Review: Tim Ferris podcast will teach you something new – but only if you’re interested

The Tim Ferris Show - a busines podcast from the author of the bestselling book The Four-Hour Work Week - only tackles subjects that Ferris is interested in, so choose your episodes carefully.

Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Work. Amy Price / Getty Images

If you haven’t heard of Tim Ferriss, you must have been living under a very large rock in the desert.

His book, The 4-Hour Work Week, about building an e-commerce business with minimal personal involvement, spent four years on The New York Times bestseller list and was swiftly followed by The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef.

Ferriss has become a well-established face on the start-up scene and an angel investor in companies from Facebook to Twitter to Uber.

So it was a logical progression for him to experiment with a business podcast.

The Tim Ferriss Show, in which the entrepreneur and author interviews various people who interest him started three years ago. Guests range from actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger to Silicon Valley journalist Kara Swisher.

Starting out with a six-show experiment, it has now surpassed 200 episodes and been downloaded more than 150 million times.

Ferriss, who turns 40 this year, tends to podcast about what he’s interested in, whether it is mushroom coffee, investing, fitness (he has a world record in the tango) or accelerated learning (he speaks 10 languages). “You do not have to be super-human to get super-human results,” he says in episode one.

Be prepared for podcasts from a snappy five minutes to 192 minutes long – almost as long as the movie Titanic. His idea is that you do an 80:20 analysis to extract the 20 per cent of “tactics, tools and routines” of value to you from any podcast episode – but it is left to you to find that 20 per cent. So choose your episodes carefully – such as Should You Build A Start-Up? or How To 10X Your Results – as it is a lot of time to waste if you are not interested in the subject matter.

Since Ferriss went on to distil the best of the show into a new book, Tools of Titans, the podcasts recycled from the book are the best place to start for a brief(er) “best of” list.

The Tim Ferriss Show can be downloaded free from iTunes or at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.

Q&A: Tim Ferris tells Suzanne Locke about the rationale behind creating his podcast:

Who have your favourite entrepreneur interviewees been?

Too many to count, but a few off the top of my head (and they are also favourites of the fans) are Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby), Chris Sacca (venture investor who appears on TV show Shark Tank), Seth Godin (author Purple Cow), and Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape, who now sits on the boards of several technology firms including Facebook).

How much time do you spend on your podcasts?

I tend to record on Mondays and Fridays, but I’ll sometimes batch-record like a maniac, then schedule out. For instance, in January I already had nearly all podcasts until March and April recorded and ready to slot. Each episode is generally 90 to 180 minutes of recording.

You already had so much success with books, what made you do a podcast?

The podcast is my favourite part of writing (research, interviewing experts) without the writing. I love it. On top of that, audio – unlike print or video – is often consumed as a second activity while people are commuting, exercising or cleaning. It’s introduced me and my content to worlds and audiences who never would have picked up one of my books otherwise.

What podcasts do you listen to?

Hardcore History (by journalist Dan Carlin), Design Matters (profiles designers, artists and writers) and Jocko Podcast (by the author of Extreme Ownership).

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