The Tim Ferriss Show - #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery

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Starting point is 00:05:29 Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job, as always, to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, influences, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own life. My guest today is a friend, Maurice Ashley. Maurice Ashley is an incredibly impressive human being on so many levels, and we get to really dig into a number of facets of his life story and lessons learned.

Starting point is 00:06:04 Maurice Ashley is the first African-American international grandmaster in the annals of the game of chess, and he has translated his love to others as a three-time national championship coach, published author, ESPN commentator, iPhone app designer, puzzle inventor, and motivational speaker. In recognition for his immense contribution to the game, Maurice was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2016. His book, Chess for Success, subtitled Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens, shows the many benefits of chess, particularly for at-risk youth. His TEDx talk, Working Backward to Solve Problems, has more than a million views. He's also appeared with me in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu episode, which has some chess of the Tim Ferriss Experiment TV series way back in the day,

Starting point is 00:06:48 joined by our mutual friend Josh Waitzkin. Maurice is very well known for providing dynamic live tournament coverage of world-class chess competitions and matches. His high energy, unapologetic, and irreverent commentary combines Brooklyn street smarts, which we talk about quite a bit, with a professional ESPN-style sports analysis. He has covered every class of elite event, including the world chess championships, the U S chess championships, the grand chess tour, and the legendary man versus machine matches between Gary Kasparov, or is it Kasparov? I never get that right. And IBM's deep blue traveling the world as a spokesperson for the many character building effects of chess. Maurice consults with universities, schools, chess clubs, executives, and celebrities on how chess

Starting point is 00:07:29 principles and strategies can be applied to improve business practices and accelerate personal growth. You can find him online, mauriceashley.com, on Twitter, at Maurice Ashley, and on Facebook, Grandmaster Maurice A., and on Instagram, Maurice Ashley Chess. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than Maurice Ashley. Maurice, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this and hoping to have you on the show for so many years now. And we've had many different points of connection. But of course, it began with

Starting point is 00:08:10 our mutual friend and also a popular podcast guest, Josh Waitzkin, who has known you for a very long time indeed. And he has a quote, in fact, that is in praise of your book, Chess for Success. And it goes as follows, quote, Maurice Ashley has been like a brother to me since I was 12 years old. I know the man, I know the competitor, I know the artist, and I know the teacher. There is a lot of terrain for us to cover, a lot of nooks and crannies to explore, but I thought we would begin with Maurice the Jamaican. And I was hoping you could describe for us your beginnings, and we could start with the Genesis.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Well, yes, I was born in Jamaica, the island, not the area of Queens. And I grew up there. I was there until I was 12 years old before I came to this country. But probably the most significant thing that happened for me in Jamaica was the fact that my mother left Jamaica to come to the United States when I was two years old. My brother was 10. My sister was seven months old. And she had this opportunity to come to the U.S., but she couldn't bring all of us at the same time. She could only bring herself. And her leaving was really quite an event in our lives. My father wasn't with us, living with us at the time. So we grew up with our grandmother. And my mother would send down stuff, supplies to

Starting point is 00:09:35 Jamaica, whether it be foodstuffs, flour and rice. She'd send them in a barrel. She'd send books. She'd send like notebooks. And I remember her sending like a softball and a glove. And of course in Jamaica, nobody played softball, baseball, nothing. So I threw the glove to the side, not knowing what to do with it. And we used the softball as a soccer ball. It got pretty worn down pretty quickly. It really turned into a softball very quickly after that. But just being raised by my grandmother, she was a teacher by training. And so she would teach us so much as young people. So we were really well prepared educationally because of my grandmother. And she was 64 years old at the time my mother left. So you can imagine a 64-year-old having had seven children of her own, now suddenly taking on the care of her daughter's children at that age, when she might be thinking about maybe slowing down and retiring,

Starting point is 00:10:36 enjoying herself. But for the next 10 years, she took care of us. And that was really a hugely significant part of growing up, living there until finally my mother got the resources and the paperwork through to get us green cards and finally bring us to the United States. When or how does competitive drive enter the picture? I love doing homework on friends of mine before they come on the show, because I always find these things that I've never known, such as some of the athletic accomplishments of your siblings. Could you describe your siblings a bit and then speak to the competitive aspect? Well, yes, we are a competitive family. My older brother, Devon, is a kickboxer, a boxing trainer now, but he was a three-time

Starting point is 00:11:29 world champion kickboxer. And my sister, the baby, Alicia, was a six-time world champion boxer. And so we always joke about who's better and who's got more accolades. And we always try to one-up each other. And, you know, one gets into the hall of fame, the others are upset and the other one gets to the hall of fame. And like my sister's not in the boxing hall of fame yet. So she's like, oh man, how you guys got that on me? So yeah, we, we definitely are very competitive family. It started, I think it's, it started very young. I mean, my mother, despite not being a competitor herself, had a tremendous drive. Our family had a drive to succeed. I mean, my mother, despite not being a competitor herself, had a tremendous drive.

Starting point is 00:12:05 Our family had a drive to succeed. You know, our circumstances were extremely modest. Jamaica wasn't what people think of it as, at least the northwest side of Jamaica is. Montego Bay and Ocho Rios and Negril and, you know, a party and all that. Reggae Sunsplash. But we lived in Kingston. And Kingston was people packed on top of each other in not great conditions and so we knew we wanted to be something special but you

Starting point is 00:12:35 just wanted to have the resources to be able to do that and i think it was really fortunate that we finally got that opportunity to my mother's diligence and eventually my father re-entered our lives as well. And he's a dancer. He's a dance teacher. He was a professional dancer. Danced with Martha Graham and was very accomplished at his own dance company as well. So, you know, the family was just a pretty driven bunch.

Starting point is 00:13:02 Why did it come to pass that you moved to the U.S. at 12? How did that happen? And why did that move happen? Again, my mother, she wanted to bring us up, but she couldn't by the rules at the time, just bring her family with her. So she was allowed, in the 60s, there was a mass immigration of Caribbean folks, but you had to come by yourself in the main. And then after you had proven yourself, gotten your own citizenship papers, et cetera, you were able to bring your family up. And so a lot of children, they were called barrel children, which meant that parents would come usually by themselves to the country,

Starting point is 00:13:36 and then they would send down supplies in a barrel. And so you'd wait for that barrel to be shipped so that you could open it up and get all the goodies from your parent. And that barrel was an indicator of how much my mother was working in order to supply materials for At first, she was a nanny. Then she got an office job and saved up her money and got herself ready because her three children were going to be with her. And she wanted to be able to afford that and take care of us. And so in 1978, we finally were able to come up. And it was just like her dream basically come true. A dream come true for us as well because we had been living without our mother for 10 years. And you can imagine when that finally came to pass, it was just like a fairy tale. Was it also strange to be reunited after all that time? Absolutely. Or was it? No, absolutely bizarre. I mean, for us, our grandmother was really our mother, especially for me and my sister, right? Because we were so young.

Starting point is 00:14:47 I was two. My sister was less than a year old. And so we didn't have intimate knowledge of this woman. She would visit us when she could, every year if she could, but sometimes it took longer. And we would write her letters. It's funny. She showed us the letter. She saved the letters we wrote her from over 40 years ago. And I didn't know she had them until last summer. And she took out this pile of letters. These are the letters. Actually, it's my daughter who went

Starting point is 00:15:19 down to interview her. My daughter's a budding filmmaker. To interview her, my daughter said, do you know that grandma has letters that you wrote her from 40 years ago? I was like, what are you talking about? She says, yeah, she's been saving them all this time. So when I finally go down to visit her again, I see these extraordinary letters that we wrote to her that kept that connection. And you imagine, it's not email. This is letters, handwritten letters being sent and waiting in expectation for letters to come back for our mother to tell us about how life was, where she was, and for her to hear from us. And I was a pretty poetic kid. I told her, you know, wrote poems to her, how much I loved her and how I missed her and all that. You know, It was quite an extraordinary thing to do, to be able to go back

Starting point is 00:16:06 and see myself as a six-year-old, seven-year-old, eight-year-old, as my thoughts evolved and my intellect grew as I wrote her letters. So it really was an extraordinary thing. Very strange to finally meet this mythical figure who would sacrifice so much for us to have a better life. Where did you land in the US and how did chess enter the picture? We ended up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Brownsville is the same neighborhood that Mike Tyson grew up in. And I often make the joke that Brownsville was so rough that Mike had to get out of Brownsville. And it was that tough. I mean, my mother was able to get us this apartment that she could afford, which was a two bedroom apartment. There were four of us. So my brother, sister, and I were in the

Starting point is 00:17:00 one room, one bedroom, bunk bed, or the rollout bed, actually. And my mother had the other bedroom. And my brother at the time was 20 years old. So you can imagine a 20-year-old having to sleep in the same room as his younger brother and sister. But he got his life together pretty quickly, went to school, then got work, and then moved out. But that's what she could afford. And it was just what it was. And Brownsville in the late 70s, early 80s was what you can imagine what Brooklyn was. Not today's Brooklyn. You've got Starbucks and lattes and Park Slow Moms. Forget it. This was BK. This was hardcore. This was drug dealers shooting every single night, not necessarily at anyone, but just to remind the neighborhood who was in charge. There were prostitutes in the corners. You had car thieves. I mean, it was a hot mess. It was Brooklyn. Urban blight is at its worst. New York has changed a lot since then.

Starting point is 00:18:05 Brooklyn especially has changed a lot since then. But back then, it was really tough. And to answer the second part of your question, sorry. And chess came into my life when I went to Brooklyn Technical High School. Now, I knew the rules of chess, actually. I knew the rules of chess from Jamaica because we played a lot of games in Jamaica. We didn't have television. TV came on at six o'clock at night. And the first thing that came on was the news and it was two channels. So you didn't want to watch that as a kid. So you learned to play games. And I had a very passionate love of games. And it was a lot of board games, whether it was checkers, which we call drafts,

Starting point is 00:18:43 whether it was card games. And chess was one of those games that my brother and his friends got hooked into. And I kind of played around with it for a bit. And my brother said I used to be in the backyard, just moving the pieces around by myself. I don't even recall doing that. But later, when I came to the US in high school, I saw a friend playing. and that's when I got involved. I started playing this guy I thought I could beat, and he just crushed me. And I couldn't understand him. And again, competitive side, it's like, what's going on? And it just so happened while I was in the library that I saw a book on chess, and that's where the love affair began. What was it about the book? If my research is serving me right, this is a book, I believe by Paul Morphy, if I'm getting the name correct. Maybe, maybe not. But what was it about the book on chess and your experience that gripped you so much? It wasn't by Paul Morphy. It included Paul Morphy as one of the greatest chess players of all time. And I don't know if it was solely the book or the fact that I wanted to kick my friend's ass. Like, I think that's sort of the case.

Starting point is 00:19:53 Like, wait a minute, there's a book? Oh, I'm going to take this out. His name was Clotier Colas. His family is from Haiti, another immigrant family. But everybody called him Chico. And Chico just had mauled me and it's like this and then there was a book wait a minute i'm taking out this book i'm gonna study the book and then i got something for chico and i read it i was fascinated like wow there's strategies

Starting point is 00:20:19 you're supposed to do certain specific openings and these ideas. I didn't know any of it existed. And then I, so when I was done, I went back to play him. And the first game I played him, he crushed me again. And it turns out that he had read that book and many other books. He had game and I was stupid thinking that I was going to get him. But then that really stoked the fire. And from then on, we played chess every single day after school, like every single day. It was basically school, homework, chess. And that was my life in high school. So never underestimate the hellfire-fueled redemption from an ass-kicking, I think would be one moral to take away from that. And the next chapters that followed, I've done a little bit of reading, and I suppose

Starting point is 00:21:09 we could start with the Black Bear School of Chess. What is the Black Bear School of Chess? That is indeed the next chapter. The group itself, the Black Bear School, was a group of largely African-American males, one Latino brother in there as well. They were a group who played chess together, either in the parks or at each other's homes. They took chess deathly seriously. They studied books. They studied encyclopedias. They studied chess material magazines in other languages. Even if they didn't speak them, they would get out a dictionary from a magazine. I remember you have a German magazine or a Russian magazine, Chokhmatny Bulletin, and they would take a dictionary and go over each word, translating word by word to find out what was in the material, which, you know, you think about, I mean, it's not Google Translate, right? You don't speak

Starting point is 00:22:13 the language. You're literally trying to figure out word by word what the explanation is. Of course, the piece names were different, but they were consistent. So, for example, in Russian, a bishop is a slon, and it would look like a capital letter C. So whenever you saw that, you knew that was the name of the piece that was moving, and then you know what square it was moving to. So at least the games, they could go over very easily. But the explanations, they had to look up and do it very slowly. So you can imagine the seriousness they took chess with. And I got to meet them when a friend of mine who I was beating told me that he knew a group that could beat me. And I was a big trash talker.

Starting point is 00:22:54 So when he said that, I was like, please bring it. And he told me about the Black Bear School. And he took me to one of their homes, the home of Willie Johnson, who remains a mentor to me today. Everybody calls him Pop, but he's just like, he was like a father figure to me. And I went and I played Willie that first game. And he was just so friendly and amicable. And he thought he was going to teach me a lesson. Then it turns out that I was good enough to hang with him. And that was my indoctrination into this group that just was so amazingly competitive. You cannot imagine. I mean, we were already competitive, and these guys were out to kill each other every single day, every single time they played. They'd play on the weekends. They would stay at Willie's house from Friday night until Sunday and just be playing chess. And generally speaking, we're talking about blitz chess, not the slower classical version where you stop and think for a while,

Starting point is 00:23:47 but the fast version where it's just like dynamic and the clock, as you know. So it was just fun to be in that kind of group. And they didn't teach me anything. I was the youngest one. I was a big trash talker. They were very upset when I talked so much trash. You got to respect your elders. They were generally about seven to 15 years older than me, but they knew I had competitive fire. And so their way of teaching me was to beat me down,

Starting point is 00:24:16 send me home, and make me go study. And that was training by fire. Just to define some terms, you mentioned classical chess and blitz chess. The way I've heard you describe the difference, and I want you to fact check this and correct me if I get anything wrong, but in classical chess, you might have a four-hour session, say back in the day, four-hour session, a break, you sort of recuse yourselves, study the position, come back the next day, play another four hours. You can take your time. With blitz chess, how much time does each side have? Or I guess it varies, but the way that you guys played. Yeah, five minutes per side for the whole game. It's a two-faced clock. So each

Starting point is 00:24:56 side has their own time. Whenever I make a move, I press the clock and the other person's time starts ticking, my time freezes. And we play the game that way. If you run out of time, you lose. So you can imagine five minutes total per game. Now you have even faster than Blitz, you have Bullet, which is one minute per side, which is really like Edward Scissorhand's speed. Pieces are moving. But five minutes was still plenty fast,

Starting point is 00:25:19 but enough time for you to study the position somewhat, get a good feel, and go. A lot more instinct, a lot more tactical tricks and traps, some definitely room for strategic play. But classical chess, back in the day as you described it, you would adjourn games after the first time period. When computers came along, you couldn't adjourn games anymore because people could just go to the computer and ask for help.

Starting point is 00:25:43 So that killed adjournments. And now games could last between three and a half to six hours. There's no set time because you keep getting time added depending on the number of moves you play. And it varies. But like I said, between three and a half to six hours, that gives you ample time to study, to be accurate, to analyze all the moves, to play strategic niceties, nuances, but that's not what we grew up with. In Brooklyn, it was all body blows. Just hit them again, hit them again. I mean, and guys had tactics. When I say tactics, I mean moves that were like pyrotechnics. You'd think, where did that come from? You thought you had the position under

Starting point is 00:26:24 control and and somebody would drop a move and it would just explode on the board it's like what that's playable so you you just had to be absolutely fierce and focused and maintain that discipline all the way through because these guys would were true ninjas on the board. So let's talk about focus and maybe a caltrop under the foot of focus. Smack talking, right? So trash talking is an art form and there are different schools in this art, different approaches. Could you describe some of the different schools of trash talking or

Starting point is 00:27:06 different approaches to trash talking? Because this is something I had very little exposure to, but I'll give people a preview. We'll probably talk about this a little bit later. But you and I spent some time together for the Tim Ferriss experiment, this TV series that was done a handful of years ago. And we got this one clip of you playing this trash talking player in a park in New York City that went completely viral, has close to 7 million views now. It's just amazing. And you do see how it's used to knock people off balance, right? So could you speak to just trash talking in general, any way you want to tackle it? I think the most critical thing about trash talking is that it actually is very much an individual thing, right? It's more who you are than what you're trying to do. So each person approaches it their own way based on their

Starting point is 00:28:00 personality. And if you're low key, your trash talking is going to be understated. You're not going to be loud and braggadocious, like all in the guy's face, because that's not who you are. So you would throw your own self off if you did that. You insult the person or get inside their head the way you would as yourself. And so you have the people who will just be real low-key sarcastic, right? It won't even necessarily be fancy. They might say something like, really? That's what you're going to play? I mean, there's nothing big, nothing fancy, but it'll be in your brain somewhere. It'll plant that earworm, right? And then I'll start over and over somebody like Ralph mouth, who would always say,

Starting point is 00:28:49 no matter what the situation, that's what she said. Just every single time. That's what she said. You know, I'm whipping your ass. That's what she said. Like whatever,

Starting point is 00:29:01 whatever it was, that was always his line. Then you had guys who would quote Shakespeare, like Vinnie Livermore, who was played by Laurence Fishburne in Josh Waitzkin's movie about Josh Waitzkin searching for Bobby Fischer. Vinnie, he'd be quoting Shakespeare the whole time. He's like, you got to know Shakespeare to quote Shakespeare. And clearly this guy knew Shakespeare. So that was another way. Or there'd be people who stayed very, very, let's call toys uh in the description like what like how did that come in your head dude like could you please just play chess but that's where the conversation would go and and uh and anything they were doing you know like the rook is penetrating into the rear

Starting point is 00:29:58 you know like what of your position really okay we're gonna go with that so everything and anything could come at you depending on who it was that you were talking to. And also, of course, you also have colorful language, right? And you couldn't avoid that either. And so much more so the person expressing themselves at the board in a way that allows for them to feel like they're in flow and potentially disturbs your equanimity. And if that happens and you're done, like I saw people who were better chess players just lose their cool at the board because the other guy just kept talking. And the worst thing to do to a trash talker is tell them to stop talking that's the worst now you're done now you're like really okay i'm going to stop talking you know i'll stop talking because i want to respect you so i'm going to stop talking right now i mean really you're a better player so let me stop saying anything and disrespecting you by talking that's what's going to happen it's just going to be unending stream and you're never going to get past. So the best thing to do is to keep cool.

Starting point is 00:31:08 And so for me, that was really good training in not being distracted no matter what was happening around you. Did any of those players in the Black Bear School of Chess, Black Bear School, go on to play elsewhere? And where did you go in terms of evolution from that point? Absolutely. These players ended up becoming master players, like legit chess masters. Not as far as grandmasters and international masters, which is the highest levels of chess, grandmaster being the highest title you could have. But these were strong players. Now, the problem for the black bear school in my opinion as i was coming up was i recognized that it was a bit too much infighting players wanted to beat each other

Starting point is 00:31:54 so you had the best players like william morrison who we called the exterminator or george golden the fire breather um and then you had guys like Ronald Simpson, as I mentioned, Willie Johnson, Ernest Colding, Mark Mears, Chris Welcome. These guys were serious, high level talents, but their best wish was to destroy each other that day. And for me coming up as a, as a young player, I was in my teens, I didn't see the value in just beating them because the people I was reading about in the books were grandmasters, famous players. And I wanted to be like the people in the books. I wanted to play at that level. And the only way you could do that was if I left the group

Starting point is 00:32:42 or didn't stay just inside the group and played in the clubs in New York. And I was very fortunate because New York is a hotbed for chess activity and some of the strongest players in the country were living in New York. So I started going to the Manhattan Chess Club, the Marshall Chess Club. Those are the two venerable clubs and playing against the grandmasters there. And that took my game to another level. And it eventually allowed me, in fact, to come back to the Black Bear School and become the president, as we called it. I started dominating those guys because I wasn't just about playing inside this one group.

Starting point is 00:33:18 Did you decide to go to the clubs? Did someone else suggest it? No, I did. I did. Once I found out that clubs were there, I wanted to find out who played there. Can you find the best players? And so I went. A friend of mine, Sam Singh, and I, we hung out. He had a beat-up car, but it was good enough. And we would drive to the city regularly and play tournament chess and play against all the masters and international masters and grandmasters of the club. And that really took our game to another level.

Starting point is 00:33:51 What is the atmosphere in a venerable chess club? What does that look like? What does it feel like? As you would expect. It was not Brooklyn, I can tell you that. Not Browseville. It was different. It was definitely different. You know, you had people who were coming out of work, businessmen in suits. They didn't quite know what to do with a young black kid from Brooklyn. And so it was definitely a different vibe to what I was normally experiencing. But chess is chess. And once you see good moves, you understand you're playing against a player. So I wanted to be that player whenever I played

Starting point is 00:34:33 against those guys. And that's what it was like. So it was definitely a much more formal affair, but as long as it was about chess, then I didn't care. I want you to correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but I read about a moment when things seem to have crystallized for you in a way, and that was watching Tiger Woods in 1997. Was that an important moment for you? Absolutely. Absolutely. You're fast forwarding big time though. So now I'm way out of my teens. I'm now, at that time, I'm 31 years old. So we're jumping fast. I had gone through many experiences before then, but my quest to become a grandmaster was seemingly stymied because by then I had a daughter. I had to work for a living. I was teaching chess actually primarily,

Starting point is 00:35:20 but I was also doing chess commentary and the like. And so I was fully involved in sort of fatherhood and making money. And my dream was to become a grandmaster. So by the time we get to Tiger in 97, he was at the Masters and he dominated that Masters. Remember, that was his coming out part. And that really struck a chord for me because when I watched him be a dominant player in a sport that largely didn't look like him, and I was in the same boat in my sport. Chess is a sport, yes. And I felt like one day I wanted to do that. I'd been dreaming about that for so long and I'd never done it. So when I saw Tiger do that, I went into a bit of a depression at first. I was like, what the heck? I'm distracted by all these things that I'm doing and I'm not focusing on my game, my craft, my passion to finally do what I've always wanted to do. And that eventually turned into inspiration and search, the quest to finally do it. And I was very fortunate because at the time I was working in an organization, a Harlem educational activities fund that had a sponsor by the name of Dan Rose.

Starting point is 00:36:31 He was the philanthropist who actually, who gave to this fund to help young kids in Harlem. And I was teaching in his chess programs and we'd produce national champions and the like. And he heard about my dream and he said, listen'll support you on this quest as long as you come back to harlem after you're done and get back to which i was very happy for that deal and i was able to stop everything i was doing and just focus on chess and about 19 months later i got my final norm that made me a grandmaster so i want to dig into a bunch of aspects of this because this seems like it could be fertile ground for exploring quite a bit. When did the depression get transmuted into inspiration?

Starting point is 00:37:15 How long did that take? What did it look like? Because a lot of people, and I've certainly had these periods where I go into a low and I might recover to baseline, but it doesn't get translated into this new source of momentum, which seems to have happened to you.

Starting point is 00:37:32 So how did that happen? And how long did it take? You know, in this specific case, it took as long as it took for me to find out that I would have a sponsor who would make it financially feasible for me to pursue what I wanted to pursue. So this is a bit different from what you're describing. Were you kind of telling as many people as you could, and that's how it wound its way back to this philanthropist? Because that was sort of manifested, not in the secret sense, but he somehow heard about this dream. So I'd just love to hear you describe how that came

Starting point is 00:38:07 together, sort of accidentally, indirectly, or otherwise. Yeah, it was sort of incidentally. The woman in charge of this foundation, her name is Courtney Welch, she was a friend of mine as well. So she knew, of course, she was the one who hired me to teach these kids chess. And I don't know how long after this happened with Tiger and I'd been, been marinating in my spirit and, you know, I was like a, a caged tiger, if you will. And I was talking to, to Courtney about it. And of course she was the head of the foundation that Dan supported.

Starting point is 00:38:41 So she knew him well. So when I was talking to her, I said, you know, I can't believe what would happen. This thing has really been bothering me. And I feel like I'm not doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. I'd really had gone to the top of coaching. Like I said, my kids had won the national championships, my students. I was doing commentary. I was traveling the world doing commentary. I'd done a CD-ROM by then. And it felt like I was doing everything that was just peripheral to what I really wanted to do. And I was basically letting her know that this is where my spirit was. And she was the one who said, well, why don't you just ask Dan? And that hadn't even occurred to me, even though he was just

Starting point is 00:39:21 basically one degree of separation away. I said, I don't know. Okay, I guess. And so I just did. And very quickly he said, I love this. You've done so much for the kids and for our organization. I'd be happy to support you. And I feel like that's an important thing to, like when you have a dream, you're not on an island, right? You're not isolated. There are people around who will sense your sincerity, will sense your drive, will sense your determination. And sometimes it just comes together. And I feel very fortunate that this all happened for me, but I feel like this happened to me at various points in my life, that a window opens because

Starting point is 00:40:01 I'm manifesting out there that this is what I want. It may not have been a specific person to help sponsor me and sponsor my quest, but just somehow it just opens. And I always have faith that something's going to happen. You just have to keep at it, keep that window open, that spirit open for possibility to come to you. And just don't lose that passion, that drive, because it's not happening right away. How does someone, and this is as much for me as for people listening, become rated in chess, becoming a master or a grandmaster or anything in between? Is it a function of racking up competition points? What is the process for progressing upward through the ranks in chess? mathematician, Arpad Elo. And he came up with a way of weighting results to compare players against other players. And once you start that, and somebody has a number, and then you play against

Starting point is 00:41:16 that person, you get a certain number of points for beating that person, or for drawing that person, or you lose points for losing to that person. And then you find out where you are on the totem pole. And that is, you know, now you spread that out to millions of people and chess players all around the world get these ratings. Now we have class players, so class A, B, C, on down. Then you finally become a title player is when you become an expert or a master, an international master, international brand master, and you're moving up the rating scale. But again, you have to do it by beating people at that next level for you to bring yourself up or

Starting point is 00:41:54 dominating your level, which means you don't belong in the level anymore. So you just start accumulating a massive amount of points. It's very similar. Tennis uses pretty much the same thing. To get the title officially, however, titles like International Master or Grandmaster, you have to perform at a certain rating level against other internationally ranked players. And those numbers, it's again, a formula depending on who you're playing against, very specific numbers. But man, they put that level so high that people spend years and years of their lives trying to attain the norms, as we call them, and you need to do it three times. So imagine taking the bar in law, and somebody says, you're going to have to take the bar

Starting point is 00:42:38 three times. You're going to have to pass it three times. Except the bar, at least, you can study for, and there's content on there that you have to learn. In chess, you have to deal with the fact that whatever you know, there's somebody sitting across the board trying to destroy you and prove you wrong. And that's a very different kind of ladder to have to climb. So no grandmaster wants to be the one that somebody else stepped over to become a grandmaster themselves. So it's cutthroat. It's trial by fire. It's amazing. It's like the top black

Starting point is 00:43:14 bouts in karate, right? You're Bruce Lee's. Imagine having to fight Bruce Lee if you want to call yourself a professional fighter. I mean, that's the kind of stuff you have to do in chess. And so it's quite a journey. So let's talk about the dusting off the gloves. So you are teaching, you're commentating, you're doing very well in these various fields. You've created instructional materials. Then you decide to get back in the ring to try to actualize this dream, what does it look like to get back into training shape, so to speak? What do you do? So first things first, all the chess books get pulled out. You've got to have material, stuff to learn. At the time, one great development, we're talking 1997, was computer databases on chess.

Starting point is 00:44:09 So we're talking about collections of games of famous players or even not so famous players that were archived and in such a way that you could research individual players. So that meant that if I had to play Tim Ferriss, if he's played in a tournament somewhere, that game gets archived. I look up your games and I say, oh, so you like the Sicilian defense. Let me make sure I prepare because that's what you're going to play against me when I play you in a couple of weeks time. It's like watching tape on a boxer for any sports game. We're able to record all the games. It's one of the great things about chess is we have games from hundreds of years. We have games from

Starting point is 00:44:48 centuries ago. Easily, games from the 1500s, Italian players, Italian school of chess. We have games purportedly Napoleon played. There's some doubt whether it was him. But nevertheless, all the top chess players of the past

Starting point is 00:45:03 and certainly those of the present, we have their games. So that is important because you're talking about initially hundreds of thousands of games. Now the databases are 7 million to 8 million strong, meaning number of games. So I could research the best players if I'm going to play world champion. I research, boom, Magnus Carlsen's name comes up and I see all his games. But not only that, I'm going to play world champion. I research, boom, Magnus Carlsen's name comes up and I see all his games. But not only that, I'm able to very easily check which are his favorite lines.

Starting point is 00:45:32 Well, that guy plays everything, but where is his inclination? When does he lose? What kind of things happen to cause him to lose games? What kind of situation am I trying to avoid? So that's when you have to really dig deep into the psychology of the player through the information you're getting from their games. And that was a huge part of our preparation. And you can't do that half-heartedly. You got to be ready. That's digging. That's note-taking. That's research

Starting point is 00:45:59 at the highest level. And you got to study your openings. So like I said, so you combine openings, book study, database, openings. And then on top of that, you need to have a trainer. You need to have somebody who has had great experience in chess, who may be retired now, and has been through all the wars, but now is an advisor role. And you pay him that money or pay her that money because they're going to say to you, you know what, this situation right here, you should be doing this. This thing right here. Now, that's not you. You shouldn't try studying that. Try this this line. And then you call them up. You got a big game. Hey, what should I do in this game? I'm playing so-and-so. And they help you and you do the research. So it's all that support system.

Starting point is 00:46:41 The top players have more than one person on their team. They have a team, a real team. So you just get that together so that you could be prepared like a fine-tuned assassin ready to play. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is incredibly important to me. I study it. I research it. It is my end-all be-all. It determines so much else. And I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress for the last few years. I also have one in my guest bedroom and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others.

Starting point is 00:47:25 Just go to helixsleep.com slash Tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it for 100 nights risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at helixsleep.com slash Tim. One more time, that's helixsleep.com slash Tim for up to $200 off. What does it look like to build mental and physical stamina for the game of chess. I mean, you said earlier, and it is a sport, referring to chess. I can't even conceive of trying to concentrate on a single game for six hours. It's hard for me to conceive of, and I consider myself pretty good

Starting point is 00:48:22 at focusing. But when I lived in Japan as an exchange student, it was my first real exposure to any chess. It wasn't Western chess, but it was shogi, which is Japanese chess, and then go, which is a whole separate animal. And I was toast after 30 to 60 minutes. Complete toast, worthless. So how do you build mental and physical stamina for high-level chess? Well, physical is easy. You just get on the treadmill, you go swimming, you run, you bike, you do whatever it is that you have a good time doing, preferably you have a good time doing, but you make sure you get that cardio burn because you're going to need reserves of energy when you're playing for that long. So exercise is a must. And you look at all the top players now,

Starting point is 00:49:12 nobody's overweight. Nobody's overweight. In fact, you're burning so many calories when you're playing from the intensity of it. I know they just did a study, which I think is completely insane. The numbers that they came up with something like 6,000 calories burned during a chess game, which I find that's, I know we're like doing a lot, but that seems like over the top, but that's essential. First of all, in terms of the mental side, I think a big part of mastery in that way has to do with the fact that you start experiencing it as a youngster. So you train over the years and years and years. You learn by doing, right? When a kid first starts playing chess, kids are not stopping to think. Like first move that comes

Starting point is 00:49:59 to mind, boom, that's what I'm going to play. Boom. So that works for a while. And then you do that against a good player and then you do that against a good player and then you lose yeah you make a mistake and boom you lose again and then it's the kid that stops and says okay i need to stop and look now because that person is actually threatening something with their moves and i need to respect that and so they stop they start slowing down and the more you do that the more you start training yourself to be more thoughtful and respectful of your opponent. And that's the building of the discipline of the mind that happens very early on, which is why we teach chess to kids because that process happens

Starting point is 00:50:39 automatically. And I'm sure, as you said, you were toast after 35, 60 minutes, but if you loved it enough enough or if you couldn't tolerate that ass kicking enough and you'd be back and back and back you would just keep doing it and doing it and doing it and soon you would get that stamina so that you could go an hour and a half two hours two and a half and and beyond the other thing that some people use is meditation and a way of quieting the mind and the spirit so that you can really focus and not get ahead of yourself when you're playing. That's a huge part of it as well, that kind of mental training and anything you do. And that was extremely, extremely helpful in centering me and getting me to recognize the openings that were possible in my opponent's position that I would be there because they were overly aggressive. So we use every trick in the book.

Starting point is 00:51:35 I was going to ask you about Aikido chess because I found a mention of Aikido chess. Could you elaborate on how you tie those two together? One of the greatest books I've ever read is called Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere. It's by O'Reilly and I want to say Weston, but I think I got that wrong. Westbrook. Anyway, it's Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere. And I remember when I first stumbled on this book, and the book is about Aikido. But as I was reading it, I felt like I was reading about chess. And I was really struck by that, how they were so intimately connected in the idea of your opponent, the focus you have on the opponent, on the attack, on defense, on centering. It's important, your chest is very important to control the center of the board. So the primacy of centralization,

Starting point is 00:52:29 the dynamics of the struggle. And when I saw that, I said, I got to study Aikido. I got to actually go on the mat and not just do this from a theoretical standpoint. And I went, fortunately, there was one in my neighborhood. I went to the dojo and it was really life-changing. It took my game to a totally different level. I just learned to recognize primarily Aikido is defensive. So Aikido recognizes the flaws in attacks. And I would say,

Starting point is 00:53:01 I'm from Brooklyn. We had a school of chess that said, you attack, that's how you go. My friend Ronnie Simpson used to say, ever forward, never backward. So he's not backing up. When he's coming after you, you're supposed to die. But you did that against the best players, and somehow they would sidestep your attacks and bring their pieces inside the gaps that you left behind. And that's exactly what Aikido and many of the soft martial arts are about, is finding the gaps and letting you get as much of your attack as you want off,

Starting point is 00:53:35 but just getting off center enough that you miss or you barely hit. but then the return coming at you is going to come with tremendous force. And when I was able to physicalize that, like get it into my body and then internalize it and then transfer that into mental mapping onto the chessboard, my game went to a completely different level. And that really is what took me to becoming a grandmaster as far as I'm concerned. Because being able to do that meant that you had to stand in the middle of the energy, the tornado coming at you and just find that soft point and say, no, I'm fine. Everything is okay. This attack's not going to work.

Starting point is 00:54:22 That was a whole different way of thinking that I hadn't studied before. And because of it, I was able to change the way I played and improve as a player. What was it like when you became a grandmaster? Can you tell us about that experience? Was it all you hoped it would be? Were you shocked?

Starting point is 00:54:39 Was it anticlimactic? What was that experience like? It was depressing. It's depressing. It was depressing. It's extraordinary. At first, at first, there was the whirlwind of becoming a grandmaster. I got a lot of press around being the first African-American grandmaster in history and all that. But when you're on a life quest, right? This is something that you always dreamt about doing every day. You wake up and your North star is this goal, right?

Starting point is 00:55:11 This is what you want out of life. Like I want to become a grandmaster. I don't care about anything else. I want to become a grandmaster. I would wake up thinking, please don't die today. Maurice, I don't want to die.

Starting point is 00:55:23 I just want to become a grandmaster. And that fuels my passion. I mean, I'm serious about to die. I just want to become a grandmaster. And that fueled my passion. I mean, I'm serious about that, by the way. That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted. So when I got there, there was that feeling of elation, joy, satisfaction, relief. It had finally happened. I had many false starts starts i came this close so many times only to lose the last game that i needed to win i mean it's it was such a hard climb up the mountain and once you get to the top of the mountain you look around you get your chance to look and now what like you you got a nice view that great. How long can you stay on the mountain? You just, you know, that's not, that's the human mind.

Starting point is 00:56:08 It doesn't work that way. It's not like you're just going to sit there. Not all mountain climbers do. Right. So you need, you need another mountain. And that like next six months, I couldn't find another mountain. I was just like, oh, I don't have to think about this again. There's nothing almost for me to do. That was my thinking. It took me a while to stop

Starting point is 00:56:34 and say, you know what? You can just become a better player. Maybe focus on the world championship title. I was already 33 years old, late to the game as it was, starting chess at 14. That's already geriatric as far as chess is concerned. So the odds weren't high that I was going to become a world champion. Let's put it that way. The odds were slim to none. But you need a goal. You need something that even if it's unreachable, it drives you. And so when I reset, that goal allowed me to now say, let's become better. Let's get better again. And I refound my love for the game beyond the competitive drive and the goal setting that I had. And in many ways, that was more beautiful than the goal itself, because it was a rekindling of why I played the game in the first

Starting point is 00:57:27 place. And one of the great truths that I learned in becoming a grandmaster is that I was a beginner again. And that beginner's mind has never left me. I'm still fascinated by the game we're talking about 20 years later. I'm still fascinated by little things about the game that just continue to amaze me that it's possible on the chessboard. And that evergreen freshness that chess has is what draws us in. And it's made me happy all these decades. talk about beauty and captivation because uh i'd like to take that lens and apply it to coaching and teaching you've had some very successful students very successful teams how do you hook kids on chess how do you make it captivating uh how do you help them see the beauty what what have you learned in all of your teaching? And also, what were some of the names of the teams? The Raging Rooks. That was a great team.

Starting point is 00:58:31 That was my best team. In fact, they won a middle school championship in 1991, straight out of Harlem. My teams were, both teams were out of Harlem. And we didn't have any stars on our team. We didn't have big time players, masters and the like. We just had kids who loved the game and had passion and heart and would listen to whatever I told them to do. The Dark Knights were another team that we had and same deal. And for me, it really wasn't about creating stars or even winning a national

Starting point is 00:59:07 championships. Again, the idea of setting a goal is important because it allows you to focus. But you asked me what I learned. The two things I learned from coaching, number one, I was very lucky that what I was coaching was chess because the activity was the real drive. Chess is just a great game. Chess is just a great game. It's been around for 1,500 years because it's a great game. It doesn't get old. We're living in a video game age, and yet chess is thriving online. With COVID shutting everything down, chess tournaments are bigger than ever. Chess participation is bigger than ever. People are following chess players now

Starting point is 00:59:50 like never before. Hikaru Nakamura went from he's a top player, went from 10,000 followers on Twitch to almost half a million. I mean, just... Holy cow. That's in the last handful of months. Exactly. Wow. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:00:06 Wow. It's been amazing. Incredible because people are inside and they want something fun to do it. So not just fun, but meaningful, right? Something they think kids are going to have not just a good time, but not waste their time. They're going to learn from it. And so chess has just exploded online. It's incredible. So the game holds an eternal fascination for the human mind. And it really is a part of world culture played in all countries everywhere. The International Chess Federation has over 200 country membership. I mean, it's just really ubiquitous game. For me, it's easy when I put chess in front of kids because

Starting point is 01:00:47 they're going to be fascinated. You've got the chess pieces, the king and queen, and rooks and knights, and bishops and pawns. You've got these shapes. You've got the board. Kids just want to touch and feel and move. What do these pieces do? The love of the thing itself is critical. The love of the thing itself. And as a teacher, what's critical is the love and passion of the teacher. Because if you're just teaching people, if you're just there to make a buck, if you feel obligated to do it, people pick that up right away. Kids pick that up even quicker. It's when they see how much you're on fire about what you do, when you're fresh to it, that other people

Starting point is 01:01:31 will say, hey, I want a piece of this. I'm listening to this guy. I want to learn. I had so much fun coaching chess to my students. For me, it was sports. I'd be bringing in basketball. I'd be bringing in martial arts. I'd be bringing in trash talking. You saw a good move and I'd be like, that was juice. That was juice. And then they started quoting me. Oh, that was a juice move right there. The teacher brings that energy. The teacher brings the passion. And I think when that happens, it's easy to take people to the next level because they can feel you. They can feel that you love what you do and you really want to impart this to them. a simple affair because I've got one of the greatest pieces of world culture that is perennially fascinating. And then I got the fact that I'm in love with it. So you combine that and people want to hear it. People want to learn it. What would your advice be to someone like me or anyone listening who is hearing your

Starting point is 01:02:41 descriptions, your life story, and wants to give chess a shot in the sense that they really want to actually dedicate some time to become a competent, not necessarily a hyper-competitive chess player, but a competent chess player. What would you suggest they do? Easy these days. Everything's online. Everything's online. You got great websites. You have chess.com, which has resources up the wazoo. Very inexpensive to get, whether it's puzzles, whether it's instructional videos, whether it's being able to watch tournaments, whether it's playing anyone from all around the world. There are millions of people online all the time. You can just challenge them to a game anytime you want. It's a quick game. You can play five-minute blitz. You can play 10 minutes.

Starting point is 01:03:32 You can just tailor it according to how much time you have. That's one website. LeeChess.org is another great website. How do you spell that? L-I-Chess.org. I mean, those sites have really done it right in such a way as to give you everything you could possibly want so you can learn chess better. There's another site, chess24.com, chess2, the numbers 2 and 4.com.

Starting point is 01:04:03 You get professional folks. You get the world champion on there a lot. You can watch the top level play with top level commentary. Once you get to that level of interest. I mean, it's amazing how chess has teleported itself online in this way, but seamlessly, seamlessly. If I had these kinds of resources when i was in brownsville oh my goodness out of the dangerous i might have turned into a player are there any you mentioned puzzles are those situational exercises where you are effectively in a preset situation on a board and have to in in X number of moves, do Y, something like that? Is that what you mean by puzzles?

Starting point is 01:04:49 Yeah, but you made it sound so boring. No, I don't mean to make it sound boring. When I was in Japan, this is a long time ago, I was 15, but there's something called tsume shogi which is i'm trying to figure out if it's the same thing which is a book of these exercises where it's like all right here's the situation what do you do and i found it completely addictive i found it fascinating it is and it's the best thing about about chess is when you get to look to see how you would win the game if we watch lebron james go up for a shot right and he he does like a 360 puts it between his legs

Starting point is 01:05:35 switch to his left hand and dunk it right flush all you can do is go wow but you're not doing that but in chess we have the opportunity to take a position where one of the greatest players of all time may have been behind either the white or the black pieces and it says okay you get to be gary caspar or magnus carlson or paul morphy or alexander alikine you get to be that person. Right now, what's the brilliant move to win or series of moves? And you sit there, you figure it out. When you sit there for a while and you can't really figure it out, then finally you do this calculation that you try this, you try that, and then you realize what it is. And usually it's just a work of art. And you're able to copy that yourself.

Starting point is 01:06:27 But you feel like a genius after that. What a great feeling. I can play like him, right? But not really. You got to get that position yourself. That's the hard part. But it's so much fun. It's so much fun to be able to get inside the minds of the great geniuses. Do you have any favorite books related to chess? If somebody wanted to, in addition to the websites and electronic tools, to have something to take with them on a trip or on a weekend when they want to, in an analog way, dig into chess. Do any resources come to mind i mean there's so many great books out there uh my friend grandmaster yasa sirwan did a great series uh called the winning chess series winning chess strategies winning chess tactics

Starting point is 01:07:21 really lucidly explained simple language language, great little situations for you to learn a lot from. I think that series was very, very popular. Published by Microsoft way back when, but it's evergreen. And I think that I could list a lot of books, but that series was pretty spot on. And we'll link to those in the show notes. We'll find the proper links to everything we've been talking about and put those in the show notes for this episode. Let's continue with books. So one of the bullets that I have here for discussion is the importance of biographies.

Starting point is 01:07:59 Can you expand on this, please? Yes, absolutely. Biographies are some of the most inspirational materials out there. I think people read different things, right? But if you really want to know the journey, the path to mastery, the path to becoming a champion, the obstacles that you may have to overcome, how to deal with those obstacles, there's nothing like reading the lives of great people. And it's almost like the secret sauce for success along the lines of motivation and deep learning, deep patterning.

Starting point is 01:08:37 I remember when I read Jackie Robinson's autobiography, And I was reading it actually on a plane to Germany, where I would play in a big tournament that ended up giving me the second step, the second norm, we call it, out of the three norms that I needed to become a grandmaster. I remember reading it on the way on that plane and then finally finishing it up after I landed and I was back in the hotel. And I was so inspired by his journey because here I was trying to become the first African-American grandmaster in chess history. And I'm reading about this man who had broken the color line in baseball and the challenges that he faced. I faced some racism myself, but it paled in comparison to what he faced. I couldn't even talk about my experiences. When you listen to the people putting a black cat on the field,

Starting point is 01:09:37 calling him the N-word, left, right, and center, just screaming, spewing hate at him from the stands. And then his dignity and strength in dealing with that just was so absolutely inspiring. That fortitude that it took, that mental toughness to be able to stand up to that and still perform at the highest level, win Rookie of the Year and end up winning a world series for the Dodgers. I mean, just even thinking about it right now, I'm feeling inspired inside. But those kinds of materials, that's what I think really is a secret recipe for growth along the path to success. And I think it's extremely important to find those stories and read them and study them because you'll call on them on your quest, your journey. You'll call

Starting point is 01:10:32 on them along the way. You'll remember something will be happening to you and you'll remember, oh, I read about this, happened to this person. It's nothing like learning from other people's experiences. Do you have any other favorite biographies or biographies that come to mind that have made an indelible impression on you in some fashion? The one that jumps to my head is another great African-American,

Starting point is 01:10:55 Frederick Douglass. And he had it even worse than Jackie did. Going back in time, obviously, Frederick Douglass was in the 19th century. I don't even understand how he became what he became. I really don't. I think about somebody who was a slave for the first 20 years of their life. And to teach himself how to read and then to become so well-spoken, so articulate, so learned to stand up after having been beaten to a pulp so many times, finally escape, of course, and then to go on with little bitterness in his heart to fight for a cause of human bodies. I mean, I really just sit in awe

Starting point is 01:11:49 at the grandeur of someone like Frederick Douglass. He's one of my favorite people in history. And he's one of those people you say, okay, who you want to go back and meet and sit down and talk to, please give me three days. I need three days with Frederick Douglass. And his biography is really what makes me want to do that, particularly his second one. He has three autobiographies, right, those that he wrote. There's a great biography on him also by David Blight that's like the definitive one, but he wrote his own as well.

Starting point is 01:12:21 He was just remarkable. What was it about the second autobiography that struck you? It was fresh. It was fresh to what he was experiencing. By the time he got to his third one, he was already sort of seeing it through the lens of his experiences. And that was many years later. But the second one was enough of his life out of freedom that he was able to really describe it in a fresh way. And you just think about what humans have to go through. I just I can't understand it. sit today, you know, with the social unrest that's going on in the U.S. now, but I sit today thinking about what happened to African Americans at that time. And I just, I don't understand how,

Starting point is 01:13:16 you know, people kept their chins up. You know, you're working as slaves, you're working for someone your entire life, your entire life. All you know is working for someone else with no compensation. How do you do that for hundreds of someone else's drum, you get sold if they choose to do so, you're separated from your family members if they choose to do so, and somehow you're not suicidal, right? Depressed, at least. How do you keep your head up? How do you keep your head up and forge a destiny for the future generations and produce people like Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman. It's stunning to me. It's absolutely stunning.

Starting point is 01:14:12 I think it's a story that is not truly well told in schools, deserves to be, because it was just absolutely beyond comprehension and so inspiring. Yeah, incredibly so. If you're open to it, could you speak to your personal experience or observations related to the current moment? You mentioned the social unrest, the current moment, current events. What are you seeing and experiencing? I've been really down. I guess it's both ways, you know, down about all that's going on right now. That we could be in 2020 and that this discussion is so relevant as though we're back 60 years ago, back 100 years ago.

Starting point is 01:14:58 Like issues that a Frederick Douglass would notice and say, what? You guys haven't solved this yet? Are you serious? I think that the reason for that is because what happened in the society is essentially America tried to? You can't legislate respect. You can try to legislate fairness, but you can't make everyone everywhere get on that same page. So laws were put into effect when the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment happened, and then the Reconstruction happened for the brief time that it did. But then people's hearts hadn't changed so immediately after reconstruction came this redemption period in the south where they just simply undid all the benefits of those amendments and carried out

Starting point is 01:15:56 terrorist campaigns against african-americans through uh intimid, through burning down homes, through burning down neighborhoods like in Tulsa, through lynchings and the like that set it all back. And you're putting in clauses, anti-voting clauses, making it very difficult to vote. If your grandfather hadn't voted, then you couldn't vote. Well, of course, my grandfather was a slave. Of course he couldn't vote. If your grandfather hadn't voted, then you couldn't vote. Well, of course, my grandfather was a slave. Of course, he couldn't vote. All these impediments to keep African-Americans down. And then you fast forward to 1965, 64, 65, and you get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. And those are, again, implemented as federal laws, but you can't legislate that on the ground people would necessarily embrace this principle and begin to carry it out in every way that the nefarious fingers of

Starting point is 01:16:55 segregation and racism had entrenched themselves in such a way as to make it very, very difficult to undo. So a lot of people want to hope that these laws somehow changed everything fundamentally. And there have definitely been changes. I mean, you can go to a hotel now in places you couldn't before, you had lunch counters you couldn't, et cetera. But so many other issues remain, whether it was in fair housing because of redlining, African-Americans couldn't get loans for homes. Whether it's education, because if you live in a poor neighborhood, your taxes pay for your school, but your school is going to obviously be underfunded because you're in a poor neighborhood. Or whether it's incarceration, where African-Americans are incarcerated at a greater rate than others. And then this current issue of police brutality and if these things weren't literally attacked like you know so you could address them comprehensively then they weren't going to

Starting point is 01:17:57 be solved it's really that simple they simply weren't going to be solved we sort of hope for a certain evolutionary effect if if you will. It will happen over time. The law is there in place. Therefore, now everything else was going to undo itself magically. And what history has shown is that it just didn't. And sooner or later, you'll have these flare-ups that show the inequities that exist. And if the greater society that is the majority in this country doesn't feel impassioned to make the change happen, the change won't happen. It's just a tyranny of the majority. As Alexei de Tocqueville said, democracy has its tyrants as well. And the tyrants are actually the people,

Starting point is 01:18:44 the majority of the people. The majority doesn't feel that an issue is that important. They won't address it because they don't see it as a problem. And until the majority sees it as a problem and embraces it and now wants laws to effectuate that, it simply will not change. That's the only way it changes is the majority gets on board with it. And a minority group can fight for those things, but they can't vote the way they want it to go. They can't legislate out those things out of existence because they're simply always going to lose the vote. So I think as great as democracy is, this one fundamental issue that the majority, so natural, right? Majority usually is supposed to win. If there's 10 of us, 10 buddies, and eight of us want to go to the movies and two of us want to go hiking, it's eight of us want to go to the movies. That's what's going to happen. It's so natural that you don't think about it. It's just the way things function. But we have a responsibility. Anywhere there's a majority,

Starting point is 01:19:41 I don't care where it is, the US, it could be Nigeria, wherever it is, the majority has a responsibility to very carefully address the concerns of the minority. Because otherwise you turn into tyrants without knowing it, with just taking care of your family. You take care of yourself, your family, and your friends. That's all you need to do, yourself, your family, and your friends. But once that is amplified to those like you, you're turned into tyrants without knowing it. So we're dealing with that right now. And I'm not sure where it's going to end up. You're old enough. You feel like, yeah, maybe there's going to be change. You're young. You feel like, yes, it's a time for it it but we have to see how it shakes out thank you for

Starting point is 01:20:26 sharing all that and elucidating it i mean and certainly giving voice to it so so well are there any particular changes or any particular actions that you would like to see in the next, say, two to three years, if you could direct things in any way, do any particular changes come to mind that you would like to see? Is it more a cultural shift that needs to happen by attention being paid by a majority to the plight and inequities that affect the minority? Are there any other particular examples that come to mind for you? Yeah, so that first one is big, right? That's where it all starts. If the majority doesn't realize or doesn't take an interest, doesn't care, doesn't focus on the concerns of the minority, and again, minority in any sense, then whoever has the vote wins. Right. And so that has to be where a mental shift takes place.

Starting point is 01:21:29 That's where it all starts in terms of legal structure. And then in terms of specific concrete steps that can be taken. So I can start talking about, you know, you need to address over-incarceration of young Black men, or you need to address racism in police departments, even if it's just a small percentage, but that small percentage needs to be rooted out aggressively. And you can't have good cops ignoring bad cops, right? I don't care if you might say whatever percentage, you know, the percentage pay, we don't know the percentage, but let's say it's 98%. That 2% has to be weeded out aggressively. You need to address the stress that police officers are dealing with when they're on the job. You know, it's an extremely high stress position.

Starting point is 01:22:22 Give them help, give them evaluation. Maybe they need a little extra time off, whatever it is, to make sure that they're coming to communities whole and healthy and ready to be champions of justice that we expect them to be. specific areas of concern we can address. I think that for me, the two big ones are police tactics and education. I came from a family that said, you pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you work your tail off, you will be successful. That was our formula, right? But you can't have structural impediments that stop that from happening. And the reason why policing is so important is because police have the right to take life. They're the only group in society that just has the right to take your life on a judgment call of somebody who might have just joined the force and maybe 22 years old, but has to make a snap decision and just makes it. And then this person's lost their life. So that's important because it's traumatizing the community when that happens. If it happens unfairly, it happens regularly and unfairly, even in perception, that's traumatizing to the community because when one Black person

Starting point is 01:23:34 feels under siege, I guarantee you the larger group feels under siege. And I don't want to think about my son walking down the street, my beautiful son who just graduated high school and has all the aspirations to become an artist and then somehow gets mistreated a certain way. I couldn't survive life if something happened to him. Just I couldn't imagine anything. Right. So it's important that that is a place where we feel safe. We feel respected, we feel like justice is properly served by those who are champions of justice. You want to look at every police officer and say, this person's a champion of justice. They're a hero. And when you see stuff like what happened with George Floyd and the

Starting point is 01:24:19 person on this guy who I won't name, we know his name, but I don't want to honor him as such, putting a knee on a man's neck for nine minutes, you're not a champion of justice. Then the rest of us have to watch that. And the rest of us are traumatized by that. And one of those are angered. And now there's a reaction. We've got to get to that good place, right? We've got to get to that good place. And education, the inequities in education, everybody knows it. Everybody on any side of the aisle knows that people are trying different things, whether Republicans who believe in choice or, you know, loosely speaking, and Democrats believe in public school and approving that. I don't care what it is. That cannot be unfair because that's going to keep a group down. There are other things as well, of course, but to me, those are the two major areas of concern. I'd love to see great

Starting point is 01:25:06 movement on both of those. As I watch right now, I'm concerned. I'm concerned because we're also living with COVID and attention shifts easily. I don't know that the results will come, but I think if we have good-minded people who feel like they really want to see change happen, and I love the fact that corporations are jumping in on this as well, it probably has to be private because when it's government, question mark, question mark, question mark, each person has to be in the middle of this fight. On the education front, I mean, you've spent time as an educator, as a teacher, as a coach. Are there any particular problems that you saw within the systems that you were part of, or challenges, or handicaps, or opportunities that stood out to you, or particular challenges that kids you were working with faced that perhaps were unaddressed?

Starting point is 01:26:04 Does anything come to mind when I ask those questions? How long a list do you want me to put together? The biggest thing is lack of resources or good resources in a school. If you don't have a lot of money money the school doesn't have the top computers that it needs so kids can go in that that room and use those computers the school doesn't have the latest books for kids to read or enough books so that every kid can have a book i mean kid teachers are facing this every single day in neighborhoods all across America. And it's sad. I mean, it's completely ridiculous.

Starting point is 01:26:50 When I came to this country, for us, it was a joke, the American school system. Because I came to the country from Jamaica, where I went to one of the top schools. I tested into one of the top schools. I spent a year as Wilmer's Boys, high school, but I was only 12. I was 11 when I got in, 12 when I came here. And I tested into the top class in my middle school. I took a reading test, the school guidance counselor, whoever it was, I remember her just having me do a reading test. I was reading on a 12th grade level. Great. You belong with the special kids, the smartest kids in the school. This is the top class. This is where these kids

Starting point is 01:27:31 are like the kids on track to success. And I went into class that first day. And when I was done with the day, I went up to my mother. I said, I don't belong in this class because the stuff we're learning in this class, I already learned in Jamaica. This was like the beginning of last year in Jamaica. Like this is this stuff is too easy. And my mother, she didn't know how to work the system. She finally had kids like in school in America. So she gave me a report card to take to the teacher and to the guidance counselor. So I took it and I said,

Starting point is 01:28:05 look, I was stopping my class in Jamaica. And she's like, what is this? No, you are in the best class. You're 12 years old, seventh grade. You're in the best class. That's it. Now imagine that tiny Jamaica, tiny, poor, no, you name it, right, country of Jamaica, is producing basic education or good education that I'm in the best school in the hood, the best class, that is, the best class in the school, and we're woefully, these kids are woefully underprepared. And they're the smartest kids. We ended up all, by the way, skipping eighth grade. We jumped from seventh grade to ninth grade because they knew it was a waste of time for us to be in eighth grade class. If we were going through that, imagine what the other kids were

Starting point is 01:28:53 going through, the kids who were not in our class, kids who were on the slow track, or let's call it the normal track. A whole generation of kids underprepared for the challenges that they have to face and through no fault of their own. This is a systemic problem. challenge in preparing our kids, the vast majority of kids, not the special few, for life in the 20th century, for elite jobs, for top leadership positions. It's unacceptable. And so to me, that's really where that gap is. And I don't know. I mean, it's obvious how to solve it. You just got to go in there and improve schools top to bottom. By the way, COVID has really exposed the inequities of this. My ex-wife is the head of a department that does quality control in school systems. And when we're talking, she's just shaking her head saying, all of a sudden, everybody realizes how unequal it is, what kids are going through.

Starting point is 01:30:03 Kids were supposed to be learning from home, but don't own a laptop. Or if they're home with two or three brothers and sisters, there's only one laptop in the house. So how are they all learning from the same laptop when there's only one in the home? And then they're dealing, if they do have it, with poor Wi-Fi because mom and dad can't afford that. There's just some basic inequities that are across the board that people are now having to deal with now that this pandemic has hit us. Their eyes are open saying, oh my God, how are we going to teach these kids? And for the next, we're talking about potentially for the next year and a half,

Starting point is 01:30:41 these kids are going to fall behind even further. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. It's a terrifying and awful prospect. And like you said, I think COVID and all of the recent events have acted as a kind of a force multiplier on the pressure in the container and have shown the cracks, just how severe and how many of them there are. As you were talking, I want to mention two organizations that people might want to check out. They're not systemic solutions. In other words, they're not top-to-bottom fixes, but I do think they are of great value. One is DonorsChoose.org, which allows you to help provide resources to teachers specifically who are under-resourced with kids who need basic materials in many cases. They don't have books, they don't have pens.

Starting point is 01:31:34 And DonorsChoose, I'm very, very confident in both these organizations because I've been involved with them for a long time. The second is QuestBridge. You can find Donorshoes.org at Donorshoes.org. Not surprisingly, QuestBridge.org is another. QuestBridge is very good and very innovative in how they connect and source talent from underserved communities, economically disadvantaged communities, and so on, and match them with scholarships to top tier colleges and universities. Because it's not exclusively a funding problem with respect to scholarships. It's often a talent sourcing and matching problem. And they're very, very smart about how they do this. Just to give one example that I remember really caught my attention when I met Michael McCullough, who's one of the founders. These are both nonprofits and massively successful and very lean. don't have the social support that one would hope for in terms of academic or life aspirations, right? So the idea, even if they have the intellectual horsepower and the drive and

Starting point is 01:32:54 the dedication to apply to, say, a Harvard, just does not exist in terms of their inputs. And so what they've done in a number of cases is, for instance, they'll provide an iPad giveaway and they'll promote a new iPad giveaway. And the application form for the giveaway, unbeknownst to the kids who fill it out, doubles as a standardized application that can be sent to 20 different colleges. And then several months later, these kids get a letter in the mail saying, sorry, you didn't win the iPad, but by the way, you have a free ride to Amherst or whichever school it might be. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really amazing. So I don't want to, don't want to hog the microphone here, but those are, those are two, I know much less about criminal justice reform. I have friends who focus on that. I know much less about police, both training and self-policing and all the facets of that. But on the education side, those are two that are really worth taking a look at for folks. And even if they're treated as a stopgap measure, they actually do deliver results. Maurice, you strike me as someone who thinks very deeply. I mean, you do think very deeply. You ask a lot of questions of yourself. You interrogate reality or your perception of reality. Could you speak to two books here that you've mentioned and mentioned in Tribe of Mentors where you appeared as a profile, which I very much appreciate you doing. And there are two books

Starting point is 01:34:25 I'd love for you to speak to as having an impact on you. Passages, and I think it's Gail Sheehy, is that how you pronounce the last name? S-H-E-E-H-Y, and Mastery by George Leonard. Could you speak to those two? Absolutely. Passages, I read that book as a teenager, late teenager, 18 or 19. I had just gone through a pretty rough period of changing. Actually, I can't even call it changing, literally dropping friends in my life because I felt like those friends weren't about what I wanted to do. And I felt I needed to go in a different direction. And so it was a lonely period for me, a transition between great friends

Starting point is 01:35:09 and the next set of friends that I would have. And this book, Passages, was about the passages of a man's life. And so essentially, Gail Sheehy, she just went from a man from his teenage years, his 20s, all the way to old age. Every decade, giving the broad strokes of what would happen to you as a man during those decades. Of course, you can't be specific. Everybody's going to have their own experiences, but by and large, you're going to go out and get work. You're going to go out of school. You're going to go get

Starting point is 01:35:44 work. You're going to try to establish yourself somewhere along the line. You're going to get a significant other. Especially, you're going to have children. You're going to go through that father period. Some place, you're going to have a middle age crisis somewhere along the way. Your identity is going to shift a few times as you challenge yourself. And then at some point, you're going to become settled in who you are. You're going to come to a different level of acceptance. It's settled who you are and start to accept the world for what it is and your place in it. And then there's a certain kind of peace and comfort that comes with becoming older and recognizing life, the kind of wisdom that you get.

Starting point is 01:36:26 I was fascinated by this. It was almost like she was analyzing life like a chess player, like analyzing it all the way down to the end game. And I wanted, from that book, I wanted to have the wisdom of the 70-year-old and the 80-year-old. As an 18-year-old, I was like, wait a minute, if that's the end game, I want to have it now. I want to learn that now. So I've always respected older people. From that, it made me really respect older people because they were at a

Starting point is 01:37:00 different point along the passage. And I wanted to listen to the older guys talk, you know, like, what's up? What's, what's this like? What's that like? It just made me even more thoughtful, you know, more wise about the journey. It doesn't necessarily solve the problem. It's not like when I was 25, I had it all down pat. No way. You have to go through it yourself. But it just helps so much to think about it in the long term and not just what's happening to you right at this moment. This too will change. The other book, Mastery, by George Leonard. George Leonard was an Aikido practitioner. And he brought the principles of Aikido into life in that small book and talked about mastery, the different obstacles to mastery, folks who just want to get it done quickly, people who just want to hear the secrets, people who give up for various reasons, where the obstacles, where the traps you might fall into. But the biggest lesson of that book was that the journey was more important than the destination, right? And that you would plateau, that you would have

Starting point is 01:38:14 to love the plateau. Sometimes on the path to mastery, you're just going to get stuck. You're not getting any better. You're working your ass off and you're not getting any better. What's going on? Well, it's not a linear trajectory. That's not how it works. You always grow every single day. Sometimes you have to go, your studies and your work causes you to actually lose ability, lose specific efficacy because you're trying out new techniques. It's like Tiger Woods when he decided to reconstruct his swing, despite the fact that he was the best player on the planet. But he wanted to reconstruct his swing and maybe lose more tournaments. But at the end of that reconstruction of the swing, when all of it became natural, suddenly he was Superman.

Starting point is 01:38:59 Like, what happened here? How do you do that? There was no complacency where he was. And that is because you have to enjoy that process and love the plateau. You may not be getting better, but as long as you're doing the work, everything's fine. Those two books really had impact i have to say think about me that i feel a lot in my life like i'm i'm like keanu reeves in the matrix when you know like when you you get a you get the program laughing because so many people describe you as morpheus so yeah i like you identify with neo

Starting point is 01:39:40 yeah i mean it's like you know you you get the program put in and all of a sudden i know kung fu right that line like to me when i read a book when i read a book that's how it is i start reading a book and then i'm like oh damn that makes a lot of sense gotta make some changes right i'm very impressionable that way but you taught me something deep i mean your book for our work week i mean that was a riot mean, you wrecked my life for a while. Frank, you literally wrecked my life for a while because I was looking at my life like, you know what? This man is right. And this life I'm living is unacceptable. I can't do this anymore. This has to change. Everything about it has to change. And, you know, when you got a wife and kids, the missus is not here in that right now. What? What? What do you mean for our work week? What are you talking about? You don't want to do what you're doing anymore. How are you going to get paid? You know, you could get into some serious arguments. And I did trying to just upend your existence because you just read a book by some guy who say, you know, you only have to work four hours a week. But anyway, I really feel that it's important to be flexible, to embrace uncertainty. There's always been hallmarks for me. I don't really know. I don't really know. I'm just observing. This is what I'm thinking at the moment. It may change as I get more facts. I don't really know. I don't want you to know what I'm going to say before I say it because I'm so predictable. I don't want to live in that

Starting point is 01:41:13 strict level. I want to be the person you say, really? What made you change so much? Why are you living this life? And now I'm actually living that life, by the way. I got to that point where I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I have unlimited time. I choose the gigs I do. I'm traveling the world. I mean, last year, I gave up my apartment. I've been 15 months a vagabond.

Starting point is 01:41:36 I've traveled all over, man. I've been everywhere. I've been a few countries in Africa. I've been all over Europe. I'm just living totally out of my suitcases. It's so liberating and wonderful. Well, it matches the embracing uncertainty, right? I mean, you're moving with the winds and the tides and also your passions, it would seem.

Starting point is 01:41:56 Absolutely. That's at least what it looks like. And it's also a nod to minimalism. Because when you're living out of suitcases, they want it to be 50 pounds. Like this is not 50 pounds. Take whatever's in here and put it in your other, your small bag. It's like, I need everything that I have with me, man. What do you mean? You know, Tim Ferriss says I can, I'm supposed to have this. I'm kidding. But, but you know, you've got to, you've got to deal with what you've got. And so my stuff is in storage. There's going to come a point where I figure out a place I want to be, my headquarters,

Starting point is 01:42:33 if you will, a jumping off point, a place my kids can come visit and put their feet up. But for now, it's just absolutely liberating to just floating and going with the winds. Although I got to tell you that damn COVID breeze is no fun. That is putting a damper on the travel like nobody's business. And so I've got to respect that for now, at least, until we resolve this one. Does clip the wings a little bit. Might mean more time on the feet. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:43:04 Or on the tires. Well, Maurice, I always enjoy spending time with you and this has been a long time coming. I'm embarrassed that it took me this long, but I really appreciate you and the perspectives that you bring to bear. And also you mentioned it almost in passing, but I think it's a hallmark of a partner that moves in lockstep with the curiosity that drives so much of what you love and also so much of what you're good at. And that is the willingness to say, I don't know. That is, it's, I don't know if you realize, you probably do, how uncommon that is. People like to know.

Starting point is 01:43:49 What I've observed in many of the people I respect most is the more they learn, the more they realize they don't know. And I'm continually impressed by your willingness to say, I don't know. And not to use that as a sort of metaphorical armchair of complacency, but as a jumping off point, right? Those are like the starting blocks. And it's something that I admire a lot in you. And no doubt that's something that you've transmitted to your students and hopefully to a lot of people who are listening. So I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation. I have one more question for you

Starting point is 01:44:28 that I must ask, and that is, where does dancing and salsa fit into all of this? You got to have fun, man. What do you mean? You got to enjoy life. By the way, before I answer that question, there is a book called The Half-Life of Facts. The Half-Life of Facts by Samuel Arbsman. The subtitle is Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. It's such a great book for what you just talked about, because what you think you know has become history 10 years ago, right? We knew Pluto was a planet. I still know Pluto is a planet, right? It's nine, not eight. Kids today already know, they've already incorporated into their system, they'll never make the mistake to call it a planet. Facts are changing under our feet, and we don't see it until it experiences

Starting point is 01:45:27 its half-life. And then suddenly the tallest building in the world that I knew was one thing is no longer that tallest building in the world anymore, or science moves on from what it thought was one theory and another theory. There's a certain predictability, in fact, to this, the life of so-called facts. And what it does when you think of that concept is that it humbles you. It humbles you into realizing that the knowledge base that you think you're accumulating, I mean, any specialist in fields know this is constantly happening, right? Doctors are constantly upgrading what they know because I don't want the guy who only read the handbook from 1980, right? I want the guy who's looking at the 2020, 2021 stuff. So we are always behind the times. We are always, that's just the way it works. So for me, the thing I want is process. I want to be open. I want to be flexible.

Starting point is 01:46:28 I want to keep an uncertain mind. I want to be as least prejudicial as I can be so that when that new interesting data comes in, I'm ready to throw everything out that I thought and embrace this new idea. That's my hallmark, my intellectual approach to everything. At least it's what I want for myself. It ain't easy, right? Obviously, because you want something certain somewhere, you know stuff in your brain. But I think what I want to know more than anything is how to process information, right? That's, that's what I want. I want to how to process new information as it comes in, to be able to judge properly, to not be biased one way or the other. I don't want to be predictable. I, I just don't want you to know exactly what I'm going to say before I say it, because that's what you knew I said 20 years ago.

Starting point is 01:47:26 I can be different. I can be completely changed. That's cool. It means I'm growing and we're all growing. I don't want to be the same person I was at 30 thinking I knew it all. And I'm the same person at 50. No way. I've grown way beyond that.

Starting point is 01:47:39 And one of the ways I've grown, of course, is with salsa dancing and bachata. I love to dance. I've danced just music itself for a long time. But in the last six or seven years, I saw a friend of mine doing salsa, and he convinced me to start it. And I fell in love with it. Latin music, which added to then being Latin culture. I'm totally immersed in studying Spanish right now. I studied Spanish back in studying Spanish right now. I studied Spanish

Starting point is 01:48:05 back in middle school in the worst way you can study. You know how we study languages and we forget that stuff. Now I'm immersed myself. I'm personally invested. I'm like, I'm studying chess is how much I'm studying Spanish. I'm watching Mexican telenovelas. I'm taping them. So wait a minute. I closed caption. Okay. What was that word? All right, let's go. Meantime, I'm watching the story. I mean, I'm hooked, man. I'm so hooked. And it's very funny to see, but to me, that's how you stay fresh. That's how you stay fresh. I've studied French as well. My father lives in France, so I visit him and been to Paris many times for chess. So for me, travel, learning languages, and exploring the world is my greatest joy. Really, that's my greatest joy in life.

Starting point is 01:48:59 And part of it is the dancing. And it's nothing like having something like salsa and bachata, which is a different form of Latin dance, which is my favorite one over salsa, in fact. But there's nothing like having that wherever you go. Because it's just like chess. I can always find a game, find a club where people play chess in any country I go to. I can always find a salsa club. Always. So wherever I am, I'm making friends and I love it.

Starting point is 01:49:28 Yeah. Que chingon. Que chingon. You're going to get all sorts of interesting slang in the Mexican telenovelas. And there's also a Spanish podcast made by Duolingo that you might want to check out. It's also really, really helpful. I ended up with a somewhat hilarious mongrel version of Spanish from spending time in Argentina, which has a very, very particular accent to it and grammar to it. But I love it.

Starting point is 01:50:03 I would imagine at some point you're going to find your way to Cuba. Oh yeah. I've, I've not yet been, but if I can't help you with the salsa, but if I can help in any way with the Spanish, please let me know. And this is just great.

Starting point is 01:50:17 Maurice, I hope we get to hang again in person at some point soon and people can find you. I hope they find you check you out. Maurice, Ashley.com. They can find you on Twitter, at Maurice Ashley. And I'll include links to all this at tim.blog forward slash podcast. Actually, you will have your own URL, which is for the show notes of this episode, tim.blog forward slash Maurice. And then on Facebook, it's Grandmaster

Starting point is 01:50:40 Maurice A, Instagram, Maurice Ashley Chess. Of course, I'll link to all of this. And I will also link to the video clip from the TV show where you are just in Jedi fashion going toe-to-toe with this trash talker in your city in the park, which is just an incredible video. Everybody should watch it. It's one of my favorite pieces of television and i'm biased of course because it was on the show but it's just fantastic so that i gotta tell you i gotta tell you it's funny because the only reason i was in that park was because you were playing one of those hustlers yourself and i remember when your producer said uh tim's going to study chess for two weeks and then go try to play one of those hustlers

Starting point is 01:51:29 and I was like really? Good luck with that he's in trouble and you had some trouble you had your hands full I had my hands full I had my hands full not all these episodes turned out with me on top

Starting point is 01:51:46 of a float going down a parade and after my victory lap and also that episode included a a disproportionate amount of ass whipping and receiving ass whippings because not only was there the chess piece which was just like jumping into the deep end without checking the depth headfirst. There was the jujitsu piece at, you know, Josh and Marcelo Garcia's school. And I just got manhandled. I got completely demolished. Uh, so if anyone wants to see all sorts of, of, of pain and injury, uh, mental and physical, then that's a good episode. Maurice, is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up? Only that I appreciate you, man. I appreciate what you're doing, watching you over the years, seeing how you've remained intellectually curious and the way you open up your home, if you will, online, that is, with your hospitality to people, people to express these great ideas that they have. You are a connector and a revealer, and you do it through your intellectual curiosity. I think that's just a wonderful thing. So keep up the great work. And I'm grateful because you have influenced me so much. Like I said, you wrecked my life, but that's a good thing. I appreciate that. That's what I want from people. I call my friends. I need a nice life wrecking. That's a good thing. Just upend all the BS. Just come on, get that out of the way and get to the real stuff.

Starting point is 01:53:26 That's what you want from somebody. So keep wrecking people's lives, man. Just keep doing it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I'm proud of you for it. Just reconstructing the swing. Just reconstructing the swing.

Starting point is 01:53:38 That's all it is. That's it. Call it what you want. Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate you as well and really have enjoyed this conversation. And I know people listening will as well. I'll link to everything at Tim.blog forward slash Maurice. And I can't wait to hang in person soon. We can go dancing, maybe even speak some Spanish, depending on where we might find ourselves. And to everybody listening, as I mentioned, you can find the show notes for everything that we discussed at tim.blog forward slash Maurice. And I wanted to read a quote before we go, which I was thinking of as you were speaking not too long ago, Maurice. And this is a quote that I used to open all of my public talks with for about a decade. It is a quote from Mark Twain, and it applies right now and always on so many levels. The quote is, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. I think that applies certainly right now and is highly, highly relevant. So pause and reflect, question your assumptions,

Starting point is 01:54:46 look at not just your own needs, but society's needs moving forward, because ultimately, it's all intertwined. And until Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness

Starting point is 01:55:44 before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be?

Starting point is 01:56:07 The answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in the 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick, or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole food meals throughout the rest of the day. And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery

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