The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Chris Paul's Next Move. Plus, Wright Thompson on His New Book, 'Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last.' 

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on rumors that Chris Paul may be headed to the Phoenix Suns, before briefly remembering Celtics icon Tommy Hinsohn (2:00). Then, Ryen talks with author Wright Thompson about his book, 'Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last.' They talk about the history of whiskey in America, the origins of the iconic Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, the story of a man's fight to honor his ancestors, and more (17:00). Finally, Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (58:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I think he's done probably, I would say two, maybe three features. I don't want to limit it to that, but his Jordan and Tiger features, if you've never read his stuff before, go back and Google it. His tiger returning to the masters thing. When he said, it's like watching a baby being born again. I mean, it's just crazy levels of writing. So he has a new book out about bourbon, which you're thinking, wait a minute, what? But there's more to it.

It's a Pappy Van Winkle brand. People are very, very into this. It's hard to find. There's a crazy story behind it. And basically because Wright's a good old Southern boy, he wrote a book about it. And I've known him from my time at ESPN. So we're going to talk with him about that.

We'll do life advice at the very end. But here's what I do want to do. So aggregators get ready. You know what's happening with the aggregators I've noticed, Kyle, is that I'll say something or say it with Bill because, you know, Bill's platform is what it is. And then it'll go overseas for some weird, bad translation. And then it comes back to the

States. And I just get tagged in all these ridiculous overseas Instagram basketball pages that turn what I say into something that's 10 times more dramatic because that way it sells. So I'm expecting that some of this will get picked up too, but I'm just doing this to kind of help everybody during the offseason and with the draft a week away to get some more information on everything that's going on. So Chris Paul to the Suns. It's reported by ESPN last night. I talked to a few different people,

and this is kind of gathering the Chris Paul pursuit because everybody wants this guy. Everybody wants him. I mean, all 29 teams? No, but anyone that wants to try to improve or has some flexibility or is trying to reinvent themselves this quick offseason, turn this around. So let's run through it. The Clippers definitely interested in Chris Paul. The math doesn't really make any sense. And Paul has basically told any of the teams that are interested in trading for him, hey, I don't want you trading your player for me.

I want to just come and join you, but that's really hard when you're making over $40 million a year and another year for $40 million plus for next year. So Paul's not taking any kind of buyout for Oklahoma City to then try to make up the money somewhere else because I don't know that the buyout would make a ton of sense for anybody involved, even if the buyout were really high and then Paul just went ahead and made extra money. But here's something that did surprise me because I just feel like Kawhi is this distant mythological creature that doesn't talk with anybody. Apparently, Kawhi reached out to Chris Paul immediately and was like, hey, you should come here. So that part is real. The pursuit was real. The interest in the math on it from Paul's standpoint

doesn't seem to be all that realistic. The Lakers, I don't really think that that was an option for Chris Paul. And I'll leave it at that. New Orleans definitely had interest in bringing him back. But this Drew Holiday stuff that's all over the place, Chris Paul wanted to play with Drew Holiday and Drew Holiday would be the guy that would have to go out to try to bring him in. Paul wanted to play with Drew Holiday and Drew Holiday would be the guy that would have to go out to try to bring him in. So, um, Paul doesn't want teams tearing themselves down to try to add him, which again, doesn't make a ton of sense, but that's just the way NBA stuff works. Like I remember when Paul George was available to everybody back when he's on the Pacers and all

of these teams would tell me, Hey, we were offered Paul George for this, but it was really interesting to hear, you know, a GM or assistant GM just tell you, go like, look, our one guy or our two guys that are really good that you would be interested in taking back from Paul George, they're under contract and they're happy here. So what would happen is we would trade all these other pieces and draft picks and a third team and bring Paul George, join this group. And then we'd see what we'd have, but it's about adding when you already have stars. When you have one, you add two, when you have two, you want to add the third. It's not about switching out our number one or number two guy for your number one or number two guy. And if you look at the history of trades, that's really how it's worked because the players are going, look, I don't want to go there and then not have any of

the other good players there. So the Lakers thing, I don't even know who they would send out. The Kuzma stuff is not there. And I don't know that Paul was as interested in the Lakers as maybe people think. Okay, New Orleans, back to that, the Drew Holiday thing. Drew was mentioned in a potential trade with Atlanta. That was news this morning. I don't have anything other than Atlanta is one of the many bad teams

that is desperate to make the playoffs to say they made the playoffs, whether it's front office and coaching staff staying alive. But it's just you're hearing more and more that Atlanta has putting pressure on everybody involved. They're like, look, we need to make the playoffs and playoffs and get smashed in the first round. Fine. But there's always this, this weird thing that owners seem to do where it's like, can we pretend we're evolving? Can we pretend that we're really improving as a franchise? We can say to everybody, and maybe it has to do with sales and marketing and the hype, or you just lie to yourself because fans have done that. I think I used to do that when I was younger where you'd think, hey, the experience is invaluable. Going in, the playoffs, really understanding what it's about. Remember when Detroit got swept by Cleveland a bunch of years ago in the first round? You're like, Detroit, can you imagine the growth in just that short amount of time?

And I think a lot of times it's like, you know what? Just give me the better pick. Why do I need to go get smashed in the first round to pretend that we're growing as a franchise? But there's a bunch of teams outside of the top seven in the East that all believe that right now. And we talked about that on Bill's pod. And I think I did some of it with Kevin that the buyer's side is the ratio of buyers to sellers. It's all buyers right now in this league because there's so many bad teams

with the same people that have been in charge. They have owners that are upset. So they're not, it's hard to sell your owner on another rebuild three or four years later. And I'm not even saying that's what Atlanta is doing, but the Atlanta thing that did surprise me, at least in that rumor would be

if Drew Holiday went there, okay, makes sense put a grown-up in the room have him next to trey young i think drew's the personality where defensively he can cover for trey and a lot of that stuff like it makes sense it makes sense um but drew was somebody that chris paul would want to play with if zion and brandon ingram and some of those other pieces are going to be there and that's a lot tougher to pull off so that wasn't going to happen milwaukee was somewhere i believe paul wanted to play a while ago i don't think there's any anything to that philadelphia was interesting because doc rivers was definitely interested in

bringing chris paul in um but i don't think there was a fit there uh the knicks call all the time apparently and there's nothing that would happen with the knicks and the other thing to remember here is that Presti, from what I'm told, doesn't exactly want to trade Paul because Paul makes the team better. But Presti had promised Paul, if things went south last year, that he would do Paul the favor and trade him. And apparently Oklahoma City is going to rebuild this thing,

which is very clear based on the roster. And I don't think Paul wants to stick around for another entire rebuild so that Presti kind of has to figure this out. But when it comes to Phoenix, from what I'm told, is that with Booker in place and with DeAndre Ayton in place, and there's a bunch of people on Phoenix's staff that Paul is very, very comfortable with, whether the front office or the coaching staff,

and he's cool with Monte Williams, and he just loves Booker. So that would be, you know, some people throwing around, hey, it's 80%, it's 50%. I don't know. I still think if it's Rubio and Oubre going back to Oklahoma City, knowing Presti's history, I don't pretend to know Presti well, but knowing his history and how he operates, he's going to want to sweeten her in that deal some way

because I have a hard time believing he's taking Oubre and Rubio back and then Rubio's $17 million going into next season, so the following season. You know what? While I'm here, I should double-check the guarantees on that. Yep.

That's a full guarantee at $17.8. So if Presti's taking on Rubio, who in two years is making $17.8, I think he has to do more than just do Paul the favor. There has to be some sweetener coming back. So I don't know if the deal happens. I'm just telling you, if you were handicapping all of these teams,

Phoenix is clearly the favorite based on who I've talked to. I don't know if there was anything else in here that I thought was important. Nope. I think that's about it. Real quick too, I want to send my condolences to the Heinsen family. Tommy Heinsen, Celtics legend, is a player, coach, and broadcaster.

Passed yesterday. I grew up like a lot of kids in the 80s watching basketball. My first basketball experience was the 82-83 Sixers, which was always a little weird for a New England kid. But that was the first team that I was like, oh, my gosh, the Sixers are going for 70. I i still have that sports illustrated cover somewhere because the sixers were going for 70 wins and that team was incredible but you know one of the great things about heinz was he's doing nba finals games with the 86 celtics um there'd be other celtics games

or maybe they weren't doing as well and heinz you know the cells would be down 20 because some of those games would get real lopsided just because you know those teams were amazing back then and uh you know heinz said it'd be complicated like i can't tell you how how proud i am of this celtics team for fighting the way they are like imagine being the fan of the other team on a national broadcast and heinz can't help himself and he can't help himself because he had celtic green in his blood and i know that can sound a little corny but can't help himself because he had Celtic Green in his blood. And I know that can sound a little corny, but if anybody ever did, it was Tommy Heinsohn.

And I'm sure plenty of you listening, whether you're watching League Pass, you check in on a Celtics game, and you're like, this guy, he's just cheering for his own team. Yeah, absolutely. He was cheering for his own team. And most home broadcasts are pretty slanted anyway now. So you could actually say that Tommy was the originator of that. But he cared about

the Celtics so much, as much as anybody that I've ever been around. And I always think about your path as a man and thinking, wouldn't it be amazing to matter so much to a community or be attached to something for such a long time that you're like an icon of this franchise? Or I think about that with the college program. Again, it's not going to happen to me, but if you were a college basketball coach and this great college basketball coach, you'd go be a pro coach. Sure, you'd want to test yourself at the pro level in football or basketball, but there's something to be said.

The attachment that Davo Swinney is going to have with Clemson if he wants to stay there forever. What Coach K has accomplished at Duke, I think there's just an amazing, because so few people get to live that kind of life, and Tommy got to do that with the Celtics. And so the one part as it relates to my experience with him, you know, he started traveling a little bit less.

And I worked in Boston from 03 until about 09. And I was commuting back and forth towards the end from Connecticut because I still really loved doing those Celtics games. And Kevin Miller, who ran Comcast back in Boston, he had heard me on the radio. And he had said, look, you're just good on the Celtics. I don't care that you didn't play. I don't care that, you know, everybody's going to give you a hard time, give me a hard time, but just go out there and talk Celtics because we don't care. You're just good at it. And so he took a huge chance on me. I've complimented,

well, I shouldn't say complimented him. I've thanked him. I don't want to compliment the guy and be like, Hey, he was so smart. But the reason I'm even bringing that up is that Tommy was with Comcast and then he started traveling less. So then we had him in studio a bunch of times and being in this industry can make you numb to these big moments. Like you can have so many moments that you're numb to ever the moment of sitting back and be like, Hey, like in the moment right now, be aware of this and realize how cool this is. and Tommy was that for me and my father because here I was, this kid, my summers in the 80s, all it was, the beginning of those summers, it revolved around Celtics basketball playoff runs. It just was. That was summer to me, was Little League baseball and the families listening to the Celtics game on the radio in somebody's car, being up in Vermont, visiting my grandparents and visiting my aunts and uncles and all the cousins, and then my father and I taking over the television and watching the 86 Celtics, watching the 87 finals.

I mean, every summer, that was it. 84, 85, 86, 87. It was just, it's what we did. And Tommy was a part of those. And then one moment in 2008 is the Celtics are making their run for the win against the Lakers in that incredibly great season, I'm turning to my left or turning to my right and I'm sitting next to Tommy Heinsohn in a studio. And, you know, I don't know that I get nervous. Maybe I should get more nervous, but you know, there's very few things that ever make me nervous

of doing that kind of stuff and eventually just kind of get used to it. And it wasn't that I was nervous in front of Tommy. It was that I allowed myself to have a moment to go, holy shit. took a hymn where he's curled up on the couch with his hair matted because he was asleep on the couch and he set the alarm to wake up to listen to me on my first radio show at 6 a.m and he just sat there on the couch listening to me you know and i was 27 27 years old and when i did that first show with tommy heinsohn in studio and i'm walking back to my car and i would drive from the set you know back to my shithole apartment in b. Uh, my father calls and goes, Hey, he was just, so you realize like I was home watching it and I had a moment where it's like those summers. And then all the years that followed is just Celtics fans and watching games with my dad and listen to Tommy yell at the refs and give out Tommy points and try to talk himself into Marcus Banks. Um, my father's like, you just sat next to him. You just sat next to that guy.

And like, this is what you do for a living. And this is what you're going to do for your career. And you got to sit next to that guy. And, you know, Tommy was a big teddy bear. He's as well rounded a guy as you could ever imagine. And he,. And he yelled at me a few times in the beginning, but that was just Tommy's way of kind of showing you love. And in the beginning, somebody would ask me a question about a player and Tommy would be like, that's not what's going on. And I couldn't do it normally. I'd be like upset.

And with him, I just kind of laugh. And the more we hung out, the more he started to warm up to me and the more I would just get the biggest kick out of it because he felt like he was your grandfather, even though, you know, and I'm not pretending that I'm, you know, in touch with the family or anything.

There's not that kind of connection. But at least that's my feeling of him and him passing yesterday was a sad moment. So hopefully everybody with the Celtics and everything, those of us that know you and be connected to it, whatever level and even on my distant level, I'm thinking about you guys. All right, let's talk about some whiskey.

I'm going to be painfully honest here with our next guest, Wright Thompson, a terrific writer, ESPN. He reaches out to me. We don't talk a ton, but you hear from Wright and you're like, oh, I wonder what's going on. He's like, look, I got a new book coming out. It came out yesterday. It's Pappyland, a story of family, fine bourbon, and the things that last.

And when he was like, hey, do you want to read this and then have me on? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. And then I opened up the document and I go, why would you have agreed to this a week before the NBA draft? You fucking idiot. I know you just are not, you're not going to be able to get this done. And then within two pages, because it's right. You're like, you know what? This is going to be terrific. Um, you are one of the great writers of my generation. I know that's true. I know a lot of people share that with you. So let's just start very simply with this. Um, what is Pappy Van Winkle and why is it a book? Well, Pappy Van Winkle is, uh, the world's most sought after bourbon. And, uh, that became

interesting to me because like, I'm like, I think subcultures and obsession are the root of almost every good story. And so I just wanted to know, what is this stuff and why are people paying $3,000 a bottle for it? the late lamented Grantland is probably more part of the ringer than ESPN. Just, you know, like, so it was sort of born with you guys. I mean, this started as a, as a Grantland story for bill and, uh, uh,

which was nine years ago, which is unbelievable. You know, it reminded me of that in the sense, like I loved Grantland so much because I go, let me just see what they're doing over there today. And I would go in blind, just going,

I know I'm going to read about something that I normally wouldn't have thought of today. And that was the beauty of it. And that's, it's funny you say that. Cause in the beginning I'm going, oh, this reminds me of that a bit. Well, that's, that's 100% where it was born. I mean, then people forget I was the food and booze columnist for Grantland, which was the most ridiculous. That was, that was great.

The peak. That really was everything has been downhill from there. Uh, and so, you know, I started hanging out with Julian and at first I thought like, here's his name's Julian P. Van Winkle III. He sounds like one of those dudes who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, you know, like nobody likes that kid. And so when I found out that that wasn't true, it turns out his grandfather had built this huge distillery empire and then his father had lost it. So he was born with a reputation, but also with this deep desire to redeem something. And, you know, you forget that in the 60s, 70s,

80s, and half of the 90s, no one was interested in buying bourbon. And Julian had this little distillery label that his father had started after they'd lost the big distillery. And then his father died. Julian talks pretty eloquently about how the pain of failing and letting down the family name sort of killed his father. And so Julian was left with this thing and he just wouldn't give it up. And he, I mean, he borrowed, he borrowed so much money that they're finally paying the last of the loans back this year. I mean, 2021 will be the first year in the black for Pappy Van Winkle, which is crazy considering how popular it is.

And I came to understand pretty quickly that it wasn't like one of these guys who like, you know, had a dream, you know, I'm going to make it to the NBA and like, nothing's going to stop me. Him doing this wasn't with the goal of making it, it was honoring the journey and sort of being willing to go down with the ship, to have like a samurai death, you know, like it wasn't even about one day turning it around. It was about honoring whatever commitment he felt like he needed to make to his father and his grandfather. And that really hit me like that hit me hard because, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, what we owe our, what my. Would my father, he missed all of this. Would my father be proud of me?

It's interesting. I mean, this is a separate deal, but I was thinking it's Masters Week, and I was thinking about Tiger Woods and him winning last year and how his kids had never seen him be Tiger Woods. And so if he wouldn't have won in front of them, they would have had to live with the ghost of that forever. You know, that there's this version of their father that everyone they ever encountered in the world would talk about who they never met. And so, you know, I think honoring our past and figuring out what we owe our ancestors is a really important

thing to me. And once I understood that that was at the core of what was going on with Pappy Van Winkle, then I was 100% all in. Yeah, there's some unbelievable family things that you intertwine your own personal story to this too, which I think some people would be like, how is this working? And whatever it is, it just works. But I still have to start with the actual bourbon. Um, I hate to admit this. I think I've had it, which is disrespectful to it to think that I'm not sure, but it was a wedding and at weddings, things happen. Who knows? Why is it so good as somebody

that understands this liquor better than others? Well, the technical reason is that, uh, it's, it's secondary grain is wheat, which makes it smoother and more mellow. And then it's aged for a long time, which is very hard to do. You put 53 gallons of essentially moonshine into a barrel. And then when you take it out 15, 20, 23 years later, in the case of Van Winkle, when you have six gallons left, I mean, sometimes you take the barrel out and it's empty and all that was for nothing. And so it's a really, really fragile thing that gets more and more

fragile with each passing year. So most bourbon is aged three, four, five years. And that's pretty easy. When you start getting up past 12, uh, it is not easy. And so that's what you're, that's what you're paying for is, is the expertise. And frankly, you know, the, you're paying taxes on the building where the stuff is sitting, you're paying taxes on all of it all the time. And the longer you let it sit in that barrel and don't put it in a bottle to sell to people, the more money you're burning. And so like a lot of people aren't willing to do that just as a business decision. The history of bourbon, um, you know, it's the original go West young man is, is not going that way. It's going to Pennsylvania. It's going to Kentucky. And if anybody reads about the Whiskey Rebellion, which you reference here with Hamilton and Washington and the first use of like federal power to try to control something

here, give us kind of a sense of why it's Kentucky, because it's not Kentucky the way we think of it just on a bottle. It really felt more about necessity. It's interesting. So whiskey, I love this. So after the American revolution, they needed a way to pay for the war. And so Alexander Hamilton, because no one wanted to pay for it, by the way. Everybody wanted the freedom, but no one wanted to write the check. I love that. I love it now. Like, you know, no one wanted to pay for this. I love reading about that stuff because it's like, thank you for all of your work and sacrifice and marching around in bare feet in the winter and eating leather because there's no food. But we would also not like to pay for any of this.

So we appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for your service on Veterans Day. It's a nice thing to do. Yeah. And so Alexander Hamilton, he lived in New York City, which was full of saloons that were rougher than the bars are there now. And so for him, whiskey and his daily interaction with it was as a vice.

And so he was like, let's do a sin tax, like a whiskey tax. And that's how we'll pay for the war so we can be a country. And George Washington was like, look, here's what you don't understand. Whiskey, you have to think of whiskey not as a drink to the people who make it, but as a crop. Because at that point, the Montana of America was Pennsylvania. I mean, that was as far west as you could go. And so there were farmers out there who lived so far from distribution chains and from their ability to get their crops to market that their crops were rotting in the fields. And so they had to figure out a way to preserve that value. And that's all whiskey was, was a way of taking a crop that otherwise would have rotted and being able to sell it so your family could stay on the land.

And the Whiskey Rebellion, the tax passed, and the people in Pennsylvania went batshit crazy. And George Washington had to get back on a horse. Don't you know he was like, God damn, I just did this shit. All he wanted to do was go back home. All he wanted to do was go back home. All his entire life, he's like, I just want to go back home. I just want to go back home.

And now I got to go out there and fight you guys again. And so he goes out there and they win. But, you know, in many ways, like, we could go down a whole rabbit hole because every argument we have in American public life, on some level, goes back to how Alexander Hamilton saw whiskey and how George Washington saw whiskey. And the beauty of it is, and I think the thing that we could all learn is that both of them are right from their perspective. If you lived in New York City, that's what whiskey was. It was a thing people drank in bars. And if you lived on a farm out in the frontier, which was at that time, Pennsylvania,

then this was a tax on the most disenfranchised, fragile Americans. And both of those things are true in the right light. And so a lot of farmers were running from the tax man and they went to Kentucky. I mean, it's interesting that Kentucky became a state either the year before or the year after the whiskey tax was passed. Like people were running from the taxman. And so it's so fascinating that when you buy a bottle of bourbon now, most bourbon as its secondary grain is rye. Van Winkle, Makers Mark, Weller, a couple of them use wheat as a secondary bourbon. But when you think about the power of American history, especially unseen American history, to influence even the smallest decisions and things we do today, I mean, rye

doesn't grow in Kentucky where all bourbon is made. I mean, there's so little of it grown there that the USDA doesn't even track it as a crop. So people in Kentucky are importing rye based on muscle memory from what farmers were doing in 1780s Pennsylvania. That's the only reason they're still doing it. It's just habit. If you drive through Kentucky, what you see tons of is wheat. It's everywhere. And so I've always felt like weeded bourbons were bourbons that were truly of the place. And Julian's grandfather, Pappy Van Winkle, one of the things that he did was he was the first person to mass produce bourbon with wheat as the secondary grain. So the way I like to see it is that he sort of made a true Kentucky product or shook the Pennsylvania out of the bottle. Pappy's story to be this determined to say, this is the way I'm going to do it.

And the way he would treat his salespeople because he originated as a guy who was in sales and then bought the distributors. And then, you know, he talks about going up against, I guess there were hearings essentially where he was basically going at the mob and these four distributors where he's like, this whole thing is a mess. And I'm this lone guy trying to fight these people. And it's an unbelievable story that most people would have just given in at some point. Oh no. And he, it's interesting because you can see that will to fight in Julian because, I mean, Pappy was wagging his finger at the mafia and the mob. And he was always sort of, there's a sort of strain of don't tread on me that runs through the Van Winkle family. And, you know, Julian's refusal to quit is fascinating for that same reason. And, you know, Julian's father, I mean, Julian's father was a badass.

Julian's father was a Purple Heart and Silver Star in the Pacific as a tank commander who was wounded. And I've got all these letters he wrote back to Pappy at the distillery. You know, Julian's dad was a big guy, played football at Princeton, you know, big, burly, scary guy. And all his letters are about asking how the distillery's doing and about how pissed off he is that he's stuck in this hospital and can't go kill more Japanese. Like these letters are like, you read these letters, you're like, this guy, I mean, can you imagine? It's like having the great Santini as your father. And so it's very interesting that this tough, strong, heroic, proud man lost the family business. And his son, in a tremendous act of honoring his father, has returned the Van Winkle name to the very top of the bourbon world. And I found that really, you know know that got me in all my fields

yeah no it's it's a great point and just to revisit the timeline for those listening just so they can keep up a little bit so pappy the original great uh the original grandfather starts it julian's father is the word uh vet that you're talking about the early guy who then eventually had to give in he owned it with his, but they didn't own all of it. Yeah. His sister made him sell it in 1972, I think. And that was it. He started Old Rip Van Winkle and then died several years later. And Julian, whose only other job was working as a clothes salesman at a men's store in Louisville, now owned a distillery and he just would not let it die. How old is Julian right now? Julian now is probably 73, 74. And this is who you hung out with the whole time. You consider him a friend. The story was about him and now he's your boy. It's interesting because very early on, I realized

that the story needs to be, as opposed to writing a book, I need to write a book about writing a book, not to get super meta on it. But like, next time I have a business decision to make, or like a family decision, I mean, Julian's a guy I call and just be like, hey, what do you think about this? I mean, he's that guy. And so talking to him, as I was reporting this book, Julian had a cancer fight and my wife and I finally were able to start a family. And so Julie and I would have all these conversations like in the margins of our bourbon conversations. And ultimately, I just found that those were more interesting to me almost than the whiskey stuff. And so I wanted to write a book that really got at, because bourbon isn't just a thing you buy to show off on your bar. It's something that you pour to share with a friend. It's, you know, it's Ryan is coming into town for an Ole Miss game.

And so I'm going to pull out this bottle of Van Winkle as a way of showing you that I'm honored to have you in my home, that I'm proud to call you my friend. And, you know, all these things that I would like to communicate, that I can communicate in a way without having to use something so clumsy as language, you know. And so I wanted the book to reflect not just that, hey, this is a product that people make and sell, but try to get at the ethos of why people love it so much. And that it does, it is the carrying case for really complex ideas about identity and home and your relationship with your parents and your father. And like all of those things live in our relationship with bourbon. And it was important to me that all of those things somehow blend together on the page. I mean, like not to get

like inside baseball, like that was the real trick of writing is to make that happen. Yeah. Because you're going through your own stuff and you include that rarely. Do you read a book? That's a feature essentially like a 300 page feature where, Hey, second chapter, hi, I'm right. Thompson. And here are my own issues and here are my own things with the family. And I think that's really difficult to pull off. And you did. And I, you know, it's funny, you write something in your basement and it doesn't ever occur to you that people are going to read it. And I mean, I've been, uh, this is, this book is really intimate. And, uh, one, I just felt like if I was asking Julian to go there, I needed to go there. And two, I just think readers know if you're pulling punches.

I don't know how they know, but they just know if you're full of shit and if you're not really going there. about everything that's going on in as a transparent way as I can and try to explain why it was important to me to spend these particular four years with Julian. Not just any four years, but these four years and why that was important to him and to me. And so, you know, it's interesting. I like writing about other people, man. Like I, I would much rather tell you all the deep, dark secrets of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan than myself. And so, uh, you know, I don't want to do this again. Well, the, the Julian part that I, I kept wondering, like, I wanted to know more. And as, as the story develops, I want to know more because it's like, does this guy rage? Like he's this rock star now because of the brand and

you're at the Kentucky Derby with him. You're going to these tastes. You're walking around with like a made man in this part of the country where he's sort of the not a tastemaker sounds odd, but the actual act of him signing off on the taste of something is like, okay, now it's now we're good to go. What is he like? Because he's obviously entertaining as hell, but his own story evolves into something that maybe he didn't even think was going to happen. Well, it's interesting because I'm so caught up in, I have a hard time just being still. and I feel so caught up in news cycles and, and, you know, whatever the latest thing is. And, uh, so like, I'm constantly trying to be slower and to be more

present. And when you hang out with a guy whose entire business is, is trying to predict how much of a product someone is going to want in 20 years, you realize that he is causing a question like real basic shit like time. You know, like because he doesn't, he is living both now and 20 years from now and therefore is so engaged and has been taught from such an early age that you have to play the long game and that nothing that is will will always be and that you know everything dies maybe that's a fact you know and like well like that's the that's how he is and it bleeds into every other part of his life he's a really present

guy because his business is he's not stressed about tomorrow. He doesn't give a shit about tomorrow. He is really worried about, you know, November 10th, 2040, you know? And so that becomes really seductive. And you start wondering if you could live like that without having to make the whiskey. And so, you know, one of the, you know, you've read it. I mean, one of the sort of subplots of the thing is trying to understand what of that is replicable. Like, you know, I want to be, I want to live like that a lot and I struggled to do it. And when you're around it, it makes you wonder if it might actually be possible.

I love the idea of him being up online late at night, maybe a couple of drinks in him, and he's buying old Fitz bottles, which is a different, like they're just so hard to come by. And his wife made him stop because it was like 15,000. Yeah.

But there's a really deeper um it's not a storyline but it's this thread where you get into memories and then you use the uptake quote about the mask eating the face and you start to question like you can get real heavy here if you want to it's like what are any of us doing in the moment and what does it mean is your pursuit of profiles mean you're masking something does Does my pursuit of all of these other things I want to do try to get me from the day of not dealing with other stuff? And yet here's Julian who's

chasing these ghosts of his grandfather, which is the motivating factor to turning this thing around. I mean, it has worked in the sense of it working now, but then you start to think, do you become obsessed with something to distract you from something else? And it's pretty heavy shit. If you let yourself just sit back and think about it. And like, look, I, you know, did you see the Springsteen Broadway show?

I saw the lyrics that you were using. I did not watch the Broadway show, but I mean, I've, I've seen the lyric example that Teller gave you that you go, yeah, you know what? Like that's an incredible lesson. But it, and so it, you know, it's just talking about the difference between being an ancestor and a ghost to your own children. I mean, like the ancestor propelling them to a better life and a ghost where your own shit is so, you know, wound tightly around their ankles that you drag them down. And so, I mean, watching Julian taste his whiskey,

what he's trying to do is put a whiskey in the bottle and then sell it to you that is the closest he can come to remembering what that old Stitzel Weller whiskey tasted like, which doesn't exist anymore. And so once you understand that every bottle in a really serious personal way to him is a memory quest and that some whisper of his dead father and grandfather exist in every one of those bottles in which he is successful. It gets heavy quick because, because what he is doing is, is tangibly heavy in the moment when you talk to him about it. And look, I think about this stuff all the time. You know, I like to say, oh, I'm working so hard for my family, but I mean, I don't know

if that's true. You know, I mean, uh, I get a lot of praise and love and money and, and, uh, you know, uh, you do start the, I try to be honest in the book about asking myself those questions. Like, what are we doing? You know what I mean? Like, what is any of this? And like, am I really spending my whole life talking about sports? You know, like, being around Julian and how serious he takes his craft makes you just by necessity look at your own yeah when i was thinking about it because it was i was thinking about it last night when i was finishing up the book and i went

okay but the simple counter would be all right well then why do anything yeah you know like it was almost a solution to these thoughts that you would have like okay well what's the point of doing any if we're going to dissect every single decision we make, like it's okay to actually do some of these things. Um, I want to ask a couple outside of the book questions, but I want to, I don't know if I'm geographically biased. I don't know if you'll be geographically biased in, um, answering this and maybe I'm assuming too much, but as somebody who's from the North, spent his entire life up until 30 in new England, never lived outside of the States of New England, and then didn't really start getting on planes

and traveling the country. And then I traveled as much as I possibly could. So I feel like I've been everywhere. I think I understand the South in a way. I never even understood it before. I didn't know what it was to even understand the South. I think the South understands the North because maybe it's not that complicated.

Do you think the North still in a way has no idea what the South is about? Because maybe it's not that complicated. Do you think the North still in a way has no idea what the South is about? Because that's what this book, it hit home a bunch of more times where I go, so many of my friends, they have no idea of just this lifestyle and mindset. Well, it's interesting. I mean, to talk about it through the lens of bourbon, I mean, I talked to this guy, so Kentucky, which everyone assumes is the South and Kentucky surely likes to call itself the South, uh, for marketing purposes. Yeah. For marketing purposes. No, really. I mean, it was not in the South in the war. I mean, it was, uh,

Kentucky was in the union, uh, three times as many people from the state of Kentucky fought for the Union as the Confederacy. And it becomes so interesting when you realize that Bourbon, which is all about myth and nostalgia, that when you realize that Bourbon comes from a state that now pretends it lost a war that it actually won, It lost a war that it actually won. That the levels, the Gordian knots of levels that are going on with Southern identity and myth and the way that so many Southerners run from any sort of real accounting of our own history

just dooms us to repeat it over and over again. I mean, like William Faulkner's a genius for a lot of reasons, but maybe most of all for saying the past isn't dead. It isn't even past. And so this idea of living with ancestors and with ghosts is, uh, you know, is certainly a daily part of life growing up in the South. I mean, you're just, you're, you're either train yourself, you either wall yourself off from it to the point that you lose a lot of collateral empathy, or you deal with it head on and really try to understand who we are and how we got here. I mean, almost every Southerner I know does one of those two things. family members, people I love, dear friends, people I went to high school with, you were either an extreme questioner or you have just walled yourself off from the questions so much that

it's hard to even acknowledge they exist or that when other people have them, they are legitimate. There's almost no middle ground. And I think that, you know, Churchill had a quote that the English forget the victory. The Irish remember the defeats long after the English have forgotten the victories. And, uh, there's still a reckoning going on in the South that it's just, you know, this was a really long year for that. I mean, it was just like, I would just read new stories. I'd be like, Jesus Christ, like, come on. So, uh, it's, uh uh the book really tries

to explore not not the paula dean bullshit fucking sweet tea y'all myth of the south but like a real honest look at the place by someone who loves the place your writing over the years um and this is probably one of the great compliments you can have as a writer and i'm sure you heard it a million times before but you know when you did the tiger woods piece when you did the michael jordan like what's michael jordan like today it's the kind of stuff where you know i'd walk through i got to walk through bristol's hallways for 14 years and you know when those pieces would come out guys would be like hey did you read Wright's thing on Tiger and you'd be like no is it up and

you'd be like all right and then you just go I'd print it out I was a big printout guy back then because I just loved having it in my hand and I would highlight different things and we would probably have you on Van Pelt and I and all that stuff when you go in to that kind of feature where the end product becomes different than it feels like anybody else would have done like whoever else was assigned to it would have not done the job i'm not knocking other people but you just find this lane how do you start the process of going all right this is how i'm going to do it and this is how i'm going to differentiate it from other stuff and this is why it's going to kick ass i don't i i think you get in a lot of trouble if you try to reverse engineer an outcome.

Like I don't ever start thinking, you know, any of those things. I just like, I find. So the first mistake would be trying to do it that way. Got it. Yeah. Like, like for Tiger, I literally was like, I want to know what he did every single day between Earl Woods dying and, uh, that Thanksgiving with Elon in the golf club. You know, like it was literally like that was the question. And so I'll find what is I want a simple question that I can answer. Even if the even if the process of answering the question is hard, I want the question to be something simple that I'm interested in. And, you know, so for Tiger, that's what it was.

For Michael Jordan, it was, what do you do when you used to be Michael Jordan? I mean, for Pappyland, it was, why do we invest such complicated feelings in a basically poisonous beverage? You know what I mean? Like, like what? There is a nice warning in there too, where it's like, Hey, by the way, this stuff tastes great, but yeah. Yeah. Like this will fuck your life up if you're, if you,

if you let it control you instead of you controlling it. And you know, like I – so it starts with a simple question and then you just answer it. You know, I mean, the tiger thing, I worked on that. That was 18 months, two years. I mean, the stuff where, you know, he's – you didn't really know what was real. And I don't know that you were trying to confirm whether it was real or not, but it happened,

you know, when you, it's all real, like, that's, what's crazy. No, but the training part,

like when he decides to train and you're going like, I don't know if he's like, do you really want to be a Navy seal? Like what the fuck is going on here? It was nuts. I think like one of the things, and look, you've interviewed,

you've been around a lot of guys. And by the way, I don't mean that when you write no no no no no no no I understand right but like you've been around a lot of guys and nobody who's great at something is normal and like the degrees to which like when you really get to know somebody like wow that is bat shit and uh you know there are a lot of folks, you know, that I work with that you used to work with who were really great at their jobs and they're like, they're crazy is deeply tied into why they're great at their jobs. I mean, you don't, you wouldn't want them to be normal. And so like, I'm, I have learned to be open to the possibility that the truth is way weirder than I ever could have possibly imagined when I started asking the questions.

And especially in sports, that's true. I mean, people do weird, weird stuff. And so you have to train yourself to be open to the fact that this could be real wacko. You have a real connection to Julianian in this the jordan one i always felt like does he does right feel bad for michael jordan like does he feel bad for him after hanging out with him and then when it's jordan it's even like you're almost concerned even criticizing him that was the thing that reigned through that that was i did feel i did yeah it came through because i was just like he has trained himself to be the perfect killing

machine and you know like he has at the expense of many other parts of his personality uh his own empathy his own a lot of things at the expense of those things he has molded himself into someone who was perfect to do this job. But the problem is, is that job has a time limit on it. And so now he can't do that job anymore. And all these traits that he has so carefully sharpened at the expense of everything else in his life, not only are those not useful to him anymore, but they are in fact the biggest obstacle to him enjoying all of his success. Yeah.

So like he turned himself into someone who could do these things and then couldn't enjoy them. And what's interesting now, I love that he got that NASCAR team because a lot of people don't realize. So Michael's dad, James Jordan was a mechanic in the military and Michael's dominant memories growing up. Michael people say he's from Wilmington. He's not really, he's from the country outside of Wilmington. Like Michael grew up chasing pigs on his grandparents' farm. Like he grew up country, you know, he and his brother shooting BB guns and playing in the woods and falling off horses. And so his dad, Michael's like his

dominant memories of his father growing up or his dad with cars out on blocks in the driveway, his dad loved to work on cars. And when you think about that, Michael Jordan is super country and he comes from a family of car people. All of a sudden the NASCAR thing starts to make a lot of sense. And, you know, he feels to me like someone who has through a lot of hard work and self reflection is learned how to enjoy having been Michael Jordan. And that was,

and that was not the case seven years ago. And I just find like, he is someone who, in public, has clearly been doing work on themselves. And, I mean, good for him. I want to leave with this because I'll admit it was one of those lines where you read it and you go, I'm going to write this down.

When you write a line like this, whiskey is marketed as an antidote to change, so the magic is especially vulnerable during times of transition. When you write that line, do you sit back and go, man, I'm fucking awesome at this. I wish like,

uh, it's a great line. If somebody else wrote it right, you would, you would appreciate it. Yeah. And I might appreciate it now, but like in the doing of it, man, I mean, you know,

I wrote this job. I mean, I wrote this book while I have a day job. And so the book got written between 4.30 and 6.30 in the morning. And then I would come get ready for my day and then do my ESPN job. So for like a year from 4.30 to 6.30, I would get up and write about whiskey. And it was interesting because the house was dark and it was quiet. And I felt like that sort of freedom and lack of grounding in time and place, like, really influenced even the voice of the book, just that like, I felt totally free and it, you know, it, it feels stylistically different than a lot of these other things.

And I just, I had a great amount of joy in just letting it go. And let's just go down there and write for two hours and see what happens. And so, uh, so no, I don't do a home run trot on a line like that, but I'm doing a home run trot this week. Don Van Natto, who I work with, who used to work with, Don is a fabulous guy.

Don told me that the phrase in the New York Times newsroom where he used to work, when you had a big A1 story, Don won Pulitzer's for investigating Al Qaeda, like crazy stuff. And when you have a big A1 story, you make sure to go into the office that day so you can just sort of strut around the newsroom. And the verb in sort of like the New York Times newsroom for it is called Cadillacking. Oh, look at Don. He's fucking Cadillacking. And so I've been doing a little Cadillacking. I mean, I'm not going to lie. So this has been a really great week. I have a, you know, as we said at the top, I have a five-day old baby and a book out that's doing really well and that feels like its existence is a tribute to

my late father. And so I hope that he would be proud of it and of me and, uh, would, you know, I'm sad he can't get to, uh, meet his second granddaughter, but I, I, I like to imagine that he is watching. And, uh, so it's been a really, I mean, it's been a really emotional, but a really good week. and you go think about it from the outside of course your father's proud of you um anyway the book out yesterday pappy land a story of family fine bourbon and the things that last from penguin right thompson another great piece of work man and i really appreciate the time thank you so much ryan add a little excitement to your sports watching experience by betting on all the action on fanduel sportsbook this football season there's a reason why fanduel is america's number one sportsbook their app is simple to use trust me it's so easy kyle sends me the links all the action on FanDuel Sportsbook this football season. There's a reason why FanDuel is America's number one sportsbook. Their app is simple to use. Trust me, it's so easy. Kyle sends me the links all the time.

I find the picks immediately. Boom. Kyle very close to nailing his same game parlay. I had a friend ask me about picks. We didn't even do them on the pod. You know, I can't really brag about that because I never really did on the pod. I guess I could show you my text, but I'm probably not going to do that. The app, as we said, simple to use. They've got great odds on all different

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If you lose, you get your entire bet up to $1,000 back in site credit. That's kind of crazy, to be honest with you. All right, favorite picks this week. I got to tell you, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State. I really didn't like Oklahoma State in their win last week against Kansas State. I think Oklahoma's rolling here. Granted, they're playing lesser teams, but I would lay the 6.5 with them. That's the number we have in FanDuel right now.

I'll just throw a couple others out there that at least look a little intriguing I think Boston College plus the 13.5 at home against Notre Dame this is nothing new big number against the letdown, I think BC's a little tougher, if you haven't watched them, they're competitive I think Penn State's probably due to get a win here, I think they're the first

0-3 team that was top 10 in the preseason AP in forever not the first team to ever do it, top 10 in the preseason AP in forever. Not the first team to ever do it, but it doesn't happen very often. So maybe they'll lay the 3.5 with them at Nebraska. I was looking at Georgia, but I can't figure out

if that team feels like everything's done or if they're mad and just going to go into Missouri and stomp them. So I'd stay away from that one. I just looked at it a little earlier. So there you go.

A couple of different picks there to play around with. And you know what? If you go ahead and place those, you get a refund back in site credit if it doesn't work out. So if you've never tried FanDuel Sportsbook, what are you waiting for? Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app to get started and be sure to sign up with the promo code Ryan, R-Y-E-N, so that they know I sent you. It helps the podcast.

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So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. I'm laughing a little bit because this first one is probably the least important one we'll ever read, but we got to mix it up every now and then. All right. So we'll take a break from the lost 21 year olds. You're 25. You're supposed to be lost, man. I don't know what to

tell you. All right. But we try, we try quite a bit. All right, here we go. Man checking in here. My roommate and I need an arbitrator. We know this may not be as serious as some of the requests you normally take, but this is where seven months of quarantine has left us. We're 24, live in an apartment in Brooklyn. He's an engineer. I work for a nonprofit, Life's Good. Last week, I took it upon myself to clean out our bathroom sink. We generally keep the apartment clean, but there were some schmutz around the drain, so I grabbed one of our forks to scrape it out. After that, I cleaned the fork and it was drying in our dish drain when my roommate got home. He was thanking me for cleaning the sink and asked how I did it. I said, I used one of the forks and he freaked out.

There were three forks still in the dish drain. We don't know which one was used to clean the bathroom sink. We now have been arguing for five days about what to do with them. He wants to throw all three out. I think we can do another round of cleaning, but should just put them back. So this guy, the guy emailing wants to just clean them a second time in the dishwasher and use them. The other roommate is like, we don't know which one's the live fork. And if they're all mixed into the three, chuck them all. Um, if he can't identify which of the three forks we use, why does it matter? Okay. We have other forks. It's not like a college apartment. We have one fork, one plate of person, by the way, just a side note here, our dish fork utensil thing got so out of control in college.

I think I've told the story before, Kyle. So you got to check on me as I get older about repeating stories. But we just, we came up with one plate, one bowl, one cup. Not the one cup that maybe you guys remember from a long time ago. Fork, knife, spoon. remember from a long time ago um fork knife spoon but then it got really it turned into a free-for-all because then guys are starting to take strainers and putting it in their kit so basically it came down to like you had to wash your own stuff and that was the only way it was getting done because we had another roommate that if you would cook some mac and cheese he would leave like three

bites in the pot and then would say hey do you want that mac and cheese and you may say i don't know let me take a look at it or yeah maybe i'll grab a bite i'm not sure and then if you didn't eat it and then guys would be like how come there's still mac and cheese in a pot left here and then the guy would be like well rosillo city might take a bite and i'm like yeah but i didn't so what does that mean now it's my property it's a bait and then he'd be like well right and his thing and it was total bullshit he would just do it uh you know look it's just a weird thing about living with people when you're younger. It's like when you really start to learn, you're like, wait, and it always goes back to the roommate theory. How many people have you spent more time with that? You go, man,

I really liked this person more versus the much larger number. When you go, the more time I spent with this person, the less I ended up liking him. I mean, it's the same thing as, as actors or people that talk for a living. You're like, ah, I really liked this person, but man, the longer I listened to him, the less I ended up liking them because the longer you're around somebody, really the more chances they have to screw up as opposed to actually impress you and do positive things. So living with people at this young age, now, granted, you guys are a little bit older, you're out of college, you're 24, and you don't see a problem with it. And, um, you know, we had all sorts of different things and we had to disband the one plate one one cup one bowl uh

utensil deal we had to just completely shut down the whole system because guys it just turned into a free-for-all and then if you used a spatula then a guy was claiming the spatula was his because he took care of the spatula more i mean it was really really got really stupid custody yeah like a dude was like i bought the spatula how come you think he's like well because i use it more i'm always cooking eggs in the morning and you know you guys don't eat breakfast as much as i do we're like oh my god and it's just crazy because it it turns into all these debates where you go like all right so we had one thing where when the mail showed up we'd leave the mail on this fold-out table that was by the staircase and of course you know i was the kind of guy that

i wouldn't look at my mail for a month because most of it was bad news. And, you know, that's something else you get to grow out of, like open the mailman because the news, the news doesn't get any better. You don't just get to ignore it forever. The late fees only increase. Yeah. Right. So I would, I would be like, whatever. And then, you know, I knew it was there. Like that was my little area that when I needed to actually deal, I could then go and, you know, I it was there like that was my little area that when i needed to actually deal i could then go and you know i'd be like hey who threw out all that stuff and then the other good sat there forever i was sick of looking at it i'm like really four envelopes ruining your fucking day like it's we're college kids there's six of us this place is not exactly immaculate you know if there's some stuff on it we're're using a fold out table. Bill's fans would jump

on and break as a piece of furniture in the living room. So, you know, I don't know what your expectations were for this, but every now and then there's going to be some loose papers around and it just, it's just going to happen. Like, I don't think those not being in anyone's line of vision improves much around here. All right. But everybody is different. We had the same thing with the laundry where wet laundry, do you take somebody's wet laundry and put it in the dryer ahead of time and then put your stuff in, or you just take your wet laundry out and leave it so that they get moldy stuff and you just do your laundry on your own way. We were very, we were house divided on that one too. So none of this is very new. This stuff happens and it will happen forever. So, um,

our man essentially is asking, do we just throw out the forks? You've been arguing about this for a week. Throw out the forks. Throw out the forks. Now, yes, chances are it's totally fine and good to go. But if he has a weird thing about wanting to stick the fork in his mouth that was dealing with some crud around a drain in a bathroom, it's not the optics. It's just a sense of it. I mean, if you really broke down using forks at a restaurant or if you look at your utensils and you're like oh man back when we were at restaurants all the

time i mean you could get in your own head about it so you have to respect the fact that it bothers him so this bothers him so much that he wants to chuck the forks i mean what are we talking about here 10 bucks to replace the forks and you guys spend a week on this that's the kind of math you should be doing you shouldn't be fighting for the forks. You should be saying, Hey, I get to spend $10 on this to get out of this stupid conversation. And there's your solution. I don't blame you. It's nice that you clean the drain. The forks are probably okay. But if the three forks are driving this guy crazy and therefore driving you crazy to the point you have to write an email, spend the 10 bucks or upgrade 20 bucks, Amazon full set, backup set, extra utensils. Easy, easy, easy.

Yeah. The stakes are super low. It's worth it. You got to fit a new doorknob or something. It's just forks. Okay. Brian checks in 30 year old guy living in Wisconsin, actively dating online. All right, dude. Uh, recently met a 28 year old girl. We had a guy chime in. He goes, I've slept with hundreds of girls the last year and I, I don't know what to do. Oh, you're doing it, man. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what, I mean, he was kind of bummed out about it though. So I read that one that Kyle sent me. I got to go back and find it because at least it's entertaining. Um, but it's But it's also, as the guy points out, I'm starting to feel a little gross.

I'm like, okay. I'm like, what are you, an NBA player or a bartender, man? Here we go. All right, so our man is 30, dating online, met a 20-year-old girl. We hit it off in a way I've never hit it off with anyone before.

Within 24 hours, there were jokes about marriage, kids, et cetera. We both knew it was insane to think these things so quickly. She asked me some deep questions early on. How many people I'd slept with? Terrible question. Terrible. Nothing good ever comes to that question early on. All right. Religious views, kids, etc. She mentioned I seemed like, quote, the guy she's been looking for and had an insanely good feeling about this one. Those are her quotes. She also happens to be a dentist who is objectively attractive, which of course doesn't hurt. Hey man, no problem. You're not shallow. People like what

they like. I'm not exactly a slouch. I'm a decent looking guy. All right, dude. Self-confidence. I have a graduate degree from Wisconsin. I've had a history of sleeping around in the past and partying a lot. Well, okay. It sounds like Madison. I was very open with her about this in the last year. I've really changed what I want. I'm tired of meaningless sex. Some guys are listening to this going, oh, sorry, must be terrible. All right, so our guy gets around a bit. He parties, and that happens with some guys. All right, so he's shifted his focus to finding his life partner. Hey, he's hit 30. Maybe it's 31 for others. Maybe it's 25. Maybe it's 50 for other dudes. All right. Maybe it's 31 for others. Maybe it's 25. Maybe it's 50 for other dudes. All right.

After just two days of messaging, we met. The conversation was good. We had chemistry. Following the date, we confirmed we wanted to meet again. However, the next few days, she was very quiet. I inquired what had changed. She told me I was overly open about my past. Everybody asks that question and wants honesty until they get honesty.

You know, like, oh, hey, you know, I'm Ryan. What's your name? Oh, you know, like, you know, what's, what's your story? It's like, oh, I used to be out of control for like a decade. Like, well, when did that stop last week? Oh, really? Cool. Uh, you know, look, let's just all be honest with each other. I mean, different, we get, we get probably predictable reactions based on information

that we don't always want to hear. And the longer you go, the longer your past is. And everybody kind of has a past and sometimes you have to get over it. And sometimes there are things that you're just not going to be able to get over. Um, I admire guys that don't care about anyone's past or women that don't care about anybody's past, but it's not always the same for everyone. Some people, it's a bit more of a hangup, especially if there's somebody that they know that's part of that past girl or guy that you have a lot of feelings for. So she told

me I was overly open, uh, hooking up with girls, being into older women, pursuing girls at weddings and being open to hooking up with a professor. If I was asked, I never did, but it's kind of a fantasy. So you just went all in. That was stupid. So strange. Yeah. Like, you know, it's's i kind of get what happened to our guy here because you're connecting in a way you've never connected before you feel this way you're like oh my god did i have did i just get hit over the head with the one where there's this feeling and we see it in movies and we hear these stories but it doesn't happen to any of us and then you're thinking wait a minute it does happen it does exist because i do have a couple friends that are in relationships like that where it was just absolutely knocked out with love immediately.

And it really worked out. And I think that's what everybody kind of hopes will happen when they decide they want to settle down. But because that happened to you, you just started telling her everything and you should have had more of a filter because very, the number is low of people that are like, oh, cool. You told me everything. It just, that's, you're smart enough from this email that I think you

already knew that you screwed up. So she said my openness about the past was a turnoff. Shocker. Made her feel like she couldn't move forward with me. She reaffirmed the chemistry was totally there, but the things I'd said made her feel like I wasn't in it for a relationship, more like friends with benefits. The sliver of hope she left me a text is if it's meant to be, it will be. She said she's taking some time to reevaluate what she wants and perhaps taking a break from dating. I've never felt so much heartache after seeing a girl just one time. Wow. I know it's insane. No, it isn't. I don't think it is insane. I get it. But I honestly believe we'll end up getting married if she gives me a chance to prove I'm the guy for her. I've been thinking about writing her a letter to show

how much I'm invested in this. I want her to understand I'm committed to this in a way I've never been romantically committed before. Do you think I should write her the letter? Should I wait and see if she reaches out? What should I do? Okay. Don't press, don't press it here. Um, but I understand what you're going through because you feel like you immediately screwed up when you were actually just trying to be entirely genuine. You know, it's not like you did something awful. You just shared way too much information. So I do think, uh, I do think there's a way to repair this by giving a couple of days and outlining everything that you just said to us in this email to her going, Hey, I have never felt this way before. I connected with you in a way that is so foreign to me that,

yeah, I opened up, but I think the positive, despite what the turnoff may be about me talking about my own history is that I I'm aware at 30 that I think the positive, despite what the turnoff may be about me talking about my own history, is that I'm aware at 30 that I actually do want to change these things. So that's why I think I am worth it. And you know what would be the better fix? Have her listen to this part of the podcast because she'll know that you didn't do this

for us to then share it with her. But there you go. Problem solved. So give it a week. Have her listen to this podcast. And then, you know, good luck at the wedding. Word. Good luck. No, seriously. No, for real. Think give it a week, have her listen to this podcast and then, uh, you know, good luck at the wedding. Good luck. No, seriously. No, I think about it that way. She does. He wasn't doing this thinking we'd even read it. Now we read it. And so we're like the third party here

giving him the advice. But at the same time, like he actually like the most psychopathic thing ever would be to fake all of this stuff with email because he doesn't think we're going to say anything like that but there you go problem solved he wrote these sincere things to us he's asking for the advice from us have her listen to this part of it because then she's probably going to believe this part of it more than you just trying to repair it all although i do think it should be repaired and if it can't be repaired then um you know yeah then then it does then it's not going to work. Then it might not have worked either. Cause I think that even though we don't love hearing about everything, all right, we've

all been there. You got to grow up about it a little bit. And, you know, especially I try to think of like, you know, the people that I work with and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, wait, if you're going to, if you're going to date somebody who works in sports, there's a pretty good chance. Um, you know, the, the female who works in sports has dated an athlete. I know that sounds shocking. I know that sounds shocking, but if you're a gorgeous woman working in sports that ends up marrying and many of my my you know people can joke about my

friend zone situation with girls that i work with but i'm just very very close friends with you know they end up with guys in sports because guys in sports are fucking cool i'm sorry but i mean that we're the rest of us civilians are at a disadvantage uh because it is cool to to be with the pro athlete thing so you, there've been plenty of times where I've gone, okay, well, you know, I can't worry about some of this stuff from the past. Um, because even though it may not be what you want, it may not prefer it. Uh, there, there's parts of these things where you kind of just have to get past it because if you start eliminating everybody before you even meet anybody in a row. Okay. There you go. Uh, we'll be back on, I'm fired up about Friday's guest. so yeah, we'll be back on Friday. you