The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 20: Dan Carlin - Hardcore History, Building Podcasts, Creativity, and More

Episode Date: July 29, 2014

Dan Carlin is the host of my favorite podcast, Hardcore History.But... what?! History?! I know. I thought the same thing. How could a history podcast have a cult following?And yet it did. During research for launching The Tim Ferriss Show, I asked many of the top dogs on the iTunes charts: what is your favorite podcast? Almost without exception, the answer came back: Hardcore History.Since then, I've become friends with Dan (and more obsessed with his show), and this episode explores all the questions I've been dying to ask him, whether related to his early experiments, his "radio" voice, creativity, building podcasts, and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. Best, Tim***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. Thank you for tuning in. I'm going to start with a quote. This one is from Steve Jobs. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Good advice. The second thing I'm going to give you to start off is a probably useless way to remember how large Mount Fuji is. And that's 12,365 feet in terms of altitude. And the way you remember that is 12 months in a year, 365 days in a year. So you're welcome. This episode features Dan Carlin. Dan Carlin is hugely impressive to me, which is obvious when you listen to my initial ramblings and I am clearly nervous and I stumble over a bunch of words, which is hilarious. So I hope you enjoy that awkwardness. Dan has done many things in his life. He's been on radio, he's been on television,

but the way I came to know him was through Hardcore History, which is an incredible podcast. And you should put aside for the moment any reservations or doubts you have about a podcast based on history. Of course, this podcast, Tim Ferriss Show, is about deconstructing excellence. And if you listen to one episode of Hardcore History, you will realize how absolutely stupendous and amazing Dan Carlin is. So we get into, among other things, his early beginnings, stumbling in the beginning, first versions of the podcast, how he grew into it as a full-time profession, his influences, his habits, his rituals, the things that he would do differently, the things that he would tell himself when he was 20 years old, and on and on and on.

The point being to pull out tactics, routines, tools that you can use, not only in podcasting, but well outside of podcasting. Because people who are good in a particular arena tend to have a lot in common with people who are the best in other arenas. As always, this podcast is supported by you guys. So if you do like this podcast, please visit 4hourworkweek.com forward slash books. That is the home of the Tim Ferriss Book Club, where I list a handful of books that have had a huge impact on my life, my career. And I guarantee you'll be extremely impressed and happy with them. It's not too many. And they'll link through to Amazon

where you can take a look at these various books and audio books. So it's four hour workweek.com forward slash books without further ado, hope you enjoy the podcast and thanks for listening. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, ladies and gentlemen, and I have a treat for you. We have Dan Carlin on the phone. And Dan, I have to tell you, I have had some fantastic folks on this podcast so far, and I've met a lot of people in my life, and I have been so nervous about this particular conversation for weeks now. And the part of the reason is, there are very few podcasts that I actually listen to on a regular basis. And I'm hoping that by the end of this conversation, everyone who listens to

this will at the very least listen to one full episode of Hardcore History. And this is somewhat akin, given that I'm a novice in the podcasting arena, to me getting in front of a crowd of tens or hundreds of thousands of people and trying to, say, have a pass with a famous NFL quarterback or do a foul shot competition with a top NBA player or something like that. I've been so impressed by the quality of your podcast. And we've talked about this before, recognizing the amount of time and energy that you put into each one of these. And we'll jump into things in a second. But just

as context, I had asked a number of my very close friends who were involved with audio production and podcasts as well as video what their favorite podcasts were. And almost without exception, Hardcore History was listed in the top three for every single person. And of course, the first question I asked myself was, how could a history podcast be one of the most popular podcasts out there. And I remember downloading the very first episode that I heard of Hardcore History, which was The Prophets of Doom. And I looked at the length, and I think it's well over four hours, if I'm not mistaken. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to download this. I'm going to just get a taste for it for the first five to 10 minutes to see if I can learn anything about the style. And then that's going to be it. And I have digested now dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of your content. So first and foremost, thank you for putting so much effort into each of these

episodes. I don't always know how to react to such nice things that people say. I mean, it's a fantastic compliment. And I always tell people that I would love everyone in their lives to get that feeling of that something you did was so well received by people. I feel very fortunate and a little like I stumbled into this and like you can't even really take credit for it. You just kind of fall into something that after you fall into, it seems like where you should have been all along. So I feel like a really lucky guy to have stumbled into something that seems to be so well received. I appreciate that. And yeah, four hours. I mean, if you had told me when we started doing hardcore

history that I was going to be doing four hour shows, I think I would have canceled right then and there. So not only do you not want to listen to it, I didn't want to do it. So that's actually where I was hoping to start naturally at the beginning and give people a little bit of background on how hardcore history came to be. Because I remember you mentioned in a previous conversation that it started off very, very differently. So I'm curious to know how it came to be and what your expectations were at the time, because certainly it's become an entity unto itself and it's turned into something very, very big. But how did it come together and how did it start off? Well, maybe other podcasters listening to you will be able to relate to this. I've started a lot of shows in my life, and a lot of them were radio shows and whatnot. And

the one thing you learn when you start these shows is that all you can do is come up with a concept and then try to take that concept where you think it should go initially. And then once you do that, whatever you create is going to evolve. And some of that evolution is in your control and some of it isn't in your control. I always say find your favorite TV series. Take something like Seinfeld, for example, and then go look at the first five episodes. And you'll notice that it's not really Seinfeld yet. They haven't figured – it hasn't evolved into what really works and they haven't find – but then eventually it finds its stride. And so when you listen to our early episodes, they don't sound a lot like what

we're doing now either. And, and I mean, length is a perfect example. There was a time where we were really scared of approaching an hour long program. And we used, I remember one time it was, it was with our Apache tears episode, the ones we did on the Apaches and we were approaching an hour. And then I got a finished product. It was like one hour and 15 minutes. And I said, we're canceling this show. We have to dial it back over an hour because no one will listen. And so I think the fact that the audience had proven receptive gave us a feeling that there was some freedom here to go a little farther and then a little farther. And I'm shocked that everybody can listen to it that long. Editing it for us, we dread hearing it over and over and over again.

So I'm really not on the same wavelength with a lot of the listeners. Well, speaking as someone who's written a 420-page book, then a 592-page book, and then a 670-some-odd-page book. Those are nightmares. It's the same thing. Nightmares. It really does take on a life of its own. And I'm really glad you brought up the Seinfeld example, because I remember looking at, say, some of the current versions of podcasts when I was considering doing my own, looking at some of your newer episodes, looking at some of the more polished Joe Rogan episodes, which are also monsters, looking at many different types. And then someone recommended that I go back and look at, say, the first one or two episodes that Joe did on video, and they're hilariously

amateur. I mean, really, really hilarious. And if I hadn't done that, I think I would have been too intimidated to get started because I would have falsely assumed that the polished format that you've arrived at is where you started. And that reflects an intrinsic ability that I entirely lack, which could also still be true. But what I'd love to know is with hardcore history in particular, and we'll talk about the podcast. I also want to talk about history. But were there any particular tipping points that helped you start to form it into what it is now? And I'm sure it's still evolving.

But were there any particular tipping points, whether it was in popularity, specific episodes, aha moments that come to mind for you content or format wise? I think we had ideas when we started it of things we wanted to do. And then a couple of shows into it, you could start to sense that these were elements that you should have in every single episode. So for example, somewhere along the line, I'd always had these sort of twilight zone kind of ideas about history. And when we could start to say, okay, every episode really is successful if it has some of those, some of the drama, some of the narrative. So you start to figure out what the ingredients in your creation are. And once that's the case, then you can start to say, it's not so much a formula as a checklist and say, right, OK, every good episode that we do should have A, B, C, D and E. And I'm not sure when you

start that you're totally aware of that. You're still playing around with the ingredients and the mix. And and we still do that. I mean, each episode is going to sound different because we want to put extra cumin in this one and less hot sauce in that one. But at the same time, you don't really know what's working in the first few episodes. And so somewhere around like, we did one called Step Stories early on, which is sort of a loose look at all the different people and the culture and history of the giant flat area, you know, that starts in Eastern Europe and goes almost all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And we did a show like that. And it was the first time I think we had hit the sweet spot with all those elements. And when you heard it, you just said, OK, that's significantly better

than anything else we've done. And that's when you sit there and go, OK, well, we figured out how to do this kind of and we're going to start to not mass produce it, but we're going to make sure that we do a better job in every later episode that incorporates all these things that we think have started to blend well. I am currently listening, or I should say re-listening, to The Wrath of the Khans, which is an audiobook or three worth of content in and of itself. And it seems like, having polled my 500,000 or so people on Twitter, that that is one of the most popular series, so to speak. And I'm,

I'm curious to know if there are any episodes that you thought were going to be a huge hit that were not, or if there are any episodes that were completely out of left field, a huge, a huge home run. Well, it's nice to hear you say that because I think I left a little bit of my sanity with that Wrath of the Khan series. And the truth is, is that the longer multi-part series where we

take on some big issue and it takes four or six episodes, hours long each, and you have an audio book at the end to do, are so challenging because you have all these loose threads that develop while you're doing the story. And then by the time you hit the middle of the series, you have to start tying those threads together. And it becomes, you know, I'm in one of these things now we're talking about the first world war and we're in episode four. And all of a sudden the whole thing is unraveling in front of my face. And it does, it does challenge your sanity a bit. I'm always surprised when the shows are well-received. So I don't have any where I was going, oh, this is going to be a home run. I'm always sure I screwed up one way or the other.

So it never happens that I'm sure it's a hit. Oftentimes I release something and I just brace myself for what I'm sure is going to be this negative response. Prophets of Doom that you liked. I did a thing at the end where I said, I heard it. Yeah, it was like a disclaimer saying, this didn't come out the way I wanted and people liked it anyway.

So that's usually what happens. I'm a little bit more of a perfectionist. I was reading a book the other day on the Rolling Stones and they have this picture in it of their guitarist, Keith Richards, just hanging over this audio board. And you can see he's been up for like days

and they're on like the hundredth take of this song and this album is overdue and the whole thing. And I thought to myself, it's not all that different than what we're doing here. And so I'm always sure that this next show we're gonna release is gonna destroy our brand forever and that I'm never gonna live up to the hype and that the sanity

has been left in the studio somewhere. Prophet to Doom is a perfect example. The Apache Tears show where we, I think it was the first one, either we were near or over an hour. I was sure people were going to freak out about that. So pretty much every episode I release, I'm sure that's the end. We screwed it up. And you mentioned the aspect of tying loose ends together. And this is something I feel very familiar with just having put together books with multiple storylines and dozens of different components. However, with the printed word, I have the luxury of being able to go back, copy and paste, cut out sections, translate them to other areas. But with audio, after you've recorded, say, two, three episodes, you really have to work with, I would imagine on some level,

what you've already done. So I'd love to hear how on earth you prepare for these things, what the process currently looks like. Because when I listened to the prophets of doom, and at the end, like you said, the disclaimer came out where you say that it didn't really turn out the way you expected it to, or wanted it to, and that you'd, you'd actually recorded. And I have to just hear it from the horse's mouth here. I recorded a complete version of that episode that you then scrapped. I just couldn't fathom taking the time to record that and then scrap it and start over. I mean, it just blew my mind. So could you talk a little bit about the process? How do you research? How do you choose topics when you're going after an episode like this? Because it sounds very masterfully delivered.

So one of the thoughts that occurred to me, for instance, was how often do you stop? Like, how long is it take, in other words, and so on and so forth. So I'd love for you to just discuss, if you would be open to it, to kind of start to finish what the process looks like for putting one of these shows together. Well, let me back up because you talked about doing a book, and there are similarities when you do these really long podcasts, especially these series. We have a name for it in-house. I call it the Blue Room.

And the Blue Room is when you've heard the piece so often, and this happens with reading too. So I'm sure you have the same problem with books where you've now seen it so often that you lose the ability to absorb it the way a new listener would or a new reader would. And it destroys your ability to judge what you have. So, I mean, it's the only time I get jealous of like the TV networks and stuff where they're able to bring in test audiences and show them something that they put together and just say, OK, so what's your reaction to this? Because they have the same problem we do, right? They get the blue room, but they have the chance to expose a few people to it and say, OK, is this good? We've lost all sense of direction on this. Now, the bad part of that is then you can,

then the audience can start driving it. You don't want that either from a creative sense. But when we hit where we are in this show now, I haven't the slightest idea if it even makes sense anymore. Or like you'll hear something and you'll go, this sounds remarkably similar to something I think I said seven hours ago in part two. And so you, and like you said, at least it's easier to do that in the written sense.

But the same problem exists. So when you say, how do you do these things? The reason it gets complicated where we are now is that I have to write some of that stuff down and say, no, you talked about this already. Don't talk about this again. Right. As opposed to saying what I'm going to do. And it's part of keeping the, you know, don't cross the streams, like they said in Ghostbusters. It's trying not to cross tangents and streams. And the only part that's a saving grace in the

episode we're doing now is in the First World War, things are repetitive and it's actually a part of the story. That's how people at the time felt like, oh, my God, we're still going through the same. It's the same movie over and over again. So if I make the listeners feel that way in the show, the cop out is going to be able to say and I'm going to say it. Well, now you feel just like the people in the story. So if I sound repetitive, we were after that. So if you ask how I do it, I really do. I pick subjects that I already know about. And then I begin the

research from there because I always tell people, someone will say, can you please talk about the history of Southeast India or something? And I'll say, you don't want me to talk. I don't know anything about that. And you can't educate yourself to a reasonable standard in the short period of time we have. I have it's enough for me to pick a subject I know a lot about. I know a lot about the First World War, and I've read 50 books since we started this thing. On top of that, what's amazing to me is how much has changed since I thought I learned about these things. Maybe the 1980s, I was really into that subject for a few years. And you go back and you think, well, there can't be that much more about this 100-year-old subject.

Since then, you couldn't be more wrong, right? There's books and revisions and new points of view, and it's insane. So I pick these topics I already have a good foundation for. And I've thrown away – by the way, you talked about throwing away shows. I threw away a show on the Greeks and the ancient Persians. I think I threw away one of the Apache shows. So I've done this before. But I pick something I know a bunch about and I think about it.

And this is the thing that listeners never give me any time for, because basically I'm behind schedule when I start. And the listeners are always wondering what I'm doing. But you actually have to sit down a little bit and think and just sit in the shower and just go, what's weird about this story? And what turns me, you know, and that's where you come up with these weird sort of things. And those things are the pillars we sort of build the show around. I always say it's a little like our style is jazz-like or Led Zeppelin used to have a line for how they constructed their work they said they said our format is tight but loose and that and that's kind of how ours is where where there are

these mile posts that i set that i want to get to but within those mile posts i have all this room to sort of you know go off on a yeah guitar solo for a long period of time or like tangents if you can't stand tangents you can't listen to my stuff. Because that's, I mean, it's like the tangents are maybe the pillar of the show. We just go off on all these avenues. You couldn't structure it if you tried to write it out that way. It wouldn't work. But I think it does come across perhaps as disjointed sometimes,

or maybe this solo has gone on too long and we need to get back to the format or whatever. But I do. I go into the studio with kind of a concept and an approach I want to try to make work. And it doesn't always work out. And I'll go in there and usually I'm, you know, coffee used to work so much better for me in the old days. But I'll have a bunch of cups of coffee. I'll get in there and I'll just start talking about it. And usually it's pretty good for a while.

And then it breaks down at some point and that's where I'll get in there and I'll just start talking about it. And usually it's pretty good for a while. And then it breaks down at some point and that's where I'll stop. And then I'll pick up from just before it broke down the session before. And we'll try to string something together. Now, sometimes I'll go and listen. I'll go, oh, wow, we really left this part out. Or, oh, there's a mistake in there we have to fix and so there's going back and pulling the rolling stones in the in the studio obsessing over take 99 of you know uh one of their songs and we do some of that now too and we do a lot more than we used to because when you're doing four and five hour episodes you can't keep it straight so we're constantly re-listening to the stuff and it's

become a lot more structured than it used to be i I used to be able to walk in there and say, if we get lucky, I'll walk out of the studio with a whole hardcore history show for you. That doesn't happen anymore. So you sort of run out of length. How much of what I hear as a listener is scripted out, is written out in long form? What do your prompts look like or your props, so to speak? Because I'm thinking about how I prepare for, say, a keynote presentation, a 60-minute keynote presentation. There are cases where I'll have portions that are verbatim that I'll memorize just for delivery's sake, say, at the beginning and the very end. Then there are, in some cases, bullet points that I use to break, say, a section into three parts so that it's easier to rehearse as well as nail repeatedly. But I've been mystified trying to figure out, because I'm just purely guessing, what you have in front of you when you're recording and sort of generally speaking,

how often you take breaks, for instance, say 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. What does that look like these days when you're doing a single episode as opposed to a series? Well, I hope you can tell that there is no script because there is, there is no script and that, and we hope that that's why it sounds natural like it does. Well, the only reason that I ask is because it's it sounds so polished without the ums and ahs that I'm accustomed to hearing from almost everyone that I've ever heard in long form conversation that it just seemed like a superpower to not have a script, I guess. Well, let's understand that there's definitely editing going on there. I mean, I'm sure that we've taken out some ums and things like that before. But I mean,

you know, I did radio for a dozen years before I did podcasts and I did television before then. And ums are a pretty basic thing you work on. It doesn't mean we're um free. It just means that I'm less likely to pull an arm than I might have been. And I always said, you know, we kind of had an advantage when we got into podcasting. Well, first of all, we got in so early. It was a little like the Oklahoma land rush. It was nice to get in there so early and sort of claim your little zone. But also, I wasn't learning how to do proper mic technique. I think I was starting at a little bit of an advantage. And so the ums fall into that category a little bit. In terms of, I mean, we do write

down, for example, if I've got a twisty idea that I want to make sure to include, I might write down the twisty idea and then post that up on the corkboard to remind myself that in this 20-minute segment today, you want to hit that idea. I also find, you know, what you call primary source accounts. So somebody's in the First World War, and they talk about what it's like in the trenches, and I'll know that I have that piece. And so I'll have a note that says, okay, page 246 of this book, you know, and I'll have marked that guy's quote. And so I'll know I have that. And but I don't know exactly when I'm going to get to it. I just know that that somewhere in today's session, you're probably going to run into

the point where it's logical to put that primary source quote in. So that that's how I organize it. Otherwise, it's a free form sort of improvisational talk. God, it's amazing. I want to give people a couple of different options for places to start with hardcore history because it really – I'm seldom as impressed as I have been with the entire show. Stop it, dude. I know. Stop it.

I know I'm making things awkward. It's nice of you. I appreciate that. Everybody – a lot of good people out there. There are a lot of good people out there, but I've sort of gotten stuck on hardcore history. So I feel like I need to satisfy that fix first. But one thing I think that you do very, very well, and I'd like to ask you how much of this was learned over time. And also, I'll get to the second part, but you do a very good job of pulling listeners into the episodes. And the example that jumps to mind is you might have a description, say in the case of Wrath of the Khans, of some of the historical context, some of the various cultures and step communities in different areas. And then you'll say, you know, imagine if you will, that you have an entire army comprised of circus trick archers. And then not only do they have

bows, but the bows are 130 pound pole, which happens to mean more to me these days because I've been playing around with archery. And I know how hard it is, at least for me, to repeatedly pull, say, a 55 or 60 pound bow. So the fact that they could unleash, you know, 60 arrows a minute or whatever it was, but you pull people in with the, you the, imagine if you were, and then doing hypotheticals with, of course, the Martians and so on. own vocal delivery and they want to podcast. Maybe I'm projecting here, but how would you suggest that people work on that skill and try to refine their delivery to get a little closer to what I would consider very, very professional in your case? Well, I appreciate you saying that because I came up in radio at a time, the tail end of what maybe you could call the big voice era where radio was still this won't mean anything to all of the young listeners but like a gary owens deep you know classical almost

stereotypical old-fashioned broadcaster style with the deep pipes or the way the guys used to describe their voices and when i came up i remember the boss at the radio station where i worked i mean at one time he actually suggested i have like adenoid surgery or something to maybe get that deep voice that that was the classic that they were looking for and i not only didn't have that i didn't want that i just wanted to talk the way i talk and then somewhere while i was doing that that whole deep voice thing went out of fashion and everybody was more looking for a unique, you were looking for your own voice, right? A unique voice that sounded like no one else. And luckily just having your own voice, as long as it didn't grate like nails on a blackboard,

which some people said mine did. So it's, it's an acquired taste maybe, but having your own voice became the real preferred form. And all of a sudden, everybody's saying, gosh, it's so great. You have your own voice. And all I'm thinking about is all those years that that was the one thing everybody didn't want me to have. So when you say to a listener, how do you get more polished and broadcaster? Like there's a process you're going to go through if you start podcasting or whatever, where you figure out what your voice is and it shouldn't be something fake. It should be your voice, but maybe you take it down a range, maybe, because we've all got a vocal range, right? From the highest you speak to the lowest you speak, there may be a sweet spot in there,

and it might not be the way you always talk, or you might want to talk in that tone more. I think personally that there is no perfect voice. And I think that as long as you like it and you sound the way you want to sound, that that's especially in this world. I mean, what I love about the podcast and the Internet is that there's so many potential people out there listening that if you just be yourself, you're going to attract listeners who like that. And then you never have to fool around with trying to be someone else to please your audience because the people you've attracted are there because they like you already, right? I don't think you should try to develop some style other than just polish your own style. The ums are a perfect example, but listen, I bet if you wanted to, you could weave that into your style where that's almost your thing, right? I mean, we talk around here a lot about that the meter just jumps up into the red,

and they would say, you need to speak in this one zone of loudness, or you'll screw up the radio station's compression. Well, after a while, I just started writing liners for the big voice guy. Here's Dan Carlin. He talks so loud, or whatever. And I just said, that's my style. I meant to do that. And as a matter of fact, if you do it, you're imitating me. So it's partly taking what you already do and saying, no, no, no, this isn't a negative. This is the thing I bring to the table, buddy.

Right. I copyrighted that. I talk real loud and then I talk really quietly. And if you have a problem with that, well, you don't understand what a good style is, Tim. I like that. I think I shall capitalize on that. Copyright your fault, man. It reminded me of actually an experience that I had with writing the four-hour work week. It was my first book. I was very nervous about it. And when I first started, and I'm not sure how many people know this, I wrote the first four

or five chapters and I ended up throwing them all out because I was writing in this very pompous sort of Ivy League style that I thought sounded very smart. And it came off stilted and it just, it was very unattractive. So I tossed it. And then I tried to write in an amusing fashion. I thought I needed to be funny. So I was like, all right, I'll be funny. I should stop being so serious. And it came across very slapstick Three Stooges. So yet again, I had to take these four or five chapters that I'd spent weeks on and throw them out and ultimately found my own voice, which was really just discovering something that was latent and that people felt in conversation by having two glasses of wine and starting to write

as if it were an email to two specific friends. And that is when I finally sort of found the proper balance, which was intrinsically how I spoke to my close friends about serious subjects after a couple of glasses of wine. Was there a point, and also brings to mind, there's a friend of mine named Gary Vaynerchuk, who became well known after doing something called Wine Library TV. And if you look at the very first, say, 10 episodes, especially the first few, he's really subdued. And you learn later, of course, he's sort of grown into himself. And he has a very bombastic style, but that's who Gary is. But it took him a long time to get there. And were there any sort of points for you, aside from embracing this extremely flexible vocal range that you talked about, where you kind of got comfortable in your own shoes and were able to no longer conform to other expectations people had of what a good, say, radio host was or podcaster? Well, if you go listen to even my earlier podcast, the one thing you're going to

notice is I talked faster. I was louder. I was more aggressive and all. And people go and listen to it now and go, God, when did you slow down? Or I'm glad you slowed down or something like that. And I always say, but it wasn't it wasn't intentional. I just got older and the coffee doesn't work as well. And yet and yet it slowed me down to a level that more people are comfortable with than the way I used to be. But it wasn't intentional. I mean, I would have been perfectly happy attracting whatever audience liked that style more. But I think there's a natural aging. And I mean, I think you hear it with singers or anyone else where the style doesn't change because the singer doesn't like singing the way that they used to sing. They just their voice is different

and their energy is different. And luckily for me, me getting older and slower and mellower is easier on more listeners, I guess, than the style I had when I was younger. I'll tell you what I miss. As I get older, you know, I've gotten to the age now where sometimes I'll reach for some fact or something that's in my memory banks. And it takes longer to get than it used to. In the old days, I was so fast. And it wasn't just vocally. It was indicative of how fast my brain was working. And

my mouth was trying to keep up with my brain. And now my brain is slowed down. And so I feel like an athlete who's past their prime, right? Who say, I used to be able to run a 4-3-40, man, and now I can't do it anymore. But the people like it slower. So in a funny way, I've aged to a point where more people are comfortable listening to my middle-aged style than they were listening to me when they used to call me the angry young wolf background, if you can believe that. Could be worse. Could be worse. That was one of the better nicknames. It's a lot worse than that. So who are some of your favorite podcasters or radio personalities or people on audio? I guess what I'd love to know are people who've inspired you or people you admire in the audio medium, as it were. They could be living, dead, current, up and coming.

Really doesn't matter. But I'd be curious to know who you have looked up to or admire in that world. Well, I appreciate you saying living dead long, because here's the dirty little secret of my life. And it's very hard to explain to people. I do not consume much media anymore that is not text based. So people will say, have you seen this show or have you seen this movie or have you listened to this podcast? And I can almost say with 100 percent certainty, no. And it's going to get me into trouble. I tell other people I'm going to rip off

some well-known movie or TV show theme or something someday without knowing that I've ripped it off. You know, I almost did once I did this thing once where I had this great comparison for this one episode we did. And somebody who listened to it before I released it, thank goodness, had to tell me that I was just giving the listeners the plot of Avatar, which was the big movie out there that I hadn't seen. And I thought, that's a great way to stumble into a copyright infringement or look like you're ripping somebody off. So I haven't really consumed media in a long time. And it's not on purpose. I just, I'm not in a place in my life where I have that kind of time right now. But of course, we were all influenced by people.

I had in the same way you were talking about how much you like interviewing me. Well, I like interviewing people and I like to interview James Burke. And we did in the show, the guy who was the famous host of the Connection series. Oh, yeah. The day the universe changed in an Irish guy. And as someone with the Irish genes myself, I admired Burke from a long time ago and the way his wonderful mind thought and the way he would string ideas together. And so for me, Gwen Dyer – we had Gwen Dyer on the program, a Canadian journalist who did a wonderful series when I was growing up on war that got me where I live somewhere deeply. I was an old – when I was a TV reporter,

I was on a CBS affiliate and at CBS, the, the soul of Edward R. Murrow sort of runs deep. And so those of us who were serious about reporting, which was not all of us took a real, I mean, that was a really important thing for people, especially of a tradition history minded kind of thing to look up to and to shoot for. I mean, you know, sometimes you aspire to be things that, you know, you can never quite achieve. But the attempt to reach those heights, even if you fall short, is a good goal to set. And so those are the kind of people that I look up to. And I think a lot of times when we're doing, especially the Hardcore History podcast, you look at people like Orson Welles and people who were involved in audio when audio was the main medium and say that those people did a lot of things that we

could recreate again. When you talk about like a theater of the mind approach, little known fact, we used to do theater of the mind stuff on the older history shows. And if you listen really carefully, it's crazy because we put this immense amount of effort, hard to even describe how much effort, basically composing an audio score for these episodes. But we wanted to make it optional so that you didn't have to hear the score if you didn't want to. So we made so we because we didn't know if it was a plus or a minus. And we thought it might be a plus to the people who liked it, but a minus to the people who didn't. So we made it so quiet that you literally have to have to sit in a room and put your headphones on and crank it up and get into it. We have candles on or whatever the listeners do, and then you can enjoy it.

But if you're in your car or on the bus or what, you won't hear it. And people love that. It was all theater of the mind. And that's the way I loved it too. I mean, if I could do it anyway, again, I would throw the theater and the optional theater of the mind stuff back in it. But it was like doing an episode after you'd already finished an episode. I mean, we'd have to do the show and then score the show. And it just at a certain point in order to free up, I mean, we already weren't getting shows out fast enough.

We had to drop that. But if I could ever do it the way I want to again, I would go back to scoring the shows with sound effects and little hums and drones. And because we've got a whole, I mean, you can go back and listen, a bunch of our shows have all these, it's not quite put on the Wizard of Oz at the same time we start the podcast,

and you'll follow along. But there's, we do a lot of fun stuff that I miss. I mean, in Bubonic Nukes, the one we did on the Black Plague, my favorite part of that whole episode is at the very end, we're talking about how you may think that this is a long time ago, but, you know, it might not be as long as you think. And then we have the sound, really quiet in the background, of a laboratory beaker dropping. And then you hear a red alert alarm going off like the CDC lost a flu virus or something. And so I used to love the potential of throwing in the Orson Welles, theater of the mind type stuff. And so when I look back on the greats of the past, at this point, I'm almost looking back on them the way Led Zeppelin looked at

bluesmen that they could rip off. I'm trying to find little techniques they could steal that they used to do. But yeah, so I mean, I wouldn't say that there are specific individuals as much as, oh my gosh, that's a great show, or that's a great idea. So I'm not listening to a great song. I'm listening to a great riff and going, oh, I, that's a great show or that's a great idea. So I'm not listening to a great song. I'm listening to a great riff and going, oh, I love that little drum beat right in there. I could rip that off or, you know, so, so, so right now that that's more influential to me than any particular broadcast, but yeah, I, I loved so much growing up, obviously. You mentioned text. I am a really avid reader, love books, always have. And it's clear that you do a ton of research for these shows.

A couple of questions related to books. What is the book that you've given most as a gift to other people? Oh, my goodness. Or books. You know, I have to tell you the truth. I don't do that either. And people say to me all the time, can you recommend a book for A, B, or C? And I rarely do because I'm not reading general

stuff a lot of times. I'm reading really weird sort of books that would, like, you get into this World War I subject that I'm into now. So then you're finding these weird little things that aren't going to mean anything to someone unless they've read some of the other books that I read before that. So my stuff is not real useful to people. I'm trying to think what, if anything, I gave to him. I'm a really horrible gift giver too, Tim. Thanks for exposing all of my weaknesses here publicly. That's why my wife is so fantastic at gift giving. She makes up for me. I'm going to have to pass on that question. I don't know the answer. All right. No problem. Bad gift giver. That's my answer. Bad gift giver. Are there any...

All right. Let's take a different tack. Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies? I know you don't consume a lot of media these days, but what I'm trying to figure out is what... And maybe this is a separate question, but what made you so fascinated in history? And I know you've studied it before, but for a lot of people, they take the viewpoint that, well, history is in the past. I don't feel like getting into esoteric aspects of old civilizations

when I should be focusing on A, B, C, D, or E. Of course, there's a lot of practicality, I think, in studying quite a bit of history, which tends to repeat itself. But I'm trying to identify, for someone who is not, aside from listening to the podcast, of course, which I think is the easiest answer, to get someone hooked on history, even indirectly. Are there any documentaries, movies, books, anything that come to mind? That's a bunch of different questions. It is. That was loaded. Let me take them one at a time. Some of the movies that I enjoy watching, it's so perverse to bring them up because they're not good movies a lot of times. Like, for example, I tell my wife, if it has time travel in it, I'm likely to watch it whether or not I have any interest in. I mean, that's what gets me. Forget about, oh, this is a great film. I have to, I'll give you a perfect example. There was a movie, I think they did it in late 1970s or maybe 1980, I think it came out, called The Final Countdown.

And it's relatively horrible as a movie goes, but it doesn't matter. The story is about what if a modern aircraft carrier went back to the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. And so it's taking on Japanese zeros with modern airplanes. And forget it. The story can suck. Now I'm in, right? That's all I need. The acting can be terrible. I don't care. See? So that's a perfect example of a movie that would grab me just because, okay, conceptually, I'm all in. You don't even have to execute it. And listen, with our podcast, we kind of go there sometimes too. Hopefully these twists are enough to disguise the fact maybe we didn't tie this other thought together so well, or I go

off on too many tangents. The other point about, I mean, I think you're striving to try to find how the history bug got started in me. And I think we've been trying to figure that out in my family forever. My mother's concept is that I was somehow born with it because I was into it at such a, you know, I mean, you could give me history related things at Christmas when I'm four and I'm into it. And there's no explanation. I just think you have to suggest that a lot of us are hardwired to like this or that. And in my case, you know, I mean, some people you give a musical instrument to and oh my God, they're four years old and they're playing like a teenager. For me, it was stuff from the past and I don't know, but I've been into it since I was very little, which is,

it's so weird to me to be able to make a living doing something. That's what I mean. When we started this conversation, I said, you know, I've really been fortunate to fall into something that you almost seem to have been born to do. And I don't know how I got so lucky, but everybody should have this feeling, you know, to feel like, God, catching a football. It's just I've been doing it since I was two. It's the thing I do best in life. And somebody gave me a job catching a football. So, I mean, that's how I feel that there's a little bit, you know, when you talk about being born to something, I guess what I do is storytelling because that's what people tell me I do. Right. I think there's a storytelling gene, you know, and I think I think it runs in families.

I think the Irish people in my family could tell a hell of a story long before I was on this planet. And if you're lucky, you get some of that. And so I think there's a bunch of a story long before I was on this planet. And if you're lucky, you get some of that. And so I think there's a bunch of those elements that just work in our favor and we're taking our strengths and running with them. And so when you talk about how you put a podcast together, one of the things I would suggest that people do is build it around what you do well, you know? And so I feel like I'm just utilizing whatever talents I was born with and it's working out. I mean, that I can do this instead of working on the assembly line is one of the great gifts in my life, you know? It seems, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that Hardcore History at least has existed since 2006.

Is that right? You might know better than I do. Something along those, somewhere. I think the other podcast is 2005 and Hardcore History comes sometime after that. Right, so this, like you said, you've been in this game or in this medium for some time. When did it occur to you that you might be able to do this full-time?

When did that transition take place? And was there a particular moment that stands out to you when you realized that? People have been telling me for a long time that we could do this long before I thought we could do this. I had a guy hire me, a tech guy hire me back in 96 off the radio to do our show on the internet. And I looked at him like he was crazy because I did, because one, the internet wasn't that, wasn't that old. And two, there wasn't, the mechanisms didn't exist.

And he said, well, that's what my company will do. We'll invent the mechanisms to do this. And you'll be like the test case, right? You'll show people it never went anywhere. But ever since then, the discussion of how do we put Dan on the Internet has been going on amongst people that I just had to trust knew better than I did about that. And the implication always was that you would have more listeners because I was always I would say I was I was the messed up part of the radio station's day part whenever I was on because I just was a Martian. I never fit. I mean, I apparently was good enough to stay employed, but I never fit with the programming. And so so the attitude was

that's what the Internet's for. You'll be able to reach this mass of people that are above and beyond your normal talk radio show demographic. And that turned out to be true. But the treated i mean i went to a bunch of people before we started asking for donations we had done the show for years before we asked for any donations or any money or anything and i went to a bunch of experts i trust in business and law and a bunch of other areas and i solicited their advice and said if we ask the listeners to donate to this will that work and every single one of them said, not a chance in hell. Really, really, really intelligent, smart people. And I was dissuaded. And I thought, oh, my goodness, all these people. And we thought, well, let's just do it anyway. What are you going to lose? We're just asking the listeners, if you think what you heard was

worth a dollar, give us the dollar. Save up till you have five and then give us five, whatever. And oh my gosh, that's changed our lives. And so when I talk about how fortunate I feel to be doing this, let's not forget who I owe for this. A bunch of people who didn't have to pay, we give them away for free. They didn't have to do this. I mean, it's like what Radiohead did when they put that song out on the internet instead of instead of putting it on the radio or selling it as a CD and saying, just give us what you think it's worth. And it worked out better. Now, I don't know if this is sustainable, right? I don't know if this is a flash in the pan or whatever. But at the moment, what people have done is make possible professional amateur media. I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that's what we are. And so I owe a lot of people out there listening to your show and mine and lots of other

podcasts for giving me this blessing that I do. And I mean, I talk about it too much. I'm sure it gets old, but I wake up in the middle of the night and just say, thank you. You know, it's crazy to me. Well, I'm going to tone down my over the top praise, but I mean, it's, it's very clear that you put a lot of effort, a ton of effort and prep into the episodes, which I think is part of the reason why people are so willing to donate. For instance, what has been the most popular episode to date? If you had to guess or popular episodes, they say in history, like if you're the history channel, for example, that the subject that people get the most excited about is the Second World War. That's why I think they did

it to death on the History Channel and stuff like that, because it's almost something you have to screw up to not do well with. The only real time that we've touched that subject dead on is when we talked about in a multi-part series, the Eastern Front in the Second World War. So basically the war between the Germans and the Soviet Union, although there were a lot of other people involved, most Americans, and I didn't realize this actually, don't know much about that because they hear so much about the stuff that our side was involved with. That to them is a part of the war that essentially gave us the advantage of taking that subject that's gold, right? Second World War, it's history gold. And yet a part of it that people

weren't aware of. So it's like finding new World War II stuff. I mean, it's like if you're the history channel, you go, guess what? All this World War II stuff you haven't explored yet. I mean, oh my, it's like finding gold. so we we told this story and people love it. This is the ghost of the Ostfront. Ghost of the Ostfront. Yeah. Ostfront is the German word for Eastern Front. You know, if you took and I think we said this in the show, I can't remember what we said yesterday, much less what we said that. But if you take just the Eastern Front of the Second World War and isolate that as its own war, it by itself is the biggest war in human history, all by itself. And so I think the stories that come out of that and the horrificness and the feeling of the people

who must have been trapped, you know, in that dynamic are such that people listen to it and I think can really relate. And again, having a new World War II subject, especially one that's so big, I mean, when you hear that, you really understand that the war was probably won or lost on the Eastern Front. And so I think it had all the elements right there to be a really popular episode. If I don't screw it up, right? It doesn't seem like you did. What episode did you have? I know how stressful it must be. It is. People don't understand it. It's become a lot more stressful than it used to be. All good stuff. I'm glad to be doing it. But but we're stressed right now, for example. So what whether it's with stress or without which which episode or episodes did

you have the most fun personally recording, whether it's researching or recording? Oh, I could cheat on this answer, though, because we did three interview shows before the audience informed me that they get hugely let down when they finally see a hardcore history show, you know, after waiting forever for a new one. And instead of being what they expect, they get an interview show. But I like the interviews are fun because you can do them in real time. I mean, you basically take an hour, talk to someone you admire for an hour, and then you have a show. Oh, my gosh. I'm on three months now working on the latest Hardcore History show. So I love that.

And I get to talk to people that I admire, like James Burke. But in terms of the other shows, I won't lie to you. None of them were easy and they get harder. And I don't know why I keep doing that to myself. My wife was saying, why don't you just pick a nice, small, easy topic and do that? And I don't know why, because there's something about feeling like I'm pushing myself. I mean, if I have some creative brain cells, I am using every single one of them. I will not be able to say as I'm laying on my deathbed somewhere that I didn't push myself to the limit. And on these shows, we'll go from that Mongol series, which, like I said, I think I left some of my sanity in the studio and decide to do the First World War after that.

What sort of masochist does that, Tim? I think we're cut from the same cloth i mean who's who's doing the thinking in this company um but but but so the answer is it's just when i think i'm gonna have some fun with one of these things i decide to take on something that listen there's no question by the time it's done it's very satisfying to say hey people like that we did a lot good, hard work and it paid off. But while you're in the midst of it and first of all, I'm not sure it isn't going to crumble like an airplane crash. You know, I don't know that that we're going to get to show five and the whole thing is just going to fall apart. So it's nice when it's over to know that it worked out.

But I'm always feeling like like I'm not having a ton of fun while I'm doing it, but I, but, but I am, it's like working on some big account. If you're an account executive and you're so happy when it's over and you go and you toast the team you worked with and all that at the end, it's very satisfying. But while you're in the midst of it, there's a lot of stress and pressure and deadlines and all that. But listen, that's life, right? I mean, nothing's like you always have that. No, it's a, it makes me think of my experience with publishing where after each book, I tell myself, you know, the next book's going to be a short book. I always say that. The next book's going to be a really short book. I'm going to take it easy. Crank it out fast. Crank it out fast. It'll

be nice and bite-sized. And then of course, after I have some type of series of nervous breakdowns over a year and a half or three years, someone asks me, well, or they imply, you know, I assume the books must get easier. After you do the first book, the second must be much easier than the third must be just wrote. By that point, I say no, because I take everything that I've learned that that should and could make it easier. And then I just double what I want to do or triple what I want to do based on that new efficiency. So I end up doing just as much, if not more. No, it sounds exactly the same. Exactly. And, and, and, you know, listen, from a creative standpoint, you shouldn't want to have it any other way, right? If you're the Rolling Stones and you're Keith Richards in that, in that studio on

the hundredth take, you want to be working that hard because you want to. I mean, you know, there's an old line that when you reach the top, the only way to go is down. Right. And so when we hear that we just did an episode that people say, well, that's the best episode you ever did. We instantly think to ourselves, well, you don't want to do anything worse than that. That becomes the new minimum standard. Right. Right. But and truthfully, if you don't give them something as good as that next time, they're going to say, well, you know, it's not as good as that other thing. So, so we always feel, and I think you do too. I think everybody does when they're doing creative work, the next thing needs to be better than the last thing. So you're continually saying, oh, sure.

I didn't go in. I almost went insane the last time I'm going to go insane the next time. It's the only way to ensure that I'm, I'm, uh, I'm pushing the limits, right? Right. Yeah. The high watermark must be surpassed. How does Michael Jackson do better than Thriller, right? Oh, God, I don't even want to think about that. But that would be, yeah, I can't even imagine. One of the many things that comes up listening to hardcore history is military history. And certainly with Wrath of the Khans, the explanation of different techniques and approaches like the false flights or the false fleeing, I found endlessly fascinating. And it sounds like that's something that has fascinated you. In military history, are there any particular people or techniques or strategies that you found

most interesting? I know that's a very big question. I'm thankful that you find it interesting because I think, and again, something for podcasters who are just starting out maybe to pay attention to is if you talk about what you find interesting, eventually you will acquire a listenership that likes that too. And so a lot of times I'll wonder if I'm not getting too deeply military on some of this stuff. But then I realized that the people who are listening, if they're still listening, like that military stuff from earlier episodes, that was my focus in college was military history. And so that's what I've always been interested in.

I don't do rainbows and unicorns is what I always tell people. And it's dark. I'll tell you something on your show. No one else even knows, Tim. Wonderful. We're working on artwork for the specific shows that we've done. I've got an artist. Very cool. And it is so dark. And our artwork is dark anyway. And I showed my wife the other day, I was so proud of it. And I said, honey, look at this. Look at this art. And she comes over all excited to see the art. And I can watch her face drop. And she goes, it's horrible. I said, I said, do you mean it's bad? She goes, no, it just so dark and terrible. I go, the listeners will love it then. I said,

it'll just be, it's just what we're after. It matches the subject matter perfectly. So, I mean, but look, it's, it's, it's what I like. And you just figure if you try to make a show based on what you think other people will like, eventually you will have a show that you don't like. Yeah, that's a great point. And so you have to do what you like. And that's why this internet is so wonderful and all these billions of people out there. If you only suck up one tenth of one percent of the pie of internet users that like your weird stuff that you bring up, that translates into a lot of people. I always tell folks I'm like a street performer. Really, Tim.

I mean, that's what I do. I'm like that guy, the mime on the street corner or the guy who plays the violin and he opens up his violin case and you throw pennies on the street corner to the guy who plays the violin. I just work a really busy street corner. And that's what this is, is that if you're a niche market product, the internet is a place where that niche can still translate into a ton of actual people. So don't water it down. There's a phrase, and we've all heard it, but we don't think about what it means. If you go on television, on a TV network, you are broadcasting, right? You are reaching a broad segment of the audience. The problem is, is that to broadcast, you have to

water things down and widen them out to the lowest common denominator. We podcasters are narrow casters, not broadcasters. And you can't lose sight of the fact that that's not a bug. It's a feature. You want to be a narrowcaster and you want to have this niche that's all yours. And so if you're talking about invisible unicorns that you see on the weekend, make that yours, man. You do the invisible unicorn on the weekend podcast and anyone else who does it's ripping you off, right? I told you never to tell anyone about that. I'm really upset. That's right, man. The Sasquatch is in my house podcast. I mean, that's how it should be. I don't think that when you're talking about a program that you should do it for other people, do it

for yourself. And military history is where I live. I think the other thing that I have to keep emphasizing, and I don't think you should be afraid of this too, if I've learned anything from the podcasting, it's don't be afraid to do something you're not qualified to do. Yeah, I tell the story all the time is that I didn't come up with the hardcore history idea. I have far too much respect for historians to have thought that I could have done that as a history major with a degree. I mean, if the one thing history majors know is how great historians are because we read them all the time, right? So I used to tell my stories that I've told my whole life and I was telling them around the dinner table. And my mother-in-law said to me,

you know, cause I was already doing one podcast on current events and stuff. And she said, why don't you do a podcast on the stuff you're talking about here at dinner? And I said, oh, I couldn't do that. I said, it's history and I'm not qualified to talk about history. I don't have a doctorate. I'm not a historian. And she said, I didn't realize you had to have a doctorate to tell stories. And I thought about that for a bit. I thought, well, listen, most of the great historians from the non-modern era didn't have doctorates either. They're just storytellers too. As long as I'm not purporting to be a historian and as long as I'm using their work. And what I always will say is, let's say there's a historical controversy. I will tell

you the controversy. Then I will say, well, here's what historian A says about it. And here's what historian B says about it. And I've been surprised how much the listeners like to hear about what's called historiography, which is the process of how history gets written and made and interpreted. They love hearing that. And so you'll actually talk about the different theories. And so I'm not making this stuff up. I'm using the experts to tell you a story. And the story is the part I'm qualified to tell you. Oh, no, that's one of the aspects of the show that I most appreciate is that you'll point out the contradictions, and you'll also talk about the different schools of history. So you'll have certain types of revisionist history.

You'll have different political leanings and how they interpret events, say, in the Spanish-American War, found the events at play in a lot of the reporting and writing that we might otherwise assume to be objective. Well, give me a perfect example. We talked about Rome, ancient Rome in the Republic period. And, you know, the reason that people look at that period and think it looks a lot like our own is because you can see some of the same political dynamics at work, broadly speaking, right? You know, obviously there's a lot of time elapsed. I often say to people, imagine that there's a Fox News in ancient Rome and an MSNBC in ancient Rome. So a left-wing version of events and a right-wing version of events, because what they always say is history, journalism is the first draft of history, right? So then imagine that only one of those narratives made it into your history books. Right. Rome as seen by Fox News or Roman politics as seen by MSNBC and how you can tell the Roman story that way.

And if you do it and you contrast the two views, it sounds even more modern. So I do think that it actually sheds light on the events to point out the different views. It sounds even more modern. So I do think that it actually sheds light on the events to point out the different way. I mean, the Apaches a hundred years ago, those are red murderers killing good Christian white settlers. 30 years ago, it's terrible, horrible white people murdering blameless Indian. I mean, you go through these periods where the entire focus and the public mood changes and we write history a different way. Those are fascinating in and of itself because it also teaches you that there isn't necessarily truth here. There's just the current perspective that's in vogue.

Oh, absolutely. And I'm actually reading a book right now called Dying Every Day, which is subtitled Seneca at the Court of Nero. And it's a very fascinating account of Seneca that tries to reconcile at some level, the opposing views and mythologies and facts surrounding this character Seneca, who was a very famous Stoic, but at the same time was very, very wealthy. Some people called him opulent. And just trying to point out the backgrounds of the people who wrote these histories or who had these accounts who were, in some cases, his political enemies. It's really fascinating thus far because I'm a huge fan of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and a lot of these philosophers.

That's like the hedonistic Stoics. That's my favorite. Exactly. See, you point out how much money. That's the best kind of Sto ask- I like the hedonistic Stoics. That's my favorite, exactly. See, you point out how much money, that's the best kind of Stoic to be, the hedonistic. Yeah, you have to- It's like premeditated spontaneity, you know? Let me, if I could shift gears a little bit, ask just a handful of kind of rapid fire questions.

And I'm having a lot of fun. We could do this for a long time, but I want to be respectful of your time. But I'd love to throw off a couple of rapid fire questions and I'm having a lot of fun. We could do this for a long time, but I want to be respectful of your time. But I'd love to throw off a couple of rapid fire questions and you can take as little or as much time answering them as you'd like. You have your hands in a lot these days. You're doing quite a few different things. What are the first, say, hour or two of your day typically look like? What are your morning rituals? I've had the same morning ritual for a long time. It's the old talk radio show host or reporter ritual where I get up and I'm really going to – one of these days when books and newspapers go away, I'm going to be really sad because I have to start with the newspaper like an idiot nowadays.

I bring it in. I get the cup of coffee out. I start with the newspaper. Then I go online. If I see any stories that pique my interest, I'll print them out. I'll put them in a folder. And then the next time it's time to do a current events program, I'll look in the folder and see. You know, we're on like 275 of those or something.

So it's getting awful hard to find new things to talk about that I don't feel like we've already done. But I spend the early morning while I'm waking up with the first cup of coffee or 10 catching up and reading mostly current event stuff. What time do you wake up? Oh, goodness. Well, it's summer vacation now here at my house. It's based on the children's schedule. So when when it's school time, it's like, you know, 7 a.m. and we're up and at them. Now I can sleep a little bit later sometimes. But I have a I have a sweet spot in my production ability where I'm at my best talking. And it's usually from about like nine to noon or one. And so that's when I like to be in the studio. I hit like two o'clock and all the coffee in the world's not keeping me up, you know? And,

and so that, that's why we're having this interview now, Tim. Right. No, I remember the scheduling. Yeah. So I have this awful problem when I'm dealing with East Coast people. It's really awful. So I try to get into the studio when I've got a decent amount of energy. And then by the time I'm out of there and done, then I spend the afternoon getting back into reading research because there's a lot of reading to do. And I'm not the world's quickest reader. And so I also have a very tough time trying to figure out opportunity costs. You know, one of the things that a lot of podcasters start to learn once their podcast becomes popular is you're running a business now.

And that's not the part that most people, yours truly included, thought of when we got into podcasting, right? You think about the product. You don't think about the edifice and structure that you have to maintain to keep the product going. And I'm not gifted at that stuff. And so what people will often say, like on Twitter and stuff, wonder what you're doing in the three months since the last time you put a history podcast out. And you can't you can't even begin to tell them all. I mean, just the website alone that I've been working on for years, the time wasting that goes on in my life. And certainly I could do it better.

But like people will come to me and say, Dan, could you do this or you do that? And you get these opportunities thrown your way because of the podcast. And you think to yourself, I can't get a podcast out in three months. How am I going to take advantage of any of these other opportunities that come my way. And so, so I'm wrestling with how I do more because people have given me these chances based on the fact that these listeners are so kind to listen to the show. I don't know how to do them. I don't, I don't know how to run this business. So it's all I can do to get these shows out. So when you talk about how you do these things and I wrestle with the business side of this every day, to be honest. Well, I will, uh, we've, we've chatted about this before,

but if I can help with any website stuff or whether it's WordPress related or otherwise, I'm happy to... Be careful, Tim. I could abuse you worse than you've ever been abused. So let's stay friends. I've heard about your bookshelf full of tomes about medieval torture.

I know how you operate. I use it on people who promised to help me with websites. What is the newspaper that you read? Is there one newspaper that you consistently read? Yes. The stupid local one here that just gets delivered to my front door easily. And the funny thing is, is everything I read in it's been printed two weeks ago on the internet, but I still just like some old person have to do. And I have to read it all the way two weeks ago on the internet, but I still, just like some old person, have to do, and I have to read it all the way to the end of the comics,

like some person with OCD or something. I just, I can't help myself. And when I was in TV news before the internet was doing news, I used to get like five newspapers, and I'd go through every one of them all day like an idiot. I don't do that anymore, but yeah, just the silly local paper here in my local Berg.

I love it. And when you're, when you go online to potentially find interesting current events or, or angles to print out, what, what are those sources? Are there any particular sources that you repeatedly visit? Well, a lot of Twitter has turned out to be a really good way for listeners to share with me things that they think I'd be interested in. And then they get a pretty good idea of the sort of things I like. But, no, I go everywhere. I might start with Google News and then just I check out all the British newspapers. I check out the major American newspapers. There's some in Canada.

And then I like going. Wonderful thing about the Internet, the ability There's some in Canada. And then I like going, a wonderful thing about the internet, the ability to kind of go local. So if you're reading about stuff between the Israelis and Palestinians, for example, I like looking at the newspapers from the Middle East. I like looking at various, for example, if you're looking for the Israeli side, there are different Israeli newspapers with different perspectives. And so when I'm delving deep, it's wonderful to have the internet that allows you to three-dimensionalize in a way that was not possible when I was getting five American newspapers in one day to really, I don't know if you end up being more intelligent on the

subject, but you could certainly give multiple viewpoints. Does that make sense? Oh, definitely. I remember my first real extended trip abroad in college. This was after being in Does that make sense? eye-opening because I'd never been exposed to two extremely different viewpoints on what I perceived to be exactly the same phenomena or current events really was an eye-opening experience for me. And the Tribune's what we always read when we're out of the country. Yeah, it was all I could get my hands on. I know. I've been there. Just to completely shift gears, when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind? Oh, my goodness. You know, Tim, I don't know.

You've thrown some questions at me today, and I'm this verbal person, and I'm usually pretty quick on my feet. But I don't know how to answer that because my definition of success is perhaps a little different. You know, I was arguing with somebody once about ambition, and we were talking about whether ambition was genetic or not. And we were discussing happiness, and I was trying to make the point that being successful in life means you're happy, but that some people have to achieve certain things to be happy, right? So in other words, I know people who can do nothing in their lives and be happy with that. So to me, they're successful, right? But there's a lot of people who say, well, no, no, no. If I, if I don't make a bunch of money or if I don't

achieve something, or if I don't create something or, or, or if I don't, you know, if you don't reach these particular goals, then I'm not happy. So in other words, success for them requires, in order to be happy, requires that they do these other things to find happiness. So to me, being successful is being happy. And so there's lots of people out there that I think have managed to be successful, who most of us have probably never heard of. I tell you what, there's a part of me that's even jealous of the people that can manage to be happy without having to do a bunch of things to get there. Absolutely. You know, yeah, I think I mean, people look and say, isn't it great what's going on with your podcast? And I said, yes, because it makes me happy, not because of any other amorphous or even concrete goals, making this much money or getting this much notoriety or whatever.

You know, going on Tim Ferriss's show and having him say all these nice things about me is wonderful, but the show itself makes me happy. And that's, that's where the success comes in. Now, if we didn't make enough money to live, I wouldn't do the show. So I wouldn't be, you know, so, I mean, it all kind of boils down to the same thing. We need different things to be happy, but happy and successful are the same thing to me. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, that makes sense. The roundabout way of answering your question. No, no, it's a good answer. Restated the whole goal of the question. Sorry about that. Very clever of you. No, what would be failure to you then? Would it be being unhappy or is

it something else entirely? And that could even be as it relates to the podcast. If we wanted to try to constrain it a bit to make it easier to answer. I'll tell you. Here's the worst part about having a podcast that people think are successful. Is if you've never made it successful, then you haven't screwed anything up. You took a chance and you failed. And that's part of life and it's part of learning and it's part of success actually. But if you manage to create something that's successful and then you screw it up and blow it, that to me seems much more of a tragedy and a personal failure than never having gotten one

off the ground at all. So I think I was rather devil may care when we started these podcasts. Now, all I'm thinking about is if I don't do this Blueprints of Armageddon part four and have it be really good, then I've screwed up the golden goose, right? So failure to me is really, you know, like Keith Richards would have said in that Rolling Stones studio, you're only as good as the last thing you put out. So failure is not putting out a piece of good work at this point in my mind. Yeah, no, I definitely get it. I mean, I think especially with the sophomore act, for me at least, with the second book, brought a lot of stress with it. Yeah, you feel really under the gun with the second book. It's a perfect example. Yeah, very similar feeling. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd be more productive. I think that's pretty easy. I got out of the booth today in the studio and I didn't have anything useful. I've been working on the same part for like three days now. And you're just ready to smack walls. I mean, to sit there and. So every day I wanted to write this many hundred words and I would feel productive. And then you would get to the end of the week and you need to edit what you wrote and you get rid of five thousand words or something. And you just you think to yourself, oh, my God, what did I waste all that time for? And I think that's that's how creative endeavors often are. So so like, you know, you asked me how these programs go. There are days when I'll go in there and not like anything I do. And they just feel like such waste.

I could have used that time so much more constructively had I only known it was going to be a wasted day at the microphone, right? So, yeah, productivity. I'd love to be more productive. I'd love to be able to multitask. I can't multitask either. Don't you think just to touch on what you just said, don't you think, though, that sometimes that that day of seemingly wasted recording is necessary to gestate? Yes, yes. To get to that one paragraph that is the one that everyone quotes. You are absolutely one thousand percent right. You are absolutely 1000% right.

And that is what it is. You're fumbling your way to glory. That's my that's my my M.O. Fumbling your way to glory. Should be the name of my next book. Next book. I think we have a T-shirt at least. Yeah.

No. And you couldn't be more right about that. And I keep trying to console myself saying that it wasn't actually a wasted, created day, even though 500 people on Twitter said, where the hell is the next show, Carlin? Get off the beach with your Mai Tai. You know what I love, Tim? I love that there are people out there who literally think I wait until the last second, and then I walk in, and four hours later, we have a show, and I was just making you wait. I love those. Those people think I'm Frank Sinatra. I love those people. Right. And you know what? And I'm going to start to cultivate

that image that I really don't do anything until the last second. And then, yeah, OK, I'll give you a show maybe the night after dinner. I'll crank one out for you. I mean, you know, you talk about making yourself an immortal legend. Right. I just do those shows in real time, Tim. No, absolutely. Yeah. At one take, Carlin. I'm Frank Sinatra. Let me know how you like it.

I come in at midnight, keep the band up late, and then I just, you know, we're out there with an album. So speaking of Mai Tais, you walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender? Something straight. You know, I come from a family on both sides of old-fashioned men and that's the only way to describe them i don't smoke cigarettes like they did but it's hard to totally get away from your roots and they were hard drinking see they were so much tougher than i am too i don't have the toughness but i can drink like they drank. And so, so if I'm going to sit there, if I'm going to go to a bar and drink, I'm going to drink a straight whiskey or a straight rum or a straight

vodka or something like that. I don't fool around. Right, right. Why skip the foreplay? That's right. Come on. It's a production done, right? So, so I'm going with the Sinatra theme that you set. So we, we talked about Sinatra. We talked about drinking. What's the first face that comes to mind when you think punchable? Punchable? Oh, you know, I get so, I have, see, and this is where, like, if you get to my old shows on politics and current events, I sound so much angrier. I think when I got into politics as a teenager, I got in it from a, and I think a lot of teenagers when they get to politics or early college students, it's out of anger. You start to see the world as it's been created by the generations before you and you just feel like it's so screwed up.

And how can they deal with all the mile in the other guy's moccasins a little bit better. people that you would just want to punch. Maybe it's a holdover wanting to punch them from years and years ago, but the people that drive me crazy, I'm going to answer this question a certain way. We could downgrade it to slap also. I'm not, I'm not recrafting. I just want to tell you that there was a wonderful series called hell in the Pacific and it's a, it's on the second world war in the Pacific theater. And I think it was made by a British company. And I remember being shocked because it had footage that we don't or we didn't show much in the United States of really horrifying Pacific battles. And they interview a U.S. veteran who didn't die that long ago. His name is Eugene Sledge, and his nickname when he was in the Marines was Sledgehammer. And he went on after he got out of the, to teach a school, a college in,

I think it was Georgia. And he's the most soft-spoken, wonderful, sweet Southern gentleman you've ever met. And the whole Hell in the Pacific series starts with him saying that no one who's even yards behind the front line in war knows what it's really like. And nobody who does, who hasn't been up there, should be able to send young people off to war. If you haven't been, and he means right on the front lines, you have no place doing that. The people that drive me crazy are the people in American politics who are, I mean, who see war as the answer to everything. And I don't even mean war. I mean, some of these, John Bolton's the guy I always use. He's the former American

ambassador to the UN. Just another one of these guys that himself avoided military service, but sees sending other people to go do that as his answer to every problem. And I guess that just drives me nuts because as a guy who talks about military history all the time and who hears these accounts of veterans and realizes how often their lives are forever altered, even when they come home in seemingly one piece. You just want that to be such a really well thought out decision when you decide to have people suck up that that lifetime of damage for some cause, just like Eugene Sledge was saying, you know, anyone who's going to send someone off, you've got to have a really good reason. And I feel we've got a lot of people in the public sphere that didn't do this themselves, but for any reason are willing to go send other people.

And they just make me angry. Like I'm 16 years old and into punk rock, which I'm still into and mad. And you do, you get Irish and you just, I'm ready to become a stereotypical, you know, punch somebody in the mouth. And it's really, it's really a piece of me that's mostly dead now that comes back and haunts me at moments just at the wrong time. It's always at the wrong time. It's always at the wrong time. So speaking of punk rock, what are the most frequently played bands or songs on your, whether it's a computer, iPhone or otherwise? Oh God, I go through, I go through phases where I just kill something, you know, and I, I'll just, I'll get back into the dead Kennedys. And then it's like two weeks

of just nothing but that until I can't listen anymore. And then I'll move to, I've never quite discovered the variety is the spice of life thing. I have to like eat all sushi for like two weeks until I can't have any more. And then, you know, and I don't like sushi, but I just it was an example. And that's how I am with music. I mean, I would buy back in the days of record albums, the new record album and play it 200 times and then never want to hear it again. Or, you know, so and I like all the old stuff, too, when you go back to like Lou Reed or the Seeds or to me, even Jerry Lee Lewis is punk rock to me. That's an attitude, not a not a sound.

Sure. So so I just like all those to me. Music is about so much more than the listening experience. That's just a basic philosophy in music. Is it about the technical expertise of the musician or the beautiness of the melody? Or is it about tribal drums that get your blood going? And, you know, and I'm much more of the tribal drum person than I am about, you know, I work with a lot of audio people and for them, they want to hear technical expertise and wonderfully crafted. And I want to hear something from the soul, you know? Oh, for sure. I'm just getting into hand drums. So I'm all about the drums.

It's very, it's very emotional and ancient sort of. I love it. So last question, potentially, if you could give one or two pieces of advice to your 20 year old self, what would it be? Oh, I think about this all the time. I remember coming out of the television station where I was a TV reporter and I was working the night shift and I had just worked on some stories all day and was just thoroughly unsatisfied with them by the time they hit air. And I remember walking out of the station at like midnight and it was up on the top of this mountain, a beautiful place. And I remember looking out and just saying, oh my God, when am I going to like this? You know, when am I going to, when am I going to really be, be happy with the work that I'm churning out?

So I look back on that all the time when I think of where I am now and just think if I could go back and just tell myself, don't stress about it. It's all going to work out in the end. Wouldn't any of us like to know that? Just tell me it's all going to be okay. And I can get by in my twenties. The 20s were really, really hard for me, I thought. And if you could have just said, stop worrying, it's all going to be okay, although I'm assuming it's all going to be okay, Tim. I still don't know that. But I think I would have saved a ton of emotional stress and worry. I'm a natural-born worrier and I think it would have been nice. Although, if you'd have told me that, I might

have relaxed so much that that reality might never have occurred. So, you know, that's why you can't go back in the time machine and step on the butterfly. You'll screw up everything. So I won't go back and tell myself that, Tim, because I'll screw up my future. That's right. But if there's an aircraft carrier headed back to Pearl Harbor, you'll at least sit down and watch the movie. I don't know how I wouldn't. I don't know how I could avoid that.

All you have to do is come up with a good concept and I'm here. So Dan, this has been a lot of fun. I want people to listen to more of your stuff. What episodes would you like people to listen to? What's the starter kit? If you want to get people hooked, I have my own thoughts,

but what episodes of Hardcore History would you recommend people start with? Well, I wouldn't start with the really old ones because I don't think they are representative of what we've evolved into. It's not that I don't like them. It's just I think that people who liked the really old episodes sometimes miss the way they sounded, and the people that like the current ones don't as much like the old ones. So I'd start with something new just because if you like that, you might get more of it. If you listen to the old stuff, you're not getting any more of that.

I think I would simply pick it based on the subject matter. So we have a certain number of shows. We usually leave the new shows up for a year or two or three before we remove them to the paid archives. So we should have a decent mix of things. We do something called blitz additions sometimes, which were supposed to be shorter, but they aren't shorter because I'm too long winded. But they just they turned out to be about slightly different focuses. So instead of focusing on an event, one of the blitz additions that we did focused on, you know, were people in the old days tougher than we are? And I think the question we asked is, could you beat your grandparents in a war? And then we did another one on, I think we

called it intoxicated priority. Oh, no, history under the influence, we called it. And it was the hidden effect of intoxicating substances maybe on the past. And so those are the way Blitz editions more look at weird subjects like that. And then the other episodes look at historical events. So I would say pick one that sounds like it's an interesting piece of subject matter and then keep your fingers crossed that we that we pulled off that episode halfway decently. And that's how I would do. And that's the that's the gateway drug into hardcore history. I would say for those interested in my my personal recommendations, I have yet to dislike any of the episodes. I think Wrath of the Khans is outstanding.

If you're interested in warfare and tactics and the lore of not Genghis Khan, but Genghis Khan, I guess it turns out. That's right, Genghis. Then I think that's a fantastic series. The Prophet to Doom, I got to say, I know you weren't happy with it for whatever reason. I know you have your reasons, but I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because I was saving that story. That is one of the great twisted history stories of all time. And I remember thinking to myself, OK, you are halfway to a good show before you say your first words with this story.

And so I had really high hopes for how great because it's just the story itself is so wonderful. You don't need Dan Carlin to make it better. You had too much performance anxiety. I think so. I really enjoyed that episode. You teased the hell out of it in the beginning. I got to say, I was getting antsy for a little bit in the very beginning. I was giving you context, though.

You have to understand the reformation for that thing to make sense. Oh, no. I love the reformation. But the lead is fantastic. I'm not going to give away too much of the story. Yeah, I would tell you, listen, don't listen to that one. There's too much set up. So I'm going to let people explore.

Where can people best find you on the interwebs? Where would you like people to find you online? Listen, you can get the free shows from our website at dancarlin.com. They're obviously on iTunes as well. You can get the old shows off our website. I think they're a little cheaper off our website, but you can get them on iTunes as well. Type my name into the search engine somewhere. The right thing should pop up.

Listen, I'm just happy you're sharing my stuff with your listeners. I appreciate that. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. a lot of podcasts, the amount of effort that you've put into each of these episodes is, I think, magnitudes of order better than most audiobooks. And that's saying a lot. I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks. Think about this, though, man. Think about this. This is the real key. The real key is that we live in an era where we can do this stuff. Because I can tell you right now, you look at podcasting, and there's about 20 or 30 really creative podcasts out there

that you would never be allowed to do in a million years in the media of 20 years ago. And yet when you listen to them, you think it's just brilliant, right? And so if we're lucky enough to be in that category where you go, oh gosh, this is something that would never be in the mainstream media. And I'm so glad I found it. Then we're really fortunate. I, to me, that's as somebody who came from that media. And by the time I left it, it was so the opposite of creative. The fact that we could, we've got this blank canvas where we could be creative again. What a great time to live, right? Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing. I mean, you've got, you know, everything from, of course, what you might expect, like the, this American life, uh, to say, welcome to Night Vale, which is like one of the

weirdest things imaginable, which is, uh, it's, it stands, I mean, always in the top 10 on iTunes. It's a hell of an open playing field. And like you said, narrow casting, it's, uh, it's, it's just ripe for the picking. People can be as weird as they want to be and they'll find their audience if they're passionate enough about it. So listen, if you're gifted, I always think about it this way. Can you imagine someone as gifted as Eddie Murphy when he first showed up on the comedy scene or Richard Pryor when he first showed up at the comedy scene? If they simply, you know, the mic can be bad, the audio can be bad. You might not get shows out very frequently. But if Eddie Murphy were simply doing a podcast today when he first started out, that would be his ticket to fame and fortune

without ever needing to make it on a Saturday Night Live first or anything like that. I mean, this is direct media to the public. We've never had it like this, and I'm not even sure it's going to last. This may be a wonderful little golden opportunity in human communication. Take advantage now. If you've ever thought of having a podcast, it's a good time to get in. Yeah, absolutely. Well, well, Dan, this has been a blast. I really appreciate your time. I'm going to continue to listen again to the entire series of Wrath of the Guns, which I use for my morning walks. Everybody, everybody is twisted as me. I know. I know you're going to start getting weird letters from me soon, but I recommend everybody check it out. And, uh, if you've ever thought of starting a podcast, well, maybe now is the time to do it. And I'll be writing a lot more about that. So

Dan, I appreciate it. I will, uh, I will talk to you soon and, uh, really good hanging out. Thank you very much for having me on man. And let's continue success. You're doing great. Thanks, man. I'm, uh, I'm just, I'm, I'm still on the training wheels, but I'm learning as I go. So thanks. Thanks again. I'll talk to you soon. Anytime. All right.

Bye-bye. If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com, F-O-U-R-A-T-O-U-R-B-L-O-T.com Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com slash tferris. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook at facebook.com slash timferris. Until next time, thanks for listening.