The Tim Ferriss Show - #205: Mark Bittman on Changing the Food Industry and Living Dangerously

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront,

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Starting point is 00:04:37 But before we go down that dark trail where I'm going with this, typically what I do on this show is I deconstruct world class performers and tease out the habits and routines and so on that you can use. Their favorite books, morning routines, and whatnot. This episode is no different. And instead of a chess prodigy or someone in the military, we have Mark Bittman. Mark Bittman, at Bittman, B-I-T-T-M-A-N, on Twitter, is the author of 20 acclaimed books, maybe more, including How to Cook Everything, which is a series, Food Matters, and his latest, How to Bake Everything, which is on a coveted shelf in my own kitchen. And many of you may not realize that I started cooking with baking for the cyclical ketogenic diet,

Starting point is 00:05:25 which we talk about in this episode. For more than two decades, that's 20 years, people, his popular and compelling stories appeared in the New York Times, where he was ultimately the lead food writer for the Sunday Magazine, and he became the country's first food-focused op-ed columnist for a major news publication. He's done a lot. He starred in four TV series, including the Emmy award-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He's been a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and was recently appointed to the faculty of Columbia's Malman School of Public Health. I'm not high, folks. I'm just in the war room on book launch. That explains it.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Throughout his career, Bittman has strived for the same goal, to make food in all of its aspects understandable. And he also extends that to a brand new podcast called Get Bitt, B-I-T-T. And in this episode, we talk about my fasting regime, why I do it the way I do it, a bit of ketosis here, a bit of ketogenic diet there. We discuss his favorite failures, what he's learned, the first piece, his breakthrough in the world of writing or journalism, and much more. So without further ado, as I always say, please enjoy this episode with Mark Bittman. Mark, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Tim. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you making the time. And I thought we would just jump into,

Starting point is 00:06:52 rather than asking you the 17 questions that you've been asked most often, what I would call rapid fire questions. Now, all that means is I'm going to attempt in my sometimes long-winded way to ask short questions. Your answers don't have to be short. They can be as long as you would like. The first question I wanted to ask, trying to steer away from the most trodden path, is if you had to give a TED Talk on something that you are not known for at all, something that is perhaps an obsession of yours or an interest of yours that people or very few people know about,

Starting point is 00:07:29 what would you talk about? I was going to say cooking, which is obviously totally the wrong answer. That's the only one on the foreboding list. It is sort of this quiet passion, but I happen to have turned it into a career, so we'll let that go. You know, I guess running. have turned it into a career. So we'll let that go. You know,

Starting point is 00:07:45 I guess running, I guess it would be running. Cause it's, I, I did used to write a little bit about running and, um, you know, it's funny. I'm in a down, uh, sort of a, a down moment in my running life, but I've had those before. And I know that I'll always come back and it's just, as I age, it's just an interesting thing to keep track of and an interesting thing to note that I, you know, at this point, I think it's 45 years I've been running. So even if I'm not running and I see other people run, it just stimulates my thinking about it. And is there any, for instance, I've read a little bit of Haruki Murakami and his running, certainly Malcolm Gladwell, well-known runner. What is it that you get out of running, and did you start really young?

Starting point is 00:08:32 I started when I was in my 20s. I started as a way to stop smoking cigarettes, which worked. And, you know, I have gotten so much out of running, you know, besides general, I think overall fitness. I was a terrible, I was like the slowest kid in my group of boys when I was growing up. I was almost always the last or second to last one chosen when we were playing games. I was a terrible athlete, the worst runner. And when I started running as a, you know, as a, as a hobby, and I, you know, I realized I was never going to obviously never going to be among the fastest people, but I had great endurance. I really enjoyed it. I could get into this spacey head

Starting point is 00:09:17 place that I really liked. And I just kept running longer and longer distances. I've run a bunch of marathons. And I think, um, I think it's this combination of fitness and self-worth and then, um, the kind of daily when it's going well, the kind of daily high of just putting your head in a different place and getting tired and feeling good about the way your body feels. So that's, you know, when I listen to those things, that's a lot. You can't get that out of a lot. I mean, you can get it out of any daily exercise where it feels like you make progress, I guess. But that for me, because I was competitive with myself or even with where I would be in a given year.

Starting point is 00:10:04 I mean, I'm never going to break any of my older personal records, but just to make progress, it's just something very rewarding about it. Very reinforcing. This is going to be a left turn, but these are all going to be left turns, so I guess we'll just end up going in a weird square over and over again. Right. Cool. What books besides your own have you gifted most to other people? Um, I don't, you know, I, I have bought, uh, I was going to say I buy one off.

Starting point is 00:10:38 I see a book someone will like, and I buy that. I have bought a bird by bird by Annie Lamott for a number of people who've told me that they were struggling with writing. Cause I think it's a really great writing book and it's a good read. Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic book. You know, I, I used to buy catch 22 for a lot of people. Cause I just thought if you hadn't read it, you had to, but maybe that era is over. I don anything else? I bought cookbooks by other people. I bought Marcella Hazan books for people and Julie Sani books for people because those are the best, I think, basic Italian and Indian books, respectively. Maybe I don't buy a lot. Like I said, I think it's mostly one-offs. I'll see something. I think someone I know will like and just send it.

Starting point is 00:11:26 Preston Pysh, MD, So if we're looking at one-offs and continuing in that thread, what purchase, and it doesn't have to be exact, but what purchase of say less than $100, but something not terribly expensive comes to mind that has had a significant positive impact on your life? Could be anything. The iPhone headset. I don't know, an electric shaver. Those are all fair answers. You're saying them like questions. Those are all fair. A kilo tin of anchovies. I mean know i think i could probably go on because those are it's funny to talk about purchases because i feel like in the past year

Starting point is 00:12:15 talking about books i was thinking about amazon but i dropped amazon prime because i felt like i was buying things too easily i felt like i wasn't thinking about, you know, it's not even really the cost because most stuff is inexpensive or negligible. But, you know, it's not like I was buying washing machines on the way. You know, if I needed a box of tissues, I might buy a case of tissues, that kind of thing. And I just thought I wasn't thinking things through enough, thinking through purchases enough. And then I started to realize how much stuff I had and how easy it would be just as easy to give things away or to go shopping in my closet for clothing or that kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:13:02 So I feel like in the last year or so, I've become less of a consumer, more thoughtful about this and more thoughtful about how things decline in value. Some things decline in value tremendously the minute you buy them. We think about cars, but if you think about clothing, it's sort of the same thing. And I try to focus purchases on stuff that I need and stuff that's higher quality. And that goes especially for food, because you use food up. So you do need to buy that more and more. But it's interesting that I basically, six months ago or so, I said I'm going on a three-year clothing strike. Just not going to buy anything.

Starting point is 00:13:50 And that hasn't exactly been true. But compared to what I was like before, you know, it's like if I need something, I needed a rain jacket for a backpacking trip I was going on. I bought it, but I'm not buying things on whims. I'm not buying things because they're quote unquote nice. It's more like, yeah, I have enough sweatshirts. There's probably enough sweatshirts for the rest of my life. You mentioned, did you say a gallon tin of anchovies? Kilo. Kilo. All right.

Starting point is 00:14:20 Yeah. You know, you can buy salted anchovies. Anchovies come in, you know, two ways. They come, or that is preserved anchovies, they come salted or they come packed in oil. And if they're salted, you then rinse them off and you can pack them in oil yourself or not. But they keep really well. You can use a couple at a time. It's a little less expensive. They're pretty high quality. Generally, they come from Sicily

Starting point is 00:14:48 or elsewhere in Southern Italy. So I don't know. That was just an example. I do like that. And it's a nice can. Everybody buys the same. There's one producer that everybody... What's the name of the producer?

Starting point is 00:15:00 I don't know. It's Sicilian stuff. The reason I'm asking is that i actually travel with cans of sardines and i was turned on yes by a scientist named dominic d'agostino so are you just eating them uh as as a solo dish often as a snack yeah but what tell me about that because I'm curious well well Dominic D'Agostino he researches a number of things but he focuses on metabolism and is more recently focused on exogenous ketones so these are ketone esters that mimic the physiological state of fasting in some respects. And your brain utilizes

Starting point is 00:15:48 ketones very well. So he's looked at how ketones in the dietary state of ketosis along the lines of say an Atkins diet, or if it's induced by fasting can affect everything from cancer growth, even with very aggressive cancer growth, like glioblastoma and things along those lines. He's done a lot more than that, but he follows a ketogenic diet himself. And I asked him what he had for breakfast. And he said, well, I usually have, let's say a handful of macadamia nuts, some eggs and a tin of sardines and a half a tin of canned oysters. And I'd never even, I didn't even know there were such a thing as canned oysters. So I started emulating his breakfast and I fell in love

Starting point is 00:16:31 with these sardines, these wild planet sardines. I know them. Yeah, they're good. They're really great. Oh, they're great. Packed in oil. So when I'm traveling, I'll just throw a few of those tins in my checked luggage. and if I find myself in a tight spot where I can't get a breakfast that's acceptable to me, then I'll have that. Have you done any experimentation with fasting? Five years ago, I fasted for four days. I don't know if you count that as experimentation. It was for sort of political reasons, And it was, um, uh,

Starting point is 00:17:05 it was an interesting experience, but it wasn't really, I don't think, it was the kind of experience that, that you're asking me about. Right. Yeah. It's so, I, I mean, this is your podcast, so I, you know, I want to do what you want to do, but, um, I, I wouldn't mind continuing this conversation because it's interesting stuff to me. Yeah, we can talk about the fasting. So there's, I think it's Seyfried might be the last name. I'd have to look it up.

Starting point is 00:17:32 But there are a number of published researchers who believe that as one tool in the toolkit, not a standalone monotherapy at all, that fasting can, among other things, let's just say using the standard of care chemotherapy or something like that, sensitize cancer cells to the effects of those treatments while also increasing the resilience of normal cells. So I have a friend who was, I think it's stage three cancer. I won't get into specifics because he's a private guy, but he fasted for three continuous days prior to his treatments. And while the rest of his cohort, these other people were laid out in bed for a day, he was running 10 miles the next morning. And that could have been placebo, who knows, but there's enough data to support that in addition to that, even using fasting prophylactically, you could potentially,

Starting point is 00:18:28 and over the age of say 40, everyone has, or most people will have, I should say, precancerous cells in their bodies. And that in and of itself is not a problem if they don't grow out of control. But fasting, extended fasting, let's just say, and I think Dominic generally does a five-day or five to seven-day fast a few times a year, can help to purge those cells that might at a later time metastasize or become a problem. So for both sort of philosophical and ascetic reasons, but also physiological reasons, I've started scheduling regular fasts for myself. So what does a fast mean under these circumstances? So what a fast means under these circumstances is, a fast is, and I've changed it over time.

Starting point is 00:19:21 I did a distilled water fast, which I actually do not recommend. I do not believe juice fasts fit in this paradigm because you'll never click over into a ketotic state if you're feeding yourself glucose, or in this case, fructose. And for me, I'll tell you exactly what it looks like. It looks like waking up, I will have tea or coffee, so a non-caloric beverage. I will allow myself some fat that could come in the form of coconut oil or pure MCT oil. And I am avoiding protein and carbohydrate for the most part. There are a few allowances that I made in the last go-round, but generally speaking, I'm having water, tea, or coffee, and allowing a small amount of fat each day, particularly in the first few days. And when I say I made some allowances last time around, when I did my water fast, I lost,

Starting point is 00:20:16 I want to say about 12 pounds of muscle. It was a very, very large amount of muscle. Because it took me a long time to go from glucose dependent to fat adapted and when you're glucose dependent you run out of glycogen you start breaking down muscle tissue in a process called gluconeogenesis in the liver so the second time around i did a 10-day fast and this is maybe the third time and i got into ketosis very quickly in about 18 hours and i'm measuring this with a finger prick using a device called the Precision Extra XTRA from Abbott Labs. It looks like a glucometer. It is a glucometer. And once I get to about really over 0.5 millimolars, which is the concentration of ketones in the blood, most people would say that's ketosis. I only feel it when I get to

Starting point is 00:21:02 about 1.2, 1.3. But the point being, I got into ketosis very quickly. So I'm already sparing muscle tissue. And I was doing DEXA scans, these body composition scans every two days or three days to keep track of muscle mass and just general composition. I started losing muscle. I started losing muscle, which I did not want to have happen. And I spoke to Dominic, the scientist I mentioned, and he said, well, you could try using very, very small amounts of branched chain amino acids, very small though. So we're talking 1.5 grams in the morning. And then on a workout day, if you're going to work out, taking perhaps two to three grams intro workout. And I started doing that and I lost zero muscle tissue over a nine and a half day fast. And the only protein I was consuming were these, let's just call it one and a half to three and a half grams of branched chain amino acids per day.

Starting point is 00:22:00 And I would very occasionally give myself a treat of Nori sheets in olive oil or soaked in olive oil because it's 10 calories. There's nothing to it really. It's all fat. It's all fat. assumed on some level that if you're avoiding primarily protein and carbohydrates, that the fat, a very, very, very, very ultra low calorie ketogenic diet that I then call a fast probably provokes a lot of the autophagy and cell cleaning and so on that I'm looking for in a fast without being just distilled water where you get into trouble with distilled water is you're going to be peeling off electrolytes and losing a lot of water and people end up. And this was, this was consistent when I did my first seven day fast at a medical clinic, almost everyone had a tachycardia is a rapid heart rate at night. They couldn't, they couldn't sleep at all. And when you start to supplement with, let's say, bullion cubes and water or magnesium, potassium, et cetera, then you're totally fine and you can sleep. And I think that's a cholinergic response, but there you have it. So that's a big part of

Starting point is 00:23:17 my monthly and quarterly scheduling now though, is the fasting. Have you written about it at all i i have actually and i mean we're we're certainly here to talk about uh what you're up to but that my my brain yeah i'm just curious oh no no for sure we don't have to just yeah we don't know no no no no no i don't mind i mean i i've had enough caffeine to to enjoy talking but but the the the my i mean i have a brand new book that's coming out in a few days called tools of titans and one of the longest chapters is on everything i've learned including my personal routine related to fasting and and the ketogenic diet but it's it's very neglected i think people think about fixing problems by adding things. This is a very natural instinct and it's it's not as common to think about subtracting things and then reintroducing them in in this is perhaps an extreme example, but fasting you just removing all the inputs and allowing nature to try to do its work and you see some really odd things happen. A lot of people with joint injuries have them resolve themselves.

Starting point is 00:24:27 I can't explain exactly why that's the case, but I've seen it in dozens of cases. It's really odd. Let me ask you, we talked about writing. You brought up Bird by Bird, which completely saved me when I was writing my second book, and I've given it to a lot of friends since. I'd love to talk about your writing process a little bit. How many books at this point have you authored or co-authored? 20.

Starting point is 00:24:50 God, that's a lot of books. It's a lot of books. That's the answer. That is the answer. So yeah. And you very often seem to write books that are similar to some of mine in the sense that you could, you could bludgeon a mugger to death with, with some of these books. I mean, there's not small books in all cases. What does your, when you are on deadline, let's just say you're a month out from book deadline, what does your daily routine look like?

Starting point is 00:25:22 You know, it's like, it's really different. Cookbooks are different from other things, or they may be similar to what you do. But with cookbooks, the process, especially the big ones, and there are now five, including the How to Bake Everything, the latest, there are five How to Cook Everything books. Six, if you count that one is the second edition of another. So How to Cook Everything, then a second edition of another so um how to cook everything then a second edition of how to cook everything and how to carry the vegetarian how to cook everything the basics how to carry everything fast and now how to bake everything those are all so big that they're really years-long projects and a month out from deadline doesn't mean anything

Starting point is 00:26:01 because i tend to submit things in quarters or halves or whatever, and I'm working on editing the first half while still finishing the second half and so on. I think on a book project like Food Matters or Vegan Before Six, where there was much more writing when it was more of a long essay or novella length essay. I think in the last few weeks, a lot of what's going on is tweaking language and trying to make sure that sometimes you read things so many times that you don't realize what's wrong and you need a big chunk of time to get away from it and come back and say, oh, this whole chapter and half the paragraphs should be somewhere else. Like it's just not tracking right. And those are only things that you can catch after you've written something and let it rest, or at least for me, after you've written something and let it rest for a while. So

Starting point is 00:27:02 I think more interesting than what happens in the last month might maybe what happens in the last six months. And I hope that part of that last six months is setting things aside so that I can come back and look at them fresh. And when you're in the thick of writing, when you are actually in production mode and not stepping away, what does the structure of your day look like? Well, I'm, I'm about to, I'm hoping in January, maybe I'm hoping in March that I should stall a little bit, but I'm about to enter one of those periods. And, um, uh, you know, I'm, I, the, the plan is to get up at four, four 30 and30 and work seriously from 5 till 10 and then let the rest of my day take whatever shape it takes. But I need that. If I'm working at my most serious level, it has to be

Starting point is 00:27:56 in absolute peace and quiet with nothing around and no email, no phone calls, none of that stuff. And the only time I have the discipline to do that is when I first get up in the morning. I read about writers who work late into the night and, man, that is so not me. So not me. And when you wake up, what happens? Besides brushing the teeth and so on, what is leading up to sitting down to write? And then what is the first 30 minutes look like? First 30 minutes is coffee. And then there's sort of a bunch of like knuckle cracking, throat clearing. I might do some email

Starting point is 00:28:41 or I might look at the paper or something like that. Just really, it's almost warming up my fingers at the keyboard. And then often it's rewriting something that I've done the day before, or if there's something hot in my head, it's just spilling it out. And I'm a firm believer. I mean, this is, there's no secrets in bird by bird. Most writers say the same thing, this idea that you have to get a lousy draft down before you can do anything good and that you just need to spill the contents of your brain out onto what we'll call the paper, you know, out onto the screen and then worry about making it beautiful later. I understand there are some writers who really write a careful sentence at a time, but most writers you talk to feel like there are two different kinds of processes. One is kind of a brain dump, and one is this refine, refine, refine.

Starting point is 00:29:41 And do you sit in front of the computer and clock your five hours no matter what or is there uh have you left yourself a starting point it's the hemingway-esque style of stopping kind of mid-paragraph so you know where to start the next day i've never done i've never done that um but you know i'm not going to compare myself to Hemingway. It was a different kind of writing anyway. But I think that I don't do outlines very well, but sometimes I'll get to a point in writing something where I'll say, okay, here I can see the rest of this chapter,

Starting point is 00:30:24 or even the rest of the next few chapters, and I'll just make some notes. First this, then you do this, then go do this, then do that. And that's as far, as close to an outline as I get. And I like when that happens. But if it doesn't happen, it just flows. I've never had what people call writer's block. I've had months where I didn't do a lot of writing,

Starting point is 00:30:52 but I've never really had to or wanted to write something and not been able to do it. So it's usually, you know, I don't recall an experience where I'd gotten up in that when I've been in that kind of rhythm. And it's funny, it goes back to running in a way. It's when you run every day, you just run every day and, um, you don't think about it that much. You get up and maybe do something and maybe you don't, but at some point early in the day, you tie the shoes on and you go out. And it's kind of the same thing. There might be months where I'm not really writing anything serious, but if I am writing something serious, it's just mostly getting up and doing it. So you mentioned not really having writer's block or not thinking of it much, certainly.

Starting point is 00:31:46 Let's talk about failures or mistakes for a second. So how has a failure or an apparent failure in your life set you up for later success, if you can think of any? Or do you have a favorite failure of yours that actually ended up being really important to your career or life? There was a period where really by my standards, I was a failure. And that was because I had done a bunch of writing when I was in my early 20s, but not really been paid much for it. But then when I started to want to write, when I decided I was going to write for a

Starting point is 00:32:30 living, no one was interested in anything that I was writing. And this went on for two or three years. It was back in the mid to late 70s. So, you know, it was a while ago but in those days the advice was you do well i've tried to write fiction but i didn't think it was very good um so then i was trying to write freelance articles and in those days the wisdom was you wrote letters to editors and you and you said here's the story want to write, and then they would politely say, no thanks, or they would ignore you entirely,

Starting point is 00:33:07 and that went on for a long time, during which I made a living by being a traveling salesman. I sold photographic equipment. So that, and that went on for a while, and I kept trying and trying and trying and failing. I guess that's failing. I mean, not succeeding anyway. And then the funny thing is, was that people thought I was a good traveling salesman, but

Starting point is 00:33:40 I knew that I was a terrible traveling salesman because I knew that my heart wasn't in it. And I didn't particularly believe in what I was selling. I wasn't that interested in it. I was selling photographic equipment. I might have said that already. Forgive me. But I was driving around from store to store saying, you want to buy these tripods? You want to buy these notebooks?

Starting point is 00:33:59 You want to buy this? And I didn't really care whether people bought them or not because the marginal income was not all that significant. So that is to say I was making enough money from the job that any additional sale, I made a little more money, but it didn't seem like it was worth killing myself for it. But as I said, I didn't really believe in the product. So there was there was that and then i finally sold my first piece and my first piece was a food piece and um do you remember what it was about the oh yeah totally have it on my wall um i i was in a karate class i was in a karate class with a guy named chris angerman and um chris i was in new

Starting point is 00:34:44 haven and chris was writing theater reviews for the local weekly but that's not what he did for I was in a karate class with a guy named Chris Angerman. And Chris, I was in New Haven. And Chris was writing theater reviews for the local weekly. But that's not what he did for a living. And I said, how did that happen? And he said, oh, just go talk to George DiStefano. He's the arts editor down there. And he'll let you do something. So I went in the next day and I talked to George DiStefano. And I said, you know, I could review restaurants better than the people you

Starting point is 00:35:05 have reviewing restaurants now. And he said, well, write one and, um, and we'll see what happens. And I wrote one, I slaved over it for 24 hours and I brought it in and, um, uh, he really liked it. And I, you know, it's, it's interesting. I, The date on it is March 1st, 1980. So it's now, what is that 30 going on 37 years ago? He really liked it. And I, I have it on my wall and I think it's really good. I'm quite happy about it. Um, so that was my first success. And I, and, and the interesting thing after that was that I became a very aggressive salesman of my own stuff. I think you could probably relate to that. And I think a lot of entrepreneurial writers can relate to that, which is we have to go out there and say, you want to buy this book, you want to buy this article, because I'm going to say it in a way others haven't.

Starting point is 00:36:00 And it's an interesting topic and I'll do a good job, blah, blah, blah. And I've made my living doing that since then. And I've had setbacks and I, you know, some years are better than others and so on. But I do believe that I'm a good writer. And obviously I've learned a lot over the years and I've learned tremendous amount about food which is why if we go back to that first question about what I don't talk about that I do there is this kind of not it's not a secret life but I do cook all the time and I'm always amazed at how both at how much there is to learn and how much I actually have have learned how much I know in modesty aside how much I know, and modesty aside, how much I know. So I do think there is this way in which that period of seeing that I didn't believe in

Starting point is 00:36:51 what I was doing set me up for being excited and being assertive, if not aggressive, about once I started doing things, that I did believe in what I was doing. You mentioned that you, people considered you a good salesman of this photographic equipment were, did any of that get translated over to selling your own work? And I'm just wondering what specifically makes you or one good at selling either of those things? Like what,

Starting point is 00:37:24 what was it that made you better at selling your ideas or the photographic equipment than some of the other people who were doing the same I think they thought I was good at selling photographic women because I was a nice guy and people liked me and knew how to talk and actually I am curious about other people's lives so I'm really I mean it happened here this was supposed to be an interview with me. We wound up talking about something you're doing for, you know, for 10 minutes. And I think that's not, that's not a contrivance. I, I'm not that interested in

Starting point is 00:37:55 myself. Um, I, I know what's going on in my self. So I, I like to hear other people's stories. And I think I've always liked that. And that's being a reporter and that's being a journalist. And yeah, I think I've always had that, that curiosity. And, and that's, um, I think if you show a genuine interest in other people, which I do because I am genuinely interested in other people, they like you. Do you have any quotes that you live your life by or think of often? I bet I do, but I can't think of them right now. It's not like I have any, it's not like they're mantras, that's for sure.

Starting point is 00:38:53 But I'm sure that there are things that, you i actually you know i've said i said to my kids but it's not maybe i still feel this way because i am this writing project that i'm about to take on is a complete and total stretch for me and um i know we'll probably talk about this but i just started doing a podcast and that's a stretch for me. So I do think that one thing that I learned and it's interesting because it goes back to what we were just talking about. But one thing that I have learned is that if you are afraid to fail, then you're not going to succeed because, you know, there is no success without failure. And fear of failure keeps people from trying and then there's no possible success so that's that's not exactly a mantra it's something that i know i know to brew and i've and i've said it to my kids and to other people and um i lived my life lived my life that way it makes me think of a video that actually had a huge impact on me when I was about 15

Starting point is 00:39:46 years old. It was a video of a very, very legendary wrestling coach named Dan Gable in Iowa. And he was doing a postgame analysis on one of the Iowa Hawkeyes. I think it was a dual meet competition. And he was yelling at one of the athletes who got a tie. And he said, you just didn't want to lose. You didn't want to lose because he beat you twice before. And so you got a tie.

Starting point is 00:40:18 You never win that way. The idea being like wanting not to fail and wanting to win are two very different things right um what what advice and this is a cliched question but sometimes it goes somewhere what advice would you give uh or do you wish you'd received when you were say 20 25 or 30 you can pick you can pitch pick whichever uh or time that you needed some advice for that matter. Well, you said it was a cliche, and it's so often repeated, and it is so corny. And my parents never said this to me, but I think they telegraphed it to me despite themselves and despite the way they live their own lives. And, you know, that's not we're probably not going to get into that.

Starting point is 00:41:10 But but my parents are funny in that they're they're verbal cues. I don't know where to go with this. OK, so I do think that there are ways in which my parents taught me things that were very unintentional on their part. Very little to do with how they lived their own lives and even what they believed. And yet somehow there were messages that I managed to absorb. Now, maybe I didn't absorb them from my parents at all. Maybe I absorbed them from elsewhere. But anyway, you know, it's the follow your passion thing. I

Starting point is 00:41:45 think you have to do what it is you think you want to do, because you're not going to succeed at stuff that you don't want to do. Um, so I wasn't, I was passionate about food in the cooking sense. It wasn't that I ever thought, oh, I'm going to write about food. It was that I thought, I'm going to write, and I really like cooking. And those two things together really worked for me. And I didn't sit around saying, oh, I'm passionate about this. This is what I must do. Those are just the things that I felt that I wanted to do. And I don't know.

Starting point is 00:42:23 Other things could have worked out in my life in much different ways, of course. And they might have worked out better, they might have worked out worse. But these were things that I was, that I wanted to do and wanted to have as part of my life. And I think that's the advice I say to people all the time. They say, what should I do? It's really like, what is it you want to do? Because that's what you I say to people all the time. They say, what should I do? It's really like, what, what is it you want to do? Because that's,

Starting point is 00:42:48 that's what you got to know. What, I don't know if you had any external input or pressure or, uh, advice given to you, but if you hadn't listened to that, if you had listened to other people, what do you think you would have ended up doing or where would you be? My parents would have loved

Starting point is 00:43:05 it if i was a doctor so the thing is that i um when i was young i felt like there were so many options of things to do that it was impossible to decide which one was going to be the right path so to decide in high school which is sort of what it would have taken or early in college to become a doctor, it just seemed way too early. But to say I'm going to be a writer was so vague and meaningless that it left every door open.

Starting point is 00:43:38 And it was only later that I realized every time you say yes to something, you've said no to many, many other things. Not every other thing, but anytime you make a commitment, you're making commitment in a direction, and it seals off other directions, at least for that moment. And that's an important lesson also, is that it's not only the things that you say no to

Starting point is 00:44:04 that shut down certain avenues, it's what you say yes to. Because if you say yes to something that you're not going to enter into wholeheartedly, you're still going to take time, which is, you know, I guess we could say the most precious thing we have, and devote it, that path, which means you're not giving time to another path. So, you know, if you're, and, and it can, these can be daily decisions or these can be life decisions. If you're watching TV, you're not exercising. If you're cooking, you're not sleeping. I mean, whatever it is, you say yes to something, you say you're saying no to something else. And then in the long run, if you're, if you are 17 years old and you say, I'm going to be a doctor, you've just,

Starting point is 00:44:50 if you stay on that path, you shut off all these other careers. I mean, there are remarkable people who have more than one career, but that's not the norm. Yeah. I, I, I want to say this is a Steve jobs quote, but it makes me think of the innovation is saying no to a thousand things. But it's like, as you pointed out, it's also saying yes to, I guess this is echoing a friend of mine who's been on the podcast named Derek Sivers is an entrepreneur. to the hell yes, 100% in options and not to the that could be kind of cool options because you will drown yourself in these mediocre commitments. And as you put it,

Starting point is 00:45:33 it displaces the opportunity to do these things that you actually care about. How old are you now, Mark? I'm going to be 67 in February. So if we had your, let's say your 80 year old self just poof appeared on the couch. Not that far away. Not that far away. So what would your 80 year old, what advice do you think your 80 year old self would give

Starting point is 00:45:58 your current self? That's great. Um, well, I guess I could say the kind of advice that i'd like the my 80 year old self to give my current self yeah i would think i would hope that it would be don't age too fast or don't write things off too quickly um keep changing keep struggling to do newer, better, more exciting

Starting point is 00:46:27 things and don't be afraid to jump off metaphorical cliffs. And that is what I'd really hated if my 80-year-old self was saying to me, now, you should

Starting point is 00:46:43 be much more conservative in the way you're living you should take far fewer chances you know that kind i don't want that and you said don't write things off too quickly could you elaborate on that or give us an example there are there are projects there are things that seem too hard at first and then they turn out to be, you know, the fun thing for me, and I don't know how many people feel this way, but often the fun thing for me is the steep end of the learning curve. So whether we're talking about the fasting stuff that you were describing before, which is completely new and wild to me and makes me feel like, oh, I'd like to explore that. Or we're talking about backpacking,

Starting point is 00:47:28 which is something I've taken up recently and just completely surprised me how much I've liked it. Or Pilates, for that matter, same thing. Or backgammon. I mean, all these things that I never, you know, I never thought I'd be interested in it for one reason or another. I became interested in that. And I love that stuff. I love starting new things. And I love the part of it. That's that, that goes from God, I'm completely clueless at this too. Well, I've gained some competence in this arena and isn't

Starting point is 00:48:02 that nice. And that's the the that to me is the most fun gaining competence i think is the one of the most fun things in life and um something that i hope i can continue to do when it's funny because you know i gained competence in cooking for example a long time ago but i like getting better and better at it. But some things come and some things go. And what they've had in common is that I love that steep end of the learning curve. Preston Pyshko So why start a podcast? And what is the name of the podcast? Richard Leider The podcast is called Get Bit, for better

Starting point is 00:48:39 or worse. It's a name we kind of like. We'll see if other people like it. It goes back in a way to why I left the Times. I left the Times because I felt, I left the Times for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that I felt constrained and I felt like I couldn't say anything I wanted to say about any subject I wanted to tackle. And I thought, well, there are two ways of dealing with this. One is to do a newsletter, which I might still do. And the other is these guys I quite liked came to me and said, would you like to do a podcast?

Starting point is 00:49:16 And it's funny, I hadn't listened to many podcasts. I mean, I'd listened to Serial like everybody else in the United States, but I hadn't listened to really any sort of personal people telling their stories. And I started to do that. And I thought, this is great. These people are able to do whatever they want. And it's not, no one says it has to be 30 minutes and no one says it has to be two hours. And, um, no one says you can't talk to this guy and no one says you can't do this thing. And it's self-publishing in a way. And it's verbal instead of written.

Starting point is 00:49:55 And I thought that's appealing too. Because I do like to talk and I like interviews a lot. I mean, I like both ends of interviews and I'm pretty good at interviewing people. And so we thought we'd give it a shot. And I think three or six months went by and we were doing samples of this and we were thinking of who might sponsor and how we might organize or whatever. And then at some point I said, we should just do a show. We know it's not going to cost us that much money or that much time to, um, to put something together. Why don't we do a show? So people got together where I'm living, which is up the Hudson river, about 50 miles from New York. And it's a, it's a, it's a working farm. And, um, I mean, the bigger story than that, but that, that'll do. And, um, my daughter Kate came up with her newborn at that point, newborn son. And,

Starting point is 00:50:53 and, um, uh, two of the producers came. And as it happened, the guy who was doing a story about me for Epicurious came and a couple other people showed up. And for two days, we, we made phone calls and did a, did a couple of interviews. And we did some walking and golf carting around the farm a little bit and talked about this and that. And we did a bunch of cooking and talked about that. And it was really, really fun. And so then they went back, Josh and Mark, who are two of the people I'm working with, went back and edited the hell out of all this. By that time, we probably had six hours of material, edited it down to 30 or 40 minutes.

Starting point is 00:51:36 And we just sort of self-published it last week. You can find it on my website, on the Get bit website, you know, in the Twitter sphere, whatever. But we were really happy about how it came out. And I loved, I loved the process. It was like, we just did stuff for two days and Josh mostly was walking around with microphones while we were doing it. And yeah, I think it worked out well. So we're going to, we're pushing ahead. We're going to go ahead with it. And yeah, I think it worked out well. So we're pushing ahead. We're going to go ahead. Is it get bit with two Ts, B-I-T-T or B-I-T?

Starting point is 00:52:13 No, B-I-T-T. Okay, of course. Just making sure. Right, right. The podcasting, yeah. I found podcasting so fun as an experimental medium, because as you said, there are no rules, really. And it just provides you an opportunity also to explore your thoughts in a way and the thoughts of others that can translate to, at least for me, writing much more clearly later. I'm walking through and developing my thoughts as I'm listening to people and asking questions. Now, you have interviewed a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:52:51 What are some undervalued questions? Some questions, perhaps, whether they're follow-ups or just openers, whatever it might be. What are some questions that you have found very, very helpful or valuable? I don't think my answer is going to make you happy. I'm not very happy in general. It's okay. I don't think it's going to give you what you want. This is me. I mean, I don't pretend to teach interviewing. And actually, I tried to teach journalism last year, and I felt like I wasn't very good at that either. You know, I think after this hour-long conversation, it's clear that I'm not modest when I don't need to be.

Starting point is 00:53:36 But when I recognize something that I'm not good at, I'm happy to talk about that also. And I don't think I'm good about teaching some of the things that I think I do well, but I think that, um, you know what, maybe you will like this answer because I'm thinking about what's just happened in the course of the last hour. I don't believe in having had questions for interviews. I, um, I might have a couple of key things that I want the person I'm interviewing to cover, but I actually think the best interviews are conversations and that you have to see what the natural conversation is and that any subject of any interview can give a variety of different interviews. The interviewer has to determine what he or she, if I'm interviewing somebody, I have to figure out what they are doing. That's interesting to me and hope that that is interesting to other people also. So, I mean, you can think of anyone you want, but it's most likely that the questions that they most often get are not the

Starting point is 00:54:43 most interesting questions. And they're also not the questions that are gonna make them think Because if if you say to me, how did you start cooking? It's a question that I you know that I've answered I mean literally 200 times So I can't come up with it Anything I say is going to sound rehearsed. Whereas if we have a conversation as we're doing, which is why I realized you are going to like this answer.

Starting point is 00:55:13 If we have a conversation, then I'm taken by surprise, but what by whatever comes next and I'm forced to actually think. And I think that as an interviewer, that's what you want to do is get the person you're talking to to actually think. I just thought of maybe a coping strategy for when you get asked

Starting point is 00:55:37 that question again. And I heard that Nick Nolte, this is a rumor, but it's been verified a few times, that he got so sick of answering the same questions that he would just make up extremely elaborate lies, and he would tell them. No, I went through that.

Starting point is 00:55:53 I've done that. I've been there, done that. It's satisfying, because it's kind of fun, but it doesn't, I mean, and it also forces you to be creative in a way that you might not otherwise be, but, um,

Starting point is 00:56:14 man, who wants to sit around lying all the time? I don't know. It doesn't seem that appealing really. Yeah, certainly it's a headache for the publicist who gets the fact checking call, uh, at the end of the day. But let's talk about another topic that I don't think you're aware is actually something that is near and dear to my heart, which is baking. in fact the first type of cooking I ever attempted because I was trying in 1999 to follow a ketogenic diet and the tools and packaged foods and so on that support people are trying to follow an

Starting point is 00:56:54 Atkins-like diet now did not exist then. And you get so sick of eggs, meat, water, eggs, meat, water, you just want to have something crunchy. And the only thing available at the time was pork rinds. And I said, no, I'm sick of pork rinds. I need something crunchy. So I went out and tried to find soy protein powders that might be suitable for baking. I want to make cookies and I'd never made cookies. So I got really into baking and I found it suited my personality, which made sense later when I was talking to somebody at the CIA, not the Central Intelligence Agency, but the Culinary Institute of America. The other one, right.

Starting point is 00:57:34 And I asked how they steered people towards savory or sweet. And they said, well, sometimes we'll just ask them, do you like folding your underwear and socks? And if the answer is yes, then we point them towards the baking. And I was like, okay, well, I don't do that, but I do have a lot of monkish tendencies. So, and baking was really fast. I enjoyed the immediate feedback. What to you makes baking fascinating or fun? What are most people missing who haven't ever attempted to bake something? Here's the thing. I don't think that baking is all that different from cooking.

Starting point is 00:58:16 And I think the answer to that question goes for cooking as well as baking. And the answer is you wind up with a finished product that makes you happy in a variety of ways, plus you can eat it. So if baking is your passion, I think maybe you're more interested in the final product having a very specific shape and form that's pleasing to the eye. Because cooking has been a little messier. You know, a stew does not have the same aesthetic qualities as a cake or even a cookie. It's sort of more freeform and flowing.

Starting point is 00:59:02 I mean, on the other hand, there's nothing more beautiful than an omelet. So cooking can be, of course, as beautiful as baking. But I think that both have that thing in common. You start a project and a reasonably short period of time, you finish it. It has a lot of wonderful aesthetic qualities and you get to eat it. And you get to nurture people you care, often you get to nurture people you care about which is quite an incredible thing so how many pages is how to bake everything 700 something 700 all right so how to bake everything everything's all-inclusive it's not everything of course everything I know how to bake which is a lot so which is a lot i don't want to i don't i always feel like this title which has a story of its own

Starting point is 00:59:51 as um you know it was a bit a bit tongue-in-cheek at the beginning but um i always feel like i have to apologize for it even though it's obviously not meant to be taken literally. But yeah. Well, I mean, you're talking to the guy who wrote something called the four-hour work week, which you'd expect to find after the rotisserie chicken before the spray on hair at three in the morning on TV. So yes, I know the feeling. In that book, though, so 700 pages, if you wanted to get somebody hooked on baking and simultaneously give them a dish that would teach them principles that applied to a lot of other dishes

Starting point is 01:00:34 or just great principles for cooking, is there any particular recipe that comes to mind? Well, it might be a cheat, but I would say something like pizza because it's got cooking and baking in it. So it's more than, you know, you're making a sauce, which I think is an incredibly valuable thing. And you're learning how to make a dough that incorporates yeast, which is something that can really serve you well. But, you know, I always say when people say, how should I start? I say, just pick up a cookbook and find something that really appeals to you. Find something that you want to make and then take your time and tackle that. Yeah, that is what I think.

Starting point is 01:01:22 I think that the best dish for a person to cook first is the dish that appeals to that person most. And that's sort of the way I best know to guarantee or at least to nearly guarantee success. Well, I think pizza probably hits 80% of the population. People like pizza, so that's good. Yeah. And I remember I picked up, is it Marcella or Marcella Hazan? Marcella. Marcella. Yeah, the best.

Starting point is 01:01:56 And what is her sort of her magnum opus? I'm blanking on the name here but well the first thing that she did was was uh me too classics of classics classics of italian cooking that's right and and i remember being intimidated but focusing on the roast chicken and to this day i I think that that is my go-to approach to roasting chickens. And it was the least intimidating or one of the less intimidating that I could approach. But you know that people always used to say that you can judge a restaurant best on its roast chicken because it's the hardest thing to make. Now, I don't think that's actually true, but many people think that, you know, making a great roast chicken is actually, and it's true, making a great roast chicken is not easy. Making a decent roast chicken is pretty easy, but making a great one is not easy. I've heard this say, I've heard the same thing about

Starting point is 01:03:00 making a French omelet that people will say, okay, let's see how you make a French omelet. And that was also one of the litmus tests, or one of the, I'm sure, many different tests that people could throw out there. I am not a chef. I enjoy cooking, but certainly wouldn't put myself on the line anywhere even half respectable. So, Mark, where can...

Starting point is 01:03:23 It's all practice, as you know. Like, where can, uh, practice as you know, it's like everything else. It's all practice. And the more, as you pointed out, the more you enjoy the, whether it's the skill or the dish that you pick out, the more incentivized and motivated you're going to be to practice in the first place. Uh, Mark, where can, uh, I guess, I guess two things. So the first is we'll wrap up here

Starting point is 01:03:46 and I'll let you get running because I know we have a hard out so the first is where can people find out more about you and find you on the internet etc and then last is if you have any parting ask of my audience or recommendation could could be anything, what would

Starting point is 01:04:07 that be? Well, those are great questions. Thank you for asking them. I mean, I have a live and well website called markbittman.com. So that's where you can find me most easily. And I'd love people to listen to Get Bit and tell us either on the Get Bit site or through Twitter, which I'm at Bitman, what they think of it. Yeah. And of course, I'd love people to check out how to bake everything, but that goes without saying. And now I hope that after this conversation, people are curious about it and will check it out. It's obviously a great season for it and it's like everything else I've done. The most accessible possible book I could do. So yeah, those are my two requests, I think.

Starting point is 01:04:57 And it's sitting right in my kitchen next to a bunch of others that are my favorites, like Seven Fires and some of my go-tos. So How to Bake Everything has a spot in prime real estate right on my kitchen shelf. And Mark, I am sure you'll be doing a lot of cooking coming up on the holidays,

Starting point is 01:05:19 so I wish you and yours a very happy holidays. Thank you for making the time. It's great chatting with you, Tim. Really a lot of holidays. Thank you for making the time. Great chatting with you, Tim. Really a lot of fun. I hope we get to do it again. And I will be working on my pizza for cheat day. Excellent.

Starting point is 01:05:37 To everybody listening, as always, you can find the show notes, links to everything we talked about at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And until next time, and as always, 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

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Starting point is 01:08:36 to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account, but just start with seeing the portfolio that they

Starting point is 01:09:20 would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com forward slash Tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront,

Starting point is 01:09:38 who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers, Etsy etc why do they use it well Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost features include gorgeous high quality playback with no ads up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week unlimited plays and views and a fully customizable video player which can include your logo custom

Starting point is 01:10:05 outro etc you also get vip support and you get all of this for just $1.99 per year that's $17 a month with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees and you can try it risk-free for 30 days so check it out vimeo.com forward slash business that's vimeo.com forward slash business. That's v-i-m-e-o.com forward slash business and use promo code Tim to get 25% off. That's a special discount just for you guys. So check it out, vimeo.com forward slash business, promo code Tim.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #205: Mark Bittman on Changing the Food Industry and Living Dangerously

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #205: Mark Bittman on Changing the Food Industry and Living Dangerously

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