Unlike when Tarantino was here, I actually read your stuff. He literally walks into the limousole life because his master just broke his leg for fun. So if you have this stuff go to your house, that's the other problem. You know what, I'm gonna start with these books.
Guys, get rid of these books. 100%. Welcome to another episode of Two Bears One Cave. And for the second time ever, we have a smart person in the studio.
You might know him as the daily stoic. Put your hands together for Ryan Holiday, everybody. It's your number two. Second, smart person.
Who's number one? He's number one. He's number one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Smart guy. Yeah, of course. Smart guy. Unlike...
He's much more of a bear than I am. He's a bear. He totally is a bear. Yeah, but I mean, we can grow that beard.
I actually cannot. You can't? Dude, have you ever been saying some supplements? If I didn't shave for like a month, I would get probably what you get in a day.
Really? It just doesn't happen. I remember I was shaving pretty early. Yeah.
And a friend's dad was like, how often do you shave? And then I'm like 16, 17. I was like, yeah, I mean, pretty almost every day. And he goes, and it comes in pretty full.
And I was like, yeah, I was feeling pretty good. And he goes, yeah, you're probably done growing. And I was like, what? And he was like, you're not gonna grow anymore.
And I was like, what? Really? He's like, I was like, oh, fuck, I'm done growing. I thought I was just gonna keep getting better.
I was like, oh, no. It was fucking effective. Someone told me that being a runner when you're in your teens, I get fucked with your hormones in a weird way or something. You cross country?
Yeah, I did. You can see it. Yeah. So I run.
Yeah. Yeah. How often? Everyday.
Everyday. Yeah. Long distances or? Long, actually like four, five, six, something like that.
Okay. Yeah, I've been starting running more. In Austin? In Austin, yeah.
Really? Yeah, it's 10. So, you know, tell me like in the center of Austin. That's it.
There's a 10 mile loop. Okay. And none of it's all like manicured, like crushed granite, 10 miles. So you can do all these different iterations.
And then there's like, I don't know, like four or five bridges. So you can like do different, you don't have to do the same thing everyday. I haven't done it in so long. And I have like the only, most of the cardio I've been doing was indoors, you know?
Like in gyms, like I do the Peloton bike and try. And when I was in New Zealand, we did an outdoor run. I was like, man, this is so much better. In all ways.
Yes. And then the running is actually more challenging, but more rewarding. I liked it so, so much more. Yeah, I hated it when I was a kid.
And then as soon as I, when I was in college, I fell back in love with it. And then I basically done it every distance. That's awesome. It's almost like you have a sense of discipline.
Yeah. For me, the discipline is actually more like not doing it. Like if I'm sick or tired or the weather's bad. Yes.
And I think about like, I try to take my kids for this walk every morning. Like this morning, I was cold and they were like, I'm happy. And like I have to be like, don't be the person that forces my kids to do shit that they hate. Yeah.
Or can I be like, this is a made up thing. For me being disciplined about discipline is actually like the harder. I understand that. I mean, I think that like discipline now for me with physical things is actually going, all right, that that is something you should listen to that feeling that tweak instead of going, no, you've pushed through.
It's actually no dial it back. Yes. And and listen to that because if you don't, you know, it can't really go. Yeah.
It's like, do you want to miss one day because you're like hurts or do you want to miss like six months because you tore something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I fucking read it later. I get it. All right. You went to the movies with a black guy.
Anyway, I've okay. So first I want to tell you how I discovered you like this whole thing is there's so many things I want to talk about. But a few years ago, this is how I actually first landed on any of your stuff. I forget what it was.
It was a few years ago and I had expressed like some struggle, you know, something that was weighing on my mind to somebody and they sent me a link to the daily stoic Instagram page. Yeah. Right. And they go, they're good.
They go, oh, they post a great stuff like this. And it was a quote. Yeah. And it was just one of those things where it's just a moment where you read the quote and you're like, oh, yeah, like, you know, it was a wisdom that I took in.
I was like, oh, that's, that's a really good one. So I hit follow and, you know, and I would, you know, scroll as we all do and I would land on those sometimes and I was like, oh, that's a really good one. And I didn't even realize that there's a person attached to it. Yeah.
And I just thought it was, you know, somebody posting that stuff and then eventually I saw your page and I was like, oh, and I didn't put together. I was like, oh, that's that guy. Okay. Okay.
And, you know, I think that like most pages, I will say are fucking nonsense. It's just, you have one of the few public pages on Instagram where I would say, you know, when you, when you read, when you post something, whether it's a quote or video, you say something, even if it's a brief moment, you provide kind of a brief moment of calmness to me, right? Like where I go. And I think you probably do for a lot of people where they go, this is a nice, this is a, in all the chaos and everything that's going on in our lives in our world, there's a moment where you digest something that you've said or shared and somebody goes like, oh, yeah.
And even, and look, you might go right back to your chaos, but it is nice to have these brief moments where you kind of feel like, oh, yeah, step back, slow down or process or perspective, a different perspective and you go, oh, yeah. And that's how I first came to know you. So it's one of the very few positive Instagram stories out there. It's so funny.
It is weird because I think people think philosophy is this like thing you like study in college or it's this thing that you, you do like once, like you have done it as opposed to this thing that you practice or it's like an ongoing thing. Christina, she's a philosopher major. Yeah. But I think people tend to think of like people who don't actually have familiarity with philosophy that's either this like academic discipline, this theoretical thing or something that you have studied in the way that's like, I studied physical therapy or interesting as opposed to this ongoing pursuit.
Yes. And there's this one interesting letter from Seneca where he's writing to his friend and he's like 2000 years ago and he's basically saying like, he's like, I'll give you a quote, you give me a quote. And so like they're doing it. Imagine how difficult it would have been to write a letter to deliver a letter.
They're doing the same thing 2000 years ago, which is like, I'll give you a quote that's helpful, you give me a quote that's helpful. And he's like, this is what it is. It's like, if we get one thing per day that makes this a little bit better that we think about for two minutes is like, that adds up. And that's kind of what the daily idea of the daily scale is supposed to be, which I kind of fell into totally back.
Would you summarize stoicism as such? Yeah, I mean, so it's a philosophy that starts about 2500 years ago. And it's built around this idea that like we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens and that everything, all of those responses should be towards these sort of four virtues, which are courage, temperance or self discipline, justice and wisdom. And so of all the philosophies, it's less this sort of systemic or systematic explanation of the universe and more like this operating system for being like both a good person in the world, but also like the person who's able to survive a shitty fuck up complicated, like unpredictable world.
Has that has being, I mean, I would consider you an expert in this field. Has that helped you survive, you know, hardships and tough. Yeah, I mean, look, my my hardships are privileged compared to someone who doesn't have any arms or legs or who's born in, you know, sub-Saharan. Everybody goes through something.
Yeah, I mean, we're like, we're all, we all have the same limited amount of control over the world. Totally. And it really is like our, you know, depending on how you want to describe it, it's our mindset and our mind frame, our perspective, our view of things that helps you either fall apart or persevere and push through. You have amazing examples of a lot of this in the book.
One of the cool things about Sosum is that like, Seneca's, there's the big three in Sosum and Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus, they actually form like kind of an interesting spectrum. So on the one end, you have Epictetus, who's a slave, he's like, and this is a slave in Rome, like the shittiest place you could be a slave. He literally walks into the limb of his whole life because his master just broke his leg for fun. So he's just has like, as you get, he wins his freedom at like 30 and then he's promptly exiled.
So like all the things that can happen to a person happen, Epictetus, he's like one end of Sosum and then the other end, there's Marcus, who's not even like born a prince, like Prince Charles. Like he's just born this regular kid, his dad dies, and then the emperor goes, I think you should be my heir. And so he's like, just chose it. Like just a random kid, basically, is chosen to be groomed, to be the most powerful, richest, most famous person in the world.
So it's like, as far as extreme ends of the spectrum, it's like everything that could go wrong, everything that could go wrong. It's really as chosen by the emperor because of his way of being as his personal temperance at that age. I mean, we don't know the exact age that he like sort of comes into the circle, but basically Adrian is the emperor, he's probably gay, doesn't have any kids. And he, I think comes up with the idea that like I could mold someone from scratch to be what it takes to be emperor.
And so he probably sees something promising in him and then says like, I want to train him to do this thing. And then the interesting thing is he realizes that it's an impossible thing to put on a person that young. So he adopts this guy named Antoninus, who's like in his late 50s on the condition that he adopt Marcus Aurelius. So they set in motion this chain where when Adrian dies, Antoninus will be emperor and then when Antoninus dies, Marcus will be emperor.
And he probably thought, you know, Antoninus will rule for five years and then Marcus will become emperor like in his 20s or something. And Antoninus rules for 19 years. And so Marcus becomes emperor like late 30s, early 40s. Which is a good thing.
It works out and they actually got along. And even though none of them had any blood relation to each other and they could have seen each other as rivals or whatever, like, like Antoninus actually decides I'm going to help my successor be successful. And then Marcus Aurelius says like, I'm going to actually listen to the person who wants to teach me. And they have this like amazing never before, never again, like transition of power.
We don't really see that these days. No, no. It's totally different. And like even when there's much lower stakes, you know what I mean?
That Tim Cook takes over for Steve Jobs, you're like, oh, they don't, they didn't fucking hate each other. Like the stakes are like, they couldn't kill each other. They couldn't like get rid of their relatives. Like the emperor had unlimited power.
But whoever they wanted to death, they controlled the largest empire in the world, the largest army in the world. Like the stakes are enormous. And you know, it's supposed to corrupt absolutely. And then there's like three exceptions in a row.
It's very weird. Yeah, that's very strange that you would be able to have the wheeled that much power and not become like animal. I mean, it speaks to probably how grounded in some way the guys must have been or they're really wanted to rule for the betterment of an entire society, which everybody like everybody who runs for office sells that speech. Yes.
Everybody. Yeah. They all are like, I just care about this. And then you're always, you're always disappointed in them.
Yes. Well, have you read Robert Cara's books? No. He's like, he's been writing about Lyndon Johnson since like basically Lyndon Johnson died.
Just about Johnson? Yeah, he's on book five. About Lyndon Johnson? Which you would think would be so boring.
Yes. The most is probably the greatest biographer series of biographies ever in. Really? Yeah.
And it's incredible. You should definitely read it. I'm sure they're good audio books too. He's, he's like in his eighties now.
He's probably the greatest biographer of all time. He shows up every day. He's like, this one. He's still in his eighties or nineies.
He shows up every day in a suit and he goes to his office and he writes long hand and then his wife types them up. They're this like writing team and working together. That's pretty cute. But Johnson's from the Hill Country here in Texas.
Yes. He lived there. I've been to the town that he's from. Johnson City?
Yeah, because like, and then there's signs about it everywhere. And you can, I was searching for the name and they're like Johnson City? You can see there's like, they called it the Western White House or the White House on the Brothers. You can go, but anyways, Cara like lived here for a long time just to study Johnson and the libraries here.
Because Johnson, Cara was talking about Johnson and he goes, power doesn't corrupt. That's too simple. He says power reveals. And so it's really like, if you're a shitty person, power's gonna make you worse.
Yes. And if you're a good person, it could make you better. You could do good things with it. People always say a similar thing about wealth that it'll kind of show who the person really is.
If it's becoming extraordinarily wealthy, they're like, guys, a piece of shit, you're gonna find out. Right. Like it's like, maybe I'm broken my slaves like for fun, just so you know. I would have done that 100%.
That sounds like too good at that. Sorry. No, no. It's a, so Cara's point about Johnson is like, Johnson is basically like your average southern racist politician, more or less corrupt, like totally into it for himself.
So you would think that when he finally gets the thing he wanted more than anything, he would have been awful. And like he passes the Civil Rights Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, like he actually, like his point is that Johnson gets power and like in many ways actually is better for it. But Marcus is an interesting example because he has power that Lyndon Johnson couldn't even dream of. He's a incredible power.
And there's a cool passage in Meditations where he says like, he says, be careful of being Caesarified, like the Caesar, and he says, don't be stained purple as the Emperor's cloak is purple. And his point is like, don't be corrupted by power. And he does like a pretty good job of not knowing how are these guys like the three of them able to have this, this perspective. It's like, it's almost hard to wrap your, especially in that time.
And with that, like you're saying that level of God like power. I don't understand how they were able to hold back. It's, yeah, it's pretty amazing. I mean, you could argue it's the philosophy, right?
That's like the one thing they all have in common. And Marcus, it's like incredible. Marcus is given by his philosophy teacher, like a 25. He's given a copy of Epictetus's lecture notes.
Either his professor or either his, his teacher had attended them where he'd gotten a copy. And so in his meditation, Marcus is like quoting Epictetus all the time. So you have this like powerless person influencing this very powerful person. And yeah, maybe it's sort of, it's like a set of guardrails or a set of principles to act by.
And he does a good job of being stuck to it though. Like, that's the one thing to be like, I'm going to, I'm going to hold to this with it, then to actually have the position and still stick to your philosophy is a different thing. Or to end to have it for a long time, right? Like it's like you did it for like Nero, who's the other interesting emperor here, who talked about Seneca, Seneca is a philosophy teacher and a politician.
And he gets this job helping this kid who's supposed to be emperor in the future. And that kid is Nero. And just like people don't know Roman history, like he sucked, right? Like that, you just know that name is like a shitty guy.
So Seneca's job was to teach this kid. He teaches him all philosophy and it doesn't work. It doesn't stick. He doesn't listen.
But there's the first five years of Nero's reign are considered by historians to be pretty good. Like he gets good marks. And then the wheels come off. So it's like someone's someone's successful or talented and it's like they have these habits.
They have like people around, you know, it's like you can withstand the sort of warping effects of wealth or privilege or power for so long. And then as the limitations fall away, then who you are is revealed. So I think it's not just Marcus was emperor and didn't wasn't shitty like at the beginning. But they're like 15 years in.
That's the more impressive thing. It's the longevity of it. To be consistent for a long time is it's like the thing that impresses you the most, I think like in entertainment. Yeah.
So when you see somebody like I didn't appreciate it when I was a kid. And you're like, this person's been knocking it out of the park for like 40 years. I mean, like as a singer or an actor, you're like, God damn, that really is impressive. Well, because you know, like they could be coasting and like there's nothing.
No one has a gun to your head insisting that you maintain a quality of work. It's completely opposite. It's completely up to you. Yeah.
Yeah. To find a drive to push to like, you know, and you talk about a couple authors, you know, they're just they're about doing the work. And that's ultimately what has to be the thing that you care about to deliver good work. I think you see it in comedy.
And I think it's a bunch of examples of like great comedians who like it's just it's decades longer. Like they're not distracted by it. They're just like about and with I think with writing. By the way, I can't believe how much how much you've turned out and you're fucking 35.
Yeah. I mean, if I didn't see you, I go, I don't know this guy's in his 60s. I don't know. He's like an old wise guy.
I do. I do. I feel very old. I had to do my first book.
I was 24. So I had a little bit of head start. Now, is it true? Because you know, we produce Dr.
Drew after dark here that Dr. Drew introduced you to stoicism? Yeah. Yeah.
Tell me, can we hear this? Yeah. I was writing for the college newspaper and I got this like call message. Anyways, I got invited to this thing that Trojan condoms was putting on.
Nice. It was like a conference or something for a college journalist. And so I went, I was like, I get to go to Hollywood and I've been before. They put it up in the hotel.
And then we went down and was like, there was a talk and then like some Q&A or something. And the person talking was Dr. Drew. It's sort of been like, doesn't it?
Five, maybe? Do it in six. So still like kind of the height of the line and which I had grown up listening to in my room every night. And I was a huge fan.
But and I knew Dr. Drew was like really smart and I don't think I'd ever met any smart people in my life. Yeah. So I was just like, Hey, like you're smart.
Like what books should I read? I just went up to him after I asked him that. And he was like, I'm reading this guy, Epictetus. And I was like, what?
You know, I didn't know what that didn't even know how you really begin to spell that. And so I went back to my hotel room and I typed that in and Marcus really also came up like in the Amazon search and I'd seen the movie gladiator. So I was like, I should, I should start there. That's more my style.
Yeah, sure. And yeah, that like totally changed my life. And did that change? Did you then major in everything?
Like did you drop out like several months later? Not his fault. I left college and then I did a bunch of other stuff always with the intention of coming back to writing. To writing.
That's what I wanted to say. And were you apprenticed or? I was one of the things I left college for was to be a research assistant for Robert Green. And I see that you're still obviously like, as I've seen you guys together, you've posted about his book I think today or yesterday.
We're doing our first two live events actually in March and everything in person before. He must also have like a sense of, I don't know, pride or something about the fact that you were a research guy for him and that you've developed this career that you have or like, he's the best. It's funny because the first law in the 40 Elazah Powers Never Outshine the Master. And then he talks about how people are very precious and sensitive and insecure.
And one of the other laws is do all the work and others take the credit. And he has been like an incredible, like he's opened up so many doors for me and so good and is like, to me is the greatest. Like of like nonfiction sort of self improvement books, I think he's the best. First off his books have sold like a trillion copies.
And he's been doing it. He's talking about doing it at a level, the 40 Elazah Power came out in 1998. And it's still like one of those. If you pull it up on Amazon right now, I bet it's like top 100 top 200.
Not only that, it's in the lexicon where like, it's not a thing where people go, what is that? He sent a lot of his entire career on the 40 Elazah Power, which he read when he was in the hospital after getting shot. Really? Yeah.
So yeah, he's just like the greatest. And he is. And I imagine that just as a side note, the amount of research that goes into something like the 40 Elazah Power feels like it would be just unbelievable. Robert has like sections in his books that are as long as my whole books I've published.
So we're like, we're operating in very different universes. But that's incredible. It's still right. Yeah.
Well, he showed me how to write books. So like, I think from Robert, I learned like a whole bunch of things about work ethic and I learned a whole bunch of things about him. You read all this. I learned like that was at college for me as working for Robert.
But Robert also showed me like actually how you do the thing, which you can't really like would take decades. So why am I, why have I been able to do this in such a short time? It's because I didn't have to learn literally the hardest thing that is to learn by trial and error. Which is like, how do I write?
How do you write a book? You have an idea for a book. How do you write a book? All of the steps of that process instead of like fumbling around and doing the wrong thing.
Dude, I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote a book and I was like, you know, I remember so I got a deal to write the book as the pandemic took place. The place started. So, a couple of months in you're like, what I'm used to is touring. We're like touring shuts down.
I'm sitting there's no touring. And maybe I'll never come back. Because every month they're like, next month or next month and next month actually it's worse. So they're like, take your touring off your schedule for like at least a year and you're like, what am I going to do?
I'm working a manager at the time is like, well, why don't you write a book? I was like, I don't know. So I talked to a publisher and they just say, well, can you send in an example of your writing? So I write a couple essays, let's say.
I send these in, they're like, oh yeah, you can definitely write a book. I'm like, oh, okay. So we work out a deal, you got to, and I'm like, well, what do I write? And they're like, write more of these.
I'm like, do they have to string together or something? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, I don't know what to do. They're like, just write men.
And so I'm just writing this thing. And I have no idea. Like this to me is a, there's a through line. There's like, it all kind of, it all ties together.
What I wrote is like, story about my dad, story about this place, the story about the airport. It just like, it doesn't all go together. But I think that's actually a good metaphor for life, which is that you assume that when someone pays you money to do stuff, that they know how to do it, they're gonna tell you how to do it, and that it should be pretty straightforward. And the reality is it's like, they're paying you to figure it out.
And like, they have no intentions or plans or even ability to babysit you. And it's like, you have to figure it out. And so even on my first book, when I sold it, it's like, wait, now I'm 23, 24. And I have to go do a thing that I've never done before, that I don't actually know if I can or can't do.
For the most amount of money I've ever been paid to do a thing. And if I fuck it up, I won't be able to do it again. And so the ability to sort of figure stuff out is like obviously a huge strength, and not a lot of people have. But I think that people assume like, if I just get like discovered or if I just get my break, that's like all downhill from there.
And it's like, no, that's like, that's not even the startup. That's like the warm up, the start of the thing. Just getting primes for stuff. And then you're like, you have to figure out how to do all the things.
You strike me as someone who probably, when you're done with something. This is actually, so I'm doing this. The discipline is the second book in a four book series. And I did the first one a year, a year.
And then the third one is basically done. And it's basically done. It's basically done. What is the third one?
Which was justice. And how long till that is? Well, so it could come out in September. And I made the first time, the decision for the first time, I like to push a project for a year.
So I'm gonna let it sit for a year basically. Which is a draw. And just say it. Exactly.
Like in the book. So you can tell that I read it. Yes, definitely did. That's the Joyce Carol Oates story.
I'm trying to appreciate. Yeah. So, okay. So you actually will then revisit it much like you.
I'm not gonna start the next one right away either. Which actually is taking like a fair amount of restraint for me. I'm in this phase right now. So there's always this thing.
I wonder if it's similar to like what you go through. Where I just shot a special. It's my fifth one hour special. The turnaround time on these is usually, like so usually if there's not a pandemic.
You shoot it and then you go back to square one. You build an hour. Because you have to kill all the material. All of it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's all gone. And then you start from square one. And then you build a new hour.
You tour with it and then you shoot it. Usually this has been a two year window for me. That whole process. Right at tour shoot.
And so I just shot. I shot in November. And then it's not, you know, it's like it's being edited and cut and I have not turned in a cut. And I always go like, I don't wanna watch it.
Can you please watch it? I don't really feel like it. And then people like start. You don't feel like it?
Or it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. I hate watching myself to stand up.
I hate listening to myself to stand up. Dude, I sometimes there's like my stand up will come up on my phone and I'll fucking punch the radio. Like I don't wanna hear that shit at all. I don't wanna hear my voice.
But it sounds different in your head. It's something about the vibrations. Tim Ferriss was telling me that's like, that like the way you hear your voice when it's coming out, you hear like the sound vibrates through your own skull. So you have a sense of your voice as X.
And then you hear it from an outside source, not directly coming out of your mouth. Yes. And it sounds like what it sounds like to other people. And that is super unfamiliar to you.
So unfamiliar. And like recognizable, obviously you know it's you, but it's unfamiliar. And also there's this discomfort of, I feel like I'm, when I hear myself just stand up, I feel like it's equivalent of like doing stand up at the dinner table from my family. I'm like, hey, how's everybody doing?
I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Like it feels like I'm doing that to myself. Like I just, I can't handle it. So, but what I'm getting to is that now, okay, now I'm going to square one.
It's one of the most frustrating parts is when you start over. Sure. It's become, here's the thing, it's familiar, in other words, I recognize it. And I know what it is.
And that helps because you go, I know I'll get through this. But there's this period where you go, I don't know if I'll ever come up with anything else again. And then I go, oh, that's what I thought last time. And that's what I thought the time before.
And then what you get euphoria is when you all of a sudden you just, it just starts. You do your first new bit. And when you do a new bit, whether it's at the very beginning or even like as you're touring, there's nothing like the feeling. I'm not going to remember on tour, coming up with a new bit and going to like, seeing friends and all, and they were like, you look happy and I was like, I just fucking, I have a new bit and it worked.
And like that feeling, I think that's what actually keeps you doing it forever and ever. Is that there's no feeling like it, like coming up with something going on stage and trying it and having it, having it become like a solid bit. But yeah, I'm at that phase right now where I'm like, oh fuck, I gotta start all over again, you know? It's like torturous and wonderful.
And I think for me, my solution to the torturous has always been like, as soon as you finish, start the next one, as soon as you finish, start the next one. And so I've been on that for basically 10 years. And the thinking was, first off, I want to do it for 50 years or whatever. And so obviously that's not sustainable.
You can't do it every year for 50 years. Like you'll die and you'll wake up and you'll be like, oh, like I don't know who my kids are because I've been doing this thing. It actually doesn't matter to me that much anymore. And so now, so it's weird.
It requires discipline to like start the next one. But then if that's like the groove or the rhythm you get into, then actually it doesn't take discipline to keep in it. It's like a workaholic, which I sort of struggle with that. It's like a workaholic is actually like, the work isn't hard for them.
The work is this weird, addictive, like selfish thing. It seems like it's healthy on the outside to other people. But it's actually like the worst thing they could be doing. I completely, I have suffered from the same thing where it's like, when are you going to just enjoy life?
It's being not doing. And being not exactly being not doing. So that's it. Yeah, that's its own struggle.
The struggle is not doing more work. That's actually, you're like, oh, I'll fall into that. Yeah, sure, I'll do more work. It's like when I was 15, I had to struggle to make myself be someone that works, right?
And win that battle. And then you have to rein in that impulse. I mean, you don't have to. I mean, you could be Tom Brady if you want.
If you're lucky and you don't get hurt and all these other things, but it comes at an extremely high cost. And like, I'm interested in being really good at what I do professionally, but also, have you heard this term, art monster? Art monster? Yeah.
It's like someone who basically becomes a monster in pursuit of their art. Oh. Like they're so all in in the thing that there's like, savage about it. And it's not just how they work really hard.
They could just be like, are you one things obviously an art monster also in a different extreme way. But where you give yourself totally over to the thing and you lose what is like sort of good and decent and normal. And I would like to be, I've got to know like some sports, some really great athletes from the books. And like, there's obviously the ones who have won the most.
I'm really interested when you meet someone who's like won a lot. And then they're like fucking normal. Yeah. And there's, you know, I mean, I'm sure you've discovered this too.
There's there are endless stories of the greats in sports, in entertainment, in politics, who are like, this is the most famous person. And then you just peek behind. And it's just stories of what a piece of shit. And they're a whole personal life is just a disaster.
And they're like, he was drunk and abusive and neglectful. And they're just like, nobody's having less fun. Nobody's life is worse than that person. And they're like, buddy, you made cool paintings.
OK. Nice, great. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. To me, it's actually harder to be like world class at something and be like, pretty normal. That is definitely harder. Also, one of the reasons why is it the more world class you get, the more the world treats you differently.
That's the thing about the super famous that I think some of us lose sight of is that the reason that they're weird is because everybody treats them like they're not normal. So that it takes a real effort to be like, oh, I, like, how does fucking, I don't know, Rihanna, like, when he told me it was in a regular airport. And then somebody was like, excuse me. Hey, like, you know, like, because that's normal.
It's normal that somebody would be like, I'm in front of you. You know, like when everybody's just like, you're the greatest, that changes your view. That's the way the world operates. Yes.
And then if you do that for a really long time, you can't possibly keep your bearings. No, then your Garth Brooks, you're a fucking psycho, dude. So no, I think actually that's one of the reasons I live here and like how I live. That's a choice.
That's a deliberate choice. Yes. I mean, what made you choose here? Well, so I wrote my first book.
We moved to my wife and I moved to New Orleans. We were like, let's like move somewhere weird. That's not a major city and we liked it. But it's like you can't be a normal person in New Orleans for very long because it's not a normal place.
It's not. What other city takes a month off every year for parades and parties? So it is, I would say this for people that, you know, it's a lot of people who haven't traveled, you know, and you go, like, man, if you want to go to a place that is truly different, I mean, it really stands apart. Just go and see that this is one of the major cities of the United States and they operate on a whole other wavelength.
Yeah, it's crazy. So that was really great. And then my first book came out and I was like, I'm a writer now. I should move to New York and I was like, this is awful.
This is not how people should live or where I want to live. And people should live. This is not good for anyone. And if you make $65 million a year, it's totally which people say in New York as though it's a normal thing to say.
Yeah, yeah. They're like, as long as you make more than a million a year, New York's pretty great. And it's like, yeah, that's not normal. If you're making more than a million a year, great.
And by the way, you're not balling in New York. No, no, that's to have like an apartment with two bedrooms. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it.
You're still renting. Yeah, that's the crazy thing. There's like people in like a million a year and they're like, you fucking don't own a place? You're like a million dollars a year.
No. Yeah. That's not that's not the treadmill that I think you want to be on. If you have a choice, some people you don't have a choice.
But if you have a choice, you should not do that. And so we picked Austin because Austin, I felt like, is a mix of what a lot of great cities in America have. Sure. And then we lived in East Austin.
And then we were like, we bought a goat on Craigslist one day. Just fucking around. And then we were like, you know what? Our goat needs more space.
And so we moved out to the country. That's awesome. Yes. That is so cool, actually.
It was nice. Yeah. Yeah, I want to get a goat, dude. Yeah, goat goat.
I had more goats. I had three goats and then a pack of wild dogs eviscerated two of them three months ago. It was the worst fucking thing. Yeah.
On the farm on the ranch? On the ranch. Just packs of wild dogs. That's one of the things you learn to be living in the country.
It's like people are animals. Like people just go, I don't want this dog anymore. I can't just let it go here in the city where I live. So I'm going to drive 30 minutes out.
And then I'll just let it go. And then they come together and packs. And they prey on animals. So that's fun.
That was shit. Yeah, yeah. So I don't have a goat to spare right now. Yeah, you discovered.
Did you know it was wild dog? It was still there when my wife got home. And one of the goats had locked himself in a little thing. So it survived.
And the other two goats. The one that made us move out there. It's no longer with us. Damn, man.
That sucks. Yeah, it was brutal. But that is the other thing you learn out there. It's just like death or slash life is much less precious.
Because just things die all the time. Even if you take great care of your animals, they get eaten by dogs or your chicken gets it's head ripped off by raccoon or just whatever. Just stuff dies. Stuff dies.
And you're not really that different than the cow. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I definitely suffer from this.
Don't appreciate how quickly things can go. Yes. It really is. I mean, you could say that that's an example of the wild pack of dogs.
That can happen to human beings. Sure, too. In so many ways. When we first moved out there, we had these geese.
And we'd raised one. Since it was like a little bit more. And it got attacked by something. It was all cut up.
It took it to the vet. We spent $500 getting it stitched up. It's like, this is our goose. And then three weeks later, it got totally eaten by something else.
And it was like watching the other geese, not give a shit. There was five of us, another four. That's life. And you realize, oh, the feeling sorry for yourself, mourning, grieving.
Not that there's aren't things you should do. But you realize that that's a pretty human thing. It's totally human. And it's a first world human thing.
Yeah. Especially really sinking into it. Because I think some people have a different relationship with loss and with grief and how they know. Some people are a little, I think, extremely cold about things.
There's a diagnosis for some of them. But for people in the normal spectrum, people can be very serious. They can kind of just process things and move on. And then some people really sink into a dark place with that stuff.
And then you look at something like the animal world and they're just like, moving on. Yeah. Sorry, this thing froze to death next to me. And then I'm hungry.
Yeah. Exactly. It's going to go eat. It's totally different.
Oh, I want to ask you this about the... So you're doing four, a series of four. They're called the Cardinal virtues. Now that it's a...
Obviously, it's a big success. You're a big success. And the books are you go like, oh, cool. But I go back to pitching this.
Is that a difficult pitch to get someone to be like, this is going to be a series of four books. So my first book was about marketing. I did this book on an ex-visa of media in basically fake news, not on Trump fake news, but real fake news. Your boy.
He offered you a job. Trump. Then he offered you a mark. I did not Trump, but one of the kind of secretaries.
Actually, the worst, the worst. This is something I think about. Okay. So the guy who gave Trump the idea for the wall, like just some...
Because Trump's just an idiot and just surrounded by random people who were like, hey, you know what would be cool? And he's like, that's a good idea. Like, bring in the my pillow guy. What?
What? Yeah. So this guy is named Sam Nunberg. He's talking about it.
Right. Yeah. That guy's favorite book is Trust My Line, which is your book. Yeah.
And he's like, great. How am I going to get that off my contest? This guy? Yeah.
He was also drunk live on the news ones. He's quite a... I find it hard to believe. So, okay.
So Sam loves that book. Yes. And then after you had... This is...
The book came out 12 years ago. Right. So my first book was about marketing. And then so...
But what I really wanted to write about was the kinds of stuff that Robert gets to write about. Big ideas, timeless stuff. And so I went to them with what became the obstacles the way and they were not excited. Not at all.
Because I mean, it's like a terrible idea. It's like an obscure school of ancient philosophy at a business imprint. And so they offered me less than half what I got from my first book. And I was like, set it up.