The Daily Stoic - Author Adam Rubin on Creativity and Pursuing Your Passion | Did It Make You Better

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to Adam Rubin about his newest book High Five, taking the leap from being a part time artist to being a full time artist, the magic that is being able to express yourself creatively, following your destiny and inspiring others to do the same, and more.Adam Rubin is a #1 New York Times best selling author of children's books. His books have sold over one million copies. Rubin graduated from Washington University in St. Louis where he studied advertising and worked as an advertising creative director for ten years before leaving his day job to focus on writing books. His new book Gladys the Magic Chicken comes out on October 26th, 2021.Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com.Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. Novo makes banking easy and secure - you can manage your account in Novo’s customizable web, android, and iOS apps with built in profit first accounting and invoicing. Get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at https://banknovo.com/STOICSign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Adam Rubin: Homepage, TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcasts early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace in wisdom in their actual lives. Did it make you better. Musoneus Rufus was exiled four times.

For those of us who just spent a year complaining about pseudo-quarantine and social distancing, can you imagine? Losing everything, being sent away from home, missing all the things you considered normal, not once, but over and over again. And yet, as I tell in his chapter in Lives of the Stoics, Musoneus Rufus never wavered under this pressure. Instead, he was transformed by it each time, just as his heroes like Diogeny's had been.

He believed that exile was a cure for soft living and luxury and that by accustoming a person to live more austerely it restored their health. More impressively he saw exile as an opportunity to do good. While stuck on an island off the coast of Greece a fresh water star of tell-hole he helped local villagers discover in underground spring which improved life for all who languished there. How did Musoneus do this? Well, first, adversity was something he had trained for. While in Rome, he lived on hard mattresses and familiarized himself with hunger and thirst.

By training, he said the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardship, sturdy and ready for any task. He also understood that fate visited circumstances on us, whether it was exile or a pandemic. And what mattered was how we responded. We could be made better for events or worse. What would it be that was our call. Now, each of us who had endured this difficult year and who will undoubtedly endure more difficulty at some point in the future. What will it be for you? Will it find you prepared and dug in for assaults? Will you use what happens for good?

Can it toughen you up? Let this make you better. It's the only way to find meaning from it. I'm really proud of the chapter about Musone's rufus in lives of the Stoics. Musoneus is the mentor and philosophy teacher of Epictetus. In turn, influence is Marcus Aurelius and was also the philosophy teacher of Rousticus, we think, who was Marcus Aurelius's philosophy teacher. All that being said, I really think you'll like the book Lies of the Stokes.

They debuted at number one on the National Besseler List. We've got signed copies of it in the Daily Stokes store. Pick up a copy at the Payneed Porch. My book store here in Bastrop, Texas, or anywhere books are sold, lies of the Stokes, the art of living from Xenon to Mark's Relius. Check it out. ...

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. I don't know if I've told this story before, but when I wrote my first book, Trust Man Line, which is sort of a marketing media book, I was like, I'm an author. Where do authors live? I moved to New Orleans to write my first book, which is an amazing place to write a book. But didn't feel like necessarily where like an up-and-coming author should live, and

my wife and I, not then wife, but then girlfriend, moved to New York. And it was awesome. didn't end up working out over the long term New York, still with Samantha. But I got to meet all sorts of amazing people, and it was this exciting time, because my book was new, and it had been controversial, and I got introduced to these cool people.

And I'm gonna tell this story a little bit with my guest, but I ended up meeting today's guest, roughly 10 years ago, who I didn't realize, although he was a cool guy, we talked, we connected, he sent me a copy of his book, I didn't realize what a big role he would play in my life a decade later once I had kids. I'm talking about Adam Rubin, of course, but before I get to that, I guess the moral of that story is, you don't have to live in New York City as an artist. It was nice to live in New York City for a brief time to be at the center of things. It was fun. I'm glad and thankful for that period in my life.

In part because it led me to today's guest, who is one of my favorite writers. He's a writer of children's books. I don't want you to turn this episode off because it led me to today's guest, who is one of my favorite writers. He's a writer of children's books. I don't want you to turn this episode off because we touch on children's books tangentially, but we're really talking about creativity, following your destiny or calling in life, how to get good at a craft,

and a whole bunch of other awesome stuff. But Adam is very, very qualified to talk about this. His books have sold millions of copies, multi-number one New York Times bestselling author of ten critically acclaimed children's books, including those darned squirrels, Secret Pizza Party. One of our favorites, Lov Taka's, Lov T Tacos 2. His book RoboSaus we've read and liked. His book High Five we really like. Just a great guy. We carry them in the painted porch. They're all time favorites. We even have, I remember like a box set that's Dragon Love Tacos and then it's got like stuffed animal dragon

with Tacos. Just I love got like stuffed animal dragon with tacos. Just I love it and I found his the other day I was reading to my son and we've bought so many copies of this book of dragons of tacos. I knew I had a signed copy somewhere but I pulled it and there was the signed copy that that Adam had sent to me. And as I talk about in today's episode, we've had kind of this cool journey where he'd written like one book at that time when we met, I'd written one book that came out almost at the exact same time, and then we reconnected, he came to one of my book signings at the Strand, you know, many years later, and we'd both left advertising, left marketing, I think left New York City, although he might be back there, and had gone on to have these great careers. And I always love when lives sort of go in separate directions and come back.

And so Adam's one of my favorite people. Adam was instrumental in influencing, it gave all sorts of great direction and advice when I was coming up with the idea for the boy who would be king at the beginning of the pandemic. I'll give you one other funny quick story about Adam Rubin. I had dinner several years ago with a friend and BJ Novak, the great writer, director, most famously of the office, but also two or three great kids books, including the book with no pictures.

We were talking about books and kids books, and I mentioned something about Adam. And he was, you know Adam Rubin, because Adam is awesome and his work is great. And I think you should check it out. Check out Dragons of Tacos, check out those darn squirrels, check out L. Chupacabras, high five. His other book of stories, the ice cream machine,

there is just awesome great stuff from Adam. Check it out. And here is my interview with the one and only Adam Rubin. You can also follow him on Twitter at Rubingo. That's R-U-B-I-N-G-O. And you can go to Adam Rubin has a website for all sorts of information about him. And I do hope you check out your books,

but mostly I hope you take from this episode to follow your creative instincts, do something cool, and be like Adam. I was thinking back, do you remember when we met? Kind of, I feel like it was on a rooftop maybe. No, was that a net scamp?, it was at a net-scan. Oh, that's right. That's right.

Through Corey Mince, is that possible? I don't, I'm terrible with name. So it is whoever your boss was at first born. Mmm. That's right. That was Dan LaCivita, he introduced us. Yes, he invited me to a net-game and you were there, and I remember you were like, oh, I'm a writer too.

I write children's books, which is, as I'm sure you've met many people who have said the same thing to you. I was sort of like, oh, sure, sure you are. And you sent it to me and I read it, but I didn't have kids. You sent me dragons of tacos. And I read it and I was like,

I guess this is a good children's book. I have no idea. And I could have not anticipated that just, you know, six, seven years later, I would have read that book literally hundreds of times to a small human who lives in my house. Oh my, my apologies. Ha, ha.

Well, I was, but I was thinking about that like how did you go from advertising to writing and then I want to talk about the transition from sort of a person wearing two hats to the decision to go full time to one hat because I think that's a, that's a position a lot of people dream of being in and then either don't do or they do too early. So talk to me about how you go about starting the first book. Well, I never really looked at advertising as a lifestyle. It was always something I was doing for money. I thought it was a really good way

to get paid for being creative, but I never, even when I was looking for jobs straight out of college, I never confused the idea of having a day job with having this identity that's wrapped up in what I did for money. And to that point, I was doing comedy shows at night. I was really invested in the annoyance theater and the people there and the shows that were going on and I was there almost every night. I lived just down the street. So the advertising thing was always kind of the thing I was doing to earn a paycheck and kind of fit into that mold of what I thought you were supposed to do after college just get a job. But I feel like a lot of creative people do that, right? They go like, okay, I need to go get a job to make some money and then

I'll go do the thing I really care about. Yeah, and you're relatively pleased. We don't all make it out alive. I guess what I'm saying. Well, yeah, a couple of things can happen. I mean, first of all, they steal your time, right? They give you this salary and it seems like you're going to be working in a normal amount. And then the next thing you know, you're in there on the weekends and you're traveling last minute and you're there all hours

at the night and some people just get used to eating three meals at the office. And that's no good. Like, that's not fair. So, and then's no good, like that's not fair. And then maybe you have to do that at some point in your career to kind of get the next promotion or whatever it is. I guess it depends on the culture of the place, but eventually you get to this place where you have a sort of an opposite problem where you don't really have to work that much

and to pay you a whole bunch of money, so it sort of diswades you and discourages you pursuing something a little riskier or more exciting. And I think it's sort of like gardening projects are concurrent. You try one thing and you work on that, and you keep a little space in your head to work on this other thing. So you never invested in any one thing

to the exclusion of all other endeavors. Just mentally, right? You have a little break and you take it by working on this other thing that interests you. And some of them may be more interesting and some of them may be more profitable, but you sort of bounce around between them. This is just how I've approached it.

It's just kind of bounce around between these different fun things to do. And you stay creatively engaged that way. When I was at the agency and when I was in the agency world, I always had some other stuff going on, whether it was a writing project or something to do with optical illusions or recreational mathematics or magic tricks or comedy and that just I feel like being engaged in these different sorts of endeavors benefits all the others at the same time. I think it's attention, right? It's like the starving artist thing is

usually not the best way to do it. It doesn't create the best work. The people think it's pure, but I'm not sure it does because you can't make great creative decisions if you're worried about eating. And you also don't have any leverage with publishers or a studio or whatever if you, you know, you, again, don't know where your next dollar is coming from. But then exactly what you said, there's the other side of it, which is you go and you pursue this thing that's supposed to fund or fuel or make the creative work possible, but then it gets so easy and you get into a rhythm, sort of a velvet rut as they call it, where

you know, it's, you're actually disincentivized to go do the hard, risky, creative thing, even though it's less risky to you because your life is so safe. It's not just the financial risk, too. It's the ego risk. Some of these people wind up big mock and e-mucks at some agency or a design firm or some company somewhere and everybody respects their decision. So deeply that nobody questions any of their creative impulses. But then if you want to try something new or do something on your

own or collaborate with a different group where you don't have those letters in front of your title, you got to check your ego, which some people can't do after a certain point in their career. Yeah, I remember I was reading about Jeff Bezos when he had the idea for Amazon. He was talking to his boss at some like Wall Street firm or some consulting firm. Like I was like, that sounds like a great idea. And he's like, for somebody who doesn't already have a job. So there's also like the, it's not shame,

but you have to be willing to, I think Ego is a good word for it. We have to be willing to be like, I'm at this level here professionally, and then I have to be comfortable. I imagine when you went to go do comedy and stuff, you were lower on the toden pole than you were on Madison Avenue, right?

And you have to be comfortable being, like, lower status in a different world where you're paying your dues, you know, cutting your chops, whatever. You have to be willing to be like, yeah, over here, I'm great, but I'm a first time aspiring, you have to be willing to be like, yeah, over here, I'm great, but I'm a first-time aspiring, you know, open mic, you know, insert beginner phrase at this other thing.

Yeah, that's exactly true. And when you don't have hobbies, I think hobbies are so important to people's mental health. Pastimes and hobbies, just things you do purely for joy that introduce you to different micro communities that have you interact with people that aren't involved in your work life directly because it helps you see yourself outside the identity of whatever your job title is. Right. And get comfortable being mediocre

as you get good at something. Right, and that's okay. I think that's one of the great beauties of having a hobby is you don't have to be great at it just to enjoy it. Yeah, that's right. I remember I was, because I was in advertising also, marketing and advertising, or the in-house

not in an agency. And I remember I went to adweek like three or four years in a row in New York City, which is sort of a made up thing that only people in advertising care about. But I remember I went once when I was like 21 and you know I was like a kid and I'm sitting in this giant room. It was at like the Times Square Sheraton or something and I was like one of the only people not in a suit and then I went the next year and I was one of the only people not in a suit and then I remember the third year you know so now I've done this three years in

row and I remember thinking if I keep coming to this I'm gonna be in a suit one day like I like the first couple years I was like oh, I'm not the same as these people. I do this stuff on the side, right? Like their lifers like I'm just riding this train, but It made me realize like if I keep coming to this I Everyone said that for a while right as you said no one gets into advertising because they're deeply passionate about it. It's usually like you have the skills, but you'd probably rather be doing something else. And I just remember thinking like that if I kept coming, that I would be like them and

that advertising or the thing you do for money, you can only do for so long before it changes who you are. Did you feel that? Absolutely. I always felt like I had one foot out the door just because I was doing these other things and I was trying to keep in perspective that even though I was on set in my 20s, giving input on this huge production for McDonald's, where Spider-Man, Swing, and Air, jeeps, or crash, and through the, like, it's easy to think, well, I must know what I'm talking about because these people are listening to me, but it's really just a matter of happenstance. And and it's really important to keep that perspective, because otherwise you start to think

you're some sort of creative genius just because you have this corporate gig. And that can be detrimental to both your mental health and your creative output. So you did Dragon's Love Talk as well, you were in advertising, but then at some point, because that's when I met you,

but at some point you said, I'm going all in on this. Walk me through that decision and that sort of what that felt like. So my first gig at a college, besides like dressing up like an ear and handing out coupons outside of the US cellular field, was working at Leoburnett in Chicago.

And it was a great job. I was partnered up with a guy in his 50s named Jim, who taught me so much about the industry and just about the process and I had some great mentors there that really guided me through. And my career in advertising would never have been what it was without that mentorship. But about a year in, I was talking to a friend who introduced me to this guy named Dan Salmieri, and Dan had just graduated from the Philadelphia Institute of the Arts. He wanted to illustrate picture books, and his portfolio from his student work was incredible,

but he didn't have an idea for a story. So I said, well, I've had this idea for a story for a while, and this is why my friend introduced us. We exchanged some of our work like some of the ads I had done, some of the comedy sketches I had filmed in the written, and we just really hit it off right away, just really shared a similar sensibility. So I wrote this story for him, and he had some meetings set up with publishers

on the strength of his portfolio from college, and just like that, we sold the book. And most people, that's not how they get into publishing and a lot of struggling authors hate that story, but it was really okay, so just being in the right place at the right time. And that first book came out, it was called Those Dorn Squirrels, came out in 2008, got a Borders Racial Voices Award, it got this really great write-up in the New York Times, Pamela Paul was a big fan and just it got all this attention and praise. So because of that we got to do a couple more. We did three Doves Darns Squirrels books. This is all while I was working and advertising. I would just like write the books

in my kitchen at night. And they came out like once a year and then about I guess after the third book came out, I came up with this idea called Dragon's Love Tacos and I showed it to Dan, he loved it. But when we tried to sell it to Hot and Mifflin, they were like, this is too silly. So Dan had an agent at the time and they shopped it around and Penguin wanted to buy it. Now they didn't, they weren't like, oh, this is going to be a huge hit, this is going to be a big seller, they just liked it and put it out. And the initial response was good, but there was no way to know that it was gonna be this Like juggler not so

It just kind of kept selling and kept selling and then just really it just caught on and people really liked it And they would buy it for their kids their friends kids when they had kids They would buy it for kids birthday parties and like that was 2012. It's 2021 now. It was on the best soloist last week. It's insane. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes

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Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Well, it's a classic. It's a classic. It's a perennial seller, as I would say. So that really opened a lot of doors,

having a best seller like that. And did a couple more doors, having a bestseller like that, and did a couple more books, Secret Pizza Party, which was very well received, and RoboSauce, which was, I think it was a number one bestseller in High Five, but after RoboSauce was a num, I think it hit number one, and that kind of like, at that point I had, I don't know, three bestsellers or something, and I was kind of thinking, I should probably leave my day job. This is, yeah. This is like a pretty smooth transition to step by step.

It's not there. I'm not risking anything financially or creatively. And it just felt like a natural transition to leave the advertising world. At that time, I was working at firstborn. That's when you met me. And I don't know if we've met before I left. And I was really happy with the job. I like the people I worked with. I love collaborating with talented people. I actually liked the thrill of the pitch

and the traveling and all that stuff, but it just opened up a lot of opportunities when I wasn't beholden to some corporate entity for my time each day. No, it's funny how similar our journeys were because we met when we've basically done one book to at the same time And then I also did three books while in sort of incorporate before I moved and I just looked it up We met through Michael Ferdman at a net scheme and it was a net scheme in

January 2013 so this takes me way back and I see the email that you're CCed on. This is hilarious. They played the Kings, which I was very excited about. I think that's why Michael picked the game for me. But, um, oh, it was Ferdinand. It wasn't it wasn't Dan. It was Ferdinand. It was Michael. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was Michael Ferdinand. Yeah. so, but I experienced that too where you sort of go, you started the book and you kind of have these two things going on, which is cool. And then I remember hitting me at some point where I was like, how many people would kill to have written to be a writer,

and I would have killed to be a writer? And then how many people would kill to work in advertising or marketing, much fewer. I remember my dad told me that something was, my dad was a police officer, and he was sort of working his way up through the ranks, and he was a detective, and then he got promoted to a sergeant. He didn't like being a sergeant as much as he liked being a detective, and he was telling me that he said something once, he was like,

Ryan, he's like, I realize like, they make movies about detectives. You know, like that one was like much cooler for reason and yet he'd sort of like promoted himself out of the cool part of the job, right? And that stayed with me where I was like, I meet all these people in advertising, in marketing and business, they all want to do books. And yet here I am, like, not committing

fully to this thing that I have the opportunity to do. And that's, to me, that's when you take the leap when you're like, the thing, your work is actually holding you back from the thing that you, that so few people get to do. It's almost insulting to continue to moonlight. There's some, I don't know, there's something romantic about moonlighting. It's never about leading the double life. One has nothing to do with the other, and yet you get to plan both worlds at the same time. For me, I was like, I had, for a long time, I had three worlds going on because the comedy world has nothing to do with, and I'm talking specifically

about like alt comedy has nothing to do with the advertising world or, I guess at some really high level it does, but for me, it was just, and then that kind of, I really needed to be separate from that picture book world because nobody wants the, no parent buying book wants to hear me say fuckership. Well, what I think is funny about what you decided to do, I mean, all creative people here that's like people think they can just do what you do, right?

Like everyone thinks they can write a kids, or everyone thinks they can write a book, right? But like everyone thinks they can write a children's book. So what I'm fascinated by about what you do is that it's something that looks very easy but is actually quite hard to do at the level that you do it at? Yeah, it's, here's what happens is people have different levels of I could do that, right? There's like, it's like, it's like watching UFC. You're like, I would have ducked under that punch, right? You know? Yeah. It seems very simple to like just avoid getting hit in the face when you're watching it on TV. And I think the same is true of writing a book or even writing a song. And that kind of helps put it in perspective for people because

There are a lot of picture books Some written by very famous people where it's like there. It seems like they're just looking around their kitchen I'd be like there is a refrigerator. There is a clock There is a door and and then there's an accompanying picture and that's the whole book and there are plenty of books like that. I'm sure. You have discovered that in your parenthood. But a really good picture book is like a song. And the music is the artwork and the lyrics are the writing and it just works in this absolutely seamless way to create something catchy and moving and that sticks with you in bears repetition, right?

Very few books do people read 10 times. Sure. And yet a picture book must stand, a good picture book or one that's not going to get thrown into the fireplace must withstand repeated readings, like sometimes multiple times a day. Well, there's a saying from the poet Heracetus, that we never step in the same river twice. And I think that's what's interesting about this sort of insane target that you have to hit as a children's book author, but also as a writer of songs,

which is I think is an interesting analogy that you're making, which is like, how do you make something that not only can someone listen to you more than one time, but how can you make something that not only can someone listen to you more than one time, but how can you make something that has sustained relevance to them over a relatively long period of time? So like a song you hear in high school that still works when you hear it,

when you're 40 years old, but like with a kid's book, it's like I probably read Dragon's Love Tacos to my son for the first time when he was a few months old. And then we just read it a couple of weeks ago or your high five book. We keep it at this place. We vacation to every once in a while. So it's like, we read it like in six-month intervals, right?

And so, I mean, for kids, six months of aging is like, they're an entirely different person. But for the book to be both something familiar and new is a really extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve. You know what I mean? Sounds impossible to me. Sounds like an impossible task. But somehow you did it. Sometimes you don't. Well, the real secret to my process is that I don't think about, I write the book for me. I write a book that I'm going to like, that me and whoever I'm making the book with like. And I just trust that my sensibilities are appealing enough for a wide audience based

on the past. But that's what I was doing in the beginning, too. I just didn't care. I had nothing to lose. I was like, I'll just write something I think is good. And then even if nobody else likes it, at least I'm happy without turned out. And the illustrator too. And so now that I'm doing stuff that has way fewer illustrations, it's even more about like what's bouncing around in my head. Like you can, I could change the entire universe of this story with a couple of words and it costs nothing and it takes no time to make those sorts of changes. So how do you know when to stop? How do you know when it's the way it should be? And I think the only way to tell is when you like it. Of course,

that's great to get feedback from other people and then people you respect in opinions that you respect. And sometimes you have to do, or you know, it's advisable to do something that is maybe slightly against your first instinct, but you have to be happy with it, Nian. But so obviously, Stoicism is a, let's say a serious philosophy, right? Like it might not seem very humorless to people, although the irony is

that, and he has earned himself a spot on the Wikipedia page for unusual deaths, which is quite a funny page for anyone who hasn't looked at it. But Cricippus, one of the earlier stilloks, who was a very serious guy, he actually dies as an old man over a joke that he makes about this donkey. This donkey walks into his yard and starts eating his figs. And we don't know the joke, but he basically makes this joke and then he starts laughing so hard

at his own joke that he dies, which to me is a pretty good way to go. But I'm interested in like- Totally, good way to go. When you're at first born, like obviously you're a first born, like obviously you're a serious person, like not all your commercials were funny or ridiculous or absurd, they were, you know, like serious, right? Or yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying.

I mean, there was definitely some projects that were humorless, mostly for brands that were humorless, like American Express or something. They were funny at some point. I just mean you're thinking about it in the adult way of like, okay, we got to do the purpose of this commercial is to sell X, Y, or Z. It's not like, let's just do something that's entertaining to me, right? As you were saying with your books. That's true. I'm curious about like, how do you get to that silly place? Because your books are silly and that's what makes them wonderful.

And they're like, how do you just get to a, you're like, you know what I'm really, like the itch I really have to scratch today is like, dragons and tacos. Do you know what I mean? Like, talk to me about getting to that child-like space because it seems like that's where your best work comes from.

Yeah, I love silly things. I love the play and wonder. Those are really strong threads in my life. I've designed a bunch of optical illusions and impossible objects that are basically sculptural astonishment like objects that inspire wonder that you go, what is this magic? What is this? And that magic is, we know, right? I was a teenage magician.

I was a doing, I was working at David Buster's on the weekends. And when you learn magic tricks,, you realize reality is subjective. For the person sitting on the other side of the table, something impossible just happened. And for me, I'm like, carefully hiding something behind my hands so they can't see it. And as a kid, that was really valuable to me to understand. Because I was the kind of kid that always had this child

like instinct, even when I was like taking AP calculus and stuff. I just was always kind of thinking about silly things or playful things or things that wouldn't be considered appropriate for a serious sort of student. And you can have that kind of beaten out of you and a lot of people do, but somehow I kind of hang on to it and the way I really was able to embrace it and develop that sense of play was through improvisation. And it was a really like a real passion of mine for many years. I studied, took a bunch of classes.

I performed it on a parallel team at the Improval Olympics in Chicago for many years. Then when I came to New York, I was teaching Improv at the annoyance, and that is another funny little field improvisation, or comedic improv, just because people get into it, because they're excited by the idea of making stuff up and playing around. It's very childlike. You're in the backyard as a kid and you go, okay, I'm Batman, you're Superman.

The ground is lava. We gotta get across using the swings or something. And you're just playing around and you're having fun. But it's one of those things where like, even though the whole enterprise and the whole architecture of the world is designed to encourage people to play, somehow it manages to beat it out of like 90% of the people that engage with this hobby, and by the end of it, they're like, they're not having fun anymore.

They're like really judging themselves and the people around them and it's sort of turns into this weird, joyless exercise where everybody on stage is supposed to be having fun, but they're not. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so- so expert experts.

Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon

Music or Wondery app. Well, that's what I love. I love that about Asop's Fables, like as serious as they are and as powerful as the lesson he is trying to impart. Like clearly, like he was a fucking weirdo to make, to teach the lesson, like in the form of a like a talking fox trying to get grapes. Like clearly there was like a very powerful imagination going on and a sense of the absurd as well as a strong sort of desire to teach. I think that that is a wonderful combination and if you can just give yourself permission

to be sillier to play and allow yourself to enjoy whatever weird things happen. Without judgment, like that is a powerful ability. That's that can be really can give you a lot of potential for creative endeavors, just to be able to just give yourself permission to be stupid and silly and fuck around and not be weirded out by whatever happens. A book I'd recommend if for anyone that's interested in that sort of thinking, is called Improvise by Mick Napier. He's the founder of The Nointh's Theatre, and his book Improvise is great. It's got a bunch of exercises you can do just by yourself.

For talk, basically talking to yourself, sing, or just kind of playing around little, little mental games you can play with yourself. It also talks about theatrical and proud, in a group for groups to do as a performance. But you can use it for all sorts of things to develop really anything you're working on, to just put yourself in this mindset where whatever happens is OK for this amount of time anything goes and then

afterwards we can look back and see if it was any good or not. But in the moment you just you just play. I think one of the things kids have going for them is a lack of self-consciousness and maybe that's where what you're talking about. It's not that people don't know How to play is that they're too self-conscious to do it in front of other people or to do it on the page or whatever Yeah, that's why a lot of people turn to drugs or alcohol or these like hyper specific context of Four games or karaoke or something to give themselves permission to have fun and not judge themselves, as you said, to not be self-conscious. But I see it, society basically convinces us we're not good at things because it compares

us to all these people that are great at these things. And so then we say, oh, I'm not good at drawing, I'm not good at writing, I'm not good at singing because look at them, they're so much better. I see it visibly reflected in students at elementary schools. Every elementary school, when I go and visit, they stuff the gym with every, every kid that's in the school. And they all sit the kindergartners in the front, then the first graders, and then the very back of the auditorium is the sixth grade or the fifth grade or whatever is the oldest grade in that school. And I like to ask the kids, I say, who here likes to write? And the first row,

every single hand goes up. And the second row, like most of the hands go up. And then, by the time you get to the back to the sixth graders, it's maybe half. And then I say, who likes to draw? And in the front row, in the kindergarten, the first grade, every single hand goes up again. And in the back, by the sixth grader, it's like very few hands are going up. Because even though drawing is super fun and painting is like such a pleasing and enjoyable kinesthetic experience Somewhere along the line someone told that kid they're no good at drawing and now they've they believe them And so they don't do it anymore, and they maybe never will again, and that's the tragedy But what I would also say is maybe they're actually not good, right?

Bear with me. They're not good, but that's actually part of it too, right? Like one of the things that I- Because I don't say who's good at writing. I say who likes to write, who likes to draw. And that gets back to what we were talking about, Hobbies. It's like you got to get yourself permission to not be good at it. But that's what I was going to say about even the creative process, right?

One of the best rules I heard for writing is is just a couple crappy pages a day, right? So, I think people think that writers or any creators make sort of perfect first drafts. So, like, you know what I mean? So, it's not just like everyone starts not being good and you develop skills. But to go back to the idea of self-consciousness, part of it is also like understanding that, you know, a Hemingway's quote about the first draft of everything is shit. I actually have a print of this on my wall.

Like you, you also have to be comfortable. And I think the better you get, the more comfortable you should get, although it can be hard, because you're judging yourself against finished product, but can you get comfortable knowing like, yeah, this doesn't have to be good yet. I'm just figuring it out right now, and my identity isn't tied up in the fact that what I'm putting on the page or, you know,

on the screen or whatever it is, that it's not perfect. Like I'm okay being in process. Yeah, and I think that that word process is the key because there's nothing writers like to talk about more than their own process. And I think the reason for that is because it's so hard to figure out, some people just like have it figured out,

they figured it out at some point. And like this is what I do and they stick with it. For me, for my personal experience, it's kind of evolving as I go, as I take on new projects, but knowing what your own process is, and it's different for everyone. It really is, that is enormously helpful in helping you break through that wall of judgment, that wall of that writers block or whatever you choose to call it in that particular day where you just cannot be productive. Like knowing, okay, I'm going to spend three months on the first draft, I'm going to write the whole thing, then I'm going to go back once, read the whole thing, fix as much as I can, then the editor's going

to read it and give me their notes, and then it comes back, and then I do it again. Knowing how the process works is such a relief, and so helpful to giving you that motivation to keep going, I just finished a book of short stories. It's my second installment in this series of short stories that I'm writing for young readers. And the first one took me like three years, because I just didn't know what I was doing. And to be honest, I had to kind of start over half way through, because I just, I fucked the whole thing up. I didn't know what I was doing.

And I kind of did take that, oh, let me just get the word count. I'm just going to spit it out, just like, get these words. And then when I went back and read everything else, I was like, this is making me sense, dammit. So I would highly recommend Outline and if you're going to do fiction or even nonfiction, I think Outline is really, really helpful. At least it was for me. But the second one, it took me a year. It was like much and I wasn't grumpy when I was approaching deadlines and so I'm hoping that the third one is even easier.

Well, I'm in the middle of this right now, because I'm doing a four book series. So I've done one book and I'm about a third of the way through the second book. And now I'm like on 10 or 11 books. So I have some experience, but I found as I started the book on my birthday on June 16th, sitting down with my no cards, I sort of find all the stuff. And you know, the first like three, four weeks, it was not going well. And I was grumpy, as you said, and I was doubting, and I wondered if I needed to push the deadline, if it was not gonna happen.

And then I found a note card that I'd written to myself like months earlier. And I was like, I said something like, when you go through this box of note cards in June, it will be very disorganized, but just keep following the process and it will come together. Just trust that if you do the stuff, it will come together.

And like three days after I found the snowcard, it did. It magically kind of came together. I've been churning it right from the past. Yeah, my brain had been processing it and processing it and I just couldn't figure out the combination, but I had all the ingredients and then it clicked. And I think as you do hard stuff, whether it's probably the first time you put together an ad campaign, the first time an investor takes a long position that takes three or four years or seven years or 10 years to pay off, first time you start a company, you know, first time you have a kid,

you do a really hard thing, but you have to tell yourself that you're actually figuring out the process. So in the future, there's less uncertainty, and you can kind of just trust that if you follow the steps, it will come together. I think about that a lot. I think about time travel,

because we're doing it right now, right? We're moving forward. Sure. The backwards part that's tricky. But I often think about how and what I'm doing today. I often think about how what I'm doing today will benefit future Adam. And how I can make his life easier, you know, and how me screwing around one day when I'm supposed to be writing is going to make future Adams life a little harder. And yeah, there is, there is this kind of bargaining you do and I am a master procrastinator. I like, I have said in the past, I am a professional procrastinator with a writing hobby because

I mean, I wrote a walking tour and produced and performed a walking tour in Brooklyn to avoid writing this book. I mean, it's incredible how I'll be so deep into something all of a sudden and realize, wow, I'm doing this so I don't have to do this other thing. And it gets me back to that gardening metaphor where sometimes you feel like tending the roses and other times you feel like pruning the bushes or I don't know, I'm not a real good gardener, but I hopefully, those broad examples will hold up. If anybody has any rose advice, I do have a bush I'm trying to keep it alive.

No, have you read this book I recommend a lot, but have you heard the War of Heart by Stephen Pressfield? No, it's one of the best, but he calls it the resistance. So procrastination, doubt, imposter syndrome, you know, doing other stuff, so you don't have to do this thing. It's all about the resistance. We know what we want to do. We know what we need to do. We know what our calling is, but then resistance is what gets between us and that thing.

He calls it the resistance, like capital T, capital R. And so I just think he's calling it the war of art because instead of the art of war, that it's like, that the creative process is the battle against this resistance. And... Well, I actually think that doubt and procrastination are tricky, but I actually think that the imposter syndrome is kind of good.

Okay. Explain. Well, if you ever meet somebody that's like, yeah, I did this on great. Aren't I great? That's what you're going to hang out with that person. No, that's what you're going to go. That sucks, you know. But, I mean, the people I know, and I have some friends that have reached pretty extraordinary

levels of success, creatively or financially or whatever, they look back at their past accomplishments. And they have this kind of like, was that me or was it? The work kind of takes on this significance for people that you just can't ascribe to yourself personally or you start to drive yourself insane. Well, that's totally right. And he actually talks about this in the book, Steven's a big believer in like them uses. And I think it is like this.

I think this is the Spanish they have a Dwindé. Yes, it's like a flamenco thing. But it like in sports like, you know, LeBron James just has this amazing game, so other worldly experience. He's not like, yeah, I'm fucking LeBron James. He goes like, you know, all glory to God, right? Or he goes like, God was there. He's a team. I think all great people understand very quickly that if you're attributing the success to yourself,

not only is it not true, but it's not conducive to future success because it contributes to ego. But I think every artist experiences this most profoundly because you're like, I just found this, I just read the audiobook for my courage is calling book, which is one coming out in the fall. And like, there were passages I was like, who wrote that? You know, like where did that come from?

And the answer is the musists, right? Like, it wasn't me, somebody or something or some process gave that to me or created it through me. And if you think about it any other way, it makes you worse. Well, see, I kind of think of it like we are sort of the subconscious result of all of human history. Sure. The people that came before us and all the work that came before us is kind of digested

by us. And we're sort of like our ancestors dreaming. Whatever we make is kind of the same whatever would have come out of the show. The show of the scientists of the things exactly exactly and conscious or not like everything we say and do is informed by the things we've experienced prior. And so much of that is great art that's been created by people that were in a similar position of taking in what they saw around them and processing it in some personal way and sharing it as much as they can. I think that it's a really a great privilege to be able to take what's in your head and share it with someone else. And they're not always going to get it exactly the way you intended it or feel the same way that you did or even maybe they take something totally different from it that you never even imagined was in there.

But it's still like, in deeply satisfying to be able to take what's inside of you and kind of bring it outside of yourself. No, I think that's right. And I have an extra relationship with that writing about this ancient philosophy that I didn't come up with, right? So like when people come and they say, like, oh, your books changed my life or oh, I read, you know, the obstacles the way every day or I've read, you know, the Daily Stoke for, you know, five years in a row.

I don't want to say it's a defense mechanism, but one of the things I think is part of remaining well-adjusted and also being able to create future work is when I hear that to go, sure, I played a small part in that, but primarily what's working is the reason they're having that reaction is because of the ideas which did not originate in me,

right? I was a shepherd of them where I portrayed them a certain way, I put the packaging together, but like, my book is a quotation or a series of quotations. And that we're all, I'm just, there's that expression like a new wine and old bottles or something like that. I sort of see it that way. It's like you're continuing a tradition as opposed to being like some pioneer or trailblazer, a creative genius or something.

That's interesting. You say that because especially during the pandemic when I was stuck inside, I got really interested in collective mythology in these stories that stand the test of time and just keep getting repeated and repeated in different ways. I was reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and Carl Young and there was this great book by a guy named Goodson who it's called Magic, a history. It's not about theatrical magic at all. It's about what he calls the triple helix of religion, science, and magic, as he describes it, or as he defines it.

It's a fascinating book, and it just talks about all these things that are kind of tied into what Young talks about, these rituals, and the idea of picking up rocks from an important place and keeping them or collecting them because they have some sort of emotional significance to people is something that has been found all over the world. So there's something inside of us as humans that attracts us to certain kinds of stories and behaviors, and that to me is fascinating. The book that I wrote during that period was a classic hero's journey, just that big circle of going out into the world and discovering new things and changing and beating you over coming up schools and coming right back to where you started a little bit different than when you began.

And to me it's really funny that you can kind of take that story and pull it on to almost anything, almost any epic adventure. Vonnegut has this famous lecture where he says there are six shapes of stories. If you think about this as like on an x, y axis, you got a line that goes from the bottom left to the top right, that's the rise, right? That's the rise to riches story. The opposite of that is the fall, that's like the descent of a tragedy basically. And you've got a little hill, which is sort of an acreage story, right? You start at the bottom, you get too close to the sun, you fall back down to where you started again. And the opposite of that is like a rabbit in the hole is one way people have described it where you got to solve a problem. You know you get into this position, you got to

figure your way out, you get out of it, it's sort of like a die hard. I like to think about it. And then there's the S ones, the S ones are fun because the S is a Cinderella story, which he says in the most popular story shape in the world where you start at the bottom, you rise to the top, you're at the ball, but then it strikes midnight, you're back down to the bottom again, the prince doesn't know who you are, but he's got that glass slipper and he finds you eventually and you look happily ever after and it goes back up again like a sideways S. And the inverse of that is like a twilight zone where a black mirror kind of twist ending where you start sort of at the, you start kind of at the top, you fall down into this hole, you think

you've solved the problem and you go back up, but then, uh-oh, like everybody's faces messed up or you sit on your glasses and now you can't read any of those books and you wind up in a tragedy at the end. Well, I think what's interesting about all of that ties into something, as you're sitting here, I pulled up my email, and I guess this would have been in March or April of 2020, when I was working on my kids' book, The Boy Who Would Be King, I sent you like a really, really draft of it,

and you gave me a bunch of amazing notes, but I was going through the notes, and you were so nice, you sent me like a handful of them, or you looked at it a handful of times, but as I'm looking at what your notes are saying, I see two themes. One, you kept telling me to simplify, just like, pair it down.

You're like, does this character even need to be in here? Right? What about, you know, what is, you kept simplifying it? And then the other thing, you kept sort of looking at is like, what is the arc of the characters? Right? Like what, they're going from here to here and you sort of boiled the boy who would be

came down to the central conflict of like the world and Julius Rousticus want Marcus to be really great and she wants to be a kid and that that's like the conflict, right? And so I was just thinking that, yeah, the core it boils down to like what is the story in ARC and is it really, really simple. Even if there's a lot built on top of it, it has to be very simple.

I was doing these writing workshops during quarantine where I would meet with these kids like three times over the course of three weeks and we would talk, they would write a story. They would write a story. I would just kind of guide them along. And I learned a lot about my own process and just how to articulate certain things that I felt instinctively, but wasn't sure how to intellectualize or explain.

And I realized it's kind of halfway through it from talking to these kids that a really good place to start if you wanna write a story, is to have a character, it is with a character that we like as a reader. They could be bad, they could be evil, but they're appealing in some way, and the whole story is them trying to get something they want. And that is a pretty good place to start,

is a character we like trying to get something they want. And they don't even have to get it. We just, you know, they don't even have to succeed in the end. It depends how you want to end the story, if you want to which shape of that, which shape, which are those shapes you want to tragedy or comedy or twist ending or what. But that's a really a good place to start. Yeah, like what do these characters want? I feel like that's a pretty common artistic question, particularly in Hollywood or like on a TV show where you're like

sketching out the arc of someone. It's like what does this person want? Yeah, it's a it's a It's an easy thing to articulate and then when you sit down to write the character and write the story You can often forget it, but they got it and forget it, but they can't just want something. They got to try to get it in some way. It could be a small way. I feel like actually it's not bad life advice, too. Whenever I talk to authors or people who are doing stuff

or asking me for career advice, the question I always ask is, what does success look like to you? And I'm always amazed at how rarely people have a good answer because it's like it's either stuff they stolen from other people, they haven't thought about it or it's like 50 different things and it can't be 50 different things. It has to be like what do you where are you trying to get? What do you want? Feels like a very clarifying question to me. What's your what's your definition of success? In a word, autonomy.

I like to be in control of my life. Not like control of every little thing. What I mean is like, I want to be deciding what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, how I'm doing it, as opposed to like, for instance, being a senator, doesn't have any appeal to me because I know a handful of them, and I'm like, oh, your day is like mostly meetings and phone calls and a certain amount of fun rate.

Like you have a lot of power, but also the profession has a lot of power over you. What I like about being a writer is like, I own my life. Yeah. It's pretty incredible to be able to change the setting. I have friends that work in TV. And if they want there to be, you know, if they want to align to walk out of a refrigerator, that's the second time I've referenced a refrigerator if you can't tell where I'm sitting right now.

Okay. If they want to, if they want to lie into I've referenced a refrigerator if you can't tell where I'm sitting right now. Okay. If they want to lie into a refrigerator, there's all these meetings that have to be done. These props need to be built. A lion has to be casted, the animal trainer and the hours and all this stuff. But for me or for you, you just write it down. And then later you decide it's going to be hip-aponymous. Very easy to change.

And that is like, that is pretty extreme power in that little university you've created. Well, I would add something else to that. So my book, Conspiracy, which is about Peter Tio and Hulk Hogan and Gokker, it got option to be a movie and Charles Randolph, like one of the great screenwriters of our time, he wrote The Big Short and the Eropom bombshow, he did an adaptation of my book.

It's incredible honor, surreal experience, they've cast some really cool people in the movie, except for that movie got optioned, or that book got optioned in the summer of 2016, and it is 0% closer as I understand it to ever actually being real. I've written like five books since then. So the other thing is just also like,

like as far as your emotional state, as far as your like rhythms, as a person, as far as like what you like and how you operate, like also just understanding like where, what kind of system do you function well in? And so I've mostly been resistant to television or movie projects for that reason. It's like, I don't like not being able to make

what I want into reality. I hate the idea of, let's get on another conference call and then we'll talk about this. And then six months later, we'll talk again. And it's like, yes, so we're just starting to take action on what we talked about six months ago, right? Like, also just knowing like what kind of creative environment, or what kind of environment period do you thrive in and ideally not picking a profession that is the opposite of that

environment, but a lot of people do. Yeah, they do, they do because it's sexy and it's exciting and There's beautiful people involved but It is hard is hard to do a project with so many people. That's why I think a lot of corporations become Unwieldy because it's just hard to organize a large group of people and so that's one of the reasons when you find a good collaborator someone you to organize a large group of people. And so that's one of the reasons when you find a good collaborator, someone you share a sensibility with that you can work with effectively and enjoyably.

Like you gotta hang on to them. You know, do another project of them. That is so precious. No, I think that's great advice. And yeah, it's like, look, there are some people whose temperament is like, yeah, I can do one project every four years. Or, you know, like, I can work on this project

for 10 years, 70% of that being like pre-production work. And then there's other people who like me, who that sounds like a specifically designed form of torture. But like, still, if somebody came and said, hey, Ryan, I want you to work on this film project, the ego part of you or the attractive part of the money can suck you away from what you know is right. So you have to have a certain amount of discipline to sort of like know what you're good at, know what you like, know where you have the most autonomy and stick to it. Yeah, and I think that the flip side of autonomy is responsibility, which is that if it sucks, there's no one to blame for yourself. True. That may be part of the appeal for people that like

to work in a group environment is that if it sucks, they're not going to get fired. Yes, and that's true with publishers also. And that was something I was going to ask you because, like, so for instance, I was going back through this email chain where you're giving me advice. Now, I took some of the advice. And some of the advice you had was, it was perfectly fine advice, but I knew it was not,

it was the opposite of what I was trying to do. Like, for instance, you said, like, I gave you this long text and you're like, Ryan, the average children's book is 32 pages. This isn't possibly going to work, which was perfectly correct. I'm sure I told you that some of my books are are over, are around 50 pages, but if I remember correctly, that draft was somewhere closer to 70 pages. Right, and the finished book is like 115 pages. It's a different style of book,

but the point is, and I think this is something that we should kick around, and this is why you have to know what you're trying to do. If you don't know what you're trying to do, like if I was like, I'm just generally doing a kid's book, you, your advice would have been helpful or I would have taken it because there's conventional wisdom behind you, but I had a strong sense of,

in this specific instance, I wanna do something that's not conventional. So I think, like I remember Brian Coppeman has talked about this. He was saying that when they did the first, when they went out with the screenplay of rounders, people were like, there's too much dialogue. They're like, this whole movie is just dialogue.

And he was like, but that's, we want to make like, a movie that's just dialogue that people quote to their friends. He was like, that was very specifically what we wanted to try to do. So I guess what I'm saying is. Yeah, it helps. It really does help to have a vision. Yes.

And you know, and that goes back to what I was saying earlier about, make shit that you like because it's the guiding star to know when you're making the right decision or not. Otherwise, you can get really confused because you get conflicting advice from different people. But people that you respect, and one tells you one thing, and the other tells you the other. And have you know what to choose?

Well, if you just do what you like, what you think is good, that's a good way to filter that. And you're getting advice from committees. I remember I went to my publisher with the boy who would be king and they talked about conflicting advice. You were like, Ryan, this has to be way shorter. This has to be like 30 pages or 50 pages or whatever.

My publisher was like, we would love to turn this into a book, but we wanted to be like 30 pages or 50 pages or whatever. My publisher was like, we would love to turn this into a book, but we wanted to be 10,000 words, which is 10 times longer than it was. Also, the opposite of what I was trying to do. So you have to know what you're vision is. You have to know. You have to know. And you have to also consider your audience often. You can be pure and you'd be like, it's just for me, truth be told, I don't do that. I think, okay, this is for kids. I can't say certain words, you know? And I need to explain things like,

if I'm gonna reference insurance, I need to explain that in a way that a kid knows what it is because the average kid has no idea what the hell insurance is and I want them to understand the story of the reference. Unless I don't, there's certainly references in many of my books that are for the kids or for the parents that are reading them to get a laugh too. But the length thing is something that is brought up pretty often.

I have some books like High Five for example. I think it's like, I don't know, you would know better than me. You've read it more recently, but I think it's like 60 pages. Yes. And I hear from parents, they're like, we love High Five, but it's too long. And I think about, I'm like, it's not, it's not like it's very, it's because they're reading it

every night. And so when the kid is ready to go to bed, and I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just gonna be in a relate to this. The kid is ready to go to bed. They get to pick maybe one book, two books. Right. And in that case, they want it. They want to be done with that, get out of that

bed, go to bed. And in a more broad sense, it's hard to keep a kid's attention, especially if they can't read the words yet, they're going to be pouring over those pictures and there has to be something to keep them engaged. Now Now that could be, and often is, just straight up the enthusiasm of the parents. If the parent loves biology, they could take the kid through Darwin's origin of the species and a seven year old kid is gonna be fascinated by that. If the parent decides they're not into

the stinky cheeseman, one of the greatest picture books ever written, then, the kid's not gonna be into it either. Well, what I think about the high five book too, just to push back if anyone's not read it. It's not that it's too long. It's, that's not a good bedtime book. That's a get your kids excited.

You know, I mean, like you're literally, they're supposed to be hitting the book as hard as they can, right? Like, that's a, that's a, that's a, let's read this like instead of watch TV book, right? Um, so I, I think that is an important thing that a lot of people don't think about, not just with creative projects, but anything like an app or a company or, or whatever is like, where does this fit in the life of the person making it? Like so obviously what is your vision? What are you making it?

But like, what is the target that you're trying to hit? Not just as far as the audience, but like, what is this do? My editor said that to me once. She says, it's not what a book is, it's what a book does. Right? What does it do for the reader? And knowing that is really important

and people don't think enough about it. So that's what inspired me to write these short stories, these collections of short stories because for the past 10 years I've been the guy that stands up in front of the kids in the gymnasium and says hey, reading is fun and I can prove it because I'm going to read you this book I wrote and we're going to have a blast. You're going to laugh and it's going to be great. But as the kids get older, I want to tell them the things you're telling your audience, the things that we're talking about now, which is that writing is the best part

of the whole thing, like to be able to take what's inside of you and share it with somebody else, to be able to express your inner world is a kind of magic. And so all these short stories, although I get to write whatever I want, And so all these short stories, though I get to write whatever I want, what do they do is that, in my hope, is that they inspire kids to try it themselves,

to try writing their own story. And in that way, what the book does is directly connected to what the book is, but in a strange way, doesn't limit what the book can be. Or what the story is going to be about. All right, so I have two last questions for you. One, my wife told me that there is a weird QAnon story or conspiracy about one of your books. Do you know about this? Yeah, it's not just one of my books. I mean, it's just, everything for kids,

like if you do Q and on and any beloved children's entertainment, you will find, you'll go down a rabbit hole, just very strange conspiracies of people just basically entertaining themselves, I think. But you know, you can find it for like, for SpongeBob and just any beloved children's entertainment was tainted by QAnon at some point or another. It wasn't one of your books a little politically incorrect as I forget which one it was, but I remember liking it and then you telling me, like I couldn't even conceive of how someone would not love it,

but you were telling me something about that. Well, so I wrote a book in Spanish, or it's a bilingual book. It's in, it's simultaneously in English and Spanish. It's called the El Chupacabra, and it was awarded the Texas Blue Bond Award in 2020, which is voted by Texas Public School students, or maybe it's private and public, but either way, it's voted by the students of Texas. And it was like this huge honor, and I was so happy because when the book came out, even before it came out, there was some people on Twitter that were like, this book is racist,

this guy can't be, look at him, he can't be writing a, a book in Spanish and it hadn't even come out yet, you know, like they hadn't read it. So it was just this weird, just internet vitriol and people started piling on and like making pictures of the book with an x-through it and the publisher got freak out. So they like made me put my grandmother, which is true, my grandmother grew up in Cuba on the dust jacket of the book to like try to swage any, I was living in Spain when I wrote it like it's just so, the whole thing was really, really weird. And I didn't want to offend anybody.

They had a sensitivity reader who somebody basically, they hired to tell you what's racist in the book. Well, I've done that. Yeah, very rarely do they come back and they're like, well, you paid me all this money, but there's nothing racist. It's like humor, right? You can find it, almost anything, if you have the right mindset. But we came back, we came through it anything, if you have the right mindset. But, you know, we came

back, we came through it and everybody was happy with the story, and it's incredible artwork. But when it came out, there was no tour, there was no marketing, there was no nothing. And I had to have many best-selling books before that, but it was just, they were terrified that there would be a negative response. And so it just kind of went out totally under the radar. And so it was really vindicating when the students and teachers of Texas who have it, many of them are bilingual or speak both Spanish and English, they really responded to the book in a positive way.

And that made me feel vindication. No, no, it's a great book. And it goes to what we're talking about earlier, which is like, you got to do it because you care about it and you have to have some ability to do that stuff out. Yeah, and it really bummed me out. It really made me sad because I was trying to do the complete opposite thing, which is force English speakers to confront the second language because living in in Spain taught me how Unremarkable it is to be bilingual, trilingual, quadrilingual Like There are so many polyglots and they just treat it like it's it's no big deal here in America

If you speak even a little bit of another language It's like telling somebody you can do a standing back flip. It's enormously impressive like How could you even, how could that possible? But if we make it more accessible to kids from a young age and force Americans to confront the idea that the word that they're saying doesn't mean the exact same thing to everybody on the planet, I think it engenders empathy. And that's really good for society and for for Civilization well last question and this might be sensitive so we can cut if you don't answer but Is it unusual that you're a children's book author who doesn't have kids? Are you are you ever gonna have kids? Is that or are you just such a kid that you don't want to have kids? Yeah, I mean there's plenty of people with kids that don't understand kids at all and can't relate to kids

And so I don't think having kids of your own Is the is the deciding factor of whether you can write for kids or relate to kids I don't have kids I probably I mean I may never have kids. I like kids. I don't necessarily, you know, the nice thing about not having kids and being a children's authors, you get to see the best side of the kids. You don't get the temper tantrums. You're like an aunt or an uncle.

Exactly. I'm, I'm, I'm like the uncle that comes in. We have a great time. They start to get cranky or they, you know, they crap their pants. And I'm like, all right, see you later. I'm gonna go get a beer. And it's really the best of all sides for me. I love that, that's funny. Well, dude, I'm so glad we're here talking

10 years after we met. And I can't wait for many more books. And my youngest is now right around the age of being able to discover your books for the first time. So, well, that's so cool. And I want to tell, I mean, I got to plug the new book, which comes out in October. Yes. It's called Gladys the Magic Chicken. And I'm sure it's available from a particular bookstore in Texas, at least. It will be, yes. I believe in October.

And it should be available for your local bookstore. And if you get a meringue or send them an email, I'm sure they'll be happy to pre-order it for you. It is an epic adventure. It's an epic swords and sandals adventure where the hero is a dancing chicken that is totally oblivious to her status as a legend. I love it. It sounds awesome. I can't wait. We have all your books at the

Payton Port right now, so we'll add it to the stack. Well, I really hope I get to travel around and see some faces in person and signs some books. Yes. You know, October, but I'm not sure if it's going to happen or not. I really, I really would love to. All right, man, this was amazing. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to chat with you as always. I always love putting life through the lens of the Stoics.

It's always interesting and enlightening. My newest book, Courage Is Calling Fortune Favors, The Brave is now available for pre-order. We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis is called a superb handbook for crafting a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey called it an urgent call to arms to each and all of us. I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the four virtue series courage temperance justice wisdom. Courage is calling fortune favors the brave. If you want to pre-order

it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailystoic.com slash pre-order. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the daily stoic early and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.