The Daily Stoic - Stop Waiting To Be Chosen | Adam Skolnick

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

From writing with David Goggins to working alongside Rich Roll, Adam Skolnick’s success didn’t make imposter syndrome disappear. In this episode, Adam opens up to Ryan about his path as a writer, the years of underreported stories and side gigs, how self-doubt still shows up, and the unbelievable true story that inspired his new novel American Tiger. Adam Skolnick has written about travel, adventure sports, human rights and the environment for outlets like The New York Times, Outside, Lonely Planet, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is best known as the ghostwriter and audiobook narrator for David Goggins memoirs Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished. He is also the author of One Breath - Freediving, Death and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits and now his debut novel, American Tiger, is officially out. Check out Adam’s new novel American Tiger and follow him on Instagram @AdamSkolnick👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.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.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down,

be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic podcast. A couple of weird confluences of things that sort of connected up in two days. today's episode. I'm just moving some books around in the office. Like, does this go here? I'm like rearranging finally now that I finished the Four Virtue series and I don't need a bunch of the books I was working on for that, like right behind me, I've been moving books around.

And some of the only books I have at my house, I have all my fiction at my house, and then I have my very large collection of books about animals. I don't know exactly why it broke that way, but I love weird books about animals. The Tiger is one of my all-time favorite books. That's John Valance book, which is, I've said one of the greatest narrative nonfiction books of all time. I'd rave about it at the bookstore all the time. So when a couple of months ago, a friend of mine who I've known for a long time, I met him through Rich Roll, and I'd read one of his previous books about free diving called One Breath, crazy good book. He also was the ghost writer for both of David Goggins memoirs. Adam Skulnick. Anyways, when Adam Skulnick sent me a message, he said,

hey, you know, hope you're doing well. I wanted to send you a proof of my new book. You'll see why this sentence appealed to me. He said, it's called American Tiger, and it's a novel based on a story I covered for LA Weekly 20 years ago when an escaped tiger was rumored to be prowling around Seamy Valley. He says, I think you mentioned you have some tiger owners not too terribly far from your place. Have you ever been out to see it? In this book, I visited many private zoos and sanctuaries. Drop me your address. I'll send it over. And I said, just bring it with you. come down and do the podcast and we'll talk about it. So that's what today's episode is. And it's funny, the zoo he was talking about, there is this like small little zoo down the street from

where we live. Like whenever we have meat that goes bad in our freezer or like I have too much meat after going hunting or whatever. On one time we were cleaning out this hunting fridge. We just, it's so much meat. I didn't feel comfortable eating it anymore. And my assistant take this big bag of it over there. And she was like, dude, the dude came out and he like started crying. And And I was like, oh, that's, that's beautiful. Anything we can do to support the animals. I don't know exactly how I feel about the zoo, exactly, but it does exist and the animals there shouldn't start. And it's funny, I just told my assistant when we were taking down the Christmas tree, because I'd seen a video of, like, zoo animals playing with Christmas trees. I was like, see if they want the Christmas tree. So all of that

perfectly coincides with today's episode, which is me talking with Adam Skolnick. We took a little bit about tigers and some other things, but mostly we're just talking life and philosophy. I thought this was a great conversation. I'm a big fan of Adam and his work. You can check out his new novel American Tiger. And of course, I also recommend one breath, free diving, death and the quest to shatter human limits. You can follow him on Instagram at Adam Skolnick, and you can hear him co-host Rich Rolls podcast from time to time as well. I'll just get into it. Here we go. How far did you swim in Martin Springs. Oh, just a kilometer. I've been having like, I think I caught Rich's back pain. We can talk about that. I think I have, do you ever have like sympathetic pain with your spouse?

And so like I never had it with Rich before, but I got like a herniated disc flare up like right around the time he started really talking about his back pain on his podcast. It's like psychosomatic. Yeah, it's like two months ago now. And so it's like finally kind of coming out. It's still not great. So I'm not pushing it, but I'm doing a little bit more. I think that's like the best pool in the world. Oh my God. It's up there. Icebergs and Sydney and that one.

Yes. Yes. I was in Australia last summer. There's something about where you're like, how long is this going to last? Yeah, right. Because like the ocean gets higher. And it always gets wrecked. Did you know?

Yeah. When I went and visited icebergs and swam in it for the first time, it was just getting refurbished and redone from something. And then the king tide came again and smashed it. It's been closed again at least once since then. Yeah. And it was more recently, yeah, yeah. The idea of being sucked out into the ocean, by the waves, is not a fear you have to have in Barton Springs.

No, there's none of that raging ocean smashing into the rocks. And the king tides are becoming more prevalent. But usually you can, I'm not even sure you could get. I mean, I've seen it in other little pools there too where the tide gets high and it starts crashing. There's a famous story about something. It's like the most Australian thing ever. It wasn't that one.

It was maybe the one in Manley or something. where like a shark got washed into it. Yeah. And this, Rich actually sent it to me. And like this woman was swimming when it happened and she went over and grabbed it and just threw it back in and then kept swimming. That's very Australian.

Yeah, totally. It's like the most Australian thing. Yeah. We like manly. I mean, that's where April's from Sydney. And so she was living in the northern beaches when we first got together. Yeah, some of the other ones might be better.

They're not as good of a pool, but they're like prettier. Yeah, but they're more just kick back and have a dip. They're not really lap pools like icebergs. And there's another one. There's a one in like downtown, like the central area, not far from the opera house that Rich likes as well. It's not quite, it's a little bit more removed, but it's also one of those natural pools. They're kind of the same era as Barton Springs where like people like, we used to build things.

Yeah. Do you know, like, we were like, hey, this should exist for everyone and we're going to spend our money on making this thing and it's going to last for a hundred years. Right. That doesn't really happen anymore. No, we should, I mean, that's definitely like the works progress administration kind of started it, right? Like in the New Deal stuff that was happening.

And it was not like a negative checkmark to anyone that the government was trying to improve your lives or invest in infrastructure. It wasn't like a big fight or battle. Some of that might be it was just cheaper, like things like the inflation hadn't happened. And it was like... Well, not just like financial inflation, but just like that everything is insanely bureaucratic and difficult and takes forever. They were just like, we're going to have these kids build a swimming pool because there's

no jobs. And they don't need to be like world-class engineers or whatever, you know? Right. That's true. Just do stuff. That's true. They just do stuff. But, you know, at the same time, though, like this, at the same time that was happening,

like the Army Corps of Engineers was concreting all the rivers. And so, like, there's like as many goals. things. There were also kind of mistakes. My theory on it is like we wanted to improve life because life was so hard in the early part of the 20th century. And so like we look back, say as environmentalists now, we say, how could you make the mistake of concreting all the rivers and getting all the rainwater out of the city and into the ocean? But like in those days, people are dying from floods. Exactly right. Exactly right. So we wanted to save lives and life was super cheap then. And so we do it. Now it's kind of the reverse where we're so concerned about not offending or say,

you know, that we can't get anything done. So, yeah, well, it's like the things that were awesome are still here. Yeah. And then the things that are terrible, truly terrible, like somebody died and so we destroyed them or we just, we just assume they were always there so we don't think about whether they should be there or not. So that's a really good point. So yeah, we build Barton Springs. and then also we cut cities in half with interstates, bulldozing and raising whole neighborhoods, not thinking about what we were losing in that process. And now you're just like,

there must have always been a freeway here. And it's like, no, this didn't exist until the 50s or 60s in some cases. Right. And now, and there was a vibrant neighborhood and community and you could walk places, and that's all gone. Yeah. And we just go, why aren't there more stuff?

Why isn't there more stuff? We learned the wrong lesson, and then we overlearned the reaction to that lesson, and then we can't do stuff. If you're ever in Texas, there's a better one than Barton Springs. Oh, really? Well, awesome. So there's Barton Springs, which is incredible.

Yeah. And there's Deep Eddy, which is on a little bit further up. I guess it's on the other side of the, is that on the other side? Other side of the river, right? I think it's a river. Yeah. Is it a river or a lake? It's a river.

It's the same river that's behind us. Right. But it's damned, I think, five or six times. Okay. So there's a series of lakes. And again, because there's terrible floods. flooding, right? Like, like, there's a sign over on the trail where it's like, you're like, wait, the water went up to here. This is, this would have made the entire place uninhabitable. So, so anyways, it's dammed. Here you can get in the water because it's a real river. There, it's not only pretty stagnant, but one of the dams broke at some point. And so that whole area is filled with like concrete and rocks and rebroad. That's why you're, you're allowed to paddleboard on town lake, but you can't swim in it. Oh, interesting.

Except for once a year they do a triathlon where they're like, the danger doesn't apply because it's a group of people. Right, right. But anyway, on the other side, there's Deep Eddy, which is a pool. I think it's 30 yards that's filled with the same water from Barton Springs. Okay. But it's a pool. So the spring fed, but it's actually a pool. So no chlorine, they drain it every night and refill it.

And it's not 180 yards, 180 meters or whatever? 30, it's 30 years. Okay. That one's awesome. That's more like what you have in Australia. It's like that area. Yeah, yeah. But like six hours from here, there's one called Balmure, or Balmoria.

Okay. How we pronounce things in Texas is ridiculous. But it's like three times bigger than Barton Springs. Really? Yeah. It's much bigger. In terms of gallons. Okay.

It's just like unimaginably big. And it's so big and so old that it has a species of fish in it that is extinct everywhere else. Like they captured them in this pool. And then we killed them. them everywhere else. And it's like the Comanchee pupfish. It's the only place in the world that exists in this one pool. That's amazing. It's like the Army Corps captured it and there's no fishing in the pool. Otherwise, the fishermen would already have taken it. Yes. Yes. Or we would

have killed them by pollution or drought or whatever. Somehow. And then the other funny thing is to go to the point about learning lessons, it has this stone high dive. And if you notice, like, no public pools have high dives anymore. No right. But it's protected by the national register of historic places. Like the high dive is protect. They can't take the high dive down because it's protect. So it's like two different government sort of like statutes are in caught. Like normally you'd be like you can't do this. The government says it's not safe. And then here you're like, but the government says we can't touch this. So the, it's just there. Yeah. Jonathan Haight would be very happy. He wants risky play. Yeah. He wants kids jumping off high

dives. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. And then so anyways, that's the best. That's probably the best natural pool in the United States. It's interesting. You know, it was the more free use of eminent domain in those days, and you could do that. And it's partly because these communities didn't have a voice or they didn't know or they just like, if the government said so, they said, okay, we'll go over here, whatever it was, or probably some mix of all of it. And so that you could use it. And now you could never do that. So there's so many reasons why it's not happening now.

And a lot of it's just political will and just like people are just scared. Well, it's political will and political power. Have you read the power broker? No. The Robert Carroll book? Do you know this book? No. Oh, so it's about Robert Moses, who was the Parks.

Oh, I do know this book. Yeah, yeah. It's a famous book. And then I'll give you another. He has a shorter one called Working where he talks about himself as a writer and how he learns lessons. But, yeah, like Robert Moses built bridges and parks and did all this stuff because he just, it's like, he really cared about parks and bridges and stuff. But he also just really didn't care about Puerto Ricans and black people and poor people. So he was like, well, I want the bridge.

here. So, and then because he didn't care, he was able to do it. So there's something about the brutality of it that's both appalling and, I mean, as they say, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Like the reaction, counter reaction, you have Robert Moses, who's like, fuck everyone, I want to build a bridge. And then you have Jane Jacobs who's like, but I love my corner grocery store, a little tiny, you know, old building. And then the result is like, not enough people can afford to live in Greenwich Village, and that's why it's so expensive. And the tension between these two things is like as fascinating. It's like you want to know why things are the way they are.

It's stuff like that. That's interesting. It's like the unintended consequences of good intentions is kind of the demise of everything. It's like we think everyone thinks what they're doing is the right thing to do. I mean, almost everyone. Yeah. Like there are certainly horrible people that know they're doing the wrong and they want to do it. But there's, but a lot of most people, 98, 99% think what they're doing is exactly.

the right thing. And whether it's right or wrong, there's all these unintended consequences. Sometimes this thing that we all dread is to benefit us, right? Like 10 years later, 20 years later, and vice versa. So it's interesting. In L.A., the good example to that is Chavez Ravine and Dodgers Stadium. And we love, you know, we're all stoked. We love, I mean, Dodgers Stadium, to go there in a home game, it's like a power spot for L.A. It's like this place where all of L.A. comes together. We rejoice together. It really is a beautiful experience for those of us who live there. especially like long-time residents or lifelong residence. And so it's one of those places, but it was built with eminent domain.

It was a destruction of a community. And sometimes that bubbles up and you hear about it. There was a book about it. But was it worth the sacrifice? Like long term, like not personally, but just if you look back, not because I'm happy there, but like just all the people affected in a positive way, was it worth the sacrifice? You know, like that's a question. It always comes down to political power.

So the story Robert Carroll tells it, I think, is really interesting. So Robert Moses is building this highway that's like going to go to this park or something. And so like the highway is going to cut through somebody's property, right? And if it goes this way, which is the most natural way for it to go, it cuts through these like sort of Gold Coast mansions. And specifically it will cut through the private golf course of some, you know, billionaire from the whenever, right? And so obviously it doesn't know. It doesn't because they have political power. And instead it goes, you know, it veers this way, it goes around the golf course, it goes this way, and it cuts through this guy's farm who had 40 acres.

And now his farm is cut in half and he has to get to his other acres. He has to go down here to a turnaround. And Robert Carroll just really dives into like the physical cost to this one dude. Like it ruins his farm income and it ruins his property value. But just like the hours every day that this guy has to go to do this loop to. get to his own property so this guy's golf course could remain untouched. And you go, yeah, like, things are the way that they are. The core of it is power. Like, do you have power? Yes or no. And I think we would like to think power doesn't exist or doesn't matter. And it's like,

no, no, somebody had, Lyndon Johnson had power in Texas. And he was like, build this. Like, Lyndon Johnson was in charge of, is it the WPA or the youth WPA? So those things exist because he had favors and power. Right. And he used some of it for good and some of it not for good. And his power in Texas is the reason he became vice president and president eventually anyway. Like that's the reason JFK add him to the ticket. Yeah. So it's interesting, I used, before I became a writer, like the last day job I had was at tree people. Tree people is an environmental group in Los Angeles, famous for planting trees and neighborhoods and at schools. My job was to take out blacktop and put trees in with kids. It's probably the most impact of development. Yeah, the most impact I've

probably ever had in my life as the trees I planted with kids years ago. And so what we, our base of operations was this park above Beverly Hills between Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley on Mulholland called Coldwater Canyon Park. I've been in that park. Okay. So Coldwater Canyon Park was our base and that was William Mulholland's ranch. That was where, so we live now, it's like fancy offices, but where we worked were these old breaking like tumble down shacks where literally where Mulholland would plan his takeover and his diversion of water from the Citrus farms in the San Fernando Valley, and he created that valley. I mean, just through the, through his power. And so it's really interesting to think about the, you're right, like, that,

that changed the face of Los Angeles. And on the other side of it, Santa Monica, where I live, at one time, the people in Santa Monica wanted the port of L.A. to be built there. Yeah. They didn't want, like, where the pier is, that would be the port of L.A. instead of Long Beach. And so it was two competing factions. And they thought they lost. Santa Monica thought they lost. And instead of having a big port, like Long Beach, which is awesome in its own way, we have like this tourist destination in Santa Monica with these awesome beaches with Venice and Santa Monica. So it's a trip, right, to think about how it really does come down to, like you say, these people with power.

I like used to be very much interested in politics. I mean, I'm still interested in it to some degree, but I was like an activist. Yeah. Yeah. When I first came out of college, I was an activist. I was an environmentalist. I was like into justice. And now as I get older and kind of understand it a bit more, I'm less interested in trying to build political power and more interested in just observing it and seeing where it goes.

But also writing about it and detailing about it and explaining it is a form of sort of activism. Yeah, for sure. My friend Brent lives in this ghost town in California near Owens Lake, which is the classic Mulholland example. Right, right. He's like, I want this fucking water. We need this fucking water. you live in the sticks, you have no political power. 100%.

We're going to steal that water. We're going to take it, which he does. And then you go like, wait, there was a lake here, like a Lake Tahoe-esque lake that just is now a dust bowl. Right. Because one guy was like, and you go, oh, it could have been something else. It could have been something different. It could have been otherwise. Right.

But this guy had the political power. He had the political will. And the other people didn't think it was important or didn't have the political power or didn't understand what was happening. Right. And they got out maneuvered. And now, like, you're on Mount Whitney and you should be looking down in a gorgeous lake. And instead, you don't just look down at a dust bowl.

You look down at an environmental, they have to now reflut it with water. Because when you take the water out, then the things at the bottom of the dustbed become this giant source of pollution cloud, right? Yeah, yeah. It's now like the illusion of a lake because they have to put just enough water in it that it doesn't do that. And you go, this is the legacy of one human. being and then history is the unintended consequences of those kinds of decisions. 100%. Like that's it. The unintended consequences of good intentions is what got us into this mess and it's also going to save us. Yeah. Well, it's all messes for all time. Everything is unintended

consequences. That's what I think I love about your stuff so much is like when you go back into it. And I'm sure that's the fun of it of going into these books and looking at the Stokes and looking at history is it's all already happened. And you even say it in wisdom, it's all already happened a million times. Like nothing we're doing now is really that original. Nobody's that original, essentially. No, no. Like there's this line Truman, he was like, whenever I had a problem in politics, I would read Plutarch, who is this Greek Roman biographer 2,000 years ago. And he said, nine times out of 10, I would find the solutions to the problems there. And you're like, well, how could someone 2,000 years ago help you when you're setting up the UN? Yeah, incredible. Well, it's like,

Because the Greeks had to ally against the Persians and these disparate states had to come together and banned against an ascendant, you know, enemy in a global power crisis. Or, you know, you had to, you had a Caesar. Okay, so that's like a MacArthur character or Staliness. Like, you, the same personality types are always there doing the same things that they always do. Yeah. It's interesting. You seem to attracted to like the Truman's or the Patton's like like not that Patton wasn't a great individual, but he's not MacArthur.

Like you seem attracted to these thoughtful, like well-read kind of not really the top people people think about, right? Like Truman and even Lyndon Johnson gets a lot of flack and rightfully so, but like in some respects. But like you see and like I think of it like you're finding these the like Eisenhower. I think of Eisenhower. Yeah. Like Eisenhower as a Republican president, like when you grow up and you start thinking, oh, was he any good? And then you actually go back and see. Yeah. And he was really not into billionaire and so he was really into fairness more so than like the Reagan ideal that everyone lifts up. Eisenhower is interesting. Like I wonder if you looked at him. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that it's like right about that era. So it's like 50 to 70 years, you stop caring whether someone is a Republican or a Democrat. And they're just like a person. Right. Yeah. And like the partisan labels don't. matter as much so you can kind of study them. He's a fascinating person. I've written about him in a bunch of my books, but like, you know, he faces like McCarthy and the rise of McCarthyism, and he has to do it. But there's this great book called The Hidden Hand Presidency that's all about

how Eisenhower deals with McCarthy, but never gets his hands dirty. Like he's sort of maneuvering to shank this guy without challenging him publicly. That was his thing. He's like, I never deal in personalities. Like he would never say, if he didn't. like someone or he was opposed to them, he would never say their name and he would never address them directly. He would just work behind the scenes. And that was kind of his thing to go to our point about power. It's like, we think power is like, I condemn you from the podium. And it's like, that's like what a weak person does. A strong person who can actually move the needle knows like, hey, it's actually better if I don't tell you that I'm coming for you. Right. And then when you get shanked,

you're not even going to blame me for it. Or even the way Abraham Lincoln, the ultimate power broker, right, Abraham Lincoln who doesn't even want to come for people, but he wants to utilize people wherever they are. Yeah. And he'll only come for you if you come for him, essentially. And even then, he's like the ultimate Matador. Yeah, if he can still use you, he'll keep using you until he's done with you. Yeah.

And then he'll find a nice exit for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that goes to the savviness of power, too, is like we don't, we just go, oh, Abraham Lincoln was this nice, honest guy. And it's like he was. and he was a brilliant operator. And I think the problem with a lot of activists is they think it's like,

well, what matters is that your heart's in the right place or whatever, which it does, but then you also have to be a savvy operator or you don't get anything done. Well, right. I mean, the problem I've had, like, so coming from kind of environmental politics and just being involved in politics as an activist

back in the early 90s, like I was the only one that cared about it. Like, none of my friends cared that much. I mean, they all were kind of aligned with positive causes. I mean, it's California. in the early 90s. But like, for the most part, their lives did not revolve around it. Yeah.

And so I was one of the only people out there trying to push people to get more political. Now it's the opposite. Everyone's too involved. Yeah, that's too political. And at the time, early on, I was like, God, I wish just more people would care. And now I realize, no, no, no. I wish I wish people would care. Today's sponsor is Chime, the fee-free banking app changing the way people bank.

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and healthy aging. Human has an exclusive offer for our listeners. Visit human.com slash stoic for an extra 15% off your first purchase. That's enter code stoic at checkout human with two ends.com slash stoic for an extra 15% off. You were saying about like Truman and Manhattan and whatever. I do think, you probably think about this because I see this in your writing. It's like, LeBron James is interesting. Yes. But that's not who lights you up as a right. It's never like the most well-known, most famous, most generally admired of the people that make the best stories. Right. No. You want to find

it's the characters or the people that are doing things they shouldn't be able to do or they do it in a way that doesn't really make sense. Yeah. That's the most interesting. I think so. I mean, for me, it's a function, kind of, it's more functional. Like, I was never a staff writer. So I could, I never.

You didn't have the access. I've never had that. I've never had that. So even, like, after I published a book, after I've been published in the year of times, several times, like, I still couldn't get interviewed by, like, small papers when I was in a financial crisis. Yeah. And so, I was kind of by nature drawn to the underreported stories.

Yeah. Because I couldn't tell the well-reported stories. Right. That's a staff person's job. Yeah. So for me, I just followed that. It's almost like just like survival in a way. But also, like, I'm not an analytical writer.

I'm an organic writer. And the analysis comes in at the end. It's not like that my work isn't related. It's that I'm not really overly thinking the process through. I'm following it and kind of flowing with the process. As that makes sense. And that's true of the kind of writer I am too. I make a plan.

I outline. but then I also kind of allow it to organically unfold. And so I think my career is an expression of that kind of because I had to follow that. I actually do think that's good career advice. I think people go like, let's say you want to be a writer. They're like, I want to be a writer. And so I'll get a job at Rolling Stone. Some of these are dated.

But I'll get a job at Rolling Stone and then they'll assign me a cover story about Bad Bunny. And then I'll get to meet him and write a story about it. Right. And it's like maybe, maybe there's one person that gets to do that. Right. But actually it's you have to find. these obscure or unknown figures or the fascinating stories that other people aren't reporting, and that's your way into those things.

100%. And so, yeah, most people are kind of sitting around waiting to get picked, or they're, like, throwing themselves against this closed door that it's never going to happen. And meanwhile, there's all these equally fascinating, unknown, undiscovered things, and that that's actually your way in. 100%. Like, finding the underreported stuff. but then also just saying yes to all the jobs. Like I said yes to everything.

Like my first business card was all things written. And I was literally, I think you had some of this too. Like you would write anything someone gave you. So I remember like at one point I had like some, I don't know, like some rob report of like South Florida hired me because this person found a story of mine. She goes, I want to just hire you for my very small vanity publication. And they said, okay. And they're like, could you write about these knives? and some Japanese knife companies sent me a bunch of knives.

And I literally had it on my website. I probably was in 20, 30 stories on my website at that point. And, like, I mean, it's hilarious now. If you think about it, I'm writing about, like, very seriously about these knives. Because I wasn't really self-conscious of it or embarrassed by it. It was like, I needed work and I wanted to do it. You're getting reps, too. Exactly. And so you just get better.

And so, like, ultimately, it's hard to hear that, though, when you first start. Really, it's about getting better. It's not about the story you're writing. Yeah. It is, but it isn't. You have to. care, but it's really not, the outcome is not there. But it's hard to hear that when you're young and you're starting and you have ambition.

You know, it is hard to hear. But it is true also. It's like I've written press releases. I've written scripts for explanatory videos. You know, I've just written like thousands of things. Do you know what I mean? Ads, right? You wrote ads.

I mean, when I was at American Apparel, I probably wrote the press release for 50 to 60 store openings. You know, there's like one after another. And how do you do that? and not blow your brains out. Like, you have, you have to find a way for it to be interesting to you, you know? And so the challenge of that, plus the challenge of just actually doing the thing. And then you're, then it actually does get read by people. And you're like, then you just do this over and over and over again.

And even think, like, the thing that you're so, like, it's weird to think like, this book, your new one, could be reps for a future book that you can't even conceive of yet. 100%. 100%. And, and, and, and, and, but you have to care about it in the moment and think, this is my, the best thing I've ever done. This is so important. I cared about it.

And then also somehow in the back of your mind, know at some level that, like, in the future, you will look back at this and cringe. I might. I might. Like my first book, I had to do, I did a five year anniversary and I'm doing a 15 year anniversary now of it. And it's like, it's weird to go like, hey, my first book was practice for all my future books.

And now when I read it, I mean, obviously, I think it's good at some level. I'm not like ashamed of it. But you're like, I published this. Yeah, right. You know? Yeah, yeah. Because you, that's how it should go, because you should get a lot better. 100%.

I mean, that's the ultimately, but it's funny because with books like in record albums, artists probably think their later stuff's better and people aren't really that into the later stuff. So it's funny how timing plays such a big part. I'm sure in success. I mean, American Apparel being like you guys were the Zyte. at that time. It's funny to think about it now. And not just, not just that this brand did well, but the aesthetic around the, around the framing of this brand was very original, right? And you see it now kind of coming through. Yeah, it's been gone long enough that there's nostalgia for it.

That's fucking crazy. And then also, though, you do these things and you go, this is going to be on my resume. You say, you throw something up on your website. And then you're like, like, literally no even. That's not that they don't care. It's that like, it, doesn't register to them at like like for 10 years when I would get introduced as a talk to be he's a former director of marketing in American apparel and now if someone says that you can hear it's like it's like a record scratch it's just like what well I had no idea rich told me about it but I before I finished the after word of wisdom yeah takes work I didn't know about that yet and so in my head because I came to you through the stoic and and through the daily stoic on Instagram I mean

I was aware of your work, obviously, prior to that in 2016, I think, as I first heard about you. But I wasn't clued into your pathway to being an author. And so when I started to clue into like what you're doing with the Stoics and bringing them forward and this old wisdom, which is very close to my heart, because I've been studying the Dow for a long time. I do it. I read it almost every day. And so it's kind of a parallel thing, but I've never been a classicist. So everything I hear about from, no, but these are kind of classics like the Western classicists. like Greek and Roman, I had no idea about these guys.

Like, I didn't know about him. And so, I mean, Marcus Aurelius, I heard about in Gladiator. Yeah, me too. That was it. But I said, I'm not a classist. I meant that I have no training in the stuff. Right, but I thought you had. So in my mind, like, I'm like, this guy's fucking smart.

He must be like, where did he go? Like Princeton or Yale? I thought, and then I found out that you have a much scrappier backstory. And I was like, whoa. Because I had no idea. I'm one of those people that would have been introduced that. I'd be like, wait, who, what, when? Yeah.

You know, same deal. I mean, there's sort of a metaphor for this in writing, which is like what the first draft and the finished draft often don't resemble each other like at all. Yes. And like your sort of life and your career is that too. There's echoes of it, but it's like it sometimes not a word of it from here makes it to here. But that doesn't mean. But certainly this would not have been possible without that. Dude, you know who exemplifies that the most?

Is it Lauren Groff, Laura Groff? She wrote Florida. She's a short story. She's a great, great writer. And she, short stories and novels. And she's got a little bookstore in Gainesville. So she's kind of like... I've just heard about this.

Yes. And so she is incredible. And what I heard, I don't know if it's true because I don't know her, but I heard from Liz Gilbert that what she heard, because she likes her tune, they never met either. But what she heard was that she writes everything out long. hand. Yeah. And then she gets, like, she writes her story, then she shreds it or whatever, gets rid of it. And then she starts again. Wow. And just the memory of it is the only part that is connecting that, that handwritten draft to the next one. Yes, exactly. Wow. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. So, and she's, I mean, as a short story author, I mean, she's, I've only read her short stories, but I'm sure the books are, the novels are good too. But, like, remarkable. Like, one of the best going right now. I know. I do all my, my, my, my, I do all my, my, my research handwritten. And then I do think there's a lot of the great biographers like McCullough and Carol, they write longhand. Susan Strait was just here and she was telling me, she's like a great California writer. She was telling me about her process and then she was going to that bookstore.

So that's how I just wrote. Oh, okay, cool. But she does all her stuff longhand too. I think there's something about the inefficiency of it. Yeah. And the just sort of going through the motions of it, there's probably something to the I think the hand of the brain thing, you know, like we're babies. We have our hands here.

And so there's some connection there. I used to do all of it like notes in notebooks. So everything was notebooks. So when I first started writing before, when I was journaling, before I even had any ambitions of trying to do this for a living, it was always kind of like a notebook and a pen. And then as I started to get into reporting, it was obviously the same. And the early Lonely Planet stuff.

And then at some point, I switched to the notes app because, Lonely Planet was switching to like a content management system and the guy came out to shadow us on the road and he's like, listen, we want you just for this one. Don't use your notebook. Just use your notes app and just to see. Just for an experiment. You can go back. Just type it on your phone? Yeah, just type it. And I thought that's not going to work. It takes too long, blah, blah, blah. But now like from that moment, I'm like a trained dog. Now it's always the note app. So it's still kind of the same thing. It's still a dump site. It's still like if you go through, you know, you could see my my box of old notebooks, it's probably not that different, but I do miss it. You know, I miss the

hand to paper. Well, I find it's like, so it's like if I'm typing it and then I need to use it again or whatever, I'm copying and pasting it. Yeah. And like, so what I'm losing is one step where I have to do it again. Yeah. So I wrote the process where I'm writing it by hand and then I'm typing it again. And you can imagine like if you do your things on a typewriter or you do it longhand And you're like, I want to move this section over here. You have to do it again. Yeah, you do. And in doing it again, you're almost certainly doing it better.

I agree. Because you're fine-tuning it. And like, I got to imagine, when you did the audiobook for Can't Hurt Me, were you editing as you were recording still? No, it's kind of punch and roll. So like if you flub or anything, but we weren't editing the, what we- The manuscript. The manuscript?

No, it was done. Because I do my audiobooks in here. and I have never once not made cuts and changes, having been forced to say it aloud. Yes. Because then I'm like, oh, this, like, every interaction with the text in a new context forces you to re-examine things.

And you can write for audio much more. Like this book, I'm still, like, we're still doing the last pickups for audio. There's so many alliterations, and I'm reading the book, it drives me nuts. I'm like, I'm not going to write like this anymore. I'm going to write like this anymore.

I'm going to write for, saying it because you can stumble over the sometimes it sounds good in your head yes but speaking it is harder yes but so the reader i don't think they need to be the same so my my feeling is like going forward is they shouldn't be the same we don't need them to be the same but there's this thing in publishing where it has to be the same yes that's going to go away at some point to like for instance like when you're writing yeah you should say like he said she said whatever like it's obvious when you're hearing dialogue. Yes.

You know, especially, like, what I hate is, um, when you're listening to an audiobook and it, it's like the voice of the person. And then it's like, he said, it's like, the voice. You would never do that in a movie like, like, right, right. I agree. They're going to diverge more and more. And I know with that one, you guys like, you added in extra stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. So that, that stuff we did and, and, um, we did a couple multiple takes of some of the in-between stuff a couple of times. But no, the book was done because, you know, that... It was a very compressed production, wasn't it? I guess it was. I mean, we started to write it the beginning of 2018 and it was out by November. So, yeah.

So it was. But because, you know, David is such a master storyteller, right? He'd been telling this story back when he was in the Navy. Like, it's in the book. Like, he would recruit for the Navy. And so they sent him out. So he was telling his childhood story. Maybe not the ultra version, but he was telling his childhood story.

Meanwhile, he was out training with kids at these little stops. Whoever wanted to run with him, he'd run. So he was telling those stories too. So it was just ingrained in him. He had his greatest hits. Yeah, and he is like just a master oral storyteller. Like there's a great American tradition of them. It goes way back, you know.

And so he's one of them. And so when you're working with someone like that, it's like this process. and a chapter by chapter process, it's easier to build something that's super tight by the end. It's not the same as us rattling around in our own heads and constantly kind of changing.

Not that we didn't tinker and make sure it was perfect, but I think it's a slightly different experience. I also think on the audio front, I don't get, since it's a file, like, why isn't there like five narrators? Like, it doesn't, like, for a big book, like I did a kid's book, and I was like,

I'll read it, I'll have my kids, read it. I'll have someone of the British accent read. It's like, just put like 10, five, like it. A pastiche. Pick what you want to listen to. Oh, and you let the people pick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting idea. You know, there's just no reason that it's like,

I like that. This is the narrator, take it or leave it. No, no, no. Yeah, no, I like that. Like a chosen, well, AI is going to make that. I think it'll make it easier. But at the same time, like, also why I don't get why every audiobook doesn't have what you guys did, which is just like, cram a bunch of other stuff in there.

Right, right, yeah. It's a package. Us and Gladwell, Gladwell, once he started doing revisionist history, his more recent books. He basically writes for audio books now. Yeah, and he's just, yeah, exactly, exactly. But we did that first,

and it was just kind of like a natural thing to do because he's so good extemporaneously on the mic. So it's like you want to have that as much as possible. Just this morning, as I do every morning, I was taking the supplements that I take. And if you're not taking any sort of, supplements, well, January is a good time to think about doing that. Choosing the right supplements can be confusing because there's so many brands and, you know, it's kind of a low trust category.

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She's very sensitive about what she puts in her body and when she doesn't. And she loves their stuff, too. If a product doesn't meet the Momentus's standards, it doesn't hit the shelves. And a space where trust is rare, Momentus is redefining what trust looks like. And right now, Momentus is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with promo code Daily Stoic. Head over to LiveMomenus.com and use promo code Daily Stoic for up to 35% off your first order. That's LiveMomenus.com promo code Daily Stoic. Okay, you mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert earlier.

Yeah. Last time I saw you at Rich's place, she was there. But then my producer was telling me you're in Eat, Pray, Love? I am. I didn't know this. It's such a random thing. I met her in Bali in 2004. It was my first time kind of bundled a few assignments from like kind of secondary

magazines. Not bad, but like Islands magazine, which used to be a good travel magazine, but it wasn't like travel leisure. So I got a few of those and I packaged them together and fronted my own travel cost. This was me becoming a travel rider. This was my first kind of big step in that direction. And so when I was out there in Bali, because it was in Indonesia at that time, hotels were blowing up in Jakarta, bars were blown up because it was like, you know, Al-Qaeda, Indonesian Al-Qaeda was like. Oh, we literally blown. Oh, yeah. We were like, Indonesia was on the State

Department watch list. So that was kind of part of the pitch to the editors, hey, let's go to this place, somewhat dangerous, lots of cool stuff happening in terms of spiritual energy. well, so let's go check that out. Yeah. And so I did that. And so somehow, through a contact of mine said, hey, you got to meet Elizabeth Gilbert. She's in town. She's awesome.

She's here doing a book. I'm like, okay. And so I didn't really know who she was. Then we connected and we just became fast friends. And then pretty soon, like I realized who she was because she had written Coyote Ugly for GQ and that became a movie. Oh, she wrote that? She wrote that. She'd written a novel that's really, really good called Stern Man, kind of a coming of age novel about a lobster woman who was

You can't get in the game, you know, like a young woman who wants to do it. And so just a remarkable person. And so we just, she became kind of right away this person that helped me right away, like as a mentor. And so she, a friend and a mentor. So I just hung out with her in Bali. And so I was at, but when I first met her was at like some birthday party. And, and that's when I met her.

And so, you know, some kid was there and said, the kid asked me what my favorite animal was. And I said, I don't know, pelicans. And that's the word pelicans. that's my line and he probably I've just name check I have no impact on the story it's just a name check

just an inclusion I'm like oh alright Is it you as like full name or you're a character? No no it's just me I'm the guy I'm this guy that's that likes pelicans The California The California bro at the party that likes pelicans I still like pelicans Pelicans are awesome

They're so fucking weird They are weird Have you ever seen them eat? Yeah it's nuts It's got to hurt the way they eat Yeah No teeth just swallow it and it's like Well and then

And like you think because it's like a bird's beak, you think it's like this hard thing. And then it's like this weird. I don't know. I've never touched it. Yeah. But it's just like it's like this expand. I don't know. It's weird.

No longer my favorite animal, though, I would say. What is it tigers? Right now it's tigers. Right now it's tigers. Probably whales, but then tigers, yes. Yeah. I like all whales except for killer whales. Like I find orcas just existentially horrifying and scary.

Oh, interesting. Like, I don't like, I like the Pacific Ocean, but I don't like the Pacific Northwest. Interesting. I just find it very ominous and like, like, you go to Hawaii, you're like, the ocean's amazing. And you go to the Pacific Northwest, and you're like, this ocean will murder you. Don't go in here. Cold and creatures. Although there's never been an account of an orca killing a human being in the wild.

Really? Yeah, never, not one. It doesn't, doesn't do anything. It doesn't make it any better for me. All it means is it's going to happen soon, right? I don't like that they can go on the beach, you know. I don't like that they can, they'll break the ice to get at things that they want. It's, it's, it's just, I don't know.

I think everyone kind of has like some animal that fills them with dread. Yes. And that's, that's mine. That's yours. Okay. All right. Do you know John Valant? He wrote.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. I don't know him, but I know the book. Right. Because he wrote a book, Go on Tiger. But he was telling me the story about, like, I think I was telling him about this, but I think what to me, encapsulates the Pacific Northwest is like, you'll see these logs up on the beach, and they're just like as smooth as they could possibly be. And you're like, that was a very large, very rough pine tree or redwood. And you're like, the ocean just took this thing and turned it into a, and he was saying there's some cliffs up near Oregon or Seattle or something where like the ocean will hurl these big logs at the cliffs. And it makes a sound. Like it makes us, like they'll vibrate like a musical.

instrument. I was just like, that's crazy, dude. I read passage to Juno. You familiar with that book? The author is escaping me. I'm really, really sorry. He wrote a book called Badlands also. He's a great English author that moved to Seattle. And this is all about him sailing his boat from Seattle to Juneau through the inside passage. And one of the scary things about it is like he has to be on watch for these logs. Yeah, because they either fall into the ocean or it's from those logging ships that are moving them around. The barges. They escape. Right. The barges. And they'll submerge and they could just wipe you out.

Yeah, just a 200-foot floating like speed bump of death or something. Next thing you know, you're floating around by yourself. I was going through some of your New York Times pieces and I was fascinating. Like, in a way, it's like it's all these different sports. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And yet at some level, you're writing about like the same person every time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that ever strike you that like, like one of them swimming 90 miles, the other is running 500 miles, or this one's trying to dive this deep or this one's, but like it's the same maniac, male, female, different cultures, but it's the same maniac every time. It is. I think there's an archetype there, right? Like the, whether it's, I think daredevil is the wrong word. It's the, it's the archetype of the person that needs to find the edge. I don't know what we'd even call it. But it's like, is most themselves, most who they're supposed to be when they're trying to find the edge of what's possible. And so that's kind of the archetype. I think I haven't thought of it that way. What I thought about recently because I had to redo my website, you know, for this kind of stuff, you redo everything and rethink. And like I said, I'm not that analytical.

But looking back, what I noticed is that all my work ties together with this idea of there's more to this life. there's more to yourself than you know. Yeah. And that you allow yourself to know. Because to just get through life where these bubbles kind of floating around and we all have that bubble, even these people that we're talking about,

their bubble is just much closer to the edge. But you got to pop it and take a look around and see, wait a second, there's so much more to learn, so much more to understand about myself and about this world. And so I think that is the through line. And so these particular people

are learning it through, ultra endurance or through trying to dive as deep as possible on one breath or now I'm I'm into the wing seat base jumping I'm researching a book on that and so that is like that crowd of trying to find that's more the daredevil that's more daredevil but it's the same thing it's the same people who are trying to find an edge because that's giving their life a different perspective it's that's more like the people who are using like the Buddhists who are meditating on death it's like this kind of unconscious meditation on death right to give your life or like the free solo guides, it's no different.

Yeah. And so I think that's the way I look at it is this, this kind of opening that we are more. We can do more. We can be more. And we are just more naturally also. It's like, yeah, also. It's like they're like engaged in this like perennial battle against the self and whatever limitations the self perceives.

That's right. Can a human being do this? Or how can I get to the point that I can't not do it? Right. And that's the edge they're looking. It's not like an edge in a, it's about like finding the edge and then seeing if that's actually the edge. Yeah, and they're not doing it for any glory. I mean, except for the really top people, they don't get money. Yeah. They don't get notoriety, really.

Yeah. They are doing it for the experience itself. And that's kind of what I think, not just myself, but the sports editors that I'd work with, who are constantly doing stories on the big sports and like all these athletes that want the glory, they loved doing these stories with me because it was like the purity of sport, right? the purity of finding out, can I do it? And the humility that comes with it. Because, like, I mean, the best free diving competition in the world, they still have to bring out the diving platform themselves.

It's like, imagine the Ironman athletes before the race having to set up their own barricades. That's what it's like with some of these sports that I cover. So I think they're not just not getting paid. It's an expensive hobby. Right, right. Exactly right. That's 100% right. I mean, the only professional athletes in high altitude mountaineering, I mean, for the most part, unless you're the really top guys, are the Sherpa.

Right. You know, that, that. Oh, yeah, climbing Everest, the only one getting paid is the person that lives there. Right. They're the professionals. Yes. Everyone else is a tourist. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I guess you probably saw this with Goggins. Is it like a wound? Is it a death wish? Is it a competitive desire? Like, what is the, I'm sure it differs from person in person, but what motivates someone to go like, no, I want to swim a hundred. miles or I want to I want to dive further than any human has ever gone or I want to run for I want to run for 36 hours straight.

What makes a person do that? Like once it's like, okay, I think a normal person can relate to that, right? Like everyone's like, I want to try a lot of people like I want to try a marathon. I want to try ultra marathon maybe. But the people that do it as a thing they're trying to master, what is that? Well, I think I could, if we take kind of three examples, right? Like, let's take the ultra marathon example. There's a marathon, you know the marathon monks in Japan?

No. It's like a Zen Buddhist sect that they run every day. Like, I forget how many days in a row, but like 50 miles a day for however many days in a row. And it's kind of like you get into a meditative state. So anytime you're doing these ultra events, you're coming up against the point of delirium, because there's sleep deprivation. You're coming up to the point of pain and injury. And then when you get through it, there's this euphoria.

And we call it the second wind, but there's also this euphoria that, wow, you know, David calls it the 40% rule. Yeah. We all think we're done at 40%. And after that, there's this amazing wonderland of energy and strength and power that you tap into. I think breaking through that surface, especially for ultra runners, is the is the what gets you to want to do it again got it i think there's this breakthrough this power

this euphoria this this this this energy that you get and that's why people do it over and over again i don't think it's the suffering itself although certainly there's people who are masochistic but i think it's what comes after that that is that is a thing and it's not just breakthrough transcendent moment is what they're chasing i think so i don't think it's to say i did this race because how do you explain a guy like harvey lewis that's just doing it over and over and over again constantly. He's chasing an energy. He's chasing a feeling. Other kind of people like, say, Lakba Sherpa, who's the first woman to climb Everest 10 times, she grew up kind of powerless in this male-dominated society. And for her, getting into the

mountains and climbing the mountains and defying the sexism that was inherent in her culture and in mountaineering itself was empowering. And Alenka Artnick, one of the deepest women ever as a free diver. She was just a shop girl living in Slovenia. and kind of partying at night and feeling kind of like her life had no meaning until she stumbled into a free diving pool session. And she found this thing that gave her life energy and power. And so we started off thinking about power, right? And I think it all comes down to personal power.

Power over the self. Yeah. And not just power over the self, but a sense of your own, not power over it, although that is right. But I was speaking more of the important power that we all have to feel good about your life. Yeah. Like, that's the empowerment we all can tap into.

Like, for me, it started back with, you know, out of college, I started reading the Carlos Castaneda books right out of college. Robert Green, your mentor talked about it on a video not too long ago. And Carlos Castaneda is now being posthumously canceled. Cancel? Yes. And I'm not commenting on him at all. But those books meant a lot to me.

And one thing that they got me to do is I would just. go out on the trail in nature, and I would just contemplate nature and try to tap into the power that I heard, you know, that Don Juan was teaching, you know, the Carlos Castan, I didn't care, forget his name now. And I was like channeling that.

And that's the first kind of sense of individual power that I ever had, this power to kind of feel good about my own life through connecting to this source. And I think that the source for a lot of these athletes is their, the medium is their source. And that's who they are. And it's not just identity. It's something beyond that.

It's like this tap into a power source. Yeah. There's a stoic line like, he is powerful who is under his own power. So like, you know, you're, I want to be king. I want to be senator. I want that's what you think power is. Yeah. But if you're doing that because you want to be loved or you want to be remembered or what you're actually or you're addicted to it, that's actually not power.

You're powerless because like this thing has the power. And also whoever decides whether you get it is. the powerful one. That's right. But when you're like, no, this is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I'm working on, and then your success or failure at the thing is up to you. Yes. That's a magical thing, right? Like, I think we probably love the same thing about writing. Like it's publishing is one thing. Yes. And it comes after the thing you actually love, which is doing the thing and being in it for months or years. That's the part you control. And if you love that part the most, you'll do really good work. If what you love is,

that feeling of exhilaration of making or not making the bestseller list or checking how when the, when the advance check arrives. Right. One of those is a is a very self-contained approach and the other is a very externally motivated approach. Yeah, 100%. I think we do have the same feeling about writing because we love it, but we also recognize it's also not that fun a lot of the time. Right.

Like running an ultra marathon is probably not fun. Exactly. Exactly. And this book particularly challenged me in so many ways because, like, for the first, like, I don't know, year, year and a half I was writing it, I didn't think it was good. And I'm like, am I wasting my time as like, I'm going, my family's kind of doing their thing. Like, Izuma was a baby. April was working hard on that.

And I'm sitting here doing this thing. And it's not making us any money. And like, is it, am I completely screwing up and wasting everyone's time? And it took a long time to get to the fun part with this particular project. It took a long time. Not that I didn't find it worthy, but like the project worthy, but I wondered if the book be worthy. It's kind of if you go back into my career, I didn't know, you know, I was making it as a writer. I was already doing Lonely Planet guidebooks, but I didn't know that I was really any good

until I suffer from the external thing until I got my first New York Times assignment and I realized how the editors were treating my work. Yes. And it was like, because I was always fighting from the outside in and any, any, it was like a constant battle. And when they anointed, when I felt like they approved, then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I actually, I actually, am pretty good. And it took a long time for that. That's my own self-loathing. It's a hard thing because I think it's hard in anything to like feel like you've made it or you're part of it. But then it's hard in a profession where anyone can call themselves the thing. So it's not just that you necessarily feel the imposter syndrome, although I think everyone does.

But there is this like, am I being one of those posers or am I actually one of the handful of people really doing it? And like that that kind of self-consciousness is probably good and then it means you're not like an egomaniac, you know? Probably. But like that's a good, that's a sign of humility, but it is hard. Like when you can get to a point where someone says, what do you do? And you're like, I'm a writer and you're not like, you know? And then and then when they go like, and what are you write about? And then you can confidently just be like, and this is, external stuff can help with that. It totally helps. It totally helps. I mean, even with this, I was like, I felt like I did feel, I do feel like this is some of my best work. I'm not going to judge it against everything, but I feel very good

about this book. But, you know, we didn't find a major publisher for this book. Right. And so it was fucking with me. It was like, I don't understand it because everyone I was handing it to believed in it. UTA believed in it. All these people believed in it. And you'd have a decent track record. Like, it must have been frustrating because if you'd had any kind of more conventional or down the middle idea, you know they would have fallen over themselves based on your track record to spend a lot of money on it. And then you're like, is it, is it a bad idea? Is it I'm not doing it right? Or is it that they have some blind spot?

And that's a hard thing to parse. I think ultimately what I came around to is it's a mix of things. But like it's not really that it's a bad idea, but the blind spot is that it doesn't fit the boxes, right? It took me a long time to come to that. So for like a year, I was pissed. Yeah. Like I was, well, we were looking for it.

I just couldn't understand it because I read a lot. I'm like, I'm not sure. I mean, I do have some humility. But at the same time, I know what a good one. Your shit. Yeah, I know it's good. And so I was like, I was just puzzled by it and confused. And I felt like, maybe these people don't care about like the Goggins book. Maybe they don't care about these things. Maybe it doesn't register to them. And I think it doesn't in some ways because David went outside the system to publish his book. And so, and also it's his book. And also it's fiction. And so there's this nonfiction. Yeah. So it's nonfiction and fiction divide.

So there's all these things I'm trying to break through. And so my whole goal was, well, if I write something bulletproof, it won't matter. Yeah. And so my, I thought I had something bulletproof. I didn't. And it's a good lesson. And I think coming back to your point about external versus internal, what happened for me was, um, I realized that I was waiting to be anointed. And I realized that I was still trying to be called something, called a novelist, because I always loved novels. That's why I became a writer, right? You wanted the novelist people to go, you have been invited to join us. Yes. And this, this counts. Right. I wanted to be like, I've always, I think my progression as a writer has always been, it's been hard for me to get on the inside. Yeah. You know, I've always felt like I've had to scrap on the

outside, which is why I find these underreported stories. Sure. But eventually what I came to realize is I talked to Rich's wife, Julie, uh, Julie Piat. And she said, you're waiting to be anointed. You don't need to be anointed. You'll, you'll find a way to publish this novel as soon as you decide you're a novelist. Yeah. And that was it. Like, the light flipped on. I was like, wait a second. She's right. And then I've looked into it. Jane Austen self-published sense and sensibility. Charles Dickens paid for the publication of Christmas Carol. Sure.

So it's like this thing that I thought I wanted, I didn't need. And because of Canter Irmea, I was able to do it. And so I thought, you know what? By the way, most of those people whose space you would want, you would want to be part of their, they got $3,200 as an advance. And the book sold 17 copies. And like, it feels like that's actually the better, safer, cooler club. and it's it's only because you don't know, not you, but oftentimes the thing we want desperately

is actually not better. It's just safer and it seems safer because it's more conventional. Right. That's just something we made up. You have like someone behind you saying, yes, you know, but I exactly right. Those would kill to actually be in your position, financial or contact or platform wise. Well, totally. Here I am sitting with you talking about it. And so it's like, it's, to be able to do that is awesome.

but also coming back around, like, when I was going through this process, at some point, I looked at the blacklist, you know, the, like, there's, yeah, Franklin Leonard's thing. And they, he started a fiction one. And so this whole time I'd been like wondering, why didn't, I still don't understand. Why, why not me? Why didn't they pick me? And then I'm looking at this blacklist thing and said, you can join and you can pay a little money and you join this contest and, you know, and we'll celebrate you if you're one of the picked novels, the unpublished novels. And, you know, It asked me to pick a category for my book. And that's when I realized I couldn't pick a category. They had a point. Like you, you, yes, like, you realize a lot of times just not being clearly one thing or another is a huge disadvantage, not like as far as quality or like, it just, you're asking a lot of people. You are for the people who are packaging them.

Yes. But for readers, it won't matter. And so, like, that's what I thought. I'm like, okay. So no one's being an asshole. No one wants to spend a shit ton of money on a book from the guy that wrote David Goggins' books, his novel that's hard to explain. Right. If it works, of course.

But, like, you don't make any more money for buying a good book in publishing. But you definitely get fired if you fuck up or do something that makes you seem stupid. That's right. And that's what you, people don't realize they're often bumping up. It's like, why won't these VCs fund me? It's not that it's a good idea or a bad idea. It's just they don't want to be laughed at by their peers, and as you're currently presenting it, it could potentially be something that puts egg on their face. That's the main thing they're trying to avoid.

Right. I mean, this book isn't that hard to explain on some level, but what it gets into is much more subtle. And, you know, we're talking about a book where there's a tiger slinking around the suburbs of L.A., right? And that's based on a true story I reported for the L.A. weekly 20 years ago. And so it was a true story. And so that's it. So everyone understands that. That concept, I thought, always worked.

And it's kind of like a tight timeline. It's over the course of this search. Is there a tiger? Is there not? But what makes the book work and I think why people are responding to it, who have had a chance to read it, is that it's just a deeper experience. And so to me, what all great books do, what your books do, what the things I write, I try to do, is they wrestle with the fundamental question of what it means to be.

be alive. And that's, I think, all great books do, right? That's why people come back to meditations for soul. That's what's amazing about Marcus Aurelius, right, that he was wrestling with it. True. I mean, a guy in his power was wrestling with it. It's an insane fluke. But talk about a book that doesn't work in a category. Right. He wasn't thinking about it as a book. He didn't want it to be a book. For 500 years, it wasn't a book. Right. You know, it's a random confluence of circumstances that it even exists. If you had pitched it to someone, they would have been like, No thanks. Exactly.

And then I think what you explained with Elon Musk, by the way, I mean, you're Elon. It's the best I've ever seen anyone explain Elon Musk. I haven't read Walter Isaacson's book. So, I mean, obviously you have multiple sources. That's one of them you write in the book. But like the way you explain him and build him up and take him apart is, I think, the best I've ever seen. And one of the things that he is is a guy that doesn't wrestle with.

what it means to be alive. Sure. And that's, and that's the, the dangerous people out there are the ones that don't wrestle with it. They're not interested. That means a lot to me that you point there. That was the hardest thing in the book to write. And it took the longest and I had to read the most.

And it's also the scariest because you're writing about a vindictive person with unlimited resources, who by the way owns like half this specific town. I didn't realize that until all of his stuff is here. Yeah. And like people that work there live on my show. streets, you know. They agree with you, I'm sure. I don't know.

But, yeah, that was a challenging one. Yeah, there is a stunning lack of self-awareness or introspection, which is probably his superpower in some ways. Yeah. But, yeah, that was a rough one to write. Speaking of which, I was thinking of this book, because when I drive my kids at school, sometimes we, like, on the New York Times app, you can listen to stories. Yes. So it's like instead of their terrible taste in music or whatever, we'll all, like, pick articles.

When I'm reading the news throughout the, like, you know, I go, oh, I think. think my kids would like this story. And there was a story that I said, we listened to it. There was a report of a lion in Ireland like two weeks ago in the woods in Ireland. And so the... An African lion. Yes. Which seems crazy, which I'll get to in a second. But there was some reports of this African lion. And it turns out it was just a dog that a guy had shaved weird and it liked to trot around in the woods and they found the dog. And so it was this huge story because now this dog's like a hero and everyone loves this dog. It's a very famous talk. But anyway,

that's the first half of the article. The second half of the article is, of course, you're probably like, how would an African lion have been in Ireland? Obviously, that's dumb that people. Ireland was at one point, like the breeding capital of lions? It wasn't really. The MGM lion is from Dublin.

It was bred by a lion breeder outside of Dublin or something. That's amazing. And you're just like, man, life is so fucking weird. It was way weirder. In the first half of the 20th century, like around the turn of the century and the 20s, people were doing all sorts of shit. Like people would have like chimpanzees as pets, big, like all the kind of weird exotic pet stuff starts then. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Because rich people could travel and there wasn't like strong. So it'd be like you took the boat to Africa and you took a lion home with you or whatever. Yeah. Like that, you know, that famous viral video about the lion running and hugging those people. Yes. That they were, they lived in London. That's where that lion was.

Exactly. They bought that lion at Herod's. Yeah. Did they really? Because they sold, yeah, they're like, think about British colonialism, by the way, up until much more recent than you think. Yes.

And nothing brings that home to me, by the way. I was just having to talk to my UK publisher because there's a bookstore in Australia that wanted something for me. Yeah. And British publishers still exist in the empire. Is that right? Is that right?

So when you sell. That's right. You could have UK rights include Canada and Australia and all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In India, too? It's insane. So in India, too? English India.

That's funny. The English translate, in the English language in India, that is your UK. Yeah, too? South Africa. Okay. I don't know about Kenya. Okay. This is like, this is because publishers from 50 years ago were still part of this system.

How many other businesses are like that? It's crazy. I'm sure, like the imports of like commodities. Yes. That's kind of still exist in that same. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm sure, like if you buy teak. Right.

It's probably some company in Thailand owned by a British dude. And certainly tea. Yeah. Tea from India. But anyways, I thought I was like, the MGM lion is from Ireland. And the MGM lion has a tiger dubbed in. Oh, that's what the roar is? Yeah, the roar is a tiger.

Because the proper roar that we all think of with lions and tigers is only a tiger. The lions have a more cough type of roar. It's like it's a growl plus like a, you know, they belt something out, but it's not the classic, like, clean roar, that's tigers. Well, when I first thought, I was like, oh, is it set in Texas? Because Texas has the most tigers. Right. Yeah.

I mean, you know, in those days, so what the backstory is of the true story is that a Tiger King type couple moved their menagerie of cats from Riverside County to Ventura County. And they had a 30-day grace period. Like, you don't have to tell the game wardens of the new county. It's just a law. Like, they have 30 days. And then they lost track of two cats. Just lost it. And they didn't tell anybody.

And the links turned up first. The Game Warden found the links. And then these guys came to pick up the claim the links. And that's when the Game Ward went to their place. So lose anything else? Yeah. And they denied it. Yeah.

I mean, imagine the strange psychosis of like losing, knowing you lost track of a tiger. Sure. And denying it. Yeah. Like, that's nuts. I mean, that's another level of nuts. And you think you're dealing with like the federal government. Right.

But like what happens in Texas, for instance, is like, it's like, okay, there's some. national laws or statewide laws, but it's like most of the things are like ultimately regulated at like the city or the county level. Right. And like most counties are not like, and then let's make sure we pass a law that says you can't own tigers. Yeah. Because the assumption is there's no tigers here. People don't have tigers. It's kind of, oftentimes it's only happens because something like this happens. Right, right, right. The safeguards are there because the absurd exception proved the need to have it in the first place. That's right. I mean, that's the history. of lawmaking, right?

But so what happened is prior to 2022, it was state by state, was governed in the state. And so certain states allowed breeding, certain didn't, but it was all pretty legal to own them. And then in 2022, they passed the Big Cat Safety Act. This is the great legacy. Exactly. And so that happened. And so now breeding is illegal. Tiger petting is illegal.

So it's all recent that this is like, it used to be in 2021. You could still go to a tiger petting like concession in the United States. Every time I, we drive down to Florida a couple times of year, and every time we drive from here and we're passing through New Orleans, I tell my son that when he was a baby, we were driving through and we stopped at the tiger truck stop, which had a tiger in a cage at the gas station. And he's like, can't wrap his head around that being a thing. I'm like, not only was the thing. People went. I watched someone walking in the gas station, buy lunch meat and throw it into the tiger cage. You're like, this is not. ancient history. No, I mean, I did it when I was researching this book. I went to like five or six of these kind of amateur zoos. One was outside the Sequoia National Park. Still exists. These places still exist. These places still exist because in California. Yeah, in California. All of them were in California. One was in the high desert. One was outside the National Park. One was in Santa Clarita, Tippy Hendren's place. Yeah. One was outside San Diego. They were called some of them were refuges. So like places that the bad

actors would have to, they'll take them because somebody else had one. Right. And they can, they have a better situation and they have more better management. But they're all like not that great. And so then you, but you can feed them at some of these like the worst ones. You could do tiger feeding. I fed them like this crappy. They have a zoo down the street. It's like $20 to feed the lunch.

Actually, I have a, I have a picture of my, they had a thing like they had a dingo there. Yeah. Dingo had puppies. Oh my God. And you could go and so as a picture of my kids like just being jumped on by dingo puppies. Is that right? That's hilarious. Not eating the baby.

That's cute. But yeah, you're just like, this is not, life's weird. It is weird. It drove to work the other day. I saw a zebra in someone's front yard. Is that right? This is weird. Well, you get that also outside of Hearst Castle.

You know, there's zebras. Well, that's the Seamy Valley thing. Because some of those zebras are, like, Hurst Castle. He had a crazy zoo. You can still see the zoo. Yep. But, like, some of the zebras got out and bred with, like, horses and so they're still like, they're still like planes.

Like, light below the Castle Hill. They're still part of the Hearst property in San Simeon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, I mean, you know, the, the, the Simi Valley part of it was interesting because, like, for a long time, I was hesitating writing this book, and I was trying to figure out, like, the best way to tell it. And so I was thinking, like, a journalist, I'm going to get all the information I can get. I went back. When I was covering for LA Weekly, I was there when they were doing it. So I went back to some of those game wardens and tried to get as many files. U.S. Department of Agriculture who brought in the trackers wouldn't give me anything. They sent me this redacted file. I don't know if you ever got redacted files, but, like, it's like, a funny game of Tetris all black and then like and what are they hiding i don't know like it's this is just a tiger story for 20 years ago yeah i know so i couldn't get everything and finally decided you know what it's fiction yeah i don't have to set it in semy valley i can kind of change semy valley to suit the make it a story exactly and so i i there's a lot that's true in it but then there's a lot

there's a there's the opportunity to kind of get magical with it and so and for the whole time though I thought I was going to treat it pretty honest to what happened until the end and started writing the ending. And I realized, no, there's something else that could have happened. Well, to go to your point about power. And then I want to show you some books in the books. Yeah. I thought the funniest thing, like, it's like, okay, William Randolph-Hurst, I'm rich, I'm powerful. I need to own a bear and whatever.

And then, I mean, obviously this is what the Romans did, you know, and kings and whatever have done forever. But I thought the funny, there's this interview with Ridley Scott when he's being asked about the new gladiator. because have you seen the United or two? No, I have not. There's, so they used to. You are obligated. You have to see. Of course, of course. I should have been asked to do a cameo.

You should be at the premiere. But like they used to flood the Coliseum and have naval battles in it, which like we only discovered relatively recently. Talk about eminent domain. Yeah, yeah. But in the movie they do that. But then there's sharks in the water. And this journalist like, so like how'd you have the idea to do that?

I mean, he's like, obviously the Romans didn't have sharks in the, in the, in the Coliseum. And really Scott, he gets fucking mad. He's like, you don't fucking know. He's like, do you know how hard it was to build the Coliseum? And then they flooded it with water. And then they, they put ships in and they have naval battles. Yeah.

He's like, I don't know. Maybe someone caught a shark and put it in there. It's not that crazy. He's like so mad. Don't you love that he's still so passionate about his shit? Like some of the stuff now, like these old men that are doing it, like some of them are more wise, like Scorsese is kind of like more humble than he used to be. They turned the volume down?

Yeah. Not him. No. He's gone the other way. But it was just like, oh, this is what lights you up. And you're, yeah, like, you're right. Like there's something kind of cynical and smug about like, obviously they didn't do this. Right.

And his view is like, maybe they did. Right. Well, why are we attached to when you're talking about story and fantasy or whatever it is, why are we attached to keeping the rules the same of our known world, right? Like the whole idea of, you know, the hero with a set thousand faces and the hero's journey, which we're all on, right? We're all on. That's one thing that you point out to everybody is you have power of your life.

You can become your own hero. You can follow these masters and do it too. If we're on the hero's journey, the worst thing you can do is tell yourself that you already know the ending. Yes. Yeah. I mean, we do all know the ending. Instead of just going like, instead of just going like, hey, that was a cool scene in this fictional action. be.

Right. You're like, it didn't really happen that way. Right. It didn't happen at all. Right. It didn't happen. That point isn't that it happened.

The point is here's a story that you can use to relate and inform your life, right? I mean, like that isn't that the point. And maybe just to entertain you, which is all we need sometimes. That's what art is. Yeah, that's all it is, man. You want to check out some books? Let's do it. All right.

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.