Ep 47: Bryan Callen on Eating Corgis (Yes, The Dogs) and Improving Creativity

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

Can I answer your personal question now? Where does the perfect time? What if I did the opposite?

I'm a cybernetic organism.

Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

Paris.

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That's twitter.com tfer riss or on facebook@facebook.com. Timferris with two r's and two s's. Good day. This is Tim Ferriss. I'm sitting in a park. It's a beautiful park in San Francisco, and the fall weather is upon us. The leaves are turning color and the eucalyptus are still standing tall. The foliage has not yet fallen. It's a beautiful day. For those of you who have not listened to the Tim Ferriss show before, this is where I try to use all of my contacts and research to dissect excellence, to figure out whether it's a billionaire investor, a chess prodigy, an actor, or in this episode's case, an actor and a comedian. How do they do what they do? What are the tools and tactics and tricks that you can use. So we dig very, very deep. But I'll start off with a bit of linguistic trivia, and I will ask apologies, or rather not apologies. That'd be a weird way to phrase it. Forgiveness from the turkish speakers. I love the turkish language. It's a fascinating language, fascinating culture, a real collision of european and middle eastern cultures. And I also have found the similarity between Turkish and Japanese very, very interesting. But I'll give you an idea of how I deconstruct languages. Just by memorizing phrases, you can pick out patterns. So, for instance, if you say good day is translated into English in Turkish. And again, I've read this, not said it a lot, but it's igunlar. Igunlar. Okay, good evening. Is e Akshamlar. E Akshamlar. And then the way you would say child, I believe it's chotuk or chokuk. And then you have chokuk. Lar. Okay, so you notice the lar at the end. So to turn child into children, you have the lar at the end. And it turns out that literally, good day is good days or good evenings in Turkish. And so you can start to piece it together without a dictionary, without a grammar reference, just by memorizing a handful, even like a hundred words or phrases. Anyway, I'm a nerd. There you have it. But we're going to move on to Brian Callan, who is the guest for this episode. He is a prolific actor who has acted in more shows than I can count, certainly, but includes pretty much all the shows at the top of the rankings. Frasier, NYPD blue, entourage, law and order, CSI, Sex in the City, king of Queens. It goes on and on and on. He's also a world class comic who travels the globe performing stand up comedy for sold out audiences all over the world. He is also one of the best read people I have ever met. So we're going to dig into all sorts of things. The craft of comedy, how he boosts his own creativity, which sounds like I could stand to gain from ideas for improving education, both self education and institutional education. Many different book recommendations, influences of his. We really dig into a lot of details that I found fascinating. Brian's one of my favorite people to hang out with. So without further ado, here's Brian Callan. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to the Tim Ferriss show. But we also have 50% of this episode, which is the Brian Callan Show. Brian, welcome to the show.

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

I am excited to have you on for many different reasons, not the least of which, as we were discussing before we started recording, you are known as the best body in comedy, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right. You guys don't have any videos. Just think of if you were to take human skin and stretch it over a cheetah. I think that's probably the best way. That's not me. That's just what my critics, the critics.

That'S the worst they can come up.

With, what my admirers say. But that's just what the critics.

You know, I'm trying to piece together. It's been a number of years now, but how did we first meet? What was the first.

Neil Brennan, who was the creator of the Chappelle show, knew I was into fitness and all that. And he sent me, I believe, a Ted talk you had done about a guy named Tim Ferriss. He said, what do you think of this guy? And I watched it, and I was very taken with the way you were explaining things and how you used your body as a human guinea pig. And I think I texted him back. I said, well, I know one thing. I'm going to go out and get the book, the four hour body. And of course, that sent me. Basically, I started with the four hour body, and then I got in the four hour work week, and then, of course, I listened to, then I read the four hour chef. So I became sort of this. But some of the concepts that you talked about resonated so deeply with me. 20% of your effort results in, 80% of your results, et cetera, et cetera. And here was this guy who was into all the things I was into, fighting and deconstructing the learning process. And then I heard you were going to be at this loft in downtown LA at some publicist place talking about your book. So my wife and I went there and I had a brief conversation with you. Not long enough. And I think that's how we first met.

That's right, yeah.

And then I think we had mutual friends, Joe Rogan and Keith Farazzi and various people like that. And then I got you on my podcast. I remember.

And that's when we started dating.

Seriously, I think when we started dating.

That's right. And actually, the timing now is making perfect sense to me because I recognized you initially