Good Life Project - Caroline Paul: Fighting Fires, Writing Books and Gutsy Girls

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

Caroline Paul is the New York Times best-selling author of four books, including her memoir about being a San Francisco firefighter, called Fighting Fire, and the illustrated Lost Cat, A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology. In her latest book, The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, she shares her greatest escapades—as well as those of other girls and women from throughout history. The Gutsy Girl encourages a new generation to conquer fears, face challenges and pursue the lives they want—lives of confidence, self-reliance, friendship and fun.In This Episode, You'll Learn:Her unlikely path to becoming one of the first women in the San Francisco Fire Department.How she learned that her brother was a secret animal liberation leader for 20 years.Is there such a thing a 'girl books' and 'boy books'?The writing collective that kept her sane.Why she loves flying experimental planes, but not all the fancy gadgets and gear. Mentioned in This Episode:No Boys Allowed: School visits as a woman writer by Shannon HaleWhy Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute to Be Scared? by Caroline PaulCelia Slater's work with True North SportsWhen Breath Becomes Air by Paul KalanithiFighting Fire by Caroline Paul Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is brought to you by Camp GLP. It's an amazing opportunity to come hang out with me, with our awesome Good Life Project team, a lineup of inspiring teachers from art to life to work, and a community of almost impossibly friendly grown-up campers from literally all over the world as we take over a beautiful summer camp for three and a half days of workshops and activities that fill your noggin with ideas and strategies for life and create the type of friendships and stories you thought you pretty much left behind decades ago. It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and more than half the spots are already gone. So be sure to grab your spot quickly because our $200 early bird discount ends on April 30th, 2016. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes. On to our show. And we've gendered bravery to be male and fear to be female.

And fear is actually a female trait. I mean, when you laugh and giggle and say, I'm too scared to do that, nobody blinks an eye. If a boy said that, they'd be very worried about him. Caroline Paul wasn't the kid who dreamed of being a firefighter when she was little. In fact, she dreamed of being a writer, and she became a writer. And she pitched at some point a story to actually cover the San Francisco Fire Department. That story, she quickly learned, wasn't just a story that she felt she wanted to write about. It was a story she felt called to live.

She became fascinated with the fire department, so much so that she became a San Francisco firefighter and had a long career there and eventually wrote a book about her experiences, which led her back to that deeper passion, that sort of underlying Jones to continue writing, and a series of additional books, and most recently a book called The Gutsy Girl, which is all about really reclaiming a sense of adventure, especially for girls and for women. Today's conversation is wide-ranging. As always, we go deep into her personal journey, the choices we made, what it was like living the different parts of her life as a woman, and as a woman who was out in the San Francisco Fire Department in a time where both were extraordinarily unusual circumstances, all the way through to returning to writing

and writing this most recent book. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die.

Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So it's so good to be hanging out with you. I thought a fun jumping off point might actually be something

that you just wrote last week. Or maybe you wrote it a little bit before, but it went up on TED last week, which was this article about boys reading girls' books. Can you take me into that a little bit? Yeah, when I came out with The Gutsy Girl, Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure,

that's my newest book. And before it came out, we were approaching schools to talk to the age group, which is about 7 to 12. And some schools said, you you know we don't want to actually have you because your book excludes boys and I was taken aback and at first actually I was probably not that taken aback I was like okay I get it says that's a girl yeah I think it's sort of a it didn't surprise me it didn't even I didn't think about it but the more I thought about it the more thought, really? Why? Just because it's not about boys doesn't mean it's excluding boys. And we read in order to learn other things outside ourselves. And I had read all the books that I read when I was a kid were, quote, boy books. So I wrote an op-ed about that. Yeah, and it was powerful.

And what's interesting is in the op-ed, you also reference, I'm blanking on the other person who you reference, who sort of like wrote her own essay, which sort of tied it to the notion of actually cultivating rape culture by not allowing boys, not introducing boys to books and ideas and

stories about girls. You know, when I started the article, that was not where I was going. I was just thinking, this is a shame. I read Red Badge of Courage and I liked it. How come boys can't read my book? That was sort of the simplistic level. But the more I dug into it, I came upon shannon hale's blog about her own experience going to a school where they actually allowed boys not to attend the assembly

because it was quote a girl's book and she's the one that made that connection of like when you allow a segment of the population not to learn stuff outside themselves, to only learn specific things that the culture wants you to learn. And in this case, of course, with boys, it's boy books that are more war or they're not as relational. You know, according to her, this leads directly to an insensitivity and a narrow mindedness that and then she said that it leads to rape culture. Yeah. And it, you know, it's interesting, because when my daughter was really little, you know, and I used to read her to sleep at night, and I started reading, you would, I'd look for whatever, you know, like the classic bedtime stories were. And inevitably, it was always some version of, and the prince comes and saves the day. And I'm

thinking to myself, I'm like, this is not the message that I want for my daughter. So I actually, when she was like four or five years old, I wrote my own sort of badass, kind, traveling girl detective story. And to this day, she's like, Dad, you should publish that. Yeah, you should publish that. But I, you know, it's interesting, because when I was reading that, I was kind of thinking about myself when I was a kid. And when I was a kid, I mean, I was reading Hardy Boys, but I was also reading Nancy Drew. So there was no separation for me. It's not like I didn't have a lens that said, you know, like reading about girls doing awesome stuff was in some way not interesting.

Well, you know, I got a little bit of pushback. I did get some men saying there's no such thing as girl books, which I actually respectfully disagree because I think we have divided books into girls and boys books, just like we think that there is no distinction. But the way I define a boy book is by a man with a main character as a boy. And usually that boy is doing kick-ass things. And so this book is a main character are girls doing kick-ass things, which I think really appeals to boys. In fact, I interviewed somebody from the Representation Project, and they're very concerned about gender stereotypes in the media and how that affects boys and girls. And they said, you know, this idea that boys only want to read boy books and don't want to read girls' books is an adult construct. So we have to stop doing that to our boys. And let them read about girls. Right, that makes sense to me. Although, you know, you think about, you know, if I put myself back in my like, you know, like 11 year old boy body, you know, if there was a book that was sort of

on the cover, quote, you know, like packaged and wrapped, you know, in something that was sort of, like very clearly marketed to girls by the way that the actual – and I'm thinking to myself, would I have been comfortable sitting on the front steps of school with that book in my hands? And the answer is no. No, I mean, I think the biggest insult a boy gets is that he's a sissy. He's like a girl. I mean, that's something we have to change too. These attributes, these girly attributes are to be reviled or to be avoided. That's also something that I can, as I was writing this op-ed, I did more research and

a lot of people are saying that, you know, being called a girl is an insult to a boy. Yeah. I have a friend of mine, Celia Slater, who was big in the collegiate coaching world, and now she trains coaches. And one of the things she shared with me was that, you know, it's interesting that a lot of the women's training for coaches is focused on women. But she was saying exactly the same thing you were saying. you know, they're, it's, when you think about a lot of the names that boys are called to try and belittle them, it's girl parts, you know, or like, you know, theoretically feminine attributes. And she's like, we need to change that. But the conversation can't stop at women, like men have to be a part of that conversation. And she's, you know, part of her work, part of

her sort of, you know, calling on the earth at this point in her career is to try and sort of bring everybody to the table and say, can we all just talk about this? Well, yeah, because we, you can't ask a boy to respect women and also tell him that the attributes that women have are bad. This can't, doesn't make sense. Yeah. It's a tension that doesn't vibe. On a personal level, I know, if I did a quick inventory,

I'd probably know far more like seriously badass women than men in my personal life. So I like this, the very idea to me is just alien, but yes,

it's so interesting. And it's interesting that you got pushed back and I think that's where the conversation starts. You know, it's like you put it out there, you know, you take, you're pushback. And I think that's where the conversation starts. It's like you put it out there. You're taking a position.

I'm curious, and we'll get a lot. We'll kind of go back in time a little bit and talk about a lot of your adventures and your current book. As a writer, clearly you've reached some level of comfort taking a lot of physical risks. As a writer, when you take a really strong position and you put it out into the universe, is that a comfortable place for you these days? Definitely not. I don't read responses. I'm happy to start a dialogue.

In fact, I think it's important. But I don't feel like I'm the expert necessarily on these things. I have an opinion. I am having my own life to draw from. But I'd like to start the dialogue and then let it run. I mean, ideally, even with the book Gutsy Girl, what I'd like is to the gutsy, the gospel of gutsiness. I don't want to be the masthead for that. I just want to be the person that starts it.

It's like the fire starter kind of, or the prompt. Yeah. I love that, probably because it resonates with the way that I sort of enter the conversation, too. I don't like to be the lightning rod, but I like to be the spark. Maybe we're chicken. Yeah, maybe. It's just not my personality to be at the forefront anymore. Maybe at one point I wanted to be seen and heard in a big way.

But when I was young, I think we all do. But now I'd rather just do good in the world and watch it spread. Yeah. Which is interesting, too, because you come from a family, from what I know, where just among your sister and her brother, and it seems like there's a really strong and enduring activism ethos that's been sort of like existed across the family for a long, long time. Yeah, well, my brother and my identical twin are just amazingly kick-ass moral people of integrity that I cannot keep up with. My brother was in prison for uh he's an animal rights activist he was actually a the um secret underground leader of the animal liberation front for 20 years and nobody knew that until he was um till the fbi finally got

him on i think they knew that he was part of this for a while but you can't really put someone in jail for freeing dogs or bunnies from labs that you know it's very hard to do you can do it legally but the court of public opinion yeah will probably bring too much to light and so he did um but he but he went to prison for four years and uh remained vegan in prison which was amazing changed way more hearts and minds i think in prison than we could ever do in our sort of normal lives. That's so interesting. Yeah. He was in the black market there.

It was like heroin and cigarettes. And he's like getting spinach. It's like, you don't need tofu. Yeah, exactly. And they all were sort of agog at him because they knew that he was just such a principled person. They weren't animal rights people there. But I think his values osmosed into this population that would never normally think about these things. Yeah, that's so interesting.

So here's part of my curiosity. And tell me if you're comfortable going here or legally okay going here. During the 20 years where he was sort of secretly the guy who was leading this thing, did you and your sister know this, or was it something that was kept secret for? Yeah. The animal liberation front, nobody knows who's who. They're sort of an underground, very secret organization. So, yeah. So, so when, when he ends up getting busted by the FBI, very secret organization. So, yeah.

So when he ends up getting busted by the FBI, I guess, were you guys like, what just happened here? Oh, I mean, it just threw our whole family into a tailspin. Yeah, I mean, it was very, we were the last people to think that our phones would be tapped and that I would be on the watch list. Oh, wow. Yeah. Huh. So, but, you know, that's what happens when sometimes you live a life of integrity that's not a, you know, we're sort of, and my sister too, I mean, she also has been arrested multiple

times. She's an actress. She has been an actress for pretty much her whole adult life. But her real passion is activism, electric cars and overpopulation. Her big. So let's take a little step back in time. So we're hanging out today. We're in the studio in New York City. And you're a four-time author now. Is that right? And we're going to zoom back up to that in a little bit. Stepping back in time, you grew up, you started out in the city too, right? Yeah. But didn't stay for long. No, we were born here and stayed till around third grade.

Yeah. What part of the city are you in? Do you have any recollection of that? Oh, yeah. Central Park West. Oh, no kidding. So right in the neighborhood. Yeah, right in the neighborhood. Got a little nostalgic walking here. Yeah, yeah. It's a great neighborhood um so was it the classic you know the kids hit a certain age let's move up to the burbs type of thing or we had a weekend house in a rural part of connecticut and um my father was a banker and we got transferred he got transferred to france for a couple years so we lived there we that was a really amazing experience when we came

back they wanted to move permanently to the country. And so I'm not exactly sure the reasons, actually, but we were psyched. Yeah. Yeah. So I consider myself a country girl. I don't know. Even though, you know, I now live in San Francisco. Right. Tell me about, so when you went to France, you were 10, 11?

Fourth and fifth grade. What was that like at that age, literally just picking up and dropping yourself? I'm assuming you didn't speak French at that time. No, we didn't speak French. And then I learned passable French. My sister became fluent because she went to an all-girls French school. When you were there. Yeah.

And I did too, but the nuns didn't like me. And I was too, but the nuns didn't like me. And I was pretty shy. And so I was a little overwhelmed by the nuns. So I went to an American school after the first half a year, I think. And then my brother, he only learned swear words in French. Well, those are generally the first words as a kid you're going to pick up pretty much anywhere. We did not appreciate the amazing experience at the time but it was it was amazing yeah you just said you were shy at that age i was shy as a kid yeah and uh i sucked my thumb till i was like eight and uh my sister was the one who

was really outgoing and precocious and thus she's you know an an actress and I'm not. I'm mistaken for one a lot. the outside in and be like, wow, like risk taker, bold, doing amazing, dramatic things in your life. And I wonder if the immediate association with somebody like that is that they're also, you know, like a raging extrovert out there doing everything. So it's interesting to hear that you have lived a life where you're very forward facing and very risk inviting and very open to adventure. Yet at the same time, it sounds like you're also, there's a side of you that is more introverted and solitude-seeking. Well, definitely when I was a kid, I was much more shy. And I also had this right-hand man, my twin sister, who was very social.

So that at once buffered me and overshadowed me, I think. So she did a lot of the work, perhaps. So I didn't have to be, I think. So she did a lot of the work, perhaps. So I didn't have to be. I didn't really explore the... And frankly, I was scared of a lot of things. I mean, I talk about it in the book. I was scared of school and big kids and anything under the bed after dark, things that kids are scared of. i was really shy but now i'm i don't feel like i'm shy i think there's a part of me that's shy but i don't feel as shy i i empathize with shy people sure that which is a really powerful place to be to be sort of the voice of putting yourself out in the world and also have that space for empathy for people who kind of like you know

maybe prefer to move into it more slowly or a little more cautiously. Yeah. Well, I think the other reason I have an empathy for people who are maybe shy or just don't socially jibe is because I'm gay. And so I grew up at a time that's where it wasn't acceptable. Yeah. And I didn't talk about it for a long time.

So I had a real empathy for people who were not part of the norm, even though everyone thought I was part of the norm. Yeah. I think we're about this. I'm 50. I think we're like pretty similar age. Yeah, I'm 52. Right. So for you, I mean, now it's funny, like, you know, to say you're gay or queer or all those sort of like different permutations these days, especially in New York, San Francisco.

It's like, so? Yeah. But at that time, you know, in the 70s, 80s, I think a lot of us forget that it just wasn't the same thing. Oh, no. I mean, I didn't know a single person who was out growing up. And I just knew that it was considered abnormal. And I passed, So that's great. Yeah.

That's the way, you know, but it's, so I grew up keeping a secret, which I was sort of secretive as a, as a young person, which my sister said, finally, yeah, that's not a good way to live. And she's right. Now I don't keep secrets. So ask me anything. Complete open book. But it's interesting that, that in your sort of mind that also planted the seed of empathy for just anybody who's kind of living with something that's not open, whatever it may be. So you end up growing up for the most part bopping around the outdoor world in northwestern Connecticut and then head enough to Stanford.

Sounds like private school, great family, conservative investment banker dad, British mom, going to Stanford. The clear next path is some sort of high-level professional job. That ain't the direction that you choose to take. So take me to what happened. Yeah, I graduated from Stanford and a couple years later, I became a San Francisco firefighter. It was an unusual path. It shocked even me, to be honest. I mean, I was not, I did not plan it. I was not one of those kids who wanted to be a firefighter when they grew up. That wasn't even an option. It's funny when you're so privileged and the world is open to you, you think it's actually not uh there are still sort of restrictions

cultural restrictions and certainly becoming quote a blue collar worker was sort of one of them yeah it's because the expectations are that that's not the path right exactly and uh but i was sort of floundering in my 20s as one does or at least i think some people do and i didn't know what i wanted to be and i had it was doing odd jobs and i had a vague idea that i wanted to be either a journalist or a filmmaker because then i would be out in the world i could sort of have adventures and record them i was already doing outdoor things i'd been a whitewater rafter and uh and i was um had mountain bike through bolivia i'd done a lot of outdoor stuff and i thought well that would be the great life i don't And I had mountain biked through Bolivia.

I'd done a lot of outdoor stuff, and I thought, well, that would be a great life. I don't want to have a briefcase in an office. But I still didn't know, and I was interning at a radio station. And at the time, there was a lot of stories coming across my desk about the racism and sexism of the San Francisco Fire Department. And I thought, oh, that'd be interesting. I'll do an undercover story. So i went and i took the test and i passed and by the time i got through the whole uh process i realized wow this is an amazing job and of course i didn't find any you know in a searing story about racism andism, because in a short process like that,

you don't find those things. And the reason sexism and racism is so pervasive is because it's insidious. And so, and then I, and I got in and so I became a firefighter. Which must've been an interesting announcement to the family too. Yeah. It was a little bit of a slower process than that. When they told me, you're in the next class, I said, no. Well, actually, I said, maybe. I said, please defer me. I was so stunned.

And then pretty soon after the San Francisco earthquake happened, and I read a lot of stories. Yes. Right, yeah. April, I think, of 89. And I read a lot of stories about the San Francisco firefighters, the men, and these incredible acts of bravery and empathy. And I thought, well, yeah, okay, this is definitely an institution with racism and sexism. But these are also individual people who are incredible and I could learn from. And this is a life that looks really fascinating. And so I called back and said, you know, I'd actually like to take that. Yeah. If you're looking for flexible workouts,

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really dive into and maybe make a career out of i I can't quite remember, but I think at the time I was so unsure about what I wanted to do that this was this great anchor. And so to the extent that I thought far ahead, then, yes, this is something. I wasn't going to do it for a year. I knew that this was a commitment. Right. Yeah. I'm curious, what was it about it that, because it sounds like you did, you started out as a journalist project, right? And you're going deep into it,

and you discover that there's actually this culture of courage and empathy. And at the same time, not but, but and at the same time, you know, there's tremendous adrenaline and risk and speed. And there's also wearing the white hat, you know, like doing this beautiful benevolent service for people. Was it the blend of that that drew you to it? Or was there sort of one element where that you felt like was pulling you into it more deeply? Oh, it was definitely the adventure. Yeah. The elements of compassion that were necessary for the job didn't really become really clear to me until I was in it. And so the fires were very up my alley. I mean, they were exciting and looking for fire. What was harder for me was developing the compassion during a medical call. It's not that I'm not a compassionate person, but there was a lot of pressure as a woman little bit unclear how you acted like a firefighter beyond doing the practical aspects. And I, as I was deeper in the job, I began to really like medical calls because there was a possibility of connection with people that very few people get. somebody when you're helping them say put putting oxygen on them because they're having trouble breathing and they're really scared is a very powerful thing and sounds really simple but

something that i didn't learn right away it certainly wasn't something we were taught so that that i think when i became a firefighter it was such a growing experience for me emotionally because of many things, I think. But one aspect was learning at once to be compassionate and productive at the same time. Were you surprised at how you eventually ended up being drawn to the human side of it? Like, did that kind of catch you or? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was not, that's not how they advertise the job. Right. You know, they say you're helping people, but you just, it's sort of the hero helping.

Right. Yeah. There's not the subtle or the nuance part of when people actually pass away in front of you. And what do you do? Well, for me, I learned to just say a little prayer. I'm not religious, but. So nobody teaches you that everybody i think comes to their own uh their ways of dealing with these highly dramatic situations yeah i mean it's interesting

i um i just finished reading a book called when breath becomes air i don't know if you read it i haven't read it but i do know and and it i mean i finished it in a hotel room in Austin, Texas, and I was literally like heaving, sobbing. And it took me completely by surprise. And, you know, we as a culture here, we don't talk about or deal with or, you know, outside of professions like what you were doing, we don't expose ourselves on a regular basis to death. You know, to the notion that we're all going. And maybe not 10, 20, 30, but you just never know. And I wonder how being exposed to that on a fairly regular basis, to your own impermanence and to others, how did that move into you? You know, what it changed is that I'm not against death.

I am against suffering during life because I saw so many people whose lives were so tough. I mean, as a firefighter, I'm a girl from Connecticut, and yet I got to walk into these places where hoarders live deep into the projects I got to interact with homeless people with stories that I never would have heard of otherwise I mean it was a completely different life that than most people I know and certainly that I was prepared for and I think what I realized is that you know death is inevitable and I'm not trying to be cold about it but it didn't started not to surprise me anymore but what really moved me was the way people lived and our adaptability i mean there were people living with under such duress and yet they still

have friends and family and you know the the human spirit yeah Yeah, it's pretty incredible. And I think also, and I wonder if being, when I was growing up, my mom for a window of time was an EMT. She worked with the fire department and the ambulance. And so she saw things, you know, that she wasn't normally exposed to. And I remember her coming home one day, and she'd been on a call where a kid's life ended. And she was kind of wrecked. I think it sort of made her just really reflect on a lot of things. She was probably pretty hesitant to share the story with us also, but she was pretty rattled, I remember, so she did. In an odd way, I wonder if seeing that also, it's sort of, it lets you touch base with the fact that

we're here for an indetermined window of time. So let's own it while we're here rather than, you know, someday. Yeah, I mean, I certainly hope so. I mean, that's, that's the lesson we all want to take away how short life is. Yeah. In some ways, death became rote. I mean, I saw so many people die or become very badly hurt and their life changed forever. What really struck me was how quickly life could change. I remember once going to a call where a man was just, he had locked himself out of his house. So he climbed the fence of the gate and he fell five feet right onto his head. And just because he'd lost, he'd forgotten his key and decided to make that small effort instead of something else. So it's that kind of thing that I was very aware of how fast life could change. It's interesting too, because for me, I'd be curious, well, did that inspire you to start to live life and be more adventurous? But for you, it's not. You came into this with that mindset. But it sounds like there was a bit of a switch that you had to hit, which kind of, I don't know if the word numbing is right, but to do that job,

because you did it for 14 years, right? To be able to be okay in that job for 14 years, it seems like you need to sort of develop the ability to dissociate a certain amount of the emotion that's a constant line that you're that you're walking like yeah you want to feel something but you don't want to feel too much because that can really wreck you i think that's why there was just so much drinking in the fire department up until certainly when i got in there still was a culture of drinking and uh you know that's gone now but i think because that's the way at least the men learned to deal with i don't know if they would say that but um because they called it liquid courage they used it was more a way to sort of fight a fire but um i think it's a way to handle all the trauma that we saw yeah so you then when you, when you were there, you're hanging out, you're in a major city fire department.

At that point, you're out? Yeah. Okay. So you're openly gay, you're in a big machismo, like you're the sister of a then major TV celebrity. Yeah, my sister was on Baywatch, which was the most watched show in the world. Right. So it's got to be really interesting in terms of like, what you felt you had to represent and the way that you're being judged or viewed within the culture of the fire department.

Well, when I first got in, I really wanted to be under the radar. That was not to be. I mean, well, first of all, I was one of I was the 15th woman out of 1500 men. So a lot of men hadn't even worked with a woman before when I got in in 89. And I was just the obvious. I was, yes, I was not under the radar as much as I wanted to be. And I wouldn't have been anyway because I was a woman. And there was a lot of stress because at the time and still, people don't think that women can do a very physical job like firefighting, which is not true. They definitely can.

In fact, women can be very good at this job because this is not a job that demands brute strength. It's a job that demands strength and smarts. And so I think people who aren't big brutes can offer this whole other way of handling fires and handling medical calls. And I think you could speak to any of the smaller men in the fire department and get at that because they too don't have the brute strength and often are the guys that I would want on my crew. But at any rate, there was a lot of stress because you were being looked at anyway, just as a woman. And of course, then I was being probably looked at anyway just as a woman and of course then i was being probably looked at more and uh you know everything that i did was not just there's caroline being a firefighter it's there's all women being a firefighter and once i accepted that uh it got easier initially i was like oh no

i don't have to prove myself i i passed the academy i was in the top uh you know i came in always right third in the physical stuff every single time out of you know 26 people no one's going to be questioning me but that's not true you are you constantly had to prove yourself and in fact i was kind of up for that that was something that i was pretty good at trying to prove something when you're young that's not so much anymore it's like i'm gonna write yeah people i love it yeah yeah things change but you know that said these are these men who even if they didn't want women in the department they were good men yeah and don't be confused and the interesting thing is i came into this allegedly racist sexist they were, which is an institution that was very homogenous.

But I did realize that my own life was homogenous, too. And I should not be finger pointing here. Like in what way? Take me deeper into that. Well, all my friends looked like me. Most of my friends were white, same socioeconomic background, many from Stanford. It wasn't like I was branching out and being incredibly diverse in my life. In fact, in the fire department, that's where diversity really came into my life. And I'm forever grateful for that. It's interesting because we love to point fingers. Yeah, it's so

right. And it's like, you know, go ahead and point, but always remember, like, you know, start from the assumption that I am no different. Yeah. So eventually the finger's going to point back at us. Well, you know, I wrote a memoir about being a firefighter. It was my first book. And everybody thinks that it's this, without reading it, they think it's this referendum on the fire department. And it's not. It's a coming of age about how I changed.

Yeah. It has nothing to do, you know, it does talk about some of the incidents that were very difficult in the fire department from individuals who could not accept that their club was changing, but really it's about, you know, how I changed for the better. Yeah. So what leads you back to after 14 years, I guess it started to happen before the 14 years were up. What was the seed that started to lead you back to writing or was was it something that you were kind of doing just in the background the whole time? It's kind of ironic. I mean, I took the test to write about the fire department.

But when I got in, I never did not plan on writing about the fire department. You know, now I was a firefighter. And I had been a journalist of sorts, and I wasn't a good one. Because the truth seemed too slippery for me and so i really began writing probably like five or six years into being a firefighter and it was mostly to process what i was seeing because i was doing cpr on babies i was pulling burn victims out of places and seeing people's lives just turn around in this tragic way. And it was a way to sort of put it on paper and process it.

Yeah. So it's almost like journaling just to try and get it through and out of your head. Yeah. How does that lead to, you know what, this actually, I want to go back and do something bigger. You know, like there's a bigger story in here that I need to write. I was really serendipitous and people that want to become writers hate me for this and I don't blame them. But at the time there was no books about firefighting by women. And so I had a perspective that was unique. And so it was a firefighter read something because my father read some my father was immensely proud of his kids even though we were all radical liberals and he's very conservative he's nevertheless super proud of us and so i got an agent very quickly realized i wanted to write fiction by the way did not want to write a memoir oh no i wasn't going to write a memoir and nobody

wanted fiction they wanted non-fiction yeah well that's like you know the um what was uh uh james fray yeah a thousand tiny pieces like apparently i don't know if this is true or not but apparently that was first shopped as fiction i totally believe it actually because they really pressure i had uh you know these stories and they said well you know it's it's a memoir it's non-fiction said no it's not and they said, well, you know, it's, it's a memoir. It's nonfiction. I said, no, it's not. And they said, well, you just change a couple of things. I mean, really, honestly, it was almost like they wanted me to hand in the fiction. It was startling. I had no, I was very naive.

That's so interesting. So you ended up turning this into a, um, basically just saying, okay, memoir time. Oh, I would just rewrite. I mean, nobody, nobody, I have to say that everything in that book is totally true. And when it gets read by firefighters, you know, and nobody tells you that, no one ever questions any of the stories. Right. When that book came out, did you get, was there any pushback or what was the response within the San Francisco Fire Department? You know, they were very, actually the men that read it really liked it. And the people that didn't would like bad mouth it behind my back.

Supposedly, I didn't, I didn't really. But the really funny thing that I learned was that it's basically a valentine to the San Francisco Fire Department, that book. And I describe people, this is a classic situation with memoirs, is the people that I thought maybe wouldn't like the way I portrayed them loved it. And then some people who I just thought were amazing and tried to portray that, you know, were super upset. It's so weird. People are just strange beings. Well, the weirdest thing is that the names are all changed. So in some ways they are anonymous. Right. But of course, within the fire department, everyone was figuring out who was who.

Right. When the book came out, where you got out of the department? Oh no. You were still in? Yeah. I've been in eight years. Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize it was sort of more towards the middle of it. I thought it was more towards the end. Eight, nine years. Yeah. So you were still, ah, okay. That kind of like layers more stuff into it.

Did that book relight a flame then at that point and say, wow, this is something that I missed. It's something I want to go deeper into. No, not at all. I mean, I wanted to be a firefighter, but then I got, I had been, I got injured. I fell in a fire and messed my knee up and didn't want to be injured. So I ignored it. And that was a big mistake. And then I had multiple knee surgeries while being

a firefighter and then finally couldn't get up the stairs without holding on to the banister which is the one thing like you cannot do that you have to have be able to run up and down stairs hands free to do whatever you need to do and so i i retired and i didn't know anything i all the only thing i knew how to do was CPR or write. So I became a writer. That's funny. It was like, okay, there are two things that I can do without using my knee.

Right. So what's your next move then? Well, you have a book behind you, so you've got a little bit of a track record, but some time had passed. My next move was to be incredibly depressed for two years. I really sank into a very deep depression, which I think happens to a lot of people. Especially coming from the level of adrenaline and constant stimulation that you came out of.

Yeah, it was not a good time. And I had my knee replaced, and it was just not a good time. That's a long rehab, yeah. Luckily, I joined this group called The Grotto in San Francisco. It's kind of like a famous writers group, right? Yeah, at the time, there were only nine of us. And now there's 80. Right.

Is that where Poe Bronson came out of? Or was it? Ethan Kanan, Poe Bronson, Julia Shears, Mary Roach, ZZ Packer. We have a lot of people that have come through or started there or still there it's basically a writer's community that we we rent a space together and we share a kitchen and we share you know we used to share like a fax machine when that existed and we have offices and we write there and so we feel like normal people and some people begin to collaborate and we share advice and you make relationships with some people where they read your manuscripts and it's amazing it made it kept me sane made me realize this was a job that i could do because

all around me people were becoming more successful when i got in like i said there were nine people and then we as we kept getting kicked out of our spaces because of the rising rent rental rates because san francisco exactly we kept having to get more people and basically the grotto is full of published authors and journalists working working writers and when you see that around you you see you just get inspired and so it's because of the grotto that i'm on my fourth book. There's no question. It's interesting, too, that in a way, and tell me if you felt like this,

it feels like you replicated the culture of your crew and being in the firehouse. It's like you've got your group of people, you show up, you support each other, you go through thick and thin. And so it's sort of like, you know, I wonder if it was that yearning for that similar type of like community that brought you back out. I think so. You know, I have mixed feelings about groups of people probably from the fire department because I think homogenous groups can be dangerous. You know, they can be insulated and narrow minded. So I'm a little bit wary of them, but I also see their power. And the Grotto is a great example of this ineffable power of a community because we

have an inordinate amount of successful writers who were not successful when they joined the Grotto, but became New York Times bestsellers, became kick-ass journalists or Sundance filmmakers. And the numbers don't make sense, in my opinion, that it's just random. I think it's because of the power of a group. It's practical. You see what people are doing. You get advice. But there's also something about that energy. Yeah. It's interesting. I agree. I've seen groups like that be really elevating and constructive, and I've seen them be absolutely disastrous, like some sort of artist collectives. You know, I wonder if so much of it is just set by the tone of whoever's kind of perceived to be, you know, like the person kind of running the show it is it's totally about the sort of culture the culture the expectation the cultural expectation and that's set really early and i think at the grotto it's one of generosity and not competition it's not a zero-sum game right it's not we don't have a poverty mentality there we have a sense that if somebody's doing well, that helps all of us. We have, I mean, we have, I did the numbers.

We, I think, have had 20 New York Times bestsellers come out of the Grotto. Which, from a percentage basis, that ain't luck. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty amazing. I have to look at the numbers again. And we have National Book Award winners and Pulitzer Prize and the Book Critics Circle Award finalists and just amazing. And, you know, the top, the 35 over here, but also I know you'd like to be in the air as well in various forms. So paragliding, what else? I learned to fly Cessnas at 18. Okay. So that's from a young age, actually. learned to fly general aviation which was very difficult at the time it was a pencil it was a map on the knee none of this gps stuff that young folks have very difficult and uh and i found that

i didn't really um it was fine it was interesting to fly but it didn't move me because it felt a little bit like i was driving a car in the air so So I went to paragliding, which is basically a, what I talk about in the book, just a bed sheet in the shape of a wing. Right. And you jump off a cliff and fly. And now I fly, because of my knee,

I stopped flying. That was a foot launch and foot landing. And so now I added a little motor and I fly experimental planes or ultralights. Ultralights, yeah. So that's a hang glider with a sort of go-kart underneath. A propeller. Yeah, basically, yeah.

I've seen those. They look incredible, actually. Yeah, it's, it's really, I feel very lucky to be able to fly. Yeah. So what is it that where it's sort of like you against the environment as stripped down as humanly possible? You're kind of like the Jack White of natural challenge. Well, I'm not a gearhead. I know a lot of people that do adventures and they love the gear involved. So my pilot friends are like that. It seems like you're the opposite.

They try to put fancy stuff on my trike, my ultralight, and I just say, no, please, we have to leave it as simple as possible. If I could just have, I mean, I could just have no instruments at all in theory, but I'd be happy. I do have a radio and I do have some fancy-ish equipment, but I'm sadly behind a lot of my friends and actually happy about it. Again, I'm not interested in gear. I'm just interested in the experience. Yeah. What does gear do to it that takes away from the experience for you? It's just not why I'm there.

I mean, I'm there to fly. I'm not interested in the horsepower that's getting me up there. I like the feeling of being like a bird and a bird doesn't look at a GPS. Years ago, my wife and I actually took a single paragliding lesson. And it's amazing, right? It's incredible. I mean, even just a tiny little hill running and getting a little bit of air, you're like, oh. And as soon as you get that air, it's this feeling.

Right, you know, it's like five seconds. You're sort of loosed from the earth, yeah. Yeah, so I get that. But I also, I mean, I love being outdoors. So I'm also, you know, I surf. I don't surf well, but I really like it a lot. I like getting in the water and I don't log my boards or I don't have a quiver of surfboards for certain conditions. I just want to grab something very simple and run into the water and see whales and dolphins, which I have, and birds. So, I mean, it's your consistent pattern.

Sort of like as minimal as possible, you against Nate. It's not even like you flowing. It's not against, though. Right, it's not against. It's because I lose every time I'm against. And believe me, if you've read my book, you see that I get into myself and do a lot of mishaps and misadventures. Because, you know, I'm just an average. And I'm not trying to be coy here at all.

I'm very average at things that I do. Obviously, I've been overeducated. I've had a lot of privilege. But I'm just very dogged and determined. And I wanted a life of adventure. And so I have it, but I'm an average. I mean, there's a lot of people that have done way more, you know, spectacular things. What does that you with the whatever natural source of challenge and adventure,

what does that do for you? I mean, what is it that keeps, I don't know if you can even answer this question, but what is it you're seeking that or was it give you that nothing else gives you? Well, I will say that when I was younger, I was very intrigued with this idea of bravery and mastering your emotions when you're in a critical situation. And I enjoyed that feeling of adrenaline and sort of mental control. I'm not saying I was always good at it. So, for instance, when I was young, I was a member of a whitewater team, all women, that did first descents around the world. And when you do a first descent, that's a river that hasn't been done before. So you have no idea how that one is going to turn out.

And that was, for someone like me, I'm actually very routine oriented in my daily life. I'm very scheduled. I'm not that spontaneous. But when I get on an adventure, I'm just way looser. And I think it's, I just like being in the outdoors. There's something exhilarating about that. Yeah, I'm with you on that level too. It's interesting that you mentioned that you're very ritualized outside of those things. I did a whole bunch of research for the last book I wrote also, looking at a lot of the top creators across artists, business, and what's fascinating is it's actually a really consistent pattern that a lot of people who go, you know, like quote out there

and create and take risks on the extreme level, whether you're a painter or a writer or an entrepreneur. They take all of their risks in that domain. But then when you look at all the sort of like the day-to-day regular things that have to happen, there's a massive amount of habit and ritual that's built into it. It's almost like because you need... Mayday, mayday almost like because you need. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Yeah, in part I think it's because you need the cognitive bandwidth to make those decisions when you're out in that place.

But also it's just you need to know that there's a place that you can go back to where you can touch stone and it's going to be the way you need it to be, which gives you that grounding to then go out there and be groundless. Yeah, I mean, I think it's what Obama said. He wears the same ties because he can't as courageous emotionally and like interrelationally. So, yeah, it doesn't necessarily translate. But I think learning bravery in the outdoors, and that's why I wrote this book for girls, is a great way to learn bravery in your life. And though it doesn't always directly translate, once you master these things in the outdoors that you might be afraid of, then you have a confidence that you bring to other parts of your life. And I think that's

definitely true for me. Yeah, it's almost like it translates back. Is that why you wrote the book? What's the real, like, what do you really hope to come out of it? Because I mean, clearly, you're a woman who is living a powerful, risk-taking, adventurous life, and you've gotten a lot out of it. And, you know, kind of coming full circle, we started the conversation with the piece that you wrote about books about girls not being shown to boys. So with this book, with the Daring Girl book, what's your why? Well, I wrote this book because I want girls to be brave and resilient. And I want that to be values that they take with them. And I think right now, we don't acculturate girls to bravery and resilience. We do boys, but not girls. And that really concerned me. We actually encourage girls to be fearful. And I find that to be very detrimental and something that as women, we really try to shed, but by then it's too late. And I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. And I spoke about a study where they showed that moms and dads caution their girls way more than their boys

and tell them about how they could get hurt way more. For the exact same activity. Yes. Right. And for boys, they encouraged them to, it was around, ironically, a fire pole and on a playground. They were actually, boys were encouraged to do this and given guidance to do it on their own and so the message you're giving girls is that they need help and they should be fearful of the impending consequences and the message we're giving boys is that girls are like that

and that boys can do it on their own and overcome obstacles and we grow up that way. And that, I don't know why, and we've gendered bravery to be male and fear to be female. And fear is actually a female trait. I mean, when you laugh and giggle and say, I'm too scared to do that, nobody blinks an eye. If a boy said that, they'd be very worried about him. Now, the irony of all this is that we do this because we think we're protecting our girls. But at that age, especially, girls and boys are physically the same. So we're acting like girls break easier and can handle less. But in fact, at this age that the study was done, the kids were like between six and 10. Girls are stronger physically most of the time. I know that my twin sister and I were.

And they're ahead emotionally. So it doesn't make sense to me that we're guiding our girls this way and we're guiding our boys a completely different way. And we think we're helping our girls and we're not. And we're doing it because we think they're more fragile. It's very insidious. And you wonder how that ripples up. I know how that ripples up. Right.

I mean, culturally. Oh, I mean, I think as women, we're constantly fighting this timidity, this deference, and this lack of initiative because we haven't been taught to try and fail like boys have. And when we become women, we're trying to reverse all that. And it's just too hard. And so, and we're passing it on to our girls too, because we have this idea that in fact, we are fearful. Well, we're only fearful because we've been taught that. And so bravery is learned. And so with this book, I'm asking that girls learn bravery. Yeah, I love that. I mean, as a father, you know, that matters.

So the more voices out there sharing that message, I think the better it is. It sounds like you're also trying to really sort of bring this to schools. Well, I mean, yeah, and it's definitely want to talk to schools. But the reason it's for girls, it's actually for boys too, let's be very clear, because they need to read about badass girls as we talked about before. But for girls, I really want them to read this book before the pressures of being perfect, being pretty, and being liked really kick in. Because those three things aren't relevant in the outdoors. And so when you learn to call upon your inner resources at a young age, you won't value these outer things that women are told are why we're valuable as much because you'll have this

background of, you know, being in the outdoors and practicing calling upon your inner resources when you want to deal with something so there's lots of activities in the book yeah i love and i i love the way that you sort of draw on your own affinity for nature and for the outdoor world and there's a wide range of things it's not hey go take a big rest it's like really gentle like go hey here's something really cool that just requires you i'm not asking people to like you know skydive at all but i i mean my stories are pretty extreme they are are about misappened. Right. But the invitations, the daring dues are, you know, like,

Right. The activities are, of course, because in fact, you know, I don't think you have to jump out of planes to be brave. There's bravery is getting outside your comfort zone. And that's different for everybody but girls aren't taught to move outside their comfort zone they're taught that once they feel discomfort to be fearful because they could get hurt and i want to change that because when you move outside your comfort zone then you start learning things yeah i think that's where life happens yeah you know that's that's the place and boys learn it so early and so and they just, you know, they're able to do things like, you know, try and fail. This resilience, this idea that failure isn't bad, which girls have, that failure is bad. I mean, studies have shown that girls believe that you are born with innate talents. So intelligence, athletics. If you can't do it initially, then you're never going

to be able to do it. That's because they're not taught to try and fail. Boys don't have that belief. They believe that if they keep at something, they will get better. And that's what girls should be learning because of course we're not good at things when we start. And so girls are dropping a lot of stuff that they shouldn't because they're too scared to fail because they don't believe that they'll ever be good at it. Yeah. I wonder if even in today's society, it's becoming more of an issue for both boys and girls. Even if girls are weighted more because we've just become such a massively protection against failure society. What's interesting, I live in these weird worlds where on the one side I live in the world of entrepreneurship where the culture of the acceptance of failure has gotten much higher.

Now it's almost like a badge of an honor. If you haven't moved through three companies before you get your fourth one, which really rolls, people are like, well, you're not real yet. You have to move through those cycles a few times. And failures embrace this just, hey, this is data. It doesn't mean that you suck. It just means that this didn't work. Do something different, do it again. But then on a bigger cultural level, I feel like the culture has grown across male and female to just, especially in the context of kids, like protect, protect, protect, protect. And don't let anybody take risks because, God forbid, you skin your knee or you fail. And I get it. As a parent, you know, number two on my list is I want my kid to be happy.

Number one is I want them to be safe. But at the same time, you know, like a fierce commitment to safety can start to be detrimental. Yeah, I think people misunderstand me when I say that you, that cautioning, that you're not, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you caution your kid, you're not giving them tools to handle things. And so you can still protect your kid by instructing them. And I'm not against protecting kids. Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't implying that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah.

But I just think that instilling this sort of this broad emotion of fear, which is what we do with girls. And I don't think we do that with boys. So even though we might be hovering more, we do not instill fear in boys, because that is a sissy, quote, sissy thing. I don't exactly mean, maybe you can tell me what, what we do more, but I really, I believe strongly that we're still very not, we don't want our boys to be fearful, because that is not a manly thing. Yeah. And that's what that data that you said in the op-ed, I mean, it was all about. Right. So coming full circle, the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer the term to live a good life to you, what bubbles up? What does that mean to you?

Well, I think definitely to live a good life is to live a life that's true to what you want. I mean, this is not, I don't think that's earth shaking, but I think knowing what you want is really hard. So taking time to figure that out. And I believe in a happy life. And I know some people say that that's a vapid, but I think happy is, you know, if you're happy, you're probably also purposeful. You're probably also kind. You're probably also very connected. And so I like happy as a benchmark personally. And I think connection is the key. And how far you want to connect or how big your connection radius is, is up to you.

So for instance, my twin sister wants to make changes in the whole world by having us all drive electric cars, stopping the overpopulation issue, that kind of thing. And my brother too, is he has a wider circle. My circle is a little smaller. I think maybe with by writing books, hopefully I'm reaching people. I mostly want to connect with my friends. A lot. I want to make a difference in my friends lives. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast.

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on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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