Top 5 Albums, Books, Events, and People

Hi, I'm Gay Hendricks. Welcome to the Big Leap podcast. What are your top five albums you've ever heard? What are your top five movies? What are the top five or three books that have really changed your life? In this episode, you're going to hear me and Mike talk about what ours are, and maybe then you can join the conversation and tell us about what some of yours are.

Yes. And what I love about this episode. First of all, you're going to hear the reason why, because Gay's got a really, really excellent.

His. His knowledge of history and people and personalities is part of what makes this really interesting. But we also talk about some of our favorite concerts, but also some of our favorite people, people who you really need to know or you want to know. And this is. It's just a delightful conversation that I know you're going to enjoy. And like Gay said, make sure you tell us what your favorites are, too. So all that and more in this episode of the Big League.

So one of the things that Gay and I have in common is we love a lot of the same things. So I thought we'd call this the top five episode. Now, we may or may not do five, but I wanted to cover the top five books. Movies, albums, events, people worth knowing, people worth watching. And Gay's always got an interesting way of looking at these decoding. And I thought this would be fun and entertaining. So, Gay, you're ready to rattle off some big favorite things?

Yes. What would you like to start with? Which category?

Well, I think the more entertaining, the better. So I'd love to start with music because I'd like to know who your top five, and I think albums would be more interesting than performers because we'll get performers as part of it. But album albums that shape the world because you grew up a lot of it during the 50s and 60s. But I don't want to limit the music to that era either.

Just. Okay, well, number one for me, the first album I ever bought, and I probably put it up there at the top of the list, is the original first Elvis Presley album, the one with Heartbreak Hotel masterpiece I Got a Woman. I mean, it was just one thing after the other, but it was that song. You know, you could hear Heartbreak Hotel and.

Don't Be Cruel on the radio. But some of the other songs on that album were so great, like his version of I Got a Woman. I must have listened to that 500 times when I was a kid. Okay, so let's put Elvis's original album up top there. And I got to see him when I was in the seventh grade.

Oh, yeah.

Moment of my life.

The second one, I would say would be Abbey Road. And I'm thinking of albums I've played more than almost anything else. Abbey Road came along at a time, early 70s, when I was a graduate student at Stanford. It was a very stressful time in my life and very hardworking time in my life. And I can remember many times just coming home and dropping into that album for an hour, you know, and kind of dropping out of the world. And. And also I would. Number three would be an album that I listened to a lot in that very same era, which was Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan.

So that made a big impact on me because of the. The incredible. Well, there was a wonderful range of songs, but it was listening to the way his lyrics crafted different emotional states that really appealed to me. And so I've probably played that worn out quite a few copies of that. And as a matter of fact, I recently have been listening a lot to the deluxe version of Abbey Road that was remastered and everything by George Harrison's son, Danny. The real labor of love. But the sound is extraordinarily. And there are all these outtakes where you get to hear, you know, like, their first version of a song and then the next version, then the final version. And so those are. Those have had a big impact on me. What other albums? Oh, yeah. I would say in fourth place would be the Dark side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. That had a big impact on me because.

I didn't know how to dance. And.

A mentor of mine said, take that album and just play it through and don't try to dance, but just move your body back and forth to the beat, which is sort of what dancing is.

And in fact, I said, you mean dance? And he said, no, don't think about dancing. Just move your body back and forth to the beat. So I went back to my little apartment that afternoon and I played the Dark side of the Moon, and I just stood there in front of the speakers trying to learn how to move my body to the beat. So I learned how to dance partly by listening to that album. So I would put that right up there at the top, too. What else did I would. I put in fifth place there?

I love the album Barcelona by Freddie Mercury and an opera singer named Montserrat Caballe.

Yeah.

Yeah. That just thrills me. That's very thrilling music. Oh, my gosh, I gotta say one more. The Third Symphony by Henrik Gorecki. If you've never played the Third Symphony of Henrik Gorecki G O R E C K I famous Polish composer. Put that on the top of your list there too. One of the most stunning pieces of music I've ever heard.

Wow. Well, one of the things that I did in researching this and I recommend everyone check this out, is go to Rolling Stone and look up the 500 greatest albums of all time. I'll make sure that it's in the liner notes. But I'm going to just tell you what the top 10 are. Gay. So you.

You'Ll, you'll. I think you'll appreciate this. So number one. Consider the number one album of all time according to Rolling Stone is Marvin Gaye what's going on 1971, followed by the Beach Boys, Pet Sounds. And you know that this came out right around the same time Beatles, Rubber Soul did and.

There was.

God only knows, which was I think one of the most magnificent, well written pieces of music of all time. It's I cry when I listen. I almost cried just talking about it. That's how emotional of a song it is. And then Joni Mitchell blue. I've never been a big Joni Mitchell fan, but my wife Vivian likes her. I've just never dug her. And then Stevie Wonder songs in the key of life. And number five is the Beatles Abbey Road.

Followed by this is interesting, Nirvana, Nevermind, which is another big one. Fleetwood Mac Rumors, Purple Rain by Prince is number eight. And then Bob Dylan, blood on the tracks is number nine. And Lauryn Hill, the miseducation of Lauryn Hill, who's an interesting character but then you know, you keep on going and you know, you get to Beatles, Revolver and Michael Jackson. But again, if you really want to jog your mind with some fascinating stuff, this is, it's really a great way to get exposed to big ideas and turn on the way back clock. So that's music.

Well, what about, what about yours though?

Your top?

Well, I. The God honest truth, gay is I. I'm all over the place with music because I love so much. But I'm going to tell you a couple that really have impacted me and I, I thought were extraordinary. So I. Growing up I was a huge Pink Floyd fan as well and it was the Wall, Dark side of the Moon and then wish you were here and Animals, all of those really, really powerfully affected me. And another album, I don't know if I put it in my top five, but I listened to it nonstop was Moody Blues on the Threshold of a Dream, which was a really fantastic, semi psychedelic but incredibly complex and then another one that I love because it was holographic in nature and not a lot of people would even recognize this, but Roger Waters had.

God, I don't even remember the exact name, but it's about hitchhiking. So it's one of Roger Waters solo albums and it was one of the most exceptionally well crafted, well engineered albums. And it's a story about a guy's life hitchhiking and it, and it. You literally live a lifetime inside the album. And this really powerfully affected me.

And another one that I still love. I've always been a huge Police and Sting fan.

I love the Synchronicity album. It was exceptionally well produced and of course it was one of the first concerts I ever saw along with Rush Movie pictures. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's so good. And.

And then, yeah, so Rush, Police. And I also was a big fan of. Of yes. So they were exceptionally talented.

Performers and musicians and also studio musicians. So the 90125 album was another exceptional album. And part of that is I. I remember it because it was one of the first concerts I ever saw. But that led me down the path of following John Anderson, who performed with Vangelis. And, and so I have that album. Oh, you do? Okay, yeah. So if you. There's John and Vangelis actually played a lot of stuff together. But you know, over the years I was a huge fan of many, many soundtracks and if you start going down the Vangelis, John Anderson route, that'll lead you to Genesis and Peter Gabriel. And so again, I have an eclectic love of all things, whether it's raw jazz, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, all the way to like, you know, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. So. And you know, if you haven't listened to some Beefheart, it takes a while to get used to him. And you realize there's this. He had one of the most profound vocal ranges ever recorded. Really fascinating guy. So the, the last one I'll throw on here, even though I over answered the question, is Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa. Absolutely hilarious album about Scientology. And he was reaming Scientology in the 70s. It was unbelievably brilliant. And it's basically a complete rip and tear down of.

L. Ron Hubbard and involves a lot of robot sex. I will just say that. So if you haven't listened to it, the album is just filled with hilarity and lots and lots of multilayered jokes about the recording industry, musicians and all that. So I just, I really miss brilliant lyricism and Complex songwriting and the craft of. And the poetry of album making. When every song led you somewhere, like Rush and Led Zeppelin used to do and certainly Pink Floyd where you. You literally got immersed in a movie inside your mind by listening to an album and looking at the art.

Yeah. While we're on the subject, why don't we do top three or top five concerts? Because I got to see Peter Gabriel back in the 80s and. Oh my God, Katie still talks about that concert. It was.

Do you remember which album it was?

Yeah, it was. Well, it was after Sledgehammer and that whole set of.

Came out. So he did. I forget the name of that album, but this was an Amnesty international thing with U2, Peter Gabriel and two or three other acts. But Peter Gabriel was really the stunning. I've never seen a performer be able to do what he did with that audience. You know, like at the end he had 16,000 people singing a song as he departed from the stage. You know, it was. Just gives me chills even thinking about. I also got to see Roger Waters do the Wall and I got to see Pink Floyd without Roger Waters. But I've seen Roger Waters twice. Last time down at the Hollywood Bowl. I mentioned the Elvis concert. It was great seeing Elvis, but the sound technology in 1957 or whenever that was, was so rinky dink, you know, it just wasn't immersive sound like you get today. The first concert I ever really saw with mind boggling sound was Jimi Hendrix in 1967.

Oh yeah.

There was this bank of Marshall amplifiers back against the back wall of the stage, you know, and.

It was probably the most thrilling sound I've ever heard just to hear what he could do live on his guitar. And it was on his first tour, so he was excited about it and he was there, you know, and he wasn't into dope big time yet. And so. And I also.

I love the bass player, Tony Levin, who used to play with oh My God.

And Genesis.

And Genesis.

He played. Yeah, yeah. Exceptionally talented guy.

Yeah. And so I've gotten to see Tony Levin a number of times with his band Stickman. So it's. And also when he was with King Crimson.

Yes.

So I've seen them a number of times too. So I love the kind of the. A lot of the English progressive rock that's kind of. Oh, and I got to see Led Zeppelin several times also. That was pretty thrill. That was pretty thrilling to hear in person too. Also, I say with concerts, I like indoor concerts a lot better than I like outdoor concerts because of the sound. I'm a sound freak, you know, and so you just cannot get great sound in a stadium, no matter what you do.

I. I couldn't agree more. I'm definitely a. A snob that way for sure. And so again, we. We've got very similar tastes. So I, I think the only add on here I ended up seeing. I've seen you two a couple times, and one time they played with Black Eyed Peas and it was.

Just.

You know, mind blowing. And, and every time you'd see them, you'd be like, how in the hell have these guys. First of all, they've been on the road and performed for, I think it's close to 40 years now as a band. They've been together since they were teenagers and just holding it together is. Is mind blowing. But the second thing is just to be able to perform like that. And then I had the good fortune of seeing the Police both in their Synchronicity tour, which is really their biggest breakout album, and then back together when they. When they reunited and they were just as tight then as they were back then. I mean, just so you know, because, you know, the drummer. God damn.

I just.

I'm spacing on his name right now. Stuart Copeland. He's. He's a concert composer and drummer. He's, you know, he.

He.

He's one of these guys who moves very little compared to the sound that comes out of. Out of that kit. And he's a minimalist, and I always appreciated that about him. Compared to Rush, which I also saw and, and multiple times. And they. And I saw them again when they're Moving Pictures came out, which again, what I'd consider their biggest breakout album that mainstreamed them. And then not too long ago, I went with Brian Hilliard, Ariel's husband, for those of you who don't know him. And we went and saw Peter Frampton and you know, he's got a degenerative disease. So he was at the end of his career where he wouldn't be able to perform anymore, but he still performed flawlessly. Just had reached a point where his. He was having degradation and. And the opening band was.

Oh, I'm. I'm having a. Led Zeppelin's John Bonham's son, who's also a drummer. They were. They played Zeppelin music and they had a young Asian Filipino guitarist performing as. Who's the guitarist? Help me out.

Jimmy Page.

Jimmy Page dressed up like him, but he's this short little guy, but he had all the moves, still played the double neck. And I mean he was a precise copycat. Very much in the way that.

Journey brought back a. A young Filipino kid who is like a street performer and sounded exactly like Steve Perry and. But he's, you know, five, two, just this little guy, but just like a parrot emulator. And it was delightful to watch. So I love seeing some of the old bands come back because I think, you know, going back, I saw Journey as well. And they were like mind boggling, bogglingly great performers. And Steve Perry would be playing with no in ear monitors. He just had that voice and that rock and roll movement that I think the only person who to this day is. To this day, I think the greatest performer on stage is Freddie Mercury as a rock and roller. I think he actually could outperform Prince or Elvis. And I didn't see Elvis, but that's just based on my observation. So there you go, it's mine.

All right. And while we're on the subject, though, I do have to say too, to counterbalance this, that I've seen a couple of concerts that were monster disappointing to people that are very excited about seeing but turned out to suck in person. Who is that? Well, one was Steely Dan. Oh, no. Yeah, they produce really great music to listen to. And I very excitedly once went to concert in Denver. Again, it was an outdoor concert, so the sound wasn't exemplary. But I could see that they basically by that time hated each other's guts.

Nobody acknowledged anybody else on the stage or anything like that. It was like they sat at different ends of the stage. So it was like everybody was wanting to not be there. So that was a problem. I also was really disappointed. I'd always wanted to go to an Elton John concert and I went to one and it turned out to be kind of just him and a piano and a drummer. I didn't realize that going in. And so it turned out to be. He played a lot of B sides and things like that. But I was very disappointed in that. I was also, frankly, disappointed in Bob Dylan too, because he's such an unshowman like guy that I would put also Van Morrison in that category because I was very disappointed. I've seen him a couple of times and, you know, most of the times he stands there with his back to the audience the whole time. And when he does sing, he sings with his eyes closed. So the whole time he never made any contact with anybody in the room. And yeah, that's. That's disappointing. I like to see people, you know, take the room along with them, you know, and Be right in that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want it. You're there for larger than life. And. And that is. And also to witness if there is a classic like we saw right before the Pandemic started, we went and saw Brian Ferry, who came to San Diego, and he still doesn't. He does not have the pipes he once had, but he was still a consummate professional performer in every way. And he had some of his original bandmates with him and vocalists who were just angelic. So it's again, going back to.

I say this to. To in all sincerity, which is. I'm so disappointed with the majority of music being produced today. It's generic crap.

Yeah.

Hideous. I know, but let's just strap it on today, my friend. So I. I couldn't agree more. So let's go down.

I've heard a couple of performances. It just blew me away. I don't know. Did you happen to catch Kelly Clarkson singing Garth Brooks's song the Dance at his Kennedy Center Honors a couple weeks ago?

No, I didn't. I didn't. But she was awesome.

I've watched it three times now, and each time it's brought me to tears. So check out YouTube and get Kelly's version of the dance on the Kennedy Center Honors. Garth Brooks. It had him in tears halfway through it. Wow. It's a great song. It's one of the great songs in country music. But her version of it, oh, my gosh. I'd never really paid any attention to her. I know she was a American Idol person and all that, and I'd never actually seen American Idol, so I. I missed out on her there, but, boy, did her voice blow me away.

Oh, that's fantastic.

We ought to do books before we finish. How about.

Yeah, let's.

Five books.

I want to hit your book list. So let's have it.

The first one is probably a weird one, but I read it every year. It's called Meetings with Remarkable Men by Gi Gurdjieff. And it's the story of his wanderings in Central Asia and around.

In search of truth back about a hundred and some years ago in the 1890s, turn of the century. And of course, Gurdjieff later on came to the west and developed an institute and became influential in lots of ways. But hearing his description of what he had to go through to get wisdom, you know, like today we can punch up something. If we want to hear some guru, we can punch him up on YouTube or her up on YouTube and watch a few videos of the Guru. But in those days, he had to hike all the way through Central Asia to Tibet and, you know, ride a mule into Pakistan and all those kinds of things in order to get the kind of wisdom he was getting. So it was. It was a stunning book and also became a pretty good movie that also has some amazing Sufi dances in it. So I recommend both the book and the movie. So that would be number one, probably a book I read every year. Number two would be Thaddeus Golas's book, the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. And I picked it up one time. It was a dollar and a half in a little bookstore way back a long time ago. I don't know how many hundreds of times I've read it now, but it's only about 80 pages long. But it will turn your brain around, and I highly recommend it. Let's see. So three, what would three be?

Hmm.

Hmm, hmm. You know, fiction. I probably learn about as much from fiction as I do from psychology and spirituality.

And if you pick up any book like Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy by John Le Carre, I recommend that one in particular, Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy. It's got such depth of psychology in it, in addition to being a great spy story. So I would put that as number three, and I put as number four.

I pick up more often than not. I'm kind of blocking on. Maybe I just got three right now. What do you got?

Okay, I'm gonna.

Take kind of like a weird path on this one, which are. I'm gonna tell you some books that really affected me at important times in my life, because there was the first one that got me down the pathway of personal growth and development, even though my mom had.

Some books around the house, and I'm trying to think of their names, but there are some of the original personal growth books, but it was really Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant within by Tony Robbins and going to some of his events. They. It was because of that that I started going to.

The Whole Life Expo. I met a guy who used to lead trips with people like Tony Rob. Well, with Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra. So after going. Getting exposed to Tony, I signed up for a trip.

That went to Egypt. So we visited all the Egyptian monuments and tombs and stuff with Deepak and Wayne, ended up meeting Wayne's wife at the time and his daughter. And I also met Ariel Ford and Brian on this trip and a guy named Tom Gygax, who was from Minneapolis when I lived there. So, yeah. And Tom ended up hiring me as an Advisor and a consultant to do some electronic stuff right after I had sold my agency. And that led me to meeting a guy named Gordy Schaefer, who his mother used to partner with.

Oh, forgive me for a minute here. Jeremiah Abrams, who wrote the original Shadow of America book, which influenced Debbie Ford. And he was a therapist to a lot of people we know. Well, he took me to Greece the following year, where I met Vivian. So if you take. If you go down the pathway, you and I indirectly met because I read Unlimited Power, Awaken, the Giant within, met Ariel. Arielle introduced us, and that eventually connected me with my wife, who used to work for Deepak, which then opened up this world of insane working with personal development gurus, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why I brought that one up. And then.

That's great.

Yep. So then there was a period of time I went through a huge heartbreak. So it was after my first marriage ended and after I had sold my business.

I met a woman, and we had a relationship for a little while, and she dumped me right before I was about to visit her in Florida, and I had already had the ticket. I had nowhere to go. So I just went down there, rented a car, and drove to the Keys. So on the way out of. As I was about to jump into the car, I picked up a cassette tape of Wayne Dyer's Manifest your Destiny. And I listened to that over and over again as I crossed Florida from the top, basically from Orlando all the way down to Florida Keys and back up again. And it wound up affecting me in such a way that I think it shaped how I manifest and create to this day. And eventually I got to meet and, you know, spent time with Wayne and his family, and I kind of semi dated his daughter. So that's kind of a weird thing that happened, too. And then the last one is a how to book.

But it, again, it shaped me. So around 99 or so, I discovered Dan Kennedy, and I started reading all of his books and getting all of his material and buying his stuff on ebay. And.

You know, a few years later, he came out with this book called the ultimate sales Letter. And I modeled that. I copied it, and it opened up my eyes to the power of. Of great copywriting. And I. I know I read other ones, but that was still one of the best. And I, I, to this day, one of the greatest skills you can ever learn is not just how to write, but how to write sales copy. And so for fiction, I'm at a little bit of a loss because I've read a lot of pulpy fiction, but I will just flat out say every one of Kurt Vonnegut's books I've loved and adored. I think he's one of America's greatest writers. And Breakfast of Champions and Venus on the Half Shell are two of his most hilarious books because he has this unique way of tilting life on its side in such a way that you look at everything differently. And.

I just think he was a great gift. And he completely changed the way I looked at life through a humorous, comedic point of view. And I could laugh at the funniest things. And it was because I had a Great teacher in 9th grade in my humanities class named Chris Theme, who had us read Vonnegut and also, like, you know, Slaughterhouse 5, you know, and a lot of banned books. Every book we read had been banned at one point in time.

I love Kurt Vonnegut, too. I think I've read all of those. Yeah. One of the things that I feel needs to be done someday is somebody needs to make some really good movies out of Kurt Vonnegut material. You know, there hasn't been really anything.

That was really great that came out of his material.

I. You're so right. I. I mean, the science fiction possibilities.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So, so good. All right, so here would be the. The last one on this list. I'd love to know. By the way, this has been a ton of fun, but if you had to pick.

Some of the top people.

Worth knowing.

And either you already know them or you wish you did.

What pops up for you out of people who you know or wish you did? And I'm going to just stick to living or were living when you knew them.

Yes. Well, Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti, was one of the towering experiences of my life, being able to be around him when he was still alive. I first connected up with him in the early 70s and went to spend time with him many times between then and the time he passed away in the mid-80s. And he lived a very long life. I think he was 85 or 86 when he died. So that was huge for me because it opened my mind in so many different ways, because he was kind of the ultimate purist, in a way, in the sense that he didn't believe in any kind of. Any kind of external beliefs, anything about reincarnation or anything like that. He was just pure in the moment. And that was really incredibly important to me at the time, finding my way through the thicket of belief Systems and all that to kind of find the pure thing underneath. So I would say that as far as people that I knew when he was alive, he would probably be the top of the list there. I'm trying to think of people I've hung around with of late that.

Some of them are people like that are kind of hard to find. Like a Tibetan llama named Oli Nidal. He's still around, but you kind of have to. Would have to look hard to find him. Okay, but he's worth finding. Um.

Who else would be.

How about someone damaged that you loved or love?

Somebody who was damaged.

Yeah. Yeah. Damaged people are always fun.

Oh, man.

Maybe we don't want to mention them after that.

Yeah, that's. That's a problem for me to say about.

I want to still keep getting invited to their houses at Christmas time.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great.

No, I'm just drawing a blank right now because I hang around so many fabulous people. It's like once I got on the wavelength, you know, of people I would call in a moment, you know, like Jack Canfield. If I wanted to talk about something, I'd call him, or I'd maybe call John Gray, or he and I communicated when his wife passed away, you know, so I know all these fabulous people. And so it's hard to single out any one particular one. But.

You know, someday we'll have to do. We'll have to have our lawyers come in and sit in on us while we talk about all the obnoxious, truly obnoxious people we've known in our travels.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So I was just looking through my text messages here for a couple of them because.

I've had the good fortune of meeting and becoming friends with a lot of people I've admired over the years.

And so I'm going to just give you a quick list here of some of them. Obviously, I'd say one of the top on the list has been Tony Robbins. He turned out to be one of the most fascinating people I ever spent time with, did business with. And he's very complex. Very complex human being. But.

I learned a lot because of him. And because I was in his proximity for years and years, it forced me to really grow. Another person I really enjoyed enjoy is Brian Tracy. Got to know him and did a bunch of stuff with him. He's another fascinating creator, and he's got. He's.

A complex character, I'll just say that. And traveled with him a bit, drank a lot of wine with him. So another one is Dan Sullivan and also someone that you and I have in common, Stuart Emery. He is a fascinating, interesting guy. I really love him. And for people don't know who he is, he's one of the guys who helped create and launch what became the Landmark, or it was EST at the time became Landmark.

He was the. Actually the first EST trainer other than Werner Earhart, I believe.

Yeah, that's right. And he's got fantastic Warner Earhart stories. A lot of. Lot of things there.

Another one I had the opportunity to know Werner not real well, but I've actually also worked with several people who used to work with him. So, yeah, he was a fascinating character too. I was only around him on a couple of occasions, but he had a very complex. He was very clear up in front of an audience. He had a very complex offstage life.

Yes, that and what Stuart, you know, I won't say too much in just in case it's sensitive, but I mean, he's still alive and he met him not long ago and he's kind of a. He's, you know, he's old now. He's just lost his. His way and he's, you know, he's been through a lot of stuff, as you can imagine. Another one who is endlessly fascinating. I walk with him pretty often as Darren Hardy, you know, from Success magazine. My God, is he a high performer, disciplined guy, and again, really quirky and interesting. I learn a lot every time we're together. And another gentleman who he founded Lululemon, Chip Wilson, worth checking out. He's. He recently was interviewed on Tim Ferriss podcast and I got to know parts of him that I didn't know before, and I haven't spent a ton of time with him. But he's. If you'd meet him, he's kind of like. He's like Viking. He's huge. He's big. He shaves his head. He's Canadian. You would never in a million years say, oh, yep, he's the founder of Lululemon. But really fascinating guy. And, you know, connected to that Tim Ferriss is. I've spent. I did some work with him and he is a really interesting. Another very complex guy. He's very open now about some of the challenges he's had in his life.

And how he's wrestled with anxiety and depression and that kind of thing. But, wow, what a fascinating dude. And then I've got two more here. Even though this is supposed to be a top five or top ten or five, I've given you a couple more One of them is Joseph McClendon, who for over 30 years he's been run a lot of Tony Robbins events. He's an African American guy who's always on all the UPW events. But he's a, he's a performer, presenter, speaker, high performance expert and how he's managed and negotiate. Being on stage with Tony for 30 years and doing business on and around him is endlessly fascinating. He's just a great guy. Talk to him pretty frequently. And the last one is someone no one's ever heard of but is Lee Stein. I don't know if you've met Lee. I met him through Ariel and Brian. Okay.

He's been to my house, we've sat out by my pool talking.

Isn't he an interesting man? He's a producer's producer. You know, he's behind the scenes at like X Prize and ted, so everyone who needs to know him knows him, but nobody's ever heard of him. And he's got a real low profile, but he's got a true genius mind. And he's another one of my walking, my regular walking buddies. But every time I'm with him, it's just like he drops a truth bomb, value bomb that just opens up, you know, it's not just your third eye, but your fourth eye and shakes the foundations.

He's only been here one time, but I, I'd like to get to know him better. Sometimes I envy you guys that live in the big city. I live up here in my little mountain retreat and.

We don't get as much traffic up here.

Well, we'll have to figure out a way to throw together. We started doing superpower dinners down here and I have to find a way to persuade you and Katie to come down and we do these.

Great food, great wine, and just really fascinating people in our backyard. And it might be the time to throw one of those things together soon.

We should do a show with Lee Stein just because he's so fascinating and not many people know his presence in the world, but it would be great to talk to him because he's one of those walking geniuses.

Consider it done. Yeah, yeah.

You could put him down in the middle of Prague and he could have a business going by that night. Or put him down in Adelaide, Australia and he could get something going.

Oh yeah, no, he's the guy, I always say he's the guy who gets the Pope on the phone, but it'll be like, oh yeah, I just got off the phone with the Governor. It'll be like all right. And. Oh, yeah. And we're. It'll be like, they've got $100 million deal going on. And I'll be like, how in the hell. Because, you know, he came up with the carbon X prize that Elon eventually sponsored. That was his project, so. But I'll text him as soon as we're done here. I'll make sure that we've got him on on an episode of the show, and we'll deep dive into the genius Elise died. So.

Sounds good. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Maybe we'll do another top five show another time and take on a bunch of other areas of life, but books, movies, people, music. I think we've got a good start here.

I love it. I love it. Well, with that, let's officially wrap this up, bring it to a close. So there's two big ideas that we have for you. One of them is, if you haven't already gone and seen Gay's latest book, which is your genius zone, go to geniuszonebook.com, check that out. There's a free chapter and an audio meditation. And, of course, the book is awesome, too. And speaking of awesome and working with Gay, we have put together the big leap experience, which you can learn more by going to bigleappodcast.com apply. But here's what's important. We've included a bonus called 90 days in your genius zone, which is an opportunity to get coached, advised, and managed by Gay, making sure you get in your genius zone. You stay in your genius zone, and you avoid the pitfalls that are part of the big leap, which are your upper limits. So you can also text to get some information and some goodies by texting the letters BL to 858-434-5316. Anything else you'd like to add before we close this up, Gay?

Well, the things I like, the music I like, they're all about genius. They're all about people. When I think of Pink Floyd, those guys just got down in there and released their pure creativity on the world. So that's what I want for everybody. That's what I'm doing here, is trying to get everybody in touch with their genius so that we live in a world of genius. That's the world I want to live in.

You're here. I love it. Well, the next step is yours, by the way. Make sure you comment. If you've got someone who you think would enjoy this episode, make sure you share it with them and comment on itunes and like, and do all the social media, this, that, and the other thing. So thank you for another great episode, Gay, and thanks for listening or watching.

Thanks a lot, everybody. Thank you, Mike.