The Daily Stoic - Steven Rinella On Rockhounding, Stoic Wisdom & Controlling The Process

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Ryan talks to Steven Rinella about the sense of wonder, respect & adventure for nature, spending time with family, rockhounding and his new book published back in june catch a crayfish, count the stars: fun projects, skills, and adventures for outdoor kids .Steve Rinella, from his books to his groundbreaking show MeatEater, has made hunting and nose-to-tail wild game gourmet cooking popular from New York City to Hollywood. Thanks in large part to Steve’s humor and extensive historical and anatomical knowledge, MeatEater is one of the top “reality” shows not just in outdoor media, but arguably across all media combined. As a writer, TV host, and now podcaster Steve and the MeatEater crew are as trail blazing as they come. We carry one of Steve’s books, American Buffalo, here at the Painted Porch Bookshop. His most recent book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, offers practical advice for getting kids radically engaged with nature in a muddy, thrilling, hands-on way, with the ultimate goal of helping them see their own place within the natural ecosystem.CATCH A CRAYFISH, COUNT THE STARS: FUN PROJECTS, SKILLS, AND ADVENTURES FOR OUTDOOR KIDS It's a hands-on, gloves-off, activity book for young adventurers ages eight and up, offering fun projects and adventures to build lifelong skills and knowledge about the natural world.✉️ 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.

I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on so do sit back and enjoy Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever, you get your podcasts. Emily, do you remember when Wondirection called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well luckily, we can. A lot. Because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first one directioner to go it alone. Zayn Malik

We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band. And explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. At Bet365, we don't do ordinary. We believe that every sport should be epic. Every goal, every game, every point, every play, from the moment that are remembered forever. To the ones you've already forgotten, whether it's a game winning goal in the final seconds of overtime or a shot on goal in the first period.

So whatever the sport, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary. At Bet365, must be 19 oryear-older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you are someone you know as concerns about gambling, visit connexontario.ca. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful.

With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I'm down here by the golf with my family spending a little time at the beach putting the finishing touches on the Justice Book before that goes into production. It's been awesome. It's very, very hot. We're escaping the heat dome in Texas.

Slightly different heat dome here in Florida. But at least we got the ocean. It's amazing. Funny story. I was picking up some food for everyone. And my wife and I swung by books a million, which is a chain we don't really get where we are. It's always good.

I like to check out different bookstores. I pop in, and I see there's a huge dosedosum section, which is a chain we don't really get where we are. It's always good to check out different bookstores. And I pop in and I see there's a huge doissism section, which is pretty cool. And my wife says, congratulations on popularizing a school philosophy. Did you ever think that would happen? Because trust me, when I used to go to borders, right, where I bought my first copy of meditations,

they didn't have anything like that. And they had a bunch of my books right near that section, and it was actually in like the self-help or something like that. But anyways, I went over to one of the store employees and I said, hey, this is kind of awkward, but you have like a ton of my books. Do you want me to sign them? And the guy goes, not really.

Which was embarrassing and we had this slowly back out of the store. Always good to be humbled. The next day we went to Sundog, which is one of the great indie bookstores in the South and signed a bunch of my books. A couple of days later, I went back, they'd sold out all of them and they had new ones. So I always love supporting the folks at Sundog anyways. That leads me to today's guest, which is a book we have been reading every night

as a family from one of my son's favorite authors and my favorite authors. The fact that we can already share one is pretty cool. Talking about the one and only Steve Rinella. Steve Rinella wrote this amazing book called American Buffalo, which is about this hunt. And he goes on for American Buffalo tells great story of the American West

and Megafauna in the United States. One of my favorites, we sell that in the painting porch. He also wrote, he's also the creator of Meet Eater, which is a great podcast, a great YouTube channel, a great Netflix series. My son and I watched those videos. Together all the time, he used to watch them before he would go to bed.

He wanted to FaceTime with Steve before we started the interview, so he might hear the pop of that for a second. But I really love Steve's last book, Outdoor Kids in an inside world, which I have raved about. I've told a million people about it. I would carry that at the pain in porch too. You'll definitely like it.

But the new book, Catch a Crave Fish, Count the Stars, Fun Project Skills and Adventures for Outdoor Kids. There's a ton of stuff in here for families and kids alike. I am a huge Steve Rinella fan. I've raved about his stuff many, many times for very good reason. You can follow Meet Eater on YouTube.

You can follow Steve Ronella on all social platforms. Listen to his podcast, watch the Netflix show, get outdoor kids in an indoor world, read that first, love it, then with your kids, read catch a crayfish, count the stars. If you don't have kids, you're just an outdoor person, grab his Meet Eater series books,

and then if you're just looking for a great book of narrative nonfiction, one of my all-time favorites, do check out American Buffalo, which is just one of my all-time favorites. I had Steve on the podcast for outdoor kids and indoor worlds. You can listen to that also. And without further ado, here's my interview with the one and only Steve and Renelle. This isn't in the studio.

We did it over Skype. There was a little bit of lag here and there, so you might hear some slight strange edits. But we had a great time and it's always a pleasure talking to one of my favorite people. So I thought we'd start with, I thought we'd start with rock counting, which was an unexpected favor in the book in our household. I don't think they, like, obviously you love rocks as a kid, And I don't think you anticipate once you get older and you stop liking rocks that suddenly rocks are gonna become part of your life again.

Yeah. We used to use them primarily to, to hook at stuff, right? Yes. Skipping, throwing at signs, whatever. But I didn't grow up, you know, it's funny. I didn't grow up in a great rock it's funny. I didn't grow up in a great rock area here. Well, I grew up in Michigan. I'm actually in the house I grew up in right now, because I'm visiting my mother. And it's sand, you know, very few artifacts around,

just a big glacial deposition of sand here. So I like to be honest with you, I didn't grow up with a huge enthusiasm form because there's just not a lot of cool stuff to find in this little corner of Michigan where I grew up. There was a Potosky stone, which is a state stone, and it's a fossil. You could find way north, but then I spent so much my adult life out in the Rocky Mountains where adult life out in the Rocky Mountains where fossil hunting is prime, man, like prime, prime rock hunting. Some of the, you know, I feel like some of the best rock hunting around is around our areas.

I've gotten really into it. I've trying to turn my kids on to it as well. Well, it's, it's, um, it's a reminder of sort of how simple the thing has to be for a human to manage to get excited about it. Like we don't we're in Texas. So it's kind of a good rock area, I guess in some sense, but like we live on this dirt road. And the amount of excitement that my kids will get about what is essentially ordinary gravel is pretty remarkable. Oh, hey, this rock, you know, waters clearly falling on this rock, so part of it's worn away, or this rock is in a weird shape. I mean, they'll come home from school some days,

and I'll be like, why is your backpack so heavy? And it will be because it's filled with rocks. You know, just rocks that they've decided are special. When of course, they're, you know, they're not a side from the fact that they have decided they're special. of course they're not aside from the fact that they have decided they're special. And then that's one of the amazing things about having kids is because they get excited about it, it helps you develop a habit that gets you excited

about seemingly ordinary stuff. Yeah, one of the coolest things I wrote about this in one of my books, the coolest kind of rock things that happened is we were out turkey hunting one time and my kids were messing around on this hillside and they came down and their faces were all yellow. And they had found some ochre and ochre was historically used by, you know, various Native American groups as a face paint and as a dye.

Yeah. And it struck me as really funny that they would, and they didn't have any awareness of the historical uses of ochre, but that they would find it very quickly hit upon this ancestral use for the thing and wind up using it as this face coloration. Right, that they would, they would intuit the historical use of a thing that goes back thousands and thousands of years.

Yeah, it would hit them the same way. And another funny incident we had is my daughter who's standing to the left me right here. We got a metal detector. Yeah. And one day we were digging down to trying to unearth an object that we had struck with the metal detector, and we found a stone projectile point. Okay, so what, you know, a tradition to be known as an Indian arrowhead. ahead. And the amount of times I explained not to their satisfaction that the metal detector had not flagged that. It was coincidental. It was a, it was a, it was like a collateral, it was a collateral find on the way to a piece of rusty metal that

job. No, you know what I'm saying? This wasn't what the metal detector was talking about. No, it's funny. I'm reading this biography of Thoreau right now. That's really interesting. And I marked this passage. I was going to talk to you about it.

So he's walking in the woods and conquered. And he says, how often have they stood on this very spot at this very hour? Here he went on stood, Tata Wahunk, or what is it? Taha, Tata One. He said, and there, there is his arrowhead. He said, it was a mere rhetorical flourish,

the gesture of a boy playing Indians, but when he impulsively stooped to complete the scene and picked up the nearest bit of rock, it turned out to be, quote, a most perfect arrowhead as sharp as if it just came from the hands of the Indian fabricator. And he goes on to say that his whole life, Thoreau has this almost magical luck

of always being able to find the best arrowheads, which, you know, in his time, obviously, he's a tad closer to, you know, people actually using them in those very spots. But I just, you know, we think of Thoreau as this philosopher, which he was, and then there is this other part of him that's just like a boy who likes to play in the woods, and that's what comes through in the philosophy so much. Um, the real heyday of, of arrowhead, you know, arrowhead picking, the real heyday was during the thirties, the twenties and thirties, people developed this fascination with picking up project out points.

Um, you can imagine like how good it must have been back then. picking up project out points. You can imagine like how good it must have been back then. But I mean, things are so picked over now, but I had, I had the experience one time of going up to the Brooks range, the North slope of the Brooks range on the Arctic slope. And we're actually in an area that, you know, there would be sort of mathematically the most, the remotest place in North America in terms of distance to higher, distance to roads, distance to towns.

And you can get a glimpse into what it was like at one point in time because when you go to a likely place, like the confluence of two streams that would have a good flat bench, the ground would be littered with it, littered with it. Like, no, it just hadn't been picked up yet. And so, yeah, the fact that Thro was doing good, I mean, yeah, because people hadn't flagged yet that they were of interest, you know, but what contradicts that a little bit interesting way is trust, you know, but what contradicts that a little bit interesting way is they, there's some cliff dwelling sites where they have found in the cliff dwelling sites, they had found ice age projectile points. The supposition being that even these much later people, right, these archaic aged people would look at those projectile points and

recognize them something unusual, you know, like something that warranted collection because diagnostically it wasn't their technology. Right. But so you had people who would, you know, you had people who made who worked in stone points. Picking a thing up and being like, you see that? That's really old. That's old, man. What it is funny, right? Yeah, because to us, the past all kind of blurs together.

Like ancient is ancient. We forget, I've been talking about this recently, but we forget, like, people in the past lived in the present, right? So their technology, they would have seen in some ways a superior or newer, right? And so they would have been fascinated by things that to us, you know, cutting the arrowhead this way versus this way doesn't seem like a radical technological invention or, you know, doing it this way or that way. But yeah, they would have noticed that that was old.

And yeah, why would human beings in the past have not been interested in things that were from far away? Then that's just the basic sense of human wonder and a connection to tradition that of course we share. Yeah, there's a lot of amazing, it's fun to use the word technology, but there's a lot of these technological achievements in the creation of stone tools that would progress and re-gress, you know, and cultures that would use abrasion to shape things.

And then other cultures would come later on that same landscape and use a different style of thing. And then it'd go back. It's interesting, man. And in terms of like trying to turn, you know, dealing with children as it gives you this, like you said, it's the thing they have this natural movement toward, sharp rock, you know, anything capable of destruction.

And then use it as a, as this kind of launch way into talking about these really complex things and discussing that, that, that these places where we live were occupied by a entirely different people with entirely different religious structures and entirely different sense of what it means to own property, entirely different sense of family, you know, it blows their mind. Yeah, my kids went to this camp, not far from us in Texas a couple of months ago. And, you know, it's this old ranch, right? It's like the original, it's one of the original settlers with Stephen F. Austin or whatever. So, you know, it dates back to early 1800s.

This guy gets a land grant, builds this cool ranch. You can go, there's a mill that he had. You can see his old stone house. I'm sort of walking along. It's all, you're sort of on one historical timeline. 200 years. It feels very old. This waterfall he's using as a grist mill.

His house, which is in ruins ruins made out of these blocks, looks exactly the same as a cinder block house going up in construction now and sort of struck by this. And then I'm walking along and my kids had told me there was this cave there. They were at the camp that I was exploring the area before I dropped them up. And I'm walking in, I find this cave they've been talking about. I'm reading the sign next to the cave. Well, the cave has been a host to native peoples.

It says, for 8,000 years. And so suddenly the scale of the history that I'm sort of soaking in goes from like this to like, and you realize 200 years is nothing and that the people have been hunting and lighting fires and getting out of a storm in this overhang, slaughtering animals, whatever, for 8,000 years. Yeah, it stretches the limits of my imagination,

let alone the imaginations of little kids who you're trying to Get them to embrace some of the complexity of the planet, right? Yeah, I mean you even see this in literature, right? Like I think all these all these writers with names that are hard to pronounce seem like they came from roughly the same period I was I remember in Mark's to be with his meditations, you know, he talks a lot about Euripides, the playwright, and I'm like, okay, so he must have been like, I don't know, like a contemporary playwright, or okay, no, he's Greek, so that's like a couple hundred years back,

or whatever. I'm looking it up, you know, Euripides has been dead for like six, seven hundred years by the time Mark isurelis is getting around to quoting him. So first off, just that a single piece of literature in the ancient world is 800, like in ancient Rome, this guy is quoting from memory in his journal, a piece of literature, like a play that's multiple centuries old. And then some of those plays survive in their totality to us. In some cases, all we have are these little fragments. But you're just like, this playwright that he's quoting

is older to him than Shakespeare is to me. And so the sense of the past that people in the past had, I think we don't spend a lot of time trying to put ourselves in those shoes. But yeah, what must a hunter in, you know, the year 500 AD have thought of a stone age hunter. How could they, how could they have conceived of that? Just like when those same hunters and then later people discovered the dinosaurs, you know, they had, they couldn't comprehend millions of years ago, they were thinking these things must be a couple thousand years old

or that these animals must still be alive. Mm-hmm. You know what I wanted to, I keep wanting to back you up because I want to, why you read, I'm curious what drew you to read and throw. Why you read and throw? Well, weirdly, I read this fascinating biography of Emerson first, and then I wanted to read through next. But I mean, these are probably the two greatest American philosophers

who have an interesting connection to the Stoics too. And so I don't know, I'm just always interested in people who are interesting, Thoreau's famous line, which I think I quote in the obstacles the way he says, you know, the purpose of philosophy is not to have subtle thoughts. It's to solve the problems of life, not theoretically, but practically. And that's the kind of philosophy that gets me really excited. The famous line from Thoreau that I quote in the obstacle is the way, he says, the purpose of the philosopher is not to have subtle thoughts. It's, he says, it is to solve the problems of life, not theoretically, but practically. And that's the kind of philosophy

that gets me really excited. He got, I had an interesting kind of a funny thing happen around Thoreau is, yeah, I studied literature in school and the graduate degree in writing. So I'd always been brushing up against Thoreau, you know, your whole life, my whole education career. And then long ago I read a piece in Harper's, I think it was in Harper's, back when like Harper's Mag, it was kind of like ascended, you know, it's ascended position. And there was a guy talking about basically arguing, and I can't remember the full thing, arguing about what a phony throw was you know and how his whole like going to spend all this time at

Walden pond you know he was down the road from his mom's house and what a mom was boy he was and he's always back and forth from his mom's and and basically that he did I can't I have to go revisit the thing. He basically just did a version you can imagine someone today of writing a nonfiction book and having it be like, it was like, well, not quite. Not quite. Sure. I went down.

I mean, would you, I had made some comment on my show. I'd made some comment about throw being in a candy ass. And that's just, I was just like making a stupid comment, I made some comment on my show. I made some comment about throwing in a candy ass. And that's just, I was just like making a stupid comment, you know. Later I read this article. And my candy ass is a term my dad always uses like a derision for, for someone who was weak. And there a day someone used a term candy bucket, which I liked a lot.

But. There are days someone used the term candy bucket, which I liked a lot, but so I see this like headline in a magazine and it's sort of like battle cry of the candy ass or whatever it was, that's weird because that's like a word that I like it, you just don't see that word. Yeah, I know it well. And it won't be in this criticism of this blow hard podcast host to a dare call through OK. Yes.

I mean, the couple of crazy things about the row. I mean, number one, his dad owns a pencil factory, which seems, you know, sort of incomprehensibly modern, you know, like that's where he would make his money. His dad, he worked in his dad's pencil factory. And then the other, I mean, he writes this, he goes to Walden, he writes this great book at Walden, obviously. And he also writes this book of this river cruise that he does, which I've read parts of. And, you know, he was a school teacher.

As far as I understand, yeah, I don't think he's some courageous mountain man necessarily. But he clearly was a guy who enjoyed the outdoors more than the average person. And he's endlessly quotable. He was writing about stuff that people weren't writing about at the time. And I guess it was just like a stupid offhand and remark,

but just kind of just funny how it's funny how there are for all these figures, there are people. The thing that blew me away, I don't know if you can really admire them. And you can't be casual. You can't be casual. The thing that blew me away, one of the sort of throw away lines in Walden is he talks about how they would come out to Walden pond every winter and cut ice, right, from the pond, which they would ship as far as Calcutta. So like you don't think of,

you don't think of, yeah, you don't think of global trade in the 1830s or 40s, but yeah, they would, Boston was cold, they would cut ice from Walden pond, packet with sawdust in ships, and it would go all over the US. If you had to mint Julep in New Orleans in 1840, you know, you're probably sipping ice cut from somewhere like Walden Pond.

But that's something I had. That's something I didn't retain. Yeah, you think of this triangle trade. The guy's trading ice with a British ship, which is heading to British India. And you're drinking the same ice that Th you know, that Thoreau watched Freeze over from the windows of his cabin. Yeah, that's cool.

That's pretty cool. All right, I got one other quote for you. I wanted to get into that I was thinking about. The Thoreau quote. No, no, this is a Theodore Roosevelt quote, which I thought you might like. He's on this long hunt. He was hunting after a bull caribou, I think. He ends up getting it,

right? But he says it was one of those moments that repay the hunter for days of toil and hardship that is if he needs repayment and does not find life in the wilderness pleasure enough repayment and does not find life in the wilderness pleasure enough in itself. How have you, are you an outcome guy when you're out there or are you a process guy? I'd say both an equal measure. If it wasn't, if it wasn't really fun, if hunting wasn't really fun, I wouldn't do it, you know, but if it didn't yield tangible result, I wouldn't do it either. I don't, you know, my kids and my wife, they like to go skiing. I just, I don't get it. I don't get it. There's no thing that you bring home in the end. I have a very, I'm very extractive.

You know, I'm very, you know, there's even a term of you heard this. When people are trying to lump outdoor activities, there's this term you hear more and more where you have consumptive and non-consumptive users. And hunters and anglers are lumped under consumptive users. And then hikers, bikers, skiers, whatever would be your non-consumptive users. I don't really like where that's going, but it's pretty true. There's a consumptive element. You can get into obvious

considerations around it being sustainable, ultimately helpful, right? It's not destructive, but it's consumptive. But if I have to enjoy the process, you know, if I hated to be out in the woods and I hated the act of hunting, but I just love to eat wild game, I would probably just fall into some different eating habit. You know? Sure.

But the fact that it produces, the fact that it produces something that I really, really want and I really, really like to do it, it's like what more can you ask? But if you pulled either of those away, it would lose all of it for me. Also, besides just the tangible,

the tangible, usable part of that we eat a lot of fish and game. Last night for dinner, we had halibut and lincod and shrimp that we caught. We had green beans that we grew. We had green beans that we grew. We had tomatoes that my mom grew. That's our diet, right? Even beyond the edible part, I like the other parts, you know.

I keep all kinds of skulls around and antlers around as things, there was a big wildfire that was not really but there was potentially a threat to our home a few years ago and I was out of town and I instructed my kid, we have this little kidy swimming pool you know, Mm-hmm. I told him, if you got a split, I want you to throw all those skulls into that pool.

I didn't advise him on how to salvage anything else in the house. It's like the thing I wanted. I don't want it to go away, because all that stuff means a lot to me. So I'm very... Result. You know, very result. So I'm very resolved. You know, very resolved, but I'm also real processed. Bosh Legacy returns now streaming.

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Are you a results guy in the rest of life also? Like I I have tended to find that as a writer I've gotten better the more process oriented I am, and the less outcome oriented I am, in the sense that the process is something I control, and the outcome is somewhat dependent on things outside of my control. No, I only like things after I've made them. I hate, I don't really enjoy any part of the things I make. I just like I'm a lot when they're done. I like I'm a lot when they're done.

I feel like shit when I'm not doing them. But I don't like doing them. You're saying? Yeah, there's a writing. There's a writing quote, painters like painting writers like having written. Yeah, not familiar with that. I'm not going to say that.

I'm not going to say that. Yeah, there's a writing, there's a writing quote, painters like painting writers like having written. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I've miscoordered that a bunch of times. And it's like, like, I feel if I'm supposed to be writing something or need to write something, I can't be miserable when I'm not doing it. Even though I'm trying to entertain myself in other ways, in the back of my head, knowing that I need to do it is ruining whatever I'm doing. Then when I'm doing it, I resent what I'm doing, because if I had it done, I would be able to go do the thing I was trying to do, but couldn't enjoy, because I hadn't done what I'm doing. And then when I'm done, done, then I love it. Then I love it.

But is your sense of pride in having done it intrinsic or is it in some way dependent on reception or appreciation or success? No, not entirely dependent. I could do something that's unsuccessful. We're working on a project right now. I don't know. It might be unsuccessful.

I could picture it being unsuccessful, but I'll be very glad we did it. Yes. If I'm doing a thing that I'm not even like. If, if I wind up working on a thing that I have doubts about whether it's really the best thing I should be working on. And then I do it and it's not received well, then it seems like a real blow. If it's a thing where I'm like, listen, if you don't, if people don't like this, that's their problem. They're stupid. Because this is, this is fascinating, right. If people don't like this, that's their problem. They're stupid because this is fascinating, right? Then I'll still, I'll, I can suffer a lack of success on it.

Yeah. You know, and I could be like, oh, listen, man, that thing is totally cool. I've always wondered about that. I'm so glad we got, I got to spend time learning all about that. And if people aren't interested in screwing, you know, and I can go on, but it's still so things I got to spend time learning all about that and if people aren't interested in this group,

and I can go on, but it's still so things that you're kind of aren't wholly committed to, but you then do them real well and you kind of in the back your head, you're like, I don't know if I should, is this really what I wanna be working on right now? And then no one likes it. Then you're like, well, I knew I should have seen

something in the back of my head told me. You know. The disorienting ones are, you know, that you come in and they're like, okay, today we need you to shoot X or hey, we want you to write a piece about this, right? Or your publisher is like, what about something like this? And there's that part of you that's like,

I don't know, that doesn't really get me excited. But, you know, you know know that you're not always right. So you do it, then you sort of have these feelings as you're going along, are you phoning it in? Are you being phony, you know, all this? And then it, like, then it crushes, that's almost the worst, right? Like then it does well.

Because then you're like, now I don't even know if I can trust my gut on what I should be doing or not. And then, and then you're like, now I don't even know if I can trust my gut on what I should be doing or not. And then you're like, should I like it? Because other people like it, or was my own internal reticence, or, you know, doubts about this, was that actually like the voice of conscience in some way? And then you're just like, you know what,

I don't fucking know, I don't know. Nobody knows anything. I've had some examples like that one, but when I first started out as a magazine writer, I would get a dream of getting an assignment, you know, and I established myself as a magazine writer, but it's doing work and submitting, you know, and I established myself as a magazine writer, but it's doing work. Sure.

And submitting, you know, like submitting assignments. Yeah, yeah, be like, I'd write a thing and shop it around. Yeah. And eventually I got where I'd get assignments and the assignments were never quite what I would have shopped around. And I found myself in this position of needing to try to be like, okay, let's say I was interested in this. How would I approach it?

I would pretend, I'd pretend to be interested in it. Sure. You know, they all say a guy was interested in this subject. He probably would, and I felt like going through that. And I can't think of anything I ever was assigned that did that. I never got an assignment and I thought to myself, I don't feel like doing this. And then it wound up working or wound up being a great hit for me. or want it being a great hit for me. So that kind of reinforced in me, not that other people's ideas aren't good,

just that I'm not good at the pretending part. I'm not good at pretending to be interested. I have a lot of respect for these writers that have this huge breath and just can go do anything. And they can always find a way writers that have this huge breadth and just can go do anything. And they can always find a way to make it their own. I work with a collaborator, Savannah, a Schuhrer. We do these series called Campfire Stories.

And we do them for Random House Audio. And there are these audio originals. We've done some called close calls. And it's people telling near death experiences. And people telling near death experiences in mountaineers, wildland firefighters, hunters, whatever. And there's like interstitial narration. But Savannah's great strength is that writers, hunters, whatever. And there's like interstitial narration.

But Savannah's great strength is that over the lifestyle, she really couldn't give a shit. Yeah. And when we're all hung up on someone saying a tree would have been a certain kind of tree, but if you think about it, it couldn't have been that kind of tree because of where he was, you know. This is not her thing.

Um, which, and she's able to just focus on like outside of this personal understanding, just focus on like quality and merit. Yeah. without the noise of subject matter expertise. And she learned that because she used to work at a trade publication. And they did a lot of like enthusiast publications. And she over the years got to where like, oh, okay, I don't know, cross stitching shirt. How do we do the best project possible

on cross stitching? I'm not a cross stitcher, but I know how to put stuff together. And that just become like an expertise she has is to be able to apply a really good editorial sensibility, a good producer sensibility, and just apply it and do it without needing to have personal passion. Yes. have personal passion in the space. And that's a great skill, man. It's a great skill.

And I just, like, I lack it. I lack it. No, I've probably, I've written hundreds and hundreds of press releases over the years, like for different people, for clients and stuff. And that's a weird one, because first off, it's almost always boring, but that person is excited about it, right?

They're announcing this thing that by definition, they are excited about. It's news to them, right? And the ability to sort of try to figure out how to come up with some voice of excitement about this thing that is not news. Because if it was news, someone would be asking you about it.

Instead, you're announcing the thing. And I also just see that as like just simple hours doing the fit, like how, you know, those were just reps that I got over the years writing stuff. And yeah, there is this tension between like, you're shaped in your life by all the things you had to do that you didn't necessarily wanna do. Like you probably took some of those assignments

because you just plain needed the money, right? Oh yeah. You're just trying to provide for yourself. And then as you get successful, right? You, there's less and less that you have to do that you don't wanna do. And so how do you continue to be shaped and get your hours and develop and get better when

you have a certain amount of control and discretion over your choices? Like I think about this in the sense that like I basically don't do anything like people invite me to go to stuff. I like never. I don't like going to parties. I don't like going to events. Like I'm out of the scene. There's so many things that I would like to do before I voluntarily attend to this conference

that I'm not being paid to speak at, right? And so yet, when I look back on my life, how many of my relationships and friendships and business things that how many have come from things that I went to that I didn't necessarily want to go to, but I had to go to, right? And so I go, you know, what am I sometimes I think about what I'm missing out on by the fact that now I have the option to not go and I choose not to go. Yeah. I, uh, I have a similar thing that happens and it's convenient where I'll now and then want to go do something, but it's not really justifiable from a business perspective, you know, and I'll feel a little bit guilty about going to something or doing some activity that's

pulling me away from more pressing issues. But then I'll make some, I'll meet some guy or hear some story. Yes. And in that story, you'll wind up, in however minor, however minor way, that story will find its way into my work or a learn about some little thing, you know, like, helmet. Yeah. You had, you have a cattle rustling problem. And then a year later, right, I'll be doing a thing on livestock

fab. And I say to myself, you see, just goes the show. Yes, yes. Anytime I'm out screwing around, it's good. It was good. I think about stuff that I've like, you know, it's like I should be reading a book and then I think of something and it's like, where did I learn that again? Oh, I was flipping through an in-flight magazine on a Southwest flight nine years ago, you know, or whatever.

Like, like this random stuff that you found when you weren't looking and then, you know, I think as you get more control and you, you know, suddenly things are revolve around you a little bit more, maybe you're missing out on some of those, those opportunities and you don't even know what you're missing. Um, I just lost my train of thought there. Say that again real quick, because I missed it. I was you don't even know what you're missing. You know, you don't even notice the random connections you're not making or the things you're learning. Oh, you know,

I used to, uh, have a thing I would wonder about when I was gone and traveling and people would say to me, oh, you're so lucky. You make your living, X, Y, or Z. You make your living, you make your living hunting. You make your living fishing. And I, you know, I used to be really eager to correct them and be like no it's not true this is not what happens. Like I make my living as a writer, right. I make my living doing a thing

where the the the work I I do is outside of that. Sure. The thing I bring to the table is an ability to go do a thing to do some activity adventure or whatever and then translate it into words, whether it's on a page or recorded. That's the work. And I say that in a little way, because it was kind of like defensive, a defensive posture

to say that, to clarify, there's more to the story than that. Sure. But really, the older I get more, I think about it, I think that there actually is some truth to that, because especially when when in considering artificial intelligence and some of the things we're talking about now would be you imagine that you have an object and then you have the objects shadow right in written word recorded word is the shadow of an object, meaning you've experienced the thing, beheld the thing, whatever, and that's the thing. And then the material you make about it is that thing's shadow, it's captured in some way. As we see that just that words and styles can be just captured, can be created

by computers. You realize that what you are bringing to the table perhaps is You realize that what you are bringing to the table perhaps is that you're having a set of experiences or a set of thoughts that hasn't been put down yet to be harvested. That hasn't been put down yet to be harvested by computers. Sure. Right? Like everything that they have to work with is stuff that we been put down yet to be harvested by computers. Sure. Right? Like, everything that they have to work with is stuff that we've put down.

Yeah. So when you're doing a thing that hasn't even been captured by anyone yet, that's the IP. You're creating the material. Yeah. You're like, you're beholding the object, you know? And then, if the ability to put words down becomes cheap and over time, because we can create machinery to make, to construct sentences, what you still hold is the thing like,

what you can't harvest my thought. I haven't had it yet. When I have it, I'll be the first person to put it down. So when I'm out doing what would be like my research or my experiences are going on that trip to look for projectile points on the North Slope or whatever I'm up to. In that moment, I'm having the, that's where the, that's the origination. That's where the, that's the origination. Right. That's what will become something that's captured forever more digitally, right? The creative act is the creation of a new combination

of experiences, the fact that your DNA has never been in that place, witnessing that thing, doing whatever it is, all of that is the singular, you know, genesis of something that hasn't existed, and actually detailing what's happened or what was seen is not the skill. The skill is making the thing exist for the first time. Yeah, so I used to clarify, oh no, I don't go on trips for a living. I write for a living, but maybe in the future, I'll be like, no, no, no, I do a lot of talk and the joke is, you know, they're not paying you to deliver the talk. They're paying you to get on the plane. Yeah, yeah, to go ahead. They're paying you to go there and be in the place.

Right. To go outside. That's the scarce thing. I think about, do you ever, when you maybe early on in your writing career, did you ever get any pleasure or satisfaction of writing down things that other people had written, like copying down quotes or...

Oh, or... When you're transcribing, when people had something that, like Hemingway or something, had written. Have you ever done that? I'm trying to understand what you mean. You mean the... I'm sorry.

We ever typed up, you know, like somebody else's writing and kind of felt like Hemingway go through your fingers. Oh, no, but I hear people doing that. And I can't remember what writer I was reading about that was writing another writer's writing just to get a sense of the cadence. Yeah. No, man, I've never done that.

I don't know. No, I've never done that, and I never would do that. It gave me an interesting insight into AI, because I do that. So here's your book. I have little things that I've marked that were interesting to me. I was reading it to my son, and I was like,

oh, I'm going to go back and look at that. This is the throw book. I was reading it to my son and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go back and look at that. This is the throw book, right? I'm not that far into it, but this is, so I'll go back through and I'll type up the stuff that I liked, right, that I then keep for research or stuff that I'm writing in the future. And sometimes I'll just write it in a Gmail, write it in an email to myself.

So I'm not opening a word document, saving it. I'll just type it in an email to myself. So I'm not opening a word document saving it. I'll just type it in an email. And so this is obviously there's AI, if you are written an email in Gmail, right? It suggests how you want to finish that sentence, you know? If you're experiencing it. Yeah, and so even when they're right, I changed my mind. Yes, but what was interesting to me is so AI

is supposed to be this collection of basically all the insights of all literature and everything ever made. So you'd think, right, if there is a quote unquote right way to finish a sentence, if I am writing a sentence that has already been written, right, a classic sentence from Hemingway or Thoreau or Steve Rinella or whatever, right, you'd think AI would be able to guess the end of that sentence properly, but it not only never guesses it, it never, what it suggests is never better than what this great person suggested. You know what I mean? So I'm not saying AI is worthless, but I am saying that I totally agree with the premise that

going and having the experience is 90% of it. But the decision of where to go, the unlimited options of how a sentence could go or how an experience could be detailed, that taste, that taste is still worth something. And it's very, very difficult to replace. It's probably easy to replace someone who's not very good, but if you're great, one of my favorite expressions from the economist Tyler Cowan, he's talked a lot about AI.

He says average is over. Basically, it's really hard to be mediocre in the world we're going into. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it, and it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And rich, life takes energy. Ghosts aren't real.

At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happened in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent argument of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too. Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night argument of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too.

Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother. Who was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face. From wandering in Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us.

Follow Ghost Story on the Wondering app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondering Plus. I, uh, what do you call that when you have a book? I always use them. What do you call that when you have a little quote in the beginning of your book from some other writer? In epigraph. Yeah, an epigraph. of all the stuff I've written and I've written a lot of pages. I sometimes worry that I haven't, that I'm not, I don't have any like a twain, Oscar wild. All these people just get quoted again and again and again. They got quotes on all this shit, you know, elderly, you're cold. Like, I've never generated, I can't think if I've generated a sentence yet, that whatever turn up as someone else's epigraph and that always kind of bums me out, man, like I don't think I have, like how to twain or ask a while.

I mean every paragraph these guys have, there's some shit that's like quoted everywhere and then people can't remember who they're quoting. They mess up the quotes, you know, like, I never let schooling get in the way of my education, right, Twain. I haven't generated any of that shit. I just pulled up, I just pulled up your name. I just pulled up your name. I just pulled up your name. I just pulled up your name. I just pulled up I just I just I just pulled up your your quotes on good reads and I can see all the chunks of your writing that people have highlighted over and over and over again. When you find one no when you find one in an epigraph to another writer's book you let let me know, man. But see that's a t-shirt.

Or on a t-shirt, let me know. I would disagree in the sense that if I'm, have you ever picked an epigraph from a still living writer? On you cut out, say that again. Sorry, have you ever picked an epigraph from a still living writer? You gotta go further back, you know what I mean?

No, man. I used still living writers dude. I used Tells his name In my Buffalo book I used to still living writer and it was a guy I had met as Can't remember his name as the epigraph for American Buffalo. Yeah Wow, you know that terribly. I mean, he was older. Me. How was his name, man? I met him because he kind of like. He was an avant-garde short story writer of some sort.

And he kind of rolled through the Mizzoula literary community. I can't think of it right now. I would say epigraphs favor the dead. So you can only evaluate someone's quotability as a writer after at least several decades, right? It's you got to have a you got to you're too early and it's like you're not you're not even eligible for the Hall of Fame yet. No, but I just like I just don't know. Yeah, maybe I'm maybe I'm alarmed. I don't need to be alarmed yet, but I just think of of of of all the shit I have written that I haven't thrown off. Like a real gem, a free like a free standing, a freestanding, you know, something on par with, I never let school and get in the way of my education. Like, how would I have not have thrown that off, you know, it's troubling to me, man. It's a real problem. I need to start thinking in terms of quotes

and not thinking in terms of books. Well, I loved the new book. I was gonna ask you a couple of questions on it. It feels like even from the title, at the core of it, I mean, you see it in the cover also, but it feels like at the core of it, it's about wonder, right? It's about the stuff that kind of blows your mind.

I mean, obviously there's little pedestrian things in the book, like little fun projects, but I think what's so wonderful about kids and nature and then maybe what nature lets us recapture as adults is the sense of being immersed in, subsumed in something so much bigger than you can even comprehend or more powerful than you can ever even imagine. That's what I think it's very important to establish in young kids. My oldest kid is 13. So I've been a dad for that, you know, that long. I have a eight year old, a 10 year old, a 13 year old. The main thing I care about right now is instilling in them a sense of wonder and respect

and adventure around nature and the natural world. That's what I care about. I am not yet interested in the doom and gloom. In fact, two nights ago, I had a conversation with my 13-year-old where at school, he's getting fed so much doom and gloom that he's almost in tears about how it's all over. Yeah. And needing to undo that. I think that he can mourn if he's going to be told that it's all over.

The earth is ruined. It's all over. The earth is ruined. It's all over. If he absorbs that at 13, I think there's a very good chance that you're going to wind up with a very apathetic 20 year old. I'm But in my view, it's not time yet. Time right now, even if you had, even if you were just looking at future generations as being the potential saviors of the planet. Make them love it first. Sure. Let them love it first. Yeah. We will soon begin talking about challenges, but right now we're in the, you know, like the cycles of like a romantic relationship.

We're in the infatuation phase. And that's where I think kids need to be for a long time as in the infatuation phase. It's also the phase of having agency that things can be improved and changed. Like to go back to this throw thing, when we think of New England, we think of New England as a place with lots of trees, right? It's like this beautiful dense wooded area. Well, one of the things he talks about in the book

is that was not Therose New England. The reason he goes to Walden pond is to get into the forest because almost all of New England has been clear cut. Like the average person needed like 25 quarts of firewood to get through a single Boston winter. His dad owns a pencil factory. They had cut every imaginable tree in the 200 years that settlers had been in New England at that time. So that's

all new. Like when you go to New England and you see trees now, that's not what it looked like not that long ago, right? Because they've all grown back because people realize, hey, this is a bad thing to do. So that's not to minimize where we are with the climate crisis or anything. But it is to say that, you know, the moment that you're in now is not how it potentially will always be that human history has been a cycle of overuse and fallow, overuse and fallow and improvements and breakthroughs and that, yeah, the idea that we are past the point of new no return even if that were true I'm not sure that's what a 13 year old needs to be told. Yeah it's it's it's it only struck me the other night that how alarmed I was about how, um,

how alarmed I became. And I'm going to, I'm going to think about it more and probably do things about it. More and, and concentrate more on it is the sequencing of, of how we kind of roll out of how we kind of roll out to our kids that the challenges we face in the trend lines, in the trend lines, because they're not good at it. I made the mistake years ago, several years ago, I made the mistake of telling all three of my kids

that in four billion years, the sun would be burned out. Yeah. And I just told that in passing, it's sun would be burned out. And I just told that in passing, it's just like an interesting little tidbit, the sun would burn out in four billion years. And man, we didn't talk about anything else for weeks. As I tried to back pedal and explain like, well, I need to try to, I'm gonna try to explain what four billion years means.

But dude, they added that like shit, really? You know, Graham is gonna die. Graham is gonna die. So it's like there's a, there's a, There's a, there's a, there's, there, there, there, we need to create room, we need to create room for them to see some kind of sense of rhythm and a sense of staticness, right? Because if not, there's just so much upheaval, culturally, but to create them and idea that nature, like I said, while dynamic, you know, there's all these things, populations going up and down, lily pad beds that were there last year, but then you go and they're not there now and seasonality.

And, and, you know, you go to grandma's one June, and there's like bluegill spawning a lower place. You go to grandma's the next June, and you can't find a bluegill, right? That's it's dynamic in a way that they can live and see, but I hesitate to I hesitate to over-complexify natural environments and natural places, because I want them at first just to see it as something that's fairly inviting and soothing. Yes. Well, and that it abides, right?

That, you know, things are always happening. And to with few exceptions, this stuff will always be there. That, you know, this tree not only is older than the United States, but it's older than the Mona Lisa, you know, it's older than, you know, Shakespeare, you know, that it goes that far back and that, that's, again, it sort of gives you that zoom out perspective. It also gives you that sort of humility. It also gives you the sense that like, yeah, that sort of nature and the world kind of has its own pace and that it's own rhythms and that the beautiful thing about going out in nature is to be able to tap into that and to to ride along it for however long you can be in it until you have to go back to the crazy real world.

The other thing, what I like about this though, like in the title especially, right, there's Ketchik Krayfish, right, which is as minor and little and silly as it gets and then there's... It's Consulter. Which is it's Consulter. Yeah. Sure, sure then there's It's consultants, which is it's conservative. Yeah. Sure, sure. But then count the stars, which is beautiful and majestic as it gets, right?

When I grew up, we would catch them off the pier in Lake Tahoe. We call them cradads. But you know, it's a hot dog on the end of a on the end of a coat hanger. It's as unmagestic as you can get. And then that same night you're watching the stars come up over the lake. It's as beautiful as it gets. But they're sort of two sides of the same coin. Yeah, that was intentional. And we, you know, and thinking of good titles,

it always becomes kind of a communal project with people I live with and talk to and friends and stuff. I usually start with some really unwieldy sub-title. I'm a big sub-title. Yeah. Working sub-title. But yeah, I think I wanted to capture that and I also wanted to have a nod toward that consumptive use. Because again, the way I go with my kids is we catch a lot of stuff to eat and we grow

a lot of stuff to eat and we grow a lot of stuff to eat. And there are forces and people that try to push in them an idea that they're doing something wrong by not getting with the program in terms of buying your food, buying your protein. Like people really want you to buy your protein from stores. And even in elementary school, there are a lot of kids and teachers and things that are unhappy with someone that would not do that. These aren't people that don't eat meat. They're just unhappy that you would go get your own. It seems very barbaric. It seems very barbaric and wrong to them. Sure.

So one of the things in the book is introducing this idea, which I've gone through great pains to introduce to my kids, of responsible, responsible, consumptive use and well-considered, consumptive use and well considered, consumptive use. And that's in there. And also a lot about danger in risk. You know, like when I start out in the book, I talk about, you're going to find hatchets and drills and machetes and blow guns in here.

I learned while writing the book, there's a how to make a blow gun thing, and I learned while writing a book that in California, even if you made the blow gun in the book, you would be in violation of the law. So there's a lot of like kind of noughtiness, you know, around danger of stuff and making bows.

And it's not just nostalgia for one of weird kids and would play with fireworks as you bows all day, but I think that there's like a little bit of risk taking and being smart about risk and learning how to work with a hatchet, you know, with parental supervision, learning how to drill holes in something with parental supervision. So that stuff was real important to me too, is just developing mechanical skills, you know, tool use, right? Because you could grow up now, just the way things are so specialized, you can grow up now without getting a lot of tool use in. And then later it can feel very clumsy to you to work with your hands. And so by introducing tool use and fabrication and learning how to m a guyver shit together, like learning how to do that in play is like a great substitute for the days when you used to have to put your five-year-olds to work out in the fields and they would learn tool use but also have

a real limit on their imagination, right? But so I think that that was important to me too in putting it together. It is just to start finding ways for kids to make stuff and figure things out and cut things and put holes in them and fasten them together. All that stuff is, I think, really strong for kids, cognitively, right? Well, and it creates, I think, an awareness

that is really important. Like one of my kids goes, they both went, but one of them still there, goes to this sort of outdoor nature school that is amazing. The classrooms outside, they go on hikes every day, they learn about plants and animals and wildlife and all this stuff. But like, there's a fire at the school.

Every day, there is a open fire at the school every day, right? And in one sense, it's kind of terrifying, right? You would, I think, you wouldn't want, you know, kids' fire is not a great combination, which is why they all have to learn how to be around a fire. Like, you know, kids are so sort of clumsy and not in control or command of their bodies. And it's good for them to learn awareness of like, hey, the stakes of the stuff that we're doing

are high. You're not just sitting in a desk and nothing bad can happen to you. Like, if you're not listening, if you're not paying attention, you could get hurt. They were fishing at the school the other day. And the kids weren't following, the kids weren't listening to the instructor or to the teacher. They were splashing around throwing stuff in the water. So of course, they weren't catching any fish, right? So they're learning the lesson of why you have to listen

because listening is contingent, or the outcome they want is contingent on following the instructions. These aren't made up behavioral rules. These are rules that, hey, if you aren't responsible in the water, you're not going to catch the fish that you want. In my writing, I've used a few times I've used a term called arena, making an arena of consequence.

And that's one of the things I like about nature and bringing kids in the nature is that you do enter into that place of confidence. If you're sneaking up on a fish to catch, if you're creeping up on a cutthroat trout and a creek to catch him and you spook him, he's gone, man, he ain't coming back. You can reboot all you want, but it's over. And I like that kind of stuff. And I also like that little bit of physical risk

around fire making and other things. Yeah, it's like, it creates a need to be aware physical risk around fire making and other things. Yeah, it's like it, it, it, it, it, it, it creates a need to, to be aware and also I think is really important is a beginning to develop a way to be cool headed and not, and not excitable. Yeah. And, and the way you develop cool head and this in the lack of excitability is being in a lot

of positions where not being cool headed and being excitable caused trouble. That's what I see. That's the people who I see overcome that stuff as it's overcome through exposure. Yeah, right. Why doesn't a fireman or a firefighter or or a police officer, especially for why don't they freak out in a high stakes Dangerous situation. It's because they've been in that situation in real life a bunch of times and they've trained themselves in that situation You know nature nature is wonderful and beautiful and fun It's also incredibly frustrating and you have to, it teaches, it forces you to figure out how to

contain and manage that frustration or rip your heart out. Unfortunately, I haven't found that management skill to be transferable outside of nature because I can tolerate, I can avoid frustration with natural systems. You know, bad weather streaks, like it's frustrating. Weather events that, you know, stop you from doing something you wanted to do outside. And I can cope. But problems with my laptop, problems with my phone. I cannot bring that same level of, you know, I've developed the skill in some areas of my life, so it's not wholehearted and it's, you know,

ironically, because we're talking about kids, I have, I struggle and I've always struggled to, to not sometimes just want to pull my hair out. Yeah. And dealing with kids, you know, like even last night, I'm like, why has it been bedtime for about an hour? And I like, yeah, I even said to him, you guys, you have taken up much more of my time tonight in this whole getting into bed thing than I was planning on giving this. I'm going to lose my mind if you don't get in that bed. Right, but I

would never talk that way to a blue girl, you know. Well, I think the key is, I mean, the number one source of frustration in life is other people. And if we can start to see people traffic, you know, politics, et cetera, as a function of nature, as the human species doing what it does, I do find that a bit more tolerable. Mm-hmm.

I hope maybe it would all be way worse if I hadn't learned to deal with it and if I hadn't learned to deal with it and if I hadn't learned to deal with it in nature, but what's funny is just these universals, yesterday my boy got his fishing rod so tangled up, he was almost in tears dude and it was funny because it happened like I said I met my mom's house. And I remember being his age and being in tears about a tangled up fishing rod. And just waiting for my dad to come home and untangle my rod. And here he was, you know, 40 years later, whatever the hell some 30 some years later, like

on the same shoreline with the same kind of tangle and the same like, ah! But that's the best! That's also just the best. That's amazing. That's just so beautiful and perfect and probably the perfect place to wrap up the full circle in this oven.

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, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Okay, so if you had a time machine, how far in time would you need to go back to be a dominant basketball player of that year? I need to go to when Bob Coosie was playing. Back in the plumber days.

27 year old Shay would give Bob Coosie the business. He's not guarding me. Hi, I'm Jason Gatsupcione. And I'm Shay Serrano and we are back. We have a new podcast from Wondering. It's called Six Trophies. And it's the best. Each week, Shay and I are combing through all of the NBA

storylines finding the best, most interesting, most compelling ones, and then handing out six pop culture theme trophies for six basketball related activities. Trophies like The Dominic Toretto, I live my life on quarter mile in a time trophy, which is given to someone who made a short-term decision with no regard to future cons quits. Or The Christopher Nolan Tenet Trophy, which is given to someone who did something that

we didn't understand. Catalina Wine Mixer trophy. Ooh, the Lauren Hill you might win some, but you just lost one trophy. Follow six trophies on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Equal to the six trophies and free right now by joining Wondery Plus.