Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Part 1: Journalist Cal Fussman on Questions, Storytelling, Adventure

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

This conversation, just like Cal Fussman, gets better as it goes. I really enjoy the conversations, that at the end, I walk away saying, man I'd love to spend more time him/her….This was one of those conversations. He's known for his skill of asking great questions -- yet his talent of storytelling is world class. Questions are to illicit responses and engagement -- and -- there is so much more beneath the surface of an answer -- body gestures, emotions, hints of motivation, and ultimately, snips of the framework that the person is working to share how they understand the world (and people). It's all in there -- does the responder orientate to protect, to embrace…..to explore, to have fun? And -- Cal takes that understanding to the next level by doing it artistically through storytelling. We all have a story -- thousands of stories. Cal pulls back the curtain to share his -- and the challenge is set for us all to become better at asking questions to learn other's stories -- and -- to become thoughtful on how we share our own stories with people who are thoughtful -- caring -- interested -- enough to offer their time and attention. This is a two part episode -- it's too good, way to good to cram. When you listen to Cal's stories, listen for the framework, for the stuff underneath the surface -- and -- also see if you can listen to how he constructs his stories. We also talk about the art of interrupting others -- during storytelling -- He doesn't -- I do, and we have fun with it (and if you've ever wondered why I purposefully interrupt folks -- it's all by design, and we talk about it just a bit in this conversation)._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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almost like the way you would see De Niro in a movie. And his head's kind of tilting. His eyes are squinched. He says, you want to break bread with me? Yeah, I want to break bread with you. And he turns to the assistant. He wants to break bread with me. Come on.

And I said, yeah, I want to break bread with you. He says, okay, well, like, when am I further? Tuesday? Wednesday? What do I got for lunch? Wednesday? Okay, Wednesday. You come to Tribeca Grill, 1 o'clock, Wednesday.

We'll break bread. So now I leave the office, and I am ecstatic because this is no longer an interview. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. And we want to understand what they're searching for, the unique psychological framework on how they see the world themselves in it, how they understand how people work, how they explain events and activities in their life.

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That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot.

Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our

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conversation. So it was a wonderful experience for me. And I hope that we do justice to his art. And he's known for the skill of asking great questions. Yet his talent is that of storytelling in its world class. In my opinion, questions are formed to elicit responses and engagement, either responses within or responses that we share. But there is so much beneath the surface of an answer. There's body gestures, there are emotions, there's hints of motivation. And ultimately, there's snips of a framework that the person's working to share on how they understand the world and how they understand people. It's all in there. And the question is, does the responder orientate to protect, to embrace, to explore, to have fun? That's what we want to be able to pay attention to.

And so Cal takes that understanding to the next level by playing with it, by knowing that there's a dance between the question and the answer and the two people engaged in it. And he does this artistically through storytelling. Now, we all have a story. We have thousands of stories, actually. And Cal pulls back the curtain to share his. And the challenge is set for us to become better at asking questions, to learn other people's stories, and also to become thoughtful on how we share our own stories with people who are thoughtful enough and caring enough to be interested. So this is a two-part episode. It's so good. It really is. It was way too good to cram into one long episode. So when you listen to Cal's stories, see if you can listen to the framework for the framework, for the stuff underneath the surface, and also see if you can listen to how he constructs his stories. and we talk about the art of interrupting others during storytelling. He doesn't do it.

And we have fun with it because some of you know that I do. And if you've ever wondered why I purposely interrupt folks, it's by design. And we talk about it in this conversation. So this is a two-part conversation. Let's jump right into this with Cal Fussman. Cal. Hey. That's fun. How are you doing? I'm happy to be here, man. Let's jump right into this with Cal Fussman. Cal. Hey! That's fun. How you doing? I'm happy to be here, man. Yeah, I am too. So I've been looking forward to this for a while. So, you know, at this point,

you've built this large reputation of being artful or artistic and purposeful with questions. And so this is an interview type conversation where I'm going to ask questions. So there's that funny little twist that this meta analysis that's going to happen for both of us about the questions. And I'm sure you get that all the time. I love questions. I love questions. I don't need to ask them, but questions coming at me because,

you know, I've found that that's where I learned the most, but questions coming at me because, you know, I've found that that's where I learned the most when the questions come at me. Yeah. So do you, which, which side of it do you prefer? Cause you've got a long history of interviewing and having conversations and asking questions with world's best across so many arts. And now you're spending a lot of time answering questions which one have you enjoyed more it's amazing because for half of my life i was asking questions and pretty much silently listening what we what does that mean silently listen? Well, some people can listen, but they can't stop from getting in the conversation. I will let you talk. I won't interrupt you. I might guide you, but I'm going to give you a chance to tell a story and I'm not going to forcefully

knock you off balance when you're talking. And I can recall, I came out to LA about eight years ago to help Larry King write his autobiography. And Larry said, okay, first day, why don't you show up at breakfast? He has, we had breakfast every day, same place called Nate and Al's Beverly Hills and deli. And he had a table full of guys who are in their seventies, a lot of them childhood friends. And I showed up at the table and I really wouldn't speak very much because I was like the kid at the table. I'm like 50, mid-70s, and I'm just listening and listening. And at one point, Larry actually looked at me,

and he slammed his hand on the table and said, Speak, Cal'll speak. And what was happening to me when I get into an interview, of course I speak, but here's the interesting thing about this. I did an experiment with a guy who interviews executives and he puts them through like four hour interviews. And I interviewed him and he interviewed me to see how our styles might overlap. And one of the amazing things that came out of it, he knew that in his interviews with executives, he wanted to get the most information. So his questions basically took up 10% of the interview, which means the executives were speaking 90% of the time.

I didn't know any of this. When I interviewed him, we went through the process. And after I knew the statistic, I said to him, well, how much time am I speaking? And when I interview somebody, how much time are they speaking? And he said, you're at 5%. Wow. So you really listen. Even with somebody who gives the interviewee lots of space, you do even more. Yeah. A lot of times, especially people think when they see interviews on TV, that like that's an interview. Of course it's an interview, but in that case, the interviewer has to ask direct questions, has to get to some place where if I'm interviewing somebody and nobody is going to hear the whole thing, if I'm going to condense it into a what I've learned column in an Esquire

down to 900 words, then I have a luxury where I'm just patiently waiting for the gold nuggets to come down the river. And how do you know when a nugget is gold? As soon as you see the gold, you know it, man. Is it something like, is it an alignment that you have within yourself? Is it the prose? Is it the cadence of the words? Is it the structure of the sentence? Is it the light bulb the person has has is it all of that well it's sort of like that rap song there it is it is yeah it's just pops out at you and there's no mistaking it would they know that they had the gem too or is that just the gem they might not right they might not okay all right so my i'd love

okay so this this conversation is going to be about the importance of great questions and what that can do and the gift that you can give another person and also um how you can learn about other people through that process that's what i'd like to do and then on the other side i want to become a better questioner. I want to learn better questions from you. My approach, and this is based on training in psychology, is that I'm looking for, you called it nuggets, I'm looking for something very similar, but threads to pull on. And I purposely interrupt often. As soon as I hear something that's a thread that's related to a principle, a psychological principle, then I pull on it.

And sometimes I'll just stop people. And I've had lots of people, not lots, handfuls of people through social media kick back and say, hey, why do you interrupt your guests? There's a reason for it. And so you and I have very different styles. But here we do the same thing. The difference is because I can be more patient, I see the thread and I put it in my pocket. And then I'll let them keep going and keep going and keep going. And then they get to the end of what they're saying.

And I'll say, that thread that I just saw, and then I'll put it out and then they'll go with it. So it's the same thing. It's just a different tact. Got it. Yeah. A lot of it probably depends on how much time you have with the person. Usually in my world, it's limited. How much time, if you're doing one of those interviews, what's your base time? 15 minutes to 45 minutes. If I'm talking to somebody for an hour and a half, it's a different game. And if I can get it to three hours, imagine the difference. So I can see why you have to do that. And there really may be no choice. Well, you know, I can hear people in my, in the back of my mind saying, Mike, many of your podcasts are an hour and a half and you still interrupt.

Make them dream. We'll see. Yeah, that's great. Okay. So how about this as just to kind of get to know you a little bit better is what would be important for me to understand who you are? Like what, what are the events, the stories, the experiences to help me understand who you are? Well, this goes back to November 1963. It was the day that I knew who I would become. That's a phenomenal statement like that. And so you're not, when you said it, you're nodding your head like, yeah, I get it. Like that's. A hundred percent. On that day.

That's rare. I knew it. Apparently it's very rare because that same guy who interviews the executives said that I was in like the top 98% of people. They only 2% have like a moment like that when they're seven years old, like I had. So I'm aware that it's rare. Okay. Seven years old. So I'm seven years old and I'm sitting in my second grade class, just turned seven.

This is a week after I turned seven. And Miss Jaffe leaves the room. And she comes back. And as she comes a way that lets you know that, uh-oh, something just happened. And she starts to tell us that President Kennedy's just been shot. And we're all let out of school, go home, find out the president's been killed, and that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is now the new president. It's all anybody's talking about the whole day. That night, my parents probably figured, we don't know how this is going to affect him. He's never, he's never really been through anything like this. And so they call me over to the kitchen table. Okay. Hold on, hold on. I'm doing that interrupting thing now. Okay. Okay. So is that rude when I interrupt? Like

what's happening for you as I interrupt? Cause you're right in the middle of a story. That's like, no man, you gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. Gotta let it go. Yeah. And so what did you want to know that I haven't told you? And perhaps because I may want to hold something back to keep you leaning in. Yeah.

Well, I actually, I just want to know what it was like to be interrupted. Cause I know you were right in the middle of it. You can't do that, man. You're not in the middle of a story. You can't interrupt somebody in the middle of the story. But what happens for you? Do you get frustrated? This is like you, the man, Cal, the man. Okay. My deepest quality is curiosity. So I'm looking at you saying, what the hell is going on here why would we do this why would you interrupt it's not like the story was going off course no great story i i've i've told i've been asked this question i've told the story before so i know where it's going i may

i've i've already held back details like right in the beginning. I said it was November 1963. I didn't give you the exact date, which you might have identified. I didn't start the story with, I knew who I was going to become on the day President Kennedy got shot. I started out with November 1963 to make you wonder, well, what happened then? And how would he remember that date? That's where I went. Wow, he can remember a date?

Yeah, okay. Yeah, so. So, no, no, the art that you have to tell the story, are you better at storytelling or asking questions? Well, you know what? That's a great question. Let's get back to the story. I'll hit that one at the end of the story you know it is like when you watch these guys in the white house in the press room and mr president mr president they get their hand up they never ask one question directly it's always the. And then, and if that's the case,

and then a second question, and maybe they can fit in a third. And I'm wondering like, why would anybody do that? Because number one, if you ask somebody three questions, they now have a choice to respond to only one of them, the one that they like, and they can completely go whatever direction they want and avoid the other two. And I'm, I'm wondering why would these guys be doing this? And every one of them, guys, women, they all do the same thing. Never, ever will you hear one question in a White House briefing. And I start to think about it, and I realized they're on camera. The camera is on them, and they want to be seen by their boss, the editor, back in the office for as long as possible.

And it makes them look erudite asking three or four questions, but it's almost as if it's not designed even to get the answer. Cause if you ask four questions, you are not going to get the answer. And a lot of questions. And I, I, there's an, there's a timing and art to this. And I'll say it now because I know we'll come back to it is you combine people in a question. Is it a, or is it B? Well, maybe it's neither and maybe it's part A and B, but if you ask the question, is it A or B, it puts people in a bind. Wow. I never asked that question. Yeah. I think you ask really open and ended semi semi-structured questions. When I listened to you, like you asked the, you know, tell me a time when,

right. Is there a specific, whatever, and you have very targeted specific, but open-ended. Yeah. I never try to lock somebody in very rarely. Will I ask a question that has a yes or no answer. Yeah. Because you say, do you think? And then the person can just say, yeah, or no. And that's their answer. Now, of course, you could say why after that. But I always try and just take a shortcut through and use the word why to start the question.

You know, it's fascinating. We're so far off from your story, which I want to get back to, like, I really want to get back to, but the why question I never answer. I know rarely, rarely do I ask why. And as you're saying that I'm, I've been more interested in how and when and where and what, and, and you go for why. Because why makes a person who knows something about a subject think deeper about it. It nudges them to think deeper. Just the word

why. It makes them stop and look inward. And it's very difficult to give a one word answer to why other than for the interruption because I learned a lot about you through the interruption process. That's very cool. Yeah. And so do you have any interest in me telling you what I learned? Go ahead. Is that interesting or not? Yeah. No, I'm here to learn you you immediately showed like wait a minute what is he doing because you know that the art that you're unfolding and somebody kind of walked on your canvas and the holding

back of the information is i didn't know you're doing that but that's the hidden art that you have and so it was like like what is going on and then you were able to articulate your that physiological response which was like no no you're not supposed to your, that physiological response, which was like, no, no, no, you're not supposed to be doing that. And I also got to learn that a lot about your art. And then my, my, my begging question is like, do you easily get frustrated or does curiosity do something to temper that for you? I hardly ever get frustrated. You don't. Yeah frustrated in an interview. Even when somebody is obviously trying to protect themselves, I don't find myself getting frustrated. I'll give you a good example of that. Once I asked President Carter, after he had gone to Korea to negotiate with the head of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, I said, what's it like to look Kim Jong-il in the eye? Cool question.

And he, as great politicians will do, said, well, our problems in North Korea go back to 1949. And then went through the whole political explanation, and it took him five minutes. And what he was saying was, okay, you know I ain't answering that question, and it just cost you five minutes. So we can do this again, or you can ask me another question that's going to make me comfortable to answer. And at that point, I had a choice.

I could have said, yeah, yeah, I get all the history, but what's it really like to look Kim Jong-il in the eyes? And I wasn't going to get an answer. And you had that awareness in that moment? Oh, I completely knew. This is my point. Maybe somebody else would have been frustrated. Inside, I was smiling. I said, okay.

I get the chess move. Okay. I'm going to save this question for later. How you've developed that meta-awareness to be able to see the path, the options and paths and to not be overridden by emotion, but to be able to adapt and adjust to that unknown terrain that you're in. If you if you want to go for it now, let's go for it. But that's I think that that's a significant skill that you have it's interesting because i now that you're saying it it's making me think about it and i don't feel that emotion i don't feel that frustration it doesn't come up no i i don't i and i like I can, this could be cool.

I'll tell like 20 stories. At the very end, I'll go back to the first. That's so good. You're making me pay. That's so good. It's a nice bookend. So if you were actually like writing a story, it would be a cool technique. Cool.

You get interrupted and then you go through and then you find out what I was going to say in the first place. Beautiful. I'm with you. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this

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Okay. And I'm not feeling comfortable initially because I know that he does not like to be interviewed. And there had been a history of other writers at Esquire having a difficult time with him. Other writers I heard of, they said, very difficult guy to interview. And so I'm sitting in a waiting room at his office and time's passing. The interview's supposed to be at 3.30 and 3.30 comes. No Robert De Niro. It's 3. The interview's supposed to be 3.30, and 3.30 comes. No Robert De Niro. It's 3.45, 4 o'clock, 4.15.

And part of my feeling going in of maybe uncomfortability was that this interview was going to be in his office, which meant that he could be sitting behind a desk and I would be on the other side of the desk. So there would be a barrier and an obstacle between us. It was going to be hard enough to do it to begin with. But now if I got to work with a desk between us, it's going to be even harder. And so time's passing for 45, five o'clock and now I'm feeling great. Great. Yeah. Because I know the interview is not happening today. Why would you feel great?

Because it's an hour and a half has passed, and now this interview will not happen, and if things work out, I will get to go in his office and say hello to him, and it will be rescheduled. And sure enough, the assistant comes out, says, sorry, Cal, things have come up. It's just not going to happen today. Why don't you go and say hello to Bob and we'll make it work out.

Now I am overjoyed. Yes. This is my opportunity. To? Well, I go in, we say hello. And he says, Oh, I'm really sorry. And that's a good place to be because he's, he's not a bad guy. He's a good guy. He just really doesn't like to be interviewed. And he really didn't like the idea that I'd been put off for an hour and a half. Whatever came up, you know he didn't want to do it

and it gave him the opportunity to push it away. And I said, that's okay. Don't worry about it. You know what? I really didn't want to interview you in your office. And he looks at me and his eyes kind ofinted. I said, you know what? In fact, I didn't even want to interview you at all. Now. Was that a, was that a real statement or was that to ride it? No, I said, I didn't, I didn't want to interview you at all. Now he's

like really squinting at me. Like what is going on here? I said, what I really want to do is to break bread with you. And now he's looking at me almost like the way you would see De Niro in a movie. And his head's kind of tilting. His eyes are squinched. And he said, you want to break bread with me? Yeah, I want to break bread with you. And he turns to the assistant, he wants to break bread with me. Come on. And I said, yeah, I want to break bread with you.

He says, okay, well like, when am I further? Tuesday? Wednesday? What do I got for lunch? Okay, Wednesday. You come to Tribeca Grill, 1 o'clock, Wednesday, we'll break bread. So now I leave the office and I am ecstatic because this is no longer an interview. I know it's no longer an interview. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Show up at the Tribeca Grill

and sit down. I'm waiting for him to come. But the beauty is, this is his restaurant. His father, who was an artist, painted the cover of the menu.

And so when he sits down, it is not an interview. He is my host. This is his restaurant. Beautiful. And so the menu is out and I'm looking at it. I say, you know, Bob, what's good here? You like clams? Oh, I love clams. Let me take care of this. It's like his hands are waving in here. He's calling over the waiter and he's got appetizers coming. He's got wine coming. We're sitting down, all this stuff coming to the table. And I say to him, you know, I know you hate to be interviewed. That's why I didn't want to interview you in the first place. Why I want to break bread with you. So if, if I say anything that like gets

too close, that makes you feel uncomfortable, just, just let me know. And I'm going to back off because the last thing I want to do is make this into an interview. I just came to break bread with Robert De Niro. He says, don't worry about it. We're going to have a good time. So we start talking. I ask him about the moment that he knew he was an actor. Which kind of harkens back to the first story, which you interrupted.

Yes. See, now we got to give it the build up because now people got to wait to the end of the podcast. It's so good. That was a good idea, actually. I had to try that. Interruptions can work. Yeah, they can. So he starts telling me this story about when he was a teenager and he went down to the dramatic workshop

and he wanted to take acting lessons. And he had to see a person running the workshops, an old Yiddish guy. The guy comes out and says to him in a person running the workshops, an old Yiddish guy. The guy comes out and says to him, Yiddish accent, why do you want to be an actor? And De Niro doesn't know what to say. And he's just silent, kind of frozen. And the head of the workshop looks at him and says, to express yourself! And De Niro looks up at the guy and says, yeah, yeah, that's it, to express myself.

And so when he told me that story, I said, oh, okay, I understand. He may rely on other people's words or other people's characters to best express himself. And in an interview, he may feel like he's not expressing himself in the best way that he possibly can. I didn't know, but I'm getting a feeling for why he may be uncomfortable. I mean, as well, he had young kids at the time. He was probably wanting to protect his privacy. He had good reasons. Cal, how do you have, what's happened in your life where you have developed this skill of insight, this way of revealing, having something revealed to you that is apparent

to you, but might not be apparent to others. Did that have something to do with the way you were brought up? Did it have something like some sort of experiences in your craft? Was it a loved one? How have you been able to develop this insight that's another story but i'm gonna finish the de niro story before i can get to that come on you're killing me okay good let's go so now i i'm getting a feel for who de niro is and the's coming, we're having a good time. And he's telling me about 9-1-1, because I mentioned that I was a sommelier at Top Windows of the World, which is the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center,

just before the buildings got hit and went down. You were. I wrote a magazine story for Esquire in which I learned as much as I could about wine over two years. And for one night I was the sommelier atop windows of the world. Cool. Wow. And so I'm telling him this. And now it's a conversation going back and forth.

It's not an interview. And he's volunteering his thoughts on 9-1-1, how he's sitting and watching it on the television, and he can't believe it. So he has to go out on his roof to actually look at what, at the World Trade Center, like coming down or in the pieces of it in order to believe that what he's just seen on the TV is real. And the conversation is getting deeper and deeper. And at the very end, I said to him, do you have any regrets?

And he said, yeah, I do. I do. And he starts telling me how he went to his mom and said, Mom, I want to get the family history recorded. Will you sit down? I'm going to send a few guys over with a camera. They're going to ask you some questions. That's no big thing.

Just tell family history. And she said, I don't know. It doesn't make me feel comfortable. She didn't like to be interviewed either. And he immediately felt what she felt, and he backed off. Not long thereafter, she passed away, and that was his regret, that he did not get the family history that he wanted to get. So I'm listening to this, and as soon as he says it,

like you asked about a light bulb, that's where light bulb goes off. Because my parents are about to celebrate their 50th anniversary. And now I know I've got to go out, get the family history, and we're throwing a big party for them. We'll turn it into a documentary and make a big show of it. And so I do that. I go out with my camera. And even to interviews I was doing, Mayor Giuliani, at the time he was mayor, and I was interviewing him and I told him about my mom and dad.

He'd get behind his desk saying, Herb and Rita Fassman, I guess you a proclamation about their long love affair and 50 years as New Yorkers. And he really took it over the top. People were really going out of their way to be nice and make this film. And it was the best night of my parents' life. They both wrote me notes saying this was the greatest night of our life. When you say that, what happens to you speaking about it now? Makes me feel ecstatic. Yeah. And it never would have happened if not for Robert De Niro, the guy who everybody said is impossible to interview. The guy who was either, I don't know if Prickly is the right word. Yeah.

Prickly. He literally gave me one of the best days of my life. Phenomenal. And it's because you had the awareness. I want to go back to that insight. You had that insight and awareness and somehow the courage to be able to speak on it. So the insight at that moment was, well, okay, so if he's not going to interview me now, he's going to feel he's probably not interview me now, he's going to feel

he's probably not a terrible person. He's going to feel a little badly about the situation. And maybe there's going to be a better opportunity to not do it in his office. That's okay. So that is like the decision tree for you. Right. But I'm not sitting there. I don't think that I was sitting there calculating, like you just said, I think the way I can best describe it, it's sort of like when you go to grandma's and she cooks this meal for you that you love and she doesn't have a recipe. She just dips her hand in the salt, sprinkles it a certain way. And if you ask her, well, Grandma, how much salt do you put in? She couldn't really tell you.

And that's the way I was in the waiting room. Although I'm knowing something good is going to happen. Okay. And that's what I'm trying to unlock, you know, not so cleverly, obviously. I'm trying to unlock, it's not the question. You ask great questions. And I'm not saying that questions are mechanical. I'm not saying that.

You ask great questions, but there's something that precedes the question that you have tapped into. And it's the awareness to be able to know to take question A, B, or C, follow that one. And then from that, from the end of that story, if you, because you're so patient to then choose A, B, or C, D question, whatever that, and follow that. And I'm trying to sort out like, how have you, or what has taken place in your life that allows you to be so patient, to be so present, to have such an awareness that you can see the map? That's a great question.

And probably if I took that back to my childhood, my mom loved to talk. And so. What is your ethnicity? Jewish. Jewish. Okay. love to talk and so what is your ethnicity or your Jewish Jewish okay and so she just would be at the table talking and talking and talking and you really had no choice but to listen so you're still living out like the dining room table conversation yeah I suppose if you took it that deep that's probably what's happening. So you were trained early on.

Did mom have fire? What was mom's expressive attitude? My mother had this amazing quality where she could take the smallest detail and turn it into the biggest thing. That's been your training. These are the two parts of your training in the dining room table. Like the storytelling part you saw. But she wasn't telling stories. But you witnessed somebody make something small magnificent.

Well, yeah. But it's interesting you say that. Because she could take a bottle of wine that she drank many years ago and start telling you, you know, there's this wine. I really wish I could get it again. And it just was so good. And I was, I had it on this amazing night, man. I wish I could taste it again. And it took me, this is at the time where I was becoming a sommelier. So now I want to get to, I got to find this amazing wine. And when I get to the bottom

of it it was like an eight dollar bottle of wine she didn't know yeah she didn't know and the beauty of that is that she thought this eight dollar bottle of wine was like a French first growth. That is amazing. And so that was, that played out in a lot of different ways. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'd still go back to bet at some kind of level, just seeing how people develop and early experiences are so important. And we don't even fully realize how they shape us, but you got patience and storytelling. You learned patience and witnessed the art of storytelling and all the different ways and flavors that somebody could articulate something, whatever it might be. This is your mom's, you know, maybe natural gift. But she wasn't a storyteller. That's the thing.

Okay. So she would just... Which made you be more patient. Mom, get to this. Get to this. Yeah. Oh Godeller that's the thing okay so she would just which made you be more patient mom get to this get to this yeah oh god that's great okay in fact she could be very repetitive and so that might have made me even more patient because yeah i've heard i've heard that two or three times again okay okay and you and you, you would listen on the third time. Yeah, I think, I think I learned, I probably learned to listen that way. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft.

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. What is the difference? Maybe you don't know how to articulate this, but not what is the difference. What makes a great listener? And can you notice this is now I'm giving you two questions in here, right? Can you notice when somebody is not? Oh, yeah. Immediately.

You can feel it on the other side. A hundred percent. Me too. Yeah. If somebody is not present, it's completely apparent. It's like a dismissiveness. It might be a survival strategy or something like i feel like the um yeah dismissiveness some people some really smart

people that i've met or heard about it have this amazing ability to be thinking about like eight things like they're playing chess in their head while they're talking to you. And you can feel like they're engaged, even though they're making all these different chess moves. Those are rare people. And I talked to a guy who was like a speech therapist. He helped people with their accents. He helped people speak in public.

And he was sent to help out a scientist, really brainy guy, who had to give a speech, but he couldn't connect with the crowds. And so he went to meet the guy and he'd ask a question. And after he'd asked the question, the scientist would turn away from him and look out the window and then start answering him.

And this went on for like three or four questions. And finally, the speech therapist said to him, you know, by the way, why aren't you looking at me? Why are you looking out the window? And the guy said, well, I know what your next question is going to be. I know what my answer is going to be. I have a pretty good idea what your question after that's going to be. And I know what my answer to that's going to be. So in the meantime, I'm going to gaze out here and think about what's really important. And there are those characters out there, too.

Then that's not I suppose you could say that's dismissiveness, but for those people, it's really hard to just be in one place and one moment because they want more out of it and they can get more out of it. Yeah. Your frame of reference is pretty cool because you've interviewed and sat across from people that have made large impacts globally, a large impact globally, whether it's Ali presidents, Gorbachev, like you've sat across people that are literally phenomenal at global impact, good and bad, probably De Niro, right? List goes on and on. And, and so your frame of reference are likely people that are highly talented, right? And likely has, they have intelligence that goes with it. And the combination of those two, they've seen the frame many times. They've

seen the interview frame. They, they have a sense of what's coming next. So they're playing this other game. I think that that's a rare and a very narrow capture of the population. Not that you and I have dissimilar engagements with people. The thing that I was thinking about was at a social engagement or a party or a conversation and somebody's looking just to the left of your ear. They're looking to see who's coming in the room. Yeah, right. Beautiful guy or girl. I get it. I mean, you see that all the time. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, you've got me begging to go back to the original question. We're going to wait for that, though. All right. Okay. And then can you give me a sense of what it was like growing up? We got a sense of mom.

Yeah. My dad was a guy who worked for IBM for like 28 years. We lived in the suburbs of New York, near Park Long Island. And he basically got on the train the same time every morning, pretty much came back on the train the same time every night. He was a manager.

And so I saw him getting on the train, coming home from the train, getting on the train, coming home from the train. And I think some part of me, I don't know if rebel is the right word, but I wanted the train to go to other places. I didn't want it to just come to work and go home. And that caught up with me a few years after I was out of college and I started to travel. And then I just would get on trains. I would buy the tickets pretty much not knowing where they were going. I would just walk up and ask like, when's the next train going out and buy the ticket and then walk down the aisle looking for the right empty seat. So it was exact opposite of my dad who basically knew he's going to be sitting next to the same people going and probably coming back.

Was that, was that, was that all by design or purposeful or was it like, This happened. This happened. Just happened. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, did you always know that you wanted to go to school, college? Yeah, I think so. It never, I think it was kind of built into neither my mom or my dad went to college. So I was the first one in my immediate family to go.

Yeah. So was I. And I asked that question to a lot of folks because I didn't, I didn't have any idea, even like kind of the beginnings of high school that I was going to go to college. I knew it was important, but I didn't have a frame of reference. I'm always curious if people knew if they were going to go to school. Yeah. Yeah, I sort of saw it as an adventure.

What did you study? Journalism. Yeah, okay. And it was a great college experience, but for the most of the time I was working as, as a journalist, like from the day I got there, I was working as a journalist. I was at the school newspaper or working for the town newspaper or working for the big city newspapers that were two hours away as a correspondent. And I didn't really go to classes very much. I knew what I wanted to do, and I was immersed in it from day one.

When did you come to realize that questions were important to you? Well, that's what gets back to the first story. Okay. All right. So pause on that again. Where did you learn questions? Where did you learn how to ask questions? Trial by error? Was it some introspection? Well, there was one moment I remember as a freshman in college.

I was a sports writer. Went to the University of Missouri. And from the very outset, I went to like every football game and every football practice. And this was highly unusual for a freshman. Usually it's something that if you were a senior and you had the Missouri football beat, that was your responsibility. This was something I did just because I had to do it. It's what I wanted to do. And so the first few games, I could not get a press pass.

And I would drive with some of the other writers down from Missouri to Mississippi to watch the game. But I would be in the stands and taking everything in. And then I'd watch the writers come out of the locker rooms and be talking about all the quotes they got and is this good or that good. And I was just dying to get in the locker room. And then I think it must have been the fourth or fifth week of the season, Missouri went up to Nebraska, which had a great team at that time. And they scored a huge upset. But the most compelling thing about it, in my mind, was that was the moment I realized, hey, these photographers on the field, they have these passes. Like, maybe I can get one.

The photographer's not going into the locker room. Maybe I can just get one of the passes from the photographer. And then I can get into the locker room. And then I can ask questions. So I took my notepad with me, got a photographer, said, fine, I'm not going to use it. Got his pass, put it on, went in. And the Nebraska coach, Tom Osborne, was in front of a group of like 60 reporters. And I was in the middle of it. And these questions are going and sometimes you see somebody ask a question and the coach answer it. And nobody

writes down what the coach said, meaning either it wasn't a very good question or it didn't get a very good answer. And so this went on for, I observed it for a few minutes and then a question came to my mind and there was this momentary lull and I just immediately broke through it with the question. And he looked at me and his eyes responded to the question and he started to give a really articulate answer. And I remember seeing everybody go to their notebooks to write his answer down. In fact, I was the only one who didn't write the answer down because I was conscious of how everybody else was writing down the answer to my question. And that's a moment that I knew, okay, these people around here, most of them is mostly men, a lot of them, you know, 40, 50, 60 years old. It's when I knew I belonged.

So in that experience, Tom Osborne was on the podcast. You're kidding. Yeah, just an aside. Oh, he was phenomenal. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, was on the podcast. You're kidding. Yeah. Just an aside. Oh, he was phenomenal. Oh man. Yeah. I mean, just a beautiful man. He's a great man. Oh geez. Yeah. And we, we had a, what I would feel, what I experienced as a real conversation and it was, it was beautiful. It was like one of the first ones I did and I had no idea what I was doing and we just had a real conversation and he went there at least three times. You can't tell it was beautiful it was like one of the first ones i did and i had no idea what i was doing and we just had a real conversation and he went there at least three times you can't tell but he

really went there in person it was like wow like that was rad so uh back to your story is that i'm curious about there's you you captured a moment in time where you went for it. And so many of us have this idea that we'd like to go for it. We put ourselves in a position to go for it. And then either we freeze up or we don't, or something happens or we create an excuse why we don't say the question or why we don't put our hand up or whatever. And so did you have in that, in that particular moment, hesitation and then fight through it or did it just kind of happen? And that, that, that's what I'd like to understand from you. I think I really had a question that I wanted to get answered. Yeah. So it just came out and the surprise to me was seeing everybody's reaction first his response and

it's very interesting that we both saw kind of a similar thing in in him where if you engaged him he was going to give you the best answer he could. So it's, it's hard for me to know if I was scared in that moment. I don't, I don't think I was, I think I was more excited. Yeah. I'm inside. Yeah. Well, it feels to me in this conversation, that's how you live, like with some zest or zeal or fire, like you've got that in you. And so I think the obvious question I'm supposed to ask you, do you remember the question? I'm not really interested in that. I'm more interested in like how you, I'm more interested in how you had the gumption to go up to a reporter or a photographer and say, Hey, can I work the system here? And like, so that's going

forward again, like having an idea and going for it, having an idea and going for it, having something to say, and then going for it, where pausing happens for people. And sometimes if you pause too long, you miss. I think that really, and it'll ultimately come back to the first story. When you know where you're supposed to be, then it's natural to say, Hey, how can I get in there? It was almost like this isn't fair. Why did they get to be in there and ask Tom Osborne the question when I should be in there? I got good questions. And so I didn't even really think I was hacking the system. I thought I was just getting to where I needed, where I was supposed to be.

Yeah, really cool guiding principle. It was really, you know, was it kind of interesting? Because I'm thinking about your question now. There have been times where I stopped myself from asking a question and in retrospect i looked at it and i was not regretful i just felt if you didn't ask it there was a there was a reason you knew not to ask it it was like too much salt in the dish do you you? Yeah. Right. That, that goes back to that grandma. Yeah. Yeah. So do you, are you asking questions or engaging in conversation? Maybe as a gentler way of saying it, is it, do you make those decisions from

your body, from your head? It's another way of saying like intuition or thinking, how do you formulate that process yeah you know i was talking to a guy about the brain because everyone says like go with your gut go with your gut and he was explaining to me that actually it's your brain that tells your gut what to do you've had these experiences and they're like stored in the brain they're not stored in the gut that's right stored in the brain and then the brain is sending a message to your body and it goes into your gut and then you know what to do yeah there's some research right now that the the gut is the second brain because there's so many receptors, serotonin type receptors, serotonin receptors actually in the gut

that there's a strong link between the two. And so your brain is the epicenter for memory and the signals do get sent through your body, but there's so many receptors directly linked there. It makes sense. So there's no storage of the memories in the gut. It's stored in the brain, but the gut gets the lightning bolt. Yeah. I mean, I think, and I would also love anyone that's listening to course correct us on that. The brain is really fricking a complicated three pounds of tissue. I think that that's a best guess. And I'm sure there's people that would, that's all that Dennis studied that could guide us on it.

But that's my best guess right now of a two. Okay. Is there a word that guides you or phrase that guide you? Listen, that's it. I think, I think it. I think, I think so. I think I wish I could see better. Like literally. Yeah. I wear glasses. I mean, I, I really wish,

you know, like Chuck Yeager, the fighter pilot, he has great vision. And that's why he was so successful because, you know, planes would be coming at him. And he was like seeing the planes before the pilot and the other plane could see him. His vision was superior. And it's funny, but one of the things that I'm working on now is trying to take pictures and see better. Because I don't seem to have the same power in my eyes that I do in my ears. My ears are like those big antennas that you see outside of ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut, that are like 50 feet tall. Like I, I hear things. I, I can be on the

phone and somebody's talking and I'm getting their feelings through their words. But I'm a terrible photographer. Do you listen to yourself as much as you listen to others? Is that a different experience for you? Oh, yeah, because I talk to myself. Out loud or quietly? Well, if you saw me walking down the street, I'm probably writing. I'm definitely writing. In fact, a friend of mine who is, I'm helping him write a book,

and he's just, I got out of college, and he didn't know anything about writing. And so he was really shocked to understand that I don't really write when I'm at the computer. I write when I'm walking down the street. I write when I'm in the shower. And then when I get to the computer, I just type what's been written in my head down into the computer. I'm not, and a lot of people you hear, these writers with writers block, they struggle, they, they got the empty page and the typewriter and they want to yank it out. That was in the days when there were typewriters. Now I don't know what people would do on a

computer, but I won't go to the computer unless I've seen it in my head. And so I'd be walking down the street, like talking to myself. And this isn't only me. Aaron Sorkin does the same thing. Because when I interviewed him, he told me he'd be sitting in his car going back and forth as two characters in a movie. And somebody at the studio would pull up next to him while they're at a red light and look at him going back and forth

and completely understand, okay, he's doing his movie. And so I'm walking down the street talking to myself and this friend of mine is with some buddies. And one of the buddies said, hey, there's Callis. And he said, no, of the buddies said, Hey, there's Cal. Let's, and he said, no, no, don't disturb me. He's writing. And they let me walk by.

And so is it more, is, are you fleshing out concepts? Not word for word? Oh no, I can see words. I see phrases. I see paragraphs. I can see concepts for chapters. Okay. So, so what, in a word, let's try this again, or not again, but in a different way, in a word, is there a word that describes what I understand the most, what I can do is interview people

because I have written books in other people's words. And so I can ask them questions and listen and listen and listen. And then it'll be on a tape recorder and I'll go back and I'll listen to the tapes and over and over. And I can start to to like be that person wow and and it's it's a crazy it's it's almost i guess like being an actor yeah right 99.9 percent of you is lost and in that in that moment now i like this hasn't i I haven't trained myself that way where when an actor is trained, that's an amazing skill and talent and something else is going on because they are themselves but somebody else. And so I can do that so I will I think I can feel what they feel and I know this because I'll be doing a book about somebody or no no it could be an article that i've gone over and over and over with somebody who just hates to be disrespected it like drives them nuts and generally if somebody's disrespectful to me, I'm curious, like why, what's in their mind that's making

them disrespect me? Why are they that way? What happened to them that made them act that way? You wouldn't necessarily know this. That is an incredible strategy for, as what we would call an anecdote, to be able to push out anxiety, depression, overtaxation of emotion. It's an incredible anecdote for it. That strategy of curiosity, there's a gentleman that we've been fortunate enough to have on the podcast, a scientist that articulates just that strategy. And so it is a form of mindfulness, awareness, training to orientate yourself in a curious position to be able to wonder. And that literally is an anecdote for mental health, some of the conditions of mental health yeah wow that's that's that's wild to me because i i never i i never really i don't know what depression feels like i bet not yeah i bet not i look at people who are depressed and it's

probably the hardest thing for me to understand. How about anxiety? That I know. If you're on a deadline and you have too much to do or other problems put you in a situation where you can't make it, then you get anxious. So let's pull on that thread just a little bit. I would imagine in your preparation for an interview that you would write down or have questions in your mind or concepts that you're trying to get at. So mechanically, is it concepts or questions or is it both that you work for that part of preparation? It's just quite pure questions,

pure questions. I'll write down like 200 questions. Seems like a lot, but that's all part of your preparation. I'm just sit down. It doesn't, I'll do research. I'll read books. I'll read magazine articles. I'll watch videos. But then when I sit down, I just write out questions. Yeah. So that's like the training to talk about an athlete. That's the physical training, if you will. And then there's this moment before the moment, before the moment. And then, so let's say you're about to sit across from Muhammad Ali, or in your case, when you did sit across from Muhammad Ali, what are those moments like for you? Does your body speak to you? Is there a heart rate? Is there any sort of activation that you need to manage?

Or are you really a very grounded person that is so curious that the curiosity really allows you to be fully present. I think the curiosity allows me to be fully present. Did I put those words in your mouth? I'm regretting. I asked the question. No, I think, I think I've been thinking about this and I think it, I think it does. I think in, in those moments I am, when I'm in an interview, I will like stare into somebody's eyes and I won't, a lot of times I won't even, I'll walk out and I won't even be present of details in the room because I was so focused on the person. And the style of writing that I would do when I fill out my What I've Learned column is in the words of the subject.

So I don't have to write, he sat in a cushy chair with a pillow behind it and his head tilted back. And he said, I just write down what they said. That was a nugget of wisdom or a story that tells you something about the person. If I had to do it the other way, which in fact, when I did interview Muhammad Ali, I had to do that because it was a cover story for Esquire's, I think it was their 70th anniversary. And I spent a week with him. So I had to describe where we were, what things look like. So in that case, I actually kind of forced myself to look around and, but he was, he, he was so friendly that it just became relaxed. Can you, okay. I, I'm stammering because I've got two ways I want to ask this that I've seen so many

times on so many occasions where people come up to a very famous person and they lose themselves asking for an autograph or a picture and they shake and they tremor and they can't even hold their camera or you've seen the same thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that I think is really common when somebody is in the presence of what they think something that's large, whether it's another human or concept or something like they lose themselves and not in this circumstance, not in a very good way. How do you stay grounded? Is it the curiosity? Is it the focus? Is it a combination of those? What is the, is it some sort of principle that you're operating from, um, that guide your life? Well, what happened for me when I started to travel, I was about, I think, 23 or 24, and I was describing that I would go to these train stations and buy a ticket to the next destination. And part of the reasoning was I had very little money at the time. In fact, I had hardly any money.

So I certainly didn't have enough to spend night after night in a hotel room. So when I would get on the train, I would start walking down the aisle and I would be looking for an empty seat next to somebody. I would never sit in a seat that had an empty seat next to it. I would be looking for somebody who looked interesting, somebody who I thought I could trust, somebody I thought who could trust me. Now, naturally, I wasn't thinking that at the time. I was just thinking, okay, I'm going to sit down in that seat. The train's going to start rolling. A conversation's going to get started. Person person may not speak English. I may not speak the person's language, but we're going to engage.

And by the end of this ride, I need this person to invite me home. Otherwise, I ain't got no roof over my head. And so that really was what taught me trust. And that went on for 10 years. Okay. I want to make sure I get this right, that you would go home with random men and women. There was a joke inside of that. That was the whole purpose of it.

Yeah. That's unbelievable. And you would go into their homes. Yeah. And did you learn trust you to how to trust yourself or trust others? It was complete circle of trust because I had to trust my choice of the seat. I think that that thought gets missed a lot is that the first order of trust is to figure out how to trust yourself. If I couldn't trust myself to pick the right seat, then I might

have looked at the seat and said, no, no, no, don't go in that one. But certainly over time, I could walk. And the way like I described this, it's kind of funny to people, but I'm walking down that aisle and I see a beautiful woman. And she could even be smiling at me. She's got no rings on her finger. Could be a supermodel. I walked right on by. She's not asking you over. She ain't taking me home, brother. Not a chance.

And you know what? It's a funny thing. I came to regret this later on because I was interviewing Petra Nemkova, the supermodel from Czech Republic. And I show up for the interview. I was at a bar and get a message. She's running late. She shows up about 30 minutes late, comes to the table, and we start to have this great conversation. And it makes me feel like the conversations that I used to have if I was on a train in Czech Republic. This is exactly the kind of conversation I would have.

And I say to her toward the end, man, I feel terrible. Because all this time, all those 10 years, I was walking down trains. And if you had been on the train and you had smiled at me next to an empty seat, I would not have sat down next to you. And we just had a great three-hour conversation, and I lost that. What did I lose? I don't know, but I discriminated against you because you're beautiful. And she looked, she was so sweet.

She grabbed my hand and she said, don't worry about it, Cal. This time I sat next to you. Wow, yeah. And as a next to you. Wow. Yeah. And there's a compliment to that. Wait, hold on, hold on. What's happening for you right now when you relive that story?

When I relive that story? Like what's happening for you right now? Well, I saw I was back in the seat with Petra and then I flashed to myself in another seat next to an actress named Kat Graham who's also beautiful and I was telling her the story about Petra and she's like loves to travel too and I was like now apologizing to every beautiful woman I met for not sitting down next to them. And she looks at me and she says, you asshole. And I said, like, I'm sorry I didn't sit down, but why, why am I an asshole? She said, like, do you know how many times like you walk by that seat, didn't sit down. And then some guy sat down that I didn't want to sit next to me who then tried to pick me up.

You asshole. And so now I can, I will never discriminate against somebody because they're physically beautiful or they're really talented, but I'm not going to, I'm going to treat them as if they're sitting on the train that is rolling somewhere in the world. I'm not going to treat them like, oh, I, I, I saw you in this movie, can I have your autograph? And that came from, that was unlocked from the conversation with Petra. Well, it was unlocked when I did 10 years of that traveling on trains and people were passing me around the world. So then when I came back to the United States and Esquire started this What I've

Learned column, and now I'm sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev or Woody Allen or Muhammad Ali, I took what I learned on the trains and the buses as I was going around the world with people who we would look at as ordinary. And I brought that ordinariness into those conversations, which sometimes surprised the people because they weren't used to being treated ordinary. That is not to put a play of words that's the extraordinary right that's the extraordinary part but that was your training so you had early training patience this is me thinking about you right now and it's very cool i'm i'm getting to understand why i am what i am well i am and which is the gift right so thank you so early training on patience and storytelling from mom with some passion and fire, right?

And the repetitiveness in stories, but taking something small and making it larger. And then the later was born out of, or the middle was born out of not having money, not wanting to do the same thing your dad did. You were internally driven to be able to go explore. And right, this wasn't for money. It was an internal drive to go explore and right this wasn't for money it was in internal drive to go meet and whatever whatever and that you went on that exploration then you took both of those gems or pieces of your life and when you're in front of extra an extraordinary person you were ordinary you didn't try to be something other than yourself oh okay

that's completely correct yeah yeah and what a gift of humanity to honor another person's humanity and not honor their fame and not honor the thing that they've done, but who they are, be more curious about who they are. So this is me trying to understand you. You've given people an incredible gift. So therefore you get increased access by honoring who they are, not what they've done. And so many of public facing people are overwhelmed by people just acknowledging the thing they've done. And they know that talent knows that the thing they've done is temporary. And now the majority of people around the world are attaching to this temporary thing. How the hell do I do it again?

And again and again and, to be relevant. And it's this internal house of cards that's really challenging. And so you know what they do? They become weird. Oh my God. Right? Because it is weird. It's very weird to only have attention, primary attention, for the thing you do, not the who you are. I never thought. Thank you. It's a really beautiful thing to know. Well, this is from my quick observation. This is the gift you've given to others, right, is to acknowledge who they are in a real way. Not like, okay, I'm going to go be grounded.

You're just grounded. Yeah, it goes back to the curiosity. Right. So I've got this other hope right. You're reminding me of the importance of curiosity, right? Like how wonderful that is both for the curious one and the people that we're curious around. How wonderful that is. Because it's the opposite of nonjudgmental.

That is for sure. It's the opposite of critic. That's right. And damn it, if we're going to be the critic, like, get me out of that game. Get me in the game of the being and the doing authenticity. And this is what's being lost in the United States among this political divide, where you turn on the television now and you're not curious simply because of the channel that you've turned to if you're like a right-leaning you know what channel to go to you're going to go to fox yeah and there's nothing to be curious about because they're they're serving you

what they know you want to order if you're left-leaning you go to msnbc and they're, they're serving you what they know you want to order. If you're left leaning, you go to MSNBC and they're serving you your meal. And none of it is, is making you stop and say, why would you say that? Right. Cause it feels familiar. It's like confirmation bias. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, that's right. Because you're already heard it 14 times before. You know, I asked that question about the go back a few questions ago about like, how do you prepare the moments before the moment? And in performance sciences, there's this idea of having pre performance routines, which I people know that I I'm not a fan of. I'm just not a fan of them because it's substandard to being authentic. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't do, some people might not

benefit from them greatly. And a pre-performance routine is, let me pretend like I'm a basketball player. When I tie my right laces of my shoe, I say to myself, get back on D, trust my open shot. And then as I make the loop, I might say, and lock it down. And then I go to my other shoe and I say to myself, get back on D, trust my open shot. And then as I make the loop, I might say, and lock it down. And then I go to my other shoe and I say, trust my open shot, get back on D. And as I make the loop of the lace, I say, lock it down. And then when I stand up, I purposely like stand, yeah, stand up. When I stand up from that tying of my shoe, I've focused my mind or set my mind to trust my open shot, get back on D and lock this down. So I've created a mindset that has been triggered by a pre-performance routine.

Small, really small. That is substandard to what you've described, which is, Hey man, I've lived a lot. I'm really curious. So let me go be me. It's true, but I'm also doing other stuff too. Okay. Teach. be me it's true but i'm also doing other stuff too okay let's teach teach all right so number one i always go in with two tape recorders not one that i've loaded with fresh batteries so that way i know that and and this goes back to the days where you used to have those micro cassettes and if you rewinded them sometimes the pull on the tape would be too much and the tape would come off the track and you'd lose the recording. So I would always take two so that I knew that if one of them had a problem,

I was covered on the other, and that way I could relax. Because even when we've been talking, you've looked over at your recorder, I would say five or six times. Yep. And making sure that it's still recording i've had that pain i've lost some great conversations you know oh my and like it's awful that's right so yeah you know that pain i i take that away by having some redundancy i've got two if i had two of them there and i knew that they were freshly loaded with batteries and there was enough time to speak for six hours. You're good.

Yeah. So now I don't have to look over because when I look over, I am signaling to them that this is an interview. I don't want them. Yeah, good call. I don't want them to feel. And then not that when I saw you doing it, it didn't affect anything I was saying. No, good reminder for other folks that maybe aren't savvy or sophisticated or comfortable in interviews that would know that. But that's a, that's really cool. Yeah. I don't want the person who's in the middle of a story

revealing something that's deep to them to suddenly see me look over at the tape and then say, oh shit, what am I saying? Because he really wants to get this on tape. Yeah, right. So that's why I push that out. And I can remember going in to interview Richard Branson with my two recorders. And he says, fuck.

And I said, what's up? And he said, he started out doing some journalism. He started out, like, making a magazine. And he would have to interview people. And he realized he was always like looking over at the recorder in fear that it was going to run out or it wasn't working. And so when he saw the two recorders, he's, damn, why didn't I think of that? That's a good one. Yeah. That is good.

Okay. So that's one thing that I would do. But that's not a pre-performance routine. Isn't that kind of like tying your shoes? No, that's, that's preparation. That's redundancy. That's being prepared. If you touched, when you touched the record and play button at the same time, and at that moment you took a breath or you said something to yourself, now that's a pre-performance routine. Oh, I don't do that.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, but what about this? Like now there have been like three books that Esquire has published of these, what I've learned interviews. And generally when I would go to do an interview, I will bring one of the books like I did today. Thank you. And I'll sign it to you when we're done. And when I bring this as a gift and I'll present it before the interview starts, a lot of times people start turning to the book and it's, Oh, like you talked to Gorma Tim, you talked to Muhammad Ali, you talked to Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. And two things are going on there, I think.

This is where I'm now grandma who's been told, OK, measure the salt. All right. What's what's in that gift that you're giving them? Two things. Number one, it's almost like I'm saying to them, this is a party, and there's all these guests. There's Gorby, there's Johnny Depp, there's Tim Burton, his partner in film, there's Art Garfunkel and Andre 3000. He's in that corner.

And it makes you feel like, join the club. Everybody's been happy to be here. So feel welcome. And the other thing it does, I think, is to some people who are very competitive, it's saying, like, uh- Oh, I better have my game on today because this, this guy's going to know what's good. And now I'm competing with Clint Eastwood and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. And so I'm going to come at him with my best stuff.

Yeah. That's really cool. Does it do something else for you? A third thing, which is it reminds you of your past success. It's a primer for you in some kind of way. Maybe it's non-conscious, maybe it's conscious where you're looking at this piece of collateral, this, this thing that you can hold, and it's got all of your highlight reels in it. I never thought of it that way. I thought of it more as a gift, the if I was say traveling around between countries and had something in my bag from another country that I could pass on. I saw it more as a, as a gift because people were opening their homes. And so I think part of me realizes that when I do an interview, the person is opening their home. Their heart.

Their heart. Their mind. And their soul. Yeah. And so why wouldn't I come with a bottle of wine or a book that I put a lot of work into that kind of tells them who I am and gives them a memory of the experience. It's really cool. You know, you're, um, I'm going to take from that, right?

For sure. Moving forward, you're, you're, you just gave a gift, hopefully to all the future guests on this Finding Mastery, right? So what kind of, well, I don't know. Will you give them the same gift or will you give them a different gift i think i think maybe i'm thinking right now like a bottle of wine i know not everyone drinks but you know like a bottle of wine that i appreciate or something like that no and and i think if the if i can give like a little suggestion uh to give something that has a story that goes with it. Yeah, exactly.

Because people will think about the gift in a different way once the story is attached. Yeah, and that's why you... Because the story will have you in it. Yeah. You're giving the wine and it's, oh, it's a nice gift. But when they bring it home and they're going to share it with somebody, they're going to say, oh man, you got to hear this story that came with this gift. I'm all about it.

That's really cool. So hopefully there's a bunch of people that thank you. And that's part one of the conversation with Cal. I know it's always tough to stop right when it's getting rolling here, but part two is fantastic. And there's so many more insights and stories to come. And I want to just take a quick moment and thank Max Bauman, the founder of Just Chill, for the introduction between Cal and I. You can hear his podcast. He was on a previous podcast and that podcast was number, I believe it was 51. So you

can search the archives on iTunes or on our website, findingmastery.net. And I just want to thank him for that conversation. It was, or that introduction was fantastic. And if you're new to the Finding Mastery podcast, you can check out a bunch of our conversations that we've had with world-leading performers and thinkers on FindingMastery.net. And then you can also punch over to iTunes. And if you haven't had the chance and you enjoyed this podcast, please keep telling your friends. Use social media over your local tea shop or coffee shop, over dinner, whatever you can. And we just want to – I want to say thank you. And the gratitude that we have for

knowing that you and we together are building a community about people who are interested in creating the best version of themselves. And so this path of mastery is so much more than the path. It's the people along the path and the celebration of the ups and the downs and the twists and the turns and having people that we can invite and they invite us to be part of that journey together. So I just want to say thank you for all of that. So if you want more, even deeper, you can head over to findingmastery.net forward slash tribe. And that's part of this community of people that are supporting each other digitally and remotely. And there's meetups as well. There's local meetups as well on the Path of Mastery. So with that, take some time, write your story. Maybe this is a nice little moment for you to

get clear on your story and then, you know, take it further and share your story with others and ask them for theirs. And let's, let's see if we can live the story that we want to share. That'd be great. Live the story that we want to share. That'd be great. Live the story that we would like to share. With that, let's be about it. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show,

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