The Daily Stoic - Finding Purpose In An Abandoned Ghost Town | Brent Underwood

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Ryan talks with American entrepreneur and ghost town miner Brent Underwood. They discuss identifying and following your path, the history of Cerro Gordo, Brent’s latest book Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley, and more. Brent Underwood is the owner of Cerro Gordo, an original boomtown silver mine, established in 1865. Brent currently lives on a mountain above Death Valley with no running water, seven cats, six goats, and at least one ghost.Get a limited edition, signed copy of Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley from The Painted Porch. Youtube: @GhostTownLivingIG: @BrentWUnderwood @cerro.gordo.ca✉️ 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.

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Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I went to the Spurs game in Austin on Sunday. I guess it's the I-35 series. The last two years, they played here in Austin two games. I missed one of them. I got to go to the other one. It was awesome. And it's funny because I talk, I tell a story in the new book. R.C. Buford is the CEO of the team, was nice enough to give us some tickets, and he's actually come to the book launch, like the philosophy dinners that

we did for the Courage book and the Discipline book. He's been a great supporter of my work. And it's funny, I tell the story in the Justice book, which is coming out in June, and you can pre-order that at dailystoic.com slash justice, I believe, or anywhere you get your books and I'll talk about the bonuses later. But anyways, I tell this story in the book about the Spurs coaching tree. Basically the Spurs organization has maybe

the most impressive coaching tree in all of sports. Coach Greg Popovich being, essentially running a coaches clinic there. And I've just fallen in love with that team and seen what the organization has built and done. And the culture of not just wanting to win and be successful there in San Antonio, but wanting the people that are part of it to go on and do things.

And basically, I think something like half the coaches in the NBA have some affiliation with the Spurs at this point. I remember R.C. was telling me one time, like he was bragging even about what their social media employees and salespeople have gone on to do. It's just an amazing organization. And so I was thinking about that when I was recording this interview because it's about

someone who's in my coaching tree. I tell the story at the beginning of the episode so you'll hear it but Brent Underwood started as my intern more than a decade ago and he's gone on to be this hugely successful YouTuber. He owns a town at 8,000 feet, about three hours from Los Angeles called Cerro Gordo. If you've ever followed the YouTube channel, Ghost Town Living, you've seen it. You've probably seen his super viral clips.

He's got an incredible press coverage, but it's a YouTube channel we watch as a family. It's my oldest. Clark is obsessed with it. And I've been reading Brent's new book, Ghost Town Living, Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams on the Edge of Death Valley. And I've been actually reading the book

the last couple of nights. Brent was at the Painted Porch on Tuesday. He did a book signing an event. I'll bring you that episode later. But he signed a copy for my son, Clark. It said, Clark, keep exploring. See ya at Cerro Gordo. And it's an awesome book.

We've been reading it. It's really a great book. It's in that genre of like, you know, desert solitaire, wilds by Cheryl Strayed kind of books. And I think you're really gonna like it. If you're not following Ghost Town Living on Instagram or YouTube, you're missing out. Brent Underwood is, I think, you is, I think he's gonna go on

to have an awesome and really cool career. And he's been integral to bringing you the Daily Stoic. This podcast would not exist without Brent. The YouTube videos would not exist without Brent. The email list would not exist without Brent. He quickly outgrew the intern role and has become my partner in building this business as well as Brass Check, my marketing company.

So I'm really excited to bring you this conversation with the one and only Brent Underwood, ghost town proprietor, carpenter, builder, miner, adventurer, explorer, and all around great dude. Oh, and I meant to say Brent actually signed 1000 copies at the painted porch and he numbered each one. So these are signed numbered first editions of Ghost Town Living, Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley. I'll

link to that in today's show notes. If you're going to get a copy is a great audiobook which you recorded 900 feet underground in one of the mines, which is pretty cool. But if you want a physical copy, and you should get one because it looks beautiful, it's a great book. You can grab that from the painted porch, and I'll link to that in today's show notes.

Check it out. I thought we should start at the beginning, which is how we came to meet each other. You applied to be my intern. Yes. Probably what? 2012 maybe 2011. I think it would have been 2011 because trust me on mine hadn't come out yet.

It. Yeah. I think it was 2011. I think I'm not yet. The first book I worked on was trust me on mine. Yes. 11, 13 years ago. Yes.

It's crazy. It does seem crazy. 13 years ago. Yes. It's crazy. It does seem crazy. And I think it's funny because like, like mostly internships don't go anywhere. Like on both sides, like they're a dead end for the intern.

And then like most of the time, like when you hire interns, it's like you're doing your friend's kid a favor and it just doesn't work out. Like it goes nowhere. But I feel like it worked out a little bit for you. I'd say very well. You know, sitting here now, book on the way. It's been crazy.

It's been a wild journey. And I say in the back of the book, I'm very appreciative of all your guidance. Oh, am I in the acknowledgments? You're in the acknowledgments. Yeah, you gotta check it out. That's like the weirdest part to write. Like I get it that that one at Harvard president

who was accused of plagiarism, she like partly she like plagiarized the acknowledgements, but I get it. It's so cringe to do the acknowledgements on something. She was probably like, that's good. I'll just do that. And I don't think it counts. Like I don't think, like the scandal aside,

I feel like you can't, it's like you can't plagiarize like a greeting card. Also, can you like, can you edit acknowledgements as like your feelings towards people change? Does that work? Okay, so I'm doing the 10, I'm doing the 10 year anniversary of Obstacle and it's this tension between

leaving stuff as it was like pure in that moment, like for the book itself, and then also the acknowledgements. Because I was grateful to that person in that moment, and I remain grateful, but my view of them has changed. So it's like my appreciation for what they did for me is still there. The flowery language with which I describe them

is demonstrably untrue subsequently. Well, I wonder too, I imagine there's too little sense that you want to acknowledge that have helped the book significantly, potentially more than the people that were included initially. You know, I actually didn't think about that. And can you add in people to the acknowledgment? I think you can definitely add people

into the acknowledgments. But yeah, that's great. Like the acknowledgments are dated to everyone who's helped you with the project up until like this is the launch day for your book, right? So like the acknowledgments, first off, you have to finish writing them. You can do it late in the process, but like at some point the book is locked and other stuff happens. But that it the acknowledgments are are true up until that exact point and no point further, even though, yeah, if I don't know if some

some person gets behind the book and makes it a huge hit, they would be integral to its success, but you would not write like if it becomes a movie, do you think like the movie producer, you know, I'm saying to like making him do a movie or whatever you do, actually, I was talking to Michael Dell. And I asked him if he recorded his audio book. And he was like, I actually did. I just he's like, I wanted to do Michael Dell, and I asked him if he recorded his audiobook. And he was like, I actually did. I just he's like, I wanted to do it. And he's like, there's this

funny story where he was finished. And then he started to record the acknowledgments. And the guy was like, we don't record acknowledgments and audiobooks. And he was like, on this book, we do. When I did? Yeah. Well, he was like, he was like, he was like, I feel so grateful to the people, like, I'm not not going to thank him in this. And I thought back, I feel so grateful to the people. Like, I'm not not gonna thank them in this. And I thought back, I don't know if I've recorded the acknowledgments of all of my books. Yeah, I didn't get clear instructions because I also recorded my book down in the mine,

which we can get into. So there was no producer on the line. I was kind of just winging it. I recorded mine, I thought they were supposed to. And by down in the mine, you mean how many feet below earth? 900 feet underground in the former largest silver mine in California. That's insane. But yeah, so I think I've started doing it

because it was true. It's like, why not take the extra effort? I guess maybe I thought before, like I already wrote it down, it's in the book. It's a little weird to do it. And then maybe I was like, what if I mispronounce someone's name? Or then if I'm reading it and I skip someone as a weird, maybe I was like, what if I mispronounce someone's name? Or then if I'm reading it and I skip someone,

maybe I was self-conscious about it. But I do remember I thanked my dog by her nickname in one of my books, like maybe obstacle. And like several years later, like a translator for some relatively obscure language emailed me and they were like, I'm currently translating, I'm doing your book for the country of Uzbekistan

or something and I need to know what the name McCuppinstuff means. Or I need to know what the word McCuppinstuff means. And I was like, yeah. That's just what we sometimes call my dog. That's funny. No, but it feels like, I mean, that feels like an eternity ago,

both like in terms of actual life and then like, all of this story is like 10% of 30% of that story. Like. Since you and I met. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were both living in New York. We're, no, was I?

I think I was living in New Orleans. You were in New York, you had a little apartment. I remember I got your couch. You remember like you gave me like your couch. This was later, but I think I hired you when I was living in New Orleans. Yeah, you did, you did. I was still, cause I moved there after the book came out.

That's true. Yeah, I do remember you showed up in a, like a- Man with a van. A van and took, yeah, all my furniture when I moved back here. And then you came here and then didn't leave. Right. So yeah, that was funny. Do you like, why, do you remember why you applied?

Like, do you remember what you were trying to do? Yeah, cause I went to school for finance. So I just graduated from Columbia with a master's in real estate development. So I thought I wanted to do real estate development. I got a job at a bank and it just sucked. It was kind of like one of those things where I went to dinner outside of Chicago. And I remember sitting at the dinner and like everywhere around me was five years older. They're all just very really miserable. It's one of those things where you very much can see your future in front of you. So I quit, traveled, came

back. My only goal was to like not work at a bank. And so I remember like at the time I was like, well not just that, but also like be more creative in my work. And so the posting was on Twitter, I believe. And so it was on Twitter. And so I remember I was following you and somebody that you knew.

And so like I was reading that, applied. And then I remember at the time like you were the young whiz kid, right? Because you were like 22, 23, and he was like, he's the director of marketing in American firm. I was like, damn, that guy's pretty smart. And so I figured it was a great opportunity

to learn a bunch. I was living, to set the stage more, I was living deep in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy in a four-bedroom apartment I was sharing with five people. So I was paying like $400 a month to basically live where I was. I thought it was a, didn't you turn it into a hostel or something?

Yeah, yeah, eventually it was just turn the extra rooms, put bunk beds in, turn it into a hostel to like save money basically. And so that was paying my rent. That's kind of how I was existing in New York. And that's how I was able to work essentially for like very little money, you know, early on. And I think that like, when I think back of,

I really thought it was exciting kind of the storytelling you guys were doing around press. Cause the idea was last time I was doing radio press, I was like, do interesting things that get enough attention to bring a lot of press towards it. And I remember that just being very exciting. And I remember also on the time I was spending a lot of time on Reddit cause I was like sitting in my apartment. I remember like, I understood Reddit and maybe a way that like you guys did it at the time.

I remember that was kind of like a foot in the door. I was like, oh, I'll show you guys how to like utilize this tool in a little bit better way. Yeah, it's interesting though. You mentioned that dinner where you like see someone you don't want to be. That's like a very powerful experience. I had one of those, I was at this conference

in New York city that I'd come to a couple of years in a row and I was in marketing and most marketing people would like dress well, right? It's like a client business. And it's like, I actually felt like I did marketing and I feel like these people like had meetings where they just like sold people on stuff

that they couldn't actually deliver. And so I remember I'm going to this conference and I'm sort of the only one not in a suit or the only one not dressed nice. And I worked in American Apparel. So I was just wearing American Apparel clothes. And then I came back the next year, it was the same thing. And I remember maybe the third year I sort of went,

if I keep coming here, I'm going to end up in a suit. Meaning like I would get poached and work at one of these. I would just, you can't work in a scene or an industry and be like an outlier for very long. It eventually wears you down and you become, there's an epic fetus thing about how like if you put two lumps of charcoal next to each other, one of them is lit and the other is not.

The unlit one will either extinguish the lit one or the lit one will lightly unlit one will either extinguish the lit one or the lit one will lightly unlit one. And so you'll either get destroyed or you'll be absorbed. And you sort of sense that and then you either pretend you didn't sense it and let it happen or you have to blow up your life. Yeah, I think for me it was like, it was very close. I was in like Gurney, Illinois, which is outside of Chicago.

I remember the bank even was like, oh, you're gonna go to Chicago. So they're just lying to me. I wasn't going to Chicago. I was going to like to some suburb. You were flying to Chicago. I was flying to Chicago. I was going to Gurney to do due diligence consulting,

which is like digging through boxes of papers. And like everybody posed this as the job to get in school, right? Cause I was going to school, I was paying a lot of money. And then at that table, we were at one of those outliers in a strip mall. It must've been like a Chili's or something similar to that. And everybody just was waiting for their two

for all the margaritas. And I was like, no, this is it. When I get back to New York, I'm never doing this ever again. And that was kind of like my promise to myself. And pretty shortly thereafter, started working with you in the marketing stuff. And then- Did you have a bunch of debt though?

Still paying for it, yeah. Still, I mean, literally to this day, I still have a student loan debt. And so it was, I mean, it costs like a hundred grand to go to Columbia for the time. And I didn't have any scholarships or my parents weren't helping me. So I just got student loans.

And then it was a difficult decision to make. I remember going back, I started first writing articles for like a credit card.com or something for like $5. Just things you could freelance for. Anything I could do that I could do for my house just to not go back into that bank. And here we are. Isn't it kind of crazy though?

Okay, so like obviously spending all the money you have in the world to buy a ghost town is insane. Sure. Reckless, ridiculous, totally irresponsible. You could go down the list of all the things. But at 18 years old, taking on as much debt as a house, by the way, debt that can never be discharged, right?

For an industry that you know nothing about, like to get it, to potentially get a job in an industry you know nothing about, that by the way is shrinking, about like to get it to potentially get a job in an industry, you know, nothing about that by the way is shrinking or most people are wildly unhappy and that is not only considered to be sane. It's encouraged. It's it's it's expected. And in some cases, like backed by the security of the government. Yeah. And it was like for me growing up, both my parents were teachers.

So it was almost prescribed like, you will go to graduate school. It's just like, what are you going to choose? And it's like, doctor, lawyer, banker. And I was like, oh, banker sounds good. And like you are, you're supposed to choose on this premise that you've made up in your mind that you've been, I like,

I would see Gordon Gekko on a movie. I was like, that looks cool. I was like, it's not cool. And so, you know. You don't know he's actually the villain. Yeah, that's not cool at all. Yeah, that actually he's way cooler and better than most of the people in the thing,

that's actually boring. And eventually once you get into the trap, it's, I had to live with five other people deep in Brooklyn, you know, to not work at the bank. So it's kind of like that path gets set by a pretty innocent decision when you're young and some people will never get out of that path. It's like set for life basically.

Well, but it feel then when you wanna do something big or crazy, they're like, that's big and crazy, you can't do that. And you don't realize you've already done something big and crazy. I think where I got lucky dropping out of college was not obviously all the opportunities that came along with it were great and grateful for them.

But it's it's that I blew up my life and nothing bad happened was like actually the most important thing. So then, you know, five years later, whatever, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, walking away from running marketing at a publicly traded company, it didn't seem that great. Like I'd done that before. I knew the rhythms of like, you're gonna tell people and they're gonna be like, what? And it's gonna seem scary.

And you know, but you've done it. It's like when you've started a company and starting another company, even if that one fails, you've done the thing before. And so you're not doing it for the first time. I think as you do more of those things too, you surround yourself with people that do those types of things.

Yes. And so your surroundings change. Like before everybody in my surroundings was going to graduate school. Yes. And then after I started doing something different, I started meeting more people. So it's a little bit more comforting to do it

the second or third time or fourth time. That's true. You find you, you self-select towards people that do even crazier things. And then someone fall out of a chair. You all right? Did you fall out of a chair? You meet people who have done even crazier things

and who you're like, well, I'm not doing anything that risky, you know? Like it makes what you're doing actually seem like pretty tame or conservative. And then you're like, oh, like I, and then also you just get older and you have more experience in your understanding of like, what is like a hard left turn changes.

You're like, okay, you're taking a sabbatical? That's not that crazy, you know, or whatever. Totally, yeah. Yeah, it's weird too because that was also kind of early on sort of remote work and living where you want and making like that. I didn't remember a lot of people doing stuff like that. Yeah. Almost nobody. I remember like even to this day from my graduating class, I don't know anybody that really works in that type of capacity. Like the majority of my friends,

I grew up in like suburban Tampa. And so it's like most of them are selling insurance, you know, they're pretty standard kind of blue chip type of jobs that they would get into. But eventually like there is some satisfaction in being the person who's not doing that within your group too. You know, like going back home and being like, wow. You know, like, I don't know.

Something like that. It's kind of. Do you, cause I think you are a good example. Like I don't remember paying you like anything. I had the first check actually still. I don't remember paying you anything. I have the first check actually still. It was $100 for a month. So I have a $100 check signed by Ryan Holiday. I do, and I do, I actually, okay,

I actually do remember this because I think I'd never done any of that. I never had my own company before. And I remember the checks were connected to the wrong bank account, which didn't have any money in it. And I think they subsequently bounced. Not that I didn't have $100, but I was so green myself.

I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. So I was figuring it all out. But the point is working for someone for free or taking an apprenticeship or just taking a flyer and being like, I just want to be in the scene where this stuff is happening. It, it obviously is crazy and it usually doesn't work out, but it is also one of the best ways to figure out how to do stuff and build like a career and a portfolio and to actually like do stuff. Yeah, I mean, you have to be around that scene, you know, no matter what that scene's gonna be.

And I think like, Steven Prespo talks about a lot, Robert Green obviously talks about it a lot. And so for me, I didn't know exactly what the scene was that I was getting into, but pretty early on, I remember us going to some author conferences and meeting like, Michael, maybe like Michael Ellsberg, or you know, some type of author. Oh, this is like-

Was that my book launch? An interesting crew, yeah, your book launch in New York. And so thinking like, oh, these people are confirmation that there is a different type of life out there, you know? And also it was interesting because for me, I don't even know if I told you this. So two pretty important moments. When I first moved to New York City,

when I got my first job, my best friend in the world gave me the 48 laws of power. And he's like, you're living in New York now, like you need this book. And this is 2011. And I was like, all right, I need this book. I remember reading. I was like, wow, that's good. And then after I quit the banking, I went to travel for six months. And my other best friend from growing up gave me a pirated copy of the four hour work week. I'm like limewire. And I was like, oh, like there's another way to live here. Like you can, you

know, whether the methods are still applicable today, like the mentality behind it is really cool. And then within six months, I was working with Robert and with Tim and I was like, whoa, like full circle moment. Now to think that like Robert's on the front cover of the book that I wrote. That's pretty cool. Yeah. No, the important thing is you're trying to sort of break out in a career or a life is there's a Lyndon Johnson said you have to be you have to become close to the people at the center of things like you have to you have to meet the people that are doing the thing not necessarily that you want to do like I don't think I knew I I think it took quite a while for me to give myself permission to want to be a writer, but I loved books and I loved writing.

And so I just wanted to be like close to writers or authors or the industry. And so I was sort of drawn towards that. And then marketing was the thing that they knew the least about, that I could teach myself the fastest, and then was also like the most valuable currency in that world.

And so it's like, if you wanna be a record producer or you wanna be, like you're drawn towards music, like you gotta get yourself a job, like sweeping floors at a record studio or a production facility because you don't even realize the jobs you don't know exist. You're like, oh wait, there's a person that just does that? That's awesome. And then maybe you meet that person and they're like, let me show you how to do it. You just want to be like in the room where it's happening and then you can refine from there.

But if you're not, if you're just on the outside, you're just making stuff up, you're guessing, it's gotta start there. Well, what I think is interesting is like, not just getting into the room, because a lot of people can get into the room, but it's like then leaving the room to do your own thing. Meaning like how many people that want to become musicians

stay A&Rs for their whole life, because they never can, like for you, you could have stayed Robert's assistant forever, or you could have done these things. So I think the first step is getting in the room, but then it's like, what are you taking away from that? And how are you kind of creating your own path from that? That's true, but I mean, maybe you actually do love A&R

and that's your thing. Yeah, no, totally. And you just didn't, you love music, but maybe actually you're not cut out to be a musician or you're afraid of being, there could be all these things that are why you, that's not for you, but like, you just start by like, what you don't do is go get as far from the room as possible,

which is get into a different room that is a classroom. No, I'm still agreeing with you. I think like first step is it's very hard to get in the room. And then I think what's interesting is like, then leaving the room, so for instance, like you and Robert doing your own thing or even like Sarah Elgordo in a way. That was like learning everything I could about marketing,

having this background in hospitality and then trying to combine them as Robert would say into like your life's task or whatever it would be. So how can you combine your own skills into a unique way? Well, the way to think, yeah, it's like you're accumulating skills and experiences and relationships for that moment where you get tapped on the shoulder or you

catch something out of the corner of your eye and you're like, that's my thing, or that could be really cool. And now you're actually qualified to do something with that thing. Yeah, I was talking to Cal Newport in here the other day, and we were talking about how like, you want to get in the room. And then the first step is like people, first off, people don't put themselves out about how like, do you wanna get in the room? And then the first step is like people, first off people don't put themselves out there enough, take the risk to get in the room.

Then they get in the room and they're kind of lazy or entitled or they're crazy or weird or they don't work hard, you know, all those things. So you get tossed out of the room. Then there's this other thing where like, they're basically like, I don't wanna say too good in the room, but it's more like they're not showing the promise required or the initiative to be too good for the room.

What I mean is it was very clear very early that you were not gonna be my intern for very long and that you have to promote that person up or give them more responsibility or you lose them. And that's like, that's a really critical part of that process. Like you have to show, like I think people think mentorship is this thing that you like humbly submit to,

which it is, but it's also like, you're kind of, it's more like you're this bit of energy and there's like heat seeking around, like, you know, like, like the, Sheryl Sandberg has a quote about like, don't like get a mentor and you'll do well. It's like, do well and a mentor will find you. You have to show that like, oh, this person has promise

compared to all like the record studio that we're talking about, it's like they have 50 interns, 49 of them, like nothing, they're not going anywhere and they're just doing some small tour of duty. And then one of them is like, this kid is worth investing in. Yeah. Well, something I've been thinking about a lot is like how, when you said like how do you corner your eye, you see your thing, that's going to become your thing. Like how do you identify that? Cause I remember you and I had this specific car ride,

you might not remember this, I do though. Like we were driving back from San Antonio, a Spurs game. And we were like, oh, you're like very good at things. This was probably six years ago, seven years ago. And you're like, well, what's your thing? And you were kind of like, you have a lot of skills, you've done a lot of different things, but like, what is it gonna be?

Like, where are you gonna apply all of these skills basically in a way? And then probably like a year and a half later, Sarah Elgorto came up. And so like, I kind of noticed that. I don't know that it was necessarily directed based upon that conversation, but like something that I think that people are probably

listening to, they're like, they're in that room, you know, they have the skills. And so like, they're wondering, I get asked this a lot, like, how did I find this passion? How did I dive everything into there? So I'm wondering what you think of like, how you identify those and how do you know like, when that's the thing to make the jump into?

You know what I mean? Yeah, you just sort of know like I how did I know that? It was my time to write a book and that that was my first book I don't know but I really knew you know, like I really knew I I had I had other book offers I had other book ideas, but then I'd read this I'd'd read this book by Upton Sinclair called The Brass Check and it was like just a different, it was just this unique book that was, I was like, oh, he's doing like an expose of the media of how the system works.

And I was like, I have a similar experience of this other world. Like I could do a book like that. And then I remember looking going like, has someone else done this? Like, does that exist? Because sometimes you have ideas and you realize like, oh, it's already been done or there's all these reasons.

But it's when you have that flutter of excitement or connection and then you look around and you go, oh, this is like open territory. And then you just go, I think this is my thing. And you ask around and you go, is this crazy? Is this stupid? And hopefully you've cultivated at this point, people who actually know,

not like kids who went to high school with, but other people who are further along in that path. And they go, that's actually a good idea, you know? And so, yeah, I think for me, it was this sense later that I was always gonna be a writer, but I needed what my first book was. That makes sense. Yeah, I think for me, I was always like,

I've always had an interest in hospitality and buildings, I went to school for real estate. And I tried to go to architecture school, it didn't work out, I had to drop out, it's too hard. And so like, with Cerro Gordo, it was kind of a similar thing. You know, like I had this idea, this background in marketing and storytelling. And so like this abandoned mining town in the West

that like kind of triggered those childhood memories of, you know, my grandfather watching guns smoke and all this. Imagine like hospitality plus storytelling equals. But it's weird, I don't remember you mentioning any of that. Like I don't remember you mentioning the Western stuff. I don't remember you mentioning like doing dangerous, terrifying things. Like in retrospect, you're clearly, I think,

a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Sure, of course. And you're like building stuff with your hand. There were all these things that must have, I mean, I'm not saying you made them up, but they must have been like somewhat latent inside you and they were unlocked once you found yourself in this world.

Yeah, I think that like a lot of it was early childhood stuff like being in rural Florida, like building stuff, building sand castles and all this type of stuff and like wearing boots all the time. And then like being pushed into that path like we were talking about before, becoming a banker, you know, having the life

of New York City. And then I think that this is kind of like a, oh, that's cool. You know, this is an exciting thing that I could go down. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers?

Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil.

George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wandery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wandery app. I'm Peter Frankopern. And I'm Afro-Hersch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time,

somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter?

I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Well, Robert Green talks about that because people ask, how do I like find my passion or my life's task? And I think his answer is a really good one, which is that you don't find it. You don't find it. You already found it.

And then you covered it up. And you turned away from it because it was irresponsible or weird or uncertain or dangerous or whatever. And it's and so he's saying it's really about going back to your childhood and this thing that lit you up. And you have a story in the book, which I remember when you told me for the first time, you were scuba diving with your grandfather or your father or someone. My neighbor up in New York. Yeah, you were scuba diving and you discovered like an anchor from a ship from a naval battle in 1812. Yeah, the war.

Yeah, and it goes in this museum. But you so you you had this like life changing incredible moment. Like if that was the only thing someone did in their life, that would be a pretty cool accomplishment. They're just like an insurance salesman who once found like a rare naval anchor, right? artifact that's in a museum, that'd be pretty cool. And you had that at like 12 years old, and then you were just like, but obviously this can't be my life.

Yeah, you can't make a living from it, but now like I do make a living adventuring, so that's pretty- And finding stuff deep underground. And finding stuff deep underground. So it's pretty amazing. So yeah, so I think it's important that people understand, like you, chances are you already found it

Yeah, already know what it is. You've been denying it or dismissing it and you have to like what was that thing that you just You were obsessed with that you turned away from and and really I think in the development of your brain as I understand We'd like so, you know kids like they have all these They know all these facts about dinosaurs and tractors and whatever. Well, as you get a little bit older, like as you leave being a toddler, your brain has this process where it forgets a bunch of stuff. Like, so your, your mind had this ability to latch onto something that was interested, interesting to you and learn everything you can about it. And then as you got, as you started to develop your brain's like, well, we can't keep all this stuff.

And so you discard it. It's like, even in the movie Inside Out, there's this like giant graveyard of like memories and facts, like her imaginary friend is in there, all this stuff. You just, you just throw it all out to become like regular. And so I think really like finding that like life's task is more in kind of an unearthing or an inward exploration as opposed to just like,

oh, I'm gonna audit a bunch of classes in my college and try to find something. Yeah, and I also think eventually like, you kind of decide on your purpose, I think in some way. It's like, it's not gonna decide you eventually like at Cerro Gordo, it was like, oh, this is good enough. But like, I mean, Mark Manson talks a little bit like comfort and commitment, you know? And so it's kind of like, eventually you have to commit to like something. What are you going to do? Are there any pain from thing to thing to

thing? I think early on, it's easy to like, or it's good to kind of pick up a lot of different skills here and there. I think that like eventually at Cerro Gordo, I was like, you know what? This is it. This is like what I would like to spend my life on. And for me, there was like, like almost a deep breath out, cause it wasn't what's the next project, what's the next project, what's the next project, you know? It's like, oh, this is the project. And I think that like, I removed a lot of mental energy

of trying to think of what's next, what's next, what's next. But don't you think like at some point, you could have got a better paying job than working for me or like, I see, I could see you having jumped ship earlier and it going very differently for you. Not that I'm responsible for it but I just mean like like I think what can happen is like you get this opportunity someone gets this opportunity and they're going but like for me I was working

for Robert Greene I was working at American Apparel, I wrote this article about socialism. I had a chance to write a book about that when I was like 22. Right. But the decision to not do that, to stay in the kind of development phase and to keep learning, and the financial hit that went with that, and the ego hit with that,

I wouldn't be here if I had taken the leap then. Totally. So what made you take the leap when you did then? I mean, I had put in a lot more time. I felt like I was more ready. And then also life had kind of chosen for me because like I'd come to the end of that road. Instead of jumping early,

I let it kind of take it as far as it was gonna go. Yeah, I think although something that you did that a lot of people have this myth that they like need to fully jump into the passion and cut all ties, you know, like burn the boats, but like you still maintained your job for a while or being an author. I still, you know, maintain a job while doing Cerro Gordo. So I think that like a lot of times people write me now after Cerro Gordo, they're like, oh, I quit my job and I bought a castle. I'm like, no, like, please God, no. I still maintain like a job that like I enjoy that

keeps me mentally stimulated. There is a lifeline. It's not that all the chips are pushed into one thing. No, no, that's totally true. You can experiment and build up a viable alternative and you should build up the viable alternative with as much time and space and, what's that? OPM, other people's money. You wanna do as much as OPM, other people's money.

You want to do as much as you can with other people's money. Totally. And just at least like it buys you the freedom to experiment a little bit more, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just like, you worked for me for a long, like, so if we met in 2011 and when did you buy Cerro Gordo? 2020, nine years later.

Yeah. Nine years. And so it? 2020, nine years later. Yeah. Nine years. And so it was like nine years of learning, understanding, seeing opportunities. There was other crazy properties that came up in that past time. There was like lighthouses. I really was obsessed with this lighthouse for a while.

Yeah, you told me once we were gonna like buy a ranch and turn it into a place for like bachelor parties or something. Yeah, I thought that. I still think it's a great idea. And so, and there was like the hotel in upstate New York that I was looking at. So there was a lot and none of them were like

fully grabbing me and holding me. And so I think there was, I just think that like, there wasn't anything that I could do there and maybe that nobody else could. And I think that the storytelling around Cerro Gordo was something that like, I felt like I could do pretty good. I understood at that point, this channel was going, you know, a lot of stuff that I've been learning

at Daily Stoke is happening. And so it felt like, oh, like this could be applied to ghost town, which has inherently more interest than let's say a ranch for bachelor parties outside of Austin. And so it seemed like there was a whole nother level there that like, maybe I could contribute that I couldn't contribute anywhere else. That's an interesting point. Cause yeah, I guess I would have worked on enough projects and platforms and people's stuff, and probably given them advice that could have worked that they didn't listen to so many times,

that by the time sort of the idea for the Daily Stoke book, but then an email list and all this other stuff, I was like, I think I was this other stuff. I was like, I think I was at a place where I was like, I was tired of doing it for other people or watching other people not do it. Then I was just like, all right, this is going to be my thing. Instead of, instead of being the consultant, I'm going to be the creator. And so yeah, you kind of, but I think about all the lessons that I get, I've learned with other people's money or other people's projects that allowed me to start so far ahead when I was launching the daily.

So there's any number of mistakes that I could have made that would have sunk it before it even started that because I'd done it on a small scale, all these other times, it was different. I think in this case, like there wasn't another guy out there rebuilding a ghost town that I could not honor necessarily. So it had to be a little bit of a leap of faith,

a big leap of faith, but I knew that like, I do have a skillset. And so like, if there's qualified people, like I have a degree in real estate, I have a background in storytelling, you know what I'm saying? No, I mean, like you'd started the Daily Stoke YouTube channel and you'd built the Daily Stoke social account.

You had built other things for other people. So then when you you were not like, how do you do this? Totally. You know, you you had you had done that. And and actually, like, I mean, now it's huge, but you've done it at a big scale. Right. So you've learned, like, lessons that you don't learn until way on. And you're like, for me, you know, I'd been on so many calls with publishers that when I did my first book, I knew it was bullshit and I knew what wasn't.

I knew what to ask for. I knew what didn't work, you know? And so I was just starting with a store of knowledge that allowed me to make my stuff a success faster and then also avoid pitfalls. Yeah. So, okay, so you, I remember, so it was almost exactly four years ago.

Then moved to Cerro Gordo, yeah. Well, yeah, I called you, cause it was like everyone was just like in lockdown. I remember I was sitting on my porch and you were like, I think I'm gonna make a run for it. And I was like, what? I think I'm gonna make a run for Zargarra. But actually I'm forgetting. First, I remember, this is a couple years before,

I remember it was kind of late and I was upstairs working in my office at my ranch and you were like, hey, I'm gonna buy this ghost, I think I'm about to buy this ghost town, are you in? Do you remember what I said? I think you said there's a bunch of ghost towns for sale. This isn't a good idea or something to that effect. Well, I think I remember sending you a link

to a lot of different ghost towns for sale. That what? No, what I remember. Yeah. I, I, I, because yeah, every couple of years, there's like a popular viral article about like ghost town for sale. It's like a thing real estate agents know. But I remember I sent you that Randy Jackson meme where he goes, that's going to be a no from me dog.

That's my answer. I was like, it was like hard pass. Seems like a terrible idea. I do. I was like already deep. Like I probably hadn't told you that point. I would already like wired over earnest money. I don't really like wired $50,000 over to the real estate agent.

And I was just desperately trying to like get the rest of the money together because I didn't have it. And so I think though, like eventually some other mutual friends of ours got involved and then I think you took a second look at it and then that all kind of worked out. No, no, I did invest. I do remember asking for somewhat preferential terms because I also knew what it was going to cost. I think I invested for two reasons. One, I did ultimately think if anyone could do it, you could do it. But I also knew what it would cost me

in terms of like phone calls and like, yeah, exactly. I might as well participate. Like the opportunity cost of this is already enormous for me because it's gonna take your eye off the ball from all the other stuff that we do together. But you paid me back because even though you bought a fucking ghost town with money you didn't have,

requiring skills you didn't have, when I was like, hey guys, I think I'm gonna open a bookstore. You're like, terrible guys, I think I'm going to open a bookstore. You were like, terrible idea, definitely going to fail. Don't do it. I was, yeah. I remember like physical locations are terrible. You're going to lose your shirt.

Don't do it. Yeah, you were like, you were very adamant and spent, like you gave me a lot, like a very long argument about how miserable it would make me. I think I called it like, it's going to be a prison of your own making. I'll take this. You're making your own prison. It's going to be a, I always used to describe like, I had the hostiles of like a beautiful prison. You're going to make it really pretty, but you're always going to be stuck there. But look at us now. Who would have thought?

I do. That is an interesting thing. So, you you know you get advice from people and they mean well But you quickly realize they have no idea what the fuck they're talking about like you and I were standing in the ghost town with another person we've worked with before and I was sort of I was like this is what I'm gonna do. I'm excited I was like pitching it I was trying to get both of you involved and And he goes the build out of this thing, at least 500 grand, you know? And I go, oh man, I remember I went home and I was like so down about it,

I was talking to Samantha, I was like, we can't spend that, that's crazy. And she was like, why don't you like get a bid? Like she was like, why don't we think about what we actually wanna do and then get a bid for that. And it was like $40,000. Like not half a million dollars, but less than 10% of that. Because people are thinking when people are giving you advice, they're usually thinking, not is it a bad idea generally, but like, is it a bad idea for them? So like, even when I was like, Ghost Town,

like, I don't want to live in a Ghost Town. I have kids and a life, and I like stability and normalcy. You have a very different lifestyle and approach than me. You know, I don't have normalcy or stability. Not at all. You are already living in, you are already living in, I don't want to say filth, but you are already living in, you were already living in, in, in, I don't want to say filth, but you were, you were, you were already living in,

you already lived, I think you've said this before, that you are a slumlord to yourself. Yeah, I never, I don't like to spend money. Yeah. So it's like you, you were already not, you were already not like living easily. So like for me, I'm thinking, here I am, here's what it would be. And you were so much closer to that thing.

So, but the point is like if I had listened to that advice, it would have deterred me from doing it, but the advice was not what I was going to do. And I remember one of the things I did as I went and I was like, well, what did these say? Like, and when I looked online, it was like other people were like, oh yeah, it costs $500,000 to a million dollars to start a bookstore.

And I thought, well, I'm not, that's crazy. You know, I don't want to do that. And I can't do that. And so I was like, but what do they say? I was like, I currently have an e-commerce, uh, like media business. Um, and I know what that costs to start, which was nothing because I bootstrapped it for nothing. And I was like, what do those same outlets say it costs to do that? Like a million dollars. Yeah, it was like $250,000. And I was like, Oh, okay. So these numbers are nonsense.

You know, and so one of the things that you can get sort of intimidated by is just wildly inflated or inaccurate senses of how something goes when oftentimes you're either doing something uniquely or you're doing something that's never been done before and no one could possibly tell you whether that's realistic or not. Yeah. And I think sometimes like, sometimes people aren't necessarily looking for advice, you know, they're not necessarily looking for confirmation. They're looking for like a little bit of a litmus test

and to kind of get feedback. I think that sometimes if you're like, if you know it's the thing you want to do, then I don't know, there's a little bit of wiggle room there. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is, it's hard though, because also the biggest failures in my life, people told me was a really bad idea

and I should have listened to that. Right, but how many people told you that obstacles away was a really bad idea? Yeah, well, you know. Wasn't there someone that told you it would sell maybe a thousand copies? Well, I was just gonna say, a lot of times nobody says like, it's gonna fail.

Right. They go like, eh, you know, like they kind of damn it with faint praise, you know? Um, so it's really hard to get an accurate picture of how something's going to do. Yeah. So someone, uh, predicted the obstacles away would sell 500 or 5,000 copies. I mean, my own publisher didn't think it was going to be that big. Like looking at the events they gave you, like, I mean, did you think it was going to be that big?

No, but I wasn't, but I don't think, I don't think I had any sense of how big it would be. You're open to the idea of it being that big. I thought it would be a good book to write. That's great. Do you know what I mean? Like I wasn't thinking at all. Like most of the things I've done that have succeeded, I had zero idea of the

parts of the outcome that were sort of like quantifiable or monetizable. It was something that I was excited to do. And that part's up to you. Yeah, controlled input, not the output. Yeah, like let's just say like what parts of it are up to you and what parts are not up to you. So like when I talk to someone and they're like, oh, I'm gonna write a book and my goal is to sell a million copies. I'm like, I already hate this project. First off, I know that it's not because like 99.9% of books don't even sell like 10,000 copies.

But you didn't tell me that I should work on this book with you because it's going to be important or meaningful or nothing's ever existed like it, or it's the result of this or that. You're already leading with the most meaningless part of it. You know what I mean? And so most of the things that I've taken big risks on were motivated by something, I think more pure than just like some quantifiable outcome.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot better ways to spend your money than on an abandoned ghost town. Yeah, I mean, if you bought an abandoned ghost town because you wanted to turn it into a big YouTube channel, I think it's dead in the water. Yeah, or even like a giant resort. I think that that was kind of some of the metrics moving into it. And so I think that, dead in the water. Yeah, or even like a giant resort. I think that that was kind of some of the metrics moving into it.

And so I think that, I don't know, the motivations are a little bit different. Like sometimes there's intangible things that you're benefiting from as well. Yeah, well, think about it. You bought this ghost town in 2018, right? And you don't even start the YouTube channel until mid 2020.

Correct, yeah. So two and a half years of flailing around before it even starts to be the thing that it becomes. Right. So if you have to be open, you have to genuinely like the thing and genuinely be motivated by some kind of intrinsic motivation,

or when it invariably takes longer than expected, you get crushed. You give up. Yeah. And this has taken, I mean, we were hoping to get some type of overnight accommodation the first month that we were, I remember like, I looked at my original plan,

it's like, all right, we're gonna like sweep the floors and put people in beds, and then we're gonna start renting it out. And now it's six years later, and nobody's ever paid to stay overnight at Cerro Gordo yet. It's taken a lot of different in beds and they're gonna start renting it out. And now it's six years later and nobody's ever paid to stay overnight at Cerro Gordo yet. It's taken a lot of different journeys and they will, we're working on the hotel, that's the hope.

But yeah. So for, we're sort of using a shorthand about it because I've been there many times and I love it. And I've watched most of the videos, but describe why do you fall in love with this place? What is it, where is it and why is it? Yes, Cerro Gordo is a former mining town. It's about three and a half hours northeast of Los Angeles,

about three and a half hours west of Las Vegas. It's in the mountain range where to the east is Death Valley National Park, which is about six miles from us. To the west is the Sierra Nevada and Mount Whitney. So it's kind of cradled in between the lowest point in the US and the highest point in the US. They started mining silver and lead there originally in the 1860s.

They mined that for about 20 years. That went bust, kind of turned into a ghost town. Another guy came back in 1910. He mined zinc there for another 20 years. He sort of mined an active life from about 1860 to 1940, which is a huge life. 80 years is crazy for mining town. Usually they figured they should have five or eight years. And so since 1940, it's sat pretty much abandoned. You know, people have tried to do different things here. They're like tours and this and that. And so when I got it in 2018,

when we got it, it was kind of like a treasure chest waiting to be opened with as far as storytelling goes and stuff, because there was an important town. You know, as Pete had 4,000 residents there, and you have to figure to put in perspective at that point in time, Los Angeles only had about 6,500 residents when this town had 4,000. And so there are so many interesting stories there. And then the more I dug into it, the more I dug into it, it was just like, I don't know, like a true town out of the American West

and being there was amazing. I loved Westerns when I was a kid. And I felt like I knew all the big towns. Yeah. Dodge City and Deadwood and yeah. And I had never heard of Cerro Bordo. Yeah. I wonder if it's like, you know,

Tombstone had a big movie about it. So that probably helped quite a bit. But yeah, the town pulled like 500 million dollars worth of silver out of it. So I wonder, there's a couple of things that had against it. First, there wasn't a lot of record keeping. And then when they did start to keeping record keeping,

the County Courthouse in Independence, California burned down twice and was lost in an earthquake once during the active years of the town. It's like most of the like actual storytelling history got lost in all these earthquakes and fires. And there's like nothing exists. There's newspaper articles, but all the newspaper articles are, um, unreliable to say the best. I think Mark Twain said like a minor is just a liar standing next to a hole, which I think is a good quote. Um, and so there's like all this to wade through. And so I think that it was just kind of got

forgotten over time, just lost. Also, unlike a lot of the towns, there was no, there weren't like the cowboys. You know what I mean? Because it was functionally just a mining town. And so there wasn't that kind of... It was hard to get to. There wasn't the infamous shootouts at the Okei Karau

because there wasn't just like the buzzing city of let's say a tombstone that you pass through on the way somewhere else. If you're going to Cerro Gordo, you were going to Cerro Gordo for a purpose. And so a lot of those stories and infamous people, there was the infamous people that came through town, but it wasn't like, there's rumors,

all these rumors, Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain's on a lot of time in Owens Valley. So it's like probably likely that he went up to Cerro Gordo just because of his time there. But then like to me, there's people that I think have it as interesting of life as those guys, but just weren't ever recorded or talked about.

Like the owners of the town, Mortimer Belshaw, was the guy that set it up. He got robbed a lot of times by Tiburico Vasquez, which the Vasquez rocks outside of Los Angeles is named after. And so there's all these characters there that, if the light was shining on them a little bit more, I think have just as interesting of life and just as like important of impact into Western history that just hasn't been told. And so I think for me, what got me fired up over the last few years is uncovering these stories, putting them into the book and just trying to give a little bit more light to them.

Cause I think that like, Bellshock could be a character like we think of when we think of these other towns or Lola Travis, the woman who won the brothels in town, you know, she was a huge character. She had like shootouts, she had, you know, she was an entrepreneur, she had a bunch of businesses there. And so I think it's exciting to think that this history

that maybe would have been essentially lost is now very much more in the public eye. And I wonder like what that will do in 10, no, let's say, let's say a hundred years and a hundred years, will it be like, oh yeah, the big towns in the West, Cerro Gordo, Tombstone, you know, like, will it be part of that conversation? I wonder how much of it is also its proximity to Los Angeles.

There's a great book about Los Angeles called like a history of forgetting. Okay. Like you don't think of Los Angeles as a historical place, but it's just as old as San Francisco. And it's cause Los Angeles, you know, sort of destroys all its big Victorian mansions. Los Angeles is constantly reinventing itself

because of Hollywood, even though it's so often, the movies are about the past, it's also this sense of the future and like sort of, it sees itself as a modern city, not a historical city. Yeah. And so it's connection to the old west. Like what's mind going to me is that the mind, the silver would come down the hill of Cerro Gordo, get put in a boat, go across Owens Lake, then by train to Los Angeles. And so Cerro Gordo is gone. If you've seen the movie Chinatown, you understand why Owens Lake is gone. The idea of trains in Los Angeles, that's gone.

So like just every part of that has been like physically removed. And so like it's just not part of the history of it in, in, in how the state or the region understands stuff like Southern Southern California feels like Florida, like just the, like vacation present, whatever the fact that there were people there, like, like that, uh, like, I mean, some of them there's like Adobe kilns where they used to, to process it. So like, it goes so far back. There's, there's like, you know, they used to process the silver. It goes so far back. There's like hieroglyphs.

Yeah. 2003, I mean, even before that, even before trains were removed, mules used to bring them into Los Angeles. So the idea of mule barns being done in Los Angeles. And the guy that was bringing the silver from Cerro Gordo to Los Angeles was a guy named Remy Nadu.

And Remy Nadu opened the very first two story hotel in Los Angeles. He's the first hotel with an elevator, was the guy from Cerro Gordo, which eventually became, which that got torn down and became the LA Times building, which then that got torn down and remade into something else. And so now we're like three buildings removed

from Cerro Gordo history. And again, like, because it's not in front of you, you can't touch it. And like the history burned down four times, you know, in the court records. I wonder if to your point, it just kind of like got lost in the shuffle over time. Even like downtown Los Angeles is this sort of old artifact of a city. And then like if when someone says I'm moving to LA, they're Santa Monica and Venice and Malibu and Hollywood. It's like, so it's just, it is this region

that's kind of has this amnesia about its past, right down to the fact that there once was a beautiful lake. And so you can understand that somebody like, I worked in storytelling for 10 years, the idea of like bringing the dead town back to life, both like literally and like storytelling wise is pretty exciting. Like the idea that maybe in a hundred years,

it is mentioned in the same breaths as all those other big towns, which I think it could be, you know, if people do enough research. Well, it's a very powerful thing when you're like, when you discover something and you're like, this is amazing. I, why don't more people know about it?

I mean, that was my relationship with stillness. Totally, yeah. Yeah. And, and so, yeah, it seemed crazy at the beginning. And yet it was also, it's been this explosive thing because people are having the same, when people are discovering the things I've written or the videos I make or whatever,

they're having that same reaction that I had. So you have, if it was explosive for you and you discovered it for the first time, chances are if you, if you do a good job and you, you can recreate that for other people, then you know, you have this explosive thing. That's very interesting. I didn't think, but it was kind of a very similar similarities because like stosism then was probably like with the real academics, you know, it was popular within them and like the real desert rats out in, you know, the middle of nowhere would know about Ceragol and they got excited about it. But then when you can see it and maybe like apply it

through a different lens and different digestible bits, suddenly now Ceragor is everywhere, so is everywhere, you know, it's kind of, I hadn't thought about the parallel. And then you have these tools that didn't exist before. And so, yeah, I can watch a one minute TikTok of you going 900 feet underground and discovering a perfectly preserved jacket

that's a hundred years old. And you're like, what? Or I can watch you digging down the ground and finding beer bottles that were made by hand. The little things that were amazing for you have the ability to be broadcast and reach huge amounts of people very quickly. Well, I think for both Stoicism and Cerro Gordo, right place at right time almost. Because like for Cerro Gordo, the old owner wanted to make it into a bed and breakfast too,

back in the 90s. She didn't have social media. It never really worked out. Maybe she was barely scraping by, not really. And so now like TikTok, YouTube, they all come out of the scene and suddenly the tools are there, the right person's there, you know? And so suddenly these TikTok, YouTube, they all come out of the scene and suddenly the tools are there, the right person's there, you know, and so suddenly these things, these ideas can kind of

take off. Okay. So you make a run for it in March of 2020, you end up in, in, uh, Sierra Gordo. I remember you sent me a picture. You, you couldn't even drive, you drove it, basically the plan went sideways before you even physically got there. Well, yeah, I mean to tie it even further. I was driving your sister-in-law's former truck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That I bought for, I remember that.

Almost nothing. Yes, yes. Two-wheel drive, base model Tacoma, packed all my stuff into it. And this was at the time of the pandemic when they were talking about shutting down state borders. So I was like, oh man, I gotta get out there or I'm gonna get shut down. And so I remember calling you and like,

what if I get shut down in Arizona? I didn't know what was gonna happen. And so I made a sprint for it. I pretty much drove straight for 24 hours. The little two wheel drive truck didn't make it all the way to town. It doesn't handle snow very well after being a Texas truck.

And so- Well, first of, when people think ghost towns in California, I don't think they're thinking snow. Yeah, so when people think ghost towns, California, I don't think they're thinking snow. Yeah. So when people think ghost towns, they often think like desert. We're in the high desert. So the town's at 8,500 feet in elevation or the end of an eight mile dirt road that increases a mile in elevation on the way up, which you have run actually, which is very difficult

run. So it's a really steep mountain, twisty, tourney road to get there. And at night, if you arrive, you can't see what's going on at the top of the hill. You have no idea what's going on up there. And so I had no idea there was a blizzard essentially happening. Right, because you enter at what, like 4,000 feet. Yeah.

Normal weather. Normal weather. Totally fine, everything looks good. Oh, great, I'm gonna get up there, I'm gonna have this adventure. Get halfway up the road. Oh, a little bit of snow. Oh, a lot of snow.

And at that point, what are you gonna turn around and slip and slide back down the hill? And so parked the truck, packed my bag, walked into the house and never looked back. I was still there, still there four years later. And that by house, you mean which house you walk in? Like there's just a couple of houses, a couple of buildings.

Yeah, I walked into Mortimer Belshaw, the original owner of the towns, his house. We're talking no running water, no wifi, barely cell phone service. And so very like call of the wild experience to get into this house and- It's like going back in time. For time, yeah it is.

Yeah, it's 150 years. And so then wake up the next morning, even more snow is there. And I think I went out there a little bit looking for an adventure. I was looking for something to happen and I was like, oh, well, here's my adventure, you know, pretty much day one. And I remember very early on being excited. You know, I think during the pandemic was an interesting time to be there because nobody was really spending time with a lot of people.

Everybody was socially distancing. So the loneliness factor of being around in your town was not really there. It's like, oh, everyone's lonely. So it's actually a very good time to go up there originally. And then I brought up actually our camera that we used to use for daily stoic. Not used to use, you stole the day. I remember we had shot something at my house, like the first or second week of March. And then you taking the camera back

to like upload the footage. And then everyone taking the camera back to like, upload the footage, and then everyone was supposed to go to their separate quarters. So you just had the daily Stowe camera, and you just took it with you. Was it stealing as a borrow, you know, it was a stealing if you give it back eventually. I still haven't yet given it back,

but I one day hope to be, yeah. I mean- Does it still exist or did you lose it down? No, it still exists. No, it still exists. It still exists. It's still on my desk at Cerro Gordo. And so, I mean, that camera is responsible

for hundreds of millions of views, which is crazy. And so the camera, so this place, Daily Sog is very much responsible in many ways about the training and also literally the physical camera that I used to record it. And everybody up there like, I wanted to take those astrophotography. I started taking those photos of the stars.

That was, everybody during the pandemic was doing different hobbies. People started baking sourdough bread a lot, you know, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna take those astrophotography. I started taking those photos of the stars. That was, everybody during the pandemic was doing different hobbies. People started baking sourdough bread a lot, you know, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna take photos of stars. And I did really, I shared one. But then I was also like, oh, this is an interesting experience. I'm gonna capture this, like, maybe I'll put it in a video

or maybe I'll just have it for my own archive to look back on the pandemic. Made a video about it, put it up. First video did really well. And then I just enjoyed it, you know, cause like while I worked around a lot of creative people for a long time, I never had my own creative outlet. I wasn't maintaining a blog.

I wasn't writing books. I wasn't making music. And so putting together a video is really interesting to me. How can you tell a compelling story throughout it? And so suddenly I had that creative outlet and I enjoyed it and I think that I was able to mix in what I thought was interesting videos and luckily they did pretty good. I'm Matt Ford and I'm Alice Levine and we're the hosts of British Scandal. In our latest series, we're visiting one of the rockiest sibling relationships ever. Okay so I'm thinking Danny and Kylie, no no no I'm

thinking Anne Boleyn and the other Boleyn. No no Barry and Paul Chuckle. No it's Noel and Liam Gallagher. Now these two couldn't be more different but they're tied to each other in musical dependency. Despite their music catching the attention of people around the world, Ligam's behaviour could destroy their chances. However, their manager saw an opportunity to build a brand around their rebellious nature. It's got fights on boats, fights on planes, fights on land. They just fight everywhere. If you like fights, you'll love this. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts,

or listen early and ad-free on Wondry+, on Apple Podcasts, or on the Wondry app. to save event is back with our most incredible deal yet on our most reliable internet. Enjoy Rogers Ignite internet now starting at just $50 a month backed by our wifi satisfaction guarantee. Visit rogers.com. I remember you got almost immediately, so you get in there and then almost immediately you start getting attention because we're all bored all on our phones and it it was like, Guy snowed in in Ghost Town during pandemic, which was a compelling story. But I also saw very clearly, oh, this is Brent's marketing ability. A plot

like put layered on top of the fact that he's in a pretty extraordinary circumstance. Yeah. I remember like, so when I got up there, I got snowed in and that's like, that's what happened. It was like very difficult to be there. And I remember I was looking online and we were all bored looking articles. And this person from the New York Post wrote this article

about like how people were living shining like experiences. I was like, no, no, no. I am living the shining experience. I am living in a ghost town. I'm snowed in, I'm the caretaker of a hotel, you know? And so I wrote her, I was like, hey, like I'm living in a ghost town. I'm snowed in, I'm the caretaker of a hotel. And so I wrote her, I was like, hey, like I'm living in this ghost town. And I think she saw the appeal of it too.

And it turned from, you know, like, oh, this is what I'm doing to man trapped, having to eat, you know, like his own shoes to survive. It got like sensationalized a little bit. And then the way media does, it just turned into this, it has its own momentum that I couldn't almost control. It was like each time it would get a little bit more removed until I remember, I think it was the Daily Mail

or some blog like that was like, you know, battling ghosts, man is like drinking his own blood to like survive in a town. And I was like, well, like, hold on. And if I look back at the original email, it's like, hey, I came over to this town I bought, it's snowing, you know, that might be an interesting life experience. And so kind of sometimes the media has a way

of just taking it for its own ride. But again, at the end of the day, I'm not oblivious to the fact that a guy living in a ghost town during the pandemic is interesting inherently. And so I think that helped with the press, but it also helped with the channel to get going originally.

Well, it's this funny thing, like at the beginning you do a thing and nobody cares at all. And then you decide to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. And then one thing one way or another, and then all of a sudden the fact that it is crazy or unusual or should be not interesting is what makes it interesting. And then you have the, now you have like more press than you know what to do with. And it can be this sort of weird disorienting experience. Yeah, it can kind of take on his life of its own.

I remember talking to the manager, like one of the biggest music acts out there. And they're like, we don't do press period. Because like they can't control. Cause eventually you no longer have control. I think at first it's really fun and it's rewarding because you're like, oh, people care about my story. They're telling my story.

But then they're like, oh, but I didn't say that. Oh, but I didn't do that. And then so like, it takes like a little bit of leap, a little bit of leap, a little bit of leap. And then suddenly you're like, I no longer have control of the wheel. This car is taking its own ride. And so I think that like,

that was a little bit of the experience during the pandemic and I can see why certain people wouldn't do press generally. Well, yeah. And early on you feel validated by people seeing you and talking about you. And then you go, okay, the downside is this could be really negative publicity.

And the upside is actually not, you get enough press hits and you see that it, other than some people seeing it, it doesn't like do anything for you. And then you go, oh, okay, I actually don't need to do this. And then the discipline of being like, I'm just gonna ignore that, like, or I'm just not gonna respond to that,

or I don't actually need to do that interview. That's something I have to talk, with the justice book coming out, I'm like, the publisher's like, well, here's like all these places that would have you on. And I go, every one of those is like an hour of time, at least, or two hours of time. And it's like, what can I make with that time

and just talk to my actual audience or make stuff that I care about that would matter. But it's hard to say no to that. It's a weird experience too, because there's the ego first when the pressure is setting, but then even with social media, even with anything, like clips or whatever, you put out a certain type of clip and the initial appeal is to make more of the same type of stuff that you've

done. And I think for me, at least what happens is, you know, anytime you turn on a camera, inherently the room changes, whatever that law is, you know? And so you put on a little bit of like a, maybe it's more peppy, maybe a little bit of this. And then I think what happened with me is, you know, a year on, you kind of lose the thread of who you are and who the character is a little bit.

And then it can be difficult. Even if there is a character, that is a person that you have to become when you turn, like writing me and podcasting me is different, writing me and video me is different. And then me just as a person is different than all of those things. I think, well, we try, I try try to be as close to who I am in those

as I can, but anybody that says they're 100%, there's a lot. There is some type of character that's being performed. It's some type of performative act that's happening. And so I got really lost in the, what is the character, what is me, what does the character think, what do I stand for? And so I think that like,

if you zoom forward from that original burst of attention, it got to like a pretty, like almost dark place, or as I couldn't understand. Well, here's what you know, it's a character. I remember at some point, like I'd seen your videos, and then we turned on that, what we call the big TV in our house, that's not iPads. And like one of your videos was suggested on YouTube. And

so Clark Weston in like four or five at a time. I was like, let's watch this and we watch it. He gets, he's like fascinated by it. You're like repelling down this mine. You're fine. He just falls in love with my son falls in love with your YouTube. Yeah. I was like, you know, you know, Brent, like you've met Brent many times. And the idea that this person on the TV was a real, especially because I don't, I don't think I saw it. We didn't see each other for like a year because of the pandemic, because you were there and I was here.

Um, he like couldn't, it was like, I think he knew it, you know, on one level that you were a person that he'd met before. And on the other hand, there was this different person who lives on the screen. And that's, I mean, that's how it, that's, there is something, I don't wanna say false, but there's something not real about it. For all creative acts. It's by definition edited, right?

Everything about it is edited. And so it's just kind of like this edited version that's existing out there. And it's difficult, it's difficult to like, again, to for me, grapple with what am I doing sometimes? Although I remember, so you get up there, you're stuck. We were talking quite a bit. And then with Daily Stoke, we're like,

we have this other business that we have to figure out. We can't close, we have employees and stuff. And so we decided to do that a live time, dead time challenge. Basically the idea that the Stokes talk about is like, you don't control what's happening around you, you control what you do inside of it. How weird was it to be trapped in a ghost town

and then also making, like talking about those, did the stoic ideas have any sort of extra resonance for you in the situation you're in? Yeah, I mean, all the time, almost every day, I think that like being exposed to stonism for the past decade or so, or working so closely with it, I mean, by definition, it's supposed to be something that you're able to call upon in tough decisions

and up there, yeah, going through that experience where we're talking about like, remember your death and I'm looking, I don't know why I said it like that. We're saying like, we're talking about the practice of like, I would look up and I would see the cemetery, where people were buried from the last pandemic and stuff like that. And so it was-

There's a bunch of people that died of the great influenza in Sarah Wortham. Buried in the ground that I own. And so it was like- There's a bunch of people that died of the great influenza in Saragura. Exactly, buried in the ground that I own. And so it's just like, I'm remembering, I'm remembering death. And then even, you know, and more, like probably the most difficult situation when I was up there was like,

we had a fire in 2020 of the hotel. And I remember like looking at the fire and thinking about the story about Edison, you know, like when he called his kids to come look at the fire and like, Amor Fati and that type of stuff. And it was very, very useful in those moments to kind of keep going. And so I think that like living in the town

during that period of time, there was almost no escaping stoicism. And so it was like a good time to be both practicing it and also putting together materials that we were putting together for the website. You sink your life savings into this project. You're working on it for years and years. You're starting to make some progress.

You just cleaned out this whole, you know, beautiful historic building that it stood for what? 170? 149. 149 years. Yeah. You go to bed. Yeah.

And you wake up to the heat. Yeah, there was four of us in town at the time. We'd gone to bed, woke up to what I thought was like firecrackers or something, but it actually was the cans heating up so much and popping inside of the hotel. And so they're like exploding, woke up very disoriented, no one knows what's going on. Somebody else is staying in the house. So he woke up and it was like, what's going on? I don't know. And so go outside. Eventually he realized that the main hotel here, the main building and the whole property was on fire. Try to do what we can, you know, grab water, pouring it on it, you know, just completely a mess trying to figure out what to do next.

It's complete loss, everything goes away. I remember staying up the entire night battling the fire, talking to firefighters, all that type of stuff. And in the morning, I remember kind of standing on the porch and just like unsure what I was gonna do, where I was gonna go. And the old owner of the hotel, or the old owner of the property had come up the night before that night.

Remember he kind of like came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder and I just like kind of lost it. I was like, oh my God, this is like too much to handle. And I remember he was like, you know, this was bound to happen. This is part of history now. You can't change what happened, but what happens from here is up to you.

And that was a very like. That's like stoicism 101. He was preaching to me stoicism in a different manner. And it wasn't like, he was like, I'm going to tell you some Stoicism. This is like part of his nature. And I think in times like that, you try to grab onto something. I think that's what Stoicism is so helpful for. People when you're in a tough moment, you need to latch onto something when your life

is just going over high. You just watched your, the entire future and history of the town essentially burned to the ground. Yeah. The centerpiece, all of our plans were poised around people gathering in the hotel. That was the whole point of the whole project was that. And to see it go away, I was lost in every sense. I didn't want to be there.

I didn't want to be in a relative. So for him to say, you can't change what happens, what happens to you, up to you, was kind of what I grabbed onto. And I would repeat that phrase, what happens next is up to you, what happens next is up to you. And that was just doses and repackaged from him.

But it was the only thing that almost got me through those days during, after the fire was like holding onto that phrase tightly and just remembering really his compassion in a moment where he didn't have to be compassionate, which I think it was like a testament as well. You know, like he could have come up and been like, what the hell, you know, like this is crazy. Yeah, what the hell is going on?

But like for him to like express even like the slightest bit of compassion was very like profound to me and like something I wouldn't forget for a very long time. And I think like holding onto those words that happens next up to you is this like what got the town, not just, and it's not quite back to where it was because the hotel isn't finished yet,

but like the community, the resonance, the whole property itself is in a much stronger place, I think, than it was four years ago, in many senses. It feels a little, yeah, it feels weird to say, like, but the video you make of the thing burning down is kind of what blows the whole town up because it was so raw and authentically. When you say what happens next is up to you,

your decision to share and talk about the worst thing that ever happened to you is weirdly what brings all these people on board, both as fans and as contributors. And it makes the story compelling. Like if you were scripting it, that's an incredibly devastating end to the second act. Yeah. It was just, I think that people appreciated the raw nature of it. I remember early on when

we were doing the videos, I'm like a pretty private person generally. I'm pretty reserved, like a private introvert. And I remember when we were making the videos, it was like, I kept thinking about the Simon Sinek, you know, like, if you don't care what you do, they care why you're doing it. And so you're trying to insert more why into the, you know, like, people don't care what you do, they care why you're doing it. And so you're trying to insert more why into the video. It's like, I'm exploring this mine and a thousand people have my exploration videos where they put on a GoPro and they walk through a mine

and those videos get 50 views, because nobody cares. But like, if I'm like, I'm exploring this mine because it's important for these reasons, it's important to me for these reasons. And you kind of explain that. I think that the hotel gave me a moment to express why Cerro Gordo was so important to me and to like show what I was going to do about it.

And I think people were just resonated with that. Yeah. It also gives you somewhere you're going. Whereas before it was like, here's the town and it's staying as it is more or less, right? And then for a piece of it to go away and then to have this then story about, can it come back? It. It becomes a different story. Yeah. I mean, it was like a Phoenix from the ashes kind of thing. It was kind of like really

trying to bring something back. And I think that people were able to see me out there until midnight in a backhoe, you know, like toiling away, trying to do whatever I could to bring this place back. And I think people resonated with that, resonated with the passion that I had towards it. And we're almost there, the roof's back on the hotel. I'll finish here. No, it's funny, I have one in my office, I'll give it to you, but I was reading about this pine cone, this species of pine tree, not the, not, what's the-

Bristle cone? Is that the really old one there? Yeah, bristle cones. It's not that one. Okay. It's, anyways, the point is, it's like a standard pine tree drops pine cone. You know, they're all like really tight and green.

It has to be exposed to fire to unlock. Like, so it, and it won't unlock under ordinary temperatures. Like it's only if exposed to a forest fire that the next generation of trees, like the next stand of trees can come. And I love the metaphor of, you think this is this devastating destructive event, which it is, but it's actually necessary.

The creative destruction is necessary for the next thing to happen. And if you don't get it, it can't unlock, it can't become the thing that it's meant to be. And so, yeah, you think it's supposed to be easy, you think that you want it to happen a certain way, you want to anticipate problems and eliminate them in advance and avoid them or whatever,

but actually like you don't know what you are depriving yourself of by not doing it. It gives you the opportunity to come back from it, right? And so that way, like, and I think that like, as you keep doing that, I mean, you said it before, I think you said something like, I look to evidence, I don't look to like will or something like that. And so-

Oh yeah, I don't believe in myself. I have asked. Yeah, and so I think that at this point, I've with a lot of help, I've essentially rebuilt a hotel on the top of a mountain. And so that puts me in such a stronger place than, let's say the last four years just went smoothly and we were building little cabins and stuff.

Now it's like, what can't we do? If we can rebuild a hotel in the middle of nowhere, it just kind of gives you that confidence, that evidence to point to in the future as things go wrong. Yes, Seneca says you, someone who hasn't been tested or exposed to difficulty hasn't been knocked down

and bloodied in the ring is actually someone to pity because they don't know what they're capable of. Right. And, and probably deep down that they, they suspect they're not capable of things. And so whatever it is that you've gone through as a breakup or a bankruptcy or public humiliation, or it's just the pandemic that everyone just lived through. If you wondered if you were capable of living through adversity and difficulty, the fact that you're still standing four years after this historic event happening,

you actually do have a good sense of it. And I think in your case, fire and then the logistics, first of just living alone without running water and just you against the elements is one trial by fire, but then building back after a literal fire, yeah, it probably turns down the volume on anxiety or uncertainty when you, I don't know, you get a flat tire

or something. I can solve this. When I first moved out there, everything was a crisis, you know? Like, oh my God, this is like, the door broke on the kids. And so I think that as you figure out those small things, it's like, I forget what it says, like everything's figure outable. You know, that's like, I think a very good thing. And I think that's like almost like a figured out of a muscle that like, you can grow as you figure out smaller things and smaller things. And at this point, you know, it started off with a porch needed to be repaired, then a roof needed to be repaired.

Now a hotel need to be rebuilt from scratch. And now our road has washed out four or five times. So each time I'm doing that, I feel like I'm getting stronger. And these days, like the thing that stressed me out four years ago is not even going to come close to stressing me out, you know, whether that's anything related to the property of the road washing away, a roof flying off, and that type of stuff. And I think that's just something that if you stretch yourself a little bit time, now I look back and I think about the time before the fire and I'm like, well, what was I selling myself short on before? I kind of use it as a reason to look back and being like,

oh, look at how much I was possible of doing. What wasn't I doing before? That I could have been doing more. Yeah, I also think about the change of your time horizon. So when you go through, Samantha and I have been together almost 20 years now. So when you're first in a relationship, you have a couple of bad days. Is this not gonna work? Then you've first in a relationship, you have like a couple of bad days.

You're like, is this not gonna work? Then you've been married a long time or you've been together a long time and you're like, there've been bad years. I imagine you talk to someone who's been married for 60 years, there were bad decades. They're like, the two decades where our kids in our house were just the worst.

It changes your time horizon because you've dealt with stuff longer, right? And so when you're young or you're starting a project, you're like, man, yeah, like the last two months, I feel like we've not been making any progress. But then, you know, six months later, you had this huge breakthrough and then six years later, that all blurs together and you don't think about it in terms of like that at all.

You just know that's what it took to do what you did. And so I think as you do more things, expose yourself to more things and experience adversity and obstacles, your perspective about, they're still the same, but your perspective about them is different. And with that, like when you zoom out more, they, they by definition sort of shrink. Or when you, when you go, am I, am I looking at this obstacle in terms of the problem it's going to cause for me

in one day, or am I looking at it in terms of a decade? And now it's like, it's nothing in terms of a decade. Well, I think that's also just like the opposite of the mentality that's promoted, especially within business these days, it's like month over month growth, you know, like it's like, it's nothing in terms of a decade. Well, I think that's also just like the opposite of the mentality that's promoted, especially within business these days. It's like month over month growth, you know, like it's like, what are you doing today? Like quarterly earnings. Exactly. So it's like the opposite of what you're put up to. But if you can like think about it in those decades, it's just, it's more comforting. Well, I remember I was talking to you about Sara Gorda once you had this problem with like a business partner, a bunch of stuff, you know, and I go, are you ever planning on selling Saragorda? And you're like, no, I'm gonna die here.

And I was like, well, that pretty much solves this problem for you. That should help change how you think about it, because if you're building this thing to get to a certain speed in a certain amount of time to sell it, then, then you've got a lot you've got to do here. If actually there's, there is no realistic exit here.

It's a, this is a lifetime commitment you made. And I think you, you think about the same thing in terms of marriage or having kids or, um, you know, uh, calling then, then you're like, oh, okay, like this is, I need to stop stressing about what this means right now. It only really matters. Does it change the overall trajectory of where I'm going? So when you're thinking about Saragorda, then this is a place that's been there for 150 years. Yeah.

So the fact that it's, you know, taking you four years to rebuild the hotel is nothing. Yeah, it's a blip on the timeline. I mean, even before that, the area has been there for millions of years. I guess you should think about that timeline. But yeah, I'm trying to think of it as a decades project as the long-term horizon. And I think that that it's also honestly,

I think a part of the resonance of the content and stuff I put out because people are like, I think pushing back a little bit against that short term mindset, you know, that tomorrow, tomorrow kind of month over month earnings type situation. And they know this is like a project I've settled in on. And I think it's fun to watch somebody settle

into something that is kind of like their life's calling. I think that's like a appealing thing, no matter what that is. Like I watch- Even if that thing's totally different than what you're interested in or your life's calling, just to see someone going after it is inspiring. Yeah, I've watched people,

like I watched this guy on TikTok that does like marble carving and he has some business about carving marble. I don't care about marble at all or carvings or statues, but like he's so into it and he's so like, you know, it just like fires me up. And I feel like by association, I get fired up about whatever I'm going through in the same moment.

Yeah, Sam, I've been following this whatever I'm going through in the same moment. Yeah, same. I've been following this woman who was like sailing around the world, like zero interest in sailing, but like this person's going after that thing and they're sharing it. Yeah. And there's like, anytime somebody's like fully going for it, you can't help but like watch. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and I think in terms of being a blip on the timeline, to me, that's like Cerro Gordo in little crevices and canyons. And I guess there's one sort of planted right there in front of the general store that thankfully didn't burn down, but there's a bunch of trees that are the oldest living things on earth. Yeah. The Bristol comb pine. I think that the oldest one is six to 8,000 years old. It's called Methuselah, you know, name or sure. And so these pine cones, these trees have been living, not just like existing, they're

not as like a rock. When you say a rock's been there for a million years, it's hard to be, okay, but this thing has been like breathing and you know, like reproducing, continuing on for, you know, way before the, it was old when the Stokes were right. It was old when the Egyptians, it was like, it's. It's older than the pyramids. It's older than the pyramids. And so the thought that this tree has been growing

since that time, you know, I don't have an illusion that Cerro Gordo in its state as it is, it's going to be there for 6,000 years, but like if the idea of the like resonance of the town in some way exists for that long, and that's like, I don't know, a pretty cool metric to shoot for. Yeah, I am.

There's a tree in McKinney state park here. That's like one of the oldest trees in Texas is called old Baldy. And it's 600 years old. So 10% of the age of like these trees, which there are quite a few of, but you go like, Oh, this tree was just poking out of the ground as like Shakespeare was writing his plays. And it kind of blows your mind to think about. Well, to your point too, it puts everything in perspective.

It's kind of like sympathia, or we're all going to describe it as is like, if I zoom out far enough. Oh, the Stoic concept? Yeah, Stoic concept of sympathia, it's like, am I really, I'm upset about, like before this I was upset because my book right now is not available in the UK for some reason.

And I was very upset. And like in 6,000 years, will anything care that the book, you don't know. In six days will I care? Probably not, in six hours will I care? And so I kind of like use looking around and learn all these old stuff as just a reminder of that. Yeah, there's something about understanding

that sort of time abides and the earth abides and all our stuff sort of comes and goes. Like some of the people at Cerro Gordo were some of like extremely rich, they're totally forgotten. You know, people were mad about things, fighting about things, dreaming of things and like sort of where is all that now? It's gone. I mean, I think like one of the most profound things that I did that I found early on

was that briefcase. So I found a briefcase that's essentially like the entire life of this minor, I found a briefcase that was full of pay stubs, love letters, divorce settlements, lawsuits, all of these different communications. And like, no one's ever heard of this guy, but he was pretty important at Cerro Gordo and like all this stuff fits into this tiny little briefcase. And so I started thinking like, what am I leaving in my briefcase? That's kind of an interesting way to think about it.

Yeah, kind of a similar reminder. Yeah, they call those trees witness trees. And they think about like what they've seen and experienced over the years. And yeah, they were just there. I remember we were talking because a couple of months ago, there was that crazy hurricane that like hit California and filled up lakes and death Valley. But I remember the news reports were like, this has never happened.

And I remember thinking, I bet the bristlecone pines would disagree. Like not just have seen it before, but like dozens of times. Even if this hasn't happened in 500 years. I've seen it 10 times. Yeah. I've seen it 10 times over. Yeah. That's wild.

Or just the fact that, yeah, like humans have been fighting. Like you think about the battles that have been fought there over by like tribes that we don't even remember. I mean, there's Petricos there that are two to 3000 years old. They're so old that from my understanding, the historians don't have an exact name for who left them there.

Yeah. You know, they're like, humans did in some capacity. We don't know who it is. But so long ago that we've forgotten those humans and their entire civilization. Exactly, but there's like, their paintings are still there on the walls, which is just off the property of Cerro Gordo, so it's hard to ignore. Well, and then, so there's those. And then also,

a hundred years ago, someone was writing, what's that? What's the thing they would write on the walls with? Carbide. Yeah, with carbine oil, like just, you know, graffiti, that that in time will become as old as that thing. Yeah, it's I mean, the town is just filled with those as a reminder. And I think being out there is, I don't know, important in that way. So last thing, talk to me about the momentum or of it. So you

can look up from your house and see the grave of miners, but you open the book with that line about how most of the miners died at the age you currently are. Like, Cerro Gordo was a place that chewed people up and spit them out. Yeah, it's not like a romantic history. It can be romanticized in the future, but like most of the miners that went up there did not get whatever they were searching for. Yeah. I think that I went up there searching for something, probably not, definitely not silver, maybe they were in the way, but like meaning, purpose, fulfillment, some different things like that. And the ending is to be told. I think I've been up there so far,

but I've been trying to take it as it goes is like the winds as they come, I guess, the miners that we're talking about. And yeah, to your point, it's impossible to not think about day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute even. But I mean, is there the memento mori of just like, you could be crushed by a falling rock at any moment? I could be crushed by a falling rock. Entombed underground.

There are still miners still down in the mines that are entombed. So yeah, it could be crushed at any moment. So I think that like, it gives me that urgency. I work pretty long days out there. I try pretty hard to like do what I can for the town when I can. Although I know that I could be working on it for decades, I don't take that for granted.

And I try to do as much as I can every single day and make sure that the things that I'm doing are things that I'm excited about that I think are important. Well, it's been fascinating. Yeah, it's only just begun. It's not terrifying. Yeah.

And I worry about you in there, but I'm glad the book is out. It's awesome. And I'm glad you're here to actually work for Change. Yeah, I'm here in person. I'm excited. This is a fun full circle moment. And I have you to thank for a lot of it.

So thank you. My pleasure. 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. Listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Welcome to Pura, the most pristine, safe, climate stable city on earth. A haven amidst the wreckage. Here, you're safe from heat domes, super storms,

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