The Tim Ferriss Show - #133: Edward Norton on Mastery, Must-Read Books, and The Future of CrowdFunding

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Starting point is 00:03:05 Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to tease out the routines, habits, influences, books, etc, that you can use or apply to your own life. And in this episode, I sit down with Edward Norton at Edward Norton on the Twitters. Please say hello to him. Edward is an actor, filmmaker, and activist. Of course, he's been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in Primal Fear, American History X, and Birdman. He has starred in scores of other films, including the iconic Fight Club, The Things You Own, End Up Owning You, The Illusionist, and Moonrise Kingdom, among many, many others. Unbeknownst, however, to many people, Edward is also a serial startup founder.

Starting point is 00:03:49 He is a UN ambassador for biodiversity, a massively successful investor, for instance, very early in Uber and perhaps a half a dozen other unicorns, a pilot and deeply involved with wilderness conservation. And as luck would have it at this exact moment, I am involved with one of his startups, CrowdRise. I have a campaign on there with Johns Hopkins supporting some fascinating psychedelic research. Check it out. It is to address treatment-resistant depression. It's fascinating.

Starting point is 00:04:16 So go to CrowdRise.com forward slash Tim Ferriss to check it all out. And we have a very wide ranging conversation. We cover a lot, including his beginnings, what early mentors taught him, some cool Marlon Brando stories, his physical prep for American History X, surfing, favorite books, documentaries, underrated films and filmmakers. That reindeer bell sound is Molly doing a little jig in the background. And there are also some cats and heat outside my apartment for some reason. So excuse the extracurricular sound. Catastrophe of Success would be one of the essays, for instance, his advice to his 20 and 30 year old self, and much more. One bonus, a book that he recalled one of his favorites after we stopped recording, which I wanted to include is Buddhism Without Beliefs. And without further ado, please enjoy my conversation

Starting point is 00:05:05 with the incredible Edward Norton. Edward, welcome to the show. Thanks. I am sitting here looking out at the surfers. And I know we got to start today because you had a session earlier this morning. And it seems like surfing is a big part of your life. I know this is maybe an odd place to start, but how long has that been the case? It's definitely, uh, my most positive addiction. Um, I think I started, I actually, my father lived in Indonesia from like 2005 for about seven years. And, um, I was making a film in China called the painted veil and toward the very end of the film, uh, I got chucked off a horse doing a shot and I broke my back in three places. Um, um, fortunately didn't hurt my spine at all. Just cracked three vertebrae and was really lucky. Um, but my back was like bend you know I was really

Starting point is 00:06:25 really racked and and locked up and when the film ended my dad had just moved to Indonesia so I went down there for a couple months to hang out with him and just try to recover a little bit and

Starting point is 00:06:43 I was like swimming and doing yoga and getting massages and things like that. And there was a surf school on one of the beaches there and I'd always wanted to do that and started realizing that it forced you into a reversed kind of bowed position that was exactly what I was having trouble doing. And so initially I started doing it just taking a big padded board and paddling,

Starting point is 00:07:12 just to try to increase my endurance at having my back arched. And from there, I got completely hooked on it. It seems to undo a lot of the sort of posturally induced problems of people who use computers too often right i mean you have this sort of protracted rounded back and then when you're forced into that thoracic extension even for you know a half a minute a pat or half an hour of paddling or a few hours of paddling it just seems to undo and balance all that out it's um it's great it's great physically it's it's actually great aerobically it's um it uses muscles in really weird ways um and you have to be nimble and retain your ability to like hop up you know and you know, you read, you're looking at moving water all the time. And,

Starting point is 00:08:08 um, I always say like trying to figure out the micro variations in wave forms and the way they're moving at you and where you should position yourself on them is better than any video game. You know, it's, it's, there's no video game that's more complex than trying to read the nuances of moving water and put yourself in the right place. And it's just, I actually, totally not facetious. It's an addiction. serious addicts, heroin addicts, you know, really struggle with things who have replaced that with surfing because it, it, it hits parts of the brain, I think, that are completely, you know, it's like dopamine and serotonin all at once. And you, you come out of it so blissed out and kind of, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:05 we were talking about this earlier, like it's like a reboot on your stress, on your crowded mind, on all of it. I just think I should meditate more than I do, except I do surf and I feel like that's, I combine, I get the meditative value out of surfing. I think that the mindfulness aspect of it is, and I'm not a good surfer, although I enjoy surfing poorly, but the fact that the train is always changing, like you said, have a present state awareness of where you are relative to your surroundings, where you are relative to other people. It's just a, it's, it's a, it's a necessity that you're paying attention to what's happening in the here and now.

Starting point is 00:09:56 Yeah, it's great. It's a, it's, I, it also, you know, um, I, it makes me play hooky more than I do otherwise. I'll suddenly find myself, you know, more able to be confident that I can push other things to the side. I can't explain it. It recalibrates my sense of urgency around my to-do list, you know? Yeah. It sort of, uh, alleviates the manufactured emergencies. Exactly. Yeah. What, what other, uh, morning rituals do you have that you find helpful or have you had? I wish I had better ones is the honest answer. uh, ritual morning routines that are positive, be it like exercise first thing when I'm not surfing or meditation or, um, anything that sort of, you know, as a matter of practice starts the

Starting point is 00:11:20 day in a, in a, in a mindful way or however you want to put it. I too often just let the day begin by opening up the cascade of emails or things I think I'm supposed to do. It's not the right way to jumpstart the mind. Um, and I, I, it's probably, probably, um, that's a category I should do better on. So I'm obsessed with routines, of course, different types of habits. Maybe we could, um, I've wanted to ask you this. I'm actually astonished. I haven't asked you this before in our previous conversations, but when you were when you were getting ready for the role in American History X, what type of training did you do for that? What did your training regimen look like?

Starting point is 00:12:15 It was pretty specific to building mass. Like I, I'm not, um, doing that film created the strangest distortion of perception on me. And I know that's a weird thing to say, but like, um, it was, it's unbelievable the degree to which that film and the magic of camera and art and black and white photography and all these things

Starting point is 00:12:45 made a lot of people think that I was a larger and tougher person than I am. Like, like people who know me, I think almost couldn't believe what was going on after that film because like, you know, I'm like six feet tall and I weigh 160 if I'm, you know, not in great shape. Like I have thin wrists. I'm not, I'm not a big, um, I'm not, I'm not naturally big. So, um, it was, so it was a, it was a challenge for me to, to, to put, you know, that kind of weight on. And, um, so I just did, you know, many things you'd be more familiar with than almost anybody. I, I, you know, I, I, I calorie loaded, I, I, a lot of lifting, um, for a long time, for, for the, for the first portion of it really just didn't, you know, concern with like, um, like leanness at all. Just, just tried to get muscle mass on. Um, I wish I'd had your book back then, but I didn't, uh, you know, I didn't probably would have helped me out, but, but I, you know, I did my own version of it.

Starting point is 00:14:03 Um, um, increased, increased diet, you know, I did my own version of it. Increased diet, increased protein, all that stuff. And I did it sort of the old-fashioned blunt force way, mostly just a lot of, probably much more than had I read your book, sort of, you know, your minimum effort kind of maxim. I was probably going way beyond the bell curve in terms of effort required to get the result but that's what i did and then as we approached the film um i moved into kind of like you know just fat burning mode and i i was i was running i was doing everything i could to lean out because the camera is a magical thing.

Starting point is 00:14:48 It doesn't actually see absolute scale. It really only sees things relative. So you don't know how tall Al Pacino really is unless he's standing next to Schwarzenegger or whatever. And you don't actually know how big a person is. And lots of people, you know, I had, I had gym rats come up to me and go like, would you, would you, you know, do you weigh two bucks on that? Do you weigh a buck 90? Like, whatever. And I was like, no, I wasn't that big. You know what I mean? But we, but if you get form and definition, the camera sees that. And if you put people around you which we did very conscientiously who are smaller so like the the actor guy uh tori who played the um the guy in

Starting point is 00:15:34 jail the black guy in jail who he becomes friends with we we cast he was terrific but he was also really really small and it made me look really, really big. And those things, those things, um, inflate the perception of how big you've gotten. But, um, it was hard. It was hard, but I really enjoyed it. Was the eating more challenging or the training more challenging? The, the eating was more challenging. I, I, I had trained, I was, you know, um, I rode, I rode crew in college and that was lightweight crew or no, I rode crew in college. That was lightweight crew? No, I rode heavyweight crew.

Starting point is 00:16:08 What is heavyweight? What's the… There's nothing. Lightweight has a cutoff, but heavyweight doesn't. And I shouldn't say, like, I was not like a varsity. I rode my freshman year and I rode my sophomore year um but frankly i probably should have rode lightweight because i i i was you know at my absolute maxed out i was i probably weighed 175 when i was really really big and strong and 19 years old and everything and you know and the guys who were true like

Starting point is 00:16:42 varsity a-class rowers were like 2 15 you know guys and there's a whole other thing um but i loved it i loved it and um and and so training i was a runner i did one kind of ultra marathon kind of thing i i wasn't uh training hard wasn't um a new thing for me but but building bulk was and did you was that self-directed or did you hire someone to help you with them um i did a lot on my own but no i did i had a guy um whose name is eluding me right now i never i never worked with him again or had contact with him again after but he tony uh he was terrific yeah, he designed the protocol for you. Yeah, designed it for me.

Starting point is 00:17:28 When were you introduced to acting, or how did that come to be? And I did do a fair amount of reading, and for whatever reason, wasn't able to pin it down exactly. I mean, the summer camp came up, but I don't know where things began. I mean, mostly, you know, my mother was an English teacher. She was a high school English teacher and was a real theater aficionado. Both my parents were theater aficionados and film lovers and stuff like that. But they exposed me very early on to theater and plays. And I, I, I had a strong pull toward that from the time I was five years old, even I started, I, I, a babysitter of mine went and I signed up, um, at the theater,

Starting point is 00:18:19 at the theater arts program outside of school that she was involved in. And that's how, that's how I got involved in it. And I went through ebbs and flows. I loved it. It wasn't like I knew I wanted to be an actor. I just liked doing it. And I loved writing stories. I wrote, I made up my own comic books, and I made little VHS camcorder films where you use the pause button as you're cut. You know what I mean? And, um, uh, just all that stuff I love, not exclusively, not in a way where I knew it was my life, uh, as an adult. Um, and then I, and then I got really self-conscious about it in high school. Like I didn't, I went to a public high school. It didn't seem cool to me at all.

Starting point is 00:19:00 I was doing my athletics and things, but the athletics were, at that time, what? I did a lot. I played tennis. I played baseball. I played ice hockey. Where was that? I ran track in Columbia, Maryland. It's like half an hour south of Baltimore.

Starting point is 00:19:19 And who were your first, then, mentors in the world of theater acting or performing? The woman who created this local theater arts school in our community in Columbia, Maryland. Her name was Toby Ornstein. And it's crazy to say, but she really was, I still think she's one of the great minds I ever encountered on theater, the craft of theater, the craft of acting. She was not a regional theater hobbyist. She was my Stella Adler, really, when I was young and infused us when we were really young with, I don't know, a sense of seriousness about it and, uh, of, you know, crap, like when you're young and, you know, told us to read and told us to like be erudite on plays.

Starting point is 00:20:14 And, and it was, it was really interesting. And then, um, uh, I, I, I, like I said, I got kind of in my teens, I got kind of self conscious about it. And then, um, I saw, I saw Ian McKellen do a one man show in Washington DC when I was about 17. And it was, it was so,

Starting point is 00:20:34 it had such a huge impact on me that I, I thought, I thought, wow, this is something you could actually do as a, as a, as an avocation. You know what I mean? This is something that could actually do as an avocation. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:20:45 This is something that you can do as an adult, and it's like big and important and meaningful. That's how I felt about it. And then I still didn't really have a notion that I was going to commit myself to that until a couple years after college even. A couple years after college. What was your major in college? I studied history. I got a degree in history with a focus on Asian studies and languages and stuff.

Starting point is 00:21:09 And if we go back to, and I'm blanking, I apologize. What was her name again? The first woman? Toby Ornstein. Toby. Yeah. Could you tell a story or give an example of what type of things she would emphasize when she was working with you guys or any particular memories of her? She was a great director.

Starting point is 00:21:33 Mostly, I think a lot of people would say that someone in their early life, if you're lucky, you have someone when you're young who doesn't talk down to you, who speaks to you as a serious person and exhorts you to take something seriously, to take work seriously. Definitely. does that in the right way, you feel elevated. Like as a young person, you feel elevated. You feel like someone is, someone's saying to you, Hey, you want to be taken seriously? Then take things seriously, do the work, you know, um, don't coast, you know, and, and, and I'd say that's what she gave. Later when I was in New York, um, I had a teacher named Terry Schreiber who ran a terrific theater studio in New York, acting studio in New York.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And, um, he, I would say I've often said about him that the thing I admired most about him was that he was like a pluralist. And by that, I mean, he,

Starting point is 00:22:40 he was, he basically kind of, he basically, you know, rejected this notion that, that has infused, I think, a lot of the training of actors that, that a methodology is a, is, you know, that like one methodology holds the key to anything. He was like, basically like all of these things are, uh, like what a, a forehand, a backhand, a volley,

Starting point is 00:23:09 a serve are to a tennis player. So that is, you know, the, the Lee Strasburg method, the Stella Adler imagination focus, the, the Sandy Meisner,

Starting point is 00:23:19 you know, exercises. He, he basically just said, if you don't get yourself conversant with a lot of shots, you're just not going to be great. Like you're, you, he basically just said, if you don't get yourself conversant with a lot of shots, you're just not going to be great. Like you're, you're not going to, you're not going to be able to address material with diverse skill sets, um, as called for, you know what I mean? And, and I thought that was, that really resonated with me because I was really

Starting point is 00:23:41 turned off by, off by dogma. Right. Sounds like the Bruce Lee of acting and performance. And that's sort of the, yeah, accept what is useful, reject what is useless, and have what is uniquely your own type of approach. Exactly. Exactly. I never thought of it that way, but that's, yeah, I've always been, uh, insecure on stage. Uh, and I still pace around like a nervous wreck for every time I get up to give a keynote or whatnot. I'm actually taking, I wasn't planning

Starting point is 00:24:16 on asking you this, but just came to mind. I'm actually taking my first acting class as an adult at the end of this month. And it's a three day, I think it's going to be focused on improv. I don't know exactly what the curriculum is, but what advice would you give? And it's not that I plan on acting per se. I just thought it would be a helpful exercise to get over my fear of doing this type of thing. What advice might you give me? I don't know. It's, it's, um, I always, uh, I always think that one of the most interesting things about

Starting point is 00:24:51 the challenge of representing behavior, which is basically what acting is, or representing emotion, representing whatever you want to call it, is that everybody does this all the time. Very few people are perpetually speaking in their authentic voice, like the Dalai Lama might. But I bet he's got his moments where he's sort of playing the role of a monk. You know what I mean? Sure, of course. As well.

Starting point is 00:25:25 And we put on faces. We put on postures. We adapt who we are depending on the circumstances that we're in all the time. And people do it seamlessly all the time and unselfconsciously. And yet, the minute that you tell someone that other people are going to watch them do anything,

Starting point is 00:25:47 definitely I think when you put a camera on someone, the effect of self-consciousness is so profound on people's inability to do that which is completely natural to them at most times in their lives. And I almost think like as soon as you put someone on stage or you put a camera on someone it's like if there's a circle and on one side of the circle is naturalistic you know behavior as soon as you throw someone stage it hurls them to the other side of the circle and they immediately become wooden unnatural they make they make choice they become unable to um and a lot of that has to do just with tension and and um

Starting point is 00:26:39 a sense of urgency nerves you know i i think like the old fight fight or flight thing like i think this is a weird thing to reference but you know there's these there's these great like there's this european show that was like a candid camera type show it did a lot of things like where they you know they were scaring people or setting up a situation of you know a ticking suitcase in front of a train station. And what's amazing is how paralysis is actually the most common response. People imagine in their minds what their behavior is going to be when presented with certain stimulus or circumstances. But the truth is that people go into a stone cold freeze

Starting point is 00:27:27 in many many situations you know and there's a lot of studies on this and like the you know the behavior of crowds and all that kind of stuff like right the woman getting stabbed in the street you have 40 people who all expect someone else to do right right and also just because i think it's something deeply biological like there's a lot of safety in freezing, you know what I mean? But I think that it's very hard for people to find a comfort, a relaxed comfort, let alone a sense of pleasure within the idea that they're, they're performing in front of other people. Right. Um, and, and, and, and so they start to, um, they stop listening, you know, they stop, um, they, they start doing what I would call up the middle choices. Like they start doing what I would call up-the-middle choices. Like, they start painting in the color blue

Starting point is 00:28:28 instead of doing the little things that, I can't explain it, that a moment would actually call for. One of the best stories I ever heard about young people in an acting class and, you know, the difference between sort of what happens to people typically and what a real authentic kind of genius is is that harry bella harry bella fonte talked about being in an acting class with marlon brando when they were both like literally like 19 or 20 years old in Greenwich Village. And I think he said that there was a,

Starting point is 00:29:09 what they said was, okay, one person is in a, one person's in his apartment and the other one enters. You're the person who's on your couch in your apartment. The other one enters, scene ensues, you know, just like run, just run with with it and all these people were doing all these kind of um you know sort of forced conversations or trying to create a scenario or something and supposedly marlin was sat on the couch and started reading a magazine and whoever it was with his him walked in his door and he looked up and jumped up and grabbed the guy by the shirt front

Starting point is 00:29:46 and threw him out the door and slammed the door and everybody was like, what are you doing? He was like, I don't know who that fucking guy is. Like, he just walked into my apartment. Like, he scared the shit out of me. You know what I mean? And it's like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, there probably wouldn't be a scene.

Starting point is 00:29:57 There probably wouldn't be a conversation. There'd be a like, who are you? Super awkward confrontation. Exactly, like, get out. And I, the most obvious true thing that you would do, which is wonder, you know, and. What would the up the middle choice have been in that scenario? Or what is that, like, what is another example of that? Because I'd love to get a better understanding.

Starting point is 00:30:20 I don't know. There's a great, you know, um i think that uh you know when put it this way uh there's an argument and there's something about the writing of a scene that indicates the lines would have indicate stress or it indicates anger. But the thing is that people, so then the up the middle choice is to raise your voice and be angry. But what we all, I think, know on some deep level when we watch people performing who really grab us is that they have an intuition for the choices that reflect the way that those things actually manifest themselves sometimes. Like people who are angry, you know, sometimes laugh.

Starting point is 00:31:16 They laugh or they go into silence or they go into slow burn. Like anger doesn't mean volume. But if there's an exclamation point on the end of the sentence in the script, they'll to silence or they're going to slow burn like like anger doesn't mean volume but but but if there's an exclamation point on the end of the sentence in the script they'll go with that exclamation point as opposed to um there's a great there's a great um there's a there's this a film i love called the french lieutenant's woman um the french the french lieutenant's French Lieutenant's Woman, yeah. It's Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. And I think it's either Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard wrote the script. But there's a scene toward the end when Jeremy Irons' character... Excuse me.

Starting point is 00:32:02 It's okay. Jeremy Irons' character has... I'll say it again. Sorry. There's a scene toward the end where Jeremy Irons' me it's okay Jeremy Irons character has I'll say it again there's a scene toward the end where Jeremy Irons character has been looking and looking for Meryl Streep and he

Starting point is 00:32:11 he finds her after literally years of searching and he's become angry and and they they go to

Starting point is 00:32:21 have a conversation and he's so angry and overwrought and he goes so angry and overwrought, and he goes to leave, and she moves to stop him, and he takes her in anger and seizes her by the shoulder and sort of pushes her out of the way. And it's one of those things. The camera's set three steps down in a low, recessed room,

Starting point is 00:32:42 and they're up these three steps, and clearly it was was a a planned thing where he threw her and she did a you know a staged fall down sort of right into the camera and and very dramatic and then he's he's struck by his violence and he goes to pick her up and and the scene continues on and um and if you watch I remember watching it and suddenly realizing that if you watch it closely he throws her down and she

Starting point is 00:33:12 strikes her head on the floor you can see that she hits her head on the floor and you can see if you look carefully that her reaction she really hits her head and you can even see it more on Jeremy Irons that he realizes she struck her head and you can even see it more on jeremy irons that that he realizes she struck her head and his reaction is is so alarmed he he is broken totally out of the scene for a

Starting point is 00:33:34 moment runs to her picks her up and if you watch it really closely you can see that he is checking in with her the actress for a second and is about to open his mouth, I think, and just stop and say, are you okay? And she puts her hand up over his mouth, like as though to say, we're going on, and he realizes that she's still in it and covers his own mouth with his hand to stop from smiling. And what she does in this moment where you would think, you know, the whole thing is

Starting point is 00:34:14 very melodramatic and she does this laugh in that thing. And I used to watch it because it's the strangest, it's just the strangest, most wonderful choice. But it's so true because she's just like it's completely absurd she's just laughing at the absurdity of it all and laughing at these things and then the scene sort of settles and they go into this gentle conversation and everything but it's it's amazing it's why she's like one of the great great greats of all time because she like i i think it's a completely counterintuitive choice. And it's a great example of like two great actors.

Starting point is 00:34:50 And one of them is even about to break out of it. Because it's like, oh, something's happened that wasn't supposed to happen. So we should stop. And she's like, no, that's real. You know, something's happened that makes it really, really interesting now. So let's not stop. And it's beautiful. That level of judgment under duress,

Starting point is 00:35:11 it makes, I was just thinking of a battlefield medic or something like that. I mean, having the presence of mind to put the hand over the mouth. I'll have to watch that. I haven't seen that. Yeah, it's good. I asked them both about it

Starting point is 00:35:20 and got confirmation that that's what happened. So I know I'm not like imagining it. If you were say directing a film and you had the opposite experience, you had a, a novice actor who was intimidated to say by the people around them and they were paralyzed for whatever reason or being too robotic. What, what would you do or say to kind of knock them out of that?

Starting point is 00:35:45 It's tough. It really, if it's a bad, it could be a bad question. knock them out of that? It's tough. And if it's a bad, it could be a bad question too. I'm out of my depth. It depends on the situation. I mean, I think it's, the thing that makes that work interesting so much of the time is that it's just, it's a chemistry. There's a chemistry between the people involved that's unique every time.

Starting point is 00:36:10 The dynamics are unpredictable and fluid and very unique to the people involved. And you really have to find your way every time. I think one of the things I like about it is that if I walk into those situations feeling confident, I think that I've probably been working too much. You know what I mean? I almost think it's almost better to feel at sea. If it's good, if it's complex, it's a lot of uncertain discovery in the beginning. that you're at a loss or you're finding your way and means that you're involved in something worthwhile, I think. If you're cruising and it's a thing,

Starting point is 00:37:13 then it's probably not that interesting. You've spent, obviously, a lot of time honing your own craft. You've spent a lot of time with masters in many different fields. I'm curious if you have any impressions or recollections of Hicks and Gracie when you were filming The Incredible Hulk. Were you able to spend any time with them? Yeah, a little bit. Not as much as I would have liked to. It's funny I started when I was in when I was in college

Starting point is 00:37:47 I started studying Aikido and you know that was the era that was exactly when Hoyce Gracie won the first yeah it must have been like 92 or something yeah exactly around

Starting point is 00:38:07 and maybe i started saying but i you know and and i like i said i'm not i'm not a huge person uh i'm tall and everything but one of the things that drew me to aikido was that it it had a lot of it it was one of the first things I experienced where understanding physical leverage really persuaded me that a smaller person could, I don't want to say defend themselves, but that this technique actually worked on a smaller person who was with a larger person. I always felt like with certain things I had studied that ultimately, like, if a person's bigger and stronger and faster, they're just gonna, they're gonna, you know, steamroll you. And Aikido was one of the first things I ever experienced where much smaller people were commandingly over,

Starting point is 00:39:01 you know, overmastering much bigger people. And when Hoyce Gracie won that UFC, I mean, it was, it was, it's hard to overstate the impact of that. Like, I mean, if you're interested in these types of things, he, that rewrote, that rewrote people's sense of what the priorities in, you know, in martial arts should be that you had after that, like you had to be a grappler, you had to be a jujitsu artist, you couldn't, you know, you, you couldn't just be like a striker and, and they and they were, you know, so they were legend. And I was, I was interested in Japanese studies and Aikido and things like that. So I was the whole

Starting point is 00:39:43 thing of the gracies and their form of jiu-jitsu was like was like i was very um interested in all that so me so i i wrote i wrote into the script that he's doing breath training with someone in brazil and i wrote in parentheses um you know like like Hicks and Gracie, like one of the Gracies, but you'll never get, we'll never get them. It was in parentheses in the script. And then we found out he was down there and everything.

Starting point is 00:40:15 You know, it was amazing. Those guys are magicians. You know, they're really, really, like Ricky Jay is to magic, um, magicians, you know, they're, they're, they're really, really, uh, like Ricky Jay is to magic or, you know, Kelly Slater is to surfing. It's like when you're, when you are, when you're with someone who's got that level of, you know, alpha over everybody else, it's really, really, really neat. Yeah. For those people listening, don't know who Hickson Gracie is, it doesn't, of course, cover it completely, but let's check out the documentary Choke. I don't know if you've ever

Starting point is 00:40:51 seen that. It's a great introduction to not only Hickson, but also gives a decent dose of Japanese culture. You spent time in Osaka, is that right? or how long were you there no i was there for a long summer um between my junior and senior year and in college i had a job over there and uh what attracted you to asian culture or japanese culture um i was i was interested in, I mean, I wish I could say it was something more evolved than the Richard Chamberlain miniseries of Shogun, but I think it was that. Some good miniseries. Yeah, I think I saw, when I was a kid, I think that Shogun was on. Then I went and read Clavel's book, and then I devoured a lot of his Asia sort of historical novels and thought they were really neat. And then it, you know, it kind of grew from there.

Starting point is 00:41:55 And then I became interested in Buddhism, you know, history of Buddhism and stuff like that. And Japanese aesthetics really appealed to me. in Buddhism, you know, history of Buddhism and stuff like that. And, um, Japanese aesthetics really appealed to me. And, um, the idea of Zen really captivated me when I was like in my late teens and stuff like that. And I, I,

Starting point is 00:42:17 um, that, that was all just what pulled me into it. And then, then, uh, uh, I love spending time over there and stuff. And then, you know, and then one of my advisors, one of my professors was one of the great Chinese, modern Chinese history called The Search for Modern China and just Death of Woman Wong to Change China, all these great, great, great books. And he was a phenomenal – he really activated history.

Starting point is 00:43:00 He really was one of those people who I thought – his lectures were just fantastic. And that drew me into that interest. Why did you decide to major in history? Um, because I realized, um, my freshman year, uh, that I had no natural, uh, Mozart like talent for math. And so that my dreams of like being Carl Sagan or a great astrophysicist were probably going to be hampered by my, um, by my poor grasp of even, um, you know, complex math, let alone like physics. And, uh, so I, so that became a hobby and a passion, but not, you know, and I realized I, I probably was a humanities major. Um, but I, no, I, I, I really, I've always really liked reading. I've always really, to me, like studying history and travel are almost like the same thing it's like i having a sense of like you know how things became the way they are and how people became the way they are is really

Starting point is 00:44:12 interesting to me uh humans of new york so i've had quite a few fans ask me to explore this a bit can you explain to people your how you came to be? What is Humans of New York and how did you come to be involved with it? I'm not involved with it. To be clear, my sister turned me on to the site. And I think a couple of my friends in New York mentioned it to me. And I liked it. I thought the site was really, I don't even know what to call it, a blog, a portrait series. You know, it's a, not to be too academic, but there's a great American cultural anthropologist, Studs Terkel, you know, and he, Studs Terkel was like the great chronicler of American working man and the common man kind of, you know, he was the Depression era version of that. And I feel like what this guy's got going with Humans of New York is like a modern day Studs Terkel kind of thing. And it's just great if you're a New Yorker or anybody.

Starting point is 00:45:30 It's a really, really cool vantage on just people. And so actually, again, my sister just flipped and said, have you seen this series he's got going? And he had just launched this series of profiles that he was calling the Syrian Americans about about he'd gone to Turkey to photograph and interview and profile people who were getting asylum in the US and were coming, you know, as though to say, okay, like, let's meet who these people really are and get out of the demagoguery of it all and just sort of see. And, you know, if you looked at any of them, they were incredibly, incredibly affecting stories. And how did that intersect then with CrowdRise, just last year, about this time last year, we made the decision to expand from hosting only peer-to-peer fundraising projects and crowdfunding projects for registered nonprofits and charities to also letting people raise direct assistance for other people. You know, people who wanted to raise medical costs for a friend who had had an accident or a friend who'd lost their house. So we decided to support fundraisers

Starting point is 00:47:06 where people could help friends or loved ones with medical costs, crisis, education costs, tuitions, things like that. And partly because so many people who use CrowdRise were asking us that they preferred to keep using their CrowdRise profile pages and mount those types of projects rather than have to go off-site to these, frankly, in my opinion, fairly shitty exchange utilities, as I call them, like places that are just

Starting point is 00:47:37 transactional platforms with no real strategic support, no long-term capture of your personal philanthropic narrative, and that charge, in my opinion, way, way, way too much. So because CrowdRise on the charity side had already pioneered kind of mechanisms for delivering donated dollars through at an incredibly reduced rate compared to other platforms. Often we're able to offset even the credit card fees. So charities were already excited about and benefiting from being able to get their donation dollars through at

Starting point is 00:48:23 cheaper than they can on their own websites. And as I was looking at the sites that support direct assistance fundraisers, and I was looking at the rates of charge, I was just like, screw this, man. We need to make our pricing model available to people who are trying to help their friends and family. And so we did. I hadn't even used that functionality on our own site. And when I saw that story, I decided I was going to do my first, you know, direct assistance fundraiser to help that family. And if we raised enough to help a couple of the families in the series. And how did the campaign do? The campaign was tremendous it it um it it raised it raised the first 300 000 in

Starting point is 00:49:11 in like 30 hours i mean it really it really went fast and then and then it climbed toward i think we're at you know 460 000 or something like that across the next day or two. And what's fascinating, I think, just, you know, to give huge credit to Brandon, who's the founder of Humans of New York and the photographer and writer. And we didn't put it out in any kind of crowd-rized social media or mine or anything like that. We just, Brandon, I set up the page and Brandon posted on humans of New York and a huge increment of that was driven in very short order in, I think donations that average 26 bucks or 27 bucks just from the humans of New York reader base.

Starting point is 00:49:59 And then we expanded it. We'd let some media be done on it and stuff like that. And I think when all said and done, we'll probably get up to half a million, but, um, um, I, I loved it. We let some media be done on it and stuff like that. And I think when all is said and done, we'll probably get up to half a million. But I loved it. You know, I loved seeing that, you know, for the price of three venti frappuccinos, people could, without putting any kind of a dent or making any kind of a stretch in their own capacity just make the the emotional gesture of responding to a story that touched them and and demonstrate that in aggregate if people will do this you can you can generate transformative impact um uh as a crowd

Starting point is 00:50:49 and that's that's the essence of why we set crowd rise up and i think um uh it was it was it was pretty thrilling like we had a lot of people on the crowd rise staff and brandon at humans in new york we were all just like, you know, we were all pretty emotional about it. It was really cool to see it unfold. And I think, by the way, again, that wasn't, it really was not a function of anything particular to my public profile at all. It really wasn't. It was driven, I think it was driven almost exclusively by the authentic passion of the Humans of New York reader base, who also were responding to the story and just were happy that

Starting point is 00:51:30 someone had created the vehicle to all gather around and respond together. And I think that, you know, I think that that's available to all of us. That's what I like about it. I don't think, I think, you and I were talking about this earlier. I think, you know, we're in this very strange time where like resource concentration is a real, you know, it's a, it's a real thing. of national wealth is being held by in larger and larger increment by fewer and fewer people. And at the same time we're cutting, you know, aspects of the social safety net and food stamps as our friend Tony Robin points out.

Starting point is 00:52:15 And, um, and I think that, you know, one of the things that's exciting about the, the networked world and the sort of the distributed, the, the empowerment of a distributed

Starting point is 00:52:26 culture of people outside of government agencies, outside of corporate constructs, outside of everything to be able to assemble and rally together is that people can proactively address things like that. We can move resources without anybody else's say so we can decide you know uh we can decide that we want to get together around things and and assemble resources and make things happen like in with incredible speed like incredible speed and i think that's really really exciting and what you mentioned also which i think is worth underscoring part of the reason i've been so excited by crowdfunding of of many different types is like you said you you can not only affect change in some cases massive change with incredible speed

Starting point is 00:53:13 you can do it without any given individual suffering a decrease in their quality of life yeah or discretionary income or anything else because you have just a thousand tiny movements that build this groundswell that can then sort of get something to escape velocity. And, uh, I've, I've had a fantastic experience working with the GradRise team and, uh, for those people interested and you mentioned Tony, Tony's also behind this. Uh, I think that, you know, depression and sort of the mental health research in the U.S. has a long way to go, and particularly with classic compounds that could be called entheogens, that could be called psychedelics. But I'm working with a team at Johns Hopkins, Roland Griffiths, and we're looking at,

Starting point is 00:54:02 or we will be conducting a pilot study using psilocybin for the addressing of treatment-resistant depression. So depression, major depression in subjects that has not responded to SSRIs or other types of therapy. And preliminary data would suggest that one dose has a rapid, substantial, and sustained effect, in some cases up to six months, with antidepressant effects. And so we'll be not only conducting the administration of the psilocybin, but also using things like functional MRI to track and analyze it so we can hopefully determine how to safely best administer psilocybin or some analog of that. And what's so cool about it is it takes, the study would cost a lot less than people might expect. It's $80,000 and have a roster of thought leaders from different areas who are in support of this, including Tony.

Starting point is 00:54:57 So for people who want to check that out and also just check out CrowdRise as a platform and see how well the entire page is put together. You can go to CrowdRise.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. Whether you know how to spell it or not, any misspelling will probably go to the same place. So CrowdRise.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. And I'll link to that in the show notes. Is there anything else you'd like to mention about Coddell's? Well, no, I think I love that we're going to work with you on this because I also think that I was having this conversation with Tony Robbins yesterday

Starting point is 00:55:32 because he, like you, has a terrific community of people that rally around the ideas and that you, that you share and pull together and source for people. And I think, um, I do think it's again, it, it,

Starting point is 00:55:54 to me, what you're doing and the notion that it doesn't matter that Tony could write a check for it or you could write a check for it or whatever. The, the notion that, that you can open up a serious conversation about a blind spot, you could write a check for it or whatever the the notion that that you can open up a serious conversation about a blind spot you know a a blind spot that we've got about you know um um the potential in something uh being taken off the table as an opportunity for people because it's going to get, you know,

Starting point is 00:56:26 lumped in to a category of, of drugs viewed as negative, you know what I mean? And, um, and it's just, it's so it's, it's crazy. But the idea that, you know, there's actually in many ways, I think there's much more potency in the idea of people of common mind about the rationality of something rallying to the tune of 25 bucks a piece to collectively say, let's make this happen. Like, let's make this happen. We don't need a foundation. We don't need a foundation. We don't need a rich person. We don't need a, you know, say-so from the NIH. We're going to make this happen. I think it's like actually kind of like a 21st century expression of, like, if you go

Starting point is 00:57:22 back and read de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, you know, he's this French guy visiting America in the 1830s or whatever and commenting on, like, what is it? Like, he basically, one of the most notable things he says is he goes around and says, like, these people just start organizing, they just get together and get things done is basically what he's saying. He's like, he comments on all the civic groups and all the community organizations and all the trade. He basically is amazed by what proactive self-organization Americans do.

Starting point is 00:57:57 And this is nearly 200 years ago. And I love it. I think this is exactly what you're doing is exactly that. It's like saying, hey, in this forum that you've got, we can get this done. Let's rally together and do it. in rallying crowds of people around needs, ideas, you know, businesses. We're in the earliest, earliest infancy still. Maybe not the earliest. People who pooh-pooted it first have now had to acknowledge that it's a force, but I think it's still going to mature and become an even bigger

Starting point is 00:58:50 part of our kind of cultural practice almost. Oh, I agree. And I think that the reason, just to build on what you said, the reason that I'm not just say funding this one study is that I really believe having just observed millions of people now on my various outlets and on the blog and so on for almost 10 years, hard to believe next year is the 10th anniversary of the first book. People do not attempt great things because they don't believe they can perform or achieve great things. Because I think in part, the word great implies something of massive magnitude that engenders a lot of self-sacrifice. And I think with the technology that we have now, what I want people to experience firsthand is that they can participate, make a very small chess move themselves, say moving that pawn forward one square, that collectively with everyone else doing the same wins the equivalent of like the World Series and puts a real positive dent in the

Starting point is 00:59:57 universe. Like with this study, it's a chance for people to become potentially part of history. I mean, it could really be an Archimedes lever in reinventing how we look at treating depression and doing so with fewer side effects. And to do that, participate, even if it's $1, $25, or just say, hypothetically, $0, but you tell 10 other people about it. And in that way participate. Well, that's part of what you're talking about in terms of leverage is what, it is also, I think, a part of the, almost like the philosophical conviction we have at CrowdRise, which is that people's capacity to affect change is not a function of their financial capacity. It's that everybody in the world we're living in has a dozen assets they can leverage, their Facebook page, their social networks, their friends and family, their schools,

Starting point is 01:01:04 their institutions, they're companies. Everybody's got networks now. It's not just the Rolodex anymore. It's now there's a mini network effect around everybody and available to everybody. But they have their energy, they have comfort of their couch exert their brain, their creativity without like massive logistical and cost constraints on them. And so we're saying it all the time. Like, you know, it's not even a question of whether you've got even the capacity to donate 25 bucks to a psilocybin study. It's like,

Starting point is 01:01:46 if you believe in it, um, almost everybody can ask 20 friends for 10 bucks and, and donate 10 X their personal capacity. You know, it's like you can do anything that you care about. You actually can affect now. And I think,

Starting point is 01:02:00 um, uh, one of the reasons like we, we set crowd rise up up as not a kind of a use-and-drop evaporative platform, but a place where, like a Facebook or a Twitter, it's a permanent staging ground for a certain type of activity that you're doing, is that we think people get proud when they do these things. They're proud to participate. They're proud of the things they've done. And so we give them the opportunity to stage multiple projects over time and capture the aggregate narrative of everything they've done year over year. You know, that's why we'll do this with you. And then you'll do something else and we'll do it again and we'll do it again. And

Starting point is 01:02:38 soon it won't just be the individuated success of these projects that sort of evaporate, it'll be like Tim's impact page will show the total. It'll be a way of looking at the totality of what you've done over time. And I think that's a difference in a true platform versus what I would call just a payment utility. No, and this to me is, and this has a lot of, for those people who've heard my podcasts with James Fadiman or Dan Engel and Martin Polanco, these types of cop-outs have had a huge impact in my life in ways that I couldn't have imagined possible. And so it's less a transaction or even a campaign in my mind than the beginning of a movement.

Starting point is 01:03:20 And so I felt like it was the right match. Yeah, you want stickiness, you know, you want, you want recurrence, you want like, um, you want, uh, um, a micro platform turnkey made easy for you that, that becomes something that can sustain, you know, do we have some time for a few more questions? Yeah. When you hear the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why? My dad is up there. My dad, my brother, you know, I'm not sure,

Starting point is 01:04:15 I'm not sure it's about people who spring to mind so much as that like, I definitely find that almost in balance with a lot of time for contemplative time, family time, personal health, physical health. I tend to look at that and go, wow, like, I want to be like that guy or that woman, you know, that, that they, I, I, I definitely have seen more than enough people with success as defined by notoriety or money or whatever, who look like like the specter of you know despair to me like i i've seen i've seen as i'm sure you have like lots of people you know with the albatross of success around their neck um that seem like an intense uh cautionary tale to me like i I'd rather, um, you know, so, so it's more, I,

Starting point is 01:05:47 you know, I, I, my sense of like what constitutes a health, a successful person is probably more defined now by what looks like a healthy person. How do you prevent yourself from becoming intoxicated by the sort of culture or cult of personality that seems to be so prevalent in the world of say entertainment or that obsession with material wealth. I mean, it seems to be that type of albatross seems to be very common. What have, what have,

Starting point is 01:06:20 uh, what has helped you to not succumb? Hmm. You know, like I think, I think everybody's got to constantly uh like sort of do battle with like the voices in your head that of ego and you know um i mean that's what birdman was all about. Literally, I think that the beauty of what Alejandro took on in that film was being honest about the degree to which voices in your head just hammer at you and hammer at you and hammer at you about what you don't have and what you ought to be aspiring to

Starting point is 01:07:01 and mattering in the world. And, and, um, and I think that anybody, very few people are, are, are really free of that. But, um, but I think that, um, living in New York helps me oddly, just because it's not, it's not a film industry town. It's not, I, there's so much going on there and there's so many things I'm interested in and involved in. It keeps my life diverse. And when I'm out here where we are, I do find that being in the water and being able to hike and I'm a pilot,

Starting point is 01:07:40 so flying, there's just things that take you out of your, things that take me out of my head help a lot, are pretty key. But I, you know, I mean, I'm ridiculously fortunate, and I think I have more than enough, and I think that sometimes it's even getting a little bit of a taste of how much material possessions can really be a trap. It's like there is that things that you own end up owning you kind of maximum. I do think it's really, really true. I think you start realizing how much lighter you feel when you dispense with a lot of that stuff.

Starting point is 01:08:28 Then that becomes a positive snowball, you know? What books or book have you given most as a gift to other people? That's a good question. There was a period where I really liked Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book. It's called Wind, Sand, and Stars. Oh, I haven't read that one. That's a great, great one. Were you interested in him because he was a pilot or did yeah both i was i was reading a lot of books about flying but real innovator and i guess what postal delivery yeah yeah i mean he was flying the mail from like the sahara to paris and and from

Starting point is 01:09:19 patagonia to paris which is you know from yeah that's i mean crazy for those people who don't recognize the name also wrote the little little prince yeah but you know he's a i mean wind sand and stars is like um it's it's it's it's as much a book about the philosophy of life as it and and as it is about flying it's it's like zen and zen in the in the craft of flying um but it's uh it's just beautiful um um we were talking about this earlier i really like that book the black swan yeah i gave that to friends of a certain type um what what type um i really enjoyed that book yeah yeah i think it it's it's an extremely like it's an if you if you absorb it right it's it's it's it's got a really amazing capacity to prick certain

Starting point is 01:10:14 bubbles of delusion or or help you realize bubbles of delusion that we all operate in and it's um i think it's really really cool. How not to fool yourself. Yeah. You mentioned two essays. We don't have to go too deep into the... I'll just name them and then link to them in the show notes. But there was Second Wind. Second Wind, yeah.

Starting point is 01:10:40 Which was by the former Czechoslovakian president. I'm not going to get his first name right. Václav Havel. Havel, H-A-V-E-L. And then The Catastrophe of Success, and the author is? Tennessee Williams. Tennessee Williams.

Starting point is 01:10:52 Any context that you'd like to provide for folks for those two? Just great. The Catastrophe of Success is like one of the great essays by a creative person about exactly what you're just talking, the traps, the traps that follow on achieving anything really that you were aspiring to achieve. And then what do you, what happens after that happens, you know, and second wind is sort of the same from a different perspective, more like, how do you, how do you have the courage to kind of not repeat yourself, put yourself out of your comfort zone in a creative sense, but also in a life sense?

Starting point is 01:11:32 And I think what I like about Second Wind is as a playwright, he was sort of saying like that you kind of disgorge like a point of view and you can keep doing that. But at some point, if you don't stop and go back into like absorption mode, you yourself to to to stop listen live absorb and then try again from scratch you know what i mean that that's like it's a great essay it's really really great do you have any favorite documentaries many um i won't name ones that probably i i love Bennett Miller's film, The Cruise. The Cruise. Yeah, Bennett, people know he directed Capote and Moneyball and Foxcatcher, brilliant filmmaker. But I think almost my favorite film of his is a documentary called The Cruise.

Starting point is 01:12:39 What is that about, or it's about a guy who's a, a tour. He's a, he's a tour guide, um, the host on the open double-decker buses in New York city. Who's, who's a poet and who I can't, you can't, you just have to see it. It's great. Um, uh, and I really liked that one. Um, um, other ones people might not have seen. I like i really like adam curtis's films um great british documentarian he's got that four-part film called the century of the self and then a three-part one called the power of nightmares i think I think those are absolutely brilliant, brilliant, brilliant films. Like, dense, but really eye-opening. Are there any other underrated movies that you think people should see

Starting point is 01:13:35 that are not necessarily documentaries? Any particular movies that come to mind for you? Of late, I think I'm a huge, huge fan of this French filmmaker, Jacques Odiard, who I think in the last few years, he put up a hat trick of films, The Beat My Heart Skipped, and then A Prophet. That is one of my favorite films like one of the amazing i i i personally put a prophet as one of the three best gangster films ever made so good i think for me the godfather goodfellas and a prophet are are at this point my three if i had to pick three gangster films i think they're the best ones it's just yeah if for those people who haven't seen a prophet it's uh i don't speak french but I guess it's un prophète and the, the poster, if you're looking at it on Netflix

Starting point is 01:14:28 or Amazon or iTunes or whatever, it's sort of red and black, but it's about, uh, I want to say a Middle Eastern. Algerian. Algerian. Yeah. That's right. Algerian, uh, young male who goes to prison and about his ascension. Oh my God.

Starting point is 01:14:42 I won't say anything more. And then after that, uh, rust and bone was his next film. And it's like, it's just a brilliant film. Uh, Marion Cotillard. It's like one of the great performances,

Starting point is 01:14:56 uh, in the last few years. And I love those, all those films. Um, and then, um, and I think, uh think uh you know uh excusing the fact that i happen to

Starting point is 01:15:09 be in one of them but uh but i think alejandro in your riddles last three films in a row uh beautiful beautiful was an extremely extremely underseen masterpiece um it was in your reduced film prior to birdman and it's a masterpiece um it's just called beautiful yeah spelled spelled wrong uh it's a masterpiece and it's it's absolutely brilliant and again one of the greatest performances of all in a long time and and his the third in his triptych, I think, is The Revenant out right now. I think The Revenant's one of the great films I've seen in the last many years.

Starting point is 01:15:52 It's an absolute unqualified masterpiece. It's just like a Native American spirit myth or straight out of a Joseph Campbell myth or something. It's just a magnificent, magnificent piece of filmmaking. We could have a whole separate conversation about Birdman, which we won't do today, but also one of my favorite films in the last few years. Three more questions.

Starting point is 01:16:15 If you could have a billboard anywhere that said anything, what would you put on it? I might put pray for surf. I don't know. I might put the name of certain people from high school and just say like so-and-so comma how you like me now. No, that would be very unevolved. would be very very unevolved um but uh no i i i don't know i don't know what i would put on it i um we can come back to that too you know what i you know what i No, I'm changing my answer. I would put Paul Rudd's cell phone number on it. It would complete a long-running series of jokes that would just be perfect. I would say, Paul Rudd's actual number. Please call. We'll do a separate crowdfunding campaign

Starting point is 01:17:25 to raise money for the billboard rental. What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self and could you just place where you were at the time? Oh, yeah. I know. I was on the last two days of shooting a film I was directing when I turned 30. And I think I might tell myself at that phase to, um, commit myself to a few fewer things

Starting point is 01:17:52 than I did at that time that I'm still, that I'm still feeling obligated to. And that maybe I wish I had a few less of those things um like i think my aspir my aspiration and my sense of my own energy and time was like limitless at that time and now um some of that has become a a cage of obligation that I would like to, uh, um, uh, unlock,

Starting point is 01:18:33 yeah, yeah, but I'll get there. Senior year in college. What advice would you have given yourself? Um, I might have told myself to go live abroad right then. I should have done it right then, like for a year or two. I had lived abroad a little bit.

Starting point is 01:18:57 I should have gone and... That's like when you think everything's about to get started and it's not. And I should have gone and lived. I think everything's about to get started and it's not. And I should have, I, you know, I should have gone and lived,

Starting point is 01:19:11 I should have gone somewhere and lived somewhere, you know, interesting or different that I would be much harder to do later. Where would you, where would you choose for yourself? I don't know. No, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:19:21 We should take a trip to Japan together. Get you back to Japan. Uh, last, last real question is, do you have any ask or request of the audience, people listening, things they should do, ponder, or otherwise? If you're looking to raise financial support for a friend or family member, do it on CrowdRise, not on other sites, because much more of the money will go through to them. That's my, that's my, you know, entrepreneurial hat. And then, I think, I'd say, and I'm not even joking. I think like, um, you know, stay tuned into communities like this. I think, I think it's, uh, I think these things are really cool. I think, um,

Starting point is 01:20:13 you know, maybe in a, in a simple, put simple, put more simply, like just participate, you know, in some, what I think is cool about what you've assembled is I think it's driven by people's desire to, like, not hack life, but be proactive and participate and not be apathetic. And I like that. I think that's a positive community. And I think we all get really tired. I think modern life is stressful and tiring and confusing. And I think Nietzsche has that great thing, that idea of self-overcoming, that the overman is not a perfect person. It's actually the person who's perpetually trying to self-overcome. And I really like that idea. I think staying engaged in the idea of evolving yourself is really cool. So I think it's awesome that you've got this many people

Starting point is 01:21:21 kind of linked up together around those ideas. Yeah, I really hope people listening, no matter how small you might feel or isolated you might feel, I know not everyone out there has a community like you or I might have in New York or SF. Make this year the year that you astonish yourself with what you can do or be a part of and you know look back on december 31st of this year and just say hope to say holy shit i can't believe i was part of x or i did x to yourself because i don't i think it's a lot easier than people might think uh edward where can people find you on the interwebs on social to say hello um keep up to date with what you're i'm not i'm not great at it i i uh you know i i throw tweets out now and then um mostly about

Starting point is 01:22:16 things i've seen that i like like you were talking about things i've seen or read that i think should find a wider audience or that people will appreciate. What is your handle on Twitter? Just my name. Okay. But I'm not cutting edge on – I'm not as cutting edge. I am on the crowdfunding stuff, but I'm not as cutting edge with social media as I maybe should be. Or I don't know.

Starting point is 01:22:47 Maybe it's a good thing. Probably means you've melted less of your brain. Yeah. I think doing it. Like, like what you're doing in a, in a much smaller way of it, building up more of a,

Starting point is 01:23:10 of a forum of, of interactive conversation. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta,

Starting point is 01:23:19 I gotta, I gotta finish. I gotta finish things I started. Might be a cage within a cage. Yeah, exactly. I gotta finish things I started. This be a cage within a cage. Yeah, exactly. I gotta finish things I started. This is always fun.

Starting point is 01:23:28 I, I enjoy hanging out and, uh, I appreciate you taking the time. Definitely. That was super fun. I, I,

Starting point is 01:23:34 I really, um, I've, I've, I've really enjoyed your books. I've enjoyed the kind of, uh, I've enjoyed them as a resource and,

Starting point is 01:23:44 um, and I think, uh, uh, enjoyed them as a resource and, um, and I think, uh, uh, learned a lot and, and, um, and I think it's, I really do think it's cool that, that what you've cultivated is, is people who are, people who are interested in, uh, in, in, in continuing to explore, you know, like, like I think it's, it's, um, that idea, ongoing education, ongoing discoveries, the, you know, that's the zest and things. Yeah. You don't, you don't necessarily find yourself. You create yourself one little step at a time. So Edward, thank you again. And to everyone listening, check out crowdrise.com forward slash Tim Ferriss to see what mischief, productive mischief I'm getting up to. And as always, you can find the show notes,

Starting point is 01:24:32 links to everything we talked about for our workweek.com forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Thanks. Have a good one. hey guys this is tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet friday do you want to get a short email from me would you enjoy getting a short email from me every friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend and five bullet friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include

Starting point is 01:25:21 favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #133: Edward Norton on Mastery, Must-Read Books, and The Future of CrowdFunding

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #133: Edward Norton on Mastery, Must-Read Books, and The Future of CrowdFunding

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.