The Tim Ferriss Show

#860: Daredevil Michelle Khare — How to Become a YouTube Superstar, Open Impossible Doors (FBI, Secret Service, etc.), Craft Jedi-Level Cold Emails, and Use Fear-Setting to Change Your LifeDaredevil Michelle Khare lives life to the extreme in Challenge Accepted, amassing more than 6 million followers and more than 1 billion views. Across the show, you'll see Michelle attempt everything from Tom Cruise’s Deadliest stunt to Harry Houdini’s water torture cell to trying to earn a black belt in taekwondo in only 90 days. This episode is brought to you by: Fin • powerful AI Agent for all your customer service: • Fin.Ai/TimMonarch track, budget, plan, and do more with your money: Monarch.com/Tim Momentous Fiber+ 3-in-1 formula with soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, and Solnul® resistant starch: LiveMomentous.com/TimAG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/Tim TIMESTAMPS: • [00:00:00] Start. • [00:00:24] Challenge Accepted • : The logline and why breakdowns stay in the edit. • [00:03:05] Growing up in Shreveport, LA: Friday night movies, the AFI Top 100, and interning on Snitch • . • [00:06:15] Podcasting: While “easier” than writing books, it’s a heck of a lot more work than meets the ear. • [00:21:24] Quality over quantity: 8–10 episodes a year, scarcity as strategy, and building a defensible moat. • [00:31:47] “Hard choices, easy life.” — Jerzy Gregorek, calling the FAA 300 times, and why no one copies you when the barrier is insanity. • [00:35:32] Dartmouth to Google.org: the Fermi estimation faceplant and not getting the job. • [00:37:10] BuzzFeed as graduate school of the internet. • [00:40:37] Work for someone else first: My case against starting a company right out of school. • [00:47:28] The stolen book: Michelle pulls out a battered 2016 copy of The 4-Hour Workweek • and reads her fear-setting chart aloud. • [00:51:10] “I’ve never designed my own rubric of success” — the nightmare, the repair plan, and what Michelle was putting off out of fear. • [00:56:59] Practicing poverty: studio apartment, stripped-down life, moonlighting for a year, then the three-month-savings leap. • [01:06:58] Kebab-shop destiny: meeting stunt coordinator Steve Brown in L.A. — now he does Avatar • and straps Michelle to planes. • [01:09:04] Surface area for luck: Bill Gurley, Kevin Kelly’s sleeping bag, and Seneca on voluntary discomfort. • [01:12:44] Coach, mentor, cheerleader: the three-person Formula One team you actually need. • [01:17:20] The art of the cold email — and cold-calling the FBI tip line to meet “The Hollywood Guy.” • [01:21:55] Michelle’s three-paragraph, six-sentence formula for emails that open any door. • [01:26:15] My cold email playbook: the “via” trick, include your damn cell number, and why “Yo, Ferriss” is an auto-archive. • [01:36:24] The fake Tim Ferriss Podcast phishing scam: Zoom calls, screen access, and hijacked Facebook pages. • [01:40:58] Emailing Hank Green, Brandon Sanderson’s unpublished novels, and why your first cold emails are just practice reps. • [01:46:37] Michelle’s storytelling syllabus: Survivor • , Snyder’s Save the Cat • , and peer review of whatever went viral last week. • [01:48:44] The magic of Jeff Probst, and dissecting the bones of storytelling. • [01:53:12] John McPhee’s red-ink writing class at Princeton. • [01:58:38] Six Thinking Hats • broke Michelle’s pessimism; Radical Candor • taught her how to give feedback. • [02:07:20] The slinky org chart: Seven full-timers that balloon to 50 for a shoot, then compress right back. • [02:21:21] Scope creep, saying no to big checks, and why Michelle has never hit creator burnout. • [02:30:34] My No Book • teaser: 850 pages on renegotiating commitments and getting back on the wagon. • [02:33:31] The Mindy Kaling manifesto: @MindyKalingFan, The Office • , and shattering expectations for Indian women in entertainment. • [02:40:38] Wishlist shout-out: Norland College, where Mary Poppins meets Secret Service. • [02:42:48] Episodes Michelle would pay to relive. • [02:47:40] Episodes Michelle would pay to skip. • [02:52:15] Seven marathons, seven continents, one week. • [02:57:10] Free Solo • , Alex Honnold in the creepy van, and things both of us would never do. • [03:00:38] Books gifted most: Radical Candor • , The Great CEO Within • , and Adam Grant’s Originals • . • [03:01:21] Michelle’s billboard. • [03:02:45] A primetime Emmy run and parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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#857: How to Simplify Your Life in 2026 — New Tips from Maria Popova, Morgan Housel, Cal Newport, Craig Mod, and Debbie MillmanMany of us feel like we’re drowning in invisible complexity. So I wanted to hit pause and ask a simple question: What are 1-3 decisions that could dramatically simplify my life in 2026? To explore that, I invited five long-time listener favorites: Maria Popova, Morgan Housel, Cal Newport, Craig Mod, and Debbie Millman. This episode is brought to you by: Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/timHelix Sleep premium mattresses: HelixSleep.com/Tim Timestamps: • [00:00:00] Start. • [00:01:49] Maria Popova • [00:02:04] The Cherish Quotient: Stop giving hours to people who rank as “fine.” • [00:03:15] When you apologize for your priorities, you’re apologizing for your life. Stop! • [00:04:41] Morgan Housel • [00:04:50] The do-nothing thesis: Be average long enough and you’ll end up in the top 1%. • [00:08:42] Read more history, fewer forecasts — and watch the news lose its power over you. • [00:09:32] How Stephen King’s 11/22/63 • illustrates the futility of prediction. • [00:12:21] Cal Newport • [00:12:36] What deserves a “yes” when the default is “no?” • [00:16:38] Deep Work • sells two million copies and creates a schizophrenic double life. • [00:19:07] The unifying insight: Both careers were always about technology and human flourishing. • [00:24:07] Craig Mod • [00:24:46] How quitting alcohol has been Craig’s highest-ROI decision. • [00:27:13] Therapy after a decade of sobriety: The cliché that actually cleared the water. • [00:30:27] The compounding interest that comes from committing to one craft. • [00:33:09] Debbie Millman • [00:34:30] How being offered the CEO seat at her company led to four months of paralysis. • [00:36:10] The sentence that broke the spell: “If it takes four months, you probably don’t want it.” • [00:37:38] Ambition changes shape: Validation isn’t fulfillment, and power isn’t purpose. More about today's guests: Maria Popova (@mariapopova) thinks and writes about our search for meaning, lensed sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (born in 2006 under the name Brain Pickings), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. Her books and projects include Traversal, The Universe in Verse, Figuring, The Coziest Place on the Moon, and An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days. Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) is a partner at The Collaborative Fund. His book The Psychology of Money has sold more than three million copies and has been translated into 53 languages. Morgan is also the author of Same As Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes and The Art of Spending Money. Cal Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University, where he is also a founding member of the Center for Digital Ethics. In addition to his academic work, Newport is a New York Times bestselling author who writes for a general audience about the intersection of technology, productivity, and culture. His books have sold millions of copies and been translated into over forty languages. He is also a contributor to The New Yorker and hosts the popular Deep Questions podcast. His latest book is Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Craig Mod (@craigmod) is a writer, photographer, and walker living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa. He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more. Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman) has been named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company and one of the most influential designers working today by Graphic Design USA. She is the host of Design Matters—a great show and one of the world’s longest-running podcasts. She is also chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, editorial director of Print magazine, a Harvard Business School Case Study, and a member of the board of directors at the Joyful Heart Foundation. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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