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Writing with the Master – The Magic of John McPhee

If I could study non-fiction writing with anyone, it would be John McPhee.

He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and he won that award in 1999 for Annals of the Former World.  Even more impressive to me, he can turn any subject — truly, any subject — into a page turner.

An entire book about oranges? Check. Bark canoes? Done.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve raved about his books like a sweaty-palmed fan boy.  Personal favorites include the bite-sized Levels of the Game (about one epic tennis match), Coming into the Country (about the Alaskan wilderness), and his amazing collections of short stories (don’t miss Brigade de Cuisine in this one).

Now, a confession.  I did have the chance to study with McPhee as an undergrad at Princeton.  I still have all of the class notes.  I consider it one of the biggest strokes of luck in my life.  And… simply mentioning it makes me nervous as hell that I’m going to leave a typo in this post.  Besmirching the fine legacy of Professor McPhee!

Translated into my native Long Island-ese:  If I fuck up anything in this post, it’s all my fault, and I didn’t listen to Professor McPhee well enough. He tried his best.

Now, moving past my preamble…

The below piece on McPhee is written by Joel Achenbach, a fellow graduate of McPhee’s class. Joel is now a staff writer for The Washington Post and the author of six books.

The profile recently appeared in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and I absolutely had to share it with you. It’s the incredible story of a master writer, master teacher, and fascinating human being I aspire to emulate.  There’s so much to learn from McPhee, and the below is a laugh-out-loud sampling.

I’ve left in the graduation years to preserve the context.

Enjoy!

###

John McPhee ’53 has many moves as a writer, one of which he calls a “gossip ladder” — nothing more than a stack of quotations, each its own paragraph, unencumbered by attribution or context. You are eavesdropping in a crowd. You take these scraps of conversation and put them in a pile. Like this:

“A piece of writing needs to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there.”

“Taking things from one source is plagiarism; taking things from several sources is research.”

“A thousand details add up to one impression.”

“You cannot interview the dead.” 

“Readers are not supposed to see structure. It should be as invisible as living bones. It shouldn’t be imposed; structure arises within the story.”

“Don’t start off with the most intense, scary part, or it will all be anticlimactic from there.”

“You can get away with things in fact that would be tacky in fiction — and stuck on TV at 3 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes the scene is carried by the binding force of fact.”

The speaker in every instance is John McPhee. I assembled this particular ladder from the class notes of Amanda Wood Kingsley ’84, an illustrator and writer who, like me, took McPhee’s nonfiction writing class, “The Literature of Fact,” in the spring of 1982. In February, McPhee will mark 40 years as a Princeton professor, which he has pulled off in the midst of an extraordinarily productive career as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of more than two dozen books.

When the editor of this magazine asked me to write something about McPhee’s class, I knew it would be the easiest assignment ever, though a little nerve-wracking. It was, because most of McPhee’s former students have saved their class notes and marked-up papers (Marc Fisher ’80: “I’ve never lived anywhere without knowing where my notes from his class are”).

When I meet Rick Klein ’98 at a coffee shop down the block, we examine forensically Rick’s class papers and the McPhee marginalia, the admonitions and praise from a teacher who keeps his pencils sharp. McPhee never overlooked a typo, and when Rick (now the hotshot political director at ABC News) wrote “fowl” instead of “foul,” the professor’s pencil produced a devastating noose.

McPhee’s greatest passion was for structure, and he required that students explain, in a few sentences at the end of every assignment, how they structured the piece. (McPhee noted on a piece Rick wrote about his father: “This is a perfect structure — simple, like a small office building, as you suggest. The relationship of time to paragraphing is an example of what building a piece of writing is all about.”)

Rick reminds me that the class was pass/fail.

“You were competing not for a grade, but for his approval. You were so scared to turn in a piece of writing that John McPhee would realize was dirt. We were just trying to impress a legend,” he says.

Which is the nerve-wracking part, still. He is likely to read this article and will notice the infelicities, the stray words, the unnecessary punctuation, the galumphing syntax, the desperate metaphors, and the sentences that wander into the woods. “They’re paying you by the comma?” McPhee might write in the margin after reading the foregoing sentence. My own student work tended toward the self-conscious, the cute, and the undisciplined, and McPhee sometimes would simply write: “Sober up.”

He favors simplicity in general, and believes a metaphor needs room to breathe. “Don’t slather one verbal flourish on top of another lest you smother them all,” he’d tell his students. On one of Amanda’s papers, he numbered the images, metaphors, and similes from 1 to 11, and then declared, “They all work well, to a greater or lesser degree. In 1,300 words, however, there may be too many of them — as in a fruitcake that is mostly fruit.”

When Amanda produced a verbose, mushy description of the “Oval with Points” sculpture on campus, McPhee drew brackets around one passage and wrote, “Pea soup.”

That one was a famously difficult assignment: You had to describe a piece of abstract art on campus. It was an invitation to overwriting. As McPhee put it, “Most writers do a wild skid, leave the road, and plunge into the dirty river.” Novice writers believe they will improve a piece of writing by adding things to it; mature writers know they will improve it by taking things out.

Another standard McPhee assignment came on Day One of the class: Pair up and interview each other, then write a profile. It was both an early test of our nonfiction writing skills and a clever way for McPhee to get to know his students at the beginning of the semester.

McPhee’s dedication to his students was, and is, remarkable, given the other demands on his time. One never got the sense that he wished he could be off writing a magazine story for The New Yorker rather than annotating, and discussing face-to-face, a clumsy, ill-conceived, syntactically mangled piece of writing by a 20-year-old.

He met with each of his 16 students for half an hour every other week. Many of his students became professional writers, and he lined up their books on his office shelf, but McPhee never has suggested that the point of writing is to make money, or that the merit of your writing is determined by its market value. A great paragraph is a great paragraph wherever it resides, he’d say. It could be in your diary.

“I think he loves it when students run off and become field biologists in Africa or elementary school teachers,” Jenny Price ’85 tells me. She’s now a writer, artist, and visiting Princeton professor.

McPhee taught us to revere language, to care about every word, and to abjure the loose synonym. He told us that words have subtle and distinct meanings, textures, implications, intonations, flavors. (McPhee might say: “Nuances” alone could have done the trick there.) Use a dictionary, he implored. He proselytized on behalf of the gigantic, unabridged Webster’s Second Edition, a tank of a dictionary that not only would give a definition, but also would explore the possible synonyms and describe how each is slightly different in meaning. If you treat these words interchangeably, it’s like taping together adjacent keys on a piano, he said.

Robert Wright ’79, an acclaimed author and these days a frequent cycling companion of McPhee, tells me by email, “I’d be surprised if there have been many or even any Ferris professors who care about words as much as John — I don’t mean their proper use so much as their creative, deft use, sometimes in a way that exploits their multiple meanings; he also pays attention to the rhythm of words. All this explains why some of his prose reads kind of like poetry.”

Just to write a simple description clearly can take you days, he taught us (once again I’m citing Amanda’s class notes): “If you do it right, it’ll slide by unnoticed. If you blow it, it’s obvious.”

We had to learn to read. One of his assignments is called “greening.” You pretend you are in the composing room slinging hot type and need to remove a certain amount of the text block to get it to fit into an available space. You must search the text for words that can be removed surgically.

“It’s as if you were removing freight cars here and there in order to shorten a train — or pruning bits and pieces of a plant for aesthetic and pathological reasons, not to mention length,” McPhee commanded. “Do not do violence to the author’s tone, manner, style, nature, thumbprint.”

He made us green a couple of lines from the famously lean Gettysburg Address, an assignment bordering on sadism. A favorite paragraph designated for greening was the one in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that begins, “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.” (McPhee, in assigning this, wrote: “Caution: You are approaching what may be my favorite paragraph in a lifetime of sporadic reading.”)

One time the young Bob Wright used the word “minced” in an assignment. In their bi-weekly office conference, McPhee challenged Bob to justify the word. Bob offered his reasoning. McPhee looked up “minced” in the hulking Webster’s. “You found the perfect word,” McPhee declared.

McPhee’s career coincided with the rise of “New Journalism,” but he never was really part of that movement and the liberties it took with the material. A college student often feels that rules are suffocating, that old-school verities need to be obliterated, and so some of us were tempted, naturally, to enhance our nonfiction — to add details from the imagination and produce a work of literature that’s better than “true” and existed on a more exalted plane of meaning. We’d make things up. McPhee wouldn’t stand for it.

Amanda remembers being called into his office one day: “I could tell something was wrong because he wasn’t his usual smiling self. He had me sit down and glared at me a moment. Then he asked me very sternly whether I had made up the character I had allegedly interviewed for my paper that week about animal traps and snares — I’d talked to an elderly African American friend of my grandparents, whose snare-building skills helped him survive the Depression. Once I convinced him that Oscar was a real person, McPhee sat quietly a moment, then smiled and said it was one of the best papers he had received. Those were some of the finest words I’ll ever hear.”

Perhaps there are writers out there who make it look easy, but that is not the example set by McPhee. He is of the school of thought that says a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people. Some people joke about lashing themselves to the chair to get a piece of writing done, but McPhee actually has done it, with the belt of his bathrobe.

Here’s David Remnick ’81, the McPhee student who is now McPhee’s editor atThe New Yorker: “You were working with a practicing creative artist, a writer of ‘primary texts,’ as the scholars say, but one who was eloquent, detailed, unfancy, and clear in the way he talked about essential things: description, reporting, structure, sentences, punctuation, rhythm, to say nothing of the emotional aspects of writing — anxiety, lostness, frustration. He didn’t sugarcoat the difficulty of writing well. If anything, he highlighted the bitter-tasting terrors, he cherished them, rolled them around on his tongue. But behind all that was an immensely revealing, and rewarding, glimpse of the writing life. Not the glamour or the readings or the reviews. No, he allowed you to glimpse the process, what it meant to write alone in a room.”

Marc Fisher, my Washington Post colleague, points out that part of McPhee’s magic was getting students to slow down. “He catches adolescents at exactly the moment when we’ve been racing to get somewhere in life, and he corrals our ambition and raw skills and somehow persuades us that the wisdom, the power, and the mystery of telling people’s stories comes in good part from pressing down on the brakes, taking it all in, and putting it down on paper — yes, paper — in a way that is true to the people we meet and the lives they lead.”

I doubt many of us ever took a class that resonated so profoundly over the years. Part of it was that McPhee felt invested in our later success, regardless of our vocations. You could knock on his door years later and confer with him about your writing, your personal issues, your hopes and dreams. How many teachers are willing to be Professor For Life?

These are tough times in my business, which the people in suits now refer to as “content creation.” Revolutionary changes in how we consume information have created challenges for anyone who is committed to serious, time-consuming writing, the kind that involves revision and the search for that perfect word.

But I don’t think anyone can obliterate the beauty of a deftly constructed piece of writing. This is particularly the case if you’ve written it yourself. It’s like hitting a great golf shot; you forget the shanks and slices and remember the one exquisite 3-iron.

One day in McPhee’s class, he praised a sentence I’d written about the Louise Nevelson sculpture “Atmosphere and Environment X,” near Firestone Library. He had me read it aloud. The hook was set. I don’t always think about it consciously, but that’s pretty much what I’ve been trying to do for more than three decades — write another sentence that might win the approval of John McPhee.

- Joel Achenbach

###

Question of the Day:  What is your best writing tip or lesson learned?  Please share in the comments!

Interested in more on the craft of writing or art of creativity?  Here are a few resources:

In-depth interview with 7x New York Times bestselling author and Rolling Stone interviewer, Neil Strauss

The Odd (And Effective) Routines of Famous Minds like Beethoven, Maya Angelou, and Francis Bacon

Behind the Scenes: How to Make a Movie Trailer for Your Book (or Product)

Marc Goodman, FBI Futurist, on High-Tech Crime and How to Protect Yourself

“The fact of the matter is, back in 2008, terrorists were using search engines, like Google, to determine who shall live and who shall die. I know it’s a black swan event, but when you’re sharing on Facebook, it’s not just the media and marketing companies that you need to be concerned about. When you share openly, everybody has access to it.” (Tweet It)

– Marc Goodman

[Quick announcement: The Tim Ferriss Show is officially one of iTunes’ “Best of 2014“! Would you or your company like to sponsor the show? Click here for more details.]

Marc Goodman has been a Resident Futurist for the FBI and a senior adviser to Interpol.  He is also author of the much anticipated Future Crimes.

In this episode, we’ll go deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using emerging technologies against you…and some simple steps you can take to decrease your vulnerability.

To start, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bio-terrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders (all of which we touch on), but what else is waiting for you? What else is potentially targeting you right now?

If you want to hear about current and future threats, and simple defensive steps you can take, this interview is for you.

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download the MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save link as.”

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: Have you ever been hacked or cyber-attacked? What practices are you using to mitigate the threat in the future? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
Hartnackschule – Berlin-based German language school
“Hacker” Movies: War Games | Sneakers | The Net | Ghost Busters
Marc’s fave vintage crime novel – ONE POLICE PLAZA by William Caunitz
Watch Marc Goodman’s TED Talk
Gattaca – Movie related to the universal genetic testing
Hacking the President’s DNA by Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman and Steven Kotler
Warfarin – anticoagulant
Neighborhood Emergency Response Training course
Reputation.com – Manage your online reputation
The Onion Router (TOR) – Anonymity for web browsing
Watch Ethan Nadelmann’s TED Talk
Watch IBM’s Watson beat the humans (Not the best video, but it tells the story)
Password protection and generation services: 1Password | LastPass
Pre-order a copy of the book at FutureCrimes.com
Learn more about Singularity University

Show Notes

Rapid fire questions [7:45]
Marc Goodman’s daily rituals [11:55]
Surprising examples of Internet-based crime [13:25]
Personalized biological weapons, genetic sequencing, etc. [16:25]
23andMe best practices: paranoia vs. preparedness [22:10]
Examining the urban myth (or not?) of personalized biological weapons [26:10]
Debunking the myth that terrorists and criminals are simply uneducated [28:10]
“Public safety is too important to leave to the professionals.” [35:55]
Do you think having iodine tablets and gas masks at home is overkill? [44:05]
Kidnapping in the modern world [45:40]
The story of Andy Grove and data infiltration in China [50:10]
Spear-phishing e-mails and how billions can be lost [52:50]
How to Armageddon-proof yourself [54:55]
The digital underground and how to access it [57:00]
The illicit drug industry and how disruptive technology is a threat to it [1:00:00]
On “Narco” R&D budgets, drones, submarines and shock and awe  [1:06:55]
Potential threats of artificial intelligence (AI) [1:12:25]
The scalable paradigm shift in modern crime [1:15:15]
A handful of simple steps to decrease the odds of successful attacks [1:18:55]
Low-hanging fruit in terms of security [1:25:25]
On cyber crime cottage industries [1:27:40]
Why there is a Post-It note on every camera of Marc Goodman’s devices [1:29:05]
How the Crowne Casino in Melbourne was hacked for $33 million [1:33:05]

People and Concepts Mentioned (Partial List)

Aum Shinrikyo
Andy Grove
Open-Source Intelligence
Red Team – testing your assumptions and vulnerabilities

Bryan Callen on Eating Corgis (Yes, The Dogs) and Improving Creativity

“There are three things you can’t fake: 1. Fighting, 2. Sex, and 3. Comedy.” (Tweet It)

- Bryan Callen

Alright, this may be the funniest episode yet.

Bryan Callen is a world-class comic and prolific actor. He travels the globe performing stand-up comedy for sold-out audiences, and — in his spare time — regularly appears on shows like Frasier, Entourage, Law & Order, CSI, Sex and the City, Oz, The King of Queens, and How I Met Your Mother.

Bryan is also INCREDIBLY well read.  Don’t miss the show notes and links below.

In this episode, we delve into the craft of comedy, fixing education (or shortcuts within it), habits and tricks for boosting creativity, writing, and the general pursuit of excellence.

And, of course, eating corgis…

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: Who are your 2-3 favorite comedians? What style or traits make them memorable? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

And PLEASE — Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. They’re very important and keep me going.

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Connect with Bryan: Website | Twitter
Warrior with Bryan Callen
Comedian – Documentary on the craft of comedy
The Fighter and the Kid – Podcast with Bryan and UFC Heavyweight, Brendan Schaub
QuestBridge.org – Leverage your support for high-achieving, low-income students
Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz
1000 Years of Solitude & Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Art of Learning (On Audio) by Josh Waitzkin (My interview with Josh is here)
The Somerset Collection
The Symposium and Dialogues by Plato
Dying Every Day by James Romm
Bryan’s favorite Twitter: Taking Hayek Seriously
Fed Up – A documentary about the food industry
Bad Science & Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre
Nutritional Science Initiative – The Manhattan Project of nutrition (I advise)
Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks
Hardcore History – Specifically, Wrath of the Khans
The Looming Tower & Going Clear by Lawrence Wright
Jazz & Baseball – documentaries by Ken Burns
If This Is a Man & The Truce by Primo Levi

Show Notes

How Bryan Callen and Tim Ferriss started dating [9:45]
On fighting, sex, and comedy [10:50]
How to create a long-term career in comedy [11:45]
On public education [15:45]
Bryan Callen’s creative process [23:45]
Comics who inspire Bryan [34:05]
Bryan’s first great performance [36:50]
How Bryan Callen developed his appetite for reading [42:05]
Bryan Callen’s first paid gig [47:30]
Rapid fire questions: Pilsner, aged wine, politics, pit bulls, hunting, originality, and eating corgis [01:04:45]

People Mentioned

Niel Brennan
Joe Rogan
Keith Ferrazzi
Travis Kalanick
Brendan Schaub
Hunter Maats
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ernest Hemingway
Flannery O’Connor
Fiona Apple
Harry Connick Jr.
Steven Wright
Mitch Hedberg
George Carlin
Richard Pryor
Dov Davidoff
Sebastian Maniscalco
Tom Segura
Bret Ernst
Ayn Rand
Friedrich Nietzsche
Joseph Campbell
Joshua Waitzkin
Steve Jobs
Lawrence Wright
Ken Burns
Primo Levi
David Blaine

The Random Show: Hating Tech, Hidden Japanese Gems, Sexual Awkwardness, and More

This episode of The Random Show is a mind snack… fueled by wine. There are dozens of topics covered in this bromantic session of scatterbrained nonsense.

Like what? To start off: hidden gems in Japan, hating tech, Kevin’s new obsessions (and projects), gifts, books we’re reading, excessive sexual awkwardness, and much more. O-tanoshimi dane!

For all previous episodes of The Random Show, including the infamous China Scam episode, click here.

Can’t see the video above? Click here.

Want audio to listen on the go?  Here you go…

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What should other people be more grateful for this Thanksgiving? Perhaps something regularly overlooked? Please share in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Learn more about Kevin’s new company, North
Watch-Curious? Check out WatchVille.co
Blue Plate San Francisco – Suggestions: Meatloaf, Fried Chicken and/or Key Lime Pie
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Refinery29: Style Stalking by Piera Gelardi and Christene Barberich
Refinery 29 – The largest independently-owned fashion and style site
The Art of Robert E. McGinnis by Robert E. McGinnis
The Gibson Girl and Her America by Charles Dana Gibson
Epicureans and Stoics by Axios Institute
The Underground Storyteller by Alex Day
The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
Hidden Tokyo Coffee Shop — Chatei Hatou Pour-Over Coffee
Lisn Inscense – Japanese Organic Incense
SOG Throwing Axes
Looking to invest in startups? See Tim and Kevin‘s deals on AngelList
MD Insider
How to Win Over 30 Consulting Offers in 30 Days – AngelList Tips
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Too Many Cooks


Abbreviated Show Notes

Thoughts on WatchVille  [5:00]
The environment and new book recomendations [11:50]
Fermented coffee beans [18:45]
Tips for ice baths [24:45]
Tim’s next big thing (or not) [40:15]
How to get involved in the tech scene without tons of capital [42:25]
On Influence by Robert Cialdini [45:15]
Too Many Cooks video recommendation [49:35]
Gratitude this coming Thanksgiving [50:50]

People Mentioned

Robert E McGunnis
J.C. Leyendecker
Norman Rockwell
Dmitry Klokov

Nick Ganju on The Majesty of Ping Pong, Poker, and How to Write Hit Songs

(Photo: Foxxyz)

“It turns out that writing Tetris on your calculator doesn’t actually win you the cheerleaders.”

-Nick Ganju 

Housekeeping Note: The e-mail subscribers who won the SONOS PLAY:1 (The Best $200 on Sound) are Drew Glaser and Kristopher Chavez. Guys, keep an eye on your inboxes! Are you still not an e-mail subscriber? It’s free, no spam, and I send out awesome VIP exclusives. Click here to sign up, and you can always easily opt out.

In this episode, I talk to my old friend Nick Ganju about ping pong, poker, hit songs, and tackling my most feared subject (oh, the suspense!).

He makes complex subjects seem simple, which is a rare gift.  Nick is one of the few people I consistently ask for advice when trying to acquire tough skills.

Nick is the founder and CTO of ZocDoc, which allows you to find doctors and immediately book appointments online. As CTO, he is responsible for overseeing all software development. It’s a huge job for one of the fastest-growing startups in the US (6+ million monthly users, $95M+ in funding raised to date), and he’s repeatedly proven himself to be a master teacher.

Enjoy!

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY:  Have you overcome subjects or skills you initially found super-intimidating? What was the key moment? Please share in the comments.

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

ZocDoc
War Games
The Birthdate Problem
Long Term Capital Management
SMART Goals
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Michel Thomas – Rapid Language Learning
How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard
The Handshake Grip - Ping Pong Skills
Loss Aversion
Sunken Cost Fallacy
List of Cognitive Biases
Secrets of Power Negotiating
Getting to Yes
Getting Past No
Across the Universe
Connect with Nick on LinkedIn
Axis of Awesome – The 1-5-6-4 – How to write a hit song


Show Notes

ZocDoc stats [6:34]
Rewinding the clock, comfort with computer science and global thermo-nuclear war [10:44]
What makes the University of Illinois a top computer science school [14:04]
“Coachablity” of computer languages and thoughts for those starting in computer science [16:14]
How to make it easier to develop high-level math and computer science skills [21:44]
Resources and books for optimizing your math/emotional intelligence skills [28:44]
Setting objective goals and how Monsters Inc. can help [30:14]
How to encourage measurable goal selection and tracking within your team [38:14]
Excel spreadsheets? [44:14]
Nick Ganju’s favorite movie [53:14]
Skill acquisition and the glory of ping pong [55:29]
How to practice ping pong when no one is around, plus the most common mistakes [1:02:44]
The daily rituals of Nick Ganju [1:05:44]
What it means to rid yourself of cognitive biases [1:06:29]
Cognitive Biases and how to price anchor like a god [1:11:14]
The Bill Gates-like life plan [1:16:04]
Rapid Fire Questions: Punchable, frequent plays, and how to get people hooked on music. [1:17:39]
Advice for the 20-year old Nick Ganju, or anyone seeking to rapidly develop business skills [1:25:14]
Choosing your fist gig or your next gig -> How to get started [1:27:14]

People Mentioned

Mac Andreessen
Max Levchin
Phil Gordon
Keith Devlin

Margaret Cho on Comedy, Bisexuality, and The Slow-Carb Diet

“My dog thought I was a singer… because dogs don’t understand standup comedy.”

-Margaret Cho [20:40]

[Housekeeping update: The demand for my $5K Holiday Megabox exceeded expectations, so I'm opening up a few more slots. First come, first served, and deadline is 11:59pm PT today, November 11, 2014. Click here for more details.]

Margaret Cho is a polymath.

She is an internationally acclaimed comic, actress, author, fashion designer and singer-songwriter. Perhaps you’ve seen her on the big screen, or in TV series such as Sex and the City and 30 Rock.

But well before she was on Dancing with the Stars (yes, she’s done that, too), she decided on her comedy career… at the tender age of eight.  The stage has been her constant companion ever since.

In this episode we delve into her comic influences and approaches, bisexuality, slow-carb adventures, and much more. Please indulge me as we dig deep into the lesser-known tricks of the Slow-Carb Diet. Margaret had a lot of detailed questions (she’s followed it for ~3 months), and the answers might help accelerate your own fat loss.  (If you want more, here are several case studies — with pics — who’ve lost 100+ pounds.)

Enjoy!

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What’s your favorite curse word — or phrase — and why? Please click here to let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments.

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Explore Margaret Cho’s Writing:

I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight | I’m the One that I Want

Overeaters Anonymous and HOW for those struggling with food cravings
How to Be a Movie Star by William J. Mann
Connect with Margaret Cho: Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram

Show Notes

What compels Margaret to perform stand-up comedy [3:30]
The early years of Margaret’s comedy career [4:50]
On the appeal of Joan Rivers and her immense gratitude [8:50]
Fearlessness and Margaret’s most fearful on-stage moments [11:30]
How to deal with hecklers [15:45]
Margaret’s inspirations [19:30]
Revealing intimate traits on stage and thoughts on female bisexuality [23:00]
The challenges of the isolated comedian lifestyle, and the potential for drug addiction [30:00]
Personality traits for those who gravitate towards stimulants vs. depressants [33:00]
The catalyzing moment when Margaret decided her prescription pill addiction needed to be fought [34:45]
Margaret Cho’s process for creating new material [40:30]
Why to hone an act (or product) internationally before bringing it to the USA – Note: Nike does this. [42:30]
“Successful” — who comes to mind? Does Margaret self-identify as successful? [48:00]
Clarifications on the Slow-Carb Diet and cheat day [50:30]
Hunger and human resilience [58:30]
Her death-row meal and why it’s changed since starting the SCD [1:10:30]
Margaret’s favorite curse word [1:11:45]
Stand-up pre-game rituals [1:13:45]
On Hollywood success and the types who aren’t tortured by it [1:16:10]
What attributes Dave Grohl exhibits, and why drummers tend to be positive people [1:17:30]

People Mentioned

Joan Rivers
Robin Williams
Anna Nicole Smith
Dave Grohl

Rolf Potts on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”  - Rolf Potts

“If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.” - Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding (hear the audio book sample here), one of my favorite books of all-time.  It was one of just two books (the other was Walden) that I carried with me around the world from 2004-2005.  Those adventures led directly to The 4-Hour Workweek.

World travel doesn’t have to be a wealthy person’s sport. In this often hilarious conversation, Rolf and I dig deep into travel tactics, creating time wealth, “managing success,” and much more.  It’s a fun romp through every imaginable topic, from business to poetry, and from Wall Street to psychedelics.

Enjoy!

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream it by clicking Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Download both as MP3 by right clicking here (Part 1, Part 2) and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What are the most valuable lessons (or tricks) you’ve learned through travel? Please share your story in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes.

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Part I

Build.org – If you’re an entrepreneur, check this out.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Wall Street – Charlie Sheen talks about riding a motorcycle across China as his “retirement”
BootsnAll.com – Community and support for travelers
VirtualTourist.com – One of the sites that inspired my early travels
Trippy.com – New travel site created by the founder of VirtualTourist.com (Here’s my profile)
CouchSurfing.org – Find community and great stays on the road
AirBnB.com – Great places to stay all over the world. Tired of hostels? This is a good choice.
Learn more about The Beginners Mind
The Freedom App – Get yourself off the Internets
Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

Part II

The Writers Toolkit Roy Peters Clark
To Show and To Tell by Phillip Lapate
Screenplay by Sid Field
Story by Robert McKee
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
Marco Polo Didn’t Go There by Rolf Potts
Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog
Con Air
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (Download Audiobook for Free)

Connect with Rolf Potts:

RolfPotts.com
Vagabonding.net/resources
ParisWritingWorkshop.com
Twitter @RolfPotts

Show Notes

Part I

Converting travel fantasies into realities and the time-wealth principle [2:30]
Deconstructing and defining success, money, and freedom [12:00]
The time-strapped billionaire paradox [14:10]
Resources to fight the fears associated with world travel [25:09]
How new collaborative consumption technologies affect the long-term travel experience [29:00]
JP Morgan’s trip to Egypt, and what we can learn about business on the road [40:56]
Vacations and their effect on creative output [42:55]
When to leave the optimize-for-efficiency mindset behind [44:32]
Can you replicate travel benefits with a “staycation”? [51:37]
Exploring appreciation vs. achievement [54:08]
Rolf Potts’ writing process + “Swoopers” and “Bashers” [59:54]

Part II

The breakthrough for Potts in his writing: structure learned from screenwriting tomes [1:00]
Vagabonding and the therapeutic use of psychedelics [7:00]
The art of getting lost, and the benefits of getting lost [8:05]
What it’s like to teach writing in Paris, and who is a good fit for the class [16:15]
Thoughts on a mid-career Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) [22:13]
“Success management” and her champions: Dave Chapelle and John Hughes? [35:26]
Rapid-fire questions: Grizzly Man, Con Air, the love of poetry, and more [41:45]

People Mentioned

Part I

Henry David Thoreau
Ayn Rand
Anne Lamott
Kurt Vonnegut

Part II

Joseph Campbell – Monomyth
Flaneur and Psychogeography
Pico Iyer
Tim Cahill
Dave Chapelle
John Hughes
Werner Herzog
Heather Dobbins-Comb
Stuart Dischell
Michael Robbins
Amy Nezhukumatatil
Naomi Shihab Nye
Major Jackson
Donald Hall

The Unusual Books That Shaped Billionaires, Mega-Bestselling Authors, and Other Prodigies

Who are the mentors to billionaires, chess prodigies, rockstars, and mega-bestselling authors?  Who teaches them to do what they do? To achieve the success they achieve? Oftentimes…it’s books.

On The Tim Ferriss Show (iTunes, SoundCloud), I dissect world-class performers to find the tools and tricks you can use.  Here’s a full list of guests.  One of the questions I always ask is:

“What book have you gifted most often to others, and why?”  

Below is a list of answers from people like billionaire investor Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, etc.. (And here are my own current answers, if you’re interested.)

You’ll see several books that appear more than once. Can you guess which they are?

The Ultimate To-Read Book List

Kevin Kelly is the founding editor of WIRED magazine, real-life Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man In The World.”

Favorite book(s):

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide by James Fadiman
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko by Daniel H. Pink
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts

Full Conversation:

Peter Thiel, billionaire investor (first outside investor in Facebook) and co-founder of PayPal, Palantir.

Favorite book(s):

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by René Girard

Full Conversation:

Tony Robbins, performance coach to Bill Clinton, Serena Williams, Paul Tudor Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and more.

Favorite book(s):

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E.Frankl
The Fourth Turning by William Strauss
Generations by William Strauss
Slow Sex by Nicole Daedone
Mindset by Carol Dweck

Full Conversation:

Peter Diamandis has been named one of the world’s 50 greatest leaders by Fortune Magazine.  In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Today, the X PRIZE leads the world in designing and operating large-scale global competitions to solve market failures.

Favorite book(s):

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A.Lindbergh
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein
The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil

Full Conversation:

Joshua Waitzkin – Considered a chess prodigy and the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, Josh has perfected learning strategies that can be applied to anything, including chess, Brazilian jiu-jutsu (he is a black belt under phenom Marcelo Garcia), business, and Tai Chi Push Hands (he is a world champion).

Favorite book(s):

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English Translation
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway
The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Larry W. Phillips

Full Conversation:

Ed Catmull is a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios (along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) and president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.

Favorite book(s):

The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
One Monster After Another by Mercer Mayer

Full Conversation:

Neil Strauss has written 7 New York Times bestsellers, including The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

Favorite book(s):

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gregory Rabassa
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera

Full Conversation:

Tracy DiNunzio is the self-taught founder and CEO of Tradesy.com, which has attracted legendary investors like Sir Richard Branson and John Doerr.

Favorite book(s):

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

Full Conversation:

Mike Shinoda is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and one of the two vocalists of the band Linkin Park, which has sold 60+ million albums worldwide.

Favorite book(s):

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway

Full Conversation:

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and bestselling author.

Favorite book(s):

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
Jesus’ Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Full Conversation:

Joe De Sena is the co-founder of The Death Race, Spartan Race (1M+ competitors), and more.

Favorite book(s):

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Shogun by James Clavell
The One-Minute Manager by Ken H.Blanchard

Full Conversation:

Sam Harris is a neuroscience Ph.D. and the author of bestselling books including The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, and Lying.

Favorite book(s):

Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana
The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein
Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Full Conversation:

Brian Koppelman is a screenwriter, novelist, director, and producer. He is best known as the co-writer of Ocean’s Thirteen and Rounders, as well as a producer of The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones.

Favorite book(s):

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
The Artist’s Way – Morning Pages Journal by Julia Cameron
Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Full Conversation:

Chase Jarvis is a master photographer and the CEO of CreativeLIVE.com.

Favorite book(s):

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler

Full Conversation:

Jason Silva , called the “Timothy Leary of the viral video age” by The Atlantic, host of Brain Games on National Geographic Channel.

Favorite book(s):

The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler

Full Conversation:

Ryan Holiday is an American author and the media strategist behind authors Tucker Max and Robert Greene. Former Director of Marketing for American Apparel.

Favorite book(s):

Meditations: A New Translation by Marcus Aurelius
Wilderness Essays by Epictitus
The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Cherow
How to Live by Sarah Bakewell
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
Tough Jews by Rich Cohen
Edison – A Biography by Matthew Josephson
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity by Brooks D. Simpson
The Control of Nature by John McPhee
Giving Good Weight by John McPhee
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Full Conversation:

Ramit Sethi is an American personal finance advisor and entrepreneur. Sethi is the author of the 2009 book on personal finance, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a New York Times Bestseller, and a co-founder of PBworks, a commercial wiki website.

Favorite book(s):

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier
Age of Propaganda by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson
The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi
Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca and William Novak
What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School: Notes From A Street-Smart Executive by Mark H. McCormack

Full Conversation:

###

Did you find this post valuable?  If so, please let me know in the comments.  If you dig it, I’d compile more posts that spot patterns across top performers.

Andrew Zimmern on Simple Cooking Tricks, Developing TV, and Addiction

“Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you.” – Andrew Zimmern

Andrew Zimmern is a world-class chef, television host and producer, writer, and — at the end of the day — teacher. You’ve probably seen his shows Bizarre Foods or Dining with Death. In 2010 and 2013 he was awarded the James Beard Foundation Award, which annually presents awards for excellence in cuisine, culinary writing, and culinary television.

But many people don’t know the earlier chapters in his life.  At one point, he was sleeping on the streets, stealing purses, and shooting heroin. In our interview, he shares all.  We delve into everything, including his culinary tricks, how he developed his hit TV show, his influences, key turning points in his life, beating addiction, and much more.

This is a powerful interview.

It’s full of tactics for anyone, and it has extra insights for all types of compulsive behavior (and, really, who doesn’t have at least one?).  I hope you enjoy it.

Listen to it on iTunes. Also, check out all previous guests on iTunes or on SoundCloud.
Stream by clicking here.
Download it as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as”.

This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results.

This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: Have you or anyone you know overcome addiction? If so, what was the tipping point, or what helped most? Please share in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going…

Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.

Non-iTunes RSS feed

Selected Links from the Episode

Pick up some Puerh from Living Tea
Listen to Andrew Zimmern’s podcast, Go Fork Yourself: Website | On iTunes
Say hello to Andrew on Twitter (@andrewzimmern)
Explore his excellent website: Andrew Zimmern
Here’s the 7″ all-use chef’s knife that Andrew uses

Some Highlights with Time Stamps

What Andrew was inspired by, and who he modeled his show after [09:40]
Recommendations for those seeking to cultivate an on-air personality [11:50]
The three herbs or spices that Andrew Zimmern couldn’t live without [19:20]
The magic of citrus, building flavor contrasts, and how to provide robust flavors [21:20]
Tips for improving knife skills and cooking skills [27:45]
How to identify expert chefs [33:38]
The surprising story of his addiction-filled life [36:15]
The challenges of helping those suffering from alcoholism or other drug addiction [45:05]
The positive side of addiction, advice for overcoming it, and how to support others [50:20]

People Mentioned

Michael Palin
Rick Steves


Hazelden Treatment Center

Is Beet Juice Really a Performance-Enhancing “Drug”? Digging In…

(Photo: Foodthinkers)

The following is a guest post by Mark McClusky, the editor of Wired.com and founding editor of Wired Playbook. Previously, he was a reporter at Sports Illustrated and a member of the baseball analytics collective, Baseball Prospectus.

Can “juicing” for performance enhancement sometimes involve juice alone?  Beet juice, spinach, celery, or chard, perhaps?  In this post, we look at fact versus fiction, dosing, and results you can potentially replicate.

I’ve added some thoughts of my own in brackets. In other random news, I’m finally on Instagram! Here I am, and here is a pic of Tony Robbins palming my entire face.

Now, back to our piece…

Enter Mark

The latest craze in sports drinks for Olympic athletes isn’t something citrusy from one of the big sports labs. It’s not chocolate milk, which has been shown in study after study to be a great, low-cost drink for muscular recovery…

No, today’s hottest sports drink is deep red and frothy, and tastes a little bit like dirt. Drink the recommended dosage, and you may find that your urine and feces become pink from taking it. But you also might find that you’re faster in your races. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you beet juice.

The key researcher into beet juice’s effect on athletes is Andy Jones, who became well known in sports science circles through his work with marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe. How much has Jones, a professor at the University of Exeter, in the UK, become associated with the beverage? His Twitter handle is @andybeetroot.

So why beet juice? (Or beetroot juice, as it’s sometimes known, especially in the UK. They’re the same thing.) The key is the very high level of nitrate found in the juice. The body transforms nitrate into nitrite, and then into nitric oxide. According to Jones, nitric oxide has two major effects on an athlete. “The first is that it causes blood vessels to dilate, so you can provide more blood through them,” he says. “Simultaneously, it seems to make the mitochondria more efficient, so they are able to create the same energy while consuming less oxygen. So you really have two things happening. Lower oxygen cost because the mitochondria are more efficient, and then you have a higher oxygen supply—in terms of performance, that’s a pretty good combination.”

That combination does, in fact, seem to offer a strong performance boost for a particular kind of event. Jones’s group has published a study that seems to show a nearly 3 percent gain for athletes involved in efforts that last between five and thirty minutes.

We’re commonly told that nitrates and nitrites are potentially dangerous, and that we should limit our consumption of them. The fear is that inside the body, nitrates and nitrites can combine with meat proteins to form compounds known as nitrosamines. There is some evidence that these compounds are carcinogenic, which is the reason that most health organizations advise that we limit our intake of cured meats like bacon and hot dogs, which use sodium nitrite in the curing process.

But Jones and his team have shown that we’re still very early in our understanding of what nitrates and nitrites do in our bodies, especially when it comes to athletic performance. As opposed to cured meat, beet juice contains nitrate, not nitrite, and there’s no protein that could lead to the formation of nitrosamines. (Other vegetables also have high levels of nitrate, including spinach, celery, and chard. They presumably could have similar effects, but such studies haven’t been conducted yet.)

The protocol that’s been studied the most by sports scientists involves about 300 mg of nitrate delivered as beetroot juice between 2 and 2.5 hours before exercise. Jones and his group did a study the looked at the dose-response curve for beetroot juice—more juice did have a greater effect on nitrite levels in the blood, although there seemed to be a diminishing return when it came to the actual performance boost. The optimal level in their study was two concentrated shots that are the equivalent of about 600 mL of juice.

It’s probably worth finding the minimum effective dose of beetroot juice, given some of the side effects. Many athletes suffer from gastric distress when they drink a lot of the juice. World Champion cyclist Mark Cavendish highlighted another side effect of beetroot juice in a tweet:

Doesn’t matter how often it happens, taking a pee the day after drinking beetroot juice will always freak you out!! #pissingrainbows

— Mark Cavendish (@MarkCavendish) January 13, 2012

As contrasted to the results for those 5 to 30 minute events, the results are more ambiguous for longer events. The Exeter researchers found that while there were small performance increases for cyclists in a fifty-mile time trial when using beet juice two hours before the event, they weren’t large enough to be statistically significant. [Note: There was no re-dosing in this time trial]

Of course, that raises an important question: is “statistical significance” [versus clinical or practical, for instance] the right measurement to use when we’re evaluating a study like this, especially for athletic performance?

LET’S TALK ABOUT STATISTICS

In the 1920s, English statistician Ronald Fisher created the concept of the p-value. The idea behind the p-value is that it’s an expression of the probability that the result see in an experiment is due to random chance [p-value], rather than the result of an intervention or treatment.

So, when you’re doing a study that seeks to show the effect of beet juice on cycling time trial performance, you start out assuming that it will not have an effect—this is called the “null hypothesis.” [i.e. It will not work] After collecting your data and doing your analysis, you crunch the numbers and come up with a p-value. A smaller p-value means that the evidence against the null hypothesis is better; that the effect of the intervention (in this case, beet juice consumption) is more likely. The p-value tries to express the reliability of the conclusion that researchers draw from their experimental data.

[In other words, a high p-value increases the likelihood of random chance, coincidences, or dumb luck explaining your outcome.  The lower the p-value -- ostensibly -- the higher the likelihood that your "treatment"/intervention produced measurable differences.]

Fisher argued that a p-value of less than or equal to 0.05 was a good informal line to draw when it came to evaluating research. That means that there is a 5 percent or lower chance that the null hypothesis would be true (i.e. In general, if you’re a scientist and you do a study where p is greater than 0.05, you’re unlikely to ever see it published. If p is 0.05 or below, it’s assumed by many to significant; most journals follow this cutoff.

Will Hopkins, a New Zealand sports scientist and statistics guru who has written a massive primer on the use of statistics in scientific papers, advocates a different way of evaluating sports science research.

Hopkins points out that a reliance on p-values below 0.05 completely falls apart when you’re looking at elite sports, where the margins are so tight. “You would see effects in studies where things would help an athlete, and yet it wasn’t statically significant, so people would say there was no effect,” says Hopkins. “It’s crazy to say there’s no effect, it’s crazy to make that kind of decision. It’s clearly wrong. What matters is a probability of it helping an athlete. We need to decide what we take as sufficient evidence to use something or not use something with an athlete.”

The issue with the use of p-values is that if you have a small sample size for your experiment, you need a very strong effect to cross the threshold of statistical significance. But when you’re trying to do studies on elite athletes, you have, by definition, a pretty small cohort. And if you are studying something that might only have a small effect, you’re probably not going to get over the p-value threshold with that sample size.

Hopkins’s solution is to express the results of research in terms of what he calls “confidence intervals.”

Instead of a binary view, where a result is either significant or not, he talks about the likelihood of a benefit or negative effect. So, he’ll express the results of a study in terms of it being very likely beneficial, or almost certainly not harmful. Because when researchers and coaches are working with elite athletes, they have to conform to that central principle of medical ethics: First, do no harm.

“You’re trying to do better,” says Hopkins. “But you have to make sure not to do worse.”

BACK TO THE BEETS

With all of that in mind, we can look more closely at the study I mentioned above, where Jones’s team looked at the effect of beet juice on a 50-mile cycling time trial. If you read the abstract of the study, you see the following:

In conclusion, acute dietary supplementation with beetroot juice did not significantly improve 50 mile TT [time trial] performance in well-trained cyclists. It is possible that the better training status of the cyclists in this study might reduce the physiological and performance response to NO3- [nitrate] supplementation compared with the moderately trained cyclists tested in earlier studies.

That seems pretty clear—”did not significantly improve.” But then you look more closely at the experiment. There were eight cyclists involved in the study, and they did a double blind experiment where each rider did two time trials, one after drinking 500 mL of normal beet juice, and one when they drank the same amount of juice that had been nitrate-depleted. Here’s the key line of the paper with the results of those trials:

Compared to PL [placebo], BR [beetroot juice] supplementation resulted in a group mean reduction in completion time for the 50 mile TT of 0.8 % or 1.2 min (PL: 137.9 ± 6.4 vs. BR: 136.7 ± 5.6 min), but this difference did not attain statistical significance (P > 0.05).

So it wasn’t that the riders didn’t improve. When you look at the mean, they improved by 0.8 percent. But the sample size was small, and the improvement was small, so the p-value was above 0.05. That’s why the authors correctly note that it didn’t attain statistical significance.

[Note from Tim: Here’s what one researcher friend of mine added to this: “This is a classic problem of “underpower” (beta). With only 8 subjects in a cross-over design, you’d need to see a 10% difference or so to achieve p

But Jones knows that part of his audience is scientists working with competitive athletes. Drawing on Hopkins’s concept of how to express the results of an experiment, the paper states:

It is noteworthy, however, that although the group mean improvement in 50 mile TT performance did not attain statistical significance, an improvement in completion time of 0.8 % would likely to be practically meaningful during competition.

And digging even deeper into the study, you find something else. Of the eight subjects, five of them had their level of plasma nitrite increase by 30 percent or more after drinking the beet juice, which is what you’d expect when you drink something rich in nitrates.

But the other three riders didn’t get the same increase in nitrite in their blood—in fact, one actually had a decrease. This sort of individual difference in response is actually a common phenomena across lots of things, from nutrition to how we react to a workout. (In my book, Faster, Higher, Stronger, I argue that those individual differences mean that each of us is doing an experiment with just one subject, a perspective that’s near and dear to many of the readers of this blog and Tim’s books).

When you look at just the responders to beet juice, the improvements look very different. They had a mean time reduction of 2 percent, which would be more in line with what previous studies have found.

One other interesting result of Jones’s research is that beet juice seems to be a more effective ergogenic aid for regular athletes than it is for elite performers. “If you think of the things beet juice helps with, like blood flow and mitochondrial function, in elite athletes, those abilities are pretty well developed,” says Jones. “So there, you do have an issue of diminishing returns—any ergogenic aid might have a smaller benefit in the elite. But even if the benefit is just 0.1 of a percent, it’s probably worth trying.” This is one case in which regular folks like you and me might get more out of beet juice than an Olympian, but as Jones notes, even the small chance of a benefit for that elite athlete make it worth trying. And they certainly have been.

Jones tells me just about every top nation at the 2012 Olympics was using beet juice with its athletes. “It was actually pretty difficult to buy beet juice within ten miles of London,” he says.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?

As Jones says, the good news is that beet juice is likely more effective for more normally athletic people like you and me. The best recommendations I have for you right now are:

Beet juice’s benefits are best established for events that last from five to 30 minutes. Lots of athletic events fall into that time frame, from middle distance swimming and running to rowing, all the way up to 5K, and even 10K if you’re a fast runner. Research has pegged these gains at around 3 percent.
Most research has been done with the equivalent of 500-600 mL of beet root juice consumed between 2 and 2.5 hours before the event. (So, for instance, the research on longer events didn’t include athletes re-dosing due to the length of the effort). This can be in the form of regular juice, while some athletes have started to turn to concentrated beet juice which makes it easier to get the nitrates without so much bulk in the stomach.
Team sports have been studied less than individual sports, but there is some research that indicates that beet juice can improve performance in the so-called Yo-Yo recovery test, which simulates the stop and start action that you get in sports like football, basketball, and soccer. Many sports teams are starting to use beet juice.
As discussed above, the data on endurance events over 30 minutes isn’t as clear as the data for shorter events. But there’s no evidence of harm to performance with the standard dosages. So feel free to try it and see if you’re a responder or non-responder.
Speaking of responders and non-responders—keep track of your data! You won’t be able to correct for the placebo effect when you use beet juice, but by tracking your performance (whether it’s a training log, a fitness tracking device, or a site like Strava), you can see if you’re getting a benefit, or if you’re just #pissingrainbows for no reason.

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My book, Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science Is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes, is an in-depth look at the science and technology that allows the world’s best athletes to push the boundaries of human performance.

Further reading:

10 Uncommon “Superfoods” from the World of Ultra-Endurance
How To Lose 20-30 Pounds In 5 Days: The Extreme Weight Cutting and Rehydration Secrets of UFC Fighters
Are Saunas the Next Big Performance-Enhancing “Drug”?
How To Gain 20 Pounds In 28 Days: The Extreme Muscle Building Secrets of UFC Fighters