The Daily Stoic - ESPN's Wright Thompson On What Makes Us Great… And Human

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Ryan speaks with writer Wright Thompson about what drives an author to cover a topic, the similarity between writing and sports, their differing writing processes, and more.Wright Thompson is an author and journalist who covers the intersections of sports and culture. Thompson has written for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine on topics like auto racing, MMA, bullfighting and more. Thompson wrote The Cost of These Dreams and recently released the New York Times bestselling Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last.This episode is brought to you by Optimize, the membership that guides you on the path to living right. Optimize offers services like Philosopher Notes, six-page condensed reviews of insightful nonfiction books like Epictetus’s Discourses, Ryan’s The Obstacle Is the Way, and more. Members also get access to 101 video Master Classes, each one an intensive taught by experts about a particular topic. Visit optimize.me/dailystoic and get your first fourteen days free, plus 10% off your membership with discount code STOIC.This episode is also brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan's podcast is one of the most interesting ones out there, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Wright Thompson:Homepage: https://wrightthompson.com/index.htmlInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wrightthompsonbooksSee 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 Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. of necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily's Dove Podcast. My guest today is one of my favorite writers ever. I think one of the great sports writers of all time. I did a post on Instagram a couple weeks ago where I just posted some of my favorite books about sports and I had a copy of Wright Thompson's, the cost of these dreams on there. And she sent me an Instagram message, which is a total surprise and unexpected.

And I said, dude, you have to come on the podcast, please. And as it happens, he has a new book out called Papyland, which is an incredible book about this whiskey manufacturer who's really an obsessed craftsman, who is the best in the world at what he does. And of course, in classic Wright Thompson style, it's not really about that at all, it's really about the human condition and the human experience,

which we get into a whole bunch in the podcast. But his book, The Cost of These Dreams, it's just incredible. There's a great profile of Bear Bryant, Bodyguard in there, which he wouldn't think would be interesting, but it's fascinating. He wrote the classic piece on Tiger Woods, which shaped the chapter in Stillness's The Key. He wrote two incredible profiles of Michael Jordan, which also influenced my chapters in Stillness' The Key. He has a chapter profile on the book about Ted Williams and his relationship with his daughter, which I wrote a bunch of emails about for the Daily Dad.

And he wrote the classic profile in Urban Meyer, which is also featured into a bunch of stuff we do over at Daily Dad as well. One of the best to ever do it at his thing when I had Paul kicks on the podcast a few months back. You definitely listen to that episode. I was talking to him about right and he's just like, one of the best there is rights at the same thing about Paul kicks. So it's a small world out there that people who are true craftsmen

are unfortunately quite rare. Any chance I get to talk to one, I'm gonna take, and we get into stooploscopy, we get into dealing with one's demons. We talk about trying to detach from the results of things and one of my favorite topics, how a great spouse keeps you sane and protects you from being at the mercy of said demons. So here's my interview with Bright Thompson. Check out his books, The Cost of These Dreams,

and of course, The New One, Pappy Land. Well, it's amazing to chat. I loved the new book. I loved the cost of these dreams so much. So I thought we'd start there. Yeah. That, I don't know, to me, that's just the perfect title for a book. It's the perfect expression. I went and I listened to the song where it's a drive by trucker song. Yes, it's a drive by trucker

song called Angels and Fuselage. What does that phrase mean to you? Like, what, why, I think I know why it resonated but but hit me with why that that's stuck with you. You know that song has always lived inside of me in a really melancholy way in the way that like really great music can you know I mean I think the whole Bruce Springsteen album darkness on the edge of town makes me feel a lot of those same things. But like, if you are really driven to do things and you don't really know why, I mean, I think a lot of us who write for a living are a weird mixture of arrogance and insecurity that probably both come from some hole inside

that we're trying to sort of understand the structure of before you can even start to fill it. And so that phrase to me, it always is like this reminder in the back of my head, certainly, to try to understand why you're doing the things you do and how that truth is different from the reasons you might tell people in public. Like, how I love that thing when generals would come back to Rome, someone would sit behind them and whisper, all glory is fleeting. And the line lands to me a lot like that, you know, like adding up the cost of these

dreams. Like, it's over now, you know, it was a worth it. And so like that line is resonated with me forever. And certainly in all these athletes, I profile because nothing is ever for free. And so the combination of those two things is why I picked it. Yeah, writing is a weird profession because you're a great writer is as driven and ambitious as the kinds of people you're

talking about in your book, whether it's Jordan or Ali or Tiger or Bear Bryant. But then we kind of have a foot in the insanity, but then we're also a little bit outside the insanity, observing it and observing ourselves at the same time. So it's this weird thing where you get it, but then you're also sort of haunted and horrified by it at the same time. It's interesting because I mean, I don't believe, for instance, that

Aaron Rogers wants to be a great quarterback anymore than I want to be a great writer. Do you want to mean like, so I fundamentally don't believe that the public nature of something, I don't think I want to be a great writer anymore than the guy who built my house wants to be a great contractor. I think people are driven in really personal and complex ways. The fact that they do it in public is very interesting

and certainly amps up all of these forces. And if you're, you know, if ambition, if we sort of can agree that ambition almost always flows from some need, then having to chase that ambition in public like that just cranks up all of this stuff to 10. You know, it's funny, like, you know, I made the mistake of reading some online book reviews. I was like, I was talking to my wife. I'm like, what gives them the right to say this? She sort of looked at me and she goes, what do you think all those athletes you write about? And I just went, oh shit. I'm a total hypocrite. But it is interesting, the public nature with which these athletes chase their jobs becomes an obstacle for them to overcome a companion for them to walk with.

You know, I have a story coming out in a week or so on Archie Manning. And it is a basically about how 50 years ago his life split into and he had to learn to get to know this total stranger archie manning all capital letters. And it's a story about his evolving understanding of who that person is and where that person intersects with the actual him and where that person doesn't. And so I mean, I think, you know, for all of these athletes chasing these deeply personal dreams in public, you know, they certainly are doing things

that most of us can relate to a little, but not really. And one of the weird things about sports, which I both am deeply envious of, and then feel must be an immense curse that we don't have to bear, is that it's such a measurable experience. Right? So, like, I think your book is amazing. I think it's one of the best sports books ever written, but there's no demonstrable way that the books in your category are ranked. You know, my books, they've sold well. They've been reviewed pretty well, they've hit this list,

but not this list. I have the ability to sort of define my six, I have much more autonomy over my definition of success, whereas Aaron Rogers, as great as he is, you know, has to look at Tom Brady in a way that's so much more measurable and in your face and mathematical than the rest of us. And I got to think that, you know, even with Tiger Woods, I think it's in your piece, but it's like Tiger Woods is like, I play for the hardware. Like the fact that it's like a trophy, a thing you get if you have the score that's higher than someone else's score is very artificial and so that way

It's probably a relief from the vagaries of life, but then it's also a Thing that you can never quite get. I've certainly thought about that and I've also you know I don't have an answer, but I've also wondered if the you know if the inverse is true You know like if the stats are protection against imposter syndrome, you know, like, like if Aaron Rogers can be a more ob-1x super-balls and thrown for Y yards and Z touchdowns. And so you put a book out in the world and some people like it and some people love it. And, you know, if you were both arrogant and secure, you are suspicious of the praise

and give too much credence to the criticism. And so I've always wondered if the tangible nature of success and the fact, I would love for there to be a scoreboard on the wall. Just let me know if I won or lost. And I think the other thing, you know, I wrote about Dale Murphy one time, the old Atlanta Braves, two time MVP, and I just came away thinking, that's the happiest athlete I've ever met, because

he, you know, is a great up-dike quote, the mask eats the face. And he is one of the few professional athletes who was, you know, beloved and very, very famous at the time when the Atlanta Braves won the Super Station every day. And he said about intentionally killing the avatar of Dale Murphy number three when he stopped playing. And so, you know, when you're around him, it's hard to remember he was even a star. Like he has been so successful in killing all that was fake and nurturing all that was real. So, you know, when you go back to your question about, you know, you talk about Brady's hardware, I mean, when you look at Tom Brady right now,

and I don't know the answer, I'm posing a question, I have no idea of the answer. When you look at Tom Brady right now, who has six super balls, and you look at Peyton Manning right now, who has two, who seems happier? That's the ultimate question. I mean, I had, I had, and I think your, your pieces,

you know, certainly illustrate the idea of the sort of, the haunted, tortured athlete to some degree, right? You're, your famous Tiger Woods profile and, and your, your, your Jordan profile. And I had Manu Genobli on the podcast a few months ago who I've gotten to know over the last couple of years. And what I think so fascinating about someone like him is like, well, there you have a guy with four rings who doesn't seem to be tortured, who seem to have enjoyed his experience and

seems to be a sane individual. And that's actually something that I struggle with in my own life. It's like, I almost feel like the ultimate ambition is to be really great at what you do and not be turned into a monster in the process. I had to reread my new book, Papyland, about, I don't know, two weeks ago,

trying to find an excerpt for someone. And that's a weird experience to read it. And there's this line in there, there's something in there, and we'll get to this later, I don't want to sort of veer off cost of these dreams until you're ready. But like, there was something in there I wrote about the whole point of success is that it is an asset for you to trade for something. And so what do you, do you trade it for a real life? Do you trade it for one more hand at the table?

Do you blow it? I mean, if you look at any success as a fragile set of chips at a blackjack table, like, you know, I mean, like, I think about that all the time. And so people like, Genobly, they're like, there are a lot of guys like this who you meet. You're like, that dude's just happy.

Charles Barkley just seems happy. And so, I mean, I find people like that to be, I mean, I don't know if seductive is the right word, but there's something about that life that I find I want. And I think the reason I want it so much and I'm so interested in it is that I just don't have it yet. Do you know what I mean? Like there's some inner thing that Monogynobli has that I don't have. And, you know, I would love to spend time around him just to try to see it. You know, one of the things I loved about Julian Van Winkle was that because his bourbon has to sit in barrels for 15, 20, 23 years, he has to live a sort of long game that

I don't. And so I found that to be really seductive. And you meet athletes sometimes who are like that. I mean, Archie Manning seems, when you're around him, he just seems happy. He doesn't complain. He's really good with fans who approach. Like, you're just like, I won't summon what he's got. And I'm sure that's true for a Geno boy. I was thinking about this when you mentioned Manning

and you were telling me you just had another kid. I was reading a book a few months ago. I think it's called My First Coach, which is all about quarterbacks and their relationship with their fathers. And there's a scene in that book about Archie Manning where he talks about, I forget what team you got traded to from the saints,

but he talked about one of the reasons he retired is that he saw that Eli was just sort of much more introverted than his other kids and that the relationship wasn't as natural. And then he said, one of the reasons I retired, even though maybe I could have, there was a chance that one of those last couple seasons

could have turned into something was, he was, he walked away from the game because he wanted to be home and he wanted to spend more time with his son. Because he wanted to have the same relationship with Eli that he had with Peyton, and I'm forgetting the name of his other son. Can I just say, wow, that, yeah.

That may actually be the greatest thing that you've ever done. Like, that is almost a form of more elusive greatness than had you won the Super Bowl that you probably wanted more than anything in the world? One of the things that's so interesting about viewing the long arc of someone's life as what it really is, which is a series of choices, that, you know, especially like in the context of this conversation, which is sort of, you know, we're circling all around the idea of character, you know, lower KC.

I mean, it seems to me that there are very few chances in life where you were faced with the decision to prove whether you're the thing that you say you are or whether you're full of shit. And the problem is, is no one tells you which decision is that. You know, like one of the things Michael Jordan said to me that was so interesting was that it was all coming at me so fast that I wasn't even really making decisions.

You know, it was almost like sort of just deflecting and you know, those years of those high speed reactive deflections become who you are and these things become muscle memory. And when you're flying that high and that fast, whether you're Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, deflections become who you are and these things become muscle memory and when you're flying that high and that fast whether you're Tom Brady or Michael Jordan Tiger Woods or Peyton Manning or Eli Manning, you everything is happening so fast that no one stops and shakes you and says this is one of those

moments and so when you see someone like Archie or like Dale Murphy who arrives at this moment and makes the right decision, it's really something. I'm sure you watched the last dance and actually I read a piece you wrote sort of afterwards. I'm sure you saw it. But there was that scene in the documentary where the bulls have just beaten the jazz at home. You know, it's probably the last, it's the sort of final disappointment of Karl Malone's, you know, sort of never quite getting there. And there's that scene where Karl Malone runs out of the stadium, you know, through the tunnels outside the stadium

onto the bull's bus. And you don't know what he's gonna do. Is he gonna punch Michael Jordan in the face? What is he gonna do? And he just wants to shake his hand and congratulate him and you're like, again, that actually may be a greater accomplishment than winning the champion.

I certainly fewer people have done it. No, it's like those the moments, you are who you are. I mean, I find that's like, you know, after Urban Meyer won his first national championship at Florida, he had this beautiful celebration with his father and a bunch of friends and coaches and they're sitting around crack of beers. After he won the second straight national championship, the confetti is still falling. He runs from the field. I think they're at the football stadium in Phoenix.

I think it was a festival. And he runs from the field through the confetti, past his celebrating players, runs into the locker room, into the coaches' locker room, shuts the door, locks it, and starts calling recruits. I mean, the confetti is not all been released. And so you just realized that- Character is fake.

Yes, like 100%. I mean, Michael Jordan said something to me that was so interesting that he was like, you know, I spent my whole life crafting myself into this perfect being for one purpose. And I did that at the expense of all sorts of other things that I might have been, different kind of father I might have been, husband I might have been, friend I might have been. And now that it's over, I have turned myself into this person with these traits.

And those traits are not only useless in my new life, they are the thing that is standing between me and enjoying all of the things that that person I created purchased. And it's just like my head exploded because I was like, one, the self-awareness of that, like I don't have that, you know, I mean, and two, just, you realize what the work of the rest of his life was. And so when we see these people who do these things in public, particularly musicians and athletes, who I think we have different relationships with and we do with movie stars and TV people, but like, you know, just dealing with the cost of the person they had to be to become, to get the things they wanted

is often as much work as the thing itself. It seems like to me. There's a tragic element to it in, you know, Michael Jordan can articulate that. I can even articulate, like I can think back to my childhood, my relationship with my parents, the thing I wanted from my mother, my father, what clearly, like, what they saw as success, and then I went out and did that thing. And I can articulate it, I can see it, but in the sense you're also kind of powerless to stop it. You know, you're, it's like, my children can say that, but then doing it is, doing even the slightest thing about it is almost impossible.

It's almost impossible for me and you. I mean, imagine what it would be like for that. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, right. I like to think that if I had a billion dollars, when you have a billion reasons not to do anything. Yeah, if I had a billion dollars in a Gulf Stream,

I mean, I wouldn't be doing this right now, except that I probably would. But you know what I mean? That's the thing. Yeah. It's like, what is enough? And what does that look like? That's a really interesting thing. I think a lot of people face.

And like, what is enough? Well, that's the Tiger Woods thing, right? And I mean, I wrote about this in my last book, Stillness. You know, his father, I'm sure you know, this I probably got it from your article, but you know, his father called enough the eward, right? It's like when you've had enough, either had enough or you're full or you're done, just say it.

And I thought it was so revealing, almost Freudian that enough, that they called it the e-word, like it was a curse word, like it would be bad to ever be full, that struck me as almost an experience. Well, you know, it's interesting, there's like for a long time,

you know, so it's the second time I've mentioned this, the song, Darkness on the Edge of Town, which is on that album I referenced earlier, you know, he it's the second time I've mentioned this. The song, Darkness on the Edge of Time, which is on that album I referenced earlier, you know, he has this line, like, I'll be on that hill with everything I got, I'll be on that hill because I can't stop. Lives on the line, dreams are won and lost, I'll be on that hill and I'll pay the cost,

I think is what it is. And like, you find these mantras that you use to sustain yourself on the climb when you need to sacrifice and to be willing to push harder than other people are willing to push. And then those same mantras that get you somewhere are almost always the mantras that either A will stop you from enjoying everything you gained on that climb that will probably be the seeds that lead to the sort of tree of your self-destruction or most likely seed both. You brought up Urban Meyer and I actually wrote this line down. I pulled up my copy before we talked and I actually just wrote in the margin, I just wrote the word like Jesus Christ next to your sins, but I thought it was a perfect encapsulation

of the tragic element of that ambition. You said, like any man who destroys himself running towards a finish line that doesn't exist. It's like, I'll be happy if I get this. I'll feel good if I get this, dad will be proud of me if X and you get there and it's nothing. It feels like nothing. And it's so interesting. You know, like I don't even ever heard David DeVal talk about all he wanted in his life was to win a major championship

and he was a long time the best player to never win a major, then he wins the British Open and he wakes up in the morning and he understands that nothing is different. And he hasn't won a golf tournament since. I mean, you know, it does become interesting. Like, the metal levels of the fact that we're having this conversation to me, the metal levels to me are, I'm selling a lot of books.

I want to sell more books. I mean, part of me is proud of it and I want it to reach eyeballs. But another part of me is just, you know, I'm on a treadmill, this is what you do. And in the book that I'm actively out here saying, selling, I write about how I need to not do that. And so like, Jesus Christ, I mean, like how unself-aware could a human being be?

And so, I mean, that's how these things connected my head is that, you know, these things are always a walk. They're never a destination, hopefully. No, I mean, so I wrote in my book, you guys, the enemy added a chapter about how the effort has to be enough. You have to detach from the external results. You can't think about, you have to focus on what you control not on the external results because the external results are not in your control. And I even talk I talked about

John Kennedy tool right John Kennedy tool rates a Confederacy of Dances. It's a brilliant book. It gets rejected. He kills himself. It wins the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. Nothing has changed. Right. It's the same the same fucking book. And if nothing illustrates the hollowness of the publishing industry or critics, it's that. And so I wrote that and I feel it and I know it. And that book comes out and it sells enough copies that should have debuted in the number one slot

on the Wall Street Journalist. And I open up the, you know, that comes out on the Friday after the release and it's not there. Like not, not like not at the number one slot, like it's not there. And it was like, what happened? And it turned out my, I won't say, who someone at my publisher had switched without discussing it with anyone, something they thought would be helpful.

They'd switched the category that the book was put in, what's they call Bysac, like it's the sort of categorization. So this technical decision disqualifies it from the number one spot, and instead it hits zero spots. And so it's like, you know it, but then you have to do it in that moment and everything in you rebels against doing it in that moment.

And then, you know, I mean, I've had that experience so many times you know it, you write about it, you feel it, you practice it, but then to do it in the moment for Jordan, it's turning down a chance to win a competition with someone for Tiger Woods. It's putting family above X, Y, or is it, we all have that thing and then it's, can you do it in the moments that count? That's really, I guess that's really what philosophy and this stuff is about.

Well, I mean, in some ways, I think the study of philosophy, it seems abstract when you're on a college campus, but when you're grown up and you start reading Thomas Aquinas or Thomas Martin, who I love, I write about Thomas Martin a lot, or Will Campbell, if you've ever read Brother to a Dragonfly. I mean, the real point of reading philosophy is to develop some sort of like ethical muscle memory. So when we're in that moment, like Jordan was talking about where things are flying at you and you're just making decisions, you're not going to make all the right ones, you're not gonna make all the right ones. You're not always going to be the person that you wanna be,

but that doesn't mean you have to understand that you're going to fail at that, but that if you have thought about this a lot during call moments, then you stand a better chance of making the right call during moments of chaos or stress than if you hadn't done that. I mean, like, you know, I'm sitting here looking at my desk right now, and on it, I have the bubblegum cigar, I got when my first daughter was born, I have a picture of my wife and I, I have the bound volume of Esquire

magazine from January to June 1986, which had Richard Ben Kramer's famous Ted William story in it, which was always sort of a thing I long to achieve. I have my son copy of Willie Morris' North Tordholm, and I have the Pocket Thomas Martin, which is just beat to death. And so hopefully, by just picking that thing up and reading it from time to time when I'm bored, some of that shit's gonna seep in, I hope. Yeah, and I was thinking about that recently myself where it's like, maybe this goes to the sports idea, it's like, you don't have to be perfect. Just more often than not, you have to be able to hit that shot, you know? And it's like, you don't have to win every game.

You just have to win enough games to sort of stay ahead of 500 basically. And I think that's almost a maybe a kinder way to think about it instead of expecting perfection, can you just, you know, can you just do it pretty consistently? Yeah, I mean, it's also not being precious with it or with the idea of you.

I mean, I love that Samuel L. Jackson is in the greatest movies of our generation. And he'll, you know, do the Capitol One commercial. And I guarantee you, he's laughing his ass off on his Gulf stream on the way to the Med abord his 260 foot yacht. Do you know what I mean? Like, like, Samuel L. Jackson looks like someone who's happy, you know, and so like, sure.

It is interesting how it's, one, it's a volume game probably, be a volume shooter, you know? But yeah, not expecting perfection from yourself is vital and it's something that's very, very hard for athletes. My mom used to stay studying for 100 and you'll make a 90. And that sort of thing seeps in. There's a great cynical line. He says, what progress have I made?

I have begun to be a better friend to myself. And that struck me as a theme in a lot of your profiles, whether it's Ted Williams or Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, is just how almost heinously hard these people were on themselves. And that was the real cost of the dream, is that it wasn't fun. Like when I watch the Michael Jordan Hall of Fame speech, I don't feel envious, I feel sadness for him. Like it seemed like, oh, the cost of being this great,

the cost of being great the way he was great meant that he couldn't enjoy this moment. And what's so interesting too is, you know, you have people like Michael Jordan who are doing these very personal things in very public ways. And so, like, you know, I think there are two things in Michael Jordan's public athletic life that are deeply tied to how he feels about the loss of his father.

One of them is quitting basketball and going to play baseball, which seems like a cry for help and a wandering and a stumbling through the dark. And then, you know, he just did this NASCAR team. And I mean, I teared up a little when I heard about it because I know him really well. And when Michael Jordan closes his eyes and imagines his father, his father was a mechanic in the military, and they grew up way out in the country. He sees a guy out in the driveway

working on an engine of a car on box. And so the fact that Michael Jordan has a NASCAR team, like all I could think about was what a healthy tribute that was to James Jordan, almost as healthy as quitting basketball to play baseball was unhealthy. And so like in those two things, you see the arc of someone's personal growth doing it in a very, very public way. It's like what we

were talking about at the beginning. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's the challenge of athletes and musicians, songwriters is that they're doing this very personal intimate thing is that they're doing this very personal intimate thing in a very public way and opening themselves up, not just to critics, but to fans. They, their avatar doesn't belong to them anymore. And yet their avatar is the vehicle that they're trying to use to deal with this deeply personal shit.

And so it's no wonder, I mean, I mean, Diego Mayor Donna died last week. I mean, that guy didn't stand a fucking chance. You have that quote in the Tiger Woods piece that I think about all the time. And I forget who said, I'm sure you know who said it. I think it was anonymous, but it was like, mere, mere on the wall, we become like daddy after all. Oh, and that wasn't anonymous.

That was the first director of the Tiger Woods Foundation. Mirror mirror on the wall. We turn out like dad. Okay. After all, you know, it's like, uh, uh, that's Jesus Christ, you know, like, wow. I mean, that's not what you want someone saying about you, but I mean, no, that's brutal in its efficiency. Yeah, no, it's like encapsulating the human, generations of the human experience in one ridiculous dismissive rhyme. And you're just like, oh man, that is our destiny.

In such a, and all the good we've done is us managing to overcome it and all the horrible things we've done in some ways is us not managing to overcome it. I was at that New Dixie Chicks album when it came out and they had this line just in a chorus. It was like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, repeating all the mistakes of your father. I'm just like, whoa, holy shit. Like, boy, that is a non-iron to the head, or a, you know, I mean, like, it is.

Let's take all of human existence and sum it up into non-words about your deepest insecurities. And I think one way that I've found that I've been able to combat that, however lucky I've been able to do it, or whatever success I've found that I've been able to combat that, however lucky I've been able to do it or whatever success I've managed to have is something that I also loved and cost of these dreams, although I guess for some people could be the exact opposite, but you you talked about your relationship with your wife and the intro of that book and you're talking about sort of her being

Your corner man or that that's how she saw herself in and I related to that, but it's like it's their their corner man or that that's how she saw herself in and I related to that but it's like it's they're their corner man in the sense that they're encouraging you to get back out there but they're also there telling me when you have to throw in the towel or what you're doing wrong there I think that one of the one of the ways we combat our natural inclination to repeat the patterns of the past is by bringing in a totally disinterested observer with their own familial issues who looks at your stuff and just says like, what the fuck are you doing? That's the most insane logic I've ever heard. Why are you repeating this pattern over and over again?

That's like, that's what my wife does at least. I mean, it's interesting. Do you know what, when that book, when the cost of these dreams came out and hit the New York Times by a seller list, my wife got me a present. And she got me one of those metal things with a rubber handle made by Everlast that corner men use. Oh. Let you know she's paying attention.

And I mean, you know, it's interesting in that, you know, I mean, in a lot of ways, the voice of Papi Land, which I struggled with, was born out of writing the intro to that book, you know, that intro, the book was late, but the intro to the cost of these dreams. Like, I just didn't know what to say. And we went over to visit my mom in Carcasset, I'm a Mississippi where I'm from. And we'd been out to Moon Lake the night before

and had this great dinner. And I woke up and I went to this coffee shop downtown, carcassale, this little bitty town where I grew up and it just came out. And in some ways doing that unlocked the voice of happy land because like I was really struggling, you know, I kept going up to visit Julian van Winkle and I loved the conversations we were having about bourbon but he was dealing with a lot of stuff in his life, you know, coming up with a succession plan for his business, Bourbon Business, you know, we had a cancer fight, my wife and I were trying and failing over and over again to have a child, you know, we had a miscarriage in Paris that was like a nightmare and

it was just, you know, I found that the conversations I was having with Julian about life were more important to me than the conversations I was having with him about Bourbon. And yet I had sold this book about Bourbon and so I just couldn't abide the best version of the story being the one I experienced but couldn't figure out how to pass on the readers. And so when I wrote that intro to that book, I found the voice. I mean, it would be interesting

if you read that and then read Pappy land. It could be the intro to Pappy land. And so like, it's funny. I'd never really thought about this to right now, but like writing that unlocked this book, which I had, you know, I was really, really late. I mean, you know, it was due before cost of these dreams came out. I just couldn't write it. And like, you've been through this, like, just to be real crest,

I'd already spent the money. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I had to give them a book. And I couldn't figure out how to do it. And so, understanding how this book flow, how this book in a lot of ways was trying to answer the questions I posed in the intro to cost of these dreams, unlocked it for me.

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Yeah, there's a, there's a humility that comes from realizing that often your best writing or best work comes when you're the least in control and in some ways being the least intentional about what you're doing. You have to think you're in the driver's seat and then you have these moments like Stephen Pressfield sort of talks about them uses. If you haven't read the War of Art, you would love it. He's amazing. Stephen Pressfield wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire.

But you know, he talks about that this stuff doesn't come from you. It comes from some magical place, whether it's the gods or the subconscious or whatever. You think you're in the driver's seat and then every once in a while there's like a crack and you actually see you're like, oh, I have nothing to do with this. I'm just sort of a vehicle for this stuff. Maybe I shouldn't let this go to my head and I shouldn't grip the wheel so tight. You know, both of those things are necessary.

Shouldn't let it go to my head. You know, it was interesting. You know, I've been feeling pretty good about myself the last couple of weeks. And then I went on my dear friend Scott Vempeltz television show last night. And almost immediately, you can see the Amazon, you've done that before, even though we lied,

say we don't, you can look at the Amazon number. I mean, almost immediately, you can see it starting to climb. And it just hit me like, I'm selling books right now. And these books have nothing to do with me or the way anyone feels about me. This is a reflection of a gift that my friend Scott and his producer Mike McQuade, who's also a dear friend of mine, that they have given me. You know what I mean? That they are using their thing in this moment as an act of agape or whatever

you want to call it. And like, it really hit me that like, that the only emotion that isn't that the only emotion that isn't laced with at least some toxicity is gratitude. And, but we have to, you know, I constantly have to remind myself that like, you know, there are a lot of people involved in everything that we would call a quote-unquote a success. Yeah, I had an experience with my book The Ops Goes Away, which is my first book that really, really popped. And when I sort of really trace it back down to what that sort of breakthrough moment was, it was like the Amazon algorithm like accidentally discounted it, but didn't like change the royalty. It was this whole, it was like a lost leading discount that a billion dollar behemoth accidentally set my way, and that put in motion these other things, you're just sort of like, this has nothing to do with me, this is the universe doing its thing. And this time I'm the the beneficiary of it, but oftentimes

you're the victim of it, and you sort of can't, you can't take either of those two, two-closure identity. If that's so hard, I mean, especially, of course, especially now with like how virtual, you know, I mean, you know, is there more, is there a more toxic word in the English language than brand? language and then brand, you know, I mean like, like, but you know, it's hard to tell now where the avatar stops and you start. These are the philosophical questions of our time, you know, I mean, I would love, I would love Seneca to be on fucking Twitter. I, you might not be Seneca if you was forced to be on Twitter. That maybe that maybe the reason we had wisdom. I look what I loved about Papyland. I was curious if you agree. It's sort of I don't drink so I don't like not only do I not drink, even if I did drink, I have like the palate of a child. So

I couldn't appreciate you know good whiskey versus mediocre whiskey. There's an element, though, where it's like you're reading the book and you're like, Oh, craft is craft is craft. Like whether it's golf or writing or whiskey or fixed end cars, you either, you either get what craft is and you dedicate your life to it or you're, you're one of those people that doesn't understand why this is so important to you. First of all, craft is craft and and Zen is buts and seats. You know, I mean, like, Zen is not some magical thing. Zen is the ability to do something over and over and over until you're great at it, whether it's making whiskey or it's like John McFee's Birch Park canoemaker. You know, one,

even if you don't drink, you know, I mean, the Wall Street Journal review of this was basically like, it's barely a book about bourbon and that's right. I mean, it, you know, it's, it's more about, it's more about craft and it's more about why, it's about what we owe, like what do you owe your ancestors? And so like, what we owe, what do you owe your ancestors? And so like, a lot of people don't know this, but Julian, his grandfather started this really famous distillery and then his father lost it. And so Julian was left to pick up the pieces

and kept making whiskey, losing, he borrowed so much money to keep this thing alive starting in 1981, that this year they are finally paying the loans off. I mean, this is one of the most famous products and valuable brands in the world and 2021 is the first year in the black. And so when you talk to him, you realize that, you know, you hear always, you know, you see bulletin boards and shit where people follow your dreams, believe in your dreams, your

dreams will come true. And like, that is deeply toxic because it is the pursuit of the dream that is where character and identity is found. And that's certainly shown in Julian because I came to realize that he wasn't burning through all this money and then borrowing more and borrowing and borrowing and fighting because he believed that one day suddenly people would realize he made the best barbed in the world. It was because he owed something to his father and his

grandfather and was going to die honorably. I mean, whatever you're going to cliche, you want to use it. Go down with the ship. You know, be carried off on your shield. Like it was never about success. It was always about failing with honor. And that's when the book was born really in my head. When I sort of understood, okay, this is about inheritance. And this is about the journey and not the destination. Why do you hear that from people that go, oh, I want to write a book and I go, oh, the don't.

You know, it's, I have to, right? Like it's, it has to be, and that's where the cost of these dreams comes in. It has to be like almost a compulsion. It has to be coming from some profoundly deep place in your soul where you can't not do it. That's the only way you do anything that matters, I feel like. Well, I mean, it mean, I would say that's why there's so many false starts on Papyland, because I didn't have to tell a story about Bourbon, but ultimately I had to tell a story about family inheritance and home. You know, there's, I went to see Springsteen's Broadway show,

and he said this thing that was, I was like, holy fuck a shit. He was like, you can either be an ancestor to your children or a ghost. You know, an ancestor propels them to chase their own thing and to carry you around as armor and flag. And a ghost wraps their shit so tightly around your kids' ankles that it drags them down. And I just, you know, that was another one of those things that helped unlock it.

And so, you know, I think you're totally right. If you want to write a book, don't. Because ultimately, before it's gonna come out, it's gonna stay underground and build and build pressure till it demands to come out. That's a beautiful line from Springsteen, holy shit. I might have to steal that. That's amazing.

It's unbelievable. I mean, I was at the Broadway show in New York because I'm grossly overpaid sportswriter and so I just paid it, bought the ticket and I was sitting in there and I was with my friend Seth and we both really like Springsteen and that left me feeling hollow. Like if you ever heard when, blow through a pipe or someone like blow through a gun barrel, you know it's that sort of whistling hollow sound. That's how I felt inside when he said that. And I was just like, oh shit.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, those things coalesced in my subconscious until the book just demanded to come out like it came out. I love the subtitle of the book, the idea about things that last I did a book about that myself a while ago. I'm fascinated by work that stands at test of time. And I was reading, I read like these poems to my son before he goes to bed and I was reading Longfellas, a song of life. And he has that line, which I guess is a Latin saying about how life is short but art is long. There is an element, I think,

you may be the story, I would say philosophically, it's unhealthy, but it's also beautiful that creating great art or great whiskey or coming back when you're down 28 to 3 in the Superbowl, there's an element of, that's what the denial of death gets you, right? There's this idea that for this brief moment we can reach that kind of sublime place as long as, as long as it says, you know, leave a footprint in the sand of time, there's just that you can get there for like a fleeting second and do something and it endures. I think that's what motivates the craftsman. I mean, craft stands the test of time because it's a table and it either works or it doesn't.

Art is tricky. I mean, if you haven't read it, there is a fabulous essay in the current New Yorker about William Faulkner. And it is basically a book review about this book that was written about how Foughtner was so progressive and anti-racist in his novels and yet was so sort of paternal and racist in his personal life and how these two contradictions say something interesting.

I mean, even the most famous artist have to understand that art doesn't belong to the artist. You know, art doesn't belong to the artist. You know, art belongs to the world in which it is put. And there's no way to know how it will be received generation after generation, or how it will fall from favor and return, and how it will be, you know, beautiful and intellectual. And then in the next generation might be seen as shlock and merch and then might find its way back. And so like, you know, the lesson I think of the craftsman is that it's the craft that matters not the thing produced with the craft. Do you want to mean like it's, you know, when

you're in the ground, it's it's it's I mean, a god, it's such a cliche, but it I mean, it really is the journey, you know, I mean, like, and I don't, we all know that. I mean, living it is something different entirely, but it really is. I mean, when you talk about Julia Van Winkle making whiskey, you know, they put whiskey into barrels this year that he will never live to see be put in bottles. And so, you know, if that's the case, then what are you doing it for? And, I mean, you know, that's certainly propelled the book that I gave up. No, that's true.

There's a great line from Marcus Realis that I love where he says, you know, like people who are out for posthumous fame, forget that people in the future will be just as stupid as the people around now. And I think about that as a writer. It's great. Which is great, given the idea that this emperor 2000 years ago wrote a book that people still read, I just love the perfectness of that. But at the same time, I think it is the journey. But I think one of the things that writers miss, especially,

I had two sort of formative moments as a writer, Robert Green, who is my mentor, he said, a book has to be either extremely practical or extremely entertaining. And my editor said to me on my first book, I'm sort of describing what I wanted it to be. And she said, it's not what a book is, it's what a book does.

So at your point about craft is a table. Like a book has to fucking do a thing for someone and that's how it endures. And the whiskey, it's not some beautiful expression of whatever. It's also like, does it do the fucking job? That is 100%. What is the job? Well, that's what becomes interesting,

because the job is never what you think it's gonna be. I mean, like, you know, I've written a lot of stories for ESPN and the one I get stopped about most of all in airports, for instance, is one I wrote about my father and I was just trying to use my megaphone so that I could tell his story loudly enough so that some piece of him wouldn't die. And yet, like the number of people who said they were

sort of quietly, or like in a cold assrangement with their father, with their son and how reading that story made them realize that they were acting like it gets. Dude, I bet I've heard that from 10 people and like nobody's gonna remember this stuff really. I mean, I'm a sports writer, let's just be honest about it. And maybe they'll remember a couple of the pieces. But the fact that there are like 10 relationships

that were repaired, because there was some unintended side effect of this thing I did very selfishly. Like that just lets you know that like the world is going to decide the use of something. And no, you're exactly right. I mean, all of these things are out of our control. Yeah, it's...

All the best sports writing is really at the core, not about sports. No. It's about what it teaches us about what it means to be human, which is probably a great definition of art in general. Like, the painting is not the painting of squares. It's what is it make the person looking at it feel? Well, it is, yes, I mean, it's interesting in that, art always is a prism, not a object.

I mean, it's always a way of seeing either the world or yourself, you know, and you know, things move us in ways that we don't understand. Like, you know, that Van Gogh painting of the, that has a lot of orange in it that it's his room at all. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. I love that painting. I can't really tell you why except that it emotionally affects me and one day maybe I'll figure out why. I love that painting. I can't really tell you why except that it emotionally affects me and one day maybe I'll figure out why. And like, but it's not really important that I know why, you know?

Yeah, music is a hard one, but for, I remember when I was researching the book, you would find all these, these sort of great songwriters, whether it's Metallica or Max Martin, they were like, no, you put the song on, you take the demo, you put it in the car, you put the roof down, and you drive up PCH, and how does it, does it work? And you're like, oh, even music has a job, right? Music isn't just, you know, me doing what I want to do, it's, does it, does it heighten the experience in this way? That's the job. And I think it can be really easy to be self-indulgent, but you gotta, does it,

does it do the job? And if it does the job, boom. It doesn't really matter how you do the job. There's lots of ways, but it's gotta do the job. Well, I mean, and when art goes wrong, it is very often because the artist has forgotten that they are not doing something for themselves, but are in essence doing a job for someone else. They're building someone a table and the table better holds shit. Yeah, I forget who said it. They're like, the one thing all bad art has in common is that it's like a poem to the self or some, you know, that it's about you, not about the universal we or whatever.

That's really interesting. I mean, one of the things I think that art is also trying to do, I mean, it's a correlated that is try to see what pieces, what is a universal we? You know, I mean, like like what are, you know, my editor used to say all great stories need to be on some level about the human experience, about the condition of being alive on the planet now. And I find that,

I've always found that to be like a jumping off. When I'm talking about that in a story, it has a chance of success. And when I'm not, you know, it is very easy for things to slide into being merch. Yeah, like I think the one of the great, greatest novels of all time, certainly I think the best Southern novel is the movie goer and and the Walker Perseus. Just here you have a guy who has this weird malaise and experience and it's on the one hand totally about that, but on the other hand it becomes about the experience we all go through, I love Lance a lot, which is his Walker Percy's second person novel.

It's that if it's too on the nose, if it feels like it's about you, there's something strange about it. But if it's about someone else that you see yourself in, that's when it works. Well, and so Tiger Woods, if you're like're like Tiger Woods, you'd be like, no, but if you just show me Tiger Woods' warts and all, it, I go, I'm like Tiger Woods. Well, it's interesting that we, again, back to the thing we started at the very beginning, like I don't fundamentally believe that, you know,

somebody who is going about something anonymously cares less about their job or craft than Tiger Woods does. And so what you realize through doing these stories is that fundamentally, all human beings are the same, whether you're Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, whether you're Julian Van Winkle, whether you're me or you or anyone listening.

I mean, you know, wants and needs are primal and I mean, that's food change shit. And so like you do start to see that everyone is connected in that way. Totally. And to me, that's the most still a idea of all that people are people. We've always been people. We always will be people. And whether the emperor or the lowest part of the tone boy, you're struggling with the same things. And people were struggling with it 2,000 years ago. They were struggling with it 200 years ago, and they'll be struggling with it 20,000 years from now if we're still around.

Well, that's, you know, that the mark, the arc of the moral universe is long, is what the truest thing anyone's ever said. Because, you know, it's interesting that like, you know, if you read a history of the 30 years war and you replace every mention of the word printing press with the word the internet, it's a pretty good description of the planet today. And you just start to realize like, oh, we're idiots. We're just doing the same

shit over and over and over again. Yeah, you read John Barry's book, The Great Influenza. Yeah. Yeah. Literally 100 years have passed and nothing has changed. Not a single fan. Well, right. Thank you so much. I loved both books. You're one of my favorite writers. It was an honor to do this. And we'll have to do it again because I feel like we got another couple hours of stuff to kick around. I can do this forever, man. Anytime you want to. This is really interesting. All right, man. Thanks. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoke email, go to dailystoke.com.

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