The Tim Ferriss Show - #223: Calming Philosophies for Chaotic Times -- Krista Tippett

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 seen an appropriate 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 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

Starting point is 00:00:33 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 formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D

Starting point is 00:01:00 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week,

Starting point is 00:01:38 which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always going to be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast,

Starting point is 00:02:15 some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing,

Starting point is 00:02:39 special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely 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 I dig into the details of world-class performance and attempt in each interview to tease

Starting point is 00:03:13 out the thought systems, beliefs, habits, lessons learned from people of all walks of life to give you small little things or very big things that you can test yourself. In this episode, we have Krista Tippett, who's been requested many times at Krista Tippett, K-R-I-S-T-A, Tippett, two Ps, two Ts. Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts the very well-known public radio program and podcast On Being and curates the Civil Conversations Project, an emergent approach to the differences of our age.

Starting point is 00:03:50 She received the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom. Krista was a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin and holds a Master's of Divinity from Yale University. Her books include Becoming Wise, an inquiry into the mystery and art of living, Einstein's God, subtitle, Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, and Speaking of Faith, subtitle, Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It. We cover a lot in this conversation, including Krista's morning routines, Zen versus striving, are they compatible, incompatible, something else, defining the words spiritual and wise, the role of prayer for her and what she focuses on, overcoming depression, and the skills of good interviewing. There's much more to it, but I will leave my intro at that.

Starting point is 00:04:51 And without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Krista Tippett. Krista, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be with you. I have, I suppose like many people, heard your voice quite a lot, and I've read your words quite a lot. And I thought we might start with one of my favorite sentences of yours. And it is, anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public. And this has been a mantra of sorts that I've adopted to help me sustain the battle weary feeling that I get on the internet at times. Could you explain the context of that quote?

Starting point is 00:05:33 Well, I guess the context of that quote or how I walk around with that thought is, it's such an important context and kind of piece of perspective to dealing with the level of emotion in our public life right now. And, you know, it's in politics, but it's really everywhere. And we take things at face value that we would be wiser to not take at face value. We would be wiser to be taking more breaths and understanding that things are true of other people that are also true of us. often the thing we say and do is really a deflection of what we're actually upset about or how we're upset. And, you know, in terms of our public life right now, this way we have of reacting to each other's surfaces is getting in the way, among other things, it's getting in the way of us grappling with all the very real things we need to grapple with that actually are of our shared interest and have to do with our common well-being. Definitely.

Starting point is 00:06:53 And it seemed to me also that anger is often what fear sometimes looks like when it shows itself in public. And I've heard you say before that your father was fearful. And I was hoping you might elaborate on that. And in doing so, just give us some context for your childhood. Yes. And maybe that's part of the reason I have a sensitivity to this, because I think my father had had a terrible first three years of his life, which we didn neglectful. And my father was this kind of larger than life character. And that's how he presented. And of course, he was this huge, powerful character. But I think even from a very, very young age, I sensed that underneath he was very frightened. And, yeah, I hadn't actually thought recently about how that may be helping me imagine that inside the political dynamics in America right now. Where did you grow up? I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. It's a good wrestling state. That much I know.

Starting point is 00:08:32 Really? The only sport I knew growing up was football. I was the only person I knew who was against football. Against football. So I can't say I'm against wrestling because that was the only sport I could be half competent at growing up. So I idolized John Smith, who was just this incredible savant slash superhuman athlete in the world of wrestling from Oklahoma, then turned into an amazing coach. I was always against football. I just felt like it got too much attention. And then when I got older, I had this enlightened moment kind of in high school where I was a debater. I did drama and debate. And that's actually what kept my brain alive growing up.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And I found out that the high school football team had a $50,000 budget, which included steak dinners for all the players after every game. And this is one of my first introductions to injustice in the world. And I protested that and it absolutely colored my view of football. And that was a lot of money. I mean, it's a lot of money now. It was a huge amount of money in the 1960s, 70s. Oh, it's a money machine uh as a lot of people know and do you feel you mentioned drama and debate and i i know that uh there there have been a lot of formative moments as for all people in your childhood then throughout high school and college do you looking back do you think drama and debate were good training for what you do now?

Starting point is 00:10:06 Or was it really just a manifestation of what you were already good at? No, it's so interesting to get to be in your 50s, which I have to say, when I turned 50, I found that I've never cared about birthdays and have basically found every decade to be more interesting than the last. But this one, I didn't like. I didn't like the number 50. I didn't like crossing it. But, you know, now that I'm in it, you have a certain perspective on your life.

Starting point is 00:10:36 And I do feel not that I ever would have planned or, you know, foreseen what I do now. I mean, until, you know, even a few years before I did it, but it does feel like it pulls on all these threads, all these many things that I did in my life. And what's interesting to me is that it actually does pull on that drama piece, which, you know, I went away to college, I never did that again. And kind of here late in life and what turns out to be, I guess, my big career. There's a presentational piece to it. And so I'm really grateful for that. So you mentioned college, and I have a lot of friends, many, many of my closest friends went to Brown and I've heard you describe it as moving to Mars.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Now, uh, the, the question that I'd like to pose is if I, if I were to talk to your closest friends and ask them what your superpowers are, how would they answer that? And my closest friends in college? No, your closest friends now or in college, because the follow-up question is, were those superpowers present in college? Oh, gosh. It's such an interesting question. I mean, I did feel like I had moved from one planet, which was my small town in Oklahoma,

Starting point is 00:12:04 Bible Belt, to this very different world. And, you know, I'll tell you something interesting. I ended up spending most of my 20s in divided Berlin. And after the wall fell, I got my Stasi files. Oh, wow. The East German Secret Service, Stasi, had kept files on me from the time that i went to east germany on a brown exchange program my junior year um which included reports on me from east german students who came to brown uh through that same exchange program and then and then later in

Starting point is 00:12:40 the years i spent in berlin and it's so fascinating It's like this malevolent observer, malevolent, however, you know, like kept folders for me of me in my 20s. And so in my Stasi file are like all the letters I wrote home to my parents from my semester abroad, all the letters my parents wrote to me the letters back and forth between me and my boyfriend um and also the observations of these east german graduate students about me at college it's so fascinating so one day when i'm no longer doing this radio show i will write this book um what were some of their observations well well i mean it was it's it's suffused with um paranoia because they always assumed that i was working for the cia which is so ridiculous because 19 year old college sophomores don't work for the cia um so it was like it was like observing me through this lens of paranoia.

Starting point is 00:13:47 But they saw me as so competent in a way that I think I didn't see myself. You know, like one of them came to Brown after knowing me in East Germany where I was just so much in learning mode and soaking everything up mode. And I guess that would be one of my superpowers that I, you know, if I get curious, if I give myself over to an experience, I really give myself over to it. And I guess I'm a good learner. And so that was the way they had experienced me, you know, full time that semester I spent there. And then this woman came to Brown and she said, to her, I was like a different person. She said she knows everyone, which I never thought of myself. I never thought of myself as someone who knew everyone.

Starting point is 00:14:39 And she saw me as very outgoing and gregarious and a strong personality. I mean, I don't know. I look back at my college self. I look back at myself in my 20s, like many of us, I think. I only remember all the self-doubt and the confusion. What do you think the principles of good learning are? By all accounts, and certainly my impression is that you are a fantastic learner. What do you think the principles or elements of being a good learner are?

Starting point is 00:15:08 Well, I guess two things come to mind. One is good questions. And what I would also say about that is that I think learning is a process. So even if it's something I'm spending an hour learning about, I'm going to expect that my questions are more refined at the end of that hour than they are at the beginning of that hour. So it's being able to formulate good questions going in, but then not just letting your answers or what you're understanding be shaped, but letting your questions evolve um that your questions get better and better um and then i guess the other thing about learning i think is it kind of gets back to where you and i started about seeing what looks like anger we seeing what is expressing itself as anger but understanding that there's something very more, being interested and open to knowing

Starting point is 00:16:08 that there's something more complicated and perhaps something quite other, deeper than what is showing itself on the surface. And I also think that's a quality of learning is pushing for that deeper thing, that what's beneath the surface. So I have always been, and this is not a good thing, quick to anger. And I could point to family influences, I could point to all sorts of things to absolve myself of responsibility,

Starting point is 00:16:38 but it's been in some respects, maybe an aid, a level of aggression, but it's also been very damaging. And I remember being told a few years ago, and I don't recall who gave me this advice, but they said, do not ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. And I've since realized that incompetence can be replaced with a lot of things. Busy. They might just be busy. Just because they gave you a one-line email response to your mini novella that you sent them doesn't mean that they're spiteful or angry. Maybe they just have 10 times more stuff on their plate than you do. If anger is the emotion that I historically have been quick to, that I'm trying to learn to work with in a more constructive way. What emotion are you quick to? Well, you know, I have to say that I'm a redhead and I also am, well, you know, and I think I'm going to say this kind of proudly. I mean, I don't act out the way I used to, but people who've known me at other parts of my life would certainly say that I had a huge temper. And I do righteous indignation really well.

Starting point is 00:17:52 I do it less often than I used to. Well, so Brown was just like jet fuel on the fire. My cousin went to Brown. I have so many friends who have gone to Brown. I think I probably would have been happier there than Princeton, quite frankly. But yeah, righteous indignation. That's the full context of the word. Yeah, I'm good at that. I think one thing about having children, which kind of gets to what you're talking about, is you see how children, and this is interesting because I've read your books across the years and, you know, if they haven't eaten enough or they're not eating the right things, if they haven't gotten enough sleep, you know, they get cranky.

Starting point is 00:18:38 They're miserable. And it's all out on the surface. And I mean, so much of, I think, our bad behavior or the behavior that we look back later and say, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. It's also about just these elemental things about being creatures and bodies and being tired and being hungry and not taking care of ourselves. Yeah. I mean, sometimes people, we're just, we are, a lot of us, we're tired, we're stressed out. But somehow as we go through life, we get less good at wearing that on the surface and sometimes saying that and stepping back rather than giving into the fit

Starting point is 00:19:14 that might be another way to work out our stress or our tiredness. And this reminds me of an anecdote that was shared with me a few months back, which was that Bill Clinton, so President Clinton at the time, when he was having a meeting that would lead to some type of negotiation, the first thing he would do when people came in is ask them if they'd had anything to eat or drink and make sure that they were not thirsty and not hungry before the negotiation. And for myself, at least, I've realized, and I would like to talk about some of the depressive periods that you've worked through, because that is something that I've, I hesitate to use the word suffered from because it makes it seem, I don't want to seem like I'm victimizing myself or playing the part of victim, but something I've learned to have to work with. And I've noticed that very often when I'm trying to sit down and think my way out of some type of funk and I'm coming up with all sorts of sophisticated or seemingly insightful reasons as to why I'm unhappy at the time or just in a low energy state.

Starting point is 00:20:30 The truth is staring me right in the face. No, you haven't eaten for five hours. I'll sit there and I'll journal for 10 pages. It's like, no, idiot. You just need to go have an orange and you'll be fine uh for you for yourself and i know you've you've spoken about this before and written about it but going through depressions and let's let's let's say i think it was a few years ago that uh that you went through depression what what can you identify or explain for people what triggered

Starting point is 00:21:05 or catalyzed that and then what helped you to get over that episode of depression? Yeah, I think I probably had my first episode of true depression when I was a sophomore in college, but nobody had that vocabulary back then and um it did not i did i would i used the language with myself that i'd fallen into a black hole um and the way it felt and the way it still looks to me like now i almost visualize it is that i clawed my way out of that black hole. And in fact, it was a formative experience that I merged with a lot of courage and a lot of determination. I mean, I kind of set a plan for my life, which included how much sleep I needed every night. And I look back and I think, well, that was very intelligent because those are the kinds of things that matter. But also, I think that I, well, I would say at this point, I know that I think I come by this honestly. I think, you know, living,'s crazy because I'm not that old, but I grew up in the culture I grew up in. Girls didn't do sports, really, I mean, everywhere I was in the world for 25 years, and I was a few places in those years, I swam at least every other day. And looking back, I think that was a way that I was, that was a form of self-care.

Starting point is 00:23:00 And so, actually, that summer before this major depression set in, I had stopped swimming. I was doing something else. I was rollerblading. But that was a little bit different. And so I changed that. But I think the big answer is that I had, you know, I was in my early 30s. I literally led a few lives at that point. I'd put myself through all this change. I was

Starting point is 00:23:26 always very hard on myself, which, you know, got me a long way. But it was much too hard to be me. And I had, you know, I had had this career in Berlin, being a journalist and being a diplomat. And then I'd taken myself away to write diplomat. And then I'd taken myself away to write a novel and then I'd gotten married and I'd lived in England and then gone to divinity school and then had a baby and moved to Minnesota. And honestly, I think this depression had been waiting a long time to happen. And as often is true of us in life, I think at the moment at which I was kind of settled enough to allow it to happen, it just took over. I had just started to see a therapist. Like I'd always thought of myself as somebody who had a happy childhood and would never see a therapist and didn't need that.

Starting point is 00:24:18 But somewhere, you know, in myself, I think i got ready for this and that was really a depression where i stopped i stopped being able to sleep at all and you know all the classic things lost 15 pounds for no reason and eventually just um you know went to bed and couldn't get out um what helped me were you know i was very fortunate to be to take well to the medications and to have a great therapist who I saw just once a week. It was hard for me to afford that therapy at that time. In fact, a friend helped me afford the therapy. But for a few years, I saw this person and I always say I never want to romanticize something like depression. And in the moment that someone is depressed, the last thing I would want to insist the course of my life was changed for the better because of what I had to face, the truths I faced about the things that, you know, the ways I was

Starting point is 00:25:34 wounded, right? The pain I was carrying around, the ways I had been so hard on myself, so much harder than I needed to be. And I was able to start living differently over years. It's kind of a long answer. Sorry. This is a long podcast. So long answers are a good fit. What were some of the changes if you're able to talk about them that you made? Oh, you know, it's this classic stuff. Again, it's interesting because I, I definitely was one of these people who wasn't sure that I thought, you know, I wasn't sure what I thought of anybody who went to therapy and it was okay for Woody Allen to do it. Right. But, um, guilty, guilty as charged

Starting point is 00:26:18 over here as well. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought that's not me. I don't need that. And boy, did I need it. I kept ahead of his teasing. I could get positive approval when I blew him away. Only if I did something that was so smart or that he had so not thought of, I would have these moments of it being okay. And so that's what I did. So I pushed myself really hard. And I got through my childhood. And I went to amazing places on that same kind of energy. But it was not a way to live. And it was not a sustainable way to be human.

Starting point is 00:27:20 And at that point in my 30s, if I hadn't found a way to treat myself more gently, then I think I would have just gotten smaller after that. So I've not done a deep dive on this yet, but potentially for myself and certainly just as an area to explore, I've become very interested in CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and particularly its roots or some of at least the core tenets being similar to stoicism, which I never done any type of consistent therapy. I have hired people who would call themselves coaches, which may in fact offer a very similar support role. But what type of therapy was it that you found most helpful or what were the characteristics that were helpful? I just want to say that one of the favorite interviews I did across the years, it was a long time ago now, so you probably haven't seen it, was with Jennifer Michael Hecht,

Starting point is 00:28:36 who's a philosopher and a poet. And she wrote a book on doubt, which is just masterful. And she talks about the origins of stoicism and cynicism and how they meant, she talks about them as graceful life philosophies, right? We think of them almost as stances against, you know, or neutral. But anyway, so I just want to say, I don't think stoicism is just neutral. Oh, it's not. It's not. I'm really being facetious because I think that stoicism for most people brings up the image of a cow standing in the rain or something like that. But it's much more than that. I mean, I've done a lot of work with publishing and recommending stoicism is something to explore, but there are many different types of therapy.

Starting point is 00:29:29 And for some people, I've spoken with friends, for instance, who really just need to talk, but they don't want to do it with their friends who are biased in one way or another, or they feel guilty because their friends have many different things to do. And you go down the list, there are a million different variations. What did

Starting point is 00:29:46 you find most helpful? Yeah, I didn't do anything fancy or exciting sounding like Jungian therapy. I had this, I was living in Minnesota at the time that I still am. And I had this just really good therapist who probably i would say family systems was where he was coming from um but i'm not even sure i knew that language then and um i would say and i think this was you know this was kind of part of my survival stuff from my childhood is i'm not somebody who ever talked to anybody about any of this. I wasn't. And one thing I've invested so much in, and I think that going through my depression and my therapy has opened up this whole part of my life in the last 20 years is investing in my friendships. It's not that I didn't have friends, I did, but I didn't lean on people back then. And I think I didn't think I didn't think it was safe to. So, so this was really the first time that I had just kind of told the truth. You know, I had somebody asked me questions about what it was really like to grow myself, you know, being the answers.

Starting point is 00:31:09 And it's just like unpeeling these layers. And then there's this terrible moment, which I'm sure everybody gets to, kind of, I don't know how far it was, six months or a year, where you peel away enough layers that you're actually making progress but you haven't you've you've had and you have to do that to get into a new place but that moment where you've learned things about yourself that are hard and true and you get vulnerable for the first time and you have not yet started to create the foundation for this new way you will live and that's it you know i remember that moment in

Starting point is 00:31:54 therapy as just despairing because i just where i just felt like i think i said this to my therapist i i am damaged goods right you know that's never the way I had allowed myself to think about myself or certainly anybody else to think of me. But then, I don't know. He kind of helped me walk out of that because that also wasn't the whole story. And the damaged part wasn't, you know, it wasn't all of me. And it kind of helps you live into other places in yourself that you haven't been able to live into because you were so catering to that fear. Does that make sense? No, it does make sense. And I think there's also, at least in my own

Starting point is 00:32:36 depressive periods, the acute feeling, and this is not speaking for you, but speaking for myself, the acute feeling of being alone or uniquely damaged. Whereas maybe we can take solace in the fact that we were all dinged up by the full contact sport that is life. And there are very few people who go through cradle to grave, fully intact, like a porcelain doll. T tends not to happen. You mentioned a few questions and I'd like to talk about questions. What are the interviews or episodes or experiences that have helped you to grow most as an interviewer? I don't know that I've thought about that. Honestly, I feel like I've grown as an interviewer by doing it. And that sounds really simple. And it's very straightforward. And it's something we know like I can't believe that I've been doing the same thing now for over 12 years I mean it's more like 15 years if you think about the early days when I was creating the show um I I guess doing the same thing over and over again but in this in this constant mode of learning. I think when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, I would have been really resistant to the idea of doing the same thing for a long period of time,

Starting point is 00:34:14 right? That would have felt like stasis to me, like kind of not growing anymore. But I do think that this, you know know and i never thought of myself as an interviewer until i kind of created this job um and it's i i still i i still consider myself to be kind of a newcomer and an interloper in the world of media, which I know is ridiculous at this point. I'd say it's pretty ridiculous. I'm realizing it's ridiculous because that's not the way other people see it. So I think that clearly, you know, I do feel like I'm doing something I'm good at. I know how to do this.

Starting point is 00:35:03 I have a good set of skills and instincts that lend themselves to this, but I truly would say that what's what I, how I've gotten better is doing it over and over and over again. And that is such a thrilling thing to get, to get better at something over time. What were some of the mistakes that you made early on as, as an interviewer? I can think a lot of, I'm still making mistakes, but I can think of a lot of mistakes that I've made.

Starting point is 00:35:32 They fall into a handful of categories. What were mistakes you made early on that I was better when I could stop, that I was better when I was really planted in the fact that it wasn't about me, that the point of the interview was drawing out this other person, and when I could get out of the interview was drawing out this other person and um when i could get out of the way and that that doesn't mean you know like i'm i'm an essential person in the interview right like you know you and i are having a conversation i actually think your job right now is harder than my job because you know you are creating this narrative arc you're hosting this experience

Starting point is 00:36:21 right so i'm not i'm not belittling the role I had to play. I still had to ask those good questions. I still had to listen well. I had to be able to go with the conversation. But as clear as I could get about the fact that it was about them and not about me, I would be better. I used to have this experience that i would do all these rituals right like to be to be to have good energy and at some point early on i realized that that sometimes when i went into the studio for an interview and i was tired for whatever reason i hadn't been able to get the sleep right or i had you know i hadn't been able to drink the right amount of caffeine um it was a better it was it was a better experience for me and for them. And that was one of the signals for me that when I even by force had to surrender

Starting point is 00:37:11 that that actually was part of what made it good. How did that manifest itself in the conversation? Was it longer pauses, more silence? Was it just a greater degree of focus because you were summoning every ounce of strength that you had after an all-nighter to look them in the face and actually hear their words? How did that surrendering manifest itself? Yeah, well, I guess it did manifest as a calm. I mean, you know, I was worried about it as tiredness, but it also, it took an edge of energy off, which in fact was helpful to letting the other person's energy be what drove the conversation. I think it made me more porous, right? Because I wasn't able to gear up

Starting point is 00:38:08 the way I thought I should, right? That in fact, I was letting more in. What habits, I probably should have asked this at the beginning, what habits of other interviewers annoy you? I can't, I really, I will have to laugh if it's like four or five things i've been doing repeatedly in this conversation but no no no no you're anything that it's such an impal i feel like it's an impal my answers are in politic um oh that's okay there's a lot there's most of what most of what i see that's a big statement much of what I see that calls itself interviewing, at least let's say in news. I mean, there's so many interesting things happening.

Starting point is 00:38:53 There's so many new platforms, right? And this is one of them. Although I'll say, you know, I'll say in podcasting, what can happen because it is so easy. I mean, I had to actually start a public radio show, which was much harder than it should be, right? It took years and it was like being hazed for years. And, you know, I can't even believe it happened because it was so difficult. But that was the only way I could get this thing out there. And that's not true anymore. You can start your podcast. But the danger of that is not to understand that there's a craft, right?

Starting point is 00:39:27 Not to put any rigor into it. Because there is a craft to creating a conversational space that is listenable and that goes somewhere. And that will be affecting for the person who's being interviewed as well as people listening anyway but but so that's new that's a new phenomenon but um i mean you know even in public radio which i love um the the nature of the of the experience and of the way things work is that people who we hear as interviewers have been handed a list of questions by producers, which they pose, and then they move on to the next question.

Starting point is 00:40:16 And that's, I mean, that's just not a conversation to me, right? It's the interview proceeds without any reference to what's just been said for the most part. Um, so it's something almost scripted or it's scripted on their end. And, um, and that drives me crazy. And there's just a lot of lost opportunities for, uh, revelation. And I, but I guess the other thing that drives me crazy is that when people are going for revelation um it's often in the form of making their questions sound tough it's about how they sound and how they present and you know we actually reward and laud interviewers who push their subjects into corners and embarrass them

Starting point is 00:41:08 who put people on the defensive and then they strike out and then that creates the conversation we talk about um i just don't i i think i don't think that I think that rarely accomplishes anything aside from something entertaining, something that demeans both of the people in the conversation and demeans us by enjoying it. I agree. I think that it's adding division to a world that is already divisive enough in a lot of respects. Here's a bit of a gear shift, but this is a question from one of my dear friends who is a huge fan of your show, as are many, many people, of course. He would love to know what you read to your kids or have read to your kids. Well, my kids are now 18 and 21. Right, so before that, before that, when you were reading to them.

Starting point is 00:42:12 I don't know that I read. I mean, I remember reading to my kids was just one of the, well, it was both beautiful and exhausting. I mean, I also remember the nights where they would say, read me another story. And I was, oh, please let both beautiful and exhausting. I mean, I also remember the nights where they would say, read me another story. And I was, oh, please let me go to bed.

Starting point is 00:42:29 But it's also true that those were such special moments. But, you know, I read Margaret Wise Brown. I mean, the kind of good night moon in that genre. I mean, I am a huge library user. And so I took my kids to the library all the time and we would walk away with stacks and stacks of books, more than like buying books. And actually, I mean, I didn't have a lot of money to spend when they were really little. So we just, I would just say we read everything. What I also did as my kids got older is that I would read when they were kind of a little bit too old for the

Starting point is 00:43:07 for the children's books but liked um liked being read to at night even just to fall asleep like i would read new yorker articles or pieces from this new york times book review that were just educational and enjoyable and i really liked that period when they allowed me to do that. So I'm going to sprinkle in questions from fans of yours and fans of mine as we go through this. So this is another fan question and I'm paraphrasing in part, but trimming them down in some cases so i appreciated her interviews with mary oliver and other end poets what are top three poems she'd recommend so for someone who is i'll just rephrase this a little bit for someone who is allergic to poetry

Starting point is 00:43:59 or has never viewed themselves as liking poetry for whatever reason. Maybe they just had a bad teacher or a bad day in school. What are three poems or poets that you would suggest they start with? Well, I have to say, I think that's a daunting question because I probably won't give the best answer. I do interview so many poets these days, and I, and I, and I meet people who tell me that, you know, they discovered poetry through my show and that just thrills me. But, you know, honestly, I'm just like everybody else in that poetry has eluded my attention, you know, for a lot of my life. And I, I love it. And yet it, it, it kind of hurts going in and I have to force myself to read it. So I think I'm fortunate to be in this position where, you know, I get paid to like draw out to go sit with Mary Oliver and soak up poetry. I would say

Starting point is 00:44:53 just so what comes to mind, these are just the three poems that come to mind right now. I mean, I do actually think Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese is incredible. i think it's a poem that has saved lives um and there's a line in there that actually comes to me at interesting times and it's not unrelated to some of the things you and i have been talking about you know let the soft animal of your body love what it loves and sometimes that's such an important thing to be able to tell ourselves that's beautiful it is beautiful and uh another poem that i found really important thing to be able to tell ourselves. That's beautiful. It is beautiful. And another poem that I found really important this year, I interviewed a poet named Naomi Shihab Nye. You know what?

Starting point is 00:45:32 I literally just pulled up her name because I was going to mention her. Please continue. Yeah. So she has this poem called Kindness, which she wrote after she was, she may have even been on her honeymoon. She was with her husband. I think they were in Colombia. Something happened. They were robbed.

Starting point is 00:45:54 I mean, they had this really traumatizing experience so that she's like in a different country, you know, sitting by the side of the road. Her husband takes off to find help. But she actually wrote this pro this poem about called kindness about what happened you know about what happened after that experience and it's it's a reminder it's just beautiful it tells a story but it's also it's it's kind of it's lines that you can carry around with you that are a reminder um that we have we each of us

Starting point is 00:46:28 have so much power in any given day to make the day of a lot of people right or um and we feel there's so many things for us to feel powerless about but that's huge um so i like it and it is about kindness but it's unromantic right there nothing fluffy, touchy-feely about it. I guess the other thing I'd just recommend is a book. Rilke is probably the name, if there's one name of somebody else who's not alive that's come up more often in my show. I mean, most often it's probably Rilke. And there's a book, a translation of his um book of hours which is called book of hours love letters to god and um it's translated by a buddhist teacher named joanna macy and a friend

Starting point is 00:47:16 of hers who's also buddhist who's a psychotherapist named anita barrows and i've interviewed both of them across the years and i real because german because i lived in germany across the years and I Rilke's German because I lived in Germany for seven years and for some bizarre reason there's part of my brain that is in German so I I'm very fluent in German and Rilke's German is exquisitely beautiful it it has it bears no relation to the kind of guttural German that is in all of our ears from movies. And it's almost like he has his own language. And Joanna and Anita have translated, have turned that into English. And it's a book that I return to again and again, the poems in there.

Starting point is 00:48:03 And given that you speak both languages, you feel like it captures the essence of of rilke's german i i do and but it does it like i've never been happy with any of the translations of rilke um any of the others out there there's one translator of his letters to a young poet that i like which is an older translator um herder norton um but this poetry it's a it's a creative work right like they have not tried to um translate every word as it appears they they have they have done something creative and and that that veers away from the text in a way that captures what it really does in another language. I'll have to check that out. We won't get into it, but I lived in Berlin for a while myself in 2005.

Starting point is 00:48:58 Oh, you did? When was that? I lived in Prenzlauer Berg for about three months and spent a bit of time in East Berlin for boxing. And it was incredible how, even at that time, how different you crossed a line and architecturally and just culturally, everything was different. I had a fantastic time german unfortunately for me is maybe it's due to the noun cases and whatnot but i it is the one language that i lose like sand through the fingers faster than any other i it's really a shame but because i love the language but i can't win them all uh so a few things i wanted to mention so naomi shiebnei was the first poet. I was introduced to her through a friend who felt compelled for whatever reason, this doesn't happen to me often, to read a poem to me. in previous encounters with poetry, my overwhelming thought was, and it was often presented in an academic environment where the less, the more incomprehensible it was, the more valuable it was seen. And I just didn't get it. There's another book that I picked up

Starting point is 00:50:17 about a year ago. I've been trying to focus less on being obsessed with productivity all the time. And part of that is trying to focus on beauty that doesn with productivity all the time. And part of that is trying to focus on beauty that doesn't necessarily have a point for the sake of beauty. I love that. Yeah. So that was one of my learning curves. Yeah. Like that last 5%. I'm still working on it. It's like that last 5% that's going to make you a miserable wretch and maybe not worth it. So I picked up this book because of the title, which I don't do that often,

Starting point is 00:50:45 but a very thin book of poetry called Night Sky with Exit Wounds. I just loved the imagery that that conjured. And I will warn people, it is very sexually graphic. So if you were sensitive to that, be aware Ocean Vuong. I don't know if I'm pronouncing the Vietnamese last name properly, but V-U-O-N-G. Really thin. And I committed to reading one poem per day in the morning. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, which I'm doing right now with the Tao Te Ching, which is the book that probably is in the top four that have come up most often in my own podcast. You mentioned love letters to God, and I'd like to talk about language for a second uh the word god

Starting point is 00:51:29 is tricky for a lot of reasons as you are well familiar and i'm not going to focus on that right now but i will ask this is actually a question from a fan if you were to choose one word common or uncommon which is most important to humanity what what would it be? And that's a huge question, but I'll let you take it. Well, okay, I'll just say it would not be God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's, yeah, or important for us in this modern epoch? Yeah, I mean, the word God is too small and it's too overused and misused. And, oh, I don't know, you know you know honestly i would probably say something

Starting point is 00:52:06 uh that might sound cheesy because it's another overused word but i i think the word love is uh i mean you know it it i i've been writing and talking a lot about this over the last couple of years that that the that the word love is so watered down and and and kind of ruined and yet um it's just all it's the it's the only thing big enough um if we can recapture it and all of its complexity for our life together and again if we can recapture it as something practical and not merely romantic, passionate, I think we need to keep the passion to it. And it is, you know, love is kind of an amazing word because even though it is completely ruined, and I just yesterday, I interviewed Alain de Botton about love and sex and marriage, this philosopher. And we talked the whole time,

Starting point is 00:53:08 you know, the language of falling, right? That is something you fall into and fall out of. And yet, there's only ultimately one way to say, I love you. And those are some of the most incredible words and the most affecting words that any of us can ever hear at any moment. So I think even though it's ruined, that might be my choice if I had to choose one. So I have had, and maybe this is from, I blame it on the language learning and having studied whether whatever it is, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, et cetera, that I get very anxious. Maybe this is just also my OCD at work with amorphous or nebulous words. If something's not well-defined for me, I don't like to use it.

Starting point is 00:54:00 So I've avoided using a lot of words whenever possible. Success, I don't like to use very much or successful. I do the same thing. There are lots of words that are just messed up. What other words do you try not to use or do you think people should use less? Oh, I mean, I do this all the time, but of course now you're asking me and I... And we can come back to it too. Oh, you know, I actually think I work a lot with words like justice and privilege. We're just doing a show on whiteness. And it's like some of the things that we need to have big conversations about together. And I mean, actually just have to start like with baby steps.

Starting point is 00:54:43 We're so far from knowing how to have certain conversations, especially around race. But I think the whiteness conversation, even among white people, is a big one. But we've loaded down, you know, there are these words and these phrases that are attached to those conversations that just are conversation stoppers. That are very meaningful for the people who are using them, right? That have a lineage and have substance, but illicit immediate defensive reactions are immediately polarizing to the extent that they are counterproductive. And I feel like there's a whole lot of that around race. And even words like peace and justice,

Starting point is 00:55:32 I don't use words like that. Social, what is it? I like to talk about um you know social healing rather than social activism um there are a lot of words we use that we act like have inherently positive connotations like innovation or progress don't, right? I mean, there's a lot of things we do in the name of progress and innovation which are impulsive or which are so bounded by what we can see at the moment that are going to have terrible effects 20 years from now. I mean, I think the best example of this is like what we did with food in the latter half of the 20th century and how when I was growing up, you know, my mother being able to make dinner by opening a box and a can was progress. And in fact, you know, we have just systematically messed up our bodies, our agriculture, and our planet. And so I think we need to be really wary, especially, I mean, success is a good one. You're right, especially about these words that we kind of reflexively think are good. We need to question a lot of that. We need to be more thoughtful. Well, even happiness can fall into that category.

Starting point is 00:57:05 Oh, terrible. Yeah, I don't think happiness is a word I use very much. Flourishing. I like that word. So I want to mention a few things. The first is that the same friend, or I should say one of the friends, so Matt Mullenweg, who's just a brilliant entrepreneur, very thoughtful, soulful guy, who's thought of typically as a lead developer of WordPress, which powers 26%. I know, he's amazing. I've been so honored that he, I think he quoted me in his speech. He's so amazing. He's a big fan. And his New Year's resolution assignment to me was to have you on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:57:46 And I've given him his own New Year's resolution, which explains the Twitter back and forth. To do a silent retreat. To do a silent retreat. But he introduced me to a book years ago, and I believe it's called Words That Work. And it's by Frank Luntz, who is, I believe he was a Republican political strategist. And putting any partisan feelings aside, it really underscores the importance of the words that you use. And how the words you use affect or perhaps just are your thinking. And then that, that of course affects everything else and uh it's it's uh it's so critical i mean you mentioned the whiteness episode you should

Starting point is 00:58:35 have a thumbnail of my head i look like american history x i'm the palest human you've ever seen The, the, uh, putting my, my hair loss issues aside, the, uh, I found that, and I won't spend too much time on this, but it, it's a very worrisome or worrying trend that I'm observing, which is in say a conversation about race. Uh, there is a tremendous, and I think it's, it's both self-induced and contributed to by outside factors. I mean, I can't do a Q&A anywhere without getting some scoffing comment about white privileged male, and it shuts down the conversation. There's so much self-loathing among, for instance, people who are white, and that is a really broad category, right? I mean, they could be recent immigrants from Albania. They could be fill in the blank. But I do think that

Starting point is 00:59:32 it's important to realize if you, and this comes back to the point you made about interviewing, if you immediately put someone on the defense and shut them down, even though you might get the cheap applause for that, it is not in the long-term constructive. And in fact, I think it's very, very, very, it sows the seed of later destruction in many, many ways. All right, shifting gears, getting off of hardball with Chris Matthews, and let's move to Eastern practices and philosophies just to temper it. This is a question from a fan. Sometimes I find Eastern practices to be demotivating. How can you reconcile Zen and striving for success? This is a sentiment that I've heard a lot of type A folks, myself included,

Starting point is 01:00:19 talk about amongst friends related to even meditation. Like, I'm afraid I'm going to lose my edge type of concerns. How do you think about that? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I do want to say one thing. I think also it's like Zen, I mean, you can be an incredible meditator and be very narcissistic, right? So first of all, it's not like any of these things magically change you or or make you a better person but putting that aside i'm meditating to become more narcissistic am i doing it wrong yeah okay well we'll have that um uh well i you know honestly i think i'm like them i think that I, as I say, I get a lot done. I personally, even after I started to vicariously benefit greatly from the conversations with Buddhists and contemplatives, just couldn't do it myself, which is crazy because, you know, I was saying to somebody recently, I mean, meditating is in fact one of life's few instantaneously rewarding activities.

Starting point is 01:01:32 I mean, I really, I mean, I have had across the years just these one-off experiences of putting myself in that place or being in a setting where I was put in that place. And it is transformative, even in some ways that stay with you. And yet I could not force myself to keep doing it every day. So I guess one thing I would say, I think this matter of spiritual practice and what spiritual practice works for us, it gets to be personal. You know, we are different. And so what actually changed for me, I mean, I at some point decided that I just, again, even though I'd had these amazing experiences and utterly believe in that, I just thought it's not for me.

Starting point is 01:02:13 It's when I started doing yoga that I started to let this into my life. And what I told myself, and this is, I think, true, but it's also kind of my narrative right is that i needed it needed to be active like i need i needed my body to be moving for to to calm my mind down and and i do a very kind of athletic kind of yoga and i love that i will say that very gradually um i have held it i have held these these spiritual technologies in high regard i have continued to speak with teachers i've continued to have these kind of one-off experiences um and i have very gradually developed a really modest practice where you know i i spend 10 minutes every morning and that's up from six last year. And that's while my tea steep. So it even, I'm even like killing two birds with one stone.

Starting point is 01:03:12 But, and it has calmed me down. I, I think whether it takes your edge off depends on how, how much in charge you are of change of like how you're moving through the world to begin with? I think it also, at least where I've landed, not everything needs to have an edge, right? So if you're looking for a scalpel to cut something effectively, yes, you want an edge. But if you're trying to sleep, you don't want to lay on a bed of razor blades. And I've also noticed oftentimes, for me at least, having only meditated consistently for the last two or three years, that it allows me to be more observant of my own thoughts and therefore more precisely determine what I need and want. So that I'm not using an edge to charge through brick walls in a direction that I don't need to be heading in the first place. And, you know, I've thought a lot over the years. I know from my conversations with scientists and from the kind of study I did of Einstein, you know, that time is an illusion.

Starting point is 01:04:53 I mean, it's like the way we're experiencing it is the way our senses are experiencing it. So, for example, so we walk around with some illusions, like you're, just as you're saying, you know, that certain things are a certain way and we have to manage them that way that, in fact, aren't reality-based. And I think this is very much the question you're asking. I get a huge amount done in the first hour to hour and a half that I'm awake in the morning. I'm a little bit OCD about my email inbox and I can't stand for it to be more than one screen. And I have to act on everything before I can get rid of it. But I am on top of a lot of things. But the way I used to work is that I'd get up early and I would just be clearing through correspondence and like my colleagues would get into the office and, you know, their inboxes would be full of all this stress for me. And what I had told myself forever is that this is how I got everything done. This is how I stayed on top of all these jobs I'm doing.

Starting point is 01:06:03 This is how I got everything done. This is how I stayed on top of all these jobs I'm doing. This is how it's productive. So then when I committed myself to sitting quietly before I opened my inbox, before I did anything like that, I didn't get as much done before 7 o'clock in the morning. But it all got done, right? Right. So, you know, and this is a strange feeling that I felt I was, by some measure, less productive, but that did not mean that there wasn't time in the day. And it was much less stressful. And it was less stressful for the other people on the other end of my emails. And then there's also the question of what are you being productive for? If it's to improve your quality of life on some level, then you're in fact being more productive by being less productive, if that makes any sense. So here's a question and it, I think, reinforces for me the importance of defining one particular word and this this may be what you just described so you don't have to repeat that if that's the case but one of these one of the fan questions is what can one do daily to begin a small but marked increase in spiritual awareness so i'd like to pose that, but I'd also like you to define

Starting point is 01:07:25 spiritual for us, because this is one of the words that I've dodged myself for the most part. And living in San Francisco, you can only imagine how many different ways this word is used. So, I mean, you can barely walk down the street without tripping over a didgeridoo and someone doing acroyoga and so on. So the spiritual in how would you define spiritual and then if you'd like to take a stab at this question what someone can do daily to begin a small but marked increase in spiritual awareness well i think i think practices are important and i do think that everybody gets to find um what works for them where it works for their personality type, what works for their life. I mean, you know, it's the same thing like if you're talking about prayer.

Starting point is 01:08:14 So, I mean, there are a lot of people who pray, but there are so many forms of doing that and they don't all work for everyone so so i do i think what i think is important in human life that our spiritual traditions have always known is ritual right so in a way what we're talking about i mean you could say that your meditation practice is also a form of ritual it's it's setting aside time when you are recollecting yourself right um and and now we know from science you're also calming yourself you're doing all these great things for your well-being on every level um but what i would want to say also about spiritual practice beginning a spiritual practice is so i think ritual is really critical because i just think as creatures we need it too. I think it's a human need and spiritual life benefits from that. But also I don't like to think of spiritual life as a compartment of life. I think that it's how you move through your days. I think those rituals

Starting point is 01:09:18 actually can help you internalize that. It's as much about kind of how you are, you know, how you are present to whatever you are doing. That's also spiritual practice. And then something else I would say about that is that it's not about being perfect. But it is about intentionality and it's about forgiving yourself and it's about being gentle with yourself and others and it's a it's a gentle thing and you know it doesn't have to be something you wear on your sleeve or that you could wear on your sleeve i mean i one of the conversations i've had with so sylvia borstein who's kind of jewish buddhist teacher and talks about you know spirituality can be folding the towels sweetly, right? I mean, some of the great mystics, you know, Brother Lawrence wrote this book, The Practice of the

Starting point is 01:10:14 Presence of God, you know, and he talked about, you know, washing the dishes as an act of prayer, and Thich Nhat Hanh does that too, you know, how you wash the dishes so that's important and then the final thing i would say that is actually um that is actually included in those in those um kinds of ways of being that i just mentioned is that it's it's embodied as it's a it's bodily yeah i'm at this point in my life i'm really not very interested in anything that is merely spiritual. And it's, you know, getting, doing yoga, getting into my body. And also, it's in our bodies that we encounter other human beings. This has deepened my spiritual life as much as any other, any kind of technically spiritual activity. So part of this is about us giving ourselves permission to see what is ordinary as spiritual practice. And that is a real relief. If you couldn't use the word spiritual, would it be a combination then of empathy, presence? I'm just wondering what the components

Starting point is 01:11:28 are. For instance, I'm thinking of a very good friend of mine, Sam Harris, certainly controversial, but very well-spoken and very thoughtful in many, many respects. He has a extremely well-developed meditative practice. He's very present when you talk to him. And I think he does enjoy, is able to enjoy the small things. And so he, from that perspective, checks a lot of the boxes, but he's certainly a non-believer when it comes to religion and would consider himself an atheist more so than spiritual. But is he spiritual? I guess it depends on how we define. I'm just curious what words you might use that are the preconditions or the components of that. And again, it can be a very personal definition i'm just yeah i mean spirituality is one of these words that i i try not to overuse um because it is amorphous

Starting point is 01:12:33 um i also think you can't you can't avoid it um i so so i know that for um that for people who are atheist or agnostic, you find different degrees of comfort with the spirituality language. And I, so let me just say this. I don't think that anybody stops having a spiritual life because of the absence of a belief in God. I think an atheist can have a spiritual life, and I think every atheist I know has a spiritual life. I also acknowledge that some of them wouldn't like that language, and I would honor that. So it's not about faith.

Starting point is 01:13:20 I would say inner life, interior life is one way to approach it. That doesn't quite get at spiritual, but it gets pretty close to me. And again, there is many ways of doing inner life and interior life as there are people. For sure. Here's a different question, which is from a fan. What do you think about the notion that wisdom comes with age? And if so, how can we become wise beyond our years? So I think wisdom does not necessarily come with age. Some people get old and wise and some people just get old. And I'd love to hear how you define it. I mentioned Sam. Sam has jokingly said before that wisdom in some capacity, and I'm paraphrasing, is learning to follow your own advice. Something along those lines, which I liked quite a bit.

Starting point is 01:14:25 But yeah, how do you think of this? A definition of wisdom? Yeah. But I want to say that to me, wisdom, to me, every stage of life, there's a capacity for wisdom at many different stages of any life, I think. So, yes, there is something very special about a person who has lived a long time and accumulated wisdom by way of experience, the fullness of the human experience by how they have moved through that and what they've internalized as they've moved through what they've integrated into their wholeness like how they've integrated what has gone wrong into their wholeness um uh so that's but that's just one kind of wisdom i you know there's a there's a wisdom of young children that can be uncanny, right? They're,

Starting point is 01:15:27 you know, four-year-olds say things and ask things that drive to the heart of the matter. There's a wisdom of teenagers and of people in their 20s. There's this ability to kind of see the world whole and to have a whole vision of change and this fierceness, this urgency about that. So I think there are these flashes of wisdom at different stages of life and that it is it is something that's accessible that we can that we can practice and aspire to um like we practice and aspire to other skills how i define it um contradicts that a little bit because ultimately and you know it's interesting because i wrote a whole book about wisdom without defining wisdom. So as soon as I was out talking about the book, this is one of the first questions people would ask me, how do you define wisdom? And I realized I'd never done that.

Starting point is 01:16:33 I mean, you could say that it was, you know, a few hundred pages about it. But what I think distinguishes wisdom from, you know, knowledge or accomplishment or intelligence. I think, you know, a wise person can have all those things, but it's not a possession. It's not like you look at someone, you know, as like you can, they are smart, they are intelligent, they are accomplished. The measure of wisdom is the imprint, a life mix on other lives, on the world around it. And with a wise person, it's almost something that's palpable. It's something you can see. That's kind of where I've come.

Starting point is 01:17:15 I like that. With the definition. I'm jumping from one big concept to another, but I think these are worth exploring. So here's a question. Krista herself is very calming, very good at finding meaning. Can you ask her how she does it? How does she consistently see the best and most meaningful things in the world around her? And this is something just out of pure self-interest I'd love to hear you answer because I can sometimes get so trapped with

Starting point is 01:17:42 blinders on that I find it difficult to see the best and most meaningful things in the world around me. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Well, I don't want to another human being and have immersed myself in who they are. And I am there, that's right, to absolutely draw out the best of them, to help them put words around something maybe they never put words around, and that we're all present while that happens. Now, I'm actually, you know, I'm going to be kind to myself, and I'm going to say that at this point in my life, I am actually getting to the point where I live that way a lot of the time, but I couldn't have said that for the first 50 years. I mean, really, the short answer to that question is practice. You know, at some point, about 15 years ago, I started walking in this direction. fortunate to to create this job that allows me to do this with an intensity and a primacy in my life but i you know i i don't think you have to have this job to be doing this um

Starting point is 01:19:13 i've i keep putting myself in this position and um whatever know, anytime you keep putting yourself in a certain place in a certain position, practicing certain things year after year, it changes you. And this has changed me. What is the position that someone else could put themselves in, you know, you can do this in terms of how you, how you interact with your colleagues in the workplace. I mean, you know, this is one of the things Adam Grant writes about, right? Givers in the workplace change everybody and uh and i also know and this is just has been it is true across this my career as anybody else is that the workplace can be you know one of the most stressful places to do that like i always wanted to do a show well we were a big part of a big media organization until three years ago and i always wanted to do a radio show called The Problem of Evil in the Workplace, which I felt like evil is so much greater in workplaces. That was much more devastating than whatever, my fear of earthquakes or fires. Um, so, you know, where you work, where you live, um, with your children, with your, you know, with your family, becoming a neighbor in a different way. The great challenge that is before us now as a country is to figure out what common life means, to reimagine it.

Starting point is 01:21:13 I think we actually have to reinvent it. I think even if our political life weren't so fractured, we'd have to reinvent it. And maybe this is one reason our political life is so fractured it's just not going to look like the same thing in the 21st century as it did in the latter half of the 20th century and and that is about in very practical ways kind of getting to know our neighbors who have become strangers and i mean that is that is a calling right for. And so anytime any of us do that in whatever small way in our communities, that is practicing presence, right, and practicing real curiosity and working on asking better questions and caring to find out details and nuance and complexity. Those are ways to talk about what I do in this work I do. And also not to respond too quickly to statements. Another quote of yours that I like, and you can correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can't disagree with your experience. And I think that there are so many problems in this world, in this country, certainly,

Starting point is 01:22:30 because people confuse the two. And if someone is telling you a factual recounting of something that happened to them, that is very different from saying, I think you should, or providing an opinion. Those are two very, very different things. And keeping that in mind is very helpful to mitigate overreacting emotionally to other people in, I suppose, the stoic sense that is very practical and applicable, less than the trying to remain Spock at all times.

Starting point is 01:23:06 And I've really found that quote of yours, that concept, at least, very helpful to think about. Like experience, opinion, those are two different things. So you can provide your experience without also, and even preface it, and I've done this before and say, I can only comment on my personal experience. I don't want to give you a bunch of opinions but here's been my experience this is what has happened to me or something along those lines and it diffuses a lot of these potentially volatile situations yeah it humanizes um we we we have all these ways we think we know each other we think we know what each other are about and they're they have to do

Starting point is 01:23:46 with positions and issues right or you know how somebody voted we don't know we don't know each other on a human level i mean i've been thinking since the election about um um i i learned i i I learned, I started, you know, my vision for doing this and kind of a bit of my methodology started in this project I did for some Benedictine monks back in the late 90s. And they were ecumenists, which when they started doing it was a completely revolutionary thing. I'm going to plead ignorance here. Could you define that for me? What, ecumenism? Yes, please. Well, it was like inter-Christian, inter-denominational conversation,

Starting point is 01:24:32 which, you know, we forget that in the 1960s, it was absolutely radical when Catholics and Protestants started talking to each other. And then when they added Jews, you know, it was amazing. So it's, and you know, the difference between Armenian Orthodox's and you know the difference between armenian orthodox christians and nazarene holiness christians is as vast as the difference between you know different faiths um so so that's what this place was about but they they would take up big theological questions and big theological divides by posing a question and asking people to answer the question through the story of your life, which actually you still got

Starting point is 01:25:15 to really big, heady places in the discussion, but you humanized it as you got there. And I've been thinking since the election, I think this would work. Like, I don't know how it would be structured, but what if we could have, create these experiences where people got together in trustworthy spaces where they could be safe, they were safe. And you just, you had people start talking about, you know, why did you vote for Donald Trump? Or why did you vote for Hillary Clinton? Or why did you vote for Hillary Clinton? Answer the question through the story of your life. And then we would actually start talking about,

Starting point is 01:25:52 eventually, the things we need to start talking about, including economics and our children's future. And the fact that we have a shared stake in all of our children's future. I'm glad you brought that up because it's a very, I didn't ever put this together because I hadn't heard you say that before, but it's also intensely practical to say, answer the question through the story experience of your life, because it has full context. It's not abstract.

Starting point is 01:26:24 And in fact, there's an organization called the Entrepreneurs Organization and they have chapters all over the country and regional and citywide groups of entrepreneurs who want to help one another. And I'm going to probably get this slightly off because I've spoken at a number of EO events, but I'm not a member myself. Since I live in Silicon Valley, I can't escape entrepreneurs. I don't really, but the rules, as I remember them, are that you, the group, the chapter is split into, I think they're called forums, which are groups of say four to five people. And I'm sure my fans will correct me if I'm getting this wrong. But when someone in the forum, that is your social accountability group and primary cohort. When someone asks a question,

Starting point is 01:27:16 hey, I'm trying to figure out how to franchise in this following state, what should I do? Or I'm trying to solve this particular problem with hiring or going public or fill in the blank. You cannot use conjecture in answering the question. You can only answer the question through a story or experience that is from your personal life. Yeah. That's it. That's it. That's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And the only thing, so it's very practical. It's something anybody could do. The only thing that we'd have to start, that we'd have to create, that we don't have now is we don't, like, and this is a big order, to somehow have spaces, as I say, that are trustworthy, where it would be reasonable to invite people in and expect them to show some vulnerability and tell some truth. And it wouldn't actually be reasonable to ask people to do that in most of our political spaces and a lot of our public spaces now. So that's something we'd have to make happen. And also time, right? Because like with these monks, with these gatherings in Collegeville, they would have five days.

Starting point is 01:28:32 So like everybody would spend 45 minutes or an hour answering that question on the first day. And then that was an incredible foundation. And it's hard for the next few days. And it's hard to imagine us carving out that kind of time and space, but I think we could figure this out if we wanted to. And I think also going into thinking about these larger polarizing issues with the expectation that the conversations are going to be very uncomfortable and that none of the biggest problems you'll face in your own life, in the lives of others, as a community, a country, fill in the blank, are going to be comfortable. And when you have these stakes involved and that

Starting point is 01:29:16 it's, if I could implore anyone listening to this to do one thing, certainly in the US and elsewhere, is to regularly practice exposing yourself to uncomfortable conversations so that you can get better at navigating them without vilifying the other person or emotionally overreacting. It requires practice, just like negotiation, just like playing tennis, just like anything else. And if you wait for the big, big, big topic, whether it's some aspect of race or you have about how you walk into those encounters we will have or how we will present or defend our position or be advocates or change someone's mind or we go in with all kinds of assumptions about them. And so I really don't think this is rocket science, but part of what we have to work through are all the instincts we're carrying that don't serve us well. And then, you know, the other thing is, and this is connected to that, if you want to talk to people across difference, you don't probably start with that, right? Totally.

Starting point is 01:31:02 Like, we just think we have to do everything head on, you know? We're Americans. We have to accomplish something. We've got an hour here. And so I'll tell you one of the most hopeful stories. I have been talking about this everywhere that I've heard, like, that I think a good model for this is I was in Iowa, like the week after the election, and there was this woman who talked to me about how she and a group of parents who she knows, who are pretty much split down the middle in terms of who they voted for in the election share a concern about the effect the corrosive public speech and the corrosive campaign had had on their children, their children's imaginations. And so they were gathering across these divides of politics with this shared was meaningful to all of them about what they're going to teach their children, how they're going to talk to them, the realities they want to create moving forward. And, you know, I think they'll get really, you can get really far down the road with that without ever having to talk about who you vote, why you voted for, who you voted for. And yet it creates a possibility of relationship,

Starting point is 01:32:27 which creates all kinds of other possibilities, kind of coming at this from a sideways direction. Absolutely. I think that sometimes the most directly impactful approach is the oblique approach. Yeah, yeah. The slant, coming at the sl slant coming at the slant coming at a slant and one of the books that helped me a lot to navigate my own emotions so that i could less trigger other

Starting point is 01:32:56 people's emotions so it's a win-win was radical it still is i reread this book on a fairly regular basis. Radical acceptance by Tara Brock. Oh, I haven't read that. I found it hugely helpful for me personally. What books other than your own, have you gifted the most to other people? I have, I have gifted that real good book.

Starting point is 01:33:22 And who are the authors again? This was love lettersters to God. It's Joanna Macy, M-A-C-Y, and Anita Barrows. It's Rilke's Book of Hours, and the subtitle is Love Poems to God. I have gifted Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart. That's kind of a sacred text that I carry around with me at all times because things are always falling apart. Like that's a book I feel like I can pick up anywhere at any moment and read a paragraph and it will be redemptive. letters to a young poet. I give that to young people. And it's not really about poetry. It's about life

Starting point is 01:34:09 and there's some wonderful things in there about love and the facile understanding of love that we walk around with and the idea of giving yourself time

Starting point is 01:34:22 to grow up and grow into what love can be. That's a good selection. At other times in my life, I gave away all the books I loved. And as a result, I don't have many books. If you were, say, given the opportunity or maybe the assignment to teach a lecture, not a lecture, a seminar, it's an ongoing class with either college freshmen or college seniors,

Starting point is 01:34:53 which would you choose and what would you teach? Sorry, college freshmen or college seniors? Right. Gosh, I don't know how I would choose. I do spend a lot of time with people that age. I love it. I guess I would choose college seniors just because I of time with people that age i love it um i guess i would choose college seniors just because i think you know you're so much under formation in those years and still as a college senior what would i teach oh they're they're growing up into this world of disarray now. I don't know if this is a teaching subject,

Starting point is 01:35:26 but I'm thinking a lot about the narrative that we all walk around internalizing and working with, which is the narrative we receive from, you know, whatever was in the New York Times today, what it was in the headlines of NPR, or whatever our media, chosen media is, BuzzFeed or whatever it is we're reading. And how that is not the whole story. And how when we walk around too shaped by that narrative, well, it's overwhelming overwhelming it actually is very paralyzing and it it's it doesn't

Starting point is 01:36:11 it does not tell or give people to work with um other realities like generative realities that the things that are actually saving us the things the things that are growing us up um and that also like focusing on that and focusing on a long view of time as opposed to this 24-7 instant view of time uh which makes us small um taking seriously treating as a data point, the beautiful and noble people and projects you see around you, you know, not that it doesn't refute the hard things that are happening, but it's also true. What exercises might you have those students do or readings that you would assign to help them with this? Oh, I would just want them to get a big view of time, you know, to see this as a moment within a much larger canvas of time and to see what we internalize as the news,

Starting point is 01:37:21 which we too often internalize as like the whole of, you know, the kind of a snapshot of reality, you know, to be able to create some skills to put all of that into perspective and to ask what might really be important that's not, that we're not talking about. I don't know, if I had to teach skills, I suppose, which is really your question um i i think these days i would love to do and i actually i did or i didn't do create a course but udemy is that how you say that they created a course on i did something through acumen which is a course on listening and conversation and i i i would love to um to teach just about know, the art of conversation, the practice of listening, like practical tools, as well as the kind of presence, the intentionality that needs to go

Starting point is 01:38:15 into that. These are practical skills. I think listening is a, you know, basic social art. And it's not just that we have to relearn them and that we haven't kind of learned these things. It's that the things that we have very actively learned work against them. So we've all really been trained in the tools of advocacy, representing our position. And we need those skills, but we actually need to kind of retire them. Also, we need to learn. We need to dampen those as reflexively the only things we know how to do. And so I think that could be fun.

Starting point is 01:38:58 And the art of asking better questions. Absolutely. I mean, the quality of our questions determining the quality of our life, our lives, as Tony Robbins would say, I think it's reflected not only in the questions that you ask others,

Starting point is 01:39:15 but the questions you ask yourself, which is part of the beauty of what's been so fun about slowly trying to strengthen my Bambi legs and interviewing myself is becoming better at asking questions in my own head. Who are some of the best listeners you know or have known? Well, sometimes people say to me, oh, you're a professional listener. You must have grown up with great

Starting point is 01:39:45 listeners but i'm i'm the other story i'm the story of the person who grew up surrounded by people who didn't listen and so in in the absence of that i felt my need of it um so i did i didn't grow up with a lot of models and i don't you know while there are certainly many good journalists and hosts, you know, as I say, I don't really take my models from kind of traditional media. I mean, the good listeners I know are not famous people. That's okay. They don't have to be famous. They're my friend Nell, who's in her 80s, who is just one of the wisest people I know and one of the dearest people I know and the person who encouraged me to work on this project that sounded pretty far-fetched when I first had the idea. And she's just, you know, she really cares.

Starting point is 01:40:50 She's really curious. And she's also a joyful person. And joy is infectious. And, you know, so she's a great listener. Do you have any favorite documentary or movie? Favorite documentaries or movies? I'm so bad at these questions about favorites. Like everything goes out of my mind.

Starting point is 01:41:18 And in fact, a lot of people ask me what is my favorite interview. And in fact, I just had this exchange about a week ago where I was a little bit frosty with somebody because they said, who's your favorite interview ever? And I said, I can't choose. I said, I love them all. And who's your favorite interview this year? And I always say my favorite interview is the last one I did. And they said, well, you're being very diplomatic. And I said, no, I'm not being diplomatic. It's true. So I would say my favorite movie would probably be the last one I watched, except I watch a lot more TV than movies

Starting point is 01:41:55 these days. I love how we're relearning storytelling and doing it well on TV. Some incredible writing and otherwise on TV. Some incredible writing. Yeah. And otherwise on TV. What are you watching currently? Or what's the last memorable TV show that you watched? Yeah, I think I watched a lot of things. I loved this.

Starting point is 01:42:20 I loved The Night Manager. I loved, you know, I've been reading john the carrie in all my years in germany and um um i love that kind of thing i love those thriller stories i i loved true blood i loved the vampires um i this is so there's so much tv that I like right now. I'm watching The Affair. Oh, The Affair. All right. So just as a quick side note for The Affair. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:42:50 A lot of it or a good portion of it takes place in a restaurant called The Lobster Roll out on Long Island in Montauk. Is that a real place? It's a real place. And my second ever job was as a busboy at The Lobster Roll. Are you enjoying it? Are you enjoying the show? I haven't seen the show.

Starting point is 01:43:09 In fact, I haven't. I know a few people I grew up with, fellow townies on Long Island who have said it's very surreal to watch because I remember getting yelled at by rich city people and having to clean up their messes. That is so funny. That's so funny that it's a real place. Oh yeah. Very much a real place. If you had one gigantic billboard, you could put a short message on it to get it out to millions of people. What would you put on that?

Starting point is 01:43:39 I think I'm really bad at these questions. I can zig instead of zag here and we can do different types of questions. But if anything comes to mind, let me know. Otherwise, we can table it and come back. Maybe that line that you started with right now, that anger is what fear and pain look like when they show themselves in public. I think that would be a good thing for people to reflect on even briefly yeah absolutely um you talked about a little bit about your morning you mentioned the i guess it was meditation while your tea was steeping i remember correctly what is what is the first say 60 minutes of a good day for you what does

Starting point is 01:44:20 that look like um yeah good days i i've had a pretty good sleep love my sleep i get up and i do i start i make my tea and then i what time do you wake up and what kind of tea i wake up about 6 30 what what's your go-to tea uh it's yorkshire gold yorkshire gold is that a black yeah which is what is is what makes good, strong black tea in Minnesota. I think everywhere you are with the water, it's different. Yeah, I sit for about 10 minutes. And sometimes I read a little bit. Like I read a little Thomas Merton or a little Pema Chodron or a little Rilke.

Starting point is 01:44:59 And then I actually have started adding prayer back into my meditation. I realize that's my mother tongue. And that's kind of been a revelation for me to start doing that again. What do you, as someone, I'm not particularly religious, what type of, I was just speaking to a very close friend of mine who is recently about this, what are your prayers like? What are you? Yeah, well's it's an interesting question i mean i i for a long time i used to have a a book of common prayer and i used to like read the complin um these complin services these ancient services very poetic and

Starting point is 01:45:41 recently i have never talked to anybody about this. This summer, I got quiet and rested for the first time in about 10 years. It was amazing. I was on Big Sur. It was incredible. And one thing I did is I actually wrote a prayer. It was like the prayer of my life right now. And it was such an incredible thing to do.

Starting point is 01:46:03 I never thought of doing that. But I think the thing is, and this is where I've been saying, I think spiritual life is a very, like we all have personality types. And so you have to find what works for you. And I grew up Southern Baptist, which is all very free flowing. And like when the minister was praying, you were supposed to be praying your own prayer in your head. And there's something about me that likes, I like liturgy. I like rituals. So, um, and I, but I think previously I would have thought that even writing my own poem would, my own prayer would be, um, would be not as good as a prayer that had been around for hundreds or thousands of years. Um, but somehow I managed to write something that is a really good way for me to move into the

Starting point is 01:46:47 day um and and so and so i so i i say that and and and and and i also have some some time of silence and just breathing and sometimes kind of a mantra and all of this in 10 minutes isn't incredible i'm so productive um and of course just like everybody else um i will i will be distracted for six of those 10 minutes um but i think that's why having a bit of liturgy that you have to stick to right like having something to hang with and on um and then i and then i do make my tea and put my milk in it, and I get to email. If I have writing to do, I do that in the mornings, just when my mind is clear. And then I'm happy if I've kind of prepared the day with important correspondence or with getting some important ideas out.

Starting point is 01:47:42 And then eventually I go to work about 9.30 or 10. And usually I have something to record in the morning. I have to ask, because my fans will certainly ask me why I didn't ask you, and you don't have to share, but would you be open to sharing your prayer? Or is that something you'd prefer not to discuss? You mean now? Yeah. Well, I can tell you what it's...

Starting point is 01:48:09 I mean, maybe I can tell you... Gosh, I cannot even... It's funny because I've learned it. Or what it's about. However, I know people would love more details because it's so valuable to you. In a way, yeah. So in a way,

Starting point is 01:48:24 it reflects what I've been learning about myself, like what I need to work on my inner life, my spiritual work, right? um to open my heart and keep learning um to let go of the kind of resistance and protectiveness that saved me when i was growing up and and that doesn't that you know that became an armor around my natural love and trust and softness that's kind of my life work right and i'm so much better i mean just the fact that i can say it that way means I'm getting somewhere, but it's still my life work. to know to to to to know to to take delight um and that what i fear you know that i might welcome and i pray to about blessing that you know constantly knowing the difference between intentions and consequences because i think there's something you know mysterious about um you know what becomes of our actions that we don't control. And that's actually largely a wonderful thing.

Starting point is 01:49:52 But it doesn't necessarily converge with kind of my American can-do accomplishment mentality. To lean into that. That, you know, you do the right thing for the right reason and to some extent you have to let go of what becomes of it um and uh you know those that's kind of some of the big ideas of course again i say it every morning and now i i you know i i spent some time last december with in austria with brother david stendhal rost i don't know if you heard that interview he's just he's he's a benedictine monk he's austrian he's one of the great people in the world thinking about gratitude and um that's

Starting point is 01:50:42 probably one of those words i avoid a little bit too because it's just been on too many hallmark cards um what i like about him is that you know he lived through then fascist occupation of his country as a teenager like he's really known he knows how gritty the world is um and one of the things he says is that it would be absurd to say, for any of us to say, that you should be grateful for everything that happens to you. We don't say that, but that you can be grateful in every moment. And that's really stuck with me. And so that's how my prayer ends, like teach me to be grateful in every moment. And that's a practice that helps me.

Starting point is 01:51:31 That's extremely powerful. And thank you for sharing. I'm glad you did. I think that many pieces of that will be extremely helpful for many people. So thank you. Well, I certainly did not expect to talk about that. I didn't expect to ask you about it. And it makes me also want to go find wild geese that you mentioned earlier on top of that. Well, just one or two more questions and then I'll let you get back to your day. And this is basically the tail end. I'd like to ask you if you have

Starting point is 01:52:01 any, and then I'll ask where people can find you and so on. But first, do you have any requests of my audience, of the people listening, anything that you'd like them to take away, anything you'd like them to try, anything you'd like them to consider or otherwise? Any parting words for the people listening? As I said a minute ago, I'm just intensely aware of how many messages we internalize. And I feel that that gets in the way of people really knowing how much power they have

Starting point is 01:52:36 in terms of how they move through the world, the world around them, the people they can see and touch, the small and large interactions they have. the world you know the world around them the people they can see and touch the the you know the small and large interactions they have like we we live in this bizarre moment where the places we have wanted to look for modeling and leadership and you know the way forward are very dysfunctional and and partly because of our technology you know we're turn of century people we're in this moment where we were the all of us who are adults were were were born in one

Starting point is 01:53:12 in one world of assumptions and institutions that made sense and we are growing up or growing old in a world in which uh most of our disciplines know, the way things have been done don't make sense. And we have to create the changed realities and it's not going to happen from the top. And that's not the way our digital world works anyway. But I think we have more power, more agency to do that than we are made to feel. And, you know, it's a wonderful calling. And I think we have to like keep, you know, keep each other company, accompany each other in keeping that sense. So that would be my encouragement. Somebody was talking to me yesterday about a phrase, social courage. And that's, I think, that's a good way to talk.

Starting point is 01:54:10 I think that's something I want to invite people to and call people to and just make clear that that is available to us. I think that I can't think of any time when that has been more important, in my lifetime that i'm consciously aware of then yeah then right now being socially courageous which i think also means probably presenting and potentially defending important views or perspectives or experiences that are very unpopular. Yeah. You know, I think in terms of the different callings of this moment, and some of us are going to have to defend, and some of us may have to put our bodies in the way of danger

Starting point is 01:54:58 that is coming to some people who are on the front lines of vulnerability. And I also think there's a calling for many of us to be calmers of fear. Yes. I think there's some very quiet callings right now that can also make a huge difference. Krista, this has been so much fun. I really appreciate you taking the time. And I'd like to encourage people to check out your work.

Starting point is 01:55:24 Where can people say hello? Where can people find out more about you? And if you have any recommended starting points, I'm not going to ask you the favorite interview question because I don't like getting that any more than you do. But where can people find you and what would you suggest perhaps they start with if you have a recommendation? So, yeah, so the website is onbeing.org. And we also have something called the Civil Conversations Project that we're going to be building out. There's also a civilconversationsproject.org website. It actually has a little guide that I wrote that we're calling Better Conversations.

Starting point is 01:56:01 But we have the OnBeing app in the app store. And of course, you can find the OnBeing podcast in iTunes or wherever you get podcasts. I am not on Facebook for some reason. It just makes me break out in hives. But I do actually love Twitter. And I mostly go there to just kind of, I kind of correspond and communicate with people who reach out to me there. So that's a good place to check in. At Krista Tippett. Yeah, just at Krista Tippett. Two P's, two T's.

Starting point is 01:56:38 You have to do that as much as I do. Double R, double S. But Tim, I just, I want to thank you so much. Also, I was really tired today. Here we are. Isn't it Friday the 13th? It is Friday the 13th.

Starting point is 01:56:50 Anyway, it's Friday afternoon and I'm so tired today and I've just, it's been really energizing and you have built something amazing. And I'm just, I'm so amazed that you're listening to on being and I'm, and I'm really grateful to be, to meet your audience, your people like this. Well, it's really fun and meaningful for me to have you on.

Starting point is 01:57:13 And I hope this is not the last conversation that we have. Yeah. Well, we'll get together sometime and talk about Berlin. Yes. And I would love to do that. And you can listen to my mangled German, but that's okay. Ein Fuss nach dem anderen. It's one little step after the other as I butcher yet another language.

Starting point is 01:57:38 So thank you so much. And to everybody listening, as always, you can find show notes, links to everything that we discussed at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out as well as every other episode. And until next time, 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?

Starting point is 01:58:14 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

Starting point is 01:58:45 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. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is now the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid fast, which basically describes the core needs of most entrepreneurs and freelancers. The product was recently relaunched and rebuilt from the ground up, focusing on simplicity and speed. It's an awesome service, and many of you recommended it to me, which is how they came to be a sponsor. Now, I awesome service and many of you recommended it to me,

Starting point is 01:59:25 which is how they came to be a sponsor. Now I can't cover all of the many, many features, but for example, you can take pictures of receipts on your phone using FreshBooks iOS mobile app or connect your bank account or credit card to FreshBooks and watch your expenses automatically import into your account every day. And if you have any questions whatsoever, a real live person answers in less than three rings to help you with all of your needs. So to claim your 30-day unrestricted free

Starting point is 01:59:51 trial, that means no credit card needed, and see how the all-new FreshBooks can change your freelancing game, go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and enter Tim, T-I-M, in the How Did You Hear About Us section. That is freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and then put Tim, T-I-M, in the How Did You Hear About Us section. That is freshbooks.com forward slash Tim, and then put Tim, T-I-M, in the How Did You Hear About Us section. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone

Starting point is 02:00:24 and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I went the contest route. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options risk-free. Let's say you need something late night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem. Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate path or a different option. And that is the one-to-one project service. So in a number of cases,

Starting point is 02:01:02 and I'll give you one example, when i wanted to create the cover for my audiobook the tau of seneca this was a very important project to me i decided to use their one-to-one project service and with this service you can invite a specific designer to your project agree on a price and then work together until you're satisfied and they'll let you iterate and provide feedback and all this stuff and i haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So you can check out the Tao of Seneca design and other work that I and your fellow

Starting point is 02:01:42 listeners, for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com forward slash Tim. Again, that's 99designs.com forward slash Tim.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #223: Calming Philosophies for Chaotic Times -- Krista Tippett

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

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #223: Calming Philosophies for Chaotic Times -- Krista Tippett

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