YouSaid · the spoken record

Brandon Stanton

lines on the record: 109
first: 2018-06-18
most recent: 2018-06-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So, I mean, I'm in New York, and I've been trying to make this work for about six months now. And six months in that time of my life was probably the equivalent about two years of work because I worked every single day, I worked on Christmas, I worked on Thanksgiving. I didn't go home. All I did was photograph all day long. I would go out. I would just photograph people. I'd come home. I would take a nap and then I would go out at night and try to get some more photos. And so I had gotten thousands of these portraits and not many people were paying attention. I think I had just kind of started posting my photos on Facebook. And I photographed this woman and she was dressed all in...”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was called Humans of New York from the very beginning, yes. And things really, and nobody was really paying attention, and I was taking hundreds and thousands of portraits and things really started to get traction when I started posting the photos as I got them onto social media, mainly Facebook. That is when things really started to grow. The focus of humans of New York moved away from this giant sweeping project that was going to cover the entire city of New York and be some sort of representation of New York City. And it switched much more to about the individual. Who is this person that I'm meeting each day? And it became something more personal and immediate. And that's when things... Really started growing.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At first I was putting that one of my main kind of weaknesses and blind spots in the beginning was not understanding the importance of daily content because I had never had a blog before. And so I kind of had this great, and I mean, it kind of mirrors my journey as a college student where I was like trying to do something huge instead of focusing on doing something every single day. And so I had this huge kind of sweeping project of I was going to photograph 10,000 people and plot their photos on a map. I was dumping about 30 or 40 of these portraits every single day onto this website that I had that nobody was going to and the numbers. I even had a counter on the top of the website counting up to 10,000 because that's all I cared about was the end. I was going to get 10,000. I was going to create this sweeping photography project.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You like. And that was kind of really how I was honing in on my style again, which might still be considered primitive. It still might be considered unschooled by a lot of people. But I was just honing in on what I liked about a photo. And that was the process.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walk Well, I was just, you know, I was looking for anyone who, anything that captured my attention or curiosity at all got photographed. I mean, and that's one of the beautiful things about digital cameras. I mean, you can just take a thousand photos every single day. And so you don't have to worry about conserving film. Like you can just photograph everything. And so anything that caught my eye got photographed. And then when you go home and you load your thousand pictures on the computer and you start going through and because you don't know how to photograph, you photograph that person 50 different times and you're looking at your 50 photos of each person and you're finding the one that you think looks the best. And then you're going and you're doing it again and you're doing it again and suddenly you're not taking 50 photos of each person. You're taking 40, then 30, then 20, and then 10 as you start to get an idea of what it is that you think is a great photo and what it is that you...”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just came out of being on the street and doing it all day long and figuring out what it was that I liked the most. And without any education of what a correct photograph was. And I think if humans of New York has original elements, if humans of New York is original in any way, it was because I was just so addicted to taking photos that I never stopped to learn about photography. And because of that, I just, I was figuring it out as I went along.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More slowly than somebody else. And in fact, I might have improved so slowly that I'm sure a lot of professional photographers look down on my photography still. But by being that engaged and emerged in the process as opposed to any sort of formal structure of what makes a photograph, I innovated my own style. I innovated my own type of work that later on people have introduced me to Studs Turkele and people introduced me to these wonderful photographers of the past who took these Jacob Reese and who took these wonderful photos of regular people that my work kind of grew to resemble. But I mean, any resemblance.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Moments that were happening. I was still doing a lot of candid photography of people. And if I captured that, that was a good photo. And that's all I cared about. And that was what was driving me for these first several months and this first year, year and a half when I took thousands and thousands of pictures. And I was getting better slowly. I mean, I'm.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying? I mean, I was too addicted to taking photos to ever stop for a second and learn about photography. I have one memory. I have one memory of going to Barnes& Noble because I can afford to buy any books. I have one memory of going to Barnes& Noble one night and flipping through some photography books and enjoying the photos, but I just wanted to be out taking pictures. I didn't really want to be studying how to take a correct photo. You know, I just wanted to be out photographing. It was the act of it, the act of discovery, you know, and I had a very amateur view of photography at the time where is if you get something or somebody interesting in the frame, it's a great photo. I don't care how many points perspective it has. I don't care about the rules of thirds. I honestly don't really even care about white balance or focus or any of these things. I was just looking for wonderful people and wonderful.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I could start having conversations with these people, which turned into questions I was asking them, which turned into eventually seven years later the kind of 90 minute to an hour and a half long, very kind of probing and therapeutic and psychological interviews that I have with random strangers every single day. the result of which and the output of which became the stories that I think people are so connected with and the stories that really make humans of New York humans of New York.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wasn't doing any interviews at this time. And I mean, that's the thing. It's like the humans of New York that I moved to New York to do looks nothing like the humans of New York that later became successful. I mean, it was really just the impetus to get me on the ground working every day to kind of figure it out along the way. You know, my very first idea for humans of New York was I was going to photograph 10,000 people in New York City across all five boroughs and I was going to plot their photo on a map. That was my idea of how I was going to make a life out of being a photographer is I was going to be the guy who did that. And it was, that was kind of what got me on the ground, got me out on the street every single day approaching hundreds and thousands of people and put me in the situation where I could kind of in”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when I got to New York and I was stopping people and asking for their photographs, I realized that New York, if you were going to try to do this type of photography was the best place to be. I mean, mainly just practical reasons that you don't need a car in New York. I didn't have a car and I couldn't afford a car. You can just ride the subway everywhere. You can walk everywhere. And there's so many people. I mean, there's so many people. I remember coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel the very first time and looking down and I couldn't even see the sidewalk because it was rush hour and it was just there were so many people and I thought you know if I'm going to do this type of photography this is the place to do it”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All I did. And then I started traveling to different cities. I went to Philadelphia just stopping people. Then I went to New Orleans. I went back to Atlanta and did this. And then I traveled to New York.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then while focusing on that, I started stopping people on the street and asking for their photo and kind of taking a portrait of them. And because of that extra layer of difficulty of having to approach a stranger, the portraits that I was taking of people were more different than the candid photos I was taking of people. And so I started focusing solely on that. And that's when I kind of started having an idea that even though I hadn't been photographing so long, I was heading in a direction that was pretty unique because I was stopping random people on the streets in a very, you know, I know some people will do series, but I was doing this every single day and I was getting quite a collection. And this seemed like kind of a new kind of fresh type of photography.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something else. So, I mean, what I did is, so I got fired and I started, my goal was, I want to find out how to be a photographer. You know, I love photography. How am I going to create a life where I can support myself and photograph all day long? And so I was just out doing it every single day. And then I started kind of along with the graffiti and along with the, you know, architectural shots. and along with the nature shots, I started photographing people. And I noticed that these, out of everything I was photographing, the photographs of people were the most unique. They're the ones that least resembled everything else I was seeing being put on Facebook and stuff like that. And so I decided to kind of focus on that.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't spend much time with friends because I didn't really know anybody in New York. I mean, that's another crazy detail about Humans of New York is that humans of New York is an eight-year-old photography project based on people in New York City. I took my first photograph eight years ago and I went to New York for the very first time in my life eight years ago. So it was all just very new and all very driven by the desire to photograph all day long.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The same shoes. That was enough for me to just eat, sleep, and photograph all day long. And once I got to have a decent level of skill, and I mean just a passable level of skill, if anybody would pay me to take portraits for them, I would do that. Somebody hired me to do their wedding. And I basically, I just, I didn't spend money on anything. All I did was photograph all day long because I knew that I was making this pivot in my life to where I was going after kind of a lucrative career towards I was going towards just wanting to spend my time doing something all day long. And so, you know, and I became obsessed with photography in the same way that I was obsessed with markets. I mean, I just loved it. I just loved it. It was like a treasure. I mean, just going out, and it was so different than trading too.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was 2008. We had a, I believe, a record amount of time that you could get unemployment. And I had just lost my job. And so I got $620, I think, every two weeks from the government because I was unemployed and I had worked for two years. So that was enough to basically just pay my rent in a sublease that I found on Craigslist in Bedford Stuverson, Brooklyn. That was enough to pay that and maybe have peanut butter jelly sandwiches and eggs, assuming that you needed no other expenses that you wore the same clothes.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“this thing that was nourishing in the moment that I enjoyed doing and I said you know I'm going to try to structure my life around creating as much time for this as possible I want to make the minimum amount of I just I want to make just enough money to where I can pay my rent eat and photograph all day long and the journey that ended up creating humans of New York was my attempt to create that space in my life and that space in my head to focus on something that was very nourishing in the moment”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started taking photos was because I was trying to create some space in my mind away from work. I was desperate for something to do on the weekends that, you know, that would give me this foothold in my brain where I had a sense of purpose and a sense of identity outside how the markets were doing every single day. And so I bought this camera. I started going to downtown Chicago and photographing, you know, just everything. And I loved it. And not long after I lost my job and I made the decision that I was going to be a photographer, not because I was very skilled at it at the time, you know, not because I thought it was an angle towards success and not because I thought it was an angle towards an audience is that I just loved doing it in the moment. It was nourishing in the moment. And so I found.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To make money, you know, I'm going to try to make just enough money to where I can control my time and just do something that I enjoy doing for no other reason than it is nourishing in the moment. Not that at the end of the day, I'm going to have a profit, but because it's nourishing in the moment. And at that time, it was photography. And the whole reason I think, you know, one of the best, the kind of neatest things about humans of New York is that over the past eight years, you know, humans of New York has become largely, you know, the most, you know, followed photography project in the world with, you know, I think 25 million on social media now. And it's eight years old. And I think one of the coolest things is I just started photographing about eight years ago. You know, I started taking photos during this time that I'm talking with you about. And the whole reason I...”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you know, like what do I want to do? If I could do anything with my time, what would I do? And I had been for two years so focused on keeping that job, you know, that I didn't, I had never, I didn't have room in my brain to kind of ask myself any other questions. And so, you know, at that moment, I decided, you know, I've lost these two years of not only my time, but more importantly, I've lost two years of my thoughts focusing on this game, this game for making money, which was fascinating and philosophically interesting, but when you boil it down, it's a game. And I said, you know, I'm going to spend the next foreseeable future instead of my spending to...”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Off their computer every single day, go home and not think about the markets and kind of completely leave them there. But for me, it was something that was kind of all consuming for me. And when I made the decision to pursue something more artistic was when I had kind of lost my job and I was looking back at the two years of my life and I was thinking God, you know, and after I lost my job, I was so scared of that day, you know, during the two years when I was obsessing over markets and then when things started going bad, you know, there was nothing I was more afraid of than losing that job. And then on the day that it happened, it was surprisingly a good day because I remember taking a walk that day and I started asking myself things like, what do I want to do?”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you're burying so much of your thought energy into just the desire for more and the fear of losing. You know what I mean? That kind of narrow animalistic drives that, you know, that push a market up and down and you're kind of tethering yourself to that. And you just kind of miss out on so much of the life that's going on around you. And this is me. You know, this is me. I think it's part of my personality that once I dive into something, I do it to the exclusion of almost everything else. One of the reasons humans of New York ended up becoming so successful. I did know some of, you know, more the exception than the rule. There are people who are so in control of their emotions or maybe they don't have the same emotional range as other people that are able to turn.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those very kind of primal drives of wanting more and being afraid to lose. I mean, that's really what drives the markets is the greed and the fear. And I think talking with somebody about those two drives and where their greed comes from or where their fear comes from, it'll give you some insight. But to me, the markets, they can only tell you so much and they can only”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would, you know, I, as somebody who's interviewed 10,000 people, I would say that talking with somebody about their money and how they choose to use their money will give you an insight into a very limited. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but a very limited aspect of their personality, which is their comfort with risk. And I think our approach to money and our approach to trading and our approach to markets are very much kind of driven by our animal spirits, greed and fear and things like that. But, you know, I feel that the, you know, kind of there's a huge portion of people's lives and kind of thought lives that are, you know, kind of separate and isolated from those drives.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About a year after I left. So that is the part of explaining that avoids the most personal responsibility. If I was to explain it in the way that makes myself the most personally responsible, markets changed and I wasn't adaptive enough to figure it out. I kept banging my head against the same things that used to be working. I refused to fully embrace the fact that what worked for me extremely well for a year had stopped working. And because of that, the risk calculations had changed. And instead of making a lot of money every night, I was losing a lot of money every night. And I eventually got to the point where I was no longer a productive member of the firm. And so, yeah, it depends upon which story you want to tell. I think the truth. This probably somewhere in between the two, but regardless I ended up without a job.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think the narrative that's most protective of the ego is that we had a type of trading that was calibrated to work during periods of low volatility. The years from, I'd guess, 1995 or whatever, or whenever, you know, I don't know when my math is right, but late 90s to, you know, 2008 were periods of historically low volatility where the type of trading that we were doing worked. And during when the financial crisis hit in 2008, volatility went through the roof. Long story short, the type of trading that we were doing stopped working and the company that had been around for over a decade was out of business.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After the end of two years when I lost my job, I kind of looked back at the time that I had spent that two years. And it wasn't the physical time that was lost, that was most concerning to me. It was that I had spent two years using all of my intellect and all of my creative energy trying to figure out how to be the most effective relative value trader in fixed income securities in the Asian markets. It was something It was just something that was so narrow and so myopic and I couldn't even talk with my friends about it. And at the end of two years, we had gone through the financial crisis. I lost everything I'd ever made. When I lost that job, it was a very lucrative job potentially. But when I lost that job, I was broke because I lost everything. Wow.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was extremely, you know, I don't think I could do it today. I was in my early 20s at the time. It was just, there was just adrenaline pumping through my body at all times. And, you know, I was in that when you take something that is, you're naturally kind of philosophically interested and you pair it with a large amount of money and a large amount of excitement. It creates this fixation. It's almost like crack, you know, where it's just all you can think about at any given time. And when I go to colleges and I give speeches on the path of humans of New York and what led me to kind of pursue this life that was, you know, outside of books and outside of computer screens was that I”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The computer and go back 50 years. A market is a crowd of people haggling over what something that is impossible to value is worth. And the number that comes out of it is really based on psychology and it's based on this back and forth over what these numbers mean. And that was always so interesting to me. And it remains very interesting to me. So I was philosophically very interested in markets. And I was fascinated by bond trading. And I was obsessed with it, to be honest for two years. And it was a type of bond trading. We were very highly leveraged. And so, you know, it was a type where there was just huge gains or huge losses like every single night. To like playing very high stakes game of poker every single night. And so it was...”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which really has nothing to do with my life now. But, you know, and I think the narrative that people in interviews always try to put on me is that, because, I mean, it's a fun narrative. Oh, chasing the money, you know, doing this soul-sucking finance job, and then, you know, cut the rope behind him to pursue his true passion, which was taking photographs and art. And I mean, there's a kernel of truth there, you know, but the real story is that markets were fascinating to me. I'm still fascinated by markets. You know, they seem so tangible when you're watching CNBC and you're seeing these numbers and it seems all so mathematical. But in reality, markets are nothing but a bunch of people arguing over what something's worth. It's just like a market if you remove.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, and see this is the, and I always try to say, you know, when I mean, if somebody has just listened to this interview up until this point, you know, I think we talk about, you know, bond trading and dictators, you know.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Based on the Well, yeah, it's the, you know, I think it was kind of the comfort with risk-taking. And so, you know, at that time, I was, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do again. I just studied history because I enjoyed it and I really enjoyed it. And so he got me an interview with his boss. And it was scheduled. And I mean, this is somebody who went to an Ivy League school and he had studied finance his entire life and he had gotten this job. So I thought this was an opportunity I would not have any other way and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at the time. I was a history major. And so I had like a month to prepare. So I read. About 20 books on the market, and then I went into the interview, and at that time I was very well versed on how markets worked, and that's how I got that job.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I ended up only making, I mean, I made like, you know, $1,000, $1,200, which for me as a college student was all the money in the world. But more faithfully, I was telling that story just like I'm telling it to you, to a friend of mine who worked in Chicago. And he was a trader. He was a bond trader. And I was telling him that story. And he told me, you know, the one differentiator between successful traders and unsuccessful traders in our office is their comfort with risk taking. And based on that story, I would like you to talk to my boss.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back then it was an Irish exchange. It has since gone under. It was called in trade. And I think they had him at like 40% chance to win at that time. And he had like a 70% chance to win. Or something, and so you know, I didn't make a ton of money off of it because it took me like a week to wire my money to Ireland. And in the time that I was wiring my money, he had won a couple more.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When Obama, it was God, what was it, 2008, 2007, I think it was 2007, he was in the primary. And I was, I really became fixated on this campaign. And I was going to knock on doors. And this was during the primary when he was going up against Hillary. And I was knocking on doors. I was going to different states and knocking on doors. And I was reading every article about the delegate system and super delegates. And, you know, there was this point where I was just absolutely positive he was going to win. This is the primary. I was just absolutely positive he was going to win. And I was broke at the time. This is not something I would ever do today. But I took out $5,000. In student loans, and I actually bet on Barack Obama win the presidency.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talked about it, and I I think, you know, I started talking about histories because bond trading was really an anomaly in my life. I was really kind of wrapped up in all these things that we're talking about now. You know, I was really kind of wrapped up in history and biography mainly.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anywhere, you know, people can get pulled into this crowd psychology and direct their anger and their hatred and violence towards people in a way that would counterdict their morals if you met them one-on-one. And, you know, because of that, the lives and the periods of history that have always been most intellectually interesting to me. Again, it's not something I admire. It's not something I'm looking to duplicate, of course.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“well-meaning people were able to be able to be organized under the premise of committing such evil. And that to me has always fascinated me because I believe that people are inherently good. And, you know, I've traveled to 30 or 40 different countries. And, you know, it's funny every place has a reputation. Oh, don't go to this city. People won't talk to you. So many times when I land in a place, they say, you know, this isn't going to work here. You know, people aren't open here. People aren't friendly here. And, you know, I find one-on-one people all over the world, you know, are very, they kind of share, you know, a similar soul, I guess. And, you know, if people are generally the same everywhere, then... then that means anywhere something like this could happen”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Isaacson one was the one I read, and that stands out the most because it was the first. The person that I've read the most biographies on, probably Theodore Roosevelt, just because his life is so fascinating, probably Adolf Hitler, probably Stalin. And it's not because in any way these people are admirable, but as a history major, to me it wasn't the individual themselves that was fascinating. To me, it was how does a group of people, you know, Germany was a smart industrialized country. To me, the big philosophical question that fascinated me and the reason that I delved so much into the lives and the practices of dictators is how is it that a group of such educated smart”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A Lyndon Johnson biography you should read the four volume biography by Robert Carrow, which is the best of those. But you know, other than that, it just like, it all depends upon what it is that you want to do in life. There's just no biography that every person should read. They should pick the person they admire the most and read the biography of their life.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most do you want to participate in social movements? Pick Martin Luther King? Do you want to be president of the United States? If you want to pick be president of the United States, I would recommend Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson, because he was probably the president that was given the least in his life, except for maybe Abraham Lincoln. He didn't go to Ivy League. He didn't, he wasn't necessarily a great looking guy. He went to San Marcos teacher college. He, you know, basically, and again, this is if you want to be president, I don't want to be president, he worked his way up through understanding how the levers of democracy work, the levers of power in our government work. And so he is a fascinating character sketch on how to be president. If you want to read”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Drugs into that world? Are there any that come to mind? It depends upon what you want to accomplish in life. Like if you're just flagging and you don't know what you want to do, start with Ben Franklin. Start with somebody who is very disciplined and programmatic in figuring out how to develop themselves. Again, my advice always to people who are stuck is quit looking at the big pictures. People get stuck because they want to accomplish too big a things and they don't know the right step to take. So, you know, I always say just kind of instead of focusing on the year, instead of focusing on the arc of your life, focus on the 24-hour period. And nobody mastered the 24-hour period more than Benjamin Franklin. So it's like if you have no idea what you want to do, start there, I would say. If you know what you want to do, you've got to pick the person that you and”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that you really admire and read a nice fat 800-page biography of their lives, find out the struggles they went through, find out that the twists and turns of their lives and the decisions they made. And I mean, I don't think there's any better actionable roadmap, actionable education than getting down the granular level of somebody's life and finding out how they navigated it.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, but it grows and it kind of develops you, but yeah, you know, so biographies were the ones that I was really, really drawn to. And so, you know, at the time, you know, I started kind of reading all these biographies and I was loving it. And biography is just history. You know, biography is the best form of history, if you ask me, because it cuts through the theory, it cuts through all the speculation of the author. And we get down to the nuts and the bolts of the decisions that people made in their lives. And I think that is the purest form of education that you can get. And it is the advice that I give people who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Pick somebody that you admire and read their biography. Read their biography. If you really want some sort of guidance in your life, pick somebody who's done things that you want to do.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“60% of that was biography, I would say another 20% of it was history. And then I would read fiction too, you know, when I was absolutely tired of eating my vegetables. That's what I would call the most boring books, the really kind of conceptual one I just viewed as vegetables. It was sometimes hard to get through.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it kind of, it made me think that I had spent all this time kind of thinking and kind of pondering. And I thought that I was, that school was beneath me and school was boring. And because of that, I really hadn't been imbibing much information. And, you know, at that time, it's something kind of flipped. And I felt like, you know, I've missed out on, you know, probably the last four or six years of education because I was just doing the minimum, you know. I was just getting by and writing my papers before class. I was probably looking at the person's next to me's paper, you know, a few times.”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like this feeling, I mean, psychologically, you know, it was like this feeling of being, you know, maybe behind. You know, I remembered one of the very first books that I read was this autobiography of Ben Franklin. And you know, he has all these kind of, you know, he did the poor Richards almanac and he has all these kind of sayings. And I remember, you know, first of all, Ben Franklin himself was kind of the pioneer in getting self-improvement down to a science. You know what I mean? And so, you know, his example, first of all, of how much he, you know, how much effort he put into improving himself and moving himself forward. And then I remember he had this one quote, you know, that uneducated genius is like finding silver in the mine. You know?”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ever made was that I was going to read 100 pages a day, mostly nonfiction, and whether the book was the little prince or it was something like The Wealth of Nations, whether it took me an hour or whether it took me eight hours. Every single day I was going to read 100 pages and I did that for years. Even when I went back to school, in addition to my schoolwork, I would read 100 pages. What catalyst?”
2018-06-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT