James Patterson

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. We recently heard, so funny, we heard this. Neve Campbell, after being on the fact check, decided to check out the show.

And she went to listen to it only three different times, and it happened to be episodes where I introduced us as Dan Rather and Miniature Miles. Yes. And she was like, oh, I guess this isn't the right thing. And it never occurred to me that someone actually might be on their first listen.

I love that. And go, oh, I got the wrong podcast. This is Dan Rather's podcast. And boy, his voice is different.

No, Dax Shepard and Monica Padman. AKA Dan Rather and the Duchess of Duluth. Today's guest is James Patterson. He's one of the world's best-selling authors.

Hundreds of millions of books. It's very prolific. Very prolific. Very successful.

His books include Along Came a Spider, The Angel Experiment, School's Out Forever, 10th Anniversary, The People vs. Alex Cross, a bunch of movies have been made out of his books. And he has a new book out right now, which is super interesting because, in a way, it is co-authored with Michael Crichton. Yes.

Because this is a book that Michael Crichton was writing on, and James was brought in by Michael's wife to finish it and bring it to fruition. It's called Eruption, and it's a very Crichton-esque story about a huge volcano on the big island of Hawaii and a military secret that this will expose. Eruption, out now. Please enjoy James Patterson.

How are you? I'm good. How are you? Welcome.

I'm good. Maggie Dash. Nice to meet you. I'm a little irreverent, so I joke a lot.

You're in a very safe space for irreverence. I would say that's our reigning tone here. So many drinks. Where will I start?

How long are you in town for? Just today and tomorrow. We're doing a thing with Sherry Crichton, Michael Crichton's widow, because I have the book coming out. Eruption.

So we're doing that Sunday morning CBS thing. Oh, you are? And they're going to shoot. It's actually a pretty cool story because she was pregnant with her son when Michael died.

Oh, you're kidding. No, no, no. In 2008 he died? I don't know exactly.

I do. It's like 13, 14 years ago. He never saw his son. He never met his son.

And this, well, whatever. Tell me when we're ready. Oh, we're ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, you need me started? Do you feel bamboozled? Yeah, I know. We're going to do that thing.

Okay, fine. We have a saying in here. No, it's not Robert Durst style. It's not like The Jinx, where you're miked and you'll be in the bathroom and admit to some murders.

You must have watched The Jinx in 2015? I did not. You did? I'm aware of it, but I did not.

And you know he didn't know he was miked. I do know that. Okay, what do you watch? If you're not watching The Jinx, which all of America watch.

Like Slow Horses? Okay, you love Slow Horses. We love Slow Horses. Right.

My wife and I. I'm always bad when I'm trying to remember. Like, what do we watch? A series will grab us.

What was the Englishman? The Gentleman? Oh, I like that, right? Have you watched Slow Horses?

I watched the first episode. First episode is not typical of the show. Interesting, okay. Because it's all about that one British actor, Gary Oldman.

And once he gets going, he's great. He's one of the greatest. I mean, it's really engaging and wonderful and off the wall. And it's a great character.

So we like that. Are you more prone to watch nonfiction or fiction? Fiction. I did the Epstein thing.

Yes. And it's a four-hour. I mean, Netflix is amazing. 110 million people saw that in the first 10 days.

I was one of them. I'm bored by it. I want an hour. Oh.

I want the four hours. So to give it to me a little tighter. You're locked into the formatting of your brain. And that's supposed to be this length.

I don't criticize other people. It's just that's my style, which just tends to be very tight. Some paragraphs could be a single sentence. Yes, absolutely.

Actually, I'm doing a book now. And I think it's a good thing to do. It's about how to be a better dad. And that is single sentence.

Because I want dads to feel very comfortable reading it. I want it in their style. I want it to get to things quickly for them. Because not all dads, but a lot of dads, they don't really have anybody to talk to about it.

They feel like they're alone. They either don't think their friends will want to talk about it. Or they're embarrassed to bring up the stuff. And this thing's what gets at them.

And it ranges from not being afraid to say I love you. Some dads are cool with that. And a lot of them aren't. To hugging.

Your son's 26. Jack is 26. But my memory of my own father, and I'm sure this isn't accurate, but the only time I remember him hugging me was on his deathbed. Oh, wow.

And I said, 77. You said, oh, my God. I didn't even think you were 70. Is that great or what?

It is. I said, I will never leave your publishing house. I will always be with you. And James, isn't it funny to watch how you evolve?

Because I'm imagining that if you tried to forecast a day when being mistaken for 70 would be great news. It makes you recognize like, oh, yeah, we're here now where I'd be delighted that you thought I was 70. Yeah, I know. Well, it happens.

I can remember when Jack was a little kid. I had Jack when I was 49 or 50. And my beard was coming in white. And I wanted to cut down the number of people that would ask me if I was his grandfather.

That's of course. Yeah, so my conventional standards. I was late into the game. Our first kid, we had, I was 38 and then I was 40.

I have enormous gratitude for having done it later because of the patience required. Yeah, the big pro for us is at that point, we're financially fine. That's huge because the finances, I think of all the things that screw people up and make it hard, it's that. I would imagine to the attention that you're paying to climbing the mountain, you've climbed the mountain at least far enough that you can focus.

Yeah, I never worried too much about climbing the mountain. It's never really been a problem. I just don't think about it. I just do shit.

Well, whether you've thought about it or not, you did. It was there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still climbing, yeah.

My grandmother's lying. Hungry dogs run faster. Yes. That's a good one.

That's good. But starving dogs run a little slow. They're malnourished. Okay, back to the patience element.

Well, let me ask you because maybe I'm assuming incorrectly. I would imagine for you at 51, you aren't as singularly focused on it or maybe were you? Singularly focused on my career and stuff? Yes, yes.

To me, it's always been you do your work and then you come home. The work that isn't there. I've always been, okay, I'm doing something else now. And my priorities, certainly all the way through the marriage have been Sue.

I'm going with her. The truer thing about Sue is every once in a while, there come a couple hours when I can't stand her. Yeah, yeah, of course. There's never a day when I'm in love with her.

And that's accurate. Yeah, that's lovely. And it's lucky. At the apex of your output, what was the hour allotment in a day that went towards you?

In the beginning, I'm working in advertising. Right, you do 25 years. But I've been clean for over 25 years. But I really like to think about those days.

And that was a real balancing act. I would figure out a way to carve out a couple of hours. Like lunchtime, I would shut my door and write for half an hour. Can't be a coincidence.

You retire from the advertising job in maybe 96, you get married in 97. Some space was made when you stepped down from that CEO role. I was with Owen for seven years. She developed a brain tumor and died.

Not selective memory, but it just was a wonderful, wonderful relationship. At a certain point, it occurred to me that the best thing that had ever been in my life, I hadn't tried to do that again. Maybe I was afraid. Who knows what the scars are?

What was the gap between the passing of her and then when you were ready again? Over 10 years. And during that period, I went from being a copywriter to running shit and doing whatever that was and writing books. Once you were liberated from the advertising job and you were just writing.

I like that liberated from the job thing. Yeah, that's right. It's true. How many hours a day were you actively writing?

I don't know the answer to that, but first of all, I do it seven days a week. I still do. I don't think about the hours, but basically I will get in sometime early in the morning, eight or nine o'clock, write for the morning for the most part, write some more in the afternoon. I don't do X number of words, but some people do.

I write with Mike Lupica sometimes, and Mike was a sports writer for a long time. He'd have to do these thousand words a day thing, and that's still his thing. So he'll just do a thousand words. Obviously, when you're writing a column, you know the word.

You're doing 1,500 words. I've just kind of never been that way. I just do it. Is there time in the evening where you generally are like, okay, that's that.

I'm shutting this down. Mostly, yeah, but occasionally I want to go up for another hour or so. But there's no pressure on it. I don't feel any pressure.

I read a New Yorker article about how hard it is to pin down your approach to writing, and I'm now finding it for real time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wonder, do you have a... I just don't have it.

Okay, but James, is it that you literally can't figure that out or think about it, or you're just really reluctant to... I can't figure it out. Your brain doesn't work that way. I don't think about it that way.

That's one of the interesting things about journalists, and they think that you're going to think the way they think, and I don't. And I don't praise myself for that. I don't pat myself on the back, but no, I just don't process stuff the way most people do. I would feel a little worried if I figured it out.

It might go away. I mean, that's my own... Well, that's what I'm saying. You guys just spend too much time with shrinks.

Yeah, that's right. Over-therapize, for sure. Well, no, I'm a writer, and I'm obsessed, as most writers are, with process. The hardest part of writing is starting to write, wouldn't you agree?

Not for me. I love it. I outline. And outlines, there's never any pressure.

You just kind of keep writing shit down. Eventually, I'm going to organize all the bullets, all the thoughts, all the possible scenes, the chapters. Okay, pause right there, because that's fascinating. So is it just free form conscious of the bullet points?

This could happen, and I want this happen. I'm just sitting here, and I can see this. I can see that. Well, the first thing I'll do is there's some concept that I'm kind of excited about doing.

I'm actually out here because we're in the process of selling this... Sherry Crichton, Michael Crichton's widow. Michael did Jurassic Park, and Westworld, and ER, and all that stuff. He died 13, 14 years ago, and his widow came to me, and she said, Michael had started this project.

It was a pet project. He'd been messing with it because he loved Hawaii for a long time. And would you be interested in finishing it? And I said, I don't know.

Let me read what he wrote. And I was a big fan of his. I'd read certainly all of his fiction. And I read it, and I went, yes, for a lot of reasons.

Secondly, there was something on the island in terms of there was this toxic waste there that the military had left. And if that got out, it had the potential to show the world. So here are these two things, and they're working in concert. And I said, yes, I want to do this for all those reasons.

I also want to know how the hell it ends. I've got to figure this out because that wasn't there. Yeah, so he left behind a partial manuscript and a ton of notes. Notes, yes, a lot of research.

And what was the total of that? There was a fair amount of material. There was a lot of research. Most of the research that he had done had to do with what he had already written.

So I had to go get another researcher, my own researcher, Elizabeth from Alaska. And she's a teacher at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She's the best because I would say, what about this? And she said, I don't think that could happen.

And then the next day she'd go, I can make that work. Yes, on the big island of Hawaii. There's an enormous volcano that has the potential to fly to the island. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there's something worse than a volcano there. And that's pure Crichton. And I love it. The other challenge, which I didn't really think about at the time, I wanted people to read this and really not know where Michael stopped and I started.

Also, that it would feel like it had some organic unity to it, which I think it does. Yes. And this isn't Michael's voice, but I think it reads like a book that he might have written. Well, let me ask you this.

Michael Crichton was defined by his incredible comprehensive knowledge of science, be it archaeologically or medically. He really had a pretty keen scientific mind. Obviously, the writing doesn't intimidate you, but did the technical savvy intimidate you at all? No, because I thought I could research it.

There are certain things that I look at and go, like, Tom Clancy, I couldn't do that. I don't know how generals think in general, how they talk, how generals think in general. There's a sense of the dialogue. I just don't quite get it.

I couldn't do it. I can write a love story. I couldn't write a romance novel. I'm not putting them down.

I just don't quite understand them. The mechanics. And there's certain other things where I go, I think I can do that. So I thought I could do this.

When you're reading, do you tend to read fiction or nonfiction? Both. Actually, I'm reading, which I haven't read before, Travels, which is Michael's. It's a book about his years in Harvard Medical School, Michael Crichton.

And then the way he sort of used travel as, I guess, therapy. He would go to this place and really stretch, stretch, stretch in terms of what he could do, what he couldn't do, what he could be frightened of, what would scare the hell out of, etc., etc., etc. And that's interesting to me. Very alpha energy him.

Like, I'll go tackle everything. Can we start at the beginning a little bit? In Newburgh? Sure, Newburgh, yeah.

Newburgh. How far out of the city is that? Newburgh's about 60 miles north of New York City. People say, oh, you're from New York.

Upstate New York is not like New York the way people think of upstate. It's more like Michigan. There's a lot of farms. And dad was an insurance broker?

He sold insurance. Interesting dude. He grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse. His father just took off.

So my father grew up in literally the poorhouse. And his mother was a charwoman. What's that? They cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned the kitchen, that kind of thing.

And before that, they got a room in the basement. And he was lucky in that the people who ran it really loved him. And they took care of him. And then eventually, they helped him get a scholarship to Hamilton.

It was a very good school. But he had no confidence in himself. When we think of maybe what his potential shortcomings as a father were, obviously, he's taking a guess at it now. Totally.

Good human being. Smart guy. But he didn't have the confidence. He came out of him.

It was a really good school. And then he started driving a bread truck. And he drove a bread truck for six, seven years. He could be very engaging.

No reason other than just a lack of confidence. Did you have siblings? Yeah, three sisters. Three sisters.

Were they older or younger? All younger. All pains in the asses. Okay, sure, sure, sure.

I hate you all. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

Would you be in high school at the same time as all of them? No, because the Catholic school I went to was all boys. Okay. The oldest was three years younger.

And then they went down to ten years younger, the youngest. And what was your relationship with your dad like? Mixed bag. He was a tough guy.

He wasn't very loving. No hugs, as you've said. No hugs, yeah. He was a good human being.

He just was a tough big drinker, unfortunately. And mother. You know, it's interesting. Reading this writing book, Travels, he talks about with his family and his father.

If he got it in 98, they said, why didn't he get 100? My family was the same way. Really? What kind of boy were you in school?

Smart. With no interest in any of it. I just want to get out of Newburgh. Okay, you were not to get out of here.

Get me out of here. Not that it's a bad city. But I just know I don't want to do this and I don't want to raise that. Okay, in the Catholic school, how did you get on there?

Smart. And a good jock. You were athletic. Here's my highlight reel.

Nine holes in one and I could dunk in high school. Now, I don't know which one you find more unbelievable. The nine holes in one. Really?

Yeah, for sure. That sounds like Kim Jong-un's kind of my record at golf. My wife has six. Oh, she's right.

My wife is a jock. She's a four-time All-American swimmer. So she's a legit jock. Okay, great.

So Jack had a real chance. He's pretty good tennis player. He had no interest in athletics at all, which is fine. And our thing was always just open doors.

That's all. And we never pushed him. And he's a bright dude, but it was never like with me. I'm supposed to be first in my class.

That was the deal. Okay, so you go to Manhattan College, you get a BA, and then you go to Vanderbilt for your master's. Yeah. What did you think of Nashville?

Well, it was a whole different thing then. One, they loved me because I was like a northerner and it was so cool and I must know all this stuff because I went to school in New York City. And in those days, it was just beginning. And down there, it wasn't as bad with dope.

So I woke across the campus like smoking weed and stuff. They wouldn't even know the smell. Because they didn't get to it. Yeah, it was whatever it was.

I really enjoyed it there. I didn't want to leave, but it was in Vietnam. And they had a lottery. It was on television.

Myself and some of my friends, we went to this bar and we watched it. And this is life and death. You could get in the army and go, and next thing you know, you're in the jungle. Oh, within a year.

Yeah, yeah. And they would do like January 1 and they'd give the number. On March 22nd, it was 265. And they thought the draft wouldn't go past 70 or so.

So I'm basically out. But to do that, I had to leave school, not immediately, but at the end of that year. Otherwise, you got thrown into the lottery the next year. You might not have a 265.

You might be number three or whatever the hell it is. And that's why I left Vanderbilt. I had a scholarship to stay there through the doctorate. I also at that point said, yeah, I don't really want to do this.

I don't want to teach English, but I did want to write. I had a bug. And I was very lucky because one of the professors I had there, I'm like this long-haired whatever, and he was very, very conservative, but he really liked my writing. And he was the first one that really said, no, no, no, no, no.

You have something. Yes. When did you first, though, start writing? Family moves up to Massachusetts.

That's when I got the job at McLean, the mental hospital. I didn't know if I mentioned that before. No. That was interesting, too.

Like, James Harlow was there. As a patient. Yeah. And this was before he was famous.

But they had a coffee shop, and he would sing at the coffee shop like three times a week. So he would be, like, right where you are. Yeah. That close.

And he'd be singing, and he'd already written Fire and Rain and Sweet Baby James and some of that stuff. And you'd be like, wow, this guy's really good. One of his brothers, Liv, was there, and his sister Kate. So the three of them, they were all there.

Actually, I'm not sure if they were there the first year that he was. He was only there for the one year. And then he went off, and within a year or two, the Beatles had found him. He was one of the first that they recorded Apple Records, and he became this monster hit.

Now, I know he wrestled with addiction. Is that why he was in there, to be honest? Because they didn't know what to do with us back then. I don't know the whole thing.

I think that was a piece of it. I don't want to analyze this whole deal. But yeah, there was more than that. I know he's an ex-junkie, so I know when a junkie's in a mental war, that's typically why they're there.

I don't think that was the main problem. I think there were other things that he was working through. And his family was in it. Well, I think the father was a shrink.

Oh, wow. I think he taught in North Carolina. Well, that's a biography I want to read. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, when I was in high school, in Catholic school, he just gave us a lot of stuff we didn't want to read. I wasn't a big reader. But all of a sudden, when I'm there, I fall in love with him. I work a lot of overtime shifts.

And I would go into Cambridge like three times a week. And it was all serious stuff. The classics. Classics and then stuff.

It wasn't necessarily classics, but it turned me on. Like, there was two books, Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge.

And it was these short chapters, and very witty. And Jersey Kaczynski was another one, Steps. Did you ever read Bukowski? Yeah, a little bit.

either but it happened anyway it just scared the shit i just didn't want to do that i didn't want that to run my life and it worked for me even smoking you never did either no and they were doing like three packs a day both of them and also writers over index for sure no one never fucked with it my grandmother was hungry dogs run faster she was the strongest influence and she said you can do whatever you want to do she said you're not gonna play the nba so forget that one but you can do most of the stuff that you want to do smoking is a dirty habit smoking is a dirty habit smoking is a dirty habit i got it smoking is a dirty habit so she helped a lot okay so you have your master's in literature and english and you get out of grad school and you immediately go to work for this agency yeah i'm living at that point in this little hotel room in the washington jefferson hotel which is still there i believe and this room that i'm in is about like the third of the eye oh no nothing and it has about maybe 11 foot ceilings and that's creepy wallpaper there's wallpaper with these little pendants you can imagine it must be five thousand little pendants oh geez oh no it gets worse somebody has penciled an x into every pendant for previously night yep after one of the windows it didn't say jesus say so it was something like that that blinked all day it was a church and i said i have to get out of here i have to get a job and i had no money i had whatever i had saved from the mental hospital work i had no training no anything about advertising i had a friend who knew somebody so i went in and met this woman penny hawkey this is a jay wilson concert which was big but she wasn't she was kind of neat and she's running around in bare feet she's got to be a flat on the wall and maybe she said you need a book i said what's the book she showed me some portfolio so i went back to the washington jefferson hotel and my best friend his wife could draw so i literally put together a book in 10 days of fake advertising that you had come back and they hired me do you still have that book now that'd be great to have probably not i remember some of it yeah yeah that'd be kind of cool it would okay so you got the job and then you remained there for 25 years and you rose to ceo i did ceo of north america of north america so what that was an english ad agency i'm guessing where did it come from originally i don't even remember yeah just if you were north america that begs the question but under your time there could this be true or is this apocryphal that you may have panned or come up with the jingle for i'm a toys r us kid i did a line i did not do the jingle you know when i read that that's you i got the best for so much less you'll really flip your lid i don't think you understand well maybe you understand for anyone born post 75 that song might be more seared in our brains than my i think in general these big corporations come to an ad agency they want something creative and wonderful yeah and then they're presented with that and they're terrified and they want to lean back on whatever worked for them 15 years ago it's a mixed bag part of it and it shouldn't happen this way because they should at least figure this out it's very hard for a lot of people even people think they're creative to look at a raw idea i'm looking at hollywood you sit there and go like really i just had a thing i don't get too much into it because i don't want to expose these people but the notes come in and they're all about how you need all this backstory in this first episode of saying what are you fucking me really girl in the dragon tattoo i don't want to know all her backstory eventually at some point i'd like to know how the hell she became i don't want it right in the beginning i just want to watch this person okay she's doing i want to leave us some questions exactly yeah that's what keeps me going i want to know okay what the hell so that advice is the worst unfortunately there's just a lot of that and you know what it is and i run into it out here a bit everybody runs into it in certain places i run into it in publishing and the line i have for it is they're not stupid they're just stupid okay yeah yeah it's kind of intuitive okay so i can definitely imagine with your creative spirit that you would have been a great copywriter but were you surprised that you had managerial skills obviously i think to rise to the ceo position i didn't want to do any of it except that every time i took a job on the way up i would go like wow i know i have to listen to myself instead of that so i used to have to listen to i'm overstating it but yes it was one more person i didn't have to listen to and then eventually it just comes down to the clients and some of the clients are quite good some of them get it and that's what it's supposed to be not that they have to agree with you about everything but okay i can see where this could be cool but it's not for us that's fine and over this 25 year run what ones pop out to you that you're most proud of i mean the toys the rest thing is fun we did some fun things for kodak because that was mainly memories i remember we did one with mike tyson it was fun to do where he was remembering it was kind of cool because you don't think of him as being a very emotional he's very emotional guy yeah now we know and at that point not as much and the other thing about it is you're going out you're doing little movies and music sessions so for half an hour you have tina turner i forget some of the others but there was something just like to work so they would come in and do music sessions in new york the crazy thing in that business all of a sudden they'd have like 10 seconds in a commercial where in would come like nine violinists from the and they go on that was fun could you guys stay for a little longer and play a little bit more yeah so there were fun things about the actual making of the film could be interesting and you get to come out here yeah you get to stay at a nice hotel you got a spence account you get to drive a convertible yeah instead of being in a little cubicle you're in new york no if i had not landed in show business i think my second pick would have been advertising you get to dabble in a lot of creative stuff meet a lot of people take a lot of field trips there's different elements it stays pretty novel and interesting yeah stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare you're writing the whole time your first book you publish is 76 but you remain in that job for another 20 years while you're already publishing books it was comfortable i didn't want to screw it up it was like i don't have any pressure initially it wasn't like i was making a fortune writing right well not so along came spider is the first of that so alex cross is a series that you wrote 30 books 30 plus the first big one being along came a spider but alex cross is in though the very first book the thomas ferryman number no that's his own so alex cross is invented for along came spider yes and that was the first hit big hit of any size yeah and you've been in it for 20 years yeah i'm wondering had you adjusted your expectations i just kind of sat down and i said okay let's get real here what do you do well what don't you do so well you always say like everything but the kitchen sink i said no fuck it we're gonna put the kitchen sink in too we're gonna just drive this thing through we're gonna start it with a foot to the accelerator and we're gonna do that for the whole book and the major breakthrough there for me was i sat down i wasn't planning to do this but i wrote like a 360 page outline whoa i read it through and i said shit man this is the book not exactly i added maybe 100 pages or so and that's where the short chapters and the colloquial style came from and it would be a shame if everybody wrote that way and they don't but that colloquial the way we tell stories to one another if we're decent at it we leave out a lot of shit elmer lanard somebody asked him when did you because he didn't start out with it together and he said when i started to make money and get good at it i started leaving out the parts of people's skin and that's a piece of it too all right so from 93 until now you create a number of series with an impossible amount of books in each series you've had 114 new york times bestsellers and you have the record for the this is higher okay right and a record for the most new york times number one bestsellers 67 books at number one and i'm curious so if we look at your career and we try to define the unique aspects of it has anyone done the number of books in all these different series i think the breadth is something that's very unusual we've got a lot of murder mysteries the kid stuff is generally funny how old are your kids nine and eleven okay so this would be a maximum ride jackie ha ha if they don't like jackie ha ha take him to a psychologist no i don't do that jackie ha ha maximum ride is i think a lot of fun for kids middle school's worst years of my life okay so in the alex cross series which two of the memorable ones from that is a long came spider and then kiss the girls then women's murder club 24 books in that series the michael bennett series a few 16 books in that series the private series 15 books in that one maximum ride 11 books all these crazy i'm sorry yeah you're right that's why i'm on the couch i'm sick please help me it's an impossible output quickly what was it like seeing a movie version of these books you wrote next back yeah i bet morgan freeman can't argue with that stories okay the new alex cross series on amazon with all this highlights that's good that's the first one where i really can look at and go like yep it's edgier it's more realistic about police work i really like the way that turned out and some of the other things as you said this documentary that i don't murders i'm not sure when that's going to come out but it's really well done kiss the girls long came spider they had their moments and morgan's great there's one that we're doing now we just sold it renee's album there's attached this is for a series well you didn't go all the way through with bukowski but there's a great book called hollywood where it's him telling the experience of having one of his books turned into the movie barfly and i think it's such an interesting yeah and i think it's got to be such an interesting experience for a writer because in some ways it represents the theoretical finish line for something like well this thing really was it because now it's become a movie i'm not going to go there with it because they're separate the book is a book and they can't mess with it and i always love the idea that the movie is even better the movie is good or something like that i haven't had that experience yeah were you friends with michael creighton did you ever talk to him have you met him never met him no because i don't like 12 people i don't like you that much because you're like what six three i have the same issue i want to be the tallest person in the room and michael's six nine he was six nine yeah whoa because i'm curious if he didn't like the movie version of his books then i would argue no one could i think he did okay okay now with this enormous success 400 million books sold i'm sure it's north of that at this point i see still the pieces to have created cross initially women's murder club okay sure some of the sandalones the one i mentioned with renee zonger the idea of it i think is pretty cool it's a trilogy 12 months to live the following year sounds like a joke eight months to live the following year book four months to live she gets a death sentence and jane effing smith is what i wanted to call it and the publishers i don't know about that but it's good you want them all to be good and they're not the kids stuff as they say jackie ha ha your kids okay put them on the thing and they can each have 30 seconds a piece you know what patrickson is a jerk and jackie ha ha isn't that good they occasionally make an appearance so that's all right but the reason i bring up the success is it's an interesting experience to transition from an underdog to one of the legendary most successful and tell me what comes with that i still feel the underdog part of it in your heart you still identify as another yeah i go to england and you know james you're terrific out here not so much so i'm still an underdog out here but you take a lot of ridicule like stephen king is this going now you know where it's going oh yeah stephen king has said he only said one particularly bad thing he said i'm a terrible writer that's not nice but here's my question yeah that's bad when i say nice things about him i know it's kind of a classy that's okay that's cool i believe it if i didn't like his stuff i said you know from one terrible writer to another but he actually is good right well listen what i want to know is envy is a given it's going to exist in any domain do you think it's uniquely rough in the literary world it's certainly a deal i think it's a deal anyway here's taylor swift boom all of a sudden people are banging her here's eilish i mean people are banging her around it seems you get to a certain point people just want to knock you down again the dialogue that's been banging around for sure i did write i don't know if you read about this that's where the big number comes from i did all these novellas one year i did about 40 of them and one of them was the murderer stephen king right but the reality of it is he's a hero in it he doesn't get killed but his people came and he said oh you don't understand because tabitha was attacked in the house once i'm going like that means he should stop writing because he attacked her based on his books not based on michael which hasn't been out i'm only curious it would hurt my feelings greatly that because i have done well at something now all of a sudden i have a lot of detractors i'm very sensitive that would be really hard for me and i feel like you care what i'm doing i try to avoid it for the most part i think right in the beginning the king thing bothered me i thought that's just silly if you read my autobiography you go like no this guy's not a terrible writer that's hard to make my life interesting i dare steven king to write my autobiography and do a better job than i do well i do think when peers are critical of you it's more hurtful yeah for sure like another actor says i'm a terrible actor that's more hurtful than someone who's not in the trade as i said in the beginning people write stuff you go yeah they got a point my strength is probably i keep the pages turning it's probably my weakness i always had this theory greatest strength is greatest weakness i should dig deeper one of the things about the creighton book is he digs so i had to dig yeah yeah challenge and did you like digging or did it feel really slow fuck digging yeah yeah it's a little slow but it's okay that's why i don't really like the non-fiction so much i have one series of non-fiction which i love and i do it with a friend of mine matt everson matt was the actual sergeant who was portrayed in black walk down he was a real guy and he and i become good friends in florida and he did a documentary with another friend of mine and i saw him doing the interviews and he could get people to talk about combat in a way go like wow because he's been through it and the title came to me walking my combat boots he did most of the interviews we did about 150 interviews nobody wants to read 50 page interviews but we took them so for each one was like four to six pages or so you get a feeling for that person who's in combat and then one or two other stories and our mission for the book was that if you've been in combat you'd say every person got it right but how could we not because it's just things and then if you're one of these people that bullshits that you understand stuff that you don't like a lot of people talk about the military they don't have a clue right you read this and say okay i really didn't have any idea and i remember talking to matt and i said to him at one point i said you know i really understand the military like i never did and a couple weeks later i apologized i said you know i really don't understand it because i've never shot another human being and i've never been shot at right so i don't really understand it i understand it better than i did but i don't really understand and then we did ER nurses and that's another one people think they understand nurses even if you have an ER nurse in your family they probably won't talk about what they do because it's just mind-blowing yeah they're my favorite people to talk to because they have the best stories and they're completely desensitized by everything yeah and matt did most of the interviews he said i can only do one a day this is a guy who's been through hell yeah he said you know it's just too much now when did you get the idea to start collaborating on books i was with a friend that we'd go on golfing and i had this thought run through my brain about a golf novel advertising you collaborate yeah you tend to be with another writer or usually an art director and i said we'll try to do it together do a little golf novel short miracle on the 17th dream yeah it turned out pretty good and that's where it came from the thing about collaboration is really people go how can that work well shit almost every television show out here you get a writer's room you put like six seven eight writers in a room and they collaborate and a lot of times they'll collaborate on the same 60 page script it's not as foreign as people think it is some people again i think dealing with some envy have been critical of the collaboration but i guess i would point out you've also written a book with bill clinton you've written a book with vali parton my hunch is you did most of the writing but you shared credit equally so it feels like perhaps from your point of view why should they be criticizing anyway fuck them seriously what's the deal the 16 chapel's about 20 great painters i'm sorry is that a bad thing if we're gonna save this freaking world and i don't know that we will but if we're gonna do it it's gonna be because we want to collaborate you know here's the vaccine unbelievable whatever you think of the vaccine in a year they did it this is unthinkable and that to me brings joy except it also brings hopelessness because we didn't learn anything right now we go back to let's not collaborate anymore yeah so i'm a big fan of collaboration but nobody should make fun of it what's the point well i think the people who are being critical they're imagining the worst case scenario which is you had nothing to do with a book and you put your name on it and claim to be the right anybody that is involved with i mean maggie who's here it don't work that way i'm not accusing you i'm saying i like i think it's ego less to collaborate i just think it's just a thing in life so what it's fine you don't have to do it that way but don't make fun of it it's a way and it happens to work for me actually the great thing about the clinton and the dolly collaborations is we really become good friends with clinton we share christmas birthday presents like that he sent me a human or one year i call him up i said you know i don't smoke i said so i put bubblegum or chocolate cigars in here he said oh at our age bubblegum because you're going to exercise your gums but it's that spirit of dolly the first year we were together she called up and she said happy birthday over the phone and what i wanted to say was dolly i'm going to hang up now i want you to call again you're going to get voicemail and i want you to sing it again but she still calls up my birthday this year she called again and that's really the precious thing and also being in their lives this is another one with jealousy whatever the hell it is the craziness of the world people have these things about the clintons and they think they understand who they are and the first time my wife so and i were ever to dinner with them and we live close together in upstate when we're up there in the summer anyway the first time we're out it's about a three-hour meal a little restaurant four five times during the meal they're holding hands under the table people don't think of them that way so whatever i mean it's a complicated thing but it's not what people think it is it's human beings if we just get back to that i know the clintons i know the trumps i know the bushes i don't know the obamas but i know a lot of them and i'm not going to defend any of them but i mean they're human beings right real life most of them are yeah as a kid who grew up in a blue collar and very modest upbringing you must have had the same fantasies i had about having money i was very actively imagining oh my first thing was and i remember i don't know how old i was 10 11 and i found out that the millionaire who owned the new york daily news his last name was patterson and i had a fantasy that he was going to show up one night and claim that i was his son and take me back to his mansion okay so of the fantasies which under delivered and which thing have you gotten great joy out of i tend to just look this way i don't have no rest i can think of was the autobiography the hardest thing to write it wound up to be the most joyful thing to write right initially it was like oh i don't know if this is a good idea and i did it during covid i don't think i would have done it if not for covid i just had an awful lot of time so it started out a daunting task and then i took a lot of joy out of doing it and the other thing i mean when they sent out for the quotes they're not like the usual kind of you know and i didn't know i mean i know clinton he gave us a quote but for the most part i didn't i don't know ron howard the quotes are like really touching wow real quotes yeah i'm good so well i think of all the collaborations this one has got to be the most unique in so many ways for eruption because you're collaborating with someone who passed in 2008 the responsibility there to me was i knew how important it was to sharing so i had dinner with her and her mother four or five times already and i knew it was special it's rumored she had met with a lot of different writers she hasn't fessed that up to me so i think it's flattering the notion that maybe she met with a lot of writers and for whatever reason she felt safest with you taking it on i'm gonna get around that tomorrow i'm gonna find that exactly yeah poke around and see who else you met with yeah okay so eruption comes out soon what still keeps you passionate to work that the next one will be the best or one of the best that was the thing with eruption and then i mentioned it's 12 months 11 8 months i think that really turned out great and the relationship with lupica is terrific i mean he's become one of my best friends this is the craziness so mike and i are on tour with that book we're at the jersey show and it's an awful day it's raining and it's cold and suits with us and they go let's go out for a walk i'm going really all right fine so we're gonna go out for a walk we're gonna go from this little hotel we're gonna walk to the beach and we go to about 150 yards i go no i'm not gonna do this anymore i'm going back to the little hotel i'm already soaking wet i'm going back to the hotel and there's this little guy riding a bicycle into the wind and rain and he's going by me and one word pops into my brain i go into the hotel i write a five-page outline for a new novel just from seeing the guy just from that one word which i won't tell you and that's a novel that mike and i are doing now so i am doing a thing on your couch and that will be uh okay you famously have a basket of ideas on your desk the clever title ideas on it it says ideas on the basket and there are i imagine hundreds of ideas and they've been accumulating over the years yeah i should sort through them a bit but i don't and how often do you go digging every time i'm thinking about a new book i'll go through and i'll jot down oh this is still interesting and the thing with for me the idea is that one is i'd like to do this i'm really interested but then the other trick is okay here's the initial idea i had to give a speech at the appeals court in washington dc and there's like 900 lawyers in the room for lunch so i get up there and go you know i'm looking at this room i could write a hell of a thriller about you guys and i said the opening scene these marshals come bursting in all these doors and they go you're all under arrest that's pretty cool right however if i was thinking of it as a project now okay does this go anywhere yeah what's the middle how does it maintain itself and is there an ending in reality of it is no that's kind of fun good opening scene but that's the thing about it can i continue with it and an awful lot of books you go oh this is kind of cool and then it just kind of marches in place and that's one of the things even with the co-writers when they send in pages i want to go yeah you're the best this is terrific a lot of times it's like whoa it's lost the voice and all these have a voice that hopefully they do but we've lost the voice or it's going sideways now there's a lot of artier stuff that goes sideways and that's the beauty of it it just goes sideways and that's great that's a point but that's not what i do we're going this way we might do a little but it's pre-linear it's going forward and that's what i'm doing do you generally get the idea of a scene that intrigues you and build around it or do you get more the idea of a full story you want to tell it won't be the full story but it could be the makings of i'll give you an example no i won't give you this one because somebody will steal it i actually like this book and it didn't do as well as i thought it would have for a woman of god and it opens with a pope has died and all the cardinals are going into the room and there's a rumor out there that a woman is being considered one of the things people don't know about the catholic church is in theory anybody who's catholic could become the next pope i mean not likely but a woman's being considered okay what the hell is this all about and then we go back and we trace this woman from when she was a medical doctor we're still going how the hell would it ultimately get to the point where she could be considered as the next pope and what it's about i was just talking to somebody from the church oh it was a reporter from rome it was about the creight novel he asked me if i was catholic i said yeah i said what i want the pope to do and this is what the book was really about is i want the pope one to say the priest can get married and secondly that women can be priests you want to save souls that will save an awful lot of souls and it will turn around the church in the united states etc that's all the dude has to do not unbelievable he's on quite a trajectory i haven't seen that as part of he's more provocative though i'm aware of so who knows you may see that in your life but anyway so there was that notion and to me the hook of how the hell would a woman get to be i want to see what she does i got to figure this out yeah yeah okay well eruption is now june 3rd very exciting to think of a collaboration between you and michael creighton the other weird thing which i like about this thing is the idea of getting to read another creighton i've read a lot of this stuff it's like man i would love to hear that there's another hitchcock yeah you know where the jack nicholson is going to do one more where he's actually going to you know i'm an enormous one so i have intentionally left out a single book of his i've not read because i don't want to be alive knowing i've finished them all i need to know that there's still one waiting for me so yes you've kind of given yourself that's like when i was in grad school somebody said that everybody should read henry james before they die preferably just before they die well james thank you so much for coming and tell us about this i doubt we'll ever talk to somebody with a more successful writing career than yours it's almost beyond comprehension over 100 years times this is great great meeting thanks so much for putting us on your busy schedule everyone check out eruption on june 3rd be well stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare stay tuned to hear miss monica correct all the facts that we're wrong you know it's so funny the mouse we catch you mainly we use a trap where we can release the mouse into your backyard as i told you we did yeah i don't have that same feeling about a rat that's living in the yard oh no yeah i kind of want to murder the rat oh no is that bad i think should we have rats should we what's the difference they're basically the exact same thing i'm calling out that absurdity this is sort of weird racism no i'm not gonna let this be racism but it is speciesism no no i just mean like like we decided what is bad sure and it's the same one spread the bubonic plague but maybe mice did too a long time ago yeah no one talked about the mice but they've done bad stuff i wonder if biologically or zoologily there's even a difference they're just different sizes we call one a mouse and one a rat they gotta be the same thing right i think they're the same with like one or two differences like the pigeon and the dove you know those are the same bird sure different colors speaking of which we saw brown doves or brown pigeons in lisbon oh you did yeah and um lincoln was very drawn to them and they were very handsome yeah they're doves they're just brown or pigeon black no because they were black pigeons right but i'm saying like the reason we like we find pigeons disgusting like as a society right because they're always picking on trash cans and stuff right but doves are the same bird no i know i know but they're all white privilege it's white privilege i know they should be considered cousins rat and the mice yeah oh rats have 21 pairs of chromosomes and mice have 20 pairs of pairs but they're both descended from a single ancestor species okay i feel weird that you put me in a position to defend rats i know i'm kind of shocked and feel a bit betrayed i hate rats and but i also hate mice what if one ran out so for people who don't know i was putting trash in the trash can i was barefoot and this fucking rat ran out from under the trash can and it was inches from my toes my gross mangled toes yeah i hate that um do you think that maybe i was right about saying i thought i saw a mouse rat run under the attic and you're like are you sure it wasn't a lizard it was a lizard well now i got more information that would definitely bolster your argument so my gym is done yeah so i'm moving stuff out of the old gym blackmail paradise um r.i.p i'm gonna take some equipment and some of the rubber flooring whatever and then i move the treadmill out of there well when we move the treadmill out of there rats tons of rat poop dax so that really does bode well i know i'm living like i'm living in a rat's ass yeah no wonder you're coughing all the time yeah i'm running nose i'm probably allergic to these rat turds that were everywhere oh no it's disgusting i hate it and i i don't i don't feel protective of rats it could have been mice turds i think it was rat turds no good size oh yeah probably but what's what's funny is like we moved it i was like oh wow that's clearly rubber has come off the tread as it moves those are chunks of rubber yeah and chris was like no no those are that's feces that's rat feces this is i gotta start killing right i can't i can't i can't be hosting a rat sanctuary or something what's that gonna do sprays like i think they're spray like like rat raid that's the equivalent of raid for rats you know what surely someone's upset that i'm entertaining the idea of killing rats but but um if my dogs kill them they'll be fine with that what i need to do is get whiskey on the yard more he's a rat dog that's the kind of dog he is you know there's three legs i bet he could make quick work of this rat well i feel validated it was definitely a rat mask that i saw yeah but you know the problem is i've never seen a rat i've seen a lizard come out of there a bunch of times i don't mind lizards being there at all and your eyes are they suck so i just wish you trust me once or twice well could it be about something that doesn't involve your eyesight it feels like a lot to ask no because it was more a feeling i had okay it was an intuition good instincts okay all right well i'm really sorry i didn't jump on i certainly didn't believe you i just was like i bet it was the lizard yeah that means you didn't believe but also i was leaning towards a lizard is what it was also the reason you should trust me and believe me is because i could have saved you like half of that rat poop this is a long time ago that i said that but what again what would i do i'm gonna get a humane rat trap and release that in your backyard here's your options i need to get a snake i need to get a snake do rat spray there's gotta be some stuff i don't know such thing as rat spray eric would be using it eric his house is overrun he has a rat sanctuary he has an infestation stop i feel so in rat station there's rodent repellent yes thank you thank you works great i'm sure it works better than doing nothing all to say i don't know but i don't i don't think killing is good i don't want to talk about it okay great um i got a fun update for the people who listened to chris pine episode and really liked the kind of burgeoning uh friendship that was developing real time and i guess people were shipping us oh wow yeah and i want no one shipping me and him well because he's an attractive single man there were people in the problem is is ever since you talked about ghosting i know oh my god yeah the comment section is just like one after another every guy like the timeline doesn't even work like i want to tell people like how could this be the person i prefer it that way that they are figuring it out really right you know who they think it is the most maybe jake gyllenhaal they're like and i think that's because they're so against him from the taylor swift song they're like of course he did that well they might be but also jake is very kind to me yeah every time we interview him he does include me a lot yeah so i don't know why that's a relationship for people it's not jake um but for the folks that were shipping chris and i we went to the motorcycle track on saturday it was really fun he showed up at 7 30 we hopped in the truck did you hug yeah yeah of course no uh not when i saw him you know not when i greeted him okay i don't remember the end of the story um this is how much fun we were having i think this is a testament i was telling some story while driving up the five and i'm supposed to get off the 14 and take the 14 to the racetrack and by the way i've never missed an exit i'm a navigator yeah and all of a sudden like the story crescendos and we're both having i'm telling a story which is why i was distracted and the story concludes and i look up and i'm looking at six flags and i go oh i realize i'm like oh my god dude i didn't get off on the 14th and he's yes of course because my whole ego is driving and navigating so he goes oh just turn around and i go well you actually think from here there might be a road that will take us diagonal back to the 14th so i open up google maps i put in the racetrack and it takes us on a thing well about midway three i was like oh we're never getting to the highway we're taking like back roads to the racetrack which is fine we're in canyons and stuff again more time to chat and when we arrive i look at what time we got there i'm like oh that's a bummer that set us back about 20 minutes right my blender but then steve di castro got there after us steve's always very early to track this man loves waking up at five in the morning so he gets there and i'm like wow that was an uncharacteristically late arrival for you and he goes how long did it take you the fucking there was two accidents on the 14th we were sitting for two and a half hours and i was like oh my god what a blessing yeah so fucking passing that exit stayed just like an hour and 10 minutes in the car and we had more scenic lovely so i guess that's the kind of um kismet nature to the trip that's great and we rode all day it was really fun had a great day riding great he got his knee down for the first time it was a big day in any aspiring motorcyclist life wow and then the ride home we just had so much fun chit chat i really enjoyed the date nice yeah it was great oh my god what so i learned about a new game okay it's very very similar to two of our previous games one being the game we used to play where i was like i think you're either sexy cute and then there was one or pretty remember we used to play this no how'd it go it was a huge game for us sorry we'll just remind me a little bit more and i bet it'll come well that's it that's so give me an example though so so you was say someone's name no it wasn't really it was a theory i think people are either oh i think you can only be two of the three oh okay sexy cute or pretty so every boy is by de facto sexy and cute they can't be pretty brad pitt's so pretty great counterpoint okay johnny deaf and his youth yeah okay so we used to play that you forgot okay i don't remember exactly what it was but it's something like it but i think it was you're one of them and if you can be sexy and cute that was like a big a big deal yes it's probably the most dangerous combination yeah yeah it could be considered deadly yes a bunch of million ships but i also had a friend to hang that was like a new friend hang this weekend a date yes a date and we were chatting about all kinds of things and she told me that her friends well jet invented this jet oh friend of the pod you are either cool hot i have to look it up oh wow you wrote it in a folder or i think they didn't know okay i want some follow-up texting that's a really great i know there are people who you hang out with and you feel like you have known them a long time yeah which is always fun okay there's a third one and then the game is you you place people in the categories it's like best boy cool guy sexy man okay sounds like it yeah it's like that and then she was saying there was a person i'm not gonna say who it is but do i know them yeah um who bizarrely is none of them interesting yes yes yeah for sure correct that's right it's a fun game we want to play sure but how do we do it walk us through it i think maybe we say a person and then we categorize them okay but we don't know the third option i'm gonna have to wait till that comes okay so this is a tbd and we'll play the game tbd oh my god generous sally's facetiming me sally from argent i'll pick up hi you're on air first time caller where you calling from sally from argent is facetiming i know you are super red is it time sensitive oh you thought i was doing poorly okay well i'll call you back bye guys bye suits oh i wore i wore argent to the my interview with jason okay and it was a pink suit it was so so cute and i got a lot of compliments i bet you did i think it's fun it's a blast yeah um oh funny oh cool hot funny hmm cool hot funny it's more like what's your order some people are nothing some people are only ones would you say i think we would agree on what my order is oh not my order but the top two for sure we would go funny and cool rob oh my god you were going to go on i thought you were asking me to pick mine or agree to yours i was like looking at monica when i'm talking about fucking cars you're like who he didn't know i know what happened he didn't know if he was supposed to answer for himself or if he was supposed to answer about you about me of course yeah i agree with yours no i don't well but let's just because here's what i'm curious about yeah which one's higher funny or cool well to me i know it's hard i want them all and there's overlap there's like a dsm trying to label like yeah but i'm wondering if my defining characteristic is being funny or being cool funny okay i was flattering myself there for a second you are cool but you know it's funny though and i guess i'm grateful for it because you know so much your identity is all just what happened when you're young and you're stuck with it well not necessarily but but you know what i'm saying you're trying to overcome it on stuff like i was just like so i'm constantly triggered if something's done yeah but lucky for me there was upside which was six and seventh grade i was super cool like the boys thought i was so fucking cool because i skateboarded and i was into punk rock and no one else was yeah so the cool thing for me that came before funny but it's so young it went away in high school i just put a lot of value on like cool no on like pre-high school time no i didn't like it so if i'm gonna select which one i don't think we get to select like a lot happens past adolescence right and like mostly you're formed past that although i was already through adolescence in junior right anyways okay i think i would say you're yours is tricky you're all three congratulations oh my god thank you i would have never made you say it but i think i honestly would order you funny hot cool but the hot and cool are just a margin if there's any chance that i'm hot it's just because i'm cool no that's not true but i know what you mean those they're informing each other they're informing each other okay um now let's do rob great it's smiling i know it's so cute it's so cute well rob is funny uh he's made some of my favorite jokes yeah the one that always comes to mind of course is that was uncommon i know you love that's your favorite of all time actually it's in the top four i would if we're picking one i would say rob's cool okay and i might say he's hot i'm always overwhelmed with how good looking rob is but rob's cool he listens to cool music yeah he's a hipster right those are cool restaurants cool bagels drinks cool coffee yeah so for me i would say rock stars yeah okay my turn okay hot cool funny funny third well i was trying to give you the order i thought you'd want just be you were offended wouldn't you want funny to be third it's not i want to be real just hold on no would you want funny to be third no you wouldn't no that's like a healthy self-esteem funny is everything funny is money that's what they say in film and television funny is to me ultimately the most important thing well certainly that's why all these things are contact specific for a long-term relationship yeah uh for a fun night out on the town not necessarily these they're different they're weighted differently but it's just who i am it's not who i want to be or who i wish i was it's who i am okay then i'm gonna do it don't try to flatter me tell me that i'll go oh okay i'll go funny hot cool okay yeah what would you say rob really cool third i think there's no matter what there's no there's no permutation where she's not offended i i was flattered like just even if all three of those are in play i actually don't care what order they're i know my real order oh what's your real order that is i am cool people think i'm cool you guys do you think the pink more people think i'm cool than think i'm hot that's how do you know that you know that's true like you read i have inside info okay the pink suit is is cool it is it's a hot see i don't know how you're knowing the difference between everyone's coming to you going like wow you look great with a cool outfit i don't know because they just said what a cool outfit but because they can't say you look hot why can't they it's off the table these days because you guys ruined it for everyone oh fuck you oh my god no i i know me of those i i think cool is above and i like i'm okay with that's fine okay i like being cool see this is this is cool not hot shoot that over i can't see that shit okay i sent i sent it oh here we go look at me not the girl in the back oh wait let me see the girl you're going for cool instead of hot right exactly yeah exactly yeah that's a cool outfit that is not a hot outfit outfit will be like low cut okay it is completely low cut it's also a midriff but it's a sweater it's not a midriff well it's talking to look like a midriff for a second but but but it is in fact very low cut it's a button-up and it's that sweater yeah but it's down and there's cleavage and barely barely cleavage okay so you know okay anyway this works on a lot of levels but rob said it before you said it so he can't unsay it well that's his opinion that rob voted for cool i mean i also said i think you're going for cooler more than you're like you're going to put a tight short dress on 100 listen let's take you out of it for cool i'm not going i want to take you out of this so you personalize it and keep it from being workplace sexual harassment okay i see a gal like this with those knockers in a low cut thing i'm thinking hot not cool it could also be cool but definitely hot's on the top but you're only saying that because my boobs are big well yeah which is a fucking part of hotness like what do you talk about that not well coolness is part of hotness too like yes yeah you yeah yeah come on a woman that's traditionally hot yeah like a club is not necessarily hot to me right either rather like a cooler hipster looking sure but then a little bit of what's this going on that's that's really where you go what's going on here we've got a very low cut button up sweater very low okay well this is probably getting so annoyed they can't see this picture but is it on your instagram it was on stories oh okay all right more frustrating but i agree with rob that i think the classic version of hot let's break this down for a second if you if i'm in a suit and i and it's very tight and you can see my hog running down my leg that's not hot but that's like what's he doing why is he doing that well okay yeah this is complicated you have to assume that like i don't know when it's an accident but the point is you're evaluating the outfit but then you also are met with this huge hog yeah the huge hog and so hotness is on the mind now you're seeing a sex organ i know what you mean okay hold on it's more essence like my essence is cooler rather than hot that's by design i'm not walking around how can you i just bumped into you without any pants on yeah that was later that day and then you'll be in like a see-through tank top with suspenders like you're i don't know what you think you're see-through tank top whenever you wear the suspenders you're it's like oh yeah yeah it's like it's almost a halloween outfit hey that's cool suspenders okay i mean it's both yeah they're mixy matchy but i'm just saying there are some people like emily radijakowski yeah is hot first i have actually heard she's pretty she's friends with amy shimmer but um all to say i think you most likely rank her as hot first right this is like a very not 2024 game to play but i think it's making me nervous i've been nervous it's great at uh dinner yeah big time then you can let her rip i'm gonna rip but what is your preferred order for you for me yeah it's actually hot i've said this a million times like really though yes because that's what i haven't had so that's what i want but don't you think are you over it i'm over it like that maybe for a long time in life yes but no why well again i have the luxury of i am funny so i don't have to like when i have to imagine that you then don't have it well then we don't have a career exactly that's my whole point so obviously i'm not trading it for that yeah but what i'm telling you is if i have my pick of what a girl said about me after meeting me i would want in order for her to go he was so hot and then the rest yeah no i wouldn't really make that trade because i make my living not being hot yeah and i want to continue to make my living yes and i'm sure i'm married because i wasn't hot i was funny exactly my kids like me because i'm so i get it but i'm just being that honest with you if i meet someone and they walked away and they got to only say one adjective about me to their friend i in my vanity would want that they said i was hot but again i've already been validated for being funny so i don't really crave it don't you feel the same i used to i really don't think i'm really putting myself i'm really trying to think like if also though so again this is where our dynamic is literally diametrically opposed which is you're looking for a partnership so in that case you do want the person you're meeting that likes you to think you're funny because that's a sustainable and long-term thing i've been in relationship for 17 years so the thing that seems exciting to me yeah someone just thinks i'm hot and is attracted to me yeah would you also like if they were attracted to you for being funny or no you don't care about that well again i don't i think that's the only reason people been attracted to me so i have a very interesting relationship with that right craving novelty at this point yes i'm craving novelty i'm craving the thing i didn't have which is like people turning their head coming giving me the shit i see happen to charlie in real life which seems very exciting and women sending drinks over to him and stuff they don't know they even talk to him they don't know if he's funny or smart or anything yeah it does not sound yeah yeah well he probably picks something different exactly yeah it's like whatever you have blah blah blah yes if someone's super hot they'd rather be funny you see hot guys trying to be funny all the time yeah i think i've grown i really do yeah i don't know why that's good by the way it's it's the appropriate thing for you to do because it's where you have more confidence yeah and if what you hope is that people think you're funny you're know pretty damn well you can deliver that i mean i guess i i guess the highest compliment is sort of sexy because that's all of it like i don't think you could be sexy without having other parts sexy like hot and cool and funny like i think for me that's what i find smart yeah oh wow okay okay a couple facts is the washington jefferson hotel still there yes oh great james taylor and the mental hospital yeah he went and then his family like some family members went as well it says during high school his family began to unravel his dad was an alcoholic he was admitted to the mclean psychiatric hospital at 16 with what we now probably would call depression and anxiety saying that for nine months two of his siblings followed him there nine months at 16 that's very intense yeah i know he said when i jumped the tracks and went to mclean it's like they thought yeah that's right we need this help it became an option yeah well and then he was an addict publicly yeah he's a heroin addict right uh yeah i think so okay i want to look up how the vietnam the lottery how it worked okay i'm gonna read do it okay in principle the function of the first draft was to select dates within a calendar year at random with men whose birthdays match those dates being drafted according to the sequence the dates were selected the 366 days of the year including february 29th were printed on slips of paper these pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules which were then mixed in a shoebox and then placed in a deep glass jar capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened the first date drawn was september 14th all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number one the next numbers drawn corresponded to april 24th december 30th february 14th october 18th and so forth the last number drawn corresponded to june 8th all men of draft age born january 1st 1944 to december 31st 1950 who shared a birthday would be called to serve at once the first 195 birthdays drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn the last of these was september 24th you know the weird outcome of that no one even probably thought about is like they would all be deployed ultimately and they'd all have their birthday at the same day yeah like you're probably gonna put two with like nine other guys with your birthday yeah weird but you know this is such a sidebar but when i was on sync and we were talking about the roman empire and i was saying like yeah men are going to be fascinated with all war stuff because it's a real thing it was researching somebody recently and or maybe even doing finding my roots and i really i'm the first generation that wasn't drafted in a long time because my dad was drafted my grandpa was drafted for world war ii the great grandpa was drafted for world war one so it's like three generations in a row you could expect to be drafted it's almost a miracle i wasn't ever drafted in my life there wasn't a draft in our lifetime that was standard yeah that is weird yeah that's five seconds ago yeah okay he said 20 people painted the sistine chapel it says prior to michelangelo's contribution the walls were painted by several leading artists of the late 15th century including sandro Botticelli Dominico Giraldello Giraldi chocolates close and pietro peregrino and then after the ceiling was painted raphael created a set of large tapestries to cover the lower portion of the wall so it doesn't say exactly how many okay um the last thing is oh that takes me back to such deep craving it's anti-buddhist i was just seeing those commercials and crave i love that they went with kids that couldn't even sing the song it's such a cute touch like they're barely getting through that it's true jamming up some words i love that he came up with that it's a good nugget right although he did not the jingle just the line yeah i don't want to still you made it clear collaborative okay well that's all oh that was fun feel free to play that game in your life yes at your parties you have a copyrighted you're not going to be seeking any kind of damages if people use it without licensing it you're giving it to the world well maybe you did it is no if you want to play the first game i didn't that's right that's what i was more referencing you all reach out to him on twitter and or instagram to find out if you have permission all right love you you you you you