The Daily Stoic - Austin Kleon on Fueling Artistic Ambition

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Austin Kleon joins Ryan to talk about unleashing creative energy, the power of hobbies, and why he believes we’ve been trained to be machine-like in today’s world. Austin talks about the driving force behind ambition, the culture of "cheap talk," and much more.Austin Kleon is a writer, author, artist, speaker, and blogger. He is most known for his five New York Times bestselling books Steal Like An Artist:10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Show Your Work!, Keep Going, Steal Like An Artist Journal, and Newspaper Blackout. You can follow his work at austinkleon.com, Instagram @austinkleon, and Twitter @austinkleon.📚 Grab signed copies of Austin Kleon’s books, Steal Like An Artist:10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Show Your Work!, Keep Going, at The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎥 Check out Austin Kleon's previous episode with Ryan Holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cniB5Wa0jV0🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Daily Stoic is based here in this little town outside Austin. When we have podcast guests come in and go, oh, what hotel should I stay at? Honestly, there's not really many great hotels out here, but there are a bunch of beautiful Airbnbs that you could stay in a ranch. You could stay on something overlooking the Colorado River. They've even got yurts in the woods out here. And Airbnb has a million different options, old historic houses.

Usually when I travel, I'm staying in an Airbnb. That is when I'm bringing my kids. We make a whole experience of it. And usually what I do is I pull up Airbnb, I look at guest favorites, I type in, okay, we want this many rooms, this many bathrooms, we want a pool, we want a washer and dryer, whatever it is, and you can find an awesome place to stay in.

And I've been doing it now, crazy me, at least 15 years I've been staying in Airbnbs, basically since it came out. I love Airbnb and you should check it out for your next trip. You just realized your business needed to hire someone like yesterday. With Indeed, there's no need to stress. You can find amazing candidates fast using sponsored jobs. With sponsored jobs your post jumps to the top of the

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and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. What do you do when it feels like the world's falling apart? What do you do when you're not feeling inspired? What do you do when everything's awful? What do you do when everything's awful? What do you do when you're tired?

If you're an artist, what you do is you show up and you do your work. Doesn't matter what's happening. Doesn't matter if people want you to. Doesn't matter if they appreciate it. Nothing matters, right? What matters is you show up and you do your work. You put your ass in the chair,

put your ass where your heart wants to be, as my friend Steven Pressfield says, or as today's guest, another friend of mine, Austin Kleon has talked about, you just keep going because it matters, right? The work that we do matters and our own sanity matters. Austin is someone I have known for many years. He actually welcomed me to Austin.

I had just written my first book. I just moved here. We got lunch over in East Austin. Is it Chestnut and Martin Luther King, something like that? Soon after Torn Down, and now it's kind of a trendy hipster place, but we had lunch and he gave me a bunch of great advice. I've been a huge fan of his work.

I think he'd only written Steel Like an Artist and maybe the newspaper Blackout book then. And then he wrote Show Your Work, which I loved. And then he wrote, Keep Going, which is probably the book I feel like is my favorite of his, the one that's meant the most to me, the one that I think is most true in today's world, and probably the most aligned with Stoicism.

You don't let the bastards keep you down. You don't let the resistance keep you down. You don't let the resistance keep you down. You show up and you do your work. You find a way to be a small light in a dark room. You try to understand yourself better. You try to make something that's of value to others. You try to turn away from what's upsetting you and towards something that is fulfilling

and interesting. And most of all, this is the great thing about having a creative practice. Certainly one of the rewards, the best rewards of having a creative profession is that it's always in your control. How my books sell is not in my control. Whether you like them, whether you appreciate them, whether you hate me for something I said to them, not in my control, whether you like them, whether you appreciate them, whether you hate me for something I said and I'm not in my control, but a couple hours I got lost in it,

as I did this morning, that is up to me, right? The doing is up to me. I quote Austin all the time, not with as much credit as he deserved, but he said to me once, you know, too many writers are thinking about being the noun instead of doing the verb. To me, keeping going, the art practice, it is about doing the verb, doing the thing. And

he's been on the podcast a couple times. He was here before we had a podcast studio. He was here before even the bookstore was built out. He's been coming out for years. I always love seeing him. He's one of my favorite people. In this episode, we talk about music. We talk about hobbies, that creative energy, and a bunch of awesome stuff. He's great, he's spoken everywhere from Pixar to Google, TEDx and The Economist. You can follow his work at austincleon.com.

He's got a great newsletter. You can follow him on Instagram, at austincleon. As always, we've got signed copies of Steal Like an Artist, show your work, keep going. Steal Like an Artist Journal, and his newspaper Keep Going, Steal Like an Artist, Journal, and his newspaper blackout book is wonderful as well. Here is me and Austin Kleon. I will link to the other episodes of the podcast.

And if you're not familiar with his work, I don't know what you're doing with your life. I had an artistic dilemma this morning. So I was swimming at Barton Springs and like when I first moved here, you couldn't see any buildings from Barton Springs. Now there's all these like beautiful, big skyscrapers. But like it was probably the prettiest sunrise

that I've ever seen over Barton Springs. I've swum there hundreds of times. And I just started, I'm swimming and it's like, it's that kind of violet crown and it's like purple and orange. And it's like, it's reflecting on the pool and on the glass. And I was like, should I get out and take a picture of this? Or should I keep swimming?

Like, probably the best one I've seen. And then I was like, should I try to capture it so I have it, or should I respect the work? I was like, I think Austin would appreciate this artistic. Absolutely. This happens with kids all the time. They're doing something really cool, and you're like, oh, I gotta get my camera out.

I should get this. And then the minute you do, it's over. I think it's observer effect. They talk about them in physics, that by observing something, you change it. Yeah. So that's how I feel about it. I'm like, let it be.

So that's what I was like, you know what, I'll do it. Or I was like, if it's meant to be, it'll still be there when I'm finished, you know? But also like, yeah, the experience of working out in this thing, like swimming while it's happening, that's special too. And to lose that, to capture it, to show it to someone. And also it's like, there's no chance

that the picture of it is going to capture. I'm not a good enough photographer to do this justice. I can imagine it and I can probably sit down and write about it at some point and get closer to whatever shitty photo I would take of this. Totally. Although I love those stories of like Oliver Sacks, like having a notebook by the pool

and like getting out and like scribbling. But that's not like an idea, right? You're trying to like, if it was something out of your mind, it might be worth like stopping your swim for like a good idea or something, but it's un-right. It's like the Mitch Hedberg thing of like, you have an idea, you're laying in bed and you have to either get up and write it down

or convince yourself it's not a good idea. Yeah, yeah, it'll be another one. Yeah, there's that great, like, before she wrote her really popular books, why am I gonna forget her name? Elizabeth Gilbert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That Tom Waits profile she did in the early 2000s. I haven't read this. It's great. I think she might write about it in Big Magic, but it's a great profile. Like, her journalism, like, before she blew up is, like, I really like.

And she's following Tom Waits around, and he talks about songs, you know, coming to him when he's driving. He's, like, can't you see I'm driving? And he looks up and just, like, says, later, you know, because he's, like, finding in the studio. Interesting. So that, like, that thing of, like, find me in the studio. Interesting. So that like, that thing of like, when you pull over, when you write things down,

like it's a great question. Yes, and then when also can you just enjoy the thing that you're in and be like a civilian, you know what I mean? Yeah, like I had a, on the way over here, I was listening to, I was gonna ask you what the hell you do on the way To Austin yeah back and forth, but the thing I was doing was I never get to listen to audiobooks

Yeah, cuz I just don't have that time in my life like unless I'm making collages or something I just can't listen to words. So I was listening to CS Lewis's surprised by joy his like autobiography and he said this thing about like, Oh, you know, just keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you'll find everything you need. And I was like, do I, do I, how do I underline this? I think that's the problem with audio books. You know? Yeah.

I love anything that gets people reading, but I would say there is something that you miss in the experience. It depends on, again, it depends on what you're reading for. If you're reading for. If you're reading for entertainment, it's probably fine. If you are reading to use what you're hearing creatively, probably woefully insufficient. For what we're doing in our work,

trying to scrape these texts out for something we can use. The kind of like pillaging and like scavenging, it's not great for that. And I do like it for fiction. Yes. So maybe I'll, I don't know, but I'm also like, I like listening when I'm doing the dishes cause then I'll just stop and I'll have the ebook.

Yeah. I'll just like look it up and highlight it and whatever. Well, I started doing, I'm almost exclusively physical and always have been. And I started doing eBooks more recently because my kids take forever to go to bed. And so I'm just like, I'm just sitting on the floor in the room waiting for them to fall asleep.

And it's like, am I gonna read news articles or respond to emails? It was a choice between what's the lesser evil. I'd rather read a book and not get what I could out of it because I'm not underlining it with a pen than read a bunch of articles that I'll also never remember. Yeah, and like you want to signal to them that you're not just like, you know.

No, no, this is a book, I promise. So something exciting happened in our house recently that you'll love is that I bought Owen a Kindle, like my oldest who just turned 12. I bought him a Kindle like years ago and like he sort of read it, but like mostly he's just like books from the library and like whatever we have in the house. Well, he's gone to middle school now and he brings it in his backpack every day. So it's like this like really, really awesome thing.

So he's like constantly asking me to like get him new stuff. So you got him hooked is what you're saying. Yeah, so like now, but I think you know this. Now you've been in the game long enough. You have to play such an extremely long game with kids. And I love it when you're like something that you bought like three years ago, finally they're into it. That's like might be how long it takes, right?

Yes, yeah, yeah. No, totally. Well, you asked me why I wasn't wearing a band shirt. So I took my son to an Iron Maiden concert like last week, which I had to sort of bribe and- Yeah. It was like another thing, we're gonna go see my grandma. It was like this whole thing,

but I was like, look, I'll do this, I'll do this. And he's like, okay. And then he had like an amazing time. And then we're like in the car driving around and he's like, can we listen to it in the car? And I was like, oh, I got like really excited. You're like trying to be cool and not freak out. And then we're home and his brother is jealous,

which I didn't expect is that we got to do this. Really? And he was like, I want to go to a concert. And we saw Judas Priest played and then Iron Maiden played. And I was like, well, Judas Priest is playing like down the street, like in three days. Do you want to just go to that? I just sort of threw it out there.

Cause you know, like kids are always whining about stuff, but then if you called them out on it, they're like, well, I don't actually, I just, I didn't actually mean it. He was like, yes, I want to go. So we went, so I took them both. And then as we were leaving, I was like, this is what I wanted. This is it.

It's happening. I was like, it's happening. It's on, yeah. They're excited to see bands that I like and I'm doing, you know? And then it was just like, I was trying to tell myself, this is like a stoic thing I think about. I was like, this will never happen again.

They'll never wanna do this with me ever again, but it happened once. So it can never go away. It happened. It's like the sunset, right? You're just like, ffff. Yeah, there's that William Blake thing about how you hold eternity in the palm of your hand.

It's all of it right there. Yep, right there. Yeah, where did you see Judas Priest? At CODA. F1? Yeah, it was crazy. I bought Clark like a tour shirt, and I was like, dude, do you have a tour shirt

for a band that you saw two dates on the shirt? I was like, I've never even done that before. Yeah, you're like a dead-headed or something now. You're like a follower. I think Rob Halford's really interesting. Have you read his books? I haven't read his books, but I've read about- Both his books are very good.

Well, he's a super literate guy. Have you seen his reference section that he has? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. He's one of the most literate lyricists, certainly in metal, I mean. What was also weird is like, it wasn't until I saw them the first time

that I was like, oh, I forgot how deep their catalog is. Because they're like, you think heavy metal, you think the eighties, but they had a bunch of hits like in the seventies. Yeah. And so you're like, oh, you were like a hard rock band

and then heavy metal, it was invented and you became that. Yeah. And so you're like, oh, you're, you were like a hard rock band and then heavy metal, it was invented and you became that. Yeah. I was shocked at how, yeah, how many songs of theirs I remembered and liked. And then I wrote a Daily Stoke email about this, but you know, you got another thing coming. Yeah.

You know, the expression is actually, you've got another think coming. Yes. That's one of those weird things, you're like, what? Yeah, which is itself kind of an weird things. You go, what? Yeah. Which is itself kind of an illustration. Like, you know what an egg- Think is a noun is kind of amazing.

But you know what an egg corn is? Like where you hear a word wrong. Yeah. And you interpret it. Because the song is so big, we think you got another thing coming. That's the expression. Which you might, you might have another thing coming.

But the expression was, you've got another thing coming. It's what you would say to someone who's wrong about something. You would be like, I don't know, you got another thing coming. But the expression was you've got another thing coming. It's what you would say to someone who's wrong about something. You would be like, I don't know, you got another thing coming. Like when we say, you ought to rethink that. That's what the expression means. I mean, the other thing I love about Priest,

not to get too into this, is like Rob Halford brought leather and studs and stuff into metal because he's a gay dude. Yes. So he's going to all these clubs and stuff. So this heavy metal music that we think of this like super hyper macho or whatever, they get all this leather and gear stuff

from this dude who's been to these clubs. Well, you should read, you should read his first, his first book is good, his second book is also good, but in the first book he talks about, so he came out on accident. So he was like, he was being interviewed on MTV in like 1997, he'd already left Judas Priest. He was in some weird kind of, like some weird metal band.

And they asked him some question and he just goes, well, you know, as a gay man. And they were just like, what? He just said it? He just said it. And then he realized as he's leaving, like, oh shit, I just like came out on television. What's gonna happen?

And like what I remember, I remember as a kid being into heavy metal and growing up in a fairly conservative place. So this would have been a couple, this would have been like reading that and going, oh, okay, that's when that happened. I would have come to Judas Priest like maybe four or five years after that, right?

And then I remember going down the rabbit hole and then finding out that he was gay in a conservative place where being gay was still not, you know, and then going like, oh, and people in heavy metal don't care. Yeah. And it was like the importance of representation and seeing someone and then finding something out about them

that you thought mattered and then realizing it doesn't fucking matter. That was a thing to me that changed. It was like one of the first time you're like, oh, the things I've been told as a kid or told in church, they're not true. And that if they were true, then I don't get to like this thing that I obviously like.

And so I'm gonna choose the music that I like over the cultural stereotypes or assumptions that have been foisted on me. I think that's what music is so good at. the cultural stereotypes or assumptions that have been foisted on me. I think that's what music is so good at and that's why people are so like, especially back in our day, oh, back in our day, you know, I mean, like people,

it is subversive. Like it gets into, you get these little like suburban or rural kids listening to this stuff. They're like, what is this? And it's like a portal. Yeah. You know, it's a portal into these other cultures. Yeah, or you're like,

oh, there's a person of this race, or listen to System of a Down, and then you're learning, it's this eye-opening thing, because you like what you like, and then you go to, and you go, oh, I didn't know it was connected to all these other things, and it opens up your horizons.

Because music hits your nervous system first. It hits your sensory system first. Like it hits your sensory stuff first. It's not like an intellectual thing. Yes. But then it becomes that. Yeah. Right. Totally. When you totally like dig in.

Well, that is the unfair thing as a medium. I think you and I have talked about this as like what a song can do in like three seconds. Absolutely. Me at my highest level in my best work, all of it combined is going to be a fraction of how powerful like an opening riff or a drum fill. You know what I mean? Absolutely. No, absolutely.

It's like I spent five years thinking about this, crafting it, and you captured in a vibe. That's music. Yes, that's the power. Yeah, that's music. Yes, that's the power. Yeah, that's music. And I don't know many writers who wouldn't truly prefer to be musicians in their hearts. Of course. Yeah.

And it kind of, sometimes it swings both ways, but I just think that music, I've said this over and over again, I'm with Nietzsche, without music, life wouldn't be worth living. I truly think it's the best art form. And I think it'll be the thing that, you know, when our civilization collapses and like we're all, you know, scrounging around,

people will be beating on a drum or singing together. Well, what I was thinking at this Heavy Metal show is like, obviously, Heavy Metal is relatively new. It's like a 50-year-old medium. And I was just like, but there's something that you hear for someone who, if you like Heavy Metal, you hear it and you're like, blah. Yeah. Right? And I was like,, but there's something that you hear for someone who, if you like heavy metal, you hear it and you're like, blah. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. I was like, those people have always existed. It's not like someone invented a thing, like they didn't invent the need or the connection, right? Like they only invented the expression of it. And so there must've been people who were just like, I only like heavy opera or I only like heavy. It was like all the other mediums and arts were just insufficiently heavy

until we got to this form of heavy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, Beethoven's pretty heavy, stuff like that. The thing I really like about music is just that it goes through time. I mean, recorded music is like one thing. You can listen to the same riff in the same room,

record on the same equipment that people 50 years ago did. And I think that's amazing. But I also think there's something about recorded music in the sense of like, you know, like a score or something. Like I play piano and when I'm playing Bach, there's this really weird thing that happens where I'm like, he put his fingers in the same places, in the same like order, and I can look at this,

you know, I can look at this page and I can recreate where he put his hands. And it's like this thing that freaks me out every once in a while. Well, I was just thinking, I've seen like a reel, it's kind of a trope at this point, but it'll be like, imagine you're in like Vienna in 1842 and like this song drops.

And then it plays, and then the people are like doing some crazy, you know, like dance from then. And they're like, oh yeah, these things must've, like Mark Maron talks about like being in high school and like Van Halen just appearing and just like being in the parking lot and hearing eruption. And just imagine you're, yeah, you're in Vienna

and it's like someone invented like the modern piano not that long ago or the guitar, like, and just those things would have been the same sensation where people are just hearing it over and over and over again and they're just obsessed with it. And it's just a huge... I was just talking to someone and we were talking about how there was this play in the 1700s called Cato, which was written by Joseph Addison,

that was just like this enormous hit. It was such a big hit that Cato became this popular figure. George Washington puts on a rendition of it at Valley Forge. It was Hamilton. Oh. You know what I mean? For the founders. It was Hamilton for the foundersge. It was Hamilton. Oh, okay, yeah. You know what I mean? For the founders, it was Hamilton for the founders. And it was like, oh yeah, stuff happens

and it's just a smash. It's huge, yeah. But then on the other hand, you've got all this stuff, like Bach wrote all this stuff for church just because he needs something new to play. Sure. And I love that too. I like Bach because like, so one thing that's really interesting to me

is when people get ideas in their heads about like the authenticity of musicians versus what was actually true. Like a lot of people look at like the stones versus the Beatles and they're like, oh, you know, the stones are all hard. Like the Beatles are these soft boys. And like Lemmy from Motorhead in his memoir,

he's like, dude, Ringo's from the Dingle, like in Liverpool, I love that line, Ringo's from the Dingle.'" Like in Liverpool, I love that line. "'Ringo's from the Dingle.'" Like the Beatles were pretty middle-working class, kinda tough Hamburg guys. The Rolling Stones are all art school brats. They're all going to art school and prancing around. So that's interesting to me.

But I guess Bach grew up in this super Tough environment that I just didn't know about that Yeah, like when you listen to when you listen to like early rock, it doesn't feel heavy But Johnny Cash was heavy, you know, like there was a heaviness to this stuff and a transgressiveness Yeah, that is lost because you heard it, you know, you saw infomercials for it as a kid selling You know what I mean? Oh, well, you raise rum you saw infomercials for it as a kid selling, you know what I mean? Where you- Gray's rumble has been in like how many, like, car ads. You see them as like black and white photos

or videos and they're wearing suits. It doesn't feel transgressive, but it was compared to what came before. It was massively transgressive and heavier than anything that had been made. It rocked harder than anything that came before it. The Black Death Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories

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Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. It also early rock and roll was dance music. It was supposed to be played when like people were dancing and like dancing like is, was this very like social sexual thing. I mean, when I think when I was growing up, you know, music really became like a, you know music really became like a solo endeavor.

It was like something you like listen to in your room or like something on headphones. So like when you're talking about that heaviness and hitting and stuff, that's like, it needs to sound, you know, when like the first lines of like Iron Man or like War Pigs or something comes on your stereo, that can be like a sonic experience

that you can have on your own. I do think that like, when I think about that early rock and roll stuff, I'm like, cause you like look at Elvis and you're like, oh yeah, fine. But then you think about being a kid in like the fifties and you're at a dance. Just the fact that it was plugged in and amplified.

There was a machine energy to that Just the fact that it was plugged in and amplified. There was a machine energy to that that would have been unfamiliar if all you had previously heard was like a piano in a bar. Yeah, and I mean, like the history of technology and music is really interesting. Like if you read about the history of microphones, like what we're doing right now,

like you wouldn't get like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby without the microphone, because they couldn't croon. So microphones being able to be amplified, that invents a whole singing style. So when you hear Sinatra and he's like, strangers, you know, it's real croony. That's because he's at the mic and he could be in a dance hall in front of people

and he could sing softly. So that changes everything, right? So to have amplification means that you can like play more subtly, it changes the way people sing. Like Billie Holiday, that's another example in jazz. You know, she can get up and kind of do that like croony thing. So like, it's really interesting how technology and music,

you really like can't pull them apart And how recent some of this stuff is I mean there are still some people alive born before jazz was invented Maybe yeah, maybe yeah, like there's like a hit like a hundred year old Yes, it was more common when we were kids, but like right the last surviving people to live before any but like the last surviving people to live before any, effectively any form of modern music. Some of those people are still alive. That's insane. That is insane.

Yeah, I mean, like history is short, right? I mean, it just is. And so like, yeah, I think the thing that I'm pulling apart personally is there's that great Nate Bargatze piece where he says, I'm from the 1900s. Have your kids done that to you yet? Well, dad, you were born in the 1900s.

It's like, oh no. But it is starting to strike me like just that century, just the incredible, you know, zero to 60 of it. It's like we are to the 90s today, what the 90s were to the of it. It's like, we are to the 90s today, what the 90s were to the 60s. And you're like, oh, okay, that gets really short, really fast. Really short, really fast.

And then you have to ask yourself, oh, well, you know, people, kids don't know who Paul McCartney is. And you're like, well, did anyone know who, I can't even think of a music, you know, cause Paul McCartney in the 60s, you go back to the 1910s, you're almost at like recorded music.

Yeah, right. So it's like, you can't even come up with a like, you know, you can't even come up with like a comparison. So you said something earlier about Elizabeth Gilbert's, like she was writing some profile. I love moments like that. I remember I was researching something for a book once, and I found like an article that Malcolm Gladwell

had written as a reporter for the Washington Post. It was like a profile of Tupac or something and not like a big one, just like a filed piece about like a news event. And you go, oh, this was you getting your hours. Like this is where all that came from. This was you just learning to be a writer. You had no control over what you were writing or how you were writing.

You were just doing your thing. Yeah. I regret not getting a journalism background or not writing for like a paper or anything just because so many of my favorite writers had that background. But I will say that that's like what all the blogging was about, you know? And I feel really lucky that in the early days, I mean, I was just old enough that blogs

were just like a really big deal when I got out of college. And I'm starting to see all that stuff is like how contextual it actually is. Cause like when I talk to like younger people now, I'm like, I don't know, you know, cause it's just like, well, what's, what's big, right? Like I keep thinking about context. I think about context all the time now,

because I think that people just, people have their heroes and that's fine. And I'm a big hero person too. They're like people I worshiped and looked up to when I was younger. And I do think that we're brought to our work through the inspiration of other people. But as I get older, I really wanna encourage people

to think about the context that their heroes were in. Because every hero that you look at, there was a context for what they did. There was a senus to the genius, right? And I just think that's like something that like the older I get, the more I'm just like trying to drill in. What does understanding that give you then? I think for me, it's just about understanding

that the people that you look up to were in a context and they made choices or they didn't make choices about their work based on the context or they were forced into certain things. And it's up to you to really use your context to your advantage, I think, or to situate yourself. There's a couple of ways you could do about it. Like you'd be like, well, I'm in a context

in which TikTok is a big thing. Okay, I'm gonna get on TikTok. Or you could do the opposite. You could say, I'm going to do interviews with people with a typewriter and mail them the question. You know, it's that, it's that, but it's understanding that the people you looked up to were existing in a very specific context.

And when it comes to comparing yourself, like I think about Vonnegut all the time. Like Vonnegut, you know, has the little bit of journalism career, PR guy, but then he gets, you know, he has a really good, solid middle class life for a while writing these stories for these magazines, because people read magazines, right? And so I think that like...

Yeah, imagine getting a work of fiction published in not book form and making a living from it. It'd make you $4,000 in 1960 on it, right? I think for me, it's just about looking around and being like, what can I use? Just being like really open to your, thinking deeply about your context. I'm not sure that anyone doing this, by the way,

intentionally would really help. I just think that as I've kind of gotten a little bit older, I've just understood the context that I grew up in and like that I came up in. And I just start to see, oh, this is like, this is like you were just kind of taking advantage of what was available to you. And one way forward might be to just keep doing that.

Like to keep like, you know. Or even just understanding like, look, there was economics and incentives and a business structure and a lot of that is no longer true. So you can't sit down and write your book of Joan Didion essays. She was a well-known journalist. And there was also like a whole scene

that would review and talk about like, there are only vestiges of that left. And so pretending that you can just, she can be your hero, but you have to figure out how to do it in a new way. You can't just pretend to do that thing. Exactly, and you put it much more eloquently than what I was trying to say,

which is like, yeah, there was an economics, there was a context, there was like an incentive. Like people complain about music today. And I'm like, well, is it possible to make a living as a working musician? It's really not. Yeah. Like if you read about it, there's the top and then there's everybody else.

And I mean, back in the, you know, I always listen, I always think like, okay, 1965 to 1975, if you take a look at like a lot of recorded music, that is a dream era of albums. Well, people bought albums. They all had records, you know what I mean? And like, so like there's a reason that, like that that stuff is so good

and why you love that stuff so much. And part of it was the economic context. When you talk about show your work, it's not just like an artistic decision to do it. It's like, they used to be able to just operate in a black box and be like, my thing's out. And then there was a system, a structure that could surface new work to people.

That doesn't exist. You have to bring people in with what, you can't start at zero. Your chances are you're not gonna make such a singular work of genius that just shatters everything and draw it. Like every once in a while that happens, but that's a very dangerous bet to make on yourself.

Yeah, and I mean, I think the requirements now are so great of the skillset that it takes. I mean, I think what we're losing culturally probably is that in the old days, the whole day sounds like ancient, you know, you could be bad at life. I mean, like a lot of artists and creative people, they could be really bad at life.

They could be not good at self-promotion. They could be not good at finances, but they could play the hell out of their guitar and they could sing. Look, athletes used to be able to smoke in the locker room because it wasn't the actual athletic demands, the level of expected performance, not that they weren't great,

but like there's a famous JJ Reddick thing where he gets in trouble. He's like, look, they were playing against like plumbers and insurance sales, you know, and it's partly true. You know, like they weren't full-time professional athletes. There wasn't that professionalized high. Every year, the level of expected performance gets higher and it becomes harder and harder to be a dilettante

or to be like, there's a lot of artists that were crazy and just mentally unstable, but they were so good. And the environment, the cultural and economic environment was conducive to them being able to succeed in spite of that. Right. That is not true. They didn't have to run some 24 seven feet of their life and present a certain way and like, you know.

Well, they didn't have to work with people, you know. It was just, you were able to be a deranged lone wolf, you know, a rabid lone wolf. I mean, I don't know how much, you know, a rabid lone wolf. I mean, I don't know how much, I mean, yeah, I do think there was a certain amount of, I just think that part of the thing I'm worried about, culture, and there's a woman named Jessup Crispin

who writes really well about this, it's just like, what do we do with people that are bad at life? Like, it used to be that like the arts were a place that they could go. Don't I heard someone say that on podcast? Like the arts used to be where you could go if you were mentally unstable, you know, like the environment sort of forgave

and enabled in some ways, but also just was like, look, they're a great actor, but they're nuts. We're gonna make it work. Yeah, but like, you know, there was a guy that used to run a TV show. And like, you know what I mean? I'm like, if you don't have him doing his TV show, what if he runs for president or something like that?

You know what I mean? I mean, these people, these maniacs, like the arts in some ways are a good place to keep maniac scores. It was like our Australian penal colony. We were like, send them over there. Just keep them in the arts. Like, yeah, Hitler, go to art school.

You know? No, totally. I mean, you know, there. It's like, just keep them in the arts. Like, yeah, Hitler, go to art school. You know, like, I mean, you know, there is something to like, people need things to do. And like- It's a healthier place to work out your enormous childhood wounds than in the stock market or geopolitics or whatever. Where you can do some real damage. Yeah, totally. So, these are the unpopular thoughts

I like to have a lot of the time. I think that's why in some ways, I am just such a proponent of everyone practicing some kind of art form, no matter how badly, because I always think that time spent doing something creative on your own like as a hobby or something, like that just means you're not out on the street bothering someone or wreaking havoc.

I mean, there's a reason like we're, you know, in high schools and stuff, like shop class and stuff like that was to like keep kids out of trouble. Like I remember like hanging out in the art room in high school, I was like, yeah, that's a place to go so you're not, like, out on the street, like, setting things on fire. No, I said this in my talk yesterday.

I was talking about Churchill in painting. And I was like, for someone who loved painting, it's interesting how he never really got good. Like, his paintings are not good. Doesn't matter. But they're worth a lot. And we celebrate them because of what they allowed him to do. Yeah.

Right? That it was an outlet for him that enhanced the thing that he did perform at an incredible level. Yeah. Right? Like a great person could and perhaps should have something they're not good at. I don't even think it's a great person.

I think everyone needs something to do. I think you're looking at a culture in which hobbies have like disappeared. Like what do people do? It used to be like, they spend it on their phone, raging on Twitter or like getting pilled on 4chan or whatever, Reddit or whatever. And then I get real interesting conspiracy theories

like, you know, I don't know that people can afford to have a garage anymore. Like, do people have garages anymore? Where they can like tinker or like, you know, basement workshops and stuff. I'm just like really interested in this idea of like hobbies disappearing. No, like look, imagine a world where Elon Musk

got really into triathlons instead of Twitter. Give this clown something to do. This clown needs something to do. He needs like, my hope for that man is like, get him like into woodworking. Like he's a middle-aged guy. He didn't figure out, dude, you're supposed to go fishing now

or like get deeply into World War II books about history or something other than... Because you still have that manic energy, that obsession, but it will feast on itself. Like, you get to a point where it can't go into more work. And if it doesn't go into something productive or at least socially adaptive, it will destroy you. I remember having a conversation at Dove Charney's house,

and I was like, does Dove have any hobbies? And I remember Robert Greenway, sex, sex is his hobby. And it was like, oh, that's a bad hobby. That's a bad hobby, bro. That's gonna get you in serious trouble. And that's what happened, because there is, I think, and I've read some book about this one time, but many successful driven people in office have some kind of, if they're not outright bipolar, there is a manic energy and an OCD tendency and obsession.

And that can serve you really well. But it's eventually going to find other places you need to you need to direct or destroy. It needs to be channeled positively, into something positive. Yes. I also think these people have big holes in them. Like I mean, I asked, I was doing a, I was doing an interview with this fella

named Franz Nicolet who wrote this book called Band People, which is about working musicians. And I said, where do you think ambition comes from? And he goes, oh, and before he could answer, I said, I think it comes from a big hole in you. It does. Do you know Tank Sinatra? No.

He's like a big meme Instagrammer. He's a great guy, but he has this thing I think about all the time. He's been in recovery for like 20 years or something. And he was talking to someone, he was like, we all have some way to fill the hole. You know, he's like, for some of us it's sex, some of us it's drugs, some of us it's drinking,

some of us work. And the person was just like, what hole? And then he realized, it's like, oh, that's true. Some of us have this problem, and some of us are just well-adjusted regular people. And so it tends to be what drives you to go past where most people stop is that hole.

And so then you get it and you realize, oh, it didn't do it. You've got to find something. Because a normal person doesn't spend, doesn't take the $200 million they made from PayPal and dump it into rockets. That's crazy. But then it works.

And then you're like, well, then I'm gonna start an electric car company. And then you're like, and then I'm gonna make a solar company, and then I'm gonna make a satellite company. And then it's still not, because some of us, the hole is so deep. Then he makes up, he's like, now the thing is the woke mind virus.

Now you've made up a thing. And in a way you can see why you make it up because he's already tackled all the hardest problems and solving them, which he did. You have to give him credit for doing. Solving them didn't do anything. Some engineer did for him, but okay, yeah. But I'm saying he built the company that did the thing.

I know what you mean. And so it's like, oh, if real problems won't fill the hole, perhaps a made up problem. They don't. But we know this. Like these guys can't just sit in a room with themselves. That's what Blaise Pascal said. They can't do it.

And that's what you have to do. And that's like, that's what you have to figure out. It's easier to start a rocket company. Absolutely. Steven Pressfield has that line about like, it was easier for Hitler to conquer Europe than to be a painter. Yeah, I mean like it's easier to do all this stuff

than to sit with yourself and really get comfortable and be a human being. Or not get comfortable. Or not be comfortable. Well, to go through the discomfort. Which is why it drives you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think like I really like that Shep Gordon, that Supermensch movie where he just says, you know, it's just never enough.

Like fame is like it just it's not going to help you. It's going to make things worse. And I think that's really important for people You know cuz there's so many people who especially in the arts like they want to be famous they want to be get their stuff known and whatever and you just really have to deal with that fact like You know, you might want to find your hole before all this stuff happens Try to fill it, you know first I You know, it's like our mutual friend, Oliver Berkman says, he's like, are we, was it him?

No, I get my smart British fellows mixed up. I think it's Layne de Baton who says, like, if your kid has no need to be famous, you should feel good about that as a parent. And I think about that all the time with my kids. I think about it, it's like the Forrest Gump thing where he's like, is he like me? Is he like me?

Yeah, he was like, you want him to not be. Please tell me he's not like me. Don't be like dad. But they get it. Yeah, I mean, like I'm dealing with this crush right now where my youngest loves scratch and Roblox and these things that are kind of pitched as like learn to code things,

they're actually social media platforms for kids. So any parents like, anyway, that's, I'll go down the rabbit hole, but he's like upset they only has like 49 followers. Like he really wants 50. And that's something I'm having to deal with with like a nine year old. That's how like deep this stuff gets in. And that's something I'm having to deal with with like a nine-year-old. That's how like deep this stuff gets in.

Which now. And that's how early it happens now. And so we, I actually had a little bit of stoic philosophy this week. I said, Jules, there are things you can control and there are things that you cannot control. You cannot control how many followers you have. What you can control is you make the best game you can, the game that you like the most that you wanna play. You have to make the game that you wanna play. And yeah, easy for you to say,

dad, I've seen your follower account, you know, or whatever, you know. But it's like, that's how early it's hitting these kids. Well, many years ago, there was this study, actually Dr. Drew did it because he hosted Loveline. He would give a narcissistic personality index to the guests on the show. So he was actually, because in an academic setting-

Great sample set. Yeah, you wouldn't actually be able to get access to those. And then it was one of the things they found was that narcissism tended to be lowest in famous people who caught famous through some form of mastery. So like a reality TV star chose, in some ways the easiest way to get famous or chose the thing that is the most sort of pure fame

as opposed to the person whose fame was a byproduct of their obsession with the thing. So like Travis Barker is very famous and has been on a reality show, but he's famous because he's clearly profoundly obsessed with the drums. Do you know what I mean? He has this thing that he can't not do.

It's a thing that he's a humble student of, even though he's great at it. And so it's almost like the more technical, the thing you get interested in, the better served you're going to be if it is a thing that is a path to some sort of public persona. Like I think what's writing is really fucking hard and you do it a lot.

Even though you can become famous for writing, you're not doing your writing in front of people. It's at the end, a solitary humbling activity. And your last one never writes the next one for you. No, you're starting from zero. It's actually harder. Sure. It gets harder, especially from zero. It's actually harder. Sure. It gets harder, especially if you have any kind of success.

That's better than say a talk radio host, where it gets easier and you become more bombastic and more just like what that profession selected for was your love of your own ability to pontificate on the fly, right? Yeah, sure. And so it's actually just making you

an insufferable egomaniac. Yeah. You're not, oh shit, I am starting from scratch on this. You know, like. Right, no one, that's a good point. That's really interesting. Have you read David Foster Wallace's essay on talk radio hosts?

A long time ago. It's so good. But he's, yeah, it's like, this is not, and I think actually, I think you're seeing podcasts break a lot of people's brains. There's a reason that a lot of, I think, podcast hosts have drifted towards sort of misinformation and extremism.

They don't have another thing that, if you don't have another thing that you do that's really hard. Yeah. What do you put your life towards? Yeah. Well I'm interested in this concept of cheap talk. So both my sons stutter. They're people who stutter and so I've gotten really into the stuttering community and there's a researcher in the stuttering community named Joshua St. Pierre, I think is his name. And he has this thing he talks about called cheap talk. And his idea is that our culture or capitalist system

or whatever is hungry for cheap talk. That it, and I'm trying to think of like talk show hosts would be one thing. You know, I'm watching baseball this week. This idea that the more you talk, the more like value you're providing or something like that. And what it really becomes is a culture of BS. I don't know why my brain is failing.

There's two things that he says come up, but you can see it on social media. It's like the more I'm engaged, the more I'm chit-chattering, the more I'm saying, the more engagement I get and whatever. And so I'm really interested in this concept of cheap talk and like how do we make talk or words or saying things have more meaning? I think a lot of people are not good at noticing cheap talk or bullshit.

Yeah. Like I was listening to Vivek Ramaswamy on Ezra Klein I was driving yesterday. And I was like, this is Ramaswamy on Ezra Klein I was driving yesterday. And I was like, this is a person who's good at talking but not saying anything. Do you know what I mean? And you're just like, oh, and this has been exacerbated

and encouraged by the social media algorithm and this sort of performance art that he's been doing. Like, he was like, you know, as a politician. And I was like, bro, you're not a politician. You've not been elected any fucking office. What are you talking about? And so, like, I think one of our major problems as a society is we're not good at identifying, like, good bullshitters.

Because we're encouraged to do it from the minute we're in school onwards. To bullshit? Yeah, because if you think about like, John Warner has a great substack, he's the Biblio Oracle, and he's written a couple of books about how writing is taught.

And he's working on a book right now about chat GPT and like how AI and writing is his like beat. He's really great on the subject, but what he talks about is, and I think about this all the time with the arts right now is we've already taught kids to bullshit in their essays. We've already encouraged them. If you think about the way writing is taught in school,

we've already encouraged them to have a lot of say and to say a lot and say nothing. Just by the very structure of like, write me a 500 word essay. Right, right. It has to have an introduction, you know, forget all the Michelle DeMontana you've read, you know, like it has to have this and this and this,

you have to fill the boxes. And so like we've already encouraged kids to be mediocre writers and to bullshit basically. And that just like, you know, that goes all the way up is how like John talks about it. And I think he's right. And one of the things I think about just culturally right now,

why people are so excited about AI or not excited about AI is we've already been fed slop for the past 20 years. I mean, we've been fed computer generated, mass produced, lowest common denominator Hollywood slop for the past 20 years. Why would we, oh yeah, sure, make an AI movie. Well, I was-

Can people actually discern? No. What's good? Well, that was- Can people actually discern what's good? Well, that's gonna be the, so AI is obviously here, it's gonna change things. And people think, oh, it's gonna be about, it's gonna do all this stuff. Actually, to me, the key skill is gonna be how good are you at spotting slop and bullshit, right?

So I was just writing something, doing this big chapter about Lincoln and the book that I'm finishing. And I read probably 4,000 pages of stuff on Lincoln. Of Lincoln, yeah. And as I've been writing something, doing this big chapter about Lincoln and the book that I'm finishing. And I read probably 4,000 pages of stuff on Lincoln. Of Lincoln, yeah. And as I've been crafting it, I lost the, I was like, where's this quote from? Who did I get this from, right?

And I was like, oh, I just asked, I was like, where did this, where did this come from? And they were like, oh, that's actually not a quote, Chat Cheap Cheap was like, that's actually not a quote from Lincoln, that's about Lincoln, that's Mark Twain talking about Charles Dickens. And I was like, well, I know that's not true. And I was like, are you sure?

No. And he said, oh, actually, no, this is Tolstoy talking about Lincoln, because there's this great passage from Tolstoy where he tells a story about Lincoln. I go, I'm pretty sure it's not. And I go, I think it's John Hay. I was like, can you confirm this is John Hay and Nikolai?

And it goes, oh yes, yes, yes. It's from John and Nikolai, and Hay and Nikolai. And I go, okay, can you show me where so I can find it? And it goes, it's book 11 in their memoirs. And I was like, show me the larger context. And it was like, actually, I can't find the larger context. They said something similar, though. And I was like, finally, I was like,

well, I know it's in one of these books. Google Books. So I went to Google Books. Yeah, exactly. And it was from this journalist in, like, 1861 who was friends with Lincoln. So watching this thing give me five consecutive wrong answers, and not wrong answers.

Like a scared intern. But confident lies. Like, oh no, like even an intern wouldn't be, they'd be like, oh, well, you know. And the only reason I didn't get it wrong myself is that I have an intuition and a well-trained- That doesn't seem right. Yeah, exactly.

And so if you don't have that, if you don't have a broad, if you have a broad base of knowledge and you're well-read and smart and good at spotting misinformation, you're media literate, AI can be this powerful thing that can help you do what you do better. If you do not, it's going to eat you alive.

Yeah, I mean, in like, I think it's Neil Postman in like, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. A lot of people know his book. Amusing Ourselves. Yeah, yeah. But Teaching as a Subversive activity. A lot of people know his book. Amusing Ourselves. Yeah, yeah. But teaching as a subversive activity starts out and he says the primary goal of education is to establish a bullshit detector and students.

It's just not happening. Like so much of, it's all bullshit. He has a good line. He says, we today know everything the ancients didn't know and none of the things they did know. They did know. And what they understood was like, they knew what a demagogue was.

They knew what truth was. They knew what virtue, they knew these basic kind of bedrock fundamental human things. We forgot that. And we've replaced it with trivia about shit. But you know, like dates and places and plots, but not like the Odyssey is an exploration of a man's tragic flaws, not a celebration of,

Odysseus is the bad guy in many ways. You know what I mean? And that's what it's a complex exploration of. And there's this great passage from Seneca where Seneca is like, it doesn't matter where this happened. He's like, it doesn't matter where this happened. It doesn't... Like, he's like, it doesn't matter the dates, the names, the places.

The thing I remember learning in school about the Odyssey, this is what I... I don't remember any of that. I remember discussing whether Homer was actually the author of the Odyssey or not, and whether he was blind or not, and whether it was an oral poem or written down or not. All fundamentally irrelevant things when you're talking about one of the greatest works of art of all time.

He's saying what matters is that you are lost at sea and the gods are angry at you. You are being tossed about and you are trying to get home. That's what you're supposed to take from the Odyssey. I think that's something that you and I really share is that we go back, that it's in old books that we find so much, you know. I think that the old books are so estranged from our current context that you have to do the work of,

first they speak directly to the time. I mean, like I was reading a Michel de Montaigne essay this morning on prognosticating. It's like an early one in the book, perfect for right now. Just like you could not get a better essay for this moment. Cause he's talking about all these people trying to predict the future and all this stuff. And I just thought, God, okay, this is like 500 years ago.

And this dude's just like nailing it. Like what good would it be if you even knew how it was going, then you'd suffer twice, right? That's the great thing. But like the thing is, you're right. Like they knew something essential. And I think that's why it just like speaks to now. But I like the way that you have to kind of translate it

to your moment, particularly when you're like younger and you don't get that like the old can speak to the now. But that's what Montagna was doing. He retires and he retreats to his library because the world is fucking insane and people are killing each other and there's these massacres and this religious persecution. And he's basically a secret Jew.

So he's not even Catholic or Protestant. He's like a third enemy. And so he's not even Catholic or Protestant. He's like a third enemy. And he's just like, I'm just gonna go here and I'm gonna read my books. And he goes and he reads, he's reading the Stoics, he's reading Socrates, he's reading, and then he's translating it. Did I give you that book, the Zweig book on Montaigne?

For people who haven't read it, it's one of the greatest books of all time. In the depths of World War II, as a fleeing refugee, Stefan Zweig discovers Montaigne in the basement that he's hiding in. And so he's a man fleeing persecution and dysfunction of his time, discovers Montaigne, as Montaigne was discovering the ancients 500 years ago.

And then I was reading it in 2017 and I was like, oh, this is a picture of a picture of a picture. Yeah, yeah. And it's just there for you. And it's been there for, the other thing that I think is cool, if you read him is like all of a sudden then you're connected to all these other writers

who read him. Yes. You know, and so then their work becomes deeper. I mean, there's a couple of passages that Shakespeare almost certainly crypt from his essays. From the like, foria or whatever. Yeah, and you're just like, oh, this is amazing. Like our point about there's hits, right? Like this book comes out and it's like,

what the fuck is this? That's what Montaigne did. Because no one had ever made themself, no one had ever essentially written a memoir, an inward facing exploration of their own beliefs, thoughts, vices, virtues. And it goes off like a bomb among smart people in Europe at that time. It gets translated in English. And yeah, a good chunk of Shakespeare is informed by this guy. They only overlap by like a couple years. It's crazy.

I was petting a cat over in the store and thought about his essay, you know, am I, is my cat my pet or am I my cat's pet? You know, especially it's just like, it's so contemporary, but they were people. They were, they were people, they were humans. And I'm worried that we're not being very human these days. What do you mean? That we're, I think we act like machines a lot of the time. I think the technology has kind of trained us

to be like machine-like in a lot of ways. Yeah, I was thinking about that actually when I was driving back from dropping my kid out from school, I was like, all these people are just, like we're scared of robo-taxis or whatever, but it's like, you're just following what the thing and you're, but also if you didn't, you would like, you're just following what the thing in your, but also if you didn't, you would like,

I've also been in like cars before where the driver is not doing it. And I'm like, it's like, do the thing. Do the thing. It's smarter than you. It's easy. It's smarter than you. Just do it, yeah. Follow what it says.

People in cars are like really fascinating. I was on, we live on like a really busy, like through way in Austin, and I'm walking the kid to middle school. It's the dream or whatever, but I have to like go past all these meatheads in the morning. This guy was revving his Mustang like really loud

and I couldn't stand it. And I said, yeah, man. I shouted at him like real ass, yeah. And he looked at me and he was like, oh, somebody's there, he started revving. I said, you're the dude, man, you. you a suddenly realized that I was making fun of him and he stopped He was like and like cuz it was just like it was eight in the morning, man but like people are just like

And I didn't get shot. So that's a different that's a different hole that someone's yeah, right? Like what are you doing? It's eight in the morning all these kids are trying to walk to school and you're in it. I find cars really fascinating, especially because like, that's why I wanted to ask you, like, what do you do when you drive to Austin? Cause I don't drive anywhere anymore, you know?

Cause like I walk my kids to school. I bike all the time now. I live behind an HEB. Like I just like don't leave the house. Like I don't really leave the neighborhood, you know? I mostly, I listen to podcasts and music. And then I also, I do, I like just roll calls. I just, all the things that I have to do,

I just get them done in the car. Like calling people or doing phone, actual phone calls? My wife and I probably talk on the phone like an hour a day. Just talking to each other. Oh, okay. Yeah. You know what I mean? That I can see, yeah.

I'm interested. So I'm driving to, I'm driving to Lakey soon. And that's like a three hour drive. Wait, where? Lakey, it's like west of Austin, about three hours. It's where Lady Lodge is. I don't know if you've ever heard of this place. I'll tell you about it later.

No one's gonna care. It's like three hours west of Texas. I'm like, should I raw dog it? There's this thing called raw dog. Have you heard of this on planes? I saw this clip where John Cena was saying, he was, have you heard this? He was like, I was just stressed one day.

He was like, he was in Tampa. He's like, I stressed one day. It's just I got in my car and he just, he drove all of Florida. Like he did the perimeter. He was like 18 hours. I just pulled back into my garage. I was like, you are mentally ill.

That is the craziest thing I've ever heard. That's like my favorite clip from the show Atlanta, where this guy's in his Dodge Charger and he's filling up the gas tank real quick and he gets back in his Dodge Charger and this guy goes, yeah, that's Herman, Herman, what's his name? He just got divorced.

He's been driving around in circles. He said, take whatever you want, but leave me my Dodge Charger. And it's like Dodge Charger, keep it divorce. But I'm interested in driving because it's something I don't do a lot. And then when I do it, I'm like, this is actually kind of interesting.

It's kind of fun. It's like a whole mental, as a pedestrian, as a cyclist, you just like watch people and they're in their little ensconced 3000 pound like steel frames. But like there is something about it that I think is like distinctly American to being in your little space and moving through.

Like Texas just the absurd distances that you have to cover. Oh, unbelievable. We're driving to, we're driving to like Big Ben for the first time. And I'm just like, all right, like here we go. But like that's all day. Yeah. And like even getting to Marfa is like seven hours.

Yeah, it's better just to do it. The fact that you can just drive all day in Texas. Are you gonna stop in Belmore? Maybe, but it's gonna be winter. But it's like Barton Springs. It's always the same temperature. Oh, is it always the same temperature? Yeah. Okay.

So like I can jump in. All right, cool. It's worth doing. Yeah. Someone was telling me there's something special though as a parent, like you want actually moments where you and your kid are staring in the same direction are really important.

So like the commute thing is not ideal, but we're trying to make them. I find the car to be some of the really fun moments. I think being in the car together is really great. I lied to my kids for a while and told them my phone doesn't talk to our old car. So I just play classical music in the morning so they can't play certain stuff. And then you get bored enough to talk to each other. So I'm always trying little tricks like that.

Who was it the other day that I was talking to about Steinbeck? Steinbeck tried to trick his kids into reading books by locking them in the cabinet and like making a big sign. Do you know this story? No. It's great. Oh, you'd love this. So this is for like Daily Dad, volume two. Steinbeck, like, he's like,

"'Now boys, don't you get in this cabinet. Don't you read anything in this cabinet. He locks the door and puts the key up on top of the bookshelf and leaves. To make it something forbidden or taboo. Yeah, to make it kind of like this is off limits. And he kind of knew that the kids would be like, oh, we're going to get in there. I told my youngest that fiddlesticks was the worst curse word.

So now that's his thing. Perfect. It's amazing. Perfect. You want to check out some books? Sure. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes,

that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on

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