I'm often asked, Count, you've interviewed all the icons of the last century.

What similarity do they have? Is there some thread that runs through all of them?

And the two that I've noticed, one, they all pushed out of their comfort zone.

Not anybody who achieved something great would tell you,

no, I stayed in the same place, stayed in the box. They all went out of the box, and two,

they all get knocked down, and they all got back up and took it higher than where they were the first time.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo.

On this episode, we're talking with my good friend, Cal Fussman. Many of you know Cal. He is a

writer at large for Esquire magazine, and he's known best possibly for the what I've learned column,

where he interviews leaders in various fields. Sounds pretty plain, Jane, but let me tell you who he's

talked to, just a sample. Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson,

Jack Welsh, De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Springsteen, Dr. Dre,

freaking paylay, Serena Williams, and even Muhammad Ali. There's a huge list. I'm just not gonna,

let's save some for the for the show, right? You get the idea. The man's got stories, but more

importantly, he knows how to get stories. And by the way, this is a long episode. You're gonna

want to listen to this in chunks. I'm just going to throw that out there. Normally with an episode

of this length, we would cut it way, way down, but Cal's got a lot of great stuff, and we just

didn't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. This episode is a deep dive into what

creates and maintains curiosity of the type that elicits some of the best from other people. Today,

we'll discover how to build rapport with people fast and how Cal had to do this during his decade

of travel in quite a surprising way that is near and dear to my heart as you'll see for various

reasons based on a past life, which I think you all appreciate, especially if you've been long time

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