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Episode: #743: Dr. Jane Goodall and Cal Fussman

#743: Dr. Jane Goodall and Cal Fussman

Author: Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig
Duration: 03:25:51

Episode Shownotes

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed 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. The episode

features segments from episode #421 "Dr. Jane Goodall — The Legend, The Lessons, The Hope" and episode #145 "The Interview Master: Cal Fussman and the Power of Listening."Please enjoy!Sponsors:Momentous high-quality supplements: https://livemomentous.com/tim (code TIM for 20% off)Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: https://eightsleep.com/tim (save $350 on the Pod 4 Ultra)Wealthfront high-yield cash account: https://wealthfront.com/tim (Start earning 5.00% APY on your short term cash until you’re ready to invest. And when you open an account today, you can get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more.) Terms apply.Timestamps:[00:00] Start[04:48] Notes about this supercombo format.[05:51] Enter Dr. Jane Goodall.[06:19] Connecting with Louis Leakey and becoming his secretary.[09:43] Gaining acceptance among chimpanzees.[13:09] Primate personalities, compassion, and the story of Old Man saving Marc Cusano.[17:34] Observations of chimpanzee compassion and violence, and inferences about human nature.[19:19] Explaining variance in chimpanzee attitudes toward dominance.[20:55] Cultivating hope to overcome apathy.[26:19] Mr. H, Gary Haun, the indomitable human spirit, and overcoming adversity.[29:37] Dr. Goodall's billboard.[31:20] Enter Cal Fussman.[32:56] Quincy Jones' unique book signing practice.[34:19] Cal's pivotal childhood moment.[38:55] Deconstructing the skill of asking great questions.[42:43] Contrasting interview styles from different life stages.[48:25] University of Missouri Journalism's role in Cal's career.[52:24] Drinking with Hunter S. Thompson and Johnny Depp.[55:45] Cal's start in international travel (and my family trip to Iceland).[1:06:34] How a single question got Cal six months of lodging.[1:14:45] Common mistakes and lessons learned about the art of asking questions.[1:23:30] Honing the ability to tell stories.[1:27:11] A life-changing event at the end of Cal's travels.[1:31:43] Perfecting the conversational interview.[1:33:43] Speaking at Summit at Sea.[1:46:15] What Mikhail Gorbachev taught Cal about the art of the interview.[1:55:45] Boxing Julio César Chávez.[2:30:31] Why Alex Banayan and George Foreman define success for Cal.[2:42:58] Most gifted books.[2:49:47] Favorite documentaries and movies.[2:55:37] Cal's billboard.[2:56:08] Advice to Cal's 30-year-old self.[2:59:05] Overcoming writer's block with Harry Crews' advice.[3:18:56] Parting thoughts.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
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00:01:36 Speaker_02
They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. This episode is brought to you by Momentus.

00:01:47 Speaker_02
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00:02:33 Speaker_02
In fact, I've been taking it daily, typically before podcast recording, as there are various studies and reviews and meta-analyses pointing to improvements in short-term memory and performance under stress.

00:02:45 Speaker_02
So those are some of the products that I've been using very consistently, and to give you an idea, I'm packing right now for an international trip. I tend to be very minimalist, and I am taking these with me nonetheless.

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Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested, which in this case means informed sport and or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else.

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00:03:49 Speaker_02
Momentous ships internationally, so you have the same access that I do. So check it out. Visit livemomentous.com slash Tim and use code Tim at checkout for 20% off. That's livemomentous, L-I-V-E, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash Tim and code Tim for 20% off.

00:04:10 Speaker_01
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

00:04:16 Speaker_04
Now would've seen an appropriate time.

00:04:19 Speaker_03
What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

00:04:24 Speaker_04
Me, Tim, Ferris, Joe.

00:04:32 Speaker_02
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss.

00:04:35 Speaker_02
Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss 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.

00:04:49 Speaker_02
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 passed 1 billion downloads.

00:04:58 Speaker_02
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.

00:05:10 Speaker_02
And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes, because my goal is to encourage you to yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars.

00:05:24 Speaker_02
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.

00:05:34 Speaker_02
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.blog slash combo. And now without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening.

00:05:51 Speaker_01
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.

00:06:12 Speaker_01
You can find Dr. Goodall on Twitter and Instagram at janegoodallinst.

00:06:20 Speaker_02
I would love just to spend a moment, and we don't have to spend a lot of time on this, but discussing Louis Leakey. And I've read various accounts of how you connected with him, but I'd like to hear it directly from you.

00:06:34 Speaker_02
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.

00:06:44 Speaker_00
Okay, well, I'd been staying with my friend for about a couple of months, and somebody said to me at a party, if you're interested in animals, you really should meet Louis Leakey.

00:06:57 Speaker_00
He was curator at that time of the Natural History Museum, but of course, he's best known as a very eminent paleontologist. He'd spent his life with his second wife, Mary Leakey, searching for the fossils of Stone Age ancestors across Africa.

00:07:16 Speaker_00
I was very shy back then, but I rang the museum and said I'd love to make an appointment to meet Dr. Leakey. A boy said, I'm Leakey. What do you want? But anyway, I was so passionate about animals. Anyway, I went to see him and he took me all around.

00:07:33 Speaker_00
He asked me many questions about the stuffed animals that were there. I think he was impressed that because I'd read everything I could about Africa, I could answer so many of his questions.

00:07:46 Speaker_00
Well, I mentioned earlier that boring secretarial course that I did

00:07:52 Speaker_00
two days before i met leaky his secretary had suddenly quit he needed a secretary and there i was you never know in this life so i'm suddenly surrounded by people who can answer all my questions about the mammals and the birds and the reptiles the amphibians the insects the plants

00:08:12 Speaker_00
It was Hepburn. Oh, you asked Leakey, what did he see in me? 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.

00:08:31 Speaker_00
So the fossils of early man that he was uncovering, you can tell a lot from a fossil, whether the creature walked upright, the muscle attachments, the wear of the tooth shows you roughly the kind of diet, but behavior doesn't fossilize.

00:08:48 Speaker_00
So he reckoned there was a ape-like, human-like common ancestor about six million years ago, just now generally accepted, and that he thought, well, if Jane finds behavior in chimps and humans today that is similar or the same,

00:09:05 Speaker_00
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.

00:09:21 Speaker_00
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.

00:09:35 Speaker_00
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 would just fish it lucky.

00:09:43 Speaker_02
he seems to have picked the winning lottery ticket, or at least a very formidable combination of traits.

00:09:51 Speaker_02
And if we take that mention of patience, or his belief that in part women make better observers because of more patience, if we flash forward then to you landing in Gombe, Stream National Park, Tanzania, if I'm getting the pronunciation correct.

00:10:09 Speaker_02
I was watching the first Nat Geo, or maybe not the first, but one of the more recent Nat Geo documentaries about you, titled Jane, and in that, and also in your writing, I believe it took something like five months

00:10:26 Speaker_02
of constant effort and having chimpanzees flee from your presence to finally be what we might call accepted. And I have two questions related to that. The first is, what do you think made the difference? Why did they go from fleeing to accepting?

00:10:46 Speaker_02
And second is when you first really had the opportunity to look deeply into a chimpanzee's eyes, what did you see? And just as importantly, what did you feel?

00:10:58 Speaker_00
Well, the acceptance in the movie, it sort of looked as though 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.

00:11:13 Speaker_00
I called him David Greybeard because he had a lovely white beard. And because he began to let me get closer and closer,

00:11:22 Speaker_00
I think if I came to a group in the forest and he was with that group, because they separate into separate small groups and sometimes alone, but if he was there, then the others were ready to run, but he was sitting calmly.

00:11:35 Speaker_00
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.

00:11:51 Speaker_00
I'd made it just in time for the six months money ran out. So the fact that I'd seen David Gravehead use and make tools, the Pischka termites, thought to be something only humans were capable of.

00:12:06 Speaker_00
That's what brought the geographic in right at the beginning, six months after the study began. They agreed to go on funding it.

00:12:14 Speaker_02
Was David Greybeard the first chimpanzee that you were able to get close enough to to sort of connect eye to eye with?

00:12:25 Speaker_00
Definitely.

00:12:26 Speaker_02
What did you see and feel when you had that opportunity?

00:12:30 Speaker_00
Well, I saw that I was looking into the eyes of a thinking, feeling being. And it was not so surprising as you might think, because I'd always felt that animals were thinking, feeling beings.

00:12:46 Speaker_00
But with the chimpanzee, they're so like us, behaviorally and biologically, that 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.

00:13:04 Speaker_00
That was the thing. He didn't run. He just sat there and looked back at me.

00:13:10 Speaker_02
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.

00:13:26 Speaker_02
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 observed chimpanzees not just using tools but constructing tools for, in this case, consuming termites.

00:13:47 Speaker_02
It made news around the world. You had many other observations. I believe also that the belief that chimpanzees were purely vegetarians. Also, you observed not to be the case with their consumption of other primates, exactly.

00:14:04 Speaker_02
And you noted, and I know this was a real, in some eyes, a faux pas at the time, real personalities. And you might have been accused of anthropomorphism and all of these things, but you observed different personalities in different chimpanzees.

00:14:20 Speaker_02
And I thought perhaps we could just start with a story, and that is the story of Old Man and Mark Cusano, if I'm getting the pronunciation right.

00:14:31 Speaker_02
And then I have questions about a few other chimpanzees you personally had quite a bit of interaction with.

00:14:37 Speaker_00
Mark Cusano and Old Man. This was on an island in Lion Country Safari in Florida. and Old Man had been in a medical research lab. He'd been captured from the wild.

00:14:52 Speaker_00
His mother was shot, and he was called Old Man because an infant chimp who's distressed and frightened, they have wrinkled faces and they huddle and they don't look very old. And he was lucky. He was about 12.

00:15:08 Speaker_00
And for some reason, he was no more used to the lab. And he was put on an island with three females, two of them from medical research, one from a surgerist. And Mark Cusano was employed to look after them. And he was told, don't go anywhere near them.

00:15:24 Speaker_00
They're vicious. They hate people. They're much stronger than you. They'll kill you. So he threw food from his little paddle boat onto the island and began watching them. A baby was born, so Old Man was the father.

00:15:39 Speaker_00
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 he began going closer and closer. And one day, he held out a banana in his hand.

00:15:53 Speaker_00
When Old Man took it, he said, I know how you felt when David took a banana from you. One day he went onto the island. One day he groomed old man. One day they played an old man. laughed, and they became basically, it was a friendship.

00:16:14 Speaker_00
And then one day, Mark slipped, it had been raining, fell flat on his face, unfortunately frightened this infant who was the love of old man's life. The old man used to protect him and carry him and share food.

00:16:30 Speaker_00
Well, the mother, hearing her child scream, raced and attacked Mark, biting into his neck.

00:16:36 Speaker_00
The other two females, to support her, ran in, one bit his wrist, one bit his leg, and Mark thought, well, how on earth am I going to get away from them, because they're much stronger than us?

00:16:48 Speaker_00
He looked up, he saw an old man thundering across the island with a furious scowl on his face, and He thought his time had come to die and come to protect his precious infant.

00:17:00 Speaker_00
But what the old man did was to pull those three screaming rose females off Mark and keep them away while Mark dragged himself to safety. And I met Mark when he came out of hospital. He said, no question, old man saved my life.

00:17:17 Speaker_00
And so, you know, I always think if a chimpanzee who's been abused by people can reach out to help a human friend in time of need, then surely we with our greater capacity of compassion can do the same to the chimpanzees in their time of need.

00:17:34 Speaker_02
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

00:17:52 Speaker_02
one of the more aggressive, but I'd love to hear you speak to this. How would you explain the variance among chimpanzees? Was it also innate? Did it seem to stem from some type of trauma? How did you think about that, and perhaps Frodo specifically?

00:18:11 Speaker_00
Well, they're all different. Some are much more aggressive than others, just like we are. Frodo was spoiled. He was a spoiled brat. His mother was the highest-ranking female at the time, Fifi.

00:18:27 Speaker_00
He had one older brother who always came to his defense, as did Fifi, and so he always got his own way. He was a real bully, so there were two young ones playing, same age as him perhaps,

00:18:43 Speaker_00
and he came to join them, they would stop playing immediately because they knew if he entered the game he'd suddenly become rough and cause one of them to be hurt.

00:18:52 Speaker_00
So it wasn't just humans, field assistants, and especially me that he targeted with his displays, hitching over, dragging. I got it worst of all. I was stamped upon. But he was not trying really to hurt me. He was trying to assert his dominance.

00:19:11 Speaker_00
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 for sure.

00:19:19 Speaker_02
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 a conscious or potentially conscious political maneuver to get better access to resources and so on, or is it really just

00:19:38 Speaker_02
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.

00:19:49 Speaker_00
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.

00:20:03 Speaker_00
Some of the males get to the top by sheer 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

00:20:17 Speaker_00
who get to the top by skillfully forming alliances, and they only tackle a higher-ranking male when their ally is there to support them. And then there are some who just persist.

00:20:29 Speaker_00
They persist in charging towards groups of superior males who are grooming each other, startling them so that they run away. And in the end, this was Goblin. In the end, I think the other male thought, well, he's just going to go on doing this.

00:20:44 Speaker_00
All right, let's just let him get to the top. We don't care anymore. That's how it seemed. And he ran ten years, and he was small, and he wasn't very aggressive at all.

00:20:55 Speaker_02
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.

00:21:10 Speaker_02
And his advice, he had a number of pieces of advice, but his first was, teach your children to be optimists. It seemed like a precursor or a prerequisite for so many other things. I'm looking at a Time magazine article that you wrote in 2002,

00:21:31 Speaker_02
I just want to read one paragraph and then ask you to elaborate or speak to it. Here's 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.

00:21:45 Speaker_02
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.

00:21:57 Speaker_02
You are just one person in a world of six 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.

00:22:08 Speaker_02
And I'd love to hear you speak to that, and also just to how you cultivate hope, whether that's in yourself or the people you speak to.

00:22:17 Speaker_00
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

00:22:34 Speaker_00
You know, if it's just you picking up trash, if it's just you saving water, then it wouldn't make slightest bit of difference.

00:22:44 Speaker_00
But because 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.

00:22:55 Speaker_00
So the message again being, think about the consequences of the small choices you make every day. What do you eat? Where did it come from? Did it harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like the intensive farming?

00:23:09 Speaker_00
Is it cheap because of child slave labor somewhere? Make ethical choices. And because millions of people are making ethical choices, we're moving in the right direction.

00:23:20 Speaker_00
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.

00:23:35 Speaker_00
And secondly, to start by saying it's very bizarre that what makes us more different from chimps and other animals is this explosive development of our intellect. I mean, look at what's happening now with just social media is one example.

00:23:53 Speaker_00
You and I talking, we're far apart. We're reaching millions of people. I mean, it's quite amazing, isn't it, when you think about it? So how odd that this most intellectual creature is destroying its only home.

00:24:06 Speaker_00
So there seems to be this disconnect between the clever brain and the human heart, which is love and compassion. And, you know, we're thinking about how does this help me now instead of how does it affect future generations?

00:24:21 Speaker_00
So now we're beginning to use our brains or scientists to come up with more and more sophisticated technology that will help us live in more harmony with the natural world.

00:24:35 Speaker_00
If governments would sponsor clean green energy rather than succumbing 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.

00:24:52 Speaker_00
and UAE as well, but each one of us can use our brains to think about the environmental footprint we make each day. And then there's the resilience of nature. I tell people stories about areas that were totally destroyed, rivers, lakes.

00:25:09 Speaker_00
Lake Erie was so polluted that it caught fire. It was so polluted, and now there's fish swimming in it because people cared. Animals on the brink of extinction are being given another chance. We just have to save the habitats.

00:25:25 Speaker_00
We have to change the mindset of those companies that want to destroy a tourist to make money out of wood or destroy forest to get minerals out of the ground to make more money.

00:25:40 Speaker_00
But then we've got to solve poverty because as you quoted earlier, if you're really poor, what can you do except cut the last tree down because you're desperate to grow food to feed your family, eat the cheapest junk food because you've got to do it to live.

00:25:58 Speaker_00
We have to solve poverty and the unsustainable lifestyle of the rest of us. But you know, my last reason for hope is this indomitable human spirit, the people who tackle what seems impossible and won't give up.

00:26:13 Speaker_00
And they may die as a result of their conviction, but in the end they succeed.

00:26:19 Speaker_02
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 Mr. H? Who is Mr. H?

00:26:37 Speaker_00
Mr. H was given to me 28 years ago by a man called Gary Horne, which is why he's Mr. H. Gary went blind when he was 21, decided to become a magician. Everybody said, but Gary, you can't be a magician if you're blind. He does shows for children.

00:26:57 Speaker_00
I've watched him three or 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 them. And he'll say, something might go wrong in your life. You can't tell. If it does, don't give up.

00:27:14 Speaker_00
There's always a way forward. And he does scuba diving, cross-country skiing, skydiving. But I think most amazing, he's taught himself to paint. And when he gave me Mr. H, he thought he was giving me a stuffed chimp. But Mr. H has a tail.

00:27:32 Speaker_00
and I made him hold the tail. He said, never mind. Take him with you, and you'll know I'm with you in spirit. So he's one of those examples of the indomitable human spirit doing skydiving when you're blind, teaching yourself to paint.

00:27:48 Speaker_00
And there's a picture in this. He's done a little book called Blind Artist, which you can only get on Amazon. and there's a portrait of Mr. H. He's never seen him. He's only felt him, and it's unbelievable.

00:28:04 Speaker_02
And Mr. H, if I'm not mistaken, has been many places with you. I don't know if you still have Mr. H, but- Oh, indeed I have.

00:28:14 Speaker_00
I definitely have Mr. H. He's in this room with me. If I forget to take him to a lecture, there's sure to be a child who bursts into tears that, I wanted to touch Mr. H, because I tell them the inspiration rubs off.

00:28:26 Speaker_00
You said that your friend told you to teach your children to be optimistic. It's really, you can't teach them that, but you can tell stories and tell stories about people and encourage them and support them.

00:28:41 Speaker_00
I mean, so many parents have set views on what they want their child to be.

00:28:46 Speaker_00
And the lesson I get from my mother is nobody was thinking about going to Africa and living with animals when I wanted to, except a few explorers, you know, who wanted to shoot them and put them in museums.

00:29:00 Speaker_00
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.

00:29:12 Speaker_00
But take advantage of every opportunity. And if you don't give up, you'll find a way to do that or something else that you really, really want to do. that wisdom I take and share with young people everywhere, especially in disadvantaged communities.

00:29:29 Speaker_00
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.

00:29:37 Speaker_02
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?

00:29:57 Speaker_00
Remember that you make a difference every single day.

00:30:04 Speaker_02
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 Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now, a lot.

00:30:20 Speaker_02
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00:31:14 Speaker_02
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00:31:23 Speaker_01
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.

00:31:40 Speaker_02
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.

00:31:49 Speaker_02
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.

00:32:08 Speaker_02
And I thought that this time we could turn the tables and I could interrogate you in public. I love asking you questions about your process. And you've been so generous with your time in terms of reviewing some of my episodes, providing feedback.

00:32:23 Speaker_02
So first and foremost, thank you for your work and for all of the help. I'm delighted, you're good. You're good.

00:32:31 Speaker_02
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 unusual, memento-like, sometimes non-chronological approach to interviews.

00:32:49 Speaker_02
And for that, I'll apologize in advance, but we can do a post-game analysis afterwards. Perhaps we could just start with something that we were discussing before we hit record. So we were talking about the live event that was here in L.A.

00:33:05 Speaker_02
at the Troubadour, and we were doing a bit of analysis, what went well, what didn't go as well as planned, and so on. And I mentioned that I suppose due to also some insecurities of a sort,

00:33:17 Speaker_02
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. And you said that's straight out of Quincy Jones's book.

00:33:28 Speaker_02
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?

00:33:38 Speaker_03
Quincy Jones will go to a book signing. There'll be long lines of people And he will not sign his name and move him on next. He will stop, ask everyone who they are, engage in a conversation, and then write a personal note in his book to them.

00:34:02 Speaker_03
And the line may be around the block. He'll be there till three in the morning, keeping the people of Barnes & Noble open. because he wants to make it a joyous experience for everybody. So bravo, you followed the master.

00:34:18 Speaker_02
inadvertently. This story, of course, if we rewind the clock, begins at the beginning. And where did you grow up? I actually am ashamed to admit I don't know the childhood background.

00:34:30 Speaker_03
Where did you grow up? I was 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.

00:34:50 Speaker_03
Because that time, second grade, was the time that I was sitting in Ms. Jaffe's classroom and 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.

00:35:09 Speaker_03
that I don't know, but it's different from anything I've ever seen before. And this was November 1963, and it was Ms. 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

00:35:33 Speaker_03
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 to become the new president.

00:35:54 Speaker_03
And I'm thinking, man, what must it be like to be that guy? What is he feeling? Here he was, I know he probably wanted to be the president, but he couldn't be the president.

00:36:08 Speaker_03
And then he was the vice president and now the president gets killed and he gets to be the president. So I picked up a piece of paper and a pencil and I just wrote to Lyndon Johnson. You wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson?

00:36:22 Speaker_03
I wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson and said, what does it feel like? And about six months later, I got a letter back. That's incredible. And it was from his personal secretary, Juanita D. Roberts. And the cool thing about it was,

00:36:39 Speaker_03
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 that this question was coming. And then the second question was,

00:36:55 Speaker_03
An answer to your query. And what that said was she was treating me like I was legit. I had just turned seven. Bonafide adult. Exactly.

00:37:09 Speaker_03
And 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.

00:37:24 Speaker_03
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.

00:37:36 Speaker_02
So that was in second grade? Second grade. Now I have to ask, when you wrote the letter, something back to second grade, And was it written on paper that had the dotted line in between the intact lines for the lowercase letters?

00:37:52 Speaker_02
Do you recall what kind of paper it was on?

00:37:54 Speaker_03
I don't know. It was probably on loose-leaf paper, if I was making a guess. I was talking to the historian Robert Caro, who wrote volumes about Lyndon Johnson. He also wrote The Power Broker, am I right? That's right. Incredible book. Exactly.

00:38:10 Speaker_03
Here, this guy has spent decades knowing everything about Lyndon Johnson as possible. And I'm telling him this story, and he's like getting goosebumps when I say, Juanita D. Roberts, you got a letter from Juanita D. Roberts?

00:38:28 Speaker_03
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.

00:38:44 Speaker_03
Nobody else in the world would have gotten that high over the words Juanita D. Roberts. But some people are just born with the proclivity to do certain things.

00:38:56 Speaker_02
What do you think, even if it's God-given talent, what makes you or gives you a gift for questions?

00:39:05 Speaker_03
I think part of that has to do with the evolution as an interviewer, as a journalist, because as we talk it through, you'll see that I interviewed differently when I was, say, 18 than when I was 24. and differently in my 40s than I was when I was 25.

00:39:29 Speaker_03
So it really is like a lifelong voyage of learning about questions and reactions.

00:39:36 Speaker_03
It's only when I started to think back on that first letter that I realized, okay, this is, I guess it would sort of be like being a basketball player and you know that you're born with big hands.

00:39:50 Speaker_03
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 some people are just born with big hands and some people don't have big hands.

00:40:09 Speaker_03
And I'm only now starting to realize, okay, I was kind of born to do this.

00:40:15 Speaker_02
Did your parents facilitate that and cultivate that in any way? Or was it not, it was the nature more than nurture in the household?

00:40:26 Speaker_03
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 some sense, that was the start of it.

00:40:44 Speaker_03
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.

00:41:00 Speaker_03
It was more than the fact that he could make predictions with poetry 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.

00:41:22 Speaker_03
How is it that a black guy can go win a gold medal in Australia and come back after representing his country and not be able to sit at a lunchroom counter at a Woolworths next to white people?

00:41:38 Speaker_03
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 Viet Cong. and he would make you think, hey, what is going on over there in Vietnam?

00:41:56 Speaker_03
So that was a huge, huge part of my childhood.

00:42:00 Speaker_02
Did you have any particular career aspiration? What did 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.

00:42:15 Speaker_03
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 what I wanted to do. Only later, after I'd done it so quickly,

00:42:37 Speaker_03
did I realize what am I gonna do now? Which we can get to.

00:42:42 Speaker_02
So you mentioned 18 and 24, so two very specific ages. Take me to, say, 18 and then 24, and contrast your two styles. But if you could tell us where you were at those two points also.

00:42:57 Speaker_03
Sure. So when I grew up, I grew up thinking interview was meet the press. I grew up thinking it was what happened in a locker room after a sporting event. So I knew in order to achieve my dreams, I need to go to journalism school.

00:43:13 Speaker_03
I asked around and found out University of 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 an interesting time.

00:43:31 Speaker_03
It was a time of Watergate. So journalists were seen at the highest point that maybe they've ever been. It was really cool to be a journalist. Journalists actually brought down the president when they caught him lying. So it was a great time.

00:43:52 Speaker_03
And I went into sports.

00:43:54 Speaker_03
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 saint louis and you open the post dispatch sports section you saw my face over a column and a year after that.

00:44:14 Speaker_03
I went to the big time, New York. An amazing magazine called Inside Sports got started up. How old were you at the time? I was 22 by then. And basically this magazine was really unique.

00:44:30 Speaker_03
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 Illustrated. and it brought in all these great writers.

00:44:41 Speaker_03
And so I'd be going to the bar at night and sitting next to Hunter Thompson, the Gonzo journalist, would be throwing back shots. The next morning I'd be getting up and going on a plane to Pittsburgh. Wait, hold on one second.

00:44:55 Speaker_02
You did shots with Hunter S. Thompson? Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're gonna come back to that. Please continue.

00:45:02 Speaker_03
Oh, man. So it was this magazine attracted all these writers and the guy who started it was a guy named Johnny Walsh, who went on to start SportsCenter for ESPN. So he just had one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen at the time.

00:45:22 Speaker_03
I didn't really even know what a Rolodex was. And I walked into Inside Sports for the first time.

00:45:30 Speaker_03
It was a Friday afternoon and I called them 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.

00:45:46 Speaker_03
So I showed up to the office at like four o'clock and there was two guys with a dolly stacked with beer. It was like case after case of beer. And I got in the elevator right behind the dolly.

00:46:03 Speaker_03
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.

00:46:14 Speaker_03
And this magazine attracted guys like David Halberstam, who was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, the best of the best. And basically, I got to sit next to all of them. I was only a kid. I was 22.

00:46:28 Speaker_03
And every night, everybody would go across the street to a bar called The Cowboy. Tony, the bartender, was behind the bar. And at the time, I had no money. So they would put out these little hors d'oeuvres.

00:46:43 Speaker_03
For people, that was like where my dinner would be if the guys with expense accounts weren't going out later.

00:46:50 Speaker_02
The mixed nuts and olives.

00:46:52 Speaker_03
That was dinner. Crappy maraschino cherries. But it was great because you're sitting next to Frank DeFord, who was like the big sports writer of his day. A guy named Gary Smith came to work there.

00:47:05 Speaker_03
He was a National Magazine Award winner for 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 up.

00:47:23 Speaker_03
Sounds like the Paris Review and many, many others. There you go. And so here I am in New York, and basically I've now achieved everything I set out to achieve when I was a kid. And I'm looking around saying, what am I going to do now?

00:47:39 Speaker_03
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.

00:47:53 Speaker_03
So I called up my mom and 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, Cal, that's wonderful.

00:48:06 Speaker_03
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.

00:48:25 Speaker_02
Okay, let's pause for a second. I want to do some backtracking here. So the first question, and I have not forgotten about Hunter S. Thompson,

00:48:34 Speaker_02
When you said, 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 in. Why did he give you such a warm welcome?

00:48:43 Speaker_03
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 found all through my travels, this school and its network, I was always linked to them in some way.

00:49:00 Speaker_03
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.

00:49:19 Speaker_03
And it's interesting because I didn't make those calls often because there was a, like a nexus, people bumped into people and you were ferreted to the right place.

00:49:34 Speaker_03
And so went 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.

00:49:49 Speaker_02
And I have so many questions about the travel. Proceeding contrast so if we looked at say you were. How you interviewed and asked questions when you are at the tail end of your first professional gig and then at the tail end of inside sports.

00:50:08 Speaker_03
What changed nothing really change their basically the idea was to get the information you needed. For a story to fill out a story and so.

00:50:20 Speaker_03
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 70s, women's sports got no coverage at all. They would beg you.

00:50:39 Speaker_03
to go into, to go to their games, go into their locker rooms, whatever you wanted. I was talking to university in Nebraska journalism school. They can't even interview women's volleyball players in a very relaxed fashion.

00:50:56 Speaker_03
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.

00:51:14 Speaker_03
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.

00:51:33 Speaker_03
But for me, it was very different than the next stage, because that first stage was very who, what, when, where, and why, and what might've been underneath, what was your childhood like? And it filled out a sports story.

00:51:48 Speaker_03
The next step, it started when I was about 23 or 24, was completely different.

00:51:55 Speaker_02
And that was, just to place it in the timeline, that was before you left?

00:52:01 Speaker_03
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 was when I decided to start traveling.

00:52:20 Speaker_03
And that's where interviewing changed for me forever.

00:52:24 Speaker_02
Two quick questions before we get there. So the first is, what was it like doing shots and having drinks with Hunter S. Thompson?

00:52:30 Speaker_03
It was fantastic. He was a very funny guy and it was all anecdotes. There were a bunch of people in the bar. Everybody was telling stories. It's completely natural. What's kind of interesting,

00:52:46 Speaker_03
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. You're talking about Depp? Yeah, Depp. Okay.

00:53:04 Speaker_03
And pull that 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 of me every now and then.

00:53:19 Speaker_03
Think about hundred times you think about him almost as a caricature but like at the bar he was like a regular guy just telling stories.

00:53:28 Speaker_03
I remember him telling stories of like being a bowling writer in san juan puerto rico and we'll 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.

00:53:44 Speaker_02
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, it was before I knew anything about wine.

00:53:55 Speaker_03
Back then, it was 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 wanna know why Inside Sports went out of business.

00:54:13 Speaker_03
They had one of the photographers who had worked with Sports Illustrated 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 expense account. I can see you're a young novice here.

00:54:31 Speaker_03
And before I do any work, he was straight to the bar. And I'm saying, like, are you sure? Like, maybe we should go out and interview with him. No, no, no. And he starts to say, you know, I think we need to have some green chartreuse.

00:54:46 Speaker_03
Lord what and this guy must have knocked the barbell and his point was look. This is how we do it sports illustrated like if you don't run up a barbell like this you know nobody's gonna think you're big time.

00:55:04 Speaker_03
Sounds like fear and loathing in las vegas 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 talking to these sports writers.

00:55:22 Speaker_03
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. Because part of it is your naivete making it so grand.

00:55:35 Speaker_03
And then it was over, the magazine was dead, and oh man, at the time I thought, I got another 50, 60 years to live, what am I gonna do? So how did you decide on travel? I didn't know what to do. And I had met, when I was in St.

00:55:51 Speaker_03
Louis, a woman from France, she came from Montpasier, France. And she says, oh, like you have to come visit Montpasier and pick the grapes. So in my mind, I always thought I've got to get to Montpasier.

00:56:08 Speaker_03
And so we bought a ticket, I bought a cheap ticket.

00:56:12 Speaker_03
to iceland air they would land 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

00:56:37 Speaker_03
told me that that was one of the best places that he'd ever been to in terms of meeting women. He said it was outrageous.

00:56:47 Speaker_03
You'd go there on a Saturday night and everybody knew everybody, but by four in the morning, people were naked doing cartwheels on top of the bar. Like who would have thought of it from Iceland?

00:56:59 Speaker_02
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 about two winters ago. Just glorious. Fantastic.

00:57:16 Speaker_02
Entirely mystical, word-defying experience. It really was fantastic. So that's maybe the other more brochure-friendly side of Iceland. But yeah, a lot of booze. A lot of booze.

00:57:29 Speaker_03
A lot of booze. If you're telling me... And elves.

00:57:32 Speaker_02
They like elves and gnomes also.

00:57:34 Speaker_03
No, that sounds like a magical moment in your life. It was, it was. Did you have like a notion of what it would be? And then did it top it like by 10 times?

00:57:46 Speaker_02
Well, the backstory, not to turn this into, well, I guess it is the Tim Ferriss Show. Here we are. But 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.

00:58:01 Speaker_02
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.

00:58:11 Speaker_02
And in my mind, of course, the image was informed by the photos that I had seen. And it turns out that the colors that are captured by

00:58:20 Speaker_02
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.

00:58:28 Speaker_02
And it's just the most ghostly, fantastic, meaning like phantasm-like experience that I've ever had visually without aid of plants. We really just

00:58:45 Speaker_02
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.

00:58:54 Speaker_02
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 10 nights.

00:59:06 Speaker_02
It was unbelievable. So it exceeded all expectations. It was really Really a trip to remember.

00:59:11 Speaker_03
I just got to ask you one more question. What was your mom's, what did your mom's face look like when she got the view that she wanted to have?

00:59:23 Speaker_02
A kid in a candy store or the description that came to mind first was like a baby who opens their eyes and sees like their favorite mobile above them. Like just that completely dazzled

00:59:38 Speaker_02
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.

00:59:46 Speaker_02
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 a while, that it took me that long, but it was a great experience.

00:59:56 Speaker_02
I will say for those people listening who are thinking about it, when I say there are very limited activities, I really mean it in Iceland, and we stayed at this place called Hotel, I think they pronounce it Ranga, but it's Ranga, R-A-N-G-A, which is in the middle of nowhere, and if you do go,

01:00:13 Speaker_02
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 expensive side.

01:00:22 Speaker_02
So you can take a helicopter over live volcanoes, which actually was phenomenal, or you can go, say, snowmobiling, et cetera, 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.

01:00:35 Speaker_02
Yeah, it was glorious, but the, so Iceland. So you got a cheap ticket on Icelandair.

01:00:41 Speaker_03
Cheap ticket on Icelandair and landed in Luxembourg. And I was with a bunch of friends. And how many friends? Let's see, there were very interesting.

01:00:51 Speaker_03
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.

01:01:10 Speaker_03
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

01:01:35 Speaker_03
wanted to go out and just see the world, see whatever was out there. And of course, my eyes are open to this because I didn't know what I was gonna do or where I was gonna go, but I wanted to see the world too. Montparnasse, let's go pick the grapes.

01:01:52 Speaker_03
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.

01:02:10 Speaker_03
Everybody loves him, knows him, and it's the bar, the restaurant, everything is very kind of fixed. The mic was always his. He could hold court. holding court, but even more than that, it was, you knew if you were in St.

01:02:27 Speaker_03
Louis, you knew if you went to Llewellyn's 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 he wasn't at one, you can go to another.

01:02:42 Speaker_03
You know, the bookstore he 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 guy's only got like 10 days. He's on vacation from his job.

01:03:02 Speaker_03
The skinny guy who's 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. We go to this mountainous town.

01:03:19 Speaker_03
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.

01:03:33 Speaker_03
So I remember 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 guy is like, oh, looks out. Gotta go see Ezra Pound's castle.

01:03:53 Speaker_03
So we gotta take a hike up to this mountain. And the portly guy's coming along, and we're having a great time. We're talking in the breathtaking scenery. And we get to this castle, and we meet some people, and they say, oh.

01:04:09 Speaker_03
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 this farmer's living.

01:04:24 Speaker_03
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 joke.

01:04:40 Speaker_03
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.

01:04:53 Speaker_03
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 gonna have an experience like no other. And that's what he was wired to do.

01:05:05 Speaker_03
And the poorly guy is saying, hey, like fettuccine is being served down in the restaurant. And they both look at me.

01:05:18 Speaker_02
Okay what are we doing and what do you think i did. Oh, this is a toughie. I want to say that you went for the village, but by the very fact that you asked me... What would you do?

01:05:32 Speaker_03
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 the fettuccine.

01:05:40 Speaker_02
I'd say you can always get fettuccine, it's not going away. But, easy to say as the armchair listener of stories, as is the case right now, what did you do?

01:05:49 Speaker_03
Well, I looked at them 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 gonna be a lot of those moments where I'm heading over the mountain.

01:06:06 Speaker_03
That was a moment I knew I'm going over the mountain. Not tonight. I'm gonna make sure my portly friend is taken care of. He eats his fettuccine. In a few days, he's getting on a plane. He's gonna go back home. But after that, I'm going over the mountain.

01:06:23 Speaker_03
And that's what set off the trip. And it became completely addictive. because I woke up every morning not knowing what was gonna happen. And then you asked before, okay, well, where does the interviewing shift?

01:06:45 Speaker_03
So what happened was I had hardly any money and I would go to a bus station or a 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'd say, okay, I want a ticket.

01:07:04 Speaker_03
So I would buy the ticket. Destination had no meaning to me whatsoever. What had meaning to me was I'd never been there before and I'm going to take this trip down the aisle.

01:07:17 Speaker_03
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.

01:07:31 Speaker_03
Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me, and the stakes are high, because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going,

01:07:45 Speaker_03
That person had to invite me to their home because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.

01:07:51 Speaker_02
I was going to ask you how you paid for the trip. So it was just savings based until it was extinguished?

01:07:58 Speaker_03
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.

01:08:09 Speaker_03
where you were going out and you had to get a roof over your head that 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.

01:08:23 Speaker_03
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.

01:08:40 Speaker_03
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.

01:08:54 Speaker_02
Hey, you know, in fairness, Billy Joel got Christy Brinkman. No 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 these things happen.

01:09:07 Speaker_03
I'll tell you a story about this that I came to later regret that. Right so this is years later and i get set up working at square where i do this what i've learned colin and i get set up doing interview with petra nemcova supermodel.

01:09:25 Speaker_03
And i'm waiting for suppose to arrive at like eight o'clock or something and she's she's late so. I'm sitting there waiting for her. And then she sits down and we start talking. We had this amazing conversation.

01:09:40 Speaker_03
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 an amazing story.

01:09:56 Speaker_03
It 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 the interview is supposed to go for an hour and a half. We're at four hours. And it's not an interview anymore.

01:10:10 Speaker_03
I feel like completely connected to her the way I would have been had I met her on a bus or a train. And I said to her, I said, Petra, I really, I'm gonna tell you something, I apologize. And she said, what for?

01:10:25 Speaker_03
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 you were good looking. And she had a very amazing reaction.

01:10:43 Speaker_03
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 is very cool, but it made me realize, and this is really, if you're a good guy,

01:10:59 Speaker_03
who's a little scared to approach that woman, you should remember that story, because they wanna be treated normally. And I was talking to another actress about this, and she really started riding me.

01:11:14 Speaker_03
She said, okay, so you don't take that seat, and now some asshole takes it, and I gotta put up with that asshole for the next hour and a half. Thank you very much, Cal.

01:11:26 Speaker_02
So you walked by this woman when you got on the train, walked down the aisle, you choose survival and housing over the prospective romance.

01:11:36 Speaker_03
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 the winner! So I walk up,

01:11:55 Speaker_03
Sit down next to the grandma let's say we're in hungary and this happened many cultures but. The sake of the story and this happened in hungary i sit down next to her and i'll ask her about goulash.

01:12:10 Speaker_03
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 goulash.

01:12:35 Speaker_03
This grandma's chest just bursts with pride. And now she's talking about her grandmother making goulash, her mom making goulash, all the ingredients that go into goulash, how they gotta be put together just the right way.

01:12:52 Speaker_03
And then she looks at all these young Hungarians and said, you know, I've been riding on this train for decades. Not one of you was asked How I make my goulash. This American.

01:13:06 Speaker_03
He asks, you tell him he has to come to my house because I am going to prepare him goulash so he knows what it's like to eat goulash and hungry. All the people on the train come along. Now I'm staying with grandma.

01:13:22 Speaker_03
Not only does she invite the people on the train, all her neighbors, all her friends, her relatives. Now I'm at the table, room full of people. They're all surrounding me. The goulash is in front of me, and I slowly lift it to my lips.

01:13:39 Speaker_03
I taste it, my eyes shut, and I smile. And there's just a roar from this place. He loves grandma's goulash. 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

01:14:01 Speaker_03
apricot brandy because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives half an hour away from me. You gotta come to taste the apricot brandy. That weekend, we're tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts.

01:14:17 Speaker_03
Another neighbor comes over to me. Have you ever been to Kishkin Halas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kishkin Halas. Now we're off to Kishkin House.

01:14:30 Speaker_03
I'm telling you, a single question about goulash could get me six weeks of lodging and meals. And that's how I got passed around the world. That's incredible.

01:14:44 Speaker_02
10 years, 10 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 in any direction,

01:14:55 Speaker_02
What are some common mistakes that people make in asking people questions, whether it's on a train or otherwise? But feel free to tackle either.

01:15:07 Speaker_03
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, where questions are being asked of job candidates like, What's your biggest weakness?

01:15:27 Speaker_03
Which they've already prepared like two hours on how to answer that question. You're not gonna get a spontaneous good response to that. I work too hard. Sometimes I get accused of being too detail-oriented. You got it, you got it.

01:15:43 Speaker_02
They'll do.

01:15:43 Speaker_03
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 no longer had to fill out a story.

01:16:05 Speaker_03
I didn't need a who, what, when, where, and why. It was just pure curiosity. And then it zoned into This basic fact people wanna talk about their lives and often especially if you go to a small town somewhere people.

01:16:28 Speaker_03
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 gossip, everybody knows the feelings, and you have to keep some things to yourself.

01:16:45 Speaker_03
But if this guy comes into your house, and he's from 7,000 miles away, You can open up in ways and tell him things you would never tell.

01:16:58 Speaker_03
People close by knowing he's gonna leave and keep in mind this was a day no cell phones is no social media is no facebook there was no. going on the internet and finding out what this person just told me, it was like a safe haven.

01:17:17 Speaker_03
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's going to know about it.

01:17:35 Speaker_03
But if you meet this traveler, your eyes are gonna be open to this new world. Plus, you can go over to the next town and 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.

01:17:56 Speaker_03
And so, in a way, I became handsome. You know, it's like, I can remember in college going into a bar 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?

01:18:16 Speaker_03
And like the girls were over six, but I'm just kind of walking around, I'm like much smaller, and I just realized I don't fit in here. It's just a different, I'm not handsome here.

01:18:29 Speaker_02
It's like every Dutch or Swedish party I've ever been to.

01:18:32 Speaker_03
Okay, there you go.

01:18:33 Speaker_02
Similar feeling.

01:18:34 Speaker_03
Okay, so 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.

01:18:53 Speaker_03
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.

01:19:02 Speaker_02
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.

01:19:13 Speaker_03
Bingo.

01:19:14 Speaker_02
Yeah. And it seems like a modern day or say a different manifestation of this is sitting down on an airplane next to someone and you can get people to open up or they'll volunteer to open up

01:19:26 Speaker_02
In ways that they might not other people because they assume rightly in most cases they never gonna see you again that's a hundred percent and when you talk about seeing people differently.

01:19:39 Speaker_03
When you're waking up in the morning and you don't know what's gonna happen.

01:19:43 Speaker_03
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 your i don't say you're making them into a rock star.

01:20:02 Speaker_03
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.

01:20:17 Speaker_03
And for women it feels great because also now 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 he'll like me. Maybe he'll take me home with him. Maybe I can visit.

01:20:33 Speaker_03
And so all of these conversations are just filled with possibilities and potentials.

01:20:40 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's beautiful in both directions, too. I think I mean, in my I remember.

01:20:46 Speaker_02
just in some of my travels, I mean, 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.

01:20:54 Speaker_02
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.

01:21:08 Speaker_03
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.

01:21:26 Speaker_03
We didn't have winter clothing. And I said to him, you know, there are camel races in Douz, Tunisia. And a day later, we were in Tunisia. We just got on a flight and flew to Tunisia and headed to Douz.

01:21:50 Speaker_03
We missed the races, but the next thing you knew, we've got pictures of us in the middle of the Sahara Desert. And so there was just the possibility of,

01:22:02 Speaker_03
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.

01:22:12 Speaker_02
Sure. Couchsurfing, I mean, there are cost-free options out there.

01:22:16 Speaker_03
If couchsurfing 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.

01:22:30 Speaker_03
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. That's right.

01:22:43 Speaker_03
So you rate the place you stay and they rate the guest.

01:22:47 Speaker_03
So basically i'm coming in with all the 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 to come to my place please come to my place but there was none of that and everyday you had to get on and i get on the train or the bus.

01:23:11 Speaker_03
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.

01:23:23 Speaker_03
And a party would be waiting for me at his house when I got there. So really it was like a 10 year party.

01:23:30 Speaker_02
I do want to get to the end of the trip and the impact on the interviewing, but first, and I can't believe I haven't asked you this before, but how did you hone your ability to tell stories?

01:23:44 Speaker_02
Because you're very good at asking questions, but that doesn't automatically make one good at telling stories.

01:23:50 Speaker_03
Maybe part of that is through writing, because that's what I was doing.

01:23:56 Speaker_03
I would interview people, and then I would have to put what I got down in a specific order, or a nonspecific order, in order to manipulate people into leaning closer, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen.

01:24:11 Speaker_02
Meaning like an in-media arrest, sort of in the middle of the action type of start to pull them in?

01:24:16 Speaker_03
Yeah, something, exactly. You start it to pull them in and then you, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Now you have to go back to the beginning. I suckered you in here.

01:24:26 Speaker_03
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?

01:24:42 Speaker_02
Could you give me an example? And I'm so curious.

01:24:45 Speaker_02
Because for people who aren't writers, I mean, if and I'm not going to lose track here, but I haven't been journalism school, but when I've taken some writing classes, they talk about like the lead and you get at least for nonfiction stuff, right?

01:24:58 Speaker_02
You get a couple of statistics, you need a couple of 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 and so on.

01:25:09 Speaker_02
We talked about the briefly the in media arrests. What would be a more subtle way to approach an opener?

01:25:14 Speaker_03
Okay, so just say you had a murder story. All right. All right. And you are operating by that principle and journalism, like, put it right at the top and then. Okay, this horrible thing happened.

01:25:26 Speaker_03
Let's go back to the beginning and then now you've got to add everything up to see why that moment happen. Another option is to start it in a very ordinary way with just a twist.

01:25:42 Speaker_03
that tells you something's gonna go on here, I don't know, and you just keep reeling them in slowly, just give a little more, oh man, and then they met this person, what's gonna happen now? And then you save it till, near the end of the story.

01:26:05 Speaker_03
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 about the headline. Yeah, but you can still use that tactic of telling a story that

01:26:21 Speaker_03
is slowly grabs you in and it just puts out a little bait and gives you that smell. There's something interesting here. And then you're dragging the line so that they've got to keep following it.

01:26:35 Speaker_03
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.

01:26:45 Speaker_02
I was thinking of this sexual analogy, though. It's like, instead of the wham-bam, thank you, ma'am, quick fix. It's like, OK, I didn't think that I needed some tantric sex and two hours of this. Turns out it's pretty great. And then you get the payoff.

01:26:57 Speaker_02
You're like, you know what? That was totally worth it. You just named it.

01:27:01 Speaker_03
It's the tantric sex. The tantric structure. Storytelling. That's it. Sting would love it. You know, six hours.

01:27:11 Speaker_02
So at the end of your travels, what happened that affected your...

01:27:18 Speaker_03
Okay, so I'm going around, I'm going and having a great time. And after 10 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.

01:27:36 Speaker_03
And when you're in Brazil, oh, there's this Fazenda de Cacau, 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.

01:27:50 Speaker_03
So I am, at this point, it's almost like I'm a guest that's now expected. Part of the family. Really, I'm part of the family before I even arrived. And a friend, the skinny guy, the skinny guy, got married.

01:28:09 Speaker_03
and he decided to take a year and spend it in Cochabamba, Bolivia. So I hear that and I'm thinking. I hope his wife did be and knew that plan before signing up. No, she did. Okay. I mean, that was it. Let's do something. We don't have any kids.

01:28:28 Speaker_03
Let's do something outrageous that nobody expected. And so naturally I hear Cochabamba, Bolivia. Hey, I was, In Peru, now skinny guys moving to Cochabamba, hey, I'll spend a few months in Cochabamba.

01:28:46 Speaker_03
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.

01:28:59 Speaker_03
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.

01:29:17 Speaker_03
And at the time I said, look, I'm in Cochabamba, Bolivia. You would think it's crazy, but I was really getting into Cochabamba, Bolivia. It's like completely different culture. And there's an Altiplano that it's a landlocked nation.

01:29:30 Speaker_03
You really are experiencing something different as a traveler. But I said, OK, you know what I said, I heard I actually heard of a beach in Brazil.

01:29:42 Speaker_03
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.

01:29:59 Speaker_03
From what I heard, you can't even get there unless you go on like a crude sailing vessel and on mule back and the editor is saying, you know, why don't you just check this place out? So I say, OK, and I leave Cochabamba, I go to Brazil.

01:30:18 Speaker_03
And I end up in a city called Fortaleza. Fortaleza. And just as I arrive, the first trip to this isolated beach, sand dunes that look like they're straight out of the Sahara, butted against the most sparkling waters of the Caribbean.

01:30:40 Speaker_03
The first tour bus is going to go to this place. They're 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.

01:30:58 Speaker_03
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.

01:31:14 Speaker_03
And I would tell you the rest of the story, except it takes two hours to do. We'll be at a, well, you're not doing it on tape, but if digital has any limits, we'll be out of there.

01:31:25 Speaker_03
But the important thing about it was that was a moment where my style of interviewing had to change again, because I was no longer traveling around the world. This woman and I got married, moved to New York,

01:31:41 Speaker_03
started to have kids, and then I began to write for Esquire Magazine, and all the things that I had learned on buses, trains, I was then able to project into Esquire's What I've Learned column, which consists of interviews with the most celebrated, accomplished, and creative people on earth.

01:32:06 Speaker_02
I have the handy recorder, the H4N, on top of one of these. In fact, what I've learned, this is the third volume?

01:32:14 Speaker_03
Is that right? 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

01:32:27 Speaker_03
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.

01:32:42 Speaker_03
So you think you know these people and then you listen to their experiences and you say, whoa, I never knew that about Robert De Niro or Mikhail Gorbachev.

01:32:53 Speaker_03
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.

01:33:10 Speaker_03
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, it was 20 years.

01:33:27 Speaker_03
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 down with George Clooney and having the time of my life.

01:33:43 Speaker_03
because a crazy thing happened to me, caught me completely off guard, and made me think about interviewing in a whole different way.

01:33:52 Speaker_02
And this was only very recently. Can you talk about that or should we keep that off? No, 100%. Can you mention that just because you brought it up and then we'll dial back the clock? Sure. And can I show you something first also?

01:34:02 Speaker_02
I've digested this entire thing with highlights and so on. There are notes on writer's block, Jodie 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.

01:34:17 Speaker_02
It just goes on and on. So I love this entire compilation and encourage people to check it out. But what changed? So recently.

01:34:25 Speaker_03
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 cruise and they turn up their nose.

01:34:44 Speaker_03
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 him, pestering him. And my wife finally said to him, why don't you take your wife on a cruise?

01:34:59 Speaker_03
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.

01:35:17 Speaker_02
And so Summit Series guys.

01:35:19 Speaker_03
Okay. So you, you know, these folks, and basically it's a cruise ship filled with 4,000 entrepreneurial minds. And that was wild to begin with because I had never, I had limited experiences with entrepreneurs.

01:35:39 Speaker_03
And then you put yourself on a ship with 4,000 entrepreneurs, your life is gonna change.

01:35:46 Speaker_02
A lot of potential energy, yeah. It's like Ted plus Coachella plus infinite amounts of alcohol.

01:35:52 Speaker_03
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. Who are you?

01:36:08 Speaker_03
I felt at the end of like three days, my head was really, it was like getting pumped up with helium. I was about to explode. It was an amazing experience.

01:36:18 Speaker_03
And like you're sitting down and like at dinner and the guy next to you says, oh, this is the rocket ship I'm building. You wanna see? And he pulls out his phone and he shows you his rocket ship. This is like wild.

01:36:29 Speaker_03
And it was like traveling around the world, except the world came to you. I think Jane Goodall was there also. I mean, it 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.

01:36:46 Speaker_03
So like in three days at Summit at Sea, you literally can go around the world. And I was totally unprepared for this. I was asked to give a speech called Decoding the Art of the Interview.

01:36:59 Speaker_03
And I'd never spoken before, didn't know what it was gonna be like. But I have experience with Mikhail 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

01:37:20 Speaker_03
As I was traveling around on Saturday nights, some 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.

01:37:34 Speaker_03
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.

01:37:46 Speaker_03
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.

01:37:59 Speaker_03
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.

01:38:17 Speaker_03
by Adam Braun, and he talked about giving, it might've 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.

01:38:34 Speaker_03
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.

01:38:52 Speaker_03
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, I'm gonna tell my stories, give a few lessons, and let's see how it goes.

01:39:08 Speaker_03
Maybe the same day that i'm supposed to speak they move my event so it's not even in the program if you're going to my event you're going to the wrong place so now i'm thinking okay i'm down to like ten people.

01:39:21 Speaker_03
That's cool i'll speak to the one the time for the speech comes people start filing in and i set up the speech around wine.

01:39:32 Speaker_03
And there's a reason for it, because in one of the stories, we could get to a little later, I went out to learn about wine by becoming the sommelier at Windows of the World at the top of the World Trade Center, right before the planes hit it.

01:39:45 Speaker_03
And so I'm very attached to wine, and what I wanted to do was to have everybody drinking a glass of wine while I told these stories. So if I messed up, they were still having a good time. Also, yeah, helps with reality bending also. That's right.

01:40:01 Speaker_03
We set it up so that all the wine is there ready to be served to people as they come in. Budgeting for 10 people? Well, no, I said, okay, there are like 150 seats.

01:40:12 Speaker_03
If 150 people show up, fine, have the glasses and the wine, but let's face it, you may only go through a bottle. So they were all prepared. and place seated 150, it's this funky nightclub.

01:40:25 Speaker_03
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.

01:40:39 Speaker_03
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.

01:40:50 Speaker_03
is to keep everyone engaged and so i said to the people that live in the wine look i need you to be able to walk down this quarter 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 seats taken.

01:41:09 Speaker_03
and they're 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, they're cross-legged in the aisle.

01:41:24 Speaker_03
They're sitting behind the bar.

01:41:25 Speaker_02
That's right.

01:41:26 Speaker_03
Taking up the foot space. 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.

01:41:41 Speaker_02
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? I'm just messing with you.

01:41:54 Speaker_03
No, that's good. We'll have to work on that next time. I think what happened is we titled it, Decoding the Art of the Interview with Mikel Gorbachev. and Donald Trump.

01:42:12 Speaker_03
And naturally, it said, like, Cal Fustman has interviewed these people, but people came in wondering, what's it like to interview Gorbachev or De Niro or Donald Trump?

01:42:23 Speaker_02
So. And we'll definitely dig into some of that, but.

01:42:26 Speaker_03
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.

01:42:41 Speaker_03
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 it gets a really good response.

01:42:58 Speaker_03
But what was surprising about it was afterwards, there's this long line of people to see me, and they're business people. And the first couple of came up to women is a okay.

01:43:16 Speaker_03
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.

01:43:33 Speaker_03
Just tell him 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?

01:43:48 Speaker_03
And he said, 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.

01:44:07 Speaker_03
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,

01:44:19 Speaker_03
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.

01:44:34 Speaker_03
It's not gonna be the most completely passionate person, but maybe they're the person that's gotta do something nuts and bolts.

01:44:43 Speaker_02
Right, the CFO, or the guy who interacts with Wall Street. Exactly. Or Gal.

01:44:49 Speaker_03
You will find out through that answer something that's going to help you make a decision. And the girls are looking, you could tell they're looking at, okay, that's our question. We'll tell them the Dr. Dre story.

01:45:03 Speaker_03
And then people started coming up to me running successful businesses who had to hire a lot of people all at once, because the business is doing really well.

01:45:14 Speaker_03
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.

01:45:35 Speaker_03
That essence because if they don't have it 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?

01:45:52 Speaker_03
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.

01:46:14 Speaker_02
Oh, it's the challenge we were chatting before we started recording about Silicon Valley and some of the issues surrounding attracting and retaining.

01:46:23 Speaker_02
Top talent, it's the fundamental challenge for a lot of these startups in particular when you go from perhaps hiring, say, if you bootstrap for a period of time, 10 people in a year to hiring 10 people a day or a week.

01:46:37 Speaker_02
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,

01:46:47 Speaker_02
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?

01:47:00 Speaker_02
There's one that I have tucked 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, I'm not gonna say disgusted, but just speechless at how I had not managed to hear this yet.

01:47:15 Speaker_02
But what did people respond to best in terms of stories

01:47:19 Speaker_03
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.

01:47:40 Speaker_03
And to back that up, I told a story about my meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.

01:47:46 Speaker_03
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 set to interview Mikhail Gorbachev for Esquire's What I've Learned column.

01:48:01 Speaker_03
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. Hi, Cal. It's the publicist.

01:48:17 Speaker_03
Sorry to have to pass this on, but the interview with Mr. Gorbachev is going to have to be cut short. And now I'm thinking, oh man, was it going to be down to an hour? Because that's the thing with this, what I've learned column, I can't fluff it up.

01:48:34 Speaker_03
I can't fill it out. I can't use my words. They have to be Mikhail Gorbachev's words and they have to be wise words. I need at the very least an hour to

01:48:47 Speaker_03
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? 10 minutes? I don't wanna say are you nuts, but it's impossible.

01:49:07 Speaker_03
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 to see Mr. Gorbachev. There's nothing we can do about this. Do you want the 10 minutes or not?

01:49:23 Speaker_03
What am I gonna do, say no? Okay, I'll take the 10 minutes. So I'm sitting down and I'm thinking, and the more I'm thinking about this, the worse it's getting. Because number one, I'm knowing that all of my questions,

01:49:40 Speaker_03
are going to be translated into Russian, and all of his answers are gonna be translated back into English. We actually have five minutes. Yeah, we're moving down. Plus, you're gonna sit down, and you're gonna exchange pleasantries.

01:49:54 Speaker_03
It's not gonna start in a finger snap. Two and a half minutes. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't two minutes, but it wasn't much more. And so the publicist leads me into the room, and at this point I'm thinking, okay, if it's two and a half minutes, Do your best.

01:50:11 Speaker_03
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.

01:50:24 Speaker_03
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.

01:50:40 Speaker_03
So I looked at him and 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 like thinking about this. It's as if after a little while,

01:51:00 Speaker_03
he's seeing on the ceiling this movie of his past, and he starts to tell me this story. And it's this story about the day his dad was called to go fight in World War II.

01:51:13 Speaker_03
See, Gorbachev 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,

01:51:28 Speaker_03
took this trip with the dad to this town to wish him well as he went off and garbage is talking about this trip and he's providing these intricate details and i'm transfixed i'm saying like oh my god that's the worst possible question this interview is gonna be over he's not even gonna get to town yet

01:51:54 Speaker_03
So finally they do get to town and Gorbachev's dad takes the family into this little shop and he gets ice cream for everybody. And Gorbachev starts describing this ice cream and the cup that it was in, it's aluminum cup.

01:52:12 Speaker_03
And as he's telling me, it's almost like he's got his hand out in front of him and the cup's in it. It's that vivid to him. And it's as if in this moment, we both have this same realization.

01:52:26 Speaker_03
That cup of ice cream is the reason that he was able to make peace with Ronald Reagan and end 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.

01:52:44 Speaker_03
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.

01:53:01 Speaker_03
He didn't expect it any more than I did. Just at that moment, knock on the door. It's the publicist. Publicist comes in, very efficient. Mr. Gorbachev, Cal, time for the interview is up. And he looks at it and he wags his finger.

01:53:16 Speaker_03
He says, no, I want to talk to him. Publishers puts up our hands. Yes, sir. And she like backs out sheepishly. The door shuts, conversation continues. Now we're getting deeper. 10 minutes later, another knock on the door.

01:53:33 Speaker_03
This time the publicist comes in a little slower. Mr. Gorbachev, Cal, and Gorbachev says, No, I wanna talk to him. She backs out. 10 minutes later, knock on the door. This time she's in a panic. The train cars are just piling up. I said, Gorbachev, please.

01:53:56 Speaker_03
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.

01:54:11 Speaker_03
I knew I pushed it to as long as it could be pushed. And I left. And the interview was a success in that it had a little story like that. And people could understand something about Gorbachev that they might never have known.

01:54:33 Speaker_03
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.

01:54:44 Speaker_03
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 Esquire. Otherwise, that would have been it.

01:55:01 Speaker_03
There would have been no way the interview would have run. So, lesson number one, when people ask 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.

01:55:19 Speaker_03
Once you get the heart and 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.

01:55:33 Speaker_03
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.

01:55:45 Speaker_02
So I'm going to pick a name that we haven't heard yet, just because this is the one that made Alex dance around, because that's all he could do to respond before he insisted that I ask you about it. So Julio Cesar Chavez.

01:56:00 Speaker_03
That's another story. And it goes back to a time when I was a teenager. And Again, as I started out, you knew that my childhood hero was Muhammad Ali, so I followed boxing, and naturally, I wanted to fight.

01:56:20 Speaker_03
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 finals sold out Madison Square Garden every year.

01:56:35 Speaker_03
I had no idea how to fight. And I 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, like, I wanna train for the Golden Gloves.

01:56:52 Speaker_03
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.

01:57:04 Speaker_03
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.

01:57:21 Speaker_03
You know, if you're good, you'll do okay. I said, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I came to fight. Thanks, pops, but listen. That's right. And basically, I wasn't on the tall side, so I was a short guy and very short arms.

01:57:38 Speaker_03
And my style was basically, hey man, I'm just gonna rush across the ring and I'm just gonna start throwing punches. Joe Frazier style. That's right. And you'll see what happens. Because like Joe Frazier knew how to fight. Right, right.

01:57:54 Speaker_03
All I could do was just throw reckless, wild, crazy punches one after another. I was in good shape. So I could throw punches three minutes a round, just start to finish.

01:58:07 Speaker_03
And it was actually, for the people in the gym, it 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.

01:58:19 Speaker_03
Maybe I'd be able to just simply overwhelm whoever was in the ring just by sheer virtue of, I'm coming at you to throw everything I got and I'm not stopping.

01:58:30 Speaker_02
The Tasmanian devil strategy.

01:58:32 Speaker_03
That's right. 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 going to represent me. And I show up to the club. He was going to drive me into Queens, New York.

01:58:47 Speaker_03
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.

01:59:07 Speaker_03
You know, you're standing by a payphone, throwing in quarters, like, who can help me? I got to get to the fights. I got to fight. You know, of course, everybody in the school knows about this.

01:59:17 Speaker_03
And so it's at a high school in Queensland, 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 the nick of time, but now like I'm all nervous just to get there.

01:59:36 Speaker_03
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, Jesus, that was his name.

01:59:56 Speaker_03
But you can tell, 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. This is like checking in for work. That's right. It's complete.

02:00:15 Speaker_03
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 of my style. No idea. He thinks like, okay, I know how to fight.

02:00:39 Speaker_03
And so he says, okay, kid, listen, you know, we're going to go in the ring. I want you to just take it nice and easy. You move, move around a little, show him the jab and let's see what happens. So start to walk in the rain, and this is like mid-70s.

02:00:57 Speaker_03
In fact, it's not too, 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.

02:01:15 Speaker_03
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 I'm like looking around and it's like, it's surreal. I've lost sense of where I'm at.

02:01:34 Speaker_03
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, get the instructions, and I am completely lost. I do not know what happened.

02:01:49 Speaker_03
All I remember was getting up, actually my eyes opening, and seeing three fingers that were very blurry, and then I'm hearing four, five, six, and I get up. And now I can kinda see clearly.

02:02:11 Speaker_03
And Jesus 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. And so I go back to the corner and now I'm pissed. Like, what just happened to me?

02:02:29 Speaker_03
Like, get in there, throw your punches, just go at him. And I'm sitting on the stool, the manager's 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.

02:02:44 Speaker_03
In the meantime, the ref is coming over and he's saying like, son, are you okay? Are you okay? I'm saying, of course I'm okay. I'm going to kick his ass. I'm going to come out. You're going to see some punches.

02:02:56 Speaker_03
Next thing you know, like the referee is like waving his hands and stop the fight. I didn't respond to him. I was like, I was out.

02:03:07 Speaker_02
So this dialogue that you were having with yourself, like that was entirely internal. That's right.

02:03:11 Speaker_03
I had no idea. The worst part of all this is my dad is in the crowd and he brought like two of his childhood friends, right? 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.

02:03:35 Speaker_03
It's like, oh, remember Cal and the golden gloves. And so I'm hearing this again and again and again over the years.

02:03:44 Speaker_03
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 Cesar Chavez, the great Mexican champion, junior welterweight, 140 pounds, he was 85, 86 and 0 at that point.

02:04:08 Speaker_03
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, right after the marriage, he's put on a bunch of weight. I got a beer belly.

02:04:20 Speaker_03
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.

02:04:34 Speaker_03
We've heard your boxing stories because that was the first thing when my family met her that they indoctrinated her. You know about Cal and the golden gloves, don't you?

02:04:47 Speaker_03
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 manhood back. And I said to my wife, you know what? You see that guy on the TV, Julio Cesar Chavez? I'm gonna fight him.

02:05:05 Speaker_03
And so naturally, my wife, 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.

02:05:21 Speaker_02
No, just the place that's at the time you're writing for Esquire.

02:05:25 Speaker_03
Actually, when we moved to New York, I

02:05:30 Speaker_03
had written, or I was writing for a magazine called GQ, and the editor at the time, or my editor at GQ, was a guy named David Granger, who later became the editor of Esquire, and when he did, he brought me and a bunch of writers with him.

02:05:44 Speaker_03
So this all started at GQ, and the day after my wife is laughing at me, I march into David Granger's office, and I say, hey, you wanna buy a story? I'm gonna go fight Julio Cesar Chavez. He says, what?

02:05:59 Speaker_03
I give him the background and he said, all right, let me go in and check on my boss. Let's see what our insurance policy looks like. They made me, that was the first thing. You're going to have to sign documents saying we're not responsible for this.

02:06:12 Speaker_03
This is all on you.

02:06:14 Speaker_03
I said, that's fine, and I go down to the Times Square gym on 42nd Street at the time, and up 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

02:06:39 Speaker_03
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 Hearns, the welterweight champion. Tommy Hearns was nasty.

02:06:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, and he had actually done pretty well. He was a very slick boxer. He wasn't that tall, and Tommy Hearns was like 6'2", 6'3", tremendous reach, and an unbelievable power in his hands. And I think that fight went a while.

02:07:13 Speaker_03
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, I'm going to be fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. You think you can train me? And now he's just like, what is this?

02:07:32 Speaker_03
Who sent you here?

02:07:33 Speaker_02
Looking for the hidden cameras.

02:07:35 Speaker_03
You got it. That's exactly it. And then this guy says he's going to fight Julio Cesar Chavez. Everybody in the gym is laughing. Are you a professional? No. I'm like, are you an amateur? Well, I had one fight in the Golden Gloves 20 years ago.

02:07:51 Speaker_03
It didn't turn out. And now Harold's saying like, okay, okay. You're really going to do this, huh? I'll tell you what, you come back tomorrow, like three o'clock and we'll do a little workout and we'll see.

02:08:08 Speaker_03
So I come back the next day and this guy, he just, tortured me, the whole point was, get out of here. You're not fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. You have no idea what it's like to be a boxer. A little respect for the craft here.

02:08:25 Speaker_03
And after three hours, 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, the door opened, I literally collapsed into my wife's arms.

02:08:47 Speaker_03
And it's like, she dragged me to the tub and we had hot water going. She threw in some Epsom salts and I just like laid in there for like three hours, unable to move.

02:09:01 Speaker_03
And when I left the gym, everybody in the 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.

02:09:18 Speaker_03
He was a fashionable guy. So that lured him in, you know, the style element. And he said, so you're really going to do this? And I said, yeah. I said, look, I'm just asking for one round with Julio Cesar Chavez, one round. That's it.

02:09:34 Speaker_03
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, this is a slick boxer. I'm going to teach you how to move and you will survive. We can do this.

02:09:48 Speaker_03
If he's taking this really seriously, you're going down. But we don't know how he's going to 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.

02:10:04 Speaker_03
And now in my mind, I'm also now thinking about the fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard. I don't know if you remember, it was the second fight. No mas. No mas, that's right.

02:10:18 Speaker_03
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, Duran won by a decision in Montreal.

02:10:29 Speaker_03
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.

02:10:42 Speaker_03
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, Duran started to train.

02:10:59 Speaker_03
Now he 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.

02:11:14 Speaker_03
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.

02:11:30 Speaker_03
But we also don't know if when he got in the ring, his stomach was bothering him or Leonard

02:11:39 Speaker_03
Adopted a style that wouldn't allow Duran to hit him and basically broke Duran mentally So we don't know if it was a stomach or his mind or both but midway in the fight Duran basically just throws up his hands and says no mass no more no more and Leonard celebrates and everybody watching

02:11:58 Speaker_03
was in disbelief because for 20 years, Roberto Duran had been the epitome of the macho man. He was like Mike Tyson of the lightweights in his era. He just bored straight ahead. Nothing could stop this guy. He was relentless.

02:12:13 Speaker_03
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 left me with some shred of pride at the end.

02:12:34 Speaker_03
So Harold says to me, okay, look, I'm gonna teach you how to move. And he was like a very classy fighter. And as he's showing me how to move around and avoid punches, I said, no, Harold, no, no, no. It's not the way we're gonna do this. No, no.

02:12:52 Speaker_03
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 to throw punches, and I want to do it just like Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier's short guy, stocky arms, just

02:13:10 Speaker_03
bobbing, weaving, coming straight ahead. And Harold says, no, no, no, I'm not going to do this.

02:13:17 Speaker_03
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 punchers.

02:13:32 Speaker_02
Incoming missiles.

02:13:34 Speaker_03
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 Joe Frasier. Hold your respect, Gal.

02:13:46 Speaker_03
You're not smoking, smoking Gal. Smoking Gal. That's right. And I said, no, I want you to teach me like Joe Frasier. And he said, Okay, you want to be smoking Joe? I can teach you how to be smoking Joe.

02:14:00 Speaker_03
And he pulls out a rope and he sets it from one, the top of the ropes on one side of the ring to the other. And he makes me start bobbing and weaving under this rope.

02:14:12 Speaker_03
Now, anybody who has never done this before, like, after a minute, your thighs are burning. And basically, Harold's idea is, 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.

02:14:30 Speaker_03
But I just, no matter how much it burned, I just got down low and I just bobbed and weaved and moved my head, and then he'd 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.

02:14:45 Speaker_03
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 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.

02:15:01 Speaker_03
But every day I just kept on going back. I literally trained like a fighter. It must have been for like four months. And plus, on the other hand, I had to figure out a way to get Julio Cesar Chavez in the ring with me. He had no idea this.

02:15:15 Speaker_02
He had no idea that you were in this intensive training camp.

02:15:19 Speaker_03
with no agreed upon fight. Not a clue. He doesn't know that I exist. And I am training three hours every afternoon, plus running in the morning, plus calisthenics at night, eating just the way Harold's telling me. My weight goes from, I was about 165.

02:15:36 Speaker_03
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.

02:15:49 Speaker_02
Very high percentage. Yeah, very high percentage. I remember also, just as a side note, because I was mystified and just captivated by Julio Cesar Chavez, that at some point, they looked at x-rays of his head and his skull's like twice as thick.

02:16:04 Speaker_02
That is normal human behavior. That's right.

02:16:07 Speaker_03
So he was used to coming straight at people and absorbing whatever punishment they were dishing out in order to land his shots. And believe me, when Harold heard that I was doing it, he said, look, Cal, I know a guy who fought Julio Cesar Chavez.

02:16:22 Speaker_03
His name is Juan Laporte, okay? Basically, after that fight, Laporte was pissing blood for a long time, because one of Chavez's biggest shots was his left hook to the liver. And he's saying, like, you don't understand.

02:16:39 Speaker_03
This is a professional athlete at the top of his profession. You know, a lot of guys think, oh, if I was out on that football field, I would have made that catch. You know, they see a professional drop the ball. I would have brought that in.

02:16:54 Speaker_03
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.

02:17:10 Speaker_03
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 Illustrated, had been sent to do a story about Julio Cesar Chavez.

02:17:24 Speaker_03
So while he's out interviewing Julio Cesar Chavez, he says to him, oh, by the way, you know, I got a friend who wants to fight you. Is it okay if he comes and fights you? Julio Cesar, send him over. He only wants one round, fine, fine. It'll be great.

02:17:42 Speaker_02
So now Julio has said yes. It's like, I'm just imagining, it's like if your second grade self in a different era had written to Tiger Woods being like, my friend in second grade wants to play you in golf. You're like, sure, yeah, why not? Send him over.

02:17:57 Speaker_03
Yeah. And 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 the ring and.

02:18:17 Speaker_03
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.

02:18:31 Speaker_03
And now like, it's starting to think, okay, Julio, are you ready? Are you ready for this? All the people in the gym are laughing. That's all part of like a community where like, what is gonna happen?

02:18:48 Speaker_03
And so at this point, GQ meanwhile is funding this, they're funding all the training, and they're gonna fund my trip to Mexico, they gotta send photographers, they'll send my wife.

02:19:00 Speaker_03
Now I got an entourage coming down to Mexico to fight Julio Cesar Chavez. And he's training to fight Pernell Whitaker, this is like the biggest fight in his life.

02:19:10 Speaker_02
Oh, I remember this.

02:19:13 Speaker_03
He's actually not really training that hard. We're supposed to have... or fight 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.

02:19:30 Speaker_03
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 saying, man, if he's fighting Pernell Whitaker, he should be a little more focused than this. So I'm waiting.

02:19:44 Speaker_03
for this appointed day, and Harold West and my trainer knew the president of the World Boxing Council, Jose Suleiman, who set up a weigh-in, and GQ made me a robe, and Julio was very amused by all this.

02:19:59 Speaker_03
We went out running one morning, and the thing about it was Julio trains in Toluca, Mexico, high altitude. So that was my first Moment where i said oh this is my issue yeah because i train really hard.

02:20:17 Speaker_03
Back in new york but all the sudden at altitude you're not you're not saying. And so we're running in the morning and it comes to this day where okay we're gonna do it.

02:20:28 Speaker_03
So I show up, I got my GQ robe on, they invited kids from their neighborhood in to come witness this. And like the kids thought like, oh, this is a fight. And so Julio is set up, I'm set up, we're ready to go.

02:20:43 Speaker_03
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 wear training gloves. But other than that, and I said, no headgear. I said, this is a fight.

02:21:03 Speaker_03
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 them pillowy, but there was cushion in there.

02:21:12 Speaker_02
What were they, 12 or 16 ounces?

02:21:15 Speaker_03
Yeah, I don't know if they were 12 or 16, but they weren't eight like mine. That was the only difference.

02:21:22 Speaker_03
Jose Suleiman, president of WBC, that's the guy, ring the bell, and all of a sudden I go charging straight in the style of Joe Frazier, right at Julio Cesar Chavez.

02:21:34 Speaker_03
He looks at me, and he's used to coming straight ahead, and now he's saying like, what's going on? 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.

02:21:49 Speaker_03
Do you understand me? Like all the work you did, there's only one chance you have. And I'm going to tell it to you. You listen to me. You listen to me good. This is the strategy. I want you to throw just like I've been teaching you.

02:22:02 Speaker_03
Left jab, right hand, straight right hand, left hook. Okay? He's going to catch those punches. I want you to do it again. Left jam, straight right hand, left hook. He's going to catch those punches. And I want you to do it again.

02:22:19 Speaker_03
Left jam, right hand, left hook. And he's going to catch them again. And I want you to keep on doing that again and again and again. Do it 20 times.

02:22:31 Speaker_03
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,

02:22:40 Speaker_03
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.

02:22:51 Speaker_03
And so, bell rings and now he's like circling around trying to figure out like, who is this lunatic coming at me like Joe Frazier? Bobbing, weaving, snorting.

02:23:00 Speaker_03
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.

02:23:12 Speaker_03
Like the first time I did it, he said, okay, I know what you got. I'm just going to see how much you can take in a little while. But we'll play this out. We'll play it out. And so I keep storming in. I keep throwing these three punches.

02:23:30 Speaker_03
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.

02:23:46 Speaker_03
And I just throw the right hand, and it just sucks him in the jaw. And he looks at me, and he sprawls backward as a way of saying, oh, OK, you caught me. Okay, okay, okay.

02:24:02 Speaker_03
He goes back like he's staggered and then he smiles at me and 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.

02:24:15 Speaker_03
I'm telling you, it was like someone took the pipe of a Hoover vacuum cleaner, attached to the vacuum cleaner that was on full blast sucking up and just shoved it down my throat.

02:24:28 Speaker_03
Down to my stomach and it's like my whole stomach is coming up through my mouth, right? 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.

02:24:45 Speaker_03
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 hit me. And so, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The round's over.

02:25:02 Speaker_03
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'm here, I did it. And Julio, he's training for his fight. He looks over at me and says, otro? You want another?

02:25:22 Speaker_03
And I said, si, mas. And we did another one. And then in the second round, he really started like, he was having fun, but he was starting to tag me pretty good.

02:25:34 Speaker_03
And you could tell Jose Suleman is watching this and he's like, a minute and a half into the round, Before we have a gringo casualty on our hands. That's right. And so the bell rings, I go back to the corner and we embrace.

02:25:53 Speaker_03
He was really wonderful about it because what was cool about what he did was he treated me, now that I think about it, he treated me like the assistant to President Johnson treated me. He didn't laugh.

02:26:11 Speaker_03
He saw my punches coming, he saw what I could handle, and then when he saw that I had, like, outfoxed him for a second, he said, okay, I'll lift the game, but I'm not here to... level them. And so it was a really like wonderful experience.

02:26:31 Speaker_03
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.

02:26:42 Speaker_03
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.

02:26:51 Speaker_02
So now it's just a good story.

02:26:54 Speaker_02
When you spoke to your wife after the two rounds, later that night or whenever you actually had a 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?

02:27:08 Speaker_03
I think she was pretty scared. I think she probably was watching with her hands over her eyes, but with her fingers spread so that she could see. And I think she was really proud.

02:27:22 Speaker_03
And you know, the thing about it is you realize it's not so much about winning and losing.

02:27:30 Speaker_03
Although, you know, my kids, it's crazy because my kids hear the story and they tell their friends in like junior high school or whatever, and their friends are like, did he win? They have no concept.

02:27:41 Speaker_03
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 beaten up out of me every day in order to learn how to duck a punch, and I did.

02:27:56 Speaker_03
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.

02:28:09 Speaker_03
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.

02:28:21 Speaker_02
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 as the part A they needed to set up part B. You know what?

02:28:34 Speaker_03
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,

02:28:51 Speaker_03
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 triumph over those moments.

02:29:14 Speaker_03
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.

02:29:28 Speaker_03
And to this day, I really do, it gets complicated when people look at the picture, I get a big picture at home of me hitting Julio, and people look at it and it looks real. It looks authentic. It is real.

02:29:42 Speaker_03
It is real, but it lends people to say, what happened? What was the result? The result was I survived.

02:29:54 Speaker_02
So Cal, there are so many more stories that, even if not on tape, I will have to ask you about, but perhaps we'll do a round two. I mean, we have to talk at some point about Muhammad Ali. We have to talk about Trump. We have to talk about De Niro.

02:30:06 Speaker_02
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 questions? I love those questions. All right.

02:30:18 Speaker_02
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.

02:30:29 Speaker_03
I love these questions.

02:30:31 Speaker_02
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 him during the course of this interview.

02:30:40 Speaker_03
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.

02:30:59 Speaker_03
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 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?

02:31:20 Speaker_03
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 he starts to look at biographies of people who he deemed to be successful, to see what the definition of success was.

02:31:38 Speaker_03
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.

02:31:57 Speaker_03
And on his journey, one of the people that he went to interview was Larry King. And he actually met Larry outside of Whole Foods, went running down, he saw Larry pushing his shopping cart, went running down the street, Larry King!

02:32:14 Speaker_03
scared the bejesus out of Larry and asked if he could interview Larry. And Larry invited him to breakfast. And when he arrived, Alex said, I'm writing a book. And Larry said to Alex, well, if you're writing a book, then you should talk to this guy.

02:32:30 Speaker_03
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.

02:32:44 Speaker_03
So when I think of success, I think of everything Alex was trying to find out. That's one. The second is another boxer, George Foreman. Who, you might remember... My mom's favorite boxer. Really? Oh yeah. Because she remembers old George.

02:33:02 Speaker_03
Now the old George was a bigger Mike Tyson. Oh my god, terrifying. Tyson was what, 6 feet maybe? George Foreman was 6'3". 220 and just had a string of vicious knockouts and won the heavyweight title by knocking Joe Frazier down six times.

02:33:22 Speaker_03
One time, he literally hit him with an uppercut and uprooted Joe Frazier like he was a tree stump.

02:33:28 Speaker_02
It looks like a superhero movie. 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.

02:33:40 Speaker_03
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.

02:33:53 Speaker_03
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 he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the other kids.

02:34:05 Speaker_03
On top of that, his siblings, his sisters, would make fun of him. He was younger. They would say, you're a mohead! You're a mohead!

02:34:15 Speaker_03
And george foreman had no idea what it meant but he knew it wasn't good and he would hear that he would chase his sisters around when he heard you and mo head you and mo head and finally years later he grew up and he found out what they were saying.

02:34:31 Speaker_03
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 Moorhead, conceived George, and then went back to Mr. Foreman. And so,

02:34:51 Speaker_03
When he was born, his siblings who were foremans were calling, you a mohead, you a mohead. 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.

02:35:08 Speaker_03
When he would walk into a place, people would look down. And he had this surliness was a big part of his demeanor. And when he went to fight Muhammad Ali in Zaire, he was an undefeated champ. People feared for Ali's life.

02:35:26 Speaker_03
And in fact, Ali would not watch George Foreman hit the heavy bag. It was too scary. This guy could hit that hard.

02:35:33 Speaker_03
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.

02:35:43 Speaker_03
And Ali had a sense that if he could make Foreman expend his energy and not land those punches, just 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.

02:36:03 Speaker_03
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 Zaireans

02:36:17 Speaker_03
had in their history a memory of German shepherds being brought in by the Belgians to keep them under control. So the Zaireans immediately hated George Foreman. And a chant grew out of it, Ali Boumaie, Ali, kill him.

02:36:34 Speaker_03
And the bell rang, and George Foreman came at Ali, and Ali didn't move. He just kept his back against the ropes with his hands up. This was the rope-a-dope? This was the rope-a-dope.

02:36:44 Speaker_03
And George Foreman is just slugging away, and Ollie would open his guard up just a little, say, is that all you got? Foreman just getting more and more infuriated, just punch after punch, first round, second round.

02:36:59 Speaker_03
Those of us who are watching, and I was watching on closed circuit television on a big screen in St. Louis at the time, you're almost crying because you were screaming at Ollie, get out of the way, dance, do something.

02:37:11 Speaker_03
We couldn't see what was happening. That he was just kept talking and joy we can hear him talking. Oh man that's it that's all you got for me is just throwing shot after shot after shot and then all of a sudden and like the fourth round.

02:37:25 Speaker_03
You see form and throw a shot alley just under it and then this throw a jab straight back and form its face and form its head snap back and we realize.

02:37:36 Speaker_03
Oh my God, he's punched himself out, has a fight, continues a few more rounds, Ali nails him with 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.

02:37:52 Speaker_03
It must be akin to what Ronda Rousey, for those who are 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.

02:38:10 Speaker_03
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.

02:38:24 Speaker_03
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.

02:38:43 Speaker_03
He was a guy who would do ads for eating hamburgers, smiling and laughing.

02:38:50 Speaker_02
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, I remember his, I wanna say I remember his comeback sort of promotional videos where he'd be going for his boxing run and people would be handing him food.

02:38:59 Speaker_03
That's right, that's right. And he starts his comeback at, 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?

02:39:16 Speaker_03
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. Southpaw.

02:39:37 Speaker_03
Southpaw, who is much faster, a 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.

02:39:52 Speaker_03
Foreman came into the ring wearing the exact red trunks that he was wearing when ali hit him and put him down. And when more is trainer saw that he recognized it and thought. So something's up here. And basically, George didn't waste any energy.

02:40:15 Speaker_03
He rearranged his character. And Moore, the first nine rounds, just completely outboxed him, moved around. George just kept his hands up, tried to land, could barely even land. And his face started to get swollen.

02:40:30 Speaker_03
And the 10th round started, and his trainer, who Coincidentally, was Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who was in the opposing corner in Zaire, basically said to him, George, you're way behind. You got to do something.

02:40:47 Speaker_03
And George just kept moving forward and Without wasting energy, just saw one moment and he threw a right hand and he still had the power.

02:40:57 Speaker_03
He still had everything that he had when he was young, power wise, and he clipped Moyer straight on the jaw and Michael Moore went down. and couldn't beat the count. And Foreman went over to the corner, got down on his knees, thanked the Lord.

02:41:15 Speaker_03
And to me, that was a symbol of success because 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.

02:41:32 Speaker_02
Ah, love George Foreman. This just reinvigorated so much more enthusiasm about learning more about George.

02:41:39 Speaker_02
And I remember, ah, it 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.

02:41:48 Speaker_02
In other words, he didn't hold his forearms together perpendicular to the floor, but they were kind of crossed over in front of his face. Such a good story.

02:41:59 Speaker_03
Well, it was all designed to, he knew he was gonna 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 land that one shot.

02:42:11 Speaker_03
So, it's a beautiful story to see somebody take their weakest point and do something within themselves to change who they are.

02:42:25 Speaker_02
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.

02:42:38 Speaker_03
That's right. In fact, I'd have to go back and watch the fight, but I'm sure. His trainer, who was aware, was probably saying, you know, you're way ahead, take it easy, stay away. And he probably said, what are you, crazy? I got this under control.

02:42:55 Speaker_03
Boom, one shot.

02:42:56 Speaker_02
Yeah, 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.

02:43:08 Speaker_03
Hard question to answer because it's almost like wine. 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.

02:43:26 Speaker_03
And like I mentioned, meeting Alex and he says to me, 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.

02:43:38 Speaker_03
And so I gave him Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude for him to know, OK, 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.

02:43:54 Speaker_03
And so my gifts tend to judge what the person needs and then fill that need. And they're no different in wine. If somebody's having a steak, I'm probably not gonna give them a Riesling. I'll give them something to complement the steak.

02:44:10 Speaker_02
So I'll give you a 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 wanna give three books to every graduating high school senior in the country this year.

02:44:23 Speaker_03
Wow. What a question. Okay. One book that people should read. And in fact, I got it with me right now. One of the blurbs on this book actually says, as Toni Morrison, this is required reading. Wow, that's a strong endorsement.

02:44:43 Speaker_03
Yeah, and Toni Morrison's a great African-American writer. And this book is called Between the World and Me, and it's by a guy named Ta-Nehisi Coates. And it's a letter to his son about being a black male in America.

02:45:02 Speaker_03
And I think it 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.

02:45:23 Speaker_03
Redirecting your eyesight to a place that you normally wouldn't go and 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.

02:45:42 Speaker_03
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 you- More than any Ivy League education. There you go.

02:46:03 Speaker_03
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

02:46:21 Speaker_03
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.

02:46:36 Speaker_03
Another book that I would recommend, it's a book that I'm reading now.

02:46:41 Speaker_02
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 as soon as we finish this chat.

02:46:52 Speaker_03
Second but it's okay if i give you to cassie to do to 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. Stand like lincoln. I'm carrying it around with me as well.

02:47:11 Speaker_02
This is amazing.

02:47:13 Speaker_03
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.

02:47:28 Speaker_03
It's a great book because there's all kinds of tips on everything about speaking.

02:47:35 Speaker_02
Subtitle 21 powerful secrets of history's greatest speakers.

02:47:39 Speaker_03
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.

02:47:54 Speaker_03
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?

02:48:08 Speaker_03
Actually reagan's just getting out of college and he got a job in radio in iowa and he was very good conversation on the air but then it came time to read the advertisements.

02:48:21 Speaker_03
And for some reason he was so stiff and awkward reading these advertisements that the advertiser basically said, get him off the air. And they fired him.

02:48:34 Speaker_03
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?

02:48:46 Speaker_03
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.

02:49:07 Speaker_03
Almost memorize the phrase in his head then look up and then say the words conversationally 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 you 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.

02:49:31 Speaker_03
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.

02:49:43 Speaker_02
I'm going to get another book for my list. Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies?

02:49:49 Speaker_03
You know, it's a really interesting question. I probably would have told you that there's a movie, Cinema Paradiso. You love that movie? Okay.

02:50:00 Speaker_03
I would mention that, but something happened to me recently where a documentary and a movie came together that provided this amazing experience.

02:50:09 Speaker_03
The documentary was called Man on Wire, and it was about Philippe Petit's walk on a wire across the towers of the World Trade Center. And it's an amazing documentary.

02:50:20 Speaker_03
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.

02:50:32 Speaker_03
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.

02:50:48 Speaker_03
And the documentary takes you through the whole thing.

02:50:51 Speaker_02
It's just amazing. And the way that they pieced it together with the alternating sort of black and white reenactments, just the cinematography and the pacing is genius.

02:51:00 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's definitely my favorite documentary. But then, last year, Robert Zemeckis did a movie called The Walk. Is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt? That's right. I haven't seen it yet. Oh, here's the thing. I saw this movie nine times. The Walk? The Walk.

02:51:17 Speaker_03
I saw this movie nine times, but you gotta 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.

02:51:42 Speaker_03
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 Philippe Petit was looking down at when he was crossing this wire.

02:51:59 Speaker_03
And I 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. That was unbelievable.

02:52:08 Speaker_03
And then the police are coming and the police have been like haunting him for years cause wherever you 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 we had this cat and mouse game going with the police all these years and now he's on the wire.

02:52:27 Speaker_03
More than a hundred stories above new york city and the police are there and they can't touch him. Do whatever you want on this wire and so like the tables are turning and yet.

02:52:37 Speaker_03
In this movie, when he steps on that wire, I knew everything that was gonna happen on that walk. I'm begging him, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Please don't do it. I completely suspended my disbelief.

02:52:53 Speaker_03
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 beforehand. I told, I warned him.

02:53:06 Speaker_03
I say, if you've got to fear heights, don't come go watch Robert De Niro and the apprentice or whatever they call that movie. What hit me was there's this one scene in the movie where he's learning how to walk the tightrope.

02:53:20 Speaker_03
And this is back in France, that'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.

02:53:36 Speaker_03
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.

02:53:53 Speaker_03
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.

02:54:10 Speaker_03
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.

02:54:27 Speaker_03
So the first time you're just swooning, not swooning, you're swaying immediately like 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 at my head.

02:54:39 Speaker_03
Every time on the ninth time poles coming straight at my head. I'm ducking out of the way. It was that visceral and Experienced and the direction was just amazing.

02:54:50 Speaker_03
I love the acting and so if you can see that movie on 3d IMAX please do it's just wonderful.

02:55:00 Speaker_02
Well, I guess I'll put out a call and

02:55:03 Speaker_02
or a 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, Daiquiri or whomever might be able to translate some of this to an immersive experience for folks.

02:55:27 Speaker_02
That's coming down the pike too. Wow, that'd be beautiful. You know, I feel like we're just gonna have to do a round two sometime, but I'll ask. You know, I'm gonna come back anytime. I'll ask three more. Okay.

02:55:38 Speaker_02
If you could have a billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would you put on it? One word, listen. Listen.

02:55:46 Speaker_03
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.

02:56:00 Speaker_03
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 can be achieved through listening.

02:56:09 Speaker_02
What advice would you give your 30-year-old self, and if you could place us again where you were at 30?

02:56:15 Speaker_03
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 thirty it would have moved me maybe one centimeter in one direction that put my life in a different place and i needed to be.

02:56:40 Speaker_03
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 the mother of my kids. So I couldn't have that moved in any way.

02:56:58 Speaker_03
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.

02:57:09 Speaker_03
Really, the time I needed advice was when I was in college and there was so much offered and so little I took advantage of.

02:57:21 Speaker_02
What would your advice be to either your kids or to people going into college? They say, Uncle Cal, 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.

02:57:36 Speaker_03
If they want to travel, you get a chance to learn like four languages. five languages, and it's gonna be so relaxed.

02:57:47 Speaker_03
All you gotta do is just go into the class and then meet somebody from the opposite sex who speaks the language, and you're gonna be going out and talking in the new language, and you could do that over and over again in college. You got that time.

02:58:03 Speaker_03
One of the things, if it was me, knowing that I wanted to be a writer, Or knowing that i'm now gonna be speaking and i'm going to be speaking about questions that people ask when they're hiring i would love.

02:58:21 Speaker_03
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.

02:58:45 Speaker_03
That's my hunch.

02:58:46 Speaker_02
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.

02:59:02 Speaker_02
I'm gonna write that one down, I'm gonna go home and order it. I am not kidding.

02:59:05 Speaker_02
So what about as a writer or to a kid who's graduating from college and says to himself or herself, you know, 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?

02:59:26 Speaker_02
What advice would you give to them?

02:59:28 Speaker_03
I would tell them just write. 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.

02:59:45 Speaker_03
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. Doesn't have to be for much money, but you can go out, especially now.

03:00:02 Speaker_03
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.

03:00:16 Speaker_03
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.

03:00:33 Speaker_03
First, as an excuse to put off writing. I need to make the school make me write. You make you write.

03:00:40 Speaker_02
Yeah, if you don't have that intrinsic motivation, it's gonna be hard to... Yeah, it's making a thing happen, because you won't always have a school teacher to whack you with a ruler.

03:00:48 Speaker_03
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.

03:00:57 Speaker_03
If you need to eat and, you know, unless you can find a bar that's putting out olives and little chicken fingers.

03:01:04 Speaker_02
you're gonna write and get paid so that you can eat.

03:01:08 Speaker_02
I remember talking to a friend of mine who's a journalist, writes for a number of very well-known newspapers, and he always laughs when he has to listen to book authors like myself sort of whinge and pontificate about writer's block, and he just scoffs at the whole idea.

03:01:27 Speaker_02
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, you know, 4 p.m., 5 p.m.

03:01:34 Speaker_02
He's like, no, I can't muse about the subtleties of writer's block, because, I mean, he has to ship, like he has to ship words every day, or whatever it might be, every week.

03:01:45 Speaker_02
What are your thoughts on writer's block, if that's not too general a question? No, I only had it once.

03:01:50 Speaker_03
Okay i only had a once and what happened was i was writing for a squire and working on.

03:01:58 Speaker_03
I can't call the perfect man and the idea was basically in line with this conversation i was gonna take all my flaws and all my mistakes and then go to experts who were going to teach me how to overcome them.

03:02:12 Speaker_03
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.

03:02:22 Speaker_03
I learned how to publicly speak by going in a boxing ring with Michael Buffer and announcing the fight. Sounds like a fun gig. That was great.

03:02:32 Speaker_03
I learned how to lose weight by going to jack lane who is the exercise champion of this day and i went to learn how to barbecue through steven reichland 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,

03:02:53 Speaker_03
You wanna 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 gonna do?

03:03:03 Speaker_03
I don't know what's what here and then you don't know if the waiter is gonna 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

03:03:18 Speaker_03
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 sommelier for a night at windows of the world which sold for a time more wine than any other restaurant on the planet

03:03:35 Speaker_03
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.

03:03:45 Speaker_03
Because you then 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. It was hundreds of pages.

03:04:00 Speaker_03
To know all those wines, it was almost impossible, but you start to get an idea. And I had world-class sommeliers teaching me, and for one night, I was the sommelier at Windows on the World. It was an amazing experience.

03:04:18 Speaker_03
When 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.

03:04:34 Speaker_03
And I had a bottle of champagne, Lordeaux champagne from France, which it basically was like a $10 bottle of champagne. But nobody knew that, and this had been served at the Assemblée Nationale in France.

03:04:52 Speaker_03
It was like a basic bottle of champagne, but I took it out to their couple. They were celebrating their anniversary.

03:04:59 Speaker_03
over with a flourish and I announced that I was serving Lord Doe Champagne and that it had never been served at these heights before and it would never be served at these heights again.

03:05:11 Speaker_03
And this woman looks at me, she didn't know who I was, her husband did, and she just like broke out in tears. And then the husband had never tasted the champagne before, but they both support it.

03:05:23 Speaker_03
They both put it up and 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.

03:05:42 Speaker_03
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 all, it was profound. It was also funny. I'd spill wine on people's, down a glass. Cause I had to be moving really quick.

03:05:55 Speaker_03
There was a lot of people and I, ah, that's inexcusable. That should never happen here. That bottle is on the house. Everybody at the table, oh, this is great. And people at the adjacent tables saying, come over here, spill some here, spill some here.

03:06:13 Speaker_03
And we get through the night. It's a delightful time and really memorable. Now I go home to write the story, and 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.

03:06:30 Speaker_03
And I remember going to the Ground Zero like a week later, the military took me around in a Humvee, and I still was so overwhelmed that

03:06:46 Speaker_03
I was almost knocked out when I saw it because I remember seeing like, there was this thin coat of white dust over everything. And you could see in a parking lot, this coat of dust over the cars.

03:07:03 Speaker_03
And I actually said to the guy in the army who was taking me around, I said, 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.

03:07:19 Speaker_03
And it's very hard to explain the enormity, but I just couldn't write.

03:07:24 Speaker_03
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.

03:07:40 Speaker_03
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 sommelier.

03:07:55 Speaker_03
And not only that, but at the end, or toward the middle of the night, somebody, like people were pressing $20 in my hand, they thought I was really the sommelier.

03:08:05 Speaker_03
And a few days later, somebody who came in that night, and nobody knew that I wasn't the real sommelier, somebody came in like three days later and asked for me. And so I was feeling so good about the experience.

03:08:20 Speaker_03
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.

03:08:34 Speaker_03
Same guy who bankrolled me going up against Julio Cesar Chavez bankrolled the wine story. I'm flying around the world tasting the wines in France, the wines in Italy, the wines in Germany.

03:08:45 Speaker_03
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.

03:09:05 Speaker_03
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 have to go into the office to see the editor, like, I knew.

03:09:23 Speaker_03
We both knew. Like, where's the story? Where's the story? Years started passing. And he started to do things to try to help me and push it out of me, whether it was lighthearted or hey.

03:09:40 Speaker_03
You know, it's like years now, the movie Sideways, which is about wine, had 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 he can.

03:09:54 Speaker_03
Might be lighthearted with a little offhanded joke. It might be, hey, come on. It's years now. We're waiting for this story.

03:10:03 Speaker_03
movie sideways comes out to big hit in the white 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.

03:10:19 Speaker_03
I never had writer's block before, but there was just nothing that would come out of me. It just wasn't, it was like a wine that wasn't ready to be served.

03:10:28 Speaker_03
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.

03:10:41 Speaker_03
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.

03:10:52 Speaker_02
Oh, it seems like a huge just anxiety trigger.

03:10:55 Speaker_03
Yeah.

03:10:56 Speaker_02
The undone homework assignment.

03:10:57 Speaker_03
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.

03:11:18 Speaker_03
And so it really affected me, but there was nothing I could do about it. And 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

03:11:32 Speaker_03
Everything turned into mold in my basement, and all the notes got black. So I had no notes of anything. Basically, everything had been wiped out. My notes were ground zero afterward. And now, how am I going to do this?

03:11:53 Speaker_03
But you know, there 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. Wrote a book called Feast of Snakes. And if you're a young man, and Harry Cruz also wrote for Esquire.

03:12:07 Speaker_03
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 feast of snakes. He wrote another book called Car about a guy eating a car. This guy was out there.

03:12:27 Speaker_03
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?

03:12:40 Speaker_03
I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, his drinking is legendary. Plus the amount of drugs that he puts in his body, you're not gonna be able to stay with this guy. You're gonna hurt yourself.

03:12:52 Speaker_03
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 go drive right up to his house and knock on the door and there's no response. Knock again, no response.

03:13:10 Speaker_03
And I could almost hear, like, a snoring. So I just opened the door. Oh, my God. 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.

03:13:32 Speaker_03
He's like getting himself out of sleep. He said, what do you want? I said, like, Harry, I just read Feast of Snakes. I 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?

03:13:50 Speaker_03
I drive over to Gator Gulch and I think that was what it was called, something like that. and they've already got like a carton filled with alcohol for me to bring back. The usual. Yeah, the usual. The usual.

03:14:04 Speaker_03
I come back and we start drinking and like naturally after a little while, I'd just been driving for 20 hours and now I'm drinking and I'm starting to float away and he's getting more lucid.

03:14:18 Speaker_03
And this was 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.

03:14:42 Speaker_03
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.

03:14:57 Speaker_03
And almost 10 years passed, and in a chance meeting with a woman who Was in a position, it was 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.

03:15:16 Speaker_03
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 gonna know if you should like them or not.

03:15:35 Speaker_03
And she said, wow, that's a good idea. And something in that conversation opened up a pathway.

03:15:45 Speaker_03
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.

03:15:56 Speaker_03
When the wine list came before me, I could give the waiter instruction, this is what I want, without feeling like I didn't know what I was doing.

03:16:06 Speaker_03
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's stuck.

03:16:17 Speaker_03
And I'm sitting at a bar, and I'm writing down all the stuff, the good shit that's stuck, and the bartender's pouring drinks, and a waiter came back with a Italian dessert wine.

03:16:32 Speaker_03
And it was a white wine, and the waiter said to the bartender, the people, they don't like it. They say there's something wrong with it. And so it was Vin Santo.

03:16:45 Speaker_03
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, Vin Santo, it's not cheap.

03:17:00 Speaker_03
And I said, wait a minute, let me smell that wine, because he brought the wine back. I said, pour me a glass. And so I swirl it around, I put it up to my nose and I said, no, it's no good.

03:17:12 Speaker_03
And the way I said it, I must've said it with such conviction that the bartender said, oh, okay.

03:17:18 Speaker_02
You said it the same way that Jesus said his name in the locker room.

03:17:21 Speaker_03
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.

03:17:38 Speaker_03
And he explained that when he was young, he was a singer and he had actually gone to the Vatican and sang in a choir for the Pope. So I said, oh, okay, fine. Then you understand this. When you put that wine to your nose, all right, listen to it.

03:17:54 Speaker_03
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.

03:18:06 Speaker_03
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 key notes. And I don't know, maybe the wine was a little corked. Maybe it was just the way they stored it.

03:18:22 Speaker_03
But as soon as he heard that, he realized that it translated for him. And OK, when somebody in the choirs 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.

03:18:41 Speaker_03
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.

03:18:50 Speaker_02
Drinking at 1300 Feet. Yeah.

03:18:56 Speaker_02
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, unearthing, and telling other people's stories.

03:19:15 Speaker_02
Of course, you've told some of your own, but I wanna hear more and more of these stories. Next time, I feel like we should have some wine. Next time we will do this for wine. But where can people find you online? Okay, they can go to calfessman.com.

03:19:31 Speaker_02
That's C-A-L-F-U-S-S-M-A-N dot com.

03:19:34 Speaker_03
Dot 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?

03:19:48 Speaker_02
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?

03:19:54 Speaker_03
Not really. This is all like a new adventure for me. I don't even know how to promote myself. It's just happening.

03:20:02 Speaker_02
Maybe I can give you the choir a cappella 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.

03:20:16 Speaker_03
I hope we have many more. And let me tell you something, you are really good at what you do.

03:20:21 Speaker_02
Thank you.

03:20:22 Speaker_03
Thank you.

03:20:22 Speaker_02
Well, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and you've been very, very generous 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.

03:20:35 Speaker_02
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?

03:20:45 Speaker_02
Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.

03:20:54 Speaker_02
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.

03:21:05 Speaker_02
It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

03:21:17 Speaker_02
And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So, if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

03:21:31 Speaker_02
If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Momentus.

03:21:46 Speaker_02
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03:21:55 Speaker_02
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03:24:14 Speaker_02
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