Austin Kleon on Fueling Artistic Ambition

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2:47Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

3:33What do you do when it feels like the world's falling apart? What do you do when you're not feeling inspired? What do you do when everything's awful? What do you do when you're tired? If you're an artist, what you do is you show up and you do your work. Doesn't matter what's happening. Doesn't matter if people want you to. Doesn't matter if they appreciate it. Nothing matters, right? What matters is you show up and you do your work. You put your ass in the chair. Put your ass where your heart wants to be. as my friend Stephen Pressfield says, or as today's guest, another friend of mine, Austin Kleon has talked about, you just keep going because it matters, right?

4:15The work that we do matters and our own sanity matters. Austin is someone I have known for many years. He actually welcomed me to Austin. I had just written my first book. I just moved here. We got lunch over in East Austin. Is it Chestnut and Martin Luther King, something like that? Soon after torn down and now is kind of a trendy hipster place. But we had lunch. He gave me a bunch of great advice. I've been a huge fan of his work. I think he'd only written Still Like an Artist and maybe the newspaper blackout book then. And then he wrote Show Your Work, which I loved. And then he wrote Keep Going, which is probably the book I feel like is my favorite of his, the one that's meant the most to me, the one that I think is most true in today's world, then probably the most aligned with stoicism.

5:02You don't let the bastards keep you down. You don't let the resistance keep you down. You show up and you do your work. You find a way to be a small light in a dark room. You try to understand yourself better. You try to make something that's of value to others. You try to turn away from what's upsetting you and towards something that is fulfilling and interesting. And most of all, this is the great thing about having a creative practice. Certainly one of the rewards, the best rewards of having a creative profession is that it's always in your control. How my books sell is not in my control. Whether you like them, whether you appreciate them, whether you hate me for something I said not in my control, but a couple hours I got lost in it as I did this morning, that is up to me, right?

5:53The doing is up to me. I quote Austin all the time, not with as much credit as he deserved, but he said to me once, you know, too many writers are thinking about being the noun instead of doing the verb. To me, keeping going, the art practice, it is about doing the verb, doing the thing. And he's been on the podcast a couple of times. He was here before we had a podcast studio. He was here before even the bookstore was built out. He's been coming out for years. I always love seeing him. He's one of my favorite people. In this episode, we talk about music. We talk about hobbies, that creative energy, and a bunch of awesome stuff.

6:30He's great. He's spoken everywhere from Pixar to Google, TEDx and The Economist. You can follow his work at austincleon.com. He's got a great newsletter. You can follow him on Instagram at austincleon. As always, we've got signed copies of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, Keep Going, Steal Like an Artist journal, and his newspaper blackout book is wonderful as well. Here is me and Austin Kleon. I will link to the other episodes of the podcast. And if you're not familiar with his work, I don't know what you're doing with your life. I had an artistic dilemma this morning. So I was swimming at Barton Springs.

7:06And when I first moved here, you couldn't see any buildings from Barton Springs. Now there's all these beautiful big skyscrapers. But it was probably the prettiest sunrise that I've ever seen over Barton Springs. I've swum there hundreds of times. And I just started, I'm swimming and it's like, it's that kind of violent crown and it's like purple and orange. And it's like, it's reflecting on the pool and on the glass. And I was like, should I get out and take a picture of this or should I keep swimming? Like probably the best one I've seen. And, and then I was like, should I try to capture it?

7:41So I have it or should I respect the word? I was like, I think Austin would appreciate this artistic. Absolutely. This happens with kids all the time. They're doing something really cool. And you're like, oh, I got to get my camera out. I should get this. And then the minute you do. Yes. It's over. I think it's observer effect. They talk about them in physics. That like by observing something, you change it. Yeah. So like, that's how I feel about it. I'm like, let it be. That's what I was like, you know what? I'll do it. Or I was like, if it's meant to be, it'll still be there when I'm finished.

8:13You know, but also like the experience of working out in this thing, like swimming while it's happening. That's special, too. And to lose that, to capture it, to show it to someone. And also it's like there's no chance that the picture of it is going to. I'm not a good enough photographer to do this justice. I can imagine and I can probably sit down and write about it at some point and get closer to whatever shitty photo I would take of this. Totally. Although I love those stories of like Oliver Sacks like having a notebook by the pool. Yeah. And like getting out and like scribbling. But that's not like an idea, right?

8:49You're trying to, like if it was something out of your mind, it might be worth like stopping your swim for like a good idea or something. But it's not right. It has to be, it's like the Mitch Hedberg thing of like, you have an idea, you're laying in bed and you have to, you have to either get up and write it down or convince yourself it's not a good idea. Yeah. There'll be another one. Yeah. Yeah, there's that great, like, before she wrote her, like, really popular books. Why am I going to forget her name? Elizabeth Gilbert. Yeah. Yeah. That Tom Waits profile she did in, like, the early 2000s.

9:21I haven't read this. It's great. Yeah. I think she might write about it in Big Magic, but it's a great profile. Like, her journalism, like, before she blew up is, like, I really like. And she's following Tom Waits around. And he talks about songs, you know, coming to him when he's driving. Yeah. can't you see i'm driving yeah he looks up and just like says later you know because he's like finding in the studio interesting so that like that that thing of like when you pull over when you write things down like it's a great question yes uh and then when when also can you just enjoy the thing that you're in and be it like a civilian you know what i mean yeah like i had a on the way over here i was listening to i was gonna ask you what the hell you do on the way to austin yeah back and forth but the thing i was doing was i never get to listen to audiobooks yeah because i just don't have that time in my life like unless i'm making collages or something i just can't listen to words so i was listening to c.s lewis's uh surprised by joy his like autobiography and he said this thing about like oh you know just keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you'll find everything you need and i was like okay do i how do i underline this right I think that's the problem with audiobooks.

10:37You know? Yeah. I love anything that gets people reading, but I would say there is something you miss in the experience. It depends. Again, it depends on what you're reading for. If you're reading for entertainment, it's probably fine. Right. If you are reading to use what you're hearing creatively, probably woefully insufficient. For what we're doing, like in our work, trying to scrape these texts out for something we can use. Yes. The kind of like pillaging and like scavenging. It's not great for that. And I do like it for fiction. Yes. So maybe, maybe I'll, I don't know. But I'm also like, I like listening when I'm doing the dishes because then I'll just stop and I'll have the ebook.

11:17Yeah. I'll just like look it up and highlight it and whatever. Well, I started doing, I'm almost exclusively physical and always have been. And I started doing ebooks more recently because my kids take forever to go to bed. Yep. And so I'm just like, I'm just sitting on the floor in the room waiting for them to fall asleep. And it's like, am I going to read news articles or respond to emails? It was a choice between what's the lesser evil. I'd rather read a book and not get what I could out of it because I'm not underlining it with a pen. Then read a bunch of articles that I'll also never remember.

11:55Yeah. And like you want to signal to them that you're not just like. you know no no this is a book i promise so something exciting happened in our house recently that you'll love is that i bought owen a kindle like my my oldest who just turned 12 i bought him a kindle like years ago and like he sort of read it but like mostly he's just like books from the library and like whatever we have in the house well he's gone to middle school now yeah and he brings it in his backpack every day so it's like this like really really awesome thing so he's like constantly asking me to like get him new stuff.

12:28So you got him hooked is what you're saying. So like now, but I think you know this. Now you've been in the game long enough. You have to play such an extremely long game with kids. Yeah. And I love it when you're like something that you bought like three years ago, finally they're into it. That like might be how long it takes, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, totally. Well, you asked me why I wasn't wearing a band shirt. So I took my son to an Iron Maiden concert like last week, which I had to sort of bribe. Yeah. Because it was like another thing. We're going to go see my grandma. It was like this whole thing.

13:00But I was like, look, I'll do this. I'll do this. And he's like, okay. And then he had like an amazing time. And then we're like in the car driving around. He's like, can we listen to it in the car? And I was like, oh, I got like really excited. You're like trying to be cool and not freak out. And then we're home and his brother is jealous, which I didn't expect is that we got to do this. Really? And he's like, I want to go to a concert. And we saw Judas Priest played and then Iron Maiden played. and I was like well Judas Priest is playing like down the street like in three days do you want to just go to that I just sort of threw it out there because you know like kids are always whining about stuff but then if you call them out on it they're like well I don't actually I just I didn't actually mean it he was like yes I want to go so we went so I took them both yeah and I and then as we were leaving I was like this is what I wanted this is it this is happening I was like it's happening they're excited to see a bands that I like and I'm doing you know and then it was like I was trying to tell myself this is like a stoic thing i think about i was like this will never happen again they'll never they'll never want to do this with me ever again but it happened once it so it can never go away it happened it's like the sunset right you're just like yeah there's that um uh william blake thing about how you hold eternity in the palm of your hand that's it's all of it right there yep yeah right there yeah where did you see jewish priest at kota f1 yeah it was crazy about Clark like a tour shirt and and I was like dude you have a tour shirt for a band that you saw two dates on the shirt I was like I've never even yeah that's actually yeah you're like you're like a deadheaded or something now you're like a you're like a follower I think Rob Halford's like really interesting have you read his books I haven't read his books but I've read about very good well he's a super literate guy have you seen his like reference section that he has yeah yeah I love that.

14:45Like he's one of the most literate lyricists, certainly in metal. I mean, what was also weird is like, it wasn't until I saw them the first time that I was like, Oh, I forgot how deep their catalog is because they're, they're like, you think heavy metal, you think the eighties, but they had a bunch of hits like in the seventies. Yeah. And so you're like, Oh, you're, you were like a hard rock band and then heavy metal, it was invented and you became that. Yeah. I was shocked at how, yeah. how many songs of theirs I remembered and liked. And then I wrote a Daily Stoke email about this, but you know, you've got another thing coming.

15:19Yeah. You know, the expression is actually, you've got another think coming. Yes. That's one of those weird things. You go, what? Yeah. Which is itself kind of an illustration. Like, you know what an - Think as a noun is kind of amazing. But you know what an acorn is, like where you hear a word wrong. Yeah. And you interpret it. Because the song is so big, we think you got another thing coming. That's the expression. Yeah. But you might, you might have another thing coming. But the expression was, you've got another thing coming. It's what you would say to someone who's wrong about something. You would be like, I don't know, you got another thing coming.

15:51Like when we say, you ought to rethink that. That's what the expression means. I mean, the other thing I love about Priest, not to get too into this, is like Rob Halford brought leather and studs and stuff into metal because he's a gay dude. Yes. So he's going to all these clubs and stuff. So this heavy metal music that we think of this like super hyper macho or whatever, they get all this leather and gear stuff from this dude who's been to these clubs. Well, you should read. You should read his first. His first book is good. His second book is also good. But in the first book he talks about. So he came out on accident.

16:24So he was like he was being interviewed on MTV in like 1997. He'd already left Judas Priest. He was in some weird kind of like some weird metal band. And they asked him some question and he just goes, well, you know, as a gay man. And they were just like, what? He just said it. And then he realized as he's leaving, like, oh, shit, I just like came out on television. What's going to happen? And like what I remember, I remember as a kid being into heavy metal and growing up in a fairly conservative place. So this would have been a couple this would have been like reading that and going, OK, that's when that happened.

16:57I would have come to Judas Priest like maybe four or five years after that. Right. And then I remember going down the rabbit hole and then finding out that he was gay in a conservative place where being gay was still. not, you know, and then going like, oh, and people in heavy metal don't care. Yeah. And it was like the importance of representation and seeing someone and then finding something out about them that you thought mattered and then realizing it doesn't fucking matter. That was a thing to me that it was like one of the first time you're like, oh, the things I've been told as a kid or told in church, they're not true.

17:31And that if they were true, then I don't get to like this thing that I obviously like. And so I'm going to choose the music that I like over the the cultural stereotypes or assumptions that I've that have been foisted on me. I think that's what music is so good at is. And that's why people are so like, especially back in our day, back in our day. You know, I mean, like people it is subversive. Like it gets into you get these little like suburban or rural kids listening to this stuff. They're like, what is this? And it's like a portal. Yeah. You know, it's a portal into these other cultures. yeah or you're like oh there's a person of this race or yeah listen to system of a down and then you're learning it's this eye-opening thing because you like what you like and then you go and you go oh i didn't know it was connected to all these other things and it opens up your your horizons because music hits your nervous system first like it hits your sensory stuff first it's not like an intellectual thing yes but then it becomes that yeah right totally when you totally like dig in.

18:36Well, that is the unfair thing as a medium. I think you and I have talked about this as like what a song can do in like three seconds. Absolutely. Me at my highest level in my best work, all of it combined is going to be a fraction of how powerful like an opening riff or a drum fill. You know what I mean? Absolutely. It's like, I spent five years thinking about this, crafting it and you captured in a vibe. That's music. Yes, that's music. And I don't know many writers who wouldn't truly prefer to be musicians in their hearts. Yeah. Like it's and it kind of sometimes it swings both ways. But like, I just think that music, I've said this over and over again.

19:20I'm with Nietzsche, like without music, life wouldn't be worth living. I truly think it's the best art form. Yeah. And I think it'll be the thing that, you know, when our civilization collapses and like we're all, you know, scrounging around. People would be beating on a drum or singing together. Well, what I was thinking at this heavy metal show is like, obviously heavy metal is relatively new. It's like a 50-year-old medium. And I was just like, but there's something that you hear for someone who, if you like heavy metal, you hear it and you're like, blah. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I was like, those people have always existed.

19:51It's not like someone invented a thing. Like, they didn't invent the need or the connection, right? Like, they only invented the expression of it. And so there must have been people who were just like, I only like heavy opera or I only like heavy. It was like all the other mediums and arts were just insufficiently heavy until we got to this form of heavy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, Beethoven's pretty heavy, you know, stuff like that. The thing I really like about music is just that it goes through time. I mean, recorded music is like one thing. You can listen to the same riff in the same room, record on the same equipment that people 50 years ago did.

20:35And I think that's that's amazing. But I also think there's something about recorded music in the sense of like, you know, like a score or something like I play piano. And when I'm playing Bach, there's this really weird thing that happens where I'm like, he put his fingers in the same places in the same like order. And I can look at this, you know, I can look at this page and I can recreate where he put his hands. And it's like this thing that freaks me out every once in a while. Well, I was just thinking, I've seen like a reel, it's kind of a trope at this point, but it'll be like, imagine you're in like Vienna in 1842 and like this song drops.

21:14And then the people are like doing some crazy, you know, like dance from then. And they're like, oh yeah, these things must have, like Mark Maron talks about like being in high school and like Van Halen just appearing and just like being in the parking lot and hearing eruption. Yeah. And just imagine you're, yeah, you're in Vienna and it's like someone invented like the modern piano not that long ago or the guitar. Like, and just those things, it would have been the same sensation where people are just hearing it over and over and over again. And they're just obsessed with it. And it's just a huge, I was just talking to someone and we were talking about how there was this play in the 1700s called Cato, which was written by Joseph Addison.

21:56That was just like this enormous hit. It was such a big hit that Cato became this popular figure. George Washington puts on a rendition of it at Valley Forge. It was Hamilton. Oh, you know what I mean? For the founders. It was Hamilton for the founders. And it's like, oh, yeah, stuff happens and it's just a smash. It's huge. Yeah. But then on the other hand, you've got all this stuff like Bach wrote all this stuff for church just because he needs something new to play. Sure. And I love that, too. I like Bach because like so one thing that's really interesting to me is when people get ideas in their heads about like the authenticity of musicians versus what was actually true.

22:32Like a lot of people look at like the Stones versus the Beatles and they're like, oh, you know, the Stones are all hard. Like the Beatles are these soft boys. And like Lemmy from Motorhead is like in his memoir, he's like, dude, Ringo's from the Dingle. Like in Liverpool. I love that line. Ringo's from the Dingle. like the Beatles are like pretty like you know middle working class like kind of tough like Hamburg guys the Rolling Stones are all art school brats like they're all like going to art school and like prancing around so like it's that's interesting to me but like I guess Bach like grew up in this like super tough environment that I just didn't know about that yeah like when you listen to when you listen to like early rock it doesn't feel heavy but Johnny Cash was heavy you You know, like there was a heaviness to this stuff and a transgressiveness that is lost because you heard it, you know, you saw infomercials for it as a kid selling.

23:26You know what I mean? Ray's rumble has been in like how many. You see them as like black and white photos or videos and they're wearing suits. It doesn't feel transgressive, but it was compared to what came before. It was massively transgressive and heavier than anything that had been made. It rocked harder than anything that came before it.

23:53Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation. getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

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25:17Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

26:01My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

26:38Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

26:58it also early rock and roll was dance music it was supposed to be played when like people were dancing and like dancing like is was this very like social sexual thing i mean when i think when i was growing up you know music really became like a you know it became like a solo endeavor it was like something you like listen to in your room or like something on headphones so like when you're talking about that heaviness and hitting and stuff that's like it needs to sound you know when when like the first lines of like iron man or like war pigs or something comes on your stereo that that can be like a sonic experience that you can have on your own yeah i do think that like when i think about that early rock and roll stuff i'm like you know because you like look at elvis and you're like oh yeah fine but then you think about being a kid in like the 50s and you're at a dance Just the fact that it was plugged in and amplified.

27:51There was a machine energy to that that would have been unfamiliar if all you had previously heard was like a piano in a bar. Yeah. And I mean, like the history of technology and music is really interesting. Like if you read about the history of microphones, like what we're doing right now, like you wouldn't get like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby without the microphone because they couldn't croon. So microphones, being able to be amplified, that invents a whole singing style. So when you hear Sinatra and he's like, strangers, you know, it's real croony. That's because he's at the mic and he could be in a dance hall in front of people and he could sing softly.

28:33So that changes everything. Right. So to have amplification means that you can like play more subtly. It changes the way people sing like Billie Holiday. That's another example in jazz. you know she can get up and kind of do that like croony thing so like it's really interesting how technology and music you really like can't pull them apart and how recent some of this stuff is i mean there are still some people alive born before jazz was invented maybe yeah maybe like we're like there's like a hit like a hundred year old yeah yes it was more common when we were kids but like right the last surviving people to live before any effectively any form of modern music some of those people are still alive that's insane that is insane yeah i mean like history is short right i mean it just is and so like yeah i think the thing that i'm pulling apart personally is there's that great nate bargazzi piece where he says i'm from the 1900s yeah have you kids done that to you yet well dad you were born in the 1900s like oh no but it is starting to strike me like just that that century just the incredible you know zero to 60 of it it's like uh we are to the 90s today what the 90s were to the 60s and you're like oh okay that gets really short really fast really short really fast and then you have to ask yourself oh well you know people kids don't know who paul mccartney is and you're like well did anyone know who i can't even think of a music, you know, because Paul McCartney in the 60s, you go back to the 1910s, you're almost at like recorded music.

30:15Yeah, right. So it's like you can't even come up with a like, you know, you can't even come up with like a comparison. So you said something earlier about Elizabeth Gilbert's, like she was writing some profile. I love moments like that. I remember I was researching something for a book once and I found like an article that Malcolm Gladwell had written as a reporter for the Washington Post. It was like a profile of Tupac or something. And not like a big one, just like a filed piece about like a news event. Yeah. And you go, oh, this was you getting your hours. Yeah. Like this is where all that came from.

30:51This was you just learning to be a writer. You had no control over what you were writing or how you were writing. You were just doing your thing. Yeah, I regret not getting a journalism background or not writing for like a paper or anything just because so many of my favorite writers had that background. But I will say that that's like what all the blogging was about. You know, and I feel really lucky that in the early days, I mean, I was just old enough that blogs were just like a really big deal when I got out of college. And I'm starting to see all that stuff is like how contextual it actually is.

31:30Because like when I talk to like younger people now, I'm like, oh, no, you know, because it's just like, well, what's what's big? I keep thinking about context. I think about context all the time now because I think that people just people have their heroes and that's fine. And I'm a big hero person, too. They're like people I worshipped and looked up to when I was younger. And I do think that we're brought to our work through the inspiration of other people. But as I get older, I really want to encourage people to think about the context that their heroes were in. because every hero that you look at, there was a context for what they did.

32:09There was a scenius to the genius, right? And I just think that's like something that like the older I get, the more I'm just like trying to drill in. What does understanding that give you then? I think for me, it's just about understanding that the people that you look up to were in a context and they made choices or they didn't make choices about their work based on the context or they were forced into certain things And it's up to you to really use your context to your advantage, I think, or to situate yourself. There's a couple of ways you could do about it. You'd be like, well, I'm in a context in which TikTok is a big thing.

32:45Okay, I'm going to get on TikTok. Or you could do the opposite. You could say, I'm going to do interviews with people with a typewriter and mail them the question. You know, it's that it's that. But it's understanding that that the people you look up to were existing in a very specific context. And when it comes to comparing yourself, like I think about Vonnegut all the time, like Vonnegut, you know, has a little bit of journalism career PR guy. But then he gets, you know, he has a really good solid middle class life for a while writing these stories for these magazines because people read magazines.

33:21Right. And so I think that like. Yeah. Imagine getting a work of fiction published in not book form and making a living from it. It make you$4 ,000 in 1960 on it. Right. I think for me, it's just about looking around and being like, what can I use? You know, just being like really open to your thinking deeply about your context. I'm not sure that anyone doing this, by the way, like intentionally would really help. I just think that as I've kind of gotten a little bit older, I've just understood the context that I grew up in and like that I came up in. And I just start to see, oh, this is like this is like you were just kind of taking advantage of what was available to you.

34:04And one way forward might be to just keep doing that, like to keep like, yeah, or even just understanding like, look, there was economics and incentives and a business structure. And a lot of that is no longer true. So you can't sit down and write your book of Joan Didion essays. Yeah. She was a well-known journalist. And there was also like a whole scene that would review and talk about like there are only vestiges of that left. Yeah. And so pretending that you can just she can be your hero, but you have to figure out how to do it in a new way. You can't just pretend to do that thing. Exactly.

34:37And you put it much more eloquently than what I was trying to say, which is like, yeah, there was an economics. There was a context. there was like there was like an incentive like people complain about music today and i'm like well is it possible to make a living as a working musician it's really not yeah like if you read about it there's the top and then there's everybody else and i mean back in the you know i always listen i always think like okay 1965 to 1975 if you take a look at like a lot of recorded music That is a dream era of albums. Well, people bought albums. They all had records. You know what I mean?

35:18And like, so like there's a reason that like that that stuff is so good and why you love that stuff so much. And part of it was the economic context. When you talk about show your work, it's not just like an artistic decision to do it. It's like they used to be able to just operate in a black box and be like, my thing's out. And then there was a system, a structure that could surface new work to people. That doesn't exist. You have to bring people in. You can't start at zero. Your chances are you're not going to make such a singular work of genius that just shatters everything and draw it. Like every once in a while that happens.

35:54But that's a very dangerous bet to make on yourself. Yeah. And I mean, I think the requirements now are so great of the skill set that it takes. I mean I think what we're losing culturally probably is that in the old days old days let's just sound like ancient um you know you could be bad at life I mean like a lot of artists and and like creative people like they could be really bad at life they could be not good at self-promotion they'd be not good at finances but they could play the hell out of their guitar and they could sing it's used to be able to smoke in the locker room because it wasn't the actual athletic demands, the level of expected performance, not that they weren't great, but like there's a famous J.J.

36:43Redick thing where he gets in trouble. He's like, look, they were playing against like plumbers and insurance salesmen, you know? And it's partly true, you know? Like they weren't full-time professional athletes. There wasn't that professionalized high. Every year, the level of expected performance gets higher and it becomes harder and harder to be a dilettante or to be like, there's a lot of artists that were crazy and just mentally unstable, but they were so good. And the environment, the cultural and economic environment was conducive to them being able to succeed in spite of that. Right. That is not true.

37:17They didn't have to run some 24, seven feet of their life and present a certain way. And like, they didn't have to work with people, You know, like there was just you were able to be a deranged lone wolf, you know, a rabid lone wolf. I mean, I don't know how much. I mean, yeah, I do think there was a certain amount of I just think that part of the thing I'm worried about culture. And there's a there's a woman named Jessa Crispin who writes really well about this. It's just like, what do we do with people that are bad at life? Like it used to be that like the arts were a place that they could go.

37:49No, I heard someone say that on podcast, like the arts used to be where you could go if you were mentally unstable. You know, like the environment sort of forgave and enabled in some ways, but also just was like, look, they're a great actor, but they're nuts. We're going to make it work. Yeah. But like, you know, there was a guy that used to run a TV show. And like, you know what I mean? I'm like, if you don't have him doing his TV show, what if he runs for president or something like that? You know what I mean? You know, I mean, these people, these maniacs, like the arts in some ways are a good place to keep maniacs.

38:24It was like our Australian penal colony. We're like, send them over there. Just keep them in the arts. Like, yeah, Hitler, go to art school. I mean, you know, there is something to like people need things to do. It's a healthier place to work out your enormous childhood wounds than in the stock market or geopolitics or whatever. Where you can do some real damage. Yeah, totally. So these are the unpopular thoughts I like to have a lot of the time. I think that's why, like, in some ways, you know, I am just such a proponent of everyone practicing some kind of art form, no matter how badly. because I always think that time spent doing something creative, like on your own or like as a hobby or something like that just means you're not out on the street bothering somebody or wreaking havoc.

39:18I mean, there's a reason like where, you know, in high schools and stuff like shop class and, and stuff like that was to like keep kids out of trouble. Like I, I remember like hanging out in the art room in, in high school is like, yeah, that's a place to go. So you're not like out on the street, like setting things on fire. No, I said this in my talk yesterday. I was talking about Churchill and painting. And I was like, for someone who loved painting, it's interesting how he never really got good. Like his paintings, his paintings are not good. Doesn't matter. But they're worth a lot. And we celebrate them because of what they allowed him to do.

39:57Yeah. Right. That it was it was an outlet for him that enhanced the thing that he did perform at an incredible level. Yeah. Right. Like a great person could and perhaps should have something they're not good at. I don't even think it's a great person. I think everyone needs something to do. I think you're looking at a culture in which hobbies have like disappeared. Like, what do people do? It used to be like they spend it on their phone, raging on Twitter or like getting pilled on 4chan or whatever. read it or whatever and then i get real interesting conspiracy theories like you know i don't know that people can afford to have a garage anymore like do people have garages anymore where they can like tinker or like you know basement workshops and stuff i'm just like really interested in this idea of like hobbies disappearing no like look imagine a world where elon musk got really into triathlons instead of this clown something to do yeah this clown needs something to do he needs like my hope for that man is like get him like into woodworking yeah like he's a middle-aged guy he he didn't figure out dude you're supposed to go fishing now or like get deeply into world war ii books about history or something because you still have that manic energy that obsession yeah But it will feast on itself.

41:20Like you get to a point where it can't go into more work. And if it doesn't go into something productive or at least socially adaptive, it will destroy you. I remember having a conversation at Dove Charney's house and I was like, does Dove have any hobbies, you know? And I remember Robert Green went, sex. Sex is his hobby. And it was like, oh, that's a bad hobby. That's a bad hobby, bro. That's going to get you in serious trouble. Yeah, for sure. Because there is, I think, and I've read some book about this one time, but many successful driven people in office have some kind of, if they're not outright bipolar, there is a manic energy, an OCD tendency, an obsession, and that can serve you really well.

42:03But it's eventually going to find other places. You need to direct it or destroy you. It needs to be channeled positively, you know, into something positive. Yes. I also think these people have big holes in them. Yes, of course. I asked, I was doing an interview with this fellow named Franz Nicolet who wrote this book called Band People, which is about working musicians. And I said, where do you think ambition comes from? And he goes, oh, and before he could answer, I said, I think it comes from a big hole in you. It does. Do you know Tank Sinatra? No. He's like a big meme Instagram guy. He's a great guy.

42:43But he has this thing I think about all the time. He's been in recovery for like 20 years or something. And he was talking to someone. He was like, we all have some way to fill the hole. You know, he's like, for some of us, it's sex. Some of us, it's drugs. Some of us, it's drinking. Some of us work. And the person was just like, what hole? And then he realized it's like, oh, that's true. Some of us have this problem. And some of us are just well-adjusted regular people. And so it tends to be what drives you to go past where most people stop is that hole. And so then you get it and you realize, oh, it didn't do it.

43:18You've got to find something because a normal person doesn't spend, doesn't take the$200 million they made from PayPal and dump it into rockets. That's crazy. Right. But then it works. And then you're like, well, then I'm going to start an electric car company. Yeah. And then you're like, and then I'm going to make a solar company and then I'm going to make a satellite company. And then it's still not because the hole is so deep. Yeah. Then he makes up. He's like, now the thing is the woke mind virus. Now you've made up a thing. Right. Yeah. And in a way you can see why you make it up because he's already tackled all the hardest problems and solving them, which he did.

43:58You have to give him credit for doing solving them. Didn't do anything. Some engineer did for him, but OK. But I'm saying he built a company that did the thing. I know what you mean. And so it's like, oh, if real problems won't fill the hole, perhaps a made up problem. But we know this. Yeah. Like these guys can't just sit in a room with themselves. That's what Blaise Pascal said. They can't do it. Yeah. And that's what you have to do. And that's like, that's what you have to figure out. It's easier to start a rocket company. Absolutely. Steven Pressfield has that line about like, it was easier for Hitler to conquer Europe than to be a painter.

44:31Yeah. I mean, like, it's easier to do all this stuff than to sit with yourself and really get comfortable and be a human being. Or not be comfortable. Which is why it drives you. Yeah, exactly.

44:57I think like I really like that Shep Gordon that super mensch movie where he just says you know it's just never enough like fame is like it just it's not going to help you it's going to make things worse. Yeah. And I think that's really important for people you know because there's so many people who especially people who are not going to help you. especially in the arts, like they want to be famous. They want to be, get their stuff known and whatever. And you just really have to deal with that fact. Like, you know, you might want to find your hole before all this stuff happens. Try to fill it, you know, first.

45:30I, you know, it's like our mutual friend, Oliver Berkman says, he's like, are we, was it him? No, I get my smart British fellows mixed up. I think it's Lane Baton who says like, if your kid has no need to be famous, you should feel good about that as a parent uh-huh and i think about that all the time with my kids like i think about it it's like the forrest gump thing where he's like is he like is he like me is he like me please tell me he's not like me don't be like dad yeah but they get it yeah i mean like i i'm dealing like with this crush right now where my youngest loves like scratch and roblox and these like these things that are kind of pitched as like learn to code things they're actually social media platforms for kids so any parents like anyway that's i'll go down the rabbit hole but he's like upset they only has like 49 followers like he really wants 50 yeah and that's something i'm having to deal with with like a nine-year-old that's how like deep this stuff gets in and that's how early it happens now and so we i actually had a little bit of stoic philosophy this week i said jules there are things you can control and there are things that you cannot control.

46:46You cannot control how many followers you have. What you can control is you make the best game you can, the game that you like the most that you want to play. You have to make the game that you want to play. And yeah, easy for you to say, dad, you've got, I've seen your follower account, you know, or whatever, you know, but it's like, that's how early it's hitting these kids. Well, many years ago, there was this study, actually, Dr. Drew did it because he hosted Loveline. He would give a narcissistic personality index to the guests on the show. So he was Because in an academic setting, you wouldn't actually be able to get access to those.

47:19And anyways, one of the things they found was that narcissism tended to be lowest in famous people who caught famous through some form of mastery. so like a reality tv star chose yes in some ways the easiest way to get famous or chose the thing that is the most sort of pure fame as opposed to the person whose fame was a byproduct of their obsession with the thing so like right travis barker is very famous yeah and has been on a reality show but he's famous because he's clearly profoundly obsessed with the drums do You know what I mean? He has this thing that he can't not do. It's a thing that he's a humble student of, even though he's great at it.

48:03Right. And so it's almost like the more technical the thing you get interested in, the better served you're going to be. If if it is a thing that is a path to some sort of public persona, like I think what's writing is really fucking hard and you do it. Even though you can become famous for writing, you're not doing your writing in front of people. It's at the end a solitary, humbling activity. And your last one never writes the next one for you. No, you're starting from zero. It's actually harder. Sure. It gets harder, especially if you have any kind of success. That's better than, say, a talk radio host, where it gets easier and you become more bombastic and more just like what that profession selected.

48:46for was your love of your own ability to pontificate on the fly. Right. Yeah. And so it's actually just making you an insufferable egomaniac. Yeah. You're not. Oh, shit. I am starting from scratch on this. You know, like. Right. No, that's a good point. That's really interesting. Have you read David Foster Wallace's essay on talk radio hosts? A long time ago. It's so good. But he's, yeah, it's like, this is not. And I think actually, I think you're seeing podcasts break a lot of people's brains. There's a reason that a lot of, I think, podcast hosts have drifted towards sort of misinformation and extremism.

49:25They don't have another thing that if you don't have another thing that you do, that's really hard. Yeah. What do you put your life towards? Yeah. Well, I'm interested in this concept of cheap talk. So both my sons stutter. They're people who stutter. And so I've gotten really into the stuttering community. And there's a researcher in the stuttering community named Joshua St. Pierre, I think is his name. And he has this thing he talks about called cheap talk. And his idea is that our culture or capitalist system or whatever is is hungry for cheap talk. that it and i'm trying to think of like talk show hosts would be one thing you know i'm watching baseball this week this this idea that the more you talk the more like value you're you're providing or something like that and what it really becomes is a culture of bs yes i i don't know why my brain is failing there's like two things that that he says like come up but you can see it on like social media it's like the more i'm engaged the more i'm chit chattering the more i'm saying the more like engagement I get and whatever.

50:32And so I'm really interested in this concept of cheap talk and like, how do we make talk or words or saying things have more meaning? I think a lot of people are not good at noticing cheap talk or bullshit. Yeah. Like I was listening to Vivek Ramaswamy on Ezra Klein. I was driving yesterday and I was like, this is a person who's good at talking but not saying anything. Do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. And you're just like, oh, and this has been exacerbated and encouraged by the social media algorithm and the sort of performance art that he's been doing. Like he was like, you know, as a politician.

51:14And I was like, bro, you're not a politician. You've not been elected in any fucking office. What are you talking about? And so like, I think one of our major problems as a society is we're not good at identifying like good bullshitters? Because we're encouraged to do it from the minute we're in school onwards. To bullshit? Yeah, because if you think about like, John Warner has a great sub stack. He's the Biblio Oracle. And he's written a couple of books about how writing is taught. And he's working on a book right now about chat GPT and like how AI and writing is his like beat. He's really great on the subject.

51:51But what he talks about is, and I think about this all the time with the arts right now is we've already taught kids to bullshit in their essays. We've already encouraged them. If you think about the way writing is taught in school, we've already encouraged them to have a lot of saying to say a lot and say nothing. Yeah. Just by the very structure of like, write me a 500 word essay. Right. Right. It has to have an introduction uh you know forget all the michelle montagna you've read you know like it has to have this and this and this you have to fill the boxes and so like we've already encouraged kids to be mediocre writers and to bullshit basically and that just like you know that goes all the way up is how like john talks about and i think he's he's right and one of the things i think about just culturally right now, why people are so excited about AI or not excited about AI is we've already been fed slop for the past 20 years.

52:54I mean, we've been fed computer generated, mass produced, lowest common denominator, Hollywood slop for the past 20 years. Why would we? Oh, yeah, sure. Make an AI movie. Well, I was can people actually discern? No, What's good? Well, that's going to be the... So AI is obviously here. It's going to change things. And people think, oh, it's going to be about... It's going to do all this stuff. Actually, to me, the key skill is going to be how good are you at spotting slop and bullshit, right? Yeah. So I was just writing something, doing this big chapter about Lincoln in the book that I'm finishing.

53:31And I read probably 4 ,000 pages of stuff on Lincoln. Of Lincoln, yeah. And as I've been crafting it, I lost the... I was like, where's this quote from? Who did I get this from, right? and uh i was like oh i just asked i was like where did this and and they were like oh that's actually not a quote chad she was like that's actually not a quote from lincoln that's about lincoln that's a mark twain talking about charles dickens and i was like well i know that's not true right and i was like are you sure no it said oh actually no this is tolstoy talking about lincoln because there's this great passage from tolstoy where he tells a story about lincoln i go i'm pretty sure it's not.

54:07And I go, I think it's John Hay. I was like, can you confirm this is John Hay and Nikolai? And it goes, oh, yes, yes, yes. It's from John Nikolai and Hay and Nikolai. And I go, okay, can you show me where so I can find it? And it goes, it's book 11 in their memoirs. And I was like, show me the larger context. And it was like, actually, I can't find the larger context. They said something similar, though. And I was like, finally, I was like, well, I know it's in one of these books. So I went to Google Books. And it was from this journalist in like 1861 who was friends with Lincoln. So watching this thing give me five consecutive wrong answers and not wrong answers, but confident lies.

54:53Like even an intern wouldn't be like, oh, well, you know. And the only reason I didn't get it wrong myself is that I have an intuition and a well-trained. That doesn't seem right. Yeah, exactly. And so if you don't have that, if you don't have a broad base, if you have a broad base of knowledge and you're well read and smart and good at spotting misinformation, you're media literate, AI can be this powerful thing that can help you do what you do better. Yeah. If you do not, it's going to eat you alive. Yeah. I mean, in like, I think it's Neil Postman in like teaching as a subversive activity. A lot of people know his book.

55:31Amusing ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. but teaching as a subversive activity starts out. He says the primary goal of education is to establish a bullshit detector in students. It's just not happening. Like so much of, it's all bullshit. He has a good line. He says, we today know everything the ancients didn't know and none of the things they did know. They did know. And what they understood was like, they knew what a demagogue was. They knew what truth was. They knew what virtue, They knew these basic kind of bedrock fundamental human things. We forgot that. And we've replaced it with trivia about shit.

56:07But yeah. You know, like dates and places and plots, but not like the Odyssey is an exploration of a man's tragic flaws, not a celebration of Odysseus is the bad guy in many ways. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's what it's a complex exploration of. And there's this great passage from Seneca where Seneca's like, it doesn't matter where this happened. He's like, it doesn't matter the dates, the names, the places. The thing I remember learning in school about the Odyssey, this is what I don't remember any of that. I remember discussing whether Homer was actually the author of the Odyssey or not, and whether he was blind or not, and whether it was an oral poem or written down or not.

56:49All fundamentally irrelevant things when you're talking about one of the greatest works of art of all time. He's saying what matters is that you are lost at sea and the gods are angry at you. You are being tossed about and you are trying to get home. That's what you're supposed to take from the Odyssey. I think that's something that you and I really share is that we go back. That it's in old books that we find so much, you know. I think that the old books are so estranged from our current context that you have to do the work of first they speak directly to the time. I mean, like I was reading a Michel de Montagne essay this morning on prognosticating.

57:33It's like an early one in the book. Perfect for right now. like you could not get a better essay for this moment because he's talking about all these people trying to predict the future and like and all this stuff and I just thought god okay this is like 500 years ago and this dude's just like nailing it like what good would it be if you even knew how it was going then you'd suffer twice right that's the great thing but like the thing is you're right like they knew something essential and I think that's why it just like speaks to now but I like the way that You have to kind of translate it to your moment, particularly when you're like younger and you don't get that like the old can speak to the now.

58:13But that's what Montagna was doing. He retires and he retreats to his library because the world is fucking insane. Right. And people are killing each other. Yep. And there's these massacres and this religious persecution. And he's basically a secret Jew. And so he's not even Catholic or Protestant. He's like a third enemy. And he's just like, I'm just going to go here. And I'm going to read my books. Yeah. And he goes and he's reading the Stoics. He's reading Socrates. He's reading. And then he's translating it. Did I give you that book, the Zweig book on Montaigne? Oh, yeah. For people who haven't read it, it's one of the greatest books of all time.

58:49In the depths of World War II, as a fleeing refugee, Stefan Zweig reads, discovers Montaigne in the basement that he's hiding in. And so he's a man fleeing persecution and dysfunction of his time. discovers Montaigne as Montaigne was discovering the ancients 500 years ago. And then I was reading it in 2017. And I was like, oh, this is this is it, man. This is a picture of a picture of a picture. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just there for you. And it's been there for the other thing that I think is cool. If you read him, it's like all of a sudden then you're connected to all these other writers who read him.

59:27Yes. You know, and so then their work becomes deeper. I mean, there's a couple of passages that Shakespeare almost certainly cripped from his essays. Oh, yeah, from the like, phoria or whatever. Yeah, and you're just like, oh, this is amazing. Like, our point about there's hits, right? Like, this book comes out and it's like, what the fuck is this? That's what Montaigne did. Because no one had ever made themselves, no one had ever essentially written a memoir, an inward-facing exploration of their own beliefs, thoughts, vices, virtues. and it goes off like a bomb among smart people in Europe at that time.

1:00:02It gets translated in English. And yeah, a good chunk of Shakespeare is informed by this guy. And they only overlap by like a couple of years. It's crazy. I was petting your cat over in the store and thought about his essay. You know, am I, is my cat my pet or am I my cat's pet? You know, especially it's just like, it's so contemporary, but they were people. They were, they were people. They were humans. and I'm worried that we're not being very human these days. What do you mean? That we're, I think we act like machines a lot of the time. I think the technology has kind of trained us to be like machine-like in a lot of ways.

1:00:39Yeah, I was thinking about that actually when I was driving back from dropping my kid out from school. I was like, all these people are just, like we're scared of robo-taxis or whatever, but it's like you're just following what the thing and you're, but also if you didn't, you would like, I've also been in like cars before where the driver is not doing it. And I'm like, it's like, do the thing. It's smarter than you. It's easy. It's smarter than you. Follow what it says. People in cars are like really fascinating. I was on, we live on like a really busy, like through way in Austin. And I'm walking the kid to middle school.

1:01:14It's the dream or whatever. But I have to like go past all these meatheads in the morning. And this guy was revving his Mustang, like really loud. And I couldn't stand it. And I said, yeah, man. I shouted at him like real ass. I said, yeah. And he looked at me. He was like, oh, somebody's in it. He started revving. I said, you're the dude, man. You. And he suddenly realized that I was making fun of him. And he stopped. And he was like, because it was just like, it was eight in the morning, man. But people are just like, and I didn't get shot. That's a different hole that someone's in. Yeah, right?

1:01:47Like, what are you doing? It's eight in the morning. All these kids are trying to walk to school. and you're in it. I find cars really fascinating, especially because like, that's why I wanted to ask you, like, what do you do when you drive to Austin? Because I don't drive anywhere anymore, you know? Because like I walk my kids to school. I bike all the time now. I live behind an HEB. Like I just like don't leave the house. Like I don't really leave the neighborhood, you know? I mostly, I listen to podcasts and music. And then I also, I do, I like just roll calls. I just, all the things that I have to do, I just get them done in the car.

1:02:19Like calling people or doing actual phone calls? My wife and I probably talk on the phone like an hour a day. Just talking to each other. Oh, okay, yeah. You know what I mean? That I can see, yeah. I'm interested. So I'm driving to Lakey soon, and that's like a three-hour drive. Like where? Lakey, it's like west of Austin, about three hours. It's where Lady Lodge is. I don't know if you've ever heard of this place. I'll tell you about it later. No one's going to care. It's like three hours west of Texas. I'm like, should I raw dog it? there's this thing called raw dog have you heard of this i saw this clip where where john john cena was saying he was stressed have you heard this he was like i was just stressed one day he lives he was like he was in tampa he's like i stressed one day it's just i got in my car and he just he drove all of florida like he did the perimeter he was like 18 he was like 18 hours i just pulled back into my garage i was like wow you are mentally ill that is the craziest thing i've ever heard That's like my favorite clip from the show Atlanta, where this guy's in his Dodge Charger and he's filling up the gas tank real quick.

1:03:25And he gets back in his Dodge Charger and this guy goes, yeah, that's Herman. Herman. What's his name? He just got divorced. He's been driving around in circles. He said, take whatever you want, but leave me my Dodge Charger. And it's like Dodge Charger. Keep it in the divorce. But I'm interested in driving because it's something I don't do a lot. And then when I do it, I'm like, this is actually kind of interesting. Like, it's kind of fun. It's like a whole, like, mental, as a pedestrian, as a cyclist, you just, like, watch people and they're in their little ensconced 3 ,000-pound, like, steel frames.

1:04:00But, like, there is something about it that I think is, like, distinctly American to being in your little space and moving through. Well, in Texas, just the absurd distances that you have to cover. Oh, unbelievable. We're driving to, like, Big Ben for the first time. And I'm just like, all right, here we go. But like, that's all day. Yeah. And like even getting to Marfa is like seven hours. Yeah. It's better just to do it. The fact that you can just drive all day. Are you going to stop in Belmore? Maybe, but it's going to be winter. But it's like Barton Springs. It's always the same temperature.

1:04:32Oh, is it always the same temperature? Yeah. Okay. So like I can jump in. All right, cool. It's worth doing. Yeah. Someone was telling me there's something special though as a parent. Like you want actually moments where you and your kid are staring in the same direction. are really important. So like the commute thing is not ideal, but we're trying to make them. I find the car to be some of the really fun moments. Like I think being in the car together is really great. I lied to my kids for a while and told them my phone doesn't talk to our old car. Yeah. So like I just play classical music in the morning so they can't play like certain stuff.

1:05:06Yeah. And then you get bored enough to talk to each other. Yeah. So I'm always like trying little tricks like that. Who was it the other day that I was talking to about Steinbeck. Steinbeck tried to trick his kids into reading books by locking them in the cabinet and like making a big sign. You know this story? It's great. Oh, you'd love this. So this is for like Daily Dad volume two. Steinbeck, like, he's like, now boys, don't you get in this cabinet? Don't you read anything in this cabinet? He like locks the door and like puts the key like just like up on top of the bookshelf and like leaves.

1:05:42Right. To make it something forbidden or or tattoo. Yeah, to make it kind of like, this is off limits. And he kind of knew that the kids would be like, oh, we're going to get in there. I told my youngest that fiddlesticks was the worst curse word. So now that's his thing. Perfect. It's amazing. Perfect. You want to check out some books? Sure. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

1:06:17Thank you.