The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Author Rich Cohen On How to Succeed When Everyone’s Against You

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan and author Rich Cohen talk about the ever-changing lens through which we judge historical figures, how the subjects of several of Cohen’s books reached success in the face of seemingly-insurmountable opposition, and more.Rich Cohen is a best-selling author and editor. His books range in subject matter from Jewish gangsters, the Rolling Stones, and the formation of the original banana republics to the NFL’s Chicago Bears and the artificial sweetener Sweet’n Low. Cohen’s writing has appeared in places like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine. He has also worked in television on such shows as Showtime’s Magic City and HBO’s Vinyl.Get your copy of The Fish That Ate the Whale: https://geni.us/haHQRThis episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. Thrive Market is the best online location for getting healthy and sustainable groceries delivered to your doorstep. Thrive Market provides for over 70 diets and value systems, and members save 25-50% off retail prices. Plus, orders over $49 qualify for their carbon-neutral free shipping. Visit thrivemarket.com/dailystoic to get a free gift up to $22 with your first order.This episode is also brought to you by GoMacro. GoMacro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Rich Cohen: Homepage: https://www.authorrichcohen.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/richcohen2003Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/author.richcohen/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rich.cohen1See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on

the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowach.com. Honestly, it's been so long. I don't even remember when I first signed up for Thrive Market, but it's basically been a part of our sort of grocery day-to-day life now for so long that we didn't even skip a beat when the pandemic happened. We've not had to go to the grocery store now in months and months and months because we

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and get a free gift today, thrivemarket.com slash Stoke. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday, welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. I hope everyone is doing well. I hope everyone's being safe. I hope everyone's being safe. I hope you are using this time effectively as we talked about this idea of a lifetime or dead time, how are you using this sort of surreal,

strange period of history that we're in that has us doing a lot less than we'd probably ordinarily be doing or otherwise like to do. How are you using it? Obviously, I think reading is a otherwise like to do. How are you using it? Obviously, I think reading is a great way to do that. So I wanted to have one of my favorite authors of all time. On the podcast today, Rich Cohen, Rich has written more books than I can probably count or name

off the top of my head that I've read and enjoyed a great deal. His latest is called The Last Pirate of New York, which is fascinating. It's about the last pirate executed for piracy in New York City. But really the book that I love the most that we spend the most of the podcast talking about is his book, The Fish that Eight the Whale. If you read my book, The Ops goes Away, you're familiar with the story of Samuel Zamurri, one of the sort of upstart owner of United Fruit. He's this sort of charismatic, contradictory, ambitious, but utterly creative, historical figure, controversial, to say the least,

but certainly a brilliant guy. I used Rich's book, The Fish That Eight the Wayle, as a source in obstacle. I just absolutely love that book. I love his book, Tough Jews, which is an incredible book. I even like the book that his father wrote, you can negotiate anything.

It's a great book for anyone trying to negotiate deals or navigate through life, sort of a precursor to Chris Faust's book, Never Split the Difference. But Rich is just one of my favorite people. He's written an amazing book about the Chicago Cubs and the curse that cost them basically a century of World Series championships. He wrote a book about the 1985 Bears. He wrote a book about the Rolling Stones.

He's written about everything. And then, if you look at his magazine work, he's been a long time writer for Rolling Stone. He's just one of my favorite writers, as I said in the episode, when you read something from Rich Cohen, you know you're reading something from Rich Cohen. He just has a distinctive voice. He manages to sort of get to the essence of what makes characters think, what makes people do, what they do. And so in this episode, we talk about some stoic ideas, how those stoic ideas connects to the figures that he writes about, particularly some of the overlaps between stoicism and Judaism, a lot of characters.

And in Rich's books are Jewish, he writes sort of beautifully about Israel. He's, you know, again, just one of my favorite people, you'll, I think you'll love this interview. If you haven't read any books from Rich Cohen, I can't recommend them strongly enough. I'd start with the fish that ate the whale or tough Jews.

I think those are the two best ones or just Google some of his Rolling Stone work, I guess, and start there. But bunch of interesting stuff, I feel like I owe Rich a huge debt. He's inspired me as a writer, but as I talked about in the interview, I reached out to him for some advice when I was writing the obstacles the way. And he didn't know me. He had no

reason to do me a solid. He had no reason to give me some of his time. But he did. And that guidance was really instrumental in shaping that book. And that's an example I think about now when young writers reach out to me or random people reach out to me. How do you pay forward just a good turn reach out to me or random people reach out to me. How do you pay forward, you know, just a good turn, a work for the common good, as Marcus would say. You know, you do something, you don't expect anything in return, you know, he didn't know that, you know, I would go on to write the books that I did,

that I'd have them on a podcast, you know, six plus years later, seven plus years later. So we just did it because he's a good guy, and I think that comes from the interview. Check this out and we will talk soon. So Rich, people probably don't know this listing, but I called you when I was writing the obstacle as the way I lived in New Orleans.

I've come across the fish that ate the whale in Octavia books in New Orleans. And I read it and I loved it. And I wanted to talk about Zimmeri in obstacle and you and I talked to me you were very very helpful and and I appreciate you taking the time especially because I hadn't done much at that time but but it's funny now how many people I get emails from that are angry that I would dare include Zimuri, this supposedly horrible person in a book about stoicism.

I thought you'd like that. Well, you know, he's just one of those guys that's interesting because his life has come to mean something else now than it meant at the time. And he's I always think sometimes the people that are in a way very advanced are way out in the middle of all kinds of conflicts because they think you're doing the right thing. But later, they're the people that take the most blame because they're the people that

actually did something. And you can't do something without looking like an idiot to later generation. So, you know, Zimmeri was, he started this very forward looking company in a very backwards industry and he ended up taking over United Fruit, which was sort of the company, one of the worst reputations in the world. So he became associated with United Fruit, but it really wasn't his whole story. So it was sort of fascinating how people sort of just hate him as a symbol without knowing about his life. Yeah, he hasn't been judged particularly kindly by history. And it's not quite, you know,

in the Bible about Noah, they say sort of he was blameless in his age. I don't think Zamory was blameless in his time either, but he certainly wasn't like a diabolical villain. He was sort of an inspiring rags to rich his story, right? Right, and he was, it's like he entered a game that existed. It's like somebody that's playing football. And then later, sort of questioning why they were so violent in their career. I mean, those were the rules of the game. And you want people to sort of be able to step outside and with perfect clarity, judge their own actions as if from, you know, the perspective of God, almost no one can do that a few people. So I always think it's like, you know,

an eye for an eye is always quoted as this incredibly violent, horrible way to live life. But the fact is an eye for an eye when it was written in the Bible was in advance, because before it was your life for an eye, you know, it was talking about being proportional in the punishment of the crime. So it was a huge advance in the way people were punished, but now we look back on it and see it from the other side of history, and it looks like bloodthirsty people lived that way. and it looks like bloodthirsty people live that way. Yeah, or in the Bible, it's also the idea that it somehow, that it was moral progress to say, oh, the crimes of the father should not be visited

on his children, that seems like an obvious statement, but actually was a moral advance at one time. Absolutely, and what you saw, so you're seeing like this, you're seeing progress frozen in time, you know, from whatever, 4,000 years ago. But I always say, when people are very, very judgmental about historical figures, the thing that drives me crazy is,

it basically means that you think that what you're doing now is going to look good to people 50, 60 years from now. And all the history tells us that what we're doing now is going to look awful to people in the future. And we don't necessarily know what we're doing that is going to look awful. You know, the thing about Sam Zimmeri is he lived long enough to see history's judgment on him.

Most people don't live that long. But you know, if you looked at Rockefeller and looked at his life, how it looked later, the oil industry and everything else, he didn't live long enough to see it change meaning, it's a Murray did. Yeah, no, this is and this is a total divergent that we should come back to, it's a Murray, but I am fascinated with this sort of very harsh judgment we render on history. And I was in New Orleans, I was finishing up, I think my book conspiracy, when they pulled down the Robert E. Lee statue. And I actually, you know, think that that statue's preposterous. I mean, Robert E. Lee never visits New Orleans. He has nothing to do

with New Orleans. He's a, you know, he's a traitor, in my opinion. I don't know why we put up statues to people who lose who lose wars. But what I think is so striking about our time today versus, you know, the New Orleans that Zimari lived in or or or or any past generation, I think it's it's it's indicative of our time that that that pedestal is now empty, right? There's just a giant column sticking up in the most important intersection in town because although we can agree who should be removed that Robert E. Lee is not our hero, even in such like a beautiful, impactful city as New Orleans with all, with its enormous cast of characters,

it's, to me, it's striking that we can't think about who should go up there instead. Well nobody's pure enough, nobody's clean. I mean it's raw human so everybody's got something wrong with them, everybody's messed up. And I do think like in our generation, you know, my generation, I'm generation X, that was the big sense, which is that everything's fallen, everything's wrecked, everything's broken. So, you don't start from any kind of purity and the great movie speech from my time, I always thought was the speech in stripes when he says there's something wrong with every

one of us. We're all mutt, you know, we're the wretched refuse of the world. And you start from that point of knowing that there's nobody that's pure enough. So we work with what we got. But now there's a combination of nobody can go up on that pedestal because nobody's pure enough and nobody's willing to take a chance vouching for somebody and saying, I want this person to be raised up because I don't know what you're gonna find out about him later, you know, because I don't know somebody completely and entirely

and I don't know what's gonna turn up about them later. So every time you sort of vouch for somebody, you put yourself on the line. So there's just a lot of fear right now. And yeah. No, and I think the problem with that when what I love so much about your books is that, you need someone on that space because people need heroes.

They don't have to be perfect heroes, but we need people to inspire us to model good behaviors for us to provide lessons to sort of model good behaviors for us to sort of, you know, provide lessons to learn from. And what I think so interesting about your books is that you do tend to pick out sort of flawed or in some cases deranged or sort of surreal characters. And then you sort of find whatever that essence was about them and you make a virtue of that rather than just focusing on how they were an evil or malevolent or flawed human being. People fail is where they're like the most interesting and the most human. And since we were talking about the Bible, I think, in the Old Testament, all those heroes

or whatever you wanna call them, they're all completely messed up. I mean, they're really bad sinners, all of them. So, you know, like King David, when you look at what he did, which is basically steal somebody else's wife and then have that person killed to get him out of the way when he impregnates her, that becomes the sort of father of the nation, you know.

So there's a, that's just the model of how out of humanity you get these kind of people who become your leader. So to me, that's where they, that's where they're interesting and that's where they struggle and where you see them trying to rise above who they are. And I just think that if you look at anybody carefully enough, no matter who they are, there's something wrong with them. Did you get that fascination with these sort of flawed larger than life characters from, from your father and your father's generation? There's sort of fascination with gangsters and you know gamblers and and hustlers and things like that. I probably you

know I don't it's like one of the mysterious things about I don't understand why I'm drawn to the things I'm drawn to. My father used to tell me these stories about gangsters from his neighborhood. He grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Illinois. His Brooklyn was the old, old time Brooklyn. He grew up in Bensonhurst. He grew up on street corners and made gangs and stuff. I mean, like social athletic club gangs, not the warriors gangs.

And that just stuff seemed more interesting to me. And it was kind of like these families outside your house. And I just was attracted to people who were kind of lived outside the regular law because a regular law didn't make a place for them. I mean, what interested me about the Jewish gangsters was they were kind of in a crooked system. So they saw themselves following the rules within their own system that they created so they could have some sort of chance at the American dream, which they felt they've been locked out of. And Zimmery is sort of similar in a way in that he by the Secretary of State that tells him, basically, you just have to sit there as we take your money and all your work and hand it over to J.P. Morgan.

And he just refuses to go along with that and goes and overthrows a government as a result. And that's the monstrous part of him. But the part of him that sort of cuts his own path, you know, that stuff is just very, very interesting to me. And maybe it's because my father told those stories. Maybe it's because I am the youngest sibling in my family. And I felt that I was never quite treated fairly by my older brother and sister.

Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting when you look at these sort of heroes or or sort of icons in in history, you know, whether it's a Zimmeri or or you know a Arnold Rossstein, that there is this sort of ambition or this drive in them, this sort of it's like there's a piece of them that's broken, but then that brokenness becomes a source of greatness. I was, I was just writing this piece about Odysseus. You know, you sort of learn about Odysseus as this hero, but then as you zoom out and you get a little bit older, you realize like actually Odysseus is really sad. Like the first thing that Odysseus does after being gone for 20 years is he tells Penelope like, hey, I need you to hold down the fort.

I've got to go on these like sort, I got to go on this raiding mission and like steal all the stuff to make myself whole again. Like he's been home for like an hour and you're like, oh, you know, this is all Odysseus's fault, this whole thing. Like this, this is his nature. He, you know, he can't, he can't stop himself. He's this sort of, you know, he's insatiable. So it's like, oh, that's what the Greeks were talking about is this larger than life theme. That's really the message of the play. And I feel like your books, whether it's the one about the bears or it's about the curse in Chicago or it's about, you know, the Jewish gangsters or the Avengers in the Second World War, there's this sort of hunger and anger. There's some sort of deep primal force motivating these

people to do what they do. Yeah, I think that it's also like all the basic good things or myths or whatever about America are seen like in the flip side, like in reverse. So that's it on a Rothstein did, which was he just wanted to take the American system and the American dream and bring it to the gangster world. You know, and Zimmeri was doing a replication of what the Robert Barrens had done, but he was just doing it the way he could do it.

So, I do, and I like the idea of big stories, and I like the idea of sort of character as destiny, which is what you're talking about, which is, the things that drive people drive them again and again and again. I mean, I don't know if you've ever had this experience where you've written something and you lose it because the computer fails or whatever. And then you have to rewrite it and you find the old thing and you

realize it's almost exactly the same. You know, that you feel that every day when you write you feel that, you know, some kind of miracle or some kind of magic has to happen and it couldn't happen. If you things went well, you got kind of lucky and maybe that couldn't happen again. But when you actually do it again, the exact same thing happens again. That's because you're the same person and you feed in the same information and the same information tends to come out. And it's like these guys, which is put in this situation, you basically know how they're going to act because it's just who they are.

It's their character. And like you mentioned, it's a weird connection, but the Chicago Bears, the moment where I sort of figured that that would, like I sort of understood what I wanted that book to be, was when you realized that the Chicago Bears had invented the modern NFL offense, which was so complicated and had to be run by a quarterback, who had to be really smart because he had to run all these plays. And that was the beginning of the modern era and football and it got so complicated

that the Bears then, 30 years later, figured out to defeat that offense, all you have to do is destroy the quarterback. And that was the 85 Bears, which is you don't have to chase 10 players all around the field. You just have to basically decapitate the quarterback. That's when Doug Plank was on the Bears told me that our goal in any game was to get to know your second string quarterback. And then you have now all the modern rules of the Create the Modern Game to prevent what the Bears had realized, which is that the final ending or where it ends up, that modern offense is in the destruction of the quarterback.

So I think that that's something that interests me as sort of how ideas and systems play out over time. Yeah, it's and some of those things when you extrapolate them out or monstrous, sometimes they're really beautiful, but that idea of character is fate. Steven Pressfield talks about this obviously, he gets it from the Greeks, but they sort of believe that we had this Daemon, a DAI, M-O-N, this sort of like this sort of God with us that was sort of taking us where we wanted to go, and that that's the sort of force that's guiding us.

And I think as a writer, yeah, you, obviously you're making it up, but somehow you're actually not. It just comes from somewhere and you're not, you're not really sure where it comes from. Like you're doing the work, but at the same time, you're not really doing the work. Yeah, I mean, when I just wrote this book

about the Rolling Stones and Keith Richards has this thing where he talks about Who he feels like the this music that he writes just comes through him? You know that he's just there to put it down and That's what it's like and you hate to even talk about it because it's like something you can't talk about But but that's what I mean about when you when there's something to go sometimes you think oh I wrote like I Certain stories that are really important to me, I write them again and again. So I wrote some, you know, when I was in my 20s

and now I'm in my 50s, which is unreal. And I write the same stories. And I read the old ones and I'm like, it's the same. And like a lot of the same phrasing even in the same ideas. And at first, it's kind of depressing because you want to believe that you're progressing and you're getting better, but it's also really reassuring

because it means that you're not dependent on this kind of magic, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, so one of the, would speaking of this idea of character's fate or this sort of driving force, I remember when I was, when I was writing obstacle,

when we talked, I was asking you about sort of like fortitude and the sort of historical figures that have endured so much. And you were telling me that you sort of had this theory about the Jewish people that sort of, because the temple is destroyed, because they're driven out of Israel, they sort of have to create the temple in themselves. That's what the diaspora is.

So there's this sort of almost independence in the Jewish characters that you talk about, that allows them to sort of go off and explore and create new things that maybe a person who was more part of the system wouldn't be able to do. Well, I think that, you know, that's a book I wrote about Israel, which I felt the same weirdly, the biggest things playing out through a massive amount of time, which was, you know, ancient Israel was destroyed by Rome, and the diaspora was created, I mean, everyone was expelled basically. And the idea of there had been several rebellions against Rome that were pretty militarily effective, but ultimately,

you're going to get crushed, and they were crushed to the point that I think 90% of the people living in That country ancient Israel were killed, which is something people don't even so long ago, but after that the whole idea of arm resistance was just Gone. So you'd never have Jews resisting militarily again and everything in the Bible that had been about military and war was reinterpreted as metaphorical because they basically you couldn't the people who wanted sort of a passive peaceful religion one out because they were the ones who. And this idea was that the temple was gone and the religion had to be reinvented. And so the idea was that the temple would be rebuilt in every person's heart, I guess, and in every town where there was a community of Jews,

you'd have these synagogues, all of which were replicas of the temple, which was gone. And in a way, it saved Israel because it becomes something that turns from a physical object, like a national religion, like there were, had existed in a lot of countries, like Greece and like Rome, and it turned it into an idea that can never be destroyed as long as people believe in it. And a lot of the Christianity and Judaism, modern Judaism kind of came about at the same time and they have a lot of the same ideas,

which are to turn all the things that were sort of the rules you had to live by and turn them into positives, which is like to me, to remove it of the religion and just talk about it practically, like turn the other cheek and sort of the strength in rising above. All that was a necessity after Rome destroyed Israel. And to me, you come full circle when, after the Holocaust, the idea of peace didn't work, and they went back to the idea of war. And then you get modern Israel again. It's like one big sweep from one trauma to the next. But I think that that to me is like what made that's how I saw the outline of Jewish history. And as far

as the strength of it, I think that being outside, having no center or having a center and having it destroyed and having just this idea that can be replicated wherever the people are, gives you this incredible strength because there's no center. And everywhere you are, you're an outsider. So we all have, now that's just an American thing too, because everybody's just about everybody. We'll have a grandparent, a great-grandparent, or a great-great-grandparent who came to America with nothing.

So we all know this sort of story of starting at zero and some extend, the people who came anyway from large parts of the world. Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Hey, everyone.

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Yeah, it's I guess it's somewhat ironic that the Romans and the Stoic specifically were so integral in the destruction of the Jewish people in that time. And yet the philosophies mirror each other. So the Stoic's talk about this idea of the inner citadel, this kind of inner temple that although your house can be destroyed, your country can be destroyed, you can be sent into exile. Like what they, what can never be taken like Musoneus Rufus, he goes, you can take away my country, but you can't take away my ability to endure exile. And that sort of captures the sort of the stoke ethos of like, life is going to throw all this sort of incredible adversity at you. You don't really control that, but you do control how you respond to it. What what the sort of the fortitude or even just the sort of simple, like, you know, sort of gritting your teeth and bearing it of it, that that's the part of it that we control as individuals.

Well, I think the reason why they're all similar, every religion you look at, if it's people believing it, and if you get, or philosophy, when you get down to the bottom of it, they'll all be very similar because it's the truth. So they all share so much because they're all after the same thing, which is the truth. It's like various different radio tuning into the same program. And once you get away from all the particular, you know, you get to the truth and people ultimately believe in it because they think that it's the truth. From my point of view, Judaism and Christianity is really the same religion. And

the opposing religion was the Roman religion. And over time, the Romans became Christian or they became Jewish, really. You know, I'll even see it that way, but that was because they're all at the core, they believe in the same things and accept the same things as true. And that will be true. You'll hear resonances in every different religion. That's why like a lot of Christianity sounds like Buddhism. You know, and my father, the most Jewish person in the world, he wrote a book called You Can Negotiate Anything. His whole secret to life is the key to life is caring, but not that much, and approaching it like a game.

He's talking about detachment, you know, and not being fixated on any particular outcome, and just dealing with the world as it comes to you, you know. So to me, it's all, it all converges at the top, if you know what I mean. And that's another reassuring thing. The way that Christianity sort of absorbs Rome in life and then comes to dominate Rome, is sort of a fish that ate the whale scenario. Here you have this sort of little insipient religion that is persecuted and attempted to be shut down,

but it sort of never goes away. And then as it grows and grows and grows, because you could almost argue it's a better operating system. It makes better promises, it has better arguments, but better in the sense that it's more appealing and at some point it takes it over. My theory on why all these things are so similar at the core of the metaphor, the analogy I use,

is it's like an evolution, like birds and bats, both sort of evolutionarily, there's advantages to being able to fly. And so over millions of years, the two species figure out how to fly, or sort of evolve adaptations for flying, responding to the same fundamental, sort of biological imperative. And to me, the idea of sort of the inevitability of suffering, the transcendence of community

and working for the common good, just all the sort of core themes of Buddhism and Stoicism and Christianity and Judaism, it's all responding to the fundamentalness of being human. Right. I agree with that completely. And it's sort of like what I was saying before about how 30 years later you write the same story and it comes out very similar. Even though you think everything else about you has changed. That's like the same thing, but on an existence, why level?

Which is, if you present different beings, you said bats and birds or whatever, or different people with the same problem and the same set of challenges, there's a solution to it and there's solutions are going to be on the surface, all kinds of difference because of the particularities of whatever, whatever, but down at the core, it's going to be similar or even the same solution. So basically, it's like, how do you live in a world that's so hard to live in? How do you survive and what do you do? And people have reached the same basic solutions again and again, which is, to me, like all the conflict that people have with each other is always such confusing because they believe something

that's very, very similar, you know, and they're facing the same problem. So everyone is in the same situation. And so much attention is paid to all the little surface things that don't really matter because down deep are all in the same exact, terrible fix. Well, it's like an ecclesiastes in and Marcus really is. It's like, basically, there's nothing new under the sun.

The same things happen over and over again. Human beings come and go, you know, the Earth abided forever. And so, yeah, we like to think we're very different than, you know, a Jewish immigrant in 1890 or, you know, a, you know, a historical figure from the 1500s or the last pirate in New York, what you write about, it's just like we're all just people trying to figure out what we want to do, what makes us happy, what works, what causes us the least amount of misery. And we kind of just fall on this. There's like 20 potential responses and we just sort of cycle between those things over and over and over again.

Right. And you're so judgmental about decisions people made or what different countries did at different times historically. But you realize that if you put a different person in the same situation, almost all of them would do the same thing. Everybody, I would do the same thing. You like to, you know, because something hasn't happened to you yet, you're judgmental about how, or you're so certain about how you would react in that situation. And the fact is, most people put in, when the same set of circumstances will react the same way.

And there's a very, I guess there probably are very few people for whatever reason, or outliers, or whatever who would act slightly differently. But mostly we're very, very similar and we're going to react very the same way. So if you give somebody power over somebody else, most of them aren't going to do well with that. And when you put somebody in a situation where they're powerless, they're going to react in a certain way.

And that's just a human thing. And when you sort of realize that, it makes you much less certain to judge how other people are acting, because you realize, I don't know what I would do. You know, if you put me in that situation. I think that's what's so sort of saintly about some of these figures that pop up from time to time,

whether it's a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King or a Abraham Lincoln. You know, Lincoln goes, hey, like, look, if you put, if you try to invent slavery in the South today, he says they would not accept it. They think this is horrendous. If we had slavery in the North right now, we probably wouldn't be able to get rid of it. His point is that the other people, the ones are so angry about that you're judging so hard, he's like, they are just what you would be

in their position. And that's it. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Which is you take one of these guys in the North at that time, and he's born in the South, it's completely different situation. So now the North didn't, so it's like slavery, let's say, is a worse sin of all of history.

So American modern slavery. Now, it did, it happened in the South, and it didn't happen in the North. Not like it happened in the South. And the fact that it didn't happen in the North means something. You know, it doesn't mean that people in the North are better, but it completely changes the history, the fact that that's what I'm trying to like, it does mean something. You know, the fact that the Holocaust happened in Germany means something. I'm not saying it means something that it makes the Germans different, that they're different,

and that caused it to happen. I'm saying the fact that it did happen there means something for the rest of German history, just like the fact that slavery did happen in the South means something for the rest of German history, just like the fact that slavery did happen in the South means something for the rest of the history of that part of the country. I don't know what it is. I'm not smart enough, but I know that your history then affects what happens from there, but anyone put in the situation at a certain point, well, what we usually react in the

same way, what Abraham Lincoln did, not only that he saw that, he also saw that he changed, you know, and he came to see, he sort of rose above where he was. He had this un, you know, miraculous thing and probably his religion had a lot to do with it. So, and then he died. So we don't really know what the rest of his life would have been like, but he's one of those people like Gandhi or who,

first, the first thing they realize, I think, is that I don't know what I would have done. I'm not any better. I'm capable of it too. I'm capable of the same sin, you know? So I always think like Yitzhak Rabin in Israel who was killed, he had said at one point, if I was born in the West Bank in this situation, I'd be a member of the PLO.

And people were like, but that's just the truth. And he said the truth. And the fact is that he recognized that, made him able to make peace. Because he realized the people that he was dealing with weren't really any different than him. They were just in a different situation than him. And if you reverse the situations, they're probably both parties would be acting the same way on the other side. And then once you realize that, then that's like your

halfway there, I think. I think so. Okay, so that last sort of wrap-up question, like so, so I know how I'm able to be like people are sometimes surprised at sort of my writing output. I know how I'm able to do it. But you're on a similar, I mean, you do about a book a year, I love all of them. You also write for different websites and you go straight to, what sort of system are you on? How are you able to be sort of so consistently productive at such a high level and do it on such a diverse sort of number of topics. It's not like you're writing the same book over and over again. These are different stories and different styles. I mean, they're all obviously rich Cohen books.

Like, I can, if there was no cover on it, I'd know very quickly that it's one of your books. But how are you doing? All right, again, this is something that feels like a jinx to talk about, but because I love you, I'm gonna talk to you about, because I think about it, which is, first of all, I do think that a lot of writing is like you as the writer of the sense, it's about your sensibility more than anything else.

So you give yourself certain material and you confront that material on the page. So it's not like, I never really see it as a story. I see it as a conference, like a boxing match, you know what I mean? Like the writer confronting the material and I think that that's the thing that's the same, which is you're the same sensibility dealing with the different material.

Now, as far as writing all the time, first of all, I'm not a rich person. I have a weird situation where I grew up thinking I might be inherited a lot of money and be rich, but I was mistaken. Mistaken inherited nothing, and I have no money. So I have to actually make money, which I was mistaken, mistaken, inherited nothing. And I have no money. So I have to actually make money, which means to live, which

means that all I can do is right. So I have to, I have to write. But so there's that. And then basically, when I wrote my first book, I realized that the analogy for me is like a road trip, because I used to drive a lot across the country and I drive from Chicago to New Orleans and New York and I realized really on the way you deal with long road trips is you basically set yourself a minimum number of hours a day, no matter how

you feel, I'm going to drive 100 miles a day and if I drive, you know, that's a slow road trip. But if you say I'm going to drive 100 miles a day, you will eventually get there. So that's what I do. I'm just going to write a certain number of words today, a day, every day, and then, you know, eventually, I'll have something that's as long as a book. And basically, the other key thing is, I don't know how you do it, but when I'm writing that first time, first draft, just don't worry if it's good or bad. It's like not your business. You can't get so into quality. That's how you go crazy.

Just write it. And then when you rewrite it, that's when you kind of do the really hard work. So to me, it's always like, you make the block and then you carve the sculpture out of it. So my first drafts are like, if I write an 80,000 word book, publish an 80,000 word book, the first draft could be like 160,000 words. Oh man, that's brutal. But look, your books have sold extremely well. You don't have to be on the track that you're on. There's some part of your character that is very driven, that is, I don't know if you feel like if something to prove, but there's something you can't turn off about your output, right?

Yeah. Also, I believe the satchel page, don't look back, something might be gaining on you. Like, you know, and I feel good when I work and I feel bad when I don't. So, you know, I don't know, it's something I had extremely poor study habits when I was a kid. I did bad, did not do very well in school. My mother decided that that had to be dealt with. So her solution was to get my older brother to help me. And the way my older brother helped me is he would, he's five years older than me. When I was about, I don't know, 13 or 14 and he was like 19,

I would have to sit there and read a book or take notes whatever I was doing. And every time I looked up, he punched me. And he did that for like, and he's big. He's not bigger than me. And he did that for about like a week or two weeks. And then that has, that created my study habit. So there's always the fear of getting punched

by a big fist if you looked up from the page. So I'd say that's probably my real secret. Yeah, no, and I feel like too, and I'm sure you've met all different artists and writers of different types. But like I get the sense that you treat it like a job. Like you show up and you do it, whereas there's also this temptation of like,

oh, I work with inspiration strikes, I'm an artist, you can't force it. I get the sense, and I think ultimately, quantity is a way to get to quality. Like you are always making stuff, and good stuff comes out the back side of that, but you're not, you're not just sort of living this, you are employed by the book industry and you produce books. That's what you do.

Yeah, well, that's what I was saying before, which is like, um, the idea of like that there's magic, that inspiration, that's the idea of magic. The idea of, I'm not saying that every now and then you can't, a blood vessel can't burst in your brain and you have some idea you didn't have before. But I'm saying mostly, it's just you confronting the material. And you'll see that, that even though you wrote it 20 years apart, a lot of it's the same. And that means that you don't have to worry so much

about inspiration. You do have to approach it as a job. You have to try to make it a little boring and just, you know, just, just like a road trip. You just keep going every day and every day you'll get there. You know, you'll get there. And I think that, yeah, it is work, you know. I think that's how everybody is. I mean, I think that that's the only way you can actually write stuff as you need to be on some kind, just like anything else. You need a regular routine.

Otherwise, you can't go nuts. No, you got it. You got to put your ass in the chair and show up and stuff comes out the other side. Yeah, well, by the way, so what you said is like the bad stuff, some stuff you write better than other side. Yeah, well, by the way, so what you said is like the bads, the stuff, some stuff you write better than other stuff. And often you don't know what that is. So you don't know what it is until later. So something that seems great turns out not to be so good, something that seems not so good turns out to be really important for your writing. But the thing is, I believe this too, like, and this is another thing that I'm so that drives me nuts about, like when people get in big trouble on the internet for making a bad joke or something comedians especially which is You've got to go through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff. They're connected

You don't just come out with a finished product now for a comedian that probably means standing up in front of people and telling a lot of jokes and a lot of them failing and Being tasteless and all that but you can't get to the good stuff if you don't go through the bad stuff, through the, they're connected. It's a process, you know? And that's the same with, for me, with writing, which is you gotta, you can't censor the bad stuff, man. You just gotta, that's what I mean, don't judge it while you're writing it, just,

because they're all connected. You gotta go through the one to get to the other. So my father used to, another saying and my father's was you have to negotiate your way through the wilderness to get to the other. So my father used to say, and my father's was, you have to negotiate your way through the wilderness to get the promise land. And I just believe that that's true about writing to him. Now, that's an awesome place to close.

Rich, thanks so much. Yeah, great to talk to you. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can

listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace,

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You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet. out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondariac.