The School of Greatness - 120 How to Manage the Digital World and Life Transitions with Baratunde Thurston

Episode Date: January 1, 2015

"If you do it just to please the crowd, you'll lose yourself." - Baratunde Thurston If you enjoyed this episode, check out videos, show notes, and more at www.lewishowes.com/120.

This is episode number 120 with New York Times bestselling author, Baratunde Thurston. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, everyone? Thank you so much for joining me on the School of Greatness podcast, the very first episode of the new year, 2015. Welcome to the new year, and thank you guys so much for joining me today.

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Now I want to bring you to my good friend, Baratunde Thurston. For those that do not know Baratunde, he is a TV host and co-founder of Cultivated Wit. He wrote the New York Times bestselling book called How to Be Black and served for five years as the director for the news outlet The Onion in New York City. When he's not delivering talks at gatherings such as the Tribeca Film Interactive, South by Southwest, and TED, he writes a monthly back page column for Fast Company. Now, in this interview, we dive in deep about a few different things. Transitions, one of the things that's a new transition right now with the new year. So we talk about transitions.

We also talk about getting unplugged. And Baratunde is very into tech and into media and has a big social media following. But for a month, he went completely off the grid, went unplugged. We talk about what that's like. We talk about the future of media online and a whole lot more. We uncover a lot of things here in this interview. So I'm very excited to bring you my good friend, the one and only Baratunde Thurston. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. I'm with my man,

Baratunde Thurston. I'm the greatest of all time. What's up? The GOAT. Yo, it's good to be here, Lewis. Yeah, man. This is a long time in the making. Yes, it is. I've been talking about having you on for like two years since I started. Since you started, actually, yeah. It's like, we got to get you on.

I had to wait for you to perfect it. You know, like I didn't want to be a part of those rough early years. We should be waiting for the rest of my life now. Because it's never going to be. Well, yeah, perfection is a process. it's never going to be a perfection as a process. It's never going to be perfected, but, uh,

it's definitely gotten a lot better. Yeah. If I listened to the first five or 10 episodes, I'm like, Oh, I can't even believe I put those out there. I feel that about my jokes and my first years in standup. It's just like,

no, that wasn't funny at all. But here's what's interesting. Like I could have been paralyzed by the thought of like, this needs to be perfect for me to put it out there. And I probably wouldn't have a podcast right now. So I'm glad I did. Yeah.

And you just did a TV show. I did. Notice the verb tense. Right, right. Did a TV show. And you said you're actually grateful. You had a great experience with it. Will you talk about it a little bit?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. So I'm here in Los Angeles with you right now. I came out in October to join an existing show. The show was called Take Part Live. It's on a network called Pivot, which is owned by a company called Participant, which is a film company. They do documentaries on social issues. Jeff Skoll, who's one of the eBay early people and a billionaire, created a network because he wanted to make the world better through media.

It's like social impact media. So I joined a show with Meghan McCain, John McCain's daughter, Jacob Soboroff, who was part of HuffPoLive before this, and we broke down the issues of the day. We debated them, and we encouraged our audience to take some kind of social action, not just get all riled up. So I did about 40 episodes of that, and then the show was, shall we say,

not continued. Sure. AKA canceled. But you said we were just talking for the last couple hours here on my balcony in the studio. It's a balcony that evokes reflection. Right. And then confession. I come out here every morning and I just like reflect, but luckily I'm usually by myself. Right. So I don't have to confess anything. You should turn your mics on when you come out. That's a whole nother podcast. That is Lewis's confessions from his balcony. And I'm usually half naked out there. So it should be like naked video podcast, naked confessions. That's it. You should get that. You should get that domain name. Yes. Slash net. All right. So you, uh, but we were talking about how you're actually grateful that no one saw it.

Yeah. So part of the challenge with the, I guess the benefit and the challenge. So it's a new network that most people haven't heard of. Yeah. That even the people who have access to it don't know they have access to it because it's a linear cable channel. They bought the documentary channel to be able to get into people's homes, but most people didn't know they had the documentary channel. So any new network struggles in its first year to be known for something even owned yeah and that's oprah yeah right and then you can't just ride being oprah so this didn't have oprah either much as i like to think of myself as like a newer oprah yeah and so it was was actually quite a

was quite a fortunate thing sometimes to not be massively exposed, especially for me because I was new to this type of television. Like I've been on TV a fair amount. I've hosted web series. I've hosted pre-recorded field pieces for science channel. Edited things. Yeah. And I've done live as a guest. I've done cable news.

Where someone's asking you questions. Yeah. And I've done MSNBC, CNN. I'm just like, be me on an issue or two. But to actually be the co-host of a show and have to toss to commercials and ask the audience to tweet and to interview people in one block and talk about ISIS in another block. And there's just a lot more going on. I have a producer in my ear. That's challenging. So to talk. You focus.

Exactly. It's a mentally challenging gig to do that for a full hour, four days a week. You have to prepare every single day for the topics. And every day is different. Every day is different. One day we're talking about rehabilitated neighborhoods and artisanal foods. The next day we're talking about international terrorism. We'll be talking about religion.

And then we're talking about teenagers and date rape. The news is the news. And you can plan some of what happens, but then other things just happen. Sure. And you got to respond to that without looking like an idiot. Right. So there was this,

anyway, all that's a long way of saying I sometimes was like a little frustrated because I like if I express something, I want the world to hear it. But it was also kind of nice, especially as a newbie in this realm to be in a little quieter spot because you're allowed to make some mistakes yeah and you don't have to feel bad about it because not the whole world you went on the tonight show every day right that would have been a much

more public way to learn yeah yeah interesting and there's something i mean i think there's even the way the internet works in terms of exposing early art to an audience before it's ready. Stand up. I started in stand up in 2002 before Twitter, before any sort of public recording of things. People didn't have phones with cameras built in. So I was able to fail quietly. Without everyone seeing you. Yeah.

Quietly. And get better. Quiet failure is so important. Yeah. Because if you stumble out loud, that's people's only impression of you. everyone's seeing yeah and then and get better like quiet failure is so important yeah because if you stumble out loud that's people's only impression of you and we're very quick to judge and like oh he's not funny he'll never make it it's like actually a lot of never makes it eventually do make it and that eventually is it needs to be baked in in some way so

i am grateful i'm not saying i'm happy that the network is small. I'm not trying to diss the network, but I am saying for me, especially it was just there for two and a half months. It was, it was a good gig. Yeah. And when I first,

I'm trying to think about when I first not met you, I'll talk about that in a second. When I first heard about you, I believe was 2000. You have to remember the date. Okay. The timeframe. 2008,

I think it was. Swine flu. Oh was 2009 2009 yeah someone tweeted a video of yours doing like a speech or a stand-up yeah about swine flu yeah and it was hilarious thank you sir can you talk about yeah no that was for people that don't remember swine flu so the sw swine flu, H1N1, influenza virus. It was all over the news for a while. Yeah, there was a big scare back in roughly April of 2009. And it was on the front pages of all the news sites. And people were buying masks and really worried, am I going to get swine flu? It was like Ebola, right?

But bigger in some interesting ways. And so I was inspired. I was working at The Onion at the time. I was the head of digital there and I was leading political coverage. And I thought, what if I could create a kind of satirical swine flu account? And I personified the swine flu as an angry- Twitter account. As a Twitter account, as an angry piglet.

And the thing that I don't know that didn't come across in that talk, because that talk was kind of in character uh-huh i really thought about it right as a performance piece okay this is i want to develop this character so who does the swine flu swallow uh follow on twitter what is his attitude what is his gender what is his use of profanity what so this is a condescending highly profane highly confident and arrogant piglet seeking revenge on all of humanity for bacon and ham hocks. Oh, my gosh. Centuries, millennia of abuse.

And then I got to work. And I just treated this character as a Twitter user and followed people and trolled them online and followed folks who were afraid of the swine flu. Oh, my God. And tweeted out that. people and trolled them online and followed folks who were afraid of the swine flu oh my god and tweeted out that especially because i knew that that mechanics of twitter and it still works this way but especially back then it was so special yes when someone follows you you get an email so these people who were afraid of the swine flu were getting in the email saying you are now being followed by the swine flu that was it wasn't at swine flu was that taken already it was the

underscore swine underscore flu but the proper name the swine was just the swine wow so they were there was like it was a new way to deliver a joke yeah and i was like i wasn't even there for the delivery like i set it up on twitter and it landed in your inbox if only there was a video of everyone who opened it yeah i mean the nsa knows right they got the webcams on yeah yes um maybe apple knows who knows what they're doing with facetime footage but um that was for me hilarious like i made myself laugh i did it for me every day and i've maintained i didn't uh publicly acknowledge that i was behind it until you made the speech or yeah until i talked the talk was like my coming out party and i got interviewed by huffington post in character wow for that al roker followed

me mitt romney followed me that's amazing it was a glorious two-week experiment two weeks and then it was like swan blue was over yeah and there was an early it was an early um version of these personified like satirical fake accounts you know you had bp global pr after the oil spill that would come later the bron The Bronx Zoo snake or something. Sure. It was like somebody created one for that. Mayor Emanuel. So all the – and now everybody creates 50 different Twitter accounts the moment anything

happens anywhere in the world, right? But back then, this is six, five years ago. It was a year after Twitter started. Because Twitter started in 2007 or something. Twitter started in 06. 06, yeah. Yeah, I got on in 07 in March for South by Southwest. Yep.

And I was always just trying to figure out, okay, how else can I be funny? Like that might have been an interesting stand-up bit, but it was a far more interesting Twitter character. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that one case is how I think about everything. Wow, amazing. What's a new way to interact? Sure.

What's a new way to express this idea? Interesting, man. Yeah. wow what's a new way to interact what's a new way to express this idea interesting man yeah there's been such a transition over the years of social media and online marketing everything and i first started getting into the online marketing world in 2009 so it's right around when i just got into it i would sell basically it's because of the swine flu so you're welcome yeah all your listeners know that swine flu gets credit for bringing Lewis. The school of greatest to the world. Yes. And there's just been a, you know, every year there's a huge transition for who has like the power, the social media power, which platforms are the biggest.

And like back then it was Twitter. And now I don't really feel like Twitter is. I feel like it's shifting so much. Why do you think there are so many shifts online in the last five to seven years? And what do you think is going to happen over the next five years? So the shifts have always happened. They're happening faster because the places that we're building are cheap to build, cheap to grow. So there was a shift from eight tracks to cassettes. There was a shift from black and white to color TV, but it took massive capital investment

in years of promotion and marketing and experimentation to move a whole population from one place to the other. Now that happens overnight. Almost literally overnight. And it's because it's all bits and bytes and they're cheaper to manipulate. So there's no

difference between Instagram and Twitter technically. It's all zeros and ones. So the manifestation of it is the same. And when it costs nothing, relatively speaking, to move and to create, we are a lot more, we're a lot less attached or we're attached for far briefer periods of time.

So I think the why is a technical why. I think it's frustrating actually to think for me when things move that quickly it's there becomes this like hyperactive gold rush mentality around everything sure and so i'm gonna get it now we gotta get now i'm i'm watching deadwood right now which is a series about the gold rush interesting and if you could think of something as massive as the Western gold rush happening every six months and a whole population physically jumping. Hundreds of millions of people. Yeah.

To the Western United States, now to Brazil, now to the Arctic. I mean, it's insane. And so there's got to, I'm trying to maintain a sense of inner peace around all this stuff and not bet on platforms and make the latest things because it feels so ephemeral. Because after you bet on it, even if you hit it big, it's like it could be gone in a moment. Yeah. And you have to build something that has that change built into it. You know, I've given a ton of talks about social media in part because of the swine flu. Wow.

The swine flu earned me speaking credibility, Right. And being at the onion and writing books and a lot of other things. But that example still has some resonance for like how to be authentic. Interesting. Ironically, because I was lying, but I was authentic to the character of this flu. And people ask me, they'll say things like,

yo, I hear, I hear 2015 is going to be the year of video. Wasn't that like 2010? And I'm just, first of all, just listen to yourself. Or the year of mobile. Yeah. It's like moving images have always been powerful in human history.

Yeah, exactly. Whether we could record them and transcode them as quickly or not is different. And, you know, is it Snapchat year? Is it Vine year? Is it the year of Bebo? Like Bebo just blew up in my life in the past three weeks. I don't even know what Bebo is. Bebo was a youth in my life in the past three weeks. I don't even know what Bebo is.

Bebo was a youth-oriented social network that was based over in the UK. Now it's reimagined itself as a mobile messaging app that creates avatars around you.

So when you hashtag with your friends, it manipulates your avatar to visually enact the emotion. Like the Sims of mobile. Yeah, it's like you are the emoji.

Interesting. And so, I don't know, maybe that'll last four weeks who knows so so where i see things going in the next five years there's like what i hope happens and what i think happens yeah what i think happens is that we continue our spiral of gold rush mentality around kind of oh people move here basically kids run from their grandparents, right? They leave Facebook, they go to Instagram. Well, grandma's on Instagram. Now I'm going to go over to this thing. So a lot of it is just like youth looking for the new version of the mall to escape old people, right? That is so much of this movement. And it's cool kids, right? Defining cool by scarcity is cool. If everybody's doing it, it can't be cool. So we got to get off of it once everyone's on it.

Exactly. So I think we'll continue this like accelerating hop of chasing cool, but the dollars follow faster because Subway finds it and they buy it out and they do some kind of stunt.

It's like, oh, now Subway's going vine. Subway's going vine. How cool can it be? It's not, yeah. So we got to get on Snapchat and now Snapchat's not cool. Now it's something else.

So I think that's part of it, but there's got to be some dimin we got to get a Snapchat. And now Snapchat's not cool. Now it's something else. So I think that's part of it. But there's got to be some diminishing returns to the leaping. And I don't know if it- For who? The brands or for the people leaping? I think both. I think we, certainly, I have limited endurance for this constant motion. I mean, for 18 months, I didn't have a permanent home in New York.

Until February of this year, I was kind of on the road. I was Airbnb-ing. I was couch surfing with friends. February of 2014. Yeah. I was Craigslisting it, and I was house-sitting and whatnot. And it was novel. The first six months were really exciting.

I was like, ooh, now I live in the West Village. Now I'm living in Williamsburg. Now I'm living in the East Village. I'm on a couch in there. I'm going to love the king and the queen. Now I'm in a building with an elevator. Now I'm living in the East Village. I'm on a couch in there. I'm going to love the king and the queen. Now I'm in a building with an elevator. Now I'm in a fifth floor walk-up. And there's something really exciting about the discovery and the exploration and the journey.

But at a certain point, I needed a home. Yeah. And I signed a lease. You got to chill. Yeah. And I needed something recognizable. For a lot of people, that's Facebook, right? They've just paused on this Ferris wheel.

I'm going to keep mixing the metaphor on this roulette wheel there's i'm going to stick with number facebook because i know it most of my friends are here and that's cool email still works for the vast majority of people text messaging that's not going anywhere and yeah where else it ends up there will be new things there will be new things but what i be new things. But what I hope happens, this goes from expectation to hope, I hope that we get a different sense of ownership as users about all the stuff that we create that's attached to these ephemeral networks. What do you mean? We're producing a lot of media in terms of photos and text messages and video clips.

We are revealing a lot about ourselves in terms of content, but also in terms of our networks. You and I are friends on Instagram and on Facebook. We follow each other on Twitter. We're in each other's phone books. LinkedIn. These platforms know that we're important to each other. Sure. We should know that too. And that should be portable in a way that is somehow held hostage by the LinkedIn's of the world and the Gmail's of the world and the whoever the I'm not picking on those guys in particular. But I think we've got a really weird balance in the relationship now where the majority of what makes Facebook Facebook is us, not Facebook.

not Facebook. And if we start to shift to a world where the connections and the media, which are all us, without any of that, these platforms are stupid. They're literally dumb. Then the shift from one place to the other will be less painful because it will already have it. And so when you think about NSA, think about the Sony hack, think about things that have been in the news a lot lately, if had their own data right if we had a trusted place to keep it or we kept it ourselves then it wouldn't be so costly so painful so ridiculous to jump from one service to the other or to you know when their terms don't line up or when they get hacked or whatever the reason is or because you don't feel like you don't like the color blue and facebook is totally blue right where's my pink social network how come facebook doesn't let me make it pink right so i think more user control is what i hope for in the next five years

then customizing your experience yeah then it becomes less of what will the geniuses at platform x dream up for me right because we are handing over it's kind of like bringing back myspace in a sense where you get to customize some of the things that you have yeah there i think customization is a part of it i think ownership is a more powerful term to throw around it because right now we're all just it's almost like we're serfs you know or or and not quite slaves and i want to use like extreme language but i feel like we're waiting right we're waiting for some genius somewhere to rescue us cool you know give me the new phone give me the new social platform it's going to be cool and hot it's gonna it's gonna you know what's gonna do

it's gonna loop videos for three seconds then play them in reverse for seven seconds then do a static sort of seizure inducing uh you know drum beat kind of like a drum and bass thing uh and then end up with a question mark that's's going to be the new hot thing. I don't know. Anything is possible. So many different things. But I want us to be more active in that transition. What is it we're all doing with all these different social networks

and devices and what is it we're all trying to do with all this information? We're trying to be loved. We're trying to be affirmed so much of it we're trying to be seen and heard and acknowledged like me love me heart me thumbs me up re whatever me and we are trying to replace in some cases a lot of what especially in american society has been lost human connection right we have these little existences like for years we wanted to like be independent and individuals and then we got it and it sucked yeah right oh what is this what is this feeling i'm having loneliness depression

meaningless you know unfulfilled yeah unfulfilled progress um lots of money, but no one around. So I think so many of us are just trying to be heard. Within that, trying to be loved, trying to be seen, trying to be acknowledged. And then there's another part of this, which is relevance. There's a fear that we're going to slip behind. We're going to lose something, that the world is moving away from us. And I don't want that to happen. I want to keep up. I want to catch up. And technology is not just technology anymore. It's everything. It's the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ and the way you talk to your family. It's like the pulse on the world. Yeah. And so it's not a Xerox PARC thing. It's not in some lab somewhere in quote unquote Silicon Valley.

There is no Silicon Valley. It's just everything. And so I think, you know, I've encountered people who, I did the show for the Science Channel many years ago, five years ago, called The Future Of. And it was just, that was the name, Popular Sciences Future Of. And I went around the world interviewing scientists, getting to play with their gadgets and talking about the meaning of whatever they were up to whether it's drones or tanks that drive themselves or which is basically a tank drone or remote sex capabilities or new ways of diagnosing disease and i would run into people

on the street who watch that show and watch discovery in general because they feel like they need to keep up sure it's part of their continuing education yeah yeah right as a relevant person citizen labor or whatever and i think there's some fun in it too it's not all super is part of their continuing education as a relevant person, citizen, laborer, whatever. And I think there's some fun in it too. It's not all super heavy. I think it's just like something to do while we wait in line at the grocery store. Right, right, interesting.

Or in traffic, which you shouldn't do. Now you took a 30-day hiatus from technology, right? There was like a cover of Fast Company. 25 days from social media. Social media. Not from all technology. You started your phone. I like toilets.

Yeah. I like fire, which is really good technology. Sure, sure, sure. But I mean, did you have a phone? I did keep my phone. You didn't have any social media accounts on there? Yeah, I let myself text. That's it.

Email? No email. No email. Wow. Which is so good. Amazing. So good. What came up for you during those 25 days?

What did you experience? What did you notice about yourself? What did you notice about everyone else? Lewis, I experienced people. They were these other objects out in the world. They're a lot like us. They're called human beings. Wow.

And I saw them everywhere because I was looking up. Wow. And not down into a glowing rectangle. It was, I think I breathed more. I think there's something about being engaged with a keyboard and a screen that shallows the breath because there's anticipation, right? There's thought of receiving or sending something.

So you're like, oh, is this, whether it's a tweet or a text or an email message. It's kind of like holding your breath constantly throughout the day. And I think I just took a lot more deep breaths when I didn't care. And it was like so many weeks of not caring for me. At least some people have gone a whole year doing things like this. I could not do that.

Right. I probably could. I wouldn't choose to do that. That would be too damaging to the rest of my life. I need to be connected to live. Speaking of keeping up with things. So that came up. I talked to people.

Like I would go to a bar. And because I couldn't escape the bar through my phone. keeping up with things. So that came up. I talked to people. Like I would go to a bar and because I couldn't escape the bar through my phone, which was my normal thing. You couldn't just look down when there was a moment of silence. You couldn't just, when you're waiting for something. I filled the space with whatever was around me.

With real connection. As opposed to what was through the screen. And I don't want to say that every interaction through a screen isn't real. I think we're beyond that too. I think there are romantic relationships and meaningful family connection and exposure to ideas that happen through a phone. But there's just something really beautiful about the in-room 3D IRL connection, the in-real-life connection. Yeah.

So that came up. And two of the biggest things that came up, I didn't need to be as on as I thought I did. What do you mean? I had created subconsciously internal pressure on myself to always be online. Always got to be posting something funny. I have this comedic background. I got to always be funny about things. I got to know all the news all the time. I got to retweet things that matter because it matters. And it turns out I'm okay if I don't do that constantly. Wow.

And the world is okay. Basically, I'm not that important. Yeah. And it's humbling to be like, oh, you know what? The internet went on without me. Yeah. People got their news without me. I wasn't this key connection.

It's not like I broke the internet by opting out for a few weeks and villages burned and children wailed and mothers lamented. You know, it was nothing. There were a few when I came back moments like, oh, we missed you. But it was a vast, vast minority. And then it was like gone. Yeah. It was like people move on.

Interesting. Yeah. What did you learn about your health during that time? Did you notice anything about your health? Did you get? I walked. I was in New York for this period, and I walked a lot.

And I saw more of the city, and I just felt physically more present in it. I cooked. A lot of this also happened over a vacation. So I had some luxury afforded that I wasn't doing this in the middle of tax season or some other urgent business time. It wasn't that it was December. No one cares in December. People kind of assume

that you're not going to be as responsive. So that was cool. But the breathing was good. And I just had more space. I think probably I had more time to fill, not with messages. Here's the other thing. I said there were two things and I forgot to mention the second one. How hard it was, technically, to pull all the switches required to unplug. To like delete the apps off your phone. Yeah, to turn off notifications,

which you still kind of have to do one at a time. There's no master switch that users can control, which they leave me the hell alone. You have to tell each of them, would you please leave me alone? Would you please leave me the hell alone you have to tell each of them would you please leave me alone would you please leave me alone would you please and anytime a human being is forced to do a repetitive action i'm like that's why we created technology right yeah so why am i pressing the same button 50 times in a row there should be an app for that it should be built into that so it also exposed to the level, the way just say no doesn't work.

It didn't work for drugs in the 80s and it doesn't work for social media and technology today because we're not empowered to simply say no. It's technically not simple to just say no. A lot of pressure. It takes a couple of hours. And that's like a real, it's tedious. It's so annoying.

And so you might as well, and every app you install, like it asks you all these questions. You're like, yeah, sure, whatever. Okay, okay, okay. And until you want to not hear from that app, it doesn't matter. But the moment you decide, I don't want you to know where I am. Yeah. I don't want you to interrupt my dinner.

Then without sort of turning your phone off completely, which is a pretty dramatic move if you still want to make a call or get a text message. So there's a lot of little things. I feel like there's a, we've, we've been treated as children in, in how a lot of these services, they don't trust us to make the grownup decision.

And that didn't, wasn't revealed as clearly to me until I tried to leave. And then they're like, Oh, you're not going anywhere. It's the mob. Basically. Interesting.

What do you think would happen if the whole world shut down from technology for 30 days? Oh, people would lose their ever-loving shit. I mean, literally 10 years ago, it wasn't more than 10 years ago, we didn't have cell phones. Yeah. Really. Yeah, most people. Most people didn't have cell phones, smartphones, let's say. say yeah maybe it's 15 years ago when i was in high school i got my first cell phone when i was a junior i was 17 i was the only i was the first kid in my class to

have a cell phone oh look at you i was like yeah yeah cutting edge house it was a little flip phone you know yeah but um you know what would it be like now since we've had it for the last 10 15 years and everyone's been used to it, what would be different now if everyone's like, all right, go back to the way it was without this. I don't, I don't know if we could.

I mean, I think we could function as humans, not in the immediate aftermath. I think in the, well, let me, let me think about TV and radio. Let me think about that.

So hurricane Sandy hit New York two years ago. Um, and a few months from when we're recording right now. It was a big one. It was huge. Shut down half the city. And it blacked out power. The north side. Cell phones. Southern Manhattan.

Southern Manhattan, yeah. It was dark. And it was creepy and it was eerie. It was like a city should never be this dark. Cities are, in my experience, and anyone who's alive today, experience is cities equal light and i didn't realize that until energy manhattan was deadly dark like except for flashlights cold too or no it was it was chilly it was around halloween so it wasn't freezing thankfully and they got most of the power back to most people before the real like icy weather came but people got by no the refrigerators didn't work

yeah i mean people i remember going to a restaurant that was just cooking all its burgers and selling them for cheaper giving them away because the meat was going to go bad wow because you couldn't assume and it was like oh this is like refrigerator olden days you got to salt this and hang it up it was it was some old prospector type stuff and we're not i think we're so distant you know from a lot of the things that make our world work now interesting like there's just a button that we push we have no idea what happens on the other side of that button yeah right and so you take that button away and it's like where how do i how do i can i how do i use the bathroom

how do i brush my teeth how do i eat eat? Where do I find food? Food. Cooking, acquiring the food. We just go to the grocery store. Maybe we go to the farmer's market if we're really close to nature. We're like hipsters. But we're still going. There's an intermediary which grew it and transported it for us. Who knows where a farm is?

Most people don't know where they'd find food. You just grab some leaves off the side of the road. That's not food. Yeah, right. So I think we would just be stunned and we would face a stupor of just like denial this isn't happening we'd like try to lower our use for a little bit will we blame the government or you know blame whoever's gonna blame north korea slash isis slash walmart Walmart, some combination of those three. And then I think if it ever at least sunk in, then we would start to reforge connection and figure it out.

Yeah, we'd figure it out. We're resilient, man. We've been through. We've survived our own attempted genocides time and time again, whether nuclear or machete-based. We've had plagues and meteors hit the planet. So I think we'd make it. I don't think losing power, for example,

is going to be the thing that does end the human race. Right, right. Because we've had so much other stuff. But I think we'll lose a lot and a lot of ugly will come out. We lost technology here. Yeah, I think there'll be a lot of, you know, there'll be roving bands.

It's getting real dark up in here, Louis. This is some post-apocalyptic, basically zombie, you know, World War Z type scenario that I'm painting here. Right, right. Let's just say 30 days for the whole world. Yeah. Not forever. I'm obsessed with shows like that.

I remember this TV show called Jericho many years ago about these like simultaneous nuclear explosions that took out most major American cities in a small town in Iowa called Jericho, coincidentally, was kind of cut off from the world and trying to make it. Trying to get information and ration and be self-sustaining in this little community. And tensions flared and relationships buckled. It was like a network drama.

Interesting. With Skeet Ulrich. And I really liked it because I want to know what people think happens buckled and you know it was like a network drama interesting and with skeet ulrich uh and i really liked it because i want to know what people think happens when we lose something huh yeah interesting i'm curious to talk about transitions because you're going through a lot of transitions you've been going through a lot of transitions since i've known you yeah your life has been a big transition i'm going to transition from birth to death. Yeah, I mean,

I guess we're always in transition, but we've had a lot of different things happen in the last four years since we first met, which was at our favorite restaurant in New York City, Delicatessen. Delicatessen. Prince and Sullivan.

Lafayette. Lafayette and Prince. Yeah. Sorry. Apparently it's my favorite because you don't even know where it is. I lived on that next block over. I'm snitching, y'all.

On Sullivan. And I love that corner right there. Yeah. The bookstore in the next is. I lived on that next block over. I'm snitching, y'all. On Sullivan. And I love that corner right there. Yeah. The bookstore in the next corner. Good views on that corner. Very good views. Anyways, but you've been going through transition constantly. Yeah.

I guess we all have, but I want to know about you're in transition right now, and you're in transition from where you're going to live. Yeah. New York and LA, transition from this TV show, transitioning into potentially doing other media things, maybe podcasts, maybe more books, maybe who knows, your own TV show. What's it like? Since you've been in this transition for four years, always from one thing to the next, and social media is constantly transitioning from the new hot things and people are moving from platform to platform, transitioning from the new hot things and people are moving from platform to platform,

how does one best handle transitions? It's also a new year coming up. How do you handle it so well? What comes up for you when you're going through transition? Do you feel like, oh, I don't know what to do with my life because nothing's happening right now? Because I know there's probably some people listening who are like, I don't know what to do next or I'm stuck stuck, or I just lost my job, or I'm quitting. Now what do I do? What are some insights you can give people on staying positive or finding a home base for yourself in transition or having a vision for what you want? Talk about that. So what you've asked me will fill three books. Perfect. By the way, apparently I have my next thing, which is Answering Lewis's Questions by Baratunde Thursday.

I mean, you've had a lot of transition though. No, I have. From The Onion to your own Cultivated Wit, from comedy to shows. Five years ago, I got divorced. Right. Massive transition. I moved to Brooklyn.

I wrote a book. People read it. The book's called How to Be Black. I don't know if that ever came up for those who don't know everything about my life. I don't assume you do. I left the onion. I started a business called Cultivated Wit. I moved again to nowhere and then back to Brooklyn. And then I came out to LA and did this TV show and then there's no TV show and the business Cultivated Wit has been growing along the way, but morphing constantly in a better direction with more people, but still morphing. So it's always been transitioning. It has. And I think

there's probably two or three types that I can get to. One is the transition of momentum, right? When I decided to write a book that created created a certain path. I got to research. I got to interview people. I got to fly around. I got to promote it. That led to me speaking and getting on planes. A lot of the transitions in life followed pretty naturally. So it didn't feel any pressure.

It felt like I'm in a river and I'm just going with the flow. Oh, now you're going through this village. Now there's a canyon. Now it's night and you can see beautiful stars. Now you're in the rapids and you fell off the boat now you get back in the boat but you're still moving when i came out here the summer of 2014 had so many question marks i didn't know if i was going to get the job offer for this tv show i didn't know if when i would have to be here. Initially, they were like, two weeks. Can you be here in two weeks?

I'm just like, that's insane. Like I have a whole life, several lives actually, that need some kind of resolution. I can't just leave my business in a lurch. I have an apartment. I got plants that need water. You know, like I'm pro-life for my plants, man. And so I was in a relationship at the time too.

And so that was transitioning in a relationship at the time too and so that was transitioning and in a really positive direction then and i got really um stressed out because the the combination of uncertainties even i couldn't handle and i got a lot of practice at handling uncertainty uncertainty and change that my mom's passed away i had a concussion i've had third degree burns i had friends commit suicide like There's been a lot of drama around my life, even as charmed as my life has generally been. Because a lot of that stuff's been right around me and sometimes right in my heart. But I've made it through. I felt like I have some level of resilience. But even in the summer, I was overwhelmed with change combined with uncertainty. calmed with change combined with uncertainty. Because I'm like, what am I supposed to do? And then I get out here and, you know, I'm no longer in the relationship I was in with the show or with this person. And I have found a level of calm and use the word love. And I've used it earlier too. And I think that's a part of it. I think about love in a couple of ways. I think about love that one wants,

love that one needs, love that one deserves. And the overlap of those three types of love is a sweet spot, right? Want, need, and deserve. Parallel to that, kind of a layer above that is the direction of love. Outward, from me to the world. I'm loving another person. I'm loving the world through my work. I'm putting love into my writing or whatever. It's like giving, giving, giving a lot of self-sacrifice and that a lot of staying up late at night, powered by some sense of love and affection and even duty. Then there's love outside in, right? It's fans clapping. It's retweets. It's your mother or your sister or your brother. And then there's the internal, right? Love for oneself by oneself, the most important. And so in the transition I'm in

now, I'm not frenzied. I am as calm as I've ever been. You seem calm. And I'm solid. I feel grounded. I'm 37 now. I've lived a few decades. So I know a lot more about myself than I did 30 years ago, 20 and 10 years ago. And so my focus is less on how do I answer these questions that fill my calendar? And it's more of how do I love myself through the uncertainty? Because it's always going to be there. And there are a lot of things that may happen that I'm not in charge of. Right. So how do I be the best version of me in the midst of all that? So how does one do that?

How does one love themselves? So here's what I've been doing. When transitions happening or when things aren't going the way they want them to go. I'm doing a couple of things. One, I've made a physical commitment to myself. I'm sweating every day. You're in good shape, man. I'm feeling really good.

You look younger. Even though you got a freaking manly beard on right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. You look the youngest I've seen you. I'm content. I am doing a little cardio workout every morning that takes five minutes and explodes my lungs.

Wow. I'm doing about an hour to hour and a half of yoga every day. And that's really pushing my body in places. It exposes weakness. How's your mobility now in flexibility? It's increasing, but I've just found where my tightness is. And more different classes I listen to through podcasts or physically go to, I'm like, oh, I'm really good at this thing. I am not so open in this part of my body. And I'm really honestly at this thing. I am not so open in this part of my body. And I'm really honestly trying to breathe.

LA is a great place to explore the outdoors in December. Yeah, great hiking. I'm treating myself to nice food. I'm cooking. I'm going to the farmer's market. I'm just trying to take care of myself and meditate a bit as well to try to bolster the spiritual, not just the physical. So I don't know what that looks like for everybody. But for me, it meant a very conscious commitment to myself in the midst of

all this. How important is this self-love for you or for anyone in terms of up to doing big things in the world and having big visions and transitioning from thing to thing and being uncertain about the future? How important is this self-love? Do you think for everyone else as well as yourself? Look, I think it's critical because the outside world is inconsistent and out of our hands. One moment, they love you and they could be your nuclear family. They could be your spouse. They could be tens of thousands of adoring readers or viewers or whatever the game or customers and that can turn you can mess up you can miss say something you can be a horrible guest on a thing and look stupid like there's a lot of or someone could decide to attack you out of

nowhere that based on nothing that you did based on a misinterpretation. So living at the pleasure of external forces is not ideal. It's a risky way. And it actually reminded me by asking me this, something my mother used to always say when she saw me going into the world of performing. She said, remember why you're doing it. Don't just do it to please the crowd. Because if you do it just to please the crowd, you'll lose it just to please the crowd you'll lose yourself because you'll define yourself by their pleasure and pleasure and tastes change so the idea of getting grounded and getting good with oneself there's a more consistent power in that sure and i think it comes across you know too, whether in an individual intimate sort of way or in a professional sales and follower count sort of way.

And I'm not promising. Look, this is not the secret. This is not me saying, if you just breathe deeply 10 times a day and eat kale and do downward dog for 17 seconds, you'll triple your Instagram likes. Like that's not, I don't know, maybe you will not, maybe your sales will go down. But I think the larger point is that even if your sales go down, your sense of self doesn't go down with it. And that's super much, much more important. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you, do you do what you do? Why are you up to what you're doing then? Why do you do what you do?

Why are you up to what you're doing then? I care a lot about the world. And I have found some ways of communicating, largely through humor, heavily through language, that help people understand what's going on. Sometimes it's a column. Sometimes it's a stand-up bit. Sometimes it's a tweet. Sometimes it's some kind of imagery but i think i am here to translate i am here to help people understand get engaged and connected with with some unique talents that i've developed slash

been granted so i do it because i know how because i feel called to and because i think i have a unique perspective to bring to the field of people also doing that thing. When did you know that you could translate this type of message for people? Was it when you're in middle school or high school? Was it when you're at Harvard? Was it at The Onion? When did you realize like,

oh, I've got this talent, this skill, something that I'm able to connect with people in a way so that they understand it differently. There have been different moments over time. I wasn't into comedy much when I was a kid. I was mostly just like righteous and like politicized. That got channeled more through humor because it's like, oh, this probably works a little better than stridency and condescension. Yeah, people respond better to a joke than like you're

wrong yeah um but i do recall doing a show in boston where i started doing stand-up i lived in boston for 12 years and i did a new year's eve show first nights which is like most cities put on some kind of non-alcoholic celebration they call it first nights i did a show a guy named tony v put me on he's an awesome guy he's been in a lot of films and he's very very funny and more importantly in this moment kind and generous so he let me open for him in front of 2 000 people twice like two shows back to back in the round so we're in a circular stage in the middle of surrounded by 2 000 people so there's no escape. That's cool. There's no backstage to run off. Put your wall. No,

you can't lean on anything except yourself and sort of the crowds response and energy. And I did some joke about Israel, Palestine issue that was very lefty kind of joke and, and played well in Boston. And an Israeli guy came up to me afterwards. And he was like, you know, where I'm from, people don't make jokes like that.

And I'm really glad you did. And it's important that you keep saying what you're saying. And I was like, that's great. That's an endorsement from someone who wasn't even the target. I remember a similar story, but I think these two get at the why of the continuing work that I'm trying to do here. I went to the Republican National Convention in 2012. I decided to count black people when I was there.

I used the hashtag Negro spotting. It was a playful game. And I updated the count intermittently throughout the days. I'm like, Negro spotting 67, just spotted this dude. I would take pictures with black people you're number 102 and um three or four five maybe five in my mind it was 50 but i think in reality it was like five black dudes came up to me in the tampa convention center and like yo are you that brother counting black people at the convention and i was like oh shit here we go it's about to be a fight with

the black republicans and they they're like i was like yeah and like that was so funny dude broke the tension and one of them he and i started talking because i really wanted to know what it was like to be a black republican i it's a foreign to me you're an alien i don't understand how your brain works yeah yeah in the age of like obama a Kenyan Muslim who hates America and voter ID laws, how can you be black and align yourself with that party? So I started having a conversation with this dude. And it was so good, I turned on my recorder. I'm like, we're putting this on the podcast. And I have a podcast on SoundCloud, sort of loose and unofficial, and it's still promoted up there.

So he ran black outreach for George W. Bush and for the McCain campaign. Wow. And we talked for 20 minutes. And it was respectful, and it was funny, and it was real, and we disagreed strongly. And it was great. And I was like, oh, yeah. Now, if I had just showed up as an activist you know protesting the rnc how come you don't have any black people here or it kept in my corner right kept the comfortable

people and ideas that i'm very familiar with i would have never met this guy yeah i only met him because of a joke a joke that he played along with and then we engaged in something a little deeper that's those moments like that there's a series of them but those two stand out and one was in like my second or third year of stand-up and one was just quite recently and they're the same story you know interesting yeah interesting well i want to get you back on at some point but i want to wrap things up right in a moment i'm gonna ask you a couple last questions. One is what are you most grateful for this whole year? That's really easy and really hard, but it's very obvious. I'm grateful for love this year. I fell in love this year

and it didn't last, but I'm grateful that I could feel that. I think I, when I was in a nine year relationship in my marriage that resulted in a marriage and then it ended, that's a big blow. And the circumstances don't matter. It's just a big blow.

And I met you right after you divorced. It was like during it or right at the end of it or something. It's just the tail end of it. I mean, the swine flu talk that I gave was like within three weeks of that. I almost didn't give the talk. Wow. Because I was so wrecked that I didn't. And that was my first public appearance since the divorce. Wow. Might've even been 10 days. I'd have to check Google calendar. They know everything. They know where my feelings were, where my heart was, where my, my Metro pass was.

So yeah, that was, that was really hard to mount the stage because I didn't feel confident. And confidence is a prerequisite for me to present on a stage. I'm like, I know all this material, this is me. And I felt wrecked because I had no confidence in myself because my marriage had just fallen apart. So fast forward five years and I was able to love again. I am so grateful for that. Oh, that's cool. I see that. Yeah.

It's the most beautiful. I think it's contributed to my sense of like centeredness and self-love. It's like, oh yeah, I do. I am deserving of love. I need love. I want love and I can provide it. Not just through another person. Very cool.

My gratitude, love. I like that. Before I ask you the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Baratunde, for one, being an awesome friend. I want to acknowledge you for that. I think we've had some great conversations over the last four years.

Yeah, same here. We've been all over the world and always find a way to reconnect. So I want to acknowledge you for being a great friend. I want to acknowledge you for sticking through everything friend. I want to acknowledge you for sticking through everything, through all these tough transitions you've had. I also want to acknowledge you for your creativity. I think you're one of the most creative individuals I've ever met.

And the courage you have to put your neck on the line, to talk about what you stand for and what matters to you and what you want other people to hear about what matters as well. Yeah. So I want to acknowledge you for that creativity, for the courage. And I want to acknowledge you for allowing yourself to open up to love and receive love again.

I think it's really powerful. And I think it's powerful that others get to see that they get to open up to it as well. Yeah. So thank you for being someone who can show others that. Yeah. Wow. I am near tears who can show others that. Yeah. Wow. I am near tears just so the audience can hear, but they're not going to flow, but they're on the edge.

Thank you, Louis. Of course, brother. Yeah. Final question. It's what I ask everyone. What do I have for breakfast? I saw that on Instagram. What's your definition of greatness?

Oh, I should have seen this one coming. My definition of greatness involves, it's like a recipe. It involves a level of truth combined with power and a little bit of love. I think whether it's athletic greatness, political greatness, creative greatness. I think greatness is the act of channeling something very effectively. And it could be John Nash with his equations. He's channeling a universal truth through math

in a way that hadn't quite been done before. And it's great. So there's this truth meets power and love. Better tune in Thursday. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Appreciate you. Thank you,

Lewis. Oh, man. And there you guys have it. Hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure to check out lewishouse.com slash one, two, zero for 120.

That's lewishouse.com slash 120 for all the different show notes, the links to go check out and say hi to Baratunde. Make sure to follow him online, everywhere that he's online. And also for some of the videos of his talks and his website,

all that good stuff about Baratunde, his book is all available at lewishouse.com slash 120. Now, do me a favor. If you enjoyed this interview, if you found value from it, go ahead and send this to a friend in an email. Again, lewishouse.com slash 120.

Just send an email to a friend of yours. Say, hey, I was listening to this podcast, had this really cool guy on. Check it out. It's lewishouse.com slash 120. That would really help me get the message out about the School of Greatness. We just broke ground on 500,000 downloads

in the month of December. So we're looking to take this to a million downloads by middle of 2015. And the only way it's gonna happen is with your help. So if each person sends one email intro to one or two friends about an episode they like, it's gonna continue to help get the message out there and grow the School of Greatness podcast.

Got some big things coming up this month and the next couple months. We've got the School of Greatness Academy relaunching. We've had hundreds of entrepreneurs go through the last six-month program. We're reopening it up from popular demand. Got a lot of people who are on the wait list. So if you're interested in taking your business to a whole new level this year, if you're interested in also figuring out how to have the lifestyle that you want and to build a business around your lifestyle,

not just be a prisoner to working constantly to make money, but to have your perfect day every single day and make the money you want to make around doing what you love. If that speaks to you, if you're up for that game this year, then go to schoolofgreatness.com. There will be a little place to sign up for the waiting list.

So make sure to go to schoolofgreatness.com, sign up for the waiting list. We're going to be sending you an email very shortly about when it's being released. You'll have to apply to get in. So there'll be some information you'll have to fill out to get accepted. So make sure to put an email that you want to receive a message from me from that you can get it and get ready to apply because we don't accept everyone. We want to make sure it's very curated and quality people that are committed to taking action and making it a great year.

So schoolofgreatness.com, lewishouse.com, slash 120. Thank you guys for all that you do. Thank you for Baratunde for coming on. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.