I am ecstatic to announce that The 4-Hour Chef has won Best First Cookbook at the 18th Annual “Best in the World” Gourmand World Cookbook Awards (!!!).
26,000+ food and wine books are produced every year, and 8,000+ books from more than 100 countries participate in the Gourmand Awards.
I was at a loss for words on the platform above. I was more surprised than this (see :08 forward).
Thank you to everyone who helped make this book a reality. It was all worth it.
Thank you to my incredible family.
Thank you to my wonderfully supportive girlfriend.
Thank you to every one of you, my dear readers. You’re the reason I keep writing.
To become a Grand Master of Memory–fewer than 100 in the world can claim that title–you need to satisfy each of the following in competitions approved by the World Memory Sport Council:
• Memorize the order of 10 decks of cards in 60 minutes.
• Memorize 1,000 random digits in 60 minutes.
• Memorize the order of one deck of cards in less than two minutes.
Ed Cooke first hit this trifecta when he was 23. He later came to international attention when he coached journalist Joshua Foer from ground zero to U.S. Memory Champion in one year, a feat chronicled by Foer in the best-seller Moonwalking with Einstein. To win that championship, Foer had to memorize 120 random digits in five minutes, successfully commit to memory the first and last names of 156 strangers within 15 minutes, and (last but not least) memorize a shuffled deck of cards in less than two minutes.
Ed has memorized a shuffled deck of cards in competition in 43 seconds. Of all memory feats, none is a more compressed act of mental athleticism.
I asked him if he’d open the kimono and explain his method, and he very graciously agreed.
It takes around four hours to get comfortable with Ed’s best-of-breed system. With a little practice, you’ll be a third of your way to becoming a Grand Master.
(Im)practically speaking, it’s just freaking amazingly cool. Few people in the world can pull it off, and that’s reason enough to take a weekend or slow evening to try. Instead of watching another bad movie, you can become one of the memory illuminati.
Last but not least, there’s a $10,000 competition at the end if you want to really give this a shot… Read More
Despite the dozens of case studies I’ve put on this blog, and the hundreds elsewhere, one knee-jerk objection always crops up: “That might work for a single 30-something guy, but what about families? I have a mortgage, kids, and…”
Georges St. Pierre, better known to fight fans worldwide as “GSP,” is currently the UFC Welterweight Champion.
His publicly stated goal is to retire as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and, at a record of 23-2, ESPN currently ranks him as the #3 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. I think he’ll get there.
His intellect–and consistency–is what separates him from the brawlers. He has a scientific approach to winning.
This isn’t limited to training. He considers nutrition a critical part of his fight prep, just as important as being in the cage. In this respect, 2009 marked an inflection point. That year, after successfully defending his Welterweight title in his second fight against BJ Penn, GSP hired Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition to help him gain lean muscle tissue and improve his recovery abilities. Berardi, in charge of the nutrient science, recommended that GSP hire Jennifer Nickel and Rosario “Ross” Gurreri, two chefs in the Montreal area who worked at Cavalli and Bice restaurants, for his meal preparation.
In the next 8 weeks, GSP gained approximately 12 pounds of lean muscle and bulked up to 195 pounds. His upgraded speed and power helped him to dominate every subsequent opponent, posting a 5-0 record since 2009.
This post will walk you through how GSP ate during his 2009 transformation… Read More
Many of you have been asking me for the audiobook version of The 4-Hour Chef. Now that I control the rights, I’d like to offer it to you… for free.
The offer is at the end of this post, but first…
Who should join me?
I’ll record a lot myself, but I’d like to involve other voice actors for small bits and pieces.
Who would you vote for? Here are some of my favorites. If you like any other them, please Tweet at them using the following format:
“Request! @[insert name] Please narrate a piece of The 4-Hour Chef audiobook! http://amzn.to/LQjLlm @tferriss is a fan.”
For instance:
“Request! @SamuelLJackson Please narrate a piece of The 4-Hour Chef audiobook! http://amzn.to/LQjLlm @tferriss is a fan.”
Here are a few I think would be incredible, even for just a few lines:
- Samuel L. Jackson – @SamuelLJackson
- Patton Oswalt (played “Remy” in Ratatouille) – @PattonOswalt
- Ben Stiller – @RedHourBen
- Morgan Freeman – I’m unsure which Twitter account is real, if any.
- Chuck Norris – Not on Twitter?
- Tony Robbins – @TonyRobbins
- Neil Gaiman – @NeilHimself
- Brad Garrett (played “Gusteau” in Ratatouille) – Not on Twitter?
Who am I missing? Any requests?
The Offer
Here’s the offer, good only until tomorrow (Saturday) at 10AM PST (1pm EST):
- Or… if you buy three (3) hardcover copies of The 4-Hour Body (BODY), you’ll get both the audiobook for free and my $299 CreativeLIVE course described here for free. Just purchase the 3 books on Amazon and fill out this form.
- Give extra books to close friends and family who can use them. Challenge them to join the current DietBet.
NOTE: If you already bought three books this week through the last promo, you’re automatically getting the audiobook Otherwise, alas, only new orders count.
What will it be like?
I’ve never had a chance to make an audiobook myself and intend to make this one VERY fun and unusual. It will necessarily omit the recipes and be abridged, but there’s a lot of room for creativity.
Completing it could take a few months, but it will be well worth it. If you buy The 4-Hour Body with this promotion, you’ll get the audiobook (free) at least a month before anyone else.
If I think up more cool opportunities, you’ll be the first people to hear about it.
Ricardo Arias – 410 pounds to 211.6 pounds, for a loss of 198.4 pounds. But is he an anomaly? Sidenote: the black pants in the after pic (56 portly-long/60+ inch waist) fit him tightly at 410.
How many “how-to” books actually get read?
Historically, no one has known. Now, it’s possible to get an idea by looking at how many digital highlights a book has, and perhaps Amazon will someday provide data on how many people finish Kindle editions.
Taking it a step further: how many of the books actually get used?
This is tricky. Patients routinely ignore prescribed drugs, estimated to result in 125,000 deaths a year from cardiovascular disease alone, so it’s hard to imagine books are better followed. But how to know for sure?
The answer is: you have to track it.
When The 4-Hour Body (4HB) was published, it was met with sharp criticism, including:
- It’s impossible to lose more than 2 pounds of fat per week!
- It’s impossible to gain 20+ pounds of muscle in a month!
- It’s impossible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time!
Fortunately, the “impossible” (circling the globe, breaking the 4-minute mile, reaching the moon, etc.) needs just one exception to be proven possible.
Since late 2010, new research and publications have supported many of the 4HB chapters that started with self-experiments (e.g. The New York Times and “brown fat,” cold exposure for fat loss, etc.). For all chapters, readers have outpaced my successes with their own. Here are several 100+ pound case studies.
But, the skeptics will rightly ask: Does it work for the general public, not just a handful of standouts?
This post will cover the first wide-scale distributed studies of The 4-Hour Body, which involved 3,500 people over 4 weeks. I’ll also include a few individual examples and measurements.
Here’s our rough table of contents:
- Case Study: 200 Pounds Lost
- The 4-Hour Body – Summary of Results with 3,500 People
- The Winner of The 4-Week Challenge: Female Before-and-After
- An Opportunity: Win Money By Losing Weight… Read More
In this long overdue episode, join me and Kevin Rose as we catch up on topics ranging from start-ups and new projects to meditation and funny business. Thanks to Glenn for the videography. This is actually Episode 19, but Kevin wanted it to be 20, so there you have it.
One wish-list item: If any of you are involved in comic books or animation, I’d love to shadow a true master or even intern/work at A) a comic publisher alongside pencilers, or B) at an animation studio at some point in 2013. I have some wild ideas I’d like to explore later, and I’m happy to be a gopher (i.e. “Go fer coffee”) for a while. Please leave a comment or feel free to email my assistant (see contact page on this blog).
Casey Fenton founded Couchsurfing.org, which connects millions of travelers with free accommodation around the world. (Photo by Alexandra Liss)
I met Alexandra Liss on a rainy day last September, outside of one of my favorite Thai restaurants in San Francisco.
Alex had just returned from six months abroad, traveling through 21 countries for free while shooting her full-length documentary, One Couch at a Time. She was wrapping up the film and had requested an interview with me.
Startups that are part of this “sharing economy” — like TaskRabbit, AirBNB, Uber, and Sidecar — have given us unprecedented access to incredible experiences and resources, allowing many people to completely upgrade their lifestyles. By capitalizing on underused resources and new technology, people can live many strata above their income. In Alex’s case, she was able to raise $8,000 through Kickstarter to crowdfund her travel and the making of her film. She also lived rent-free during those six months, staying with more than 80 different strangers she’d met through Couchsurfing.org.
In this post, Alex shares exactly how she’s managed to become a couchsurfing guru, and the steps you can take to travel the world on next to no budget… Read More
At first glance, this post appear to be about martial arts, as it’s written by Ryan Hall.
Ryan is a new friend and a phenom. He’s IBJJF Mundial (world) and No-Gi Mundial champion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), with more than 300 career victories and 275+ submissions to his credit. Looking past his fight record, this letter and post is about the dangers of hero worship. Whether you aim to lead others or follow the best leaders, there are important lessons here.
Even if you skip the martial arts-specific references, this is worth reading. No time now? Bookmark it and make time later.
Enter Ryan Hall
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1- Table of Contents
2- Foreword
3- An Open Letter to the Martial Arts Community
5- My Story
8- Hero Worship and The Martial Arts
9- You May Think You Know Your Coach, But You Probably Don’t
12- Innocence and Trust Capitalized on for Manipulation
15- Martial Arts as a Means of Generating a Cult Following
Growing up on Long Island, I watched deer struggle across our land with arrows stuck in them. Deer died on our property because bow hunters couldn’t get the job done or simply didn’t care. Then there were the beer cans littered on the side of the road, next to trucks outfitted with hunting racks. It all disgusted me.
Then… I met Steve Rinella.
He didn’t fit my stereotype. For instance, he applies physics terms to skinning. And most relevant to my 4-Hour Chef food quest, as he put it: “There are far better chefs out there than me. There are far better hunters out there, too. But there aren’t many who can combine the two like I do.”
He is a master of turning the wild into “ingredients” people recognize. In 2004, he prepared a three-day, 45-course banquet from Escoffier’s landmark 1903 classic, Le Guide Culinaire.
By “prepare,” I mean that he foraged, killed, or otherwise procured every ingredient from the outdoors… then re-created the feast himself, which took more than a week. This experiment was chronicled in his first book, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine. He started trapping for income in rural Michigan when he was 10. Now 38, he writes for a living, and his work is as likely to be seen in The New York Times as in Field and Stream.
Thanks to his incredible teaching ability (and respect for the game he hunts), Steve was my guide in most of the “WILD” section of The 4-Hour Chef.
Now, you can see him in action.
This Sunday at 9pm ET/PT, Steve and I will be on the debut episode of his show, aptly called “MeatEater.” It chronicles a life-changing week-long trip we took to remote Alaska, were we lived on the edge of a river bank, hunting, foraging, and defending camp from grizzly bears.
Here are a few trailers, followed by instructions on how to watch it live.
FAQ
- How do I get the Sportsman Channel?
Click here and look on the right-hand side of the screen, where you’ll find a Sportsman Channel Finder. Type in your zipcode in the box and click “GO.” Follow the instructions in the pop up window.
- What is the cost (or range of cost) for getting Sportsman Channel? Can I test drive it?
On DirectTV, Dish, Verizon FIOS, or ATT U-Verse, the cost for the package can range from an additional $5 a month up to $15 or so, but non-satellite cable providers like Comcast vary from market to market. Be sure to connect with them to get accurate pricing.
That said, the packages almost always come with more than just one channel, so the cost could be spread out over additional channels. For example, you get channels like FOX Movie Channel, the National Geographic Channel, VH1 Classic, PBS Kids, and E! along with Sportsman Channel on Direct TV’s Choice Xtra package.
Worst-case scenario: you can always order and cancel the next day if you’re not happy, and your cable/satellite provider will usually fully credit the amount or prorate, which would end up costing you less than $1 for a day or two. I’m not recommending you screw your cable company, but if you’d like to take the channel(s) for a test drive, there you go.
- Is it available on Roku or AppleTV?
Sportsman Channel is not currently on Roku or AppleTV.
- Any plans to be available for download anywhere like iTunes?
“We’re working on getting all episodes of MeatEater up on iTunes, but it’s probably 3-6 months away. It will be available on DVD in April 2013.As of right now, the episode won’t be available on iTunes, but stay tuned to themeateater.com or www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater for updates.”
Otherwise, alas, only new orders count.
