The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 254: Robert Kurson - How To Be A Master Storyteller: Rocket Men, The Most Daring Mission In NASA History

Episode Date: April 22, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode 254: Robert Kurson - How To Be A Master Storyteller: Rocket Men, The Most Daring Mission In NASA History Robert Kurson is an American author, best known for his 2004 bestselling book, Shadow Divers, the true story of two Americans who discovered a World War II German U-boat sunk 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Kurson began his career as an attorney, graduating from Harvard Law School, and practicing real estate law. Kurson's professional writing career began at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a data entry clerk and soon gained a full-time features writing job. In 2000, Esquire published "My Favorite Teacher," his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the Sun-Times to Chicago Magazine, then to Esquire, where he won a National Magazine Award and was a contributing editor for years. His stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.  His latest book is titled, Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon. Show Notes: How Rob quickly realized going to Harvard Law School was a mistake "The people who liked being at Harvard Law School are the people I liked the least." Following that, he got a job at a large law firm in Chicago -- "Made a lot of money, bought a BMW, a stereo, a bicycle... And I was miserable" The big corporations/large law firms "punished creative thinking" Writing... "It all started with a basic curiosity that would grow into love." --> "You can't hate what you do and be happy" The theme of writing stories -- "Freedom... Being unbound.  When I was writing stories, the time would go so fast." "Whatever it cost me, I was going to get out of practicing law, and be a writer." "I begged for any job.  I'm incredibly persistent.  I came in on the weekends and took high school football scores as my first job working for a newspaper as a writer" How can others follow their love/passion? "Never give up, do it at night, weekends, refuse to take no for an answer." "I was unwilling to see my life go that way.  I would never stop trying, no matter what.  There was no choice, that's what I was going to do." Key ingredients to being a great story teller? Understand the structure, the arc, the format: inciting incident, challenge, the heroes journey, the battles --> The beginning, middle, and end How the long car rides with his dad gave him a prime example for story telling -- "My dad was a travelling salesman and he would often take me with him.  He's the greatest story teller I've ever known" Why write about the Apollo 8 mission? -- "They are the first 3 men to leave earth and go to the moon.  The people at NASA say Apollo 8 was the most daring mission of all time.  They orbited the moon 10 times.  It was the most rushed mission in history."  They needed to beat the Soviets and rushed it because of that and President JFK George Lowe - The NASA manager had the idea to go without the lunar module The 3 astronauts refused to give up.  No matter what happens, they wont' give up.  Most of the astronauts were fighter pilots in the war.  They developed a psychology that "it won't happen to me."  They were fearless.  They had self-delusion and irrational confidence.  That fueled them.  They were not afraid to fail and had already failed many times in their lives Neil Armstrong crashed on a test flight... Just an hour later, he was seen in his office doing paperwork as if nothing happened.  The best astronauts were not phased What Rob enjoyed most -- Meeting each of the 3 astronauts.  All 3 are alive and still married (rare in the astronaut program).  They are down to earth, humble leaders Rob describes what it was like flying with Frank Borman What it was like watching Apollo 13 with Jim Lovell (who was also on Apollo 8) The power of constraints -- "Deadlines can help us do incredible things.  Construct them for yourself." Rob's routine -- At desk by 6:00 am and work until 2:00.  "After that, my work isn't very good." Structure it first, organize, and storyboard it Take a lot of walks with a digital recorder and speak the story out Rocket Men has been optioned by Netflix "Deadlines can help us do incredible things.  Construct them for yourself." Social Media: Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertkurson Read: Rocket Men Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

I think there's something in our DNA coded from millions of years of evolution about story. I think it's something that's so common to every single human being on earth. It's part of how we understand the world. And you could see the effectiveness in story, in biblical stories all the way to 30-second television commercials. That's how we make sense of the world is through story. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text, learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text

learners to 44222. Now on to tonight's featured leaders with the great Robert Curson. He's the best selling author of multiple books, including shadow divers, crashing through, pirate hunters, and most recently and my favorite rocket men, the daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man's first journey to the mood. This conversation is so insightful and very entertaining. I loved it. A few of the topics we got into. After graduating from Harvard Law School, why Rob left his big paying job at a large corporate law firm in order to become a writer full time. And then the power of storytelling. Rob gives us useful tips that we can implement into our lives to become better storytellers and the incredible behind-the-scenes story of the three astronauts

from the Apollo 8 mission, which NASA employees call the most rushed and most dangerous mission of all time. This episode is so good. You're going to love it with Robert Curson. All right, Rob, Thank you so much for being here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you so much, Ryan. It's a pleasure and a privilege. So growing up, I have to tell you, and I briefly mentioned this to you as we were chatting before I hit record, is that I was so fascinated. I still am by astronauts, by the moon, by Mars. I'm studying a lot of Elon Musk stuff now about going to Mars. I just love the thought of going to space. And I remember thinking, if I'm not going to be a professional athlete, I want to be an astronaut.

I want to go up into space. And so when you and your team talked about your book, Rocket Men, the Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man's first journey of the moon, I was, you could tell probably by my email response to Ryan Holiday and his company, I was juiced to have this conversation. So I'm excited to have you, man. Oh, it's a great story, Ryan. And I felt just the same way as you did growing up and continue to this day to hold those guys in the highest reverence. So I want to get to your book. But first, I think your personal story, Rob, is inspiring specifically to the people listening. So I mentioned you a little bit about some of the people.

Like, we have this great group of listeners that I'm extremely proud of because they're doing big things. They're very ambitious and motivated in a good way. And your story. So you go to Harvard Law School to be a lawyer and you make it through and do all that. And then at one point, you decide, I don't think I want to do this anymore. Can you walk me through a little bit of your story and how you became a professional writer, despite the fact that you made it through Harvard Law School? Yeah, it started, you know, in college, I was a philosophy major, and that was the first sign of danger that I was head toward the wrong profession because I liked to think and I liked the opportunity to think creatively about things. And so like a lot of people, I came to the end of college and I didn't know what to do next, but my grades were very good.

And that was after, by the way, a high school career in which my class rank was 606 out of 660. I had some hard times growing up and was kind of a drift in high school. I didn't get into any of the colleges I applied to except for one or two. But I turned things around in college, did well. And all of a sudden, needed to decide what to do with my life. So some people said, you should apply to law school. Lawyers are making a lot of money. Now it's only three years, not eight or ten like a medical student.

And then, and you like to argue. and to talk. So go to law school. And because I, you know, what are you going to do with a philosophy degree? You can't open a philosophy shop, really. So I applied to law schools and I got into Harvard Law School. And it panicked me. I didn't really celebrate because I didn't know anything about being a lawyer. I'd never thought about it. But very smart people that I knew told me, you should definitely go to Harvard and get the degree because no matter what you want to do in life, it'll open doors for you. But just go and take the degree. So that's what I did. And, you know, within, I don't know, Ryan, I'd say within a week of getting to Harvard, I knew I had made a

grave mistake. It just was, it seemed to be all about dotting every eye and crossing every T. And the worst indicator that I had was the people who liked being at Harvard Law School the best were the people I disliked the most personally. So, you know, there were a lot of type A personalities, very, very anal retentive, a lot of them, not all. Some of my best. friends are my Harvard Law classmates, but too many of them rubbed me the wrong way. So I thought, this is just not the right place for me to be, but I stuck it out. I thought, you know, I'll trust the people who told me to get this degree. And then I'll give law a chance. And so I did what most of my classmates did when we graduated. I joined a big corporate, big city firm.

I went to Chicago, which is my hometown. And all of a sudden, within, you know, overnight, basically, I was making more money than I'd ever dreamed of making. I'd spent my life basically considering whether I could add pepperoni to my pizzas or not. And all of a sudden I had a BMW and a beautiful stereo, a bicycle with more gears than I ever believed possible. And I was miserable instantly. Law, the practice of law was everything that I feared it would be when I was in law school. It was about representing giant corporations about which I gave no care whatsoever. I could have just as easily been representing the other side.

But the worst part was that it required exquisite attention to minutia. And it punished creative thinking. I had a partner who told me to write a memo and drew a gigantic red X over the front page of the memo that I wrote. And he had comments up in the top that said, I told you to write about California law, not like a Californian. And what he meant was stop being creative and stop thinking outside the lines, do exactly what the forms require. And the idea of spending my life doing that, Ryan, was so depressing to me that I fell into a profound depression about it. And I thought, this is how I'm going to spend the next 50 years.

And, you know, the first thing I did was start to buy myself more stuff because I thought, well, if I'm trying to try. trapped in this terrible life for 50 years, I may as well have fun stuff. And I started loading up on the things that I never could afford before. But none of it made me happy. In fact, all of it just reminded me of how desperately unhappy I was. And I started to think I have to get out of here. And that's basically how things started. Wow. And so, but, but the interesting part is what you did next. And I read this from the, from the interview you did with, um, with Ryan's company that writing routines, which I thought was a great, great interview, is that you had to essentially beg for a different job to do anything, right? And walk me through. Was it Bill Adi, or how do you

say this name, Bill? Bill 80. A.D. Yeah. Okay. Okay. See, what happened, Ryan, was that I was so desperately unhappy on the job. And by the way, I was so bad at it also. So, you know, the real recipe for a bad life is to get a job you hate and to be bad at it. And that's definitely what it was. But think about anybody here, because this, this reminds. me of the Steve Jobs quo. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. And you hated it, right? You hated the job. So how are you going to be good at something that you hate? I think this could relate to, unfortunately, a certain number of the people listening.

I think it's absolutely true. If you hate the thing on a basic level, it's almost impossible to become good at it, at least it is for me in my life. Anything that I've ever been halfway decent at started with a love of the thing, a basic love, or at least a basic curiosity that would grow into a love for something. But with respect to law, I just tried to imagine if there was something I cared less about in the entire world than the practice of big firm corporate law. And I just could not force myself to care either about the clients or about the work. I appreciated it. In fact, I was grateful for the fact that people did care about it. You know, that's who you want as your lawyer. In fact, the people who loved the job were the people I would have hired myself to represent me. But I never would have hired myself because I did not care. And in fact, it bothered me and disturbed me the kind of work. It just seemed a very narrow kind of skill set. So I was so unhappy. I found myself after several months on the job at home to rescue myself basically, right.

stories for myself and they were true stories about my life growing up. I didn't intend anyone to see them. It was just kind of a rescue effort for me. And I remembered things about being a kid and all these stories I wrote about being a kid had a certain theme to them totally accidentally. But the theme was kind of like freedom and just the idea of running unbound and playing in the playground, unbound, not thinking and just pushing yourself on the merry-go-round as hard as you could or playing basketball.

It's as hard as you could without a thought, without looking over his shoulder, without reference to the future. And I noticed something when I was writing these stories. And that was that time passed very, very quickly as I wrote these stories. It was the opposite of my experience in the law firm where, you know, I would spend four hours on a memo or what I thought was four hours and it had only been 25 minutes. The opposite was true when I was writing. And so what I decided on the spot was, whatever it cost me, I had to get out of law and I was going to try. writing because it was the only thing I'd experienced that really made me very happy to do and where time passed very quickly.

And I was naive about how hard it was to become a professional writer. So what I did was I sent resumes to every newspaper sports section within 100 miles of Chicago. And at the time, this is 20 years ago, a little more. There were a lot of newspapers and I sent probably hundreds of resumes and the only person who responded to me was the sports editor. of the Chicago Sun Times, which was then the eighth, I think the eighth largest paper in the country. And his name was Bill 80. And he's a guy, I'll be grateful to for the rest of my life. But at the time,

Bill said, you know, I have no jobs for you here. But I did get a resume from another desperately unhappy lawyer in Florida. Maybe you guys can talk and commiserate. But once I had Bill on the line, I wasn't about to let him go. That's how unhappy I was on my law job. And I begged him to let me come in and take out the garbage at the Sun Times to deliver the mail, to answer phones, anything. He said, you know, I don't even have those jobs. There's 50 people a week. Call me for that job.

But one thing I have going for me, Ryan, is that I'm incredibly persistent. And I begged and begged and wouldn't let him off the phone. I think just to kind of get rid of me. He said, well, you can come in this weekend and answer phones and take high school football scores if you want to know what it's like to be at a newspaper. And that's what I did. I showed up that Friday night. picked up the phone and I typed in, you know, the scores, Glembrook South 17, Glemberg North 14,

and I was so thrilled to be there. There were guys there making a living who were wearing sneakers and sweatshirts and throwing their footballs around. And I saw columnists, sports columnists that I had loved and worshipped and read growing up as a boy. And I thought, these guys are being creative and they're writing about sports every day. I've got to be here. And so I just determined on the spot I'm not leaving here, no matter what anyone tells me, I'm not leaving. I'm going to make some kind of future here writing. I love the story. So, but I do want to get practical, too, because I understand the people who listen and for myself.

So that story sounds great, especially now that you've, I never want to say anyone has ever made it, but you're one of the greatest storytellers in the world, right? And that's what people have said in your books prove it. and the sales of them have as well. But so, so technically you've, you've made it past that, that point of answering the phones and taking the scores and basically not making any money. However, there are a lot of people listening, Rob, who they have a passion or a dream or want to do something like that or, or unfortunately have a job like, like you had when you're, when you're, uh, working in law.

But they also have a spouse and car payments and a mortgage and kids and they have responsibilities that they have to actually, they have to pay for those things. So when you, when, if that person is, is listening to you right now, Rob, what advice do you give them when they say, Rob, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in the same spot you were in. The difference, though, is I got, I got a high fixed cost, right, for my family well-being. What, what can I do to potentially be the next Rob Kirsten so I can follow my dream, so to speak? I think that's a much tougher position to be in because I wasn't married at the time when I did this. And I had purposely in law school made a promise to myself to avoid what people in my classmates called the golden handcuffs.

Because a lot of us sense that we might be trapped someday. But I think that you can get out in all kinds of ways, even with a mortgage and family and obligations. The real thing to remember, at least as it always worked for me, was to never give up on trying to. to find something else. You can do it at night. You can do it on the weekends. You can write letters to people you admire. You can call people you admire. The thing that really worked for me was that I refused to take no for an answer. I did it politely. I wasn't obnoxious about it on the phone or anything. But that's been a common theme as I pushed my way through into this challenging writing career that I just was unwilling to see the rest of my life go the way it was going at the moment.

And so it was easier for me because I didn't have a mortgage at the time and because I was willing to live with a lot less salary. But it wouldn't have mattered no matter what because I was so unhappy at the time and so committed to getting out that I would have done whatever it took. And I just, as I did with Bill 80, I would not let people off the phone and I would not stop trying. And I think if someone is committed enough to make the change, they will absorb that idea that there's no choice. That's how I felt, Ryan. And there was no choice and I was going to do whatever it took. I had a little bit easier path to do it because I had fewer obligations. But it didn't matter.

Whatever my obligations were, I was not going to give up on this. I love it, man. It's great. I can't wait to talk more here about Rocket Man in a second. But one of the things you mentioned was storytelling. Okay. And I think storytelling is a vital skill to develop if you are a leader in any of any business of in any form of life, whether you're a coach, whether you're a CEO, you're a manager.

Becoming a good storyteller can help spread your mission, your vision, it can inspire other people. And you said that the way that you write is as if you were leaving a great Indian restaurant in Milwaukee, driving about an hour home because a great story is told in about an hour. And that's your method of writing your books. And like I said, you have been names by a lot of credible people as one of the best storytellers in the world. And so if you had to give storytelling advice to leaders in any facet of the world or of business, what are some of the key ingredients to being a great storyteller? Well, that's a great question. And, you know, I'll tell you how I think I came about it.

First of all, I totally agree with what you say about storytelling. I think there's something in our DNA coded for millions of years of evolution about story. I think it's something that's so common to every single human being on earth. It's part of how we understand the world. And you could see the effectiveness in story in biblical stories all the way to 30-second television commercials. That's how we make sense of the world is through story. And there's so much in story that's common, whether it's a short commercial or a biblical story or a great movie or even a two minute and 30 second pop song, there are fundamental elements to stories that, I mean, it sounds almost tried to say it, but stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And often you could find the best elements of story if you look at great movies. You know, there's a wonderful. books about how to write screenplays that get at this very well, that's structure of story,

that often stories begin with a hero that is going about his or her business with a great degree of equanimity. And then there's what they call an inciting incident that throws the hero off. There's a challenge and something has to be accomplished or conquered. And the hero goes on a journey and you'd be surprised. And they go through various battles. I didn't know anything about these elements of story, but I understood them intuitively. I think. I grew up, Brian, with a traveling salesman for a father. He was on the road for nine or 10 months out of the year. And in order that I didn't grow up feeling fatherless, my dad and my mom agreed that I should go on a lot of these road trips. They were all by car with my dad. So I missed three weeks,

four weeks of school at a time constantly growing up. And I went on the road with my dad. He had his own motorcycle paints and lubricants business. And what we did during these huge long, across America was tell stories. And he was the greatest storyteller I'd ever come across. To this day he is. And he told stories in this intuitive way that had beginnings, middles, and ends. And his heroes and his stories always were going about their business and everything was okay. And then something shook up their world. And they had to go fix that. They had to go on a journey. And oftentimes they had people help them learn how to go on the journey. And they would battle certain, sometimes they were monsters, sometimes they were enemies along the way. And often they

would have a big battle at the end. And then at the end, they were changed somehow. And he was intuitive storyteller. He never read any books about the structure of story. But that's how his stories laid out. And I started to realize when I watched great movies or great TV shows or even listen to great songs, often that's how things laid out. And so as I started to get into the book writing, I noticed that my instinct was to tell stories that way also. And I sought out real life heroes because all my books are nonfiction. And they all are kind of adventure stories, true life, true real adventures with people who seem to have been going about their business. And then were shaken into a new kind of world. And those stories are the kind that gripped me

the most. So that's what I look for in a good story when I'm trying to pick a subject for my next book because when things lay out that way, the story kind of tells itself naturally. So what made you pick Apollo 8, the mission that most of us don't think about. We think about 11 or certainly 13, which we'll talk about a member of Apollo 13, obviously from 8. But why choose this mission to, I know when you write a book, especially you, and I've talked to a lot of bestselling authors that you basically live with this topic, with these questions, with these people for years and years.

And so when you decide a book topic, you have to be very comfortable with the fact that this is going to be my life for years. And years, that's a long time, right? You invested, you've invested a good, good chunk of your life in Rocket Men and Apollo 8. So why this topic? Well, this is probably the greatest story, one of the greatest American stories you come across. This is the story of the first three men ever to leave Earth and the first three men ever to arrive at the moon. And it's exactly as you said, everybody knows about Apollo 11 where we landed on the moon for the first time.

And everybody knows about Apollo 13 where there was a terrible accident near the moon. And the crew almost didn't make it back. But when I started reading, because I love astronauts in space just like you do, I started reading more and more about the Apollo missions. And I came across the story of Apollo 8. Actually, I was inspired because the Apollo 8 command module, the capsule itself, is in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. And there it was. And I started to read about it and research it.

And the first thing that struck me was that so many people at NASA, including so many of the Apollo era astronauts, considered Apollo 8, not any of the others, but Apollo 8 to be perhaps the most daring and risky mission NASA ever ran. And that struck me as odd because why, you know, Apollo 8 didn't land. They orbited the moon 10 times, but they didn't land and there was no accident. And yet here were all these legendary names saying this was the most daring and risky mission, the most dangerous thing NASA might have ever done. And I started to read more about it and realized that NASA had rushed this mission, that they decided on it suddenly and unexpectedly and planned and executed the mission in four months when normal Apollo missions would take 12 to 18 months of planning.

And almost everything about the mission was extraordinarily dangerous. They would go on the Saturn 5 rocket, which had never been flown with human beings aboard. It had only been tested twice. And the second test had been almost a complete disaster. and yet they were going to put three people on board and send them, not 853 miles above the Earth's surface, which was the current world altitude record, but 240,000 miles away to the moon. They were going to do it almost overnight, and they were going to send it without a lunar module, which also, which was the thing that the astronauts used to land on the moon, but also served as a backup engine in case the single engine they had at the moon went wrong. So if they had any kind of malfunction at the moon with their engine, they'd be stranded there forever or crash into the moon. It was extraordinarily dangerous.

And as I read about these dangers and the suddenness of this operation and the reasons for going, the battle with the Soviets, the real desire to get the first man to the moon, it struck me that this is the greatest space mission of all time. And yet almost nothing had ever been written about it. So that's what grabbed me. And I felt like I was the luckiest person in the world to come across the story and have a chance to, to tell it to people who really didn't know much about it at all if they knew anything. I just, I can't fathom something like this happening today. Just the, the NASA, when it comes to putting people on rockets and sending them to space, even with our technology as advances is, we would never rush it like this.

And so when you're doing the research on, on the mission, why did we rush it so much at that space? Which is to the competition? Is that what it was? Was it we have to do what President Kennedy says? I mean, was it a combination? Why would we endanger the lives of these three people? There were two primary reasons they pushed this so fast. And so suddenly, the real first reason, in my opinion,

and I think most astronauts would agree with this, is that we wanted to beat the Soviets to the moon, to get the first human beings to the moon. And it looked like the Soviets. There was a top secret CIA memo that came out that said the Soviets were capable of doing this before the end of 1968, not by landing on the moon, but by getting men around the moon. And that was everything. We had been in an existential level space race with the Soviets since they launched the

first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. But the real goal was to get men around the moon and then certainly on the moon. So it would have been a massive propaganda victory, a space race victory for our arch enemy, the Soviets, had they reached the moon by the end of 1968. So to me, the primary reason was to beat the Soviets. But there was another reason, and that was to keep President Kennedy's promise, which he made in 1961 to the country and to the world, really, that we would land a moon and a man on the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade. And things started to go wrong for the Apollo program in 1960, really in 1967, there was a disaster when the Apollo one crew was killed in a fire on the launch pad during a training exercise. But even after that in 1968,

because the lunar module, the part that was meant to land on the moon, started falling behind in its production. And that threatened to slow the entire Apollo program down and make it virtually impossible to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. So a mild manager at NASA named George Lowe had an epiphany in the summer of 1968 that to speed up the program and to leapfrog the Soviets, we could get a man around the moon, three men around the moon, if we went without a lunar module, it would prove all the techniques and trajectories and everything else required in a trip to the moon without actually landing. And we could get there by the end of 1968, thereby beating the Soviets to the moon by a matter of hours maybe, literally hours, and also keeping the Apollo program on pace for a landing, at least by the end of 1969.

So for those two reasons, this mission was conceived suddenly. executed suddenly and put three great American heroes aboard a rocket that had only been tested twice the second time with near disastrous results. So you, in the research for this book, spent a great deal of time with the three astronauts. So they're all three still alive. They are all, from what I read, still happily married, which is very rare for astronauts, from what I read, unfortunately. But they are in their case.

That's Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Andrews. level for those who've watched Apollo 13, one of my favorite movies, played by Tom Hanks, that character. So you spent time with those guys. You've actually flown with two of them, I read, as well. And Rob, the reason I bring this up and we'll dig into these guys, because I know they're, they have to be kind of risk takers in a way to do this, but there's other parts about them that I want to learn more about, is that this show, I'm constantly striving to understand

the commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence. And obviously these guys do they, not only do they do this mission, but they've lived successful lives. And you've had the great fortune to spend a lot of time around them. When you think of these three specifically and you think of that phrase sustained excellence or sustaining excellence, what do these three guys have in common that has helped them or the characteristics they possess that has helped them do such extraordinary things? I think it goes back to the idea of an absolute refusal at the DNA level to give up. These guys are driven in a way that's rare for people, but even rarer, I think, is the instinct they have that no matter what happens around them, they're going to continue persevering. All three of these guys, you know, the Apollo era astronauts were almost all test or fighter pilots. And because of that, almost all of these guys saw a lot of dying around them when they were flying these cutting edge machines when they were military pilots.

And, you know, to see a giant black cloud in the sky and know that two planes were flying with four people, but seeing only three parachutes coming out of the black smoke is extremely unnerving. But these guys had and developed a certain kind of psychology, whereby they told them. themselves, that's how it goes. That's not going to happen to me. And in the case of Frank Borman, he would say to himself, that guy did it to himself, I'm better than him. And Borman told me he knew that wasn't true necessarily, that maybe he wasn't better than the guy, but that's what he believed. And that's what he had himself believed, because how else do you get back in the cockpit an hour later and go on the same kind of test flight in an unproven machine? So I think these guys got it into their heads and into their psychology that they were not going to

to fail no matter what. And it didn't bother them that that might not necessarily be literally true. It's what they believed anyway. It was a sort of leap of faith in their own abilities and in their own fates that delivered them. And that's the quality, or at least one of the qualities, that NASA recognized, because who else is going to climb onto an unproven rocket that has the power of a small atomic bomb that's never been proven with men aboard and go launch for the moon when nobody's ever been more than 853 miles from the surface of the earth. You have to get a certain type. And that type turned out among other things to be people who believed I'm going to make it, even if the odds say I'm not going to make it. They almost have some sort of self-delusion or irrational

confidence in themselves. Is that, do you think that can relate to the world outside of being an astronaut? Or have you seen examples in your research as a storyteller as a writer of, of of people who have similar qualities to them to say almost this ability to, like you said, to not lie to yourself, but to fully know in your deep subconscious that I'm not necessarily better than him, but I'm going to say it enough to where maybe I'll actually believe it so that I can get on, like the Wright brothers, I think I read that book recently too.

And those guys, I feel like they had some of that in them when it came to building their flying machine and getting on board and flying it, even though they crashed a few times. Is that what you found to be a separator from the greats versus the average? I think that's a big part of it. And I think also these guys were not afraid to fail. All of these guys were picked from the top of the top.

They were the best of the best in almost in every way. And yet at least the ones I spoke to and interviewed in addition to the crew of Apollo 8 seemed not to be too bothered in case things went wrong. They weren't afraid to get back up and keep going. Jim Lovell had an experience when he was flying. on a aircraft carrier when he was a Navy pilot and nearly lost his life. He became basically lost at sea and came in, finally found his ship and came in for a very, very dangerous, treacherous landing. He was shaking.

Now, this is, you know, this is one of, in my opinion, one of the bravest men in the world. But, you know, he was shaking just like the rest of us when he got off the plane, nearly lost this life, but got back in the next day and pulled it off perfectly, the same flight. That's didn't surprise, that story when I told it to others didn't surprise any of the other astronauts, but it surprised me because I don't know, you know, the way Lovell described that flight to me, that I could have ever climbed aboard another airplane, never mind done the same test flight again. So I think a lot of these guys have the ability to shrug off failure and to keep believing that they're the best, even if it appears for the moment at least, that they may not be.

Was it Neil Armstrong that crashed? I mean, it was seconds away from dying, right? And a test flight on Earth, I remember. Was it Neil? I think it was. And they followed up with them shortly after. And he was just in his office kind of acting like nothing happened. It was the most unbelievable thing, Ryan.

And there's tape of this, there's video of this online. I don't see it. Yeah. He was testing this one of the oddest flying machines probably ever built. It was built to kind of recreate. the one-sixth gravity that they would experience on the moon, and they were flying it in Houston. And Neil Armstrong was flying this. You could find this on YouTube.

And the machine started to go haywire and pitch. I can't remember if it pitched sideways or keeled over. But he managed to eject just before the thing hit the ground and blew up and, you know, a giant fireball. And to show you how close he was to the ground, his parachute ride from Egypt. to hitting the ground himself only lasted about 10 seconds. So that's how close he was to death. And the thing was a massive fireball.

It's a big disaster. And the other astronauts heard about it. And they went to his office and found him behind his desk in his office one hour after this event doing paperwork. And looking as if nothing happened, they said, Neil, is it true that you just, that thing just crashed? And he said, yeah, it's true. And even the astronauts were astonished that this guy was so cool about it that all he did was go back to his office, take care of his work and wait for them to build a new one of these so we could climb aboard and learn how to land on the moon. These guys are crazy, man. It's inspiring, though.

I mean, I think we can take pieces of it into our own lives, especially when we think that we've got problems or failure or adversity to think about those are the types of people, though, that we expect to do. these extraordinary things, to be the first people to walk on the moon, to go on Apollo 8 is to be more measured, probably a little bit less emotional in those times, more measured in their approach. And I think from a leadership perspective, that's what I think we strive for or should strive for

because if you're leading a business or managing a team, whatever it may be, there's going to be moments that aren't going to be quite as crazy as crashing and almost dying. However, there will be adversity. It'll come up quite frequently. And I think the success of yourself as a leader as well as the business will be in how you decide to react and respond to those tough moments. I agree with that completely. And imagine how the other astronauts, the impact on the other

astronauts, when they saw Neil Armstrong behind his desk and could see all the black smoke out the window of the thing that had just crashed, the effect on them in the agency. It's a ripple effect. all the way down, I'm certain of it, that someone with that kind of leadership ability, showing that kind of calm and grace in the face of near death had to affect everybody. Definitely makes me think. I learned that a little bit playing quarterback, Rob, I would say, in college, a little bit after college, is you're, especially when you huddle. You have these 10 guys surrounding you and they're looking at you on the eyes.

You're getting ready to call to play. And sometimes you have a few seconds to say something. that's outside of the play, especially if something went wrong. You got sacked or something bad happened. And I think that's another moment you can learn or I learned to that they are watching closely and their actions and what they do next. I'm going to influence that. And so have to really be conscious of that and think about that because that works as well as a dad, as a husband, leading a business, that your reaction to tough moments, your reaction to adversity, I like the phrase use, has absolutely has a ripple effect on the rest of the organization or the rest of your family

or the rest of the astronauts in Neal's case. I think it's absolutely true. I mean, can you imagine a quarterback who's sacked and gets back into the huddle and says, oh gosh, oh, God, you know, how well is the rest of the game going to play out at that point? Right. I believe in it absolutely and I believe, you know, what they say about parenting, just as you said, that you could tell your kids all kinds of lessons and they could be perfect lessons on paper and they could be perfectly expressed. But if you don't model those things genuinely, not act them out, but actually really behave that way, it's meaningless. They're going to see how you really are in the real world and that's going to be the effect on them.

I want to learn more about these meetings you had with the astronauts. I was happy to read that they were happily married alive. Two of them are still flying, it sounds like. Are there any insights or stories that you could share from your time spent as you're researching this book, meeting with them? I think you said you'd live 15 minutes from Jim Lovell. So, I mean, that's pretty incredible. What was it like getting to spend time up close with these guys? It was shocking to me.

And the thing that stunned me, the first time I met them, and probably every time, after that was just how regular guys they were. I was for some reason I built them astronauts up in my mind to be these kind of mythic superheroes and these were the most genuine down-to-earth likeable regular guys I've ever met. They could not have been nicer, they could not have been more humble but genuinely humble about what they'd done and more welcoming to me and more appreciative of the fact that they had done their part to help the country. They were real patriots. And, you know, all of them said that if they hadn't been in the space program, they would have been out fighting for the United States.

And it struck me that I had conceived of astronauts wrongly all these years and building them up to be superheroes. They were better than superheroes. They were much more like you and me. and, you know, I would go out to lunch with them or go to, you know, ordinary restaurants and they just, you know, were just regular guys. And it was, it was sometimes easy to forget that you were with heroes. Sometimes you would get a reminder, though, like when I went flying with Frank Borman in his small two-seat airplane and we were flying out of the Billings, Montana airport, and we taxied up to the runway. And then the air traffic controller got on and started to give him clearance. You could hear the absolute reverence in this young guy's voice who was giving clearance to the guy who had gone to the moon before any human being in the world had gone. And those kinds of little things reminded you that you were with very special people.

But you needed reminders after a while with these men because they were such nice guys. Like I went to Lovell's house, which like you say, it's a 15-minute drive from me here in Chicago. And when he opened the door, there was his golden retriever. And we sat down. And one of the first things he told me is that his golden retriever loves to watch the Apollo 13 movie every time it comes on TV. And his dog is a big fan of the movie and never gets tired of it. And, you know, within five minutes, you feel like this is just one of the nicest guys, plainest, most easygoing guys. And you feel right at home with them.

What does he think of Apollo 13? I assume he helped probably with some of the good. I love that movie. I absolutely. I love Tom Hanks. I love the movie. What does he think of it? I think he loves it also.

And I think I can't remember how many times he's told me he's seen it. But I think he's grateful for it. And that story is an incredible, an incredible tale, too. Lovell spent so much time and space. People don't realize that he had flown on two Gemini flights before Apollo 8. And then after Apollo 8 on Apollo 13, he had, I may be wrong about this, But I believe that by the time he retired, he had more time and space than any human on earth, including the Soviets. So he had extraordinary experiences and adventures in addition to what he's most known for, which is Apollo 13.

Yeah. I could talk to these guys all day. One thing I pulled out, I took a note on this, you think about constraints in our lives, like all of us, whether it's a time constraint or something that's not nearly as important. but constraints on a social media platform like Twitter used to be 140 now. It's 280, but sometimes the constraints can be a positive. Or as my friend and former guest, Andrew Brandt, likes to say deadlines spur action. Yes. And so thinking about, and I know as a lawyer, you've probably heard that as well, Andrew's a lawyer as well, thinking about constraints on our lives. Are there, is there a takeaway from the time constraint,

we had to get Apollo 8 out, why we wanted to do it, how we did it, how we were able to do it in such a short period of time that if you think as a parallel to people listening, and this could be a wide variety of an answer, I would imagine, but thinking about how constraints can be helpful, what tips or advice would you give to leaders or people in general when it comes to putting constraints on yourself, even if maybe you don't have to? Yeah, I think that's such a great point, Ryan. And I think that if you talk to any of the astronauts or managers at NASA from the Apollo era, they will tell you that it was almost unthinkable to do what they did unless they were so pushed under deadline to beat the Soviets and to keep John F. Kennedy's promise to the country to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

That without that absolute drive and that imperative, they viewed it as an absolute imperative to the country, to the president, and to themselves, a patriotic duty they had. They never could have done this. It seemed inconceivable. I can't remember talking to anyone who didn't express that sentiment, that without that kind of pressure and that deadline, and it was a hard deadline. They don't think they could have done it. But think about the deadlines. They really weren't essential. I mean, why did we have to get there by the end of the decade? What if we had done it by 1970? Or what if the Soviets had gotten there first, would that have really diminished what we did? I mean, it was in certain ways an artificial propaganda-driven. deadline that had a lot to do with the space race and American pride and catching up because the Soviets were so far ahead of us in the space race for so long. Kennedy needed something spectacular to overtake them. But really, did we need to do it? So in a certain way, it could be argued that these deadlines and these imperatives were artificially induced, but they produced one of the greatest achievements in mankind's history. And I might argue, the greatest achievement. So I'm all for deadlines and I'm all for imagining any way you can

to construct them, artificially put them together, whatever it takes. I'm a huge believer in that. Do you put them on yourself as a writer or maybe your publisher does for you or an editor? Or how do you use deadlines in your own life? I do try to put it on myself. Some writers miss deadlines. Some book writers are famous for that. But I like to imagine. this is this is what the publisher and I discussed when it will be ready and I'm going to make it ready by that point because if I start to think I'll just miss it by six months or something, then it's not just that I start taking too much time to do it, but my writing itself gets sloppy when there aren't those constraints. I need those lanes. You know, I'm watching this

speed skating now in the Olympics and how these guys shift lanes and stay in their lanes and I need those lanes. It's if they weren't there for me, I would be cast adrift. And so I'm grateful for deadlines and I try to respect them and I try never to abuse them because then I start getting sloppy in my own work. I couldn't help but ask before we go about just from a writing perspective. Do you, Dan Pink's great writer and we talked recently and he says he just has this when he, especially when he's writing a book, this mission every day.

And that mission is I am going to get my 700 words. no matter what. I'm getting my 700 words. Sometimes it gets more, but that's what I'm going to do. Do you have set practice in place when you're in the process of writing a book or what is your practice that you have in order to get these things done? Well, I don't have a certain word count because every day is different. I may wake up and my work just doesn't look good that day. But what I do try to do is make sure I'm at my desk from about six in the morning till about 1 p.m., maybe 2 p.m., depending on how I feel. After one or two, my work is not good.

It starts to fall apart. It starts to be sloppy. And worse, I don't realize it until the next day when I pick up what I think was my masterpiece and realize it's junk. But I do try to be at my desk early in the morning because that's when I have the most energy. And I try to at least think through the structure of what I'm trying to do because structure to me is everything. If I figure out the structure of my chapter or the structure of that paragraph, then the writing

comes easy. So everything to me is about construction. So at least the least thing I'll do is sit at my desk and try to organize the storyboard, so to speak, of my chapter or my, at least my page. Whether the writing comes out perfectly that day or not is a little bit irrelevant to me, because 700 bad words for me is worse than zero words. But I will try to be at my desk in the morning. And if nothing's coming out and the structuring is not going right, then I'll take a walk, Ryan, because walking does something magical. And I remember listening to AJ Jacobs talk about that I think when he was speaking to you about the power of walking and that something evolutionary happens when we're walking. And I believe in that absolutely. So a lot of my time

will be spent walking around the neighborhood with a digital tape recorder and I'll talk into it. And the local people think I'm a derelict or a bum off and you can see how they look at you because sometimes I don't shave and I'm walking around talking to myself and it's 11 o'clock in the morning. So I look like a homeless person, you know, making my way through the neighborhood. But that's okay because I do believe that walking really, really helps. So those are the kinds of things that I insist on doing every day when I'm at work on a book. Is writing and book writing 100% of your revenue or how all do you make money? Yeah, that's it.

That's it. I've been lucky enough to sell some of my. books or option them, I should say, for film. So that helps. My first book, Shadow Divers, has been in development for a very long time, as has my second called crashing through. And even my third, my most recent pirate hunters was option for film. So that helps a lot. And I've been lucky enough to make a life, a full-time career in book writing and spending, as you said, about three years on each book, living in a completely different world. So I could go from the world of deep water shipwreck diving, which was the subject of my first book, Shadow Divers, all the

way to the outer reaches of outer space. So what better life is there than that? That's pretty cool. Do you think this one's going to be optioned, or is it, is it we've seen the astronaut movie and we've seen Jim Lovell? Or what do you think? It's already been optioned for development for television. Oh, from a phenomenal Netflix or something like that's the idea. Something along those lines. It's a, that would be great. It's a great story, Ryan. It really is. And it's set in 1968. It happens at the very end of 1968, which is one of the worst, most divisive, fractious years in the country's history. And the parallels to 2018 are just incredible, how the country seems so divided against each other. And here these guys go. And the very last

week of 1968, you know, when Apollo 8 lifted off, Time magazine had named as its man of the year, the dissenter. And by the time Apollo 8 came back, they had changed it to the crew of Apollo 8. That's how inspiring this flight was, man's first trip to the moon, where the astronauts read, I won't ruin it for people, but they made a broadcast on Christmas Eve as they orbited the moon that was listened to by about a third of the world's population. And it remains one of the great moments in history that broadcast. So it just on every level, was inspiring it united this country. And like you said before,

these guys remained married to this day to their childhood sweethearts. They're the only crew, astronaut crew of the Gemini or Apollo era that was able to survive all the marriages. So it's just a great story on every level. Oh, Rob, I love this stuff. I'm so glad you've invested so much time in putting it together.

And I would love to see it as a Netflix series or something like that. I could see that being the perfect home for something like this. And I'm just so grateful, too, that you've invested your time with me and my listeners to share more about your own story, which I'm fascinated by, as well as the makeup and everything that went into this book, Rocket Men, the Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man's first journey to the moon. I hope everyone buys this book. I'm grateful, Rob. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Ryan.

I'm a big fan, and it's been a big honor to be on your show. Thank you. Yeah. Where would you send, thank you, by the way. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Oh, you could go to my website, which is Robert K-U-R-K-U-N.com. That has everything. I just signed up for one of the giveaways to, I think you said, was it a moon rock?

Yeah, a piece of the moon. Yeah, piece of the moon. Can you believe I'm giving that away? I should keep it. Robertcerson. dot com slash giveaway. I, maybe I can, I was hoping maybe we could talk

on the side that I could, I could score a piece of the moon somehow, but I know we can't cheat. So maybe I can get lucky and win. Well, definitely enter. I did enter. I did. I'm like, I'm going to enter again. Because I want, I think that would be pretty cool. As I said, I'm a massive fan of watch from Earth to the Moon, Apollo 13, read books.

And obviously this one, that's why I was a joy to do this. So thanks again, man, for being here. And I absolutely want to continue this dialogue as we both progress. I'd love it, Ryan. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Rob. Take care. Okay. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you being here. And thank you to Rob for sharing such a beautiful story. So well researched, you can tell. I love his attitude and its approach towards his craft and especially at the very beginning when he left his big time job at a large law firm. I'm making a lot of money. I'm inspired by stories like this. And if you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you

would write a review, subscribe, and rate the show in iTunes Apple Podcasts. That's write a review, rate the show, hopefully five stars, and subscribe in iTunes Apple Podcasts. It helps spread the message. Thank you so much again for being here. I cannot wait for the next one. See you next week. Yes, sir? Yep. Still here. Oh, man. Thank you so much. I love this stuff. And you, I mean, not surprising, but you have a great way of telling the story and the makeup. up in keeping everyone so engaged, definitely keeping me engaged. So I'm super appreciative of that. Thank you so much, man.

Oh, Ryan, you're so fantastic of what you do. Can't thank you enough. And, you know, grateful to be on it. Just love the show and, you know, awesome to talk to you.