The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 59: How to Create a Blockbuster Podcast (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 29, 2015

(Part 2 of 2) How do you create a blockbuster podcast? This episode explores the tips, tricks, and best practices of a master. My guest is Alex Blumberg, who cut his teeth on the king of all radio shows (This American Life) and recently co-founded Gimlet Media. Gimlet swiftly conquered the iTunes rankings with two blockbuster podcasts: Reply All and StartUp. Podcasters everywhere asked: how the hell does he do it? This episode provides some answers. (This Part 2 also includes a sample of my upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger episode!) Show notes and links mentioned can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast***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.

This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show. What you are about to hear is part two of a two-part conversation with Alex Bloomberg, best known for his work with This American Life as co-host of Planet Money, and also co-founder of Gimlet Media, which has produced two blockbuster podcasts at the time of this particular episode, namely Startup and Reply All. He is a true master of storytelling, crafting narrative, radio, interviewing, and much more. If you didn't catch the first part, you might want to do that before venturing in, but you can certainly listen to this independently. This second part is an excerpt from a masterclass that he taught on creativelive.com. I think it costs about $99 and it is phenomenal.

Specifically in this portion, we are going to look at the art of the interview and how to craft and find the perfect question. So I hope you enjoy it. And without further ado, please enjoy part two

of the Tim Ferriss Show with Alex Bloomberg. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1?

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Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. What we're going to be talking about in this segment is the art of the interview.

And what I'm going to be covering today, what I'm going to be covering in this section is, first of all, like sort of the most basic question, which is what are you going for when you're interviewing somebody? What are you trying to get out of it? What is the thing that you want to, what does a good interview look like, right? What does it feel like when it's happening? And as part of that, I'm going to go through what to ask. How do you come up with the questions to ask? And I'm going to be talking a little bit about the power of the right question. And then I'm also going to be talking about nuts and bolts. So that's coming up.

So what are you going for? So the first thing that you're going for is what we talked about in the last section, which is authentic moments of, you know, sort of authentic moments of authentic emotion, authentic sort of realization, authentic moments of, you know, sort of authentic moments of authentic emotion, authentic sort of realization, authentic moments of humor, something that feels like a real emotion. Like those are golden moments in an interview, and that's sort of, that's one of the things that you absolutely want to go for. And we talked a little bit about that before, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit later.

But the thing that I want to focus on now is the other thing that we're talking about is stories. And I have a sort of a very specific meaning when I say what an actual story is. But I think the first thing to do is to play you a little bit, stories. Uh, I think the first thing to do is, uh, to play you, um, a little bit of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about a story. So I'm going to play you a little piece of tape. So this is a story that was on This American Life a while ago. And, um, the setup is that it's this actor, Tate Donovan. Um, and Tate Donovan is, was a sort of a character actor. He'd been, you know, sort of on a couple of different shows, but he didn't get recognized very much. And then he had a, like a stint on Friends and all of a character actor. He'd been sort of on a couple of different shows, but he didn't get recognized very much.

And then he had like a stint on Friends. And all of a sudden he was starting to get recognized. And it was really exciting for him to be recognized because he finally got to be the celebrity that he always wished that he could be, the celebrity that he would have wanted to meet before he was famous. So when he got recognized, and this story happens when one night he was out at this Broadway show, and a lot of people were coming up to him and being like, hey, I saw you. And he was able to talk to people and be very magnanimous and say, thank you so much. It really means a lot.

And he was posing for pictures for people. And at the show, it was happening over and over and over again. I was exactly how I wanted to be. I was doing it. I was doing great. And then the kid with the camera came along. This nervous kid, I don't know, he must have been 16 years old. He's in a rented tuxedo, unbelievably like shy and awkward. And he's got like acne and he's got a camera in his hand. And underneath the marquee is his date who is literally like a prom dress. And she's got a corsage and she's really, you know, nervous and sort of clutching her hands. And he sort of comes up to me and he sort of mumbles, you know,

something like, you know, something about a picture. And I'm like, I just feel for him. So I'm like, oh, absolutely. My gosh, sure. No problem. My God, you poor thing. And I go up to his girlfriend. I wrap my arms around her and I'm like, hey, where are you from?

Fantastic. Going to see the play. It's great. And the guy is sort of not taking the photograph very quickly. He's just sort of staring at me and he's got his camera in his hands and it's down by his like chin, you know, and she's very stiff and awkward and I don't know what to do. So I just lean across and I kiss her on the cheek and I'm like, all right, come on, take the picture. Hurry up. Do you guys want to find out what happens next? That's a story. Uh, when you want to,

so what, that is the power of a good narrative. So when I talk about, I'm talking about like those two basic things you're going for emotion and narrative. We as humans are hardwired, I believe, to listen to narrative. And it's a very simple sort of the mechanics of narrative are very simple. There's like a sequence of actions and there's sort of rising action and it's culminating in something. Um, and you were in the middle of that sequence of actions and you were about to get to the culmination and I stopped it. And it's frustrating. And you really want to know what happens next. And you would never, if you were listening to this, have turned off that podcast

or that radio story at that moment. And that is a good story. And that's why you want to operate in stories. That's why when you're interviewing people, you want to get their stories out of them and you want to get them talking in stories. Because stories are what we want to hear. And so when you're working in an audio format, you need to operate in stories. The other thing we want to hear, as we heard before, is emotion. So those are the two things you're going for in a good interview. So moving on.

Actually, do you want to hear what happens next? All right. I'll rewind it again, and then we'll have it play out. in a good interview. So moving on. Actually, do you want to hear what happens next? All right. All right. I'll rewind it again, and then we'll have it play out. I don't know what to do, so I just lean across, and I kiss her on the cheek. And I'm like, all right, come on, take the picture. Hurry up.

And finally, he sort of, like, snaps it. And I'm like, okay, it was really wonderful to meet you. And he just, like, stammered over to me I'm like, okay, it was really wonderful to meet you. And he just like stammered over to me and was like, um, could you take a picture of us? And the whole time he just wanted me to take a picture of him and his girlfriend underneath the awning of the play. He didn't want a picture of me. He had no idea who I was. Oh God. Got a little emotion in there, too.

Yeah. So that is what I'm talking about when a story. So very simply, we're going to be talking a lot more about what story is in the next session. But very, very simply, it is that. It is a sequence of actions that culminates in something, some sort of revelation, some sort of punchline, some sort of joke, some sort of realization. And more to the point, it's something that you don't want to turn off,

that you don't want to stop listening to. And so that is the thing that's in your mind when you're going out and doing an interview with anybody. You want to ask questions of the interview subject that are going to either elicit an honest emotional reaction or they're going to elicit them telling you a story. So, and there's a lot of things that you can ask that, that will, so let's, let's talk about that. So, so what to ask, right?

So first, if you're trying to ask questions that will, you know, elicit a story, first of all, you don't want to ask ever really yes or no questions. I mean, you got to get some facts out of the way, but you don't want to ask a yes or no question because that is not, that's the end of a story, right? And so how you phrase the questions is very, very important. You want to sort of ask questions. I often sort of say, tell me about the time when, right? Something, you know, you were just like, you want them to tell you. You use words like tell me. So they're automatically starting to talk to you in story language. Tell me about the time. Tell me about the day when you blah, blah, blah. Tell me about the moment when you realized that this was what was going to happen. Tell me about the time

in your life when you were going through this thing. Another question that works really well, tell me the story of. Just ask them straight up, right? You know, tell me the story of this. How did this happen? Tell me the story. You know, sometimes that works. Another thing that you, when you're on the right track, you know when you're on the right track, is when people are actually sort of like talking to you in dialogue. If somebody is saying, well, first I said, and then she said, and then I said, that's really that you know you're on the right track here. So often I will tell people, you know, describe the conversation, where blah, blah, blah. Because if you get people sort of telling you,

he said, then she said, then he said, then she said, that's great, you know you're on the right track. Somebody's telling you a story right then because they're quoting dialogue to you. Again, tell me about, often what you're going for is a moment of realization. So a story has to culminate in something. Often the thing it's culminating in is a moment of realization.

So you want to say, tell me about the day that you realized whatever it is that we're talking about here. Another thing that really works well is if people can sort of talk through a process of, you know, there's, there's often steps that led from one situation to the other situation. What were the steps that got you from one thing to another? What were the steps that got you from, you know, your career in the offer army to, to your career as a, as a, as a celebrity florist or whatever. Right? So anybody here have that career trajectory, by the way? So you want to ask that, like sort of what were the steps?

If you can get people breaking it down into steps, and often each step is its own story. So often step one will be, well, I was at, you know, I was, you know, I had my career in the Army, and this one thing happened when I was in the Army. This day happened that made me want to change. And so they'll tell you that, and that's a story. Each step can be its own story,

but that sequence of steps is also a story. So these are all sort of questions that will elicit stories. You want to have people back up. You want to do all that stuff. All right, so that's one whole set of questions. And often when you're doing... So that's a whole set of questions. The other set of questions, so what do you ask if there's a whole other set of questions that are built around eliciting

sort of honest reflection and emotion? So that's the other stock and trade. That's the other thing that you're going for, right? Pretty simple, two things. So what do you ask when you're trying to get people to tell you how they feel? One question is, how did that make you feel? It's pretty straightforward.

There's a, there's a, I often joke that like doing a good interview for, for audio and, and, and having a good sort of therapy session look very similar. Because what you are trying to do is get people to articulate their emotions in words. All you have in audio are words.

That's all you have. You have people's words. And so if they're feeling something, it's like if something happens and you're not shooting it, it didn't happen. If they're feeling something and they don't articulate it, it also didn't happen. So you need them to articulate the way they're feeling. And so a lot of what you're doing is you're in the audio, you're in the interview and you're like, I noticed feeling in your voice or in your manner, and I want you to articulate that feeling. Um, and so, um, so that's one thing. And so that's like, how did that make you feel is a, is a, is a big, is a, is a big one. Often you also want to encourage that kind of reflection. Some people just aren't very naturally reflective, but they've gone through

something sort of momentous and you want them sort of like getting that, getting the, the, the, the emotion in there. So one good trick I've, I've known is sort of like if the old new could see the new you, what would the old you say? Um, cause often you're going, you're, you know, you're interviewing about something that has happened to them. They've, they've gone through some sort of transition and you want the, you want that, um, moment, you, you want them to be able to articulate what that transition meant to them. They've gone through some sort of transition, and you want that moment, you want them to be able to articulate what that transition meant to them. And these are all tricks we're going to use, by the way, on one of our audience members, Ann, coming up. So we're going to do a live interview coming up in another section. So take notes, because we're going to have to employ this and use this in action.

So a lot of what emotion is around is around internal conflict. So a lot of – and this is one of the things that I love about audio, which audio can do uniquely well, is that it can give voice to interior drama. If there's, on television, you can see people looking pensively, or you can get across an internal life, but stuff has to happen on tape, it has to be happening. And with audio that you can, if you can give people, if you can get people to give voice to the, to the internal conflict, it has the power of any kind of real drama. So, so what I often say to people is like, I'll often say like, so conflict, you're going for conflict, but it can be conflict within a person. It can be a person feeling conflicted about something. And so a big question that I use a lot, which is sort of like just,

if you had to describe the debate in your head over this moment, over this act that you took, what was one side saying, what was the other side saying, you know? Um, and it's just getting people to sort of like voice this, this, the feelings that they're having. And often our feelings are contradictory, right? And so you want that. And that's great. If people have a conflicted feeling when you're interviewing them, that's a wonderful thing too. That's what you want. Cause that's a way of breaking out of what you were talking about, Ann, which is the canned thing. Part of what being canned is, is just sort of just having like a, you know, sort of like a very, very straightforward feeling about it that you don't necessarily believe, but you can't shake people out of. And so what you want is to sort of like get at like,

you know, what, what was the conf, was there ever a point where you didn't feel so confident, confident about this? Was there ever a point where you like felt differently, you know, sort of like, you know, and sort of, and sometimes it can be just as simple as sort of like, you seem very confident right now. Was that always the case? You know, and if they say no, then just zero in on that, like zero in on the weakness, uh, the emotion, right? Like that's what your, that's what your job is. Right. Um, another, another question that I would often happens in an interview, I bet you this will, this will happen to you as you're doing your interviews. Somebody will say something and it feels like very important to them.

Like they've said something that you know is meaningful. You know, and like, you know, you're talking to like a, you know, a rail yard worker and they'll be like, well, you know, and then the boss gave us like, you know, extra hours. And they say it like, and you're like, wow, the boss gave you extra hours. And they say it like, and you're like, wow, the boss gave you extra hours.

You're saying it like it's important and I have no idea what it means. But it means something to you. There's emotion in the voice, right? What does that mean? And so, and often you, and I would always flub this thing. I would know that there was something

that they were getting at, but they weren't articulating it to me. And then Ira used this question all the time. And it's a really great question and it's super straightforward. It's just sort of like, what do you make of that? And so I say it all the time now, because like I'm often, I just need them to tell me the reason that there's emotion in the thing that they just said. Um, so what do you make of that is a really important question. The other thing that I think one of the most important things that we, which is sort of like part of the what do you make of that question,

again, you sort of ask what do you make of that, and then you're, it's sort of a dumb question. You sort of feel like an idiot for asking. It's like sort of like basic and weird. And like, it's not a question that you actually ask that often in normal conversation. And so, and this gets to the point of sort of like, are you having a real conversation? Are you having a staged conversation sort of to elicit certain things? And you're doing a little bit of both, right?

And the, what do you make of that is very much like a staged sort of therapy conversation. You know what I mean? And so, but really important is to then shut up. I can't get across enough the importance of shutting up. And like early on in my career, I would come back and I would just be talking so much and people would start to be telling me interesting things and I would be talking over them. And, and it was all because I was nervous and I was worried about like sort of

making them feel uncomfortable. And you sort of want them to feel uncomfortable a little bit, not totally uncomfortable so that they're not going to be like talking to you. You want them to feel, you want them to feel safe, but you want them to feel like, um, they're saying something real, which is often uncomfortable. So you want it to be safe. You're not judgmental at all. You never want to be judgmental, but you want to be asking real questions. You want them to be thinking really about it. So another just sort of good question that sort of gets at this is the, is the, why is this story meaningful to you? Coming up the power of the right question and how to craft it to get honest responses, deep responses, including plenty of clips, but first a short word from our sponsors.

The Tim Ferriss show is brought to you by on it i have used on it products for years if you look in my kitchen in my garage you will find alpha brain chewable melatonin for resetting my clock when i'm traveling kettlebells battle ropes maces steel clubs it sounds like a torture chamber and it kind of is it's a torture chamber for self-improvement. And you can see all of my favorite gear at onnit.com forward slash Tim. That's O-N-N-I-T.com forward slash Tim. And you can also get a discount on any supplements, food products. I like Hemp Force. I like Alpha Brain. Check it all out. Onnit.com forward slash Tim. The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is your one-stop shop for anything graphic design related. You need a logo,

you need a website, you need a business card or anything else. You get an original design from designers around the world who submit drafts for you to review. You are happy or you get your money back. And I have used 99designs for book cover ideas for the four hour body, which went to number one, New York times for banner ads. And you can check out some of my actual competitions at 99designs.com forward slash Tim. You can also get a free $99 upgrade. If you want to give it a shot, that's 99designs.com forward slash Tim. And now back to the show. So just to sort of get across like sort of like the, the power of like sort of what this,

what this question, what, you know, asking the right question. Um, I want to, I want to play a couple clips of tape here. And this first one is like a story that we did on, so this first sort of like illustration of the power of asking the right question and getting people to reflect honestly. It's a weird story. It was a sort of, it was this really conceptual story that we did at This American Life a while ago. And it was this reporter named Davey Rothbard, and I was the producer on the story, so I went out with him and asked all these questions. And the conceptual story was this. Davey lived on this block in Chicago.

It was sort of like a block in transition. There was some sort of yuppies moving in, but it had been sort of like a poor, there was some gang problems there, and it was like a sort of, it was a neighborhood in transition. And he lived on this block, and there was all these problems that the neighborhood was having with each other. Like, different neighbors were, like, having different conflicts with each other. And there was, like, a neighbor in his building who was complaining about his loud music and was constantly banging on the floor. And then there was another neighbor that had thought that, like, that somebody else stole her dog.

And then there was, like, you know. So there's all these things. And the idea was that Davey was, the idea of the story was that Davey was going to sort of, like, collect all these problems, interview all the people in his neighborhood, and then take the problems that were happening in this neighborhood to an expert on neighbor relations. Call it 540 for round figures. I set up the wrong piece of tape. I mean, sorry. Crap.

Oh, there it is right there in my notes. I missed it. I'm going to set up a different piece of tape. This is another piece of tape. This will be very quickly. Sorry. Keep all that in your mind for a second. And there's two stories I'm going to play.

I'm going to play the first one now in order. So this is a different story. This is one that I did on the housing crisis. This is a story from 2008. And it was one of the more famous stories I did. It was called The Giant Pool of Money, and it was about the housing meltdown, basically. And back in 2008, there was all this stuff happening with subprime mortgages, and a lot of the coverage was about who's at fault. Is it like were deadbeats taking out loans that they knew they couldn't pay back and then ripping off the banks?

Or were poor people being victimized by evil banks that were now foreclosing on their homes? And that was sort of the narrative. And neither narrative really ever made sense to me. And I kept on thinking, like, there's something else going on here, something bigger and more systemic that's going on than just, like, either people ripping off banks or banks ripping off people. And I wanted to get at the heart of it. And there was, like, this question.

So we found this guy who was, you know, who was going through foreclosure and he was telling the story of how, of how, um, he got this loan, this enormous loan. And in the middle of this clip, you'll hear the question that I'm talking about. The question that I felt like turned the whole thing and sort of set up the entire show as a matter of fact, but sort of got him talking in a very different way. Um, so this guy's name is Clarence. He'd taken out a huge loan, almost over half a million dollars. At the time of that loan, he had three not very reliable part-time jobs. He was making about $45,000 a year. And on the loan that he took out, they didn't ask him anything about his income.

Call it 540 for round figures. You basically borrowed $540,000 from the bank and they didn't check your income. Right. It's a no income verification loan. They don't call me up and say, you know, how much money? They don't do that. I mean, it's almost like you pass a guy in the street and say, let me $540,000. He said, well, what do you do?

I got a job. Okay. I mean, it seems as if it's that casual, even though there are a lot of papers that get filled out and stuff flies all over with the faxes and the emails and all like that. Essentially, that's the process. Would you have loaned you the money? I wouldn't have loaned me the money.

And nobody that I know would have loaned me the money. I mean, I know guys who are criminals that wouldn't lend me that money, and they'd break your kneecaps. So, you know, yeah, I mean, I don't know why the bank did it. I'm serious. I mean, $540,000, I mean, I don't know why the bank did it. I'm serious. I mean, $540,000, a person with bad credit. So I love that piece of tape because, like, it was the first time in my experience that anybody, first of all, Clarence is at the center of the problem, and I'm asking him how he feels about,

like, that question enabled me to sidestep the whole whose fault is it in a way. And it just got to a very honest reaction from him, which was sort of like, like there's all sorts of other ways to phrase that question. Did you deserve that money? Should the bank have given you that money? Blah, blah, blah. And all that would have led to a defensive answer. It would have led to not the right answer. But all this, but then when

I was like in the middle of it, I remember thinking like, oh, that's the question. And when I asked him, would you have loaned you the money? It forced him to be honest. There was no way to sort of not be honest about answering that question. Um, and, uh, and it got like a really wonderful sort of honest response that then set up the entire hour basically. So like, why were other people lending money to people that those people themselves would not have lent to them? Right. So like what, what was going on there?

And that sort of like that, that, that question set up the entire thing. All right. So I teased this next piece of tape mistakenly. So going back, cast your minds back to when I set this up before. So anyway,

Davey Rothbart taking, getting all these questions from his, all these questions from the people in his neighborhood, and all the problems, and he's running it by an expert in neighbor relations. You are the only one like you, like you, my friend, I like you.

Here's the bridge in the daytime. Anybody know who this is? Mr. Rogers, yes. Mr. Rogers, who's since passed away. Fred Rogers. So, like I said, it was a weird conceptual story. We were taking these problems from this sort of rough block of West Augusta in Chicago and then bringing them in front of Mr. Rogers and asking him to sort of pronounce judgment on what these neighbors should do.

It was weird. There's a back story that I won't even get into. But I bring it up all to sort of talk about because this was one of these moments where the question really brought us to a different place. One of the things that, so one of the problems that Davey had identified, I'm going to play one more piece of tape and then we'll get to the tape with the question really brought us to a different place. One of the things that, like, so there was this, so one of the problems that Davey had identified, I'm going to play one more piece of tape, and then we'll get to the tape with the question. So one of the problems that Davey had identified in his neighborhood

was that there was this fear, right? That was one of the big things. So there was, like, the people banging on the floor, you know, and the music playing too loud. There was a guy whose neighbor thought he'd stole her dog. And then, but mainly there was, like, a lot of fear. There was, of fear. There was the fear of the yuppies moving into the neighborhood were afraid of the kids who were in the gangs. And so Davey talked about that. And you'll hear Davey and then you'll hear a kid named The Mouth who he's interviewing.

Who exactly are you afraid of, I'd ask. They all answer the same way. The gangbangers. The kids in baggy jeans and basketball jerseys who cruise the neighborhood with their stereos bumping. The gangbangers, they said. Those are the bad neighbors. I guess it's no surprise the mouth had its own idea about who the bad neighbors are. The ones who fear and distrust him. There was a neighbor in the neighborhood that he didn't agree with what we did so much, so he'd stand in his house with a video camera and with what we did so much so he'd he'd stand in his house with a video camera and record what we were doing try to bring it to the beat meetings you

know he used to follow us around with cameras literally follow us around the neighborhood cameras you know and say i'm gonna call the cops and use and you know well for what we ain't bothering you you know that's what i think the worst neighbor is you know yeah they come in here fearing us saying that you know maybe thinking that we're going to do this and do that, but we'll talk to you, you know what I'm saying, bro? We ain't, you know, we ain't animals, bro. We're normal people like you. All right, so that's the mouth and his friends

who are sitting on the street drinking Heinekens. And so we bring that to Mr. Rogers. And so Mr. Rogers is a wonderful, lovely man. Meeting him was was a thrill. He's got this strange sort of power when you meet him. It was crazy. When we went to meet him, his assistant said, we were trying to set up the interview,

and his assistant was like, well, Fred likes to be nearby a piano. So we had to meet him in his studio so that he could play the piano every once in a while. He literally, he had the bag of puppets, and he would bring them out sometimes to make a point and start talking in the puppet voices while we were talking to him. And yet somehow it was like moving and real. I don't know. He was an amazing person, amazing.

But he was giving us a little bit of canned answers. Like when we were answering, sort of, what should this neighbor do? His answer was always bit of canned answers. Like when we were answering, what should this neighbor do? His answer was always sort of the same. Like, you know, well, I hope I would be brave enough to go and talk to them. I would hope that I would be brave enough to visit.

It's so easy to condemn when we don't know. And if I would visit you and find out that you are a reasonable person, I could tell you about my sensitivities and see if it would make any difference to you. It's funny, a lot of the things, like, you know, you said if you were in Davy's neighbor's situation, you said that you hoped you would have enough courage to go down and visit. And a lot of what you were finding when you were talking to people had to do with that same sort of notion. And I'm wondering, like, what is it that we're afraid of, do you think?

Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that, oh, there may be our people in this world who I can't ever communicate with. And so I we would give up on any other creature who's just like us. So, what are your thoughts about that? I'd love to hear what was going on in your mind. Anybody respond? Yeah, answer.

That was Mr. Rogers. That was so powerful. And you could hear the flutter in his voice, which was his emotion rippling through his vocal cords. Right. And it was amazing. And it was such an interesting contrast to think of Mr. Rogers and like, it sounded like the Buddha. Exactly. He's very Buddha-like in person. Yeah. But, but it was like, but that was one of the,

that was the, that was the most honest moment in that, in that interview, you know, and it, and it came out of like, there was this question that was sort of hovering over it and he was giving slightly, he said, did I hear this, and I wonder if you do too. Like, in the beginning, he sounded more canned. And then after I asked the question, right, you can hear it. All of a sudden, he's actually pausing, and he's actually thinking, and he's actually trying to figure out what is the emotion, and he's trying to voice that emotion. And all of a sudden, it becomes real, and it becomes authentic, and you connect to that moment. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah

i think the fact that he is mr rogers carries particular weight yeah we're used to hearing him and and we're used to hearing him do those canned simple solutions oriented just do this and it'll all be great for me that that moment of real darkness when he identifies the greatest fear is i will never be able to communicate with you. Right. Yeah. And as a listener, I can extrapolate that out to the neighborhood. It's like, I can see how that person would think that about that person. And he just took me somewhere so hopeless. Yeah. When he's usually someone who's all about hope and positivity and it's going to be great. So that juxtaposition of what I expect to hear from him and then what I hear from him is incredibly

powerful. Right. And I think, but I think that's a really great point because I think that's what you're trying to do with it. That's what an honest moment will do with anybody, whether it's Mr. Rogers or not. If you hear people talking and the way we all talk, we're all sort of like, you know, we're putting up fronts and lying to ourselves in various ways

as we go through our day. And, you know, nobody's going to notice that I actually screwed up the order of my tape, for example. And, you know, nobody's going to notice that I actually screwed up the order of my tape, for example. But, you know, that when you break out of it, even if you're not Mr. Rogers, that's what comes through. That's the thing that comes through. Yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say that he really took something that maybe many of us could not relate to, like living in a project. And when he answered that, when you asked that question about fear, it made it so personal that I immediately was thinking to myself, what am I fearing? And he took this kind of out there thing and brought it deep. And so because it was personal, then it was more important to me, like you said earlier in the day. Right? Yeah.

And then, and I engaged with that immediately. Right. And he was identifying something. I mean, again, that's also sort of like identifying, putting words to a feeling that we have that is sort of undiagnosed or unsort of explained. That is sort of a definition of profundity a little bit. You know what I mean? When you can actually give voice to, but you know, put that in words, the feeling that we share. And that's what he did with, I like, oh, that is our fear. That is the fear, right? We're, we're afraid that people that we are going to encounter somebody who

is, who we can't connect with as humans. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's also incredible because he uses his own language. He doesn't break out of being Mr. Rogers. You know, he actually manages to remain himself and still go to this really different place for him. And that's how, that's how at least I could tell it was really honest was that he like, you also get to know Mr. Rogers honestly in his language. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you can see why, like, Mr. Rogers of all people would find that an especially horrifying thing. Yeah, that, like, oh, that there are bad people in the world is just, like, such a, you know, it's more poignant for Mr. Rogers than any of us. Yeah. Morgan, yeah.

Just going off of that, at the end he uses the word creature instead of like another human. It's like we're all just these beings that need to like connect with another being. It's not, you know, it's not within our organism. We have a few more from the chat room. Jennifer says, of all people, coming from someone who so genuinely and innocently sees the beauty in people, acknowledging that core fear is really powerful. And Claudia says you can feel how carefully he's thinking about the question, and that makes it very authentic. Absolutely.

Absolutely. You can hear it. For the first time, he didn't have a ready answer. Yeah. You know, and that's important, too. And so, again, like, I don't think that moment would have happened. I often feel like there's, in every interview, or in a lot of interviews, there's a question that's sort of hanging over the interview. That if you can just figure out what that question is, what's the one that's going to, what are we talking around?

And can you figure out what that is and present it to people? It breaks through often. Like, again, the therapy language, you have a breakthrough a little bit, you know, and that's what you're sort of going for. Jeff. I'm wondering if both of those clips ended up in the final cut and whether or not you like including that transition when you get the right question and that person changing from their canned response to, to the more personal, honest one.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, cause you have to, yeah, no, those are both pulled from the actual final version. So like that's what the music was there and everything like that. That was the, that was, I just downloaded the clip off of iTunes and put it in. Yeah, that was like the, yeah. But, but is that, was that your answer or was that? Well, I was wondering if you had gotten the second answer first, if that would have satisfied you, or if you like capturing that

moment when you kind of break someone. Oh, that's interesting. Like, did you need the drama of him giving a canned answer first and then to, like, break through? There's something nice, I mean, there is something about that where it's nice to, like, it was the same thing that happened in the Dave Ramsey thing, where

somebody is not being totally honest, and then there's a question that sort of confronts them. I don't know, that's a good question. I think it helps, I think, because it also sort of tells a story. It's like a chord, I feel like it's like a chord resolving in music, when you're just, like, waiting for the

chord, and then finally the power chord comes, and you're like, ah, that's how it feels a little bit, you know, where, like, somebody is sort of, like, wrestling with it, they're not being honest, they're not being honest and then there's a question that breaks them out of it and then they acknowledge. There's a nice feeling to that as well. But I think it could have worked either way. Like we'll have, we often will use the answer without using the question and it often is just as powerful. You know, you don't need to include the whole thing. You know, it don't need to include the whole thing.

You know, it's just how it works. Alex, we had a couple of questions come in that I think tie in nicely to these clips that we just heard. So I'd love to get your opinion on this. So in that clip, you were talking about getting that location, that street in Chicago. So this ties into a question that Braden had, who says, when you're reporting on a town or a location or with Mr. Rogers, a neighborhood, do you have a methodology for getting to know that town or that place? God, that is tricky. Do I have a methodology? No, I don't. And I think my methodology is try to find somebody who knows it better than me.

It's to sort of go and find the ID, the person who is ID, the person who is the exemplar of whatever it is. Like if there's somebody, if it's, if it's a town and there's like somebody who's in that town who sort of represents sort of the mainstream view of the town and then I identify, um, the outsider, the goth kid or whatever, who can sort of like use, have a more anthropological view of the town. And if you get both of those people, generally you're sort of circling around some sort of authentic picture of it. But you're always, like, that's the biggest difficulty

of being a journalist, is sort of, like, parachuting in some place, trying to pretend, trying to get as much as you can about the place, but you never know. You never know as much as you wish you knew, and you never have time to figure it all out, you know, entirely. Generally, when I'm reporting on a topic, when I find that I have,

that I'm getting the same answers from enough people, like when, then I feel like, okay, well, I've done enough reporting now that I'm getting similar answers. Yeah. Coming up, a sample from my episode with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one and only coming soon, but I'm going to give you a preview. But first, just a short word from our sponsors. The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Onnit. I have used Onnit products for years. If you look in my kitchen, in my garage, you will find AlphaBrain, chewable melatonin for resetting my clock when I'm traveling kettlebells battle ropes maces steel clubs sounds like a torture chamber and it kind of is it's a torture chamber for self-improvement

and you can see all of my favorite gear at on it.com forward slash tim that's o-n-n-i-t.com forward slash tim and you can also get a discount on any supplements, food products. I like HempForce. I like AlphaBrain. Check it all out, onnit.com forward slash Tim. The Tim Ferriss Show is also brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is your one-stop shop for anything graphic design related. You need a logo, you need a website, you need a business card or anything else. You get an original design from designers around the world who submit drafts for you to review. You are happy or you get your money back. And I have used 99designs for book cover ideas for The 4-Hour Body, which went to number one New York Times, for banner ads.

And you can check out some of my actual competitions at 99designs.com forward slash Tim. You can also get a free $99 upgrade if you want to give it a shot. That's 99designs.com forward slash Tim. And now back to the show. Those days there was no money in bodybuilding. And so when we didn't have enough money, we literally had to go to work. And so Franco and I, since Franco's talent was to be a bricklayer and a very skilled bricklayer

and learned that in Italy and in Germany, we were able to go and start thinking about the idea of putting an ad in the LA Times, creating a company and calling it European bricklayers and masonry experts, marble experts, building chimneys and fireplaces, the European style.

And this was also a time where everything that was European was huge in America. So we benefited from that, you know, Swedish massages and everything had to be kind of a foreign name. Or Japan is this and this. So Europe and Japan and all these places were used, the names were used because for some reason the other people just thought that was better.

And so we used that in the ad. And we put the ad in the paper and literally a week later, we had the big earthquake in Los Angeles. I mean, the chimneys fell off the apartment houses and all this stuff and it cracked walls and all this. And so Frank and I,

as a matter of fact, one of the friend of ours' wife who was very smart and she worked in a supermarket um she did uh answering the phones and calling people back and all this uh just to make sure that our english doesn't get all screwed up with the talking over the phone and all this and uh and and so she gave us in the addresses and then we got to do the estimates and i was kind of like set up to be the math genius and that figures out the square footage

and that Franco will play the bad guy and I play the good guy. And so we will go to someone's house and then someone would say, well, look at my patio is all cracked. Can you guys put a new patio in here? And I would say yes. And then I will run around with the tape measure,

but there will be a tape measure with centimeters, and no one in those days could at all figure out anything with centimeters. And we would be measuring up, and I'd say, well, this is 4 meters and 82 centimeters, and they had no idea what we were talking about. And this is so much, and then we would be writing up formulas and the dollars and amounts and square centimeters and square meters and all this stuff.

And then I would go to the guy and I said, well, I said, it's $5,000. And the guy will be in a state of shock. And he says, it's $5,000. I said, this is outrageous. I said, I mean, I didn't think that this is a, well, what did you expect? The debate is, I thought maybe it's like $2,000, $3,000, about $5,000. I said to him, I said, let me talk to my guy. I said, because he's really the masonry expert. I said, but I can beat him down for you a little bit. Let me soften the meat. And then I said, we'll go over to Franco.

And we would start arguing in German. You know, this is a bullshitter. You can't ask for so much. This is a blunder. We work here in America. And this will be going on and on. in German, you know, this is eine Schweinerei, du kannst nicht so viel verlangen, das ist ein Blödsinn, wir arbeiten hier in Amerika, and this will be going on and on, and he'll be screaming back, and me in Italian,

and some stuff, and then I will be, then all of a sudden he calmed down, and then we'll go to the guy, and say, phew, okay, here it is, I said, I could get him as low as $3,800.

I said, can you go with that? And he says, thank you very much he says you know i i i really think that you're a great man blah blah blah and all this stuff i say okay i say give us half down right now we go right away and get the cement and get the bricks and everything that we need for here and we can start working i said on monday and the guy was ecstatic he gave us the money we immediately ran to the, cashed the check to make sure that the money is in the bank account

and then we went out and got the cement and the wheelbarrow and all the stuff that we needed and went to work and so we worked like that for two years. I mean, very successful.

As a matter of fact, in the end, we had various different jobs where we employed like 16 different bodybuilders, all the laziest bastards that you can never hire but nevertheless because they all were interested in working outdoor and getting a tan at the same time for their bodybuilding competitions if you enjoyed this episode you are going to love

what i have coming all sorts of crazy experiments, incredible guests, and you can very easily not miss any of it. Just subscribe on iTunes, or you can check out all of my guests, as well as my blog that has one to two million readers per month at fourhourworkweek.com. All spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com. That's where I chronicle all of my insane self-experimentation. And I would love to hear from you. So please reach out to me on Twitter, twitter.com forward slash T Ferris, T F E R R I S S or on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash Tim Ferris with two R's and two S's of course. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.