Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 211: How to Make it in Hollywood (and everywhere else), Brian Grazer

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

Brian Grazer is a Hollywood giant! He’s made more than 100 films including Splash, Apollo 13 and the best-picture-winning A Beautiful Mind. He tells Dan this week how he has used his own curiosity in others to build powerful relationships. He takes us back to when he was a law clerk at Warner Bros. delivering papers to the biggest names in Hollywood and how he was able to overcome personal obstacles to strike up conversations he would turn into connections. Grazer also discusses how he uses transcendental meditation to calm feelings of anxiety and fear. We also discuss his latest book, Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection, his secrets on how to engage with others, and the importance of eye contact is when it comes to building relationships. Plug Zone Face to Face: https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Contact-Power-Personal-Connection/dp/1501147722 A Curious Mind: http://www.grazeriscurious.com/ Social: @BrianGrazer An Evening with Joseph Goldstein and Dan Harris: Staying Sane in a Crazy World https://www.nyimc.org/event/an-evening-with-joseph-goldstein-and-dan-harris-staying-sane-in-a-crazy-world/ Dan’s Book Recommendations: https://www.tenpercent.com/reading Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Again, we got a fun show this week. I kind of think of the guests in three buckets. One bucket is deep meditation teachers, wisdom holders, et cetera, et cetera, two scientists who are really gone deep on an issue like civility or compassion or something along those lines, a happiness of some sort, some angle on happiness. And then three, it just people with amazing stories.

And that's where we're landing this week. Brian Grazer is a Hollywood legend. And he has amazing stories with real takeaway as it pertains to doing your life better. So that's coming up. Let me just do one quick, very quick item of business and has to do with the fact that I'm gonna be doing a live event with Joseph Goldstein in New York City.

Coming up in just a few weeks, we just posted an episode with him which was perhaps the most popular thing we've ever done. So if you want to see us talk in person and I know you're not coming from me, you're coming for him. That's coming up on December 5th from 7 to 9. It's a benefit for the Insight Meditation Center, the New York Insight Meditation Center, which is an incredible place right here in New York City, where you can not only learn how to meditate, but also deepen your practice and meet other people who are on this path. I think that those kind of, those sort of human connections, which are massively devalued in our current society society are incredibly valuable.

So come on out and if you want to learn more about that, it's nyimc.org forward slash events nyimc.org forward slash events Okay, Brian Grazer. I'm gonna read you his bio. It's very short, but it's I normally don't just read people's bio's whole cloth, but this is just Such a You'll see why I'm doing it Brian Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and New York Times best selling author his films and television shows have been nominated for 43 Academy Awards and 195 Emmys his credits include a

Beautiful Mind 24 Apollo 13 splash, arrested development, empire eight mile, Friday night lights, American gangster, and genius among others. So he's written two books, and this is where things got a little confusing for me. His new book is called Face to Face, and it's about what I was just talking about in terms of the underappreciated value of actually having face-to-face relationships. And the book he wrote before that, which was a number one New York Times best seller, is called a curious mind, the secret to a bigger life, and it's all about curiosity. Now, I, this is, I'll say some embarrassing things about my level of preparation here. I sometimes don't get a chance to read people's books before the show because we just have

so many guests and a lot of them write books that are quite long. And I didn't know that I was going to read Brian's book before he came on, but I noticed that my wife had purchased a copy of a curious mind. And so I started to read it before we did this interview. And so I was feeling really proud before we did this interview. And so I was feeling, you know, really, you know, proud of myself for doing my homework. And it was only, and you will hear this, it's only like, the third of the way through the interview, that that's, that it becomes clear to me, that that's not the book he wants to talk about. He actually

wants to talk about his new book, of course, face to face. It's fine, there's not going to be any damage to him or to you because both of the books are fascinating, but it's a little embarrassing to me. So quickly, we talk about curiosity as a skill, which is a really interesting skill that we can all develop, and it's what has powered his career in lots of interesting ways. And we talk about the thesis of face to face, which is the power of conversation, the power of having human connection. And really what was one thing that was interesting for me is to him to talk about his own introversion and his own fear of talking to people he doesn't know, even though he's such a big deal.

And how he can use that fear as a trigger when he notices he's scared, he's kind of trained himself to lean in, to go talk to the person he wants to talk to When he's feeling fear because that fear is a signal. Oh, yeah, this is probably important to you. You should go do it so Enough said from me. Here we go Brian Graser great to meet you great meeting you too. Thanks for having me on so friendly for a Hollywood producer I thought I was gonna to get some attitude this morning. No, no attitude. Good vibes.

I'm actually not that surprised having read a big chunks of your book. I'm really interested in the idea that I had never really struck me before I looked at your book about curiosity as a skill. And you also have this great, you have great passages and quotes into book about the power of story. So let's just start with a story from you about how curiosity became so central to your life. How did that happen? Well, it happened.

It sort of blends together with this new book called Face to Face. Basically I was a cute, acutely dyslexic kid throughout elementary school, meaning that I couldn't read one word. I couldn't assemble or understand the sequencing of a sentence. I couldn't read it all. But no one really, so therefore I was pretty, I was misunderstood to say the least.

And so to avoid getting called on by the teacher, repeatedly what I would do is I'd invent ways to avoid eye contact. And so, because if I avoid it on eye contact, then I wouldn't be asked a question or I wouldn't be asked to come to the blackboard and then be further shamed. And, but then there got to be a point

where I was about in fifth or sixth grade and I could read a little bit And then I found that by reading a little bit it gave me the confidence to actually look at people and when I looked at people That became the crown jewel because I could then if I'm looking at somebody and I'm present and I'm interested I can learn Everything human beings became my textbook and I would interested, I can learn everything. Human beings became my textbook, and I would have these interactive, expansive interactive conversations with almost everybody.

I also like people, so it worked, it worked pretty easily. And so that's how it kind of worked out. And then to accelerate, go forward, I went to USC, got a scholarship to USC, go forward, I went to USC, got a scholarship to USC, did pretty well, but the day I got out of college, I asked myself this rhetorical question,

which I often asked myself rhetorical questions. I said, did I actually learn anything? And I thought, I don't think I did learn anything. And I said, I must have learned something. And I thought, well, I guess I'd learned how to cope with larger populations of people. I thought, okay, that's what I learned. Did I learn anything else? Well, I learned something about what that means. And then I thought, well, there was one class I learned a lot in. This was a Dr. Milton Walpins graduate abnormal psychology class, but it was a very big class.

I never met him. So I thought, I think I'm going to go meet Dr. Milton Walpins. So I sent him a couple of letters. Didn't get much. Didn't get any response. And that was all this that summer. I did it immediately. I try to do things immediately, microsteps immediately.

And no response to that. This isn't going to work for me. I'm going to go to summer school and I'm going to find him. I'm going to wait outside his class, which I did. And I said, I'm the guy that's been sending you a couple of letters and called your office. Oh, yeah, but didn't you graduate? I said, I did graduate, but that doesn't mean I, I said I did graduate, but I'd really like to have a cup of coffee with you. All I need is five minutes. And I realized I could turn five minutes into an hour. And by doing that, I learned even more from Dr. Milton Walpin, not only about himself

and why he was doing what he was doing, but about the class and the subject and the heartbeat of the subject that mattered to me. And what was the class about? Abnormal psychology. Abnormal psychology. That's what it was called. But it wasn't like freaks.

It was just like, we're all abnormal. I agree with that. I mean, we've all been traumatized in some way, sometimes mild, sometimes extreme. You know, it's just that stuff. So you got your five minutes and it turned into an hour with him. Yeah. And what did that teach you? It taught me that I could do that with anybody all the time. It taught me that I had that I had the power to do that. And even though I was, But I had the power to do that. And even though I was just a little kind of nobody, and I got this little nobody job as a law clerk at Warner Brothers.

And it was Warner Brothers was only a coincidence. I had no, I didn't go to film school. I had no knowledge of movie making or television making. And I wasn't even a big fan of either actually. I just got this job in this little tiny office as a lock clerk. And I was assigned periodically to look. Just to fill this in, a lock clerk, your job was.

Just deliver papers. And if they had no papers deliver, periodically, file some papers, but mostly I just had hours of nothing to do. But you did this thing according to the book, according to a curious mind, where you insisted that whoever, you were delivering papers, just delivering the biggest folks in Hollywood.

Yes. You would insist that you needed to deliver it in person to that person, as opposed to their assistance. And then you were able to get FaceTime with these folks. Exactly. And I was able to get Face-to-Face-Key. Yeah. So, I mean, the first person I oddly had to deliver to was one of the biggest stars in the world, Warren Beatty. And he was just getting ready to make the movie, Heaven Can if anyone remembers that but it um so my job is to deliver some papers to Warren Beatty and his assistant he was living at the Beverly Wilson Hotel a very brisk assistant came down and said, hand me the papers and I said,

I can't hand you the papers. I have to hand them directly to Mr. Beatty other and he said, just give me the papers. I said, they're not legitimate. They're not authorized. I'm not authorized to do that. I have to hand them directly to him. They'd be invalid in that case. And so the guy was really pissed,

but he brought me up to see Warren Beatty where I would therefore hand him the papers in his penthouse at the Beverly Wilson. And I did the same thing I did with Dr. Milton Walpen. I started talking and I engaged him in a conversation. And that went at least an hour. And I thought, I learned a lot. I learned not just a lot about him, but I learned a lot about the language of Hollywood,

the vocabulary and what it was, and I began just this very gradual step into demystifying how Hollywood worked. So it's interesting that just to go back to your childhood for a second, curiosity started as a survival strategy. Yeah, it was only a yes. Because you were, I mean, it's remarkable that you didn't get driven further into yourself

and enclosed in yourself because you couldn't read and therefore had to avoid eye contact. So Markable, you survived that and became the extrovert you are. But you did and you were only able to read a little bit and but you used that as a toe hole to ask a bunch of questions. Exactly, yes.

Thank you, yeah, that's exactly what happened. And it was just a survival tool. And I was able to like really maximize it, optimize what that was. And it became the way I've, it became the beginning of a discipline. Well, I worked at Warner Brothers. Not only did I deliver papers periodically

to really famous people like Warren Beatty and Billy Friedkin, who directed the exorcist, or even the author of the book, the exorcist, William Peter Blattie. I met Francis Coppola. I delivered. So, in delivering these papers, every one of them, I turned into a pretty big conversation. And I had the good sense to not ask for something. I had no, like, give me a job kind of things.

I thought, nope, I'm gonna make this pure. I mean, I make it just an authentic conversation, present time with no ambition beyond that. So then when I saw that that could work, I used this little office as the Brian Grazer brand at Warner Brothers to do it every day with people that I had no papers to deliver to. So I would create a list of all of the chairmen's of the boards of all of the movie companies and television networks and star directors like Richard Brooks and actually Mel Brooks by the way. Herbert Ross and

those are famous directors and I would just every single day make a call say hi my name is Brian Grazer. I work at Warner Brothers Business Affairs. This is not associated with studio business and I want to meet your boss just to get for the following reasons. And I would research what the boss's interest or some little hooky phrase that would at least peak the interest of the assistant or at least have the assistant would know that I'm a thoughtful person. And that enabled me to meet every single person I reach out to every single day. Slight aggression.

I wanna go with this for a second, but just as I was reading your account of this, I had this thought, I like you and white male Jewish. I guess half Jewish, but you're half Jewish? Half Jewish. So you too, okay're half Jewish? Half Jewish. Okay. So you too. Okay. So you're operating in a world which is dominated by white male Jewish folks.

Yes. I wonder, would you have been successful, especially at that period of time in hustling in the way in which you were hustling if you were a female of color? Not a chance. I don't think it would be. At that time, I don't think so. Would that work? No.

Now? Still be hard. I mean, it's wow. What a great, it's a good, tough question. Well, I think I know, because I, you know, I met Eddie Murphy when he was doing raw, he's black comedian, and I, and I made his first movie, I mean, I made a movie together called Boomerang,

which is a cult hit classic. I remember it. But basically, I made a lot of movies with, a lot of movies and television shows even today, you know, like I'm doing a wreath of Franklin, the Wuteng clan as a series that's on Hulu right now. But there still is, there's still remnants of real racism for sure. I would experience it and I was I was working biggest star in the world, one of the biggest stars in the world, Eddie Murphy. And so I kind of know the layers of all of how that's embedded in the business of business. The reason why I ask, aside from just curiosity, to use the phrase, to use a word in this context,

is also that I'm always thinking about how to make the advice of my interviewees actionable for listeners and so would you know the the spirit that you with which you approached this sort of curiosity quest is I think deeply admirable but I'm just wondering how actionable is that for folks who don't look like us? Today, it's quite actionable. I mean if you read the book you'll see these stories that involve different sizes and shapes and colors and creeds of human beings and it gives them entry points to have power and bridge into having power and opportunity. But it's, you have to start with this, with the slight and subtle step of this one step of actually looking at somebody without ambition, just look at them in a calm way, and then they'll look back at you. And it acknowledges, there's a way to look at somebody,

whatever color you are, that acknowledges we're both human beings. And that's the goal. Because if you can acknowledge each other as, hey, we're both human beings, then you create relatability. And if you create relatability, you can then create rudability. And that's what movies do.

That's what's so magnificent about a movie. Routability, meaning all of a sudden I'm rooting for you? You're rooting for me. You're rooting for just Brian Grazer in the elevator. You're rooting for me. If you relate to me as a human being, and I say, do you think I can have a minute with you? There's a really good chance that person's going to say yes.

Highly, highly likely. But you do have an ambition. Your ambition isn't necessarily to get a job or money out of this other person, but your ambition is to learn. My ambition is to learn, but I learn is to learn. My ambition is to learn, but I learned through human connection. So I can tell you right now, this minute, I've already learned something about you, a few things about you that are really valuable. So that I could transport into

television show or movie or just my life or integrated into my life. What did I learn? Okay, first thing I learned is, I embarrass you, but I learned being really well poised as you are is a very big benefit. And people can work to do that. You can aspire to be well poised. You have it naturally because you have a really spectacular voice and that helps. It becomes the umbrella. And I'm actually very interested in voices

because I have to be. Because to be an impactful actor, you have to have a voice that has actor, you have to have a voice that is, has, uh, wait to it. Especially in animated films, which you've done. Yeah. For sure. I have done. But in, but in regular films, I mean, you know, Eddie Murphy has a really, because when you breathe from your, uh,

diaphragm, it does help you have a stronger or more sustainable voice. You have to do 20 takes. The minute you start getting unfortunately Western Europeans, I found that I've worked with some of the greatest actresses in the world that were one, a couple of them I don't want to say their name are French. And it's very hard for them. They have weak voices because they breathe from a higher place. They're breathier. because they breathe from a higher place. They're breathier. So the point is, it's an advantage to have a voice like yours.

And it becomes, you can work with it, you know, understand the power of that. And it immediately signals intelligence. And I'm assuming you're intelligent. That's it. It may signal more than it actually delivers, but... I don't know about that. Well, I know you are intelligent, but the point is that that's what I learned.

I think there's a real strength in being well poised. People will take you more seriously. Right, but I think it actually gets back to not the sound. I'm always wary of sounding kind of ostentatiously woke, you know, but I've just been reading and thinking about these issues a lot recently related to, you know, what, to whiteness. But it is, it is something that's in some many ways conferred upon me that is not innate. In other words, the culture confers upon me as a white guy approaching 50 with a deep voice who's been performing in front of the lights for all this time. A gravitas that I may or may not have, especially relative

to other folks who don't look like me. So it's it's just gets back to Really that why I brought this up in the first place And I think why we keep coming back to it is how can because your advice is incredibly valuable But how to harness the power of curiosity. How can we do that no matter what we look like and no matter what prejudice the culture brings to the table? Well, I think okay,, I understand, I understand. I have a delicate subject. But I think that there are people, yes, if you're not white, unfortunately, you're coming from behind a little bit. I do think that.

Because you're bringing to the table symbols that create prejudice, unfortunately. And that's, you know, I have a lot of compassion for that, but I know friends of mine that have, they conquered, they were able to conquer that. A friend of mine named Melody Hobson. I know Melody Hobson. Okay. She used to work here. Melody Hobson said,

and the actual contributor to ABC News, that's the CBS. Yeah, she's not married to George Lucas. Your marriage is a superstar. Yes, she is. But she actually told her staff, I learned this last year, You know, she's on the street. She's married to George Lucas. You're married to George? She's a superstar. Yes, she is. But she actually told her staff, I learned this last year, we took a car ride, we were in Aspen.

We just happened to be in the same car because we were being transported. And she told her team, I don't want you to wear relaxed, you know, street clothes. I want you to wear suits and ties. And she was very, she's a very smart and very alert person. And she is aware of that. And she wants all of her team to have the same competitive advantage, or at least the sense that being the equality of that. And we have to, whatever color you are,

I would rather say, you have to work to create respect and dignity. And when you have that, you're taking more seriously. It's only the few that can be very relaxed in an environment. Yeah, and I'm just aware that I get to be more relaxed because... Well, you're right, you do. You do, and... I'd learn this way in life, by the way.

Oh, did you? Yeah, I mean, I just... This is, as often said, for white men, especially especially it's the water we swim in so we're not Yeah, yeah, but I've you know had a few good podcasts guests and a few good friends and read a few good books and you you kind of become more alert to it Yeah, you know, it's a quick thing in Hollywood a Hollywood thing What about 20 years ago? I decided I'd spiked my hair up really high. It's not that high today. No, it's not.

I cut it, my wife Veronica's insisting I shorten my hair. But I used to be spiked very high. Nobody wore spiked hair. But my daughter, Sage, said, we jumped out of a swimming pool and she said, oh, I like your hair like that. And I thought, I think I'll try it. And I found that this very spiked up hairdo,

which nobody had, it mostly enraged people. They thought, what a, why would you do that? And I kind of thought, first of all, I thought maybe I better change it. And I thought, it's a really good litmus test. I think I like it. I like that it's going to bring out whatever they might be thinking

anyway sooner. It also became kind of your signature became kind of my signature. I wasn't intending for it to be, but it did. It became it did. And there was the most powerful person in show business said to me, if you don't change your hair, you're not going to be taken seriously. If you don't change your hair, you're not going to be taken seriously, but can you say who that was? He ran the biggest agency in the world the time called CAA, right of our agency. And he's right or wrong. This is what he said. He said, you're not going to be taken seriously by the business community if you have your hair spiked up. Well, he was wrong, clearly. He was wrong. But at the time I thought, you know what?

I'd rather be taken seriously by the creative community because that's where the real value is. The people that are creating the ideas, that are writing the stories, that are giving life to ideas. That's where the real leverages. The real leverages creating trust with the artists, because the artists are the ones that are doing it. And I probably lost a few business guys along the way,

but I did have the ideas that they wanted. And therefore they had to tolerate the hairdo. All right, so let's go back and tell you a second. You were telling a great story when I totally kind of unwored you here, but you are this kid in Hollywood, 23, 24, you're a legal clerk who managed to get himself into an office, a story you tell in the book, a curious mind. You've managed to get yourself in office, a nice big office, and you launch this quest

to not only get face-to-face meetings with whoever you have to deliver your papers to, but also every day you talk to somebody you didn't know. And so, and what were the results of all of that? The results were I got to learn, I understood the inner mechanics of how the media business worked. I understood that how to create leverage, all the different options, all the different ways one could create leverage. And with leverage, that's what life is. Life is you have to have leverage to create a job, to create opportunity for yourself, to create advancement.

You know, at all, is you have to have something of value or you have to accrue additive value to yourself. Like if you want to be the management, if you're in management, you have to be getting smarter. There's this thing about saying, I say, like when someone doesn't learn,

something I say, well, they're clearly on a zero learning curve because you're feeding them information. They're just not learning it. It's not because they're stupid. It's just that they're, it just isn't computing. They might be in the wrong business. The point is is by disrupting your comfort zone and then looking at people face to face comfort zone and then looking at people face to face and Getting up for the game mean being up for the challenge of meeting a new person that is might be expert It's something that you're not expert at. It just makes you better and smarter And that's where all the real insights and jewels come from is Lat is by doing things that are tough Not being complacent.

Complacency doesn't breed anything positive. But did it ever go wrong for you? I mean, I made a few times. Yeah, okay, so tell me. Oh, yeah, I've had a lot of failed attempts with the face-to-face communication, or curiosity. Well, with the Isaac A. Zimoff,

Isaac A. Zimoff was the most prolific writer of science fiction, maybe ever. And I flew from LA to New York to meet him. It took a year. And after five minutes, his wife said to him, we're leaving Isaac. After they left after five minutes, I just didn't know enough about him. That's what she said.

This guy clearly doesn't know. He doesn't know your work, Isaac. He doesn't know your work well enough. And I therefore didn't warrant the conversation. In the book, you admit she was right. Yeah, I admit that she was right, that I should have known more. And that's by the way,

because in this book, it says, definitely you have to use your smartphones. Technology is an incredibly valuable companion. He's holding a smartphone. I'm spending a how you have a holding it. You use smartphones, but don't do them when you meet people. When you meet people, the story starts as you're approaching somebody. And so therefore, do you really want your phone and be fractalized, have your attention, and be juggling your phone while you're introducing yourself to somebody? No. And you don't want to be looking at it when you're at a restaurant or you just don't want to be doing that because you're never going to really connect with them. But incredibly valuable.

And if I had one then I would have learned more about Isaac Asimov. Well, there's a lesson right there which is if you're going to request somebody's time, you better do your homework going in otherwise they may feel like you're wasting their time. Exactly. Definitely do homework. But don't do it in the middle of the talk. In the meeting, yeah. So another thing that just comes up in my mind is, you know, you had to use a phrase that our grandmothers might have used Hutzpah in order to do this. You had confidence, guts in order to do this. What if, for those of us who don't have the kind of confidence to say, I'm gonna try to request a meeting every day

with somebody new, how do we gin that up? Is that possible, even? It's very possible. Well, I can only say for myself, just to amend what you're saying about me is that I mean, I practiced this. I mean, I wasn't. I didn't have Hutzba, you know, as a kid. I had curiosity, but I'd be scared to talk to people. I'm still, as recently as two days ago, there was somebody I really wanted to talk to that was sitting

right across from me and I go, I just thought, I'm going to do it. And I don't think much more than that. I just, because if I think about it, I won't do it. I just go, hey, I have to introduce myself. And I'll just be kind in my introduction. And you'll pretty much always get kindness back. You just don't want to, what you don't want to do with people is interrupt them and then start asking a bunch of questions and you definitely don't want to ask for how do I reach you. I mean, you can read,

one should read this book honestly, face to face because it will help you if you're looking for a romantic relationship, you're looking to close on that romantic relationship or meet the potential person of your life or get promoted or get the job or raise the money that you need to raise for whatever your startup is or whatever your life job is, it happens this way. And all of the stories in the book are kind of good, fun Hollywood stories, most of them, that show how this bridge works. So you're saying that you, when you, sorry, somebody holding up a sign of face to face, you're one of your, somebody in your team, somebody in your name of your, this face to face. I was confused. I'll in your team. My crack team says face to face.

I was confused. She's holding up your new book. I was confused. I thought the new book was a curious mind because that was the book that my wife had bought and was sitting on our table. So I started to read it in preparation for this interview. I didn't realize the new book is actually a face to face. Oh, thank you. Oh, that's cool. I'm curious. There are two books. So when I reference the book in the course of this interview,

I'm referencing the first book. So I apologize for that. So actually, just to say to that, the first book is about the conversations themselves. Right? The first book, curious mind, is a synthesis of many of these curiosity conversations. But I had this flash moment two years ago realizing none of those conversations would have

ever taken place. No one would have shared anything with me had I not looked at them with a present state of mind. They would have just shut me off. Isaac Asimov shut me off because I didn't know enough about his body of work. But there were many people that I didn't know enough about their body of work that weren't quite as literal as Isaac Asimov, and there were more forgiving, and not to say I need to be forgiven, but human beings usually forgive other human beings for the sake of human connection because you There it's unpredictable what one could learn from another person and it usually leads to something like a job a boyfriend or girlfriend Something that's really valuable and so without the first step of actually looking at somebody using that bridge of eye contact It none of it will ever happen.

So, but just going back to confidence for a second, because you said an interesting thing, which is that you didn't have some innate overweening confidence, you actually had the opposite. I had the opposite. And so, I was scared. So, talk to me in a more detail about how you overcome that fear in order to do these things

that I think are scary for a lot of us. Well, I have the advantage of, you know, now in retrospect, I have the advantage of working on movies. And when actors get stuck, even the greatest actors, I won't say their names, but I've worked with all of them, they can get stuck and they can go 20, 30 times trying to say the same line or the same constellation of words and they could keep tripping up. And so what do you do?

Directors give them a prop. They say, go to the lamp. Oh, wait, carry this asterisk to the lamp. Oh, wait a second. You're going to flick your hair. So you have to create a prop for yourself. So, you have to create a prop for yourself to have conversations when you're scared. You have to say, I am just going to do this. I'm just going to say hi.

I'm just going to wave my hand. I'm just going to look at them and see if they look back at me. I'm going to, you have to create, and in in the book it has it granulates all these different little props that you can use to create a conversation. So give me an example. Well, one would be often I just say hi. I just go, hey, like that. And if you get a hayback, then you go like, by the way, what are you doing here? Or you know, fits a party because sometimes you're at a party, I still get nervous at parties.

I shouldn't because people think I'm so good at them, but I always get nervous at a party as my wife. I have so much social anxiety, but I always come to a party with three stories. Every, I've done this for 25 years. If I go to any big lunch I I tuck away in my pocket. I write like three little Stories like a piece of music that just came out or Or like this guy Nas X you that everybody's talking about little Nas X my son plays that my son goes up to Alexa

75 times a day and says play old town road. Okay. So old town road. Yeah. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to say to somebody, Hey, do you know old town road? What will I say? I saw the, I'll tell you what the fact is, I saw the video. I thought, wow, this is really cinematic. So I have something to say beyond just do you know who little Nas X is, but about Old Town Road. I can say, wow, I love the old school way that it's shot. It's really cinematic. It's like a TikTok. You know, you just come up with something that other people aren't saying. You have to be prepared. So if you're going to do the courage game, you can't just, you want something

to say. So it's incumbent upon you to watch the news, listen to your podcast. No, you have to, you have to be alert in the world. You have to, you know, you have to be a genius, but you have to be, have something to say. But it sounds to me like you're doing another thing, which is interesting, which is you've turned, I don't know if this is deliberate, but this is what I was hearing and what you were saying, which is you've turned your own fear into a prompt, which is, you notice, if I'm hearing you correctly,

you sounds like you notice, I'm feeling some fear about this person I'm gonna go approach, and you say, well, that's my prompt to just do it. Exactly, thank you, you say, well, that's my prompt to just do it. Exactly, thank you. You saved me. No, that's true. It's my, right, the fear is the prompt to just go do it.

I literally was sitting in a booth with a couple other people and I said, I gotta say hi to this person. And then the minute I felt so scared, I just swirled around and I said, I'm so glad to just be in the same restaurant with you or something like that. And it was cool. Like it then a conversation happened. Yeah, I have a lot of that fear too.

Really? I do. I do. I have a lot of that fear. But if you just, the minute you feel it, so I think what we all do, consciously or unconsciously, we read energy and we're attracted to energy or it repels us. So for attracted to an energy,

I usually feel like that's something I should do. And so I immediately, I just go, at that moment, as you just said, I will use that fear to just act on it immediately. It's, you've kind of, it sounds like you've built this scale, this training of, I feel the fear, no, that's, when I feel that the, the, the, the move is act as opposed to for me when I feel that fear, I recede. When when I'm at a party especially if it's a party of I don't know people I don't really know or you know maybe quote unquote impressive important people I will sometimes find myself moving deeper into my shell. Yeah and what you learn yes I understand that for sure

but when you but if you keep ex if you this, as we're talking about, you do it, you realize, again, you sort of demystify human nature. You realize that they're afraid to, everyone's afraid, or they were once afraid. And then they relate to that. They're really, yeah. But you were saying it can go poorly. And you have to be...

It can go poorly. Sounds like you have to be steelled for that against that possibility. Yeah, you have. I mean, I've I often in my curiosity conversations will go Way out of my way to meet people that I'm just fascinated with but I don't necessarily agree with it all One time I met with Edward Teller, it was the father of the hydrogen bomb, brilliant guy, but he really had no interest in meeting me at all. None. And I felt it the second I looked at him. So that was really incredibly uncomfortable. I remember Tom Hanks, I ran back to the, we were shooting, just finishing splash. Tom Hanks goes, how

could you take that abuse? And Ron said, yeah, that's so degrading. Why don't you just get up and leave? I thought, are you kidding? This was fascinating. The fact that he treated me like with a lack of interest for a full straight hour. I was fascinated with that. It was, it interested me. I learned.

Even when it goes poorly, you can learn something. Even when, yes, my worst experiences, I reframe them. I get out of the pain of the situation and I just pull, it's almost like I physically pull back and go, wow, I'm gonna reframe this. That was horrible, but wow, what did it feel like to be horrible?

What was it that was so horrible? And then I reframe it and I study it, like I'd study any object. I look at it kind of archeologically. I mean, I flew all the way to Russia to Moscow to meet Putin. And you have to read the book for that story. And I've had many, I mean, with Fidel Castro, I had a six and a half hour lunch with with Fidel Castro. And there was this this moment I said the stupidest thing.

First he said after three and a half hours he said how do you do your hair? That was the only question he asked about my spiky hair. And then I thought wow I'm feeling a little confident and then I added something that was just the worst dumbest thing to say. Because a friend of mine said, Graydon Carter, a vanity fair said, like he also produced the Nettie Professor, which I thought, wait, I better re-elevate myself. So I said, well, I also produced a movie about

torture in third-world countries called Closetland. And they all looked at me like, are you insane? We're gonna be in prison in about one second. You will experience torture in a third-world country. Yeah, exactly. But you're allowed to be in prison in about one second. You will experience torture in the third world country. Yeah, exactly. But you're allowed to say dumb things. If people like you, you can, it's all about intentionality. I think movies are about intentionality.

Is the spirit going in the right direction? And the same thing with you, if you're, when I meet somebody or they meet me, if my spirit is in the right place, my intentions are good, they'll forgive you for saying dumb things. Well, how, Clarify, you've talked about this a little bit, but what would you say your intention is generally going into a curiosity conversation?

To be very present and to be, ultimately like create the best date they've ever had. Because you know, like I, I just, we all know what our best date felt like when you meet that girl or in some cases, the girl meets the guy, whatever. And you just lose track of time. You're like in a state of flow, and your biochemistry

is completely aligned, and you forget it all. And it becomes, you're looking at each other, and something happens, it builds to something that's kind of amazing. That's a tall order to create that with a bunch of strangers. I do it. I mean, there was a point in my life, I thought,

because I had already had some movie success, and felt it. I mean, there was a point in my life I thought, because I had already hadn't had some movie success and felt success. I thought, I like the feeling of this better than hit movies, because you're just you're you're getting to know somebody on a deep level and they you and you're sharing part of your soul and then within your soul are inner truths that you're sharing part of your soul, and within your soul are inner truths that you want to surface. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards

of a parent's life, but come on. Some days parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. In your personal chronology, you started out by meeting folks who to whom you had to deliver papers and then you moved on to once you had a You were moving up to the ranks at at a movie studio and and at various in various positions in Hollywood You made it your business to meet a new person every day and then once you were established you launched these curiosity Conversations where you just met people from all walks of life All the time sometimes you would launch your year long letter writing campaigns. Who say Zip. Get in with them. And so now that I've just put that out there for folks,

you talked about how thrilling these were for you. And important, but it sounds like it became a hobby for lack of a better word or a passionate pursuit that was valuable in and of itself, but it also helped you in your work. It did. I didn't know that it was going to help me in my work when I started doing that. I just thought I would learn because I was, even though I was graduated college and I

did well, I'm a bit of an auto-diedec, you know, and I just, I learned so much from people, like expert people. People themselves, or just expert at anything. My Uber driver, three months ago, I had this Uber driver, very big guy, really huge guy. He was very polite, didn't initiate a conversation, I initiated with him, and we got into a conversation, I said, where are you from? He said, Serbia. That led eventually to martial arts, which I'm very interested in.

He said, well, he was expert at a certain art form, a martial art form called Sistema, which is a Russian martial art form. And I said, could you teach it? And he said, well, I could. And I said, could I pay you to come back to my house and teach me Sistema? And he said, well, I would do that. And I did it with him. It was a completely different form of martial arts.

It was incredibly interesting. And it's a superpower into itself, this particular form. So speaking of superpowers, you actually call curiosity a superpower. I do. And I can see two benefits, at least, to curiosity as a practice. One is, and this is right to the subtitle of your first book, which is that it makes your life bigger. and this is right to the subtitle of your first book, which is that it makes your life bigger. The other is that another word you could use for curiosity in the way in which you employ it,

the skill of curiosity is empathy. And for a storyteller, the ability to get into other people's lives and see the world from their perspective is immensely valuable. It's immensely yes. It's immensely valuable. Because in order for stories are designed to create feelings, you know, they're maps to feelings, movie stories and television stories are maps to the ignition of a feeling. Because if a feeling happens, then you're gonna remember it. Like live events create feelings.

Great stories, ET for me created a feeling. It holds up. It holds up. Yeah, they're moved out. They're moved elevating. And you remember them, great songs do that. Just like you said, your kids listen to this song, 70, 80 times. So optimally, that's what you want to do.

You want to ignite memorable feelings. And like a one-on-one relationship, you want to create memorable feelings. The other thing about it is, I mean, on a commercial side of it, if you read this book face to face, you'll see that with empathy, as you said, in order to sell anything, like to sell your boss on you staying another year or being promoted or raising money for anything, you have to live in the brain of the person you're talking to. You have, clearly, there's evidence that I've made a hundred movies. There's evidence I can do this well.

But it's mostly a function of, there's the art form of pitching and telling a story, but really, the real art form is inhabiting someone else's being, knowing what's going to register for them, what they're interested in, what their tolerances are, reading whether they're getting bored or move on to another creative new channel. So basically living in the brain of the buyer. There's a really good book about this, this is very famous book. Okay.

The title makes it seem like it's a classic, schlocky, dumb, self-help book. But in fact, it's actually a book about empathy. It's called How to Win Friends and Influence People. Oh, yeah, of course. And I've read it. It's a great book. It's a great book.

I read it recently. I thought I was gonna hate it, and it was gonna be the type of thing that I would mock. In fact, it is a well-disguised book about inhabiting the viewpoint of other people so that you can work well with them. Yeah. When you talked about dealing with your boss, I think empathy for your boss,

even if it's a person who you find difficult or disagreeable, makes sense if only from a strategic standpoint. Exactly. Well, it very, very well said. Exactly, Exactly. So once your viewers or listeners read the modern version and application of it, which is face to face the art of human connection, they should then go back to reading out of

friend when friends and influence people. So you've read that book. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, because you, you, I mean, I've read Dale Carnegie books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He, I mean, it's funny reading how to interpret those people because Carnegie, all of his cultural references are from like the 1910s. So it's a, it's a funny book to read, but it actually the core message holds up. So talk more about the art of human connection and why that's something we should all tune into.

What else is in the book that I embarrassingly read the wrong book for this interview? So what else is in the book that we should walk away with in this conversation? Well, I have several, there's so many stories, but there's one that just made me think about it. So I was having lunch with three or four of my most, you know, three or four very, very accomplished people. Mark Wahlberg, the actor, Jimmy Ivean, who created beats by Dre, but before that, you know, he was an engineer for John Lennon. He had Bono Bruce Springsteen,

Dr. Dre Endless. He's just a brilliant brilliant Stevie Nicks. Yes, wow. I watched the documentary on that. That's impressive. So, you have Jimmy Iveen, you got Mark Wahlberg, you have David Geffen, who's a legend, a music legend that has created multiple music companies and was right in the heartbeat of the 70s and 80s representing everybody, really. And then Bono was coming. So I knew Bono, but Jimmy was bringing Bono. And I thought, wow, I know the other guys here. They are legends unto themselves, but Bano really interests me.

And I'd really like to know, understand him in that he's used his superstar rock star power to help human lives in Africa. In other words, he uses his, all the leverage he's created by being a rockstar and being a prodigy in some ways. And he uses it to help millions of lives, people survive in Africa, survive AIDS, and, or get through it or cope or, you know, but he's saving human lives. And I want to understand like why he would do it, how he does it, what does it involve and so in order for that to happen, I had to make a point not to defuse my eye contact. So instead of like we often share our eye contact with a group or someone says something

funny and then you, you know, if you want to create unity, you, you, you all, you all look at each other and laugh and smile. And I just made a point to just really look at him so that it became a memorable moment, you know, that he would remember and he would also feel like what he has to say and is worth this long conversation. So if you want somebody to talk for a long time, which I did and explain their story, you don't look at other people, you look at that person. It sounds like a little thing,

but next time you go to a party, there's gonna be somebody you really wanna meet and talk to. Don't share your eye contact. If you're looking at him or her, don't share your eye contact with other people while you're doing it. Sorry, I'm closing my eyes now because I sometimes close my eyes when I'm trying to think of a question or how to formulate a question.

The question you referenced smartphones earlier in this era where we're all addicted to our phones and I don't think that's too strong of a word, has the art of human connection to some in the phrase that you shared with us earlier, has it been lost or degraded and do you worry about that? I'm very worried about it because, you know, it's not an, because kids are always on their phone every second. And adults are now on their phone. When you go to, I've gone to so many restaurants and great ones like Nobu Malibu

or you're waiting for the sun to set, everyone's looking at their phone. I don't even, so the point is is the phones are addictive. There is a, phones are, it's a gamification. You know, every aspect of it is doing likes on your Instagram, whatever your social media is, it's all gamified, which means it makes you want to pick it up all the time. Makes you want to see who called, who texted, what social media is loving you or not loving you. Then you're reacting to that. Then you're emotionally diffused all the time. So I think, yes, there's no question that we're all magnetized or hypnotized by

our phones. And they're really the most valuable innovation in our time. but use it independent of your one-on-one human connection with other people. It's meant to make you better, not worse, and it makes you worse. What do we do about that? Put it in your pocket when you're going to get together with somebody, meet somebody, or even if you're just walking into a party, it's kind of a weak move to walk into a party looking at your phone. It shows that you're insecure.

It's like when people are late, when they don't have to be late and they show up late and they're like, oh, I'm, you know, it implies they were too busy and smart people know that you're not too busy. They just know that you're insecure. So looking at your cell phone while you're walking into a party or running into a meeting,

it just shows you're insecure. Chose that you're less, not more. We haven't talked about meditation yet, but I know you do meditate. I do meditate. So I'm curious to hear about your practice and also whether or how it informs the two skills we've been talking about here today of curiosity

and human connection. Well, it does. It does. So meditation does, it plays a very big role. I know, we're just meeting for the first time. I know my nervous system. I'm a pretty nervous person. So I run.

Don't come off that way. Well, thanks, but I run pretty hot, you know, in that, I'm not, well, I am. I am, things make me anxious a lot. And I can direct that energy to positive things or be productive with it, like thinking, learning, and producing ideas. But it makes... So meditation is really, really helpful before I do anything that's going to require one-on-one concentration, like meeting with you today. I meditated. I didn't do as long, I did a 10 minute TM,

as opposed to a 20 minute TM. But I often before a party, I wanna disengage from, what I would normally do if I'm gonna go to a party. I'll imagine what the party is gonna be. Like who's gonna be there, what it looks like? All that does is create anxiety. It doesn't make me go, oh, I can't wait.

There are parts that make me go, I can't wait, but it's usually I'm overwrought with, I'm nervous. Or will I deliver? Or it's just, so meditation comes me so that I get out So meditation comes me so that I get out of the cycle of pre-anticipatory anxiety, which we all have. Especially social anxiety. And if you're a high performer, you really have that because you put high performers, they put a high bar on where they want to achieve. And when you put a high bar on what you want to achieve, that means you want everything

to work all of the time. And life is not that way. I've had a tremendous amount of success, but I know success is not a straight up trajectory. It drops. You fail. And you have to re, you have to, by the way, every time any time I fail, I always use the tool of TM. Always Bob Roth that has helped me quite a bit with that on the show.

Oh, has he? Oh, I just told him on the phone the other day. Yes, he's great. So, Transcendental Meditation, you've been doing it. How long have you been doing it? I started it with depec Chopra when I was getting divorced. And when you get, which is really traumatizing, and you start, you relive everything and you're stuck. And so meditation gets you unstuck. Untangling from the non-stop narrative. Yeah, the circular thought where you're living like this,

why did this happen to me? What could it, what did I do wrong? What did I do right? What did they do wrong? Why did they do that to me? And you just keep going through, that's all in the past. All we have right now is the gratitude of this moment. And I try to start every one of my days like going,

wow, I'm so grateful that I'm alive, that I have the energy of good health that enables me to run up the stairs and get to see you today. No, I mean, really, it's all those little things that give you strength and power. When you're sick, you don't have any power. When you're physically injured you don't have any power, when you're physically injured or impaired in some way. So just be grateful for what you have as you start your day.

We spent the bulk of this conversation talking about the skills of curiosity and human connection, but then you just raised two more that are really interesting. One is gratitude. and human connection, but then you just raise two more that are really interesting. One is gratitude. And then what I want to dig in right now before we close is on resiliency, because you talked about failure. And what's interesting, notwithstanding your

tremendous success, is that you have failed. And you can fail not only in, you know, you get a project made, it doesn't do well, but you also, in your first book, talk a lot about the fact that even successful movie producers deal with being told no all the time. Yeah. That it is a culture of no in Hollywood. It's a culture of no.

So you also said that you use TM as a tool for failure. So can you just say more about all of that? Okay. When you fail or when I have failed, which I have, you know, of course, have failed in movies and primarily movies, when you fail, you, you, you, you bring yourself a steam down very low. So you feel less. You feel like everyone's looking at you. You feel like everyone's going, oh, that dude's a loser or you put bad symbols on yourself. And in Hollywood, that may actually be true. People may be saying that behind their back. Well, yeah, I'm sure they are. I'm sure they are. He's lost his mojo. He's lost his touch. Any and all those things. Or

they're just happy that you failed, they didn't. Or they failed and you, they want company. A lot of it is, you know, I mean, people will compliment me by saying, oh, it's just resentment or envy. But anyway, it computes to the same thing. They're rooting for you to fail. They want you to fail.

So anyway, but when you do, when you fail, you tend to beat up on yourself when you fail and you have to get out of those cycles of beating up on yourself. You have to kiss the mirror and be grateful. You do. No, I'm laughing because I think it's a funny phrase, but I think a lot about this term of self-compassion, which

I'm trying to come up with a better term because it's a little, I don't know, for me, it's a little, um, syrupy, but kissing the mirror is a kind of a funny concept. It is. It is. It's a really funny. Somebody told me to do that, actually, to actually kiss the mirror. Yeah. Uh, he's Jerry Seinfeld's partner and manager forever forever.

His name is George Shapiro. He's, I think he's probably like in his late 80s. Really vital still runs. He said, Brian, I knew you have, when you had nothing, you had nothing. You had no night shift. You had no splash. You didn't do any of these things. Now I've seen you win an Oscar.

I've seen you been up for Oscars. Do you want Emmys? But you know what you never have done? You never looked yourself in the mirror and kissed the mirror. I thought he's really right. And so I take that with me. It's a good, it's a, it's a good thing to do. I mean, he's not talking about cockiness as I hear it. He's not talking about cockiness. He's just saying love yourself. I appreciate what whatever any of us have accomplished, be proud of it. Inclusion. Is there anything that I should have asked, but didn't? No, I mean, I think you asked, how do you go about doing all of this? And again, it's all in this book, face to face, the art of human connection, because it just, there's all these different entry points and things you can gain that are unimaginable.

And they sort of, they are embodied in these stories, whether there were with Oprah Winfrey, who I met for the very first time, and I have a story with Oprah because I was, I was again in a trouble, in the same trouble, a relationship, and she said, I never met her, and she and Gail King her came to have breakfast with me, actually the Beverly Hill, I was sorry, the Bella Hotel, and they, I felt so, I felt so much trust with them. I felt they had such open

hearts to me that I shared my issue and what it was and she said, Brian, if you really want to know, I said, I do. She said, betrayal is almost impossible to get over. And I thought she gave me her best advice and I moved on. It was helpful. So, um, in closing, just I do this thing called the plug zone. Yeah. I mentioned the face to face. The previous book was a curious mind. Are there other, if we want to learn more about you, are there other places to do so on the internet, social media, how can we get our Brian Grazer fix? You can, wow, there's other things you can watch, man, television, social media, go to my Instagram, it's just Brian Grazer. They're funny food videos because I love food and so that's fun. Or you can just look me up, Google me and say, Brian Grazer news and there's going to see a lot

of interesting, you'll see a lot of interesting and fun things. If you were going to recommend one of your movies that was your favorite that we should all watch, what would it be? Beautiful mind because it's about how we look at people all day long. And it's specifically a beautiful mind is about helping destigmatize mental disability. So whether you look at somebody that has a very minor disability or someone as extreme as gets a freneo, which was John Nash who won a Nobel Prize in economics. You know, it's just, it's looking at people and saying, wow, I'm not going to think less of them. I'm not going to stigmatize them. So I think it's very exciting movie. Like, it's really,

really unpredictable. And that came, that movie came from a face-to-face human connection with a woman that was tortured in Chile named Veronica Dinegre. And because I met her 20 years before a beautiful mine, I was able to like make this magnificent Oscar-winning film. Because I met this one woman 20 years before that. How did that help? Because I asked her how did you survive? And she told me her survival system. And her survival system was to live in an alternate reality. So while she was being tortured,

she lit created an entirely another story in the same way a schizophrenic mind works in multiple stories. Now they do it involuntarily. She voluntarily created a story so that she could endure this torture. And you made a movie about her too, closet. And then I made, yeah, then I made a movie about her as well. I have one other quick tip though. Can I give you one quick tip? Absolutely. It's your show. But it made me think of this one thing. Okay, I had this a producing deal at TriStar Pictures. And I was paid a smaller amount of money, call it X. And what happened is that then all of a sudden, this movie that I was working on called Splash came out

and it was successful. But I was getting paid the smaller amount of money from the TriStar company. And so somebody said to me, explain to the boss who I was scared of, like literally we're all scared of our boss a little bit, particularly when you asked for more money. I said, he said, tell him that your reality has changed. And I thought, well, that's interesting. What does that mean? He said, well, your current realities, you've proved to be more and more inspired, more brilliant guy.

I said, but I'm stuck in this contract, though. I said, he said, have the courage, look him straight in the eye and say it to him. I said, in a nice way, I said, look, I want to get, I asked for seven times X. I said, I want to get this because look, there's real evidence that I've earned it and that my realities change. I'm much more valuable to you and into our reality of this world. He gave it to me. He could have gone either way, but it was cool of him anyway. He did that.

Do you ever have, I think, I think about conversations I've had with my wife and a lot of successful females I know about imposter syndrome. That ever happened for you? No, it doesn't. In fact, the opposite. When Ron and I won Oscars, Ron Howard. Ron Howard and I won Oscars for a beautiful mind.

He said, oh my God, do you think they'll ever find us out? We're waiting to go see 300 journalists. And I said, are you kidding? Find us out. We're the smartest guys in the business. And I've really met it. Talk about kissing the mirror. I just thought, like, God, we've been doing this a while.

We have so much trial and error behind us. Like, who else are people going to ask? We're the guys. Right. So that's not, I don't have any positive. That's not fake puffing yourself up. That's, you've reached a point where you had done the work. I've done the way over the 10,000 hours. Yes. Well, thank you for spending one of those 10,000 with us. I really appreciate it. It was, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks very much. That was poetic. Big thanks to Brian Grazer. That was fun.

Let's do some voicemails. Here's number one. Hey Dan, Maddie here. I was wondering, I just finished reading a whole lot of Eckhart toly and read both of his books twice and read Ted Percent App, your meditation group, Physiosteceptics. You have a lot of guests on. What are a couple of your favorite book recommendations? Like a good two-word three to start.

I know at one point you mentioned, I'm pretty new to the podcast. Reading one of Sam Harris, I believe, is book a couple times. So if you could tell me which book that is, and then maybe a couple other to follow that one, then I would really appreciate it. All right, like I said, I'm ready to the podcast, but I'm really enjoying it.

So if I keep going like, have a good day. Here, I'll give you four books. This list is by no means exhaustive. I think there's a longer, we're gonna put a link in the show notes. There's a page on the 10% website that has a longer list of books, and in fact also there's a list of books I recommend. I think in the appendix of meditation for fidgety skeptics, but here are four books. One is Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright. He's a

science writer, and it's a really interesting take from a secular person who isn't wearing robes, is very much in the world, is very skeptical. It's a great deep dive into why Buddhism had such an impact on him. Second, Buddhism without beliefs by Stephen Bachelor. Stephen is a little different in that he, while he's a very skeptical dude, comes out of a Buddhist background, was a monk in two different traditions, I believe. By the way, I think Stephen's gonna come on the podcast, and I think I saw his name on our schedule

in the next couple of months, he's fascinating guy. But this is a slim volume that strips away all of the metaphysical claims from Buddhism and really talks about how you can practice Buddhism without having to believe in things that you can't muster the faith in. Three Sam Harris wrote an excellent book, he's written many excellent books, but this one's called Waking Up, and he has an app by the same name, full disclosure, he's a friend, and the book really is an excellent and science-based, reason-based case for working with the mind.

And Sam has a lot of experience on the cushion, you know, has been studying meditation for years and years and years, and also, of course, neuroscience, moral philosophy, and many other things. And then fourth, the book that I read that really got me into, really convinced me to take a deep dive into Buddhism and meditation is going to pieces without falling apart by Dr. Mark Epstein. He's written many books, beautiful books about, he's a psychiatrist. He's written a bunch of books about the overlap between psychology and Buddhism and this is the first one I think I wrote about it in my first book having read that book and what an impact it had on me so those are four just quick hits but there are many many other great books by people like Sharon Salisberg and Joseph Goldstein etc and

former and and future guests on this podcast I I can go on and on, but those are four to get you started, and you can also look at the in our show notes today, because we'll put a link to a longer list in there. Thanks for that question. Here's voicemail number two. Hi, Dan. My name is Goen. I've been doing the meditation app for about six months. at about six months. Very enjoyable. I find myself using the meditation when I'm driving, walking, and just getting ready. I don't find myself doing the actual sitting in a meditation, as you would say, on the cushion. Is that something I should strive for? I feel I'm getting quite a bit out of the activity part of meditation and focusing and following the app

that I'm wondering if I'm not getting the full complete by getting to the cushion. Thanks for your response. It's a great question. I'm going to make a recommendation, but I'm going to do it gingerly because I think you should be, I think you should savor the fact that you were doing anything at all and that you are getting something out of it. So that that's all great. And I don't want to brush by that too hastily.

And I would also say that if that's all you do forever, then it seems to me like you are better off than you were before. And you can continue to grow in these practices of integrating mindfulness into everyday life. That said, I mean, in a perfect world, I would have you doing a few minutes a day or daily ish of formal seated meditation or even formal walking meditation as opposed to just walking around in the world. There's a kind of meditation where you do formal walking, super, super, super slow walking meditation, which is not something you'd probably want to do on a busy city street unless you're willing to have people look at you funny.

The formal meditation is, it turbocharges everything else because you're only doing that. You're only generating your capacity for mindfulness in a very, or any other skill, mindfulness, compassion, focus. There are many skills that we're practicing in meditation. And in my experience, the formal seated practice, turbocharges, the endeavor of bringing mindfulness

or any of these other qualities into daily life. I don't think this needs to be some long, you know, Zen, death march thing here that I'm suggesting. I think it's just about finding little cracks and crevices in your day where you can fit it in. Maybe it's right before bed. Maybe it's right after you stretch after exercising. Maybe it's first thing after you wake up in the morning. There are lots of little. Maybe it's the five minutes that you would otherwise spend scrolling Instagram and feeling insufficient, et cetera, et cetera. Experiment with that. Give it a shot. Again, I want to stress I'm not wagging my finger at you.

You're doing great from what I can tell. But this may help you do even better by supporting the practice from which you're already extracting so much benefit, which is being more awake in your daily life. I think a few minutes of dedicated formal practice might make that even more powerful. All right. Before we go, I just want to thank everybody who's involved in putting together this show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Mike DeBuskey, Tiffany O'Mahundro,

and Lauren Hartzog. These folks do a ton of work behind the scenes to make this all possible, and I'm very grateful. Very grateful also to our podcast Insiders who every week give us hundreds of people give us feedback every week and really informs the way we do our work. And of course, thankful to you for just listening. It's a big deal. So if you want to do us a solid, rate us, recommend us, write about us on social media, share an episode with somebody you love that really helps get the word out and make our audiences even bigger and our future even brighter. Okay, enough nagging and thanking for me. I'll see you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music.

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