YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen West

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115
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2025-04-23
most recent
2025-04-23
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Was reading everything I could get my hands on, and uh, transparently, the four hour work week was a huge book that allowed me to think about possibilities in my life in a new way. I mean, that's why I think I get that it's Maybe weird to call it a work of philosophy, the four hour work week because it's in the business section, right? But what I love from philosophy books, what they do to me, that book did for me in certain areas. You're calling into question assumptions that we're making About things like New Rich, what it is to be wealthy at all. Retirement, this is something that most people just assume is going to be at the end of their life. They don't even really think about it anymore. What was possible in terms of how to make money or how to automate certain aspects of your life?”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “I used to dislike those people. I thought that they were being too selfish. They're making it all about them. I think they have really good intentions. And I think it's hard when you get to be a professor to. Know what it's like to just be starting out. For me, I would say philosophy, a way that I've heard it described is it's the disruption of common sense. I mean, what is looking at the world at all? It's an approximation. We are works in progress. I look at the world one way for a while and everybody knows what it's like to change the way that you see everything in the world. And yeah, I mean, I just think philosophy is the method of doing that. The question is not whether you're going to change the way that you think about things conceptually. The question is, how deliberate are you going to be about it? It's like the gym for.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Thinks my way out of problems. And so the idea that this is the discipline if comedians go to a comedy club and it's as pure endeavor of trying to make people laugh, that's what makes a comedian what they are. For philosophy, thinking about things like that, forming new conceptual tracings of reality, seeing it in a new way. I mean, this is, of course, I would be attracted to something like that as somebody that always thinks my way out of problems. I mean, that's the only service I can really provide to the people around me that matter to me.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Was voluntary. I mean, that's a big part of it I'm not being forced into doing it. This is why I don't want to force my daughter who's eight to like think about stuff or ask her philosophical questions. I just, I think the best way to get your kid to not do something is to tell them to do it. But yeah, aside from the voluntary nature of it, I think that I just have always been somebody that”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I kind of looked into that one too. I was a dumb 17, 16 year old kid right on that cusp. I was self-aware enough to know that I had had trauma from the mess-up childhood that we just talked about. So I didn't want to just spend my whole life taking that out on the people around me. I knew that I needed mentors and I wasn't in school. I didn't have people to look up to early and I wasn't talking to my family. I literally Googled why is this person in the history of the world? It was my best idea I could come over at the time. I had one of Plato's dialogues Gorgias came up there and it talked about sock. This guy Socrates, he's harassing people in the Athenian agra. He's asking them questions, trying to find a wise man. And I just got hooked, man.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “You are so wise for asking that question because you know when you get older, you look back, you notice things that you didn't notice at the time. The best aspect of it, I miss it sometimes talking to the guys in the warehouse. There are a lot of really good guys there, and I don't have that social element to the podcast. The other thing is I got to listen to audiobooks all day long. I mean, what other job could I have gotten? I didn't even know I was stumbling into something that would open up so many possibilities for me at the time. It felt like I was just a day laborer, just horrible. But yeah, I got to listen to philosophy books all day long and talk radio. I got to listen to like Love Line with Adam Carroll and Dr. Drew and Howard Stern just like listening to these people just paint pictures with their words. It was beautiful. And yeah, I mean, if I worked at an office or if I worked at a fast food place, I easily could have ended up in any of those spots. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to read books.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “The thing that made me want to start a podcast is looking at the old dudes that were working in the office and they would walk out to their car like just like their backs had been fused together by like multiple spinal surgeries. It's just like walking on that hard concrete and lifting 50 pound boxes on. Oh yeah.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Harder work. I mean, you show up every day, your back hurts at the end of the day. You don't want to come back the next day. Look.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “And I would just like to wound the yellow yarn every morning at 4 a.m. and like stock stuff there. That was literally my life for a while. It's just I would chow up to Joe and Fabrics at 4 a.m. work from like 4.30 to 12.30 and then I'd work the night shift at Safeway, not night, but the last helper clerk shift from 3.30 to Nine or whatever it was That was not fun. Eventually, I didn't want to do that anymore. I thought instead of having two jobs, I will just get one job where I make $14 an hour at the warehouse. And I'll use whatever good reputation I've accumulated here thus far. And my manager was cool with it. And I transferred over there like 17 and a half”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Actually, I worked at Safeway and I wasn't making enough money at Safeway making seven whatever an hour it was. So I worked at Joe and Fabrics, which actually was next door. There was a safe way in a Joann Fabrics next door. I mean, this is like a grandma's wet dream.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “I worked a lot. That's why I had to drop out of school because I had to work full time to pay my bills. If I had no place to stay, I needed to get a place to stay. And so I made money. And so I worked at Safeway as a bagger for groceries. And then eventually I got promoted to a helper clerk, which is like you stock shelves and you refill stuff, get stuff for customers. Was the biggest accomplishment of my life at the time.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “They did me a solid. They said, Look, in the state of Washington, you don't have to report somebody as a missing person if they're over the age of 16. So what we can do for you is if you just were to run away, because this obviously isn't working in this whole circumstance, we won't report you as a missing person. That was the best offer I'd ever gotten at that point. So I took it. I lived in my friend's car for a bit Got an apartment with a person that I was working with at the time. I wasn't old enough to sign a lease, so I had to just sort of be on an honor system with him. And eventually I moved in with my girlfriend at the time. Anyway, it was a, you know, people make do.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Yeah, y We hadn't had an apartment in a few months, and they just thought it was best. Then went to like group homes and I was placed with family members at first, and then they also had pretty toxic relationships. Apparently, that's how it works. Like, my parents come from messed up situations. So when I then get replaced with one of these people, apparently they also have kind of messed up situations. But anyway, taken by CPS again, separated from my big sister early, long-term foster placement when I was 14 up in Washington, which is where I live now. I haven't moved since. But yeah, when I was 16, I didn't have any place to stay. There was a long term.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “San Diego, San Diego. And then I moved to Alabama, actually, North Carolina. My dad was in the military when I was very young. So I went to North Carolina, then Alabama for a while, and then we went back to California. And then I was taken by CPS off the streets when I was nine for the first time.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Clearly, something went wrong along the way. If I ended up dropping out of high school at 16. By the way, great writing from Thomas Chatterton Williams, by the way. Incredible. A dense riding there. It's like Hemingway. My parents had their own issues, as people's parents do. Everybody grows up with their own stuff.”

    2025-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #808: Stephen West — From High School Dropout to Hit Podcast, and from Stocking Groceries to Reading Philosophy for a Living · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT