The Daily Stoic - Author Philipp Meyer on Channeling History, Philosophy and Failure into Art

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

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responder, a derivatives trader, a construction worker, an ambulance driver, and nearly as a paramedic, and he has two unpublished novels and hundreds of unpublished short stories under his belt.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

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives

and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. So you know about the painted porch. We've talked about it a bunch of times. Well, the painted porch has expanded in a cool way. We built out a podcast studio. For most of the pandemic, we did the podcast remotely. And that was cool, but there is always something special about doing it in person.

So we built out this amazing studio here in Bastrop. And you are going to listen today to the very first in person episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. By the way, we also launched a new YouTube channel where you can watch these episodes, youtube.com slash daily Stoke Podcast. If you've been following us on YouTube, this is another channel to add. You can watch these episodes. I think there's obviously something there to watch as well. There'll be clips on social as well. But as I was thinking about who I wanted to bring out in the first episode. As we were finishing up the studio, I was in Florida. I was at the Barnes & Noble in Destin. And I came across this book called The Sun, which I have raved about on the podcast before

and in the reading list email by this writer Philip Meyer. And it's this epic western. I think it's better than Yellowstone. It certainly came before Yellowstone. It's set in Texas. It captures a whole swath, multi-generations. I'm not just of the family, but of American history and Texas history. And it's just brilliantly written. It's riveting on every page. And I thought, man, I want to meet this guy. This is a great fucking book. And so I reached out to another podcast guest, S. C. Gwynn, who I thought might know Philip. He did. I read Philip's other book, American Rust, which I loved. Both of these have been turned into

television series one on AMC, one on Showtime. And I said, hey, do you know Philip, would you connect us? And he did. And it turned out Philip and I had a ton in common, both love Texas, both outdoors people, both love writing. And he came out and had the first conversation. And it was an awesome conversation. He was great. He was very patient as we worked out some of the kinks. but I think you're really going to like this episode. You will love both these books. I feel signed a bunch of copies. So those are in the painted porch. I'll link to them in today's show notes if you want to sign copy of American Rust or

the sun. But look, I won't belabor the intro in this conversation. Listen to it as you're doing right now. I think it's worth watching. Stay tuned for clips on social. The new YouTube channel is youtube.com slash daily stoic podcast. Follow the other channel too. You can see it there. As I was thinking back on our intro, we sort of opened. We're talking about the sort of great tragedy battle of American history against between the native first peoples and the settlers and the pioneers and the pilgrims. When I say it is a great tragedy,

it is a great tragedy. It's more than a great tragedy. It's also a great crime. So I don't know. I don't remember exactly how we opened the conversation, but I don't want anyone to think that I I'm not very well aware of that and actually I'm talking in the the justice book that I'm writing now, you know how Powerful group or country or individual treats

Those that it ultimately comes to have power over, how it honors its commitments to people who don't have the mechanism to necessarily enforce those commitments. This says a lot, if not everything about who those people are, Senna Kataks about clemency, obviously, in his famous essay, one of the analogies I make in the Justice book is, you know, the treatment of America and its indigenous people versus this brief moment after the Second World War where America is the only nuclear power. And it offers to turn those nuclear weapons, or it expires even handing those nuclear weapons over to the UN, it does not unilaterally use that power, accepting the moment to end the Second World War. Restraint, dignity, respect,

decency, humanity, these are not themes you will find necessarily in the sun. But I think that's the moral lesson in the book. And I just didn't want any sort of, as we were getting set on the show, as we were talking about, I didn't want anyone to to misconstrue my comments. But here is my interview with the great novelist Philip Meyer, author of American Rust and the Sun. Two books I've absolutely raved about. And I think he will absolutely adore listening to. Here we go.

It's funny I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it and I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you listen audiobooks don't you? And it's true and almost invariably they listen to them on Audible. That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs and of course, ancient philosophy all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, you'll always find the best of

what you love or something new to discover and as an A member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, and exciting new voices in audio. You can check out stillness is the key, the daily dad I just recorded. So that's up on audible now coming up on the 10 yearyear anniversary of the obstacle is the way audiobooks so all those are available and new members can try audible for free for 30 days visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 life can get you down I'm no stranger to that when I find things are piling up I'm struggling

to deal with something obviously I use my, obviously I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient, it's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable, so why wait? And Talkspace can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers. As a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your

first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic to match with a license therapist today, go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the day with Stoic. That's Talkspace.com slash Stoic. Yeah, you're the very first. So thank you for coming. Great, thanks, pal.

And yeah. So, and then And then this was a barber shop. And it's been a barber shop since it opened in the 1800s. Yeah, a bath shop's one of the older towns in Texas. Yes, I think, well, they call it the oldest historic town in Texas. It's not actually that, but in the 1830s, I think. And yeah, so the three buildings, this one, and then the bookstore and the records, they were all built around the 1880s.

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

And then we were like, what do we do with the space? I wasn't ready to carry on the tradition of being a barber. There were no takers. And so here we are. Now it's a podcast studio. No, but it is a historic town. And that's, I mean, like the first page I folded in here. I was like, well, shit, this book is based. I picked up your book randomly at a Barnes & Noble in Destin,

Florida. And I'm reading it. And then it's like Bastion. But your book was set partly in a very historic Bastion. When this was a frontier town basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did you choose Bastion? It was just historically correct. Yeah, I think we think of the West as being

the cowboysboys Native Americans. But the line of settlement was always changing. Yeah. Basically, it was constantly changing. So the line of settlement for probably 200 years was where I 95 is on East Coast. So, and then it gradually kind of moved West. And the weird thing about America, at least as far as we know, is it really was settled by whatever you want to have, or think about it by, like, citizens. It wasn't really settled by an army. There weren't really many military actions. At the very end there were, you know, to mean like, the sue and stuff. And so Bastrop was just an area that, because of the river, The Bass Drop was just an area that, because of the river, got settled pretty early here. The Spanish had kind of pushed up through Latin America and Mexico, and then they got to modern day Texas and even northern Mexico and they just kind of couldn't hold onto it

because the Native American tribes were all too tough. Yeah, in your book and then in Sam Gw's book, you sort of realize obviously what America did to the first people, this is a sort of abomination. But then you kind of realize, as you really did into it, it wasn't America that did it so much as it was Americans. Like individual people, the sort of, the now the spirit that innovates or creates things, that energy was just towards going out into unexplored lands or dangerous lands. Exactly. And they were a lot. So it was a

policy and that it wasn't disagreed with or it wasn't stopped, but at the same time it wasn't Yeah, it wasn't the army pushing the frontier outwards. Yeah, or the state itself, but individuals Correct, and it was mostly poor people yeah because it was dangerous to do so it was mostly Not I mean there are areas where you have like some very wealthy You know the equivalent of a technology now, trying to settle some area. But usually as people who are very poor, because it's very dangerous, bring your family to live in the worst neighborhood

that exists now in Syria or something. And people got killed for a reason. Because you're gonna die. And your family's gonna die. And what you saw on Bastrop was that poor folks moved here, quote unquote, settle the land. And once it was safe, you had the sort of upper class moved in. And they always used lawyers, they would challenge the title.

They'd be like, what's up, you've been here for 20 years with your family. There's an issue with how the deed was written. You made a mistake when you signed this. So your title's not valid and work taken it. And that happened across the West. Basically, you'd have working class, economically lower class people move to an area, the area would become safe.

And then you had basically the wealthy would come in and like build a big plantation out of it. So it's funny because I was reading in the New York Times today There's a piece on South Congress Yeah, and they're basically describing it obviously much less violent version of the same phenomena which is It was a terrible dangerous neighborhood in Austin. There was like a gang of bank robbers that operated out of South Congress You know was run down was terrible and a gang of bank robbers that operated out of South Congress, you know, who's run down, who's terrible, and a bunch of people moved in. Interesting shopkeepers, restaurant tours, entrepreneurs, etc. and then it became cool and popular.

And now like, your rent is up. The process of gentrification, which we call it today, is actually a pretty timeless thing that goes way, way back. And have you read Olmsted's book, A Journey Through Texas? Yeah, that's very good book. There's a passage in it where he goes like, he's quote someone who's like Austin

too expensive these days, like in the 1850s. You know, and you're like, people just have been doing the same thing in the same places for basically thousands of years. That's correct. Yeah, and even Native Americans, if you look at Texas, the history we have before Anglos come here is written down by mostly Spanish missionaries.

We've got 300 years. We know that when the Apaches came in, they pretty much wiped out all the other local native tribes brutally. And then the Spanish were afraid of them. And then the Apaches started to get scared and no one really knew why, because I'm gonna spanish,

Spanish were like a little, they were very religious. They were probably kind of some of the worst of the colonists. They would make everyone convert to Conspansism. Spare really not that great. It was a French, had a lighter touch. They didn't make people convert. They didn't enter Mary, Yadayata.

And so the Spanish start reporting, hey, these patchy are really scary or something. They're scared of the Comanche. Comanche come in and wipe out the Apache in this area. So this kind of process just happens again and again. And you look at North Texas in the Panhandle, there are these tons of old stone ruins that are at least 2,000 years old. They date back to the time of Christ.

There's tons of pottery up there. We don't know what were those people doing? Who wiped them out? Yeah. Because those are civilizations that don't exist anymore. Sure. So that mean the history of human existence,

really, all human beings is like one civilization getting wiped out by another, by another, by another, or just dissipating because the resources run out. I'm just working on this project for someone and we were sort of looking at the kind of rhythm of events because we think a human's are so sort of central to these things and we're not. And we were looking at the kind of rhythm of events, because we think humans are so sort of central to these things and we're not. And we were looking at the, you know what a bristle cone pine is?

And like there are bristle cone pines that saw, that lived through all of it, right? There's like the oldest tree in the world is in Southern California and it's like 5,000 years old. And you're just like this tree, you know, it's still it's probably like this top. Like because they grow so slow. And so twist it.

They got to grow to high altitudes. Super high altitudes. They basically only grow where there's nothing else because they don't want to compete for resources. They grow slow, they're ugly, they get twisted by the wind. But you know, it's like, yeah, you're, you're thinking of like human history as being central. But then there's also these sort of like home witness trees, you know, like they're, like the idea

that rise and falls of, of not just like native peoples and then white people and then, you know, the six flags of Texas or whatever, but it's also just like multiple waves and generations of native peoples that, that we're doing the same thing to each other. Absolutely. This is what humans do. It's what humans do. It's hard to figure out more like how do you process that? People have said they had better technology, they won the war.

The data is pretty good that they were not any more brutal. The tactics really weren't any different. Yeah, just there were more of them. We weren't susceptible to diseases, because all of our ancestors have been wiped out by those diseases that many times. Right, what happened here? It's not like Europeans had never gone through that.

They also watched millions of people die with or on the fine. Absolutely. To stop it. I mean, if you look at like, you know, the Neanderthals, as I understand, this were kind of the first group of comrades savings to leave Africa. Five or a thousand years ago, they settled Europe completely, they settled most of the northern, you know, like hemisphere. And then there's a second wave, like, uh, uh, uh, like, hemisphere.

And then there's a second wave. Four to 50,000 years later that are our ancestors, yeah, who go and wipe them out, right? Even though they're basically like cousins, you know, more or less. And this is just something that's been happening, like forever, yes, for a million years. No, it is an interesting question. At what point are civilizations morally culpable? And then, you know, at what point do you judge the past, not judge the past? It is tricky.

I mean, I think just so people don't think we're sort of this nihilistic, like nothing. I think the problem, to me, where you hold sort of this settler's accountable, is that they violated their own standards. You know what I mean? For sure. They said, you know, they would pass treaty after treaty and then not abide by. You know, I think it's, but that is the interesting clash of the civilizations is like one sort of had a set of moral

principles that it had developed over, you know, since the Enlightenment or whatever. I guess this is some of this is even pre-enlightenment, but you have this sort of western civilization principles, and then it comes here, and they have their own set of principles, but they can't really communicate with each other as to where these things are in conflict with each other. They're trying to pass treaties or make arrangements, and they're just, they just exist in totally different conceptions of reality.

Even down to like, I'm negotiating with you for ownership of a piece of land, which the person on the other side of the transaction doesn't believe that they even own or that it can be owned. Right, yeah. Yeah, this is, it's a big problem, and in turn, if you're trying to figure out like the morality of it, it may be just that

in the end, there's a part of us that just wants to hate the winners, which is kind of reasonable. You know what I mean? Yeah, sure. And there's a part of us that, especially in this in our culture, we want to root for the underdog, which is that's kind of reasonable. And it just isn't the, the, the, the what when you study Native American history, you have to get super granular because like every area had 50, 200, 5,000 different tribes, bands, language groups.

And when you start talking about Native Americans broadly, I mean, it's freaking nuts. It's like probably less accurate than talking about Europeans and Asians as if they were sort of culturally identical. Like the West, you know, the West. I mean, it's, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty tough to figure out. It's what you can, you can sort of look at individual actions and judge them. That's where you can say that this thing that was done was wrong. This breaking of this treaty was wrong, but it's tougher to figure out who's responsible other than giant historical forces, you know. Well, that's what's interesting, I think, about the book and a lot of those characters, which I think the sun is really a look at those kinds of people, because you could take

the colonel and put him in different eras. That person has always existed. Today, he would be a tech-bearing, a disruptor of something. So you realize that even if you come down and say that the overall historical force was unquestionable or unstoppable, there's still these individuals inside that. And those individuals were psychopaths or insatiably ambitious or impossible to satisfy. And that's what put, like, you know, as you said, it's, it wasn't the normal people who were happy with what they had that headed out towards. I've even realized that living out in the country myself, you realize like, why am I in this argument with my neighbor? And then you go, oh, we both chose to live out here

because we didn't want neighbors. And we're not good at dealing with neighbors, right? And so, so you realize like just the, it selects for a type of person that is naturally going to have trouble, you know, dealing with X, Y, or Z, or, or applying ordinary logic, because that's not how they operate. Yeah. And like, who accumulates a ranch that's 50 sections or whatever it was in the book, where you're like, that's not a, that's not a normal person. Yeah. And it's not, it's like who becomes a billionaire? You can be a billionaire quickly now in certain ways. Usually it's not normal people, because most people have values other than making money, you know,

that have a value of family and friends and having meaningful experiences. And most people, if they get to some certain, you know, they make 20 million bucks, which is a huge amount of money, they say, this is enough. I'm gonna hang out with my family and friends, and I'm gonna spend this money. And I'm gonna enjoy my life. But there's another type of money, they say, this is enough. I'm gonna hang out with my family and friends, and I'm gonna spend this money,

and I'm gonna enjoy my life. But there's another type of person who's like, why am I gonna stop here? Yes. And I think, or they think that if I make more money, I'm gonna be happier. So I'm usually missing from their psyche to... Yeah, the Stoics talk about how like being under your own power

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

and took grave risks. Absolutely. You don't get there if you're like, this is good enough, but the bug is a feature. You know? Correct. Yeah, I think there's some, this may be an old cliche now,

but some of the most, if you look at almost all American presence, a lot of me either had, at least recently had either like very strong domineering fathers or they had no father at all. You know, there's a healthy relationship with your parents is not necessarily a feature of people who become president. Yeah.

And you're like, why is that? Okay, well, because you have a need inside you that will never be filled and you think, maybe my dad will approve of me if I just get elected president. He's like, no. Well, I was just writing about this for something recently. It's like, okay, I think it's interesting how casually

we try to convince our kids that they should be president. Right, really? We should be president. And then you go, what you're telling your kid is that there is a one most powerful person in the world. And they deserve to be that person. What you're skipping over is the enormous weight of that. And the fact that pretty much all of literature is a warning against that from the Greeks

down. It's that it is a terrible burden and it usually warps or changes the person fundamentally, right? And so we're just like, yeah, you should do that instead of like what most artists are, I think the sun for instance, ultimately you're not like, I'd love to be in that family, you're like, you know, that's not the family that you want to be in. It's, they seem rich. There's this great line from Senegas says,

poverty isn't having too little. It's wanting more. Yeah. We're not being glib about actual poverty, but the point is you could be very rich, but if you need more, you could have, if you as the character does in this book, you could have an enormous ranch,

but if what you covet is your neighbor's ranch, you don't have an enormous ranch. It's not big enough. Yeah, and that's pretty typical. Like you're saying these people who are, I mean, who in some ways drive innovation, they are the future. And then the bug side of it is that whatever they get,

they're never gonna be happy. Yeah, like nothing is gonna make folks who have that mindset happy, they'll never be satisfied. This is why Tom Brady can't retire. He switches teams, like you're the greatest team in the history of sports, why does he leave? There's something about him that wants more and more.

And then you could judge that choice, but it's what propels him to another team. And then he wins again. So you're like, I you see why this works, but this is also why he can't retire after that. I mean, what's he gonna do? This is his identity. He spends entire adult life chasing something.

Yeah, and I've noticed, yeah, I sort of spent my entire adult life up to my late 30s going after one thing, I'll be the writer. And once I got it, I was suddenly not quite sure what to do. And then finally, I was like, I guess I'm just gonna keep doing this. So I actually tried to join the military, I tried to join the special forces,

I sort of started looking around for some other thing. And I think that there's just something, once you have a sort of goal, what if your identity is that I'm gonna chase this goal and then you never quite get it, because it's very hard to be a writer, you know, whatever. When you suddenly get it, you find that, oh shit, I thought that like...

I thought it fixed me. I thought it fixed me. Yeah, maybe part of my motivation is that I actually just liked having a goal I couldn't get. Yeah. And for time, Tom Brady gets a little bit different. But Tyner Woods is a fascinating example. He's the greatest goal from the world. The reason he's not great now, you put aside the addiction stuff, the scandals. He heard his knees jumping out of airplanes because he decided he wanted to be

a Navy SEAL in his 30s because his father was a green beret in Vietnam. And there's some part of him that thinks being the greatest athlete, maybe ever, the most dominant force in the history of your sport was somehow not enough. And he was jumping out of airplanes and I guess he was doing some drill where they like, he would pay these people that helped train him and do some drill where they kick through a door and they're clearing a room

and somebody kicked him in the leg. And he screwed up like that. He didn't, it's really hard to hurt yourself playing golf. Right, you can get repetitive injuries from golf. He doesn't have repetitive injuries from golf. He has repetitive injuries from this void he was trying to fill with things more exciting than being the indisputed champion of what he did. Yeah, I did that.

I didn't know. I actually makes me feel better about my own silly choices. Yeah, because right when the sun was sold before it came out, I tried very hard to get into the green barriers. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I, I, the only reason I didn't is that my, I was 36, so I needed an age waiver. Yeah.

But by like one year, my packet went to the Pentagon. It was turned down. But everything else wasn't lying. I'd done all the really physical stuff. What did you think that would do for you? Like, what do you think you wanted from it? I don't know. I mean, I, there was a part of me this program to serve in a way.

And people, you know, either have to see who don't. I mean, out of being an EMT a bunch of times, I've been a volunteer firefighter at two different places. I'd work, you know, in an orderly and a trauma center. So as a part of me, there's got programmed for service in some way and this fellow can extension of that, but it clearly was not. I could have just been an EMT again. Yeah, this was something different. Yeah, there was something that I want, something I needed a challenge. I were, I were, I'd take the box in some way, maybe I don't know. And this, but was this before the book came out?

It was right before the book came out. But American Rust had already come out. It had, and it had done very well, and I was, and I was happy, but somehow I've, even when Rust came out, I was like, shit, I tried to do this for 15 years. I finally accomplished my goal. And I guess I'll do it again. Yeah, and then there's a part of me that once I knew the song was gonna be a good success

or a guest it was going to be. Yeah, it was like, I guess I have to be a green beret. Yeah. Yeah. Like what's left in the world? Yeah, yeah. Which I mean, it's silly in a certain way. I met instead I went to Hollywood basically

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So the next time you have a home project, just Angie that, and start getting the most out of your home. Download the free Angie mobile app today or visit Angie.com. That's a-n-g-i-dot-com. Well, it is interesting because I was thinking about that. If I'm getting my MFA at Texas, like you did or I'm at Iowa or something, I could imagine hearing your story if I didn't know anything about it, and just being like, fuck that guy.

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

Yeah, for sure. But you never actually actually like it of course wasn't that simple. I can't imagine. I just go through the first two things. I too published novels. You know, and I spent all my 20s, you know, I wrote one long terrible novel that gave all my friends no one could read. It was very long. It was unreadable. And then I wrote another book. Yeah, I was working on Walls Readnight it was very long and unreadable. And then I wrote another book. Yeah, I was working on Wall Street. And I quit that job to finish my second book on publish book. And that book was better but pretty bad.

And then I ended up moving back into my parents' basement. You know, because I was like, I thought I really wanted to write, but I barely wasn't good at it. I didn't publish anything. And I spent 10 years doing this. 10 years of thinking of myself as a writer. And then, so the American Russ is my third novel. I always thought of it as my third novel,

even though it was my first published book. Yeah, and there's a million done published short stories. Yeah, man, it is, what I saw was that I kept on failing. Like, what I saw about my career early on, I was like, all I did was fail. That was my impression of it. And then after 15 years I had, you know, a mercurial spulbush, it did well.

And then five, four years later, the sun come, it also does well. But yeah, I mean, I thought it was a martyr too. I was like, man, it worked super hard. I've all these failures. And then as soon as you become a professional, you start meeting other people who do the same work. And you're like, oh, shit, how many unpublished books do you have?

And everyone you meet has a couple unpublished books often. Yeah, are there 60, and they're just trying to break through, or their last book sold 60 copies? Yeah. I imagine there is, you know, we look at people who go overnight success. It's always more complicated than that. Man, it's very rare.

A friend of mine, Taya Obrat, who's a brilliant writer, look at people who go overnight success. It's always more complicated than that. And it's very rare. A friend of mine, Taya O'Brett, who's a brilliant writer, she actually did write a book in her early 20s. It was amazing. Called The Tiger's Wife. There's some great book. It's a huge bestseller. You know, and I don't know how she did it, but she,

but that was the, that's the only person I know actually had that kind of huge success. Because there's bread east in Ellis, right? It's first room. But yeah, I think people think that's how it goes. Like even my first book came out when I was 25. But I'd written online every day for six years, basically. Wow.

So like when people think, like, oh, that's, you know, it's everywhere. You are very young. I, I, I, you, you're right. You have the resume of like a 50 year old. But, yeah, but I started earlier. Like, you know, I started a little earlier, and then it's funny, like, it's like that first, that I just got a Rosie statement last year for that first book.

It earned out then. So, like, so it took, it took 10 years to earn out. So you're like, oh, I did well. Like, you know what, I got to check when I was 25. I'm like, this is amazing. But the math would have been like $20,000 a year for 10 years if I hadn't kept writing. So you get your breaks and then I think what matters

is what do you do with them? Because the breaks can come early, they can come late. But what matters is like, what do you do with them? Yeah. Because the breaks can come early, they can come late. Yeah. But what matters is like, what do you do with them? Yeah. I mean, I had a hard transition after the sod. I mean, I thought that you were supposed to, I committed to a bunch of stuff I probably shouldn't have.

I instead of... Like what? I mean, I decided I was going to go make TV shows. And so I decided I was going to like, okay, how do I write and produce and be the creator of a TV show? Which in my friends, like we mentioned, pull off, we turned it,

but saw it into a show for AMC, ran a couple seasons. Also, why people, like not only did you do two great books, it sold well, but then they both got turned into things, which also isn't supposed to. It's not supposed to happen. Yeah, and so, I mean, yeah, I've been very lucky, but that period I think of as a,

in order for me to get the son, to make get the son to be a show, there's a way to do it in which I was sort of careful and cautious and winning is like the low person, the totem pole, and then also would have been able to leave and go back to writing books quite easily. And then there's a way to do it in which I was like, I will have like as much control as possible. And which is like what I tried to do, which was sort of rational, sort of silly at the same time, because I had a thing I really loved. And so yeah, I ended up

living in LA and it's a weird life. I mean, you've spent a bunch of time out there and you're around a bunch of celebrities and people are telling you good things by yourself. And that, for me at that time, was probably not that healthy. I probably needed to be alone in a cabin writing my third book. And instead, I'm sort of in this industry, which I was, thank you, University,

I'm very lucky at the end. But it was not, I think it may connect to like, trying to join the military when I was 30s. Yeah, went away. Yeah, imagine if your first choice was join the military, your second option is you go to Hollywood to try to turn things into things. That would have been hard because what I have found

about that world, obviously the finished products are, there's some garbage, but you're like, that's amazing. You would see how this has happened. But like, and it might have taken 10 years, but there was probably like two years of work in the 10 years, right? And so like, what's amazing about writing

and why I think it's such honest work is it's like, if you sit down and do it, you get finished stuff out of the outside. You control it. Even your unpublished novels. You could publish them if you wanted, right? I did this book about Peter Teal and this sort of weird lawsuit he had. Anyways, that was option in 2017 and it may go into production this year, which is six years, which is pretty fast. That's pretty fast.

But I have published like four books since then, right? Right. So, if I look at it as like, it's not like, what do you do all day? But it's a world where I think it's very easy to develop really bad habits because you need other people's approval to let you do stuff. Yeah. Right. And that is a... That's crucial to understand. It's bad for your soul. Yeah, and everything is done by committee.

If there's something that can be done with one person, it makes sense because it's cost so much money to make a show. Yeah, 50 million bucks is a cheap TV show. Yeah. And so a lot of other people's careers are on the line. It's your project, it's my project in our minds. But in fact, if it goes sideways, they're... And people... Who are going to lose their jobs?

You know, I mean, whereas we just... You should be the best rapper, awesome. Yeah. And that is something that I think as we, people like us, going from the outside, we really just don't get. You're more like, why is this... Why is this stuff not happening quicker with people? And the answer is that a lot of people have to take a lot of risks

to put your project, my project on the air. Yeah, and I think like if you're someone who thrives and like I show up, I do the work, work comes out of the other side, that's a, that you can get, not, it's not even a vertigo, you can just get, you can develop it. It's like, it's like retiring from sports. You had this thing you did every day,

and now you're just like, oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do a little bit of this, I'm gonna do a little, and it's like you're not gonna do any of it. It's like it's like retiring from sports. You had this thing you did every day And I just like I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do a little bit of this I'm gonna do a little and it's like you're not gonna do any of it because you know I'm the structure to keep you honest I feel like yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely true Everyone in Hollywood. I mean, yeah, everyone has 10 projects Yeah, I mean because one goes every year or something like this the other thing as a writer I mean for you me or anyone else, we get to succeed or fail on our own terms. And that is something that is kind of an amazing luxury. If something goes really well, it's kind of because you did it. If something goes badly, it's kind

of because you messed it up. And that is an unbelievable luxury that most people don't get. And I didn't realize that how, how amazing that was until I get out to Hollywood and you realize whether this is good or bad is not going to be because of me. Yeah, there's really other people involved and I don't. That's something actors have to figure out, which is how can you find satisfaction and fulfillment in the role when you're not the director of said role, you're not the producer of said role, you're not the marketing team of said role, you're not the financier, and you're also

don't determine when it comes out, how it comes out, how it does, how the other actors did. Even the editor is probably way more say than any individual actor, you know, let me. So how can you love the work of it, even, you know, and you don't even necessarily get to choose what work you do. There's an honesty to that, be like, no, my five seconds on camera, that's all I'm in a focus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very tough. I mean, actors, I think, I mean, all of us, you know, I mean, you had very early, early success and in hindsight, I had early success as well. And I think, mostly when I think about my life, I think about like all the work that I do. And I don't, and also you in nine or work seven days a week.

But with actors, and someone, we kind of get the fours around destiny in a way. Now you don't get to be really famous, really because our writer is as much. But actors, you gotta be picked. Everything you do, someone has to pick it. Someone's picking you. You're not really generating the material,

and the material's not coming out of your mind and you're not on the table. It's your sitting in a room and hoping someone acts you. Although the stone should say that's actually a better metaphor for life. We think we have more control over our destiny than we do. But then in real life, we are all actors in a play where you were born, you know, way are you shorter tall, you know, famous family, not like, oh, there's all these things, you know, what are you living in a time of peace or not? You know, all these things. And then really what it comes down is this tiny scope of options that are actually available to us. And do we show up and like, play the hell out of

that role? Or are we sitting around going like, why aren't they giving me better parts? I wish I was born here. And suddenly, you know, do you show up and make the most of what, you know, the little bit of leeway, the actor, the director gave you, or are you, would you prefer to sit in the audience and complain? Yeah, I mean, and it's a, yeah, it is your call. And those things are habits too. Yeah, I mean, you know, you, those are, those are habits.

If you assume that, if you assume that to some extent, other people's rules don't always apply to you and that they're these social constructs that maybe if you work really hard you can kind of get around. You have a GED but I end up going to Ivy League school many many years later as a transfer student kind of through the back door only and if I had a suit now I have to apply three times in a row and get rejected and kind of embarrass myself a

bunch of times but if I'd assumed that whatever one told me was true, which is like if you drop out of high school, you're gonna ruin your loser. Yeah. And then like you're done forever. You're like you're screwed. Then I mean, I definitely wouldn't be here. I mean, when I first started making adult decisions, the first adult decision I made was to like,

I hate school, and I'm gonna drop out. And I worked five years, I had a grown up job as just a bike mechanic, but it was, I had adult responsibilities. I was able to leave my parents' house. I basically felt like a grown up. You know, it was not something most people would consider super challenging work, maybe. But I found meaning in it, you know?

Yeah, it's tricky, right? Because it's like, there's things that are not in our control. There's things that are in our control. And then there's these things that we can have some maneuver ability about. And if you're someone who you're like, everything's fixed, everything is, I was born here, so I can't. This is the ceiling for me.

That becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. It's also more complicated than you can be anything. You put your mind to it. Right, exactly. And so how do you find a person, self-fulfilling prophecy. It's also more complicated than you can be anything you put your mind to. Exactly. And so how do you find a person, how do you become a person that is able to sort of seize the small amount of agency that you have to get the most out of it while simultaneously being a person who accepts reality on reality's terms? That's the balance.

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

I have no data that says I can write a book or be a pro baseball player or be a, yeah, whatever. There's no data. How do you know you can do something that you've never done before? And there's an egotistical place. Where you do that? A delusion that you're saying?

There's also like confidence, right? And then there's also the belief that you can to do it, which is also self-realizing. Yeah, I mean, the way to be sure that you can't do something is to not try. And I remember when someone explained this to me, I was like 19, so it'll cliche obviously, but it really is true.

Yeah. I think that was working the basement of the bike shop, but I was thinking maybe I should go to college, I didn't know, I was kind of lost. Yeah. And some kind was working the basement of the bike shop that I was thinking, maybe I should go to college. I didn't know. It was kind of lost. And some kind of mentors I had were like, why don't you, they were the ones who suggested I applied to these like Ivy League colleges.

I was like, that's nuts. The GD, a terrible academic ride. I mean, that makes no sense. Sure. And I remember one lady told me, yeah, you definitely won't get in if you don't apply. You actually do have to apply. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Yeah, exactly. And that shit is true. I mean, it's a totally cliche, but it's totally true. It's very annoying. If you have anyone you think you're like, oh, the person who's, the person who's gonna stop me most of the time is me, mostly. Yes, or it may be impossible,

but until you try, you don't actually know that. You have a hypothesis, and until you try, you don't actually know that. You have a hypothesis, and then you have to be willing to sort of prove or disprove that hypothesis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like with a book, I think though, if you're like, of course I can write a book,

and of course it will be amazing, because I'm amazing. You're probably not going to be the person that does the work that has the self awareness or the honesty to get it to where it needs to be. Right? If you're the person who thinks you have the minus touch or your shit doesn't stink or whatever, you know, especially when you want to use for it, you're going to, you may

produce a first draft of something, but it will be unreadable. Yeah, I mean, the number of times, I've seen that so many times with talented folks who are not talented folks. Yeah, it is both. I thought, I mean, when I was coming up, I thought that talent was gonna be like the, that was like why people made it.

And now I see, man, it is not. It is how much drive do you have? How much failure can you go take? How good is your reality function of looking at like, this is what I want to happen. This is what actually what happened. And then can you disconnect your ego from your work enough to do a second, third, 200 draft?

How many times can you decide that like, I'm just gonna try again. Oops, I failed, I'm gonna keep going. Yeah, I think Gatsby was rejected like four times. And then failed commercially. So you have to imagine, you have to have, you have to have a strong sense of like, this is really good.

But also there's a lot of people who are terrible, who have a strong sense. So you have to have a strong sense. It's really good. And you also have to be really good. And those come from very different places. One comes from the work, one comes from, you know, what you wish to be true or what you mother whispered in your ear or whatever when you're little. It's attention.

I remember when I quit this corporate job and moved across country, I was gonna write this book, and I was like, I'm not even gonna shop at first, I'm just gonna write a book and see if it sells. Which in nonfiction is like 90, 95% of books sell on proposal.

Wow. In your world, you write the novel and then you see if anyone wants it. In my world, this is my plan for the book, and then you sell like a business plan. In my world, you're like, this is my plan for the book, and then you sell it like a business plan. And your publisher is like your investor in it. It's like a different, it's a different,

it's a very different model. But so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna put all my money into, I'm gonna put all my chips in. I'm gonna go write this book and I'm gonna see if it's good. And like how did I, I think back, it's like how did I, how and why did I think I could do that? That's good. And like how did I think back, it's like how did I, how and why did I think I could do that? That's crazy.

And then the fact that I did do it, doesn't make it any less crazy. So was I coming from a place of delusion and ego and the clock just happened, the broken clock happened to you, right? Or was I basing it on evidence that I had from how I had done hard things in the past? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what do you think it was? I mean, I'd like to think it's the latter one. It's probably, I mean, I think there's always, like, there's a reason that ego is, they don't talk about ego being the enemy of plumbers, right? It's, you know, it's, although I'm sure it is, is they don't talk about ego being the enemy of plumbers. Right? It's, you know, it's, it's, although I'm sure it is, but like it's, I think in the more ambitious professions,

and I'm not, not meaning to say that a plumber is not ambitious, in the things that, the inherently public facing professions that an audience or the in crowd validates, there is the people that are attracted to that, I think, have by definition more challenges with ego than, right? Like, you know, it's not like the publishing industry goes around and finds the most unassuming quietest introvert who's typing away in their offices.

We choose you. You should be amazing. It's the people who seek it out. Right. Of course. Just like power is almost always given to people who want power, who happen to almost always be the worst ones. Like, I think ego, ego is a part of it, but I think I went in thinking,

you know, I don't quit. Yeah. You know, I ask questions. I have trained, like I was a research assistant for a long time, so I learned how, but like I had some sense of like how books worked. Right, right, right, right. And I had some sense of, because of my marketing background,

I had a sense of how books sell also, right? So I feel like I had a, there's a great rule actually I heard it from Peter Tiel. He was saying these like, I only invest in things where I believe I have a secret edge. He's like, what do I know that other people don't know? And if you don't have that, not that everything is inside or trading,

but if you don't believe you have some advantage, you're probably not gonna win. And so like, I believed I knew enough about how it worked and that I wouldn't quit until I got what I wanted, that that made me confident that I could do it. I didn't know for certain I could do it, but I felt like it was a good enough bet. I guess I was similar. Yeah, I think my great luck was that I'd done a bunch of difficult things by kind of early age of life, basically, and that I knew that those involved multiple big failures when I tried my hardest. And I knew that I survived all those things.

They hadn't killed me, and I presumed I could just do it again, which turned out to be right. But I was off by 10 years. I quit this job at the investment bank when I was 28, when I was a derivative straighter. And I thought within a few years, I would have like a big success. And a few years later, I was like broke,

live in my parents' basement. The book had been rejected by like every agent. And I had accomplished nothing as I saw it. But there's some part of you, and I guess like, figuring out like which part of those of the ego or like self confidence is good and which part is bad, because they're pretty tightly wound. I mean, at least for me, yeah, they touch.

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

It has to be good. The thing won't be good. It has to be. Yeah, your ego cannot be present, present when you're doing, making art, like it just can't be. Yeah, in the way that alcohol can take the edge off a social interaction,

ego can put you in positions that maybe you have no business being in, that if you really thought about, if you really look down take the edge off a social interaction. Ego can put you in positions that maybe you have no business being in, that if you really thought about, if you really looked down over the edge, you'd be like, this isn't for me. So Ego can be advantageous in that sense, but to actually do the thing, I think it has to come from a place of humility,

craft and process and unrelenting standards that you are constantly not sure you're reaching up to. Absolutely. I mean, art is always a performance for an audience. And that's something that when you're a struggling young artist, you don't always get that. And there's a kind of attention between, am I doing this for me? Am I doing this for the audience?

And the answer is always both, but the answer is like the audience comes first dumbass. You know, like, because I don't know why is someone going to read your book. Why are they going to listen to your podcast? And the answer is like, because you understand that this is actually for a viewership or a listenership. When we listen to music, we don't listen to a practice session. We listen to finished music. And so that transition, I think, for most artists,

is when you realize you're like, oh shit, everything is for the audience. And I have to find the balance between doing things that I care about that other people are interested in reading about, or they want to hear about. And that is a tough, that, I mean, that for me, took 10 years to figure out.

Really? Yeah. I just didn't, yeah, I just didn't get it. I just didn't get it. Which why have two unpublished books, you know, but I just didn't get it. Has it been hard for you with the success of the first two books to, has that made it harder or easier to do the third one, which I've heard a little bit about? The third, yeah, the third one, hopefully we've finished by end of this year. I think I became very good at ignoring what other people said about me for all my teens and 20s. Because if I listened to what people said like,

oh yeah, you're from this neighborhood, you, if you drop a high school dropout your future is this I got pretty good at ignoring that stuff Which was a very lucky skill to develop early in life and I think I didn't try I think Up until my late thursday. I just didn't I didn't like to read my reviews. I didn't want to I don don't want to hear about it. I just don't want to hear anything. And then, when Russ came out, I moved to the middle of nowhere, like bought a house in Webs, didn't work. I got away from some of my friends. I just didn't want to hear anything about the book.

I didn't want to think about the book. I didn't want to think about my, no, this might be my own weakness, but I can't, if I laid in the good stuff, I have to let in the bad stuff. It was easier for me to just keep the door tightly shut. And then I think with the sun, I ended up moving to New York and LA and all of a sudden I was like a guy in this world. And that was not good for me. I mean, whatever part, the unhealthy part of the ego, that was really not so good. So I think in the last few years, I was along with you way of saying, it was harder after having two successful books

because only because I, instead of like moving to Alaska, when this book came out, I should have moved to Alaska. We're Montana. I should have just escaped the world. And instead I went to like kind to the belly of the entertainment beast, where people sort of, most of my normal friends don't really give a shit that I'm a writer. I mean, they just couldn't care less.

I think scene is very dangerous. It's very, that is what it is. That's what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's not that you want none of it, but it's you don't want, it's like, look, you shouldn't buy foods that you don't want to eat. Yeah. Right, that are bad for you to eat because if it's in your pantry, you'll eat it.

Yeah. And it's like the further a, you are away from the, from the scene, the less likely you are to just encounter it on a normal Tuesday. Yeah. Because you're 500 miles away. And you also, I found one of the benefits of living in Texas with me is I think we're all in VS people, but like, if I'm not,

like the impulse of, I just hear less about what other people are doing. Right? And like, that's huge. And I have to sort of cultivate my internet habits accordingly also. Like, I don't wanna know about what, I wish everyone the best.

The more I know about what they're doing, the more that triggers a thing in me that's not healthy. And. That's right, that's exactly right. It takes me away from the thing I should be doing. Yeah, and I think when you hear like young writers moving to New York or moving to LA, all I think is like danger, danger, danger,

that you think this is gonna help you, it's not gonna help you. You actually need to live in Toledo, where you're the only writer, even if you don't get the, just the sense that like once a while you get a pat on the back from the world, you know what I mean,

we all need a little bit of that, but. Well also I think like, you know, where what your economic base is, like, you know, if you're in New York, you have to make a certain amount of money from your thing to keep doing the thing. Yeah. Whereas, you know, it's 50% less, let's say in the middle of nowhere, Texas or Toledo

or whatever. Yeah. And so you, you, like, like, it'd be easier to be a writer if we all had trust funds, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you create a world in which you have some semblance of economic freedom? Yeah. So you can have more artistic or entrepreneurial freedom. Yeah. And I think, like, so my first book was about marketing. And it did well.

And then I went to my publisher and I was like, I'd like to write this book about Angel Philosophy. And they were like, cheers half what you got for the last one. But like, I was in a position, you know, living where I lived and also being young, whatever. But I was in a position to say like, whatever. Right? Sure. But if I was living in New York City then, that would have been, I would have had less runway, right? And I think sometimes people do the thing to be in the scene and then it becomes their life revolves around operating in the scene, not operating in the writing or the craft routine, which you want as much space and freedom as possible in.

Yeah, and it's mental space. I mean, it's time, which possible in. Yeah, and it's mental space. I mean, it's time, which is financial freedom, and then it's mental space. And what gives you mental space is having the other voices quiet, at least for me, and then sounds like for you too. 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 and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings, but in less than a year his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part

docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering app. I was curious about the epigraphs in American Rasterj. I thought it was really interesting. You have character guard and you have Camille. Yeah, I was going through existentialist philosopher phase. And I think the book is an intense book.

I'm not, is it darker? I'm not really sure. But the book is sort of about these kids I grew up with, basically in Baltimore. I just moved it all to Pittsburgh, because it was an easier way to tell a story. But the, both Kierger and Kamehra, kind of optimistic people in some way.

I mean, Kamehra's got some distrace of darkness in him, but basically is like the point of life is to be happy if you can, you know, then there's more to it of life is to be happy if you can. You know, there's, there's more to it. You create meeting is what you create. Yeah, there's more and there's more to admire in humanity than there is to despise. Maybe only by an inch, you know, but, but, but there is. And if you don't look at life that way, you're kind of in trouble.

Yeah, you know, my, one of my favorite novels is Walker Percy, which one? Uh, which of his novels? Yeah, I know. I think, I mean, the moviegoer is basically, it's basically a about Kierkegaard. Novels is Walker Percy. Which one? Which of his novels? I think the moviegoer is basically about Kierkegaard. I like Lance a lot, it's actually probably my favorite. There's a bunch of Stoics in the moviegoer too. But this idea of the search, the search for meaning, the battle against despair that

strikes me as weirdly not common enough of a theme in novels. I almost think the modern novel seems to take as a given that everything is meaningless, everything sucks. It does, yeah. There's no, it's a rejection of likable characters almost entirely. I'm very often, yeah, I mean,

and a lot of early novels too, are like a rejection of meaning, a rejection of anything that might sound sentimental. You know, everything has to be sort of like ironic, basically. Yeah, it's, life is tough. Even if you're born into America in the 21st century, you know what I mean? And I think maybe it's just tough because we're meant to be fighting all the time.

We have sort of still caveman brains. We don't live in caveman world. And how do you adjust that? All of our needs are more or less provided for, which is of course, very good in some ways. And you're strictly true for everyone, but we're so, yeah, more so than, probably ever in history.

We're so than the people at the beginning of this. For sure. Yeah, yeah, and I think there's a lot wrong with the world right now, but I think, you know, meeting human ages longer than it's ever been. Fewer people die by violence, even not than a hundred years ago. The human race is kind of doing okay, despite the fact that the world's heating up and et cetera, et cetera. And how do you process this?

I was, I studied this period for this new book I'm writing. I studied this period around, kind of beginning of the machine age. And as machines begin to become like a larger forcing human life, both in terms of, buildings becoming gigantic, but also like electricity coming in, you coming in widely. That is the beginning of the age of anxiety. If you look at when like modern psychology begins, it is absolutely

when folks start going a little bit nuts because there are these machines are suddenly removing our centrality. Yeah, our centrality and all the things we had to, we don't have to work as hard to live as we used to. I mean, I had a taste of this because I've read American Rust and then this chat GBT thing came out, the official intelligence engine. And so I had it right, because I do this email every day, the day of Stoke email.

And I was like, right, a daily Stoke email about replaceability. Yeah. And it did be minus job, you know? Wow. So what I do, right right like the thing that I do that I am like I'm the only person in the world that can do this thing. Yeah this Computer engine that is existed for five fucking minutes, you know does a half decent job and you go This is what it's like, you know, this is what it's like to be insert blue collar profession from a long chain

of insert blue collar profession. And then we don't need you anymore. And what that takes out of a person, also the spiral it can send a person into. I mean, to me, the response to it is like, okay, how do I figure out how to use this thing? How do I get improved by this thing? Right. You know, how do I not stick my head in the sand about said thing? Right, so I'm not saying that everyone's a sort of a helpless victim, but it is interesting to see everyone wants to think that they're exempt from these inexorable laws or trends.

And it's like, also this is also what human beings have been doing to each other for centuries. It's finding ways to replace ourselves or replace people who are not us from things that they thought they were to take. Yeah, I mean, right, whether it's people limiting jobs in a factory because it makes you a little more money or makes you a little more immune to strikes or the fact we're over here, right? I mean, yeah, that is what people do. I mean, that is all that's all the worst side of us I mean, so what do you think's gonna happen with this? I don't know. I don't know I kind of focus on how bad it does certain things

But if that's in a way is me putting my head in the sand about it, I think yeah, I mean, I think the people who figure out how to How to use the tools to their advantage or to figure out okay? What is if it can now do X? Well, I can't what are the what is first off, I still had to edit this thing, right? We ended up sending it out to the list as an experiment to sort of make this meta point that everyone and everything is replaceable, right? Like, if you think you're indispensable, life will remind you that that's not the case. Right. But, but I was thinking about, well, first off, the idea of using the computer to do X is inherently an artistic statement.

And it's like, I'm going to flip the urinal upside down and all of a sudden it's a piece of art, right? Right. So, how does one come to use technology to still do the fundamentally human thing in that is expression? Yeah. But then also, what are the tasks that right now take me a lot of time? It's something like this could help me get better at. And I think I always go towards like,

I mean, I think just generally in business, it's like, what are the things that only you can do? And then how do you delegate those other things? And then like all technologies, you know, those other things. And then like all technologies, you know, I'm sure there were writers who used to go into old libraries and pour over the books themselves. And now that's fixed by a search. And the ones who rejected the search as an option, you know, didn't make the leap. And then this thing will exist. And how do you make the leap? I don't know. But yeah, yeah. But I wonder is what, Right. I don't know. But yeah, yeah, but I wonder is what, at some point something is lost. Of course.

I mean, I want to believe that it's lost. Like what you lose when you use a search engine is, I mean, you probably remember this a little bit, but is the accidental discovery. Yeah, the same to be a book. You come across a ton of stuff when you have to actually flip through a book yourself. You learn up your mind goes in different places. And when you point something to a search engine, like you, you, you don't learn that stuff. And I mean, I sort of lived through that transition. And, and I remember thinking, like, I don't want to use Google. I don't want to use search engines

because it clearly is, it is worse. Like, you get a quicker, you get the answer quicker, but instead of getting like 20 associated answers and pieces of knowledge, you get like, you're just the one there. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You find what you're looking for most of the time, but you don't find what you didn't know. The correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know, but you're just real. It's like, we think these things are always going to happen to other people. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know, but you're just real. I it's like we think these things are always gonna happen to other people Yeah, but it'll happen to you. Yeah, also I mean death is the great example of this right? Yeah, we know other people die We know other people are susceptible of things we feel sorry for them and their families Yeah, and then we're like but not here. I'm the I'm the exception to the rule And it's like it's coming for you to too, man. Yeah, I mean, this is true.

Even I mean, I work in this trauma center when I was from age 19 to 21. I saw a couple of people die every night, sometimes 10, sometimes 2, by either car accidents, gunshot, women's stappings, whatever. And I remember the very clearly, the first person I watched die,

who seemed super old. He must have been 35, you know? and it was like a drunk driving accident and Even so that did not stop me from riding my motorcycle like a maniac. I mean even though I yeah I was like was moving dead bodies around at night sometimes who would were alive when they came in and now we're dead It didn't affect my behavior as much as it should have, you know I just was like, well, that's that's that guy. Even though he's like my age. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. Maybe we're just right. The bell tolls for the... The bell tolls for like these 30 people. Yeah. Okay.

Wow. That's gonna be me. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, we don't want to think about it because I think we understand that if we think about it, it will have to change our behavior. So we just kind of, it's like we, it's in our mind,

but there's a wall there that prevents it from full. And this is probably why sometimes when people do like psychedelics or whatever, those sort of artificial barriers we've had in our mind, where we have the idea, but we've not actually let it sink into the consciousness. That's why that gets unlocked. You know what I'm saying? Or we have the, you know, you have some breakthrough in your reading or meditating or whatever.

You have, like, there's a difference between knowing this thing and knowing a thing. And you knew just as everyone knows, eventually you're gonna die. But like, it's not until you get some... to die. But like, it's not until you get some, it breaks down some of the defenses that you go, oh, yes, I am them and they are me. Yeah. This is, yeah, I mean, this is definitely going to happen. And you have like, you're lucky, 30 years left, 40 years left, but you have a, the clock is ticking. I mean, the clock is ticking like every day. But yeah, the thing that protects us from despair because we don't think about it also keeps us from making good decisions sometimes.

You know, I was thinking of a version of that. Right after I read the book, after I read the Sun, there's this brilliant scene at the end where the, when she's the fourth generation, the woman, she's like flying on a private plane or whatever, and she's like, my kids don't want money. I don't need any more money.

All I look care about is this ranch. And yet here I am doing all these things that are not that ranch to get more money, right? And I was thinking about how like we know in the way that absolute power corrupts absolutely, we know that money above a certain point tends to cause problems for people. You know, like we see the family who's torn apart, you know, dealing with the estate. We see the kids that are spoiled, you know, we see the people who thought it would fix things and it doesn't.

So we know that, right? And then what do we all do? Like we go to Hollywood to make more money. We start a company that grinds us into dust to get this huge payday. You know, we know it won't do the thing for us. And yet it's the thing we do, we work the hardest to get. Like we know it could be a generational curse, but we're like, I'm doing this for my family. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.

It's gotta be some like, you know, it's gotta be from the, for most of human existence, the resources were very limited. Your resources were literally limited to what you could carry in your pockets, right? Or in a sack. That was it. That was for a million years. And so the idea that there is an unlimited resource, which is just this abstract thing called money, which doesn't actually exist in the world. You think a dollar is real? It's not real. It's all like, you know, the only reason I'm gonna take your dollar is that I'm convinced that the dollar will buy me something.

But the moment I begin to believe that your dollar doesn't has no meaning. And I think we're just not programmed for access to unlimited resources or even large amounts of resources. At all, our minds can't process it. Like that idea is too new. It's only, we have money's only, I remember a sapiens probably talked about this, that book, you know, but,, but how old is it 5,000 years old? I mean, abundance is a thing that we can't wrap our heads around. You know what I mean? That we struggle with.

And if you've ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse, you eat a bunch, you're stuffed. And it's even different to me than a buffet. But buffet, I'm going to go up and get more food. So there's someaye, there's like, I'm gonna go up and get more food, right? So there's some point where you're like, I'm full, I don't want any more. Which is definitely past the point you're full. But the Brazilian steak has their walking around,

your stuff, you're getting the meat sweats. And then the guy comes around with the sword and he's like, you want this? And you're like, yeah, okay. Yeah, you like, you have more, you not only have had enough, you are feeling the effects of having too much, but it requires willpower, more willpower than you have

to be like, I'm cutting myself off here. And we struggle to do that. All the characters in this book, that every time they got more, it was worse for them, and yet they can't stop. Well, I mean, we're programmed for basically what is like, you know, a planes Indian,

they have American lifestyle. We're programmed to like, you just can't store that much food. You can't really own the land. Like the land you own is the land you can hold by force more or less. And even if you have a very February was called like the want the crying babies or something for many of the plane's tribes,

because that was when your winter meat had maybe run out if the hunting was bad and when nothing was growing yet. Sure. And so even if you were the strongest tribe with the most competent men and women, it didn't matter because in February, little kids might start dying, and all people might start dying no matter how good you are, basically.

And that is what we're programmed for. We're not programmed for meat to be like carried around on a trade or else. That's something that's only like, you know, a tiny percentage of the human race should have access. This is what the emperors knew about, but everyone else throughout history has some work. And so yeah, how do you learn those habits, right? It's like you can learn

the habits of like saving and scrimping and accumulating, but then the habit of like, I have more than I need what should I do with it? That's like, that's a skill set that, yeah, for all of human history, like. But wasn't a skill set you had to develop? It just, because nothing, there was never gonna be enough of anything. Yeah, I mean, there was no money that didn't exist and there wasn't enough food.

Yes. You couldn't store food from more than a few weeks anyway. Yeah, so. Yeah. Yeah, it's a skill set that like, it's like, the call for that skill set is like a hundred years old. I mean, yes, for most of us anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And something can break in your brain that makes it even harder to get there. You know what I mean? Depending on how you grew up, when you grew up, the values you got, or yeah, you're just a particularly insatiable person, as, you know, I think the great characters of literature are there to remind us. You know what I mean? The character was like, I'm good.

You know, that doesn't make for a great. It's not as interesting. Yeah, which is funny because when you're creating books, I often have, or after I remind myself, that sometimes the more realistic a character is, the more they are like the average woman or man, may not be a, like, where do you go? Where do you go? There's nowhere to go.

So you sort of write about the extremes. You want them to be realistic extremes, but you write about the extremes. Yeah, right. Average is boring. Or, or, or, well, I think about it. It's like the most successful people. There are, there are so many successful people out there who are successful, but don't need you to know who they are. Yeah. Right. And so,

Google them, they sort of the internet of their presence. Right. And, and so like, we tend to think of the, our image of the successful person is the person who relentlessly courts attention. Yeah, who's never satisfied. Yeah, is it you know the person who does a couple good books and then is like I'm good, you know that person That's not a By definition doesn't have the recognition or you know Very late. I mean look at core Mac McCarthy who didn who wrote for, she's 30 years, 40 years.

I mean, did want to interview. Yeah, I wrote from the 50s until the 90s, until he finally had success. It was kind of like living in cheap places, Knoxville, El Paso. Now, he's super old. I mean, I love his work, I don't know him personally, but that, I think for a long time, early in my career anyway, I mean, I love his work, I don't know him personally, but that, I think for a long time,

or early in my career anyway, I thought, wow, probably the Hemingway path or the Joan Didian path is safer in which you're sort of obviously courting some attention and you're cultivating an image. You're like the cool person for this time. And I thought that was in some way the safer way, but it doesn't.

I mean, the same thing is to it's not safe because I think you were, at least for me, you were, you need to be a very particular type of person. I think to be able to put up a wall in your mind in which you can do the work in the morning and sell the work in the evening. Yes. And there's some people who naturally have it. Yeah. I don't think a lot of artists naturally have it.

Maybe not many humans naturally have it. I for I struggle with it, even if I'm doing book tour. Yeah. I can't write. So if I'm on tour, I can't, I can't write. I can try to think and tell gently about what I've done. Maybe, but it's very hard for me to create stuff. Interesting. And that's not everyone. I know Ian McE but it's very hard for me to create stuff. That's not everyone. Ian McEwen talks about English novelists. He talks about he writes on Bookter all the time. He had a great quote. I'm a salesman also. No, yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's like, I don't just paint at cell paintings. I had to talk to him about this in one of the books I wrote.

But he's really good. He's like, yeah, I gotta go on the road and sell the sink. That's my job. I wonder, yeah, and he also, I mean, he, most, I feel like, a lot of novels anyway, you talk about like something in book tour that shuts down that creative flow or energy. But clearly not for everyone.

I think a big chunk of that has also been, it's actually just a luxury of the industry that everyone's taken for granted. So for most of the, most of the history of the novel, like they didn't make any money and only rich people could do them, or it was accidental,

or it became popular after their death, or whatever, right? But then for like, 150, 200 years of like the modern novel, it, the publishing industry had published a handful of titles every year, and then they could like make a book a success or not. Right, right, right.

Like in nonfiction, the publisher is like, we don't sell the book, we're paying you to sell the book. Wow. That's, there's no, there's no. I don't think I really knew that. There's no prizes, you know, there's no like, you're not, I've done 14 books, something, I forgot. But I've done, let's say more than 10 books.

You actually, I don't remember how many books you've written. I've had one review in the New York Times. So like, there's not, there's not a space, and it's my worst selling book. So, like, the point being that typically nonfiction, you know, there's not a media industry about, there's not a media, like, discovery surfacing mechanism for it. And then there's also not even, although there's a bookstore here, but like there's not even like a model-nower bookstores can like make or break a book, right? But fiction is still that, like fiction is still like it came out,

the right people said things about it, the right, got the right media attention, it was nominated for the right awards. Like it functions more like the award movies in Hollywood function, which is there's a thing and you do a set of things and maybe you get it, maybe you don't. But so the novelist has had the luxury of, you know, I don't touch any of that. Right, absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Whereas the most other musicians don't have that lecture.

Yeah, you know, they're like, no, I go on the road and I sell this thing, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think there's a, I get it, because nobody likes doing it. Yeah. But I think I got really good advice really on my career.

They're like, if you're not willing to get behind it, what are you saying to the reader? You're not saying you're pure. You're saying the sucks. Like that, you know, you're saying, it's a quantum, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like if you were like,

no, like the world depends on this getting out, you would do the stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, someone else will take care of it. There's a certain amount of, of like, I could take it or leave it to it, that I think is, it's right, which is, it's a luxury,

and it's just because that's the way the literary world is functioning for 100 years or maybe longer. Yes. But, the best selling novelist in the world right now, Colleen Hoover is like selling the shell, these books. She had eight of the top 25's best selling books

and 20's on the sheet. She's self-taught. All TikTok. All TikTok. I think Instagram and social media, I think it's start, I think maybe she's helped publish some and now she's on a couple different publishers. But yeah, I think there is this belief,

there's some nasty or impure about like doing it. But if you're given the option not to do it, then you get to have an opinion about it. But if you're not given the option, then you don't get to have an opinion about it. Yeah, I've just come to see them both as non-fiction is easier because like, there's ideas in the works that you can go, that you care about independently of whether someone needs the book or not. That's right. I mean, that's why you can sell it on a proposal because the execution is crucial, but

the ideas are something that you can easily talk about. Yeah, how many people talk about the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's books that have never read Malcolm Gladwell's books, right? Half the world. Probably. Yeah, so like, you have the ability to go out and talk about the thing, whereas like in a novel, you're like, what's this being? Like, it exists inside the universe that you've created. Yeah, and the execution's quite important.

Yeah. And, and, you know, you and I have given tasks to write the exact same novel. Those books may have no, yeah. I've, if they, you know, write a book about Texas, write a book about Texas, what, you can even get quite specific and the execution be totally different. You know what's an interesting thing as we wrap up to talk about the artificial intelligence thing.

So I have this habit and I've heard lots of writers do it, but like sometimes when I'm stuck, but also just generally when I find stuff I like, I will type up the writing of other great writers. So like, when I fold pages, I did it on your book, and then I'll write, I'll either do it by hand, but a lot of times I'll do it on my computer. I'll just type up that paragraph.

I want to feel that through me, right? And so sometimes I do it in Gmail, as I'll just send it as an email to myself to like print later, right? And so Gmail house artificial intelligence in it, you know'll just send it as an email to myself to print later. Yeah. And so Gmail house artificial intelligence in it, you're like, hey, let's meet Tuesday, and then it suggests to you, like sure, that sounds great, right?

Or when I'm typing, I'm like, hey, do you want to get together this? And then it'll flat, it's like, do you want to say evening? It can like complete your thoughts. Or so it thinks, based on millions and trillions of human interactions that have been recorded in text, the engine is able to sense so it thinks, based on millions and trillions of human interactions that have been recorded in text, the engine is able to sense where it thinks the sentence is going. So if I sit down and I write a Hemingway sentence, which is, I think we all agree as a society

is a great sentence, if artificial intelligence really was great, it should know the end of that sentence. It should know the end of that sentence, not just because Hemingway's work is functioning in the engine, but also just like, we all agree that's what we're going for, right? And it never can. And so what strikes me is that all great innovation is fundamentally doing a thing that's never existed before.

So artificial intelligence, data, etc. can tell you what people typically do in your situation, or perhaps could do in your situation, but if your situation is fundamentally new or you're trying to do something new or different, you're in uncharted territory and thus it can't help you. And so to me, that what that imperative means that if you wanna continue operating in a world where that is operating also, you have to go towards what is uniquely human and groundbreaking, not rehashing. And even art itself, we, even kids understand

that an original piece of art, and this could be also a nonfiction, an original piece of thinking is fundamentally much better than a copy. Yes. The original painting, it doesn't matter how good of a copy for the Mona Lisa you make, it's still a copy.

It actually has no artistic value, more or less. One has 100%, the other has none. And so there, and again, it's still a copy. It actually has no artistic value, more or less. One has 100%, and the other has none. And so, there, and again, that's something that even the kids understand pretty well, like we know, you just copied that, right? And we understand for ideas too. So yeah, it may, maybe this thing just pushes us all a little bit harder. Yeah, the choice to paint her is an artistic choice. The choice to leave this in and not that, right, is an artistic choice. The choice to light it a certain way, to do that. Those are all the choices that are uniquely human.

There's really a few million artistic choices in any painting, any piece of writing, fiction or not fiction, any piece of philosophy. Like it's the amount of things, let me know when you start to finish a book. The amount of things you realize you've had to leave out. Sure. And the books always get narrow.

I always have a sense of narrowing when I get near the end of the project. I'm like, shit, I want to say these. I have a huge stack of things that I thought would go in. Exactly, yeah. Now they're not. And now they're not going in. And there's always a little bit of melancholy feels

I'm getting close to the end. Cause I'm like, man, I thought I was going to hold all this. Actually, I was just going to hold this. Which is still a lot. That's still fun. But mostly, I become aware of the things that it can't really hold. Yeah. And yeah, maybe that's something to.

When it understanding that that is actually what you do, like, of course, you decide what, like, of course, you also wrote all the words. But there's some level of that that's even just channeling. But it's that you may, that your job is actually to make choices about what goes in and what doesn't, to go this way or that way, and that fundamentally, that's what's valuable.

Not how well the words are strung together necessarily, but the first choice was what is it about, and the next choice was what is it about? And the next choice was when is it? You know, like you make all these critical artistic decisions in what you do that like really can't be replaced. Yeah, especially by a machine that is just averaging them. Maybe, yeah, but it may be true that this this replaces a lot of, I don't know, man. I'm not trying to be a lawyer right now.

Yeah, or like if your job is writing for the Associated Press, the market went up two points today because XY and Z, that's very replaceable because you're fucking making, you're not even making it up. It's just like, like, it's, this is what, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, so if you want to be a writer, you have to come up with something that isn't collating random data, but that where there are choices involved. And understanding that is, so going to the thing, what are the things that can't be replaced? And going towards that is probably ultimately what matters. It's going to be a weird 10 years.

Yeah, we're in for some strange times. Well, dude, thank you very much. This was awesome. I love the books. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes That would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode Hey, Prime Members!

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