Brian Koppelman – Chasing Curiosity - [Invest Like the Best, EP.21]

My guest this week is writer, director, producer, and podcast host Brian Koppelman, who’s film credits include ‘Rounders’, ‘Oceans 13’, and ‘Solitary Man’. More recently he co-created the Showtime show, ‘Billions’, which allowed us to have some fun talking about the world of hedge funds and investing. Brian’s method for chasing curiosity is something that everyone can learn apply in their own lives. In this chat, we discuss creativity, the importance of storytelling and why we are all so intrigued by billionaires. Please enjoy! For comprehensive show notes on this episode go to investorfieldguide.com/koppelman/ For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Neal, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Patrick O'Neal is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Neal Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Neal Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Neal Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

• 0:46Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  My guest this week is Brian Koppelman, who I met because of a mutual love of books and reading. Brian is a writer, director, and producer. His movies include Rounders, Ocean's 13, and Solitary Man. More recently, he co-created the incredibly entertaining Showtime show Billions, which allowed us to have some fun talking about the world of hedge funds and investing. We discuss creativity, the importance of storytelling, and why we are all so intrigued by billionaires. Brian's method for chasing curiosity is something everyone can learn and apply in their own lives. You're going to love this discussion. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com/koppelman. And now, please enjoy this conversation with Brian Koppelman.

• 1:28Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So, did you do TM right from the get-go when you got interested in meditating?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, for me, meditation has been an incredible gift. It has various benefits. I mean, you meditate, so you know, but it has, for me, it had the effect of eliminating the physical symptoms of anxiety in a big way. And then, when anxiety chemicals stop firing, it allows for better chemicals to fire in your brain. So, it has this benefit of, I think, some kind of increased creativity, deeper thought. And TM is simple. One of the things that held me back from meditation, I did a lot of, when I was in college, or whenever I took acting classes, or any kind of theater classes, you would always do some kind of guided, three-minute relaxation thing. And I always, for me, that didn't work. It

• 2:18Speaker 02

  felt this kind of forced thing, or then, when I'd have to do breathing, concentrate on your upper lip, kind of stuff. But TM...

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Is so simple to do and the way in which I was taught it, it took all the pressure off and it became easy. So about six years ago, I think I started and I meditate every day. I don't really miss a day. I mean, I could miss a day out of two or three months, but I really don't. I mean, it's, I bet you I've missed five mornings of meditation in six years.

• 2:51Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It's something very hard to describe what it's like if you haven't done it and gotten pretty deep into it. Are there other experiences or states that you could equate to the feeling either during or immediately after meditation?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I think the only one that, there are moments when you're, when you're running. So I used to play a lot of sports and so the idea of the zone, right? So those days when you're on a basketball court and you see it all super clearly and you're, you're not really performing from a place of conscious thought. There's something similar in the way that it feels then and sort of right after you have a game like that. I mean, there's a euphoria attached to that that I, I don't chase in meditation. I mean, in one of those times where you're kind of working in basketball in particular, you're working with these five guys and you're, when that thing happens in a way that you have one of those games,

• 3:51Speaker 02

  you are afterwards completely at peace, but also there's this euphoria. Jogging though, I went through a period of doing a lot of jogging about 10 years ago and maybe seven years ago, after reading Murakami's book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. And I found that the days, and I had started, I had started by doing couch to 5K because I couldn't even, I had gotten it from a guy who played a lot of full court basketball. Like couch 5K is this incremental thing where at the end you're doing three miles, 3.2 miles. And then I got to where I was running three, three and a half miles, three, four times a week. And I did fine. And then I would do a long run, you know, like a five mile run and at the end of the week. And sometimes, and running's a weird thing because

• 4:36Speaker 02

  sometimes it's Blissful and sometimes it's hell.

• 4:39Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Agony.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  And you just don't know, right? I mean, you're, you run.

• 4:41Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I do often, yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. I mean, it's a bizarre thing. You're in the same physical shape you were in two days ago. It's all this, you're, and then, and sometimes, you know, it is, you start running and you go like, why didn't I do this all the time? Why isn't this, and you're, it's like you're just gliding slow. Whether you're a slower, I'm a slow runner, whether you're a slow runner or a fast runner, you sometimes are just sort of like in this transcendent kind of space.

• 5:04Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I think bliss is the right word.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:06Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Like there's, and oftentimes it happens in a couple of minutes where you'll be in the agony part and then in the bliss part, the.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Well, the first, I mean, in the early morning runs, for me, anyway, the first five minutes always.

• 5:15Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Always agony, yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  But after that, often, you know, you wait for that thing where you trip into that other state.

• 5:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Right.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  That's really close to medit, don't you think that's close to meditation?

• 5:24Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It's definitely, it's the example I give, but often that's not till mile six, seven, eight, you know, something really long, like it takes a long time to get there. And Lynch has this great little phrase, he calls it a thick beauty, which is such a, like a pervasive, weird, kind of buzzy feeling. You know, I'm not, I'm not religious, so no, no, no larger overtones here, but just this kind of weird feeling of connection that's pervasive. That's not some high or low. It's something like right down the middle and it's thick. Like, I like that, I like that description.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  That book is incredible, Catching the Big Fish. I mean, reading that book was one of the big things that made me wanna figure out how to meditate and why I picked TM.

• 6:06Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, and from another writer too. So it's an interesting bridge, a great bridge into some discussion on creativity. I think what's interesting for, for people listening is there's probably a lot more overlap between what we do than people might suspect because in investing creativity is very important if you're trying to do better than others. And storytelling is important, I think, no matter what you do. So I was gonna start with Billions, but my wife and I watched Solitary Man last night and it was the first time that I saw it. And so I really actually want to start there because it was an extremely interesting and unique movie. And, and there's, I won't say just yet, but there's one little short line in there. I'm curious if you can guess it, that I could literally talk about for the whole podcast. But, but first, I'd be curious to hear.

• 6:47Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  How you, how this movie came to be. So maybe if you could just tell me a little bit about how the idea germinated, how you came to it, because it's a unique character.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Sure. I'm gonna first, let me first say that, that your point about creativity, you know, a cornerstone belief of mine is that all of us, yes, in the world of investments and in what I do, there's a primacy on creativity. But I actually think humans are happiest when they're accessing the most creative part of who they are. I don't think there's any job, any, almost any sort of mission that you're not rewarded for using the part of yourself that thinks with nuanced dexterity and creativity. And so, something I chase

• 7:39Speaker 02

  all the time is the techniques by which to free that part of myself and in others. That, I think, is, you know, Tony Robbins talks about how as long as human beings are making progress, they, they, they feel good, they feel happy. And I think that that, twinned with that is this idea of creativity and not feeling thwarted or not feeling like you are working by rote. So, I, I do think that there's a, a big kinship in, in most sort of pursuits that taps into this idea of creativity. Okay, Solitary Man. The origin story for that movie is that I had seen, there's an event that happens

• 8:23Speaker 02

  at the beginning of the film where a woman in her 30s is about to see her father, a man in his 60s, and she calls out dad. And they're in a public place and he says, "Don't call me that in public because it'll make it harder to pick up women." And I saw that. And the woman in question was somebody I cared about a lot. And I was so, as, as, I'm a dad and that's the thing by which I define myself more than anything else. And seeing that and imagining the kind of monster or person who was acting like that much of a monster.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  That they could say that to their own daughter. Imagine denying your paternity in that way in public so that some rando woman would, you know, think you were still eligible and would think you were younger. It got me so angry that I went home and I wrote like the first, I wrote like 20 pages out of anger. And then a big, huge chunk of the movie came to me, including kind of the very end. There was a big part in the middle I couldn't solve for a really long time. And in that first burst of inspiration, a whole bunch of stuff I'd been thinking about, a very specific story, came to me. There was this big hole, gap in it.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And it took me years. I hadn't written anything alone. Most of the work I do is with a partner. My partner, David Levine, he's my creative partner and has been since the first movie. But this story was so personal to me. When I showed those 20 pages to Dave, I read them out loud to him and he said, yeah, that's a movie. We should make that movie, but you have to write it because the voice, the tone, the feeling of it, you just have it. And it ended up taking me years to solve. But I worked at it any sort of free time that I had and I would think of, even when I was really blocked and having a very difficult time, I would come back to it and read it and think about it. Cause I wrote half, and what happened was I wrote half of it.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And so half of the script was written and it's pretty much the movie. But the second half remained unwritten for like a year and a half in the middle, which was torture for me. And then I'd sent it to a friend of mine and he said a couple of sentences to me. He said, what are you planning? I'd sent him the 62 pages and he said, what are you planning to do? And I'd mentioned, well, this is why I'm stuck. I know this one thing should happen. And he said, here's why that shouldn't happen. And he, and as soon as he said that, Which was, I, I had a eureka moment. I went, oh, and then I wrote the rest of it in three weeks.

• 11:01Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Wow, really neat. And then, so, so let me tell you the line and, and a little bit of setup without giving too much of the movie away because everyone should go, should watch it. Basically, the guy is sort of a, the guy in his sixties is a philanderer. He's a woman.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Played by Michael Douglas.

• 11:15Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, played by Michael Douglas, the, the main character. And he's got a great character as an ex-wife who's played by Susan Sarandon. And they're, they're kind of sitting, talking, and they seem to be at peace with each other, you know, a pretty decent, um, relationship despite having been divorced. And she says something to him, which is, in a conversation, I don't change things when they're still working. That's your move. And I, I love that line so much because, um, for good and bad, it seems to me to sum up a lot of the creative process of business. So maybe we call the innovator's dilemma, um, which is the second you're not growing or changing, you're dead. It's not a matter of if, but when.

• 11:59Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Now, in this case, it's very bad, right? Because he's just, he keeps blowing, he keeps blowing up his life, but I want to get into some of the nuance because the character to me actually wasn't, there's a lot of sympathy for me between.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  In the end, once you, well, of course, because once I'm then really writing the guy, I, I can't write about people if I can't find something in them that I connect to or that I can empathize with or understand. So while I think the actions that that character takes are mostly repulsive, I understand the way he's talking to himself. I understand the story that he's telling himself. It doesn't excuse him or justify it. I wouldn't be friends with him in real life. But I'm able to understand how he got there. You know, in a later scene they have, he talks about feeling invisible. And so once I realized, once some, um, a man in his like late sixties said that to me, you know, I used to walk down the street and people would

• 12:53Speaker 02

  notice, women would notice me. And then at a certain point, I just became invisible. And once I realized that this character had this fear of invisibility, it enabled me to understand more about why he was the way he was. That doesn't mean when I write about it, I'm not going to create situations where, where we. Excuse the behavior. I think the movie doesn't excuse his behavior at all, but it allows you to get inside what his motivations are. Speaking about the question of that line, I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking of Roger Lowenstein's great book about Buffett and the way in which Buffett, he just depicts Buffett's ability to stand pat,

• 13:37Speaker 02

  which is really difficult for most of us to do. The ability to keep your own counsel, to change when you believe it's time to change based on the information that you have, equally valuable, the ability to not change when you have, despite what everybody else is saying, based on your own interpretation of events and the circumstance.

• 14:03Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It seems to me like the things, the creative output that people like most, have one foot in the familiar and one foot in the new. And that if you think about the creative process, at least in the limited amounts of that kind of creative bliss state that I've experienced in my life, it's always, there's always sort of a vulnerability in leaving behind the known.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Well, sure. There's, so Harold Bloom, the most famous lit critic ever, wrote this book called The Anxiety of Influence. And he, and he's been sort of the cornerstone of Yale's English department for a very long time, like 50 years. And Bloom talks about strangeness and how great work has a kind of strangeness to it. And that's what you're really talking about, something that doesn't feel like we've read it, seen it, heard it a million times. The causes of that kind of work are difficult to predict or to really enumerate. You know what I mean? There, there, there's a lot of preparation and yes, risk-taking that goes into it.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  You do feel, like sometimes you'll, you'll hear an album. Like I've been listening to this album by Josh Ritter a lot lately, this album called Sermon on the Rocks. And the same thing with like another album I love, Jason Isbell's album, Southeastern. And

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Even if you didn't know the biographical stuff that led these people to making these albums, or this woman named Mitski, who wrote an album, made an album called Puberty Two, you would, in hearing the records, you sense a vulnerability and openness, a willingness to strip, to strip aside a whole bunch of stuff that might have protected them before. And so I do think that that's a hallmark often of great art. On the other hand, you know, there are great artists who work in a very formal way, where what they were feeling doesn't matter at all.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  You know, where their level of sort of craft intellect and intention is so great that the work lands in a way that rips you apart, even if you have no sense of whether they were affected by it at all. Now, most of the time, that kind of work doesn't reach me in the same way. But that's taste, that's just a question of, that's just a question of taste.

• 16:32Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Is there anything that you do to create the conditions?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:36Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  In yourself, so that you're always kind of open to flowing that way?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I try not to be on guard, right? So, yes, I try really hard. So, I have rituals, because I was a blocked writer until I was thirty. And the way in which I finally blasted past that was by finding and sticking to some kind of a routine. And "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron was enormous for me. In doing Morning Pages, I freed myself from all this other stuff. I freed myself from the curse of perfectionism, which was my problem, was, you know, wanting whatever I produced to be so great

• 17:18Speaker 02

  that it would make the reader or viewer just fall down and weep and have no more reason to live. And if that's your standard, you're never going to be able to do any work, because you're never going to be able to produce work on that level. And so... The morning pages, which Julia Cameron spells out in The Artist's Way, are three longhand pages you write every morning. And it's something I recommend for every single person on earth. Because what happens as you start doing these pages, and there are great rules. I'm not big on rules, but there are great rules with this. One of which is, you can't read back what you've written for five years. You can never show it to anybody. You cannot stop your pen moving.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  So what happens is you get in the habit of producing pages without censoring yourself at all, without stopping, without trying to judge. And for me, it has the effect of tapping into my subconscious and starting this creative process. So I do that. I take a long walk in the morning almost every day. And I meditate. And the meditation piece came later. But I do those things every day. And those things put me in a state to take risks creatively, to do the thing that I want to do. How did you find the book? Did someone give it to you? Yeah, so it was great.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Dave was my partner in all this stuff, my lifelong best friend also. We met at, I had just turned 16 and he was 14 and a half. And we've been like brothers ever since. And he was writing and tending bar, and I was working full time. And I had gotten to this point. I had given him Tony Robbins' book, Awaken the Giant Within. And I had read Tony's book. And Tony's book, and I did all those exercises, is one of the things that made me realize specifically, oh, I'm scared to be an artist. I want to be an artist. I have to be. My son, our first child, Amy and my first child was born. I wanted to be the kind of dad that would tell my kid to chase his dreams and that he could do anything.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  I have two kids now, and I didn't tell them that. And I realized I wasn't. And so Tony's book kind of throws the gauntlet down to you. Well, if you're not living the life you want, why not? And how can you? And I remember going to David and giving him that book. And he felt the same way, that he loved it and started doing the stuff. And then I went to him and I said, look, I'm at a point where I feel like I have to find a way to write. And I'm so blocked up and I can't do it. And I don't think of myself like this. And then he gave me The Artist's Way. And I started doing it the next morning. And I mean, it's a crazy thing like I remember on my 30th birthday, I'd be miserable. Amy threw me this incredible poker party. I was already into poker and she threw me this incredible poker

• 20:11Speaker 02

  party, all my friends, my son was sitting there on my lap at nine months old until he was, Amy took him home and left me with all my buddies and, and I came home and I said, you know, I just, I know I'm not who I'm supposed to be and I'm 30 years old and what's gonna happen? And I started doing The Artist's Way right after that. And one year later, we had sold, we had written and sold Rounders to Miramax and it was in pre-production and we'd sold two other movies to Hollywood and my life was entirely different. My 31st birthday, I had three movies in various stages of production. Two of them didn't, at that time, didn't get made, but they were bought and we both quit

• 20:54Speaker 02

  our jobs and I was living full-time the life of a filmmaker and a writer.

• 20:59Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I often ask people what transformative or formative books they've had in their lives and that book probably has maybe come up more than any other, probably because there's a very tangible thing you're gonna go start doing right away.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Have you done it?

• 21:15Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you?

• 21:16Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I'm not religious about it. I have similar kind of morning routines to you with walking, running for me and meditation and, and then I try to write in the morning, but it's not just to dump my brain. I actually just start writing about whatever I'm researching or what have you. So I don't do it as formally and I'll come back to it for a couple of weeks at a time and lose track of it, but it is like this powerful

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:42Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  reset button or something.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  It is. If you need it, it's an astonishing tool. And I'm an atheist. I'll just say, you know, you say you're not religious. I'm an atheist and The book has so much spiritual gobbledygook in it that it it's really off putting. But she came up with, she's really smart and she really came up with something that works. This artist pages and in the beginning, the artist date, those two things, but really the pages. I've given that book, I talk about it a lot. I talk about it on my podcast. I put it out there in the world a lot, but I've handed that book to probably,

• 22:21Speaker 02

  you know, 30 or 40 people. Of those 30 or 40 people, let's say 10 people have done it. Seven of them published books or got movies made out of it. It's amazing. If you really do it, you will figure out by the end of it, because this, the other benefit of it is, you don't lie to yourself in the morning pages. So after a couple of months, first couple of months of it or a month of it, you could just be writing kind of bullshit on the page. But you know, what happens is you start noticing, oh, every day I'm writing why, that I should be doing X or Y, or that I've slacked off on this, or that I haven't gotten back in touch with that person.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  And it's, it's a way to connect to your beating heart and the thoughts that are just bubbling underneath, the things that you're trying to avoid, the things that you need to do. And so for people who need it, I find it, I haven't found a more effective tool. And, and for me bundled with meditation, it's just a really powerful way to start your day. I was really rewarding, I saw, you know, I told Tim Ferriss about it. And, and Tim talks about that I did in Tools of Titans and on the podcast. And you know, now Tim has given that to zillion, I mean, just to millions and millions of people. So I feel really good about that. And I'd like Julie Cameron to maybe dedicate the next book to me. Give me a shout out.

• 23:43Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  You mentioned Rounders and I'll use that with Billions as a kind of a bridge into Billions.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 23:49Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Where there's this phrase that Danny Meyer, who runs a lot of my favorite restaurants here in New York and people, best people know him for Shake Shack now, which has been his huge, you know, commercial success, but runs these incredible restaurants, is huge on hospitality and has this phrase, "ABCD", which stands for "Always Be Collecting Dots", which is this idea of immersion in a subject area as a means to spark creative insight or create a story or what have you. Obviously, Rounders is just thick with that sort of immersion into the world of poker and gambling, awesome movie. And Billions now is kind of like that, too. It's this incredibly deep dive into a world

• 24:30Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  that has this allure for people, you know, billionaires and intrigue and maybe the dark side of some of those things. So I'm curious how you got interested in this area and through the hedge fund investing.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, I would say one of the things I realized right from the beginning of doing any of this kind of work is that for me, it's, if I go from a place of curiosity and fascination, I have a chance to do something that has that strangeness that we were talking about. Something that feels like, oh, this is like, of course, this was supposed to be a thing, but then why hasn't it been a thing before? And also, it's not presented in exactly the way, it's not a cookie cutter, you know, it's got an original spark. Dave and I, we work together on this stuff and for years. So with poker, the other things are,

• 25:25Speaker 02

  we love insular worlds with language of their own. That's been, from the beginning, something that was important. Even Solitary Man, the character is a guy who used to own car dealerships. And when you watch the movie, you really believe the guy was a car dealer. I went and I spent time with car dealers and learned how they talk to each other and what all their terms that they use mean and what they're like. But for a long time, we'd been... Really curious about hedge funders, fascinated by the ambition that drives them, the access that they have, the power that comes from both their resources and that

• 26:10Speaker 02

  level of access. And United States attorneys, because you can make the argument that billionaires are like nation states, more than they're like citizens. If you think about it, they have armadas, they have fleets of craft, they have soldiers with arms around them. They don't ever, their feet never have to touch the ground. And so, the idea, and they move through the world unchecked, really. And you know, this is long before Donald Trump's immersion as a viable political candidate.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  And this is just the way that we looked at billionaire hedge funders. And United States attorneys, people don't really understand the kind of discretion that federal prosecutors have, but it's enormous. They really decide which cases to take and why, and then they have the full power of the federal government to throw at the defendants. And so, this idea of a king and a nation state, and we think of them as kings, and so a king and a nation state sat against one another, felt Shakespearean in its conception, and felt like we could swing for the fences, make a popular entertainment that had thematics

• 27:39Speaker 02

  that tied to like, sort of, stories that have been told for a long time. Because the themes are deeply about human nature and the limits of who we ought to be, how we ought to, how we ought to use our abilities in the world. And so, we then, and I would, I remember a year and a half ago, I talked about this at press events about the show, and I talked about Trump and Mark Cuban, and I'm very, I'm, I'm sorry if your listeners are guys in finance, or women in finance who like Trump, but I'm very, very worried about the country and the world with him about to become president, right, so be president by the time this is up. Maybe there won't even be, maybe there won't even anymore be the facility by which people can listen to this. Maybe this is just for you because maybe he shut off all

• 28:23Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I'll get it out, I'll get it out before he shuts it down.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  But, um, but I talked about it, like I'm friends with Mark Cuban. I really like Mark and I, I understand, I too sort of celebrate Mark and his achievements. But I was really interested in why billionaires are celebrated in our country, why the most popular two reality stars were Mark and Trump and like what that means. What is it about people who've had that kind of financial success that over the last 10 years has sort of superseded even athletes and rock stars and movie stars as a subject of fascination and love and idolization. And so I've been really, Dave and I were both really interested

• 29:10Speaker 02

  in exploring that. And Silent Tremendous explores too, this idea of a certain kind of charisma standing in for a certain kind of quality of person and this conflating of the value of charisma with the value of a conscience. And so those ideas were sort of circling for us, thematics. And then we decided to like find a way to get access to a bunch of people in the hedge fund world and in the federal prosecutorial world. And we were able to. And Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's our partner on creating the show, after the pilot, Dave and I made the show, the two of us with our writing staff and our

• 29:52Speaker 02

  incredible crew and the actors, Showtime. But in the beginning of this, when we were sitting with Andrew, he was able to connect us with a couple of hedge fund billionaires. And once we met a couple of them, and then they would tell people we were all right, and we wouldn't sell them out. We were able to meet more of them. I played poker a lot in the city and a lot of the people I played cards with, played cards with some of these people. And we started hanging out. I went to college with a guy who's a substantially successful hedge funder. And so we get to sit in some morning meetings and talk to them and certain people now say we can talk about it. So we become friendly with Jim Chanos, who talks to us a lot about how and why hedge funders think the way they do. We spent some time with Mark Lasry,

• 30:35Speaker 02

  who has been willing to do the same. Cuban has been this season a great advisor for us about, you know, the way he sees the world and the kind of access that people like him have. And so we then dive in and try to get all the, all the real stuff that we can and read a ton, you know, we try to read everything that we can that seems relevant, nonfiction articles. We try to interview journalists, too, because, you know, neither of us are incredibly financially literate. I'm terrible at math, but so I'll go talk to a journalist and, and say like, okay, how do you get to the bottom of this? Or what do you think this really means?

• 31:17Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  And then you just build it out from there?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have tech advisors, too, and people will call for various, you know, pieces of it so that it has authenticity.

• 31:24Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It's incredibly fun to watch as somebody, and we're being friends, obviously, with maybe some of the same people and, and know from the inside out and then to see it from the outside in. And it's pretty damn good. I mean, there's a lot of, I love the, the scenes where they're sitting around talking about, of course dramatized, but sitting around talking about investment ideas and-

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, like those morning meetings at hedge funds. I mean, we've watched those go down.

• 31:47Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  And even if the person doesn't speak exactly with the sort of, you know-

• 31:54Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Bravado.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  That Bobby Axelrod does. I mean, I've definitely seen people get dressed down the way that he dresses down people when they have an idea that isn't fully thought out. I mean, the whole, yeah, the whole, the whole notion of stock, of stocks as ideas is something that most people didn't know about until the show, like, nobody knows that that's how you people all talk about it as ideas. And that was, like, little things like that, when we hear something like that, it gives you the whole- For me, when I hear that's the way they talk about ideas and names, that gives you a whole way to understand a thought process.

• 32:31Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, that term names.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 32:33Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It's so funny.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Only you people do.

• 32:34Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Right, right. I might be reading too much into this, but I'm curious if I've got a thread here that we can pull on. So in in Solitary Man, obviously, the character is owns car dealerships, but is massively successful. Successful enough that he's gifted a library at a college and

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he made a lot of money.

• 32:51Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Millionaire multiple times over.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a person who probably had had made a hundred million. He wasn't a billionaire.

• 32:57Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Right.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  But he was an extremely wealthy person.

• 33:00Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  And well known. And and obviously, you know, Axe and billions and a lot of the characters are extremely wealthy. But there's this moment in in both where in Solitary Man, he goes back and ultimately is actually working at the deli or the diner where where he went to college. And Axe has the pizza shop where he often returns and talks to the owner and it's sort of this like grounding place. And in both situations, I thought a lot about money and the so sure, you become like a nation state, but but there is a lot of negative. This is well documented psychologically, but but also just you meet people and you see it. That when you have so much money, there is there is stress and maybe a lack of purity in your life because you're

• 33:44Speaker 02

  You're talking about transactional relationships, right?

• 33:47Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Very much so, yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  That that it becomes difficult. One of the billionaires talked about chits and how all they care about is chits and having chits. So that in the more powerful, the more access you have, the more valuable the few chits are. Where it's very difficult for you to achieve that thing. So you're trading chits on this incredibly high level. And yeah, what a bummer to have to live that way in a certain way. What an incredible

• 34:14Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Listen, yeah, of course, yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Right? But also, when you don't know

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Why somebody is talking to you? If you're the kind of person who cares about that, then then you might need to find relationships that are more clearly, I mean, pure is a very loaded word and I don't even want to use it, but that are more genuine. Although I don't think it's unique to billionaires. I think, you know, Patrick, you want to get, how many kids do you have? Two. So let's say you want to get them into a private school. Well, you'll meet somebody who knows someone who's on the board and maybe you and your wife will go out to dinner with them. Maybe you'll like them.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, is that a genuine, would you have done that otherwise? As you sort of press that advantage or as that person welcomes you in? You know, that relationship may become a real relationship, but the genesis of it was transactional in some way. And I do think it's hard in the, in the world. It's one of the hugely valuable things about both meditation, morning pages, running, walking, is the more we can get rid of the lies to ourselves, the more of a chance we have at peace. And so it's one thing to have that transactional relationship. It's another thing to fool yourself into thinking you don't.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  If you know that you do, you can then decide if you want to change it. You can then decide how you want to frame it for yourself or to that person. If you don't know, then you wake up at some point feeling more alone than you even are. I mean, I see this in social media, even from my own perch and awareness of, I have to have an awareness of. The various relationships. I have incredibly, for me, an amazing thing is like I've been with my wife since I'm 25 years old. She's the greatest person I know and wonderful writer and a great mom. I have, I spend a tremendous amount of time with my kids and my partner

• 36:34Speaker 02

  at work is my lifelong best friend. These are incredibly grounding, real things. And I have a couple of other very close, very long time friends. And I've watched, I say, I've watched Mark go through the world. And I'm not close friends with Mark, but like I say, we're pals. I've spent time with him in a couple of situations where there are people. And I've watched him. I admire it so much, the way in which he's aware of who he is and why people are talking to him. But he also has the ability to kind of see through it and look for the genuine moments and appreciate those, which I think would be just so hard in, in, in the position he's in.

• 37:13Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  You said before, driving a little bit deeper into that, you said before this, that there's this interesting trend where almost more so than athletes now, we revere billionaires and, and their success. And, you know, Shark Tank is, is the equivalent of watching Jordan or something like that. And it seems, you know, obviously we're watching people who are orders of magnitude more talented, or lucky, or, you know, some combination thereof in things that we ourselves want to be good at. You know, everyone wants to have the skill to make a lot of money, or be able to dunk a basketball, or, you know, what have you. And it's like a dopamine shortcut by watching these other people do it. You know, we can kind of vicariously experience some of that. But what do you, as you're, obviously you're

• 37:56Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  struggling with this and exploring it, and it's part of Billions. But if you had to guess, like why, what is it that makes people so, why, why this, this switch, this reverence?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  You know, I'm not trying to, I don't, like, when the show's done, I'll have a better sense of it all. One of the things Dave and I try to do is I don't have the answers to like why Bobby Ochsrod and Chuck Rhodes and Wendy Rhodes are the way that they are. I keep trying to find it. And so part of it is you put them in situations that will reveal deeper parts of their character. Because this question of the kind of ambition. That hedge fund, in particular, hedge fund billionaires have is so fascinating to me still, I can't locate, it's so hard to locate the bedrock cause of it.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  The particular thing that makes Dan Loeb have to go make the next billion, or John Paulson, or whichever, whoever you want to look at. Most of us think, man, if I made a hundred million dollars. I'm out. I'm done. I have a buddy who's a PM somewhere, and it doesn't matter where, and he makes, I'm sure he's made between 12 and 20 a year for a long time. And like, that dude is, and that's, you know, a staggering amount of money. All of us listening, except half of 1% of the people, are like, I'd be done, three years of that, I'd be done, one year of it, and I, it doesn't matter. Be at Tahiti.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, but for some reason, these people have to keep going. And it's not as simple as money's the way they keep score. It's like, sort of not as simple as the banal ideas. There is, look, Citizen Kane is still, and there's a reason we used it in the show, you know, people, I would say, you talk about books a lot, there are old movies, they seem, especially in this age of everything moving so quickly, old movies seem like boring from the outside, are like, ah, why would I watch some black and white, three hour thing? Like Citizen Kane is the most amazing piece of art. Casablanca 2 is another one, which, Casablanca for these times, let me just say, I'm saying this everywhere I can these days, go watch Casablanca, think about the world right now.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  But Citizen Kane, you know, is one of the still best explorations of the cause of the kind of ambition that these people have. That said, I, the chase for me of trying to figure it out, trying to locate it.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Trying to see what would be satisfying to someone like Bobby Axelrod is what makes it something that I can keep writing. If I knew, I would have to stop writing it. It's why it's a TV series, not a movie, but I don't have the answer.

• 40:42Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I've got this theory that, that obviously that motivation could be good or bad, that it's an obsession based on interest and curiosity, which is kind of what we were talking about earlier with creativity, and that's, that's good. And I've got this, I think you probably agree, everyone's got something like that. And for most people, it's not

• 40:58Speaker 02

  What's yours?

• 40:59Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Um, mine's reading. I mean, and that has a million byproducts. The reason I'm sitting here is because I like to read. I read a book. It's by Hedge Fund Guy. I became friends with them. We were having a great conversation. We said, let's tape this. And it's just kind of grown from there. It's just a fun thing I do. And, but almost

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Which was that one, the first one?

• 41:15Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Uh, the very first one. His name was Jeff Graham. Um, he wrote a book, actually, if you're looking for great source material, it's a book called Dear Chairman, about the history of Dan Lobes, featured pretty prominently in it.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Right, the letters?

• 41:26Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, uh, the activist letters to

• 41:28Speaker 02

  I'll read it.

• 41:29Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  To CEOs. It's a fantastic book. Uh, he's a great writer. Um, so, so for me, everything always comes back to reading, um, and, and research. I would just say research. I would include conversations in that research.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 41:42Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Um, you know, reading, source material, data, you know, the way we invest is quantitative, so a lot, we're like, working a lot with data. But, but just research at its core, and like, I'm insatiable. And I think everyone's insatiable for something. And that there is a, there's a life and a career, et cetera, that's incredibly fruitful and enjoyable when you chase it. But I think most people either aren't aware of that, or haven't been given the, the, you know, the break you got when you went from 30 to 31. You know, I think some, sometimes it falls early, and sometimes people never hit it, and that's sad. And one thing I try to do, or I would love to be able to do, and a lot of what you've said helps me, helps me with this goal, is make people realize that. Um, because,

• 42:24Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  because I think the, you know, the money thing and the athletic prowess, like, those are great, those are great achievements, obviously. Um, but it doesn't need to be the small

• 42:33Speaker 02

  You know, that feeling when you wake up in the morning, and you are incredibly curious, obsessed Fascinated is the best feeling. It propels you forward and then you end up 12 hours later and you feel like that five on five basketball feeling at the whole, the whole day. I mean, that's the other piece, you know, it's so obvious to me that I don't even say it, but when I'm creating, um, it is of course that meditative state, right? When I hit those moments in the work, so like running, the first, when you open the computer and you start to write and you have to write pages because the actors are expecting it and the networks expecting it. The beginning, it can be a drag, right? The first page or the first two lines or, but then if this is the thing that you're

• 43:16Speaker 02

  supposed to do and you've prepared yourself to know how to do it and you're writing about the thing that actually really interests you and you're really compelled by, you disappear into it. It's not like people say the thing about the characters write themselves or whatever, that is total bullshit. You're still writing it, but you do kind of, the conscious mind disappears and you enter this alpha state and you're able to, sometimes I'll write stuff and I'll get to the end of it, a scene and characters will say something that I didn't really know that I understood or knew in the way that the character expressed it.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  It's a fusing of sort of like a synthesis of like everything I know or have experienced or have thought about or have chased somehow shows up on the page. That's because of all the preparation work and showing up every day and getting in the routine, but it's also a sign to me that I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to do because the way it makes me feel at the end of it is spent in a great way.

• 44:25Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I'll give one example, this could happen recently, just as a reference point, it's useful, right? We talk about billionaires and athletes all the time. I've had this weird experience where in the last year or so, I've met three or four carpenters, like master carpenters. And there is something about these people, maybe it's a small sample size, could just be random, but it seems to me that they are, um, it's an incredible. Foursome that are incredibly creative and exist in this kind of bliss state when they're working like more than anyone I know. And as a result, they have such interesting lives. Like no one knows famous carp- there are no famous carpenters, but the point is that-

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Well, there's one really famous carpenter.

• 45:06Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Well, one really famous carpenter. Uh, yeah, one very famous one, but the second most famous carpenter in history-

• 45:12Speaker 02

  And we're talking about Adam Carolla, of course, as a famous carpenter. Carolla.

• 45:16Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So the third most famous carpenter.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Yes, third, number three, it's true, there are two really famous carpenters and then-

• 45:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  No, no one knows number three, but these guys clearly, um, have a happiness that, that is unmatched by most people I've met. And, um, in some ways, like, look, I love the show, I can't wait for it to come out again. Um, but in some ways, it would be great if we could, if there was some show that, that showed the bliss and the creativity and the productivity and the output of more mundane, seemingly more mundane things like that.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Well, that's why you love books too, because books can give you that. Someone can write about or depict a world, workers, people in any area and you can get inside their heads and understand what it is that they're feeling and, and how they're processing and, and why.

• 46:03Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  The guy that does this for me more than anyone more potently is Werner Herzog. There's a, there's a, a movie called Happy People about, um, trappers in, I think in Russia somewhere, and it is just-

• 46:15Speaker 02

  It's great because he also depicts misery better than anybody, I would say.

• 46:19Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Oh, sure, sure. Well, he, he understands both sides of the coin, but, but man, does he, is he able to basically do what I just described, so I guess it already exists. Um, but, but it's pretty valuable.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, Herzog is incredible. And folks, if you haven't watched Grizzly Man, which is not about this at all, watch it because it's one of, I don't want to say much about that movie. If you haven't seen it, go see it. Just get it, rent it. It's about a dude, guy and a bear.

• 46:41Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, that's all you need to know. I, I, I had come prepared to ask a lot about storytelling and, uh, you said earlier, you know, you're not much for rules, but I'm curious, so I'm a, a Joseph Campbell as, you know, any amateur storyteller, um, I'm sure Campbell is the first person you come across. Uh, but there is something incredibly appealing about, not the specifics and tactics, but this simple sort of arc or circle of the story.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Well, what I, well, Campbell was, I don't, I don't, I don't put Campbell in this category of like gurus you should ignore. Campbell's was genius and those books are brilliant and, uh, I've read them and like they're worth reading. To understand why we tell stories to one another and how we tell them and what they mean. I mean, incredible. What I'm really talking about is that in, is that expert, people who hold themselves out as experts, especially in a creative field, are often just failed creatives and they're not really expert. And so you should be careful about listening to them. And I think there are probably rules of storytelling, rules is

• 47:48Speaker 02

  a bad word, but there are probably cornerstones of how we tell stories. But you know them already. You know them if you want to be a storyteller because they're no different than this, when you're with your three friends and someone comes over and you want to tell them about the time you almost got caught and went to jail, but got out of it because you charmed the cop and you knew his sister. And then years later, like that story that you know how to tell, it's no, those rules, believe me, that story has three act structure, a beginning, a middle and an end. It has an inciting incident in it. It has a climactic

• 48:32Speaker 02

  moment and it has a denouement. And so those, we understand how to tell stories. A huge part of who we are as human beings. And if you want to learn specifically how to screen writing stories, read screenplays and then watch the movies made from those screenplays, then go back and read the screenplay again and watch the movie again and do that 25 times and then try to write one and then compare that to what was there. There's not a shortcut. I don't believe there's a shortcut and I don't believe you should try to have a shortcut. All the stuff that I did from zero to 30 is why when I made the decision, meaning I was obsessed with movies, movies, music, books, comedy. I was obsessed with those things. I would watch stuff over and over and over again. I would study it because I loved it.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I would memorize movies because I loved movies. That's why I could write, learn how to write a movie. David had spent time reading tons and tons of scripts and absolutely did show me in the beginning, like the way to think about a screenplay. But reading screenplays is what will give you that. Reading books is what will show you how to write a book. So that's why I don't get bound up in rules. You know, I started my podcast, one of the reasons that I do the show was to talk to people who had had really high and low moments and how they figured out how to get, how to keep moving forward.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  And nobody, so, you know, huge achievers in the arts and in business and sports. So it could be Mario Batali, or Seth Meyers, or Salman Rushdie. And you talk to these people, Amy Mann, and you say, uh, nobody says to you. Well, then I remembered for the next time, yes, I had a failure, but the next time I read a how to book and then I figured out what I was doing wrong. It's always just about going deeper inside. It's always about going deeper inside, being more true, being braver in the work.

• 50:33Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Back to Campbell, I mean, the reason he discovered what he did, the major discovery was the myths or stories across cultures, across time are all the same in a fundamental level. And that's because that's just the human journey. And it, the stories, we build up these stories based on our own experience, whether it's, you know, hands on or reading someone else's great experience. And that, you know, a common theme in the conversation today has been, you know, getting deep to something that you, that where curiosity is your, is your north star.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Another documentary that does the thing you're talking about is that one Meru, about those climbers.

• 51:07Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Those guys are nuts.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but talk about living, like, you know, uh,

• 51:12Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Such a good.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that shows you people who just like love what they, I mean, to an insane level.

• 51:20Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Have you seen the one about Yvon Chouinard, the guy who founded Patagonia? The guy, his best friend, who's the guy who founded North Face.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  No, you sent, what is it called?

• 51:28Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So it's called 180 Degrees South, I believe. So Meru makes me think of it because this guy is just a troublemaker, a maniacal outdoorsman. And he basically just started creating products that he needed that didn't exist. And that's how Patagonia came into existence.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  And that's a documentary?

• 51:44Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  It's a documentary.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  No, I haven't seen it.

• 51:46Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I will. And then, and then his book, which I've recommended.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  I'm about as much of an outdoorsman as Woody Allen, but I somehow love, I just love watching that stuff.

• 51:55Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  He, he wrote a book called Let My People Go Surfing about creating Patagonia. And it's the best, along with Phil Knight's book on Nike, which is awesome too. Those are the two best books I've ever read about, basically doing everything we've described today in the business setting of just following that curiosity and that, like, what, what would, as Warren Buffett would say, like, what would make you tap dance to work in the morning? Figure out what that is.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 52:20Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  And then just drive hard.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you know, the other thing I wanted to mention with, along with Citizen Kane, and I know if, if 1% of the people in your audience get this book and read it, it will be more than I expect because it is work, but it's worth it. It is the Theodore Dreiser's book, The Finance Year.

• 52:38Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Heard of it.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Which David Mamet would say is like the, the best book about American businessman ever written. It's a novel. Dreiser is one of the great American novelists. And this book is all said in like, over 100 years ago. And it's about the rise of this businessman. It also informed billions in certain ways.

• 53:01Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I've never heard of it.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Really?

• 53:02Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  No.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  You've never heard of Dreiser?

• 53:03Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  No.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Oh, he, he wrote a few books that'll be, you'll recommend to people. I mean, he's one of the like, greatest novelists, whoever, really who ever lived.

• 53:11Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Wow.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:12Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  So, final couple of questions. And these are the same two I ask of everybody. So the first one is, if you had to think about, or tell me about the, the individual most memorable day, individual day of your career, what would it be?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Of my career?

• 53:28Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  You could do life too, we can do two.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  No, I like career, because life, it's too, would be too hard. It's hard to top the first day on set of your first movie. It was such a crazy dream that Dave and I had that we could do this thing, that then...

• 53:46Speaker 02

  To be walking on set and there are all the trucks and the lights and all that stuff was pretty staggeringly great. So that would be one of them. And another one, a moment that just occurs to me is the first day we walked on the set of Ocean's 13. It was the Warner Brothers lot. And I remember when Ocean's 11 came out, I felt that I couldn't, I do not, and the great thing for me about having a podcast and having this conversation with an audience for a long time is you cannot hide from your podcast audience. And I talk

• 54:25Speaker 02

  a lot on mine. And so people know me. And so I know that I'm not somebody who is envy and jealousy don't those, I have other, I have many unattractive features, I'm sure, but those are not two of them. I don't ever look at somebody else's success and think like, oh, I should have had that. But when Ocean's 11 came out, I remember going to the movies with Amy and walking out in a terrible mood. And she was like, what? I said, I just can't fucking believe they didn't call us to write that movie. I was like, that's everything that we do and everything we know about. And Steven Soderbergh was like, our favorite director. And I was, I was really walked around a funk for a few days after seeing that movie. Like, how did I miss that? It was so good, you know, and

• 55:10Speaker 02

  I, that script is incredible. Ted Griffin, who wrote that script is amazing. And those actors and Matt was in it. And it was our friend and we made, you know, made our career. And so when we got the call to meet Soderbergh about Ocean's 13 and then got that job. And then the first day that we walked on set, they were building the giant casino, which was on the Warner Brothers lot. But I was walking across.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  The Warner Brothers lot with Dave and then Matt Damon was coming in the other direction, having walked out of wardrobe and we saw each other. And I hadn't seen Matt in a little while. And you know, he was so significant to the beginning of my career, starring in my first movie. And I remember seeing Matt and us all hugging each other and then him walking us across to where Clooney and Brad were in Alan Barkin. And I just feeling like, holy shit, I cannot believe my life has somehow led, I was 40, so it was 10 years later. And I remember thinking about this Tony Robbins thing in The Awakened Giant Within where he

• 56:18Speaker 02

  says, "We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, but we wildly underestimate what we can accomplish in 10." And that's something I think about a lot and I've thought about a lot in my life incorporated. And like, I thought about these 10 years that had led me to this place with these people where they're building this giant casino and making this huge movie. And it would have seemed impossible to me 10 years earlier. And so that, that day also stands out. Not quite probably the same as rounders. I'll give you one more. Sorry, no, because, one more in a small, little movie is Dave and I made this 30 for 30 documentary on Jimmy Connors. And I worked at the US Open.

• 56:57Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Thanks.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  And I worked at the US Open as a kid, selling clothes. And I was around the open a ton. And I loved it. And so walking, like, walking to the open to go interview Jimmy Connors and Pat McEnroe. And it was like two days before the open would start, so it was the grounds of the open. And we were there and had the kind of run of the place. That too was just, and that came out of complete follow your passion. There's no money in a 30 for 30. You do that only because you love it and you want to tell the story. And so getting to tell that story was really like reliving this huge part of our childhood. And that was also really special.

• 57:36Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  I love that. I love that, the Tony Robbins quote, I'm forgetting the exact quote, but you can do a lot, you know, a lot more happens in 10 years.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  You overestimate what you can accomplish in a year and underestimate what you can accomplish in 10.

• 57:46Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Yeah, so that that like sums up life, I think, and and this idea of compounding. So in investing, you know, the Buffett's been successful through compounding. Any any good investment plan, which frankly should be boring, not exciting, like, you know, picking names as we're joking about earlier, but but little little small percentage growth in short periods becomes enormous change. And when you look back and you just can't believe it. And it seems to me like, again, to hit on the same theme one last time, the only way that you stay committed to those little small percentage gains is if you love the process itself.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 58:21Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  You're not working, you didn't want to be in that spot. You're just in that spot because of your love of the process.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  That's exactly.

• 58:27Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  That's the direction it goes. So the last question, which I ask everyone, is kind of a similar look back moment, which is what is the, other than giving giving you the artist's way, what is the kindest thing that anyone's done for you in your career?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  I mean, there are so many moments.

• 58:44Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Or one very kind.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Well, in the career, no, the kindest thing it is, is Dave saying, yeah, I'll write, I'll write a script with you because it led to everything else. And it was generous, like, he was writing and had written a couple scripts on his own and was like, you know, in this pursuit. And here I was saying, well, I want to, I think I can do this, and I want to do it. And instead of just saying like, OK, well, here, you can do it, I'll show whatever, he was like, all right, let's do this together. And there have been many, many other kindnesses, but and so many in life, I mean, all from Amy, but and my father, but in in life, there have been many, and my mom, who's no longer

• 59:27Speaker 02

  here, but but professionally, it was Dave throwing in and saying like, I believe in you and in this, and we should, we can do this thing together. I mean, that's, you know, led to this creative partnership that's going strong 20 years later.

• 59:43Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Well, the good news is that this, for people listening, doesn't need to end here. I just recently started listening to your podcast, and just to give a very tangible bridge, I would highly recommend people check out the one with Jim James, who is a guy who is the lead singer, kind of creator, behind a band called My Morning Jacket, which, if, God, if you want to see a group of people in a flow state, go see them live. Sure. It's, it'll be an experience of a lifetime. I've seen them a bunch of times. And that interview, just to suggest one, in what is a very wide-ranging field of people and topics, it's a great, great podcast called The Moment. Obviously, probably everyone, everyone listening watches billions, so I don't need to, don't need to plug that.

• 1:00:27Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  This is great, man. I love that you're doing this show. You're preaching to the choir. I love that you're doing this show. It's valuable. Thanks for doing it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on the show with me. Thank you. Sure.

• 1:00:40Patrick O'Shaughnessy?

  Hey, everyone. Patrick here again. To find more episodes of Invest Like the Best, go to investorfieldguide.com/podcast. If you're a book lover, you can also sign up for my book club at investorfieldguide.com/bookclub. After you sign up, you'll receive a full investor curriculum right away, and then three to four suggestions of new books every month. You can also follow me on Twitter, @Patrick_OShag, O-S-H-A-G. If you enjoy the show, please leave a quick review for us on iTunes, which will help more people discover Invest Like the Best. Thanks so much for listening.