Coach George Raveling on This Unique Moment in Time and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Recorded on June 7, 2020 in the wake of George Floyd's death, this follow-up conversation has Tim Ferriss mostly listening as George Raveling shares his perspective on race, injustice, and hope in America. Raveling describes his personal 'stop strategy' for surviving police encounters as a Black man and reflects on a lifetime spent learning to survive and thrive. He distinguishes self-leadership from group leadership, urges people to take down the 'fences' and 'boxes' society puts around them, and emphasizes honest conversations with others and oneself. He calls on listeners to pledge to be positive change agents and challenges corporations to offer their 'intellectual currency' rather than just money to uplift young people.

• Raveling describes his lifelong 'stop strategy' for police encounters: turn off the motor and radio, hands high on the wheel, be overly polite, ask permission before reaching for ID, then pray, with the single objective of staying alive.
  00:05:26
• He shares that as of recording, 85% of his white friends and associates had not called him after George Floyd's death, attributing it to people not knowing what to say.
  00:13:31
• He explains his distinction between group leadership and self-leadership, noting that of 3,000-plus leadership books, only three or four address leading yourself: 'if you can't lead yourself how in the world are you going to lead anybody else.'
  00:28:32
• Raveling argues America 'lives a lie,' because its currency says United States and the Constitution says 'We the People,' yet the country is neither truly united nor about the people.
  00:43:40
• He says at 82 he has finally found his freedom, echoing Martin Luther King's 'free at last' as the first time in his life he feels he is a free human being able to pursue his outer limits.
  00:46:55
• He asks every listener to take a pledge: 'I will fully commit to being a positive change agent, a positive difference maker, in as many lives as possible,' stressing it requires no money or particular race.
  00:58:20
• He criticizes corporate statements as largely insincere, drawing a distinction between a statement and a message, and says society needs corporations' 'intellectual currency,' not just money thrown at the problem.
  01:00:33

• Raveling was born June 27, 1937 in the basement of Garfield, a segregated hospital in Washington DC, where Black patients had to enter from the back and go to the basement.
  00:32:19
• Washington DC was 73% Black when he was growing up (the original 'chocolate city') and had dropped to 45% Black by the time of recording, under 50% for the first time in 50 years.
  00:33:28
• His childhood home was three apartments above a meat market sharing a single bathroom with one commode, one sink, and one tub among three families.
  00:34:31
• As a boy he sold scorecards and pencils outside Griffith Stadium and delivered newspapers; the Washington Senators were known as 'first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.'
  00:35:38
• Raveling owns more than $100,000 worth of Black collectibles, including a first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin and derogatory postcards, kept as reminders of the long road traveled.
  00:11:52
• He recommends the book 'Tell Me Who You Are' by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi, saying he can rarely read more than three pages without tearing up.
  00:39:00
• He cites Robert Greenleaf's 'Servant Leadership' as a key book on self-leadership and also mentions Mark McCormack's 'What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School' and Eric Hoffer's 'The True Believer.'
  00:30:39
• During his nine years coaching at USC, Raveling coached only two Black players who came from a dual-parent household.
  01:11:12
• At 82 he is focused on developing '21st century skills' — leadership, written communication, relationships, problem solving, decision making, teamwork, and analytical thinking — spending six months reading deeply on one at a time.
  00:53:31
• Raveling says he did not find himself intellectually until his sophomore year at Villanova, where students had to wear a shirt and tie to class and sit by alphabet; he graduated with a BS in economics.
  01:07:32

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