The Tim Ferriss Show - #145: The Interview Master: Cal Fussman and the Power of Listening

Episode Date: March 11, 2016

This episode is very special to me and features a verbal Jedi who never gets interviewed himself: Cal Fussman. Cal (@calfussman) is a New York Times bestselling author and a writer-at-large for Esquire Magazine, where he is best known for being a primary writer of the “What I Learned” feature. The Austin Chronicle has described Cal's interviewing skills as "peerless." He has transformed oral history into an art form, conducting probing interviews with the icons who’ve shaped the last 50 years of world history: Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Robert DeNiro, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Dre, Quincy Jones, Woody Allen, Barbara Walters, Pelé, Yao Ming, Serena Williams, John Wooden, Muhammad Ali, and countless others. Born in Brooklyn, Cal spent 10 straight years traveling the world, swimming over 18-foot tiger sharks, rolling around with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and searching for gold in the Amazon. He has also made himself a guinea pig — Cal has boxed against world champion Julio Cesar Chavez and served as a sommelier atop of the World Trade Center. He now lives with his wife—whom he met while on a quest to discover the world’s most beautiful beach—and his three children in Los Angeles, where he spends every morning eating breakfast with Larry King. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years and I love audio books. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy! This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

optimal minimal at this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i ask you a personal question now what is the appropriate time i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton this episode is brought to you by ag1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven

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that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. 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 of various types from all fields, including entertainment, military, academia, research, and otherwise, sports, etc. This episode is a very special one and features

a verbal Jedi who never really gets interviewed himself, Cal Fussman. You may not recognize that name, but that is going to change. Cal Fussman, at Cal Fussman, C-A-L-F-U-S-S-M-A-N on the Twitters, is a New York Times bestselling author and writer at large for Esquire Magazine, where he is best known for being a primary writer of the What I Learned feature. Now, What I Learned, what is this? Well, it is comprised of interviews with icons that you will recognize. The Austin Chronicle has described Cal's interviewing skills as, quote, peerless, end quote. And I would have to agree with that. I've met a great many writers and interviewers, and Cal is just hands and heads

above everyone else. I'm not sure if that makes any sense. I've had quite a bit of wine. It is about one in the morning in New York City in the land of chaos, and that sounds like the right expression to use. In any case, Cal has transformed oral history into an art form, conducting probing interviews with icons who've shaped the last 50 years of world history, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, George Clooney, Leo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Dre, Quincy Jones, Woody Allen, Barbara Walters, Pele Yao Meng, Serena Williams, John Wooden, Muhammad Ali, and countless others. Born in Brooklyn, and this is the part where the bio sounds unbelievable. And as far as I can tell, it's totally true. Here we go. Born in Brooklyn, Cal spent 10 straight years traveling the world, swimming over 18-foot tiger sharks, rolling around with mountain gorillas in Rwanda and searching for gold in the Amazon. He's also made himself a guinea pig. He's boxed against world champion Julio Cesar Chavez when he was undefeated and

served as a sommelier atop the World Trade Center. He now lives with his wife, whom he met while on a quest to discover the world's most beautiful beach and his three children in Los Angeles, where he spends every morning eating breakfast with Larry King. And that is in fact, how I met Cal for the first time was at this particular breakfast at a Jewish jelly with Larry King, where Larry eats honey nut Cheerios. And that is it. Go figure. In any case, you guys have to check out Cal. I really love this conversation. He's been a mentor to me in this game of interviewing and asking questions, which is really about not just probing into the lives of others, but thinking more clearly yourself. And Cal is really the Obi-Wan

Kenobi of this particular area of expertise. So I hope you enjoy. Check him out. I want to help out Cal. He is doing a lot of interesting stuff and expanding outside of writing. So be sure to check out his website, calfussman.com. Say hello on Twitter as well, at Cal Fussman. And without further ado, as I always say after a long intro, please enjoy my conversation with Cal Fussman. And without further ado, as I always say after a long intro, please enjoy my conversation with Cal Fussman. Cal, welcome to the show. Thank you. I have arrived. You have arrived, and I'm so excited to have you here because we've gotten to know each

other a bit over the last however many months, and it's been such a joy because as I've tried to delve into this craft of asking questions and crafting conversation, I've realized there's a lot to it. And I've been a fan of your work for so many years. And the subtleties are just so powerful. And I thought that this time we could turn the tables and I could interrogate you in public. I love asking you questions about your process. And you've been so generous with your time in terms of reviewing some of my episodes, providing feedback. So first and foremost, thank you for your work and for all of the help. I'm delighted. You're good. You're good.

I think I have a lot of room to improve. And so this is one of these episodes where I'm a little self-conscious because I know that I have a very unusual, memento-like, sometimes non-chronological approach to interviews. And for that, I'll apologize in advance. But we can do a post-game analysis afterwards. So perhaps we could just start with something that we were discussing before we hit record. So we were talking about the live event that was here in LA at the Troubadour. And we were doing a bit of analysis. What went well, what didn't go as well as planned and so on.

And I mentioned that, I suppose, due to also some insecurities of a sort that I try to, when I do these rare live events, if it's say two hours long, I'll stay for an additional two or three hours and do Q&A or something like that. And you said that straight out of Quincy Jones's book. And so I know this is an unusual place to start, but maybe you could just provide that anecdote because it seems like you have an endless trove of these types of anecdotes. But why Quincy Jones?

Quincy Jones will go to a book signing, and there will be long lines of people, and he will not sign his name and move him on next. He will stop, ask everyone who they are, engage in a conversation, and then write a personal note in his book to them. And the line may be around the block. He'll be there till three in the morning, keeping the people of Barnes and Noble open because he wants to make it a joyous experience for everybody.

So bravo. You, you followed the master. Inadvertently. The, the story, of course, if we rewind the clock, begins at the beginning. And where did you grow up? I actually am ashamed to admit I don't know the childhood background.

But where did you grow up? I was born in Brooklyn and moved to Yonkers, New York, where I did second grade and third grade. And that's where I had, when I think back on it, like a pivotal moment asking questions. Because that time, second grade, was the time that I was sitting in Ms. Jaffe's classroom, and she came into the room. She was out for some reason. And when she came in, you could look at her and know something just happened that I don't know, but it's different from anything I've ever seen before. And this was November 1963, and it was Ms. Jaffe who told the class that President Kennedy had been shot. And so we all got sent home, found out that he had died. And I just, I really would love to see myself on videotape

like that night, because like, I knew, man, something is going on here. They explained to me that Lyndon Johnson was a vice president. and he was now going to become the new president. And I'm thinking, man, what must it be like to be that guy? What is he feeling? Here he was. I know he probably wanted to be the president, but he couldn't be the president. And then he was the vice president, and now the president gets killed, and he gets to be the president. And then he was the vice president. And now the president gets killed and he gets to be the president. So I picked up a piece of paper and a pencil and I just wrote to Lyndon Johnson.

You wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson? I wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson and said, what does it feel like? And about six months later, I got a letter back. That's incredible. And it was from his personal secretary, Juanita D. Roberts. And the cool thing about it was the first sentence was, thank you for the friendly thought in writing. So I don't know what I wrote him, but somehow i must have tried to make him feel comfortable that this question was coming and then the second question was an answer to your query

and what that said was she was treating me like i was legit. I had just turned seven. Bonafide adult. Exactly. And when you did the interview with Ed Norton, he talked about having a mentor in high school who treated him like an adult. That's right. And that is what that letter felt like to me. And only now, when people are starting to ask me questions,

did this come to me. But that's when I realized that asking questions is kind of natural for me. And that was in second grade? Second grade. Now, I have to ask, when you wrote the letter, you back to second grade and was it written on paper that had the the dotted line in between the intact lines for the lowercase letters what type of do you do you recall kind of paper it was on i i don't know it's probably on loose leaf paper if i was making making a guess i wish you know i was talking to the historian robert carrow who wrote volumes about Lyndon Johnson.

Also wrote The Power Broker, am I right? That's right. Incredible book. Exactly. And here, this guy has spent like decades knowing everything about Lyndon Johnson as possible. And I'm telling him this story, and he's like getting goosebumps when I say Juanita D. Roberts. You got a letter from Juanita D. Roberts? And he started asking me all these questions about the letter

and where it could be and how I sent it. And I realized as he was doing it, yeah, he was made to be a historian. Nobody else in the world would have gotten that high over the words Juanita D. Roberts. But some people are just born with the proclivity to do certain things. What do you think, even if it's God-given talent, what makes you or gives you a gift for questions? I think part of that has to do with the evolution as an interviewer, as a journalist, because as we talk it through, you'll see that I interviewed differently when I was, say, 18 than when I was 24,

and differently in my 40s than when I was 25. So it really is like a lifelong voyage of learning about questions and reactions. It's only when I started to think back on that first letter that I realized, okay, this is – I guess it would sort of be like being a basketball player and you know that you're born with big hands. I can grip – if I go up for a dunk, I can grip the ball with one hand. Carmelo Anthony can't. It's like a big secret. He can't get his hands around the basketball. He's great, but some people are just born with big hands and some people don't have big hands. And I'm only now starting to realize, okay, I was kind of born to do this. Did your parents facilitate that and cultivate that in any way?

Or was it not something, it was a nature more than nurture in the household? That's a good question. And maybe they did in that my dad loved sports. And I grew up in the 60s at a time where Muhammad Ali came into play. And so he was my childhood hero. And in some sense, that was the start of it. Because he was more than my hero just because he was the heavyweight champ of the world. And he could dance and make sure nobody ever hit him. And then when he wanted to hit you, he could hit you 16 times before you even blinked.

And it was more than the fact that he could make predictions with poetry and make you always laugh. His actions made you ask questions. He would take his Olympic gold medal and throw it in the Ohio River. And it would make you wonder, hold it. How is it that a black guy can go win a gold medal in Australia and come back after representing his country and not be able to sit at a lunchroom counter at a Woolworth's next to white people. He would defy the government and refuse draft induction, wouldn't go into the army, and basically say, hey, I ain't got nothing against no Viet Cong. And he would make you think, hey, what is going on over there in Vietnam?

So that was a huge, huge part of my childhood. Did you have any particular career aspiration? What did you want to be when you were a kid, say, from second grade onward? Were there any particular professions that you knew you wanted to go after? Two things. I wanted to see my face over a column in a big city newspaper, and I wanted to write a magazine story about Muhammad Ali. Wow. Very prescient. No, I knew what I wanted to do. Only later, after I'd done it so quickly, did I realize, oh, what am I going to do now?

Which we can get to. So you mentioned 18 and 24, so two very specific ages. Take me to, say, 18 and then 24 and contrast your two styles. But if you could tell us where you were at those two points also. Sure. So like when I grew up, I grew up thinking interview was meet the press. I grew up thinking it was what happened in a locker room after a sporting

event. So I knew in order to achieve my dreams, I need to go to journalism school. I asked around and found out University of Missouri had one of the best. So that's where I went. And I learned to ask who, what, when, where, and why. And went through the whole journalism cycle. This was also an interesting time. It was a time of Watergate.

So journalists were seen at the highest point that maybe they've ever been. It was really cool to be a journalist. A journalist actually brought down the president when they called him lying. And so it was a great time. And I went into sports. So basically, after I graduated, four months after I graduated, I was sitting ringside when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship for the third time. A year after that, if you lived in St. Louis and you opened the post-dispatch sports section, you saw my face over a column. And a year after that,

I went to the big time, New York. An amazing magazine called Inside Sports got started up. And how old were you at the time? I was 22 by then. And basically this magazine was really unique. It was set up in the day that Sports Illustrated was as big as it gets. And it was set up to compete with Sports Illustrated. And it brought in all these great writers.

And so I'd be going to the bar at night and sitting next to Hunter Thompson, the gonzo journalist, would be throwing back shots. The next morning I'd be getting up and going on a plane to Pittsburgh. Hold on one second. You did shots with Hunter S. Thompson? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. We're going to come back to that. Please continue. Oh, man. So this magazine attracted all these writers. And the guy who started it was a guy named Johnny Walsh who went on to start SportsCenter for ESPN. So he just had one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen at the time. I didn't really even know what a Rolodex was. And I walked into Inside Sports for the first time. It was a Friday afternoon. And I called him up. And I said, hey, if I come into New York to work,

I'm not asking for a job. Just make sure I don't starve. And he said, come on in. So I show up at the office at like 4 o'clock. And there was two guys with a dolly stacked with beer. Case after case of beer. And I got in the elevator right behind the dolly. They hit the same floor number that I needed to go to.

And they just rolled it out into the offices of Inside Sports. And I said, this is where I need to be. And this magazine attracted guys like David Halberstam, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Just the best of the best. And basically, I got to sit next to all of them. I was only a kid. I was 22.

And every night, everybody would go across the street to a bar called the cowboy tony the bartender was behind the bar and like at the time i like i had no money so they would put out these little hors d'oeuvres for people that that was like where my dinner would be if the guys would expense accounts weren't going out later. The mixed nuts and olives. That's right. That was dinner. Crappy maraschino cherries. But it was great because you're sitting next to Frank DeFord,

who was like the big sports writer of his day. A guy named Gary Smith came to work there. He was a National Magazine Award winner for many, many years. And it was just a blast. It was the best time. Sounds incredible. And then, like a lot of artistic successes, it was not a commercial success.

And like a lot of startups, it went belly up. Sounds like the Paris Review and many, many others. There you go. And so here I am in New York. And basically, I've now achieved everything I set out to achieve when I was a kid. And I'm looking around saying, what am I going to do now? Where am I going to go?

I had no idea. Because I knew if I took – inside sports was not a job. It was an experience. It was an event every evening. Who's coming tonight? And I didn't know what to do. So I called up my mom and dad. And I said, you know, I think I'm going to take some time off and travel. My mom, who's always really supportive, said, oh, Cal, that's wonderful. And little did she know when I said it that I wasn't coming back for 10 years, but I didn't know it either. I just bought a ticket to go over to Europe, left with a few guys,

and that started a 10-year odyssey of Cal going around the world. Okay. Let's hit pause for a second. I want to do some backtracking here. Okay. So the first question, and I have not forgotten about Hunter S. Thompson, but when you said, please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I don't need a job, I just don't want to starve.

And he said, come on in. Why did he give you such a warm welcome? He had actually reached out to me. And again, this went back to University of Missouri Journalism. That's where he had gone to school. So I found all through my travels, this school and its network, I was always linked to them in some way. And you knew who was really good from that school. Everybody knew it.

And so if I found out that somebody was doing really good work and they were an editor and I knew they went to the University of Missouri, it would be, it's an easy phone call for me to make. And it's interesting because I didn't make those phone calls, have to make those calls often because there was like a nexus. People bumped into people and you were ferreted to the right place. And so when Inside Sports folded, ultimately one of the editors there got the job at the Washington Post Sunday magazine.

But when I was traveling around the world, I basically – I didn't really write. And I have so many questions about the travel, but the preceding contrast. So if we looked at, say, how you interviewed and asked questions when you were at the tail end of your first professional gig and then at the tail end of Inside Sports, what changed? Nothing really changed there. Basically, the idea was to get the information you needed for a story, to fill out a story. And so back in that day, it may be hard. I know it's hard for sports writers to believe it because they asked me to speak at colleges in front of journalism schools.

And in the 70s, women's sports got no coverage at all. They would beg you to go to their games, go into their locker rooms, whatever you wanted. I was talking to a university in Nebraska journalism school. They can't even interview women's volleyball players in a very relaxed fashion. They have to go through the sports information office, and they won't be able to ask like personal questions so it's a completely different time when i would go out to do a story i might spend like a week two weeks with somebody and now that just doesn't happen because of all the proliferation of media

and everybody's asking for that time. So it's pretty much shut down. So basically you got to hang with people. And the questions basically filled out the story. But for me, it was very different than the next stage. Because that first stage was very who what when where and why and what might have been underneath what was your childhood like and it filled it filled out a sports story the next step that started when i was about 23 or 24 was completely different and that was

just to place it in the timeline, that was before you left? Oh, no. This was the moment I left Inside Sports, shut down. Mm-hmm. And there was actually like a run on the bank to go over. Seems pretty common. People to get their last checks. And right after that is when i decided to start traveling and that's where

interviewing changed for me forever two quick questions before we get there so the first is what was it like doing shots and having drinks with hunter s thompson it was fantastic. He was like a great, he was a very funny guy. And it was all anecdotes. There were a bunch of people in the bar. Everybody was telling stories. It's completely natural. What's kind of interesting about my memory of it is later on, I interviewed Johnny Depp, who played Hunter Thompson.

And he just reached into this vegetable plate that was in front of a hotel. You're talking about Depp? Yeah, Depp. Okay. And pulled out a carrot and put it in his mouth the way Hunter Thompson had, like, he would smoke, like, those long cigarettes, and he became Hunter S. Thompson. It was, like, it was wild, and he said, yeah, it comes out in me every now and then. The thing about Hunter S. Thompson, you think about him almost as a

caricature, but, like, at the bar, he was, like, he was a regular guy just telling stories. I remember him telling stories of being a bowling writer in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And we'd be laughing about things like that. So it was very human. The conversation wasn't with the caricature of Hunter Thompson. It was with the guy. And when you went out to drink with the guys, hopefully with the expense accounts, what was your drink of choice? Did you have a go-to drink?

Back then was before I knew anything about wine. Back then it was Guinness or Black and Tan or maybe Gin and Tonic. Those were the three things. You know, one time, I remember, this is really crazy. You want to know why Inside Sports went out of business. They had one of the photographers who had worked with Sports Illustrated in the past. And so I was sent out on a story with this guy. And this guy was saying, oh, I got to show you how to use an expense account.

I could see you're a very young novice here. And before we do any work, he was straight to the bar. And I'm saying, are you sure? Maybe we should go out and interview him. no no no and he starts to say you know i think we need to have some green chartreuse oh lord what and like this guy must have knocked the barbell i mean like and his point was, this is how we do it at Sports Illustrated. Like,

if you don't run up a bar bill like this, you know, nobody's going to think you're big time. Sounds like fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

It was a little like that. But it was all, I guess, day-to-day event. And I was meeting the athletes that I grew up watching on TV and talking to these sports writers. And it was one of those times that comes around once in a life,

and then when it's gone, you can never really have it again because part of it is your naivete making it so grand. And then it was over. The magazine was dead. And, oh, man, like, I got, at the time, I thought I got another, like, 50, 60 years to live. What am I going to do? So how did you decide on travel?

I didn't know what to do. And I had met, when I was in St. Louis, a woman from France. And she came from Montpasier. And she says, oh, you have to come visit Montpasier and pick the grapes. And so in my mind, I always thought, I've got to get to Montpasier and pick the grapes. And so in my mind, I always thought, I've got to get to Montpasier. And so we bought a ticket. I bought a cheap ticket through Iceland Air. They would land you in Iceland and then fly you into Luxembourg. And the idea, I guess, was to get you to somehow stay in Iceland. It still is. They still sell it. It's like the stopover destination. Stay for a few days,

please. And you know what? People should, because one of the Playboy centerfold photographers told me that that was one of the best places that he'd ever been to in terms of meeting women. He said it was outrageous. You'd go there on a Saturday night, and everybody knew everybody, but by four in the morning, people were naked doing cartwheels on top of the bar. Who would have thought of it from Iceland? Iceland, it's a limited number of activities if you're there, depending on the time of the bar and like who would have thought of it from iceland iceland you know it's a limited number of activities if you're there depending on the time of the year but i i actually uh went to

iceland for the first time with my family to see the aurora borealis about uh two winters ago just glorious fantastic just entirely mystical, word-defying experience. It really was fantastic. So that's maybe the other more brochure-friendly side of Iceland. But yeah, a lot of booze. A lot of booze. A lot of booze. If you're telling me...

And elves. They like elves and gnomes also. But booze. No, that sounds like a magical moment in your life. It was. It was. Did you have like a notion of what it would be? And then did it top it like by 10 times?

Well, the backstory, not to turn this into, well, I guess it is the Tim Ferriss show. So here we are. But to digress into my own stuff for a minute is my mom had always talked about wanting to see the Northern Lights before she passed on. And this came up many, many times. And eventually I was like, fuck it. Why haven't we gone to see the Northern Lights? Let's figure it out. And that's how the trip came about. And in my mind, of course, the image was informed by the photos that I'd seen. And it turns out that the colors that are captured by all of the photographs or the equipment that I've seen are very different when you see the phenomenon in real life with your own eyes. And it's just the most ghostly, fantastic, meaning like phantasm-like experience that I've ever had visually without aid of plants. We really just got the Willy Wonka golden ticket because we showed up and we were there for, I want to say 10 days, which is important because you could have a few days of cloud cover.

And if you're only there for a night or two nights, you could go all the way out to the middle of nowhere in Iceland or Norway for that matter, or other places and never see it. But we saw it, I want to say like seven out of 10 nights. It was unbelievable. So it exceeded all expectations.

It was really, uh, really a trip to remember. I just got to ask you one more question. Please. No, no. What was your mom's, what did your mom's face look like when she got the view that she wanted to have? A kid in a candy store or the description that came to mind first was like a baby who opens their eyes and sees like their favorite mobile above them, like just that completely dazzled look where there's nothing else in the world that exists for them in that moment, but just the pure joy of that experience. It was great. I mean, one of the most gratifying things for me, certainly, that I've ever done for my family, which makes me feel like a bad son, but for saying that it took me that long.

But it was a great experience. I will say for those people listening who are thinking about it, when I say there are very limited activities, I really mean it in Iceland. And we stayed at this place called Hotel, I think they pronounce it Rangau, but it's Ranga, R-A-N-G-A, which is in the middle of nowhere. And if you do go, two things to note, it's dark all the time. And number two, there are activities that you can pay for, but they tend to be on the expensive side.

So you can take like a helicopter over live volcanoes, which actually was phenomenal. Or you can go, say, snowmobiling, etc. But they all tend to be on the pricey side. So you do need to check your budget before you sign up for something like that. And yeah, it was glorious. But so Iceland. So you got a cheap ticket on Iceland Air. Cheap ticket on Iceland Air and landed in Luxembourg. And I was with a bunch of friends.

How many friends? Let's see. They were very interesting. I mentioned one. His name was Gary Smith. But for this, for these purposes, I'm just going to say there was a friend who was very skinny. Can't wait to see where this is going. And a friend who was very, who was portly.

Such an underused adjective, portly such an underused adjective portly and i i am completely these are my best friends okay the skinny guy the portly guy and the skinny guy was just coming off a divorce and had basically felt like his whole life had been constricted in this box around Wilmington, Delaware and wanted to go out and just see the world, see whatever, whatever was out there. And of course my eyes are open to this because I'm,

I didn't know what I was going to do, where I was going to go, but I wanted to see the world too. Mon pasier. Let's go pick the grapes. And then the portly friend was a guy who was kind of like the mayor of his job and the mayor of his city in terms of if you go to the bar in St. Louis, he's the fixture. Everybody loves him, knows him. And it's the bar, the restaurant, everything is very kind of fixed. Right. The mic was always his, or he could hold court.

Holding court. But even more than than that it was you knew if you were in st louis you knew if you went to llewellyn's bar at 8 30 you were gonna see him and and and accordingly you know where he was gonna have dinner is only one of a few places if you wasn't at one, you can go to another. You know the bookstore he walked into, the place across the street where we got chocolates. So he lived on sort of a ritual. So now the three of us are let loose in Europe.

Now the portly guy's only got like 10 days. He's on vacation from his job. The skinny guy who's been working at Inside Sports with me, he's got some time now. And I'm just kind of walking around with my eyes open, wondering where this is all going to take me. So we go to this mountainous town. We end up in a mountainous town in Italy.

And it had two names because these countries would get involved in wars and then sometimes they would be, wherever the winner was, they were named. So I remember the German-sounding name was Dorf Tirol, and it had a huge mountain, and we found out that on this mountain, Ezra Pound, the poet, had lived in this castle. So the skinny guy is like, oh, look, we've got to go see Ezra Pound's castle. And so we've got to take a hike up to this mountain. And the portly guy is coming along,

and we're having a great time. We're just talking, and it's breathtaking scenery. And we get to this castle, and we meet some people, and they say, oh, if you would just keep going over this mountain, you will have an unforgettable experience. There is a farmer there that is living. You literally will go back to the 18th century. That's how this farmer is living.

Just keep on going over the mountain and just walking down this trail. Not many people go over the mountain, but if you do, you will find this farm. He will put you up for the night. Sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke. And so

we start to get up to the top of the mountain, and now it's like getting darker and darker and darker. Maybe it's 8 o'clock. I don't know what time it is, but we've reached the peak, and now we almost can't even see where we're walking. But the skinny guy knows if we get down this mountain, we're going to have an experience like no other.

And that's what he was wired to do. And the portly guy is saying, hey, like fettuccine is being served down in the restaurant. And they both look at me and say, okay, what are we doing? And what do you think I did? Oh, this is a toughie. I want to say that you went for the village, but by the very fact that you asked me. What would you do?

And you love both of these guys. And you know that one guy really wants to go over the mountain. The other guy really wants to f over the mountain the other guy really wants to bet i say you can always get fettuccine it's not going away but uh easy to say is the armchair a listener of stories as is the case right now what did you do well i looked at them both and then i just realized look if something were to happen, like going down, I'm going, I'm going to regret it. And I knew in that moment, you know what, there's going to be a lot of those moments where I'm heading over the mountain. That was the moment I knew I'm going over the mountain. Not tonight. I'm going to make sure my portly friend is taken care of. He eats his fettuccine.

In a few days, he's getting on a plane. He's going to go back home. But after that, I'm going over the mountain. And that's what set off the trip. And it became completely addictive because I woke up every morning not knowing what was going to happen. And then you asked before, okay, well, where does the interviewing shift? So what happened was I had hardly any money. And I would go to a bus station or a train station and I would just walk up and say, where's the next train leave at? Or where's it headed?

And they would say a name. I'd say, okay, I want a ticket. So I would buy the ticket. Destination had no meaning to me whatsoever. What had meaning to me was I'd never been there before, and I'm going to take this trip down the aisle. The trip down the aisle was where all the stakes were because as I'm going down that aisle, I've got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. And the stakes are high.

Because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel. I was going to ask you how you paid for the trip. So it was just savings-based until it was extinguished? Well, there was very little money. I can't – I'm trying to let you know that like the stakes that were involved when I got on that train. You were very high. It was not – it was like an athletic event where you were going out and you had to get a roof over your head that night. I'll tell you how seriously I took this, and I'm going to tell you a story after this which shows you what I learned.

I'm walking down that aisle, and I see an empty seat next to a beautiful woman. I look at her hands. No rings. She's looking at me. She's smiling at me. She's smiling at me. She could be a supermodel. I swear I walked right on by. Why? Because there was no way she was taking me home.

There was no way she was taking me home. Now, nobody can see me, but if you saw me, you would know. The supermodel was not taking me home hey you know in fairness billy joel got uh christy brinkley christy brinkley that's another no offense to billy joel but he and i'm not comparing you to billy joel i think you're a very handsome man but just to say like i'll tell you a story about these things happen i'll tell you a story about this. These things happen. I'll tell you a story about this. I came to later regret that. All right? So this is years later, and I get set up working at Esquire,

where I do this What I've Learned column. And I get set up to do an interview with Petra Nemkova, the supermodel. And I'm waiting for her. She's supposed to arrive at like 8 o'clock or something, and she's late. So I'm sitting there waiting for her, and then she sits down, and we start talking. We had this amazing conversation.

People may not know, but she was in Thailand when that tsunami hit in like a bungalow with her best friend who basically lost his life. And she was swept away by the tsunami and narrowly survived. This is an amazing story. It took an hour and a half just to tell the tsunami story. And she's telling me these great stories and we're really hitting it off. And finally, an interview is

supposed to go for an hour and a half. We're at four hours. And it's not an interview anymore. I feel completely connected to her the way I would have been had I met her on a bus or a train. And I said to her, I said, Petra, I really,

I'm going to tell you something. I apologize. And she said, what for? And I said, because all those years, those 10 years I was traveling around the world, if the empty seat was next to it was next to you, I would have walked right on by you just because you were good looking. And she had a very amazing reaction. She grabbed me by the hand and squeezed my hand. And she said, well, don't worry, Cal. Tonight, I sat next to you, which is very cool, but it made me realize, and this is really, if you're a good guy who's a little scared to approach that woman, you should remember that story because they want to be treated normally. And I was talking to another actress about this and she really started riding me.

She said, okay, so you don't take that seat and now some asshole takes it and I got to put up with that asshole for the next hour and a half. Thank you very much, Cal. So you walked by this woman when you got on the train. Walk down the aisle.

You choose survival and housing over the prospective romance. Walked by the supermodel, and I'm looking down the car, and okay, that grandmother with no teeth eating the crackers out of her purse. There's the winner. So I walk up, sit down next to the grandma. Let's say we're in Hungary. And this happened in many cultures. But for the sake of this story, and this happened in Hungary, I sit down next to her and I'll ask her about goulash.

Now, of course, she can't speak English. My Hungarian at that point is, hi, how are you? I need to go to the bathroom. And some of the younger people on the train are watching me and grandma try and talk to each other. And naturally, they come over

and they start to translate. He wants to know what makes a great goulash. This grandma's chest just bursts with pride. And now she's talking about her grandmother making goulash, her mom making goulash, all the

ingredients that go into goulash, how they got to be put together just the right way. And then she looks at all these young Hungarians and said, you know, I've been riding on this train for decades. Not one of you has asked how I make my goulash. This American, he asks. You tell him he has to come to my house because I am going to prepare him goulash so he knows what it's like to eat goulash and hungry. All the people on the train come along. Now I'm staying with grandma. Not only does she invite the people on the train come along. Now I'm staying with grandma. Not only does she invite the people on the train, all her neighbors, all her friends, her relatives. Now I'm at the table,

room full of people. They're all surrounding me. The goul taste it. My eyes shut and I smile. And there's just a roar from this place. He loves grandma's goulash. So the party goes on for like four days. And during the

party, one of the neighbors says, well, you know, have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away from me. You got to come to taste the apricot brandy. That weekend, we're tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts. Another neighbor comes over to me. Have you ever been to Kishkin Hallas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kishkin Hallas.

Now we're off to Kishkin Hallas. I'm telling you, a single question about goulash could get me six weeks of lodging and meals. And that's how I got passed around the world. That's incredible. 10 years. 10 years. So what else did you learn about asking questions? Or if you want to tackle it a different way, feel free to take it in any direction. But what are some common mistakes that people make in asking people questions, whether it's on a train or otherwise?

But feel free to tackle either. You know what? That's a good question for a little later because that's what I discovered later on. At the time, and I'll bring it directly toward hiring people where questions are being asked of job candidates, like, what's your biggest weakness? Which they've already prepared like two hours on how to answer that question. You're not going to get a spontaneous good response to that.

I work too hard. Sometimes I get accused of being too detail-oriented. You got it. You got it. Nailed it. That is the wrong question. But we'll get to that because I wasn't there yet. I didn't even know what I was doing other than, okay, you've got to figure out a way to make people trust you through your questions.

And I no longer had to fill out a story. I didn't need a who, what, when, where, and why. It was just pure curiosity. And then it zoned into this basic fact. People want to talk about their lives. And often, especially if you go to a small town somewhere, people, they may not be able to talk so much about their lives because everybody talks about everybody in these little towns

and everybody knows the gospel, everybody knows the feelings, and you have to keep some things to yourself. But if this guy comes into your house and he's from 7,000 miles away, you can open up in ways and tell him things you would never tell people close by, knowing he's going to leave. And keep in mind, this was a day there were no cell phones. There was no social media. There was no social media. There was no Facebook.

There was no going on the Internet and finding out what this person just told me. It was like a secret. It was a safe haven. Yeah. I was completely safe haven for a lot of women because if they were in a small town and they are meeting somebody from their small town, everybody's going to be open to this new world. Plus, you can go over to the next town and have a meal and start talking and get to know each other. And you're kind of free of all the constrictions of where you live. And so, in a way, like I became handsome. You know, it's like I can remember in college going into like a bar in Colorado and like all the guys were like six foot. I don't know what it was at night, but everybody was like six foot four or taller, you know, and like the girls were over six.

But I'm just kind of walking around i'm like much smaller and like there was i just realized there was i don't fit in here i like it's just a different i'm not handsome here it's like every dutch or swedish party i've ever been to okay similar feeling okay Okay. So there you go. I'm traveling around, right? And I meet a six-foot-two Dutch girl. And want to share a room as we're traveling? Okay.

Fantastic. It was so easy because we were in a different place. And once you're traveling, you're a much different person than you are when you're at home. People see you differently and they treat you differently. You see people differently too. Yes. Wouldn't you say? I mean, in a sense that I don't recall who said this initially, but people will travel to the other side of the world to pay attention to things that they routinely ignore at home.

Bingo. Yeah. And it seems like a modern day or I should say a different manifestation of this is sitting down on an airplane next to someone. And you can get people to open up or they'll volunteer to open up in ways that they might not to other people because they assume rightly in most cases they're never going to see you again that's it a hundred percent and when you talk about seeing people differently when you're waking up in the morning and you don't know what's going to happen, and then you meet somebody, the person becomes like the most fascinating person on the world in that moment.

And they feel that because you don't know their life, so you're starting to ask them questions, and they're getting this attention. It's like you're, I don't want to say you're making them into a rock star, but they're getting the same kind of attention, the questions that are coming, why did you do that? What kind of friends do you have? What's this culture like here? And all of a sudden, they're feeling like they're in the spotlight, and it feels good.

And for women, it feels great. Because also now, and i'm sure if you're feeling boxed in and you meet somebody from afar and oh i wonder what it's like in america maybe you'll like me maybe it'll take me it'll take me home with them maybe i can visit and so all of these conversations are just filled with possibilities and potentials. Yeah. It's beautiful. In both directions, too, I think.

I mean, I remember just in some of my travels, I mean, you come across not just the natives, but you meet other people who are traveling from distant lands and kind of finding their own way in the same way that you are. And you start to wonder, like, well, maybe I should visit Turkey. Maybe I should visit the paprika capital of Hungary. And it's just that sort of the endless possibilities when divorced from, like, the routine of your life at home that are so exciting. Yeah, it's that. And also, I remember that the skinny guy and I were in Yugoslavia. And this was right before the Olympics in Sarajevo.

And it was cold. And I remember we looked at each other and just, you know, it's like too cold here. We didn't have, clothing. And I said to him, you know, there are camel races in Douz, Tunisia. And a day later, we were in Tunisia. We just got on a flight and flew to Tunisia and headed to Duz we missed the races but you know the next thing you knew we've got pictures of us in the middle of the Sahara Desert and so there was

just the possibility of look it's even more like that now where you can, you got the internet to help you connect with somebody. You can get on a plane and be in a different world. Sure. Couch surfing. I mean, there are cost-free options out there. If couch surfing was here when I was going around the world, I don't know. I might still be going. I might still be going. I'll tell you that it was the end of the trip that changed my style of interviewing again.

But if I could have been couch surfing, I can't even imagine the potential I would have had. Because from what I'm told, like you get rated, isn't it? It's sort of like Uber. You rate the driver. That's right. So you rate the place you stay and they rate the guest. So basically, I'm coming in with all these stories to regale you from these different

parts of the world. I mean, I'd get A ratings across. I'd get five stars across the board. And then everybody would want, come to my place. Please come to my place. But there was none of that. And every day you had to get on the train or the bus. Unless people were passing me around.

And after a while, it became easier and easier because it was, well, you know, I got a cousin here, and then I'd get off the train and the cousin would be waiting for me. And a party would be waiting for me at his house when I got there. So really, it was like a 10-year party. So I do want to get to the end of the trip and the impact on the interviewing. But first, and I can't believe I haven't asked you this before, but how did you hone your ability to tell stories? Because you're very good at asking questions, but that doesn't automatically make one good at telling stories.

Maybe part of that is through writing, because that's what i was doing i would interview people and then i would have to put what i got down in a specific order or a non-specific order in order to manipulate people into leaning closer what's going to happen what's going to happen what's going to happen? What's going to happen? What's going to happen? Meaning like an in media arrest, sort of in the middle of the action type of start to pull them in? Yeah, something exactly. You started to pull them in and then you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Now you have to go back to the beginning. I suckered you in here. But then there are other more complicated ways where you don't start that way in the beginning and you save it for the end, but you do it in a more nuanced way. It's almost like, okay, I'm reading, but what is something?

Could you give me an example? I'm so curious. Because for people who aren't writers, maybe, I mean, if, and I'm not going to lose track here, but the, I haven't been in journalism school, but when I've taken some writing classes, they talk about like the lead and you get, at least for nonfiction stuff, right? You get a couple of, you get a couple of statistics, you need a couple of quotes, like three people is a trend. And then you sort of piece it together. Don't bury the lead meaning bring this sort of attention grabbing piece to the top it's and so on we talked about the briefly the in media arrest what would be a more subtle way to approach an opener okay so just say you had a murder story

all right all right and you were operating by that principle in journalism like put put it right at the top. And then, okay, this horrible thing happened. Let's go back to the beginning. And then now you've got to add everything up to see why that moment happened. Another option is to start it in like a very ordinary way with just a twist that tells you, something's going to go on here. I don't know. And you just keep reeling them in slowly. Just give a little more.

Oh, man. And then they met this person. What's going to happen now? And then you save it till near the end of the story. Part of the problem is when you do that in a magazine, like they'll give it away in the headline. I was going to ask about the headline. that tactic of telling a story that is slowly grabs you in and it just puts out a little bait and it gives you that smell there's something interesting here so let me let me follow and then you're dragging the line so that they've got to keep following it and they're feeling you know what there's

something something big is behind here and and make them get to the end and then if you can deliver i don't want to say it's orgasmic but you know it's funny i was thinking of like this sexual analogy though it's like it's instead of the the wham bam thank you ma'am oh quick fix it's like okay i didn't think i didn't think that i needed some tantric sex and two hours of this turns out it's pretty great and then you get the payoff you're like you know what that was totally worth it that's that's you've invented you've just named it it's the tantric sex the tantric structure storytelling that's Sting would love it. You know, six hours. So at the, at the, at the end of your travels, what happened that affected your?

Okay. So I'm going around, I'm going and having a great time. And at this, after 10 years, I mean, I got a pretty good network of people, so I don't really even have to rely on meeting somebody. Your grandmother's eating salt beans. Yeah, because enough people know me, and when you're in Brazil, oh, there's this fazenda de cacao, this farm where they make, grow the cocoa beans. And, like, great couple, just go there.

We'll, like, we'll send the letter in advance. They'll be expecting you. So, I am, at this point, it's almost like I'm a guest that's now expected. Part of the family.

Really, I'm part of the family before I even arrive. And a friend, the skinny guy, the skinny guy got married and he decided to take a year and spend it in Cochabamba, Bolivia. So I hear that and I'm thinking – I hope his wife-to-be knew that plan before signing up. No, she did. Okay. And that was it. Let's do something.

We don't have any kids. Let's do something. We don't have any kids. Let's do something outrageous that nobody expected. And so naturally I hear Cochabamba, Bolivia. Hey, I was in Peru. Now skinny guys moving to Cochabamba. Hey, I'll spend a few months in coach obama so i'm there and i get a call from the washington post sunday magazine and again going back to this nexus uh the guy in charge had worked at inside sports and now he was in charge of his own magazine and he called me up and he said you know what we're doing an issue about great beaches around the world. We know you've been to Brazil before. Is there a story about a beach in Brazil

that you could write up for us? And at the time I said, look, I'm in Cochabamba, you would think it's crazy. But I was really getting into Cochabamba, Bolivia. It's a completely different culture. And there's an Altiplano. It's a landlocked nation. You really are experiencing something different as a traveler. But I said, okay. You know what? I said, I actually heard of a beach in Brazil. You might not want me to go there because you're probably doing this as a travel issue to basically hook up with, get travel agents and airlines so people can go to these destinations. This beach that I heard of is on the north of Brazil. From what I heard, you can't even get there unless you go on like a crude sailing vessel and on muleback. And the editor is saying, you know, why don't you just check this place out?

So I say, okay. And I leave Cochabamba. I go to Brazil, and I end up in a city called Fortaleza. Fortaleza. And just as I arrive, the first trip to this isolated beach, sand dunes that look like they're straight out of the Sahara, abutted against the most sparkling waters of the Caribbean.

The first tour bus is going to go to this place. They're going to be dune buggies. We don't have to go by mule. We don't need the crude sailing vessels. And I'm just right on time. And so first bus leaves midnight, Friday night. And I buy my ticket, get on the bus, and I let down my guard, and I spoke to the beautiful woman on the bus on the way to the enchanted beach in Brazil, and that was the end of the trip. And I would tell you the rest of the story,

except it takes two hours to do. We'll be at a, well, you're not doing it on tape, but if digital has any limits, we'll be out of there. But the important thing about it was that was a moment where my style of interviewing had to change again. Because I was no longer traveling around the world. The woman and I got married. We moved to New York, started to have kids. And then I began to write for Esquire magazine. And all the things that I learned on buses,

trains, I was then able to project into Esquire's What I've Learned column, which consists of interviews with the most celebrated, accomplished, and creative people on earth. And I have the handy recorder, the H4N, on top of one of these, in fact. The What I've Learned, this is the third volume? Is that right? That's the third volume.

These interviews have been done for almost 20 years now with everybody from presidents to premieres to movie stars. And the idea is for me to interview them and, using their own words, show them in a light that you never really knew. So you think you know these people, and then you listen to their experiences, and you say, whoa, I never knew that about Robert De Niro or Mikhail Gorbachev. And so that is where these conversations on the trains were so important because I did not approach these interviews with Woody Allen or Wolfgang Puck, George Clooney, as if I was a journalist. I approached them as if they were sitting on the train next to the empty seat,

and I just sat down next to them. And that is where the evolution continued until actually very recently. It was 20 years. So it took me like 10 years to understand that an interview was more than meet the press, but then another 20 to figure out that it was more than sitting down with George Clooney and having the time of my life. Because a crazy thing happened to me, caught me completely off guard and made me think about interviewing in a whole different way. And this was only very

recently. Can you talk about that or should we keep that off? No, a hundred percent. Can you, can you mention that just cause you brought it up and then we'll, we'll dial back the clock. Sure. And can I show you something first also? So I've digested this entire thing with highlights and so on. There are notes on writer's block. Jodie Foster's comment, one of my favorites, just for folks, in the end, winning is sleeping better. I just love that. So good. Highlighted Woody Allen.

It just goes on and on. So I love this entire compilation and encourage people to check it out. But what changed so recently? So I was asked to give a speech on a cruise, and I never, ever, ever went on cruises before. In fact, I got to say, it's almost laughable because there are certain people, like they hear cruise and they turn up their nose.

And I think I was one of those people. In fact, I had a friend who's a writer and his wife wanted to go on a cruise. And she kept on pestering him, pestering him. And my wife finally said to him, why don't you take your wife on a cruise? And he said, because I draw the line. I said, oh man,

maybe I think about cruises that way. And then I was invited to speak on a cruise, but it was a special cruise. It was a cruise called Summit at sea yep and so summit series guys okay so you you know that you know these folks and so basically it's a cruise ship filled with 4 000 entrepreneurial minds and that was wild to begin with i because i had never i had limited experiences with entrepreneurs

and then you put yourself on a ship with 4 000 entrepreneurs your life is going to change a lot of potential energy yeah it's like ted plus coachella plus infinite amounts of alcohol. There you go. And you can't even get on an elevator without meeting somebody. Somebody on the elevator is going to say, what's your name? I'm Michael. This is where I work. This is what I do. Who are you?

I felt at the end of like three days, my head was really, it was like getting pumped up with the helium. I was about to explode. It was an amazing experience. And like you're sitting down and like at dinner and the guy next to you said, oh, this is the rocket ship I'm building. You want to see? And he pulls out his phone and he shows you his rocket ship. This is like wild. And it was like traveling around the world, except the world came to you. I think Jane Goodall was there also. I mean, it just goes on and on. And like the world is coming to you and wanting to hear you and tell you what they're up to. So like in three days at Summit at Sea, you literally can go around the world.

And I was totally unprepared for this. I was asked to give a speech called Decoding the Art of the Interview. And I'd never spoken before, didn't know what it was going to be like. But I have experience with Mikhail Gorbachev and Donald Trump and De Niro and Muhammad Ali later on in life that they're good stories. And so I've been telling these stories as I was traveling around on Saturday nights, and people always, oh, tell Ali's story. So I knew, okay, I don't know how to give a speech, but I can tell these stories. And so I go up and I tell my, and here's the thing about it. There are 20 events going on at once. Generally, when you look at that, what I've column i'm invisible i don't write a single word

i just interview them the subject and then put it down in their own words so i'm not a guy who you would ever see on tv that you would really know i i'm invisible so i'm thinking, you know, yeah, there are people who know what I do, and people in the know will come up and tell And in fact, I had read Pencils for Promise by Adam Braun. And he talked about giving, it might have been his first speech. And I guess he was expecting a crowd. And he had maybe six friends attending and only one person other than his six friends showed up. And he went out and he gave this speech. And what he realized was you give the speech as if that one person is the entire audience. And it turned out that she was so enthused that she later went to work for his charity. So I went in prepared. That book prepared me. If there's one person in there, I don't care. I'm going to give that person the best. I'm not going to be disappointed. I'm just going to go

out. I'm going to tell my stories, give a few lessons. And let's see how it goes. Like maybe the same day that I'm supposed to speak, they move my event. So it's now even in the program. If you're going to my event, you're going to the wrong place. So now I'm thinking, okay, I'm down to like 10 people. That's cool. I'll speak to the one. The time for the speech comes,

people start filing in. And I had set up this speech around wine. And there's a reason for it because in one of the stories, we could get to a little later, I went out to learn about wine by becoming the sommelier at Windows of the World at the top of the World Trade Center right before the planes hit it. So I'm very attached to wine.

And what I wanted to do was to have everybody drinking a glass of wine while I told these stories. So if I messed up, they were still having a good time. Also, yeah, helps with reality bending also. That's right. So I have it. We set it up so that all the wine is there, ready to be served to people as they come in. But budgeting for 10 people. Well, no, I said, okay, there are like 150 seats.

If 150 people show up, fine. Have the glasses and the wine, but let's face it, you may only go through a bottle. So they were all prepared and place seated, 150, this funky nightclub. And all of a sudden, the time starts to roll around, and I'm watching, and people are just flooding in. They take up all the seats. And I was very specific to the people serving the wine. I set up this speech to have toasts throughout to keep everybody's involvement going. So everybody had to lift their glass and, like, scream with me to keep everyone engaged.

And so I said to the people delivering the wine, look, I need you to be able to walk down this corridor down the center and keep everybody's glasses filled because it's bad luck to toast with empty glass. And so we're all set. And now every seat's taken. And there's still like 10 minutes before the speech set to start. And people are still coming in. And now they're coming down the aisle and they're sitting like at my ankles and they're filling the aisle. They're cross-legged in the aisle. They're sitting behind the bar.

That's right. Taking up the foot space. To the back, the complete back. And now there's a line of people out that can't get in. I've become like the hottest nightclub in New York City, and I'd never done this before. Not to derail this, but what do you attribute that to? I think what happened is we... They switched you with Richard Branson in the program?

Yeah. I'm just messing with you. No, that's good. We'll have to work on that next time. I think what happened is we titled it Decoding the Art of the Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert De Niro, and Donald Trump. And naturally, it said, like, Cal Fussman has interviewed these people, but

people came in wondering, what's it like to interview Gorbachev, or De Niro, or Donald Trump? And we'll definitely dig into some of that. Okay. And so I'm watching all these people flood in, and now the aisle is completely cluttered. I can't get wine to people. Now I'm starting to freak out because I don't want people toasting with an empty glass. And the back of the room is like,

it's getting jam-packed and so i just said well just go out and give your speech so the speech it lasts for about an hour and i guess a really good response but what was surprising about it was afterward like there was a long line of people to see me, and they're business people. And the first couple that came up, two women, they say, okay, you taught us about asking questions. We've got a problem. We are really passionate about our business. We can't seem to find people to work for us that are just as passionate as we are.

What can we do? What can we ask? I said, oh, that's easy. Just tell them the Dr. Dre story. Dr. Dre story, yeah. I said, I, that's easy. Just tell them the Dr. Dre story. Dr. Dre story. Yeah. I said, I was interviewing Dr. Dre and I said to him, what's the longest you've gone working on a passion project without sleep? And he said, oh man, when I'm working on something I really care about, I'm in the zone. I don't think about sleep. It's just I go until

it's done. Could be 72 hours. So I said, just tell the person you're interviewing, Dr. Dre, he goes 72 hours. What's the longest you've ever gone on a passion project without sleep. You'll be able to tell something about that person by their answer. And look, they may tell you, you know what? I get eight hours sleep every night because I come to work every morning fully charged. And you're going to know, hey, maybe that's the right person for a certain job in your company. It's not going to be the most completely passionate person, but maybe they're the person that's got to do something nuts and bolts. Right, the CFO or the guy who interacts with Wall Street. Exactly.

Or gal. There it is. Yeah. And so you will find out through that answer something that's going to help you make a decision. And your girls are looking. You can tell they're looking at it. Okay, that's our question. We'll tell them the Dr. Dre story. And then people started coming up to me, like running successful businesses who had to hire a lot of people

all at once because the business is doing really well. And you could tell they were nervous because all of a sudden a business that starts with an idea and only them is now taking on a thousand people in a year. How are you sure that those 1,000 people have what you had when you started the company? That essence, because if they don't have it, the essence of the company is no longer what you wanted. And guys like that and women are coming up and and saying you know next time you're in san francisco can we get together because i can tell there's there's obviously an issue with hiring

and and it's funny because now i'm starting to ask everybody about it, and I'm really becoming very conscious that this is an issue that's really important to a lot of people. Oh, it's the challenge. We were chatting before we started recording about Silicon Valley and some of the issues surrounding attracting and retaining top talent, it's the fundamental challenge for a lot of these startups in particular, when you go from perhaps hiring, say, if you bootstrap for a period of time, 10 people in a year to hiring 10 people a day or a week. It's a massive challenge putting together a process for that. So question for you about the presentation. So if we were to try to decode Decoding the Art of the Interview, is that the name? Decoding the Art of the Interview.

Okay. So if we're going to try to meta that and decode the presentation itself, what story or stories, and I don't think I've heard any of them for that matter yet, did people seem to respond best to? And there's one that I have tucked in the back of my mind because when Alex, mutual friend of ours, asked me if I had heard this story and I said no, he was just, I'm not going to say disgusted, but just speechless at how I had not managed to hear this yet. But what did people respond to best in terms of stories? Interesting.

Different people respond differently to the different stories. One, if I was deconstructing the speech, one of the things that I wanted to do was to explain how much you can do with a single question in a short amount of time. And to back that up, I told a story about my meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. So I'll take you back to, say, 2008. I think it was February. We're in New Orleans. And I'm in a hotel lobby.

I'm all set to interview Mikhail Gorbachev for Esquire's What I've Learned column. We got an hour and a half. And fully prepared, ready to go. Couldn't have been happier. And I get a call. I pick up the phone. Hi, Cal.

It's the publicist. Sorry to have to pass this on, but the interview with Mr. Gorbachev is going to have to be cut short. And now I'm thinking, oh, man, was it going to be down to an hour? Because that's the thing. With this What I've Learned column, I can't fluff it up. I can't fill it out. I can't use my words. They have to be Mikhail Gorbachev's words, and they have to be wise words.

I need, at the very very least an hour to extract. Yeah. Move into his soul in a way that makes him feel comfortable and extract that wisdom at the very least 45 minutes. So I say to her, okay, okay. How much time do I got? 10 minutes. 10 minutes. 10 minutes? I don't want to say are you nuts, but it's impossible.

I can't do this interview in 10 minutes. Cal, Cal, look, I understand, but a lot of very important people have been added to the list. See, Mr. Gorbachev, there's nothing we can do about this. Do you want the 10 minutes or not? What am I going to do? Say no? Okay, I'll take the 10 minutes.

So I'm sitting down and I'm thinking, and the more I'm thinking about this, the worse it's getting. Because number one, I'm knowing that all of my questions are going to be translated into Russian and all of his answers

are going to be translated back into English. You actually have five minutes. We're moving down. Plus, you're going to sit down and you're going to exchange pleasantries. It's not going to start in a finger snap. You have Two and a half minutes. Yeah.

It wasn't two minutes, but it wasn't much more. And so the publicist leads me into the room. And at this point, I'm thinking, okay, if it's two and a half minutes, just do your best. And I look up, and there he is, Gorby. And he's a little older than I remember. He's about 77 at the time. He was in town to speak about nuclear weapons and why they should be abolished.

And we sit down, and I'm looking at him, and I just know, just know he's expecting my first question to be about nuclear arms, world politics, Perestroika, Ronald Reagan. He's just ready. So I looked at him and I said, what's the best lesson your father ever taught you? And he is surprised, pleasantly surprised. He looks up and he doesn't answer. He's like thinking about this. And it's as if after a little while,

he's seeing on the ceiling this movie of his past. And he starts to tell me this story. And it's this story about the day his dad was called to go fight in World War II. See, Gorbachev lived on a farm. And it was a long distance between this farm and the town where Gorbachev's dad had to join the other men to go off to war. And so the whole family took this trip with the dad to this town to wish him well as he went off. And Gorbachev is talking about this trip and he's providing these intricate details. And I'm transfixed. but I'm saying like, oh my God, that's the worst possible question. This interview is going to be over. He's not even going to get to town yet.

So finally they do get to town and Gorbachev's dad takes the family into this little shop and he gets ice cream for everybody. And Gorbachev starts describing this ice cream and the cup that it was in. It's an aluminum cup. And as he's telling me, it's almost like he's got his hand out in front of him and the cup's in it. It's that vivid to him.

And it's as if in this moment, we both have this same realization. That cup of ice cream is the reason that he was able to make peace with Ronald Reagan and end the Cold War. Because that cup of ice cream, just the memory of it, is the memory of it is the memory of what it felt like for his dad to go off to war, for him to see his dad going off to war. That cup of ice cream in the memory was the dread that he knew of the possibility of never seeing his father again. And we are looking at each other like, oh man, this is deep. He didn't expect it any more than I did.

Just at that moment, knock on the door. It's the publicist. Publicist comes in, very officious. Skorbachev, Cal, time for the interview is up. And he looks at it and he wags his finger. He says, no, I want to talk to him. Publicist puts up her hands. Yes, sir.

And she backs out sheepishly. The door shuts. Conversation continues. Now we're getting deeper. Ten minutes later, another knock on the door. This time the publicist comes in a little slower. Mr. Gorbachev, Cal. Gorbachev says, no, I want to talk to him.

She backs out. Ten minutes later, knock on the door. This time she's in a panic. The train cars are just piling up. Mr. Gorbachev. Please. I've got the mayor of New Orleans right outside. There's a long line of people.

We're way behind schedule. And Gorbachev just smiles. And he didn't say anything, but the look on his face was, Hey, what can I do, Cal? So I said, Thank you. I knew I pushed it to as long as it could be pushed. And I left. And the interview was a success in that it had a little story like that. And people could understand something about Gorbachev that they might never have known. But for me, when I look back on it,

what I realized was the power of the first question going straight to the heart and not the head. Because it was that question that went into his heart that took us to that very deep place and enabled the interview to continue to go. And because the interview could go, I was able to fill out the page for Esquire. Otherwise, that would have been it. There would have been no way the interview would have run. So lesson number one, when people ask me what tips would I give, is aim for the heart, not the head. Once you get the heart, you can go to the head. Once you get the heart and the head, then you'll have a pathway to the soul.

And so basically the speech was lessons tied to stories that backed them up. And whether it was with Gorbachev or Donald Trump or Robert De Niro or Muhammad Ali, each story allowed the listener to understand something very basic. So I'm going to pick a name that we haven't heard yet, just because this is the one that made Alex dance around, because that's all he could do to respond before he insisted that I ask you about it. So Julio Cesar Chavez. Yeah, that's another story. And it goes back to a time when I was a teenager. And again, as I started out, you knew that my childhood hero was Muhammad Ali. And so I followed boxing. And naturally, I wanted to fight.

Now, where I lived, there were no boxing gyms around. What we had in New York was a tournament called the Golden Gloves. Naturally, I wanted to fight. Now, where I lived, there were no boxing gyms around. What we had in New York was a tournament called the Golden Gloves. Golden Gloves, big deal. Yeah, sponsored by the Daily News. The finals sold out Madison Square Garden every year. Now, I had no idea how to fight. And I wanted to do it.

So basically, like a month before the Golden Gloves started, I showed up at a gym that was a few towns over in a bad neighborhood and said, like, I want to train for the Golden Gloves. You had to be 16. I had just turned 16. I entered. And this manager pulled me aside and said, no, no, no, no. That's not the way it works. Like, you don't know how to fight.

You don't know anything about fighting. What you do is you come here every night, and we'll teach you. And within a year, we can put you in with people who have your experience, and you'll learn. And then a year from now, you'll have some experience and you can go into the golden gloves. You know,

if you're good, you'll, you'll do okay. I said, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, I came to fight. Thanks pops, but listen, that's right.

And basically I w I was not, I wasn't on the tall side. so I was a short guy and very short arms. And my style was basically, hey, man, I'm just going to rush across the ring and I'm just going to start throwing punches. Joe Frazier style. That's right. And you'll see what happens. Because like Joe Frazier knew how to fight. Right, right. what happens because like joe frazier knew how to fight right all i could do was just throw reckless wild crazy punches one after another i was in good shape so i could throw punches

three minutes around just start to finish and it was it was actually for the people in the gym, it was kind of comical to watch because everybody knew that when I finally got in the ring, one of two things was going to happen. Maybe I'd be able to just simply overwhelm whoever was in the ring just by sheer virtue of, I'm coming at you to throw everything i got and i'm not stopping the tasmanian devil that's right you got it and so the the month passes or so and it's time for my fight in the golden gloves and and there was somebody at this

club that was going to represent me and i show up the club he was going to represent me. And I show up at the club. He was going to drive me into Queens, New York. I was living at Long Island at the time. And I was all set. And so I show up for my manager to pick me up, and he's not there. Lifted the altar. Right. Now I don't have a manager.

I don't have a lift to get into this place um and there's no cell phones you know you're standing by a payphone throwing in quarters like who can help me i gotta get to the fights i gotta fight and you know of course everybody in the school knows about this and and so it's at a high school in Queens, but a very large gym arena. It's like a Catholic school. And I managed to get somebody to drive me down there and arrived just in the nick of time. But now I'm all nervous just to get there.

And I'm able to check in. I wrap my hands, get my gloves on and out of nowhere comes my opponent in the dressing room and in the most casual way possible, he just puts out his left hand and says like, Jesus, that was his name.

But you can tell, not only was there a scar down one side of his face to his lip, but you could just tell he had done this like 400 times before he was eight years old. Right? This is like checking in for work. That's right. It's complete. And so now I'm starting to realize, uh-oh, this could be a predicament.

And I get somebody who I've never met before to work my corner. And this guy has no idea of my style. No idea. He thinks like, okay, I know how to fight. And so he says, okay, kid, listen, we're going to go in the ring. I want you to just take it nice and easy. You move around a little, show him the jab

and let's see what happens. So we start to walk in the rainer, and this is like mid-70s. And in fact, it's not too, not right around a few years before the Rocky movie came out, you know, The Great white hope. Well, I'm like the only white fighter on this card and 90% of the audience is all white. Okay. So when I come in the ring, it's like the great white hope as like finally arrived, like people are standing, cheering, going nuts and like looking around and it's like it's surreal i i've lost sense of where i'm at and this in one ear i got okay move around jab i i've i've forgotten who i am and we get to the ring go to the the center, get the instructions, and I am like completely lost. I do not know what happened.

All I remember was getting up, or actually my eyes opening and seeing like three fingers that were very blurry. And then like I'm hearing four five six and i get up and now i can kind of see clearly and jesus is coming at me and his right hand comes back and it's like right in front of me right in front of me, right in front of me, and the bell rings. And so I go back to the corner, and now I'm pissed. What just happened to me? Get in there. Throw your punches. Go at him. And I'm sitting on the stool. The manager's saying something. I don't even hear what he's saying because all I'm hearing is myself just screaming at myself. Throw punches. Remember who you

are. In the meantime, the referee's coming over and he's saying like, son, are you okay? Are you okay? And I'm saying, of course I'm okay. I'm going to kick his ass. I'm going to come out. You're going to see some punches. Next thing you know, the referee is

waving his hands and stopping the fight. I didn't respond to out. You're going to see some punches. Next thing you know, like the referee is like waving his hands and stop the fight. I didn't respond to him. I was like, I was out. So this dialogue that you were having with yourself, like that was entirely internal. That's right. I had no idea.

I had no idea. The worst part of all this is my dad is in the crowd, and he brought two of his childhood friends. Oh, God. So now, you can imagine what I'm hearing. Anytime there's a family reunion, anytime this comes up, we need a funny story. It's like, oh, remember Cal and the Golden Gloves. And so I'm hearing this again and again and again over the years. And finally, it must have been, well, like almost 20 years later,

right after I meet the woman in Brazil, she moves to New York. We get married and I'm watching the TV and Julio Cesar Chavez, the great Mexican champion, junior welterweight, 140 pounds. He was like 85, 86 and 0 at that point. And I'm watching him on TV as he's cornering an opponent. I got a big bag of chips between my legs. And at this point, right after the marriage, he's put on a bunch of weight. So I got a beer belly. So I got a beer in one hand, chips in the other, belly between them. And I'm screaming at the TV, come on, finish him off.

What are you doing? Finish him off. Julio. And my wife looks at me and says, Hey, like, calm down. We've heard your boxing stories because you know,

my, that was the first thing when my family met her that they indoctrinated her, you know, about Cal and the golden gloves. Don't you? So I look at her, I look at the TV, and I say, and it's clear what needs to be done here, because I've got to get my manhood back.

And I said to my wife, you know what? You see that guy on the TV, Julio Cesar Chavez? I'm going to fight him. And so naturally, my wife, like, you're crazy. Forget it. You know, we've heard the story. But now I know I have to do this to close this chapter in my life, no matter what. And so. No, just to place it. So at the time you're writing editor at GQ, was a guy named David Granger, who later became the editor of Esquire.

And when he did, he brought me and a bunch of writers with him. So this all started at GQ. And the day after my wife is laughing at me, I march into David Granger's office, and I say, hey, you want to buy a story? I'm going to go fight Julio Car chavez he says what i give him the background and he said all right let me go in and check with my boss let's see what our insurance policy looks like oh they made me that was the first thing you're gonna have to sign documents saying we're not responsible for this this is all on you. I said, that's fine. And I go down to the Times Square

gym on 42nd Street at the time and up these rickety old wooden steps. It was like something out of the past. Like you could literally hear each foot that you put down. And then there's the drumbeat of the bags. And you walk up there. And since I had followed boxing, I knew who people were. And I just start looking around at the trainers. And there was a guy I recognized. His name was Harold Weston. And he had fought Tommy Hearns,

the welterweight champion. Tommy Hearns was nasty. Yeah. And he had actually done pretty well. He was a very slick boxer. And he wasn't that tall. And Tommy Hearns was like 6'2", 6'3", tremendous reach, and an

unbelievable power in his hands. And I think that fight went a while. I know Tommy scored a TKO, but Harold had done pretty well avoiding the punishment. And so I went over to him and I said, hey, I'm going to be fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. Do you think you can train me? And now he's just like, what is this? Who sent you here looking for the hidden cameras? You got it. That's exactly it.

And then he's called. This guy says he's going to fight Julio Cesar Chavez. Everybody in the gym is laughing. Are you a professional? No. Like, are you an Amchuel? I had one fight in the Golden Gloves 20 years ago. It didn't turn out.

And now, Harold's saying, like, okay, okay. You're really going to do this, huh? I'll tell you what. You come back tomorrow, like, 3 o'clock, and we'll do a little workout. And, you know, we'll see. So I come back the next day, and this guy, he just tortured me. The whole point was, get out of here. You're not fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. You have no idea what it's like to be a boxer. Like, a little respect for the of here. You're not fighting Julio Cesar Chavez. You have no idea what it's like to be a boxer. Like a little respect for the craft here. And after three, three hours, I mean, literally,

I was like reduced to tears again and again and again. And I just kept going. And I remember getting home to my apartment and I rang the door open. I literally collapsed into my wife's arms. And she dragged me to the tub and had hot water going. She threw in some Epsom salts and I just like laid in there for like three hours, unable to move. And as I left, after when I left the gym, everybody in the gym was placing bets whether I was going to come back the next day.

And I did. And that was the first moment where, oh, like, hey hey that's interesting and he said okay like i understand you're writing this for gq he was a fashionable guy so that lured him in you know the style element and he said so you're really gonna do this and i And I said, yeah. I said, look, I'm just asking for one round with Julio Cesar Chavez. One round. That's it. But I'm going out there and I'm giving it my all.

He said, well, look, let me show you ways to get through that round. Now, remember, this is a slick boxer. I'm going to teach you how to move, and you will survive. We can do this. Look, if he's taking this really seriously, you're going down. But who knows? Maybe we don't know how he's going to react. Maybe he'll be curious,

and I will teach you how to move around the ring and protect yourself so that you don't die. And now in my mind, I'm also now thinking about the fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard. I don't know if you remember. It was a second fight. No mas. That's right. Where in the middle of the fight, we don't know what really happened. It's never fully been explained.

In the first fight they had, Duran won by a decision in Montreal. And afterward, he went back to Panama as a national hero. 50,000 people waiting for him at the airport, and he just had like a three-month binge party and gained like 50 pounds. In the meantime, Leonard, after his first loss, went back home and was like training the next day for the rematch.

So they set it up to have an immediate rematch six months later and after maybe two months left, Durant started to train. Now he had to take off 40 or 50 pounds. He was in no condition to do this, but he dramatically lost the weight and we'll never know, but he was overweight a few days before the fight. Now, whether he took like Exlax or something to purge his system or whether after he made the weight, he went out and ate three steaks and a bunch of orange juice. And we know that his stomach was not in the best of shape. But we also don't know if when he got in the ring, his stomach was bothering him or Leonard adopted a style that wouldn't allow Duran to hit him and basically broke Duran mentally. So we don't know if it was his stomach or his mind or both, but midway in the

fight, Duran basically just throws up his hands and says, no mas. No more. No more. And Leonard celebrates, and everybody watching was in disbelief because for 20 years, Roberto Duran had been the epitome

of the macho man. He was like Mike Tyson of the lightweights in his era. He just bored straight ahead. Nothing could stop this guy. He was relentless. And to see him quit was like what I felt about my experience in the Golden Gloves. So I basically had to somehow eradicate all that feeling.

And I had to do it in a way that left me with some shred of pride at the end. So Harold says to me, okay, look, I'm going to teach you how to move. And he was like a very classy fighter. And as he's showing me how to move and he and he was like a very classy fighter and as he's showing me how to move around and avoid punches i said no harold no no no it's not not the way we're gonna do this no no the first time i got in trouble because i didn't go out throwing punches and that's how i'm coming out this time i'm coming out to throw punches and I want to do

it just like Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier is a short guy, stocky arms, just bobbing, weaving, coming straight ahead. And Harold says, no, no, no, I'm not going to do this. Because basically now I'm not going to do this because basically now I'm asking Harold to teach me a style that is going to bring all of my energy, full focus, full bore straight ahead, right at one of the most damaging punchers in incoming missiles. That's right. And so he, he's just fighting with me. Like there's no way I'm not being a party to this. You know, if we do this, we do it smart and you come out alive.

Like, you're not going in there like Joe Frazier. All there is is that gal. You're not smoking gal. That's right. And I said, no, I want you to teach me like Joe Frazier. And he said, okay, you want to be smoking Joe? I can teach you how to be smoking Joe. And he pulls out a rope and he sets it from one, the top of the ropes on one side of the ring to the other. And he makes me start bobbing and weaving under this rope. Now, anybody

who has never done this before, like after a minute, your thighs are burning. And basically, Harold's idea is, I will make him do this so long that he comes to his senses and fights the way I tell him so I can protect him. But I just, no matter how much it burned, I just got down low and I just bobbed and weaved and moved my head. And then he'd take me to the bags. And now he's teaching me how to throw punches. Because I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. And then you have to get in the ring.

And now, like, I'm 35 years old and all these kids are like 19, 20. They love to get in the ring because they want to beat the crap out of me. And believe me, they were because I did not know how to fight. But every day, I just kept on going back. I literally trained like a fighter. It must have been for like four months. And plus, on the other hand, I had to figure out a way to get Julio Cesar Chavez in the ring with me. He had no idea this. He had no idea that you're

in this intensive training camp with no agreed upon fight. No, not a clue. He doesn't know that I exist. And I am training like three hours every afternoon, plus running in the morning, plus calisthenics at night, eating just the way Harold's telling me. My weight goes from I was about 165. Now I'm down to less than 147, closing in on 140. Chavez fights at 140. At this point, he's 87 and 0. I don't know how many knockouts,

but I think it was in the 80s. Very high percentage. Yeah, very high percentage. I remember also, just as a side note, because I was mystified and just captivated by Julio Cesar Chavez, that at some point, they looked at x-rays of his head

and his skull is like twice as thick as normal human beings. That's right. So he was used to coming straight at people and absorbing whatever punishment they were dishing out in order to land his shots. And believe me, when Harold heard that I was doing it, he said, look, Cal, I know a guy who fought Julio Cesar Chavez. His name is Juan Laporte.

Basically, after that fight, Laporte was pissing blood for a long time because one of Chavez's biggest shots was his left hook to the liver. He's saying, you don't understand. This is

a professional athlete at the top of his profession. You know, a lot of guys think, oh, if I was out on that football field, I would have made that catch. You know, they see a professional drop the ball. I would have brought that in. And lots of times they drop passes that the rest of us might have caught. But you don't understand what it's like to be up against a professional athlete until you are.

Because even these amateur kids were knocking my head off every day. But I just kept on coming back up them steps, kept on coming back up them steps. Finally, a friend of mine, the skinny guy, writing for Sports Illustrated, had been sent to do a story about Julio Cesar Chavez. So while he's out interviewing Julio Cesar Chavez, he says to him, oh, by the way, I got a friend who wants to fight you. Is it okay if he comes and fights you? Julio Cesar, send him over.

He only wants one round. Fine, fine. It'll be great. So now Julio has said yes. I'm just imagining, it's like if your second grade self in a different era had written to Tiger Woods being like, my friend in second grade wants to play you in golf. You're like, sure. Yeah.

Why not? Send him over. And like Julio is a very, he's a fun loving guy. So, you know, it was, maybe he saw it as a joke. I don't know. And so now at this point, it's like months I've been training. Now you look at my body, man. I got a six pack and now I'm getting in a ring.

And I was up against an amateur who was really beating me up badly in the beginning. And then one day he threw a right hand in my head and I ducked under it and I clocked him with the right hand. And he just went sprawling backward. And now, like, it's starting to think, okay, Julio, are you ready? Are you ready for this? All the people in the gym are laughing. It's all part of, like, a community where, like, what is going to happen? And so at this point, gq meanwhile is funding this they're funding all the training and they're going to fund my trip to mexico they got to send

photographers my they'll send my wife my man and now i got an entourage coming down to mexico to fight julio cesar chavez and he's training to fight Pernell Whitaker. This is like the biggest fight in his life. And he's actually not really training that hard. Like we see him, like we're supposed to have our fight like while he's in training. And I'm saying that he's going to different towns and having parties and so i'm starting to think this is after you arrived this is after i arrived so

i start i i didn't know i thought well maybe he's normally like this but something in my mind was saying man if he's fighting pernellaker, he should be a little more focused than this. And so I'm waiting for this appointed day. And Harold Weston, my trainer, I knew the president of the World Boxing Council, Jose Suleiman, who set up a weigh-in. And GQ made me a robe. And like Julio was very amused by all this.

And we went out running one morning and the thing about it was Julio trains in Toluca, Mexico, high altitude. So that was my first moment where I said, Oh, this might be an issue. Yeah. Because I trained really hard back in New York, but all of a sudden at altitude, you're not the same. And so we're running in the morning, and it comes to this day where, okay, we're going to do it.

So I show up. I got my GQ robe on. They invited kids from their neighborhood in to come witness this. And the kids thought, oh, this is a fight. And so Julio is set up. I'm set up. We're ready to go. The one thing Julio said was, look, I can't wear eight-ounce gloves like you're going to wear

because I'm scared I'm going to hurt my hands. So I'm just going to wear training gloves. But other than that, and I said, no headgear. I said, this is a fight. I'm coming to fight you. And so he just wanted to protect his hands. And so he had these white gloves. I wouldn't call them pillowy, but there was cushion in there.

Were they 12 or 16 ounces? Yeah. I don't know if they were 12 or 16, but they weren't eight like mine. That was the only difference. And Jose Suleiman, president of WBC, has the guy ring the bell. And all of a sudden, I go charging straight in the style of Joe Frazier right at Julio Cesar Chavez. He looks at me, and he's used to coming straight ahead. And now he's saying, like, whoa, what's going on?

What the hell is this? Now, here's the thing about this. Harold said to me, look, you don't understand how good he is, how quick he is. You have no chance of hitting him. Do you understand me? Like all the work you did, there's only one chance you have. And I'm going to tell it to you. You listen to me.

You listen to me good. This is the strategy. I want you to throw just like I tell it to you. You listen to me. You listen to me. Good. This is the strategy. I want you to throw just like I've been teaching you left jam, right hand, straight right hand, left hook. Okay. He's going to catch those punches. And I want you to do it again. Left jam, straight right hand, left hook. He's going to catch those punches. Then I want you to do it again. Left jab, right hand, left hook. And he's going to catch him again. And I want you to keep on doing that again and again and again. Do it 20 times. And then on the 21st time, if you're still standing, because we don't know, he may just hit you in the liver and that's the fight. If you're still standing, if you do that 20 times in a row

and you're still there, go left hand, right hand, and then come back with another right hand. And so bell rings. And now he's like circling around trying to figure out like, who is this lunatic coming at me like Joe Frazier, bobbing, weaving, snorting. I mean, I could sound like Joe Frazier, but he's so fast that just like Harold says, I throw the left hand,

I throw the left jab, he catches it. I throw the right hand, he catches it. I throw the left hook, he catches it. Like the first time I did it, he said, okay, I know what you got. And I'm just going to see how much you can take in a little while. But we'll play this out. We'll play it out. And so I keep storming in. I keep throwing these three punches. He keeps catching them. He's moving me around.

But I keep throwing these three punches again and again and again. Finally, like two minutes into the round, I go left jab, right hand. And then you could almost see him lifting his hand to catch my left hook. And I just throw the right hand then it just socks him in the jaw and he looks at me and he he like sprawls backward as a way of saying uh-oh okay you caught me okay okay okay he goes back like like he's staggered and then he smiles at me and says, okay, now we're going to fight. Now we're going to fight. He comes in on me

and he throws a left hook to my liver. I'm telling you it was like someone took the pipe of a Hoover vacuum cleaner attached to the vacuum cleaner that was on full blast sucking up and just shoved it down my throat

down to my stomach and it's like my whole stomach is coming up through my mouth right and i said and the thing about it was i i just started throwing punches back. It obviously wasn't. It was his way of just saying, I'm going to give you just like a little taste. But now I'm firing back because as bad as I was hurt, like this was my moment. Like I had to avenge what happened to me when I'm 16 years old and I'm firing back. Now he's starting to hit me. And so Jose, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The round's over.

I go back to my corner. My lips are blue. The altitude and that one shot literally took everything out of me. But in my mind, I'm here. I did it. And Julio, he's training for his fight. He looks over at me and says, Otro, you want another?

And I said, si, mas. And we did another one. And then in the second round, he really started, he was having fun, but he was starting to tag me pretty good. And you could tell, like, Jose Suleiman is watching this, and he's saying, like, a minute and a half into the round, ring the bell, ring the bell, ring the bell. Before we have a gringo casualty on our hands.

That's right. And so the bell rings. I go back to the corner, and we embrace. He was really wonderful about it. Because what was cool about what he did was he treated me, now that I think about it, he treated me like the assistant to President Johnson treated me. He didn't laugh.

He saw my punches coming. He saw what I could handle. And then when he saw that I had outfoxed him for a second, he said, okay, I'll lift the game, but I'm not here to level him. And so it was a really wonderful experience. I mean, they had been teasing my wife, asking her how much insurance we had and stuff like that.

But at the end, he really rose to a high level in the way he handled the whole thing. Because at the end of it, I walked out of it after going through everything I did. I pushed myself as far as I could go. I got hit in the liver and I came back. And so now it's just a good story. When you spoke to your wife after the two rounds, later that night or whenever you actually had a chance to decompress and be by yourselves, how did she describe what was going through her head as she watched you guys after the first bell ring? I think she probably was watching with her hands over her eyes, but with her fingers spread so that she could see. And I think she was really proud.

And, you know, the thing about it is you realize it's not so much about winning and losing. Although my kids, it's crazy because my kids hear the story and they tell their friends in junior high school or whatever, and their friends are like, did he win? They have no concept. But the thing is, I did win because I confronted myself. I had to go up those rickety steps every day. I had to get the crap beaten up out of me every day in order to learn how to duck a punch.

And I did. I pushed myself as far as I could go. And now I get a great story out of it. And there's no more. When I talk about the Golden Gloves, it's just a funny part of the story. there's no more when I talk about the golden gloves it's just a funny part of the story it's not something that eats at me anymore I need that part of the story to set up the ending

so I'm thankful that happened to me because without that without A I wouldn't have done B which led to C that's a healthy way to think about a lot of things, I suppose. If people, even if they're not storytellers or writers, if they think about their mishaps or some of the challenges they've had, is the part A they needed to set up part B. You know what?

It is a great way of looking at life. And man, I have taken a beating so many times. And one of the great things about telling stories is when you realize that, okay, this beating I just took, maybe I can use that to get an advance from a magazine to do something cool. And again and again, I use my mistakes, foibles, humiliating moments to come back and try to make some sense of them and triumph over those moments. And again, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to win. But you have to look deep inside yourself and know that, okay, I respect myself for this. And to this day, like, I really do.

It gets complicated when people look at like the picture, I get a big picture at home of me hitting Julio and people look at it and it looks real. It looks authentic. It is real. It is real. But it lends people to say, what happened? What was the result? The result was I survived.

Well, so Cal, there are so many more stories that even if not on tape, I will have to ask you about, but perhaps we'll do a round two. I mean, we have to talk at some point about Muhammad Ali. We have to talk about Trump. We have to talk about De Niro. There's so many other things. The James Beard Award. I mean, the list goes on and on, but I know you have a dinner to get to. Do you have a little bit of time for some of my customary rapid-fire questions?

I love those questions. All right, so I'm going to... I hope I have rapid-fire answers. They don't have to be, so that's the whole twist on the phrasing of the rapid-fire questions. The questions can be rapid-fire, but your answers can be as long as you would like them to be. I love these questions. All right. So the first that I usually start with is when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

And you mentioned him during the course of this interview. There are two people. One is this kid, Alex Benayan, who's 23 years old. He was in school at USC and his parents had basically raised him to be a doctor to the point where during Halloween, when he was a kid, they would dress him up in scrubs. Just get the point. That's where you're headed. And he gets to college, and he's got a stack of biology books next to him, and he just can't do it. He's really smart, but he's just not linked to it. And he starts to wonder, what am I doing here? He's going to school at USC. It's a great school. And he starts

to wonder about this word success. And he goes to the library and he starts to look at biographies of people who he deemed to be successful to see what the definition of success was. And he's reading biography after biography. And he realizes that the book that I'm looking for doesn't exist. I need to go out and to interview these people to find out what they think success is. And so he did. And on his journey, one of the people that he went to interview was Larry King. And he actually met Larry outside of Whole Foods, went running down. He saw Larry pushing his shopping cart, went running down the street, Larry King, scared the bejesus out of Larry, and asked if he could interview Larry. And Larry invited him to

breakfast. And when he arrived, Alex said, I'm writing a book. And Larry said to Alex, well, if you're writing a book, then you should talk to this guy. You should talk to Cal because he has written two of my books with me, and he can help you. So Alex did get to sit down to talk with Larry, but I became very close with Alex at that point. And so when I think of success, I think of everything Alex was trying to find out. That's one. And the second is another boxer, George Foreman, who you might remember.

My mom's favorite boxer. Really? Oh, yeah. Okay. Because she remembers old George. The old George. Now, the old George was a bigger Mike Tyson. Oh, my God.

Terrifying. He was, like, Tyson was, what? Six feet. Maybe George Foreman was six, three to 20 and just had a string of vicious knockouts. And one, the heavyweight title by knocking Joe Frazier down six times. One time he literally hit him with an uppercut and uprooted Joe Frazier. Like he was a tree stump. It looks like a superhero movie. For people, I'm sure you can find footage of it,

but if you look at George Foreman, Frazier, you know, knock down or knock out, I mean, just the footage is unbelievable. And you're looking at somebody there who George Foreman grew up in a very tangled situation. His personality was formed, one, by living in poverty. He would go to school in the mornings with a brown paper bag that had no food in it,

and he would blow it up to make it look like there was food in it so he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the other kids. On top of that, his siblings, his sisters, would make fun of him. He was younger. They would say, you're a mo-head. You're a mo-head. And George Foreman had no idea what a mo-head meant, but he knew it wasn't good. And he would hear that and he would chase his sisters around when he heard, you a mo-head, you a mo-head. And finally, years later, he grew up and he found out what they were saying. George Foreman's mom was married to Mr. Foreman, but they separated for a while. While they were separated, her mom went off with a guy named Leroy Moorhead.

Conceived George. Conceived George. And then went back to Mr. Foreman. And so when he was born, his siblings who were Foremans were calling you a Moorhead.

You a Moorhead. And so there was this angry part of George, very angry to the, to the point where he told me people would be scared to ask him for an autograph. When he would walk into a place, people would look down. And he had this, this surliness was a big part of his demeanor. And when he went to fight Muhammad Ali in Zaire, he was an undefeated champ. People feared for Ali's life. And in fact, Ali would not watch George Foreman hit the heavy bag. It was too scary. This guy could hit that hard. And what Ali saw was George Foreman had so much anger in him that when he came out,

he just came out to bludgeon whoever was in front of him. And Ali had a sense that if he could make Foreman expend his energy and not land those punches, have them punches come off his arms, if he could infuriate Foreman to the point where Foreman lost his cool and punched himself out, he figured out a way to win. And naturally, in the heat of Africa, it was basically Ali set this thing up perfectly. Foreman arrived with a German shepherd, not knowing that the Zaireans had in their history a memory of German shepherds being brought in by the Belgians

to keep them under control. So the Zaireans immediately hated George Foreman. And a chant grew out of it. troll. So the Zairens immediately hated George Foreman. And a chant grew out of it. Ali Bumayi. Ali, kill him. And the bell rang and George Foreman came at Ali and Ali didn't move. He just

kept his back against the ropes with his hands up. This was the rope-a-dope? This was the rope-a-dope. And George Foreman is just slugging away and Ali would open his guard up just a little, says, is that all you got? Then closes his guard. Foreman just getting more and more infuriated. Just punch after punch, first round, second round.

Those of us who are watching, and I was watching on closed-circuit television on a big screen in St. Louis at the time, you're almost crying because you were screaming at Ali, get out of the way, dance, do something. We couldn't see what was happening. That he was just, he kept talking to George. We couldn't hear him talking. Oh man, that's it? That's all you got?

And Foreman is just throwing shot after shot after shot. And then all of a sudden, in like the fourth round, you see Foreman throw a shot, and Ali just ducked under it. And then just throw a jab straight back in Foreman's face, and Foreman's head snapped back. And we realized, oh, my God, he's punched himself out. As the fight continues, a few more rounds, Ali nails him in one right hand. And it's so hot. Foreman's exhausted. Ali nails him with one right hand. And it's so hot. Foreman's exhausted.

Ali nails him with a right hand. Foreman goes down. Can't beat the count. And he's crushed. It must be akin to what Ronda Rousey, for those who are younger and watch mixed martial arts, what Ronda Rousey went through after her recent defeat. That's right. Where you think somebody is invincible. And then all of a sudden, they're on their back.

One head kick later. That's right. And George Foreman, for like 20 years, could never get another title shot. He retired. And he did something. And he told me what he did. And he said, this is the hardest thing when you talk about success. I asked him a question about success.

And he said, the hardest thing you can do in life is to change your character. And basically, in his early 40ss he came back to boxing but he was completely different he was no longer the surly guy he was a guy who would do ads for eating hamburgers smiling and laughing now correct me if i'm wrong i remember his i want to say i remember his comeback sort of uh promotional videos where he'd be going for his boxing run and people would be handing him food. That's right. That's right. That's right.

And he starts his comeback at, I think, more than 300 pounds. Big guy. He's a big guy and he's in his 40s. But it's what he changed in his head. Now he was smiling. What did he do to change that? He realized that surliness and that anger is what brought him down against Muhammad Ali,

right? So fast forward, he's 45 years old and he gets a heavyweight title fight against a guy 20 years younger named michael moore oh i remember southpaw southpaw who is much faster a little lighter but should be able to move around george with ease and just put punches into George's face without George being able to respond. But here's the thing. Foreman came into the ring wearing the exact red trunks that he was wearing when Ali hit him and put him down. And when Moore's trainer saw that, he recognized it and thought, like, uh-oh, something's up here.

And basically George didn't waste any energy. He rearranged his character, and Moore, the first nine rounds, just completely outboxed him, moved around. George just kept his hands up, tried to land, could barely even land. And his face started to get swollen. And the 10th round started, and his trainer, who coincidentally was Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who was in the opposing corner in Zaire, basically said to him, George,

like, you're way behind. You got to do something. And George just kept moving forward and without wasting energy, just saw one moment and he threw a right hand and he still had the power. He still had everything that he had when he was young power-wise and he cl a right hand and he still had the power. He still had everything that he had when he was young power-wise and he clipped Moyer straight on the jaw and Michael Moore went down and couldn't beat the count. And Foreman went over to the corner, got down on his knees, thanked the Lord. And to me, that was a symbol of success because he needed to change who he was in order to have that success. And he did it at 45. So that's the best answer I can give you. Love George Foreman. This just reinvigorated so much more enthusiasm about learning more about George

and I remember it brings back so many memories because I remember that fight also I want to say George used what I want to say was the crab defense in other words he didn't hold his forearms together perpendicular to the floor but they

were kind of crossed over in front of his face. Such a good story. Well, it was all designed to, he knew he was going to endure punishment. And he knew he had to do it in a way that expended the least amount of energy. And he knew he just had to put himself in the right position to land that one shot. So it's a beautiful story to see somebody take their weakest point and do something within themselves

to change who they are. And the history repeats itself. Irony of that fight that he won also is that Michael was known as a very angry guy, had a criminal record, and probably lost for some of the same reasons. That's right. In fact, I'd have to go back and watch the fight, but I'm sure his trainer, who was aware, was probably saying, you know, you're way ahead. Take it easy. Stay away. And he probably said,

what are you crazy? I got this under control. Boom, one shot. Yeah. Incredible. What is the book or books you've given most as gifts other than your own, which obviously for people listening, you know that I'll link to everything in the show notes as well. But, uh, hard question to answer because it's almost like wine. Uh, every meal you're going to have another experience with different people, different food. So if I meet somebody, I like to give books that I've loved. And so I, like I mentioned, meeting Alex and, and he says to me, I want, he didn't know how to write a book. And he's like, I want to write a great book. I want to, you could just tell it was bursting out of him. And so I gave him a Gabriel Garcia Marquez's a hundred years of solitude for him to

know, okay, if you've never written a book and you're going to tell somebody you want to write a great book, all right, read this and know what a great book is. And so my gifts tend to judge what the person needs and then fill that need. And they're no different in wine, if somebody's having a steak, I'm probably not going to give them a Riesling. I'll give them something to compliment the steak. If you, so I'll give you a more specific circumstance. So let's say that someone came to you and they said, you know what?

I'm a board billionaire and I want to give three books to every graduating high school senior in the country this year. Wow. What a question. Okay. Um, what one book that people should read? And in fact, fact, I got it with me right now, and I think, let me pull it out here. One of the blurbs on this book actually says, as Toni Morrison, this is required reading. Wow, that's a strong endorsement. Yeah, and Toni Morrison is a great African-American writer. And this book is called Between the World and Me,

and it's by a guy named Ta-Nehisi Coates. And it's a letter to his son about being a black male in America. And I think it is required reading just because if we want to understand what is going on, we see what's happening in Ferguson, Missouri. It just seems like it's month after after month after month, we see protests and problems. And this is just a way of redirecting your eyesight to a place that you normally wouldn't go. And it's an amazing thing about this book because as I'm reading it, I was walking down the street and I passed a news box with the Los Angeles Times in it.

And on the front page, there was this statistic that said that basically every juvenile that's incarcerated in the state of California, it costs us $260,000 a year. That is a lot. More than any Ivy League education. There you go. And think of that. If you took that money and put it into lifting that same kid,

who knows what would happen? You know, there's DNA involved. There's a lot of stuff involved. But it just made me realize, why aren't we putting the resources in before rather than just paying this money out? We don't even know that we're putting it out. And so it's just a book that makes you see the world differently. Another book that I would recommend, it's a book that I'm reading now. And just for those people wondering, Between the World and Me, this is a short book.

This is about 130 pages. National Book Award winner. I will order that as soon as we finish this chat. But you mentioned the second. The second book. Is it okay if I give you two? You can do two.

It's just because these are two that I'm reading now. It's just hot these are two that I'm reading now. So it's just hot off the press. It's a book called Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln. I love the title. And I think I'm carrying it around with me as well. This is amazing. Yeah.

You hit me at the right time with this question. It's written by James C. Humes. And there's, for anyone who wants to speak, and if you're a high school senior, at some point, you're going to have to get up and speak. It's a great book because there's all kinds of tips on everything about speaking. Subtitle, 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers. There's this great anecdote in this book that really helped me as I was preparing to give my speech because it's hard to memorize a speech. And then I'm reading about Ronald Reagan, known as a great communicator, American president. When he spoke, he riveted people.

And when he was a young man, so again, we're talking about basically the same age as the people you just mentioned. What would you recommend for the high school senior? Actually, Reagan was just getting out of college, and he got a job in radio in Iowa. And he was very good conversationally on the air, but then it stiff and awkward reading these advertisements that the advertisers basically said, get him off the air, and they fired him. And he went back to his room, and he's feeling horrible about it because he loved being on the radio. He loved communicating. And he wondered, what can I do in order to get my job back? So I guess FDR was doing the fireside chats and he realized how riveting those were. So he got those chats and he started to read them. But what he did was he would look at the words and then almost memorize the phrase in his head,

then look up, and then say the words conversationally. So he wasn't trying to memorize them by reading it off the page. He would just take a few of the words, then look up, give you those words, look down. He would never speak while he was looking down. And then he went back to radio, and that's how he did his advertisements, and it worked. So it's a great, the book is just filled with little tips like that that will make it so much easier for anybody who's got to get up and give a speech.

I'm going to get another book for my list. Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies? You know, it's a really interesting question. I probably would have told you that there's a movie, Cinema Paradiso. Oh, great film. You love that movie? Great film. Okay.

And I would mention that, but something happened to me recently where a documentary and a movie came together that provided this amazing experience and the documentary was called man on wire and it was about philip petite's walk on a wire across the towers of the World Trade Center. And it's an amazing documentary. Everything that he had to go through to almost like a spy or an espionage agent figure out how to get up on the roof. We're not even talking about how do you walk a rope. That's one thing. But then to wonder how do you get to the top of the World Trade Center as it's being built and get a wire from one side to the other to stabilize it at night when nobody's watching. And the documentary takes you through the whole thing.

It's just amazing. And the way they pieced it together with the alternating sort of black and white reenactments, just the cinematography and the pacing is genius. Yeah, it's definitely my favorite documentary. But then, last year, Robert Zemeckis did a movie called The Walk. Was that Joseph Gordon-Levitt? That's right. I haven't seen it yet. Oh. Last year, Robert Zemeckis did a movie called The Walk. Was that Joseph Gordon-Levitt? That's right.

I haven't seen it yet. Oh. Here's the thing. I saw this movie nine times. The Walk. The Walk. I saw this movie nine times, but you got to see it on 3D IMAX. Because one of the innovative things about this film on 3D IMAX is you literally feel like you are on the wire. I mean, people left the theater vomiting.

And I knew everything about that story. Because, as you mentioned, I worked at windows of the world so when i was serving wine at the top of windows of the world every day i was looking down at basically what philip petite was looking down at when he was crossing this wire and i seen the documentary so i knew that basically not only did he walk on the wire, but he laid down on the wire on his back. That was unbelievable. And then the police are coming, and the police had been haunting him for years because wherever he would try and juggle or walk the wire in order to get people to give change, they would be trying to chase him away. And so he had this cat and mouse game going with the police all these years.

And now he's on the wire, like more than 100 stories above New York City. And the police are there and they can't touch him. He can do whatever he wants on this wire. And so like the tables are turning. And yet in this movie, when he steps on that wire, I knew everything that was going to happen on that walk. I'm begging him. No,

don't do it. Don't do it. Please don't do it. I completely suspended my disbelief. And let me tell you how much I started taking people like night after night to see this movie again and again because i want to gauge their reactions and gave them motion sickness pills beforehand i told i warned him i say if

if you got a fear heights don't come you go watch robert de niro and the apprentice or whatever they called that movie uh what what hit me was there's this one scene in the movie where he's learning how to walk the tightrope. And this is back in France. It's where he's from. And he's like two steps away from getting back to the platform. And he slips and has to catch the wire with his hand. And he's like 50 feet above ground or something and he manages to get back to the platform and he comes down and his teacher is there

and his teacher basically says to him it's the last two steps that that everybody the people die, they die in those last two steps. Like remember that. And in fact, Philippe Petit was paying him to get those lessons. And when Philippe Petit went to give him money for that lesson, the teacher said, no, this lesson you get for free. This doesn't cost you anything. So I knew, I knew this story cold. I'd read his book. I'd seen the documentary many times and I'm watching this film. And when he falls down early on to get that lesson, it's shot in a way where the pole literally comes out of the screen, right at your head. Okay. So the first time you're just swooning, not swooning, you're

swaying immediately like to the right or the left to get out of the way. Okay. So now I'm watching the second time. I know this pole is coming at my head every time on the ninth time poles coming straight at my head. I'm ducking out of the way. It was that, uh, visceral and experienced. And the direction was just amazing. I love the acting. And so if you can see that movie on 3D IMAX, please do. It's just wonderful. Well, I guess I'll put out a call or a request to perhaps the people involved with making that film,

if they happen to be listening, or if you know the people involved, since people might not get to see the theatrical release in 3d, talk to the people working with virtual reality, get in touch with the, the Oculus folks or some of these other studios, uh, Daiquiri or whomever might be able to translate some of this to an immersive

experience for folks. Uh, because that's coming down the pike too. Wow. That'd be beautiful. Uh, you know, I feel like we're just going to have to do around two sometime,

but I, I'll, I'll, I'll ask, you know, I'm going to come back anytime. I'll, I'll ask,

I'll ask, I'll ask three more. Okay. Uh, if you could have a billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would you put on it? One word. Listen. Listen.

I don't know what reaction that would get, but I would like to see the reaction on people's faces when they saw that. Because I think that people don't, listening is not an art form. Well, it is an art form. People just aren't using it as an art form, but it is an art form. And a lot of great things could be achieved through listening. What advice would you give your 30-year-old self? And if you could place us again where you were at 30. Okay. I would not give myself one word of advice and I'll tell you why. Because if I would have given myself that advice at 30, it would have moved me maybe one centimeter in one direction that put my life in a different place. And I needed to be on a very specific seat, on a very specific bus,

at a very specific time in order to meet the woman that became my wife and as the mother of my kids. So I couldn't have that moved in any way. I needed everything to happen just the way it did in order to have that moment, in order to have the rest of my life. So after that, I'm sure there are times where I have given myself advice. Really, the time I needed advice was when I was in college, and there was so much offered and so little I took advantage of. So what would your advice be to either your kids or to people going into college? They say, Uncle Cal, what should I take? I just don't even know what to do with myself.

Okay. Paradox of choice. I can't figure it out. Yeah. If they want to travel, you get a chance to learn like four languages, five languages. And it's going to be so relaxed. All you got to do is just go into the class and then meet somebody from the opposite sex who speaks the language. And you're going to be going out and talking in the new language. And you could do that over and over again in college.

You've got that time. One of the things that I would, if it was me, knowing that I wanted to be a writer, or knowing that I'm now going to be speaking, and I'm going to be speaking about questions that people ask when they're hiring, I would love to have studied human behavior because I know that when a company is looking to fill a job, if the person doing the interview understands the role that needs to be filled and understands human behavior, they can ask questions to the applicants that will fill that role in a really good way. That's my hunch. You ever heard the story of the book that Newt Gingrich used to navigate politics, at least one that he's credited with a lot of whatever success he's had? Chimpanzee politics. I'm not kidding.

I am not kidding. I'm going to write that one down. I'm going to go home and order it. I am not kidding. What about as a writer or to a kid who's graduating from college and says to himself or herself, should I go on to get my MFA or continue to, say, go to a specialty journalism school or writing school? If they'd only taken maybe one or two classes that required a lot of writing, what advice would you give to them? I would tell them just write. And the great thing about it is, okay, and I'm not knocking the schooling

because as we talked about earlier, I owe everything to the University of Missouri Journalism School. It set me on my way and the connections. On the other hand, all you need to do to be a writer is to write. And not only that, but all you need to do is to find places that are interested in taking your writing. It doesn't have to be for much money, but you can go out, especially now. You don't even need a physical publication. Now you can just create a blog on the internet and just start writing. So I would advise people to just, if you want to be a writer,

write and just keep writing and keep writing. If you have the means and the will to go to school and get a teacher or teachers that can help you through even better, but nothing should really stop you from writing and you shouldn't use, well, I need to go to school first as an excuse to put off writing. I need to make the school make me right. You make you right. Yeah.

If you don't have that intrinsic motivation, it's going to be hard to make anything happen because you won't always have a school teacher to whack you with a ruler. That's right. And not only that, but the other thing is just put yourself in a position where you have no money

and you need to write something to make money. And you'll need to eat. And, you know, unless you can find a bar that's putting out olives and little chicken fingers, you're going to write and get paid so that you can eat. I remember talking to a friend of mine who's a journalist, writes for a number of very well-known newspapers. And he always laughs when he has to listen to book authors like myself sort of whinge and pontificate about writer's block. And he just scoffs at the whole idea. He's like, I don't have the luxury of having writer's block. He's like, I have a deadline, a deliverable at whatever it is, you know, 4 p.m., 5 p.m.

He's like, no, I can't muse about the subtleties of writer's block. Because, I mean, he has to ship. Like, he has to ship words every day or whatever it might be every week. And do you... What are your thoughts on writer's block? if that's not too general a question? I only had it once.

Okay. I only had it once. And what happened was I was writing for Esquire and working on a column called The Perfect Man. And the idea was basically in line with this conversation. I was going to take all my flaws and all my mistakes and then go to experts who were going to teach me how to overcome them. And then I was going to write about the experience so that everybody could have the collected wisdom. And so I learned how to walk through using Alexander technique. I learned how to publicly speak by going in a boxing ring with Michael Buffer and announcing a fight.

Sounds like a fun gig. That was great. I learned how to lose weight by going to Jack LaLanne, who was the exercise champion of his day. And I went through, learned how to barbecue through Stephen Reikland, author of the Barbecue Bible. And one of the last things I did was go to learn about wine. Because if you are a man, you want to have a feeling that you can go into a restaurant with a group of people, the wine list comes to you and you don't feel like, oh man, what am I going to do? I don't know what's what here. And then you don't know if the waiter is

going to try and unload a lousy bottle that they can't sell on you or a bottle for a lot of money, you're helpless. So I wanted to learn enough to know how to walk into a restaurant with confidence and order what I want. And the solution to that was to be trained to be the sommelier for a night at Windows of the World, which sold for a time more wine than any other restaurant on the planet at the top of the World Trade Center. And I had no idea where this adventure was going to send me, but it took me two years to learn all about wine. Because you then find out you have to go to these places where they make the wine, and you have to understand the difference between all of the varietals.

And the wine list at Windows of the World, it was like hundreds of pages. To know all those wines, it was almost impossible. But you start to get an idea. And I had world-class sommeliers teaching me. And for one night, I was the sommelier at Windows on the World. It was an amazing experience. One of the great things I did is I had a guy who I knew come in. He brought his wife. It's like the first couple of the evening. And I seated them right next to a window. So you're

looking down on New York from 106 stories or whatever. And I had a bottle of champagne, L'Ordeau champagne from France, which it basically was like a $10 bottle of champagne. But nobody knew that. And this had been served at the Assemblée Nationale in France. It was like a basic bottle of champagne. But I took it out to their couple. They were celebrating their anniversary.

And I walked over with a flourish. And I announced that I was serving Lordeux champagne and that it had never been served at these heights before. And it would never be served at these heights again. And this woman looks at me. She didn't know who I was. Her husband did. And she just broke out in tears.

And then the husband had never tasted the champagne before, but they both had poured it. They both put it up. And oh, cow. Like, we never knew what champagne was before this moment and it teaches you that like the wine and the moment are inextricably linked and i can take a great moment and make a great wine out of it and i can take a great wine and make a great moment out of it in any event like the evening transpired, and it was great, but it was profound.

It was also funny. I'd spill wine down a glass because I had to be moving really quick. There was a lot of people, and I was like, that's inexcusable. That should never happen here. That bottle is on the house. And everybody at the table, ah, this is great. And people at the adjacent table are saying, come over here, spill some here. Spill some here.

And we get through the night. It's a delightful time and really memorable. Now, I go home to write the story and I start to go through my notes because it's taken me two years to get this experience. And the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. And I remember going to the Ground Zero like a week later.

The military took me around in a Humvee. And I still was so overwhelmed that I was almost knocked out when I saw it, because I remember seeing like there was this thin coat of white dust over everything. And you could see in a parking lot, this coat of dust over the cars. And I actually said to the guy in the army who was taking me around, I said, why don't those people come back and get their cars? And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Cal, those cars don't have any owners anymore. And it's very hard to explain the enormity, but I just couldn't write. How could I translate this experience of utter joy, learning all about this amazing beverage that transformed lives, meeting all these friends along the way.

Wherever you would go, wine would, it was like traveling around the world again. It would just open up a party, and that party would invite you to another party, and another party, and another party. And so there I am, having this amazing experience. And then on top of it, for one night, I was the sommelier. And not only that, but at the end, or toward the middle of the night, somebody, like people were pressing $20 in my hand. They thought I was really the sommelier. And a few days later, somebody who came in that night, and nobody knew that I wasn't the real sommelier,

somebody came in like three days later and asked for me. And so I was feeling so good about the experience. And right after that, the planes came in and took the towers down. And now I've got to write the story about this. And the editor, he now knows. He's basically bankrolled this thing for two years. Same guy who bankrolled me going up against Julio Cesar Chavez bankrolled the wine story. I'm flying around the world to taste the wines in France, the wines in Italy, the wines in Germany, going to California. And he allowed me to go through the whole experience. And now he knows something amazing has got to come out of this.

Because I saw how much he put in. And we all know this seminal moment in American history. So he's got to step up to it. And I couldn't. I would stare in front of the computer for hours at a time. And nothing would come out. I would, like my eyes would be bleeding. And every time I would have to go into the office to see the editor, like I knew, we

both knew, like where's the story? Where's the story? Years started passing. And he started to do things to try to help me and push it out of me, whether it was lighthearted or, hey, you know, it's like years now, the movie Sideways, which is about wine, had come out. Wine is really hot now. Now is the time. So the editor is really trying to push the story out of me in the best way he can. It might be lighthearted with a little offhanded joke. It might be, hey, come on. It's years now. We're waiting for the story. The movie Sideways comes out. It's a big hit in the wine

world. And now he's saying, this is the time that the story needs to come out. I can't do it. I go to the computer almost night after night. And it's the most painful thing because I never had writer's block before, but there was just nothing that would come out of me. It just wasn't, it was like a wine that wasn't ready to be served. It needed to be in the barrel. Only you don't know how long it needs to be in the barrel and you're feeling all this guilt. And finally, I just took all my, I had these copious notes in boxes and I put them down in the basement. Just, okay, let me just get it out of my face. Cause every time I would go into my office, I would see these boxes and I would just like flinch.

Oh, it seems like a huge, just anxiety trigger. Yeah. I mean, the undone homework assignment, the, the ultimate undone homework assignment that your boss has basically

bankrolled for a couple of years. And so you basically know that you can't go in with any more big ideas until that is completed. And so it really affected me, but there was nothing I could do about it. And I put these notes away in the basement. And then we had this terrible ice storm. I was living in North Carolina at the time. And everything turned into mold in my basement. And all the notes got black. So I had no notes of anything.

Basically, everything had been wiped out. My notes were ground zero afterward. And now, how am I going to do this? But you know, there was a writer who taught me something very early in my career. His name was Harry Cruz. I don't know if you've ever heard him. No. He wrote a book called Feast of Snakes.

And if you're a young man, and Harry Cruz also wrote for Esquire. If you're a young man, and I don't even know how this book would translate now, but it was a real kind of macho. What was the name again? Feast of Snakes. He wrote another book called Car about a guy eating a car. This guy was out there. And as soon as I read these books, I just said, I got to meet this guy.

I got to meet this guy. I got to meet this guy. And so I started to tell people, you know, I'm going to go meet Harry Cruz. And people started looking at me saying, are you sure? I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, like, his drinking is legendary, plus his drug, the amount of drugs he puts in his body you're not going to be able to stay with this guy

like you're really you're going to hurt yourself and so naturally I get in my car I drive 20 straight hours down to Gainesville Florida this is when I was living in New York and I drive right up to his house and knock on the door.

And there's no response. Knock again, no response. And I could almost hear like a snoring. So I just opened the door. Oh, my God. Florida. And Harry is laid out on a lazy boy chair with like an empty bottle of rum on his belly. And I get close to him and he just, his head is just moving around.

He's like getting himself out of sleep. He said, what do you want? I said, like, Harry, I just read Feast of Snakes. I just drove 20 miles, 20 hours straight to see you. Well, why don't you drive over to Gator Gulch and let's get us some alcohol? I drive over to the Gator Gulch, and I think that was what it was called, something like that. And they've already got, like, a carton filled with alcohol for me to bring back.

The usual. The usual. I come back and we start drinking. And like naturally, after a little while, I've just been driving for 20 hours. And now I'm drinking and I'm starting to float away. And he's getting more lucid. And this is before the drugs came out. And I said to him,

Harry, you're a writer. Do you keep a diary? Like, how can you drink like this and do all these drugs and remember anything? And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, boy, the good shit sticks. And it was that line that saved me when I needed to write the wine story

because I always knew the good shit sticks. The moments that were truly great were the moments that I needed. And almost 10 years passed. And in a chance meeting with a woman who was in a position, it was a terrible position. She had loved her husband.

Her husband had died. She was alone. Time had passed. She was ready to go out and meet somebody again. And she said, like, I'm older. I've never really dated. I don't know what to do. And I said to her, join a wine class because you will meet people

and just by the way they talk about their wines, you're going to know if you should like them or not. And she said, wow, that's a good idea. And something in that conversation opened up a pathway. And then I was sitting, I went to a bar, and I'm sitting down. And remember, this whole thing started with me just wanting to be able to give somebody instruction. When the wine list came before me, I could to give somebody instruction. When the wine list came before me, I could give the waiter instruction,

this is what I want, without feeling like I didn't know what I was doing. So I have this conversation with the woman, and a couple nights later I said, you know what, let me just write down the good shit, the good shit that stuck. And I'm sitting at a bar, and I'm writing down all the stuff, the good shit that stuck.

And the bartender's pouring drinks, and a waiter came back with an Italian dessert wine. And it was a white wine. And the waiter said to the bartender, now, the people, they don't like it. They say there's something wrong with it. And so it was Vincenzo. And so the bartender was a young guy

and I think that he really didn't know much about wine. He was like a college kid to the bartender. And so he said, well, look, you know, Vincenzo, it's not cheap. And I said, wait a minute, let me smell that wine,

because he brought the wine back. And I said, pour me a glass. And so I swirled it around, I put it up to my nose, and I said, no, it's no good. And the way I said it, I must have said it with such conviction that the bartender said, oh, okay. You said it the same way that Jesus said his name to you in the locker room. That's right. That's exactly it.

I knew this wine was no good. And so the bartender said to me, well, like, how'd you know? And we got into a conversation and he had told me that he had been in a choir. He said, I'm not really a bartender. And he explained that when he was young, he was a singer and he had actually gone to the Vatican and sang in a choir for the Pope. So I said, okay, fine. Then you understand this. When you put that wine to your nose, all right, listen to it. You can tell that as there's something in,

certainly in the taste, maybe you can get it from the smell. It starts out okay, but there's somebody singing off key in there. And I don't know if it's the smell. It starts out okay, but there's somebody singing off-key in there. I don't know if it's the way the wine was stored, but in the middle of that taste of wine are off-key notes. I don't know, maybe the wine was a little corked, maybe

it was just the way they stored it but as soon as he heard that he realized it translated for him and okay when somebody in the choir's got a voice that isn't hitting what the rest of us are hitting it's a problem

and he understood that and he looked at me and he said thanks and I knew that was the end of the story. And as soon as he said it, I went to the keyboard and I wrote the whole thing out. That's amazing. Do you recall the title of the piece? Yeah. It's called Drinking at 1,300 Feet. Drinking at 1,300 Feet. Yeah. Cal, you're a great man.

You're a very, very generous person. And we will have to do this again sometime. But in the meantime, I want to let you get to your dinner and would love to direct people to where they can find you and more about you because you've spent a lifetime gathering, unearthing, and telling other people's stories. Of course, you've told some of your own, but I want to hear more and more of these stories. Next time, I feel like we should have some wine. Okay. Next time, we will do this with wine. But where can people find you online? Okay. they can go to calfussman.com. That's C-A-L-F-U-S-S-M-A-N.com. .com and send a message.

I'm just starting to speak. Anybody interested in listening to some stories or getting tips on interviewing or tips on interviewing for a job, I'm here. Go to the website and they can click on the contact form or something like that to let you know. Are you on social media at all? Not really.

This is all like a new adventure for me. So I don't even know how to promote myself. It's just happening. Well, I'll tell you what. If I can help you get Jocko Willink, the former NBCL on Twitter, I can help figure out a way to assist you in navigating that. Maybe I can give you the sort of the choir a cappella analogy version of this type of thing. Cal, this is so much fun. I always love our conversations.

And as always, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a beautiful experience. I hope we have many more. And let always, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a beautiful experience. I hope we have many more. And let me tell you something, you are really good at what you do. Thank you. Thank you. I have, uh, well, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and you've been very, very, uh, generous with, with your time and with your advice. So I really do appreciate it. And for everybody listening, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. 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 world of the esoteric as I do. It could include 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.