The Tim Ferriss Show - #220: Soman Chainani — The School for Good and Evil

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Starting point is 00:03:14 are military strategists, super athletes, business icons, or anything in between, really, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, tips, and tricks you can test and apply in your own life. And this episode was a real treat. If you enjoyed my episodes with Seth Godin, Noah Kagan, any episode that really gets into the nitty gritty details, then you are going to love this one. It is a conversation with Soman Chainani, and I'll spell that for you. S-O-M-A-N-C-H-A-I-N-A-N-I. Trying the English today. And you can find him on Twitter, on social, at Soman Chainani, in all places. He was introduced to me by Brian Koppelman. Very, very accomplished artist, screenwriter, producer, co-creator of the hit show Billions, and a very, very long filmography.

Starting point is 00:04:07 And when I asked Brian what I should dig into with Soman, he said many things, but among others, his discipline and rigor, carefulness of his approach in all aspects of life. He's in incredible physical condition. He's super careful about financial security. He kept tutoring after getting a three-book deal. He's a detailed planner and an artist of high order, more disciplined and organized and businesslike than almost any artist I've met. So who is Soman? Well, his debut fiction series, The School for Good and Evil, has sold more than a million copies, well over a million copies, been translated into 25 languages across six continents, been a New York Times bestseller for more than 30 weeks, and will soon be a film from Universal Pictures with Soman co-writing the screenplay.

Starting point is 00:04:49 He's a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University's MFA film program, after which he began his career as a screenwriter for film and TV. He was recently named to the Out 100 and has received the $100,000 Circle Grant and the Sun Valley Writers Fellowship, both for debut writers. He's also an incredible tennis player, which we'll dig into. And there are a lot of parallels and a lot of transfers between each. What we talk about is obsession with Disney, and we cover so much ground. I think you guys will really enjoy this episode. So pay attention, get a notebook ready, and please enjoy my conversation with Soman Chanani. Soman, welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Thanks so much for having me. I am sitting here with a set of questions and exploratory bullets, and each one of these could be explored for, I would say, an hour or two, I would guess. So we may need a round two at some point, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the mutual connection that we have. How do you know the incredible Brian Koppelman? And for you people who don't know that name, he is a polymath. He is a writer. He co-wrote Rounders, The Illusionist. I think The Illusionist he co-produced and is co-creator of Billions, this new hit show, which I'm absolutely in love with. But how do you know Brian? Well, it started, I think, because in my 20s, I'd come out of film

Starting point is 00:06:19 school at Columbia. And I'd gone straight to London and had been working on a movie over there for a couple of years. And that was supposed to be my sort of hotshot debut and all that stuff. And it ultimately fell apart. And so I came back to New York when I was like, you know, 25 or 26, broke a quarter million dollars in debt from college and film school. And I didn't know how to make money. So I didn't know what to do. And luckily, a friend saved me and introduced me to a couple clients and told me to become an SAT tutor. And so I learned overnight how to tutor and got into that whole business. And it just happened that Brian's son needed a tutor. And so that's how it started. And so I was working with his son and a

Starting point is 00:07:09 bunch of his son's friends as I was starting to write the first School for Good and Evil book. And so he sort of watched the entire evolution from hotshot filmmaker to broke and penniless tutor to then rising from the ashes into a new career. So he knows me better than anyone, my God. Well, he is one of your biggest fans. And the enthusiasm, he's an enthusiastic guy to begin with. But if we were to spinal tap that and take it to 11, the enthusiasm with which he wanted to make the introduction was, of course, an immediate yes then on my part. And one thing he mentioned to me, and I wanted to dig into this, is that, well, first, let's back up. And this is going to be a non-chronological interview. We're going to jump all over the place because that's what

Starting point is 00:08:02 conversations tend to do. But The School for Good and Evil, how many books are there in that series right now? So there's three books in the series right now. And then there's a full color kind of graphic handbook that's a companion guide that we offer to reluctant readers, to kids who hate to read and will never read novels ever. But if they want to be part of the universe, they get this sort of graphic version of the world. So there's either the three novels or there's the handbook. And then I'm in the process of writing the fourth one as we speak. And I think they'll probably be in the end six in the series total, just also because the movies are going to start to come out from universal. And so I

Starting point is 00:08:45 wanted to have enough books to stretch out, um, to match the movies. You didn't want to end up in a, in a game of Thrones situation. You know, that I, at least once a week, I think of that situation and cannot imagine that just because, you know, I get so involved in my work and I take it almost too seriously at times. And the idea that you have to share your secrets of what's going to happen to somebody who then is going to put it on TV before you, oh my God, I'd kill myself. I couldn't do it. So you are one of the most, according to Brian, this is our first conversation, you and I, one of the most disciplined and rigorous people he knows in all things. And one of the adjectives he used was careful. And I wanted to explore that because I thought it might lead us to some backstory. So he said, correct me if I'm wrong, that you kept tutoring. You kept doing your tutoring after you got a three book deal. Is that true? I kept tutoring after we made the movie deal. And the movie deal was enough for me to not have to work for 15 years.

Starting point is 00:09:52 Why keep tutoring? I just couldn't get out of my head the idea that art is something that you should not depend on. I don't like depending on my art for income because then I start to think in a mercenary way. And so, I had to get through my head that it's okay. You're making enough now from the books and the movies that you don't have to confuse them. You don't have to confuse money and art. Because the great thing about tutoring was it took all the pressure off the book. Even though I was broke at the time, even though I had nothing going for me, it meant that I could write freely because at the end of the day, my money wasn't going to come

Starting point is 00:10:37 from that book. And so I couldn't let go of tutoring. I tutored up until last year. I went three or four years longer than I should have because it just meant that I had that absolute freedom in the back of my head that if it all went to pot, I still had tutoring. Should have is a tricky word, right? Or it's a tricky contraction because I'd like the separation of church and state that you described in so much as you not feeling as though you have to find rent money through your art, even if your art is compensating you well, psychologically allowing you to compartmentalize that you don't think about what will sell best as the primary directive of your art. Perhaps. Where did you grow up? Don't think about what will sell best as the primary directive of your art, perhaps.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Where did you grow up? I grew up in a little island off Miami called Key Biscayne that is now quite popular as a resort town. It has a Ritz Carlton. It has a Starbucks now. It had neither of those things when I was growing up. It was basically just beaches and trees when I grew up. And it was very, very small. But the one thing it was famous for was tennis. If you didn't play tennis on Key Biscayne, you weren't part of the cool crowd. And so it's a lot of where players train these days and still. So that's sort of where I grew up. And how would you describe your, I don't know what age to pick here, let's say 10-year-old self? Were you a popular kid?

Starting point is 00:12:18 Let me think. No, not until high school. And I think it was because I just was a little confused, I think, at that age. I was the only Indian kid on the island I grew up on. I was one of three people of color at my high school. And so you grow up not looking like anyone else. And then once I turned 12 and 13, and I start liking guys instead of girls, that adds another dimension to the whole thing, right? And so also at the same time, I'm basically six foot. And at that time, I was like 110 pounds. Wow.

Starting point is 00:12:58 I could not put weight on to save my life, right? So all those things, it just felt like I just didn't fit in, in any shape, way, or form. And I didn't know what to do. And I think it led me to basically retreat into work. And so I became the kid who won everything. They used to give out subject awards at school every year. They gave out 11 on the last day of school. And from seventh grade through 11th grade, I won all 11 every single year. So it was basically me just walking back and forth, picking up trophies, because that's sort of what I did. I just sort of threw myself into work. And it was only once I got to the later years of high school, 11th and 12th grade, that I think I started to let my real self come out a little bit. I just think it broke

Starting point is 00:13:53 through on its own. And I think people started to realize that I actually did have a sense of humor for all my workaholic tendencies. When did you become openly gay? I think it was my senior year of college. And it wasn't something that... It's so funny because now I watch kids come out and it's done with such empowerment and this kind of beautiful freedom. And if there's one thing I'm sort of envious of in the entire world, it's the way that kids come out now. Because when we did it in the early to mid 2000s, there just wasn't anything out there to help you. And so it was just traumatic having to come out to people, to your parents, to your friends. Every time you did it, it was just trauma. And so I think once I actually came out is when everything sort of broke open. And that's when I think the path I was on up until then, I thought I was going to be

Starting point is 00:14:55 in business. I thought I was going to be a consultant or a banker or any of these things. And it was only after I came out that I think my creative self came back. It was almost like that had gone in the closet too. And it took time for both to come out. I was talking to a dear friend of mine, Adam Robinson, who's been on the podcast as a guest before, but alongside several other people. And we just did a solo episode and he battled with depression for a long time and I've had my own bouts with depression. I'm not saying these are the same thing, but we had a long discussion about one of the ingredients being inauthenticity,

Starting point is 00:15:36 meaning not following who you are or opening up to who you are fully as one of the ingredients in that particular breed of depression. So I've thought a lot about that. Were you able to be yourself with your parents at a young age? Or did they know you were gay? Was that an open secret? Could you describe your dynamic with your family? You know, my parents are amazing. They're just both brilliant people and both, at the end of the world, there were no models of how to do it in a real way, especially in the world of Indian families.

Starting point is 00:16:32 There was nothing. So I don't know if it was them specifically that scared me as much as the idea. I didn't even know what it would look like. I thought if you come out of the closet, you're going to live this very small, lonely life. That's what I thought at the time. And what's funny is once I came out, once I became a writer, all these things, I look back at that time and think, thank God my life sort of unfolded the way it did. Because if you look at the School for Good and Evil books, there's 120 characters, right? Each has their own story. It's an entire labyrinth world that I don't keep track of with notes. I know it in my head. Everything's in my head.

Starting point is 00:17:13 And I think all of that energy, this entire universe of creativity was trapped, right? And so no wonder I was a complete basket case for so much of my young life, because if you can't like, you know, forget the gay thing, if you're not actually like letting out this absolute volcano of sort of creative energy inside of I have in life, just myself, is whenever I sense another creative soul who's bottled themselves up, I gravitate towards them and try to find a way to let them out. And that's what the books are, too. Sort of the message of the books in there, too, is for kids is, you know, find your tribe, right? Like, don't buy into the matrix of what the society is telling you a successful person or a hero has to be. Find your tribe. What did you major in undergrad?

Starting point is 00:18:12 English. Just because when you go to a school like Harvard, you don't know, there's nothing practical, right? A lot of the finance guys will major in economics or government, but only out of just sort of default because there isn't anything applicable at a school like Harvard, really. So in my head, I knew I was going to go into consulting or banking, but it didn't matter what you majored in. So I figured I might as well major in something that I actually like, which was English. I remember having an open Q&A not too long ago where we were talking about,

Starting point is 00:18:59 where the question was related to entrepreneurship. And I gave a response and then they interrupted and they said, well, it's easy for you to say because you're a male who went to an Ivy League school. And I know, no, but I remember thinking to myself, the last thing an Ivy League school does is prepare you to be an entrepreneur. It prepares you, it molds you to be a very well-polished cog in a fancy machine like consulting or eye-banging it. But it does not in any way, probably if anything, inhibits in many respects entrepreneurship. But that could be a whole separate podcast, I suppose. Yeah. We have to at some point do our dump on IVs. I have so much to say. I almost want to put on my forehead that if you went to an IV, I probably won't date you, which is the

Starting point is 00:19:46 ultimate form of self-loathing. Where did film or the fiction come into the picture? I think growing up, film was my love. I always wanted to be in film in some capacity. I thought that's what I was going to end up doing. The big problem, I thought, was that I was not one of these people craving to direct just for directing sake. I didn't have this burning desire to be a Spielberg or something like that. I wanted to control a vision of a world, right? So I already had like a fantasy streak inside of me. I gravitated towards Narnia, Lord of the Rings, all the Grimm's fairy tales, things like that. And so I think ultimately what I wanted to be able to do only sort of came into existence once J.K. Rowling wrote Potter. Because once I saw

Starting point is 00:20:48 Potter, I thought, oh, wait, this is like exactly sort of the kind of brain I have, which is create your own universe, control how this universe is going to be presented in media, whether it's books, it's film, it's whatever. And I think that's where School for Good and Evil came from at some level was this desire to somehow bring a universe in my head into the world in the most fully realized way possible, combining my interests in both film and literature. So I have something I can't get out of my head, so I'm going to jump back to tennis. The first thing I was thinking was at six foot, whatever you were, 110 pounds, you must have had a really mean serve. That was the first thing I was thinking.

Starting point is 00:21:33 And the second is really a selfish or self-interested question because I have been considering learning tennis this year. And you've spent an incredible amount of time tutoring. Granted, doesn't sound like you were tutoring in tennis, but how would you recommend I learn to play tennis if I were going to take it seriously? And what should I focus on and what should I spend less time on? Maybe things that novices waste a lot of time on. Do you have any thoughts on that? That's such a good question. It's funny. I'll tell you how I play to this day and it might help, which is that all year long in New York, I play four or five times a week with different people. And it's usually we play matches or we hit or whatever. And then every two months,

Starting point is 00:22:21 I go down to Miami to the condo complex I've lived in since I was a kid. And I play with the coach I've had since I was a kid. I've been playing with him for 25 years. And for context, for people listening, you did not lose a first round match for 10 years, correct? What happened was I went 10 years playing tournaments all the time from high school up until probably my late 20s and never lost the first match because I always felt like I had paid the entry fee. I had done so much work to get there because often the tournament was in another state or another country. I would not lose. It didn't matter who you put me against. I had this sort of killer iron will that would get me through that match. And as soon as I started writing good and evil,

Starting point is 00:23:09 as soon as I was putting all my creative energy elsewhere, I think I lost six in a row. We have to pick and choose where you put your energy, right? So I interrupted you telling me how you play though. So I go down to Miami and I play with the same coach I've been playing with 25 years. He's basically 70 years old. He cannot move. So what he does is he takes a basket of balls and feeds me to them, feeds me them quite slowly and analyzes my swing on every single one. So it's 100% about technique, 100% about timing. It's as basic as it gets, but it's like three or four times a year, he's just training technique. And if I had a kid or had to teach somebody tennis, it's get your technique perfect. Because the thing about tennis is it's so unconscious.

Starting point is 00:23:58 If you try to consciously think your way through the strokes or anything like that, you're going to end up in trouble just because of how fast it ultimately goes. It's like ping pong. So it has to become automatic. It has to become conscious. Your technique has to be impeccable. And so one of the things he taught me from an early age is don't rush to the baseline. Start at the service line and get your technique right. And then things will flow. So I became sort of a technique obsessive, which of course flows into all the other aspects of my life because I'm big on technique and process. Service line is where you serve from.

Starting point is 00:24:36 I know this is service line is, is that like the line in the middle of the, got it. Here we go. All right. Now we're at my level. Thanks. Well, the funny thing about tennis is it rewards... It reminds me of gymnastics and figure skating where it rewards attention to detail and it rewards individualistic obsession. And so it's sort of... You're talking sweet spot of my personality. It's just the one sport I love. And I also think it's a great sport where you can put me up against somebody who is enormously big and powerful, and it won't help them. It's a sport where power is not going to do all that much for you, ultimately, against somebody who's fast. And we can see that in the men's game now with Djokovic and Murray and all those guys. So I have next to me, literally five inches from my left thigh,

Starting point is 00:25:32 I have the book I'm finishing, which is Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, science fiction compilation of short stories. And then right next to that is the next book I was planning on reading, The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Galway, W. Timothy Galway. I don't know if that's how you pronounce his last name, but where do novices waste a lot of time? We're going to get into what makes a good coach. And this is, I think, going to take us a few different places, but where should I not spend a lot of time in the beginning? And that relates to how should I choose a tennis coach? I think one of the things is when coaches put you against other kids very early and you're playing matches very early because they want to develop your competitive instincts.

Starting point is 00:26:14 Again, I think it's super dunderheaded because what they don't realize is your competitive instincts are far stronger than your technique, right? So what you'll end up doing is coming up with this hatchet job way of playing tennis that somehow will do the job to win you some matches, but it isn't going to serve you well in the long run, right? It's like memorizing openings in chess versus learning first principles. Yes. And that's how you get to the club. And when you go to the club and you see all these people with hacking back hands, or they slice both the forehand-handed backhand on tour. He was the first person to ever use it.

Starting point is 00:27:09 It's a guy named Mike Belkin. He played Connors at Wimbledon. So all he cares about is, are you hitting the ball in the micrometer sweet spot? I can hit the perfect shot. He doesn't care. He's just looking at where I hit it. And ultimately, I think tennis is about knowing your weaknesses. And I think my weaknesses, for instance, are weaknesses that show up in other aspects of my life. So having someone call me out on them a few times a year actually helps me not just on the

Starting point is 00:27:43 tennis court, but everywhere else. What are some of your weaknesses that manifest elsewhere? Oh boy, I would say... We could just trade weaknesses for two hours, but don't worry. I won't do this the entire interview. He doesn't understand why my margins are so small. He thinks that the comfortable way to play tennis is to give yourself two inches of net clearance. What is that? I see margins. You mean the space over the net with which you clear it. Got it.

Starting point is 00:28:10 Yeah. And mine is like two millimeters because I hit the ball very hard and very flat for the lines. And he doesn't understand why everything has to be so dangerous, which is the same note I get when I submit my books to my editor. Why does everything have to be so provocative? Why does everything have to be so aggressively on the edge of what's appropriate? You know what I mean? So it shows up all the time. I think the other two things are when I get tense, I tend not to finish my swing, which I think shows up in life also, which is when you're nervous or when you're tense, or when you go in with feeling on your heels, you don't let the full expression of yourself

Starting point is 00:28:52 through. So that's something that I think shows up. And maybe also, and this I think is a common one, whenever I'm going through a string of unforced errors or anything like that in tennis, it's because I'm hitting the ball too early. I'm reaching for it. I'm not waiting for it. It's not coming into my strike zone. I'm lurching forward for it instead of holding on a little bit. Do you do that with deal-making or negotiating things like that? Or where else does that show up? I think, yeah. I think sometimes it's a tendency to want to jump at something and say yes to everything. And I'm lucky to have the greatest agent ever, who weirdly enough is a lot younger than me, who basically doesn't let me say yes to

Starting point is 00:29:39 anything. He's just like, wait, hang on. And it's sort of... Start with no and then build from there. Yeah. And also just, he's like, it's not just saying yes. It's like, you have to wait until something actually excites you, you know? So, yeah. Well, as another friend of mine, Derek Sivers, entrepreneur, would say, it's either a hell yes or it's a no, nothing in between.

Starting point is 00:30:03 And that's how he makes his binary decisions. But you brought up something that i really want to underscore for people who haven't experienced it perhaps or who who haven't utilized it enough and this is a lesson that i revisit quite a lot and sometimes forget and that is we we talk a lot about of uh or say in general uh u.s culture talks a lot about mind over body and so on, but you can use body over mind in so much as the sports arena, the gym, the tennis court can be used, like you said, as a way of surfacing and working on weaknesses that then transfer to other areas. And I have found that to to be the case which is one of the many reasons that when my exercise regimen is consistently on point everything else improves or is easier uh so that is that's something that i'm focusing a lot on right now all right let's let's let's dig into some of this

Starting point is 00:31:01 other stuff uh where to even begin i have so many notes in front of me. I will start with, we talked about tennis. I want to talk about Walt Disney and Disney. So you are apparently obsessed with Disney, Disney World. Let's talk about it. Why don't you just, I'll just let the door open and we can go from there. Well, I don't know if it was by choice. I think what happened was we didn't have TV growing up. We didn't have cable, internet, any of these things that kids grow up with now. What did your parents do growing up? My dad was in real estate and my mom was a very young mom. She had three kids by 23.

Starting point is 00:31:43 Wow. was a very young mom. She had three kids by 23. So it was a lot going on. So she was trying to figure out how to raise three kids. And back then, you had your VCR and your TV that played a couple of channels and that was it. So we used to complain a lot to them that we had nothing to watch. We didn't have a Nintendo. We didn't have anything. And so my grandparents finally relented and came home with the entire Disney animated collection on VHS, which was like, I think 27 movies or something until 15. That was all that was in the house. So that was our only source of entertainment. And so I think Disney at some level infected every cell of my brain and it became for good or bad, sort of an essential part of how I thought about the world. And it was only later on, once I got to college, I took a class on, sort of a famous class at Harvard on fairy tales taught by a professor named Maria Tatar, who has become sort of like

Starting point is 00:32:51 the most famous expert on fairy tales in the world. And she exposed me to the original Grimm stories, which are horrific and dark and insane. And half the time, the evil character wins and half the time, the good character wins and half the time, the good character wins. And I think that gap between the Disney stories I grew up with and I took so seriously and the real fairy tales is where The School for Good and Evil started. Because the question that kept sticking in my head is why did kids 200 years ago grow up with stories where the hero didn't always win, where the hero died a horrible death if they made a mistake. And we got these very sanitized versions of the story where the

Starting point is 00:33:32 hero always wins, even if the hero is not particularly smart. You look at The Little Mermaid, you look at The Lion King, Ariel should die brutally in that movie because she's an idiot. Complete idiot. I mean, the number of mistakes she makes in that movie doesn't make any sense. So then to read The Little Mermaid, the original, where she dies at the end, suddenly made sense, right? And I think that's where I started thinking, okay, how do we get kids in our world to get the real stories? How do you get them to start reading something where good and evil are in balance, where it actually means something again? And I think all of that stuff,

Starting point is 00:34:10 and then the arrival of Potter, my knowledge of Disney, that all sort of played into what The School for Good and Evil ultimately became, which is sort of a mix of all of that with an attempt to give fairy tales back to children and sort of make them really think about what good and evil is. I remember reading the original Hansel and Gretel stories, a few variations, and there's an illustrated version people can check out if they want. They should read it before their kids read it, which I think Neil Gaiman played a part in, which really underscores how brutal some of these stories were.

Starting point is 00:34:53 And I have thought a lot about Disney in the last few years, but I've thought about Disney more so in the capacity of Walt Disney. And there's a fantastic Walt Disney museum here in San Francisco. Which I'm dying to come visit at some point. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. And it looks at Walt Disney, the thinker Walt Disney, the imagineer, et cetera, but also Walt Disney, the technology innovator.

Starting point is 00:35:21 But Glenn Beck, of all people, has a book and he carried it with him for some period of time. And my understanding is that it inspired Disney World's The Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Oh, I've read that book. You have by Sir Ebenezer George Howard. Have you been to Disney World? 40 times. Like I said, Disney was somebody that I admired so much that I came to a point where once you started admiring someone and studying them, you start to see their flaws. And that's where you start to see the seeds of your own career. And you realize their weaknesses. You think, oh, wait, I can come in here with my own voice and do something totally different that's going to ultimately be its own thing. And so I studied all that stuff because I was fascinated. The most important thing that I was

Starting point is 00:36:18 fascinated about with Disney is his desire to create his own city. He was obsessed with this idea of creating his own, not just Walt Disney World amusement park. He wanted his own model community that the rest of the world would then adopt. That's what Epcot was supposed to be. It never ended up happening. And then for whatever reason, they abandoned it after his death. But I think once I'm done with School for Good and Evil, I'm dying to do another series that's analogous to this idea of what the perfect city of the future looks like. You bring up something that I'd like to add to, which is the benefit, in a way, of Heroes with Clay Feet. And so people have probably heard the recommendation, never meet your heroes. And that is said because of the fear and the reality that oftentimes when you meet the people you most admire, they disappoint you in some way. There is some type of flaw. There's some type of weakness.

Starting point is 00:37:19 And it's the frame to have, I think, that is more enabling is the one that you just described. And that is, you shouldn't be, well, actually, you're allowed to be disappointed. You can be disappointed, but even if you feel disappointed in some way, everyone is flawed. And that should just encourage you because it humanizes them. You realize, okay, they're not some infallible, metaphorically, some entrepreneur or fill in the blank who is hitting every foul shot a hundred times out of a hundred. It's like, no, they have real weaknesses. And that then, like you said, opens the door to the possibility that you could do something of that magnitude. So I find it really encouraging in a way, uh, when I, when I explore the weaknesses of people that I really, really admire, uh, said, so in any case, I, I

Starting point is 00:38:13 appreciate you making, uh, making that point, you know, the paradox of heroes. Uh, what is, what is one of your, if you have one favorite failures, because I think a lot of people listening will think to themselves, good God. All right. So this guy just seems to be a savant in everything. I can't, I don't have those attributes. So let's, let's talk about some, some failure. Do you have a favorite failure, meaning a failure that in retrospect really-page treatment of the story. And the professor was this ultra jockey, you're talking patriarchal culture, entrenching kind of guy. And I submitted it. And I went in to talk to him at office hours. And he goes, so let's talk about this story you wrote about an Indian family. And I said, about this story you wrote about an Indian family.

Starting point is 00:39:25 And I said, I didn't write anything about an Indian family. And he's like, well, which one? He didn't have names on them or he hadn't looked at the names. He's like, well, which one was yours? And then he got distracted and was talking about how his favorite one was this one about fairy tales. And he's like, whoever the girl that wrote it was, she has a future. And I said, that one's mine. And his face just totally changed. And he couldn't get over the idea that I had written it, that a boy had written that story, that had a female lead character was set in the world of fairy tales. And we never went over it because he couldn't get over the shock of it. And there was something in that moment that I think I took badly. I think I got ashamed of it. And had I reacted with a little more self-confidence at 23 or 24,

Starting point is 00:40:20 however old I was, I would have taken the positive comment he had given more than the negative one. Do you know what I mean? But for some reason, I felt embarrassed by it. So that was something that I wish, but it was an important one. Because I think years later, when I came back to it with a little more self-esteem, I was like, out of all the kids in the class, he liked that one the best. Why didn't I run with it? That was a serious idea. The failure that became the cornerstone of my life happened after I graduated film school, which was I came out the if not the largest, but it's CAA, WME, William Morris Endeavor. There are a handful of these UTA out there, but CAA is one of the big motherships. And so they had picked me up and this script had won a ton of stuff and it had won this

Starting point is 00:41:20 big grant. And so I immediately got a studio deal out of England to make the movie for, I think it was a $6 million budget, which is ridiculous for a graduate of film school. For a movie that you wrote? For a movie I wrote. And so it was almost like an autobiographical story at some level with some fantasy elements to it. And so I moved to London. I spent a year and a half prepping it, doing all the work to get it ready. We had crews set up. We had a great cast. We had everything set. And it was right at a sort of bad time in the industry financially. And the studio had had three or four flops in a row. And then their big movie came out and died. And that was it. They went bankrupt six weeks before we were starting

Starting point is 00:42:11 shooting. And that was it. In a year and a half, I lost everything I had worked for all those years. And I just didn't know what to do. And I remember going home and that's when I started tutoring and all that stuff. But the biggest thing that came out of there is I remember thinking, never again, that's never going to happen again. I'm never going to work on something for two years and put my life and soul in it and not have it see the light of day. And that's when I realized there has to be a way to control your IP. There has to be a way to control the creative property so that you can be in charge. And that's when I started thinking, why don't I go back to what I was always meant to do,

Starting point is 00:42:53 which was fantasy? And what if I start with it as books first? What can I do? But even then I thought, all right, say I write a book and it comes out and no one reads it, then we're back at square one. And so I did a lot of investigation into the kids' book industry. And this is where I found sort of the magic secret, which is I watched a lot of authors going on tour who wrote kids and teen books. And if you're a teen author, you tour like an adult author does.

Starting point is 00:43:24 You just go to bookstores every night in different cities and you meet your fans, which is great. But if you don't have any fans, then there's no point, right? If you write for kids eight to 12, you don't go to bookstores. Instead, they send you to schools and you're put in front of captive audiences, anywhere from 200 to a thousand kids at a time who don't know anything about you. And you get an hour to sell your book three times a day to three different schools. And I thought, okay, that I can do. If I write a book good enough and you put me on tour and I get to see 3,000 kids a day, I can sell. And that's what got me going. I realized I could control the creative and the business side of it. And for someone what got me going. I realized I could control the creative and the

Starting point is 00:44:06 business side of it. And for someone who lives their life wanting control, I saw a career waiting to happen. So it looks like an accident, I guess, but I had seen how it could be done. So I want to talk about the selling. And now that the more I hear three times a day, a thousand kids at a time, I'm like, why have I not been choosing my genres more intelligently? Because you can show up to a gigantic book signing, even if you've had successful books and have 12 people or two people. I remember going to the UK. I've never... So just as a contrast, I've never done what anyone would consider a book tour. Because after... I remember the four-hour work week came out and I went to the UK and I expected to have this fantastic launch and it did pretty well, but they wanted to rely on everything that happened in the US. And I remember going to my first book signing that the publisher in the UK was handling. And I showed up and it was, I don't remember the exact name of the bookstore, but I show up at

Starting point is 00:45:10 seven o'clock or eight o'clock at night. It's raining outside. And literally over two hours, two people showed up. One person who was just wandering around and wanted to talk to me about things, anything that was unrelated to my book. And then one person who had already bought the book somewhere else. You know, nothing, nothing brings you back to earth like the British. Oh my God. It was just such a punch in the nuts. And after that, I was like, no more. Much like yourself, different context, but I was like, never again, ever, ever in my life am I going to have my head stuffed into the toilet this hard from an ego demolishing standpoint. But I digress. That is my want.

Starting point is 00:45:54 I think it's important because also I think at some point, all the principles that you believe in and that I've been reading your books for years and immediately sensed a fellow soul who is interested in the same things. All that stuff, kids need. And the School for Good and Evil in a weird sense is kind of a fictionalized expression of all the stuff we're talking about, right? It's everything I believe in about the world and making your own destiny and planning and not fitting in to society's constructs. And so people who want to raise their kids with those values, I hope would then find interest in the books. But at the same time, I think you're due to write a kid's version of yours. Because I just think teenagers more than anything need it. And parents will buy it because they know you. So I think it's coming.

Starting point is 00:46:54 Well, it might. It might. I've been very intimidated. And then I'm going to come back to the coming out of college and film school, a quarter of a million dollars in debt, because I think that's an important topic to dig into. But I've been very intimidated by, in a very, I think, good way, some what I would call, and the genre names are confusing. So young adult fiction. It's 13 plus., like 13 plus 13 plus when, when I picked up, this was, I don't know, 2005. It actually, I know exactly when it was, it was 2005 because it was when I was doing my walkabout around the world prior to the four hour work week. When I was doing all my experiments, I was in Panama and I was reading his dark materials, Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass. And I had to look up probably two or three words, a page to define them for myself. I mean, nautical terms, all sorts of stuff.

Starting point is 00:48:00 And I remember wondering who the audience was. Well, I'll blow your mind on that one. Golden Compass and Philip Pullman is not young adult. That's middle grade. That's eight to 12. What? I consider myself a pretty well-educated guy. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:16 No, he's intense. And I think, but he's part of the whole specter that I aspire to as well, which is if you look at Narnia, if you look at Golden Compass, even if you look at Potter, middle grade is where you find the books that really transcend to adults as well. Is Never Ending a Story? Would that be considered middle? Yeah. Never Ending Story as well. I think the problem is- That was my favorite book growing up for three or four years in elementary school. It's an amazing book. And I think the thing with a lot of young adult is

Starting point is 00:48:52 it's there to gratify specific teenage impulses from 13 to 17. So it's a very, very melodramatic and romance-based at times. And I think romance becomes an essential element of it. Whereas in middle grade, you will often find the more high fantasy, that you would also find in adult fiction, which is why I think often some of the best books that cross over things, even if you look at the best Neil Gaiman, like the Graveyard Book, these are middle grade books. My favorite audio book of all time probably is read by Neil himself. It's so good. And so that's also why I love this genre because School for Gunevo, for instance,

Starting point is 00:49:39 the number of adult fans we have is insane. There's no way we would sell as much as we have sold and been able to do what we have done without adult readers. What happens is the kids get obsessed and then they give it to their parents. The parents read it and then they start getting into it. The trick with the middle grade series is that the first book has to be a little younger. That's why the first Harry Potter book- So they can grow into the rest of the series? It has to feel like a kid's book. It has to get the kids into it at some level. And then you can start getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's how it's done. Which is why even if you look at his dark materials, Golden Compass is a little bit easier, but then two and three are intense tough

Starting point is 00:50:26 tough well you mentioned controlling your ip your intellectual property so that you would be the master of your fate more than you had been when this this this film evaporated in front of you that you were going to work on golden Golden Compass, one of my favorite books in that genre. One of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. And I was so fucking enraged when I came out of that theater.

Starting point is 00:50:55 I was like, how could you? How could you? I was so upset that they tried to cram one and a half or two of these gigantic gorgeous books

Starting point is 00:51:04 into 90 minutes or whatever it was, it just infuriated me. What have you done or how do you think about protecting the integrity of your work? How do you go about ensuring that is likely to be the case? Because I'm not going to generalize, but yes, I am. I'm going to. You don't want to take people's word for it in Hollywood or anywhere else. There are too many players. There are too many cooks in the kitchen. So what do you do? Well, first thing I do is I have this piece of paper. And anytime I get on the phone with anyone from LA, I put it on my wall and it says, they are lying. So I've been doing that for about three years and it really makes sense because they are lying. They are saying whatever they need to say.

Starting point is 00:51:56 The great thing about Hollywood is once you figure out that it is essentially the same kind of engine as the political system designed to slow things down, designed to make things move as slowly as possible. And you start to realize that it's essentially like working with Congress. Then for some reason, you start to accept it a little more. I think the difference with me is I come from that world, right? So I'd gone to film school, I'd come out and been involved with not just the movie that had evaporated, but I was getting offered a lot of projects at that time. And so I had met a lot of people. So when it came to selling the rights to School for Good and Evil, I got to pick who it was. I didn't just go with whoever gave the best offer. So I put together the producing team, which was Jane Startz, who did Ella Enchanted

Starting point is 00:52:53 and Tuck Everlasting, and is known for putting together the most faithful children's adaptations of all classic books. I mean, that's her reputation. And then put her together with Joe Roth, who is Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, Snow White and the Huntsman, who's the big blockbuster fairy tale producer. And that combination has been the magic bullet because A, I got to make sure that I wrote the first couple of drafts of the script to make sure that we were in the right direction before I stepped off to keep working on the books. And then it made sure that we got on somebody who, a new screenwriter, who would put in the studio's notes, who also loved the books, which turned out to be, right now it's David McGee, who wrote Finding Neverland, Life of Pi,

Starting point is 00:53:42 and is doing the new Mary Poppins for Disney. And his daughters love the book. So I've been reading every single draft of the script. I've been involved every step of the way. And as of now, could not be more faithful to the books. That is not to say that it will not end up being the worst movie of all time that has nothing to do with the series. But all you can do as an author is, I would say, the advice would be hold on to it until you put together the right team yourself. You don't just hand it over. How do you, whether it's through social engineering and just managing relationships in a particular way, how do you minimize the likelihood of really stupid studio notes getting forced into your script?

Starting point is 00:54:32 I think that time has helped because of social media. The fan base of the series is getting bigger and bigger by the day. And I think they have learned from too many things like Golden Compass or Beautiful Creatures or movies where the fans revolted before it ever came out. And you have to have the fans on board because at the end of the day, they're the ones who are going to make all the noise. My biggest goal when I wrote Good and Evil was, look, the way to make a success is not necessarily to have the most readers straight off the bat, but to have the most passionate ones. Well, they become your marketing force. That's it. And that's everything. And to this day, I spend at least half an hour a day

Starting point is 00:55:20 doing fan engagement to make sure that the people who love the books most get as much access as possible. What have you found most effective for that in that half hour? Well, it's tricky because with 8 to 12, our core fan base, I don't think it's really 8 to 12. It's more like 10 to 15. But I think they are not on social media so much. They're not on Twitter. They're not on Instagram. So we built an interactive website that is, I think, the best of any kid series in the world in terms of how complex and how much it offers. There's 18 moderated chat rooms. There's games. There's contests every week. We have a YouTube channel. There's so much for them to do there. And there's a forum in the chat forums called Questions for Soman, and they can ask me questions

Starting point is 00:56:05 anytime they want. And I go on half an hour a day and answer them all. Got it. Got it. So it's centralized. All right. Now, each... I'm going to lay this out.

Starting point is 00:56:17 So each year, I'm looking at some specs. Your player stats. These aren't really stats. But you write a 500 to 700 page book. You tour 60 to 80 days, film a weekly YouTube show, work on film, manage the business side of the school for good and evil. Plus parenthetical, you're single at the moment, which is a part-time job in and of itself. In New York, which is not just a part-time, it's like death of your soul. Well, you also have in New York,

Starting point is 00:56:49 it's a whole separate, you have the extra layer of paradox of choice, plan shopping issue. There's an abundance of riches in some respects that makes it challenging. But what does your time management look like? What are the keys to your time management? What do you do differently? I know there's a lot of questions, but I'd love for you just to describe how you keep things in order and prioritized. Well, I think there are a few tricks. The big trick is one day a week is where anything not essential happens. So if I have to meet my agent or get a haircut or go do some press thing or a radio interview or something, all of that happens on one day. So everything gets shoved into... Usually it's Tuesday. Tuesday becomes the funnel day for anything.

Starting point is 00:57:42 Miscellaneous. Yeah. And so I think that becomes the main day. And. And so, you know, I think that becomes the, the, the main day. And then I think for me, it's all about segments, you know? So like the, the sort of core anchors of my day are, I play tennis in the morning at usually at seven. Um, and I, uh, work out with my trainer at two and just having those two anchors makes everything go so much smoother because then I have a big block, uh, in the morning from like eight 30 to one to like write and, and manage whatever else I have to. And then after I train from like three 30 to six. Um, so I just think that becomes the, the, the way I manage time is, and also if you're,

Starting point is 00:58:27 you're fueled by those two workouts, you come back like ready to go, you know, you're just like in it. And so I always feel like I'm, I'm operating on like pure adrenaline at any given time and operating very single-mindedly on something. Um, and then I try to finish working by seven, because I also think if you work too late, it ruins the work the next day. Are there any particular tools that you use to help you manage all this? No. I've had fights with friends over this who think I should use a calendar.

Starting point is 00:59:04 But when we were growing up, my dad never used a calendar for his business and he just wasn't into it. He just felt like he could keep everything in his head. And I don't know. It's how he grew up. It's how I grew up. I never kept track of my homework in school. I never wrote stuff down. And so I don't have a calendar, which is so ridiculous to say out loud, but I don't have a calendar. Now, is that a reflection of just having a prodigious memory or is it a reflection of it being more free-flowing? Do you wake up in the morning knowing exactly what you're going to do in those two major blocks of time? Yeah, I think that's it. I think it's because I know the anchors. I know what's happening. The only thing, I mean, obviously if I have to attend it, like I'm scheduling a trip for April or something,

Starting point is 00:59:49 I'll have it written down somewhere. So let's, as an exercise, so today's Tuesday, today's your odds and ends day. What does tomorrow look like for you? And what are your key priorities? If you can talk about them. Yeah. So tomorrow, okay. So I'll get up at, I usually get up about six and then what do I do in the morning? So I'll meditate for about 15 minutes. What type of meditation? How do you meditate? Oh, that'll take us down a whole rabbit hole. Okay. We'll come back to that. I'll bookmark that. So 15 minutes of meditation. And then I start my day every day with... I boil water and then I put a towel over my head and I inhale steam because for some reason it gets a sweat going and somehow clears out my head. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:00:30 It's just something I do, which, which always works. And it just feels like you went to a sauna in your house. Um, and then I'll eat, uh, grab a juice from the Playstack store, and then get to tennis by seven. I'll get home by 8.30. I'll be writing by nine. And then right now I'm working on revisions to the first 10 chapters of book four. So I'll do that until about one, then I'll eat. Then I'll go meet my trainer. And we train from about- Do you have a set lunch that you have? Nick Neumanis Yeah. So we were talking about this before we came on. I can't cook and I just don't have time to think about food. So I have tried every meal delivery service in New York City. And I use Portable Chef, which is really good, which is basically like a customized personal chef and they deliver all your meals for the day,

Starting point is 01:01:25 the day before. Got it. So everything's set for you. So that one's really great. Heart and belly is really good. And it's not like Blue Apron or something like that where you have to have pots. It's minimal. So you heat it up and you're ready to go. Ready to go. So then I'll go train with Trainer Dave, as I call him, from 2 to about 3.30. And then from 4 to 6.30 or 7 is that second block where right now it'll still be revising. But inevitably, there's business stuff too. So I try to do that in a solid hour as well. And then because I work in my apartment most of the time, after seven, I leave. I never am at home after seven. I always go out or do something, see friends, or go on a bad date. What are your favorite ways to wind down after a day? I think it's just talking to people.

Starting point is 01:02:27 The good thing about having lived in New York for 15 years is I've met so many cool people. And so I try to go see a show, go see a movie. Inevitably, I have a lot of actor friends who are in things. So there's always something out there. Something premiering. Do you have any pre-bed rituals or anything that you do typically before bed? If I really want to sleep well, then I'll stop watching anything by 10, even 9.30. Because I think I'd rather read than watch TV. Because for some reason, I just have a very open, spongy brain. And if I watch TV too close to bed, that's what I'm going to dream about when I'd rather

Starting point is 01:03:12 not be dreaming about the Real Housewives of New York. What are you reading at the moment? Or what's the last book that you found memorable? I've read this book three times now, and I keep trying to stop rereading it, but I think it's maybe the best book I've ever read called A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. That came out- The Little Life? A Little Life. A Little Life. It's big. I mean, it's almost 700 pages, but I think it was nominated for the Pulitzer or something. And it's just incredible. It's almost 700 pages. But I think it was nominated for the Pulitzer or something.

Starting point is 01:03:46 And it's just incredible. It's about these four male friends who grew up in New York City together, and it's sort of tracking their life from when they're 20 to 60. And for anybody who loves to have a bigger view of what life is and look beyond sort of the, again, the matrix of what life is supposed to look like according to society, that book will just completely sort of ravage your brain. So I just think it's, I give it to so many people and never once has anyone come back to me and not said like, that changed my life? I think that might be the title of this podcast episode,

Starting point is 01:04:26 Ravaging Your Brain. Ravaging my brain. So much. So a few things. The first is meditation. What type of meditation? Or describe your meditation. So it's super simple.

Starting point is 01:04:43 It's just going to sound a little crazy to everyone because I've been doing this for a long time. I remember I read the Tao Te Ching when I was 23 or 24 and going through a rough time after the movie had collapsed or maybe it was a little later. So a copy of it also six inches from my left thigh. Okay. And I remember reading it being like, okay, this makes no sense, you know, but you just keep reading it again and again. And slowly I started to get the point of it, which was, thank God I played tennis. But it was saying the same thing that I talked to you about tennis earlier, which is there should not be any decisions. It should be automatic. It's not

Starting point is 01:05:20 automatic because there's something in the way. And the thing in your way is the I, the ego, your self-consciousness. So every meditation I've done since then, and it's now been 10 years, it's 15 minutes of trying to find the I, that sort of energy that makes up that conscious will inside of me and realizing that that's actually the place that you do not want to operate from, that that is actually an illusion, right? That's just residual anger and frustration and your inability to control things in the world, right? So all of my meditation is recognizing the I that you operate from and the world tells you to operate from and realizing that that's what you have to let go of. So when you sit down, assuming you're sitting, are you then, I'd like you to get as concrete as you can and describe it.

Starting point is 01:06:10 Are you imagining the me, so to speak, in parentheses, sitting behind the eyes and trying to visually or graphically observe it? Are you observing the words in your head as a detached third party? What are you doing exactly? It's more like trying to sense the me, just sort of thinking, okay, where is I? Where is I in my body right now? And trying to actually imagine your entire perception, your entire consciousness, everything that's in your mind, everything that's in your body, everything that's in your thoughts right now is that I, and realizing that all of it is actually wrong, right? All of it is, is energy that you're holding

Starting point is 01:06:54 that needs to be let go of. Um, and what you really want is empty space. I think that the line in the Tata Ching that stuck with me the most is, why is there something when there should be nothing? And it's that whole idea of the true happy human is clear. There shouldn't be anything there. And so that's what the meditation is. It's trying to find the I, that center of me. Can I actually identify what the me is?

Starting point is 01:07:23 And then realizing that that needs to be let go. So you're, you're very self-directed, even lacking calendar. So you are, I hope you have, I hope the studio has good key man insurance with you. It's a great point of leverage though, having this entire world you've created inside your own head, not without its risks but you mentioned having a trainer now uh in doing some of my review before this you appear to train exclusively with trainers i am almost the opposite uh so i'd love to hear why that is wait first tell me why you're the opposite i am uh no it's it's not entirely, uh, it's changed

Starting point is 01:08:08 a bit in the last few years when I've, uh, I've realized that there are certain types of physical movement that I view as recreation, physical recreation, not primarily training. So I'm not doing them to lose body fat or fill in the blank, like acro yoga, acrobatic yoga, partner gymnastics, that type of thing. And there are certain instances where you need a technical coach, tennis, gymnastic strength training. In those instances, I will have a coach, whether I'm using video or otherwise. But training for me, exercise has always been my me time, my meditative time to live in the present moment and very often use some type of cadence.

Starting point is 01:08:53 I never thought of it this way doing this up until maybe a few years ago, but a mantra of sorts where I'm simply counting, say, the seconds up, seconds down of a particular lift or the number of repetitions. And that for me is my mental palate cleanser for the day. It's for a very long time was my version in a sense of meditation. So I didn't want to banter with someone else. I didn't want to have any type of sensory input from someone else. That's why I trained by myself. That's why I train by myself. That's still the case with, say, weightlifting, unless it is a very technical skill and I'm working with someone for, say, an Olympic weightlifting movement where the penalty of doing it incorrectly is so high, and you really require a separate set of eyes to correct because what you think you're doing is probably not what you're doing, at least in the beginning. So that's why I've

Starting point is 01:09:50 always trained alone. And I like to train late. So I love to train at 9, 10, 11 PM for a host of reasons. I have a theory though. I think that you might instinctively be what I call a somatic person, which is like when it comes to anything in the body, you want to push yourself, right? So you won't let yourself get away with incorrect form or not pushing yourself to the max. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Which is not me, which is like mentally when I'm working on a book or something, I will die to make sure it's perfect, to make sure that it's exactly right. But when I get to a workout, my instinctive thing, just because I grew up then, I grew up like the kid who never

Starting point is 01:10:40 thought he was ever going to be strong, who kids always made fun of for being skinny. So when it came to lifting weights and things like that, I came in scared. And I always bailed before it ever got heavy thinking like, I'm too weak to do this or whatever. I need trainers to push me. Do you know what I mean? At some level, I need them to say, this is what you're doing and we're not getting out of it. You know? Right. And I think, cause if it was just me, I don't know, I would, I don't think it would be the same. And I also think like it, it lets me not have one, it lets me have one moment of the day when I'm not in charge, which is nice. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. This makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah, this could lead into

Starting point is 01:11:25 all sorts of relationship discussions. All sorts of interesting things. How many trainers have you worked with or is it always the same person or handful of people? So I work with the same trainer in New York. Trainer Dave. Trainer Dave. His name is Dave Stogsdale at CrossFit NYC. And I chose him the same way. He's about to get a lot busier. He is an absolute genius. And I chose him the same way I chose my agent, which you're going to laugh at, but I chose them both by their photo.

Starting point is 01:11:55 And I think it's because I spent so much time casting movies that I'm very good at just when I see a photo, or maybe I spent too much time on Tinder or something, but I know when I see a photo that that's the person. And so I remember going through all the CrossFit gyms in New York and looking at photos and I saw his and was like, that's the right guy. And it's funny. Hold on, I have to pause here. So what can you, is this purely subconscious or is there some, is what you do a teachable skill, do you think? No, I think it's instinct. With trainers, I was looking for a softness, kind of like a... Kind eyes type of thing? Yeah, like a non-bro bro.

Starting point is 01:12:40 You know what I mean? Right, right. Yes, I do. And, and that's him. He's, he's the guy you go to if, um, you know, you aren't like, if you, if you're coming at weight training, not from like the bro-iest place, you know, what do you do when you're on the road? Then I get a trainer every single city, every single day I'm in. It's a bit obsessive, but... How do you find them and how do you choose? Are they all photograph-based? No, no, no. So that's too much work. So that the assistant does. She knows... I don't know. She's pretty good at knowing what to look for now because, um, I've been on enough tours that I'll be like, that one was great. That one wasn't that great. So she, she started

Starting point is 01:13:29 to get a sense of, of like, you know, what I'm looking for, but I've worked with, you know, so many, so many different trainings, uh, trainers. I think what makes Dave so great is he figured out very early on that it wasn't just going to be CrossFit that I needed, but he's mixed in a ton of GSD stuff, which is the Gymnastic Strengths Training. A lot of Z-Health stuff, which is exercises that also complement brain neurology. He's very good at customizing based on your personality, what your goal is. He knows not to give me intense conditioning pieces because I can out cardio anyone on the planet. It's just the way I was born. So he's focusing on my weaknesses.

Starting point is 01:14:13 Got it. All right. Well, I'm not going to spend too much time on trainers because there's so many other places I want to dig. Quarter of a million dollars in debt, that's a fuck ton of money after undergrad and the MFA. So how did you and your family make the decision to go so far into debt? Because in the US, there's a very, and I think this is dangerous on a lot of levels, at least in Silicon Valley, there's a very romanticized anti-college notion. And I do think that student debt can be a paralyzing problem for many people. How did you decide to go, how did you and your family decide to go that far into debt? And I don't know if it was you or you and your family, I don't know how that was arranged. Well, I think at some level, Indian families are a lot like Jewish families and other cultures that put a primacy on education, where there is this expectation that your family will pay for school. And my dad was going through a hard time in the 80s because he was in real estate and that's when the market was tanking. And so it was just my decision really to basically be like,

Starting point is 01:15:48 okay, I was so deluded, I guess, into thinking that somehow I was going to pay it back. And I look at some of the kids who came out of film school and are saddled with so much debt now, and I just don't know what you do. I was lucky enough to discover tutoring, which paid really, really well. And I was lucky enough to discover tutoring, which paid really, really well. And I was lucky to get a ton of clients and do really well at it. So that's what got me through. And ultimately, the book deal helped me pay the rest off. But it is a gamble that is not wise, I think. Okay. All right. So now we're getting to the next question, which is what advice, so much like college has sort of lost its luster for a lot of people.

Starting point is 01:16:31 Although I do generally think that if you can get into a top tier name recognizable brand, which sounds terrible, but whether it's undergrad or say MBA, then it can be worth it sometimes. I agree with you. The MFA, film school, is also one of those divisive topics where a lot of successful filmmakers will say, ah, waste of time. But then there are many successful filmmakers who come out of film school. Aspiring filmmaker about to graduate from undergrad or has already graduated from undergrad, did decently well in however we want to think about that.

Starting point is 01:17:13 Should I go to film school? They love film. Maybe they've done a few short films in some elective classes in college, but their major was something else. Should I go to film school? What do you say to that person? Or what do you ask them? What's the conversation? What would I say now? I would have such specific advice now, which is only go to film school if you can get into USC. That would be my only advice. And the reason why is the industry has changed so much to basically eliminate independent film so that the only sort of productive education you're going to get in film school that will lead you to, you know, a Hollywood career at some level is to be in Southern California at USC or, you know, maybe

Starting point is 01:17:59 UCLA where you have studio connections and are working with studio professors. And if you're good enough, you're going to get, you might get seen. That's what I would say. Because when I went to Columbia, it was in the heyday of independent film at some level. And so a lot of the great things that happened to me at Columbia were because I had access to all the successful independent directors and producers who love my work and therefore introduced me to all these great people. All those people now are having trouble making films, of course, because there's no outlet for them. So they've all gone to television or whatever. So film at some level, if you want to work in film, we're talking working in the studio world, which means you got to be in LA. You have to be at one of those two film schools. But otherwise, I would say, I don't think there's a. Makes me think of Stanford also in my backyard here in the Bay Area. for engineers so outstripped supply. It's just ludicrous. But if you want to be part of the Silicon Valley tech scene and you're debating between different undergrad options, then

Starting point is 01:19:33 Silicon Valley and being based in Palo Alto where you have all the venture capitalists literally in the same town or right next door can give you a huge leg up similarly, depending on which facet of the business you want to be a part of. It was the one school that I didn't let my... Because I helped so many kids with their college applications over the years. Stanford was the one school I rarely, rarely let them apply to. Why is that? Because I said it was too hard. Too hard.

Starting point is 01:20:02 I said the problem with Stanford is that you have is that the college application game is very simple. Whichever school you apply to early, you better be fairly sure you have a good shot at getting in. Because when you apply early, your chances of getting in are much better. But you have to at least be in the game to get in. Stanford's acceptance rate is so low and everybody applying to Stanford is so good and so smart that to get in takes an act of God. You better be like a real miracle of nature. And so it was the one school I recommended more often than not. I just said, you are throwing away your application because they don't take anyone. It's harder than Harvard. It's Harvard than Yale. It's Harvard than any school. Stanford is,

Starting point is 01:20:51 to me, Stanford's the top school in the country right now. It's a great school. It's a great school. Their business school program is also outstanding. I considered it. I always thought I should have gone to Stanford had I been able to get in. I applied early to Princeton, got accepted, ended up having a very difficult time at Princeton. Always thought I would have been much better off having gone to a Brown or a Stanford. Yeah, because Princeton is very square. yeah and i ended up uh i don't know if i've ever talked about this publicly i ended up i don't know if you're familiar with the very weird eating club absolutely social structure at princeton but in effect for people who aren't familiar with this you have the you have a street you have uh you have a street that is lined with gigantic mansions and that is where the partying happens generally welcome to princeton yeah gigantic mansions they're that is where the partying happens generally. Welcome to Princeton. Parties and mansions.

Starting point is 01:21:46 Yeah. Gigantic mansions. They're all stylistically different, which is very odd. So you have kind of old-timey, blue-blood, New England-rich mansion. Then you'll have colonial style, kind of Georgia bell from old money mansion. And then it goes on and on. It's a very odd place. And they're effectively co-ed fraternities, it's the easiest way to describe it, where you also eat meals. And some of these eating clubs, it's just mind-blowing. Like Ivy, for instance, I believe has an endowment, so to speak, that is larger than some name brand universities in the United States. It's just mind-blowing. And I ended up trying to fit in, in some of these eating clubs and getting very disillusioned and unhappy, and then joining an eating club called Terrace.

Starting point is 01:22:40 So Terrace, to give you an idea, had a rainbow flag flying out front. I would have loved it. I am not gay, but it's where all the, it's basically like your Tuesday. It's where the odds and ends, the people who didn't fit in anywhere else ended up going. And it was the one thing, I don't give any money to Princeton for reasons that you guys can look up. If you want to read some practical thoughts on suicide, an essay that I wrote, then that'll give you an idea why I don't give money to Princeton, but I do give money to terrorists because it saved me. Anyway, I'm not sure how I got onto

Starting point is 01:23:15 that, but I didn't fit in in any way at Princeton whatsoever. But this is important because I think most of your listeners at some level, regardless of whether on the outside they fit in or not, I think inside they don't, which is why they're looking for something different. And that's also why I wrote the books. I felt like when I was growing up, there were no books for the odds and ends. The hero always won. It was always the good looking guy. Even if you read Harry Potter, he's always the good kid. He always does the right thing. You know he's going to win at the end because there's no version of Potter where Harry ends up in a pool of blood and

Starting point is 01:23:48 Voldemort goes kicking into the sunset. And I've wanted to write a book that questioned all those assumptions in some level and said, okay, what about us? What about us weirdos who root for the villains or us weirdos who don't think evil is what evil is made out to be and that good often is not good and all those sort of big questions. So yeah, it's why I think I've always been attracted to your work and people like you at some levels because that sort of questioning reality and what the structure is, is so important. And I think kids are helpless to do that. And if we can train them not to through books, because that's our number one medium to sort of get to them, I think it's a big deal, which is why I sort of take what I do, like I said,

Starting point is 01:24:37 too seriously, probably. Well, I mean, I think that anyone who's really good at what they do really really good tends to have a certain degree of pathological obsession with with what they do if you had to recommend books on writing or books that would help someone's writing um is there is there a short list are there any that come to mind let me think i think and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna make it genre specific on purpose it could be it could be anything for instance i'm a non-fiction writer at this point but bird by bird which is written and a lot for fiction writers really i found just the best the cheapest therapy that money could buy. Yeah. That one's an amazing book. I think I'm less interested in books specifically about writing because I think writing to me is like

Starting point is 01:25:34 breathing. You write the way you breathe. Everybody has their own way of doing it. Everyone, every true writer has to write to stay alive because that's how we live. That's our connection to the cosmos. And so every writer has their specific process. I don't get so much out of writer books. What I do get books out of are two things. One, books about creativity and then creative spirit. And then documentaries about creative process.

Starting point is 01:26:08 Those are the two things I look at. And so one of my favorite books is called The Spark. It's written by Cirque du Soleil. Oh, very cool. I love Cirque du Soleil. And they have a book called The Spark about where their ideas come from. It's very short. You can read it in like 20 minutes, but it's fantastic. And it gets to this idea that so much of creativity is about

Starting point is 01:26:32 the fact that we try to control it, right? Again, it goes back to that idea of the eye that I'm trying to get rid of, that if we just let go of this idea of the conscious eye trying to control when we work creatively, that's when the universe comes rushing through. And so it's about almost making yourself into a clear vessel and accepting that it's going to come. And I think one of the great things about writing a series is that now that I'm on book four and I've settled into a rhythm, I start to trust myself. And when I trust myself is when the great stuff happens because I'm not monitoring, I'm not judging. And that's when you're not editing. When you're generating.

Starting point is 01:27:12 And I'm getting twist after twist where every chapter is ending in a twist that I never predicted. The character is doing something I never had any idea they would do. And it's happening versus the first couple of books, first three books, where it's every chapter, one twist or whatever. Now it's constantly, constantly, constantly, because I'm allowing myself to take things in new directions. And along with The Spark, they've got a cool documentary called, I think it's called The Fire Within that follows eight people that try out for Cirque du Soleil. And it's kind of a wonderful Canadian documentary about just people passionate about their art. And then the other thing is I'm obsessed with documentaries about creative process, specifically about fashion designers. Because if you look at

Starting point is 01:27:59 fashion, it's where you get 100% undiluted creativity because it's on such a short cycle with all the different fashion shows. And so- It's also, in a sense, I mean, purely subjective, which adds to the creativity by necessity in some respects. Yes. And so you get to sort of watch these madcap geniuses who aren't constrained, right? Because again, it's subjective, so they can do whatever they want because people have already judged them to be geniuses at some level. So you get these amazing things. So things like Dior and I, or Valentino, The Last Emperor, or Lagerfeld Confidential. If you had to pick one of those three for a non-fashion, I'm the most disheveled, unfashionable person you could possibly imagine.

Starting point is 01:28:47 Which of those three should I start with? Let me give you another one, man. Let me give you one that I think the best of them all is called Ballet 422. And it's on Netflix. So American Ballet Theater has a choreographic internship That's, I think, the most prestigious choreographic award a young person can win. And people compete, I think, from all over the world for it, I think. And the person who won it one year was someone inside their own company who was just sort of a middling dancer in their company and who was only 24, which I think the youngest they've ever given it to. And it tracks his internship and his choreographic process. And when you meet him, you think he's a complete Yahoo, right? You just think

Starting point is 01:29:32 he doesn't seem smart. He doesn't seem charismatic. The guy's name is Justin Peck. You don't see why they gave it to him. You're just sort of watching this movie thinking it's dull, watching paint dry because there's no narration. It's 100% watching this guy work. And about 15 or 20 minutes into it, you start to see him at work and you start to realize slowly by slowly, you're watching a genius. And you're watching a Mozart who is just gifted with something that is absolutely unrivaled. And it's only like an hour and 10 minutes, but it's the best hour and 10 minutes you'll ever spend because you'll get to see true genius in process without any editorializing.

Starting point is 01:30:14 Oh, cool. Ballet 422. Ballet 422. And he's since become the best choreographer in the world. Wow. And he's young, but you get to watch it happen. I love it. Yeah. Have you seen, and it's a bit of a, and I use this in a loving way, bumbling documentary.

Starting point is 01:30:35 It doesn't take itself too seriously, but there are aspects of it that I found so hilarious that I could trudge through it, but Six Days to Air about... No, tell me about it. It's about the South Park team putting together an episode from scratch, zero, nothing

Starting point is 01:30:55 to shipping finished product for air in six days. Oh, see that? I'd love... After they went to the... I want to say the... I'm so out of La La Land. Maybe went to the I see that. I'd love... time they were interviewed on the red carpet, they could talk about anything except for the dresses. They couldn't even make mention of the fact that they were in dresses and they're on acid. And then they get back to the office and they're like, holy fuck, we only have six days to ship a new episode. Better get to work on that. And then it's just crunch time, all-nighters insanity. That's being watched tonight. It sounds so good. But that kind of stuff where you get to

Starting point is 01:31:40 see how the sausage is made is really the only type of documentary I want to watch. There's another one that everybody should watch called Theater of War about the making of Mother Courage when they did it in Central Park with Meryl Streep. And it's the only time Meryl Streep has ever let anybody film her rehearsing, ever. And she said she didn't want to do it

Starting point is 01:32:02 because she goes, rehearsal looks like bad acting. And she goes, I don't want to see me do know do bad acting and then she goes i thought then she changed her mind and thought maybe it would be valuable and to get to watch meryl streep's rehearsal process you realize how much it is how much of bad you know how much of writing in the beginning how much of acting in the beginning all of it is bad it's just about doing all the bad stuff to get to the good stuff. For sure. I love it. That's another great one. All right. I've been making a list of docs to watch. So now, I was already on this yesterday in my mind. So now we have a bunch of new ones to work on. Let me jump to, I suppose, what I always call these rapid fire questions, but your answers don't need to be short or rapid. What book or books have you given the most as gifts to other people,

Starting point is 01:32:52 if you have, besides your own? I would say A Little Life for sure. And then a book called The Velvet Rage. The Velvet Rage. The Velvet Rage, which is ostensibly about if you grow up a gay man, how to deal with it in the world. But I think it's more about modern masculinity and about what it means to be a man in America. So even for a heteronormative... I think so. I think so. I think the one thing A Little Life and that book share in common is an attempt to deconstruct what the tenets of being a man are in this country, because I think it ultimately restricts emotional health. And so I those books sort of give you a window into an alternative and, and yeah, here's a,

Starting point is 01:33:49 if you wanted a, a different shade of gray, uh, in a book with all your spare time that you, that you might enjoy, uh, that, uh,

Starting point is 01:34:00 a number of my friends, male and female have just found extremely powerful is Tribe by Sebastian Junger. I'm writing it down. I found it to be just a fantastic and thought-provoking book that helps to explain a lot of what we see in the world. And it might add just a different lens through which to look at that as well. What is the best investment you've ever made? And that could be energy, time, money, or any other resource. And I'll give you an example.

Starting point is 01:34:42 So for instance, Amelia Boone is a three-time World's Toughest Mudder champion, also power attorney at Apple, just a killer cyborg. And I asked her this question and she said it was the entrance fee for her first World's Toughest Mudder, or it might've been her first very toughest mudder. In either case, the fee was $450, which for her at the time was actually a stretch. But if she hadn't done that, this entire other career and life for her wouldn't have opened. Does anything come to mind for you? It doesn't have to be the best, but it could be one of the best investments. This is so small, but it made such a big difference in my life, which was that

Starting point is 01:35:20 I had struggled with just like acne for a lot of my teenage years. And it was something that like, I couldn't get rid of. And as an adult, just having like breakouts and stuff. And I, you know, you just, it starts to get in your head a little bit, you know, that you couldn't get rid of it. And so you try everything. That's the problem when you're built like, you know, me and a lot of your listeners, you try every effing thing. And so you're going to doctor after doctor, you're trying antibiotics, you're trying creams, you're trying every kind of soap.

Starting point is 01:35:53 And I just had had it. I just gave up. And so then I read this story in the Times about a company that had started. It was called AO Plus Biome. I know. Okay. Yes, absolutely. story in the Times about a company that had started. It was called AO Plus Biome. I know. Okay. Yes, absolutely. So I became one of their early adopters. I was one of the first 10 people to try the product. Could you describe for people, this was my year without soap or something like that. Oh, yeah. So you've done it.

Starting point is 01:36:19 Oh, I actually got a prototype sample of AO Biome way back in the day, which is its own story too. But can you describe for people? Well, I mean, you could take a stab at it, I could take a stab at it, but could you describe for people what this is? It's not antibacterial for sure. No, it's the opposite. Tell me if I'm wrong. As far as I know, it's a probiotic spray. It's a spray that's a certain kind of bacteria that oxidizes all the bad bacteria. And so they created this bacterial spray that they said, all you need to do is throw out all your soap, any cream, anything you've ever used in your entire life, and just use this. You don't even have to shower and you potentially would be fine. And so I was desperate. I was desperate. And so I became one of their first customers, tried it within three days.

Starting point is 01:37:31 My skin was clear and I've been using it three and a half years. They are now called Mother Dirt. They've changed their name. Oh, they did. Okay. Mother Dirt. Yeah, because AO Plus Biome was not... Yeah. It doesn't roll off the tongue. Yeah, marketable. And they have a shaving cream now that you can use. They have a shampoo that you can use that is sort of bacteria-friendly. And man, it made a difference. Let me tell you that. It just changed everything because you just... Forget the skin thing. I mean, that's just superficial. But to realize that the problems you were chasing for 10 years or more than that could be solved by your own body and by something

Starting point is 01:38:12 that was natural already, that theoretically you don't even need the mist at some level. If I don't have it for a week, I just don't use soap. And then my skin goes back to, stays completely fine. Definitely. So that was a big shift. And it's called Mother Dirt now. Mother Dirt, motherdirt.com. If people want to read the New York Times piece, the New York Times does what I do,

Starting point is 01:38:34 which is confusing sometimes, that they'll use a different headline online versus in the print edition. And then it makes things very confusing for people. But it's the, let's see, My No Soap, No Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment. And I think the author's name is Julia Scott. Discovers what she smells like after 28 sopless days. It's fascinating. It's really,

Starting point is 01:38:57 really fascinating. It's great. Yeah. Everyone should be on this product. I feel like it's a market that's going to explode soon. What other tricks do you have like that? Do you have any other expedient solutions to common problems like that? Let me think. So just because I feel like everyone's stress goes somewhere in their body. Like some people get back pain and that becomes their big thing. With me, it's usually, it was always skin until that was solved. And then I guess when I was younger, it was stomach.

Starting point is 01:39:36 Yeah. One of my best friends has that. He always gets stomach issues. Stomach issues. And also because I was on antibiotics for the skin problems when I was a teenager. So that was something that stuck around. And again, I did a lot of research and realized that you can take a daily probiotic, but that probably won't be enough. And so I sort of cobbled together my own probiotic therapy where I would buy two or three bottles of different brands and take those on tour when you're sleeping at, basically not sleeping, eating God knows what, and completely off rhythm. And just by taking maybe like eight probiotic pills a night from whatever, a combination of different brands, it solved all my problems. I can travel anywhere in the world. And as long as I'm

Starting point is 01:40:25 overdosing on probiotics, mixing up different brands, no issues whatsoever. It's the mix of the different brands that I think is what solves. And then the other thing that helps to sleep just in terms of insomnia is if you have an aromatherapy diffuser, one of those sort of wood diffusers that you can get off Amazon for like $20, and you use lavender oil in it, it'll zonk you out very, very fast. Lavender oil. All right. I'll have to play around with this. After I had Nicholas McCarthy on the podcast, who is a one-armed, or I should say more accurately, one-handed concert pianist. And he uses geranium oil when he's composing. He said it's the perfect mixture of relaxation without sleepiness. It's relaxation plus alertness for him. So I use geranium oil for a lot of my editing and writing sessions when I

Starting point is 01:41:28 did Tools of Titans. Do you use the diffuser for anything other than lavender oil? I do. But what's funny is this is such a stupid answer, but at the food market I go to, they have this basket of 50% off oils of whatever hasn't sold that week or whatever. So I just buy whatever's in there. So I never really keep track of what's in the diffuser on any day. It's just a different smell. Welcome to my life. I'm willing to cede control over what oil is in the diffuser. When you're traveling as much as it sounds like you do, 60, 80 days a year, and I'm sure you have other non-tour related travel. Do you have any tips for minimizing onset of cold, flu, et cetera, things like that?

Starting point is 01:42:21 You know, I think the steam thing before I leave helps a lot because it really does clear your sinuses because that's where you can get sinus infections. And I think I was prone to those a lot. And I think when I'm on tour, and it's funny, I read a book about Steven Spielberg who apparently does the same thing. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, go ahead. When he's shooting a movie for him not to get sick, which is he drinks tea incessantly, and herbal tea. He's just constantly drinking to stay warm because you never know what the weather is. You never know what the situation is going to be, but he's just always downing hot tea of

Starting point is 01:43:03 some herbal variety. And I think when I'm on tour, everywhere I go, every time I get in the car, I get a hot tea. Every time I get to a school, I drink a hot tea. So I'm drinking like seven or eight cups a day. Do you have a go-to hot tea or is it like the 50% off? It's, you know, if I can get to a Starbucks, they've got the Mint Majesty, which is really good. I mean, we should preface this all by saying that I can't drink caffeine because it makes me crazy. Do you drink alcohol or no? No. I mean, a glass of wine if it's been a particularly horrific day, but otherwise, not really. You don't need the enhancement or handicap one way or the other.

Starting point is 01:43:46 This is what I would say. And this is sad, but I think there's a happy lining to it, which is that I spent so long in my 20s and teens trying to get control of my brain and trying to make it a happy place. Do you know what I mean? Sure. And when I finally found peace of mind and sort of the creative space to be able to work in and now live in a fairly, I don't know, just like constant state of goodness, I don't want to mess it up. I get it. Totally get it. So I think that's where I am at the moment. But yeah. What topic would you speak about

Starting point is 01:44:28 if you had to give a TED Talk on something that you're not known for at all? So, can't be tutoring, can't be tennis. Can't be tennis. Can't, certainly can't be the writing that you're doing. It might be on things that make people laugh. Because I've done all these studies. Because when you're writing, you want to get to the sense of what makes kids laugh. Because as horrific as the school for good and evil books are at times, they're quite dark. They're also quite funny. And a lot of it is trying to find out what makes kids laugh. And so I would do a TED Talk, I would hope, on this. I read this book or this study about these people who spent 10 years trying to figure

Starting point is 01:45:11 out what makes people of all cultures laugh no matter what. Even if you go to the recesses of the Amazon, it'll make people laugh. They came up with four things. And the four things were... Okay, I'm going to try not to die laughing while I say these. Number one is beating someone with a kitchen utensil. Got it. Good. Good to know. Okay. Number two is falling down a short flight of stairs, which apparently no matter where you are, it makes people laugh. Number three is a swift Fart Delivered in Silence. I was going to say fart has to be in there somewhere.

Starting point is 01:45:51 I like how it's a swift fart delivered in silence. That could also be the name of my memoir. And I use that. I use that in chapter three of the first book. And it's always mentioned as one of the kids' favorite moments. And I'm like, of course, because it's one of the four things. And number four was such a shock, and then it stayed with me, is adults dressed as twins. What?

Starting point is 01:46:18 Adults dressed as twins. If you parade two adults dressed in the same clothes in front of a weird tribe in the middle of the Amazon, everyone will laugh. All right. That would make good TED Talk. So I think things like that, like what connects everybody, right? What are the common denominators? I just think those are important. And so I'm trying to get to the bottom of those because that's what fairy tales are also, right? At the end of the day, school for evil at their core are fairy tales. So I'm trying to get to the essentialness of, and maybe this is why I'm so focused on Zen and meditation and trying to understand the world beyond the matrix of trying to get to the bottom of what connects every kid, what connects every one of us before our blank slates are filled. Definitely. What is the bad advice that you hear given out often in your world? And I'm deliberately keeping that very, very broad. I'm not going to define your world for you.

Starting point is 01:47:22 You can take it any way you want. I think when people say, this whole idea of following your passion, following what you think you were meant to do or following what you love, I don't always know is going to lead you somewhere productive. Because I think ultimately what you are meant to do isn't necessarily what you love. It's what you're good at. It's what you were divinely meant to do, what you're good at. And I always think that's the better question. What are you better at than anyone else in the whole world? What would you put yourself against anyone else in the whole world against, at? And I think that's what's going to lead you somewhere really good. Because what? Everybody wants to be a professional athlete or movie star at some level. So I don't know, following what you love or your passion is necessarily going

Starting point is 01:48:18 to guide you to the most fulfilling career. Well, I think it's also easier let's see easier in the sense that there are more options for taking something you are good at and and molding it into something you can be excited about or combining it with other things that you are excited about, then starting with an undirected passion and then trying to become good at wherever that leads you. Oh, you're right. You're right. You're 100% right. Because if you're just following the passion, you don't have the, whatever it is, the 10,000

Starting point is 01:48:59 hours that is behind mastery to even begin, to even get going. If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, short message, no advertising, what would you put on it? A message to get out to the world? I think one of two things. One is if I'm in New York, it would be death is coming. One of the things I meditate on a lot is just what it would feel like to die. That's the other thing. Oh, besides the looking for the me, some days I just try to imagine what it would feel

Starting point is 01:49:37 like for everything to just disappear, for the something of consciousness to become nothing. So actually trying to experience death. And I think that has led me more towards happiness than anything else in my life. So trying to understand that your life is short and it's going to end and it can end at any minute. So take advantage, right? Really try to make of your life everything you can, you know? So that's the one thing. And then the second one is when I'm in Miami, because my parents have a beach house on this island and it's so clear above that you can see the sort of night sky with the stars. And so if I was anywhere else but New York, I would just say, look at the stars because you can't see stars in New York. Because every time you look up there, you realize the fact that there's life on earth.

Starting point is 01:50:27 It's such a weird freak accident that should never have happened. And there is no meaning to life necessarily in the larger cosmic scheme of things. It's just a fluke. It's an accident. So enjoy it because the fact that you got to have a life in the first place compared to the sort of infinity of the universe is pretty remarkable. I like that. And it surprisingly echoes the thoughts of two very disparate people I've had on the podcast also. B.J. Miller, who's a palliative care physician, helps people to die in hospice care. And Ed Cook, who is a memory champion and entrepreneur from the UK, both talk about the stars in a similar way.

Starting point is 01:51:16 So I think that is a profound place to start to wrap up. Just a few more questions, and I'll certainly ask at the very end where people can find you and so on, but do you have any, any ask or request or suggestion for the audience? Any, any, any parting words or recommendations, suggestions, please. I would just say that I think, you know, if, if these are sort of the principles that you're interested in, uh, not just for yourself, but for kids, either your own or somebody else's, I think this book series will sort of lead those kids in the right direction because it forces them to question all their assumptions

Starting point is 01:51:59 about what good and evil are, about what they usually see in the world, and about what their life is are, about what they usually see in the world, and about what their life is going to look like. And it's about empowering kids when kids usually don't feel empowered and usually feel so helpless. So it lets them reinterpret what heroes really are. So I would just say, give it to a kid and see what their reaction is. Soman, thank you so much for the time. This has been a blast. Awesome. And it would be great to grab some mint majesty tea when I'm next in New York or you're next in

Starting point is 01:52:38 San Francisco. Where can people find you online, learn more about you, say hello on social, if that's one of the places to find you? Where should they find you online, learn more about you, say hello on social, if that's one of the places to find you, where should they find you? Besides Tinder? Besides Tinder. If only there were a search function, alas. I think Twitter, I tend to post pretty regularly, Instagram as well. And then we have our YouTube channel, which is called Ever Never TV, but that's mainly for the kids. So Twitter and Instagram for the adults, Ever Never TV for the kids. And also the School for Good and Evil website is a treasure trove for any kid under the age of 16.

Starting point is 01:53:18 Even if they haven't read the books, it's just a great place to spend some time because there's so many awesome interactive features on there. And Twitter, it's at Soman Chenani, right? Chenani, am I getting that right? Chenani, yep. Soman Chenani on Twitter. And then Instagram is Soman C. Got it.

Starting point is 01:53:34 S-O-M-A-N-C. Well, Soman, thank you so much for taking the time. I've really enjoyed this conversation. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything, the School for Good and Evil, of course, everything else, all the books we mentioned, all the docs we mentioned in the show notes, which can be found with the show notes for every other episode at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening.

Starting point is 01:54:06 Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

Starting point is 01:54:47 And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks, and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time, and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and it's the only audiobook I've

Starting point is 01:55:30 wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing, and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become The 4-Hour Workweek. So go to audible.com forward slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com forward

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Starting point is 01:56:40 I am in the latter category. My fashion sense is also probably somewhere between homeless and confused with a dash of lazy added in. Either way, you can take heart. And I've used Trunk Club now and have found some of my favorite pieces of clothing that make me look a lot better than I would be able to handle on my own. And there are many reasons for that.

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Starting point is 01:58:12 I've had so many compliments on these shoes, and more people ask me where I got them than any other pair of shoes I've ever had. And more shirts, I ended up keeping about, I would say, three quarters of my box, which I did not expect to do. So go to trunkclub.com forward slash Tim and check it out

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #220: Soman Chainani — The School for Good and Evil

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #220: Soman Chainani — The School for Good and Evil

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