#743: Dr. Jane Goodall and Cal Fussman

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I'm a cybernetic organism living this show about metal and post-allet. Hello boys and girls ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to sit down with world class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives.

This episode is a two for one and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and past one billion downloads to celebrate. I've curated some of the best of the best some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we've been calling these super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to yes enjoy the household names.

I'm not going to be the super famous folks but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one we went to great pains to put these pairings together.

And for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at Tim.log slash combo and now with a further ado please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up Dr. Jane Goodall English primatologist and anthropologist considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots and shoots program building a better tomorrow by empowering young people.

To affect positive change in their communities you can find Dr. Goodall on Twitter and Instagram at Jane Goodall I n s t. I would love just to spend a moment and we don't have to spend a lot of time on this but discussing Lewis leaky and I've read various accounts of how you connected with him but I'd like to hear it directly from you.

And perhaps you could describe what it was that he saw in you but that initial contact and how that came to be is of great interest to me so if you could speak to that I would appreciate it. Okay well I'd been staying with my friend for about we suppose a couple of months and somebody said to me at a party if you're interested in animals you really should meet you is leaky.

He was curator at that time of the natural history museum but of course he's best known as a very eminent paleontologist he spent his life with his second wife Mary leaky searching for the fossils of stone agents that stills across Africa.

I was very shy back then that I rang the museum and said I'd love to make an appointment to meet Dr leaky and a boy said I'm leaky what you want but anyway and I was so passionate about animals I anyway went to see him and he took me all around he asked me many questions about the stuffed animals that were there.

And I think he was impressed that because I read everything I could about Africa I could answer so many of these questions well I mentioned earlier that boring secretary of course that I did true days before I met leaky his secretary had suddenly quit he needed a secretary and there I was we never know in this life.

So I'm suddenly surrounded by people who can answer all my questions about the mammals and birds and the reptiles and the Indians the insects the plants it was heaven oh you asked leaky's what did he see in me yeah he had a feeling that women made better observers he thought they were more patient. He also wanted somebody to go and study chimpanzees because of his interest in human evolution so the fossils of early man that he was uncovering can tell a lot from that fossil.

Whether the creature or how pride and muscle attachments the wear of the truth shows you roughly the kind of diet but behavior doesn't fossilize.

So he reckoned there was a like human like common ancestor about six million years ago just now generally accepted and that he thought one of Jane finds behavior and chimps and humans today that is similar or the same maybe it came directly from the common ancestor and has been with us through our long separate evolutionary journeys in which case he could have a better way of imagining how.

His early humans used to behave so he wanted a mind uncluttered by the reductionist thinking of the animal behavior people at the time. It was a very new science they were anxious to make it a hard science which it shouldn't be and so the fact I hadn't been to college was a plus and the fact that I was a woman was a plus so I was just fish it lucky.

He seems to have picked the winning lottery ticket or at least a very formidable combination of traits and if we take that mention of patients or his belief that in part when make better observers because of more patients if we flash forward then to you landing in gombi stream national park Tanzania from getting the pronunciation correct I was watching the first. Natio maybe not the first but one of the more recent that you documentaries about you.

Title Jane and in that and also in your writing I believe it took something like five months of constant effort and having chimpanzees flee from your presence to finally be what we might call accepted and I five two questions related to that the first is.

What do you think made the difference why did they go from fleeing to accepting and second is when you first really had the opportunity to look deeply into chimpanzees eyes what did you see and just as importantly what did you feel well the acceptance in the movie it sort of looked just a they suddenly accepted me it wasn't like that it was very gradual.

And it was partly thanks to this one male who began to lose his fear much ahead of the others might call him David Gray be excited lovely white beard. And because he began to let me get closer and closer I think if I came to a group in the forest and he was with that group because they they separate into you know separate small groups and sometimes they learn but if he was there then the others were ready to run but he was sitting calmly.

And I suppose that made them feel well she can't be so dangerous after all so gradually I could get closer and the first time I came close to a group that didn't run away I think was one of the proudest moments of my life you know it made it just in time for the six months money ran out so. The fact that I've seen David Gray bed using make tools the picture termites thought to be something only humans were capable of that's what brought the geographic in my to the beginning.

Six months after the study began they agreed to go on funding it was David Gray be the first chimpanzee that you were able to. Get close enough to sort of connect eye to I was definitely what did you see in feel when you had that opportunity. Well I saw that I was looking to the eyes of a thinking feeling being and it was not so surprising as you might think because I always felt that animals were thinking feeling beings but with a chimpanzee they're so like us.

Behaviorally and biologically that it's it's not like looking at another human it's different and I can't explain how it's different but it was a very magical moment because he looked back that was the thing he didn't run he just sat there and looked back at me.

I would love to ask questions about what we might learn and what perhaps you've learned about human nature or even questions that have been raised in your interactions and observations of chimpanzees and you mentioned it briefly but it's hard to overstate just how incredible and shocking and world shattering for many people it was that you observe.

That you observed chimpanzees not just using tools but constructing tools for in this case consuming term it's mean it made news around the world you had many other observations I believe also that you believe that chimpanzees were purely vegetarians also you observe not to be the case with their consumption of other primates exactly and.

You noted and I know this was a real in some eyes of faux pas at the time real personalities and you might have been accused of anthropomorphism and all these things but you observe different personalities in different chimpanzees and I thought perhaps we could just start with. That's a story and that is the story of old man and Mark Cusano if I'm getting the pronunciation right and then I have questions about a few other chimpanzees you personally had quite a bit of interaction with.

Mark Cusano and old man so on an island in line countries for a re in Florida and old man had been in a medical research lab. He was being captured from the wild his mother was shot and he was called old man because an infant chimpanzee distressed and frightened they have wrinkled faces and they huddle only they don't look very old and he was lucky it was about 12 and for some reason he was now more used to rely on and he was put on an island with three females.

Two of them from medical research one from a searchers and Mark Cusano was employed to look after them and he was told don't go anywhere near them that vicious they hate people it might stronger than you they'll kill you. So he threw food from his little petal boat onto the island and began watching them and a baby was born so old man was the father and he felt you know these are such amazing beings I must have some kind of relationship with them if I'm to look after them.

So began going closer and closer one day he held out of banana in his hand when old man took it he said I know how you felt when David banana from you when they went onto the island one day he groomed old man one day they they played an old man. No and they became basically little friendship and then one day Mark slipped it to be raining fell flat on his face was unfortunately frightened this infant who was the another old man's life they all managed to protect him and carry him and share food.

Well the mother hearing a child scream raced and attacked Mark biting into his neck the other two females to support her ran in one bit his rest one bit his leg and Mark thought well how am I going to get away from them because it might stronger than us he looked up he saw old man wondering across the island with a furious skull on his face and he thought his time had come to die and come to protect his precious infant.

But what old man did was to pull those three screaming rows females off Mark and keep them away well Mark drank himself to safety and I met Mark when he came out of hospital he said no question old man saved my life. So you know I always think if the chimpanzee has been abused by people can reach out to help a human friend in time up need then surely read with our greater capacity of compassion can do the same to the chimpanzees in that time of need.

Thank you for telling that story to what extent if we take an example from your personal experience and I know very little about Frodo but Frodo seems to have been amongst the chimpanzees you had exposure to one of the more aggressive but I'd love to hear you speak to this and how would you explain the variance among chimpanzees was it also in appear to be a name.

Did it seem to stem from some type of trauma how did you think about that and perhaps Frodo specifically well they're all different summer much more aggressive than others just like we are and Frodo. Was spoiled he was a spoiled brat his mother was the highest ranking female but the time Peepee he had one older brother who always came to his defense as did Peepee.

And so he always got his own way and it was a real bully so it's the two young ones playing same age as him perhaps and he came to join them they would stop playing immediately because they knew if he entered the game he suddenly become rough and caused one of them to be hard.

So it wasn't just humans feel the systems and especially me that he targeted with his displays hitting over dragging I got it worst of all I was stamped upon then but he was not try really to hurt me he was trying to assert his dominance and I guess they don't realize quite how strong they are.

I mean if he wanted to kill me I wouldn't be speaking to you now that's the sure is the assertion of dominance and I don't know how much of this is conscious and I don't know how one would even know but is that is that a conscious or potentially conscious political maneuver to get better access to resources and so on or is it really just a conditioned behavior based on as you said being spoiled and that just being some type of primitive drive that they have and perhaps even we have.

No, because Frodo's brother before him became the top ranking male and Freud had a very different character he was reflective.

He became dominant not through aggression but through being smart some of the males get to the top by share aggression by bullying by swaggering about waving their arms they remind me so much of some human politicians it's not true but there are other males who get to the top by skillfully forming alliances and they only tackle a higher ranking male when the allies said to support them.

And then there are some who just persist they persist in charging towards groups of superior males who are grooming each other startling them so they run away and in the end this was globbling to the end I think the other male so well he's just going to go on doing this alright let's just let him get to the top we don't care anymore that's how it's seen and he written 10 years and he was small and he wasn't very aggressive at all.

I recall a few years ago speaking with a friend of mine who I consider to be a good father a good parent and I asked him what advice he would have for someone like me considering having children I have none of my own yet and his advice he had a number of pieces of advice but his first was teacher children to be optimists and it seemed like a precursor or a prerequisite for so many other things. And I'm looking at a time article time magazine article that is that you wrote in 2002.

I just want to read one paragraph and then ask you to elaborate or speak to it is the paragraph the greatest danger to our future is apathy we cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world for those of us able to read this magazine.

And my side note or listen to this podcast it is different we can do something to preserve our planet you may be overcome however by feelings of helplessness you're just one person in a world of 6 billion how can your actions make a difference best you say to leave it to decision makers and so you do nothing can we overcome apathy yes but only if we have hope and I'd love to you speak to that and also just to how you cultivate hope whether that's in yourself or the people you speak to.

Well you know I have my reasons for hope which I'm always sharing with people but this thing of people feeling helpless because they don't know what to do this message of our youth programs that every individual makes a difference and you know if it's just you're picking up trash if it's just you're saving water then it wouldn't make slight a split of difference but because people are becoming a different person.

People are becoming more aware all around the world then there's not just you but thousands millions of people picking up trash and saving water so the message again being think about the consequences of the small choices you make every day where do you eat where did it come from did it harm the environment was it cruel to animals like the intensive farming is it cheap because of child slave levers somewhere make ethical choices.

And because millions of people are making ethical choices we're moving in the right direction all of our young people you know they're influencing their parents and their grandparents I know that because the parents tell me so you know my reasons for hope number one is the youth as I've said because they're just so inspiring and secondly to stop I say it's very bizarre but what makes us more different from chimps and other other things.

Is this explosive development about intellect I mean you could what's happening now with just social media is one example you and I talking with far apart we're reaching millions of people I mean it's quite amazing isn't it when you think about it so how are that the most intellectual creatures destroying its own home.

So there seems to be this disconnect between the clever brain and the human heart just love and compassion and you know we're thinking about how does this help me now instead of how does it affect future generations so now we're beginning to use our brains or

to come up with more and more sophisticated technology that will help us lead better I think live in more harmony with the natural well if governments would sponsor clean green energy rather than that so coming to their ties with the oil and gas industry we could be more or less off the grid in many countries today China and India are moving in that direction rapidly and the rate as well. But each one of us can use our brains to think about the environment and footprint we make each day.

And then the resilience of nature I feel people stories about areas that were totally destroyed rivers lakes Lake area was so polluted that it caught fire so polluted and now this fish swimming in it because people killed animals on the brink of extinction for being given another charms just have to say the habitats you have to change the minds that of those companies that want to

destroy a tourist to make money out of wood or destroy forest to get liberals out of the ground to make more money but then we've got to solve poverty because as you're quoted earlier if you're really poor what can you do except cut the last three down because you're desperate to grow food to feed your family the cheapest junk food because it you got to do it to live.

So we have to solve poverty and the unsustainable lifestyle the rest of us but you know my last reason to hope is this indomitable human spirit the people who tackle what seems impossible and won't get back and they may die as a result of that conviction but in the end they succeed.

You also seem to be aside from an expert storyteller very good at using imagery or symbols and sometimes stories themselves are symbols but could you describe Mister H who's Mister H Mister H was given to me 28 years ago by a man called Gary Hall which is why he's Mister H.

Gary went blind when he was from he won decided to become a magician everybody said but Gary you can't be a magician if you're blind he does shows for children I watched him for four times now and of course he sets his props up ahead of time children don't know he's blind and at the end he'll tell him and he'll say something like go wrong in your life you can't tell if it does don't give up the smallest away forward.

And he does you but I think cross country skiing sky diving but I think most amazing he's taught himself to paint and when he gave me Mister H he thought he was giving me a stuff to him but Mister H has a tail and I made him hold the tail he said never mind taking with you and you know I'm with you in spirit.

So he's one of those examples of the indomitable human spirit doing sky diving when you're blind teaching yourself to paint and there's a picture in this he's done a little book called blind artist which you can only get on Amazon and the third portrait of Mister H he's never seen him he's only felt him and it's unbelievable. And Mister H if I'm not mistaken has been many places with you I don't know if you still have Mister H but he did I have.

He said in this room with me I forget to take him to a lecture should be a child who buss and to tell that I wanted to touch Mister H because I tell them the inspiration ruptured you said that your friend told you to teach your children to be optimistic.

It's really can't teach them that but you can tell stories and tell stories about people and encourage them and support them I mean so many parents have set views on what they want their child to be and the lesson they get from your mother is nobody was thinking about going to Africa living with animals when I wanted to

to show to you explore as you know want to do shoot them and put them in museums but when everybody laughed at me and said I never get there I was just a girl it was a war we didn't have money. Mom said if you really want something like this you're going to have to work really really hard but take advantage of every opportunity and if you don't give up you'll find a way to do that or something something else that you really really want to do.

That was to my take and share with young people everywhere especially in disadvantaged communities and I wish mom knew how many people have said Jane thank you you taught me that because you did it I can do it too. I'd be curious to ask if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking that could get a message out to billions of people it could be a word a phrase a question an image really anything what might you put on that billboard. Remember that you make a difference every single day.

Perfect that could not be more perfect. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show this episode is brought to you by wealth front there is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now a lot that's an understatement are we in a recession is it a bear market what's going to happen with inflation so many questions so few answers I can't tell the future nobody can but I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings.

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And now Cal Fussman New York Times bestselling author writer at large at Esquire International Speaker and host of the big questions with Cal Fussman podcast find Cal on Twitter and Instagram at Cal Fussman.

Cal welcome to the show thank you I have arrived you have arrived and I'm so excited to have you here because we've gotten to know each other a bit over the last however many months and it's been such a joy because as I've tried to delve into this craft of asking questions and crafting conversation I've realized there's a lot to it.

And I've been a fan of your work for so many years and the subtleties are just so powerful and I thought that this time we could turn the tables and I can interrogate you in public I love asking you questions about your process and you've been so very generous with your time in terms of reviewing some of my episodes providing feedback so first and foremost thank you for your work and for all of the help.

I'm delighted you're good you're good. I think I have a lot of room to improve and so this is one of these episodes where I'm a little self conscious because I know that I have a very visual the mental like sometimes non chronological approach to interviews and for that I'll apologize in advance but we can do a post game analysis afterwards.

So perhaps we could just start with something that we were discussing before we hit records we were talking about the live event that was here in LA at the troubadour and we were doing a bit of analysis went well what didn't go as

planned and so on and I mentioned that I suppose due to also some insecurities of a sort that I try to when I do these rare live events if it's say two hours long I'll stay for an additional two or three hours and do q&a or something like that you said that straight out of Quincy Jones's book and so I know this is an unusual place to start but maybe you could just provide that anecdote because it seems like you have an endless trove of these types of anecdotes but why Quincy Jones.

Quincy Jones will go to a book signing there will be long lines of people and he will not sign his name and move them on next he will stop as everyone who they are engage in a conversation and then write a personal note in his book to them and the line may be around the block he'll be there in the morning keeping the people's bones noble open because he wants to make it a joyous experience for everybody so bravo you followed the master.

It inadvertently this story of course if we rewind the clock begins at the beginning and where do you grow up I actually am ashamed to admit I don't know the childhood background where did you go?

Born in Brooklyn and moved to Yonkers New York where I did second grade and third grade and that's where I had when I think back on it like a pivotal moment asking questions because that time second grade was the time that I was sitting in Miss Jaffe's classroom she came into the room she was out for some reason when she came in you could look at her and know something just happened that I don't know but it's different from anything I've ever seen before

it was November 1963 and it was Miss Jaffe who told the class that President Kennedy had been shot and so we all got sent home found out that he had died and I really would love to see myself on videotape like that night because I knew man something is going on here they explained to me that Linda Johnson was a vice president and he was now become the new president and I'm thinking man what must it be like to be that guy what is he feeling?

I know he probably wanted to be the president but he couldn't be the president and then he was a vice president and now the president gets killed and he gets to be the president so I picked up piece of paper and a pencil and I just wrote to Linda Johnson you wrote a letter to Linda Johnson what does it feel like and about six months later I got a letter back

that's incredible it was from his personal secretary one e to d Roberts and the cool thing about it was the first sentence was thank you for the friendly thought in writing so I don't know what I wrote him but somehow I must have tried to make him feel comfortable with this question and then the second question was an answer to your query and with that said was she was treating me like I was legit you know I had just turned seven

five adult exactly and you know when you did the interview with Ed Norton he talked about having a mentor in high school who treated him like an adult that's right and that is what that letter felt like to me and only now when people are starting to ask me questions did this come to me but that's when I realized that asking questions is kind of natural for me so that was second grade second grade no I have to ask when you wrote the letter something you back the second grade

and was it written on paper that had the dotted line in between the intact lines for the lower case letters what type of do you recall got a paper I don't know is probably on loose leaf paper if I was making a guess I wish you know I was talking to the historian Robert caro who wrote volumes about Lyndon Johnson also wrote the power broker am I right that's right incredible book exactly and here this guy has spent decades knowing everything about Lyndon Johnson is possible

and I'm telling him this story and he's like getting goose bumps when I say one needed D Roberts you got a letter from a need a D Roberts and he started asking me all these questions about the letter and where it could be and how I sent it and I realized as he was doing it yeah he was made to be a historian

nobody else in the world we've gotten that high over the words one need a D Roberts but some people are just born with the proclivity to do certain things what do you think even if it's God given talent what makes you or gives you a gift for questions I think part of that has to do with the evolution as an interviewer as a journalist because as we talk it through you will see that I interview differently when I was say 18 then when I was 24

and differently in my 40s then I was when I was 25 so it really is like a lifelong voyage of learning about questions and reactions is only when I started to think back on that first letter that I realized okay this is I guess it was sort of be like being a basketball player and you know that you're born with big hands

if I go up for a dunk I can grip the ball with one hand Carmelo Anthony can't it's like a big secret he can't get his hands around the basketball he's great but it's some people are just born with big hands some people don't have big hands

and I'm only now starting to realize okay I was kind of born to do this did your parents facilitate that cultivate that anyway or was it not it was a nature more than nurture in the household maybe they did in that my dad loved sports and I grew up in the 60s at a time where Muhammad Ali came into play he was my childhood hero

and in a some sense that was the start of it because he was more than my hero just because he was the heavyweight champ of the world and he could dance and make sure nobody ever hit him and then when he wanted to hit you he could hit you 16 times before you even blinked and was more than the fact that he could make predictions with poetry and make you always look at the world

and make you always laugh his actions made you ask questions he would take his Olympic gold medal and throw it in the Ohio River and it would make you wonder hold it how is it that a black guy can go when a gold medal in Australia

and come back after representing his country and not be able to sit at a lunchroom counter at a Woolworth's next to white people he would defy the government and refuse draft induction wouldn't go into the army and basically say hey I ain't got nothing against no be a con and he would make you think hey what is going on over there in Vietnam

that was a huge huge part of my childhood did you have any particular career aspiration would you want to be when you were a kid say from second grade onward were there any particular professions that you knew you wanted to go after two things I wanted to see my face over a column in a big city newspaper and I wanted to write a magazine story about Muhammad Ali wow very prescient no I knew I knew what I wanted to do only later after I done it so quickly did I realize what am I going to do now

which we can get to is you mentioned 18 24 so two very specific ages take me to say 18 and then 24 and contrast your two styles but if you can tell us where you were at those two points also sure so when I grew up I grew up thinking interview was meet the press

and I grew up thinking it was what happened in a locker room after sporting event so I knew in order to achieve my dreams I need to go to journalism school I asked around and found out university and Missouri had one of the best so that's where I went

and I learned to ask who what when where and why and went through the whole journalism cycle this was also interesting time was a time of water gate so journalists were seen at the highest point that I maybe they've ever been it was really cool to be a journalist journalist actually brought down the president when they caught him lion

so it was a great time and I went into sports so basically after I graduated four months after I graduated I was sitting ringside when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship for the third time a year after that if you lived in St. Louis and you open the post dispatch sports section you saw my face over a column

and a year after that I went to the big time New York an amazing magazine called inside sports got started up held rear of the time I was 22 22 then and basically this magazine was really unique it was set up in the day that sports illustrated was as big as it gets and it was set up to compete with sports illustrate

and it brought in all these great writers and so I'd be going to the bar at night sit next to Hunter Thompson the Gonzo journalist throw back shots the next morning I'd be getting up going on a plane of Pittsburgh all the ones like you did shots with 100 stars yeah yeah okay we're gonna come back to that just continue so it was this magazine attracted all these writers and the guy who started was a guy named Johnny Walsh who went on to start sports center for ESPN

so he just had one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen at the time I didn't really even know what a rola dex was and I walked into inside sports for the first time it was a Friday afternoon and I called him up and I said hey like if I come into New York to work I'm not asking for a job just make sure I don't starve and he said come on in so I show the office at like four o'clock and there was two guys with a dolly stacked with beer

like a case after case of beer and I got in the elevator right behind the dolly they hit the same floor number that I needed to go to and they just rolled it out into the offices of inside sports and I said this is where I need to be

and this magazine attracted guys like David Halberstam who's a Pulitzer Prize winning writer the best of the best and basically I got to sit next to all the miles only kid I was 22 and every night everybody would go across the street to a bar called the cowboy Tony to bartender was my in the bar and at the time I like I had no money so they would put out these little odd derbs

but people that that was like where my dinner would be if the guys would expense accounts were going out like the mix nuts and all of that was dinner happy marriage you know cherries but it was great because you're sitting next to Frank de Ford who is like the big sports writer of his day

and I was like the guy named Gary Smith came to work there he was a national magazine award winner many many years and it was just a blast it was the best time sounds incredible and then like a lot of artistic successes it was not a commercial success and like a lot of startups it went belly out sounds like the Paris review and many many others there you go

I am in New York and and basically I've now achieved everything I'd set out to achieve when I was a kid and I'm looking around saying what am I going to do now where am I going to go I had no idea inside sports was not a job it was an experience it was an event every evening who's coming tonight and I didn't know what to do so I called up my mom dad and I said you know I think I'm going to take some time off and travel my mom who's always really supportive said oh cow that's wonderful

and little did she know when I said it that I wasn't coming back for 10 years but I didn't know it either I just bought a ticket to go over to Europe left with a few guys and that started a 10 year Odyssey of Cal going around the world okay let's okay let's pause for a second I want to do some backtracking here okay so the first question then I have not forgotten about Hunter as Thompson but when you said I please correct me if I'm getting this wrong but I don't need a job

I just don't want to starve and he said come on and why did he give you such a warm welcome he had actually reached out to me and again this went back to university of Missouri journalism that's where he had gone to school so I like and I found all through my travels this school and its network I was always linked to them in some way and you knew who was really good from that school

everybody knew it and so if I found out that somebody was doing really good work and they were an editor and I knew they went to the university of Missouri it's an easy phone call for me to make and it's interesting because I didn't make those calls often because there was a like a nexus of the people bumped into people and you were

there to the right place and so when inside sports folded ultimately one of the editors there got the job at the Washington Post Sunday magazine but when I was traveling around the world I basically I didn't really write and I have so many questions about the travel the

preceding contrast so if we looked at say your how you interview asked questions when you are the talent of your first professional gig and then at the talent of inside sports what changed nothing really change there basically the idea was to get the information you needed for

a story to fill out a story and so back in that day I know it's hard for sports writers to believe it because they asked me to speak at colleges in front of journalism schools and in the seventies women sports I got no coverage at all they would beg you to go into to go to their games go into their

games whatever you want it I was talking to university in Nebraska journalism school they can't even interview women's volleyball players in a very relaxed fashion they have to go through the sports information office and they won't be able to ask like personal questions so it's a completely different time when I would go out to do a story I might spend like a week two weeks with somebody

and now that just doesn't happen because of all the proliferation of media and everybody's asking for that time so it's pretty much shut down so basically you got to hang with people and the questions basically filled out the story

but for me it was very different than the next stage because that first stage was very who I went where and why and what might have been underneath what was your childhood like and it filled out a sports story the next step that started when I was about twenty three or twenty four was completely different and that was just to place it in the timeline that was before you left oh no this was the moment I left inside sports shut down and there was actually like a run on the bank to go over

seems pretty common people to get their last checks and right after that is when I decide to start traveling and that's where interviewing change for me forever two quick questions before we get there so first is what was it like doing shots and having drinks with Hunter S Thompson it was fantastic it was very funny guy and it was all anecdotes they were were a bunch of people in the bar everybody was telling stories this completely natural

was kind of interesting about my memory of it is later on I interviewed Johnny Depp who played Hunter Thompson and he just reached into this vegetable plate that was in front of a hotel and pulled out a carrot and put it in his mouth the way Hunter Thompson had like he was smoking like those long cigarettes and he became Hunter S Thompson it was wild and he said yeah it comes out in me every now and then

the thing about Hunter S Thompson you think about in almost as a caricature but like at the bar he was like regular guy just telling stories I remember him telling stories of like being a bowling writer in San Juan Puerto Rico and we're you know be laughing about things like that so it was very human the conversation wasn't with the caricature of Hunter Thompson it was with the guy and when you went out to drink with the guys hopefully with the expense accounts

what was your drink of choice did you have a go to drink back then was before I knew anything about wine back then it was like Guinness or black and tan or maybe a gin and tonic those were the three things you know one time I remember this is really crazy you want to know why inside sports went out of business they had one of the photographers who had worked with sports illustrator in the past and so I was sent out on a story with this guy

and this guy was saying oh I got to show you how to use an expensive count I can see you're like very young novice here and like before we do any work you straight to the bar and I'm saying like are you sure like maybe we should go out and get a view of some no no no and he starts to say you know I think we need to have some green chart truce oh lord what and like this guy must have knocked the bar bill and his point was look this is how we do it at sports illustrated

like if you don't run up a bar bill like this you know nobody's going to think your big time sounds like fear of loathing in Los Angeles it was a little like that it was all I guess day to day event and I was like meeting the athletes that I grew up watching on TV and talk into these sports writers

and it was one of those times that comes around once in a life and then when it's gone you can never really have it again part of it is your naïve tay making it so grand and then it was over the magazine was dead and oh man like at the time I thought I got another like 50 60 years live what am I going to do so how did you start on travel I didn't know what to do and I had met when I was in St. Louis a woman from France

she came from mompasier and she says oh like you have to come visit mompasier and pick the grapes so in my mind I always thought I've got to get to mompasier and so we bought a ticket I bought a cheap ticket to Iceland air they would land you in Iceland and then fly you into Luxembourg

and the idea I guess was to get you to somehow stay in Iceland it still is still solid it's like the stopover destination stay for a few days please and you know what people should because one of the playboy centerfold photographers told me that that was one of the best places

that he'd ever been to in terms of like meeting women he said it was like outrageous you'd go there on a Saturday night and everybody knew everybody but by 4 in the morning like people were naked doing cartwheels on top of the bar and I could have thought of it from Iceland

Iceland you know it's a limited number of activities if you're there depending on the time of the year but I actually went to Iceland for the first time with my family to see the Aurora Borealis two winters ago just glorious fantastic entirely mystical word defying experience

it really was fantastic so that's maybe the other more brochure friendly inside of Iceland but yeah a lot of booze a lot of booze a lot of boo if you're telling me and they like elves and gnomes also but you know that sounds like a magical moment in your life

it was it was what did you have like a notion of what it would be and then did it top it like by 10 times well the backstory not to turn this into well I guess it is the Tim Verstow so here we are but the the digress into my own stuff for a minute is my mom had always talked about wanting to see

the Northern Lights before she passed on and this came up many many times and eventually I was like fuck it why haven't we gone to see the Northern Lights let's figure it out and that's how the trip came about and in my mind of course the image was informed by the photos that I'd seen

and it turns out that the colors that are captured by all of the photographs or the equipment that I've seen are very different when you see the phenomenon in real life with your own eyes and it's just the most ghostly fantastic meaning like phantasm like experience that I've ever had visually

without a native plants we really just got the Willy Wonka golden ticket because we showed up and we were there for I want to say 10 days which is important because you could have a few days of cloud cover and if you're only there for a night or two nights you could go all the way out

to the middle of nowhere in Iceland or Norway for that matter or other places and never see it but we saw it I want to say like seven out of ten nights it was unbelievable so it exceeded all expectations it was really really a trip to remember I just got to ask you for more questions now I know

what was your mom's what did your mom's face look like when she got the view that she wanted to have I kid in a candy store or the description of the camp to mind first was like a baby who opens their eyes and sees like their favorite mobile above them like just that completely dazzled look

where there's nothing else in the world that exists for them in that moment but just the pure joy of that experience it was great I mean one of the most gratifying things for me certainly that I've ever done for my family which makes me feel like a bad son

but for saying it that it took me while that it took me that long but it was a great experience I will say for those people listening who are thinking about it when I say they're very limited activities I really mean it in Iceland and we stayed at this place called hotel I think they pronounce it

morangau but it's oranga R-A-N-G-A which is in the middle of nowhere and if you do go two things to note it's dark all the time and number two there are activities that you can pay for but they tend to be on the internet

or they tend to be on the expensive side so you can take like a helicopter over live volcanoes which actually was phenomenal or you can go say snowmobiling etc. but they all tend to be on the pricey side so you do need to check your budget before you sign up for something like that

and yeah it was glorious but the so Iceland so you got a cheap ticket on Iceland air cheap ticket on Iceland air and landed in Luxembourg and I was with a bunch of friends and how many friends let's see there were very interesting I had I mentioned one

his name was Gary Smith but for these purposes I'm just going to say there was a friend who was very skinny can't wait to see where this is going and a friend who was portly such an underused adjective portly and I am completely these are my best friends okay the skinny guy the portly guy

and the skinny guy was just coming off a divorce and had basically felt like his whole life had been constricted in this box around Wilmington Delaware and wanted to go out and just see the world see what every what whatever was out there and of course my eyes are open to this because I didn't know what I was going to do where I was going to go but I wanted to see the world too mompazier let's go pick the grapes and then the portly friend was a guy who was kind of like the mayor of his job

and the mayor of his city in terms of if you go to the bar in st. Louis he's the fixture everybody loves him knows him and it's the bar the restaurant everything is very kind of fixed the mic was always his or you get hold court holding court but even more than that it was you knew

if you're in st. Louis you knew if you went to loelons bar at 8 30 you were going to see him and accordingly you know where he was going to have dinner is only one of a few places if you went at one you can go to another you know the book story walked into the place across the street

where we got chocolates so he lived on sort of a ritual so now the three of us are let loose in Europe now the portly guys only got like 10 days he's on vacation from his job the skinny guy who been working at inside sports with me he's got some time now

and I'm just kind of walking around with my eyes open wondering where this is all going to take me so we go to this mountainous town we end up in a mountainous town in Italy it had two names because these countries would get involved in wars and then sometimes they would be wherever the winner was

they were named so I remember the the German sounding name was Dorf Tirol and it had a huge mountain and we found out that on this mountain Ezra Pound the poet had lived in this castle so the skinny guys like all exhale got to go see Ezra Pound's castle so we got to take a hike up to this mountain

and portly guys coming along and we're having a great time we're talking and the breathtaking scenery and we get to this castle when we meet some people and they say oh if you would just keep going over this mountain you will have an unforgettable experience there is a farmer there that is living you literally will go back to the 18th century that's how his farmer is living just keep on going over the mountain and just walking down this trail

not many people go over the mountain but if you do you will find this farm it will put you up for the night sounds like the beginning of a dirty trip and so we start to get up to the top of the mountain and now it's like getting darker and darker and darker

and maybe it's eight o'clock I don't know what time it is but we've reached like the peak and now we almost can't even see where we're walking but the skinny guy knows if we get down this mountain we're going to have an experience like no other and that's what he was wired to do

and the portly guy is saying hey like bed of chini is being served down in the restaurant and they both look at me and say okay what are we doing and what do you think I did oh this is a toughy I want to say that you that you went for the village

but by the very fact that you asked me what would you do and you love both of these guys and you know that one guy really wants to go over the mountain the other guy really wants to bet it I say you can always get fed a chini it's not going away but easy to say is the armchair listener of stories

as is the case right now what did you do well I looked at him both and then I just realized look if something were to happen like going down I'm going to regret it and I knew in that moment you know what there's going to be a lot of those moments where I'm heading over the mountain

that was a moment I knew I'm going over the mountain not tonight I'm going to make sure my portly friend is taking care of him he eats his fed a chini a few days getting on a plane he's going to go back home but after that I'm going over the mountain and that's what set off the trip and it became completely addictive because I woke up every morning not knowing what was going to happen and then you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little bit of the work that I did

because I woke up every morning not knowing what was going to happen and then you asked before okay well where does the interviewing shift so what happened was I had hardly any money and I would go to a bus station or train station and I would just walk up say where's the next train leave out of where's it headed and they would say a name I say okay I want to take it so I would buy the ticket destination had no meaning to me whatsoever what had meaning to me was I never been there before

and I'm going to take this trip down the aisle the trip down the aisle was where all the stakes were because as I'm going down that aisle I've got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting somebody I can trust somebody who might be able to trust me because and the stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride wherever it was going that person had to invite me to their home

because I had no money to spend night after night no hotel I was going to ask you how you paid for the trip so it was just savings based until it was extinguished well there was very there's very little money I'm trying to let you know that the stakes that were involved when I got on that train it was not it was like an athletic event where you were going out and you had to get a roof over your head night and I'll tell you how seriously I took this and I'm going to tell you a story after this

which shows you what I learned I'm walking down that aisle and I see an empty seat next to a beautiful woman right I look at her hands no rings she's looking at me she's smiling at me she could be a supermodel I swear I walked right on by because there was no way she was taking me home there was no way she was taking me home now nobody can see me but if you saw me you would know the supermodel was not taking me home Hey you know fairness Billy Joel got Christie Brink Christie Brinkley

that's right that's no not another offense to Billy Joel but he and I'm not comparing you to Billy Joel I think you're a very handsome man but just to say I'll tell you a story about this I came to later regret that all right so this is years later and I get set up working at S. square where I do this what I've learned column and I get set up doing an interview with petron M. Cove the supermodel and I'm waiting for a supposed to arrive at like eight o'clock or something and she's she's like

so I'm sitting there waiting for her and then she sits down and we start talking we have this amazing conversation that people may not know but she was in Thailand when that tsunami hit in like a bungalow with her best friend who basically lost his life and she was swept away by the tsunami and narrowly survived this is amazing stories really took an hour and a half just to tell the tsunami story and she's telling me these great stories and we're really hitting it off

and then to use post-to-go for an hour and a half like we're at four hours and it's not an interview anymore I feel like completely connected to her the way I would have been had I met her on a bus or train and I said to her I said petron I really I'm gonna tell you something I apologize and she said what for and I said because all those years those 10 years I was traveling around the world if the empty seat was next to you I would have walked right on by you just because she

were good looking and she had a very amazing reaction she grabbed me by the hand and squeezed my hand and she said well don't worry Cal tonight I sat next to you which was very cool but it made me realize and this is a this is really if you're a good guy who's a little scared to approach that woman you should remember that story because they want to be treated normally and I was talking to another actress about this and she really started riding me she said okay so you don't take that seat

and now some asshole takes it and I got to put on that asshole for the next hour and a half thank you very much Cal so you walked by this woman when you got on the train walked on the aisle you choose a survival and housing over the perspective walked by the supermodel and I'm looking looking down the car and okay that grandmother with no teeth eating the crackers out of her purse there's a winner so walk up sit down next to the grandma let's say we're in hungry

and this happened many cultures but for the sake of the story and this happened in hungry I sit down next to her and I'll ask her about Gulash now of course she can't speak English my Hungarian at that point is hi how are you I need to go to the bathroom and some of the younger people on the train are watching me and grandma try and talk to each other and naturally they come over and they start to translate he wants to know what makes a great Gulash

this grandma's chest just bursts with pride and now she's talking about her grandmother making Gulash her mom making Gulash all the ingredients that go into Gulash how they got to be put together just the right way and then she looks at all these young Hungarians said you know I've been writing on this train for decades now one of you was asked how I make my Gulash this American he asked you tell him he asked to come to my house because I am going to prepare him Gulash

so he knows what it's like to eat Gulash in hungry all the people on the train they come along now I'm staying with grandma not only does she invite the people on the train all her neighbors all her friends her relatives now I'm at the table

a room full of people they're all surrounding me the Gulash is in front of me and I slowly lifted to my lips I taste it my eyes shut and I smile and there's just a roar from this place he loves grandma's Gulash so the party goes on for like four days and during the party one of the

neighbors says well you know have you ever tasted apricot brandy because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father it lives half an hour away from it you got to come to taste the apricot brandy that weekend we're tasting apricot brandy

having a great time another party starts another neighbor comes over to me have you ever been to Kishkin Hollis the paprika capital of the world you cannot leave hungry without visiting Kishkin Hollis now we're off to Kishkin Hollis I'm telling you a single question about Gulash

could get me six weeks of lodging and meals and that's how I got passed around the world that's incredible ten years ten years so what else did you learn about asking questions or if you want to tackle it a different way feel free to take it any direction but what are some common mistakes

that people make in asking people questions whether it's on on a train or otherwise but you'll free to tackle either you know what that's a good question for a little later because that's what I discovered later on at the time and I'll bring it directly toward hiring people and where questions are

being asked of job candidates like what's your biggest weakness which they've already prepared like two hours on how to answer that question you're not going to get a spontaneous good response that I worked too hard sometimes get accused of being too detailed or handed you got it you got it

they'll do that is the wrong question but we'll get to that because I wasn't there yet I didn't even know what I was doing other than okay you've got to figure out a way to make people trust you through your questions and I know

long ahead of fill out a story I didn't need to who what when where and why it was just pure curiosity and then it zoned into this basic fact people want to talk about their lives and often especially if you go to a small town there people they may not be able to talk so much about their lives

because everybody talks about everybody in these little towns and everybody knows the gospel everybody knows the feelings and you have to keep some things to yourself but if this guy comes into your house and he's from 7000 miles away you can open up in ways and tell him things you would never tell people close by knowing he's going to leave and keep a mind this was a day there were no cell phones there was no social media there was no Facebook there was no

going on the internet and finding out what this person just told me it was like a secret the safe here yeah I was completely safe for these people not only that but I was a safe haven for a lot of women because if they were in a small town and they are meeting somebody from their small town everybody is going to know about it but if you meet this traveler your eyes are going to be open to this new world plus you can go over to the next town and like have a meal

and start talking and get to know each other and you're kind of free of all the constrictions of where you live and so in a way like I became handsome you know it's like I remember in college going into a barn in Colorado and all the guys were like six foot I don't know what it was at night but everybody was like six foot four or taller you know and like the girls were over six but I'm just kind of walking around I'm like much smaller and I just realized there was

I don't fit in here it's just a different I'm not handsome here it's like every Dutch or Swedish party I've ever been to okay so we're going okay so here's there you go I'm traveling around right and I meet a six foot two Dutch girl and want to share a room as we're traveling okay fantastic

it was so easy because we were in a different place and once you're traveling you're a much different person than you are when you're at home people see you differently and they treat you differently you see people differently too yes wouldn't you say I mean in a sense that I don't recall

who said this initially but you know people will travel to the other side of the world to pay attention to things that they routinely ignore at home bingo yeah and it seems like a modern day or say a different manifestation of this is sitting down on airplane next to someone and we you can get

people to open up or they'll volunteer to open up in ways that they might not to other people because they assume rightly in most cases they're never going to see you again that's it 100% and when you talk about seeing people differently when you're waking up in the morning and you don't know what's

going to happen and then you meet somebody the person becomes like the most fascinating person on the world in that moment and they feel that because you don't know their life so you're starting to ask some questions they're getting this attention it's like you're I don't want to say you're

making them into a rock star but they're getting the the same kind of attention the questions that are coming why did you do that what kind of friends do you have what's this culture like here and all of a sudden they're feeling like they're in the spotlight and it feels good and for

women it feels great because also now and I'm sure if you're feeling boxed in and you meet somebody from afar oh I wonder what it's like in America maybe you like me maybe you'll take me home with them maybe I can visit and so all of these conversations are just filled with possibilities and

potentials yeah it's beautiful in both directions too I think I mean in my I remember just in some of my travels I mean you you come across not just the natives but you meet other people who are traveling from distant lands and kind of finding their own way in the same way that you are and

you start to wonder like well maybe I should visit Turkey maybe I should visit the paprika capital of Hungary and it's just that the endless possibilities when divorced from like the routine of your life at home that are so exciting it's that and also I remember that the skinny guy

were in Yugoslavia and this was right before the Olympics in Sarajevo and it was cold and I remember we looked at each other and just you know it's like too cold here we didn't have winter clothing and I said to him you know there are camel races in Duz Tunisia

and like a day later we were in Tunisia we just got on a flight and flew to Tunisia and headed to Duz we missed the races but you know the next thing you knew we've got pictures of us in like the middle of the Sahara Desert and so there was just the possibility of and look it's

even more like that now where you got the internet to help you connect with somebody you can get on a plane and be in a different world sure couch surfing mean there are cost free options out there if couch surfing was here when I was going around the world I don't know I

might still be going I might still be going I'll tell you that it was the end of the trip that changed my style of interviewing again but if I could have been couch surfing I can't even imagine the potential I would have had because from what I'm told like you get rated isn't

it it's sort of like Uber you rate the driver you that's right so you you rate the place you stay and they rate the guests so basically I'm coming in with all these stories to regale you from these different parts of the world I get a ratings across I get five stars

across the board and then everybody would want come to my place please come to my place but there was none of that and every day you had to get on I had to get on the train or the bus unless people were passing me around after a while it became easier and easier

because it was well you know I got a cousin here and then I get off the train and the cousin would be waiting for me and a party would be waiting for me at his house when I got there so really it was like a 10 year party I do want to get to the the end of the

trip and the impact on the interviewing but first and I can't believe I haven't asked you this for but how did you hone your ability to tell stories because you're very good at asking questions but that doesn't automatically make one good at telling stories

maybe part of that is through writing because that's what I was doing I would interview people and then I would have to put what I got down in a specific order or a non-specific order in order to manipulate people into leaning closer what's going to happen what's going to happen what's going to happen meaning like an immediate arrest sort of in the middle of the action type of start to pull them in yes something exactly you started to pull them in and then you wait wait wait wait wait wait

minute now you have to go back to the big as suckered you in there but then there are other more complicated ways where you don't start that way in the beginning and you save it for the end but you do it in a more nuanced way it's almost like

okay I'm reading but what is something you can be an example I'm so curious because for people who aren't writers maybe I mean if I'm not going to lose track here but I haven't been journalism school but when I've taken some writing classes about like the lead and you get at least for non-fiction

stuff right you get a couple of discs you need a couple quotes like three people is a trend and then you sort of piece it together don't bury the lead meaning bring this sort of attention grabbing piece to the top it's and so on we talked about the briefly the in-media rest what would be

a more subtle way to approach an opener okay so just say you had a murder story all right and you were operating by that principle and journalism like put it right at the top and then okay this horrible thing happened let's go back to the beginning and then now you've got to add

everything up to see why that moment happened another option is to start it in like a very ordinary way with just a twist that tells you something's going to go on here I don't know and you just keep reeling them and slowly just give a little more oh man and then they

met this person what's going to happen now and then you save it till near the end of the story part of the problem is when you do that in a magazine they'll give it away in the headline I was going to ask that headline yeah but you can still use that tactic of telling a

story that is slowly grabs you and then it just puts out a little bait and gives you that smell that something interesting here and then your drag in the line so that they've got to keep following it and they're feeling you know what something big is behind here and

make them get to the end and then if you can deliver I don't want to say it's orgasmic but you know it's funny I was thinking of like this sexual analogy though it's like it's instead of the sort of the Wambam thank you ma'am quick fix it's like okay I didn't think that I

needed it some tantric sex in two hours of this turns out it's pretty great and then you get the payoff you're like you know what that was totally worth it and that's you just named it it's the tantric sex the tantric structure storytelling that said sting would

love it you know six hours so at the end of your trams what happened that affected your okay so I'm going around I'm going to have a great time and after ten years I mean I got a pretty good network of people so I don't really even have to rely on meeting somebody

because enough people know me and when you're in Brazil oh there's this Buzz energy cuck out this farm where they grow the cocoa beans like great couple just go there like we'll send the letter in advance they'll be expecting you so I am at this point it's almost like I'm a guest that's now

expected for the family I'm really I'm part of the family before I even arrived and a friend of the skinny guy the skinny guy got married and he decided to take a year and spend it in coach Obama Bolivia so I hear that and I'm thinking is wife to be knew that plan before signing up oh

she did okay I mean that and that that was it let's do something we don't have any kids let's do something outrageous that nobody expected and so naturally I hear coach Bolivia hey I was in Peru now skinny guys moving to coach Obama hey I'll spend a few months in coach Obama so I'm there and I get a

call from the Washington Post Sunday magazine and again going back to this nexus the guy in charge had worked at inside sports and now he was in charge of his own magazine and he called me up and he said you know what we're doing an issue about great beaches around the world we know

you've been to Brazil before is there a story about a beach in Brazil that you could right up for us and at the time I say look I'm in coach Obama Bolivia you would think it's crazy but I was really getting into coach Obama Bolivia it's like completely different culture

and there's an alti plano that it's a landlocked nation you're you really are experienced in something different as a traveler but I said okay I you know what I said I heard I actually heard of a beach in Brazil you might not want me to go there because you're probably

doing this as a travel issue to basically hook up with travel agents and airlines so people can go to these destinations this beach that I heard of is on the north of Brazil from what I heard you can't even get there unless you go on like a crude sailing vessel and on

muleback and any other saying you know why don't you just check this place out so I say okay and I leave coach Obama I go to Brazil and I end up in a city called Forte Liza and just as I arrive the first trip to this isolated beach sand dunes that look like they're straight out of the

Sahara but it against like the most sparkling waters of the Caribbean the first tour bus is going to go to this place are going to be dune buggies we don't have to go by mule we don't need the crude sailing vessels and I'm just right on time and so first bus leaves midnight Friday

night and I buy my ticket get on the bus and I let down my guard and I spoke to the beautiful woman on the bus on the way to the enchanted beach in Brazil and that was the end of the trip and I would tell you the rest of the story except it takes two hours to do will be at a

little bit more than a little bit more well you're not doing it on tape but if digital as any limits will be will be out there but that's the important thing about it was that was a moment where my style of interviewing how to change again because I was no longer traveling around the world is women

and I got married moved to New York for S. Quarra magazine and all the things that I learned on buses trains I was then able to project into S. Quarra's what I've learned column which consists of interviews with the most celebrated accomplished and created people on earth.

I have the the handy recorder the H4N on top of one of these in fact the what I've learned this is the third volume that's the third volume these interviews have been done for almost 20 years now with everybody from presidents to premieres to movie stars basically people that you know the idea

is for me to interview them and using their own words show them in a light that you never really knew so you thought you know these people and then you listen to their experiences and you say whoa I never knew that about Robert De Niro or Michele Gorbachev so that is

where these conversations on the trains were so important because I did not approach these interviews with Woody Allen or Wolfgang Puck George Clooney as if I was a journalist I approached them as if they were sitting on the train next to the empty seat and I just sat down next to them and that is

where the evolution continued until actually very recently was 20 years so it took me like 10 years to understand that an interview was more than meet the press but then another 20 to figure out that it was more than sitting to work on my dream that was about it.

UT Rotten truth and she asked me if I think I lost a lot of courage into it, college, I think it was more important than choosing, I'm being quite afraid ofero I was talking to the documentary and I don't realize, but two years ago you know those später hard to 2 years earlier your

career, you in that wake and change comes from your memory habits and also you notice it was again the Jody Foster's comment one of my favorites just for folks in the end winning is sleeping better I just love that so good highlighted Woody Allen it just goes on and on so I Love this entire compilation and encourage people to check it out, but what changed?

So recently so I was asked to give a speech on a cruise and I never ever ever went on cruises before in fact I got to say It's almost laughable because there are certain people like they hear crews and They turn up their nose and I think I was one of those people in fact I had a friend who's a writer and his wife wanted to go on a cruise and She kept on pestering and pestering him now I'm like and my wife finally said to him. Why don't you take your wife on a cruise?

And he said because I draw the line I said oh Man, maybe I think about cruises that way And then I was invited to speak on a cruise, but it was a special cruise It was a cruise called summit at sea Yep, and so some of the series guys. Okay, so you you know these folks and Basically, it's a cruise ship filled with 4,000 entrepreneurial minds and And that was wild to begin with because I had never I had limited experiences with entrepreneurs and then you Put yourself on a ship with

4,000 entrepreneurs your life is gonna change a lot of potential energy. Yeah, it's like head plus Coachella plus Infinite amounts of alcohol There you go and you can't even get on an elevator without Meeting somebody somebody on the elevator is gonna say what's your name? I'm Michael. This is where I work This is what I do what they who are you? I felt at the end of like three days

My head was really it was like getting pumped up with the helium. I was about to explode It was amazing experience and like you're sitting down and like a dinner and a guy next she's oh This is the rocket ship I'm building you want to see and he pulls out his phone He shows his rocket ship. This is like wild and it was like traveling around the world except the world came to you

I think Jane Goodall was there also. I mean just goes on and on and like the world is coming to you and wanting to Hear you and tell you what they're up to So like in three days at some of the sea you literally can go around the world and

And I was totally unprepared for this. I was asked to give a speech called decoding the art of the interview and I never spoke in before Didn't know what it was gonna be like But I you know I have experience with Michele Gorbachev and Donald Trump and De Niro and Muhammad Ali later on in life

That they're good stories and so I've been telling these stories As I was traveling around and Saturday nights and people always oh tell Ali's story So I knew okay, I don't know how to give a speech But I can tell these stories and so I go up and I tell my and here's the thing about it There are 20 events going on at once Generally when you look at that what I've learned column I'm invisible

I don't write a single word. I just interview them the subject and then put it down in their own words So I'm not a guy who you would ever see on TV that you would really know I'm invisible Yeah, there are people who know what I do and people in the know

Will come up and tell me hey, I respect what you do in odd ways But I'm figuring okay, I'm on this cruise ship maybe 20 people are gonna show up at best And in fact, I had read pencils for promise by Adam Braun and he talked about giving it might have been his first speech and I Guess he was expecting a crowd and he had maybe six friends attending and only one person other than his six friends showed up and he went out and he gave this speech and what he realized was You give the speech

As if that one person is the entire audience and it turned out that she was so enthused that she later went to work for his charity So I went in prepared that book prepared me if there's one person in there

I don't care. I'm gonna give that person the best. I'm not gonna be disappointed I'm just gonna go out and tell my stories give a few lessons and And let's see how it goes maybe the same day that I'm supposed to speak they move my event So it's now even in the program if you're going in my event you're going in the wrong place So now I'm thinking okay, I'm down to like 10 people

That's cool. I'll speak to the one the time for the speech comes people start filing in and I had set up this speech around wine And there's a reason for it because when one of the stories we could get to a little later I went out to learn about wine by becoming the Somalia at Windows of the world at the top of the World Trade Center right for the planes hit it And so I'm very attached to wine and What I wanted to do was to have everybody drink in a glass of wine while I told these stories

So if I messed up they were still yeah helps with reality bending also. That's right We set it up so they all the wine is there ready ready to be served to people as they come in Punching for 10 people. Well, no, I said okay. There are like 150 seats if 150 people show up fine have the glasses in the wine, but

Let's face it you may only go through a bottle. So they were all prepared and play seated 150 and it's this funky nightclub and all of a sudden the time starts to roll around and I'm watching and people are just Flooding in they take up all the seats and I was very specific to the people serving the wine I set up this speech to have toasts throughout to keep everybody's involvement going So everybody had to lift their glass and like Scream with me

just to keep everyone engaged and so I said to the people delivering the wine look I need you to be able to walk down this corridor down the center and keep everybody's glasses filled because it's Bad luck to toast with empty glass and so we're all set and now every seat's taken and There's still like 10 minutes before the speech set to start and people are still coming in and now They're coming down the aisle and they're sitting like at my ankles and they're

Filling the aisle there see it cross-legged in the aisle sitting behind the bar. That's right taking up the foot of the bus To the back the complete back and now there's a line of people that can't get in I've become like the hottest nightclub in New York City and I'd never done this before not to derail this, but what do you attribute that to?

I think what happened is they switched you with Richard Branson in the program Just Maso the other that's good Well have to work that work on that next time I think what happened is we titled it decoding the art of the interview with Michele Gorbachev Robert and Nero and Donald Trump and naturally it said like Cal Fussman has interviewed these people but People came in wondering or what's it like to interview Gorbachev or De Nero or Donald Trump so

And we'll definitely dig into some of that but okay, and so I'm watching all these people flood in and now the aisle is completely

cluttered I can't get wine to people now. I'm starting to freak out because I don't want people toasting with an empty glass and The back of the room is like it's getting jam packed and So I just said well just go out and give your speech so the speech it lasts for about an hour and And I guess a really good response but what was surprising about it was Afterwards like this was a long line of people to see me and their business people and The first couple came up to women to say okay

You taught us about asking questions we got a problem. We are really passionate about our business We can't seem to find people to work for us that are just as passionate as we are What can we do what can we ask I said that's easy just tell them the Dr. Dre story Dr. Dre story yeah, I said I was interviewing Dr. Dre and I said to him What's the longest you've gone Working on a passion project without sleep and he's oh man

When I'm working on something I really care about I'm in the zone. I don't think about sleep. It's just I Go until it's done Could be 72 hours, so I said just tell the person you're interviewing Dr. Dre he goes 72 hours What's the longest you've ever gone on a passion project without sleep?

You'll be able to tell something about that person by their answer and look they may tell you you know what I Get eight hours sleep every night because I come to work every morning fully charged and you're gonna know Hey, maybe that's the right person for a certain job in your company. It's not gonna be The most completely passionate person, but maybe they're the person that's got to do something nuts and bolts

They're the right CFO or the guy we interact with Wall Street. That exactly or gal and so You will find out through that answer Something that's gonna help you make a decision And then your girls are looking you could tell they're looking at okay, that's our question Well tell them the talk the tray story and then people started coming up to me Running successful businesses who had a higher a lot of people All at once because the business is doing really well and you could tell they were nervous

Because all of a sudden a business that starts with an idea and only them is now Taking on a thousand people in a year How are you sure that those thousand people? Have what you had when you started the company that essence because if they don't have it The essence of the company is no longer what you wanted and guys like that And women are coming up and saying you know

Next time you're in San Francisco. Can we get together because I can tell There's obviously an issue with hiring and it's funny because now I'm starting to ask everybody about it and I'm really becoming very conscious that This is like an issue that's really important to a lot of people

Oh, it's the challenge we were chatting before we started recording About Silicon Valley and some of the issues surrounding attracting and retaining Top talent it's the fundamental challenge for a lot of these Startups in particular when you go from perhaps hiring Safety bootstrap for a period of time 10 people in a year to hiring 10 people a day or a week It's a massive challenge putting together a process for that. So

Question for you about the presentation. So if we were to try to decode Decoding the art of the interview If we're gonna try to meta that and decode the presentation itself What story or stories?

And I don't think I've heard any of them for that matter yet did people seem to respond best to There's one that I have talked in the back of my mind because when Alex Mutual friend of ours asked me if I had heard this story and I said no he was just like I say disgusted but just Speechless at how I had not managed to hear this yet But what did people respond to best in terms of stories?

Interesting different people respond differently to the different stories One if I was deconstructing the speech One of the things that I wanted to do was to Explain how much you can do with a single question in a short amount of time and Back that up I told a story about my meeting with Michele Gorbachev so I'll take you back to say 2008 I think it was February we're in New Orleans and in a hotel lobby

I'm all said to interview Michele Gorbachev for S. Quares what I've learned column. We got an hour and a half and fully prepared Ready to go couldn't have been happier and I get a call I pick up the phone I Call it's the publicist Sorry to so I have to pass this on but the interview with mr. Gorbachev is gonna have to be cut short Now I'm being you know man. Oh Was it gonna be down to an hour because as the thing with this what I've learned column

I can't fluff it up. I can't fill it out. I can't use my words They have to be Michele's Corbachev's words and they have to be wise words. I need at the very least an hour to Extract yeah move into his soul in a way that makes him feel comfortable and extract that wisdom at the very least 45 minutes So I say to her okay, okay, how much time do I got?

10 minutes Ha ha ha 10 minutes are you I don't want to say are you nuts, but it's impossible I can't do this interview in 10 minutes Cal Cal look I understand But a lot of very important people have been added to the list see mr. Gorbachev There's nothing we can do about this Do you want the 10 minutes or not? What am I gonna do say no?

Okay, I'll take the 10 minutes So I'm sitting down I'm thinking and the more I'm thinking about this the worst is getting because number one, I'm knowing that all Of my questions Are going to be translate into Russian and all of his answers are gonna be translated back into English actually a five Yeah, we're moving down plus you're gonna sit down and You're gonna exchange pleasantries

It's it's not gonna start in a fingers now do enough. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't two minutes But it wasn't much more and so the the public says leaves me into the room and at this point I'm thinking okay If it's two and a half minutes like do your best And I look up and like there he is Gorby and he's a little older than I remember

He's about 77 at the time. He was in town to speak about Nuclear weapons and why they should be abolished and we sit down and I'm looking at him and I just know Just know he's expecting my first question to be about nuclear arms world politics Perestroika Ronald Reagan He's just ready So I looked at him. I said What's the best lesson your father ever taught you and he is Surprised pleasantly surprised he looks up and he doesn't answer

He's just like thinking about this. It's as if after a little while He's seeing on the ceiling this movie of his past and he starts to tell me the story and it's this story About the day his dad was called to go fight in World War two

See Gorbachev lived on lived on a farm and it was a long distance between this farm and the town Where Gorbachev's dad had to join the other men to go off to war And so the whole family Took this trip with the dad to this town To wish him well as he went off and Gorbachev is talking about this trip And he's like providing these intricate details and I'm transfixed But I'm saying like oh my god. I asked the worst possible question

This interview is going to be over. He's not even going to get to town yet So finally they do get to town and Gorbachev's dad Takes the family in to this little shop And he gets ice cream for everybody And Gorbachev starts describing this ice cream and the cup that it was in He is eluminum cup and as he's telling me it's almost like he's got his hand out in front of him and the cups in it It's that vivid to him and it's as if in this moment we both have this same realization

That cup of ice cream is the reason that he was able to make peace with Ronald Reagan and then the Cold War Because that cup of ice cream just the memory of it Is the memory of what it felt like for his dad to go off to war for him to see his dad going off to war That cup of ice cream in the memory was the dread that he knew Of the possibility of never seeing his father again And we are looking at each other like oh man. This is deep. He didn't expect it anymore than I did

Just at that moment knock on the door. It's the publicist Publicists comes in very vicious Squarbachev, Cal time for the interview is up and he looks at any who axis fingers says no I want to talk to him Publish this puts up our hands. Yes sir and like backs out sheepishly the door shuts

Conversation continues now. We're getting deeper 10 minutes later Another knock on the door this time the publicist comes in a little slower Mr. Gorbachev Cal Gorbachev says no, I want to talk to him She backs out 10 minutes later This time she's in a panic The train cars are just piling up Mexico

Please I've got the mayor of New Orleans right outside. There's a long line of people We're way behind schedule and Gorbachev just smiles and he didn't say anything But the look on his face was hey, what can I do Cal So I said thank you like I knew I pushed it to as long as it could be pushed and

I left and the interview Was a success in that you know and had a little story like that and people could understand something about Gorbachev that they might never have Known but for me when I look back on it what I realized was the power of the first question going straight to the heart and not the head Because it was that question that went into his heart That took us to that very deep place and enabled the interview to continue to go and because the interview could go

I was able to fill out the page for for Esquire otherwise that would have been it It would have been no way the interview would have run So Lesson number one when people asked me What tips would I give is aim for the heart not the head Once you get the heart You can go to the head

Once you get the heart in the head then you'll have a pathway to the soul And so basically the speech was Lessons tied to Stories that Backed them up and whether it was with Gorbachev or Donald Trump or Robert De Niro or Muhammad Ali Each story allowed the listener to Understand something very basic. So I'm gonna pick a name that we haven't heard yet Just because this is the one that Made Alex dance around because that's all you could do to respond

Before he insisted that I ask you about it. So Julio says our shabas That's another that's another story and it goes back to A time when I was a teenager and Again you as I started out you knew that my childhood hero was Muhammad Ali so I followed boxing And naturally I wanted to fight Where I lived there were no boxing gyms around What we had in New York was a tournament called the Golden Gloves Golden Gloves big deal. Yeah sponsored by the Daily News

The final sold out Madison Square Garden every year. I had no idea how to fight and I've wanted to do it So basically like a month before the Golden Gloves started I showed up at a gym that was a few towns over in a bad neighborhood

And said that like I want to train for the Golden Gloves you had to be 16. I just turned 16 I entered and This manager pulled me aside and said no, no, no, no, that's not the way it works He's like you don't know how to fight you don't know anything about fighting what you do is you come here every night and we'll teach you and Within a year we can put you in with people who have your experience and you'll learn and then a year from now

You'll have some experience and you can go into the Golden Gloves. You know if you're good you'll you'll do okay I said no no no no you don't understand. I came to fight I But listen That's right and basically I wasn't on the tall side so there's a short guy in a very short arms and you know my style was basically

You know, hey man, I'm just gonna rush across the ring. I'm just gonna start throwing punches Joe Fraser style That's right and you'll you'll see what happens Because like Joe Fraser you had a fight you raised right

Okay, all I can do is just throw reckless wild crazy punches one after another. I was in good shape So I could throw punches three minutes around just Start to finish and it was I was actually for the people in gym was kind of comical to watch because You know everybody knew that when I finally got in the ring one of two things was gonna happen Maybe I'd be able to just simply overwhelm whoever was in the ring just by sheer virtue of I'm coming at you

Throw everything I got and I'm not stopping the Tasmanian devil strategy. You got it And so the month passes or so and it's time for my fight in the Golden Gloves and there was somebody at this club That was gonna represent me and I show up the club He was gonna drive me into Queens, New York. I was living at Long Island at the time and I was all set And so I show up for my manager to pick me up. He's not there

Lifted the altar right now. I don't have a manager I don't have a lift to get into this place and there's no cell phones You know you're standing by a pay phone throwing in quarters like who can help me? I got to get to the fights We got to fight and of course everybody in the school knows about this and so

It's at a high school in Queens with a very large gym arena. It's like a Catholic school and I managed to get somebody to drive me down there and arrived just in nick of time, but now like I'm all nervous so just to get there and I'm able to check in I wrap my hands get my gloves on and Out of nowhere comes my opponent in the dressing room and in the most casual way possible

He just puts out his left hand and says like hey, soos. That was his name But you can tell I'm not only like was there a scar down one side of his face like to his lip But you could just tell he had done this like 400 times before he was eight years old

Right. This is like checking in for work. That's right. It's complete And so now I'm starting to like realize Uh-oh This could be like a predicament and I get somebody who's never I've never met before to work my corner And this guy has no idea my style Not no idea He thinks like okay, I know how to fight and so he says okay kid listen

When you know we're gonna go in the ring. I want you to just Take it nice and easy you move move around a little jome the jab and let's see what happens So start to walk in the reiner and this is like mid 70s In fact, it's not too not

Right around a few years before the rocky movie came out, you know the great white hope Well, I'm like the only white fighter on this card and 90% of the audience is all white Okay, so When I come in the ring, it's like the great white hope has finally arrived like people are standing cheering going nuts and Looking around and it's like it's surreal. I've lost sense of where I'm at I'm this in one ear. I got okay move around jab. I've forgotten who I am And we get to the ring

Go to the center and get the instructions and I am like completely lost. I do not know what happened All I remember was Getting up actually my eyes opening and Seeing like three fingers that were very blurry and then like I'm hearing four five six and I get up

And now I can kind of see clearly and hey sus is coming at me and his right hand comes back And it's like right in front of me Right in front of me and the bell rings Okay, and so I go back to the corner and now I'm pissed Like what that what just happened to me like get in there throw your punches Just go at him

And I'm sitting on the stool the manager is saying something. I don't even hear what he's saying because all I'm hearing is myself Just screaming at myself throw punches remember who you are In the meantime the reference coming over and he's saying like son are you okay? Hey, are you okay? I'm saying of course. I'm okay. I'm gonna kick his ass I'm gonna come out you're gonna see some punches next thing you know like the referee is like waving his hands and stopping the fight

I didn't respond to him. I was like I was out So this dialogue that you were having with yourself like that was entirely internal that's right I know Ha the worst part of all this is My dad is in the crowd and he brought like two of his childhood friends. Oh, good So now you can imagine what I'm hearing like anytime there's a family reunion

Anytime this comes up. We need a funny story. It's like. Oh remember cow in the golden gloves and so I'm hearing as again and again and again over the years and finally Must have been well like almost 20 years later Right after I meet the woman in Brazil. She moves to New York. We get married and I'm watching the TV and Julio says our chavez the great Mexican champion junior well to weight 140 pounds He was 85 86 and 0 at that point

And I'm watching him on TV as he's cornering an opponent. I got a big bag of chips between my legs and at this point But right after the marriage he's put on a bunch of weight So that got a beer belly. Yeah, so I got a beer in one hand chips in the other belly between them And I'm screaming at the TV come on finish him off. What are you doing finish him off Julio

And my wife looks at me and says hey like calm down. We've heard your boxing stories because that was the first thing When my family met her that they indoctrinated her You know about cow in the golden gloves don't you So I look at her I look at the TV and it's clear what needs to be done here

Because I've got to get my man to it back And I said to my wife you know what You see that guy on the TV Julio says are chavans I'm gonna fight him And so naturally Like you're crazy forget it you know we've heard the story but now I know I have to do this to close this chapter in my life no matter what No just to place it's at the time you're writing for S.Core Actually when we moved to New York I Had written or I was writing from magazine called gq and the editor

At the time when my editor at gq was a guy named David Granger who later became the editor of sqire And when he did he brought me in a bunch of writers with him So this all started at gq and you know the day after my wife is laughing at me I'm marching to david granger's office and I say hey you want to buy a story I'm gonna go fight Julio says are chavans He says what?

I give him the background And he said there let me go in and check what my boss I see what her insurance boss it looks like oh they made me that was the first thing you can have to sign documents saying We're not responsible for this. This is all on you I said that's fine and I go down to the time square gym. I'm 42nd Street at the time and and

These rickety old wooden steps. It was like something out of the past like you could literally hear each foot that you put down and then there's like the drumbeat of the bags and you walk up there and Since I had followed boxing I knew who people were and I just start looking around at the trainers And there was a guy I recognized his name was Harold Weston and he had fought Tommy Burns Well-to-white champion. Tommy Burns was nasty. Yeah, and he had actually done pretty well

He was a very slick boxer. He wasn't that tall and Tommy Burns was like six two six three tremendous reach and unbelievable power in his hands and I think that fight went a while. I know Tommy scored a TKO but Harold had done pretty well avoiding the punishment and so I went over to him and I said hey, um I'm gonna be fighting Julio says our job is you think you're can train me And now he's just like what what is this? Like who are you here looking for the hidden cameras?

You got it. That's exactly it and then he's called this guy says he's gonna fight Julio says our chop is everybody in the gym is laugh I-are you a professional? No, I'd like are you an amateur? Well, I have one fight In the Golden Gloves 20 years ago it didn't turn out

And now Harold saying like okay, okay, you're really gonna do this, huh? I'll tell you what you come back tomorrow I Three o'clock and we'll do a little workout and we'll see So I come back the next day and this guy he just Torch him me the whole point was

Get out of here. You're not fighting Julio says the chavis you have no idea what it's like to be a boxer a little respect for the craft here and after three hours I'm literally I was reduced to tears again and again and again and I just kept going and

I remember getting home to my apartment and like I rang the door of home The door opened I literally collapsed into my wife's arms and it's like she dragged me to the tub and We had hot water going she threw in some epsin salts and I just like laid in there for like three hours Unable to move and When I left the gym everybody in gym was placing bets whether I was gonna come back the next day And I did and that was the first moment where hey that's interesting

And he said okay, I understand you're writing this for GQ. He was a fashionable guy So that lured him in you know the style element and he said so you're really gonna do this and I said yeah I said look I'm just asking for one round with Julio says their chavis One round

That's it, but I'm going out there and I'm giving it my all he said well look Let me show you ways to get through that round now remember is a slick boxer I'm gonna teach you how to move and you will survive we can do this if he's taking this really seriously You're going down, but We don't know how he's gonna react maybe he'll be curious and I will teach you how to move around the ring and protect yourself So that you don't die Uh And now in my mind I'm also now Thinking about

The fight between Roberto Durán and Sugar Ray Leonard. I don't know if your members a second fight no No, moss. That's right where in the middle of the fight. We don't know what really happened It's never fully been explained in the first fight they had Durán won by a decision in Montreal and afterward he went back to Panama as a national hero

50,000 people waiting for him at the airport and he just had like a three-month binge party and Gained like 50 pounds In the meantime Leonard after his first loss went back home and was like training the next day for the rematch So they set it up to have an immediate rematch six months later and

After with maybe two months left Durán started to train now. We had to take off 40 or 50 pounds He was in no condition to do this But he dramatically lost the weight And We'll never know but he was overweight a few days before the fight now whether he took

X-lax or something to purge his system or whether After he made the weight he went out and ate three steaks and a bunch of orange juice and We know that his stomach was not in the best of shape But we also don't know if When he got in the ring His stomach was bothering him or Leonard

Adopted a style that wouldn't allow Durán to hit him and basically broke Durán mentally So we don't know if it was a stomach or his mind or both But midway in the fight Durán basically just throws up his hands and says no more no more and Leonard celebrates and everybody watching Was in disbelief because for 20 years Roberto Durán had been the epitome of the Macho man He was like Mike Tyson of the light weights in his era. He just bored straight ahead

Nothing could stop this guy. He was relentless and to see him quit was What I felt about my experience in the Golden Gloves so I basically had to somehow eradicate all that feeling And I had to do it in a way that's left me with some shredder pride at the end So Health says to me. Okay, look. I'm gonna teach you how to move and he was like very classy fighter And as he's showing me how to move around and then avoid punches. I said no Harold. No, no, no

It's not not the way we're gonna do this. No, no The first time I got in trouble because I didn't go out throwing punches And that's how I'm coming out this time I'm coming out Throw punches and I want to do it just like Joe Frazier Joe Frazier's short guy stocky arms just

Bob and we mean coming straight ahead and now says no No, no, I'm not gonna do this because basically now I'm asking Harold to teach me a style that is going to bring all of my energy Full focus full bore straight ahead right at one of the most damaging punters in this incoming missiles That's right and so

He's just fighting with me like there's no way. I'm not being a party to this if we do this we do it smart and you come out alive Like you're not going in there like holder is that gal you're not smoking the smoking caliper That's right nice and no I want you to teach me like Joe Frazier and he said Okay

You want to be smoking Joe? I can teach you how to be smoking Joe and he pulls out a rope and he sets it From one the top of the rope some one side of the ring to the other and he makes me start Bobbing him weaving under this rope now anybody who has never done this before like after a minute your thighs are burning And basically Harold's ideas I will make him do this so long that he comes to his senses and fights the way I tell him so I can protect him But I just

No matter how much it burns I just got down low and I just bobbed and weed and moved my head And then he's take me to the bags and now he's teaching me how to throw punches because I didn't know How to do any of this stuff and then you have to get in the ring And now like I'm 35 years old and all these kids are like 19 20 They'd love to get in the ring because they want to beat the crap out of me and believe me You know they were Because I did not know how to fight

But every day I just kept on going back. I literally train like a fighter It must've been for like four months And plus on the other hand I had to figure out a way to get Julio Sazor Chavez in the ring with me He didn't have no idea this He had no idea that you're in this intensive training camp

With no no agree to pawn fight. No not a clue He does know that I exist and I am training Three hours every afternoon plus running in the morning plus calisthenics at night eating just away heralds telling me My wake goes from I was about 165 now I'm down to less than 147 Closing in on 140 Chavez fights at 140 at this point. He's 87 and 0

With I don't know how many knockouts, but I think it was in the 80s very high percent. Yeah, very high percent I remember also just as a side note So I was mystified and just to captivated by who they're says our shop is that at some point It looked at X-rays of his head and his skulls like twice as thick

That's normal you would mean that's right. So he was used to coming straight at people And absorbing whatever punishment they were dishing out in order to land his shots and and believe me When herald Herde that I was doing they said look Cal

I know a guy who fought who low says our chavez name is one Laporte. Okay basically After that fight Laporte was pissing blood For a long time because one of chavez biggest shots was his left hook to the liver And he's saying like you don't understand this is a professional athlete at the top of his profession You know a lot of guys think oh if I if I was out on that football I would have made that catch they you know they see a professional drop the ball

I would have brought that in and lots of times they drop passes that the rest of us might have caught But you don't understand what it's like to be up against a professional athlete until you are Because even these amateur kids were knocking my head off every day

But I just kept on coming back up them steps kept on coming back up them steps finally A friend of mine the skinny guy Writing for sports illustrator have been sent to do a story about Julio Cesar Chavez So while he's out interviewing Julio Cesar Chavez he says tomorrow by the way, you know I got a friend wants to fight you is it okay if he comes and fights and Julio is a shark like send him send him over He only wants one round fine fine It'll be great So now Julio has said yes

It's like I'm just imagining it's like if you were second grade self in a different era had written to Tiger Woods being like my friend in second grade He wants to play you in golf like sure. Yeah, why not send him over yeah I think and like Julio is a very he's a fun loving guy So You know it was maybe he saw it as a joke. I don't know and so at this point it's like months. I've been training

Now you look at my body man. I got a six pack and now I'm getting in a ring and I was up against an amateur who was really beating me up badly in the beginning And then one day he threw a right hand in my head and I ducked under it and I clocked him with a right hand And he just went sprawling backward and now like It's starting to think okay Julio Are you ready are you ready for this all the people in the gym or laugh at this all part of like a community Where like what is gonna happen

And so at this point dq meanwhile is funding this they're funding all the training and they're gonna fund my trip to Mexico. They got to send photographers. They'll send my wife Now I got an entourage coming out of Mexico to fight Julio says our challenge and

He's training to fight pernell wittaker. This is like the biggest fight in his life and He's actually not really training that hard we're supposed to have Our fight like while he's in training and I'm saying that he's going to different towns and Having parties and so I'm starting to think this is after you arrived. This is after I arrived So I didn't know I thought well, maybe he's Normally like this, but something in my mind was same and if he's fine pernell wittaker

He should be a little more focused than this. So I'm waiting For this appointed day and Harold Weston my trainer New the president of the world boxing council Jose Suleiman who like set up a weigh-in and GQ made me a robe and like who Julio is very amused by all this if we we went out running one morning and The thing about it was Julio trains into lukemexico high altitude. So that was my first Moment where I said uh-oh

This is my finish. Yeah, because I trained really hard Back in New York, but all of a sudden at altitude you're not You're not the same and so we're running the morning and it comes to this day where okay. We're gonna do it So I show up. I got my gq robot. They invited kids from neighborhood and to come witness this and like the kids start like Oh, they this is a fight and so Julio is set up. I'm set up. We're ready to go The one thing Julio said was look. I can't wear

Eight-ounce gloves like you're gonna wear because I'm scared. I'm gonna hurt my hands So I'm just gonna like wear training gloves, but other than that and I said no headgear. I said This is a fight. I'm coming to fight you. So he just wanted to protect his hands and So he had these white gloves. I wouldn't call him pillowy, but there was cushion in there 12 or 16 ounces Yeah, it's something I don't know if they were 12 or 16, but they weren't eight like mine. That was the only difference and

Jose Suleiman president WBC. Yes, the guy ring the bell and all of a sudden I go charging straight in the style of Joe Frazier right at Julio's He looks at me and he's used to coming straight ahead and now he's saying like what's going Now here's the thing about this Harold said to me look You don't understand how good he is how quick he is you have no chance of hitting him Do you understand me like all the work you did?

There's only one chance you have and I'm gonna tell it to you you list to me you list to me good This is the strategy. I want you to throw just like I've been teaching you left jam Right hand straight right hand left hook Okay, he's gonna catch those punches. I want you to do it again left jam

Straight right hand left hook. He's gonna catch those punches And I want you to do it again left jam right hand Left hook and he's gonna catch him again And I want you to keep on doing that again and again and again do it 20 times

And then on the 21st time if you're still standing because we don't know He may just hit you in the liver and that's the fight If you're still standing If you do that 20 times in a row and you're still there go left hand Right hand and then come back with another right hand And so Bell rings and now he's like circling around trying to figure out like who is it's looting they coming up me like Joe

Frazier Bob and we've been snorting. I mean I could sound like Joe Frazier But he's so fast that just like Harold says I throw the left hand I throw the left jab he catches it throw the right hand he catches it. I throw the left hook. He catches it like the first time my daddy said okay. I know what you got and I'm just gonna see How much you can take in a little while?

But well we'll play this out. We'll play it out and so I keep storming in I keep throwing these three punches He keeps catching them he's moving me around But I keep throwing these three punches again and again and again finally two minutes into the round

I go left jab right hand and then you could almost see him lifting his hand to catch my left hook And I just throw the right hand and it just socks them in the jaw and He looks at me and he sprawls backward as a way of saying, uh-oh, okay, you caught me Ah, okay, okay, okay. He goes back like he staggered and then he smiles at me says, okay Now we're gonna fight now. We're gonna fight he comes in on me

and he throws a left hook to my liver. I'm telling you it was like Someone took the pipe of a Hoover vacuum cleaner attached the vacuum cleaner that was on full blast sucking up and just shoved it down my throat Down to my stomach and it's like my whole stomach is coming up through my mouth, right and I said And the thing about it was I just started throwing punches back It was his way of just saying I'm gonna give you just like a little taste But now I'm firing back because as bad as I was hurt

This was my moment. I had to avenge what happened to me when I'm 16 years old and I'm firing back Now he's starting to like now he's starting to hit me and so Fruit the rounds over I go back to my corner my lips are blue The altitude and that one shot literally took everything out of me But in my mind I did I'm here. I did it

And Julio he's training for his fight. He looks over at me says Altaro you want another and I said See moss and we did another one and then in the second round that he really started like He was having fun, but he was starting and it tagged me pretty good and you could tell Jose Pseulaman is watching this and he say Minute and a half into the round bring the bell ring the bell

In the forever the gringo casualty on our hands. That's right and so The bell rings and go back to the corner and we embrace he was really wonderful about it because What was cool about what he did was he He treated me What now that I think about it he treated me like The assistant to president johnson treated me. He didn't laugh He saw my punches coming. He saw what I could handle And then when he saw that I had like

I foxed him for a second. He said okay. I'll lift the game, but I'm not here to level him and so it was a really like wonderful experience I mean they had been teasing my wife asking her like how much insurance we had and stuff like that but at the end he really Rose to a high level in the way he handled the whole thing because at the end of it I walked out of it after going through everything I did I pushed myself as far as I could go

I got hit in the liver and I came back. So Now it's just a good story when you spoke to your wife after the two rounds later that night or whenever you actually had chance to decompress and be by yourselves How did she describe what was going through her head as she watched you guys after the first bell ring?

I think she was pretty scared I think she probably was watching with her hands over her eyes, but with her finger spread so that she could see and I think she was really proud and you know the thing about it is you realize It's not so much about

Winning and losing although you know my kids it's crazy because My kids hear the story and they tell their friends and like junior high school or whatever and their friends It did he win they have no concept, but the thing is I did win because I confronted myself

I had to go up those rickety steps every day I had to get the crap beating up out of me every day in order to learn how to duck a punch and I did I pushed myself as far as I could go and Now I get a great story out of it and there's no more

When I talk about the golden gloves. It's just a funny part of the story. It's not something that eats at me anymore I need that part of the story to set up the ending So I'm thankful that happened to me because without that Without a I wouldn't have done B which led to C

That's a healthy way to think about a lot of things I suppose if people even if they're not Storytellers or writers if they think about their mishaps or some of the Challenges they've had is the part A they needed to set up part B

You know what it is a great way of looking at life and man. I have taken a beating so many times and One of the great things about telling stories is When you realize that Okay, this beating I just took Maybe I can use that to get an advance From a magazine to do something cool and again and again, I use my mistakes foibles humiliating moments to come back and try to Make some sense of them and try them over those moments and it's again

You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to win, but you have to look deep inside yourself and Know that I respect myself for this and to this day like I I really do it it gets complicated when people look at the picture. I get a big picture at home of me hitting Julio and people look and it looks real

It looks authentic. It is real. It is real, but it lends people to say what happened I what was the result the result was I survived So Cal there's so many more stories that even if not on tape I will have to ask you about but perhaps we'll do around too I mean we have to talk at some point about Muhammad Ali we have to talk about Trump

We have to talk about the nearer. There's so many other things the James Beard award I mean the list goes on and on but I know you have a dinner to get to do you have a little bit of time for some of my customary

Rapid fire question. I love those questions. All right. I hope I have rapid fire answers They don't have to be so that's the whole twist on the phrasing of the rapid fire questions The questions can be rapid fire but your answers can be as long as you would like them to be I love those questions

All right, so the first that I usually start with is when you think of the word successful Who is the first person who comes to mind and why and you mentioned them during the course of this interview There are two people one is this kid Alex Benayan who's 23 years old He was in school at USC and

His parents had basically raised him to be a doctor to the point where During Halloween when he was a kid they would dress him up in scrubs Just like get the point that's where you're headed and he gets to college and He's got a stack of biology books next to him and he he just can't do it He's really smart But he's just not linked to it And he starts to wonder

What am I doing here? He's going to school at USC. It's a great school And he starts to wonder about this word success and he goes to the library and starts to look at Biographies of people who he deemed to be successful To see what the definition of success was and he's reading biography after biography and he realizes that The book that I'm looking for doesn't exist I need to go out and to interview these people to find out What they think success is and so he did and on his journey

I one of the people that he went to interview was Larry King and he actually Met Larry outside of Whole Foods when running down. He saw Larry Lee pushing his shopping cart And when we're running down the street Larry King Scared of Jesus that Larry and asked if he could interview Larry and Larry invited him to breakfast and when he arrived

Alex says I'm writing a book and Larry said to Alex Well, if you're writing a book then you should talk to this guy You should talk to Cal because he's written two of my books with me and he can help you So Alex did get to sit down to talk with Larry but I became very close with Alex at that point So when I think of success, I think of everything Alex was trying to find out That's one the second is another box of George Foreman

Who you might remember did you love his favorite boxer really? Oh, yeah, okay. She remembers old the old George

Now the old George was a bigger Mike Tyson. Oh my god terrifying Tyson was what six feet maybe George Foreman was six three 220 and just had a string of vicious knockouts and One the heavyweight title by knocking Joe Frazier down six times one time He literally hit him with an uppercut and uprooted Joe Frazier like he was a tree stump It looks like a superhero movie If for people I'm sure you can find footage of it

But if you look at George Foreman Frazier, you know knock down or knock out. I mean just the footage is unbelievable And you're looking at somebody there Who George Foreman grew up in a very tangled situation his personality was formed one by living in poverty He would go to school in the mornings with a brown paper bag that had no food in it And he would blow it up to make it look like there was food in it So the other he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the other kids on top of that

Is siblings his sisters would make fun of him. He was younger. They would say you a mo ahead You a mo ahead and George Foreman had no idea what a mo ahead meant But he knew it wasn't good and he would hear that and he would chase his sisters around when he heard you a mo

head you a mo head and finally years later he grew up and he found out what they were saying George Foreman's mom was married to Mr. Foreman But they separated for a while while they were separated Her mom went off with a guy named Leroy Moorehead but Steve George conceived George

and then went back to Mr. Foreman and so When he was born his siblings were foreman would call you a mo ahead you a mo ahead And so there was this angry part of George Very angry to the point where he told me People would be scared to ask him for an autograph when

He would walk into a place people would look down And he had this surling this was a big part of his demeanor And when he went to fight Muhammad Ali in Zayir he was an undefeated champ People feared for Ali's life and in fact Ali would not watch George Foreman hit the heavy bag

It was too scary this guy could hit that hard and what Ali saw was George Foreman had so much anger in him that when he came out He just came out to bludgeon whoever was in front of him And Ali had a sense that if he could make Foreman expend his energy

And not land those punches to have them punches come off his arms If he could infuriate Foreman to the point where Foreman lost his cool and punched himself out He figured out a way to win And naturally in the heat of Africa It was basically Ali set this thing up perfectly

Foreman arrived with a German shepherd Not knowing that the Zayirians Had in their history a memory of German shepherds being brought in by the Belgians to Keep him under control So the Zayirians immediately hated George Foreman And a chat grew out of it Ali Bumayi Ali kill him

And the bell rang and George Foreman came at Ali and Ali didn't move He just kept his back against the rope so his hands up This was the rope of the rope of the rope And George Foreman is just slugging away and Ali would think Open his guard up just a little say How you got him?

Then close his guard Foreman just getting more and more infuriated Just punch after punch first round Sec round Those of us who are watching And I was watching on closed circuit television And a big screen in St. Louis at time

You're almost crying because you were screaming and Ali get out of the way Dan's do something We couldn't see what was happening That he was just he kept talking and George we couldn't hear him talking Oh man that's it that's all you got Foreman is just drawing shot after shot after shot

And then all of a sudden in like the fourth round You see Foreman throw a shot and Ali just duck under it And then just throw a jab straight back in Foreman's face And Foreman's head snapped back And we realized Oh my god he's punched himself out As if I continue a few more rounds

Ali nails him in one right hand And it's so hot Foreman's exhausted Ali nails him with a right hand Foreman goes down Can't beat the count And he's crushed It must be a kin to what Ronda Rousey For those who are like younger And watch mixed martial arts What Ronda Rousey went through

After her recent defeat You think somebody is invincible And then all of a sudden One head kick later That's right And George Foreman For like 20 years Could never get another title shot He retired And he did something And he told me what he did And he said this is the hardest thing

When you talk about success I asked him a question about success And he said The hardest thing you can do In life is to change your character And basically in his early 40s He came back to boxing But he was completely different He was no longer the surly guy

He was a guy who would do ads for eating hamburgers Smiling and laughing Now Christopher wrong I remember his I want to say I remember his comeback Sort of a promotional videos Where he'd be going for his boxing run And people would be handing him food That's right That's right

And he starts his comeback I think more than 300 pounds Big guy He's a big guy and he's in his 40s But it's what he changed in his head Now he was smiling What did he do to change that He realized that surliness And that anger Is what brought him down Against Muhammad Ali Right So fast forward

He's 45 years old And he gets a heavyweight title fight Against a guy 20 years younger named Michael Moore Oh I remember Southpa Southpa Who is much faster Little lighter But should be able to move around George with ease And just put punches into George's face Without George being able to respond

But here's the thing Forman came into the ring Wearing the exact red trunks That he was wearing When Ali hit him and put him down And when Moore's Trainor saw that He recognized it And thought Uh oh Something's up here And basically George Didn't waste any energy He rearranged his character And more

The first nine rounds Is completely outboxed He kept his hands up Tried to land Could barely even land And his face started to get swollen And the 10th round started And his trainer Who Coincidentally Was Angelo Dundee Muhammad Ali's trainer Who was in the opposing corner In Zahir

Basically said to him, George You're way behind The power of the power And he was out wasting energy Just saw one moment And he threw a right hand And he still had the power He still had everything that he had When he was young, power wise And he clipped moyer straight on the drawer

And Michael Moore went down And couldn't beat the count And Forman went over to the corner Got down on his knees Thank the Lord And to me He needed to change who he was In order to have that Success And he did it at 45 So that's the best answer I can give you Ah, love George Forman

This just reinvigorated so much more Enthusiasm about Learning more about George And I remember, I've brings back so many memories Because I remember that fight also I want to say George used with I want to say was the crab defense In other words, he didn't hold his Forms together

Perpendicular to the floor But they were kind of crossed over In front of his face Such a good story Well, it was all designed to He knew he was going to endure punishment And he knew he had to do it in a way That expended the least amount of energy And he knew he just had to put himself

In the right position to lend that one shot So it's a beautiful story To see somebody And do something within themselves To change who they are And the history repeats itself Irony of that fight that he won Also, is that Michael was known as a very angry guy Had a criminal record

And probably lost for some of the same reasons That's right, in fact, I'd have to go back and watch the fight But I'm sure His trainer who was like aware Was probably saying you know That's right, in fact, I'd have to go back and watch the fight But I'm sure Where was probably saying you know

Your way ahead Take it easy Stay away And probably said what are you crazy I got this under control Boom one shot Incredible What is the book or books You've given most as gifts Other than your own Which obviously for people listening You know that I'll link to everything in the show notes as well

Hard question to answer Every meal You're going to have another experience with different people Different food So if I meet somebody I like to give books that I've loved And like I mentioned Meeting Alex And he says to me I want he didn't know how to write a book

And he's like I want to write a great book You could just tell it was bursting out of him And so I gave him Gabrielle Garcia Marquez is a hundred years of solitude For him to know If you've never written a book And you're going to tell somebody you want to write a great book All right, read this

And know what a great book is And so my gifts Ten to Judge what the person needs And then fill that need And then no different in wine If somebody's having a stake I'm probably not going to give them a reasoning Or something to compliment the stake If you So I'll give you more specific circumstance So let's say that someone came to you And they said you know what?

I'm a board billionaire And I want to give three books to every graduating High school senior In the country this year Wow What a question Okay One book That people should read And so these books on this book Actually says As Tony Morrison This is required reading Wow So that's the

And Tony Morrison is a great African American writer And this book is called Between the world and me And it's by a guy named Todd Nahisi Coats And it's a letter to his son About being A black male in America is required reading just because if we want to understand what is going on, we see what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri. It just seems like it's a month after month after month, we see protests and problems. And this is just a way of redirecting your eyesight to a place

that you normally wouldn't go. And it's amazing thing about this book because as I'm reading it, I was walking down the street and I passed a news box with the Los Angeles Times in it. And on the front page, there was this statistic that said that basically every juvenile that's incarcerated in the state of California, it costs us $260,000 a year. And more than any Ivy League education. There you go. And think of that. If you took that money and

put it into lifting that same kid, who knows what would happen. You know, there's DNA involved, there's a lot of stuff involved, but it just made me realize why aren't we putting the resources in before rather than just paying this money out, we don't even know that we're putting it out. And so it's just a book that makes you see the world differently. Another book that I would recommend is a book that I'm reading now.

And just for those people wondering between the world and me, this is a short book. This is about 130 pages National Book Award winner. I will order that soon as we finish this chat. The second book is okay if I give you two, because these two are coming back into two, just because these are two that I'm reading now. So it's just hot off the press. It's a book called Speak Like Churchill, Stan Like Lincoln. I'm carrying it around with me

as well. It's amazing. Yeah. You hit me at the right time with this question. It's written by James C. Humes. And there's for anyone who wants to speak, and if you're a high school senior at some point, you're going to have to get up and speak. It's a great book because there's all kinds of tips on everything about speaking. Subtitle 21 powerful secrets of history's greatest speakers. There's this great anecdote in this book that really helped me as I was preparing to give

my speech because it's hard to memorize a speech. And then I'm reading about Ronald Reagan, known as a great communicator, American president. Well, you know, when he spoke, he riveted people. And when he was a young man, again, we're talking about basically the same age as the people you just mentioned. What would you recommend for the high school senior? Actually, Reagan was just getting out of college and he got a job in radio in Iowa. And he was

very good conversational on the air. But then it came time to read the advertisements. And for some reason, he was so stiff and awkward reading these advertisements that the advertisers basically get up the air and they fired him. And he went back to his room and he's like feeling horrible about it because he loved being on the radio. He loved communicating. And he wondered, what can I do in order to get my job back? So I guess FDR was doing the

fireside chats and he realized how riveting those were. So he got those chats and he started to read them. But what he did was he would look at the words and then like almost memorize the phrase in his head, then look up and then say the words conversational. So he wasn't trying to memorize them by reading it off the page. He would just take a few of the words, then look up, give you those words, look down. He would never speak while he was looking

down. And then he went back to radio and that's how he did his advertisements and it worked. So it's a great, the book is just filled with little tips like that that will make it so much easier for anybody who's got to get up and give a speech. I am going to get another book for my list. Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies? You know, it's a really interesting question. I probably would have told you that there's

a movie, Cinema Paradiso. I would mention that but something happened to me recently where a documentary and a movie came together that provided this amazing experience. The documentary was called Man on Wire and it was about Philippines walk on a wire across the Towers of the World Trade Center. And it's amazing documentary. Everything that he had to go through to almost like a spy or an espionage agent figure out how to get up on the

roof. We're not even talking about how do you walk a rope? That's one thing. But then to wonder how do you get to the top of the World Trade Center as it's being built and get a wire from one side to the other to stabilize it at night when nobody's watching. And the documentary takes you through the whole thing. It's just amazing. And the way they pieced it together with the alternating black and white reenactments, just the cinematography and the pacing is genius.

Yeah, it's definitely my favorite documentary. But then last year, Robert Semeckis did a movie called The Walk, which is that Joseph Gordon Levin. That's right. I haven't seen it. Oh, here's the thing. I saw this movie nine times. The walk. The walk. I saw this movie nine times. But you got to see it on 3D IMAX because one of the innovative things about this film on 3D IMAX is you literally feel like you are on the wire. I mean, people left the theater vomiting. I knew

everything about that story because as you mentioned, I worked at Windows of the World. So when I was serving wine at the top of Windows of the World every day, I was looking down at basically what Philip Pateep was looking down at when he was crossing this wire. And I've seen the documentary. So I knew that basically not only did he walk on the wire, but he laid down on the wire on his back.

Unbelievable. And then the police are coming. And the police had been like haunting him for years because wherever he would try and juggle or walk the wire in order to get people to give change, they would be trying to chase him away. And so he had this cat mouse game going with the police all these years. And now he's on the wire more than 100 stories above New York City and the police are there and they can't touch him. You can do whatever he wants on this wire. And so like the

tables are turning. And yet in this movie, when he steps on that wire, I knew everything that was going to happen on that walk. I'm begging him, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Police don't do it. I completely suspended my disbelief. And let me tell you how much I started taking people like night after night to see this movie again and again, because I want to gauge their reactions. And gave them motion sickness pills before. And I told I warned them. I say, if you've got a

fear of heights, don't come. Go watch Robert De Niro in the apprentice or whatever they called that movie. What hit me was there's this one scene in the movie where he's learning how to walk the tightrope. And this is back in France. It's where he's from. And he's like two steps away from getting back to the platform. And he slips and has to catch the wire with his hand. And he's like 50 feet above ground or something. And he manages to get back to the platform. And he comes down

and his teacher is there. And his teacher basically says to him, it's the last two steps. The people who die, they die in those last two steps. Remember that. And in fact, Philippe Petit was paying him to get those lessons. And when Philippe Petit went to give him money for that lesson, the teacher said, no, this lesson you get for free. This doesn't cost you anything. So I knew, I knew this story cold. I'd read his book. I'd seen the documentary many times. And

I'm watching this film. And when he falls down early on to get that lesson, it's shot in a way where the pole literally comes out of the screen right at your head. Okay. So the first time you're just swooning, not swooning, you're swaying immediately to the right or the left to get out of the way. Okay. So now I'm watching the second time. I know this pole is coming out my head every time, on the ninth time, pole's coming straight out of my head. I'm ducking out of the way. It was that

visceral and experienced. And the direction was just amazing. I love the acting. And so if you can see

that movie on 3D iMacs, please do. It's just wonderful. Well, I guess I'll put out a call or request to perhaps the people involved with making that film if they happen to be listening, or if you know the people involved, since people might not get to see the theatrical release in 3D, talk to the people working with virtual reality, get in touch with the Oculus folks, or some of these other studios, Dacquet, or whomever might be able to translate some of this to

an immersive experience for folks. So that's coming down the pike too. Wow. That'd be beautiful. You know, I feel like we're just going to have to do around two sometime, but I'll ask you, you know, I'm going to come back anytime. I'll ask, I'll ask three more. Okay. If you could have a billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would you put on it? One word. Listen. Listen. I don't know what reaction that would get, but I would like to see the reaction on people's faces

when they saw that, because I think that listening is not an art form. Well, it is an art form. People just aren't using it as an art form, but it is an art form. And a lot of great things could be achieved through listening. What advice would you give your 30-year-old self? And if you could place us again where you were at 30. Okay. I would not give myself one word of advice, and I'll tell you why. Because if I would have given myself that advice at 30, it would have moved me

maybe one centimeter in one direction that put my life in a different place. And I needed to be on a very specific seat, on a very specific bus at a very specific time in order to meet the woman that became my wife and as a mother of my kids. So I couldn't have that moved in any way. I needed everything to happen just the way it did in order to have that moment in order to have the rest of my life. So after that, I'm sure there are times where I have given myself advice. Really,

what the time I need advice was when I was in college. And there was so much offered. And so little I took advantage of. What would your advice be to either your kids or to people going into college? They say, okay, what should I take? I just don't even know what to do with myself. Okay. Paradox of choice. I can't figure it out. If they want to travel, you're going to chance to learn like four languages, five languages. And it's going to be so relaxed. All you got to do is just

go into the class and then meet somebody from the opposite sex who speaks language. And you're going to be going out and talking in the new language. And you can do that over and over again in college. You got that time. One of the things, if it was me knowing that I wanted to be a writer or knowing that I'm now going to be speaking. And I'm going to be speaking about questions that

people ask when they're hiring, I would love to have studied human behavior. Because I know that when a company is looking to fill a job, if the person doing the interview understands the role that needs to be filled and understands human behavior, they can ask questions to the applicants that will fill that role in a really good way. That's my hunch. Have you ever heard the story of the book that Newt Gingrich used to navigate politics, at least one that he's

credited with a lot of whatever success he's had, chimpanzee politics. I'm not kidding. I am not kidding. I'm going to write that one down. I'm going to go home and order it. I am not kidding. So what about is a writer or to a kid who's graduating from college and says to himself or herself, should I go on to get my MFA or continue to say go to a specialty journalism school or writing school, if they'd only taken maybe one or two classes that required a lot of writing,

what advice would you give to them? I would tell them just right. And the great thing about it is, okay, I'm not knocking the schooling because as we talked about earlier, I owe everything to the University of Missouri Journalism School. It set me on my way and then the connections. On the other hand, all you need to do to be a writer is to write. And not only that, but all you need to do is to find places that are interested in taking your writing. It doesn't have to be for

much money, but you can go out, especially now. You don't even need a physical publication. Now you can just create a blog on the internet. Just start writing. So I would advise people to just, if you want to be a writer, write and just keep writing and keep writing. If you have the means and the will to go to school and get a teacher or teachers that can help you through, even better, but nothing should really stop you from writing and you shouldn't use, well, I need to go to school.

First, as an excuse to put off writing, I need to make the school make me right. You make you right. Yeah, you don't have that intrinsic motivation. It's going to be hard to make anything happen because you won't always have a school teacher to whack you with a ruler. That's right. And not only that, but the other thing is just put yourself in a position where you have no money and you need to

write something to make money. If you need to eat and you know, unless you can find a bar that's putting out olives and little ticket fingers, you're going to write and get paid so that you can eat. I remember talking to a friend of mine who's journalist writes for a number of very well-known newspapers and he always laughs when he asked to listen to book authors like myself. Sort of winch and pontificate about writer's block and he just scoffs at the whole idea. He's like,

I don't have the luxury of having writer's block. He's like, I have a deadline, a deliverable or whatever it is. 4 p.m. 5 p.m. He's like, no, I can't. Mu is about the subtleties of writer's block because he has to ship. Like he has to ship words every day or whatever it might be every week. What are your thoughts on writer's block if that's not to general question?

No, I only had a once. Okay. I only had a once. And what happened was I was writing for Asquire and working on a column called the Perfect Man and the idea was basically in line with this conversation, I was going to take all my flaws and all my mistakes and then go to experts who were going to teach me how to overcome them and then I was going to write about the experience so that everybody could have the collected wisdom. And so I learned how to walk through using

Alexander technique. I learned how to publicly speak by going in a boxing ring with Michael Buffer and announcing a fight. It's like a fun gig. That was great. I learned how to lose weight by going to Jack Elaine who was the exercise champion of his day. And I went through learn how to

barbecue through Stephen Reiklin author of the barbecue Bible. And one of the last things I did was go to learn about wine because if you are a man, you want to have a feeling that you can go into a restaurant with a group of people, the wine list comes to you and you don't feel like, oh man, what am I going to do? I don't know what's what here. And then you don't know if the waiter is going to try and unload a lousy bottle that they can't sell on you or a bottle for a lot of

money, you're helpless. So I wanted to learn enough to know how to walk into a restaurant with confidence and order what I want. And the solution to that was to be trained to be the Somalia for a night at Windows of the World, which sold for a time more wine than any other restaurant on

the planet at the top of the World Trade Center. And I had no idea where this adventure was going to send me, but it took me two years to learn all about wine because you didn't find out, you have to go to these places where they make the wine and you have to understand the difference between all of the varietals and the wine list of Windows of the World. There was hundreds of pages to know all those wines. It was almost impossible, but you start to get an idea. And I had

world-class Somalia is teaching me. And for one night, I was the Somalia at Windows on the World. It was an amazing experience. One of the great things I did is I had a guy who I knew come in. He brought his wife, it's like the first couple of the evening, and I seated them right next to a window, so you're looking down on New York from 106 stories or whatever. And I had a bottle of champagne, Lordeau champagne from France, which it basically was like a $10 bottle of champagne.

But nobody knew that. And this had been served at the Assembly, National, and France. It was like basic bottle of champagne. But I took it out to their couple. They were celebrating their anniversary. I walked over with a flourish, and I announced that I was serving Lordeau champagne, and that it had never been served at these heights before, and it would never be served at these heights again. And this woman looks at me. She didn't know who I was. Her husband did. And she just

broke out in tears. And then the husband had never tasted the champagne before, but they both supported. They both put it up and they said, Oh, cow, like we never knew what champagne was before this moment. And it teaches you that the wine and the moment are inextricably linked. And I can take a great moment and make a great wine out of it. And I can take a great wine and make a great moment out of it. In any event, the evening transpired. And it was great, but it was

profound. It's also funny. I'd spill wine on people's, there's down the glass, because I had to be moving really quick. There was a lot of people. And I, I, I, that's inexcusable that should never happen here. That bottle is on the house. Everybody at the table, this is great. And people at the adjacent table saying, come over here, spill some here, spill some here. And we get to the night.

This is delightful time and really memorable. Now I go home to write the story and like, I start to go through my notes because it's taken me two years to get this experience and the planes crash into the World Trade Center. And I remember going to the Brown Zero like a week later, the military took me around in the Humvee. And I guys still was so overwhelmed that I was almost knocked out when I saw it. Because I remember seeing like, it was this thin coat of white

dust over everything. And you could see on a parking lot, this coat of dust over the cars. And I actually said to the guy in the army who was taking me around and I said, well, why don't those people come back and get their cars? And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Cal, those cars don't have any owners anymore. And it's very hard to explain the enormity, but I just couldn't

write. How could I translate this experience of utter joy learning all about this amazing beverage that transformed lives, meeting all these friends along the way wherever you would go, it was like traveling around the world again. It would just open up a party and that party would invite you to another party and another party and another party. And so there I am having this amazing experience. And then on top of it, for one night, I was the Somalia and not only that,

but at the end, we're toward the middle of the night. Somebody, like people were pressing $20. My hand, they thought I was really the Somalia. And a few days later, somebody who came in that night, and they nobody knew that I wasn't the real Somalia. Somebody came in like three days later and asked for me. And so I was feeling so good about the experience. And right after that, the planes came in and took the towers down. And now I've got to write the story about this. And the editor,

he now knows he's basically bankrolled this thing for two years. Same guy who bankrolled me going up because Julio says they're chavis, bankrolled the wine story. I'm flying around the world. He's the wines in France, wines in Italy, the wines in Germany, going to California. And he allowed me to go through the whole experience. And now he knows something amazing has got to come out of this. Because I saw how much he put in. And we all know this seminal moment in American history. So he's

got to step up to it. And I couldn't. I would stare in front of the computer for hours at a time. And nothing would come out. Like my eyes would be bleeding. And every time I would go, have to go into the office to see the editor, like I knew we both knew, like where's the story? Where's the story? Years started passing. And he started to do things to try to like help me and push it out of me, whether it was lighthearted or hey, you know, it's like years now, the movie Sideways,

which is about wine. It come out. Wine is really hot now. Now is the time. So the editor is really trying to push the story out of me in the best way you can. Might be lighthearted with a little off-and-the-joke. It might be, hey, come on. Years now, we're waiting for the story. Movie Sideways comes out. It's a big hit in the wide wine world. And now he's saying, you know, this is the time that the story needs to come out. I can't do it. I go to the computer almost

night after night. And it's the most painful thing because I never had writers blocked for. But there was just nothing that would come out of me. It just wasn't, it's like a wine that wasn't ready to be served. It needed to be in the barrel. Only you don't know how long it needs to be in the barrel. And you're feeling all this guilt. And finally, I just took all my, I had these copious notes in boxes. And I put them down in the basement just, okay, let me just get it out

of my face. Because every time I would go into my office, I would see these boxes and I would just flinch. Oh, it seems like a huge just anxiety trigger. Yeah. I mean, the undone homework assignment. The ultimate undone homework assignment that your boss has basically bankrolled for a couple of years. And so you basically know that you can't go in with any more big ideas until that is completed. And so it really affected me. But there was nothing I could do about it. I put these

notes away in the basement. And then we had this terrible ice storm. I was living in North Carolina at the time. And everything turned into mold in my basement. And all the notes got black. So I had like no, no notes of anything. Basically, everything had been wiped out. My notes were ground zero afterward. And now, like, how am I going to do this? But you know, it was a writer taught me something very early in my career. His name was Harry Cruz. I don't know if you've

ever heard him. No. Wrote a book called Feast of Snakes. And if you're a young man and the Harry Cruz also wrote for S. Quarer. If you're a young man and you don't even know how this book would translate now. But it was a real kind of macho. The name of the feast of snakes. He wrote another book called Car about a guy eating a car. This guy was out there. And as soon as I read these books, I just said, I got to meet this guy. I got to meet this guy. So I started to tell people,

you know, I'm going to go meet Harry Cruz. And people started looking at me saying, are you sure? I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, he's drinking his legendary plus the amount of drugs he puts in his body. You're not going to be able to stay with this guy. You're going to hurt yourself. And so naturally, I get in my car. I drive 20 straight hours down to Gainesville, Florida. This is when I was living in New York. And I drive right up to his house and knock on the door.

And there's no response. And knock again, no response. And I can almost hear like a snoring. So I just opened the door. Oh my God. And Florida. And Harry is laid out on a lazy boy chair with like an empty bottle of rum on his belly. And I get close to him and he just his head is just moving around. He's like getting himself out of sleep. He's like, what do I say? Like, Harry,

I just read a few snakes just drove 20 hours straight to see you. Well, why don't you drive over to Gator Gulch and let's get us some alcohol. I drive over to the Gator Gulch. And I think that was what it's called something like that. And they've already got like a carton filled with alcohol. The usual. The usual. I come back and we start drinking and like naturally after a little while, I just been driving for 20 hours. And now I'm drinking and I'm starting to float away. And he's

getting more lucid. And this is before the drugs came out. And I said to him, Harry, you're a writer. Do you keep a diary? How can you drink like this and do all these drugs and remember anything? And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, boy, the good shit sticks. And it was that line that saved me when I needed to write the wine story because I always knew the good shit sticks. The moments that were truly great were the moments that I needed. And almost 10 years passed.

And in a chance meeting with a woman who was in a position, a terrible position, she had loved her husband. Her husband had died. She was alone, time had passed. She was ready to go out and meet somebody again. And she said, like, I'm older. I've never really dated. I don't know what to do. And I said to her, join a wine class because you will meet people. And just by the way they talk about their wines, you're going to know if you should like them or not.

And she said, wow, that's a good idea. And something in that conversation opened up a pathway. And then I was sitting, I went to a bar and I'm sitting down and remember this whole thing started with me just wanting to be able to give somebody instruction. When the wine list came before me, I could give the way to instruction. This is what I want without feeling like I didn't know what I was doing. So I have this conversation with the woman and a couple nights later I said, you know what?

Let me just write down the good shit, the good shit that stuck. And I'm sitting at a bar and I'm writing down all the stuff, the good shit that stuck. And the bartender's pouring drinks and a waiter came back with a Italian dessert wine. And there's a white wine and the waiter said to the bartender that people they don't like it. They say there's something wrong with it. And so it was Vincento. And so the bartender was a young guy and I think that he really didn't know much

about wine. He was like a college kid to the bartender. And so he said, well, look, Vincent, it's not cheap. And I said, wait a minute, let me smell that wine because he brought the wine back. I said, pour me glass. And so I swirled it around, I put it up to my nose and I said, no, it's not in. And the way I said it, I must have said it with such conviction that the bartender said, oh, okay. You said it the same way

that Jesus said his name in the locker room. That's right. That's exactly it. I knew this wine was no good. And so the bartender said to me, well, like how'd you know? And we got into a conversation. And he had told me that he was had been in a choir. He said, I'm not really a bartender. And he explained that when he was young, he was a singer. And he had actually gone to the Vatican and sang an acquire for the Pope. So I said, okay, fine. Then you understand this. When you put that wine

to your nose, all right. Listen to it. You can tell that as there's something certainly in the taste, maybe you can get it from the smell, it starts out okay, but there's somebody singing off key in there. And I don't know if it's the way the wine was stored, but in the middle of that taste of wine, are off keynotes. And I don't know. Maybe the wine was a little corked. Maybe it was just a way

they stored it. But as soon as he heard that, like he realized it, it translated for him. And okay, when somebody in the choir has got a voice that isn't hitting what the rest of us are hitting, it's a problem. And he understood that. And he looked at me and he said, thanks. And I knew that was the end of the story. And as soon as he said it, I went to the keyboard and I wrote the whole thing out. Do you recall the title of the piece? Yeah, it's called Drinking at 1300 feet. Drinking

at 1300 feet. Yeah. Cal, you're a great man. You're a very, very generous person. And I want to let you get to your dinner and would love to direct people to where they can find you. And more about you because you've spent a lifetime gathering, under thing, and telling other people's stories. Of course, you've told some of your own, but I want to hear more and more of these stories. Next time I feel like we should have some wine. Next time we'll do this for wine. But where can

people find you online? Okay, they can go to calfessman.com. That's C-A-L-F-U-S-S-M-A-N. .com. And send a message. I'm just starting to speak. Anybody interested in listening to some stories or getting tips on interviewing or tips on interviewing for a job? I'm here. Go to the website and they can click on the contact form or something like that to let you know. Are you on social media at all? Not really. This is all like a new adventure for me. I don't even know how to promote myself.

It's just happening. Maybe I can give you the choir, acapella analogy version of this type of thing. Cal, this is so much fun. I always love our conversations. And as always, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a beautiful experience. I hope we have many more. And let me tell you something. You are really good at what you do. Thank you. Well, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and you've been very, very generous with with your time and with your advice. So I really do appreciate

it. And for everybody listening, thank you for listening. Hey 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 people subscribed to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share

the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles, I'm reading, books, I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on. They get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts, guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then

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