughtful people will think, okay. That adulation is not working for working, but I really it's not gonna last forever. Nothing lasts forever. What's plan b? What else do you wanna do? And, she felt that my avoidance of the topic, was I don't wanna say shallow because that's too pejorative, but someone would have heard the conversation and said, my wife's deep. I'm shallow. And I'm really cognizant of that because she is. She's much more thoughtful about the future than I am, because I'm saying, hey. It's a good ride. And I look at it a little more like sports, which is, hey. Listen. As long as I can not be Willie Mays, but throw it from the center from center field, as long as, I enjoy it, I'm gonna keep doing it. And she said, well, what happens if you stop enjoying it? And I come back and say, then I will pivot. Alright. We'll get through some more of these. Episode 324, Cal Fussman. I think if I just say the name Cal Fussman, a lot of people don't know who he is, but he was kind of a editor at large for Esquire, interviewer at large. He's interviewed everybody from Yeah. Mikhail Gorbachev on down. I think he's one of the best, interviewers on the planet. Yeah. He's terrific. And we have to thank Jay for that, our engineer, Jay Yao, because he had run into him and was like, he'd be great for you guys, and thank you, Jay. Jay, where'd you run into him? Doctor Oz. I recorded him with doctor Oz. Oh, okay. Interviews with great I I admitted, like, a call out, confessed because you've since become a close friend of ours, and, I was a little skeptical. And, but then once I listened to it, I felt like, wow. This guy is really smart. I think also, good friend of the podcast, AJ Jacobs, recommended We Talk to Cal as well. Oh, that's terrific. Yeah. A large and Esquire. Yeah. Exactly. But, man, we and that one was the first one we did. We did that podcast in my apartment because we couldn't find a studio. And, gosh, Cal and I just hit it off so well. We were, like, best friends right away. And we just we talked about look. The art of interviewing is important. There's 600,000 podcasts out there, and I would say maybe a dozen have, you know, people who are really a plus interviewers. And Cal Fussman is is one of them. And we just talked about it, and we had such a fun time. I don't even I I I should go back and listen to that one. Then I've been on his podcast about minimalism, and we reaired that on our podcast. So, And we have we have some nice things we're gonna do with Cal coming up. So, Cal, get ready. Get some rest. And, I'll look terrific when we saw him. He lost Blake. That. We're gonna we're gonna break a record. So Cal, be ready. Get to sleep. That almost sounds like a song. Cal, be ready. That could be like a country western song. I wanna get to the idea that questioning not only is a way of connection, but it's like this superpower, like questioning and and and kinda figuring how to how to dig and open people up. That provides you housing and income and experiences and surprises and expands your horizons. Like, that that is the superpower. That's like your mutant superpower. Yeah. I I I think it is. And If you were if this was the Justice League, you're like, question man. Yeah. I but, you know, the the problem with that is I'd have a costume with a question mark on it. And you've looked at the Riddler. That was already taken by the Riddler. It's it's an interesting thing because the more that I think about it, the more that I see, like, what questions can do for people, you you can show your intelligence by asking a question. I I remember when I was a freshman in college, and I I was on a path to be a sports writer, and I went to the University of Missouri, which has, like, a big journalism program. It was so competitive that there were in this little town of oh, they they couldn't have had more than 50,000 people, But there was a town newspaper, there was a journalism school newspaper, and there were 2 university newspapers. And and so there was so much so many people were going there to be journalists. There was so much competition that everybody wanted to be the person who wrote about the University of Missouri football team because it was the biggest most eyeballs are on that. And when I went as a freshman, I realized, again, I was gonna have to wait, like, years in order for the seniors to graduate and then the juniors to move on and graduate. And by the time I was a senior, then I could get in the locker room and practice the craft. And I just I was ready to get in the game. And so I went with the older reporters in the same car while they drove to these away games and just sat in the stands. And I watched the games just because I wanna be close to it. And around the 4th or 5th game, there was, like, a big upset that Missouri had pulled off on the team from Nebraska, which had a national championship winning coach and a great powerful, tradition. And I just felt compelled. I had to get in the locker room. There were questions I had to ask. And so I looked down, and I saw there's a photographer from the school newspaper I was working at, and he had a press pass dangling around his neck. And I thought, well, he's not gonna go in the locker room. He's done taking pictures. What if I got his pass? Would that let me in the locker room? Then I could ask my questions. So I got down to the field. He said, sure. I'm not gonna use the pa*s. Put it around my neck. I got in the locker room, and I can remember looking around, and there were all these people that I wanted to be. They had the job that I wanted, and they're asking the coach questions. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I had this one question, and I just asked it. And there was silence, and the coach, like, you could see his eyes. They could go up in the air. He was really thinking about the answer. And then he started to answer, and I saw everybody this was the days before tape recorders. Everybody had their pads out, and they were busily writing his answer. And I knew in that moment 2 things had happened. 1, the coach had respected the question and given a good answer to it. And 2, I looked around and thought, okay. Now I'm one of you guys. And from that moment on, I had a very different confidence. Right. And and and what you showed there is that the art of asking a good question creates a career rather than necessarily knowing all the facts. So people sort of feel like, oh, if I know the all the facts, then I have a career. But actually, the art of knowing what quest like, science is all about people don't realize science is not about knowing the secrets of the universe. Science is about asking the right questions about the universe and then testing those questions. And so it's really the questions motivate the career rather than having all the information, which changes constantly and is wrong constantly and and so on. Wolfgang Puck, was a couple episodes later, episode 328. I just loved his love for food. Like, he he grew up in his mother's garden picking out, like, just natural ingredients for food, helped his mom cook. And you you could see it's not just you know, they always say in the 10000 hour world, you need your 10000 hours, and then you're the best in the world at something. He started his 10000 hours at the age of 5. He's probably got 60 1000 hours of Yeah. Cooking under his belt. And it was just you know, I'm not even interested in cooking or whatever, but it's to listen to someone who's such an expert at something that's so important in our daily lives. Like, what, a, what makes someone the best in the world at something? B, just what's the nuances that separate them out from there's plenty of, like, great chefs, but what makes him the best in the world? And, you know, and, obviously, he's not just a great chef. He's a great businessman. Later that night, I went to eat at it after the podcast, I went to eat at his restaurant. He sat down with me for a while. He gave me a tour of the kitchen. Just a good human being. I I love his enthusiasm for for what he does. That's we've seen it time and time again. Don't even don't even try if you're not gonna be enthusiastic, if you're not gonna be obsessed, if you're not gonna love what what you're doing. Because how are you gonna work the 16 hours a day if you don't you don't love it? No. He was definitely a real inspiration, and and we like to always say, like, how you do anything is how you do everything. And everything he does, he does a certain way. And, he talked about having the best ingredients possible and how that's key, and I think that's a lesson in life. Like, have the best people around you or people love you, care about you, and, you know, who could help you. You know, I'm and by the way ingredients to a good life. But the ingredients to a good life upon on the book. But what you just said, how you do anything is as is how you do everything, that's a Steve Cohen original. And, that's that's probably the the quote you've said that's the most important to me because a lot. You've said a lot because it's really a lot of quotes too. Oh, you said a lot of quotes. But, like, it's really true. Like, how he picks ingredients, the care with which he picks ingredients, that's ultimately gonna be reflected in the final food someone eats and the energy they take in and how he runs his business and how he picks employees and treats them. Like, you know, it's such an important thing, and it's it's it's a real good trick to looking like, I'm not a good judge of people. But if you see how they do certain things, you can kind of see, okay, how they do everything is how they do everything. Like, it's not the case that someone's gonna be, you know, you know, like Wolfgang Puck and then just be, you know, a bad guy in every aspect other aspect of his life. It's sort of rare. What I love about hearing you speak right now, it's, like, infectious in the sense that you run, I don't know how many 1,000,000,000 dollars worth empire. You cater it to the Oscars. You're you're opening up all these restaurants, and yet what you love doing is finding a local farmer, going to the farmer's market, thinking about these ingredients. So this reels us back in time again. 14 years old. You're working in your first kitchen as an apprentice. You do the correct thing and drop out of some stupid high school or whatever and and start really doing what you love, what you care about. Like, how did you grow in your love for this? Because you could've gotten in any direction at the age of 14. It almost went in the wrong direction because I left my home, and my father told me always. My stepfather said, oh, you're good for nothing. You're gonna come back home anyway. And I said, I will never come home again. And then I left with my little suitcase. It was 50 miles away where, it was. At that time, we didn't have telephone or anything. So if I wanted something, I had to write a letter to my mother. And then I get in this different town, and I started to work there. And on a Sunday lunch, we ran out of potatoes, and the chef told me you have to go home. You're not fire you're fired. Go back home. He he blamed you for running out of potatoes? Yeah. Yeah. We Why? I was wondering about that because you told us, like, were you supposed to buy the potatoes? No. We I was supposed to peel them and cook them. That's it. But I was 14 years old and, like, 5 foot tall. And So you peeled them too thickly? No. So we ran out of potatoes. Potato is a big side dish in in Australia. You know? We eat a lot of mashed potatoes and Yeah. And just steamed potatoes and so on. So in the middle of service, there were no more potatoes. So I believe the chef freaked out. The the sous chef came and he starts screaming at me. At the end of service, the chef called me over and said, you're fired. You know, you ran out of potatoes. And I said, I didn't know how much potatoes we need. I just started them months ago. And then I said, I'm not going home. It was really crazy. And so I said, I'm gonna kill myself. I'm not going home. So I went on the river there. It was a big river with a, big high bridge going. So I said, I'm gonna just jump in the river. So I was standing for an hour on the bridge, looking down and looking down and seeing, it was early winter, and seeing the ice swimming down the river and some wood things swimming down, and I looked and looked. And I said, I'm gonna jump, I'm gonna jump. And then at the end, something lit up in my head, and I said, I just gonna go back tomorrow and see what happened. So I arrived the next morning in, the restaurant, and the apprentice who was ahead of me was all excited because he didn't wanna clean the kitchen or he didn't wanna peel potatoes and onions and everything. He hid me down in the vegetable cellar. And then, 2 weeks later, the chef used to come down in the cellar and sees me sitting on a milk crate down there peeling carrots. And he said, what the heck are you doing here? I fired you. Go home to your mother. I said, I'm not leaving. And he grabbed me. He tried to pull me physically out. I put dug in my hair and said, I'm not leaving. And then he didn't know what to do. He obviously was like a scene. He was yelling and everything, I'm good for nothing. Go back home. And then, at the end, he called the owner of the, restaurant and said, you know, I don't know what to do with this kid. I fired him. He should go home to his mother, but he doesn't wanna leave. And the owner said, well, maybe maybe I send him to the other hotel we have, and maybe he can stop there. So I said, okay. That sounds better. I'm not going home. And then I left, and I started to work in the other place, in the other hotel. And there, the chef was a woman, and he she told me basically, I said, okay. Just do your job. Don't make any noise, and everything will be fine. And so and then it started to get better. And about a year later, we went, to school. Well, you started to get better. I feel like there's obviously a lesson in here, which is not only don't kill yourself and go back to work, but there's some element of perseverance. Like, this, your father told you you were good to not for nothing. The chef then to that you looked up to and you were working for and you love cooking, the chef essentially told you you were good for nothing. Yeah. And what made you inside feel like, okay. There's something in me that wants to cook. You didn't even look for another job in another industry, which you could've found Yeah. I'm sure even at the age of 14. What made you really deep down wanna go back? Did you wanna prove yourself to your father, to the chef? I I think part of it, it was me. That's what I really wanted to do even at that young age and, you know How could you tell? How do people know? Because I had no idea about anything else maybe, or I didn't, think about anything else. Was it love for mother? Maybe. The love from the mother. And my mother was like an angel. She was amazing. And but I think for me, cooking was it. I didn't wanna become a mason or a carpenter or things like that. I used to hate that. That I knew because my stepfather was building the house. By year by year, he added on things. Whenever he had money, he built a little bit on or did something. And he always had me work with him, and I hated it. And and yet I can feel like you might like, given what you said, you might have liked that just because, again, he's using the ingredients of nature to build, you know, and then and it's But I didn't like him. I didn't like him. That's the problem. Was the big problem. Yeah. And I think my mother was amazing, and I loved her. And she loved me and my grandmother too. So I think it was the connection, really, I had with her which made me like what she was doing. And I think that's probably a big, reason why I went into cooking. I'm picking these 15 episodes out of the 100 not because they're the best. All 100 are great. People always ask me what what's my favorite episode. There's really no answer. It's it's almost like it's easier for me to say what are my what the worst episodes were. Fortunately, none of them are in this 100. But, the next episode, was right after Wolfgang Puck, Sebastian Maniscalco, just by coincidence. So weird coincidence, actually. That was the very next episode. And here, I had never been to Wolfgang Puck's restaurant in my life. And then 2 days in a row, I go there because Wolfgang Puck, invited me for the first time. And the second time, Sebastian Maniscalco had started his career as a waiter in, the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons Yeah. Where Wolfgang Puck's restaurant is in New York City. And so we went right back down there the next day because Sebastian wanted to do the podcast where he first worked. It was sort of his way. So many people, again, don't know who this guy is, which is kind of amazing. He Forbes had him on his highest on the highest paid comedians list. He made $15,000,000 as a comedian last year unbelievable. Which wasn't in any movies. It wasn't on any TV shows. It was all from touring on the road. And we talked about that. How do you build up such an audience without, like, the plat a national platform like a TV show? And I think this is important for anybody in personal branding, like, the kind of high touch he did with his, quote, unquote, customers, his fans. And it was really interesting. I'll tell you the main thing that was interesting. I mean, there was a lot of things that were interesting in that podcast, but it was funny. You know, every comedian's got a kind of, like, kind of their everyday voice Yeah. And then their funny voice. And he and I were talking, and you, Steve, because you talk all the time, you were talking to his you were talking to his manager, like, a few feet behind us. And suddenly, he switched into his funny voice, and he's like, yo. We're, we're busy over here. We have a little quiet. And and it was just funny. Like, his funny voice was just funny. I started laughing. And so but, anyway, that's an interesting podcast to listen to. Once I became comfortable on stage, I started kinda peeling the layers off and and really showing my true self of who I really am and kinda how I act around the house. Not that I'm walking around the house going, what? But, you know But even though you say that is funny. But I would've never done that, what I just did, in an interview 10 years ago. You know, I didn't be not comfortable with myself, not confident in myself that that might be funny or, even even interviewing, even going in these TV shows that I've been on today, I noticed that what I was doing on these TV shows, I would've never been able to do 10 years ago because I would've not allow I would've been editing myself. What what do you think changed at some point? So you've been doing comedy, let's say, for for 20 years almost or maybe more, maybe less. 20. 20. So, what do you think changed around year 10 that allowed you to be more yourself, both in terms of talking about your personal life and in terms of, like, this almost persona that you that you're comfortable with now? Yeah. It it was just that comfortability on stage that knowing whatever I kind of, play through this instrument is gonna be funny because I've honed the instrument so so much over time that I know that, whatever whatever I might be talking about, I could go spin class with my wife. It could be going on an airplane. It could be me going to a tech business, so much I recently did, to see how people behave now in the new, work environment. I used to work at United Airlines when, 1996, and there was cubes. You sat in a cube, and you went home. Now you go to a business, and you know, people are running on a treadmill typing an email. There's ping pong in the commissary. You know? It looks like camp. So anything that I put kinda put through this filter, I know my point of view. And once you get the point of view down, I think a lot lot of it is so much easier because now you have a a a point of view you're talking through opposed to just kinda trying to find yourself on stage and just you know, when I first started, I was completely angry. I was not likable. I didn't laugh at myself on stage. Nobody was in on the joke. You know? The way I think is a little absurd, but I made it sound like I was talking at the audience rather than, like, hey. Everybody else outside this room is crazy. We're the normal ones. You know? Like, I I was talking at the audience like they were the problem. So, again, that's his time. He takes time to kind of feel comfortable on stage. And after, 2005, it was, like, 8:8 years in. I felt like, oh, wait. Now I'm starting to feel like Sebastian Masculco on stage rather than a a copy of of him in in some distorted way. So, and and then that translates to all aspects of life. Just being yourself. Like, I was a little bit more introverted when I first started doing comedy. Even when I would check into a hotel, I didn't really talk to anybody. I would just head down it, you know, get the key. You know? Now I come in. Hey. How are you doing? How's it going? It's just a little bit more freeing now that I know who I am. I know myself, and I'm very confident in what I'm doing. And it's kinda bled into all aspects of my life. So so so, like, for someone listening to this and saying to themselves, you know, I might not wanna be a stand up comedian, but I wanna be myself like this guy is talking about. How can someone learn a little bit more? How to be a little more authentic in their daily interactions? Like, is there a way to kind of skip part of those 10 years if even if you're not going on stage 7 times a night? Whatever it is. It it doesn't have to be stage. It could be whatever you're doing. And I think over time, you'll begin to, you know, peel those layers off. Whether you want you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to be a musician, you want to be a teacher, whatever it is. I'm sure when you come out of college and you're teaching a class, you're not the same person as you are when you're 40 years old teaching that same class, because you have all that experience to draw from. So I don't think there's shortcuts. I don't think you skip 10 years. It's you gotta you gotta go through the the the time and the pain and and and to really find out who you are, and it it doesn't have to be like I said, I'm just speaking because I went on stage to do it. But if you're a businessman, it's like you gotta be in there at 6 o'clock in the morning, pounding the pavement, trying to, to make money. And and, again, it might not happen a year or 2, 3, 4 years, but is if you feel passionate about the the whole thing is passion. You gotta feel passion in what you're doing. If you didn't feel passion in doing these, these 3 3 times a week you're doing this. Right? You you I I would tell if you're not passionate about it. I could tell right away that you really care about this thing. You took time to read the book. There's a lot of people that don't even read the book, or they read a couple pages, or they'll get, like, a synopsis or whatever. The the fact that, you know, you took some time and and did some research tells me that the guy's passionate about what he's doing. So you can't really substitute that passion in anything that you're doing. So what I would advise these people out there that are listening to your show, if they have a passion, and then they wanna be themselves, and and whatever, you got you got to go out there and and and work. I mean, there's no I wish I had, like, a magic formula to tell you. Next episode, I'll skip to here is, episode 338, Michio Kako. Kaku. Michio Michio Kaku. I would say he Michio and Neil deGrasse Tyson are the Carl Sagan of our times. Absolutely. And, either one could be. Like, they're it's not that, you know, they're they're the most well known physicist, and they've really they've really made physicists physics accessible and interesting to anybody. And physics and astronomy. And, you know, Mitch Iokaku, wrote a book, the the future of humanity. Let me just let me just see all his books. Yeah. And while you're doing that, yeah, just I I found the future of humanity, his latest book, just very accessible, very easy to understand, and it made you feel like it wasn't as daunting. And, you know, yeah, you got a sense of excitement about it. Right. So he he wrote The Future of Humanity. He wrote Physics of the Future, Parallel Worlds, Physics of the Impossible, The Future of the Mind. And in the future of humanity, he's talking about, like, well, how are we gonna travel to Mars? How are we gonna travel through galaxies? How are we gonna could we be immortal? What's our destiny beyond Earth? But it's not in sort of a way where he's lecturing. It's what I really learned from him in the process of talking to him is that he thinks in terms of questions and not answers. Yeah. Most people think in terms of answers. Most people think that they know everything and that they think that since they know everything, that's how they make their decisions. But he basically assumes the first thing you should do in any situation is ask what if. Like, what if we went to Mars? That means we're gonna have to spend years of, you know, sitting in a ship. So maybe there's a better way. What if what if we can put our consciousness into a computer and send the computer? Or or or then what if what if we could beam on light our consciousness? You know, if we if it's if it's not just electricity, but we can put our consciousness, program it into photons, or if we can beam that. And then does that make us immortal? Would it be the same soul? Is this how we could get across galaxies? Well, okay. What if the solar system was going away and we needed to get across galaxies? Well, time you know, is it possible that you know, we know time and space curves, so could time and space fold? I don't know. I'm not just describing it properly, but everything sort of started with this super fascinating what if. And I think his skill was he always knew how to ask the right what if. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's kinda like where, Tony Robbins says, like, you could better your life by having better questions. And, like Have you ever sent me that quote? That's a great quote. But I also and another quote I think is applicable with him, where, like, Albert Einstein said, you know, if if you if you really understand it well, you could explain it very simply. Right. You know? And I think some people try and hide behind an implied profundity or like obfuscate things and he has the capacity, which takes a lot, a lot of work. I mean, it's like Nathaniel Hawthorne said, to write easily is very hard. You know, to make it seem simple is is a very hard thing. Well well, you figure, to get to where he is, you know, being, you know, this amazing professor and author, and he's been on TV a 1000000000 times explaining physics, and he's you know, again, he's like Carl Sagan of our times. And to think so deeply about these issues, in order to get that training, he probably had to go through decades of the most boring math. Like or not I shouldn't say boring. The most difficult math. Right. Sure. But there's no math in any of his books. He's he's explaining it all in terms of, like, well, if we can get to Mars, here are the problems that could result. What if? You know? And then here's how we could solve these what ifs. And it's just I I strongly recommend reading the future of humanity and then thinking about the issues in your own life and kind of transforming those problems into what ifs. He he sort of removed problems by saying what if, and then building the I'll I'll give you an example. So he's come on now twice, actually. This was the first one. The second time he came on was the other day when we also had William Shatner on, Captain Kirk from Star Trek. So we talked about some of the physics of Star Trek, and and he he you know, everybody always is fascinated by the technology in Star Trek. Like, the transporter, you know, teleports you from the ship to the plane. Yeah. And so Michio Keiko said when he was a grad student, they would start thinking, well, what if The Transporter could happen? What and then he builds the bridge between now and the outcome. The outcome's on the TV show. The Transporters created in the 23rd century. So what would have to happen What if that existed in the 23rd century? What has to happen in order for us to get there? And he starts that's when his mind starts working well. Reverse engineering it. Yeah. We have to we have to quantum entanglement has to be bigger than atoms, and, you know, we'd have to figure out how to transport consciousness and all these things. So his what if is almost not a way of having problems, but a way of solving problems. Like, let's say you want let's say you, Steve Yeah. Wanted to write a best selling novel. Instead of saying James, help me. James, you were in 19. Help me. Instead of saying, oh, it's too hard for me, or that's a big problem, or I'd have to be friends with lots of agents and publishers and all that, you you would say, you know, what if I could write a best selling novel? What has to Yeah. Happen? Well, I'll read some best selling novels now, and I'll, what's a topic that's interesting to me where I can put a thriller esque component to it? And, you know, you I think reading the future of humanity is really a guide to to what if. And, also, it's a beautiful way to see Michio Kako's pure awe of of what he of of the universe, and that's why he's so he was so interested in conquering the mass so then he could deal with these deeper, more interesting issues, philosophical issues. And I'm gonna pay you a compliment because the other day when we had William Shatner and Michio back here, who's just a terrific guy, you you didn't know like, we had asked Michio at the last minute. You know, we asked him and he came in and you were able to hold your own with these people. I mean, I'm still like it was whoosh. Right? A lot of it was over, you know Yeah. You clashed a sign to me. Mitchie Okeko's in the audience. So I had to figure out how to segue. Like, William Shatner is great at kind of holding the stage. Yeah. I had to figure out how to segue from the fascinating things he was saying. I didn't really wanna interrupt him, but, also, I wanted to bring Michio on the stage at the right point, and they knew each other. They were friends. Yeah. And it was just they hugged each other, and they were also talking. Correct because he was so overjoyed, and Shatner, you know, was a terrific interviewer as well. But he, you know, he appreciated, like, how art imitated life and back and forth. And, you know, just, and I think people like Kaku appreciated the demonstration of some of these concepts in Star Trek, and they were debating about whether it could be real or not. But it was really a cool interview. Yeah. And I was, everybody was so well, that was one of the few times we had, like, a big audience Yeah. For the podcast. And everybody was, like when Michio came on the stage, everyone was clapping, and the conversation was just so great. People I mean, there were, like, a 100 photos posted on Twitter by everybody just to make great. Yeah. It was kind of a memorable moment. How do you come up with all the questions you come up with? Like maybe maybe you've been doing this for so long, you're not really aware of the process in your brain, but it's very different from from most people's. Your book is filled with more questions than solutions. Well, you know, when I watch science fiction movies, I say to myself, what in this movie violated the laws of physics? When I see Harry Potter, in fact, that's of course a magic, movie about magic. But I realized that, well, very few laws of physics are violated even in Harry Potter. Once we understand the motion of molecules that can manipulate molecules, we can do things that most people would consider magic. And so writing this book, I asked the same question. What prevents us from laser porting? What prevents us from living nearly forever? What prevents us from going to the stars? And then I realized almost nothing. The laws of physics are compatible with everything inside that book. And then every time you come up with a solution though, it seems like you're looking at, well, what questions does this lead to? Like, for instance, if if we solve this, problem of antiaging, of the cancers, you know, may may of the cells dividing instead of 60 times, a 1000 times, well, then what do we do about the resulting cancers that could result? So it seems like every solution, you you try to push yourself a little further than the solution and say, well, what 10 problems might occur here? Right. In other words, Like you push yourself. Right. Because you see people have science fiction writers have explored many of these avenues, but they haven't looked at the consequences and the physics and the principles that may or may not make this possible. Now, when I wrote the book Physics of the Impossible, I said that, well, there are 3 categories of impossibility. Some things are just unlikely, but well within the laws of physics, like starships, for example. Unlikely, but compatible with the laws of physics. Then things are at the borderline where they just may be possible and may not be possible, like time travel. That's at the real cutting edge of what we know about the quantum theory. Then there are things which are just impossible. That is, things that are impossible like violating the conservation of matter and energy. That simply violates everything we know about the universe. So when you put it that way, you begin to realize that every proposition in science fiction you can pick apart. Is it simply plausible? Is it possible but unlikely? Or is it simply impossible? So when you look at it that way, then you realize that there are gradations. That every question has another answer, which begs more questions. But that's good because that's what science is all about. The very next podcast after that, number 339 was Tyra Banks Oh, yeah. Which, an amazing person. I mean, they're in their 29th season of America's next top model. I mean, to have even one season of a TV show is amazing. And, of course, she developed her expertise. She was a supermodel. So she she had a whole career as an amazing supermodel making probably 1,000,000 of dollars that way, but then transforming into a TV mogul and producer and genius. But I'll I'll let people listen to the clip and the episode if they want. The main thing I got out of it was nobody knows anything. I was gonna say the same thing. Yeah. Which, by the way, we could have gotten from almost every one of these podcasts, but but I'm very interested in media. And she calls up her agent and says, what about a combination of, you know, models with American Idol? Which seems like it it's, like, the perfect example of idea sex. Like, a huge idea that's a $1,000,000,000 industry combined with another $1,000,000,000 media franchise. Why wouldn't that be great? And every agent and producer said, nah. Nah. Just forget it, Tyra. Just stay at home. And she just started the show on her own, and, boom, 29 seasons later, it's still, like, one of the best shows on TV, I mean, the most popular shows on TV. And coming from the person who started choose yourself, you know, you definitely I knew you would appreciate that, and I'm sure you also appreciated her compliments towards your hair. She said it was terrific. She just really liked it. Well well, you know, she had a lot of skills that were very charming and charismatic. Like, you could look at her and say, oh my gosh. She's stunningly beautiful in a in a very interesting way, Gregory. She has this very interesting look Yeah. And and combined with being stunningly beautiful. But it's clear that that is not the reason for her success. She she you know, when you talk to her, you see the discipline. By the way, her mom was there, so you see the effect of the of having good people around you. She's creative. She works hard. You can see from the show how hard she works and how dedicated she is to it. Like, she took us she herself took a season off from being on the show and just being she was just a producer, but she got back because she saw that, you know, she really added a lot of value to it by being on it. Just amazing. And then I will say this, and, maybe not many people know it because it didn't happen during the podcast, although I posted on Instagram. She did a big favor for me right afterwards. She sent a video message to my daughter, and I explained the reasons why this was important to me. And she was like, no problem. And, she did it 59 seconds on the dot, which means I could post on Instagram, which has a 60 second limit. So she's such a pro, and she really I really appreciated Tyra. Again, that's another one we hope comes on again. One day, I was in my kitchen, in Los Angeles, and I'd woken up, and I'm having my underwear, like, granny panties. Don't get don't think of the glamorous, Victoria's Secret panties, like, the not hot underwear. But I go in my kitchen and I'm making some tea and then I look out the window and in my head popped, wow, there's that show called American Idol and some girl named Kelly Clarkson just won and that's a really cool show. But then there's also that show The Real World on MTV and you get to see people living together and their struggles day in and day out. What if I combine the competition part of American Idol with the seeing how they live of the real world and set it in the modeling industry? It came to me like that. And I tell my agent, and my agent at the time was was, like, it's kind of like a, agent that booked me for commercials, not a modeling agent, but like a theatrical agent. And I told him my idea and he was like, models are unsympathetic characters and vapid. Nobody wants to watch that. Well, he why are people so wrong sometimes? Oh, right? Like I mean, every girl in the world was watching this show and their and their father. And she told me when when she was making that tea, she she called me, and she goes, I got this idea. And I was like, wow. That's pretty amazing. And but then when she told me what he said, it was like, what? Why do you think why do you think people are so wrong sometimes? Middlemen. I I think a lot of it is their own preconceived notions. A lot of it is they wanna keep a lot of us in our place. You know? Oh, you're just a model. You stay over there. Or going into stereotypes and not looking deeper, cutting an idea off before you can actually even hear, the idea. So then how did you avoid giving him like, outsourcing too much of your self esteem on this idea to him? Like, you basically knew that this was a good idea. How did you go around? His opinion. It was my 3rd time that I pitched a show to him. This was the 3rd one that he said was not a good idea, and I was tired of it. And so I called my best friend at the time, and still very super duper close friend, Kenya Barris. Kenya created Blackish, very successful writer. At the time, he was a staff writer, successful, but not like the juggernaut that he is today. To elementary school together. Yeah. We've known each other since we were 6 years old. And, and so I was like, Kenya, I'm so tired of my agent. I have this idea. I told him the idea. He's like, Ty, that's the 3rd good idea. He was, I'm tired of this. And I was like, what can we do? So he took it to his agency and connected me to his agency and his agency connected me to a man by the name of Ken Mock, who was like the godfather of very early competition reality shows. And I had, like a little dinner with Ken Mock in LA. I told him my idea and he's like, that's a great idea. And a couple weeks later, we're pitching it. Kenya helped develop it. Ken helped me develop it, and we sold the idea. Now, Ken, he, confesses that Ken thought I was going to be a vanity producer and that's where you put your name on something and you don't do any work. So he was shocked that I had so much natural knowledge about how to produce television and that I lived in the editing bay. After we had finished shooting, I would, like, order barbecued ribs and camp out with the lead editor, Michael Policow, and we would just chow down on ribs and edit, edit, edit, like, all day and all night. And we hit that first season, and it was super successful. Well, I think also this this behind the scenes aspect of what makes a good model, which comes out in the show, it was so, interesting because then it made clear to all these little girls that it's not just about looks. It's about how you present yourself and personality and all of these other things. Like, I don't know, what makes a good model. And it's also not just about cookie cutter beauty. My mom really, at a young age instilled in me that there's so so many different types of beauty. And so I'm super attracted to things that are not the cookie cutter. And that's one of the major messages of top model too is you don't have to be, you know, this kind of hair and this look and this eye and this booty and this boob. There's so many different types of quirks that are amazingly beautiful.