The Rich Roll Podcast - Mishka Shubaly On Forgiveness, Authenticity & Life As a Sober Artist

Episode Date: August 27, 2015

If you're a long-time listener of the podcast, then you’ve treated yourself to several of my conversations with today's guest. You know this guy well as my gravelly voiced, eminently talented, always charming yet generally disheveled, periodically homeless co-host — now back for a record 6th appearance on the RRP. Mishka Shubaly doesn’t care much for formalities. But if you need a resumé, his goes something like this: A self-professed povertarian, Mishka writes true stories about drink, drugs, disasters, desire, deception, and their aftermath. He began drinking at 13 and college at 15. At 22, he received the Dean's Fellowship from the Master's Writing Program at Columbia University. Upon receiving his expensive MFA, he promptly moved into a Toyota minivan to tour the country nonstop as a singer-songwriter, sharing the stage with artists like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Decemberists. At 32, Mishka got sober and shortly thereafter began publishing a string of bestselling Kindle Singles – short non-fiction novellas — through Amazon. His writing has been praised for its grit, humor, fearlessness, and heart. The Long Run*, his mini-memoir detailing his transformation from alcoholic drug abuser to sober ultra-runner is one of the best-selling Kindle Singles in Amazon history. Mishka's third solo album, Coward’s Path — the finest set of miserable and sad songs you might ever hear– will be released on October 2, 2015. His new book, I Swear I'll Make It Up To You: A Life on the Low Road* hits bookstores March 8, 2016. If you're new to this podcast, dig the Mishka vibe and want to hear more, check out RRP episodes 27,31,65,95 & 104. That's about 9 hours of Mishka to keep you busy. Enjoy! Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. paradigm breakers, the big forward thinkers. And in the case of this week's guest, the reformed, what would you call yourself, Mishka? How about reforming? Reforming. In a perpetual state of reforming what? Reforming idiot. Bad boy. Excellence. Across all categories of excellence and positive culture change to mine the tools, the insights, and the principles

that can help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So we're doing an unprecedented thing here. I'm having Mishka sit here and record the podcast intro with me, something I usually do by myself. We just wrapped our interview, and I thought it would be fun to have him join for this section. How do you think the interview went? Scary.

It's always scary. We always talk about stuff in public that I wouldn't talk about in private. But, you know, I'm proud of what we do. We always go there. I think it was pretty good. Yeah. We broke some new ground on a couple issues, I think. Pretty wide-ranging, too.

You and I, we can talk about anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, for somebody who's brand new to the podcast and maybe missed the six or five or seven or however many times you've already been on the show, let's break down your background a little bit. Impresario of the Kindle singles market. How many bestselling Kindle singles have you written? Well, let's back up or going even earlier than that. I'm an alcoholic and I'm also a bestselling writer. I've had six bestselling Kindle singles, a musician. I have a new record coming out October 2nd called Coward's Path, which is about my years in darkness. I am a sometime ultra runner. I am a... which is the subject of perhaps your bestselling Kindle single, the long run. Yes.

Which you have adapted into a new book, which is coming out in March. Yeah. Uh, it's going to be called, uh, I swear I'll make it up to you on, uh, on public affairs and yeah, that'll be out early March. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. I feel like my role in the ritual podcast is to be your number one fan. I don't know about that. I would call it erstwhile co-host. And now that you're, uh, going to be spending a lot more time in California, uh, I can foresee, um, doing a lot

more on the show with you. So I'm looking forward to that. Absolutely. You, you know, the number, that's right. So we won't spoil it. This is a really fun conversation, similar and also quite different than the other appearances of Mishka on the show. But if you've enjoyed those, then I think you're going to dig on this. A quick note, just to make all you guys aware, there's some explicit language for those of you that are queasy. So if you've got kids in the car or you're playing it in the kitchen or whatever, maybe pop the earbuds in or listen to it later. But it's not too bad.

But, you know, Mishka's Mishka. You've got to let him be who he is. I can't turn it down, man. I've got to be me. Thank you, everybody, who has supported the show. I appreciate you guys tuning in. It means a lot to me. Thanks for subscribing on iTunes

and for subscribing to my weekly newsletter and for using the Amazon banner ad for all your Amazon purchases. If you click the Amazon banner ad at richworld.com, it won't cost you anything extra on your Amazon purchases, but it really puts wind in our sails. And I appreciate everybody who has made a point of doing that. That means a lot. Before we get into the interview, a quick note. If you've been listening for a while, you know that I've got a couple online courses at mindbodygreen.com. I've got the Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and also a course called The Art of Living with Purpose. both of these courses starting on August 26 and running through August 30. So The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, which is like three and a half hours of streaming video content. It's basically a great like sort of piece that goes well with The Plant Power Way, our cookbook.

It's usually $99. It's available for just $54. And The Art of Living with Purpose is on sale for $69. It's usually $99. It's available for just $54. And the art of living with purpose is on sale for $69. It's usually 99. So again, that runs 826 through 830. Go to mindbodygreen.com, click on video courses, and you can check that out. And that's it. We're just going to get into it. I appreciate you guys for all the support and the love. Keep telling your friends and keep sharing it. And without further ado, Mishka Shubali. Any last words before we get into the interview?

Brace yourselves. Fair enough. Mishka, man, what's going on oh my god here we are again I can't believe it and enter the octagon is this like uh number five how many times have you been on the podcast uh this is five or six it's something like that it's turning into it's like a biannual public therapy well the last time I saw you I think was think, was our book party in New York City. Yes. And that was, we attempted to do a live podcast there, but the recording was- I'm never going to live that down.

Didn't work out. I've tried three times. Yeah, three times to record live events. And every time it's been a misfire. I thought we had it dialed in. And then when I went to listen to it, I was like,'t air this could barely hear it that's okay i i you're you're taking it more in stride than i am because i was the one who was like rich we got to do this it's going to work i'm going to make it work and we had the backup recorder we had the i know but i told you i said it hasn't worked yet so i my expectation level was

like very very low so when it when i listened to it and it didn't work out i was like yeah well yeah i didn't expect it to i um it's weird because a lot of people do live podcasts and somehow they figured out how to do it i don't know why we're having so much trouble it's it's that weird thing where you're trying to have it go out to the speakers so the people in the audience can hear it and you're also patching into the recorder and it seems simple but for some reason it's trickier than i think it takes a like a jenny jones level of production in order to make something like that happen and apparently that's above and beyond what i can do well the past is the past we're here now yes you're in uh you're in my little office here in los angeles lots of life changes and uh let's catch up man

like what's happening in the life of Mishka? We're flying without a net, by the way. I got no agenda here. My page of notes is blank. And we're just going to freewheel and see where it goes. I just left New York, my home of 17 years, my apartment of nine years, Left New York, my home of 17 years, my apartment of nine years, the apartment that I bottomed out in and bounced back. And I just turned in my book, which is. Yeah, congrats. Thank you.

Which is, you know, I'm so excited and anxious about that. Is that the final, final edit? I mean, there'll be notes and copy editing and all that, right? I mean, are you still expecting uh like response from the editor to come back and rework some stuff or is this pretty much it uh that's it for editorial feedback now we go to the lawyers which i know that will be extensive and then also the because why is it why are why are the lawyers gonna need to get involved? Some names must be changed in order to protect the guilty. Okay. What's the title?

The title now is I Swear I'll Make It Up To You, which didn't really ring my bell initially because it struck me as overtly sincere. But the more that it went through my head, it struck me as totally perfect because that's the kind of thing that an alcoholic says to you over and over and over again, and it never happens. But this is my attempt. This is a big, long apology to a lot of people.

So this is your literary amends to the world? Yeah. And in part, yeah, it's also, I mean, it's a really deep exploration of my relationship with my father and how that influenced my decision to drink to excess over and over and over again. And it's about patching up that relationship. Has your dad read the manuscript? my last encounter with my dad was I, uh, I stopped off at his house for a day when I was on tour with a buddy of mine. And at the end of our, you know, our visit together, I said, dad, you know, every time I come out here to see you, I always have something I need to talk to you about. And he was like, Oh, I know. And I said, you know, I don't really have anything to talk, any issue to go over with you now. I just want to tell you that i love you and he said mishka i read the book i know you know i love you too and then the violins

came up and the sun set in the background right so he so he did read the he did read it yeah i um he was he was there reading it with me sort of like you know every step of the way um and it's man that was a real emotional tightrope to um to have my dad you know every step of the way um and it's man that was a real emotional tightrope to um to have my dad you know because it's written you know when i'm when i was 19 i'm writing as if i was 19 so i'm saying that he's you know a coward and a scumbag and a piece of shit and how much i hate my father and he's reading all of that and then i'm having him fact check stuff so it's like okay this argument that we had in 1997, let's reconstruct that together. You know, and.

So you're workshopping it with him. Yeah, it was. To check your memory against his memory, both of which I'm sure are highly unreliable. Well, this was the. That distinct, right? There were so many gifts in the book. And one was I interviewed him him a couple years ago. And one of the things that he said in that interview was, people misremember things.

Even if I remember it wrong, this is how I remember it. And that became my North Star when writing this book was that. To honor his version, his um of events no to honor mine it's my it's my book if he wants to write a book i'll help him fact check it but that was the thing is that was more it was to free myself from an expect the expectation of writing an objective truth and instead to say this is my story it's how i remember it my story is valid it's going to be it's going to be wrong in a lot of ways but that's it's how i remember it and my father was incredibly supportive he was like well i don't remember it that way but this this story this is your your memory you know so he was like you know print it

that way that's how you remember it. That's pretty cool of him. I mean, he could have gotten angry or resentful or lashed out at you. So that's an interesting kind of, you know, dynamic to be in with with somebody that, you know, you love and raised you. It's it was such a bizarre experience, Rich. I when when I was, you know know drawing this uh this book into focus with bird when we were like getting ready to pitch it to uh to different editors um you know the elevator pitch that we settled on was uh how long distance running helped me forgive my father and i was never quite comfortable with that and i couldn't figure out why and then i got you know

60 of the way through the book and i was Oh, the reason I feel uncomfortable about it is because I haven't forgiven my father. And this is a huge problem. Because the only thing that I offer to people as a writer is my honesty. And I've, and I, I lied here. I haven't forgiven him. and I've and I I lied here I haven't forgiven him I let myself down I let every single reader down I need to give the money back and torch this project and just be done with it but when if you feel like you're in hell the solution is not to stop and sit down but to keep moving to to get through it and I so I just kept writing. I kept writing. I kept talking to my father, kept trying to work it out. And then one day I woke up and I sort of like opened a cupboard in my heart looking for the anger and resentment that I had

for my dad. And it wasn't there, I didn't make a conscious decision to, like, I'm going to forgive him. I just went looking for that anger one day and couldn't find it. And it's like I forgave him against my will. So it wasn't anything specific that occurred or some kind of lightbulb moment. It was just an evolution. Do you think it was just the process of trying to grapple with your relationship with him as you're, you know, workshopping this book and trying to figure out how you're going to lay it out that got you to that place? Or, you know, what do you attribute that to? There's a great Hemingway quote, and he talks about, you know, a family losing their money.

And he says, it happened very gradually and all at once. And that's sort of how I forgave my father. You know, part of it was I discovered that my dad had been molested by his mother until he was 14 years old. And I was. That's a big one. Yeah. And. How did you discover that?

It's a good story. How did you discover that? It's a good story. Sometimes you do a bad thing and the end result is good. I was on tour when I was living out of my van and my drinking and substance use was pretty redlining, as it was for years and years. And I was staying at his house when he wasn't there. And he divorced my mother. He had an annulment done by the Catholic Church so he could remarry his second wife, Teresa, in the Catholic Church. So there was this annulment, this document where he talks about

why the marriage was void and blah, blah, blah. And I knew that it was full of answers. And I knew that like that secret information that I saw that, you know, the key that would crack this whole thing opened. I knew that it was in there. And, um, but I knew I didn't have access to it, you know? So I was at his house, I'm drinking, you know, I hooked up with some friends. So I had a bunch of different drugs I was taking. Getting pretty loose. And I logged onto his computer, and right there on the desktop, it said, annulment. And I was like, no, man, this is fucked up. This is the wrong thing to do. Don't do the wrong thing.

Be strong. Do the right thing. Don't read it. He didn't give it to you. It's not yours to read. And it was physically exhausting for me to do the wrong thing be strong do the right thing don't read it he didn't give it to you it's not yours to read and it was physically exhausting for me to do the right thing right that's it's not not my specialty right so i pushed myself away from the computer desk in the rolling chair and like lean back and let my head fall to the left and then i glanced over and there was a filing cabinet right there and the filing one

drawer was open one inch and one tab was sticking out of the the open drawer and it said annulment and I was like okay um the god that I don't believe in wants me to read this this is a sign from you could that's one interpretation or the universe or whatever and so i um so i opened it and i read and um you know i read he had written something about me you know that like you know my son is an alcoholic failure and that was incredibly gratifying to read because i knew that's what he thought of me and uh it was i was like okay finally here it is the truth what he thought of me. And, uh, it was, I was like, okay, finally, here it is the truth. And then I also read, you know, about, um, about his life, you know, as a child growing up in, you know, rural, um, you know, growing up on a farm in Northern Saskatchewan, um, pretty isolated,

uh, you know, very sort of deeply culturally ingrained alcoholism and domestic abuse and, you know, just the, the gulag of his childhood. And so I read that, you know, I read all that stuff when I was 26 or 27 and then just filed it all away in my head because I had no idea how to deal with it. But then, so the process of writing this book and, you know, so that was the thing that happened sort of all at once. book. And, you know, so that was the thing that happened sort of all at once. And then, but then there was the gradual process of just talking to my father again, asking him questions, listening to him, listening to his responses, you know, engaging with each other and, um, and hearing

him listen to me. Um, I finally sort of realized that my dad just isn't like capital M, capital D, my dad. He's a guy, he's a man. And before that he was a boy. And before that he was a child. And like that he had all these experiences that add up to the person who I know now. And he made some mistakes.

I've made some mistakes. You've made some mistakes, you know? And you know, I, I don't think he you know i know he didn't want me when i was a kid but i'm not a kid anymore i'm a man and he loves me i love him you know you get one dad in your life it's what you make of it and uh this is a this is a long exhausting year just trying to salvage that relationship. Right.

So you came into this information quite a while ago, though. So it wasn't like in the process of writing this book, you had this discovery about his past. It was just more of a kind of a realization or a dawning upon you that this information that you came into while you were drinking and using perhaps could help solve this wound. Yeah. I mean, there were a couple of new discoveries. That was an old discovery. But I think you'll agree with me that our brains are endlessly wily when it comes to

concealing truth from ourselves. We hide it from ourselves better than anybody can hide it from us. Yeah, for sure. Especially when you're an alcoholic. And also, I didn't want to. There's levels of denial. Yeah, yeah. It's a constant process of discovery and trying to grapple with being more honest with yourself.

And it's painful. It sucked, dude. It absolutely sucked. If I make other people cry one-tenth the amount that I made myself cry when I was writing this book, I would make a million dollars. Because I was just there hurting my own feelings every single day sitting in front of the computer like melting down. And I'm so grateful that I did it. It's worth doing the work. Well, it's interesting because when you kind of launched into this project, I mean it was originally sort of conceptualized as just a longer form version of the long run, your Kindle single, right?

You were going to kind of extrapolate upon that and turn it into, you know, a 300 page version of what you'd already written. But then, you know, in the process of working it out, it becomes something else entirely. Yeah, writing, a piece of writing takes on a life of its own. It's like, you know, you're playing, you're playing GI Joes or something, and you have a script or a narrative, but then at a certain point, you take your hands away, and the GI Joes keep moving on their own. And then you just have to sort of like record their movements, you know? And that was the thing is that I could have fought this book and I could have, you know, made it more, you know, just about running and the races and, you know, grinding out the miles. And, but, um um this was a problem i had to solve man

this was um this is why i drank i finally figured it out you know and uh so in your mind do you think that you solved and cured yourself of alcoholism no dude you do this to me every time we need to have the uh we need to have it like the setup jar and every time you set me up for one of those you have to put a dollar in it that'd be like six bucks by now i'm just interested in your response my response is no um that's that's a relief to hear it uh i'm an alcoholic i will be an alcoholic for the rest of my life. I understand that. And the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And I know that the instant that I think I got a beat, that's when I start drinking again.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that that query of like, you know, why am I an alcoholic? What caused me to be an alcoholic? I mean, people ask me that all the time. And, you know, I don't really have an answer for that. And I don't spend a lot of time trying to, you know, mine that question for an answer either, because I don't know that it will avail me of any, you know, additional peace. of any, you know, additional piece. Like, I just know that I am, and I know what the solution for me is, and I try to do the best that I can, and I'm highly flawed and fallible in that regard, but I'm always trying to move forward.

And so I don't have a crystal clear, you know, idea of, like, this is why, you know? Yeah. You know, my background is very different from yours, and, you know, I could say, well, you know, maybe it was because was because of this or maybe because it was that but at the end of the day i just that it is what i am you know and i think i accept that and getting to the bottom of the whys doesn't necessarily you know i don't always find that to be a productive use of my time yeah no i i definitely i mean i phrase it as, you know, I understand why I drank.

And I don't phrase it as I've cured myself. You know, it's sort of like, you know, you toss and turn all night long. And it's like, oh, you know, do I need to quit coffee? Like, what did I eat before? Whatever, you know. And then finally in the morning, you like, you know, lift up the mattress and there's a huge stone under your bed. And it's like, oh man, that's what it was. You know, it's been a mystery my whole life of like, you know, what's been eating me, what's been like driving me crazy. And, uh, you know, and I really think that that was it.

Um, you know, I mean, obviously there's other, you know, there's other factors and stuff. Um, you know, I mean, it runs in my family. That's one thing um i'm it's weird man i'm at a point now where i'm not it's not just that i um that i accept that i'm an alcoholic and that i'll always be an alcoholic but i'm like grateful for it now god forbid just that you know i was talking to i was uh talking to somebody the other day or you know somebody wrote to me about um you know creativity and um you know if if using substances had helped me or you know whatever and um i didn't answer that question but i was able to just say that um i i make no apologies for the life i lead now and i'm done with making apologies for the life that i led it brought me to this point um i don't

you know i don't think that if i i think if i hadn't been an alcoholic i'd be a lot less empathetic to other people with their struggles with whether it be with food or poisonous relationships or, you know, or whatever. I certainly know what it's like to be to be weak, you know, and that's an invaluable experience. Everybody should feel like that sometime. You'll have much more compassion for your fellow human beings if you know what it's like to just, you know, I just want to throw myself on the floor and cry. And, you know, I think I gained a lot of experience and, you know, wisdom. I wish I had spent less time doing it, like maybe 10 years less. But at the same time, to figure it out at 32, a lot of people

figure it out at 52. So I just got to be grateful that I figured it out as early as I did. Right. Yeah. I mean, in the parlance of recovery, they call it, I will no longer wish to shut the door. I will no longer regret the past or wish to shut the door on it. And if you can get to that place, that's a really beautiful thing. And I would agree with you on the empathy thing. Like, I think that, you know, when you've suffered and kind of come out the other side and you're trying to repair your life

and evaluating the wreckage of your past and you're dealing with shame and regret and resentment and, you know, you're harder on yourself than anyone else is in the world. It's a lonely place, you know, and to crawl out of that, you know, one day at a time to get to a new place where, you know, your life is repaired and you have meaning and purpose and you have something to offer, um, allows you to, um, be more,

uh, gentle with other human beings, you know, and, and, you know, it's an interesting time right now. Like I've said this before on the podcast,

but you know, we're in the, the Gawker culture, you know, we're in this schadenfreude infused, you know, sort of public shaming sort of where people triumph and watching people yeah and and i don't you know i don't like that you know it's like i don't want you know

somebody shining that mirror on me and i don't i don't celebrate it when it's shined on somebody else we're all flawed human beings we've we've all done things you know that that uh we're not proud of and and and and i think that you know people that, that we're not proud of. And, and, and, and I think that, you know, people that, that, that celebrate that, like need to really kind of look at their own lives a little bit more. And, and I don't judge them either. You know, I'm like trying really hard to just be compassionate to everybody, but you know, it's, it's, it's a weird time that, that, that is confusing, I think, for a lot of people, like, I don't, you know, it's, it's, it doesn't make me feel good about our culture when I

see that. I, I agree. Um, it's difficult to, it's like every time you open your computer or flip on your phone, it's like, let's get depressed. This is really what it is. flip on your phone it's like let's get depressed that's really what it is and i i find myself in a in a curious um you know something that's having a positive effect on me you know with the sort of internet culture is that you know with my sort of music career starting to spring back to life you know i so i played this show last night where I'm playing my old songs about smoking crack and drinking whiskey and just being an idiot and an asshole.

And people were laughing and loving it. And then towards the end of the set, I'd say, listen, I'm sober. It's been six years. You live as long as you can without learning. But eventually, the truth will get through to you. But I find that I'm walking a tightrope between delivering the stuff that the music fans want, you know, songs and stories of being a wasteoid and chemical excess. And then also my readers um, you know,

my readership from the long run and Kindle singles and like doing the stuff that, you know, you and I have done together. And, um, you know, because, because of the internet, all that shit is out there together. And so there are, you know, there are people from, who have heard my music from Doug Stanhope. There's a guy who wrote to me first when he had just gotten out of jail and he had been singing my songs in his jail cell and now he started listening to your podcast and stuff like that. That's awesome. And there are people who already listen to your podcast

and listen to Doug's podcast. And it's incredibly frustrating for me because i'm trying to figure out you know which one of those guys i am and i'm both of those guys and yeah why do you have to bifurcate that exactly and and i keep leaning towards that and and the internet keeps pushing me to say no this is i'm i'm all of these people you know a, a great Walt Whitman line, you know, I'm large. I contain multitudes. I'm all of those people. They're all me.

It's all authentic. It's who I was at one time. It's who I am now. And the person who I am now encapsulates all the people I have been. And so it's, you know. But in your evolution as a musician, though, don't you think it's sort of incumbent upon you now to write new songs that reflect you know your current state of mind and the things that concern you now yeah i um i fly out to uh i fly out to london tonight and then i'm going to be there for a week um i just have three shows So I will have like a bunch of downtime there. And the next,

you know, the next, you know, the way that I'm going to rest my brain from writing the book is to write the next record. And I, you know, I don't think it's going to be chipper or upbeat. I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of songs about running. You're going to write like a top 40 pop song. Yeah. And like,'re about running an ultra marathon you know apologies in advance there will probably be no you know huge shout along plant power chorus oh come on now i'm hurt but um i'm i'm eager to see what comes out and whatever comes out comes out you know and there and there may be more stuff from my old life that I still need to process. Stuff may be marginally more hopeful now.

But also, you don't need alcohol to feel alone, man. That's the truth, man. You don't need anything to feel alienated or weird or uh man i was talking my friend zach about this like we go to punk rock shows and people just look you know i'm i'm 38 he's 40 we go to punk rock shows and people just look at us like who the hell like whose dad is this uh-huh is this a cop is this like a narco show yeah yeah we're like we i love this band that's okay dude as somebody who's 10 years older than you yeah like i don't you know i don't perceive you as as you know i don't know i mean i still look at you as a young man so but that that's more about where i'm coming from well that's cool i mean. I mean, look at John Joseph. I was just going to say.

He's 50. I was just going to say. He gets up there and rocks the house. So. And you know what? And there's a lot of like straight edge, you know, punk rock fans that are, that are his age that still go to shows all the time. Well, the other thing is I would argue that JJ is hitting his prime now, you know, I mean,

I always said that, I always said that I was going to do the Howlin' Wolf model where he put out his best stuff in his 50s and 60s. And that's the thing is that my editor was like, Mishka, you're an idiot. Why are you starving in the back of a minivan when your writing is doing so well and you could be doing all these other things you should be publishing here and publishing there? That's sort of my next line of inquiry here. It's like your writing career is blowing up. You're on the precipice of releasing this book and you insist on being semi homeless and driving around in that beater van that I can't even believe is still running and essentially, you know, living this impoverished, you know,

starving artist lifestyle of going from bar to bar to bar. you know starving artist lifestyle of going from bar to bar to bar rich i do it i do it because it's what i do uh-huh that's you know um being on the road this is so terrible being in a minivan that's that sounds like a harley davidson because it's lost its muffler with like no air conditioning and you're driving through like arizona and it's just incredibly hot and the whole thing smells like feet with like you know three other guys in the van who you all hate because you've been around them 24 hours a day for the last two weeks and then somebody farts and it's the funniest thing that's ever happened. And you laugh like you've never laughed before. I get that.

It's awesome. I get that. But like what I don't get is the insistence on holding on to like that van in some kind of nostalgic way. Like you're teaching at Yale. You're, you know, you're on the move and you're needing a vehicle that serves you, you know, that's not going to break down. You know, you could certainly upgrade. You know, I'm not saying go out and buy a fancy car, but you could at least get something that's safe.

And on some level, I guess my question is, you know, is there some sort of deep-seated thing where it's like, no, I deserve the lousy van? Like, I don't deserve to upgrade to, you know, a car that functions. I don't. There's a lot. I'll fess up, too. There's a lot of stuff in my life that, you know, that's rooted in self-hatred and low self-opinion. The van, it's two things.

One is that this is my second. By the way, I've been in the van, so this is my second by the way i've been in the van so i'm i'm this is firsthand testimony this thing is beyond what you're imagining your yelp review of my fan yeah one star it's definitely a one star although i do like the padlock on the glove box yeah that always gets um every time i get pulled over the cops are like okay um this is the thing it's you know there's a two-pronged argument one is that um we live in a consumer culture and it's it's fucking bullshit it's so much bullshit this is my see on that this is my second toyota previa i probably put a hundred thousand miles um no more than that i bought i got my last previa

ran until i had 289 000 miles on it i bought it when i had 165 this one i've only put uh maybe 20 000 miles on um in you know with so you know with between those two vans i've missed one show from the van breaking down all right there you go i mean it definitely has like this walter white you know mystique to it it's uh it's good on gas um i've never you know i've never had an accident or you know a dangerous breakdown i've gotten flat tires and stuff like that i know it inside and out and and i think there's something to be said there's something noble to my role in my sister's house is to follow behind the kids and they eat the watermelon down. So there's like still, you know, three quarters of an inch of good pink watermelon by the rind.

So my job is to pick up the rind, eat the rest of the useful watermelon. They eat the apple. So it looks like a cartoon, you know, a cartoon apple core where there's still so much good. And I eat the whole thing the rest of the thing it's it's good to use everything until it's used up you know i intend to use this van until it's used up for me it's a source of pride that like i'm gonna get maximum utility out of this vehicle and um the other the other thing is you know i have my friends pull me aside and they're like, dude, you own a house and you drive this van that's like a death trap, you know, it's swaying to burst into flames. And I'm like, yeah, that's why I own a house.

I make smart economic decisions to cut costs on the everyday stuff. And that's how I was able to like buy the house and stuff like well that's a good answer man i'm satisfied all right and also i love it i love it it's like yeah you know it's like that's the real reason yeah all right so how does it feel to be completely out of new york city i mean new york city is sort of you know a character in your life you know it's formative in in negative and positive ways um you know i think i've heard you say you know a character in your life you know it's formative in in negative and positive ways um you know i think i've heard you say you know it's like well new york doesn't have anything there's nothing left for me in new york you know it's time to move on i'm like come on

just because you lost your lease is that a reason to really leave this city that has infused your you know your life and your art with so much you know life and material so what is the what's the justification for saying okay now i'm out of this apartment that i lived in for a long time instead of just finding a new place to live in new york like i'm done well man you're you keep hitting me with questions that i actually have good real answers to okay so um there have been there's been a series of essays that people have published about leaving New York and how like, oh, it's not the city it used to be or let them down or whatever. This is the thing. When you're 19 or 20 or 21, you move to the big city.

You're moving to New York to transform. You're moving to New York to become who you are. And I moved to New York to become a sleazy, you know, and I moved to New York to become a, um, you know, sleazy rock and roll musician and an alcoholic writer. And it didn't unfold the way that I had imagined it was going to, um, I got, it never does. Yeah. You know, and I was, I was an arrogant son of a bitch when I moved there and I just got, I just got it pounded out of me, man. I really, it tore me down.

It really broke me down. You know what I mean? Just like just crying on the street. And, um, and then I got transformed, you know, it, um, it broke me and it rebuilt me. And, um, I'm leaving york in part because i graduated i um i got the transformation that i needed not the transformation i wanted but the transformation i i needed um it uh it broke me down to zero and then you know new york and i built me back up to being a human being and um and i'll always be grateful to the city for that you know i really needed that i needed something that that i couldn't outsmart that i couldn't outwit you know that the city is just will always

win the house always wins you know yeah yeah yeah yeah and um but i'm not fleeing new york i'm i'm running to california and i'm running to california because my parents aren't going to live forever man and uh i spent my whole early adulthood and you know a lot of my childhood just trying to alienate you know one or both of them and i finally realized that you know the only finite resource that we really have in this world is time and uh you know i want to have a lot there's a lot of good times for me left to have with my old man with my you know with my mom and uh you know my sister's little kids man i was hanging out with kai the other day and he was like, Skunkle, your eyebrows are creepy. There's hairs where there's not supposed to be hairs.

Skunkle? Yeah. I can't get that in New York. Yeah. You know, one of my AA buddies, you know, was like, oh, you know, you're pulling a location. A geographic. Yes. And I was like, Oh, you know, you're pulling a location, a geographic. Yes. And, uh,

and I was like, well, which just, just for the listener who might not know what that means, it basically means you, you wake up with this idea that if you, that, that where you live is the problem. And then if you just go to someplace new, you can start fresh and all your kind of demons or problems that visit you, wherever it is that you live will no longer be a part of your life. But then you make that transition and you wake up and realize that you brought yourself to the new location. Yes. And nothing changes, right? That's called a geographic. And you see that a lot, especially in, you know, people that are struggling to get sober, but not making it. And they, instead of really addressing the drug and alcohol issue, they just think, well, if I move and start fresh and get new people around me, that will solve my problem. Yeah. And I think that's totally a valid

concept. I mean, I agree with, you know, the idea of, you know, pulling the location. But my two problems with New York are that I'm seasonally depressive. So, you know, four or five months out of the year, no matter how I battle against it, I feel like opening a vein. And I feel incredibly alienated from my family who lives on the other side of the continent. Moving to California isn't running away from those problems. It's solving those problems. I get you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think you're making a geographic.

I just wanted to hear you explain it. Yeah, yeah. So, it's cool. And you're kind of're you're living in like a trailer right now right like yeah it's so you own this house but your mom lives in the house and you're it's like it's like on the way to san diego like i'm just trying to get a visual rich i can get anything wrong i can like i can just i can screw anything up it's hilarious so i bought this house for my mom and i'm thinking like man i'm such a good son finally you know finally like the bad kid like comes good and you know so i like

walked my mom through the house and i was like you know so what do you think you know like do you love me and she was like mishka you idiot yes of course i love you and i don't love you a single bit more than i did when you were a penniless alcoholic. You're my son and I love you. So I did this for nothing. Yeah. Mom, you fucking ingrate. What did you ever do for me?

No. And, you know, she was like, you know, but this house, this isn't what I want. You know, she was like, I'm just a young woman of 66. I can't be tied down to a place like this. I have things I want to do. I want to travel. I want to see the world. I want to hang young woman of 66. I can't be tied down to a place like this. I have things I want to do. I want to travel. I want to see the world. I want to hang out with my friends, you know, and if you want to know what a woman wants,

ask her. That's a novel concept. So, um, yes. And, you know, and then also my sister pulled me aside she was like mishka are you asshole what the hell are you doing like i need mom here to help me with the four kids you know and um so you know we made the decision to uh you know the house is just rented right now and um we we got a little trailer from my mom and you know stuck into my sister's backyard my mom has like just made it so incredibly beautiful um inside and out and she loves it there and it's um the kids call her b for some reason so that's the beehive and um she's visiting cam family right

now in canada so uh so that's where i'm crashing i gotcha and uh but yeah you know i mean i've been there for whatever a week or 10 days. And now you're kind of on the road now. Yeah, until the middle of October. I leave tonight for London, there for a week, back for two days, out for six weeks, down to Bisbee to visit Doug. I'll be touring the whole way. Are you going to go to Doug Stanhope's compound down in Bisbee? Yeah, yeah.

That's frightening. It you going to go to Doug Stanhope's compound? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's frightening. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, Doug is a singular person. And then hang out there with Doug for a second, head back up to Seattle, fly out to New York for a couple of shows, fly back, and then tour down the coast of California, and then die. And die, yeah. Drive the van into does the uh when's the book come out uh the um well the record is being re-released

in october october 2nd so that's one of the reasons why i'm touring up to it and then after it and then the book comes out uh i think march 8th on public affairs Affairs. And then, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. After all the touring's done, I'll be hanging out in California a little bit. There should be a European tour in the works. And then I have to head back to New York for the book release in March. Hopefully there's a tour after that, teaching at Yale next summer. And then hopefully around this time next year, I'll be getting a real big boy house and like an apartment or a tree house or something where I can actually live in. One can always dream.

I have been looking at RVs online, like in a guilty furtive way, the way that somebody would look at like, you know, the filthiest pornography. RVs are cool, man. You know, I'm into RVs. I'm into like that idea of being, you know, the filthiest pornography. RVs are cool, man. You know, I'm into RVs. I'm into like that idea of being, you know, that's not my life. But, you know, I know the appeal. Like our friend, Andrew is living at our house on our property right now in an Airstream. And, you know, there's a certain liberty that comes with that. And, you know, I'm also super into like micro houses. I'm always looking at little, you know, like container buildings and all that kind of stuff. Like I think that stuff is really cool.

Like, you know, if I was to do it again, I would definitely probably go that route. I think, you know, in terms of like getting something cool and affordable, like is, you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening right now. And some of them are like amazingly architectural and awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another thing for me is that, you know, buying an RV, there's, you know, there's a spot on my sister's land for me to stick an RV. It's really important for me right now to be close to my sister. You know, I spent, you know, since I was a little kid, I mean, maybe like nine.

I remember just like hating her and writing her off completely. And she and I have had a really rocky relationship. And now we're like BFFs. It's so bizarre. And I'm just incredibly grateful for it. How did you bridge that gap? Well, when she threw me out of her house once um and i was like all right fuck you you know throw me out i'm leaving i'm never coming back you know and then um her husband's a marine and

they got uh they got stationed in okinawa and so then i didn't see like her or her family for like six years and then when they came back i'd been sober for like 18 months or two years, something like that. And I went out to visit and it sucks going back to a place you've been kicked out of and sort of having to like, you know, come to the door with your hat in your hand. And as soon as I walked in the door, I was like, they just want to forgive me. I want to be forgiven and they want to, they want to forgive me. And that was like four years ago. She and I haven't had a harsh word for each other since then. We haven't had a single argument, you know, and, you know, there have been times where she's had to say, um, you know, I, you know, there have been times where she's had to say, you know, I need you to wash your dishes or whatever, or like that thing you said on Facebook. I wish you hadn't said that, you know, so she's able to give me negative feedback.

But she came out to visit me in New York, you know, in the like end days of my apartment. And like, you know, we, you know, we ran all over the city and I got, you know, I got to show her my New York. And I was like, you know, that's where I blacked out. That's where, you know, here's where I took my first run, you know, in this, you know. ran all over the city and I got to show her my New York. And I was like, that's where I blacked out. Here's where I took my first run. I got beat up in this bar. The street tour. Your version of JJ's Lower East Side street tour, right? Yeah. New York according to Mishka. It's funny. She just texted me today on the way here and she was like, thank you so much for turning me on to Rich's podcast like i really really enjoy it oh that's cool and their copy of uh the plant power

way is like in the kitchen very prominently displayed you know displayed so it's weird man i you know i'm not used to this thing of uh somebody does something nice for you and then you do something nice for somebody else and then it just keeps going right like when is he when's the shoe gonna drop yeah like when's it gonna all go bad yeah that's i'm always waiting for that and it has you know it hasn't happened and uh no it's great man it's great you know i don't know how to deal with it yeah it's interesting i'm i i feel the same way you know, it's a weird thing, like as a result of the podcast and the books and stuff like that. You know, I get all these emails, emails from people all the time, all over the world, you know, saying super nice things like,

I get so much out of the podcast, and I just love it. And you know, I get I have critics too, and haters and all of that. But it's pretty, you know, de minimis in comparison to, you know, the amount of support, um, that, that, that kind of comes in and, you know, the, the emails that say, you know, you've inspired me or you're an inspiration. And, and I get uncomfortable with that. Like, I don't, you know, like I don't, thank you for saying that. I don't, you know, I, I don't, I mean, maybe part of that is rooted in, in low self-esteem, but like, I don't, you know, I don't, I mean, maybe part of that is rooted in low self-esteem, but like, I don't, I want to be very careful in making sure that people are not coming away with the impression that I'm standing up, you know, on high and delivering some message down low about how to live your life. Like, that's not, you know, who I am or what I'm doing or how I try to, you know, manage this podcast or anything like that. Like, I'm sharing my experience.

I try to bring on people that inspire me that I can learn from. And I identify much more with the audience member than with the guests in the sense that, you know, I'm trying to figure this out too. And, and, you know, I, I don't want to be holding myself out as some kind of, you know, person who's figured everything out. You know, I'm as flawed as the next guy. I'm still, you know, have things that I got to work out and that I'm struggling with and all of that. And so as much as I've gotten so much out of, of having amazing people on the show, like yourself and so many others, and I appreciate all the positive feedback, there is that weird thing. It's like a weird, vulnerable feeling that comes with that.

Rich, if I know one thing about you, that's the thing. Because every single time you and I do the podcast together, you give me another version of that speech. cast together, you give me another version of that speech. And it's, it's so clear that that's a, um, that's something to your, you know, your very core understanding of yourself that you still see yourself as out in the trenches with everybody else who's like suffering and like, you know, searching for the light, you know, and, um, dude, that's why we love you. You know, you're, uh, you know, I, I know that I always know that, um, oh man, I really want that cookie or I would love a cigarette, you know, or I, you know, I don't really don't want to run today or like, you know, this is all bullshit. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm losing faith in this.

Um, I know that you have the same, you know, that you have the same doubts and the same struggles all the time you know and that does so much good for me man just to know that there's somebody else you know who's you know relentlessly trying to keep moving forward even though there's a part

of them inside that keeps trying to like suck them back you know I have to share an experience that, uh, that doesn't put me in a very positive light, but something that I'm incredibly grateful for. I, um, I was talking to a friend maybe a month ago and, uh, I was really stressed out with the end of writing the book and this thing of sort of managing the amount of email and Facebook messages and Twitter and stuff like that that you get from people.

And I was talking to my friend and I was like, you know, I'm just, I'm just so sick of it. You know, either it's all these people writing to me because they want help with something, whether it's help with their writing career or help to stop drinking or whatever, or people who just want to go on and on about like, you know, how inspirational I am and what a great guy I am. And fortunately, I was able to listen to the words coming out of my mouth and hear them sort of rattle around in my brain and then think, you've really turned into a colossal asshole and i need to go in and find that and like fucking destroy it because i'm so you're you're when you when you're on the receiving end of of all of that like sort of um you know lauding kind of

energy that you start that starts to feed the ego and you start to buy into it. Is that what you're saying? No, I mean, I think a lot of it was sleep deprivation and stress and being, you know, freaking out about getting the book finished and having this move happen. And, you know, I moved out under, you know, fucking court order from my landlord and it was pretty, pretty tense circumstances, you know, you know, and then almost wound up in the hospital, you know, when I was trying to get out of there. So a lot of it was just sort of being stressed out. I need to be the people are, you know, that I have even, even, you know, even the knuckleheads

who are, who are like writing to me for promotion advice. They have, they don't, it's clear they haven't read any of my writing, but they just want to have to ape my financial success. I should still be grateful for them because they're writing to me because I've been successful, you know, and that's something to be grateful for. And the people who are in trouble, you know, like, that they would look to me and, like, you know, give me that vote of confidence. Like, yeah, I need to man up and, like, respond and respond in good faith

and not be bitter about it and not be a jerk about it and not be insensitive and not feel put upon. That's a great responsibility. I see. So in other words, you're saying you were sort of perceiving all these messages coming into you with kind of a level of annoyance as opposed to like, oh my God, my life is so amazing that people want to reach out and connect with me. Exactly. And it's the second thing that you said there, that's what I need to tune in on is know i'm so lucky to have this um this is a great burden to have to be amazing you know to be able to help other people it's an incredible gift to get this book done on the time frame that i did and to, you know, engage in it as, as heavily as I did, you know, going through this minefield with my father and then, you know, the move and the record and all these things, I knew that going into it, that I would have to alienate all my friends,

not return phone calls, not return emails, and just be myopically focused just on the book, the book, the book, the book, you know, get that finished, the book, the move, the book, the move. I had all these things to get done. And I realized now that I did have to do that and I'm glad I did it and it's done. And now it's time for me to start taking care of other people. I got a really, it's super important to me to invest, you know, invest time in my sister's kids and like have real relationships with them and be there. You know, how was your day at school? Like spend time with them every day, go to Micah's rugby games. And like, you know, I have a hookup for Disneyland tickets, which is just hell beyond all imagining in my mind.

But I'm going to take the girls because they will be so happy. It will make them so happy. And it's worth a day of suffering for me. When are you going? I don't know. Maybe I'll take my girls and we'll do it together. There. Okay, there we go.

Done. All right. Done. Thank you. See, that's why I'm doing the podcast. To rope you into a stupid idea too yeah i mean i think you know in in terms of like you know the writer's life like you have to get to that place where you you're you know you're in a room with no windows and no internet access and you just have to be with your thoughts and the page

and it gets harder and harder especially especially with success and all of that. Like, you know, I'm trying to carve out time to start workshopping this next book that I want to write. But, like, with the podcast and the kids and the family, it's like it gets harder and harder to be able to do that, you know, with the pressures on your time and all of that. And you have to, you know, in order to get the work done, you know, in order to get into that creative space and execute on the level that you know you're capable of, you have to make part of that, you know, whether it's running or however you're eating or carving out that creative time where you're like, I'm not available, doesn't make you a bad person, because you can't respond to every single message that comes into you on Facebook, or respond to every tweet or every email that comes in, you know, from somebody looking for advice, you know, as your writing career and your music career, you know, continues to escalate, that becomes harder and harder.

You know, like I can't respond to every email that comes in and I wish that I could, but I would have to spend my entire day doing that. And that is a quality problem to have and one that I'm extremely grateful for and very, very in touch with. And again, it does, like I said before, there's a level of discomfort with that too. But never for a moment am I not in touch with what a gift that is and how amazing that is. And I don't take it lightly.

I'm never annoyed. I'm like, that's incredible. I mean, what would it take for you, Mishka, to sit down and write somebody a letter about how much they've impacted your life in a positive way? You know, it's a big deal. I think it's a big deal. And so every time I get one of those, I'm, like, amazed, you know, and very, very grateful.

But I can't always respond to every one of them. You know, I try to respond to the ones that are about recovery. You know, those are the ones that I always like. Okay, I've got to respond to this one. That's my first priority. But, you know, I've spent days where I'm responding to all of that and then I don't get to the thing

that I actually need to do for that day. Yeah. You know, and that's, sometimes that's the way it goes. Well, you know, one of the points that I made to my sister is, you know, she, her husband Bill works incredibly hard and he's, you know, she, um, her husband, Bill works incredibly hard and he's, you know, a great father, a great guy. I really love him. And, um, but he works

incredibly hard, you know, and he, when he comes, you know, he has this pretty stressful job and, you know, he needs, uh, he needs to be able to lean on his wife for, you know, support. She's got four little kids, you know, so she's, she's really the support system for her entire house, you know, and, you know, she was saying to me, like, I feel so terrible taking 45 minutes away to exercise every day, you know, because I could be doing, you know, things for the kids or things for Bill or things for mom or things for you. But if I don't exercise every day, I get crazy. And I told her, I was like, if you fall apart, this whole operation stops.

We're all relying on you. So if you want to help us, take care of yourself. Take that time to make sure you get your sleep, exercise, if it's going to put you in a better mood, eat right, take good care. Taking care of yourself does not make you irresponsible or a bad person or even selfish. You have to do that in order to take care of other people. And I just did a podcast a couple days ago. I haven't aired it yet but with jeff uh castellos who's president of elector records um you know ran danger bird you know founded ran

danger bird records which is a super cool indie label like the guy is you know at the top tier of the music industry he's an amazing dude sober and uh and he suffered something that I would wish upon nobody when he lost his six-year-old son in a protracted battle with cancer. And in the process of his son being ill, he started a blog to of like express his emotions of what he was going through. And that blog kind of went viral. Like it affected a lot of people because he was being really raw and transparent about what it's actually like to have, you know, a child that's so sick and, and on a daily day-to-day basis, like what is entailed in going through that. And, you know, he's a big cyclist and, and at the end of the podcast, I was like, you know he's a big cyclist and and at the end of the podcast i was like you know what are some things that you could make sure that you want people to know like other parents out there who

might be in the midst of you know what you went through and he was like you got to take care of yourself and it's so easy not to because there's so much to do and so much is at stake. And all of your emotional energy is invested in the well-being of your sick child. But if you don't take that time, he's like, I had to get out and ride my bike every day. I just had to because if I didn't do that, I couldn't show up for everything else emotionally, physically, mentally, everything else. And he's like, that's the thing that parents have to remember who are going through. And that's applicable, I think, to everybody, you know, who's living a busy life. Like, it's easy to just push that aside and say, well, that can come tomorrow. But again, that goes to the, you know, you got to like, keep the infrastructure sound, you know, the foundation

starts to crack, the whole thing collapses. Yeah. When I, um, when I quit drinking and when I, you know, got better and started running and stuff like that, I, uh, you know, I did, it was a purely selfish thing. I, I, I had to save my own ass, but in doing that, it was a tremendous gift to my family. You know, that, um, your, your perception of it was that it was selfish. But I think what we share is that that was a way of trying – that sort of crucible of pain was necessary in order to grapple with where we stood in an ashram in India or something like that. It was a soul exploration process in order to resolve certain questions about identity and what your future life might hold for you. So you qualify it as selfish, and I understand why. And I say the same thing too, quite often, but, you know, the more distance I put between myself and, and kind of that experience, um, the more I realized that, that, you know,

it was really, I mean, it's felt selfish. It's still on some level does, but, but I think it was absolutely necessary in order for me to be able to kind of come out the other side and, and, you know, be a more effective husband and father. Yeah, I mean, what I didn't realize when I was working so hard to get myself well is that I felt so isolated in my drinking, my drug use. I just felt like I was totally alone. And I didn't realize that my sister, what used to be like every time I would come to visit her, totally alone. And I didn't realize that it was, you know, that my, my sister, uh, you know, what used to be like every time I would come to visit her when I would leave, uh, she would cry.

And I was like, well, you know, why are you crying now? I'm okay. And she said, well, it used to be every time I saw you after you left, I would cry because I, I didn't know if that was going to be the last time I was going to see you. And now I cry because I know it's not. And I know that you're back. And that really made me realize that when I was out there utterly alone, I wasn't utterly alone. My family was fucking worried sick about me. And then now that they know that I'm better, that I got my head screwed on straight, and that I'm vigilant about my own self-care, they worry so much less. And that by doing something good for myself, I did a great thing for my family, too. Their son or their brother came back. Right, right, right right right right and that's a beautiful thing to celebrate man

yeah it feels good to be back man still you know every day i um you know i was fighting with the moving company like trying to get my shit delivered and i was just like ah fuckers you know like hanging up the phone i looked over my sister and she looked at me and she was like, you want to go run? And I was like, let's go run. You know, we went running, like just, you know, cursing at each other. Like, oh, these people. And we came back and we're like, all right, let's get some work done.

You know, because we just like, we're able to go out, you know, bond with each other, gripe about what was bothering us, get our heart rates up, get sweaty. And then we just came back and we were like, we're good. You know, we can, now we can face the day. We can deal with this stuff. But what was going on with your health, man? get our heart rates up get sweaty and then we just came back and we were like we're good you know we can now we can face the day we can deal with this stuff but what was going on with your health man like your health started to deteriorate a little bit was this in the process of trying to get the book done and you weren't taking care of yourself or you know i just you had some kind of like

cryptic posts on facebook that made it clear like something was happening and that didn't sound so good. Yeah, I, uh, I'll spill the beans. I don't care. I, um, yeah, when I was up in Canada, I started having, uh, this is going to be graphic pain when I urinated and it was at first, it was just, this is the difference. It's funny, you know, with urinary tract infection, This is the difference. It's funny, you know, with... It's like a urinary tract infection. It gets better. The, you know, with people coming to awareness of trans issues and that gender appears, you know, a lot of people are realizing, understanding that gender sort of manifests on a spectrum.

It's not black and white. You're a man or a woman. You know, it's, you know know people are sort of trying to define what is a man and what is a woman and i think the i think the dividing line is um you know a woman down there if she feels like her vagina has bad vibes she'll go to the doctor and like get it dealt with and if you're a man you're like well i'm only in excruciating pain five times a day other than that it's mostly okay so why don't i wait and see if this gets any worse that's classic and clearly you did not go to the doctor i took it took me a

couple days to go to the doctor and then it was just finally where i was like so it's like almost in tears every time you're yeah yeah it was brutal so of course i course, I was like, I have a bladder infection. I have a UTI. I have an STD. Something's wrong. So I went and got tested for everything twice, three times. Nothing. No sign of infection whatsoever.

They're giving me just antibiotic after antibiotic. You know, like Cipro, the real like heavy, hardcore dev, you know, stuff that's really incredibly bad for your gut. And, uh, nothing was working and I was just getting more and more, you know, it's demoralizing to be in constant, you know, to be in pain like that. And finally I went to go and see a special, you know, and this is in my final week in New York when I'm packing up the house, finishing the final stuff on the book, you know, it's just, there could not be more of a pressure cooker. And then finally I go to a urologist and he was like, yeah, all of your tests are not just normal, but good. Um, I know that you're in a lot of pain, so we know something's going on.

Are you under a lot of stress? And I was like, dude, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. Yeah. I mean like moving out of where you've lived for, you know, a very long period of time is considered, I mean that like changing jobs,

moving, uh, getting out of a relationship. Like these are the biggest stressors that you can experience, you know, suffering the loss of a, you know, a loved one or something like that. Yeah. And, um, and he was like, you, you need to find a way to relax.

And I was like, all right, buddy. And he was like, no, because if you don't, things are going to get worse. Like maybe your kidneys will start to shut down. And then I recalled that like over the course of my life, I've had, you know, I had shingles when I was 17 and then I had to come back again when I was in my 20s. I've had a bunch of weird. My friend Aaron dropped dead on the street one day and it was brought back to life and then died again and then brought back to life. He has a weird heart anomaly. So we were he was in like ICU at Beth Israel and we were like doing, you know, sort of bedside vigil waiting for him to die. And, you know, I was talking to one of the doctors, like, you know, what's going on with my buddy. And he was like, what's up with your hands? And I was like, what do you mean? And he

was like, well, I saw you looking at your hands earlier, those red and white, those painful red and white blotches that's border borderline anaphylactic shock. The next thing that's going to happen is your throat's going to close up, and then we're going to admit you. And he was like, you have to find a way to chill out. Otherwise, you're going to be in deep shit. And then that night, Aaron came out of the woods. He woke up. He was okay.

No brain damage. And I fell on the floor and just fucking wept. And then the next day, my hands were fine. Wow. the floor and just wept and the next day my hands were fine wow so you have this like sort of anxiety reaction that manifests itself biologically like not really psychosomatic but basically so it's weird because the blood tests show nothing but the urologist is like this is being caused by your emotional state yep exactly Even though like there's still something physical that's causing your, causing you the pain though.

You couldn't identify that. Well, it was inflammation, but it was inflammation that was caused by my crazy brain. And, um, and you know, fortunately like an old friend of the family, I had already, I was out of my apartment by this point. I had no place to go. I had tour dates booked in Colorado. And my sister was like, no, just pull the plug. Pull the plug on the dates. That's it. I never missed shows. I played a show with a broken finger once. Played a show with strep throat. I canceled those shows. And I went and my, you know, these old family friends put me up in their

apartment. I slept 16 hours a day for three or four days. And then I started to feel better. Wow. Well, I mean, if you needed to sleep 16 hours a day, then something was definitely wrong. I stopped taking all my medication, started drinking, you know, just drank a lot of water, ate good food. And little by little, symptoms went away. I had pink eye, too, that came on at exactly the same time. Went away without medication.

Wow. Yeah. And it was just, I just run myself into the ground, man. And, you know, I know it's a good lesson. I got to take, you know, all this shit that I was just saying 10 minutes ago about how you got to take care of yourself. Yeah. I got to take my own advice, man advice and i mean how's the diet you know it's like i know you take like sort of morose pride in your instagram posts of you know the the sad you

know bachelor can of tuna you know or can of beans with a with a fork in them well no i have the meal like i have my own it's sort of like it's it's similar to the van you know you're like you're holding on to this like well i finally i have my own uh political stance on it now it's a povertarian povertarian i mean come on let's let go of that all right no the um the the can of beans that was just something that came out of utility you know if you're writing all day you have 15 minutes to like eat a meal or whatever i was just like all right this is gonna be fast and then when i posted it and everybody went crazy and i was like all right well i'm just gonna keep i'm just gonna keep annoying you guys you're getting affirmed you know like you're getting some you're getting

like some juice you know from from from doing that but this is not serving you you're you're absolutely right and i have a i'll go one step further and embarrass myself a little bit more um from my experiments with doing plant-based i was like wow i don't need to eat animal protein at every meal in order to have energy in order to recover in order to feel full in order to feel well ergo i can just eat gummy bear gummy bears for breakfast lunch and dinner and i'll be fine that's how you solve that equation that's how you almost get hospitalized yeah exactly and it's rich it's idiotic so i mean to say it i like i feel so i feel a grown-ass man. Apparently.

I mean, physically, anyway. Like, what's wrong with me? You're in California, the sun's shining. You turned your book in. Let's focus on this a little bit now, shall we? Yeah. No, it's time for me to get right. And I got to, like... Especially now, you're going to be on the road, you know?

Yeah. I mean, here's the other thing about, like i don't i don't know how you do this like i i there's no way that i could be spending so much time in like dingy bars i mean especially without going to tons of meetings and being completely dialed in uh you know in recovery like that's gotta take a like an energetic toll on you just kind of being in those environments every single night to play music like how do you manage that the i couldn't do it i almost never feel temptation almost never but it's not even it's not even that it's not it's not necessarily like the desire to drink or not drink but just kind of being around like like on some level like it's just you know it's not a high

vibration you know when you're just around like a lot of people that are drinking and smoking all the time it's like you go to las vegas and if you're just in the casino like i know it's like oh you know there's people it's eight o'clock in the morning they're they're drinking and smoking and pulling on the slot machine like i get depressed you know i don't i don't want to drink it doesn't look good to me but like it it like is a heaviness you know that like i'm like i gotta get out of here and i think it's it can be similar if you're just in tons of pubs all the time like every single night well you're absolutely right and um it's remarkable for somebody who spent most of their life being wasted i have zero tolerance for drunks you know after

like 10 p.m when people start telling me they love me like three times in a row i'm like i'm fucking out of here. I can't deal with you. It's not that I feel temptation. I'm just like, this is so boring. But this is what I'm hooked on, man, is that some of the smartest, funniest people in the world, philosophers, are up there on stage in these shitty bars telling jokes and it's the highest high um you know touring with jt habersat j white cotton i played with tom rhodes last night obviously doug stanhope um you know i've been running you know just about every day since i've

been out in california and like my lungs are all sort of clearing out residual crap. I laughed so hard last night at Tom Rhodes that I had to like get up and go and spit in the alley because I was reaching parts of my lungs that I haven't been reaching from running because I was just gasping with laughter, you know, and that shit is so good for you. It's, it's good for your brain. It's good for your body. It's good for your body. It's good for everything. And I love my comedian friends like nothing else. I had the best day hanging out with Tom yesterday just talking about everything from racism in America to him losing his father and me getting right with my dad and, you know, talking about jokes and, and everything in between.

And, um, man, there's, there's nothing better in this world than a belly laugh, you know? And, uh, I'm with you on that, but, but I think, you know, not every night you're out with comedians, right? Like a lot of it, a lot of times you're just in, you're just playing bars and it's just the music. Yeah. Or you, or is it comedians with you all the time mostly i've been touring with comedians now yeah i've been doing it you know a ton of touring with comedians and then the only other person i've toured with you know who isn't a comic is my friend michael dean dameron who is probably the most gifted songwriter i've ever met in my life and he is also an incredibly funny motherfucker just constantly cracks me up and uh yeah so i mean a lot of it is just like you know i'm just playing with my friends you know and um you're you're right to

express concern and to and to not to not instantly grok it um i'm getting to the end of it i'm getting to the end of sort of like what i can handle and what I can deal with. You know, this next big run, like as much as I, you know, can't, you know, can't wait to like hang out with JT and J.Y. Cotton and like Mike Wiebe from Riverboat Gamblers. And, you know, hear all the new jokes that those guys have and just, you know, just crack up. You know, those drives through West Texas, it takes years off your life. And, you know, it's damaging to your sanity. And I think that I'm probably, you know, I'll probably be homeless for like the next year and then I will be homebound.

And are you going to stay down with your sister and her kids and your mom? Are you going to get a place up in town here in LA? Or what are you going to stay down with your sister and her kids and your mom? Are you going to get a place up in town here in L.A.? Or what are you going to do? My plan is to make my sisters my HQ. You know, because that's the thing is when you come off the road, you want to come all the way off the road. And being there with the kids and the dogs and the citrus grove and like that's all the way off the road. I'm hoping to do a Sunday night show with my friend Brad Erickson in L.A.

So I'll probably be up you know once a week or whatever you may find me sleeping in the garage at your place once or twice or you know i mean i'm just thinking like if you're in la you know we could do some we could do some live podcast stuff we could do let's just figure out how to get them recorded i know but i mean let's do a weekly show or something like that. Yeah, we could just book some little, you know, small little venue or theater, you know, even if we got like 30, 40 people to show up. You know, there's a bunch of other people that do that around town. That could be a fun thing to do. We should write a book.

We should do like a – you know, we should host a show together. We still have a couple of big stupid races that we got to do together there's all kinds of stuff now that you're semi-local yeah yeah and that's another thing too is that you know now that the book is done i i feel i've never been so excited about running like i just i knew that i was going to have to let my endurance training go in order to get the book done so i've been you know and that's a big thing that i learned from robin arzon huge shout out to robin is just like do those little three four five miles run you know runs every day to have get some you know consistency um it doesn't have to be like 18 miles every you know you know once a week and then you don't do anything else

you know and you're like ruined yeah consistency is much more important than you know, once a week and then you don't do anything else, you know, and you're like ruined. Yeah. Consistency is much more important than, you know, putting in the monster workout. Yeah. But it's hard, especially as an alcoholic, like you want to like, you want to go do that. You want, you want the massive thing. It's like, oh, well, three mile cares about that. You know, I'm still, and I haven't had, I haven't been able to fit this into my schedule, but I'm still looking forward to the big like bender run where i have a free day where i'm just like i'm just gonna run all day i'm just gonna run as far as i can and then i'm gonna turn around and come back and like just leave it all out there on the road just be like you know crying and covered with salt and dust limping when i come home and just like just get it all out because i've been storing

up a lot of shit man i'm ready to go out there and have one of those big epic runs yeah it's the ultra athletes version of an ayahuasca trip yeah you gotta burn it you know you gotta burn it all in the you know the funeral pyre yeah i'm gonna burn it burn all that that stuff off man yeah and also you know it's a victory lap for me. I mean, this, you know, getting this book done is a huge accomplishment to be, to be given the opportunity to publish a book, to, you know, to have a book in, you know, a physical book to hold. That's so massive.

I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the work that I did. I'm proud of the work that I did with my dad. I'm proud of my dad for, you know, enduring, you know, all the shit that we went through together. Um, I, you know, I, I'm, you know, I deserve to have a big, stupid run like that. You deserve a lot, man. You know, I'm glad that you're able to like embrace that. And I can hear the gratitude for the book too. And I know that you, you know, you fought hard for it. Um, and you had your moments of, you know,

like, I don't know if I want to do this and, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

So to be on the other side of it and having it, you know, turned in and essentially completed and to have that sense of gratitude is cool, man. That's progress. The harder something is, the more, the more it's worth it.

Of course. You know, dude, I listened to your pod with uh with james the iron cowboy crying on the plane like listening to uh you know his wife talking about him like just crying uncontrollably after three days and uh that guy's a maniac, and he's so lucky to have the family that he has. Yeah, his wife's amazing. That she was like, this is my man, and I've got to take care of him.

I've got to be with him. I've got to support him. And I've got to kick his ass out the door in the morning. Lace up those shoes, boy. You've got some work to do. Yeah, yeah. It's like, man, just such an awesome story. Such an awesome family.

It's pretty incredible. Like, I think, you know, sort of having, you know, now it's been a couple of weeks since I, you know, was up there and experienced, you know, the end of that and, and was able to, you know, have that conversation with him and his, and his family and his crew guys and all of that. And, you know, the more i think about it the more amazed i am at what he accomplished and i think that you know most people they just don't i mean there's sort of you know people like oh my god that's amazing but it's like

hold on a second like let's really like go there like it's it's a little bit more than that like i it's devastating even like mind-boggling. Yeah, it really is. I mean, and it sounds like hyperbole when I say, and I've said it before, like I really think it's one of the most extraordinary achievements in the annals of voluntary human endurance. Like, it really is. It's phenomenal. It's, you know. Okay. Let's take what James did.

Let's throw it out the window for a second. Just put it aside. Lucy, his daughter, ran a 5K every day for 50 days. Yep. That's fucking incredible. Yeah. Just that. I know.

We should do the Lucy Post challenge where we get, everybody signs up and we all do 5k a day every day for 50 days. That would be a cool thing. Cause that alone, that's so hard. Yeah. But, and then, okay, now let's put the camera back on what, you know, what James did. And that like, I mean, I know you and I were both rooting for him so hard, but, but also, but at the beginning I couldn't let myself root for him because I was like, this, this can only end in tears, you know?

And, um, I just, I cannot fuck it blew my, it blew my fucking mind that he did it. I cannot believe it. It's just, it's historical. I also think like one of the things that I observed and you know i i had the podcast with him before he went and did it and that was the only my only experience you know he hung out at the house a little bit after that but you know that's as much as i knew of him you know was that couple hours that we spent but i got a sense of like who this guy is and kind of what he's about and got a sense of his energy. And at the time, I remember thinking like, this guy's a really impressive athlete, but you know, I'm just, I don't know, we'll see, right? And then kind of

being there when he was finishing and kind of running that marathon with him and experiencing how he was interacting with someone. It was like, you know, again, this sounds like hyperbole, but it reminded me of the Russell Crowe character Maximus in Gladiator, like somebody who's just so in their power in like a really quiet, confident way, like not in an arrogant way, not in a boisterous way, but somebody who's just, you know, they're just present with who they are. They understand like what they're commanding around them, and they're doing it with grace and gratitude and humility. And that's what I got from him. I watched him.

I observed him. I saw how he was touching everyone and the way that he kind of sort of gracefully navigated all the social pressures that came with that. It was impressive, man. And he was like – you were like, that guy's a powerful dude, you know? And like, he, he kind of was starting to understand the significance of what he accomplished and how he was touching all these people. I mean, dude, 3,500 people were there in Utah, like going bananas. Like it was, I've never seen anything like that. like that. One of the things that I learned when I was starting to run was that only being enraged would get me out the door. And that was, that was easy at that time because I was always angry.

And, um, but I burned through that in like three or four miles. You know, it's hard to stay angry that long. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot out of you. My godmother was dying of cancer at the time. And so I tried to just think about her healthy and happy and like doing well and just carry like her smiling face in my head with me when I ran. That's how I was able to run long. It was hatred that got me going and love that kept me going. And that's what I took away from, you know, from listening to that pod with James is that for him, it was a great act of love,

is that for him, it was a great act of love. That was a huge valentine to his wife and to his family and to his world. That's what we do as runners. We adventure out into the world, and it's an act of love to say, I care about myself. I care about my life. I care about this world. I want to have adventures.

I want to engage in my reality. I've been in my head enough. I've been on the my reality. I've done, I've been in my head enough. I've been on the computer enough. I've been watching TV enough. I love this world. I want to, I want to eat as much of it as I can, you know? Yeah. That's a beautiful perspective. Um, and it, and it stands in contrast to the critics who would say, well, this was a selfish endeavor and how could he do this to his wife and his kids? You know, they risk so much and, you know, all of that. And it's like, it's a weird thing because, you know, you have to do something insane to get on people's radar and to get attention. But then when you do that, you're like, yeah, but that was irresponsible. It's like we want to celebrate these amazing achievements, but then we want to criticize them for actually taking the risk or the leap of faith that's necessary in order to do that.

In the same way, like, look, I just posted my podcast interview with Conrad Anker. Like, that guy goes out and, you know, does these, you know, unbelievable high altitude climbs where the risk is literally life and death. And we celebrate that as someone who is an extraordinary adventurer. And, you know, he has his critics who are like, how could you, you know, take that kind of risk when you're married and you have these kids? You know, and the kids are the survivors of their dad who was lost in an avalanche. So it's a very heightened thing, you know. And so he's got to, like, sit with that, right? Let's look at this another way

let's look at what you know typical uh typical dads are doing in america working 60 hours a week eating crap food being 40 pounds overweight working long hours at the office to buy a boat to buy a jet ski that's fucking irresponsible you. You're, you are, you're not, um, taking your, yourself out of your kid's life for two, three, four months in the summertime. Like, like James did, uh, you're absenting yourself from their lives a little bit every day. Um, two hours here, three hours here, four hours there. And then by not taking care of yourself, when you have that heart attack, when you're 49, you're, you're, you're putting yourself at much, much greater risk by doing that than by doing an insane climb or an ultra marathon or something insane by, you know, like what James did, you know, we should all be so irresponsible as to

dream like that guy and, and be like, and be like no everybody you guys are all coming with me you're my family i love you i need you there come with me you know yeah and the sheer audacity to dream that big to like have a dream that's so insanely large i need to go out and execute on it yeah dude dude is an animal i mean i just you know, one word, respect. He could have kept going, man. I know. I mean, he had like the swim on the final day. He had a rough time. Like he, there was a moment where it looked like it might fall apart.

But on that run, man, he was solid. And like literally like the last kind of mile and a half before he stopped so that everyone could run the final 5k with him he was throwing down we were easily running seven minute pace you know at the very very very tail end of his 50 ironmans in 50 states of 50 days phenomenal you know so it's pretty cool right i i have to ask you this though man because i i hopefully this is a question that's on other people's minds. He didn't do six Ironmans in six days on, you know, six different Hawaiian islands. He didn't beat your record or break your record. He fucking annihilated it. Yeah. And, um, my, um, my understanding of you and what's important, you know, to me about you is, is not the Epic five, but who you are right now, day to day in our, in our conversations on or off Mike. Um, but, but you, but I know you, you're my friend.

I mean, you must have had feelings, you know, did you feel jealous? Did you feel, um, unhappy? Did you feel, um, that you'd been shown up or was it, what was it? Did you only feel positive things for him? Or, I mean, tell us, because if you felt negative things, we need to know, like everybody out there needs to know. I couldn't have been more excited or more proud than what he did you know and and you know like i've been very honest about in the beginning like you know i didn't i wasn't sure he was going to make it and so like the the more debased version of my character is like oh he's gonna have to take a rest day we'll see how this goes you know what i mean like okay good yeah he doesn't know what he's in for yet you know i've walked a mile and he should blah blah blah but

then when it became clear like he got through the first four or five, then I was like, then I got like really excited for him. You know, I didn't like, I did Epic Five. It was cool. Like I didn't do it so that it would be some record and that I could be like the only person. It's like, I don't care about that, man. You know, I know that the fact that I did Epic Five and he read Finding Ultra, that that played a part in inspiring him to take on what he did, even if it just on a very tiny, de minimis level. And so I celebrate everything that he's doing. Like, this is why you do it.

Like, you push the boundary so that you can inspire someone else to go and say, I'm going to take that and I'm going to go here now. And that's a beautiful thing. Like, why would I? I'm not jealous. I don't, you know, I'm me, he's him. We're not competing for anything. You know what I mean? Like I wouldn't have gone to Utah and run the final marathon with him if I was jealous. Like I'm psyched for him and he deserves everything that he's getting, you know, I could not be happier for him. So, you know, what I did is different from what he did. I told my story.

He's got a different story. And we don't live in a zero-sum world. Thank you for that. There's room for all of us. And I think for me to sit around and go, oh, well, he did something more than me, so what I did doesn't mean anything. Like you said, he annihilated what I did. He took what I did, and he went 10x on it. So what am I doesn't mean anything. Like he took, he didn't just, you know, like, like you said, he annihilated what I did. He took what I did and he went 10 X on it. Yeah.

So what am I going to do? Like, oh, I'm bummed. Like, no, he deserves nothing but like love and respect and my admiration. Also, you know, I mean, you know, we were talking earlier about, you know, I needed to be all the people that I was in the past in order to be who I am now, you know, I had to wake up, you know, having pissed my pants in order to, to not do that anymore. And also to have a little sympathy for the guy on the street, who's just done the same thing, you know, and I think, you know, there's a lot of, of ultra runners out there. My friend, Scott Comer, you know, on, uh, on Facebook, you know,

I see he's doing, you know, races that are bigger and badder than anything I ever did, you know, but I know that he gives me props for pointing out to him that, oh, it was possible, you know, that like, oh yeah, I can do this, you know? And, um, so yeah, I mean, it's, um, you know, I definitely feel like it's, it's Scott's victory and not mine, you know, but, but I, I know that like I played a tiny little part in it and,

uh, and I just feel incredibly grateful to have been involved in any way, you know? And I think that, um, you know, I hope you give yourself a little bit of credit for that too. You know,

that, um, you know, the James red finding ultra. And he was like, this, this is possible and, and maybe more more but i think even beyond that like it was just a really great cool gratifying experience for me to be able to participate in telling his story and sharing it

and and and and and helping it reach more people and i know that you know look he said to me straight blank like basically in every state people were showing up because they heard about it on the podcast and then i was able to get you know this most recent um podcast with him um i was able to get it promoted on the home page of itunes and it was a really cool feeling to email him and go hey man go to the home page of itunes check out and there's an epic picture of him you know and i'm like this is going to help a lot of people like learn about your story and that feels good you know it's like blowing wind into his sail is a is a is a cool feeling to have yeah yeah i mean you know and to me too um you know your greatest accomplishment is is not uh is not the epic five or finding ultra but it's this podcast

in this space you've created the platform that you've given, you know, people like myself and JJ and James and Robin and, you know, so many people who I care about and who, you know, whose stories have touched me and you've created a space and a platform to like send those narratives out in the world. So people can say like, this is possible. There is hope you can change. Josh LaJuny.

LaJuny. LaJuny. Yeah. I love that story yeah and um and that's another that's another example of something like like with james because you know i was able to share josh's story and i know that i've helped empower him you know on a journey that he's taking right now where now he's public speaking and he's sharing you know he's like helping a lot of people and it's it's really like at the end of the day when i put my head on

the pillow and i'm like i know that i played a part in helping you know and helping him get out there and like sort of pushing him out into the world and go your story has merit and has value and it's inspiring and you can help people and you need to get out in front of people and start doing that and to see him doing that right now and and he's working on a book, and, you know, it's like, that's really awesome, you know? Because it's not about me and my story. Like, this is about sharing everybody's story. And, again, it goes back to the beginning of me, like, feeling weird about getting these emails because it's like it's about the stories of my guests and what they're sharing. And to the extent that I can, you know, be a cipher for that, like, that's

just, that's an awesome, awesome feeling. You know, it's that, it goes back to that adage of like, like if I can just like remove my, I just want to remove my ego from this whole thing and like allow these voices to come through and be of service to that so that, you know, in, in hopes that that can like be a salve to somebody who's suffering out there. And to the extent that I can get into that mindset and really honor that and serve that, like that's a magical place to be. And that's all I want for this. It's, it's a testament to, to the power of narrative, like how we use story to make sense of the chaos in our lives and how we use stories and, you know, the tales of other people's accomplishments or their struggles, how we use that as a means of a lens through which to see our own struggles and opportunities for us to change, you know, for us to transform. our own struggles and opportunities for us to change, you know, for us to transform.

You know that I'm a huge story addict, you know, any good story, you know, I just, that's one of the things. There's nothing more powerful than a story well told, you know, and the power of a story is less in the actual details of the story and more in how it's told, you know, and how it's told, right? How do you convey a message in a compelling way? And that's your job as a writer and as a spoken word person up on stage at the Moth or whatever it is that you're doing

or in writing a song. When I'm in some crappy dive bar and some old guy says, you're never going to believe this story, but every word of it is true. I'm right there, man. The hair goes up on the back of my neck. I'm like, okay, everybody shut up. Okay, speak.

And that's the power of it. Yeah, that's my jam. That's my new drug, man, story. All right, well, speaking of story, you're now in a position where you're actually trying to convey some wisdom about story to younger minds. Oh, God.

The hilarious irony of Mishka teaching writing at Yale University is just, I love it. It's awesome. So what was that experience like teaching there this summer? Maybe better than finishing the book. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a teacher. And then, you know, as I got older and made different decisions with my life, it's like, well, I guess I won't be an astronaut. I guess I won't be a surgeon.

And it's like, well, I guess I won't be an astronaut. I guess I won't be a surgeon. I guess I won't be a teacher, you know, because I was a drunk. And who's going to let me, you know, teach anyone? And then Yale contacted me and, you know, asked me to teach this, you know, intensive four-day seminar. And I've never, you know, I, you know, I'm down with ultra marathons. I'm down with violence. I'm down with grueling tours. You know, I'm not a very fearful person.

And I was terrified about having a blackboard and like having to teach people and stuff like that. And the, you know, and the other thing thing i was the new teacher there so nobody had really signed up for my workshop everybody who i got in my class they were like oh well i wanted to be in this other workshop but it was full so that's why i'm here so the first thing that i had to say was awesome i was like you're all in the right place'm going to bust my ass to make sure every single person in this class gets what they need out of this class. You know, and and, you know, my goal is is for all of us to leave here totally exhausted and that I want this to be intense. I want you guys to remember it. How did you how did you begin the process of trying to, like, create a curriculum for something like this?

the process of trying to like create a curriculum for something like this well the you know the the umbrella was that i was you know going to be teaching people how to write a non-fiction kindle single that you know that was sort of how we that was our our entrance into it instead of it a lot of it ended up just being how to survive as a writer how to live as a writer how not to give up um writing habits how to how to write a pitch email, how to deal with negative feedback online. The first handout that I gave them was like 10 one-star reviews for the long run. Oh, that's great. And I stacked it in a way so that my name wasn't on the page until the very last one. And I had them read it aloud and just read these terrible, this guy should be sterilized

so nobody with his genetic material could ever commit another word to print. Did you get a review like that on Amazon? That's hyperbole, but there were some pretty cutting. And then when they got to the last one and somebody read my name, they all looked at me like, oh my my god are you okay and and i said listen that story bought a house for my mother so fuck them all not everybody's gonna like what you do and if everybody likes what you do you're doing you're doing something wrong then it's vanilla ice cream you know you're it mayonnaise. It's not like it's nothing meaningful. But it was all nonfiction.

So some of the stories that we dealt with were a woman who had lost her son to drug addiction the year before. A woman who after the birth of her fourth child, her husband committed suicide. A woman who had a preventive double mastectomy, um, that went terribly wrong and she was left, you know, very scarred and is still, you know, navigating that process. Um, incredibly, incredibly heavy stories, you know, and I had, of course I had the whole folder of, you know, dick jokes that I'd prepared for the class that I just sort of like, okay, folder of, you know, dick jokes that I'd prepared for the class that I just sort of like, okay, just throw these away. And it, you know, I had to be very serious and very sensitive and thoughtful for four days without break. And it was exhausting, dude. As soon as I got home, I cornered my roommate and I was like, okay, I have another dick joke. I have another dick joke, you know,

and I had to get that out too. But, uh, but it was so awesome, man. I mean, my, um, I told my class, you know, after a couple of days, I was like, listen, we know who we are. We have an identity. We're the orphans. You guys all came here. Nobody wanted to be here. You all felt like you didn't belong. You belong, you know, this is us together. And like, you know, we really, I thought we were all going to cry at the end of the class it was so good um but yeah it was awesome they're gonna have me back next year for uh for a month i think i'm gonna be teaching a couple different um classes everybody should sign up it's gonna be it's gonna be intense you know um you know and the other thing too is that people are bringing in these like some of them are like just horrifying transformative life experiences.

So we have to understand that and respect it. And then look at what's wrong with the paragraph. Look at what's wrong with the sentence. Look at what's wrong with the word. You know, so they have to be able to trust you enough to go in and do, you know, basically open heart surgery while they're still awake. Right, right, right, right. And you have to have a fine enough touch that you can show them how to change it, how to improve the thing without everybody bursting into tears because it hurts. Or discouraging them so much that they want to abandon it.

Yeah, that's a fine line to walk. And here you are. Now you're a teacher, man. At Yale, no less. How is the interaction's the how's the interaction with the rest of the faculty oh it's with the tweed you know with the tweed set it's awesome it's so weird it's uh nobody knows what to do with me you're like the faculty lounge like i'm definitely the cool teacher can you go to the yale club in New York now and hang out? No, no, no.

Even if I could, I wouldn't. But I can't see you there. But it's, you know, the, and it was such a great experience for me to, to hang out with, with other, with other teachers, with the other faculty, with other academics and talk about, you know, this sort of forgotten lexicon that I have of writing and, you know, sort of serious study of literature. And, uh, and every person, every faculty member there is smarter than I am. And I have so much to learn from them. And I love being the dumbest person in the room because you learn the most. And, uh, I was just awesome. Everybody was super nice to me. And they, uh, you know, they love, you know, and I, they uh you know they loved you know and i they

you know they they treated me with respect you know they were like oh you're the you know alcoholic rock and roll degenerate right welcome every college needs one of those one of those one of those guys he's the professor that you know ends up becoming the most popular you know it's sort of this oh dude i gave this kind of like a david foster wallace type character i gave this speech and i just killed. My editor from Amazon was supposed to come in with me, but his dog was dying that day. And we were going to do sort of a conversation. Is this the one you did at the Hoity Toity Stuffy Club?

It was the National Arts Club. Yeah. Yeah, so I'd lifted some stuff from that, but it was no notes. And I just got up there and I said... And, and you gave this speech where at, uh, at Yale, at Yale. And, uh, you know, you know, a hundred people in the room. And I just said, um, I got my big break as a writer by living as a penniless alcoholic, uh, doing a ton of weird drugs and getting shipwrecked. Does anyone have any questions? And everybody just looked at me like oh man who is this guy you know i was like all right all right let me give you a little more context you know

but it was awesome it was they everybody really responded they were all fired up and like that's cool it's cool yeah you did a similar thing at the national arts club right and you it was like you i remember you posted a picture of it like just to like sort of paint the picture like you know mahogany you know walls and like everything you would imagine like a really stuffy like kind of old school club would be where you're up at the podium and there's a bunch of old people and the inside of it it's like bosnia herzegovina it's like some uh you know some eastern european country that doesn't exist anymore because the last time they remodeled the place was like in the 1700s so you're just you don't lots of black and white photos of parties from like 1964 yeah and you just you go back in time

when you walk in there and i was just like i am so unqualified to be here and uh i just told you know i my speech was about like you know richard pryor and uh you know and pissing my pants and uh i just told you know i my speech was about like you know richard pryor and uh you know and pissing my pants and uh and it fucking ate it up i think you told me like some old lady come and gave you a hug afterwards yeah yeah and that's where the book release party is going to be they really wanted you know to to have me back wow and uh i can't wait for it i'm gonna have to rent a blazer for uh jj so he can come yeah he might not even show up he i don't even know even if you gave him a blazer i don't know that he could he could force himself to put it on yeah yeah i remember he told me he's like yeah mishko he invited me to go i can't go to that plate like he's like i'm not going in there

uh he's one of a kind I know so cool man well let's let's wrap it up but before we close it down maybe I thought it would be cool

if you could kind of share a few insights that maybe you you picked up as a result of of teaching these writers over the course of the summer

that could respond to some of these emails or inquiries you get about you know how to write a great narrative how to write a great narrative, how to write a great story, how to put together a book and, you know, what are some kind of tools or tips that you could just, you know, express briefly that might be helpful to somebody out there who's considering the possibility of putting pen to paper?

of putting pen to paper? When you write, eliminate all judgment from your mind. Just let it flow. Just let it, whether you're typing, whether you're writing, just let it flow out of your pen onto the page.

Let it flow out of your fingertips onto the keyboard. It doesn't matter. If it's garbage, if there's no punctuation, whatever, none of that matters. Just let it out. Just get it onto the page. That's just, um, and, um, don't think about editing. Don't think about anyone else reading it. Uh, don't think about your marketing strategy. You don't think about agents or genre

or any of that stuff. Just get it out. Then, you know, right until you're exhausted, leave it alone, come back the next day, then start revising. That's when, then you start editing, then deal with that. You're still not thinking about marketing or genre. You're just, I'm taking this, you know, amorphous mass that I spit onto the page and now I'm going to make it into something, you know, usable. But, but you know, at each point in writing, you have to shut up the voice in your head that says, this is no good. I'm no good. This is hopeless. You just keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you throw a lot of stuff away and, uh, and you, you cry and you tear your hair and you rend your clothes and you curse God and you keep going.

Yeah. I mean, you have to allow yourself to be bad in order to be good. Exactly. Exactly. The only way to succeed is to fail over and over and over again. And just get right in your head with failing. That's how you succeed. I think that's a good place to shut it down. Awesome. Cool, man. So I think I'm going to put this up tomorrow. Awesome. So, uh, uh, for people that are listening who perhaps are in the

UK, what are these dates? I mean, is there a place where they can go online or are there a couple things you could. Yeah. If you go to a Mishka shibali.com all my tour dates are up there and uh yeah i'll hook you up with a song too to tack on at the end of the yeah i was gonna say let's uh let's close it out with a tune what's what do you think uh this is my new uh the new single off the in advance of the new record and it's called uh new jersey valentine's day orphan blues excellent man did we play that one before on the show no we played uh i can't remember when you and it's called New Jersey Valentine's Day Orphan Blues. Excellent, man. Did we play that one before on the show?

No, we played I Can't Remember When You Were Mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, cool, man. Awesome, man. Always an honor and a pleasure, dude. I love you, brother. I love you, too. It's great to be here. Let's go over to the house and hang out with the kids

and play some music and eat some food. Sounds awesome. All right, cool. So if you're digging on Mishka, MishkaShubali.com, at Mishka Shubali on Twitter and Instagram and all that kind of cool stuff. And if you're in the UK, go check him out.

Listen to him, play some music and give him a pat on the back. Peace. All right. Peace. Plants. Well, you sure got a big mouth and you know how to use it for screaming and howling and swearing and sobbing and boozing. But lay down your weapons, we're ready to give in to your demands.

Your weapons were ready to give in to your demands The getaway cars packed with cocaine and whiskey Are better to kill Happiness is as dull as it seems And the company loves misery You'd be happier being unhappy like me Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate heart out Just for you The girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphan lose

Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Well, I always do the right thing when I've run out of wrong things to do But God, everybody's made a few mistakes Everybody's buried a body or two

Or three You said with your hatred in my hangovers that we'd bring the world to its knees I'll pull my head out of the toilet long enough to say that I disagree me with my black market net

and you with your tremors and heads Who's gonna look after the kids? Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate heart out Just for you. The girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphan boots. Cause I'll be cutting my milk chocolate hard out just for you the girl with the New Jersey Valentine's Day orphanage