The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 211: "Can You Tell Me About the Testicles?" with Tim Ferriss

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Mike welcomes the author of The Four-Hour Work Week and many other best-selling books, not only to discuss the excellent advice for which Tim Ferriss has become famous, but rather to unpack the question he posed to Mike in 2008. The question that led to one of the most uncomfortable TED Talks of all time, and a speaking career Mike didn't know he wanted.

This podcast is supported by Middy Health. Are you in midlife feeling dismissed, unheard, or just plain tired of the old health care system? You're not alone. For too long, women's serious midlife health issues have been trivialized, ignored, and met with a just deal with it attitude. Many of us have been made to feel ashamed or forgotten. In fact, even today, 75% of women seeking care for menopause and perimenopause. issues are left entirely untreated. But here's the powerful truth. It's time for a change. It's time for Midi. Midi is not just a health care provider. It's a woman's telehealth clinic, founded and supported by world-class leaders in women's health. What sets Midi apart? We are the only women's telehealth brand covered by major insurance companies, making high-quality expert care accessible and affordable. Our clinicians provide one-on-one face-to-face consultations where they truly listen to your unique needs. We offer a full range of holistic, data-driven solutions, from hormonal therapies and weight loss protocols to lifestyle coaching and preventative health guidance. This isn't one-size-fits-all-care.

This is care uniquely tailored for you. At Middy, you will join our patients who feel seen, heard and prioritized. You will find that our mission is clear to help all women thrive in midlife, giving them access to the health care they deserve, because we believe midlife isn't the middle at all. It is the beginning of your second act. Ready to feel your best and write your second act script? Visit join midi.com today to book your personalized insurance-covered virtual visit. That's join midi.com. Middy, the care women deserve. Well, are you sick of it yet?

Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss a rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same.

question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at net suite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000. businesses with NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or chat, GPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deaddening manual processes.

This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at netsuite.com slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netsuite.com slash mike. That's net suite.com. NetSweet. slash Mike.

Hey there, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 211. This one's called, can you tell me about the testicles? Can you tell me about the testicles? That was a real question. Posed to me, in earnest, 13 years ago by today's guest, the one and only Tim Ferriss.

It turned out to be a pretty important question that led to an answer, I dare say you won't soon forget. I hope not, anyway. We start with the true story of one of the greatest performances of all time, in my opinion, famously executed, not so long ago, from a modest stage in a little town up north. Now, if you're a fan of the 60s, you will know the town. and if you're a fan of true excellence, you'll know the performance, but you may not know the performer as well as you think you do. And you might be surprised by the amount of time it took him to change the way

people think about that which is truly excellent and memorable and that which is merely mediocre and forgettable. That tale bleeds somewhat seamlessly, I think, into a less famous performance by yours truly, delivered not so famously from another modest stage in another little town. This one, a little town out west. I refer to what turned out to be the most consequential performance of my career, inspired by the aforementioned question from my aforementioned guest,

the one and only Tim Ferriss, who famously asked me, and I'm quoting, Mike, can you tell me about the testicles? The honest answer to that. question is the reason I have a speaking career today. And for that reason, I invited Tim onto the podcast to discuss the power of advice from deliberate to accidental and the pressure that sometimes comes from dispensing it. Tim Ferriss, if you didn't know it, is the host of the Tim Ferriss Show, one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He got famous for writing the four-hour work week, the four-hour body, the four-hour chef, and several other best.

bestsellers, including my favorite tools of Titans, which, believe it or not, I was supposed to be in, but wasn't due to circumstances best explained in the form of a sincere apology that I attempt to express during our conversation. This is a good one, especially if you've ever wondered about the unintended consequences of taking conventional wisdom or harbored a latent desire to know more about the process whereby the testicles on a baby lamb might be removed. And really, who doesn't want to know more about that? It's episode number 211, and it all starts right now. Chapter 33, a little town up north. During her farewell tour in 2005, Cher demanded that multiple boxes of aloe vera tissues in rose-scented, cube-shaped boxes.

be placed in her dressing room at every stop. Happily, Cher wasn't David's problem. When Mariah Carey was interviewed on British TV in 2009, she demanded to be lowered onto the sofa by two stagehands so that she would increase her dress. Happily, Mariah wasn't David's problem. When Madonna checked into a 5,000 square foot hotel suite in 2012, she demanded hundreds of pink roses individually placed into hundreds of crystal vases,

carefully situated on every flat surface. Happily, Madonna wasn't David's problem either. But when Eddie demanded seven full weeks to prepare, well, that was David's problem, because if David was going to pull off an event of this magnitude, the most ambitious outdoor gathering in recent memory, he'd need the right entertainment, and there was really no one else like Eddie. But seven weeks of rehearsal? That was a diva move unlike anything David had ever experienced.

The event was less than a month away. Moving the date at this point would be a logistical nightmare. What to do? David rubbed his aching temples and took a moment to feel sorry for himself. Back in the 60s, prima donnas were no less common than they are to do. day, and guys like David were still at their mercy. But the 60s were also the reason David was determined to make this happen. America was at war. Young people were feeling rebellious, and David thought the country could benefit from a massive expression of love and unity.

He also believed the farmland around his hometown would be the perfect venue. Of course, he was right. You know the town. You might even know, the famous address. But unless you were there in person to hear the music and smell the air and lose yourself in the moment, it's easy to forget that the whole event turned on a single performance, which is why David ultimately agreed to Eddie's demand. He rebooked the vendors, rebooked the performers, redrew the permits, and announced a new date. Then he prayed that Eddie would come through, which, of course, Eddie did. Again, you had to be there, but if you weren't, it's fair to say that Eddie was a force of nature. Like Hendricks and Joplin, he could go for hours

on end. Like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, he could riff in ways that left audiences astounded and begging for more. But unlike those famous headliners, Eddie didn't have a band to back him up. When Eddie took the stage, it was just him. That's why no one wanted to follow Eddie, not ever. That's also why, in spite of the last-minute scheduling change, the announcement of his involvement triggered a migration of people. Thousands walked, thousands hitchhiked, and thousands more did whatever was necessary to get themselves to that little town up north, where they hoped to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and maybe hear something transcendent,

something they'd always remember. And boy, did they ever. After a few very solid opening acts, Eddie took the stage, and the crowd went wild. For two hours, the most electrifying performer in America held thousands of people in the palm of his hand. They cheered, and they wept, And when Eddie had finished, they applauded for a full 15 minutes, deeply moved and profoundly

grateful to know that one day they would tell their grandchildren, I was there the day Eddie made history. And of course, they did. To this day, their descendants are passing the same story onto their children. Because, remember, this was the 60s, a time when America was at war, and young people were feeling rebellious, a time when a farmer named David had the good sense to see that the farmland around his hometown would be a perfect venue for his carefully planned expression of love and unity. Of course, he was right. A few months earlier, another kind of gathering had unfolded in that very

same place, a gathering that brought 175,000 young people together for three days of unforgettable slaughter, an epic bloodbath that left 50,000 Americans dead or wounded. Many of them were still scattered in terrible pieces right there on David's front lawn. That's why, after three months of unspeakable cleanup, David was determined to dedicate the farmland around his home to those now buried beneath it. And so he did. unless you were actually there to hear the bands play their dirges, to hear the choirs, sing their hymns, unless you were there to smell the air, still rank with rotting flesh, and listen to Eddie deliver his 13,000-word eulogy from memory, it's hard to imagine what happened in that little

town up north during that unforgettable summer of death. You know the town, and you probably know the address. No, not the two-hour rhetorical masterpiece no one thought they'd ever forget, but the two-minute rumination that followed, a shockingly brief 272-word homily that left most people scratching their heads, wondering if they had missed something. It's funny how things work out. Edward Everett was once known as America's greatest orator, but today, very few people remember him at all. Fewer still can recall a single phrase from the epic address he delivered so masterfully on that sacred afternoon in 1863.

No one at all still recalls David Wills, the man who organized the event that transformed the farmland around his home into the sprawling National Cemetery it is today. But we all remember the man who stole the show, seven score and sixteen years ago. A haggard man, suffering from fever and grieving the death of his son. A humble man, about as far from a diva as a politician could be, an honest man who was content to write his speech on the morning of the event in the spare bedroom of David Will's home. A man named Lincoln, who delivered the address we do remember, a famous address. that took its name from a little town up north.

A little town called Gettysburg. T-L-D-R. Those were the letters that appeared in the comments under my very first Facebook post back in whatever year that was. I didn't know what they meant, but they kept showing up after all of my subsequent posts. T-L-D-R.

I encountered a millennial one day out on the mean streets of San Francisco and asked him what those letters meant. Too long didn't read. You're kidding, I said. Why would someone with no time take the time to tell me that they had no time? The millennial shrugged and said, people are busy? I understand that, I said, but if you have time to spell out the fact that you're too busy to read what I wrote, how busy can you really be? But the millennial was no longer listening. He had leaned down to pet Freddy, who snarled viciously and tried to bite his finger off. That got the millennials' attention. Hey, man, you should tell people that your dog is mean.

I'm sorry, I said. I didn't have time. I wonder sometimes if Freddy is smarter than he lets on. Like Lincoln at Gettysburg, he made his point in no time. With a snarl and a snap, he gave his audience something to remember. My dog seems to understand the power of brevity. But do I? Have I held your attention thus far? Or have I droned on like Edward Everett belaboring things unnecessarily? Don't get me wrong. What Everett did at Gettysburg was remarkable. He wrote 13,000 words, memorized them, and then delivered them flawlessly to a full house. His performance was hailed as a triumph in both the Union and the Confederacy. This was a man who could have talked about a pencil for eight minutes or 80,

and for that he has my deepest admiration. But I wonder how Everett would do in our T-L-D-R culture. I wonder how he would do at a TED conference. You might be familiar with TED, a series of gatherings in Silicon Valley where self-styled creatives pay thousands of dollars to hear luminaries hold forth on topics near and dear to their hearts. Many famous people have given TED Talks,

though the most popular ones tend to come from people you've probably never heard of. They have titles like, How to Measure Your Life, My Stroke of Insight, The Skill of Self-Confidence. Makes you wonder how creative those creatives are. I gave a TED Talk, too. In 2008, like Lincoln, who was invited to Gettysburg to make some remarks, I didn't know I'd been invited to give an actual speech. I thought I was there to say a few words on behalf of the Discovery Channel, which was sponsoring the event.

In reality, Discovery had volunteered me to give a presentation about the dignity of dirty jobs. An 18-minute presentation. No more, no less. I called my speech the changing face of the modern-day proletariat and used my 18 minutes on stage to reflect on castration. specifically the oral castration of baby lambs. It was a popular talk. You can watch it on YouTube right now. As a matter of fact, I think you should. Go ahead.

I'll wait. Are you back? Great. As you just saw, the process of biting the testicles off a baby lamb is not as barbaric as you might have thought. Sure, it's disgusting, but it's a lot more pleasant than the method recommended by experts

at the Humane Society, who assured me that putting a tight rubber band around the scrotum is the way to go. That process takes days and causes prolonged agony for the lamb, but it looks a lot more civilized than the toothier method. It's approved, you see, but it's not more effective, nor is it better in any way for the lamb. Anyway, I told my story with way more detail than my audience might have expected. Naturally, I cast myself as the protagonist. Then I discussed Aristotle's ideas about an agnoresis, wherein the hero discovers something about himself, an inescapable truth that he didn't know, and peripatia, whereby that discovery reverses the course of the narrative. When Oedipus, for instance, learns that he enjoys having sex with older women, that's an agnorosis,

a discovery about himself. When he discovers that the woman sharing his bed is his mother, that's Peripatia. Likewise, when Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense realizes that little Cole really can see dead people, that's an agnauracus. When Bruce realizes Cole can see him, because he's been dead all along, that's Peripatia. I like the idea of using Aristotle's time-minded terms to describe the surprising truth about biting the balls off baby lambs. Specifically, I liked using those terms to illustrate my realization that sometimes the experts don't know their ass from a hot rock. But let me tell you, I would have liked it a lot more if I had been given two hours instead of 18 minutes to explain myself. Here's something you

might not know about TED talks. Many of them exceed the allotted time. Take it from a guy who sat through three days of these things. Otherwise, brilliant people struggle mightily to keep their stories under 18 minutes. Those are the TED Talks that never get posted to YouTube, the ones that make me feel better about how much trouble I had with mine. In fact, you may have noticed, despite my best efforts, I also went over, the allotted length, by two whole minutes. No big deal, right?

except that two minutes was all Lincoln needed to unite a divided country, to make the occasion eternal with words we now consider immortal, words that if posted on Facebook today would undoubtedly elicit a TLDR from those with just seconds to spare, or maybe a woof from Freddie. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him.

That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse. And it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the high-rector. hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. And it helps people like me find the people who can function in a non-traditional work environment like MicroWorks. In other words,

ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too. Postageage. job for free at ziprecruiter.com slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are, you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire.

T-I-M-B-O. And Timbo was his name, O. How are you, old friend? Yeah, good to see you, man. I'm great. I'm great. Well, full disclosure, I didn't invite you on here necessarily to interview you in the way that I think you've probably become accustomed to being interviewed as much as I love to go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. And maybe we will. I just want to back up, first of all, and tell you that I did something super weird last night. I hope this could go a lot of directions. In part, in part because of what I heard you were talking the other day.

day to, was it Andy Huberman? I was, yeah, Andrew Huberman, the neurobiologist from Stanford. Yes, and I heard him on your show, and I also heard him on Rogan briefly, and he was talking about breathing and vision, in particular vision and such a, you know, the interesting way the inside of the eye physically changes to bring in more peripheral when you're relaxed and more targeted when you're not. Well, he has the same sort of riff on the nose. And I took a deep dive on this, Tim. In fact, six weeks ago, I had my whole nose rebuilt, cut me open, peeled, peeled it back, four and a half hours under, shaved the turbinites, put the septum back where it belonged. And I embarked on a very weird week of indescribable misery and regret, followed by a kind of bliss.

that's easiest to describe by doing this for the first time. In 40 years, I can breathe. And last night, I put a piece of surgical tape on my mouth because I wanted to see what I felt like going through a whole evening, only breathing through my nose. This would have never been possible ever before in my life. But I, you know, I just came off a big trip and I was exhausted and I was like, oh God, Tim wants to talk at like 7 a.m. my time. This is brutal. But I put the surgical tape on my mouth and I woke up at 5 a.m. feeling as though I had slept for 10 hours. I am weirdly awake and cogent for this hour, which is a long way of saying, thanks for having Huberman on your podcast. You're most welcome. He's a smart guy. He's brilliant. And I'm glad you didn't asphyxiate.

No, you know what? We would be having a very, Chuck would be having a very different conversation. conversation with you. Indeed. Indeed. But how many times have you run into civilians, friends, fans who have said, dude, I took, I heard a little something in an otherwise long conversation and I applied it and the needle moved. So thank you. I hear it every day, which is what keeps me going. And it's really gratifying to have, and fun, frankly, to have conversations that I deeply enjoy that people can tease apart in those ways, right? You have a two-hour conversation, they grab two minutes, they try one thing and it moves the

needle, and they think to themselves, holy shit, well, if that tiny little tweak actually move the needle, what else, what other tiny tweaks can I apply? What other tiny tools can I implement that will move the needle? And I like how that opens the aperture of your awareness, what you see and what you question in life. So it fortunately for me happens often. And I try to direct the conversations to unearth those tools. Is it always, that's a bad way to ask it, always and never are bad words. Big words, big words. Is it usually the case in your vast experience that small adjustments are infinitely

more powerful than large ones? oftentimes they are just for the pure obvious maybe aspect of compliance when people decide as in year's resolution i've never exercised before my life but i'm going to go to the gym 14 times a week or i'm going to train for a marathon and get on a treadmill for the first time and do a training run of five miles as my first workout it's almost always doomed to fit. The side effects are too great. And by side effects, I mean physical, I mean psychological, I mean social. So it's, it would be much more effective in a case like that to do say what this one friend I have who used to work at Google, Google engineer did. He made an agreement with

the friend that they would go to the gym together and all they had to do is spend 10 minutes at the gym. It didn't matter if they just walked around the gym, just 10 minutes at the gym. That was it. They could just eat candy bars from the pro shop. I mean, they just had to, they just had to do to be in the gym for 10 minutes. And if they, if if one of them didn't show up, they had to pay the other person one dollar. Now, this is a trading places type situation. Like a dollar is not a meaningful sum of money to either of these people. But that agreement led to a compliance, meaning doing what you say you should or want to do that led to both of them losing, I want to say 50 plus pounds. And it's it's always, I think, better to stack the deck in a way where you know you can clear the hurdle in the beginning.

So you're setting the game up so you can win rather than trying to do too much at once. I think that is certainly a pattern I've observed in all of the behavioral change that I've studied, which at the end of the day is really what I'm looking at. Behavioral change. What actually gets behavior to change? and turns out that very, very small steps with immediate positive feedback like the tape on the mouth, that kind of proof of concept works, works really well. All good advice, it seems, has some sort of corollary in poetry.

And that's Robert Frost right there. Way leads on to way. You know, you don't get a clear look at the end of the path, really ever. but you're on a path right now, such as it is, and that's going to take you somewhere. So in general, if you're going in the right direction, in general, it's still going to be crooked and circuitous. You know, I'm thinking of the moment we met. Before I had heard your name, before I had seen your books, before anything, tell me the

way you remember it, because it's now, it was 2008, but when I look back at it, I have two distinct recollections of the moment we met, one in a bathroom and the other on the escalator. Which do you remember? So I actually remember standing in a hallway, so I don't know if you slip me a roofie or what happened. You'll have to fill me in on the other two, but was there by chance a urinal or an escalator in that hallway? You know, I'm going to have to hear more about this. I'm having all sorts of mixed feelings right now. But, uh, I remember, I remember getting there, and by there, I mean the EG, which for people who don't know, was in some way sort of a predecessor or prototype of TED.

Early Ted X. That's right. And so the EG was started by Richard Saul-Worman, who also started Ted. And this particular event was in, I want to say Monterey. Correct. Monterey. And I was kind of fresh off the boat having my first experience of being foisted into the public view. Foisted sounds maybe a little bit forced, but experiencing. Foisted works. Voisted on his own partard, I believe. Forsted on my own patard, as I was going

to put it. And this was right after the four hour work we could really found its escape velocity. And it took a while. It took a while. And I was very, very, very intimidated. And I remember, I remember at least part of our conversation, but I would like to hear your recollection. Okay. It sounds like, it sounds much more multi-textual. Let me tell you what I think happened. And then I'll tell you how I often tell it when people ask me. And, and now the two have become so conflated. I'm not sure which is, which is honest, but I do know the sentence, and I bet my life on this. The first sentence you said to me was, I want to hear about the testicles. That's the first sentence that Tim Ferriss uttered, and that's why you're on this podcast, because as a result of

that sentence, in a completely self-absorbed way, I completely rethought my speech at this TED talk, which, by the way, was not yet even remotely formed. I thought I was there to share a few remarks on Discovery's behalf, who was helping sponsor this Bacchanalia. But when I walked in and saw my giant photo hanging from the wall, an 18-minute talk from Mike Roe on the changing face of the modern-day proletariat, I was like, holy crap, I'm in trouble. I'm on an escalator at this point.

And that's when I hear a voice say, I want to hear about the testicles, and that was you. and the way I remember it, what I think happened was you and I proceeded to talk about dirty jobs. We introduced ourselves. I congratulated you on the book that you had written that I had not read, and you congratulated me on the show that I was hosting that had found its own weird trajectory. At that point, 2008, I had not formed microworks, but Dirty Jobs was the number one show on discovery and in over 180 countries. So both of us were just on the edge of our first real hit. And both of us were trying to figure out what that meant vis-a-vis a TED Talk in Silicon Valley with these incredibly precious people and their smartphones. It was so weird for me.

And it had to be weird for you. Oh, super weird. So before you tell me what actually happened, let me just add that when I tell them, this story, you're standing next to me urinating in the men's room. And I say, that's when Tim Ferriss looked at me and said, I want to hear about the testicles. And I'm not sure it didn't happen that way. It's a better story if you and I are taking a pee and you hit me with that line. But in full disclosure, I think it happened on the escalator as we were going up to that mezzanine. You know, it wouldn't be terribly out of character for me to say it in either locale.

So I'd say we go with the, go with the urinal since it just, it makes such a, such a better movie. It was the four-hour bathroom break. Yes, exactly. So I think that makes, I think that makes a better story. So let's go with the urinal. I do remember opening with that because I remember being nervous. I recognized you. You didn't know who the hell I was necessarily. I had more hair then. Certainly. I do remember that much. But I was very or felt very out of place. And so before saying

anything to you, I was like, what could I say that would not be something he's heard 100,000 times before? You nailed it. And I knew from watching the show that, you had a good sense of humor. And I was like, well, this is going to go down in flames or it's going to start a conversation. So let's let's start with the testicles. Tim, it did more than that. I mean, I really, my purpose in having you here, kidding aside, is to simply say thanks. And so this is kind of a backhanded compliment I'm paying you because the greatest thing you ever did for me was motivated by a sense of being out of place, a little nervous, and just wanting to cut things. through. It turned out to be brilliant advice. You did want to hear about the testicles. So in the next

few hours, I sketched out an outline for a talk on the business of removing testicles from a lamb with my teeth, which was a very controversial episode of Dirty Jobs, but turned out to be a very apocryphal one because it illustrated something that here 13 years later, I do believe is headline news, which is be wary of experts. And what I was trying to do with that speech is point out that as a guy impersonating a host, I did everything right. I called PETA. I called the Humane Society. I wanted to make sure we did this job right. And as it turns out, doing that job right was the worst thing in the world for the lamb. The right way to do it for a whole lot of reasons is the most barbaric thing I'd ever done on television, and there resided a kind of parapetia that turned into a pretty good point,

which led to a speaking career. And between 2008 and now, as a result of that offhanded conversation, comment at a urinal or maybe an escalator, I've probably given 500 talks on various versions of be wary of experts. And so here we sit, Mike Roe thanking. Tim Ferriss for wildly inappropriate comment at an otherwise august gathering. Well, you're most welcome. I'm happy to report that, you know, my customary 15% can be paid in arrears. And that's fine. I won't charge interest. And I do remember being so impressed because I knew

this had been kind of popped on you at the last moment. And I had spent, I mean, probably at that point months thinking about what the hell I was going to stammer out at this event. I was going to say four hours. Four hours in dog ears. And you got up there and much later, of course, I would have a better understanding of how you had harnessed this natural ability or cultivated this unnatural ability to extemporaneously talk on any subject imaginable, including porcelain dolls at three in the morning. And I was so impressed at how well you were able to sort of jazz improvise on stage with that presentation. So kudos to you as well. Well, maybe you can riff on this as well because there's a weird relationship between advice, execution,

and call them props or maybe talismans, for lack of a better word. And this this crazy speech I gave has been viewed like yours millions of times on the YouTube's and stuff. And they cut this part out. Like in the very beginning, I walked out on stage and I said, a few hours ago, Tim Ferriss asked me to tell him about the testicles. And so that's what we're going to do. They cut that out. I remember that.

And that's a shame. But there was a prop that came in really handy that actually inspired me to go for it. They had these, like these trading cards they made, like baseball cards with the faces of all the speakers on them. And there was a stack of them, like 50 of them. And around those trading cards was a thick black rubber band. Ah, yes. And that rubber band looked exactly like the band that PETA told me to put over the scrotum of the lambs in order to retard the flow of blood that would all ultimately let the testicles drop off, blackened and shriveled three days hence.

It was that rubber band in my pocket that was like, you know something? Tell that story, because now you have a prop. You have a completely unsolicited request from a guy who wrote a book with the word testicle in it and you have a rubber band in your pocket. What else could I have done, Tim. Just to be clear, that was the only book title of mine that had testicle in the title. Oh, I see you me. I should. I should go for that. I feel like I've earned the right to write a book with testicle in the title at this point. If you do, if you do, and I am not invited to write the forward to that book, then shame on us both. Oh, I think we'll have a Wall Street Journal style illustration of your face on the cover with a nod and a wink. I can't imagine otherwise. Can it be a

pop-up? It could be a pop-up. Scratch and sniff, possibly. Depends on the budget of the publisher. All right, I'm in. What do you remember about your talk? What in the world did you talk about in 2008 on that darkened stage? My guest today, Tom Albanyes, is an American giant, and I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level. that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton, and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could,

hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant, you're not just buying a high-quality sweatshirt or t-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive the wash. You're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high quality staples, hoodies, teas, denim, built to be worn year after year

at American-giant.com slash mic. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American Giant, American Made.

American Giant, American Made. On that darkened stage, I talked about fear as it related to a number of things, including swimming and then testing assumptions. I didn't learn to swim until my 30s. I had a number of near-drowning experiences when I was a kid and swore off swimming effectively. Didn't learn until my 30s. So I talked about overcoming my fear of swimming through a method that tests pretty much every assumption of what people might think of as proper swimming technique.

Not too dissimilar, actually, from the so-called expert advice that you received on how to remove testicles. And it turns out that proper instruction is difficult and fraught with all sorts of problems. And so I walked people through how I learned to swim in some of the technical topsy-turvy approaches that Terry Lachlan with Total Immersion Swimming uses to kind of turn the entire technique upside down and then applied that to other things like tango and language learning to show some of the principles of accelerated learning that hop between disciplines. See, this is more of that Venn diagram thing. You're really good at putting a lot of dots on the table, seemingly disparate

dots and then connecting them. And that as a parlor trick, six degrees of Kevin Bacon is good fun. In fact, Chuck and I made a show called six degrees during lockdown that tried to capture that same delight, right, of saying, oh, that piece fits in an area where I never ever would have thought to even see if it fit. And so if you're talking about taking a technique that allowed a 30-some year old who couldn't swim to be able to swim, then apply that same technique to winning. Did you win that ballroom dancing thing? I made it to the, I was a semi-finalist in the world championships of Argentine Tango in Argentina. So I made it to the semifinals.

Didn't make it to the end. It didn't win, but I made it to the semifinals. Always a bridesmaid. Well, always a bridesmaid. That's my memoir. So what, what is that moment, that realization. that allowed you not to be afraid of the water, that also allowed you to almost win ballroom dancing, which I'm assuming also allowed you to do all sorts of other freaky things with

your body, from holding your breath to sleeping better to down the list it goes. Is there a secret sauce that's applicable to all of this? I think there is a secret sauce. And the secret sauce has ingredients. And the ingredients are largely comprised of questions. So, asking yourself, if I had to focus on, say, 20% of the techniques that are recommended, which 20% would I choose and why? Or 20% of the material in the case of language learning, which would be highest frequency, asking yourself, what sequence is most logical? Or what is the sequence that is taken as common practice, best practice? What if I did the opposite? it. What if I did the opposite for 24 hours? What if I did the opposite for 48 hours is a very high

leverage question. If I had to remove 80% of the training, what would I remove? And asking people who are, say, good at a skill, but who shouldn't be, for instance, if someone were really good at ultramarathons, but really large, not built for the sport, they're not a human spider, or someone was very short and really good at swimming, you could ask them, if you had to get rid of 80%, what would you do? And what are the biggest wastes of time that you see novices engaging in? So it's really a series of questions. Some you can answer yourself. Some you can answer with the help of experts like a Terry Lachlan. Or for instance, in the case of sports, you can very easily almost always find a silver medalist or even a gold medalist from a past Olympic Games, who you can take lessons from via Zoom or in person

for say $100, $200 an hour, maybe even less. And the training could just be a 60-minute conversation where you ask them these types of questions. Who's good at this, who shouldn't be? And the secret sauce is really a sequence of questions that allow you to begin testing assumptions and pushing at the edges and the boundaries. What is the most important or consequential question

that you ever asked yourself? I think it's probably some variant of what might this look like if it were easy. And I say that because many of us, not all of us, but many of us are so accustomed to striving for sixth gear that if we're not redlining, we feel like we are not doing enough. and strain is not always an indicator of potential forward progress. And in fact, with total immersion with Terry Lockland, he said, when you're training, if you are out of breath, if you feel tired, you're not doing it correctly. Like we are doing technique training. It is not physical conditioning.

And that was an epiphany for me that applies to a lot of things. So whether it's in business, whether it's in dealing with your, inbox, whether it's dealing with your in-laws. It doesn't really matter. What might this look like if it were easy? I think is a question that I've certainly asked a lot in the last 10 years. That's so good. You know, again, there's an artistic corollary to that. We had a guest on here, an old friend of mine months ago called Michael Gellert, who's a singer. And Chuck and I each had a music teacher many years ago in high school, one of those mentors on steroids who just changed our life. But they both talked about technique in the same way. They revered it and they cursed it. When you're in the

audience, the last thing you want to see is somebody working hard at being great, right? You don't want to see the sweat streaming down the singer's face unless you're in the like the pop world and it's Michael Bolton and his cords are strained and I, you know, he's, but that's not really singing. Like a real singer, like a Dietrich Fischer Descal or a Jim Morris. or a Pavarotti at his prime, you know, their faces go slack almost. And what they're doing is at once incomprehensibly beautiful and seemingly sleepy. You don't see their technique. And so there's this dichotomy of first you must master the technique and then you must forget it.

And then people will pay to watch you. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, getting to ease or getting to elegance, right, where you're using the fewest moving pieces possible to get to a beautiful outcome or presentation, takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot, it takes quite a lot to get to that point, to get to the other side of strain, or to find a path that doesn't involve the display of strain. But what a great word, elegance. Now, that, doesn't typically apply to the way you lose weight or the way you approach your workload or the way you learn to swim. But it sure as hell applies to the way you dance. It does. Yeah. And I think it

applies to all of those things you just mentioned. I think striving for elegance, an elegant solution, much like the older design. I think it was Dieter Rams. I might be getting the name wrong, but a, I want to say head designer at Braun decades ago, whose work is featured in a film. called objectified and in many other places really looking for simple design and that simple design could apply to swimming right it could just say all right guess what we're not going to focus on breathing at all for the first few weeks you're just going to kick off the side of the pool in the shallow end and focus on assuming hydrodynamic forms and then standing up that's it you're just going to focus on that that is an elegant launch pad and

starting point for developing competence in the swimmer. It's elegant. Well, back to writers and artists and poets. Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify. It's my favorite quote from him. Now, he could have just made it simpler by saying simplify, but by repeating it not twice but three times, I think he made it elegant and made it memorable. How important is it to be memorable these days? I think it's important, depending on your objective, right? Depending on your objective. I should also say that I've become very skeptical of any thoughts of legacy or staying in people's minds. I mean, if we think of Alexander the Great, like, okay, name his other name.

Like, what was his? I can't even, I don't even know if it's his first or last name. I believe it was the first. Of all time. Alexander, it's like Madonna. We just know one name. Okay. So if we don't even know that guy's full name.

offhand. I think it's quite ridiculous to expect that anyone's going to remember me in 20 years or even 10 years. So I'm hoping for making an indelible mark. I don't want to be memorable, but I want my advice to be memorable. If I have a high degree of conviction that the advice is is actionable and tested and repeatable. So in that case, I do think a lot about what creates, attention first because you need that to prerequisite for memory and then memorability. And it's pretty simple, I think, at the end of the day. I mean, if you're conjuring images and telling stories, which you do very, very well, then we are innately equipped to remember those things. Anything that is spatially related, we're also really biologically evolved to remember,

which is why things like memory palaces work so well. The loci-eye text. technique of, say, placing different objects or talking points represented by images through a landscape or a house that you know well. And this goes back to the Aborigines in Australia, certainly includes people like Cicero remembering points in oratory. There is, I think, a blueprint for creating attention and memorability. Attention, you can get in a lot of ways, including Tell me about the testicles. Just tell me about the testicles. Yeah.

Look, I'm going to keep coming back to it because while I agree violently with everything you're saying, the humility in the dispensation of advice is so breathtaking. Look, this weighs on me, Tim, every single day, right? I've been out there. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I want to hear what you disagree with. What do you violently disagree with? No, no, no.

This is the fun. This is the juicy stuff. No, no, violently agree. I agree. Oh, okay. I misheard. I was just looking for a fight. I'm sorry. I'm getting too much caffeine. I'm overcaffeinated, man. I see what I like to do is juxtapose the language from time to time. Use a word like violent with a surprising word like agree. And suddenly you have a yeah. Right. So we are in violent disagreement with a great many things. Sorry, I said disagreement that time. All right. You know what? Let's assume I said disagreement. Here is something, and I still don't think we disagree, but how interesting is it that in the 13 years since I've known you, your headline, the headline of, I mean, you'll never ever get past the four-hour work week, and I will never get past dirty jobs. You will always be the guy who wrote that book. I will always be the guy who crawled through a river of shit. That's just the way it is. But at base, I started building a foundation in 2008. And if it had a motto, it might have said, shortcuts lead to long delays. And you built a business around the same time around this headline that might have read,

you can do this faster. So if one guy is out there saying you can do this faster slash more effectively, and another guy is saying there are no shortcuts, how can those two men possibly agree on anything? Well, the fact is, you and I probably agree on damn near everything. But our headlines, our single-minded proposition, as the ad geeks would say, are diametrically opposed. So when I look at the headlines today and when I look at all the crap in my news feed that screams out in 20-point Helvetica, it's that which I think people constantly trip and stumble over because the headlines are bull crap. It's the story that matters. and we use headlines to get people's attention, and we use turns of phrase.

You could have tapped me on the shoulder at the urinal, which would have been weird, and said, Hi, Mike, I'm Tim. I write books, and I'm a fan of your show, and I would sure like it if you talked about that time you castrated lambs, and I never would have talked about lambs. I might have peed on your shoes, but I never would have talked about castrating lambs. But you didn't. You said, I want to hear about the testicles. So, headline. fascinate me. Opening gambits fascinate me. But of course, neither of those things matter nearly as much as what follows. Because Way leads on to Way, I'm done talking for a minute. I agree. I agree. The headlines are a means of grabbing attention and they don't need to be misleading, but they can

easily be misunderstood by virtue of their brevity and punchiness. And I think that that you could take the view based on the headlines that were diametrically opposed, but when you dig a little deeper, I think we're aligned and using, in some cases, the same language, in some cases different language. And what gets lost often in the hunt for shortcuts, at least within any of the work that I've published, is that a tremendous amount of thinking is required on the front end. It's like an upfront balloon payment in order to find, not necessarily the shortcut, but question assumptions so that you can find an elegant solution involving fewer moving pieces.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to finish something in 60 minutes and then spend the rest of your life rubbing cocoa butter on your stomach on a tropical beach drinking margaritas. You made it weird again. I did, you know, this is part of my charm. There's a four-letter word that you used to use a lot that I don't. think you use as much anymore. I read something. I think I know, I think I can guess what it is, but I'm curious to see if, if, if I'm right. Please go ahead. Does it start with H and end with act? It does. It does. It does. Yes. So that's, that's what I mean by shortcuts. We're all

attracted to them. Now, my pop used to say shortcuts lead to long delays, but a good workable hack still has an enduring appeal in a too long didn't read culture. So you were really, really good at assembling giant collections of hacks. But then it felt like you stepped back from that a little bit. I didn't like the sort of connotation and baggage that that term began to accrue over time. As in he's a hack. Well, there's that. Actually, the history, the etymology of hack is pretty, pretty fact.

fascinating too. Seth Godin's talked quite a bit about that. I can't recall, but I think it involves drivers in some portion of the UK. I could be making that up. It sounds like a good story, though. No, no, no. You are not making that up, my friend. I believe it was Glenn Tilbrook in the amazingly underrated band, Squeeze, who sang, but behind the chalet, my holiday is complete. And I feel like William Tell made Marion on her tiptoed feet pulling muscles from a shell. But then he goes, squinting faces at the sky, a Harold Robbins paperback, surfers drop their boards and dry, and everybody wants a hack. Shameless plug!

Long before she was Peggy Rowe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel, and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you.

You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants, thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend $100 and use code Carl, C-A-R-L,

you'll get one tube of orange-bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine, sugar cubes ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. everybody wants a hack.

So that's a London guy singing about wanting a hack. And I remember Googling that years ago going, what the hell is he talking about? And you're right. A hack was a cab driver. Everybody was looking for a cab. You have a tremendous memory, sir. It's impressive.

I've always been impressed by it. Well, I breathed all night through my nose, Tim. That's right. You do have the oxygen advantage at the moment. So this word hack just got dirty. It was like going from like erotic artwork to the nastiest porn possible. It was just a transition that became so distasteful to me. Look, not to cast aspersions on pornography.

I'm not going to take the high road on that one or pretend. But nonetheless, let me get back to my focal point, which is this term hack, I think, began to represent for me a certain reckless disregard for first principles. It became an obsessive focus on tactics with complete disregard to thinking through things from first principles. And that bothered me. So I stopped using the word and never use it effectively. I mean, I really stopped, I would say around 2008, 2009, maybe a little bit later, but I stopped probably after, I want to say after the four-hour body. and I was effectively done with that term for that reason. Interesting.

You know, it's like be wary of experts turned into a title for a dirty jobs special. And in a really oversimplified way, because I'm by and large not really in the business of dispensing advice, although God help me, I think it happens a lot. But what I try and do with it to the extent that I do anything consistently is challenge conventional wisdom. or at least ask what happens when something that's probably prudent and wise gets dispensed to the masses. And what happens when advice becomes cookie cutter? And what happens when that becomes a bromide or a trope or a platitude? Well, in Silicon Valley, what happens is that that turn of phrase,

whatever it is, winds up hanging in some boardroom. persistence, you know, with some guy in a kayak paddling his ass off, just paddling and paddling and, you know, stay the course, right? Stay the course is great advice if you're going in the right direction. But all advice becomes just a comedy of bad advice when you try to apply it to too many people, which is, I don't know about you, but that scares the hell out of me. It is terrifying. It's terrifying when people are only equipped with answers that can only be provided by someone else and are not equipped by the questions, by better questions. And I think, I think I kind of, I'm trying to play your game and I'm going to mess it up. I think it was Voltaire. It could have been Guta, who said, judge a man, not by his answers, but by his questions. And, and there's a lot of truth to that. And it could certainly just be judge any human by the questions they ask. And a. a dependence on experts on some level is necessary.

You need specialists. If you're going to have neurosurgery, you don't want to jump on YouTube and try to DIY it. And so we have a dependence on specialized knowledge and skill. At the same time, I think it's very dangerous for people to never question specialized skill. And some of the red flags for me are any expert, A, who call, calls themselves an expert. That's something to watch out for. And number two, this is true in many, many fields, by the way. Number two would be any expert who does not say, I don't know regularly. The people in my experience are the best at what they do. The further along they get, the more

knowledge they assemble, the clearer it becomes how little we actually know when you get to 30,000 VET and look at the sum totality of what we've achieved. And if you talk to any really, really, really good doctor, I shouldn't say any, but many good doctors. There's a joke you'll hear, which is 50% of what we know is wrong. We just don't know which 50%. And that's an honest take. If you look back through history, and I don't have the attribution here, but I think of this quote a lot, and I'm paraphrasing, but we take all previous positions to be completely absurd, but we never assume that our current positions are absurd or will be proven absurd. And that's certainly true to be the case. It wasn't that long ago that we did perform surgery on newborns without any type of anesthesia.

I mean, this is not hundreds of years ago. This is relatively recent. You know, thalidomide and the recent, relatively recent oversight of agencies like the FDA. I mean, these are new developments. I know. Let's run a needle through the corner of the eye into the brain, scramble that up a bit, and that'll fix them, right? Right. Yeah. So it's, it's, I think, critical if you're assessing experts or people you consider to be experts to ask questions so that you get to see if they ever say, I don't know or we don't know. That to that to me is an indicator of someone who has their head screwed on correctly. I had no idea. I had no idea who to hire to do this thing to my nose. I talked to three doctors and they were all very good and very well reviewed. And, you know,

I live in a nice part of the country where there are a lot of very smart people with a lot of sharp instruments who are all capable of rebuilding my nose. And the first two, talk to me about the recovery and how, yes, it would be a bit unpleasant, but by the third day, such and such, and by the seventh day, so and so. And here's some people you can talk to, and this is how it's going to transform your life. And the third guy, Raul Seth, was his name, just said, oh, yes, well, your nose is a disaster and there's no easy way to do this. And if I do what needs to be done, you're going to affirmatively hate me for a while. And just stop talking. I'm like, I'm listening.

He goes, well, then I'll take the splints out. And that's going to make you hate me less. But for the next three, four weeks, maybe even a couple of months, you're going to feel like Mr. Potato Head and somebody hammered a fake nose into the middle. And you're not going to like it. And then he just stopped again. Like he wouldn't ask for the sale. He just, he was challenging me, you know.

And so he was my guy and he did it. Yeah. And he was right. I hated him for a week. But now, now, right? So, you know, I think, Tim, for guys like you and I, we're in a weird spot because the basic humility that you're talking about that has to be, that has to accompany any persuasive advice is being packaged by publishers and executive producers and networks and people whose

first order of business is to sell the show, sell the book. And you don't do that with humility. You do that with claims. You do that with proclamations. Books like The Secret, I've got it. And for $29.99, I'll share it with you. Right. It's so transactional. And you can see it on the way any hit show is promoted today, especially in nonfiction. You can see it on most of the best sellers, especially nonfiction on the shelves. And I think that brings us, I want to be respectful of your time, Chuck, have we really been over an hour already? Yeah. And if you want to go for another 10 or 15, I'm happy to do that. So I'm not, I'm not in a rush. All right, good, because this is actually important to me on a personal level. All your books are swell. One of my favorites you invited

me to be in. It was called Tools of Titans. Tools of Titans. And again, it's a wonderful assortment of amazing chunks of advice from people you know who have gone on to do great things. And how do you remember it? Because it's a little fuzzy for me too. I just talked to Mary the other day and said, tell me again why I'm not in this book because I wanted to be in this book. And Tim wanted me to be in the book, but I couldn't sign the thing he sent. So what the hell happened?

Did I get in my own way? What did I do to keep me from being a Titan in your best-selling book? Damn it. Well, what I vaguely remember was that, so let me back up and provide some context for folks. So this was, Tools of Titans is a collection of advice split into healthy, wealthy, and wise. Ben Franklin style, who by the way, you could think of certainly as a nonfiction self-help author in many respects. You read Isaacson's book, by the way? I'm sure you have read. I have read Isaacson's book. It's great. It's fantastic. Yeah. And what hilarious character and caricature,

incredible human being. Sorry, but best Franklin quote, I'd be remiss as the dirty jobs guy if I didn't circle back for his two word eponymous. The best quote, maybe the best quote ever, fart proudly. Right. I mean, that, that I think just speaks volumes to the two of this. I mean, the stove was great. The whole electricity thing. Awesome. You know, but fart proudly. Far proudly, far proudly. There's a lot. That could come from an old, that could come from Dogen, some Japanese Buddhist master. That could also be a co-on.

I mean, does one fart proudly. How does one fart proudly? But I'm losing the plot here. So coming back to Tools of Titans, Healthy, Wealthy Wise, and it had, let's call it 120 or 130 different people and tidbits of advice. and then my comments below their advice, thoughts below their advice. And my recollection of what happened was you have a very competent, very well-trained phalanx of lawyers and protectors. And I came hat in hand with this document if we were to include you to have a release,

and they circled the shields. And for whatever reason, it just, it wasn't a match. But I don't remember exactly all the specifics. I do remember a lot of redlining and then ultimately it just didn't happen. But what do you remember of that? Well, I remember my friend Tim Ferriss was putting together another book and called to say, look, our conversation on your podcast, which now is officially called, it's still the Tim Ferriss. Very clever, by the way.

focus group that one? Well, you know, I tried the first, I didn't have a name. I didn't have a name. And I did the first episode, my friend Kevin Rose, who busts my balls constantly. He did a fake intro and he called it Tim Tim Talk Talk episode one. And I was like, all right, well, that's not what I'm going to run with. Although a lot of the old longtime listeners still call it Tim Tim Talk Talk, thanks to Kevin, which is pretty hilarious.

And I just decided, you know what? I'm trying to get clever. I'm trying to think up something, some. some amazing turn of phrase and eventually got to whatever episode it was that required at that point that I have title. So the Tim Ferriss show it was. But yes. So I'd done 600 or so, although that's now 600, so probably several hundred. Yeah. And you'd been on the show, which was a, which was a great conversation. And dot, dot, dot. It was so much fun. And you called to say, look, that conversation has done really well with my audience. And a lot of gems, surprising gems, came.

out of it and I would like to print a chunk of it in this book. And I was like, great. So I talked to Mary, who really runs my company, is my business partner and is smarter than me. And she's like, okay, well, the document from the publisher is pretty broad. And we had just gone through a whole series of very disappointing experiences with publishers and networks and so forth, right? We were literally, we just had committed to taking a consistent hard line with every piece of boiler plate that came across the transom. I had really, and this is my, I'm not putting any of this on Mary, but I had said to Mary, just maybe a month earlier, I've had it. I've had it with misleading headlines. I've had it with Craven Calo executives who insist on a title that

It's simply not consistent with who I am or what the show is. And I'm done with boilerplate. I'm just not going to sign any more boilerplate agreements. Because while I trust him completely, I have no idea what hack is on the other side of the publishing wall who's going to take my name and likeness and slap it on the back of the book. It said, take it from Mike Rowe or something, right? It's not that I thought that would happen. But just as a principle, we were not going to sign any more boilerplate.

And that came into our world at that moment. And at the same time, I was out in the world doing a bunch of other stuff and not fully focused on the fact that this thing could actually go off the rails. And I might not be counted among the Titans, which, of course, was stupid on my part. But also, full disclosure, I did say to Mary, you know, I was getting very nervous. This was four years ago, maybe. And I was really starting to get nervous. Microworks had been around at that point for like 11, 9 or 10 years maybe. And I was out there giving advice, saying a lot of things that had been repackaged

and were turning into these sweeping generalizations. And I was getting very nervous. And so I just didn't know if it was smart for me. While as flattered as I was and would like to be among the Titans, I didn't know, modesty aside, if somehow or another that would delude. what I was trying to say to parents and kids who are wrestling with three, four hundred thousand dollars of student loans and trying to make this giant decision. You know, so it was just this weird, perfect storm of confusion, ambiguity, boilerplate, and dread, honestly. I was dreading what was happening in my own career with people who were intranship in these areas.

So in no way was it a reflection on you. It was just me saying in general to publishers and networks, no. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company. But he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers.

It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat for a fair price. Today, that promise, and Ben's absolute determination to keep it, has not only propelled good ranchers into the top tier of meat delivery companies, it's fueled enormous awareness among meat eaters like me that we have all been a lot of meat eaters.

affirmatively deceived by policies that allow imported me to be marketed as domestic. That's the reason I switched to good ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality not been so exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from good ranchers has been straight up delicious and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable and flexible. In fact, if you start your plan you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com. Free meat for life, 40 bucks off your first order.

Good ranchers.com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. I think you made the right decision in the sense that I definitely would have taking your face and put it on a lunchbox. I definitely would have licensed it to people in China to put you on buses. No, I think you made the right decision because the reality is you're in a

position where you are your brand. You need to think about how that could be abused, how things could be associated with you, or shortened even, right? cherry-picked in some way that would be difficult to contain once released into the world. And I've been in many, many similar situations where I've been the person saying no. And you have to have policies for these things. You can't make every piece of paper that comes in front of you or every offer that comes in front of you a separate decision because you'll die a death of a thousand paper cuts. You have to have policies.

And there is going to be some percentage, which end up being missed opportunities or missed calls. So you and I ran into a sort of mutually exclusive policies in the sense that you had a policy of not signing boilerplate. I had a policy that with 120, 130 people, we just don't have the bandwidth possible to negotiate 130 of these. I mean, the entire book would be about redlining releases. Which is a pretty great book if you think about it. Somebody ought to do that book. Releases I have signed by Micro and Tim Ferriss. That's right.

How to Red Line a Release from 12 easy steps by Mike Roe and Tim Ferriss. Too long. Didn't read. This release is too long. This book is too long. TLDR. Don't sign it. Oh, my God.

There's so many things I haven't asked you about and I feel so stupid for it. But like I said at the beginning, I didn't really want to sit down and pick your brain purely as the expert you are. I mean, people should know. There is truly a wealth of advice between the hard covers of your many books, but on a personal level, I think you're right. I did make the right decision, but I am nevertheless, sorry that I'm not in your book, because I'm a huge fan of what you've done and what you're doing. I think we should start the glide path to end this thing by asking, though, why are you stepping back? And how many times over the course of your journey, have you felt the need just to take a deep breath? I saw your email kick back, right? It's like,

I think it said, look, if you're asking me to write a blurb for your book, I can't. I get 20 a week. So as a policy, I'm saying no. Don't even bother to leave a message because I'm not checking voicemail, right? I get it, man. Sometimes the barbaric. are at the gate. And sometimes the barbarians are your friends, right? And so you have to do something. And yet you made time to do this. So again, thanks for that. But why? Why are you retreating at this point in your life? I retreat quite regularly. And that's been true for at least the last five years. In part because I recognize, I recognize, I recognize. my voice start to get emotional there. Don't start crying, Tim.

No crying on this podcast. Unless you're Chuck, in which case I fully expected. Every week. Damn it, Mike. All right, let me get back on track here. So I retreat regularly in part because we all have, or I'll speak for myself. I have many default behaviors. I have many default predispositions, say to overcommitting to certain types of projects or getting

overexcited by certain types of offers or pitches. I am susceptible to the momentum created by groupthink, even among my best friends, who I consider are incredibly smart, principled, thoughtful, philosophical people. Nonetheless, there are these micro or macro trends that can lead you to feel compelled to do things due to fear of missing out or otherwise. And one of the few approaches I've found that helps me to see those things for what they are is to really across the board categorically say no to certain things and step back that I have the forced space necessary to be able to hear in some cases the whispers from across the room, which are the actual intrinsically generated passions to do something else that is not

on the beaten path. And I don't hear those things or see them if I'm in the maelstrom surrounded by noise. The signal is not always a shout. right it's and as one of my friends scott belski put it he said it's in Tools of Titans actually he said of course it is the best opportunities never have best opportunity in the in the headline in the headline in the headline of the email in the header and you need to pay attention to not just find the opportunities but to find the peace and to find the ease to find the restfulness that i think are all pieces, for me at least, of a successful, well-lived life. So for that reason, I'll take extended breaks. I haven't done any paid speaking in years now. That was one I decided

to take a break from. I haven't done really any extended travel for business purposes, the book blurbs and so on. I really haven't done any of. And I've found that Also geographically isolating myself for a few months every year, provides the space necessary for me to live the life I actually want to live, not live the life I think I should live. Wise words. You know, if there was a silver lining during this lockdown, for me, it was the fact that I started taking long walks every morning. And at first, I would spend that time listening to podcast, listening to just catching up. Chuck and I took a lot of walks 500 miles apart and had a lot of conversations. But really, with deference to Chuck, the best parts of those walks was when I turned

off the podcast and when I wasn't making calls, when I wasn't doing anything but walking. And that's when I think your brain starts to come up with ideas you didn't know it was looking for. And if you can get that accomplished by holding upstate, or going dark for a bit or just taking a walk. I mean, that's a chunk of advice I'd feel comfortable offering to just about anybody. Our brains need to unplug in order to ramble. And if our brains aren't rambling, then they're never going to stumble across anything. They're only going to be served things.

And boy, everybody's serving something, it seems. Yes, agreed. And also I'll add one more thing, which is just related to what people might think of as self-help or how they would define that. So when people hear the term self-help, they often think of the prescriptive non-fiction books that they see in the airports and so on. But self-help can take many, many forms. And in fact, I would argue that almost all reading, most of what we do is with the

intention of self-help or self-improvement in some capacity. and that can extend to, for instance, fiction writing. And you can find help. You can find growth in a lot of areas. I mean, I would say, for instance, reading Dune, if you want to improve your leadership skills, or just have a hell of a read and really experience some of the best world-building sci-fi imaginable, that can take you some very interesting places. It doesn't have to be from someone hawking goods on the...

top of a soapbox, making bold claims promising you X, Y, and Z within 30 days, you can actually really gain a lot and grow from looking in unexpected places. It doesn't have to be from someone who is promising anything to you. Well, that was a big topic in our conversation. And by the way, folks, you should, I mean, if you've got the time, we've already been rambling for an hour and 20, but Tim and I did have a great talk a few years back. And you should check it out on. his podcast because one of the things that I stumbled across in our conversation about nonfiction was the value of fiction. And for me, Travis McGee is in this book, the very book that we've been unpacking here for the last 35 weeks as the most influential imaginary figure in my life.

That character inspired me to build a business model around the whole notion of of premature retirement and retirement in installments, right? And so many other things, but you're so right. The answers are not necessarily always where you're looking. Sometimes they're at a urinal next to you. With an offhanded comment from, forgive me, here's another four-letter word I bet you hate, but a guru of advice, a man who is literally built an empire. on dispensing advice, change the direction of my career with an offhanded comment.

And so that's probably a good place to leave this, somewhere between the incredible intentionality of dispensing time-tested advice and the incredible randomness of just living this life and being open to hearing words from a stranger that just might have more impact and import than you can imagine. Somewhere in between the two there is probably something that smells like wisdom. Well, I'm glad we met. I'm really happy to have met you and to have the chance to hang out and spend time together. I always enjoy it. Write another book. Ease up on the boilerplate. I'll do whatever you want. I'm going to do an animated series and take clips of your voice from the last podcast and use that as voiceover. If that's okay, it's going to be called Felix

the cat revisited if that works for you. Oh, geez. My favorite feline inspired X-rated cartoon. Hey, don't hang up. I have to do a shameless plug for my damn publisher who I, who I promised. If they let me talk about this book, as we just have, I'd remind people that they can download the whole thing over on Audible or wherever people. do that. Chuck, is there anything? You probably had questions you wanted to ask, but I can't help but notice we've been talking for roughly a day and a half now. It's been a long time and I tried to stay out of it as best I could, although there were a lot of places I wanted to say something just funny, like for instance that I know, happened to know that Alexander the Great's first name was

Bruce. And Thoreau, was it Thoreau who said Simplify, Simplify, Simplify? It's because he had a horrible stammer. And you mentioned the needle in the corner of the eye. Well, that'll fix them. And I wanted to say, well, it worked for me. But I kept quiet out of respect for the conversation. Oh, Tim, if you don't know it, I've known Chuck now over 40 years. It's so great.

40 years. And while I'm deeply suspicious of all bromides, I will say this. tell me if you agree, but the people you've known, the longest, somehow become exponentially more important to you, the older you get, for no other reason than the fact that you knew them then. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's 100% true in my experience. I just recently had a reunion of my oldest friends. This is the last week and friends from 20 plus years ago, altogether, barbecuing, hanging out.

And one of the most incredibly nourishing things that I do every year. And, you know, it's because you knew them then. And then in some cases, it's because you have mutually assured destruction. There's just too many shared experiences. That's right. If I'm going down, you're going. coming with me. You were there, genius. Yep.

Tim Ferriss, thank you for using the word testicles at a time when that's exactly what I needed to hear and precisely what I needed to talk about. Anything I can ever do for you in the future. Don't hesitate to call Chuck if I'm taking emails. I may have gone dark because I do retreat from time to time. On behalf of the phalanx, we apologize, Tim. The phalanx. Dude, they're literally, that's so funny. If you came to Microwworks World Headquarters and looked around, you'd be like, not a lot of phalanx going on here. Take care, brother.

Don't hang up. Chuck's got to hit buttons and fancy things happen. As for the rest of you, thank you for listening. I already shamelessly plugged the book, and you're so sick of hearing me say, give us a five-star review. So I'm not going to say it again. Don't give us a five-s. You know what?

We have so many right now we don't need any more. So please, do not give us a five-star. five-star review. Unless you care about Tim Ferriss and Chuck, who, uh, frankly, could use them. All right, then. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean teaches us how our choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean connects us. Visit monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP, because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip-off,

and Granger is your trusted partner. Offering the products you need all in one place, from HVAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800 Granger, visit granger.com or just stop by, Granger, for the ones who get it done.