Author Philipp Meyer on Channeling History, Philosophy and Failure into Art

Ryan speaks with Philipp Meyer about his novels American Rust and The Son, processing the morally questionable history of the American west through literature, how he battled through ten years of failure before his first success, the challenge of balancing ego with ambition, the philosophy that inspires his writing, and more. Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer and novelist. American Rust and The Son have received considerable acclaim, including being included in the “Great American Novel” category, as well as being awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2009) for the former and the Lucien Barrière Prize in France as well as the Prix Littérature-Monde in France for the latter. He has also written five published short stories. Philip graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and many years later received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. He has worked many jobs throughout his life, including as a first responder, a derivatives trader, a construction worker, an ambulance driver, and nearly as a paramedic, and he has two unpublished novels and hundreds of unpublished short stories under his belt. In 2010, Meyer was named to The New Yorker's "20 under 40", its decennial list of 20 promising writers under the age of 40. American Rust and The Son have both been adapted for television.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So you know about the Painted Porch? We've talked about it a bunch of times. Well, the Painted Porch has expanded in a cool way. We built out a podcast studio. For most of the pandemic, we did the podcast remotely. And that was cool. But there is always something special about doing it in person. So we built out this amazing studio here in Bastrop. And you are going to listen today to the very first in-person episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. By the way, we also launched a new YouTube channel where you can watch these episodes, youtube.com/dailystoicpodcast. If you've been following us on YouTube,

• 1:42Speaker 01

  this is another channel to add. You can watch these episodes. I think there's obviously something there to watch as well. There'll be clips on social as well. But as I was thinking about who I wanted to bring out in the first episode, as we were finishing up the studio, I was in Florida. I was at the Barnes and Noble in Destin. And I came across this book called The Sun, which I have raved about on the podcast before and in the reading list email by this writer Philip Meyer. And it's this epic Western, I think it's better than Yellowstone, certainly came before Yellowstone. It's set in Texas. It captures a whole swath, multi-generations, not just of the family,

• 2:26Speaker 01

  but of American history and Texas history. And it's just brilliantly written. It's riveting on every page. And I thought, man, I want to meet this guy. This is a great fucking book. And so I reached out to another podcast guest, SC Gwynn, who I thought might know Philip. He did. I read Philip's other book, American Rust, which I loved. Both of these have been turned into television series, one on AMC, one on Showtime. And I said, Hey, do you know Philip? Would you connect us? And he did. And it turned out Philip and I had a ton in common. Both love Texas, both outdoors people, both love writing.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And he came out and had the first conversation. And it was an awesome conversation. He was great. He was very patient as we worked out some of the kinks. But I think you're really going to like this episode. You will love both these books. Philip signed a bunch of copies. So those are in the painted porch. I'll link to them in today's show notes if you want a signed copy of American Rust or The Sun. But look, I won't belabor the intro on this conversation. Listen to it as you're doing right now. I think it's worth watching. Stay tuned for clips on social. The new YouTube channel is youtube.com/dailystoicpodcast. Follow the other channel too. You can see it there. As I was thinking back on our intro,

• 3:50Speaker 01

  we sort of opened, we're talking about the sort of great tragedy battle of American history against, between Native First Peoples and the settlers and the pioneers and the pilgrims.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  It's, when I say it is a great tragedy, it is a great tragedy. It's more than a great tragedy, it's also a great crime. So, I don't know, I wasn't, I don't remember exactly how we opened the conversation, but I don't want anyone to think that I am not very well aware of that. And actually, I'm talking in the, the justice book that I'm writing now, you know, how a powerful group, or a country, or individual treats those that it ultimately comes to have power over, how it honors its commitments to people who don't have the mechanisms to necessarily enforce those commitments. This says a lot, if not everything, about who those people are.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Seneca talks about clemency, obviously, in his famous essay. One of the analogies I make in the justice book is, you know, the treatment of America and its indigenous people versus this brief moment after the Second World War where America is the only nuclear power, and it offers to turn those nuclear weapons, or explores even handing those nuclear weapons over to the UN. It does not unilaterally use that power, excepting the moment to end the Second World War. You know, restraint, dignity, respect, decency, humanity. These are not themes you will find necessarily in The Sun.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  But I think that's the moral lesson in the book. And I just didn't want any sort of, as we were getting set on the show, as we were talking about, I didn't want anyone to misconstrue my comments. But here is my interview with the great novelist Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust and The Sun, two books I've absolutely raved about, and I think you will absolutely adore listening to. Here we go.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're the very first, so thank you for coming.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  And yeah, so and then this, this was a barber shop.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  And it's been a bar, it had been a barber shop since it opened in the 1800s.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bastrop's one of the older towns in Texas.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Yes, I think what they call like the oldest historic town in Texas.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Oh, they do?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Or some, some.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  No, I didn't know that.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  It's not actually that, but 1830s, I think.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And yeah, this like, so the three buildings, this one, and then the bookstore and the record store, they were all built around the 1880s. But this one, when it was opened, it was a barber shop.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  So it's been, and it was a barber shop up until we did not kick anyone out. The owner, John, this was John's barber shop. He had been in, I was talking to him, I go like, how long have you been in here? And he's like, oh, like, I think I opened this place in like 69. So he'd been in here for 50 years.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  And then he passed away. And then we were like, what do we do with the space? I don't, I wasn't, I wasn't ready to carry on the tradition of being a barber. There were no, there were no takers.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Uh, and so here, here we are. Now it's a podcast studio. No, but, but it is a, it is a historic town. And that's, I mean, like the first, first page I folded in here, I was like, oh shit, this book is based, I picked up your book randomly at a Barnes and Noble in Destin, Florida. And I'm reading it and then it's like Bastrop, like, but your book was set partly in like a very historic Bastrop, like when this was like a frontier town, basically.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Why did you choose Bastrop?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  It was just historically correct. Yeah, I mean, though, I think we think of like the, of the West as being, you know, cowboys, Native Americans, but the line of settlement was always changing.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Basically, it was constantly changing. So the line of settlement for probably 200 years was where I-95 is on the East Coast. So, and then it gradually kind of moved west. And the weird thing about America, at least as far as we know, is it really was settled by, what I call it, settled, conquered, whatever you want to have, you want to think about it, by like citizens. It wasn't really settled by an army.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  There weren't really many military actions. At the very end, there were, you know what I mean? Like the Sioux and stuff.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And so Basra was just an area that because of the river got settled pretty early here. The Spanish had kind of pushed up through Latin America and Mexico. And then they they got to modern day Texas and even northern Mexico. And they just kind of couldn't hold on to it because the Native American tribes were a little too tough.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, in your book and then in Sam Quinn's book, you sort of realize, obviously, what what America did to the first peoples is a sort of abomination. But then you kind of realize as you really dig into it, it wasn't America that did it so much as it was Americans, like individual people, the sort of the now the the spirit that innovates or creates things. The that energy was just towards going out into unexplored lands or dangerous lands.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  And they were a lot. So it was a policy in that it was it wasn't disagreed with. Or it wasn't stopped, but at the same time, it wasn't. It wasn't the army pushing the frontier outwards.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Or the state itself, but individuals.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Correct. And it was mostly poor people.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Because it was dangerous to do. So it was mostly not. I mean, there are areas where you have like some very wealthy, you know, the equivalent of a tech billionaire now trying to settle some area. But usually it's people who are very poor because it was very dangerous. Bring your family. It was like bring your family to live in like the worst neighborhood.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  You know, that exists now in like Syria or something.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  And.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  The land is cheap for a reason.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  The originally because because you're going to die.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Your family's going to die. And what you saw in Basra was that poor folks moved here,

• 10:12Speaker 02

  quote unquote, settle the land. And once it was safe, you had the sort of upper class moved in. And they always used lawyers and they would challenge the title. They'd be like, what's up? You've been here for 20 years with your family. There's an issue with how the deed was written. There's you made a mistake when you signed this, so your title's not valid and worth taking it. And that happened across the West. Basically, you'd have working class, economically lower class people move to an area. The area would become safe. And then you had like basically the wealthy would come in and like. Build a big plantation out of it. So.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  It's funny because I was reading in the New York Times today, there's a piece on South Congress.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And they're basically describing a obviously much less violent version of the same phenomenon, which is it was a terrible, dangerous neighborhood in Austin. There was like a gang of bank robbers that operated out of South Congress. You know, it was rundown. It was terrible and a bunch of people moved in. Interesting shopkeepers, restaurateurs, you know, entrepreneurs, et cetera. And then it became cool and popular and now like your rent is up. The process of gentrification, which we call it today, is actually a pretty timeless thing. It goes way, way back. And have you read Olmsted's book, A Journey Through Texas?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a very good book.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  There's a, there's a passage in it where he goes like, he's quotes someone who's like, Austin's too expensive these days, like in the 1850s. You know, and you're just like, people just have been doing the same thing in the same places for basically thousands of years.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  That's correct. Yeah. And even, even the Native Americans, if you look at Texas, the history we have before Anglos come here is most, is written down by mostly Spanish missionaries. We've got about 300 years. And we know that when the Apaches came in, they pretty much wiped out all the other local native tribes brutally.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And then the Spanish were afraid of them and then the Apache started to get scared and no one really knew why, because I mean, the Spanish were like a little,

• 12:25Speaker 02

  they were very religious. They were, they were probably kind of some of the worst of the colonists. They would make everyone convert to Catholicism. The Spanish were really not that great. It was the French were, had a lighter touch. They didn't make people convert. They tended to intermarry, yada, yada. And this, so the Spanish start reporting, hey, these Apache are really scared of something. They're scared of the Comanche. The Comanche come in and wipe out the Apache in this area. So this kind of process just happens again and again. And you look at North, North Texas and the Panhandle, there are these. Tons of old stone ruins that are at least 2,000 years old. They date back to the time of Christ. There's tons of pottery up there. We don't know what were those people doing? Who wiped them out?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Because those are civilizations that don't exist anymore.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  So that, I mean, the history of human existence, really of all human beings is like one civilization getting wiped out by another, by another, by another, or just dissipating because the resources run out. So.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  I'm just working on this project for someone and we were, we were sort of looking at the kind of rhythm of events. Cause you know, we think us humans are so sort of central to these things and we're not.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  And we were looking at the, you know what a bristlecone pine is?

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Sure. Yep.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  And like, there are bristlecone pines that saw, that lived through all of it, right? There's like, the, the oldest tree in the world is in Southern California and it's like 5,000 years old.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  And you're just like, this tree, you know, it's still, it's probably like this tall, like, cause they grow so slow and so twisted.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  They gotta grow at high altitudes.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Super high altitudes. They basically only grow where there's nothing else because they, they don't want to compete for resources. They grow slow. They're ugly. They get twisted by the wind. But you know, it's like, yeah, you're, we're thinking of like human history as being central. But then there's also these sort of, when I call them witness trees, you know, like they're, like the idea that rise and falls of, of not just like native peoples and then white people and then, you know, the six flags of Texas or whatever, but it's also just like multiple waves and generations of native peoples that, that, that were doing the same thing to each other.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  This is what humans do.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  It's what humans do. Yeah. And it's, it's hard to figure out like morally, how do you process that? Okay. European, people of European descent, they had better technology. They won the war. It's, the data is pretty good that they were not any more brutal. I mean, that the tactics really weren't any different.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  They just, there were more of them. We weren't susceptible to diseases. Because all of our ancestors have been wiped out by those diseases so many times.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Right. What happened here, it's not like Europeans had never gone through that. They also watched millions of people die, wither on the vine, helpless to stop it.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I mean, if you, and if you look at like, you know, the Neanderthals, as I understand this, were kind of the first group of Homo sapiens to leave Africa. 500,000 years ago, they settled Europe completely. They settled most of the northern, you know. Uh, like hemisphere. And then there's a second wave. Four hundred fifty thousand years later that are our ancestors.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Who go and wipe them out.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Even though they're basically like cousins, you know, more or less. And this is just something that's been happening.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Forever.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Literally for a million years.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  No, it is an interesting question. At what point are civilizations morally culpable? And then, you know, at what point do you judge the past? Not judge the past? It is, it is tricky. I mean, I think the, just so people don't think we're sort of this nihilistic, like nothing. I think the problem with the, to me, the, where you hold um sort of the settlers accountable is that they violated their own standards.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? They said, you know, they, they would pass treaty after treaty and then not abide by.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  You know, I, I think it, it's um, but that is the interesting clash of the civilizations is like one sort of had a set of uh moral principles that it had developed over, you know, since the enlightenment or whatever. Um, I guess some of this is even pre enlightenment, but you, you have this sort of western civilization principles.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  And then it comes here and they have their own set of principles, but they can't really communicate with each other as to where these things are in conflict with each other. They're trying to pass treaties or make arrangements.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  And they're just, they just exist in totally different conceptions of reality. Even, even down to like, I'm negotiating with you for ownership of a piece of land.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  Which the person on the other side of the transaction doesn't believe that they even own or that it can be owned.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is, it, it's a big problem. And in turn, if you're trying to figure out like the, the, the morality of it, it may be just that in the end, there's a part of us that just wants to hate the, the winners, which is kind of reasonable. You know what I mean?

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Um, and there's a part of us that especially in this, in our culture, we want to root for the underdog, which is, that's kind of reasonable.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Um, and it just isn't the, the, the, when you study Native American history, you have to get super granular because like every area had. Fifty, two hundred, five thousand different tribes, bands, language groups. And when you start talking about Native Americans broadly, I mean, it's fricking nuts. It's like probably less accurate than talking about Europeans and Asians as if they were sort of culturally identical.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Sure, the West.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  You know, the West. I mean, um, it's, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty tough to figure out. It's what you can, you can sort of look at individual actions and judge them. That's where you can say that this thing that was done was wrong. This breaking of this treaty was wrong, but it's, it's tougher to figure out who's responsible other than giant historical forces, you know?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Well, that's what's interesting, I think, about the book and, and a lot of those characters, which I think the, the sun is really a look at those kinds of people. And, cause you could take, uh, the Colonel and put him in different eras. That person has always existed. Today, he would be a tech baron, a disruptor of some, like, so you, you realize that even if you're, you come down and, and say that the overall historical force was unquestionable or unstoppable. There's still these individuals inside that, and those individuals were psychopaths or insatiably ambitious or impossible to satisfy. And that's what put, like, you know, as you said, it's, it wasn't the normal people

• 19:00Speaker 00

  who were happy with what they had that headed out towards. I've even realized that, living out in the country myself, you realize like, why am I in this like argument with my neighbor? And then you go, oh, we both chose to live out here because we didn't want neighbors and we're not good at dealing with neighbors. Right? And so, so you realize like, just the, it selects for a type of person that is naturally going to have trouble, you know, dealing with X, Y, or Z, or, or applying ordinary logic, because that's not how they operate. And like, who accumulates a ranch that's fifty sections or whatever that it was in the book, where you're like, that's not. And that's not-

• 19:44Speaker 02

  It's not a normal person.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not, it's like, who becomes a billionaire? You can be a billionaire quickly now in certain ways. Usually, it's not normal people, because most people have values other than making money. You know, they have a value of family and friends and having meaningful experiences. And most people, if they get to some certain, you know, they make 20 million bucks, which is a huge amount of money. They say, this is enough.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  I'm gonna hang out with my family and friends, and I'm gonna spend this money.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna enjoy my life. But there's another type of person who's like, why am I gonna stop here?

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  And I think, or they think that if I make more money, I'm gonna be happier. Something's usually missing from their psyche to, um...

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Stoics talk about how, like, being under your own power is the most... is the greatest form of power. And you realize how many powerful people actually are not that. There's something in them that will never be satisfied, that never has enough, that can't accept this or that. And those are, like, you think, you mentioned Elon Musk, like, right? Why didn't he stop after the first company, the second company, the third company? Because that's not who he is. Like, you, and you realize that that evolutionarily makes sense. That's what propelled us across oceans and took grave risks.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  You don't get there if you're like, this is good enough.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  But the bug is a feature, you know?

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Correct. That's, and yeah, I think, I think there's some, this may be an old cliche now, but something that most, if you look at almost all American presidents, a lot of them either had, or at least recently, had either, like, very strong domineering fathers, or they had no father at all. You know, there's, a healthy relationship with your parents is not necessarily a feature of people who become president.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  And you're like, why is that? Okay, well, because you have a need inside you that will never be filled. And you think, maybe my dad will approve of me if I just get elected president. It's like, nope.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  I was just writing about this for something recently. It's like, okay, it's, I think it's interesting how casually we try to convince our kids that they should be president.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Right? We're like, you should be president. And then you go, what you're telling your kid is that there is a one most powerful person in the world.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  And they deserve to be that person. What you're skipping over is the enormous weight of that.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  And the, the fact that pretty much all of literature is a warning against that.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Um, from the Greeks down.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  You know, it's that, that it is a terrible burden, and it usually- Warps or changes the person fundamentally, right? And, and so we're just like, yeah, you should do that instead of like what most artists like. I think the son, for instance, ultimately, you're not like, I'd love to be in that family. You're like, you know, that's not the family that you want to be in. It's see, they seem rich. There was this great line from Seneca, it says, um, poverty isn't having too little. It's wanting more.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  We're not being glib about actual poverty, but the point, the point is you could be very rich. But if you need more, you could have, if you, as the character does in this book, you could have an enormous ranch. But if what you covet is your neighbor's ranch.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  You don't have an enormous ranch.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  It's not big enough.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's pretty typical, like you're saying, these people who are, I mean, who in some ways drive, drive innovation. They are the feature. And then the bug side of it is that whatever they get, they're never going to be happy.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Like, nothing is going to make folks who have that mindset happy. They'll never be satisfied.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  This is why Tom Brady can't retire. He switches teams, like, uh, you're the greatest team in the history of sports. Why does he leave? You know, there's some, something about him that wants more and more.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  And then, you know, you could judge that choice, but it's what propels him to another team. And then he, he wins again. So you're like, ah, you see why this works. But this is also why he can't retire after that.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  I mean, what's he, what's he gonna do? This is his identity. He spent his entire adult life chasing something. Yeah, and I've noticed, yeah, I spent my entire adult life up to my late 30s going after one thing. I'd be a writer. And once I got it, I, I was suddenly like, not quite sure what to do. And then finally I was like, I guess I'm just gonna keep doing this. So I actually tried to join the military. I tried to join the special forces. I sort of started looking around for some other thing. And I think that there's just something.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Once you have a sort of goal, what if your identity is that I'm gonna chase this goal and then you never quite get it because it's very hard to be a writer, you know, whatever. When you suddenly get it, you find that, oh shit, I thought that like

• 24:14Speaker 00

  I thought it would fix me.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  I thought it would fix me. Yeah, maybe part of my motivation is that I actually just liked having a goal I couldn't get.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  And for Tom Brady, I guess it's a little bit different, but.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Tiger Woods is a fascinating example of this. He's the greatest golfer in the world. The reason he's not great now, you put aside the addiction stuff, the scandals, he hurt his knees jumping out of airplanes because he decided he wanted to be a Navy SEAL in his 30s because his father was a Green Beret in Vietnam. And there's some part of him that thinks being the greatest athlete maybe ever, the most dominant force in the history of your sport, was somehow not enough.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  And he was jumping out of airplanes and I guess he was doing some drill where they like, he would pay these people that helped train him and do some drill where they kicked through a door and they're, you know, clearing a room and somebody kicked him in the leg and he screwed up like that was that, he didn't, it's very hard to hurt yourself playing golf.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Right? You can get repetitive injuries from golf. He doesn't have repetitive injuries from golf. He has repetitive injuries from this, this void he was trying to fill with things more exciting than being the undisputed champion of what he did.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did, that I didn't know. It actually makes me feel better about my own silly choices. Yeah, because that right when the sun was sold, before it came out, I tried very hard to get into the Green Berets.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Really?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I, the only reason I didn't is that my, I was 36, so I needed an age waiver.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  But by like one year, my packet went to the Pentagon, it was turned down, but everything else was in line. I'd done all the early physical stuff.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  What did you think that would? Do for you, like, what do you think you wanted from it?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, there's a part of me that's programmed to serve in a way. And people either have this or you don't. I mean, I've been in EMT a bunch of times. I've been a volunteer firefighter at two different places. I'd worked in an orderly in a trauma center. So there's a part of me that was kind of programmed for service in some way. And this felt like an extension of that, but it clearly was not. I was, I could have just been in EMT again. You know, this was something different, you know? There was something that I want, some, I needed a challenge. I word, I word, I ticked the box in some way, maybe. I don't know.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  And this, but was, was this before the book came out?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  It was right before the book came out.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  But American Rust had already come out.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  It had, and, and it had done very well, and I was, and I was happy. But somehow, I've, even when Rust came out, I was like, shit. I tried to do this for 15 years. I finally accomplished my goal. And I guess I'll do it again. And then there was a part of me that, once, once I knew the song was going to be a good success, or guessed it was going to be, you know, it was like, I guess I have to be a Green Beret.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Like what's left in the world. Which, I mean, is silly in a certain way. And then instead, I went to Hollywood, basically, and tried to make TV shows and stuff.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Well, it is interesting, because I was thinking about that. Like, if I'm, like, if I'm getting my MFA at Texas, like you did, or I'm at Iowa or something, I could imagine hearing your story, if I didn't know anything about it, and just being like, fuck that guy.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  You publish two novels. They're both huge successes. One gets nominated for a Pulitzer. They're on all sorts of lists. Like, just out of the gate, you basically hit two home runs. That's not supposed to happen. And then I think most people who want to do things are jealous of the people who are doing that thing.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  But you never actually, like, it, of course, wasn't that simple. I can't imagine you, those were the first two things you ever wrote.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  I had two unpublished novels, and I spent all my twenties. Yeah, I wrote one long, terrible novel that gave to all my friends. No one could read it. It was very long, it was unreadable. And then I wrote another book. Yeah, I was working on Wall Street and I quit that job to finish my second book, unpublished book. And that book was better, but pretty bad. And then I ended up moving back into my parents' basement, you know, because I was like, I thought I really wanted to write, but I apparently wasn't good at it. I didn't publish anything. And I'd spent 10 years doing this. 10 years of thinking of myself as a writer. And then, so the American Rust is my third. I mean, I always thought of it as my third novel, even though it was my first published book. Yeah. And there's a million unpublished short stories.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. It is. What I saw was that I kept on failing. Like, what I saw about my career early on was like, all I did was fail. That's how, that was my impression of it. And then after 15 years, I had, you know, American Rust published, did well. And then five, four years later, the sun come is also does well. But yeah, I mean, I thought I was a martyr too. I was like, I've worked super hard. I have all these failures. And then as soon as you become a professional, you start meeting other people who do the same work. And you're like, oh shit, how many unpublished books do you have? And everyone you meet has like a couple unpublished books often.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, or they're 60 and they're just trying to break through, or their last book sold 60 copies. Like, there, I imagine there is, you know, it, we look at people and go overnight success. It's always more complicated than that.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Man, it's very rare. A friend of mine, Taya Obrett, who's a brilliant writer. She actually did write a book in her early twenties. It was amazing, called The Tiger's Wife. It's a great book. It's a huge bestseller, you know.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  And I don't know how she did it, but she, but that, that was the, that's the only person I know who actually had that kind of huge success.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  I guess there's Bret Easton Ellis, right?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  But yeah, I think people think that's how it goes. Like even, my first book came out when I was 25. But I, I'd written online every day for six years, basically. So, so like when people think like, oh, that's You know, it's

• 30:08Speaker 02

  You're never, you are very young. I, I, I, you're right. You have the resume of like a 50 year old.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  But I started earlier, like, you know, I started a little earlier. And then it's funny, like, it's like that first that I just got a Rosie statement last year for that first book. It earned out then. So like, so it took it took 10 years to earn out. So like, you're like, oh, I did well. Like, you know, when I got a check when I was 25, I'm like, this is amazing. But the math would have been like $20,000 a year for 10 years if I hadn't kept writing. So you get your breaks. And then I think what matters is what do you, what do you do with them? Because the breaks can come early, they can come late. But what matters is like, what do you, what do you do with them?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I had a hard transition after the sun. I mean, I, I thought that you were supposed to, I I committed to a bunch of stuff I probably shouldn't have. I, instead of

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Like what?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I decided I was gonna go make TV shows. And so I decided I was gonna like, okay, how do I write and produce and be the creator of a TV show? Which my friends like, we managed to pull off. We turned it, the sun into a show for AMC, ran a couple of seasons.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Also, white people, like, not only did you do two great books that sold well, but then they both got turned into things, which also isn't supposed to

• 31:26Speaker 02

  It's not, not supposed to happen. Yeah. Um, yeah. And so, I mean, um, yeah, I've been, I've been very lucky. But that period, I think of as a, in order for me to get the sun, to make, get the sun to be a show. There's, there's a way to do it in which I was sort of careful and cautious and went in as like the low person, the totem pole. And then also would have been able to leave and go back to writing books quite easily. And then there's a way to do it in which I was like, I will have like as much control as possible. And which was like, what I tried to do, which was

• 32:01Speaker 02

  sort of rational, sort of silly at the same time, because I had a thing I really loved. And so, yeah, I ended up living in LA and it's a weird life. I mean, you've spent a bunch of time out there and you're around a bunch of celebrities and people are telling you good things about yourself. And that, for me at that time, was probably not that healthy. I probably needed to be alone in a cabin writing my third book. And instead, I'm sort of in this industry, which I was, you know, thank you, universe, very lucky at the end, you know, but it was not I think it may connect to like, you know, trying to join the military when I was 30. Yeah, when I.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I imagine if if your your first choice was join the military, your second option is you go to Hollywood to try to turn things into things. That would have been hard because what I have found about that world, that obviously that the finished products are there's some garbage, but you're like, that's amazing. You literally see like, how does this happen? But like, and it might have taken 10 years.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  But there was probably like two years of work in the 10 years. Right? And so like, if you're what what's amazing about writing and why I think it's such honest work is it's like, if you sit down and do it, you get finished stuff out of the outside. You control it, even your unpublished novels, you could publish them if you wanted, right?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  I my I did this book about Peter Thiel and this sort of weird lawsuit he had. Anyways, that was optioned in 2017.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  And it may go into production this year, which is so six years, which is pretty fast.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Pretty fast.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  But I have published like four books since then.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Right? Like, so if I look at it as like, there's it's not like, what do you do all day? But it's it's a it's a world where I think it's very easy to develop really bad habits because

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  you need other people's approval to let you do stuff.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Right? And and that is

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Crucial to understand.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  It's bad for your soul.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  It's very, yeah, and everything is done by committee. If there's something that can be done with one person. It is sort of, it makes sense because it costs so much money to make a show. Yeah, 50 million bucks is a cheap TV show.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  And so a lot of other people's careers are on the line. You know, it's your project, it's my project in our in our minds. But but in fact, if it goes sideways, there are 10 people who are going to lose their jobs.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Whereas we just treat a bass rapper, Austin, yeah. And that is something that I think as we people like us go in from the outside, we really just don't get. You're more like, why is this? Why is this stuff not happening quicker, people? And the answer is that a lot of people have to take a lot of risks to put your project, my project on the on the air.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think like if you're someone who thrives and like I show up, I do the work, work comes out of the other side, that's a that you can get not it's not even vertigo, you can just get you can you can develop that it's like it's like retiring from sports. You had this thing you did every day and now you're just like, oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do a little bit of this. I'm gonna do a little and it's like you're not gonna do any of it because you don't have the structure to keep you honest, I feel like.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I yeah, that's that's definitely true. Everyone in Hollywood, I mean, yeah, everyone has 10 projects going because one goes every year or something like this. The other thing as a writer, I mean, for you, me or anyone else, we get to succeed or fail on our own terms.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  And that is something that is kind of an amazing luxury. If something goes really well, it's kind of because you did it. If something goes badly, it's kind of because you messed it up.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  And that is an unbelievable luxury that most people don't get.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  And I didn't realize that how what how amazing that was until like get out to Hollywood and you realize whether this is good or bad is not going to be because of me.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  There's a million other people involved and I don't.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  That's something actors have to figure out, which is that you how can you find satisfaction and fulfillment in the role?

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  When you're not the director of said role, you're not the producer of said role, you're not the marketing team of said role, you're not the financier and you're also don't determine when it comes out, how it comes out, how it does, how the other actors did.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Even the editor has probably way more say than any individual actor, you know, I mean.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  So how can you love the work of it even, you know, and you don't even necessarily get to choose what work you do.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  There's an honesty to that be like, no, my five seconds on camera, that's all I'm gonna focus on.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very tough. I mean, actors, I think, I mean, all of us, you know, I mean, you had very early early success and in hindsight, I had early success as well. And I think, you know, mostly when I think about my life, I think about like all the work that I do and I told and also I work seven days a week and. But with actors, man, someone, we kind of get to forge our own destiny in a way. Now, you don't get to be really famous, you know, really cause our writers as much. But actors, you got to be picked. Everything you do, someone has to, someone's picking you. You know, you're not really like generating the material and you know, you're not, the material's not coming out of your mind. And, and ending up on the table. It's, it's, you're sitting in a room and hoping someone picks you.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Although the Stoics would say that's actually a better metaphor for life. Right. Because so we, we think we have more control over our destiny than we do.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  But then in, in real life, we are kind of all actors in a play. Where you were born, you know, are you short or tall? Is your famous family not like, there's all these things.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  You know, what are you living in a time of peace or not? You know, all these things. And then really what it comes down is this tiny scope of options that are actually available to us.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  And do we show up and like play the hell out of that role? Or are we sitting around going like, why aren't they giving me better parts? I wish I was born here instead of the, you know, do you show up and make the most of what? You know, the, the little bit of leeway the actor or the, the, the director gave you? Or are you, would you prefer to sit in the audience and complain?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and it's, yeah, it is your call and those things are habits too. Yeah. I mean, those, you know, you, you, those are, those are habits. If you, if you assume that, um, if you assume that to some extent, other people's rules. Don't always apply to you and that there are these social constructs that maybe if you. Uh, work really hard, you can kind of get around. You have a GED, but I ended up going to Ivy League school many, many years later. And as a transfer student, kind of through the back door only.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  And if I had assumed that I have to, I had to apply three times in a row and get rejected and kind of embarrassed myself a bunch of times. But if I had assumed that what everyone told me was true, which is like, if you drop out of high school, you're going to ruin your life. You're a loser and, and then not like you're done forever. You're like, you're screwed. Then, I mean, I definitely wouldn't be here. I mean, when I first started making adult decisions, the first adult decision I made was to like. I hate school and I'm going to drop out. And I worked five, five years, I had a grown up job, I was just a bike mechanic. Yeah, but it was, um. I had adult responsibilities. I was able to leave my parents' house. I basically felt like a grown up, even though it was not something most people would consider super challenging work, maybe, but I found meaning in it, you know?

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's tricky, right? Because it's like, there's things that are not in our control, there's things that are in our control, and then there's these things that we can sort of have some maneuverability about. And if you're someone who like, everything's fixed, you know, everything is, you know, I was born here, so I can't, this is the ceiling for me, that becomes sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. It's also more complicated than, you can be anything you put your mind to, right?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  And so, how do you, how do you find a person, how do you become a person that is able to sort of seize the small amount of agency that you have, and get the most out of it, while simultaneously being a person who accepts reality on reality's terms? That's, that's the balance.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  And it's hard, because there's an amount of delusion required to think, I mean, on one hand, when you're like going after something that's difficult, you are maybe looking at your prior, at the things you've accomplished, or even if they're small, and you're leveraging them, you know, into thinking, I'm gonna do this much bigger thing. On the other hand, there's, there's a little bit of delusion in which you're like, I'm gonna do this thing, I have no data that says I can do it. I have no data that says I can write a book, or be a pro baseball player, or be, you know, whatever. There's no data.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  How do you know you can do something that you've never done before? Is, and there's an egotistical place where you do that?

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  A delusion that you're saying?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  There's also like confidence, right?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  And then there's also the belief that you can't do it, which is also self realizing.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, the way to be sure that you can't do something is to not try. And I remember when someone explained this to me, I was like 19, total cliche, obviously, but it really is true.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I think it was when I was working in the basement of the bike shop, and I was thinking, maybe I should go to college. I didn't know, I was kind of lost. And some kind of mentors I had were like, wow, they were the ones who suggested I apply to these, like Ivy League colleges. I was like, that's nuts. A G D, a terrible academic, I mean, that makes no sense.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  And I remember one lady told me, yeah, you, you definitely won't get in if you don't apply. You actually, you have to apply.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And that shit is true. I mean, it's a total cliche, but it's totally true. It's very annoying. When you, when you think, you're like, oh. The person who's, the person who's gonna stop me most of the time is me, mostly.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Yes, or it may be impossible, but until you try, you don't actually know that. You have a hypothesis and then you have to be willing to sort of prove or disprove that hypothesis.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like with a book, like I think though, like if you're like, of course I can write a book and of course it will be amazing because I'm amazing. You're probably not, you're probably not going to be the person that does the work, that has the self-awareness or the honesty to get it to where it's, needs to be, right? Like if you're, if you're the person who thinks you have the Midas touch or your shit doesn't stink or whatever, you know, expression you want to use for it.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  You're, you're gonna, you may produce a first draft of something.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  But it will be unreadable.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the number of time, you must, I've seen that so many times with talented folks who.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Or not talented folks.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, or it is both, I thought, I mean, when I was coming up, I thought that talent was gonna be like the, that was like why people made it. And now I see, man, it is not, it is. How much drive do you have? How much can you, how much failure can your ego take? How, how good is your like, you know, reality function of looking like this is what I want to happen? This is what is actually, actually might happen.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  And then can you disconnect your ego from your work enough to do a second, third, 200th draft?

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  You know, how many times can you decide that like, um, I'm just gonna try again. Oops, I failed, I'm gonna keep going.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think Gatsby was rejected like four times, you know, and then failed commercially.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  So you have to imagine, you have to have, uh, you have to have a strong sense of like, this is really good.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  But also there's a lot of people who are terrible, who have a strong sense, it's what it should.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  So you have to have a strong sense it's really good and you also have to be really good.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  And those, those come from very different places. One comes from the work, one comes from, you know, the. What you wish to be true, or what your mother whispered in your ear, whatever, when you were little. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a tension. I remember when I, it's like, I quit this corporate job, I moved across the country, I was gonna write this book. And I was like, I'm not even gonna shop at first, I'm just gonna write a book and see if it sells, which in nonfiction is like ninety, ninety-five percent of books sell on proposal. Not, in your world, you write the novel and then you see if anyone wants it.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  In my world, you're like, this is my plan for the book, and then you, you sell it like a business plan.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  And your publisher's like your investor in it. It's like a different, it's a different, it's a very different model. But so, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna put all my money into, I'm gonna put all my chips in, I'm gonna go write this book and I'm gonna see if it's good. And like, how did I, I think back, it's like, how did I, how and why did I think I could do that? That's crazy. And then the fact that I did do it, doesn't make it any less crazy. So what, you know, was I, was I coming from a place of delusion and ego and I, you know, the clock just happened, the broken clock happened to me, right? Or was I basing it on evidence that I had from how I had done hard things in the past?

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you think it was?

• 44:40Speaker 00

  I mean, I'd like to think it's the latter one. It's, I mean, I think there's always, like, there's a reason that ego is, they don't talk about ego being the enemy of plumbers.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Right? It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, although I'm sure it is, but like, it's, I think in the more ambitious professions, and I'm not, not meaning to say that a plumber is not ambitious, in the things that, that the, the inherently public facing professions that an audience or the in-crowd validates.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  There is, the people that are attracted to that, I think, have by definition more challenges with ego than, right? Like, you know, it's, it's not like the publishing industry goes around and finds the most unassuming, quietest introvert who's typing away in their office and says, we choose you, you should be amazing. It's, it's the The people who who seek it out.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Just like power is almost always given to people who want power, who happen to almost always be the worst ones for like, I think ego ego is a part of it. But I think I went in thinking, you know, like I don't quit.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  You know, I ask questions.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  I have trained, like I was a research assistant for a long time, so I learned how, but like I had some sense of like, how books worked.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  You know, and I had some sense of, because of my marketing background, I had a sense of how books sell also. Right. So I feel like I had, I had a, there's a, there's a great rule, actually, Peter, I heard it from Peter Thiel. He was saying, he's like, I only invest in things where I believe I have a secret edge. He's like, like, what do I know that other people don't know?

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  And if you don't have that, not that everything is insider trading, but if you don't believe you have some advantage, you're probably not going to win.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  And so like, I believed I knew enough about how it worked and that I wouldn't quit until I got what I wanted.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  That that made me confident that I could do it. I didn't, I didn't know for certain I could do it, but I felt like it was a good enough bet.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  I, I guess I was similar. Yeah, I, I, I, yeah, you, I, I think, yeah, like my great luck was that I'd done a bunch of sort of difficult things by at kind of early in life, basically. And that I knew that I, that those involved like multiple big failures when I tried my hardest. And I knew that I had survived all those things.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  They hadn't killed me and I presumed I could just do it again, which turned out to be right. But I mean, I was off by 10 years. I, I quit this job at the investment bank when I was 28, when I was a derivative trader. And, um, and I thought within a few years I'd have like a, a big success. And a few years later, I was like broke, lived in my parents' basement. The book had been rejected by like every agent, you know? And, uh, and I had, I had accomplished nothing as I saw it, you know?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  But there's some part of you, I guess, like. Figured out like which part of those of of of the ego or like self-confidence is good and which part is bad because they they're pretty tightly wound. I mean, at least for, you know, they're they they touch.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, I think about like, you know, you look at some super egotistical like performer, musician or whatever. It's not that ego totally it's it's not that the ego means they won't be successful. I think it puts a ceiling on what they're capable of doing. And almost always, when they're actually doing the thing, the ego is missing. It has to be where the thing won't be good.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  It has to be. Yeah, your ego cannot be president present when you're doing making art. Like, it just can't be.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. In the in the way that like alcohol can take the edge off a social interaction, ego can put you in positions that maybe you have no business being in, that if you really thought about, if you really looked down over the edge, you'd be like, um, this isn't for me. You know, so ego can be advantageous in that sense. But to actually do the thing, I think it has to come from a place of humility and craft and process and unrelenting standards that like that you aren't you're constantly not sure you're reaching up to.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, art is always a performance for an audience. And that's something that like when you're a struggling young artist, you don't always get that. And there's a kind of a tension between, am I doing this for me? Am I doing this for the audience? The answer is always both. But the answer is like, the audience comes first, dumbass. You know, like, because otherwise, why is someone going to read your book? Why are they going to listen to your podcast? And the answer is like, because you're you you understand that this is actually for a viewership or listenership. When we listen to music, we don't listen to a practice session. We listen to finished music. And so that transition, I think, for most artists is when you realize you're like, oh, shit, everything is for the audience. And I have to find the balance between doing things that I care about, that other people are interested in reading about, or they want to hear about.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  And that is a tough that I mean, that for me took 10 years to figure out.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Really?

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just didn't.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just didn't get, I just didn't get it.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  Which is why I have two unpublished books, you know, but I just didn't get it.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Has it been hard for you with the success of the first two books to, has that made it harder or easier to do the third one, which I've heard a little bit about?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  The third, yeah, the third one hopefully will be finished by the end of this year.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  I think I became very good at ignoring what other people said about me for all my teens and twenties, because if I'd listened to what people said like, oh yeah, you're from this neighborhood, you, you drop, high school dropout, your future is this. I got pretty good at ignoring that stuff.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Which was a very lucky skill to develop early in life. And I think I didn't, I think up until my late thirties, I just didn't, I didn't like to read my reviews. I didn't want to, I don't want to hear about it. I just don't want to hear any, I don't want to hear anything. And then

• 50:56Speaker 02

  and with, when Russ came out, I like moved to the middle of nowhere, like bought a house in way upstate New York. I got away from some of my friends. I just didn't want to hear anything about the book. I didn't want to think about the book. I didn't want to think about my

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Good or bad?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  I, no. Well, this might be my own weakness, but I can't, if I let in the good stuff, I have to let in the bad stuff. I, it was easier for me to just keep the door tightly shut. And then I think with the son, I ended up moving to New York and LA and all of a sudden I was like a guy in this world. And that was not good for me. I mean, whatever part, the unhealthy part of the ego, that was really not so good. So I think in the last few years, this is a long way of saying, it was harder after having two successful books because, only because I, instead of like moving to Alaska, when it's, when this book came out, I should have moved to Alaska or Montana. I should have just escaped the world. And instead I went to like kind of the belly of the entertainment beast where,

• 51:54Speaker 02

  where, where people sort of, you know, my, most of my normal friends don't really give a shit that I'm a writer. I mean, they just couldn't care less.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  I think scene is very dangerous.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  It's very dangerous. That is what it is. That's what you're talking about. Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  And, and it's like, it's not that you want none of it, but it's you don't want It's like, look, you shouldn't buy foods that you don't want to eat, right? That are bad for you to eat, because if it's in your pantry, you'll eat it.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  And it's like, the further you are away from the scene, the less likely you are to just encounter it on a normal Tuesday.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Because you're 500 miles away.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  You know, and, and, and you also, like, I have found one of the, one of the benefits of moving to Texas with me, is like, I think we're all envious people.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  But like, if I'm not, like, the, the impulse of, like, I just hear less about what other people are doing.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Right? And like-

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that's huge.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  And, and, and I have to sort of cultivate my internet habits accordingly also.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Like, I don't want to know about, what, I, I wish everyone the best.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  But the more I know about what they're doing, the more that triggers a thing in me that's not healthy.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  And, uh-

• 53:05Speaker 02

  That's right, that's exactly right.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  It takes me away from the thing I should be doing.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, when, when you hear, like, young writers moving to New York or moving to LA, all I think is like, danger, danger, danger. That you, you think this is gonna help you, it's not gonna help you. You actually need to live in Toledo.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Where you're the only writer, even if you don't get the, just the sense that, like, once in a while, you get a pat on the back from the world, you know what I mean? We, we all need a little bit of that, but-

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Well, also, I think, like, you know, where, what your economic base is, like, you know, if you're in New York, you have to make a certain amount of money from your thing.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  To be able to keep doing the thing.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Whereas, you know, it's, it's 50% less, let's say, in the middle of nowhere, Texas or Toledo or whatever.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  For sure, yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  And so, you, you, like, look, it'd be easier to be a writer if we all had trust funds.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Right?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  But we don't.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  So, uh, how do you create a world in which you have some semblance of economic freedom?

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  So you can have more artistic or entrepreneurial freedom?

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  And I think, like, like, so my first book was about marketing, and it did well. Um, and then I went to my publisher and was like, I'd like to write this book of, about ancient philosophy. And they were like, here's half what you got for the last one, you know?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  And so, but like, I was in a position, you know, living where I lived and also being young, whatever. But I was in a position to say, like, whatever.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  Right? Sure. But if I was living in New York City, then, um- That would have been, I would have had less runway.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  And I think sometimes people do the thing to be in the scene and then it becomes, their life revolves around operating in the scene.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 00

  Not operating in the writing or the craft routine.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  Which, you know, you want as much space and freedom as possible in.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's mental space. I mean, it's, it's time, which is financial freedom, and then it's mental space. And what gives you mental space is having the other voices quiet, at least for, for, you know, for me, and then it sounds like for you too.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  I was curious about the epigraphs in American Rust, which I thought were really interesting. You have Kierkegaard and you have Camus.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was going through a kind of existentialist philosopher phase, you know. And I think the, the book is an intense book. I'm not, is it dark? I'm not really sure. But it was, the, the book is sort of about these kids I grew up with.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Basically in Baltimore. I just moved it all to Pittsburgh because it was an easier way to tell a story. But the, um, the, both Kierkegaard and Camus are kind of optimistic people in some way. I mean, Camus has got some streaks of darkness in him, but basically is like, the point of life is to be happy if you can, you know, there's, then there's

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Meaning is what you create.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Meaning is what you create. Yeah, there's more, and there's more to admire in humanity than there is to despise. Maybe only by an inch.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  You know, but, but, but there is. And if you don't look at life that way, you're kind of in trouble.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, my, one of my favorite novels is Walker Percy.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Which one?

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Which of his novels?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Oh, I think, I mean, The Moviegoer is basically, is basically about Kierkegaard.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  I like, Lancelot's actually probably my favorite. Um, there, there's a bunch of Stoics in, in The Moviegoer too. But, you know, this idea of the search, the search for meaning.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  The, the battle against despair that strikes me as, as weirdly not common enough of a theme in novels. I, I almost think the modern novel seems to take as a given that everything is meaningless, everything sucks.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  There's no, like, it, it's a rejection of likable characters almost entirely.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Very often, yeah. I mean, and a lot of early novels too are like a rejection of.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Meaning, a rejection of anything that might sound sentimental, you know, everything has to be sort of like ironic, basically. Yeah, it's, um, life is tough, even if you're born into America in the 21st century, you know what I mean? And I think maybe it's just tough because we're meant to be fighting all the time. We have sort of still caveman brains and we don't live in a caveman world. And how do you adjust, how do you adjust that? All of our needs are more or less provided for, which of course is very good in some ways.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  Not strictly true for everyone, but more so than

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, more so than probably ever in history.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  More so than the people at the beginning of the

• 57:28Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a lot wrong with the world right now, but I think, you know, median human age is longer than it's ever been. Fewer people die by violence even than 100 years ago. The human race is kind of doing okay despite the fact that, you know, the world's heating up and et cetera, et cetera. And how do you process this? Like, I was studying this period for this new book I'm writing. I studied this period around kind of beginning of the machine age. And as machines begin to become like a larger force in human life, both in terms of, you know, buildings becoming gigantic, but also like electricity coming in, you know, widely. That is the beginning of the

• 58:10Speaker 02

  age of anxiety. If you look at when like modern psychology begins, it is absolutely when folks start going a little bit nuts because there are these machines are suddenly removing our

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Centrality.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, our centrality and all the things we had to, we don't have to work as hard to live as we used to.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  I mean, I had a taste of this because I read American Russ and then this chat GPT thing came out, the artificial intelligence engine. And so I, I, I had it right because I do this email every day, the daily Stoic email. And I was like, write a daily Stoic email about replaceability.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  And it did B minus job, you know? Like, so what I do, right? Like the thing that I do that I am like, I'm the only person in the world that can do this thing. This computer engine that has existed for five fucking minutes, you know, does a half decent job. And you go, Oh, this is what it's like, you know, this is what it's like to be insert blue collar profession from a long chain of insert blue collar professions. And then we don't need you anymore.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  And what that takes out of a person, also the spiral it can send a person into. I mean, to me, the response to it is like, okay, how do I figure out how to use this thing? How do I get improved by this thing?

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  You know, how do I not stick my head in the sand about said thing? Right. So I'm not, I'm not saying that, uh, you know, everyone's a sort of a helpless victim, but it is interesting to see, everyone wants to think that they're exempt from these inexorable laws or trends.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  And it's like, also, this is also what human beings have been doing to each other for centuries, is finding ways to replace ourselves or replace people who are not us from things that they thought they were.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, right. Whether it's people limiting jobs in a factory because it makes you a little more money or makes you a little more immune to strikes. Move the factory over here, right? I mean, yeah, that, that is what, that is what people do. I mean, that is all, that's also, you know, the worst, the worst side of us. I mean, so what do you think is going to happen with this?

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  I kind of focus on how bad it does certain things, but that's in a way is me putting my head in the sand about it, I think.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, the people who figure out how to, how to use the tools to their advantage or to figure out, okay, what is, if it can now do X, well, it can't, what are the, what is, first off, I still had to edit this thing, right? We, I ended up sending it out to the, to the list as an experiment to sort of make this meta point that everyone, everyone and everything is replaceable, right? Like, um, if you think you're indispensable, life will remind you that that's not the case.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  But, but I was thinking about, well, first off, the idea of using the computer to do X is inherently an artistic statement, right? It's like, I'm going to flip the urinal upside down and all of a sudden it's a piece of art, right? Like, so, so how does one come to use technology to still do the fundamentally human thing in, that is expression?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  But then also, what are the tasks that right now take me a lot of time?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  That's something. Like this could

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  Help me get better at and I think I always go towards like, I mean, I think just generally in business. It's like, what are the, what are the things that only you can do? And then how do you delegate those other things? And then like all technologies, you know, um, I'm sure there were, uh, writers who used to go into old libraries and pour over the books themselves, and now that's fixed by a search. And the ones who rejected the search as an option, you know, didn't make the leap. And then this thing will exist and how do you make the leap?

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  But in, uh, but yeah, yeah, but I wonder is what, hmm. At some point, something is lost a little bit. I mean, or I want to believe that it's lost, like what you lose when you use a search engine is, I mean, you, you probably remember this a little bit, but is the accidental discovery of reading a book.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  You come across a ton of stuff when you have to actually flip through a book yourself.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  You learn, your mind goes in different places. And when you, um, punch something into Google, a search engine.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Like you, you, um, you don't learn that stuff. And I, I mean, I sort of lived through that transition and, and I remember thinking like, I don't want to use Google. I don't want to use search engines because it clearly is, it is worse.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Like you, like you get it quicker, you get the answer quicker, but instead of getting like 20 associated answers and pieces of knowledge, you get like, you're just the one thing.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  You find what you're looking for most of the time, but you don't find what you didn't know.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  The, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's interesting. I, I don't know, but it, you're just real, it's like, we, we think these things are always going to happen to other people.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  But it'll happen to you.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  Also, like, I mean, death is the great example of this, right? It's like, we know other people die, we know other people are susceptible to things. We feel sorry for them and their families.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  And then we're like, but not here, I'm the, I'm the exception to the rule. And it's like, it's coming for you too, man.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is true. Even I, I worked in this trauma center when I was from age 19 to 21. And I saw a couple of people die every night, sometimes 10, sometimes two, um, by either car accidents, gunshot wounds, stabbings, whatever. And I remember that very clearly, the first person I watched die, who seemed super old, he must've been 35, you know? And, uh, it was like a drunk driving accident and.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Even so, that did not stop me from riding my motorcycle like a maniac. I mean, even though I, yeah, I was like, was moving dead bodies around at night sometimes, who were alive when they came in and now we're dead. It didn't affect my behavior as much as it should have. You know, I just was like, well, that's, that's that guy. Even though he's like my age.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, um, yeah. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe we're just.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Right. The bell tolls for thee.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  The bell tolls for like these 30 people. Yeah. Okay. Wow. That's good. That can't be me. Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  Right. Right. Well, we just, we don't want to think about it because I think we understand that if we think about it, it will have to change our behavior.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  So we just kind of, it's like we, it's in our mind, but we, there's a wall there that prevents it from full, and this is probably why sometimes when people do like psychedelics or whatever, those sort of artificial barriers we've had in our mind where we have the idea, but we've not actually let it sink into the consciousness. That's why that gets unlocked.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Do you know what I'm saying? Or, or we have the, you know, you have some breakthrough when you're reading or meditating or whatever, you like, there's a difference between knowing this, the thing and knowing a thing. And you knew, just as everyone knows, eventually you're gonna die.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  But like, it's not until you, you get some, it breaks down some of the defenses that you go, oh, yes, I am them and they are me.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. This, yeah, and this is definitely gonna happen. And you have like, if you're lucky, 30 years left, 40 years left, but you have a, the, the clock is ticking. I mean, the clock, the clock is ticking like every, every day.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, the, the thing that protects us from despair because we don't think about it also keeps us from making good decisions sometimes.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  You know, I was thinking of a version of that, right after I read the book, after I read The Sun, there's this brilliant scene at the end where the, what is she, the fourth generation, the, the woman.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  She's like flying on a private plane or whatever, and she's like, my kids don't want money. I don't need any more money. All I care about is this ranch. And yet here I am doing all these things that are not that ranch to get more money.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Right? And I was thinking about how like, we know, in the way that absolute power corrupts absolutely, we know that money above a certain point. Tends to cause problems for people, you know, like we see the the family who's torn apart, you know, dealing with the estate. We see the kids that are spoiled. You know, we see the people who thought it would fix things and it doesn't. So we know that, right? And then what do we all do? Like, we go to Hollywood to make more money. We start a company that grinds us into dust to to get this huge payday. You know, we're we we know it won't do the thing for us. And yet, it's the thing we do.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  We work the hardest to get like, we know it could be a generational curse, but we're like, I'm doing this for my family.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's amazing. It's got to be like, you know, it's got to be from the for most of human existence, your the resources were very limited. Your resources were literally limited to what you could carry in your pockets, right? Or in a sack. That was it. That was for a million years. And so the idea that there is an unlimited resource, which is just this abstract thing called money, which doesn't actually exist in the real world. You think a dollar is real? It's not real. You know, it's only because, you know, the only reason I'm gonna take your dollar is that I'm convinced that the dollar will buy me something. But the moment I begin to believe that your dollar doesn't has no meaning. And I think we're just not programmed for access to unlimited resources

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  or even large amounts of resources at all. We have, we our minds can't process it. Like, that idea is too new. It's only we have money is only, Sapiens probably talked about this, that book, you know, but how is it 5,000 years old, you know?

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Abundance is a thing that we can't wrap our heads around. You know what I mean? That we struggle with. And I've ever been to like a Brazilian steakhouse? You know, you eat, you eat a bunch, you're like stuffed. And it's even different to me than a buffet. A buffet, there's like, I'm gonna go up and get more food. Right? So there's some point where you're like, I'm full. I don't want anymore. Which is definitely past the point you're full. But the Brazilian steakhouse, they're walking around, you're stuffed, you're getting the meat sweats. And then the guy comes around with the sword and he's like, you want this? And you're like, you're like, it like, you have more, you not only have had enough, you are un, you are, you are feeling the effects of having too much.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Already.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  But it requires willpower.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  More willpower than you have to be like, I'm cutting myself off here.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  And we struggle to do that. All the characters in this book, every time they got more, it was worse for them. And yet they can't stop.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, we're programmed for basically what is like, you know, a Plains Indian Native American lifestyle. We're programmed to like, we just can't store that much food.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  You can't really own the land. Like, the amount, the land that you own is the land you can hold by force, more or less. And even if you have like a very, you know, February was called like the month of crying babies or something for many of the Plains tribes. Because that was when your winter meat had maybe run out, if the hunting was bad, and when nothing was growing yet.

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  And so even if you were the strongest tribe with the most competent men and women, it didn't matter. Because in February, little kids might start dying and old people might start dying, no matter how good you were, basically.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  And that is what we're programmed for. We're not programmed for meat to be like carried around on a trade of us. That's something that only like, you know, a tiny percentage of the human race should have access.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  This is, uh, this is what the emperors knew about, but everyone else throughout history has.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, how do you learn those habits, right? It's like you can learn the habits of like saving and scrimping and accumulating. But then the habit of like, I have more than I need, what should I do with it? That's like, that's a skill set that, yeah, for all of human history, like.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  But wasn't a skill set you had to develop? It just, because nothing, there was never going to be enough of anything. Yeah. I mean, there was no money, it didn't exist, and there wasn't enough food.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Couldn't store food for more than a few weeks anyway, you know, so.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a skill set that like, it's like, the call for that skill set is like 100 years old. I mean.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  For most of us, anyway.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Something can break in your brain that makes it even harder to get there.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Depending on how you grew up, when you grew up, the values you got. Or, or yeah, you're just a particularly insatiable people, person as, you know, I think the great characters of literature are there to remind us of.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  The character was like, I'm good. You know, that doesn't make for a great.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  It's not interesting.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is funny, because when you're creating books, I often have to remind myself that sometimes the more realistic a character is, the more they are like the average woman or man. It may not be like.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Where do you go?

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Where do you go? There's nowhere to go. So you sort of write about the extremes. You want them to be realistic extremes, but you write about the extremes.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Uh, average is boring. Or, or, or, well, I think about it, it's like the most successful people. There, there are so many successful people out there who are successful, but don't need you to know who they are.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  Right? And so.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  You Google them, they scrub the internet of their presence.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  Right. And, and, and so like, we tend to think of the, our image of the successful person is the person who relentlessly courts attention.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  Who's never satisfied.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Is, you know, the person who does a couple of good books and then is like, I'm good. You know, that person, that's not a, by definition, doesn't have the recognition or, you know.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  They get it very late. I mean, look at Cormac McCarthy, who didn't, who wrote for, geez, 30 years, 40 years. I mean, did one interview, he wrote from the 50s until the 90s, until he finally had success. It was kind of like living in cheap places, Knoxville, El Paso.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Now, now, he is super old. I mean, uh, I mean, I love his, his work. I don't know him personally, but that, I think for a long time, early in my career anyway, I thought, well, probably the Hemingway path or the Joan Didion path is safer, in which you're sort of obviously courting some attention.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  And you're cultivating an image.

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  You're like the cool person for this time.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  And I thought that was in some way the safer way, but, but, but it isn't. I mean, the safe thing is to, it's not safe, because I think you were, at least for me, you were. You need to be a very particular type of person, I think, to be able to put up a wall in your mind in which you can do the work in the morning.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  And sell the work in the evening.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  And there are some people who naturally have it.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  I don't think a lot of artists naturally have it.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Maybe not many humans naturally have it.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  I struggle with it. Even if I'm doing book tour.

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  I can't write. So if I'm on tour, I can't, I can't write. I can try to think intelligently about what I've done, maybe. But it's very hard for me to create stuff.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  And that's not everyone. I know Ian McEwan talks about, you know, English novelist. He talks about, he writes on book tour all the time.

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  I have no idea how.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  You know, he had a great quote. He's like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a salesman also.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  No, okay.

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's like, he's like, I don't just like, uh, I don't just paint. I have to sell the paints or something. So I had some quote about this in one of the books I wrote, but he's really good. He's like, yeah, I gotta go on the road and sell the thing. Like, that's, that's my job.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  I want, yeah. And he also, I mean, he, most, I feel like, a lot of novels anyway, you talk about like, there's something in book tour that shuts down that creative flow or energy. But clearly not for everyone.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  I think a big chunk of that has also been it's, it's actually just a luxury of the industry that everyone's taken for granted. So for most of the, most of the history of the novel, like, they didn't make any money and only rich people could do them, or it was accidental, or it became popular after their death or whatever, right? But then for like, you know, the 150, 200 years of like the modern novel, it, the publishing industry had published a handful of titles every year and then they could like make a book a success or not.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Like in my, in, in nonfiction, the publisher is like, we don't sell the book. We're paying you to sell the book.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  Right? Like that's, there's no, there's not.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  I really knew that.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  There's no prizes, you know, there's no like, you're not, I, I've done 14 books, some, 13, I forget, but I've done, let's say more than 10 books.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  You actually don't remember how many books you've written?

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  I've had one reviewed in the New York Times. So like, there's not, there's not a space, and it's at my worst selling book. So like, um, the point being that typically, nonfiction, you know, there's not a media industry about, there's not a media like discovery surfacing.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  Uh, mechanism for it. And then there's also not even, although there's a bookstore here, but like, there's not even like, a model now where bookstores can like make or break a book, right?

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  Um, but, but fiction is still that, like fiction is still like, it came out, the right people said things about it.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  The right, uh, got the right media attention. It was nominated for the right awards.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Like, like, um, it, it, it functions more like, um, the award movies in Hollywood function.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Which is there's a, a thing and you do a set of things and maybe you get it, maybe you don't.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  But, so, so the novelist has had the luxury of, you know, I don't touch any of that.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Right, absolutely.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  Whereas the most other, musicians don't have that luxury.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Speaker 00

  Or, you know, they're like, no, I go on the road and I.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Sell this thing, you know?

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting, yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  So I, I think there's a, I get it, because nobody likes doing it.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 00

  But I think, I got really good advice earlier in my career, that like, if you're not willing to get behind it, what are you saying to the reader?

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  You're not saying you're pure, you're saying, this sucks.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  Like that, like, you know, you're saying this isn't as important.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Maybe, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  But I'm just, I'm just saying like, by not, if, if you were like, no, like, the world depends on this getting out, you do the stuff.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  Someone else will take care of it.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  There's a certain amount of, of like, I could take it or leave it-ness to it, that I think is.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Uh, it's right, which is, it's a luxury, and it's just because that's the way the literary world has functioned for a hundred years or maybe longer.

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  But, um.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  A bestselling novelist in the world right now, Colleen Hoover, is like selling the shit out of these books.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  She had like eight of the top 25 best selling books in 2022.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  And was she self-taught?

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  All TikTok.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  All TikTok.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  I think, and Instagram and social media, I think it started, I think maybe she self-published some and now she's on a couple of different publishers. But like, yeah, I think, I think there, there is this belief that there's something sort of nasty or impure about like, doing it, but.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Well, if you're given the option not to do it, then, then, then, then you get to have an opinion about it. But if you're not given the option, then you don't, you don't get to have an opinion about it.

• 1:17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I've just come to see them both as, I think nonfiction's easier because like, there's ideas in the works that you can go, that you care about independently of whether someone reads the book or not.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, that's why you can sell it on a proposal.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Because, because the execution is, is crucial.

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  But the ideas are something that you can easily talk about.

• 1:17:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. How many people talk about the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's books that have never read Malcolm Gladwell's books, right?

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Half the world.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  Probably, yeah. So like, you have the ability to go out and talk about the thing, whereas like, in a novel, you're like, what's this be? Like, it, it exists inside the universe that you've created.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the execution's quite important.

• 1:17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  And, and you know, you and I have given the task to write the exact same novel. Those books may have no.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  If they, you know, write a book about Texas, write a book about Texas, you could even get quite specific and the execution would be totally different.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  You know what's an interesting thing that, as we wrap up to talk about the, the artificial intelligence thing? So I have this habit, and I've, I've heard lots of writers do it, but like, sometimes when I'm stuck, but also just generally when I find stuff I like, I will type up the writing of other great writers.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  So like, um, when I, like, when I fold pages, I did it on your book, and then I'll be, I'll write, I'll, I'll either do it by hand, but a lot of times I'll do it in, on my computer. I'll just type up that paragraph.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  I want to feel that.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  Through me, right?

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  And so sometimes I do it in Gmail, as I'm, I'll just send it as an email to myself to like, print later.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Right? And so Gmail has artificial intelligence in it. You know, you're like, hey, let's meet Tuesday, and then it suggests to you, like, sure, that sounds great, right? Or, or when I'm typing, I'm like, hey, do you want to get together this? And then it'll fly, it's like, do you want to say evening? It can like, complete your thoughts.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Or so it thinks, based on. Millions and trillions of human interactions that have been recorded in text. The engine is able to sense where it thinks the sentence is going.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  So if I sit down and I write a Hemingway sentence, which is, I think we all agree as a society is a great sentence. If artificial intelligence really was great, it should know the end of that sentence. It should know the end of that sentence, not just because Hemingway's work is functioning in the engine, but also just like, we all agree that's what we're going for, right? And it never can. And so what strikes me is that all great innovation is fundamentally doing a thing that's never existed before. So artificial intelligence, data, etc. can tell you what people typically do in your situation, or perhaps could do in your situation, but if your situation is fundamentally new,

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  or you're trying to do something new or different, you're in uncharted territory and thus it can't help you. And so to me, that imperative, that imperative means that if you want to continue operating in a world where that is operating also, you have to go towards what is uniquely human and groundbreaking, not rehashing.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  And even art itself, even kids understand that an original piece of art, and this could be also in nonfiction, an original piece of thinking is fundamentally much better than a copy.

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  The original painting, doesn't matter how good of a copy of the Mona Lisa you make, it's still a copy. It actually has no artistic value, more or less. One has 100% and the other has none. And so that, and again, that's something even that kids understand pretty well. Like, we know, oh, you just copied that, right? And we understand it for ideas, too. So, yeah, maybe this thing just pushes us all a little bit harder.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, the choice to paint her is an artistic choice. The choice to leave this in and not that, right, is an artistic choice. The choice to light it a certain way, to do that, those are all the choices that are uniquely human.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  It's literally like a million artistic choices in any painting, any piece of writing, fiction or nonfiction, any piece of philosophy. Like, it's the amount of things, you know, when you start to finish a book. The amount of things you realize you've had to leave out.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  And the book's always getting narrower. I always have a sense of narrowing when I get near the end of the project. I'm like, shit, I wanted to say these.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have a huge stack of things that I thought would go in.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  And now they're not.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Yep. And now they're not going in. And there's always a little bit of melancholy feels. I'm getting close to the end. Cause I'm like, man, I thought it was going to hold all this. Actually it's just going to hold this, which is still a lot. That's still fine.

• 1:21:48Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  But mostly I become aware of the things that it can't really hold, you know? And yeah, maybe that's something to.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  When understanding that that is actually what you do.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  Like, of course you decide what, what, like, of course you also wrote all the words.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Speaker 00

  But there's some level of that that's even just channeling, but it's that you may, that, that your job is actually to make choices about what goes in and what doesn't. To go this way or that way. And that fundamentally, that's what's valuable.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  You know, not like how well the words are strung together necessarily.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:23Speaker 00

  But like, the first choice was, what is it about? And then the next choice was, when is it? You know, like, you make all these critical artistic decisions in what you do that like really can't be replaced.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially by a machine that is just averaging them maybe, you know?

• 1:22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  But, but it may be true that this, this replaces a lot of, I don't know, man. I'm not trying to want to be a lawyer right now.

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or, or like, if you're, if your job is writing for the Associated Press, the market went up two points today because X, Y, and Z.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  That's very replaceable. Cause you're fucking making, you're not even making it up. It's just like, like it's, this is what.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  Coaling data.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. And so, so if you want to be a writer, you have to come up with something that isn't coaling random data. But that, where there are choices involved.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  And understanding that is, so going to the thing, what are the things that can't be replaced?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  And, and, and going towards that is probably ultimately what matters.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's gonna be a weird 10 years.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're in for some strange times.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  Well, dude, thank you very much. This was awesome. I loved the books.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, appreciate it.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.