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The little boys and girls ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out their routines, habits, favorite books, lessons learned, mental frameworks, etc. and so on and so on and so forth that you can apply to your own lives this time around we have a very special edition with two hit interviews from the podcast back catalog.
We're coming up very soon on the 10th anniversary of the podcast and I want to experiment with a new format and that is taking someone who is very much a household name, superstar who is known to the masses, in this case Jamie Foxx, and pairing that person with someone who is lesser known but who I consider to be a superstar and who I would love to have a little more visibility. So it's a two for one and in this case the names are Jamie Foxx and Maria Popova.
Jamie Foxx for those who may not know you can find him on Twitter at I am Jamie Foxx is an Academy award winning actor, a Grammy award winning musician and a stand up and improv comedian.
It's one of the most consummate performers and entertainers that I have ever met honestly I would say that the two top are Jamie Foxx and Hugh Jackman who both been on the podcast but Jamie blew my mind in this conversation it was so much fun it ended up being voted podcast of the year in 2015 back in the pleocene era of podcasting when celebrity is appearing on podcast really few and far between
and did this in his recording studio at his house there's music there's comedy there's everything the stories are amazing and then we have Maria Popova who you can find on Twitter at brain picker who is the creator of the marginilian long ago this was named brain pickings
and it is included in the library of congress's permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials started off as a newsletter to a handful of friends I think maybe six people and now millions and millions and millions of people read her work constantly the marginilian is Maria's one woman labor of love and inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life she is unbelievably prolific she reads so continuously she writes so beautifully she speaks
multiple languages and English is not her first language which is always incredibly impressive to me because her writing is better than mine which is not say that I'm the best in the world but her English is far more elegant far more eloquent than mine she is incredibly consistent the marginilian was created on October 26 2006 and it has been running strong for 17 plus years so I hope you enjoy this format you can dip in dip out
you have two people choose from my hope is that you will begin with the entertainment the no name and that will pull you in in this case with Jamie Foxx who better and then you will continue and listen to someone you may not come across otherwise and that is Maria Popova I love both of these interviews and I would love to know what you think of this format so let me know on Twitter it's going to be a while before I can bring myself to say X
as the cool kids might be saying by tagging at T Ferris at T F E R R I S S let me know you think of this format by goal again is to introduce people to interviews they might have missed over the years they might miss forever if they weren't surfaced and brought to your attention
and you can think of this as my personal curated selection of if not the best of the last 10 years of the podcast at the very least some of my own personal favorites so I really hope you enjoy this and please do let me know what you think Jamie welcome to the show man thanks buddy I'm so excited to be here I'm I'm not admiring your setup here this is where the magic happens to be honest with you a lot of
magic happens here for the people that are listening we are actually in my studio my home studio now you know studios we're talking about tech world studios because of the tech world a lot of them displayed dissipated closed doors because if you think about when LMFA OKM around they didn't need studios they did all of their music on the laptop right flying from here to Germany or whatever
and just dumped it on to and just pressed up to see CD or the item so studios are almost becoming obsolete but there's something very interesting about this studio first just for people that are listening this studio and I'll just describe it's you know sort of plush the carpets is great we can sit next with grand piano you had a grand piano which a lot of places so we keep a grand piano around just to make sure that we don't lose you
want to get too techy but what's interesting about it is it's actually electric but it's an electric grand piano so we still have the wood to give you that warm sound which you know I think it makes a lot of sense because as music starts to progress because of the way we record now sometimes you lose a little bit of the heart of it so I think within the next 20 30 40 50 years it'll be you know this type of music the real sound will you
know remain right that makes sense now the studio when I first got the house look like a old porn set it had a yeah like an old basement carpet and the couch and like a Metallica Metallica poster and I was like what would I do with this because I
wanted to work and do music what's interesting now I got a guy to change the whole place over and you can see we'll take pictures and show it for you for you guys to listen but they did a very good job and if you look over here this is where we do the recording there's a booth which is normal but also the recording on both sides were able to do animation were able to do if we want to do ADR for movies what is the ADR
like when you like when we're doing a movie but we're recording up the movie outside is a lot of noise I didn't pick up audio so we'll do pick up audio so and so and most any actor actress will tell you ADR is the worst thing in the world to do so to be able to have here have it here I could do my ADR here I could do my animation here and things like that and so just the now the studio itself the actual brains of the studio it's a
old hard drive and the reason I kept that old hard drive I used to have a smaller studio in a smaller house but when I had that small studio I wasn't in music I built the studio in my smaller house because I wanted to get a music but I was from comedy and from acting and things like that but what I
would do is I would throw parties and I would invite musical people over at the party like but when they would come over like if I had a pub or or Snoop or back at that time John B or Brian Mcnight I was a hey man you don't try to get the music would you leave me some music in my studio so people leave me like 16 bars 24 bars they would they would record something while they're in the studio they would record we'd have the party going I say
he's going to back you know what we're drinking and whatever like that and go and I said hey man just leave me a little something because I was trying to get into music and then I met this kid named Brienne Prescott basketball you know we played basketball on all this kind of stuff pick up basketball game and he say hey man want you
ever do music I said man I'm trying to get into that shit man I just you know know how to get into and then one day he I throw this big party and it was a party was was crazy because as I that that that dress a bit I would follow Puffy coms around back in the day when it was just like puff and J
low and not and back at that time no one could get into his parties but the reason he would let me in because I would carry a camera with me ever ago but it was back in the day day like you know the big cannon camera wait you would lay you in because you carry the car because at that time I wasn't Jamie Foxx I was just Jamie and so I couldn't get into all the parties because Puffy was so big like he come to LA we couldn't even get on on clubs right but I
took a town car everywhere he went jumped out of the town car one day said your puff can't record now at that point he didn't know you at all he knew me he knew me the kid that was on the living color or whatever like that but it wasn't elevated right and plus he was
in part is it was like huge like nobody's getting it and so they was he saw me with the cameras like you'll let him through and it was back in the day was like the big cannon camera with the light and I had to change the battery it wasn't like how today you just got your phone and you're packing it now I had I had production but I will follow him around and then one day we had this this party and Philly that I recorded for him and he said yo your money you know I'm
just party cuz it's what it cost a million dollars for this party I said you pay the million dollars for a party he's like yeah that's how I told puff I challenge and I said I'll throw you a party and my house at LA which is way smaller than this situation but I'll spend maybe $400 and it will rival this party not in the scale of it but in the type of people that are there and he was he was a little upset you know puff is a you know he always likes to win competitive
guys competitive guys you know you know you got your mother fuck mine playboy you don't understand essence of this party I was like all right I get it and he actually came to LA a few weeks later and it was a Saturday
said yo playboy make that shit happens so he calls me like nine in the morning right for that night in the morning for you just for the same day for the day I said no problem so I go into my cell phones call I have a I have a list of people that since I first came to LA the way I got into a
knowing everybody I was the first I was the first social media guy without social media I will go do a stand-up comedy routine at the club if they like the routine I had cue cards back in the day and what have people sign cue cards sign the name did you like the set give me your page or number I will text you and let you know where I would be you're at a time of time yeah I was there like index cards index cards so box and I had these you get this fly man stop it was
it. All right so if I can back up I just have to we took a fly break yeah so it was I just have to I said I said to admire this because the studio is all you say maybe like 30 30 by 15 feet on the floor and then another 15 feet tall and you said I'm going to stop and get this fly yeah got sort of fly I'm a lot of space and it took you about seven seconds to try this fly down and kill it I was very impressed you got to get shit done in here we'll have time so the cue cards so what so I
will get cue cards and you like I said I would send it you know I had a list of about 800 people I had 600 women because women at that time just like around 90 91 women at that time love to go to comedy clubs so it's all the pretty girls because pretty girls like to laugh you know I'm about eight
girls together Jamie so crazy whatever and so I had 800 signals just 200 guys because they wanted to be where the girls were so I would take that list and also say okay well now I'm having a party here here here whatever whatever if you want to come by so that same list along with the other
people that I met as I as I started to grow in the business I text and said I'm throwing a party a puff and this one pop had a bomb we ain't going nowhere was out and it was blade it was pop it I mean even the L.A. dude was like man we want to fuck with this New York dude just shit is so the song so
so I text I said listen I'm I'm puff is coming and the people that I text were only cool people like no people like that to be hating you know girls are pretty not slutty but not not too tight right you know I mean it was just it was really it was it was it was it was and so I hit him at 12 noon I
said you're where you at we're at a fever pitch it's going off over here in my little house and when he gets there his mind is blown and you know he shows up with the entourage that you know he you know he puffs he was like that's me and he walked and he says oh that's the girl from that show and that's the girl on this and I said yeah puff we we all live out here you know so all the people see I know that my friend and so he's like oh shit so the party's incredible we're playing his music
through my little sound speakers everybody's really toasting him and I said puff the people that are here are different in this what the fuck another fly good night two for two so so so so so he's he's he's a miren that that it's crazy and and everybody's in tune with him and I explain to him I said
puff let me explain to you who you are I said these are the people who not only live in L.A. but I think I found the right set of people who appreciate the art as well because what you do musically and what you're doing on the artistic side is blowing our minds as well and I said therefore look at the table I only spent $400 on the table there's Kentucky for our chicken I just put it in a nice bowl there's cola I just put them in pictures I said some no more than $400 but people are here I said
because here's the thing a fitted baseball cap New York fitted it's $58 maybe retail I said but puff on your head on your head it's priceless we just want to be around this fly shit right so we part in profit party and there's the do standing next like on the wall no one's talking to we got a little green jump jacket on guess what it was Jay Z nobody knew it was Jay Z can I say yeah what I do a missy L.A. has one room puff has the other room then I go to my garage to grab some other drinks and
I see this tall dude and this little dude and they're like the little guy goes yo be it's like this all the time I say yeah what you mean you know the girls and karaoke and I say yeah yeah man who are you over the Neptune's my name is for real I say yeah man I heard of you yeah man I like your shit
so that's how long ago this was amazing so here's how I make the music play though so as puff is there I get people to leave me different bits of music order like because I'm trying to get into the music thing so I turn that into a show in a sense to where I would just have different people I
would toast and try to you know give my music on so one day my boy Brienne brings in this kid he has a backpack on his jaws a little busted his name is Kanye West and I say yo yo who's who's that I said yo that's a new kid Kanye West he coming on I said really what do you do say he wrap I said
well shit he got a perform that shit because everybody comes to this to my house they got a perform so I said yo man they say you the shit and he was really quiet you know I said man let me hear you rap you need your beats or whatever he said I don't need no beat freestyle but through every
I mean chopped everybody's heads just amazed I said dude I don't know where you come from but you are going to be one of the biggest stars ever and he said I actually have a song for you I said why me a song like what you mean he said I got this song he says I want to record that so
were you happy to be in luck because I got a studio in the back so we're going to back and my studio at that time I called it the Porsche was a lot smaller than this it was really like never it was like a it was like a legit it was compact the sound was toasty I had a
engineer from all over the the city dialed in so that when real artists come they don't think they're oh this is just comedian fucking around some real shit so we go in and and and and Kanye you know quiet but but at the same time he knew what he wanted he says okay the song goes like this
he says he wants a Marvin Gaye some Luther Van Jones a little I said I got it now I started going she say she wants some my v get and he said what the fuck are you doing I said well see young man you don't know nothing about rnb see I'm a rnb motherfucker see I got to give him the shit you
know I got to put the shit on it and he goes really polite he says hits the button he says don't do that but you don't know what you're talking about right there uh then I had a song go you got to sing it this one so in my mind I'm thinking you know what I'm seeing the shit the song is wack it's not
going to make it because I'm thinking old school rnb but he was teaching me the simplicity of hip hop which I didn't know I was like yeah cool guy great rapper I don't think it's going to happen for him so I'll go off and do a bad movie when I come back my boy says remember the song you said it was
wack I said yes number one in the country you Kanye and twister Kanye's first record and it was actually twister's record I said oh shit so I'm at a club he said you don't believe me I said no I'm where am I am he they played it everybody ran to the dance floor I grabbed a mic said that's me that's
that's my song I'm I'm on that you know and so the music that's how I got into the music now the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use that same hard drive that we use I brought it to this studio I don't know so that hard drive is magical because we also did
just to give you a history on on the music Breon found that song slow jams it went number one and then as we started getting into music there was a song that Breon brought in and he would play these Breon would call me like he said you want to be in the music business it's like you know two or three in the morning he called me says you want to be in the music business I said yeah he said I'm gonna ask up I said well he said I got this song you gotta hear so I drove
all the way from my house in the valley to this to this to this to this to this little studio he says you ready motherfucker are you ready and Breon always says everything three times are you ready my fuck are you ready are you ready I said yeah yeah man play this shit so he plays it and the song was blaming on the goose got you feeling loose blame it on a I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I start that I said listen first of all please tell me that's my song he said yeah it's your song but you
gotta record it right now because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not he said but I know it's a hit we did blame it on the alcohol that night I sung it exactly like the record which goes way in contrast to my R and B roots because it was auto tune and everything like that but if we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo so we wouldn't would lose the essence of it. I don't want to be like, blame it on the alcohol, some corny shit. So we did that.
And then we went from every, the way we broke that record is that we went from every club. We went to the strip clubs first. Went to the strip club. Strip club. We went, we did the East Coast run. Said we were going to break the record in the East Coast. So we went to the strip. We went to New York. My man, Peckas took us around. And I will go into the club and use my comedic, and over-nacular to get the song off. I said, fellas, you ever been at the club? You meet a girl. You've been drinking.
You think she look like Halle Berry. You get her back home. She looks like Halle Scary. You know what you got to do? Blame it on the goose. God's feeling loose. Blame it on the, stop the record. Ladies, you ever meet a guy? You get back to the house with him. And you've been drinking too much. And you say, I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway. You got to blame it on the, so we took that. And we went all the way down from New York all the way down to Miami.
It was like 2008. And then the song took off. And so long story longer, Blame it on alcohol was done here, slow jam was done here. So this studio has that essence to it that you just, you don't throw it out of way. And just the building itself, the Tasha Beddingfields been here, she's cut, Kelly Rowlands been here, she's cut, the game has been here. He's cut right here on this floor. And I'm sure for you guys listening, I'm pointing to the floor, to the carpet.
A young man by the name of Ed sharing slept on this carpet for like six weeks trying to get his music career gone. He came from over from London. He heard about a live show that I do in LA. So really want to do your live show as possible. Because I have some music that I live with. I hear this kid, but just read him. I'm like, man, you do my live show. And it's mostly black, you know what I'm saying? But it's really like music people, like really hardcore music people, the very finicky.
You know, people that have played for Stevie Wonder, people will come there to, I mean, I had Miranda Lambert one night. I had Stevie Wonder on stage. I had baby face. I said, so this is the real shit you talking about. You know, you can come here. I don't care about the London and the accent. You got to really come with it. It's a, I think I'll be okay. I was like, so I'm taking them out live night. 800 people there. People's playing black folks sweatin' and just gettin' it.
You know what I'm saying? People singing and, you know, they were Terry American, I ain't a lot. You know, I was saying these people don't necessarily have necessarily made it. So all of a sudden they're sharing and gets up with a ukulele. Walks out onto the stage. And the brother that was next to me was like, yo, Fox, man, who the fuck is this dude right here, man? With the red hair and shit in the fucking ukulele. I said, man, his name is Ed Sharon. Let's see what he does.
But then 12 minutes, he got a standing ovation. Wow. From that crowd. And I said, bro, you're on your way. So this studio has, like I said, a lot of history and it has that magic to it as well. The Mojo. Yeah. Now, you mentioned getting into music, but it seems like from what I've read of you, that music in some ways came first. Music did. Music did. When I was a kid, my grandmother made sure that I took piano lessons. And you know, that's tough for a little boy in Texas.
You know, playing furry lease and show pond and moats art. And we're not talking about Houston there. No, we're talking tarot Texas. And I love my city. My city was dope because it was only 12,000 people. So it was like literally like 12 or 15 families. So we all knew each other. But you know, for a little boy playing at that time, you know, the kids didn't understand, yo, man, why are you doing that? My grandma wanted me to do this, you know.
And so I was sometimes I would be belligerent and be like, why are you going to do this? And she says, the reason I want you to learn classical piano is because I want you to be able to go across the tracks and play your music. For people listening across the tracks, or on the other side of the tracks for a Southern city, was the tracks in a Southern city separates the city. One side is black, and the other side is white.
So in our city, the south side, the south side of town was where all the black folk lived. The north side of town was where the white folk lived. So she says, I want you to be able to go on the white side of town and play classical music. So she taught me how to play classical piano, a lady in a by the name of Lenita Hodge, taught me how to play classical piano.
And I literally were going on the other side of the tracks and, you know, and started playing for like wine and cheese parties and things like that. But my grandmother took it a step further too, because she was able to see the future. Here's a lady with the eighth grade education. She had her own business for 30 years. She had her own nursery school business.
She says, when I say across the tracks, I don't just mean in Terrell and those people over there, I mean the metaphoric, like across the track, I mean everywhere in the world. So she said because music connects you to the whole world. So in doing that, I would connect with people on the other side of the tracks, we were in a Southern city in Terrell. You know, we were a little behind the curve when it came to race relations.
Let's just say it that way without, you know, I don't want to demonize my hometown, but there was that who's a little black kid? And my grandmother would be like, don't, you know, play. Do you think? And when I would play, you know, a lot of that broke up, you know, broke up. I remember even like being armed with just my music and sorted out racial setting and sometimes, like there was a time when there was a Christmas party with these paid gigs.
Yeah, I make like, I get like $10, $15, you know, I was saying at that time was a lot of money and I played for the church. So playing for the church, I would make like $75 a week. So if you count that up, that's like 300 a month, you know. That's real money. That's real money at 13, 14. My grandmother would take the money, and put it, you know, and give me this money. So, great, you know what I'm gonna, you ain't paying no rent, you're gonna give me this money.
So, but I remember at that time being armed with just my music and there was a Christmas party that I was supposed to play for myself and my best friend who was 17, I was 16 at the time. And so here's a little bit of the racial misunderstanding, say I want to play for the guys Christmas time. Maybe it's like December 17th. And we show up, it's two little black kids on the white side of town. And when he opens his door and he sees these two little black kids, he says, what's going on here?
I said, well, I'm here to play for your Christmas party. I said, why are two of you here at the same time? I said, well, I don't have a license. He drove me. Is there a problem? I can't have two niggers in my house at the same time. And I was like, well, you know, I've been sort of used to the racial misunderstandings. And I said, well, is there any way he can wait outside or wait, and he can't wait on the street. Start at 630, now you gotta make your mind up, man.
So I said, I told my boy, so let's just come get me at 830, which was pretty late for kids at that time. So I'll go in. He says, where's your tuxedo? I said, well, he didn't tell me to have a tuxedo. So we go into this room, which looks like a bedroom. And I'm looking like, what the fuck does he have? Close hanging up in his bedroom, but it was a walk-in closet. You know shit like that. I don't know. We make a split-level condo out of this shit.
So he gives me a Brooks Brothers jacket that had the patches on the elbows. I'm like, oh shit, I've a look. So now I'm really playing, you know what I'm getting. But as I'm playing, they were doing the grownups there. We're doing racially misunderstanding jokes. I'll say it like that. And my grandmother taught me something at that time. She said, when you're in a setting like that, there's a word I want you to remember is called furniture. I said, what's that?
She said, you're part of the furniture. So you don't comment on what's being said. You play, that's what you're there for. You let these people enjoy there. And the lady at the house felt bad. She said, I just want to apologize to you for what they're saying. No problem. She said, can you sing something for us? And I was like, sure. I could sing some for us. And this was a song with a song. Chestnut roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your door.
Oh, you'll take care of being sung by your choir. And folks dressed up like asking no. Oh, everybody. Anyway. So as I'm singing, I remember watching those white guys, older men, some of them faculty at my school, that had just said something, probably not. I don't think it was that they meant harm harm. But it was. They'd have to resign today. Yeah. And they look and they go, they immediately change. It's, wow, man, that's good. You know any other songs?
And I sat in a little about maybe like a six song set. And I saw what my grandmother talked about. That music cracked them in half. They saw a different me. And then afterwards, he gave me 100 bucks. And I'm like, shit, call me nigga every day. I got a hundred dollars. I'm rich. And what was interesting was I went to give him the jacket back. He's like, no, I can't wear the jacket. So it was still a little bit of residue left over. But I saw what the music did.
And I remember my boy show back up. I said, listen, I was cool, gig. We got paid. I said, but I got to get out of here. I said, because I'm too smart for this, I need to go elsewhere. And I did. I changed my major. Well, I changed the college that I was going to go to. I was going to go to another college in Texas and study music instead. I came to California and San Diego to study music at international university.
And what was interesting about that was is that being in Texas, it was black, white, to Mexicans. When I got to international university, it was 81 different countries represented at that school, all connected by music and other things. Music is sports. And the music arena at that time was high-end, strict, child prodigies from Japan, child prodigies from China. I had a Russian music teacher. And I had a Yugoslavia music theory teacher. So it was really across the tracks.
But because of that, because of Estelle Talley and Mark Talley, picking me up every weekend and go play music, man, it set me on a crazy, wonderful journey. And so the music was first. And my college was interested. I didn't know anything about Jewish, Palestinian. I had no idea. I was at the student center and it was just argument going on. So what are you arguing about? Oh, my brother, my brother, my friend, you're talking about the Gaza Strip. I said, fuck is that?
And they said, no, the Jewish occupation, the dissed at that. And I had a quick history lesson on that. I got a quick history lesson on people from Argentina. Or I would see a person who looked black. And I'd be like, hey, what's up brother? I'm going to be like, what's up, what's up? And I'd be like, oh, shit, where are you from? I'm from Paris. I was like, fuck, they got black.
So that music gave me not only an opportunity to share, but an opportunity to be educated about other people because we study Texas history. And then studying Texas history is interesting. Like if you study Texas history, if it didn't happen in Texas, it didn't happen.
So when you look at this just a sidebar, but when you think about politics and what people know and don't know in politics and what they know about across the sea or what they know about even on the next block or what they know about what's different in Texas
from New York, the reason that politics is so interesting is because the people don't necessarily have educations of other people, which is why I think that once we start opening up a little more and traveling a little more, because what is it less than how many percent, less than five percent of Americans have past ports and things. Small number, yeah. So anyway, that music, like I said, took me, took me everywhere. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.
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What other, your grandmother seems like a very wise woman. And I've heard you describe her and I might be, I'm sure I'm paraphrasing this, but that she was the bow or had the owner of the arrow. And she pointed you in different directions. I'm wondering what other, like you are the furniture, right? I mean, when to speak, when not to speak. What other lessons to do learn from your grandmother? My grandmother taught me confidence as well. My grandmother was a very confident person and very smart.
Just, I would you say just naturally intelligent. She was a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a torus, you know, sell natural. Is like it wasn't something that was super educated or anything, or anything like that. But your head on that I'll give you, I'll give you a, I'll give you a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a grandmother. I'm 10 years old, maybe, I think I'm going to fifth grade 76, president Carter. The preacher started preaching about homosexuality.
No. I don't know what it is, you know. 10 or 8 or whatever. So he said God made Adam and Eve. God didn't make Adam and Steve. Some people like, you know, it's Southern. It's Texas. Hey man. My grandmother stood up and said, you stopped that. And the whole church died. What said Miss Taylor? You stopped that. Now her words, what she said next was very interesting. Let me tell you something. I've had this nursery school
for 30 years. And I want to let all y'all know that God makes sissies too. And the whole place went, what? She said these little boys that I've watched since they could walk. They play by they play by different music. And you stopped that because you're making it hard for them to navigate. Siss down. He goes to another subject. Eventually he leaves the church. But I found that very interesting. At that time I didn't know what that meant until I got to be about 8 years old. What was your
talk about? She says, yes, true. She says, you know, I've had this nursery school. I see the difference in the kids. And so therefore I would have these kids come to me after they graduated from high school, gone to college or tried to have a family. Although they had they were living with this. So she was a type of woman who had natural intelligence. I said, well, Granny, well, what does it say about religion?
Doesn't it say that it's that it's wrong? You know, being a, you know, care for Texas. It's natural question. She says, you know, when I think about it, she said, you have to open up the umbrella of religion. That's what you mean. She said, if you only open up the umbrella halfway, only a few people can stand under it. She said, you have to open the umbrella all the way through. So God's children can stand on it because no one here did not get made by anybody else or anything
else but God. So that was my grandma, you know, it seems very, the move in church. That's a very bold move. Very crazy. Very bold. Very bold. But my grandmother raised those people in church. See, I was adopted, you know, seven months. So she was much older. So all the kids over there, whether it was, like I said, there was only a few families that lived in terror. So all of the kids that grew up, all of the grownups that were there, she was the matriarch. She was, she was, because during,
during the year, it was a school, you know what I'm saying? But then during the summer, you drop your kids off of my grandmother's house and just let them keep them. So she was very powerful in that sense. And then when I did finally make it, it was wonderful to tell my grandmother come live with me. So my grandma was living with me. So we go to the clubs. You know, my grandma was like, she had to be 83 at the time. Should we go to the clubs, we hang out, you know what I'm saying? She's
in LA. This is LA. I had a little apartment split level condo. Remember when that was hype? The split level condo. So I had a loft. Oh, yeah, Ricardo, he's only 19. He don't know what I'm talking about. But I had a loft. And we were living in that loft. And then we eventually rented the house and me and my grandma, and I didn't know I was a mama's boy. Like we go to the party, he's come back, we have an after party to crib. And then one of my homies came and said, yo, your fox, so, so old
the lady out here in the front room, I said, yeah, that's my grandmother. What's that? Oh, yeah, it's a class of, yeah, and then you used to abolish your campaign pop. What are we doing? We getting it or what? You know, so she was, she was amazing, man. So, you know, my grandmother, you know, we party, hang, have a good time. She was 83. And then the big thing was, as I granny, you know, it's Christmas time. Why don't we do something we ain't never done? You know, you're
selling, making a little money. Why don't we go to Hawaii for Christmas? Because I got some friends from Hawaii. Well, what, yeah, well, let's get it going. Guess up to playing, right? So we are fly to Hawaii one year. And it was just amazing to be able to show my grandmother another side of the world. It even made the papers in Tarot X's. Estelle Talley on her way to Hawaii, you know. And I remember, you know, just a fun, just a fun time. I remember, we're having a good time. We're
going everywhere. And she had a boyfriend at the same time. It was 83, too. And he was on, you know, he was on the land side. And so, so it's like these are my 23rd. We, we called her boyfriend just so they could talk. So she's on the phone. Yeah, having a good time. Oh, yeah, yeah, weather's nice. Mm-hmm, sunny. Oh, it is good. I got my own season. And so, hmm, really nice. Well, I tell you what, look, I'm on go. But let me tell you something. Don't let me
come back there and catch you with no young girls. You understand? Because I don't play that. Now, let me catch you with no young girls. You hear me? So she hangs up, you know, it's like three or four families there. We're having like little Christmas party. We all go, Granny, what? When you said the young girls, will you tell me, you know, 60, 65? I don't want to mess with no 60. She says, shit, I made it three. You know, so I can't handle 65 year old woman all of my shit. So she was just a
great person, tough girl. Oh, I remember those some situations where I did make it and some people in my family felt like I should give them all the all of my money. This lady walks in and we're my apartment. She comes in and says, my rich cousin. I didn't recognize because I, you know, I had to, I only seen him maybe once or twice growing up. So anyway, he gets around to us. She says, I need $10,000 for a kidney. I'm like, who's kidney? Well, I need a kidney surgery or something like
that. So if you give me the cash, I could take it and get the, I said, well, why don't you, if it's the situation on medical, I know some doctors, maybe they can help you. I would prefer the $10,000. That's okay. Okay. I'll hit you. Now I ain't called. I was like, so never came a problem for her. And she called me one day and left on the answer machine, young fella. The last time you see my answer machine. So I'm checking my answer machine and she leaves a scathing message. Well,
you know what? I didn't get the money from you. And that's fine because you're not part of this family anyway. He was adopted. Nobody wanted you anyway. This is what this lady is saying to me. Brittle. I said, what the hell? So I let my grandma get, let me run that back. Played it. What's that number? And she called and I, I remember listening. Now I'm grown, you know, I'm, I'm 22. So I'm grown. And I hear how she stuck up for me. She's, let me explain something to
you boy. And I could hear I got the boy on you seven months. So I said, and everybody wanted him. I wanted him. Everybody, you know, I said, and he may not be blood, but he's our family. And just it was an incredible, incredible thing. My grandmother was absolutely amazing. I think you need people like that. And when you talk about that bow, that's what, that's my reference to, to raising kids. And I got my own kids now is that when you raise your kids, you are the
bow and arrow. You're the bow. There they arrow. And you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can. And hopefully your aim isn't too off. And that's what she did for me. And then, you know, she watched my whole career all the way up until getting nominated for an Oscar, where all of the things that she taught me came into play. When we did a Ray Charles, that was an opportunity to play the piano, to be funny, to do an impersonation. And all
these things is what my grandmother championed. So when we, when we embarked upon that film, I was like, Oh, man, Granny was right. This is taking me on the other side of the tracks. And when we got in, even when I got a chance to meet Ray Charles, which you know, that's my grandmother's error, you know, and she didn't get the chance to meet him because at the time she was, you know, she couldn't move bed ridden a little bit. But uh, being around older people, you know,
I understood that muscle too because I was always the young kid with the old parents. So meeting Ray Charles was like seeing my grandfather, seeing one of my uncles. And when I met Ray, and we were trying to do Ray Charles the movie and Taylor Hackford, who was the director. And he said, you know, I've been wanting to do this movie for 25 years. I'm glad you came along because it's
the right time. And I remember meeting Ray Charles walking down his studio, you know, clean, you know, look like almost like you can see, you know, and I said, Mr. Charles, you know, he's trying to do the best I can to, you know, to do, uh, to do your move with your biop. He said, and you know what, uh, look, if you could play the blues, man, shit, you could do anything, man. I said, what you mean? He said, and just can you play the blues? Shit, that's what I'm asking you. I said, I guess,
oh, did come on. And we go, we sit down and all of the hard work that my grandmother put in, all the days my grandfather drove me to piano lessons. Here I am sitting with a legend. And we were like, and I was like playing the blues with Ray Charles. And as we're playing, I'm like, I'm on cloud nine, then he moved into some intricate stuff like the loniest monk, but I'm a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and I was like, oh, shit, I got to catch up. And I hit a wrong note.
And he stopped because his ears are very sensitive. You know, now why the hell would you do that? I said, why are you hit the note like that? That's a wrong note, man. Shit. I said, well, I'm sorry, Mr., Mr. Charles, I just, he said, let me tell you something. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just got to take the time out to play the right notes. That's life. So that was a lesson that the notes are right underneath your fingers, some metaphorically. So now you got
across the tracks. There's someone like Estelle Talley teaches you. Then you got Ray Charles explaining now that you're across the tracks, what notes are you going to play? And so now we go on and we do that movie, which we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that it was going to be like that. It wasn't a studio film. It was independent. And, you know, doing the process of the movie was interested of my background being from Terry knowing how to mimic. But I needed to know how to
do Ray Charles, like the young Ray Charles. So I got in touch with Quincy Jones. If all the young ones out there listening, make sure you Google Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. And the reason why you should do that is because they were the building blocks of our music today, which started in Seattle, Washington, which was interesting. Seattle at that time was a big hub for jazz music, jazz musicians. And that's where Ray Charles migrated to running into a young Quincy Jones. Ray
Charles actually taught Quincy Jones everything he knows about music. Who was Quincy Jones for the young ones listening? Quincy Jones was the one who did, I mean, he played, he was the band director for Frank Sinatra, all of those guys, the rat pack, all of those guys. He was the band leader. If you, and when I met Quincy Jones, he talks about that. Yeah, man, shit, man, music, man,
these young cats don't know music anymore, man. Shit, they wouldn't, they play in the key of the queue if they would, man, shit, man, when I played baby Frankie, baby, I said, Mr. Jones, who's Frankie? Man, shit, Frank Sinatra, man, shit, I was young, man, the band leader, we were playing in Monaco, man, we didn't even have time for a hearse, baby, we're just there playing, waiting on fucking Frank to come in. I said, what do you mean? He says, we had to play this show
in Monaco. Frank had never met me. New that I was this young kid who was great with the music. I've become the band leader. We don't get a chance to rehearse Monaco, where his billionaires and millionaires in the audience waiting on this incredible show. And he says, we'll just vamp him, man, shit, and Frank doesn't even come out on the stage. He comes through the audience, man, shit, talking and shit. I'm like, man, I'm nervous as hell. And then Frank got up. He said, he sang,
the band was tight. And Frank Sinatra nighted him, like gave him a ring that was like, you know, pretty significant. If you know what I mean, and if you guys Google Frank Sinatra, you'll understand what I mean about the Lucoso Nostra. And so here I am now talking to Quincy Jones. And he's telling me about Ray Charles. He says, man, Ray talked me everything, man. Shit, man, he taught me how to dress. We were wearing suits, suits, suits, and shit, man, he had nice suits, Taylor Maiden.
I said, why did he have nice suits? Shit, man, he was always around women, man, and women were telling men those suits, so ugly, because he couldn't see. So the women was telling how to dress. And I said, well, Mr. Jones, I'm trying to figure out how to do Ray Charles, but I need the young Ray Charles, right? And he says, well, man, shit, let me look. And he gives me a cassette tape to you young ones out there, a cassette tape back in the day. It was a way for us to, I'm just
messing with it to share music. And I said, okay, I got it to cassette tape. I had to go rent a truck from rent from a Hertz rent a car because there was no cassette players in the cars. So I popped a cassette tape in and on the tape was, hi, this is Donna Shaw from the Donna Shaw show. We have two very wonderful musicians here today and Mr. Kennedy Rajas and Mr. Ray Charles. And you hear the young Ray,
and you know what, I'm just so happy to be here. So happy to be here. That you know my music. I mean, this is just great. And it was the young Ray, like, you know, because when I was talking to the older Ray, I didn't want to grab those bad old habits I want to play. So I hear Ray talking young on the tape. And then all of a sudden, he's in charge of the interview and he's doing this thing. And then all of a sudden, he says, talk about the drugs, Ray. And then he started to
start it. Well, you know what? So I used that as DNA to play the icon of character Ray Charles that when he's talking about his music, he's fully in control. When he's confronted with real life things, why are you doing drugs? Why don't you take care of your family? Why are you cheating on your wife? He would stutter. And I say this long story to say this, after the success of Ray Charles,
after being nominated for an Oscar, my grandmother got a chance to witness all of that. She got a chance to see the bearing of the fruits of her labor, for her young kid coming from that racially misunderstood town, which I love and wouldn't change anything in the world when it comes to Terrell, Texas. Her saying, get across the tracks. We've now gone across the tracks. We've gone all over the
world. And then here we are. And think about, think about what's the odds of a kid who lives in a town population 12,240 people from Terrell to go all the way to Los Angeles, California. Meet puff, meet all these different people. And they actually have an opportunity to win an Oscar. And your grandmother gets a chance to see that. Now, October 23rd 2004, she passed away, which if you know the actual awards was 2005 in February, but she got a chance to hang in there
and you know, and feel it. So it's, my grandmother was just like, you know, the blueprint. How do you think of teaching confidence with your own kids? Because you're, you're clearly very confident guy. Yeah. Grandmother was very bold, very strong woman. How do you try to teach that to your kids? Well, what you do with your kids is like, when my daughter is like, there's a phrase that when you see on the lease, I, my daughter, my oldest daughter, Karin, I would always ask them,
what's on the other side of fear? And they'd be like, huh? I said, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like, if I stood in the middle of this floor right now, just yell, what's on the other side of it? Or if I stood in the middle of the floor and went, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like, either you do or you don't, but there's no penalty. There's no reward. It's just, just be yourself. So I talked them, what's on the other side of fear? Nothing. People are nervous
for no reason. Because there's nothing. No one's going to come out and slap you or beat you up and then you're just nervous. So why even have that? And so that's a building block that they can use not just about the entertainment business because that's the other thing. You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer, a school teacher, a tech guy or whatever or a girl, whatever it is, there's nothing on the other side of it.
What's on the other side of fear? Nothing. I like it. So it's like, so why are you, what, when people say, well, I'm so nervous. What are you nervous about? Reminds me of this quote that I sort of recite to myself and I'm going to paraphrase it because I haven't written down, but it's from Mark Twain. It says, I'm an old man who's known a great many troubles most of which never happened. Yeah, exactly. Because all of it is in our head. When we talk about fear or lack of being aggressive
or it's in your head. So not everybody's going to be super aggressive, but the one thing that you can do is a person's fears. So if you start early, if they are a shy person, they just won't be as shy if you keep instilling those things. So the mimicry, the impersonation, how really did that start? Because I read and maybe you can tell me if this is off or not because you never know what the internet that your second grade teacher used to reward the class if they behave by letting
you tell Joe. Yeah, they will let me tell Joe because I would get in trouble. I think it was my third grade teacher, Mr. Reeves. Because I would like talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school. I lived in a school. So I already knew the from like first to eighth grade. I already knew all of the lesson plan. So you know, a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, I'm
gonna get in trouble. So she would let me do stand-up comedy on Fridays for the kids. And all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson and the only room that had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson too as a kid. So nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old. I would just take the jokes that were being told by David Brenner and Steve Allen and a young David Letterman. Who else would be on there? Franklin and Jai. You guys, when you're hearing this,
you go Google these guys. A young J Lino. These were like sort of like, you know, Richard Pryor. So I would take those jokes and tell them in school because those kids, when he's telling me he's Richard Pryor on Fridays, well, he says I'm primed up. So what's your priority? Prime time. You couldn't, you couldn't, he couldn't really say anything on prime. He was clean. But like a rich little. And Google rich little because rich little was the first person that I saw
doing personations. So there was a, there was this had to be, this had to be like 76, 1976. So like fifth grade for me. The joke was Jimmy Carter, which was the president at the time, singing you light up my life. And at that time, his brother was getting caught drunk all the time, like Billy. So it was a Jimmy Carter. So many nights, me and my brother Billy would sit by the window waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at
an impersonation. And then it went on from there to do a Richard Neckstown higher, not a crook. So you know, uh, who else would I do? Reagan. Uh, I came later. But but he's that Reagan came later. But Reagan came like in the 80s when I was actually like 21. And I was the first black guy doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one. So I would be on stage doing my impersonations and going to Ronald Reagan. People are like, no, I didn't know where. Well, well, it's a matter of
fact. I, uh, well, no, there you go again. And so that, that being being young and, and that teacher misreads and miss, miss douth it and all those teachers allow, miss Cole, allow me to be myself. Um, you know, help me hone in on what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. Like, like, like literally my friends from terror go like, how the fuck did you do that? Yeah. This is a shit you used to do. You turned your turn to the back. It's literally the same
shit. I'd be like, wow, millions of people are watching this. It's the same, it's the same thing. And then, you know, as people came, uh, came up, you know, the impersonation, you know, what? The Cosby is back in to do the Cosby impersonation is back in. Don't know how I'm going to do it.
But there's definitely a Cosby joke somewhere. I don't know where it, but I, I used to do cause because of the people in the Jello protein and the, and the, and the fly and the farm, which Eddie Murphy did, but people didn't know like Cosby's real speaking voice is not like that. What's the speaking voice? The speaking voice was different because I remember I got in trouble with Mr. Cosby because, uh, he felt that the, the, the, the movie booty call was not cool.
And he said some things in the press about this. And I was like a young comedian like, yeah, man, I, I'm just trying to work, you know, but, but his speaking voice was on the phone. Well, the thing is, is it when you do something like booty call? What does a booty call? See, why are you calling the book? You know, whatever, but it was so, it wasn't that it was because, and you find out that that was your stick. Yeah. Because it kids and the child and people in the
farm, but, you know, so I know that that will, that will come up. I'll find the joke for, for Cosby that is, of course, is going to be a little, uh, people are going to be like, uh, but it's going to be funny. You shit. Uh, and now, who, who's now, uh, Doc Rivers from the clippers? Hey, you know, we're going to try, you know, it's not Blake's fault. You know, next year we got to, you know, we got to do better, you know, it's it. So I'm working on like the new impersonations now.
Uh, and so that's in the way you do an impersonation is usually about, it's, it's, it's musical. Like, um, say, Kermit the frog, right? So Kermit the frog is, so it's sort of like, what you do, you know, say it's, it's fine. And, uh, right? So, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, so the actual voice tone is in the key of G for Kermit the frog. Uh, uh, uh, Kermit the, uh, Kermit the frog here, here with the assessment for you.
So that's, and then once you get the voice tone, it's how you make, it's how you manipulate your, your, your mouth to get the sound. Because you know what's, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, so it's, it's sort of constricting. And then, and then it's, and then it's asking the character to come say with the, uh, Kermit the frog here, here with the, uh, three little pigs. So, you know, it's, but the key is this. And at the same time, Kermit the frog, who else sounds like that?
Sammy Davis Jr. A little bit. Uh, because you know, man. So now Kermit the frog is, is one way, but if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right and grab some swag now, you're Sammy Davis Jr. Kermit you figure it because man, you know, it's the same voice, you know, so that's, that's sort of like the mechanical way of, of getting to the impress. So you would start with not the visual because obviously those people who are listening can't see this, but the,
the mannerisms are also very much important. Manorisms are important because like, uh, uh, uh, like I, I, I do it in LeBron James impersonation, which is really not, uh, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a voice. It's more of his mannerism. It's the jaw, you know, it's the look. That's go rope.
You know, it's just go row, you know, the game of basketball, you know, we just try to, you know, you know, it's that, you know, it's right, it's right after, it's right after playing, you know, when it comes up to off the court, they catch him, he's still tired, you know, uh, you know, the game of basketball, we just try to, you know, do the best, you know, so it's the mannerism.
So people will appreciate the mannerisms first. It's a, it's a, it's a, a, a, a, a, a, LeBron, or, you know, different, you know, like I said, different, different personalities bring, bring, bring about different things. When you look back on what, uh, what Ray said to you, if you can play the blues, you can do anything. If you had to translate that for your own kids, let's just say, if you can do X, fill in the blank, you can do anything, what would you put in that
blank? I would say this. It's, it's a couple of things when you have kids who grow up around Hollywood. If you can stay motivated, and if you can not do some things, not be jaded, not be entitled, not be spoiled, not do drugs, not get into all the bad stuff because it's, they, they, you know, our kids live in an elevated space. So what I try to do in the, in Ricardo sees this, all, Ricardo sees this all the time. So it's just, we don't play around when it comes to discipline
as well. Like when the kids are here and all of our friends, the size of the house means nothing to, if you don't do the right thing, you're going to get in major trouble and you're going to get in Texas trouble, you know, saying like how my grandmother discipline. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a different thing when it comes to kids that are living a privileged situation. Luckily, my daughters are very, very, especially my oldest daughter. My oldest, I never even asked me for money.
Never asked for the new car. Never asked for a plane to ride coach. I mean, you know, so I think she really, really has a great head on her shoulders. I remember I got this Rolls Royce and I went to go pick my daughter up in the Rolls Royce thinking that's going to be, you know, pick her up in the Rolls Royce drop the top. Drop it. What up, Doc? So I'm riding, go to pick her up at school. She won't
get in the car. That's a baby. What, what you doing? Look at the top. It comes up. She says that I'm not getting a car. Calls on my side. Could you, could you come pick me up? I said, what you doing? I'm not getting you goofy. You made me, you made me look stupid in front of my friends. I was like, oh, so, you know, she's really, and that's something she has on there. So my youngest daughter is a little different. She wants to ride in the, in the Rolls Royce all the time. Daddy, let's take this
car. We riding down Sunset Boulevard. She playing Rihanna, you know, I'm saying with her shades on. So she's a little different in that sense. And I remember telling her, I said, well, on at least we can't ride around in LA in the in the limo in the Rolls Royce with the top down. You know, we're on our way to the Soho House and it's sort of finicky of that. So I got to at least put the top up. She's like, why? I said, I said, let me ride until I get to Soho House and then I'll
put the top up as we get there. Okay. So we ride up in the Soho House. We're in the Valle and all of these, you know, celebs and people are coming out. And she yells out, Jamie Foxx in the house. I'm trying to pull the top down all the celebs. Like, look at this motherfucker being arrogant and shit. He's so gotty. And he's got his kid announcing him. So, so you know, it's a lot of things you can tell you kids, man. And then you just have to hope for the best and be there. What, uh,
uh, what is your birthday? Eric Marlin Bishop. And how did Eric Marlin Bishop become Jamie Foxx? Man, I was Eric Marlin Bishop graduated high school 86. I get out to California and I started doing, you know, I'm in college and doing the music. But I will go up on these open mic nights for comedy. So I go, I do really well. I get, I get, like, standing onvation. And then I came to LA got a standing onvation. And then when I came back every week, I wouldn't get called up. I'm
like, man, what, why can't, what's going on? But what I noticed was, how does the open mic work? Well, what is it is? Will you do it? You put your name on a list, put your name on a list, and they pick from the list and they say, okay, these are people are going up. So I went on, I had a great set then for the next three, four weeks. I didn't, they never called my name. I said, yo, Monday, do you see me? Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You weren't on the list, but we got
other people. But I found that that the comedians were actually running the list. So the comedians that had been here for a while, I was like, man, we don't want him on here because he showed us up. So I was like, fuck. So I ended up going to this evening at the improv, the improv like in Santa Monica. And so I had never been there. So I would know the set. A hundred guys would show up. Five girls would show up. The five girls will always get on the show because they needed to break
up the monotony. So I said, hmm, I got some. So I wrote down on the list all of these unisex names. Stacy Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Foxx. And then the guy chooses from the list. He says, uh, is Jamie Foxx? Is she here? She'll be first. I was like, no, Monday, that's me. Oh, okay. All right, well, you're gonna, you're the fresh meat. I said, what's that? They were shooting evening at the improv. This old old comedy show back in the day. See, you'll be the guy that will just throw up to
see if you get a laugh or two. You know, it's going to be a tough crowd. Fresh meat. Fresh meat. I said, cool. So I go up in between two of the guys get a standing ovation. People like, who's the kid? Is he on the show? He's nice. Fresh meat is amazure. So then they started yelling my name. You're Jamie. You're Jamie. Hey, Jamie, but I'm not used to it. So now they think I'm arrogant. I just motherfuckin' thinks he's the, she's not even listening to us. So I took that name
in a stuck and then I started building everything off of it. Back in the day, people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had sly as a dot, dot, dot, uh, coming to the foxhole, foxhole, you know, things like that. I'm a grader little something. Yeah, sure thing. Okay, we are back after a little food break. Yeah. And we talked about some of your comedy starting third grade, maybe earlier. We talked about grandmother. And what I think talked about a little bit more is
fear. So you mentioned on the other side of fear. By the time you got to doing the open mics, getting up on stage, were you nervous? Were you afraid or were you over it? Because you, you, because first I looked at it first, like I, I went to an open mic night and saw the guy that was like, man, he's terrible. And uh, so when you go on stage and your whole life is not, I want to be a comedian. I went on stage like, yo, I'm just fucking around. So if I hit cool,
if I miss, I wouldn't try to be there anyway. You know, I wanted to do more music. But, but when I went on stage, it was just like, it was, it was just natural. It was a, uh, you know, I belong here. So I think that's the thing too. When it comes to entertainment, uh, there's a certain like, oh, I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do. How successful I will be, or want
be. That's something out of my hands. But I do know that this is where I belong. And that's with anything and anybody like when you can, when you can sort of listen to that voice in your head or what's in your heart and you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do, that alleviates a lot of the fear. Now, if it was a surgeon or a lawyer or something, you know, something that I'm not, you know, versed in or something like that, then maybe there
will be more fear. But with this, you don't have, well, I don't have those types of fears. And, and then as I've gotten older in the business, I sort of simplify things. Like now, I just execute. I have to ask people like Ricardo, Justin, Justin, what should I execute? So the fear of a celebrity or an artist now is, how do I get my art off in a world where it's, uh, the, the social media-driven, sort of, uh, ridicule and criticism. Like I always say like this, like a person like Prince or
a person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world. Because in the, in the day of the internet and where everybody has a voice, most of the voices are hateful voices or not understanding. Like, like if you saw Prince with, uh, a guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed, you know, people would meme the shit out of it, you know. So now it's, uh, it's, it's not a fear, but it's just a question that I have to always ask them. Like, yo, is this the cool shit to do or
not the cool shit to do? And so what I learned is when it's just executing something, when it's either executing a song or executing a joke or executing things within, within, uh, entertainment, it's cool. But then you have to wonder like, how do you get it off? Like how do you, like even now when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke back in the day, we just tell the joke. Now you gotta be like,
okay, I gotta tell the joke in a way that it's still funny. It still keeps the bite on it. But, you know, so those are the different like for me as a entertainer where there's not fear is just like, you know, questions. Does that make sense? Makes sense. No, that makes sense. The considerations. When you, when you, uh, have you bombed on stage before? Oh, yeah. Which, what's the two things? What do you, when you are bombing? Yeah. What is your internal dialogue or response? And then
say, I'm trying to dialogue is boy, you stay. Boy, you bomb it. Uh, I bomb and it wasn't a lot of, I only bomb like twice. Do you remember your first? Yeah. I did this, this show for this guy named Ladimor. Old blue singer. I'm 21. What was this name? Ladimor. Ladimor sounds like Voldemort. Yeah, a lot of, so this guy saw me at this other club and said, Hey man, you know, Ladimor's before him around the corner. Man, what you coming up? I said, whatever. I said, how much you paid? He said,
pay $50. I said, I'm there. 50 bucks. I need it. So this is like, $9.989.90. So I get there. And I don't know who Ladimor is. I just know it's a lot of older people like, I mean, like, oh, oh, I'm like, oh shit. What are people at these other people? So I go up and the setting was different. It was like the chairs and stuff away in a bit of like a book banquet setting. And it's in the middle of the hood, you know, Chris y'all. And like the tables were like from here to where like
20 feet away, 30 feet away from me. So I don't have that. Oh, you didn't have that. Yeah, and I hadn't been doing stand up comedy that long. I don't have been doing it for like a year. So I had if I'm funny, I got an hour. If I'm not funny, it's about 10 minutes worth of shit. Because I would just take a joke and just keep spending it and spending it. So my first joke, they didn't get second joke. They didn't get I said, shit, I'm damn now out of jokes. So I said, well, let me do this
before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar. Like, oh, shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly collar before I could say that. I looked around. Everybody has a butterfly collar. This is what they really want to look like. And so I just said, hey, man, I, you know, I don't know what I was trying to want. And pretty soon, Latamore is going to come up. You guys ready for Latamore?
And I just so do not say I'm going to take a break. So I get off stage and the dude that was washing the dishes takes his apron off and goes, I got it. Guys, I'm like, how y'all feel? And he started doing these old stock jokes. Kills. And so I said, okay, now I know what it is. You got to have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned on how to tell jokes for everybody.
Because at first, my jokes was geared towards women and was singing and so what I started doing from that from that day on, I would go to like Des Moines Island, Davenport Island, Boise, Idaho, where it's all white, Gunnison, Colorado, all white. And I would go do like 40 minutes of all black material to see what they understood what they didn't understand. So if I go to these all white places, if they understood 15 minutes, I logged that 15 minutes, I can go to any place where it's
just all white and you would determine if they understood it by the laughs. You would determine if they understood it by the last. By the way, I would ask y'all know who this is. As I would tell the joke, if 15 minutes, they understood it, I can go to any place in the world. That's all white and they get it. Then I would go to my chocolate city, Chicago, DC, Florida, and do all of my political high brow stuff and see what the black folks understood. Man,
what the fuck you doubt, my doubt. Now they understood it 15 minutes. Now I got 15 to 30 minutes of 45 minutes that wherever I go, no matter what age, they'll understand no matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand this 45 minutes. So I had to learn how to use the formula in order for you to be funny. And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people in the highest way, like if you look at a, like if you look at an arc of a Kevin
heart, like Kevin heart takes that arc, takes the same formula. I'm not for sure how he put it in his mind, but he's doing the same thing, the way he's going to all of these places, all over the world, implementing his comedy. And if they get it, he's gathering all of that so that now when people see
Kevin heart, no matter where in the world, they're gonna laugh. So it's that becoming a great comedian is also having that formula going on in your head because if you paint yourself into a corner, like you're only the black comedian or you're only the Hispanic comedian or whatever that is, then it's hard for you to become a universe. I mean Eddie was Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity to sat in the night live to get it to everybody, but it's definitely a formula to not
bomb it. So what would you say to yourself? So that was the first bomb you mentioned too. Yeah. Who was the second? Second one. And if it's too, if it's hard to recall the follow-up question is going to be what is the post-game analysis when you step off the stage after bombing? So the second time. Well, you got it when I bomb the second time was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes, but I don't like to work out jokes and tell people I'm working out. I like to actually do a
show come and do the show. Right. So we're in I think it was Erwin. So you don't tell people you're working on it? No, no, I think I think that's cheating and I think you get bad habits. So I do a show in Irvine, California. First show I kill. That was just ready for them. I'm like, oh man, everything works. Second show. Bomb. Because I didn't take time to dig out the jokes and then so when you bomb, you go like, okay, all right, let's go. Let's check it out. So I got a team
of my guys. I said, let's go. Okay, that didn't work. No, you got to put this in front of that. You got to put that behind this because that's going to kick this off. People didn't know what that was. So maybe we don't say that. So you know, you have to you when you take the bomb, when we take the L, it's not like you're not funny. What's the L? Like you take the loss. Oh, okay. When you take the loss, it's not like you're like funny. It's just like, okay, you just didn't put the shit together.
So that's the other thing too. When you do become funny, it's going to be harder now to make people laugh because you set the bar. So now you're here. So now, so why is this the hardest part for Chris Rock was after he had done something great in stand up because now you got to top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy because Eddie wants to come out and do stand up is how do I top that in your head? The hardest part is coming for Kevin Hart in the fact that you smashed him.
Now you got to you know what I'm saying? You got to know how to you got to know how to refresh because when you do something like like I would look at my stuff and go like I got to quit doing that because that's sick that I'm doing. People are catching on and they're like, okay, my fucka we don't already seen that shit. So that's the other thing. You got to have great material and you got to have you got to know you got to know how to move because like right now it's the perfect time for Eddie
Murphy to come out and do stand up because it's been so long. It's nostalgic. It was 30 years ago. So now you can catch a new young you can still look side to older you know what I'm saying? So being a stand up comedian is tough and you've seen a lot of funny guys not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at a gym carry you go like, okay man, where are you at? Where are you at? You know what I'm saying? You know, don't give up to funny.
Or you look at Chris to always look at Chris to be like, mother fucka where are you at? Don't don't leave us because being a stand up comedian is an interesting thing. Most stand up comedians want to look good. I mean what way? We just want to look good. Think about this. When Eddie Murphy started doing stand up, he was funny but then he started doing you know the weather let the suits and it was a fly shit and the rings and they don't want to look good. Joe Piscopo started working out.
But the muscles you know what I'm saying? So as a stand up comedian we got to be careful not to look too good because people started going, what the fuck are you doing? You ain't cute. Negative. We just want to laugh you know what I'm saying? But when we started you know, we started getting to our shit. That's when we looked because I did that. Like like I got to my thing was after a living color the show called the living color that I did. I felt like I had made it.
So I wasn't necessarily on a good looking shit but I was on the I've made it jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes. Just got that range Rover. Anybody else? It's crazy out here. You know they're so finicky right? My fuckers are looking at me like what the fuck is you talking about? And then I was talking about you know square footage of the house man when they get a certain square feet man that's you this crazy
maintaining you know. My mother fuckers is like mother fuck if you don't get off the guy damn say I lost it. Right. I lost it and I walked off stage and all of a sudden I walk off stage and give it up for Jamie Foxx and I'm thinking that going crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy. I'm like what the fuck they doing? I just went off stage. What the fuck are they laughing at?
And I opened the door and there was a kid skinny little tank top on barely fit. His name was Chris Tucker. He was smash. He was no one has been that funny within 15 minutes. I've never seen I've never seen and I watch them all. I've never seen a stand up where people were laughing so hard like I said he's gonna kill somebody. Like when he says last night how would you or I kill it? It's gonna be true. Somebody gonna have a fucking heart attack.
And I sat down and said and I went I can't do that. I lost that. So I left one to another club that night bomb like wasn't you know. So finally I went over to Okinawa where the troops were. I started doing stand up over there for the troops to sort of get back with my rocky moment. Like you know I started running up the steps chasing chickens and shit. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. Trying to get back. And for a stand up comedian that's the one thing you can never let go.
You can never stop being. Excuse me a certain goofiness to you. And so and like when you talk about fear and when you talk about bombing. It's it's different when you when you when you've done it for a long time. You know and when you do bomb you just gotta get right back up and you gotta acknowledge it. Okay I start. They're gonna let you know. Like today's world you can't do nothing in today's world.
I was like you know I'm gonna let somebody let you know I'll make it you fuck that up. What are the sources are where do most of your best bits come from when you look back at the stuff that just. Killed. Is it it's the shower the thing that bugs you three times so you write it down. I mean how do you develop your materials. It was observation and like you know I do jokes with them you know it's just sort of like observation.
You know early on it was the black and white thing you know black folks do it this way of white folks which was the way we were doing comedy in in the 80s and 90s. All the average white men's heart it has no it has to do with the heart the average white men's heart be like this. While the average black men's heart be like this. You know ladies that's why you have a choice would you rather make love this might like this. Would you rather make love something like this.
I mean that was the jokes you know the time so it was observational and then it was personal like you do your observation first and then it was personal my grandmother who was you know we lived together you know and when she first heard like on television what age was.
Being old she didn't know what it exactly meant she just knew it was bad but she thought that since she's always on me anyway then I'm gonna catch a. But it was for the wrong reasons like she would say boy you gonna it's six in the morning you gonna wake up shit half the day done gone. I said granny what you mean is it six shit I'm not sleeping anybody sleep that long got to have eights.
I don't think that's like no I saw it on TV you sleep it too long you got it I said great I don't think that's how they exactly. What and then like I would use her towels like you know you know old Southern women had them there was a towel using it was a nice style so I used a nice. Well I know you use my towels I say you put the a's on the towels. I don't think that's how you know so it was I said and this is what she was actually saying.
So when I did that joke on stage people was just you know with that so it's observational then it's personal and then some of the comedians are great politically. I'm not necessarily a political guy my thing was the impersonation of the politician like Bill Clinton. You know I did not have sex with you know it was you know things like that but it's so many different ways and so many different guys out there that you that you look at and go oh like when I will look at a young Chris right.
The way he was a technician just me or you look at Jay Leno or you look at even our senior hall when he would work out or you see Eddie working out a joke. You know it's they are watching George Lopez who knows how to tap into the base and just really bring you into his world and stuff so some some some guys that Sarah Silverman. Just I mean a technician Amy Schumer watching her own on just a Saturday night live when she's you know working her shit out.
A young whoopie Goldberg at the Met is so many people that you can watch and see how to how to you know tap into your own skill set you know but I try to look at all of them try to just you know not still from it but just get inspired by it. Who are some of the most underrated comedians who come to mind are people who you think haven't had their do haven't been appreciated. I wouldn't say underrated but I think that would just that was just like warriors that never got that shine.
It was got named T.K. Kirkland who was a warrior. But he never got the shine and T.K. had a colorful past you know and he'll let you know he said you know he was he was a crazy motherfucker but T.K. had jokes like and why don't. Kirkman the frog always say hi ho hi ho is he a pimp and why and why do fat people wear leather pants do they think that she's cute and why do people in wheelchairs tie their motherfucking shoes do they think they go trip.
Oh man it was just he was just amazing and his delivery you know he said he said he says. Because I'm T.K. to the motherfucking K. That's what type of motherfucker I am don't play me play Lado you got a better chance and he's he he played he made he made he made himself a character on stage. That was just you know you guys are too young to to to know this joke but the bugleboy jeans.
Oh yeah bugleboy jeans used to have a commercial where a girl would pull up in the car says excuse me are those bugleboy see you say this to a guy like he's walking on the street with his jeans he says excuse me are those bugleboy jeans you're wearing. Why yes they are and she get in the car right T.K. had a joke man that was so funny he said man let man let that motherfucker be a motherfucking black girl in the motherfucking car. And excuse me are those bugleboy jeans you're wearing. Yeah.
Get in the car motherfucking I mean people would just go to do has so many like levels and he just you know he's he's an underground guy. Who else there's a lot I mean a lot of people earthquake amazing earthquake is amazing. What's my other dudes name Tony Roberts amazing Tony Roberts man I've never laughed so he says he said. Oh man I had to dig out something his jokes but he talks about it's very physical but he talks about being on the plane and the plane is going down.
And he says he said he was doing a plane he thought the plane was going down so he said so I wanted to fuck everybody before you know I'm going to fuck before he says a while the plane's on now he's fucking everybody you know he fucked he fucked the he fucked the none he's fucking everybody and then the plane level dog. Oh I'm sorry. I'm not saying my bad.
Just hilarious man and there's a there's so many man so many not a lot of new comedians now that are actually that's funny right that are actually dangerous now we don't have dangerous comedians. Only dangerous comedian that we have right now is Amy Schumer she's dangerous like like she'll say it like it'll be hot button you know what I mean have you have you ever heard.
I saw this guy on a actually heard of him through a guy named Evan Goldberg whose Seth Rogen's writing partner and so Gerard exactly that was good. So Gerard Carmichael his special oh my god I would never make a rape joke this is more of a rape question it's like oh my god. He's dangerous that's that's dangerous.
Well he's dead and it's not a lot of that anymore it's not a lot of dangerous comedians and I think that's where we sort of go like you know where's that danger like you when you when you when you see Amy Schumer you see like I saw her in the room. It's talking about catching a dick in front of Robert De Niro like we're at the American film awards would have like that and she's just I mean.
Hard card in which is what Sarah Silverman started out as you know so but Amy looks like she's rounded the corner and is now you know really making it you know making a dope for herself.
If you look back at in living color and I watch the show and it just if in retrospect it seems like such a. Stram magical combination of people so how did that group get assembled and I mean what made that team so special because I mean you look at the list right I mean you've got Chris Rock you've got Jim Care you've got the way and you've got it just good Jennifer Lopez you got you go down the line. It's just it's an all start roster.
At that time he and I be wins was the he put it all together and he was able to grab all of these incredibly talented people. And make them get along and figure out how to squeeze all of this talent into 22 minutes of program sure because it was only it was 30 minutes show so it's 22 minutes. But he was very disciplined in how we make jokes. You were not allowed to come in and be half asked.
He pulled you to the side and say as a black comedian you cannot be half asked you're either great or you don't exist so. And he says don't take the racial part of that any kind of way that's just the way it is because he wrote for Eddie Murphy he was around the greatest he says I'm around the greatest all the time so that's what we gonna do so when you see Damon wins come in.
And I just got hired like that already been doing the show for like a year or two years so when I saw Damon walking and Jim walking it was like it was like fucking Jurassic Park. It was like fucking T Rex and fucking you know what I'm saying. And the way I got on the show was was crazy too because it went from the audition and process was a hundred comedians down to 50 down to 25 down to 10 down to five. I was part of the five but I was losing.
I wasn't doing well within the improv of it because I just wasn't catching catching the right shit. And then Keenan says something incredibly says well I dig this but I want to see y'all on stage doing stand up because I want to have standup comedians I was like oh shit that's my shit that's my shit and the other four people didn't do standup it was only one of the girl that this standup god bless the event wasn't but the other three didn't do standup so I was like oh man.
So that night everybody's going to the laugh factor which was just starting because at the time the comedy store was dominating laugh factor was just and they beg can we please have the audition and the laugh. So I show up late on purpose because I wanted to be last smart so I show up late in tomorrow while it was the producer now what are you doing your late oh my god why aren't you here was supposed to go on up early you're supposed to first Jamie oh my god you're going to kill me.
I saw a damn working can I just go last yes you have to because we've already started getting here you. So good and now this was interesting for me because I was in white world I was like on the mainstream I did all my jokes in the hood at that time you know I'm saying I was the good guy so I was oh shit you know.
Uptown you know saying it's like everything's clean and shit you know you know we didn't air and nobody's snuck no drinks and shit and it's an audition thing so I'm watching the guys and you know God bless them they just had never
done stand up before so I have my cassette tape and I knew what I was coming up to I'm coming up to heavy decent effect with more bounce to the ounce so I get to do my tape he's like what's this that's my tape you know going music you know up there they didn't go on with music they just want a hand clap that's an arm and I got a I got to come in with heavy decent effect with more bounce to the pumps I need to cry I'm going so got sure so he's standing there with the tape and then shine
wins gave me a great tip he walked up he said yo Jamie just go up and do your act man just stop worrying about don't worry about the characters just do your act your mallet mallet come here tell Jamie just do your ass I don't really do my act do my act like I do it yeah do you like you doing it
it I said straight cool so I go up they don't play the music waiting on how I like oh you got my music to do is over there I said well I suppose to have some music and I said if this shit goes wrong you will actually see me working across the street at the
gas station and I went into a character man I was in there with Keenan and all of them doll you know just it so I did this little character then I went into my act and I got a state of innovation in that and I remember seeing Jim Carrey Keenan fly girls like on the feet like I said oh man it's great
and that's how I got on the show and during that show I did this character called wander where I said all the good looking ladies clap your hands I said now all the ugly ladies let me see you make some noise it's quiet I say that a bitch and all the ugly ladies I tell hey for real they all here and talking about me so we did this character Keenan was like I want you to do that character on the show because I think that's where you
you you really flourish and when we did that when I did that character that's when everything so the change because I was trying to find my barons on the show because we got on the show but we were there for a trial basis but when I did that character it was like it was like playing football
and I was like the punt return and I was the rookie and I ran it all the way back the first day so nobody really knew who I was but they knew that this character was was was slamming and so they sort of gave me like my strikes because these guys were jugging us I watched I watched Keenan I
said Keenan these jokes ain't funny there's the rights that the writers wrote he says get on your feet everybody get up let's do this so he was like there's never a joke that's not funny you just got to work and find it so he taught us to form the find in the jokes and he was right every single time
and so like I said to be there watching Jim Carrey like create pet detective on set he's writing pet detective that's a way I said what's that you're right no hey man just you know working on some stuff you know just got some stuff I'm working on so what is that my ass is a
little thing called pet detective I said okay sound funny and was he developing for the show without the other one for you from us later with his own I got to make one phone no problem all right so we're we're back we took a little took a little breather but what we catch us up what we're just
talking about we're talking about how nowadays is that you don't get a chance to control your own narrative like we were talking about is there's two different people some people think that the tech world and the social media and things on the internet is taking us to a great place and then there's
people who think to this a horrible place I had I spoke with a young lady who had been burned bad bad by the press bad to what she lost her job and what was interesting about her job was that what they were scolding her about was like me knowing her I was like you're not like that at all
just I can't it's not like do everybody thinks so and they took something like they went through emails and threw a personal emails and all of a sudden how so what it was but it was just like do you not like that at all so when I was on the phone talking with her she was like they're saying
this and saying ah I don't worry about it you're cool like you're not like that I don't get fuck but I had an I'm bowling I'm like I don't I don't even need to read it what could they possibly say and when I look it was a national story I went what the fuck she lost a job yeah and so like even
like you'll do something where you think that it's either you're making fun or you have fun you know but they'll take whatever it is that you say and make it what they wanted to say yeah or craft it where like if you do a joke it's not about doing a joke anymore Jamie Foxe slams
Caitlin Jenner Jamie Foxe trances like nah I'm a comedian we do do but everything is something that they control and and it it's tough because when I say Justin Bieber what do you think what's the first thing comes to mind be honest hair that I'm jealous of yeah but what do you think
but what do you think something about a kid who can't get it together when I say Chris Brown what do you think it's something negative when I say Jennifer Anderson what do you think what do you think you can cover a rolling stone photograph black and white you think what cover of rolling stone
magazine black and white naked laying on a bed but that's hilarious what the average person would think of not what they do right but the impression right the subliminal image that God I think check out counter yes it's the headline if I say if I say Jennifer Anderson you automatically
because nowadays they control we don't control our own narrative to where it's like they they talked about this thing went with Quentin Tarantino which I thought was sad because usually when you see a a a a a a story about black lives matter or anything black it's usually
the same black folks with the kufi who's trying to be heard and they're absolutely right they're absolutely it's so much wrong going in black world there's black on black crime then there's the the divide that is because of social media is that is going on between the police officers in black
folk police officers are on the whole are great folk I know I should I know a gang of police officers but the one or two that have been caught on social media makes it look paint the picture that it's all of now granted we've known for a long time that blacks and police officers have
always had to divide we've done music we've done movies about it we've done books about it it's just is where it is now my take on it is because I call it residue it's slave residue meaning that slavery for 300 years you saw a person of color or certain way for 300 years you've always
saw him as a slave of the criminal or what something that you didn't value so therefore coming out of that of course there's going to be a divide when it comes to police and when it comes to blacks and when it comes to that's always been that way so take that off the table right but in today's
world of how do we bridge that gap I've gone to Quantico and Virginia saw what what a police officer sees I've talked to police officers that how can we bridge the gap I've suggested that you go get a white police officer who you think might not like black folk you know I'm saying get that
person to go into the hood and throw a picnic for a kid that's 819 years old who's African-American so that he can see another another side of the police officer because right now in social media or in media period the stories that are the most salacious where it's the the black person the
black cop being the black guy being killed by a cop it's hard to erase those images I'm a black man when I see that I have to react to that because I'm like wow you know I that that troubles me but then I have to sit down and think okay let me not think of the worst thing to say but let me think
because I know how media tries to make things or heightened it right how do I bring people together in spite of the headline because what people don't understand is that when you keep showing the images of the black guy being killed by the by the cop that does something to you that's like whatever
you believe in if it if it was a Jewish person if it was a gay person but you cannot sit and not be bothered by that at the same time that cop when he sees the other side of it when they're saying all of you guys ain't shit which that's not what's really being said most of the time is with the
individual cop now the cop sees the story in his mind now we'll fuck it with a problem now so now imagine that cop who's watching the story driving on the street that young black kid who's watching the story walking on the street what happens got him I got him I got him I because we can't get
it we can't we can't get anybody responsible on the media side to say let's stop interviewing people and putting labels on them let's interview this man and this woman but don't say that they're Democrat don't say that they're Republican don't say that they're cop just have them talk
because when you see when you're watching TV and you see something that you agree with you agree with them only and you can't hear the other person that's the first thing too like when I look at Quentin Tarantino to demonize this guy can in just because people might be listening to this for
years could you catch people up on the conclusion Quentin Tarantino who is a purist when it comes to his opinions and his emotions even if even if you could go I could go to Quentin Tarantino and say something and I think you know as a black person and so on so on so on so on he's a will kind
stop doing that stop hanging it just on black hanging on things that are substance first and then let it be I mean so I've heard this guy speak when there's no cameras I said wow you know what you make a lot of sense so Quentin Tarantino sees the black lives matter campaign sees the individual
stories 40 different people of individual stories where a police officer had killed the person who was unarmed it touched it the reason I thought that was impactful because you seldom see the white superstar go and stand with the black folk who just trying to be heard even high in black
guys don't go stand with the black folks that's trying to be heard when it comes to like especially Hollywood because you know people in Hollywood are so scared all oh they won't see my movie or they won't go see my song if I stand if I stand up for anything of substance then they so
fucking scared so when I saw this dude do that I was like wow that's great but then the misinterpretation of his words where he says I'm standing here with the murdered Quentin Tarantino speaks that way he speaks if you've read any of his movie a song of his movie he speaks in those terms he says I
stand with the murder when I see someone being murdered I call it what it is it's a murder though that's a murderer that killed this this person however the story got spawned was that Quentin Tarantino is a cop hater he hates all cops and all cops of murderers and I was like here we go again man here's a person who's willing and I'm gonna speak like willing to put aside his white cushy Hollywoodness he could live in his on his mountain and never give a shit about anything he came I said man I
fell some and now they painted so bad and now you got you got the New York cop so we got so for his that now it's a beef now it's that's not what we we're trying to do but you can't do anything right now because the media story if it's not salacious we don't want to report it we
can't lead you know I do and it's it's I mean they if it bleeds it leads right so they put the salacious the visually viscerally impactful stuff up front because it gets the clicks or the purchases see the advertising the the the only I suppose flip side to that and I have a very
specific question for you that from a fan I'd love to ask related to some some of these race questions but the good news is if you can look at it in these terms is that the necessity for new is so high that if you starve a story of oxygen it'll often die on its own yeah because they can't
regurgitate the same thing if there's no response and so you you can let it kind of die on the vine but we were talking about this before I mean I've had instances and I won't bitch him on too long because I think the question is more interesting than my bitching but I don't need to do this is where
these these formerly I would say outlets of record you know very prestigious outlets magazines I'm not going to mention them by name because it's I know what you talk about but I was interviewed and profiled by magazine at one point very very high brow magazine there were six or seven misquotes
or erroneous facts in the piece and I corrected those with the fact checker went to press with no corrections what do you do in that situation when those things that end up in Wikipedia so you have to develop a sort of strategy and I mean this will get even more interesting once we have you know
smart stadiums once we have facial recognition like you see on Facebook once that's implemented across the board it'll get very interesting but I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole and instead I'm going to bring up a question that I'd love to get before you go into that yes here's the problem
back in the day if there was a misquote and you went to that entity and say hey you quoted me wrong we'll release a statement saying that we misquoted you and it erases the problem with today's world once it's out there you can't get it back yeah you cannot change you cannot change yeah because it's
gonna stay there yeah when you when I punch up your name that's the first thing that's gonna come up or the second thing that's coming you can't give rid of it yeah and when you talk about the regurgitate nor the or the or or just letting it die you could let it die but the problem is you
have to at least once it starts give another hopefully that you can give another side of it that people may see a little bit they don't want to say it's crazy about our society right now no one wants to see anybody reconcile no one wants to see anybody come come together or say that like
when I when I think about Quentin Tarantino I spoke and said I back you as a friend and keep speaking the truth and don't worry about the haters meaning speak the truth from you not whatever the comment was right but whatever you're saying in your truth right you say that
because you ain't out there you could be promoting your movie you could be trying to make money you actually trying to see how you could get how you could go I know the way things I'm gonna go talk to them if they are wrong and what they're saying I'm gonna tell them but if they are right
he says I'll be the one that can go to the cops and say to and now look look at how it is it's so great go ahead ask questions oh no I mean it's I think you're right I think that people want gladiatorial games and we don't have gladiatorial games so they use the front page
oh gladiatorial games but but speaking of conflict resolution so this is this is a question from a fan TJ my wife is pregnant we're moving to a very non-diverse neighborhood we are kind of worried on how we'll go she is black and I'm white what is some advice he can give to a young
couple raising a child of color in today's world I'll say this I say do I'll say this about America let's use America as an example to me America is the most incredible civilization that has ever been created hundreds of years from now people will look on this look at this place and marble
there's the bitch in the complaint aisle where everybody bitches complains about every single thing but the one thing about America that is incredible is the evolution of freedom the change when I talk about slavery that happened it was 300 years of it look at the evolution we come out of it we have
a black president people are more welcoming now oh we used to live in the world not too long ago where it was frowned upon it was tough it was this what I would say to people like that just live your life like I live my life in places where at times it was definitely racial misunderstand but I
would talk to that person I would make sure that person understood who I was as a person I'm not gonna compromise who I am as far as a black man but I'm also gonna give you another another version of it not the version that you necessarily see on television the versions that you see on the
internet I'm gonna give you me and most of the time we are alike in so many different and so many instances so when he's saying moving to that non diverse place it's different man look at the look I hate to say this right listen to the kids bro but when you talk about the kids the kids today
I'm I'm at the gym last night 24 hour fitness the kid is playing future white kid where you ask is that when I'm white kid when I first moved into my neighborhood years ago and I felt like I made it I'm in the white neighborhood now I'm here oh I'm so I've made it
and I hear NWA blasted look out there with these kids it was 16 years old so times of changing man and you have to start giving people the benefit of the doubt that they'll get it right and for all those people that were here back in the old days and that are now 15 16 17 years old that's dying
out the way of thinking is dying out you may be looking in a situation where you may have the first female president it's the evolution of it's the evolution of freedom think about how we treated women at one point no voice no rights no nothing I've heard people say I'd rather have a black person
tell me something to do than a woman anything but now it's it's so we are on the right path man love who you want to love be where you want to be because we are evolving look at look at look at the steps that that gay rights took in the past few years man that was that's huge when you when you
talking about people in the Bible belt and then you know how they fell so if if those things are now like my daughter taught me like when she was 13 she's 21 now she was 13 and that was this was nine years ago and it was talking about gay rights and things like that and and and I asked her
friend I said what do you think about it yeah we don't think about it that's that's you guys that's a good answer she said that's you guys she said that's old people she said that's why we're turned off from religion sometimes that's why we're turned off from all of these different things
because old people argue about where you from what you do what you look like we don't give a shit and so thank God for the youth thank God for that couple because what they're doing is they're showing the new world she said dead if someone was doing something somewhere that was straight gay black
white or brown somewhere else does it affect you at all does your air change does anything around you change because these people are living the way they want to live as long as they're not breaking the laws you know what you made great points she went on to my radio show
and talked about it so we are in a new date what we got to do is we got to stop I said like I was telling Justine I said we got to make sure it's to say let's put let's put media out of business we got to quit allowing them to control the narrative those people like with with Quentin Tarantino
or the black lives matter or or people that speak up on something that is broken or that is wrong you don't give them a chance by painting them in a in a bad situation are you gonna do another comedy tour yeah I'm gonna do another comedy tour but my I'm gonna start it organically like uh maybe a hundred people 200 people started organically and just sort of grow it uh I got some great jokes and that's the thing like when you when you're when you're when you're comedian it's like you have
to pray that the jokes will open up so I got some great like jokes that people will get and understand and then just this stuff that's been going on with me you know uh you know getting old there you know uh not realizing you the OG you know saying like you know the young like the young hip-hop
guy what's up OG yeah that's right you know I mean just just just it's just some funny stuff it's some funny stuff that's and and that's what any comedian will tell you that it's hard to be funny when there's nothing funny happening but there's been so much funny shit happening uh feel like my mom who you know adopted and who who gave me up for adoption in seven months and she comes back to live with me and as she's living with me she walks down the first day she's here she walks
down uh the steps and says I want a phantom I'm like uh bitch of the opera what are you talking about she's talking about a phantom uh Rose Royce right and it was just funny to just certain things that the fact that everybody lives in my house the fact that my mom my dad lives here my two sisters
my dad still dates you know and my mom is going on his side of the house when she when he has a date you know just assessing like just being in a way like oh hey I don't know you have company joy I mean just and that they've turned they've turned in the kids so you know my dad
to come to my room but uh could you tell her not to come on my side of the house when I got a date and I'm like now parents so you know it's funny things that happen love the organic material yes it was organic man so we got fun when you think of the word successful who is the first person
who comes to mind and why on the bigger picture because I witnessed this in 2008 to see president Obama become president to me 2008 not talking about after he became president because everyone will have the views on on that I know what it meant to me to see him stand up there put his hand on
that Bible and say you know and become the president of the United States that is success in so many different ways and it also it jars you for every person that says oh man just cause I'm black I'm saying maybe you can't use that all the time because this man now shows you and what ever
side you end up on because it's not a political thing to see that and the reason that it means so much to me to see African-American man like do that like and literally when uh when when when he was this was interesting this had reconnected when he was 30 points down for the nomination
30 points down no one knew who he was I get a call from open one for you hi Jamie Foxx it's Oprah hi Jamie I'm like what's going on there's this guy named Senator Obama I think he's going to be the next president then I got a call from Norman Lyre Jamie it's Norman Lyre the senators on fire
so who is he is Senator Obama but he's 30 points down so well no one knows the reason they're calling me is because we have a radio show that was reaching everybody especially the huge urban market so I go on my show and I say uh I'm voting for this guy named Senator Obama because he's black and
I go to commercial when I go to commercial my phone lines light up with all black people saying that we will not vote for this guy just because he's black don't treat us that way so we ended up educating everybody about him he's a nomination and he goes on and he went and to me
it was all odds against him and I thought that that that type of success regardless of where you come from like I said whatever side you stand on to me that was something monumental when we talk about where this country has come from when you talk about the greatness of America evolving
and evolving to that type of freedom and him taking advantage of being in America and becoming a president to me that's just success that that he redefined what it is what historical figure do you must identify with who do I identify with historically uh when it comes to entertainment
Sammy Davis Jr. is a person that I look at all the time who I go on the internet watching play the drums or watching seeing or watching dance or watching do jokes or watch him do a movie or watch him spend guns to me he was just the ultimate uh in a in a tanner he was like yeah full
stack entertainer as one engineer said that's what's what's really called you yeah you kind of you had all the tools in the toolkit oh man that's great and then there's there's other sides of me too so like the the sports side like I was a magic Johnson like you know the person who
was who loved being competitive but also want to get everybody else involved and you know the way he played basketball when it comes to social consciousness man interject for a second yeah so this might seem like a funny question but do you feel like you identify more with magic Johnson than cream
Abdul Jabbar yeah the reason I feel more than the cream Abdul Jabbar is because magic smiled and it was fun he was happy you know not to say the Korean one but Korean was more serious guy you know very serious you have a met him he's completely serious you know I'm more the fun dude let's have
a good time and you know when it comes to social consciousness and social issues that's where I I draw from a lot of different people I think going I think watching Martin lose the king and going to Atlanta and seeing what he did and how he did when he did it when I look at
the bravery of him it's beyond because I look at social issues today how we're so afraid to step out on anything oh my my car isn't my my wealth and my money oh and not to say that I've thought this way all my life like literally like it just happened not to long ago where I was like we got
to step up more more socially we got to be on social come even if even if some of the people say oh fuck it I ain't going to go to your movie okay fine you won't go anyway but we have to step up a little bit more social social wise and when I went to see where Martin Luther King came from what he
did and how his house was he actually came from middle class big nice house but it's right across the street from port from poverty and it sort of taught him how to deal with other cultures taught him how to deal with other financial groups he says I don't want to see people hurting he says I
want everybody you know so I I think like that I've always thought like even when we talked about earlier the Jews and the Palestinians in the in the student center you know the rest of the story was I'm a friend of both of them and we all became friends because I call myself Spackel which
is the stuff that goes in between the shrinks yeah I'm I'm Spackel I get along with all religions get along with all people and try to bring them all together and so that was the so when I think about it socially it is the Martin Luther King thing because I think sometimes we overlooked that
the world is big enough for all of us to live on it's big enough for all of us to to get along and sometimes I question why is it so tough to get along you know which is what Martin Luther King questions I just don't I don't get it and I and I won't stand by so a little and like I said I've
only thought about like that you know here in the past few years after watching Harry Bill of Fonte gone stage before I was supposed to get a lifetime achievement award and he goes on and says something so prolific he says they were talking about violence and he said the violence
that's happening in America is mostly black violence and you black entertainers sit here mute and we laid all of this groundwork down for you guys and you guys are disrespected and not picking up so you know that's the one reason I said I think more socially I mentioned
in the career of dual-debar because I saw just like a chance a fantastic documentary called Minority of One and it's so good and it detailed in particular and I'm not I'm not at all well first with basketball so it was also a glimpse into that world for me but his relationship with
magic Johnson is fascinating do you have any particular favorite documentaries or movies that you just feel are must-watches for human beings and that's a big question that's that's why I think documentaries on cultures are important if you get a chance to see a doc any documentary about
Jews what they went through watch it any documentary documentary about Palestinians and what they've gone through watch it blacks what they've gone through watch it women and what they've gone through watch it the reason that I say it is because if we're talking about the human aspect of it
like I didn't get it until I watched it was actually the pianist yeah and I just went shit I didn't know it was like that you know I'm like I didn't know that and so you know and then when I listen to some of my friends who like you know living in the Middle East and they're going through
those answers shit I didn't know it was like that so I think anytime you get a watch get a chance to watch people and where they come from or culture and what they went through you can even look at whites breaking away from the I mean the 13 colonies breaking away from from England you go oh
shit I don't know you went through that so it's like when you do that you you come away with a sense of okay I get you now right how's build your compassion yeah it helps build your compassion because you you only live in your own world you know saying unless you get a chance to
see what it is a lot of times your views will be will be narrow and just watching documentaries like that to to open up your views are just amazing when you look at when you look at the story of of like I said the story of slavery there was a book that I just showed these young guys called
without sanctuary without sanctuary where it's a book where a guy a photographer went around the South during the times of slavery and documented lynchings and he would document the lynching and take and make postcards because at that time see we go oof but at that time it was common
place yeah it was a party so people get their food this way got picnic from they would get the food drinks or whatever they would go down and watch the lynching and so there was a postcard said here's the lynching of nigger Charlie hope you like it hope everything as well so that was something
that was mind blown because it was commonplace you know so when you get it like I said when you get a chance to see cultures and history you understand of what what's going on today and this is the last little factor if you get a chance pull up the Harrison act the Harrison act was an act
about taking drugs off the street and making them illegal because at the time in our culture we were able to you know use whatever drugs it was out there is available but the government sort of didn't know how to get it off the street so they ran a story black man gets high on cocaine and
fights cops and people like so we got to give rid of drugs people like fuck that and get rid of drugs get bigger guns give cops more jurisdiction finally they run a story black man gets high on cocaine rapes and kills Caucasian woman that's when the Harrison act because of what we don't want that
but because of that Harrison act with the jurisdiction of a cop that plays into a little bit of what we're dealing with today because it was sort of set that way at a time where it was commonplace to see slaves it was commonplace to see blacks as second or third class citizens so and it's not
to incite anything it's not to make you feel anything angry it's just the it's just appearing into someone's genesis to see where we are today so that you can understand to or try to have the compassion for all of all of us who live here in this country because like I said it's it's the best
in the world in beyond I remember Fred mentioned to me I was watching planet earth and he said there's a companion of some type which I really want to see called I think it's humans of earth and it actually profiles different civilizations different cultures around the world and it shows you
have humans have adapted you know Mongolians using falcons for hunting all of this and whatnot but the oh yeah totally agree with you I think that you know if a culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors you have to in a way be taken on that century experience to develop the compassion you don't get
it through text alone necessarily if you could have a billboard anywhere what would it say man it would constantly change it would be those new billboards sneaky answer I like it it would be the board billboard saying ball out dog have a great time go to church love somebody
teach somebody get angry a little bit it would just change you know because you know these guys know me I'm all about having and at the end of the last one be it have as much fun as you can because in a blink of an eye we'll all be gone 100 years compared to infinity is nothing I'll talk to my sister all the time why she's like I'm gonna make it's wrong it's a girl you better get you better start having some fun we gonna be gone in a minute you're gonna look back and like shit I should have
been laughing and now I'm dead yeah my billboard would change constantly because I think we all change so you said get angry a little bit and it's it and I remember I was given this advice by a guy named Pope Bronson a writer many many years ago asked him at an event I was sitting in the crowd and
said what are you doing you get writers block and he said I write about what makes me angry yeah and if you if you were teaching a ninth grade class yeah mixed race mixed gender yeah what would you what would you teach that class about like what would what would you teach would what do you think
the most important things skills or otherwise that you could teach ninth graders might be well like I said it would have to be different tiered yeah if it's the ninth grade of today I would teach him as much as you can interact with actual humans you know the toughest thing in the world is
like looking at my daughter and we're in Paris and the general general thumbs yeah they're on their they're on their they're on their cell phones so I said as much as you can interact with people because people it's the best interaction because there's all types and there's discretion when it
comes to people like there's no discretion when it comes to thumbs and what you can say on the internet and that's why you get drugged down by it because it doesn't take anything if there if it's an anonymous person and they say you're ugly and you're this or you're that and you're this there's
no discretion there so they can sort of get the venom off I said when you're if we're in a surrounding I may feel something about something but I want to say because I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings I don't want to have to hurt my family so that's the one thing interact with
people the second thing is interact with people from all over the world because you become narrow when you're just all about my block and just being about your block in today's world is going to hurt us because people don't understand global we don't understand global market we don't understand
global things that how does something in the Middle East affect me in North Dakota because of the way we're set up like this so it's like you have to get the education I would bypass well no I wouldn't bypass it get the education of people all the world and then the last
well last couple of things be history no history no why we're why we're here why this especially when it comes to to to rules and legislation and things that know why why we vote why we don't vote if you think about it this wonderful country runs on just like a human brain we only use a little
bit of it when it comes to the voting market you got a vote get out there and be active in that a lot of times we just hey man whoever's president is the president whoever's this way so so that and then the last part that I would teach is last two things hustle teach your hustle your hustle
muscle is but hustle muscle is the most important thing when you hustle and you go get it a lot of times that alleviates your problems when you don't hustle or you leave it the chance when you leave things the chance and you didn't give it all that day now you start to argue or wonder about
things bills fuck I gotta get that done oh my relationship is how did it but if you hustle for one it's gonna take a lot more of your time so you don't have time to to concentrate on just the the worrying the worrying if I put the work in I got my check I put it in there and your check can be
doesn't have to be monetary it could be anything it could be I put the work in at the charity and this happened because of the charity but whatever it is put that hard work in and now you could see things coming to fruition and that takes not 70% of your worry in a way because you
did give it your all and then the last part of it is reflect sit still for a minute because when you just work and work and work and work I gotta say that that will straighten you as well so you gotta be able to decompress you just gotta be able to chill whatever it is that you chill
with if it's your home is your friends what are they take time out to be like you know what I if if if it's out of my hands it's out of my hands I'll get a better crack at it tomorrow Colin Powell says something incredible he said I always feel like in the morning I got a brand new
chance now paraphrasing in the morning he's like I love getting in the to the morning because it's a new opportunity but really take the time for yourself you know relax chill whatever it is that you believe in if it's God Buddha I can do all of them whatever it is to get you on on that on that
okay you know I did what I suppose to do let me relax now and then tomorrow the next day get another no start what is what is the first 60 minutes of your day look like or what do you give any morning routines that are important to you morning routines I wake up I I text the people that I dig love
uh what do you say I just send them encouraging like you know there's a few you know people that just you know really mean a lot to me want to let them know I'm thinking about them all night and then uh it varies man sometimes I'll be like okay I put some work in so I put in eight days
so maybe these two days I could chill uh get a little I do the just on the physical part I get my uh I get my 50 pull-ups in hundreds sit-ups you know maybe a hundred uh maybe a hundred crunches and it's easy I used to not be able to do it my boy Tyron how many sets for the 50 pull-ups for
the 50 so I do 15 first 15 pull-ups this is what it is I do 15 pull-ups 50 push-ups 100 sit-ups then I go back and I do 15 different oh check grip yeah so that'll get me to 30 another 50 push-ups that gets me to 100 push-ups I'm done with the push-ups and then I do 10 and 10 back to the to the
first grip and you don't have to do it every single day you can do it every other day uh and then what you notice is the pull-up bar and Tyron kept telling me this well we I got a homey Tyron he played cane in Minnesota and he I kept wondering how is he always in shape he says man I'm trying to tell
you to pull a bar is everything so uh so that and then uh um and then just you don't make the calls and what I need to get done and make sure I'm you know on the right you know position and you drink coffee get the kid I don't drink coffee I don't drink coffee is have you have you have you have you have I had to stop I had to stop having stimulants there's you knew earlier in my career I was I was all about the stimulants so at a certain point I had to
X-Nay on that yeah yeah yeah I've been I've been cutting that out as well it's not good for me people are like aren't you worried about depressants alcohol like no no no no stimulants that's what I need to worry because because when I tell people I'll tell you drink coffee after
a while you you keep you keep hitting that same muscle you know that and your brain to where you I know people right now who can drink four cups of coffee and go to sleep yeah I used to be that person yeah and so it's like my and one of my boys loves uh uh what is the red ball red ball
and then he won't understand why some days he'll just be like this yeah so I had to stop and it was tough because I had to have coffee every day and I drank like double expressos you know I was like I had to have to up yeah but now I know how to go get it inside of my you know I know
how to go get it inside last last question here is um I'm gonna ask you advice you would give to yourself three different ages 20 30 and 40 um so what advice would you give to your 20 year old self man put the condom on shit stop playing around important advice 20 man put that on buddy
and not the fishnet one easy put the riddle on okay uh anything else for 20 or should we move to 30 20 20s I have my daughter 26 so the advice I would give me was like calm down you know it was like calm down and and just you know make sure you're paying attention to your daughter and to the
daughter's mind 20s was tough because I just got the LA I was just you know man the whole world was opening up so I'm like man I'm you know I'm trying to do all of it and while I was like calm down and and luckily it was 26 so moving into 30 I was on my way to calming if that makes it
does make sense so then you hit 30 turning what advice would you give your 30 year old self uh it's gonna go fast in what way it's gonna go fast the time is gonna go fast so just make sure that you uh you start now planning for your future and not only is gonna go fast but don't spend all
your money don't buy the the jacket that's 12 thousand dollars you know relax you know just just you relax it because it's good and if 40 is gonna come so fast and you don't think that it is right it's gonna come so fast and would you say that because you would want your 30 year old
self to pay attention to the present moment or do long term thinking for a long term when you're 30 you got a kid and you're in my business and in any business all businesses are gonna especially when you when you when you make my business is about me though so I have to be careful in my decisions
socially uh and and plan for the future it's not gonna be I remember uh uh do my television show and it went five years from fast and I will tell the people on my television show it's gonna go fast man and if you finish it 35 but you live till 70 you know so you have to really think about the
future a long game yeah and then 40 before zero wow 40 there are they're gonna be tough decisions that you have to make when it comes to business because in your 40 when you're 40 in my business the window is closing on certain things so you have to be able to open those windows to other things
and some of the people that you've gone to to battle with till your 40 may not be the ones that you will battle and do business with towards 50 and take a little bit of your uh personal feelings out of it because I'm very personal uh meaning like I would stay with someone even if I feel that
they're not of the part business wise but you know we have history take a little bit of the personal out of it still remain friends if you can with that person because now it's really pending like 50 about to be here you know I'm saying so it's like you know and uh I would tell my 40 yourself
grow up in your mind but not in your body necessarily meaning stay young in your body but certain parts of your life you have to grow up and be be grown about things because now you got another kid your other child is you know 20 she's 21 now which is just you know this past year so
but she was you know 1314 and when I was 40 but now you got to start living uh you would always live your life 100% for you but now that you have your kids and their certain age it's got to be 30 to 40% you 60 to 7% what you're gonna leave for them and how you're gonna leave
them because like I said it's it's flying and that's it Jamie so much fun I really appreciate taking the time and uh where can people find what you're up to find you online learn find me at I am Jamie Foxx on my periscope am I right am I saying it's right you know I got
these young cats telling with and then I am Jamie Foxx on Twitter also I'm Jamie Foxx on Twitter I'm doing better on Twitter I'm trying to do better and and uh the old fellow China the latest album the latest albums called Hollywood Story of a dozen roses this out I don't care how you get
it you can download it bootleg it steal it from a friend I don't care I just want you to I just want you to hear the music the song that's out right now is uh I'm supposed to be in love by now I'm supposed to be in love by now it's been so long for me I don't know how been drowning in the sea of broken vows but I'm supposed to be in love by now I've been chasing my dream now I'm chasing you running hard but my legs feel weak I don't play every part I don't play the fool write the movie I be your
only I'm supposed to be in love by now well girl you stole my heart to take about in love by now so make sure you get that in love by now is out it's a song that my daughter made me she sort of made me do she's like listen stop with the club stuff stop with it that's my older
daughter's like funny so then stop with the club joint stop you're trying to be too young like even she'd even like I had on some shoes one day that she thought was just I had two younger but shoe she's like that what is that on your feet I said what's your dead new style baby
they did just step is you know it's the new style I had a zipper on a buckle in my name and grade and she's like stop it she said dad you have old feet that's what it mean you have old feet like you have you have feet for marching like a civil rights you have a civil rights so uh but
she said do a song that we know that is from you in in this truth is I'm supposed to be in love by now and so uh so that and uh jumping out of the window uh and uh we just shot the in love by now video with George Lopez is the priest I get stood up at the altar George Lopez is the priest
Nicole Scherzinger uh and we all know her from the pussy cat doll but also her solo career and and everything she plays my love venture switch is great because she's a good friend and so we were able to like really get into some like uh you know they don't do old school videos anymore like this
actually has a bit of a story my man tank is in it and then all of my friends my daughters in it my little daughter is in it and uh my mom and dad is in it and you know so it's uh it's kind of cool I was um jamming to babies in love yeah that's the type of music I'll listen to
before I'm when I'm headed somewhere to write sit down do some creative work yeah man baby solid I think Justin Bieber is supposed to do that song first and we would look you enough to get it but uh babies in love kid Inc is on there so you know got some good stuff going
and then uh later on uh sleepless nights we'll be out at some point and then uh we'll start work on uh Mike Tyson uh bio and uh and that's it and then the the stand-up comedy is coming because like I said I got a lot of stuff that you know I got to get up uh get off my chest and I can't
that's it since you brought up Mike well what would Mike say if you were here right now well I'm gonna say it like this because now that I'm about to do the movie to do the Mike Tyson impersonation would be a little disservice what I would say is is that I met Mike when I was 21 years old I went
on stage and I was doing my joke and I was getting in my Mike Tyson joke and I went into it and no one laughed because Mike was in the audience a guy was in the artist with Mike and said yo Mike is in here motherfucker I was like oh man the black girls in the front was like what you're gonna do
Jamie you gonna tell your jokes you scared of Mike Tyson this is when Mike Tyson was knocking people out for nothing I did and then the guy yells out Mike said do the joke and that shit better be funny I was like oh shit so I do the joke is a stand-in-offation I come off stage and Mike
goes there he is I want to talk to you so funny come hang out with me you're funny motherfucker grab that come and get in the car with me and we take off and I started hanging out with Mike Tyson in the 21 years old it was the most incredible thing in the world Michael's bigger than Michael Jackson
at that time he was just he was the biggest person biggest star in the world Mike would be in a club see your girls say hi how are you like BMWs they're like huh do you like being like you like car yeah he would go open up to BMW dealership they bought here by car for a girl that's how dope
you were and then all of his boys would go to all the different cities and pick up the cars that he bought for girls they y'all come on get the keys back you know he's playing so it was great to see it was great to see him during the time then it was tough to see him when he went through
what he went through and then when we finally decided to do this movie this is the Mike Tyson and I think people really be able to grasp is that when we show Mike Tyson older and I call Mike and I said Mike how are you I'll pray this to allow my brother I'm happy how are you so I'm good Mike
you know what so what's going on I'm just happy I'm happy because I don't have any money anymore so I'm happy so Mike what does that mean you know it's just all the vultures that were around me the whole time it was always after my money so I don't have any money so nobody wants anything from
me so I'm just so happy and if you notice his speaking voice like what I tell you with Bill Cosby is completely different from when he's on stage when he's getting ready to fight so he was like I'm just so happy and I could tell I said Mike that's the person we need to tell that's the story we always see the person who rises to the mountain top but we don't see the other side of the mountain and all the jagged edges and all the things and and and you're about to slip off at that mountain so
Terry Winter who wrote you know Wolfelwald Street boywalk empire and Martin Scorsese who's going to direct it who hasn't directed a film about boxing since raging bull so fingers crossed if it all goes together we'll be able to see Mike Tyson in a different way and we'll be able to transform
to where I want to be so good that is Mike Tyson that I look so much like him when I walk it to his house his kids would acknowledge me as a father and then I want to be able to sit back and reflect and here's what I'm trying to do with with the career is establish
characters in living color it was one to hey for real now I rock your world then it was Willie Beeman and he gave me a sudden name my name is Willie Willie Beeman I keep the ladies scream then it's Ray Charles oh no it's a bundany brown from Ali Muhammad Ali is a prophet
how you gonna be God shut Jones it's about to garage it be number true so bundany brown and then it's where I got a woman where the challenge good to me then it's Ray Charles and then it's a jungle you know they love you very well jungle so the jango experience you know working with quit and
Tarantino which was mind blowing to be able to go in and read for that and I didn't know about that part I thought Will Smith was gonna do it I was like woo Will Smith and Quentin Tarantino is going to create him it didn't work out that way I meet with a Quentin Tarantino I told him
I understand the script and I said not only had I had my own horse and so I ended up riding my own horse in in jango and I knew that that was gonna be another character that's gonna change the game and so they'll look at that so they'll say jango and then hopefully if everything goes right
Mike Tyson will sit with those characters so that you'll be able to after a while look at a career where you transforms into a character people know it and will move by it and hopefully if it all works out it'll be a great it'll be a great opportunity to look back and see like wow
man look at the things you were able to do in America what's an incredible canon already and my brother gave me Mike Tyson's autobiography for Christmas last year and I sat down I read it because when I was a kid I would watch on the green evhs Mike Tyson's greatest hits over and over and
over and you'd see his reception in Japan he was the biggest star in the face of the planet but you read the autobiography and there are layers upon layers a guy who just wanted to be in love just wanted to just you know it was more simple than we thought it would yeah and I can't wait to see it
I hope it comes together Jamie you're the consummate performer and entertainer so please keep creating this has been such such a gift thank you for your time thank you buddy and for everybody listening you can find all the show notes links to everything at for our workweek.com forward slash podcast
search my name and Jamie's gonna probably pop right up and as always thank you so much for listening hello ladies and gentlemen this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show I am extremely excited to have a fellow geek in arms Maria Popova on the line with me Maria
how are you today very well thank you thank you for having me and I appreciate your coaching on the last name I wasn't sure if it was Popova or Popova I have friends who for instance Navale or Avacant is a friend it's actually novel but Americans can't really pull that off so he goes for it Navale so I appreciate the the coaching and I as a country of immigrants we have a
surprisingly hard time getting people's original names right right? Absolutely it's you know just the sort of angle sizing of of such a uh Chris sort of like a melting pot of different cultures and you know at the same time I think it's a reflection of where I spend a lot of time
uh which is reading and there are so many words I've embarrassed myself on many occasions that I've read dozens or even hundreds of times especially in scientific literature that I've never heard pronounced oh yeah I call this reader syndrome as somebody who spends the majority of her waking hours reading you run into that a lot especially with um sort of cultural icons last names first names that are still different than very different than their pronounced it's kind of
tragic comic when you actually find out how they're pronounced? No exactly or it can be a real revelation I remember when I was a young kid I couldn't hit let's say democracy or aristocracy I could only say because I didn't I'd also read it you know demo-crassy or aristocracy for whatever
reason I couldn't get the emphasis right but coming back to the the reading and someone who spends most of their waking hours reading if if someone asks you and I'm sure occasionally it happens you know what do you do for those people listening who may not be familiar with you but we'll start with the cocktail question what someone asks you what do you do? How do you answer that?
Well I've answered it differently over the years in part because I think inhabiting our own identity is kind of a perpetual process but right now I would say I read and I write in that order and in between I do some thinking and I think about how to live a meaningful life
basically and if someone then where to go online find your work end up at brain pickings and they're like oh this is quite interesting when they kind of looked over their shoulder because they happen to be doing it on their iPhone at the party and they're like what is brain pickings? How would you describe how do you typically describe that? It's just the record of that thinking my personal subjective private thinking that takes place between my reading and takes and the writing
and takes one in writing. Collection of very interesting things and sometimes you know how I've got to sort of simply put it to folks and brain pickings for those people wondering is one of the very few sites that I end up on constantly and when people ask me what blogs do you read?
I'm embarrassed in some cases kind of humiliated to answer that I don't go really to many blogs consistently and I think part of the reason is so many of them are feel compelled to put out very very timely of the moment material that expires within a few hours and I don't like
the feeling of keeping up with the Joneses when the Joneses are just sort of churning out content and I remember Kathy Sear at one point told me that you should focus on just in time information, not just in case information and which I thought was very astute and really sort of profound but there are there are two sites that come to mind that I end up on quite a lot brain pickings is one and Sam Harris's blog is another and I saw your review of his latest book Waking Up.
Well not a review. I don't review books. I follow. Okay no this is this is an annotated reading. They're okay so an annotated reading of and I definitely want to dig into that. Annotated reading of Waking Up which I found really impactful for me in a lot of ways. It put words to a lot of vague sort of feelings or observations that I had for a very long time.
Talking about reviews so I pulled a number of my friends and my readers about different questions they would love to ask you and a close friend of mine, Chris Saka, he came back with what percentage of New York Times bestsellers can be attributed to your coverage and I'd be curious to hear you answer that and then there's sort of a follow up but you've built this incredible powerhouse of an outlet for your whether it's creative musings or observations and it has a huge
influence on what people read so if you just sort of think of that how would you answer that question? Well first of all you're very kind to put it that way as a script but I think one big caveat to all of that is that the majority of books that I read you didn't write about are very old
out of print things that are not competing for New York Times bestseller. In fact I don't even know if I ever really I mean perhaps I don't know if the books that I read have any overlap in the Venn diagram of things with the New York Times bestsellers but I suspect that the reason for Saka
questions actually that I met him through his wife who collaborated with Wendy McNaughton the illustrator whose work I love and I love Wendy on a book about wine and that book ended up and I wrote about it because it's lovely and sort of profound and challenges are existing ideas about
sort of sensory experience and I like things that that takes something very superficial and finds something deeper and something unusual in it but in any case so I wrote about that book and that particular piece on brain picking seemed to do pretty well and I think perhaps that warped Chris's idea of how much contemporary books I really sort of am interested in
but I would say that's a minority. Right and for those people wondering it's the essential scratch and sniff guide to becoming a wine expert which was written along with and the illustrations
are wonderful. Richard Betts was the sommelier who was part of that and at one point I met with him because I wanted to try to deconstruct the master sommelier test and he said I can show you how to do it and it was just the paired down sort of hacked if you will version still of passing the master sommelier test was so intimidating that I put it on ice indefinitely but at some point Richard
we will talk again and form a game plan. So the opposite of course of sort of putting out this material that expires as soon as it's out on the vine is putting out what I think you do very often and that is sort of timeless, timely and timeless I've heard you call it material where you're
sort of pulling from old sources or older sources doing pattern recognition to pull from other areas to talk about say a theme or or something that still affects people and I was I was doing research for this interview and you know we met briefly in New York at an event and I've been a long time
fan of your work and so I thought to myself like how much how much digging do I really need to do and good God you have such an absolute canon of work out there it is astonishing I mean it is really very kind it's just the volume of time really it's been you know I've been doing this
for eight years coming up actually exactly a month from today it'll be eight years so it's just the accumulation you know and so I was I was I was I was I'm fascinated by routine and schedule and you know reading from of course not not the always accurate but generally a good place to
start Wikipedia and it says that brain picking takes you know 400 plus hours of work per month hundreds of pieces of content per day 12 to 15 books per week that you're reading how do you and I I know I'm asking a handful of questions that you've been asked before but
yeah sometimes the answer is change and evolve or they always do and which is why I actually don't do interviews very frequently because I find that they sort of tend to kind of castus is the static thing that just stays there some sort of reference point while we're really just the fluid
process and we're constantly evolving but in any case no definitely so yeah so the question that you've I'm sure been asked many times but I'll ask again is how do you choose the books how do you find slash choose the books that you read this is a huge problem for me because I my appetite
for reading outstrips the time that I have and so I end up actually uh it's unfortunately sometimes finding myself uh anxious because of the number of books I've taken on at any given point in time so I'd be curious how you sort of vet the books that you read well I guess it goes back to
that question of well let me backtrack and just say that I write about a very wide array of disciplines and eras and sensibilities because that's what I think about to anything from art and science to philosophy psychology history design poetry you name it but the common denominator
for me is just this very simple question of does this illuminate some aspect big or small of that grand question that I think we all tussle lit every day which is how to live well how to live a good meaningful fulfilling life whether that's you know Aristotle's views on happiness and
government or beautiful art from 12th century Japan or or Sam Harris's new book anything got it and the I've read you citing Kervonigot before Kervonigot's one of my favorite writers of all time I know I heard your uh semicolon quizzes I think it was either the interview I did with
Kevin Kelly or with Sam but I actually have a counterpoint to the semicolon okay no no but go on so I actually I actually I brought up the semicolon quote partially as a sort of wink wink nod ribbing to a friend of mine named John Romenella who has a tattoo of a semicolon on his
I think it's his forearm he loves type nerd he loves semicolon he also has a molecule of testosterone on the other armies he's a fascinating guy but the the quote that I heard you cite that I I wanted to dig into a bit was the Kervonigot saying right to please just one person and so my question to
you is when you write is that still the case and if so who who who you who is that person that you are writing for it is very much the case I still write for an audience of one and that's myself it's like I said it's just the record of my thought process my way of just trying to navigate my
way through the world and understand my placement that understand how we relate to one another how different pieces of the world relate to each other and sort of create a pattern of of meaning out of seemingly unrelated meaningless information and this sort of intersection of or transmutation
of information into into wisdom really which is what learning to live is it's about wisdom so I and it's interesting too because when I started brain plugins like I said almost eight years ago it started very much as a private record of my own curiosity and I shared it with seven co-workers
that I had at the time just as a little sort of email newsletter thing and now to think that there are about seven million people strangers reading it every month that's amazing congratulations but thank you but and I'm not sort of number dropping for for say or anything like that but just
to try to articulate how surreal it feels to me that I still feel like I'm writing for one person one very sort of you know inward person but there's also now the awareness that there are people looking on and interpreting and and just relating to this pretty private act and it's a strange
thing to live with and in no way a bad thing I'm not complaining about it obviously but it's just interesting to observe how one relates to oneself when being looked on by a few million people you know definitely and uh there's so many so many questions I want to ask you we might have to
do a part two at some point because I know we have some time constraints but the uh uh where do you even begin this is where I start fraying at the ends as an interviewer so the the the the first question would be related to that there's so much temptation to dumb things down
or to go after kind of the tried and true Buzzfeed type headlines do you ever contend with that temptation and if if so how do you resist it and I and this is part of the you know how do you respond to the the expectations of the crowd or the seven million people looking on and I feel
this personally sometimes because I have a blog it it has you know certainly by no means the number of monthly readers that you have you know I'm somewhere between one and two million uh unique some month usually uh but thank you but even at that even at that scale there are times when I
put out something that I feel is very very important but on on the dense side and and then it will sometimes it takes off but but sometimes it doesn't and and there's a lot of temptation when for instance I know you use social media quite a bit and we'll get to that where I look at say
the retweets the favorites on something that's kind of dense and then I'm like oh god I should just do like the seven tricks you can you can actually teach your cat you know and get 500,000 retweets is that something that you're that ever sort of crosses your mind and do you ever feel
that temptation well you know it's interesting because I think anybody who thinks in public which is what writing is which is even what art is it's some sort of putting a piece of oneself out into the world anybody who does that struggles with this really irreconcilable kind of tug of war
between wanting to really stay true to one's experience you know and being aware that as soon as it's out in the world there's this notion of the other audience and you know Oscar Wilde he very memorably said that a true artist takes no notice whatever of the public and that the public are
to him non-existent and it's very easy to say especially for somebody as wild who was very prolific very public almost performative in his public presence it's very easy to call this out as a kind of hypocrisy and say well you can't possibly not care about the audience given you
make her living through it and sort of perform to it right but I think that's a pretty cynical interpretation I think rather than hypocrisy it's just this very human struggle to be seen and to be understood which is why all art comes to be because one human being wants to put something
into the world and to be understood for what he or she stands for and who here she is and so with that lens I do think it's hard to say well you know I don't care about what happens to it out there even though I write for myself and thank for myself the awareness of the other really does change
things but I think perhaps Werner Herzog put it best I just finished reading this kind of 600 page interview with him essentially it's a conversation that a journalist named Paul Krunin had with him over the course of 30 years and in one passage Herzog says something like you know it's always been
important for me to have my films reach an audience I don't necessarily need to hear what those audience reactions are just as long as they're out there that they're touching that the films are touching people in a similar way and I feel very similarly so with that in mind I guess to answer
your question rather so couldously I don't feel quote unquote tempted to make listicles or to make anything that I feel compromises my experience of what I stand for and in part I think the beauty of the web is that it's a self-perfecting organism but for as long as it's an ad supported medium
the motive will be to perfect the commercial interests to perfect the art of the Buzzfeed listicle the endless slideshow the infinitely paginated article and not to perfect the human spirit yeah of the reader or the writer which is really what I'm interested in yeah no it's uh
I think it's a very virtuous goal I I really admire your site and obviously the newsletter and all these other aspects of it for a lot of reasons one of them is well I feel a very sort of kindred spirit with a lot of the decisions it seems you have made so for instance I mean not
doing the the slideshow's to rack up page views for some type of cpm advertising that stuff drives me insane so if it drives me insane and I assume it drives my readers insane so I'm not going to do it or like you said that's so wonderful that you do that because I think so much of the cultural
crap that is out there not just on the internet just in general comes from people who fail to understand that they should be making the kind of stuff they want to exist so if you're a writer write the things you want to read if you're an artist paying the things you want to paint we want to
see painted and I think the commercial aspect is really warping that and I really one thing I really admire about your work in all of its permutations from your books to you know this podcast to cite everything is that there's just this sort of sense that you just want this to exist it
doesn't exist for any other reason then you want it to exist and I think that's wonderful thank you I yeah that means a lot to me and I you know coming back to the the right to please just one person it's it's I I think that it's it's related to that so in a way it's you know put the things out
into the world that you would want to consume yourself or experience yourself number one secondly just for those people who who haven't heard this anecdote when I was writing the four hour work week is my first book I've I still to this day find writing very challenging and
I wish I could say it's gotten easier over time but for whatever reason it seems not to have the in the case of the four hour work week I you know came out of undergrad at Princeton and many you know many years have passed obviously but when I wrote the first few chapters it was
really stilted in pompous and kind of Ivy League you know where I'm you I was trying to use ten dollar words were a tencent word would suffice and be a lot cleaner so I threw out the first few chapters that I drafted and this was a major panic attack moment was on deadline and I remember
I was in Argentina at the time and then I went the other way and I said no no I have to be loose I have to be funny and so I wrote a few chapters that were completely slapstick ridiculous I mean they've sounded like three stuages put on paper and so I had to throw out those few chapters and
of course I'm doubling down on my anxiety at this point and decided at one point that I was just going to have a little bit of yearba mate tea two glasses of wine and no more than two glasses of mall back and sit down and start to write what is that mall back is just this wonderful
variety in South America best known in Argentina but there are actually some really nice mall back wines in Chile they were as I understand it it was viewed almost as a garbage grape in Europe but it was brought by the Italians to Buenos Aires and has developed this worldwide fame because of
its cultivation in Argentina so there's there's a lot of sort of there's a lot of metaphor there that I also like but drank two of us as a wine sat down and literally opened up an email client and started typing the four hour work week as if I were writing it to two of my closest friends
one was an investment banker trapped in his own job and he felt like he couldn't leave because his lifestyle was swelling to meet his income and then the other was an entrepreneur sort of trapped in a company of his own making and so these two very specific guys in mind I started to write
with just enough alcohol to sort take the edge off and that's how you know I was writing in that case to please just two people but that's that's the only way I could make it work the your schedule so I've I've read of your schedule but I'd love to hear the current iteration of that
it seems like you you've had a fairly you have a fairly regimented schedule which would make sense if you're putting the number of hours into reading and writing that you do so what is what is your current day look like well I'll answer this with a caveat the one thing I have struggled with or
tried to solve for myself in the last few years couple years maybe is the sort of really delicate balance between productivity and presence and especially in a culture that seems to measure our worth or our marriage or our value through our efficiency and our earnings and our ability to
perform certain tasks as opposed to just the fulfillment we feel in our own lives and the the presence that we take in the day to day and that's something that's like a more and more apparent to me so I'm a little bit reluctant to discuss routine as some sort of holy grail
a creative process because it's just really it's a crutch I mean routines and rituals help us not feel like this overwhelming messimus of just day-to-day life with consumers it's a control mechanism but that's not all there is and if anything it should be in the service of something
greater which is being present with one's own life so with that in mind my day is very predictable I get up in the morning I meditate for between 15 to 25 minutes before I do anything else what time do you wake up typically exactly eight hours after I've gone to bed so it varies
okay I'm a huge proponent of sleep I think I when I write because what or when I guess try to think what I do is essentially make associations between seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts and in order for that to happen you know those associative chains need to be firing and when I
am sleep deprived I feel like I do have full access to my own brain which is certainly I'm not unique in that in any way there's research showing that the or reflexes are severely hindered by lack of sleep we're almost as drunk if if we sleep less than half the amount of time we normally
need to function and I think ours is a culture where we where we um where our ability to get by and very little sleep as a kind of badge honor badge of honor that the speaks work ethic or toughness or whatever it is but really it's a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect and I
try to sort of enact that in my own life by being very disciplined about my sleep at least as disciplined as about as I am about my work because the latter is a product of the capacities you know cultivated by the former so in any case so I get up eight hours after I have gone to bed I meditate
I go to the gym where I do most of my longer form reading I get back home my breakfast and I start writing I usually write between two and three articles a day and one of them tends to be longer and when I write I need uninterrupted time so I try to get the longer one done earlier on
in the day when I feel much more alert so I don't look at you know or anything really external to the material I'm dealing with which does require quite a bit of research usually so it's not like I can cut myself off from the internet or from other books but I don't have people disruptions I guess
so anything social and then I take a short break I'm a believer in sort of pacing creating a sort of rhythm where you do very intense focused work for an extended period and then you take a short break and then cycle back you know and then I I deal with any sort of
admin stuff like emails and just taking care of errands and whatnot and I resume writing and I write my other article or articles through the evening I try to have some private time just later in the day either with friends or with my partner or just you know time that is unburdened by deliberate thought although you can never unburden yourself from thought in general and then usually later at night I either do some more reading or some more writing or a combination of the two
got it and so a number of follow up questions what type of meditation do you practice currently just guided prepositive very very basic um there's a woman named Tara Brock who um she's a mindfulness practitioner how do you spell her last name B-R-A-C-H got it and she's based out of D-C and she
was trained as a cognitive psychologist then the decades of Buddhist training and and live in an ashram and now she teaches mindfulness but with a very secular lens so um she records her classes and she has a podcast which is how I um came to know her and every week she does a one
hour lecture and sort of the philosophies and cognitive behavioral you know wisdom of the ages and then she does a guided meditation um so I I use her meditations and she has changed my life perhaps more profoundly than anybody in my life so I highly highly recommend her um Tara Brock
yes and all her her podcast is free um just two books out to um she's really a wonderful very chit-race person I will have to check that out and uh so you're listening then you have ear buds in uh when you're or you're listening you're listening to audio while you meditate yes
and it's interestingly I mean she puts one out every week but I've been using the exact same one from the summer of 2010 it's just one that I like and feel familiar with and it sort of helps me get into the rhythm so every day I listen to the exact summer 2010 how does that start how would
people recognize it how does the audio I think the title is it sounds cheesy but it is not cheesy I think it's called smile meditation uh and I'm sure she has repeated it in various forms through the years and other recordings it just happens to be the one that I you know have on and on my broken
gg iPhone without any internet or cell service which I just use as an iPod and that's on it awesome that's a great answer um god I love digging into the specifics so when you go to the gym then uh to workout are you still using an elliptical for that or are you are okay I do sprints
high intensity intervals on the elliptical and are you recording and I do a lot of weight and body weight stuff too you do alright but when you're reading is that on the elliptical yes and what type of device if any are you using for that reading well I prefer electronic so I use the Kindle app
on the iPad or any PDF viewer because I read a lot of archival stuff but the challenge of course is that because I read so many older books that are out of print let alone having digital versions that's not always possible in case it's rarely possible unless I'm writing about something fairly new
and so in that case I just go there with my big tone and my sticky notes and pens and sharpies and various annotation analog devices and I just do that cool all right so I have that that leads perfectly into the next question which is what is your note taking system look like um and
how do you take notes so for instance uh you're really good at using excerpts or quotations pull quotes and I found myself asking as I was reading this like how how are you gathering all this so that you can use it later um so what does your note taking system look like when you sit we in the case
of digital and in the case of hard copy hmm so with digital um it's very simple I just highlight passages and I write myself little notes underneath each um that are that have acronyms that I use frequently for certain topics or the shorthand that I have developed for myself but reading is really or
understanding really which is what reading should be a conduit to is a form of pattern recognition so when you read a whole book you kind of walk away with certain takeaways that are thematically linked and they don't usually occur you know sequentially so it's not like you walk away with one
insight from the first chapter one insight from the second chapter it's just sort of this pattern of the writers thoughts that that permeate the entire narrative of the book and so especially as you if you read as a writer so somebody who not only needs to walk away with that
but I really want to record what those patterns and things are that sort of reading is very different and so what I end up doing with analog books in particular and it's I've sort of hacked some systems of doing it electronically but they're imperfect is on the very last page of a
each book which is blank usually uh right before the end cover I create an alternate index so I basically list out as I'm reading the topics and ideas that that seem to be important in recurring in that volume and then next to each of them I start listing out the page numbers where they occur
and on those pages I've obviously highlighted the respective passage and I have a little sort of sticky tab on the side so I can find it but it's basically an index based not on keywords which is what a standard book index is based on but based on key ideas and I use that then to sort of
synthesize what those ideas are once I'm ready to write about the book. Okay I have to geek out on this because I'm so excited now so as it turns out with analog books I do exactly literally exactly the same thing I usually start with the in front inside cover but I create my own index and of course they don't have to be an order so you can sort of list them in any in my particular case in any any order I also will have sort of a two a couple of of lines dedicated to pH and pH
just refers to phrasing so if I find a turn of phrase or wording that I find really. Oh I do that too Oh really? That's what I would be out for beautiful language. Oh that's so cool okay so there's that and then I have you know like Q or Q if I if they're quotes so for instance many books will have quotes attributed to other people or just header quotes in some cases and so I'll have
you know quotes I'll just write that out and then colon and then I'll list all the page numbers for that particular sort of category that I'm collecting in the case of quotes so for when you're gathering as you mentioned acronyms and shorthand so besides beautiful language what are some of the other acronyms that you use? Oh they wouldn't make that they're just very private it's like too long to get into what they stand for. Is there is there is there one other example that you
just just if you can indulge me. One that is I guess not so much about the contents of that passage as about its purpose is L.J which is I have a little sort of labor of love side projects called literary jukebox right? Sure I've seen it it's yeah it's it's awesome. Oh thank you but yeah so I do these tearing the passages from literature with a thematically matched song and so sometimes as I'm reading a book I would come across a passage that I think would be great for that
and maybe a song comes to mind and so I would put L.J next to it but I want to go back to what you said about the external quotes I guess the author quoting another work I think those are actually really important and that goes back to your question about how I find what to read and
I mark those types of things so for the for the annotations that are specific to that's particular book all of my sticky tab notes are on the side of the pages but when there's an external quote something referencing another work I put a tab at the very top with the letter F which
stands for find if I am not with the work the work or just no letter if I just want to flag a quote from something else that I know of and I think that's actually very important because the the phenomenon itself not my annotations of it because literature is really and I see this
all the time it is the original internet so all of those references and citations and illusions even they're essentially hyperlinks that that author placed to another work and that way if you follow those you go into this magnificent rabbit hole where you start out with something that you
are already enjoying and liking but follow these tangential references to other works that perhaps you would not have come across that way I mean directly and in a way it's a way to push oneself out of the filter bubble in a very incremental way and I've often found amazing older books that
were you know five or six hyperlink references removed from something I was reading which I'd make it something else which I make something else which led me to this great other thing so I think that's that's kind of a beautiful practice yeah it's the the serendipity of it is so beautiful
when it works out and I'll I'll I'll give a confession this is really embarrassing but you know since no one's listening I came across Sennaka so Sennaka the younger who's had probably more impact on my life than any other writer originally because there I I was perusing it a number of
anthologies on minimalism and simplicity and Sennaka kept on popping up quote Sennaka quote Sennaka because it was always one word like Madonna or and this is going to be really embarrassing or like sitting bowl I assumed that Sennaka was a Native American elder of some type for probably a good
I assumed he was a Native American elder for a probably a good year or two before I realized he was a Roman and I was like man first you got to do your homework that like you got to dig in and then at that point is when I really sort of jumped off the cliff into a lot of his writings
which I've I still to this day revisit on an almost I just revisit it and his the shortness of light oh so good so with this perhaps the best manifesto and I had hate this modern word sort of buzz where but I use it intentionally so the best manifesto for our current struggle with this very
notion of you know productivity versus presence and how much are we really mistaking the doing for the being you know and and and it's amazing that somebody wrote this millennia ago before there was internet before there was the things we call distractions today and and yet he writes about
the exact same things just in a different form yeah the exact same things and the way that if I'm trying to use Seneca as a gateway drug into philosophy I I won't use the P word first of all with most people because philosophy smacks of I think it calls to mind for a lot of people the sort of
haughty pompous college student in goodwill hunting in the bar scene who's like reciting you know Shakespeare without giving any type of see I completely disagree actually I agree with the notion that that those are its connotations today and people have a resistance but I think that's
all the more reason to use it heavily and to use it intelligently and to reclaim it and to get people to understand that philosophy whatever form it takes is the only way to figure out how to live everything else that we take away from anything is a set of philosophies essentially I agree no I
totally agree so but I usually if I'm going to lead people there I try to to to lure them in with Seneca because I think he's very easy to read compared to a lot of say at least the Stoics or or that's actually not even fair compared to a lot of philosophers who who have been translated from
Greek most of his writing I believe was translated from Latin which tends to be just an easier jump from English so it's very easy to read and I what I tell people is you know start off with some of his letters and you'll find that you could just as easily replace these Roman names like Luke
Killius and and so on with like Bob and Jane or you know pick your contemporary name if of choice and they're all as relevant now as they were then so I I'm going to come back to the sort of performance versus presence which I think of oftentimes as the achievement versus appreciation
split or balance or maybe neither but before we get there I want to put a put a bow on the note taking with your electronic note taking so you're using the Kindle app you're taking highlights where do you go from there are there any other what is what is the sort of workflow look like
from there and are there any any particular types of software or apps or anything like that that you use often I mean honestly I feel like that problem has not been solved at all in any kind of practical way so the way that I do it is basically a bunch of hacks using existing technologies but
I don't think or perhaps I'm just unaware but I don't think there's anybody designing tools today for people who do serious heavy reading there just isn't anything that I know and so what I do is I highlight in the in the Kindle app on the iPad and then Amazon has this function that you
can basically see your Kindle notes and highlights on the desktop on your computer I go to those I copy them from that page and I paste them into an ever-node file to sort of just have all of all of my notes in a specific book in one place but sometimes I would also take a screen grab of a
specific iPad Kindle app Kindle page with my highlighted passage and then email that screen grab into my ever-node email because ever-node has as you know optical character recognition so when I search within it it's also going to search the text in that image I don't have to wait until I
finish the book and explore all my notes and and also it's the formatting is kind of shitty on the Kindle notes on the desktop we can see all your notes so if you copy them they paste into ever-node with this really weird formatting so it tabulates each next note indented to the right
so it's sort of this cascading long cascading thing that shifts more and more to the right of the the phone it's horrible it's like an email thread it's like an email thread except there's no actual hierarchy these are all you know and so if you want to go fix it you have to do it manually
within ever-node and you know I read you know on the Werner Herzog book for example which is 600 pages a thousand of notes so imagine thousands of tabulations until the last one is so narrow and long that it's just like unreadable so hence my point about just there is no viable solution that I
know got it okay so let me just because I this may or may not help for me it was a huge shift in how I manage ever-node because I mean I'm looking at this list of questions and I'm not reading entirely off script but I have a collection of questions they never
know it right now and one one of the things I realized about formatting and transposing things from say the you know my Kindle page if you if you log into your your Amazon account through Kindle.Amazon.com or copying pasting from many different places is going to I don't know if you've
tried this but edit and either paste and match style or paste this plain text and it tends to remove all of that headache that's a nine times out of 10 so if you yeah the problem with that I did try that once but when you remove the style it makes all the metadata look the same as the text
so I'm having highlighted passage ails have my own notes I see got it plus plus you know Amazon's own thing that says add note read read it this location delete note and so it all merges it and becomes just hideous did just impossible to read God you know I wonder I wonder what to do
there yeah I used to take notes and drop them into text Wrangler which is used for coding a lot just to remove the formatting and then put it into every note yeah I do that with kota yeah it's true though there there's got to be a solution and the thing is ever note I love ever note I've
been using it for many years and I could probably not get through my day without it but it has an API which means somebody can build this you know the way to like I even thought I mean I was at one point so desperate and so frustrated which I think is the the duo that causes all innovation you
know desperation frustration I thought maybe I should just save up some money and offer like a scholars or like a grand for a hackathon for somebody to solve this for me you know that's a great idea I still not I mean I I'm still sort of contemplating that okay well we'll talk about
that separately I think that's something that we could absolutely explore and for all of you programmers coders out there please take a look this is actually not as rare an issue as you might expect one question for you on the Kindle highlights I've run into this you mentioned the Werner
Herzog book and having you know thousands of of highlights I've run have you run into instances where you'll you'll read an entire book you're super impressed or not but you regardless you have hundreds of highlights and you go to look at those highlights and you're restricted to only see
yeah it's like 200 highlights 81 available right so how often does that happen to you because that's happened to me where I've taken so much time to meticulously highlight stuff and then I'm only able to see 25% and it's so infuriating and I think it's a limitation that is determined by the
publisher yes it is and so I'll tell you why it hasn't happened to me much it happens to me occasionally but that's a DRM thing digital for listeners who don't like acronyms digital rights management thing that has that is fairly new so that is the case with more recently published books
but if you read you know the digitized version of say you know Alan Watts that was published originally 40 years ago there's no such problem unless the publisher now is like reclaiming rights and doing a whole new thing but because I read so much less out of sort of newly published
material I don't run into it often but you know there is a way to very laboriously you know deal with it which is you can still open that passage in your Kindle app on desktop so Kindle for Max for me and it will let you highlight and copy those passages and paste them into your ever noted
between the missing courts but it's obviously I've done I have done that and it's so horrible because you also get the like excerpted from that I like three lines for everyone so just publishers if you're listening to this you are making it harder for people like Maria who have seven million
unique per month to share your stuff so please up your threshold do you have anybody helping you with brain pickings or is it just you the actual reading and writing obviously it's just me but as of about 10 months ago I have an assistant Lisa who's absolutely wonderful and she just helps
me with admin stuff that has to do with my travel or email or scheduling things that I feel is weighing me down so much I operate so much out of a sense of guilt for sort of letting people down or and as you know I'm sure when you get to point where the demands are just incomparable with
what you can even look at then you kind of need to have help in order to not to either go insane or live with a constant guilt over not addressing things so and was there a particular oh and I also have a copyator this wonderful older lady I hired to do my proofreading she's great I am
that's all I can say I think proofreading is really really important and I'm constantly embarrassed if I have a typo which you know as you know as a writer you cannot prove your own work it's just your brain just does not see the errors that we made in the first place but we're the majority of them
and so and people are kind of merciless they think somehow that a typo makes you lazy or I don't even know and there's no kind of compassion for the humanity that produces something as human as a typo right despite how mechanical the term itself seems which is sort of ironic but in
any case so yes I have my assistant for admin and my copy editor for just proofing and what what platform is is brain picking is on at the moment what's the technology behind it is I know that I've heard you mentioned WordPress before is it on is it still on WordPress
it is on WordPress I was going to make a joke about how the technology is called Corpus Colossum but the actual technology is very very Sam Harris friendly joke the the so when you're working with say your copy editor do you give your copy editor
admin access to WordPress and she'll go in proofread it and then schedule or publish what's the process it's a very again super sort of hack together process which is every night I email her the articles from the preview page on WordPress I just copy that and paste it into a body email
and I send it to her and then she sends me the corrections via email got it I mean like I said she's not very I would say tech savvy I mean I'm sure she's a wonderful learner so I'm sure she would totally learn how to do it if I gave her admin access but between that and the fact that
I write in HTML so I really don't like the wizzy wig I hate it actually I think it's just easier to do it via email because then she can like highlight the word and sometimes she would make suggestions that are more stylistic and I I would like to have the final saying those because
it's very often I want to keep it the way that I have it because that's my voice so I find email works just fine got it okay no I'm always fascinated because I I will use while when I was when I was hosting WordPress elsewhere I'm also in WordPress I would use the share draft plugin
to share drafts with people I'm I'm now on WordPress VIP which has a it has a sharing function where people can leave feedback in a sidebar that runs alongside the article itself which is pretty cool oh that's cool I should I should look into that I think that's what I have to the WordPress
VIP the WordPress yeah I don't even know what the that function is I'm kind of I mean for somebody who writes on the web I'm I don't really yeah I sometimes only learn about things through friends I think yeah that's that's how I learned about a lot of this stuff and the the other
option that I've used quite a lot is and as much as I hate word and I really do I love the track changes feature and I just find it more user friendly for a lot of folks than having them use something that's cloud-based like Google Docs just because I operate so much offline to try to get
anything done yeah I mean that's what a lot of people suggest and what Kai my proofreader actually asked originally but I do not own Microsoft products on principle and I'm not going to get a deal with it okay no that makes sense and your assistant what was what was the the defining
moment the straw that broke the camel's back when you were like you know what like what was the day we're just like fucking enough of this like I need to get somebody stat I mean what when did you actually make the decision it wasn't so much that I made the decision as the decision was very
strongly lovingly but strongly sort of pushed on me by my partner who one day said you you're using so much time on things that are just so mean-y-al and you should not and because I was really stressing to a point of just driving myself crazy and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact
that I'm always have been very independent I you know moved away from my parents house when I was 18 paid my way through school lived always by myself and I just had this Emerson like you know self-sufficiency and self-reliance that to a point of pathology where it was to my own detriment
and the notion of outsourcing felt to me on some level almost like an admission of weakness sure yeah it's ridiculous I think that's true for a lot of people though yeah I know and it's the strange thing the disorienting thing is that I think we intellectually know that's not the case
that it's actually a lot of strength to be able to delegate and to sort of dv up control according to a hierarchy of priorities but on some sort of cycle emotional level it is just death to consider that you cannot do something on your own anymore and of course I mean
it's interesting in terms of how drinkings evolve which has always been very organic so the sort of you know eight-year thing that has happened it went from being a little newsletter that contained five links no text like five links to five things that I found very interesting
um and then it went to sort of five links with a little paragraph about each about why this thing is interesting and important and then it was you know not not a little paragraph but a little like one page piece and then it became not want not five things every Friday but three things
every day of the week pretty long form in the thousands of words you know and I foolishly and the ebally thought that I could just have the same sort of operational framework despite the enormous swelling of just the volume of the writing and that's unreasonable it's completely
unreasonable so at one point last fall as the sort of seventh birthday of bringpings as approaching my partner was just like please like consider and uh yeah hi hi oh I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off I was just I'm always curious to ask how did you how did you find this the assistant that
you ended up with uh well she's wonderful she's a professional sort of personal assistant that's had this type of job for about 20 years uh she's just a wonderfully warm and and just generous person but also has such dog-idness about things and just work ethic it's unbelievable and you always have
the sense that she's looking out for your best interests and in the most magnanimous kind of way towards you but also the most warmly non no bullshit way outwardly towards the world demanding things from you and having this buffer it's really really great yeah and did uh was she how did you
track her down how did the two of you get connected uh just a recommendation she's been working for somebody who's a very trusted dear person for a long time to know she works your business and did that person reach out to you did you reach out to her I'm always curious about the specifics
because the way that I found one of my first assistants and we worked together for many years was anytime I had a really fantastic interaction with someone's assistant I would say hey I know this is off topic but you've been awesome to deal with do you have you know twin brother twin sister
somebody who does what you do as well as you do it that you could recommend it because I need some help and I just did that over and over again and eventually one of them said well actually I worked for multiple clients so we could talk about it and that's how we ended up working together uh
but what what was the oh the introduction was made by the person so we uh I I had met her I at least in my assistant I'd met her just socially many times before and so eventually when the time came for me to consider um like she just like we set up a meeting we talked and she was really into it
and she'd been reading brain thickings and uh um I asked make sure it wouldn't be too much on her plate because she's also I mean she's super woman Lisa super woman she is the mother of two kids one of whom is now her first year in high school and the other one his first year in college so she has
that on her plate too and uh but she's very like I said very doggy very sort of dedicated and she was like I can do it and uh I'd like to do it and I was like great let's roll onward so with uh with your assistant if you were to do an 80-20 analysis of to the eight the you know the 20% of
tasks that take up 80% of her time what what are the types oh what would those look like what is the vast majority of her time spent on so hmm a lot of it as I guess coordinating travel and things but I'm I'm trying to really I mean
I have this new-ish commitment to really not do any speaking at commercial conferences anymore but to speak to students because I think it's important and um what it takes out of me which is a lot speaking takes out a lot of me because I'm a writer and I also don't really recycle talks um
I like to write something original and when it's a commercial conference it just doesn't add up for me what I get out of it because I usually donate my commission to the local public library whatnot but with students it is worth my time if I disobeyed even one journalism student from
going into buzz worthy land you know after graduation um that's worth it to me and so even though I've scaled back on the speaking speaking I now'm getting like all these college requests and so that takes so much time especially coordinating because a lot of them are
organized by sort of student volunteers and they're kind of still learning what it means to you know schedules and deadlines and advanced notice and so Lisa is sort of wrangling that in another big part and I should also mention the evolution of what I've been able to
delegate has been has sort of organically happened originally I just really didn't know what to give her I felt like I had to do all of it because I didn't know how to explain it to her to do and but it's just a great learner and I'm learning to delegate more but another thing because my site
runs on donations I want to I should have made an effort to send handwritten thank you cards to just at this point randomly picked donors every month um and so I have for sort of export those names and emails for me and just give me like just prepare envelopes and all those types of things
that I could not spend too much time on the actual admin of the mailing and do you operate do communicate exclusively the email or do you use uh soft other types of software oh email email and text email and text so no project management software at this point no sort of base camp or
sauna or anything like that yeah I don't I that would make me like some sort of commercial organization you know I still have so much resistance to the fact that I even have to deal with these things right no no actually the author wild hypocrisy about audience or the humanity I guess
of the tension uh what um I a couple of a couple of quick ones so the first is when you when you lift do you tend to have the same workout what what is your what is your weight lifting look like it's changed a lot in the last year and a half I've prioritized body weight stuff heavily
no but intended that was actually total inadvertent this how language how we think in language that's so funny but uh I I prioritized body weight stuff and so I do pull up spurships and that sort of thing um it also depends on where I do my workhead my gym has my building has a sort of gym like
a you know one of those residential gyms but I also have a membership at a larger uh probably I think the best gym in New York I love it uh but I'm only there a few days a week so it just depends on where I do it and what I do and if you had to pick one besides the elliptical if you had to pick
one body weight exercise to hold you over let's see you're traveling for a few months you can only pick one body weight exercise what would it be well it would be pull up but you can't always find a place to do it uh so I just do usually elevated pushups so my feet on a bench or bed or some like a
step or something and just pushups cool a great uh little hack for pulling motions while traveling is putting your feet on a chair and going underneath a table to do basically inverted mm-hmm bent rows uh you know it's actually very helpful for traveling is uh
plyometrics plyometrics and uh TRX is actually quite handy there's a system I for some reason it just not my thing can't get into it yeah yeah it doesn't the thing is here's the thing so if I am forced by circumstances to do a workout that is not my preference
I very much like to be able to do something else while doing it such as listening to podcasts which is what I do while I do weights of the gym anyway um and there are certain types of movements that it's just a hassle to have the headphones and it's just like not great so I
actually carry a um weighted jump rope with me when I travel in case there's nowhere to do sprints which is my plan b for cardio and then plan c is just jumping skipping rope yeah your intense I love it the uh I remember the the uh you know I wanted to every time I meet and this is so silly
but I was so obsessed with uh Bulgarian Olympic weightlifters for a very long time that whenever I meet Bulgarians or people who in at any point of lived in Bulgaria I want to talk about a Olympic weightlifting but it's not I know nothing about them I don't exactly wait stuff when I was
living Bulgaria no exactly it's kind of like uh uh you know like oh you're from Switzerland let me talk to you about the guys in the Rikolo commercial they're like no we don't talk about that stuff um well let's see is that guy your cousin yeah right right you must know like no I actually don't like
I know I went to x-wine z college but there are 5,000 people per year you know it doesn't doesn't always we're got you mentioned the donations I want to talk about the site so uh it appears and I and I dug around a bit but it appears that you have no comments or dates on
your posts is that accurate I do have comments I do have dates they're in the url so the date oh they're in the url but they're not in the post they're in the url structure but they're not in the displayed post itself yeah so the reason for that is because I I do think we live in an
enormously news fetishistic culture and the reason I do what I do is precisely to decondition that because we think that if something is not news and it's not at the top of the search results or the top of the feed because all feeds are reverse chronology and you know there's an implicit
higher-give importance to that with thing if it's not at the top it's not important and you know you would understand you know writing about senica it really doesn't matter what the date stamp on it is but I think this culture conditions is so much people when they see a date
stamp they sort of think oh this was like two years old oh and it's really you know two thousand years old but because a lot of academics actually use brainfickings to reference so I constantly get things this is another thing that Lisa deals with like requests from textbooks for citations or
you know whatnot and those people actually need the dates so I've made it so that if you actually look it's kind of easy to see or I can just tell them it's when they write and ask me what the date is look in the URL but it's just not one of those immediate things that slaps you over the head like
a newspaper front page you know definitely I actually have done the same thing for quite a few years and if you if you go to any permalink so if you go if you get linked to any of my posts directly on the blog the date is there in the URL but also at the very bottom of the post after
the related links so for the same reason because there's so much bias against older material and I think some of my older stuff is I mean it depends on the person obviously in the context but it's it's an easy way to have a high sort of abandonment rate is to to time stamp the comments
did you ever have comments or have you never had comments I did originally and then I was like you know what I kind of feel like Herzog does I don't really care to hear I mean I do write for me I'm very gladdened by people who are in any way moved or touched but the comments I was getting
I was I've been fortunate enough not to really get any you know trolling or anything like that but they were kind of vacant or people trying to plug their own thing or spam and it was taking more of my time that was worth and so instead I've made my contact information very easily accessible
so if someone has something of substance and urgency to say which is I think the two things that can help people to reach out they'll do it via email behind their own name and not anonymously and then I mean I do get a lot of a lot of emails from readers and those are valuable you know
but I don't really care for comments now the flip side of that is that now that I have the Facebook page having something mysterious happened with the bring-pick and spatial page last follower it just started growing so fast I have no idea why you know I was going to ask you about
that because if you if you look at say that your Twitter follower growth versus your Facebook growth the Facebook just kind of took off yeah it was in about October of last year and it went from 250,000 to now I think I don't know I think it's going to be something million close to three maybe
so more than tenfold in less than a year I have no idea why I've done nothing differently I'm very I don't really enjoy Facebook I do it reluctantly because I know I get a lot of emails from readers elsewhere in the world who actually use Facebook as their primary thing and they're such sweet
notes you know people who just are simulated and inspired and moved in a way that perhaps they wouldn't be if they hadn't read that piece about some random thing that I read in Brutabedon I think it would be selfish of me to just sort of disable Facebook because I hate it but the
the point of it is that you can't you have comments on there and Lisa my assistant actually that's something I delegated her a few months ago just to completely deal with them I can't I can't deal with them I can't and not for any of the reason that I have complete allergy to
people pronouncing their so-called opinions without having actually digested or even engaged with the thing so people would comment on the basis of like a thumbnail image or the title make really outrageously inaccurate comments clearly not having read the piece and this kind of
snap reaction thing that I think social media to large extent perpetuate I can't deal with it just it's like a psychic dream like I can't even explain it just I can't so anyway so that would explain that would answer one of my questions which is in your header picture on Facebook
you have this should be a cardinal rule of the internet end of being human if you don't have the patience to read something don't have the hubris to comment on yeah I don't care if it counts like bitchy or anything the point I mean you know it's interesting because I think a lot about
criticism and the notion of criticism and and why it's so hard for anybody and I do think that people have a hard time with criticism because another person this agrees with or dislikes what they're saying they really have a hard time when they feel
misunderstood like the other person does not understand who they are or what they stand for in the world and 99% of the time and you actually touch on this in your conversation with Sam Harris where you say that his ideas are not as controversial as people think when they don't actually
understand what they are right the the the main source of anguish is not being seen for who you are not being understood and this kind of reactive culture where people comment without taking the care to understand what you're expressing who you aren't what you stand for it is so toxic it is
so toxic to leaders to writers to us as a culture and I just don't know how to get around it other than just having instructed Lisa to be just merciless about banning people and the leading comments that are just not there's no humanity there's no patience there's no thinking in them so I mean
you know anybody who writes online I think feels similarly that this is kind of my home and as definitely people come and be idiots and it's then they're not welcome there so yeah no I actually use the exact same analogy I say look I view my especially on my blog I view the comments
as my living room and if you come into my house for the first time and get raging drunk and like take your you know put your feet up on my table with your shoes on you're not going to be invited back you're gone you know so is your assistance job is it released a Facebook then
primarily calling the herd and just removing the the idiots or does she have what are what are other instructions if any are there things that she passes to you are there things that she responds to no I don't I don't really care what people say again to the point that if people have something
of substance and urgency they will reach out and I'm then very happy to hear from actual humans and engage in a human dialogue which I do but I really care about you know the comments on Facebook I just don't want them depressing me when I go on the page because I put my own thing
you know Lisa doesn't put the actual postings and I also don't want them creating a culture that is antithetical to the very reason why I do what I do which is a kind of faith in the human spirit I mean that's where I come from I am a cautious one sometimes but an optimist about the so-called
human condition and anybody who crafts on that without having even given a chance to the thoughts that that speak to the to those ideals which is what my articles are decorative then I will want them gone you know and so her instructions are just you know ban people who are offensive to
others sort of in a vicious way as opposed to just having rational discourse of disagreement ban people who are ignorant and and have not read the thing and have some very scandalous or not even scandalous sort of sensationless take on it clearly not understanding the nuance
because I mean a culture of news as I say often a culture without nuance and yeah so that that's basically it help me stay sane when I look at them that's her that's her tap so not make me lose my mind over just exasperation when people is impatient no and I you know I really respect that
because another reason that I read brainpickings as opposed to other sites and I feel comfortable going there is that I feel it is sort of a stronghold of positivity and optimism in in a lot of respects so kudos the email actually before we get the email I've read that you schedule your twitter
and facebook which would make sense because you're prolific if that if that's still the case what do you use the schedule that social media I use buffer for twitter and I use just my hands for facebook but again I mean this goes back to the same inner struggle of I do want to be
reading and writing for myself so why do I have the compulsion to put so much of it out there and I just self-flagelate over that because on some level it does seem like a form of hypocrisy but then I do think about the people that email me from india and pakistan and south africa and
korean wherever that actually that's how they connect and I think if I'm putting in the amount of time that I do into into what I do even if I do it for myself I might as well just harness that time anyway if it benefits somebody else's journey you know and so I do it because of that mostly
definitely and I think that while it's fine to write for yourself if you if you keep the value of what you write to yourself when it could benefit a lot of other people then I think that's actually it could be viewed as a self-ash act right so the I think that there's particularly
when you're curating in the way that you do and you're saving people thousands of hours of searching by distilling a lot of these concepts well I would argue that the benefit the value is not even I mean what I do is kind of the antithesis of search it's a discovery of things that
ideally one would not have come across within the usual parameters of one filter bubble right to sort of a lot of the people that that I hear from for example you know just this week to choose the Seneca example actually just this week I heard from this guy who was an IT person trained
as a physicist and ended up doing IT and said the Seneca the shortness of life piece really really put everything in perspective I've never really read philosophy never been interested in it never looked for it but it just cut in the middle of what I'm struggling with right now in my own life
you know and it's kind of it gives you pause to hear that from people definitely agreed on email the uh if you go to your contact page you recommend email charter dot org and I'm very curious to hear if people actually follow the email charter
and like what for it would in terms of the the email that you receive do people actually pay attention to that and follow follow the way they do and I'm so grateful and I mean for the majority of them do you know some people who reach out with the intention of self-promoting there's usually you know
laziness to people who self-promote for the sake thereof you know so they don't they don't usually um follow but people who actually care to have a conversation and to engage are very um courteous and very sort of mindful of what I've asked except for publicists who are never
yeah right well I mean uh suppose uh if they're flying on autopilot and just blasting out a template deer blogger deer blogger oh yeah I love those but deer blogger yeah yeah yes or you know what I get very often which I think is actually hilarious uh people who
don't even bother to read the name of the site so they address me deer Brian bringing some out from flying and and and and and this the pinnacle of this was when last year at one point I opened my physical mailbox in my building my home and I found this bundle from the
usps but like with an elastic band around it of of mail for somebody named Brian Pickens who lives long beach sea or used to I guess and somehow that stuff got forwarded to me because I guess the guy either moved and the usps like somehow looked things up and I don't even know it was
such a sort of mystery and metaphor for what I deal with online I was like oh if you know how can you have a trouble if this not too so I used to have a company ages ago called brainquicken and I had a I got a telemarketing call one evening I remember and uh
this guy goes hi uh sorry if you're if I'm interrupting is this Brian and I go excuse me and he goes Brian Brian chicken and I'm like a Brian chicken I was like no and take me off your list goodbye uh the uh oh god so on the on the on the uh on the email and pitching side of things or just
on the pitching side of things how on earth do you deal with not just cold inquiries but how do you deal with writer friends or acquaintances who are writers that you don't want to be rude to who want you to read their books how do you polite decline that stuff and maybe maybe you don't
get a lot of it I get a ton of it and the fact of the matter is like not everyone is is able to put the time or effort into writing a good book so inevitably if I get 10 books from decent or good friends some of them are going to be terrible uh and I don't have the time necessarily or the
inclination to read them all how do you deal with that type of situation well I guess you deal first and foremost by controlling not the outcome but the the cause which is your circle of friends and acquaintances I'm very selective about the people I surround myself with and I'm
I like to thank friendly to pretty much everybody that I need but my circle of actual friends is really close and really tight and people who are just you know when the skycrumbles are going to be there and we're there for each other and so with that in mind I think there is a certain
boundary that you have to put up beforehand to to I guess manage social expectations in a way and so for those people my friend friends in large part I mean I should mention that the majority of my close friends including my partner too are people that I have met just through what I do so
there's already the self-selection of sensibility and ideals and you know I I think would become a centripetal force for the kinds of people we want to be and surround ourselves with those types of people William Gibson has a wonderful word for it he calls it personal micro culture and even
when you said early on the kinship of spirit I think that's so important so which is the long one that we could say that when and if those inner circle people put a book out it's a guarantee that I will like it because of who they are and so then I'm more than happy to support it I mean the
the book that we started with the scratch and sniff guide to wine Wendy the illustrator is precisely that type of person somebody who I met through what each of us does and she's now one of my closest human beings you know and so of course I'm going to support her work but not because I'm
being nepotistic about it but because that's the prerequisites that I and moved by her work and respected and and love it and that's how we became friends but outside of that inner circle I don't I think acquaintances know that there's no such expectation and when I do get such request
it's a matter of well did the person do their homework in knowing what I actually think and write about because very often I'm sure you get that too you get pitched things that are just so outside of what you do in which case I don't even feel compelled to respond because if they didn't put
in the time to understand what I'm interested in why should I put in the time to explain to them why this is not a fit yeah that's a great way to put it I need to embrace that more I think that's an area where I carry a lot of guilt guilt yeah you know but guilt it's interesting because guilt is
kind of the flip side of prestige and they're both horrible reasons to do things so often we would agree as humans not just you and me or just anybody would agree to do things because they sound prestigious in some way you know and and equally avoid things because of the guilt thing or do
things because the guilt thing but sort of this whole Buddha's thing about a version of you know avoidance and aversion and making decisions based out of either fear which is what guilt is it's the fear of disappointing somebody and then feeling disappointed in yourself or out of sort of
grasping for you know approval or a claim which is what doing things for prestigious I think either of those are really bad reasons to do things and yet they they motivate us a lot or at least they sort of lurk in the back of the mind constantly and it is a real practice to try to decondition that
definitely no I like I like I like what you said about why I put in the effort to explain why it's not a fit if they haven't done the homework to determine if it is a fit I think that's a great way to put it I want to ask and I know we don't have too much time left so hopefully sometime
someday we can do a follow-up part two I think that'd be a blast I'll bring some mall back if you actually I can introduce you to it first hand but the donations I'm very fascinated by the the ad-free donation approach and just just to keep it simple if you had to choose
say 20% of the options you're currently offering which would you choose and why in other words you have no no so I'll explain or two or three so you so people can make one time offer they can make a one-time single contribution they can let me simplify that question or they can become
a member and donate you know seven three ten or twenty five dollars a month what I'm trying to ask without being improprietous or making you feel uncomfortable is what is working best and when you're asking people for donations you know assuming that it's working if if someone were to offer
one or two options instead of four options per month or the the single contribution versus the membership or the membership versus the single contribution what would your advice be to people well I will preface this with the caveat that I use PayPal for donations and I can for the
life of me figure out how to actually like look at the data and get any sort of real reason all of it is so antiquated their export tools and such and I'm not that interested I would siphon you know days into looking into it so I can tell you sort of my intuitive interpretation
yeah great and by the way the only reason these options are as they are also it's also the reason why I don't have an ad supported site which is I just asked myself what would I like to read as a reader well I would like an ad free site and how would I like to support that well I'd like to have
a few options you know just I don't want to you know be sort of confined to something and so I just just pulled it out of the hat basically with these tears and I've just left them on since I put them on they seem to work you know whatever and originally my sense was that the one time donations
accounted for much more but I'd never actually analyze it because I think I see the alerts that come from PayPal and sometimes people would send really large one-time donations like things that are totally humbling and enormously generous and I think those kind of you kind of weigh them
somehow as more than the cumulative snow of the smaller donations so I thought the one-timers work much more but then and I'm pretty sure that must have been the case earlier on right but and I've had the recurring ones I've had the one-time donations for as long as I can remember for as
long as I basically needed to start making money for the site because by the way running the site cost me several times my rent like all the costs associated with it it's like crazy so at one point I got to a point where I had to make money I said I don't want to do ads I don't believe in that
I'll have just donations and I didn't think of recurring wins at the time that was years ago and then my friend Max Linsky who runs longform.org or having tea and he said well why didn't you like push the recurring ones more because it's working really great for us and at that point I had the option
but it was buried somewhere on my like donation about page or something and so I was like okay so I put it in the sidebar and that was that we want to say maybe 2011 and it started accruing slowly and so this past year when I did my taxes I very reluctantly went to deal with all the PayPal tools to get the data out basically and I actually had Lisa pull all the Excel and whatnot and then I did the tally to see and to my surprise the recurring ones which are very small individual amounts
actually were two to one ratio to the one-time donation. Wow and I don't know at what point I tipped over but I think because of the scale and just how many people have these tiny tiny donations that they contribute every month I mean that's such an active commitment and it's so generous you know that they add up and my guess is that as time goes on because the recurring ones have only been available for the last like two and a half three years whatever they would become
by far the larger sort of financial support compared to the single ones. Sure no that makes sense the if you had to choose and of course this is hypothetical but if you had to choose two of the amounts to leave in the drop down so you have seven dollars a month three dollars ten dollars twenty five if you had to choose two of those to leave up which would you choose. Oh I have no idea I'm probably just the mathematical logical choice the two middle ones that do that three and ten.
Okay cool no just very curious about this kind of thing I think I think you've approached the blog in a very authentic way with the content and I can't emphasize strong strongly enough what you just said which is you you base what you do on what you would like or dislike as a reader
in the case of something with with text it doesn't have to be super complicated it doesn't have to be doing tons of analytics for months before you make a decision just ask yourself would this annoy the shit out of me if so don't do it would I love this if so try it out and every decision too
has been that way and actually in the last couple years I've been getting really annoyed I mean brain picking is a pretty sort of low-fi site as you can see it just very super simple basic but I've been getting annoyed that it doesn't load very well on my iPhone when I want to look at
something or pull something up to reference or iPad and my friend Scott Belsky who runs the hands he's a great guy and he's been sort of a very generous donor just supporting and you know and one time he pulls me aside I was like thinking February and March and he's like you know how
much I love brain picking but like the site sucks we didn't say it in that way but he was super sweet about it and then he offered to connect me with this guy that he knew that I could hire to do a responsive design and I always have this resistance to making these sort of technological improvements
because then I feel like I don't want to be a media company like I don't want to be a BuzzFeed but at the end of the day I as a reader and as a sort of engage or with that experience was being annoyed by it myself so now I'm in the middle of releasing like a simple responsive site that is
actually easy to read on your phone and so yeah despair and frustration prevail again in innovation yeah it's so so worth it it took me let's see it only took me three oh god seven years to get a a mobile version of the site ready to go which I just launched a month or two ago so I better late than never I suppose well Maria this has been a blast I really appreciate you taking the time if if someone were to want to explore brain pickings what are a few articles you might suggest that they
start with a few posts well since we talked about it so much the Seneca piece about the shortness of life a fairly short piece there's a piece I did a couple years ago which was less about it was not about a specific book just sort of things that I've been thinking about for a long time this
disconnect between purpose and prestige and why we do things right forget what it's called I think it's called how to do what you love or some other how to find your purpose and do what you love and it was sort of an assemblage of thoughts on that from various sources as well as my own
and perhaps most of all a piece that I wrote last fall as on the seventh seventh birthday really at the site which was about seven things that I learned in those seven years of reading writing and living which is a great article and I didn't want to replicate everything in here so I sort of
bobbed and weaved around some of these subjects a little bit but just to reiterate something that you mentioned and that's doing nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone and I just want to quote Paul Graham here which you included which is prestigious like a powerful bandit that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy it causes you to work not on what you like but what you'd like to like which I think is so astute and in closing is there any?
And also I should just interject and say any Alan Watts piece not because my writing about it is so great or it's not coming from a place of check me out it's coming from a place of check him out Alan Watts has changed my life I've written about him quite a bit so highly recommend any of
those articles cool all right brainpickings.org is the site guys check it out Maria any parting advice for for this episode this portion of our conversation but before we before we check out any advice to the people listening out there thoughts parting comments no advice for say just
I guess I comment to them and and and I hope which is that you know thank you so much not just for having me but for having this show and for doing everything that you do and I really hope we have more people who operate out of such a place of just I guess relax a bit of word idealism and conviction and yeah thank you for sitting an example that way.
Oh well that means a lot coming from you and I think I think you're a tremendous force for good out there in the world so I hope people check out your work I hope you continue to do what you're doing I hope you continue to add repetitions to your pull-ups and we will we will talk again soon
thank thank you so much for being on the show thank you guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and two million
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