Wright Thompson On The Costs Of Greatness Throughout History

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1:30Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:24Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. maybe the greatest living writer in sports, certainly currently publishing living writer. It's got to be Wright Thompson. I've raved about his book, The Cost of These Dreams, which is not really about sports, but it so much is about the pursuit of greatness and what it costs you, the kinds of individuals that are drawn to that, the cost of being drawn to that. I have drawn so much from his work. If you read Stillness is the Key, I'm drawing on his Tiger Woods story. If you picked up The Daily Dad, there's stuff in there from his story on Ted Williams and his daughter.

3:11There's stuff from Tiger Woods and a bunch of other examples. Actually, from our last conversation, I had him on the podcast back a year or two ago, a remote. This one's in person. He came out to the new Daily Stokes studio, which was very, very cool. But anyways, it was in that episode of the podcast that he gave me a pointer, that he pointed me towards Bruce Springsteen's wonderful conceit about an ancestor or a ghost. What are you going to be for your kids? Just a fantastic writer. If you want to just read some of the best sports writing or journalism on the planet today, pick up The Cost of These Dreams.

3:50His book, Papyland, a story of family, fine bourbon and things that last. Also fantastic. But just look at his stories for ESPN. Just grab a bunch of them. Just fantastic. Just a masterclass. He's covered Super Bowls, Final Fours, the Masters, the Kentucky Derby, and so much more. Thank you to Wright for coming all the way out and doing this interview. We both have a shared connection and mutual friend in Lane Kiffin, who we sent a picture of, who we sent a picture of us hanging out to. And I think you're really going to like this episode with me talking to the one and only Wright Thompson. And you'll be able to watch this one on YouTube also.

4:31I think if you're watching them on YouTube, you can check this out because we filmed a video of it also. But check out The Cost of These Dreams, We Carry It in the Painted Porch, and then Pappy Land, also fantastic. I think he signed copies of both, and those are probably available also. I'll link to those in today's show notes.

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6:04To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org, code The Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. You know, you don't have to let big wireless and your overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year. Because right now, all of Mint Mobile's unlimited plans are 50 % off. You can get three, six, and 12 months of unlimited premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. It's their best deal of the year and it makes it really easy for you to give your expensive wireless bill to Scrooge treatment.

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7:30he's like what did this person eat what did they think he's like what did they think about god i just think about that all the time then there's another scene in there where he talks about this like these buffalo that just get like stuck standing up in the mud or something and they just there's like a hundred thousand buffalo just die standing up they just find them yeah or they would run them off the cliff that's crazy like just the idea that like so the the myth that like that they were like great conservationists yes they were just they were of the individual animal like they were very resourceful on the individual animal like they could use all the pieces yeah but they might kill a thousand of them if they could yeah it's sort of like you know like your grandparents who grew up in the depression they were like yeah yeah you were using every bit of that buffalo yes oh but but yeah they would just run them off they or they would burn huge swaths of forest to run them off like they would use fire and like it also made me like i started watching meat eater after reading the book yes because i was like okay like i'm curious about yeah and it's like the anti-hunting show yeah he well i don't mean against hunting i mean it's the anti like what you would normally think of like yeah like bros totally well i mean most and a lot of the episodes he's like meh i'm not gonna shoot this one yeah you know which i like yes yes um yeah or like there's this one i saw where they go hunting with alpacas like they have like alpacas that carry their gear it's pretty nuts um my son likes to watch those before bed for some reason.

9:07So we've seen pretty much all of them. How old's your son? Six. Oh yeah, I have a two and a five-year-old. Yes. So one of my other books was Ada Twist Scientist. Oh. Ava Marie, Ava Marie. No, I could do the whole thing. Well, Steve has a good book I'll give you. It's called Outdoor Kids in an Indoor World. Okay, I need to check that out. It's all about, like, he's like, you want to raise kids that don't say ew when they're outside. Oh, that's good. You know, like they can just do stuff, right? It's like, they don't have to love the outdoors. They just have to not be afraid of the outdoors. And also like if the whole world turns into like a Carmack McCarthy novel, you like at least want to be able to like do some stuff.

9:50My favorite scene in the book, he's like, they're out camping as a family and the kids go, like, we found scorpions. And he's like, no, you didn't. There are no scorpions in Montana. He's like, this is literally what I do. You did not find a scorpion. And they're like, yes, we did. Yes, we did. And he said, absolutely did not. But any parent knows whenever your kid's like, I just saw a monkey riding a bicycle. He goes, no, you didn't. They definitely did. It's like the second you doubt them, you're proven wrong. And he says, like, prove it to me. And they come back with a scorpion. It turns out it's some super rare endangered species of scorpions.

10:22But he had to eat it. Like, OK, dad, expert. It was sort of like I'm making this documentary right now with Mickey Hart, the drummer from The Grateful Dead. And so I was talking to his daughter at his house one day, and I was like, how do you rebel when your father's in the Grateful Dead? You get a job, you wear a suit? She was like – she rolled up her sleeve and had a big Patti Smith tattoo and just said punk rock. But it's sort of like how do you rebel when your dad is Steven Rinella? Sure, sure. It's either you play video games or you're like, actually, you don't know shit. Right, yeah. You go so hard.

10:56Yeah, that you're like, actually, there are scorpions, Mr. Famous TV Hunter. No, his stuff's amazing. Yeah, he's really good. It's funny. I just had Gretchen Rubin in here, and I was talking to her about it, and then I hadn't finished it. So this will be the second episode I open talking about this book. But I just finished Walter Lord's book, The Past That Would Not Die. I have not read that. Dude, it's unbelievable. But it made me think is you have that ESPN piece about the football game right before – sorry, I'm just coughed. But right before they integrate Mississippi. Yeah. And the book was just unreal.

11:33And what's it about? It's about James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi. Oh, no. That is – like there's that book. I didn't know that was about it. There's a book called American Insurrection that's also very good about that. The detail of that, there are a couple that really stick in my mind. One of them is that they sent the 82nd and 101st Airborne to Oxford, Mississippi. Yeah. Not like National Guard. Yeah, yeah. Like stone-cold killers. Yeah. And then the other detail I love is that they also sent like military police units. Yes. And they landed at the Naval Air Station in Memphis, and they put them in trucks and in Jeeps, and they were going to drive them from Memphis.

12:14and, you know, essentially, like, they got across the state line, almost got in a shootout with the state troopers, and then they're driving down Highway 7 into Oxford, and one of the MPs who was in one of the lead Jeeps said that black families came and stood on the side of the road because they were literally watching the Union Army come down. Whoa. And it was just, like, this idea of, like, they've sent these people to help us. Yeah. And they were ready to kill some lippy Ole Miss frat boys. Have you ever read Walter Lord? Huh? Have you ever read any Walter Lord? I have not. He wrote this book.

12:53I don't think so. He wrote this book about the sinking of the Titanic. That's maybe the greatest narrative nonfiction book of all time. Really? It's the final hours of the Titanic. It's just so good. And he wrote it in 1960 or something. Before this was, it's not gonzo, but it's before that was really a genre. Do you know what I mean? And it's incredible. And then I just found that he'd written this book, which I read, and I thought it was amazing. My favorite detail about the story was that the head of the National Guard there, though, which they sent out first, is like Faulkner. It's a Faulkner.

13:30It's like Chucky Faulkner. It's like his grandnephew or son or something. You're just like, what are the chances? And also Faulkner died like two months before that happened. And so one of the interesting things about Faulkner, I mean, he writes about a lot of things. I mean, you know, mostly, especially with like Absalom, Absalom, people talk about race. But one of the things he also writes about a lot is the way civilization comes for wilderness and, you know, the sort of lamenting of this vanished world. Sure. I mean, you know, Mississippi was hardwood forest until – a lot of it until like the late 1880s.

14:14Like this is after the Civil War. And so one of the things that's so interesting is that the amount of trees got cut down in like 30 or 40 years that would have taken – I mean, I'm making this up. But three or 400 years in like the dark old forest of Europe. And it was just bewildering to people. And so that bewilderment feels like such a sort of animating feature of not just Faulkner's language, but also of his structure. Sure. But it's interesting that he died. Right before it happened. Right before sort of the end of this one Mississippi and the beginning of another one. Yeah. And I don't know what that means, but it means something.

14:52Somebody somewhere is, you know. Well, yeah, maybe if you're using it as a character, he was the one that kept saying like, just a little more time. Let's not do it too quickly. Yeah. And then he dies. And then they go, all right, time's up. Well, and the eerie detail is so Kennedy – they kept telling President Kennedy like, you need to say something. Yeah. And so he had an address planned. Yeah. And the address started, I mean, almost simultaneously to the riot. Yeah. Which is a – It's like he was going to give one version of the talk and then to hopefully avoid what was happening as he started the talk.

15:31And so what's crazy is so there's the voop of the tear gas going off that people can hear. and, you know, those big canisters hitting the pavement and there's tear gas everywhere and there are cars parked all around the circle where this is going down. And so you can hear his address in the background of this thing jumping off. Yes. And it's like, that's one of those details that makes the hair stand up on my arm because you're just like, you know, anyway, I find that so interesting. No, the story was so fascinating and so terrible and tragic and unnecessary. And I actually, I just read this other road trip book.

16:15Joan Didion did this road trip from New Orleans to Atlanta and back. Yeah, I've read that too. And she had this great line. She was like, the problem with the South, or she's like, the thing about the South is that the Civil War was yesterday, but 1960 was 300 years ago. Well, that's – no. And by the way, that's very, very accurate because it's like my high school history teacher literally called it the War of Northern Aggression. Yeah. And all that stuff is so stupid. It's just like – I mean the fact that they're Confederate statues. I mean like it would be like us – why don't we put up a statue of Rommel?

16:57Like when you get your ass kicked in a war, like you're not supposed to, you don't get to have, it's like the funniest thing about it is all of those Confederate statues, they're just participation trophies. They're just, you lost, you don't get to have the statue. Right. Like that's the whole point of, you know, all the war is, is you pushing all of the chips of your culture into the center of the table and saying, call. Yeah. And somebody else doing it. Yeah. And then whoever wins gets all the chips. Right. You don't get to be like, but we – no, you lost. It's like there's the von Clausewitz thing that says war is the extension of politics by other means.

17:34But what happens in the Civil War is basically the Civil War ends and then the war is just continued via politics. Well, what's the great Churchill? The Irish remember the defeats long after the English have forgotten the victories. And so like if you look at – Kentucky is much more southern now. So one of my favorite details is Kentucky was not a Confederate state. It had many more citizens fighting for the north and the south. Now it totally claims it. So like the pathos of the following thing is nuts. Like how broken inside do you have to be to want to pretend you lost a war that you actually won?

18:16Right. There's a lot of Confederate statues in New Mexico and Arizona and a lot of the Western states that so obviously came after. Yeah. And it is a weird – you wonder what's going on that you identify with the losing side. And not just the losing side tragically, but the losing side on the losing end of the moral end of it also, right? There's something stranger. there's something American and also very not American about the idea of identifying with the the most morally complex losing end of an event like that no it's masochistic yeah in a way that like is a kind of skeleton key for understanding so many other things about the culture yes I mean because you know like one of the things and we'll get to but like you know pappy land at its core is just a book about inheritance.

19:13Yeah. And so like, you know, all Southern stories are in one way or another about inheritance. Have you seen that meme where it's like a bunch, it's like tiny dominoes leading into one giant domino? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I saw one the other day, it was like the big domino was like all of America's problems. And then the little tiny domino is like ending reconstruction early. And it's basically saying that everything that America is dealing with today can be explained by the collapse of political will in the mid-1870s. And they just – yeah, just didn't have the stomach for it anymore. Yeah. And no, that's 100%.

19:53I mean like – I'm fascinated. I mean, this is a whole separate conversation, but I'm fascinated by sort of reconstruction and, you know, the way I was taught it in school is not at all what happened. Totally. And so when you actually dig into it and so it's, you know, it – all of the stories told about it became the moral justification for everything that happened after. I was actually – I was reading a book about Kennedy and he was saying that it wasn't until – he was like – because he went to school like in the peak of the sort of lost cause mythology, right? Yeah, yeah. And even though they're Eastern schools, he's like – he said something like it wasn't until he starts dealing with these Southern governors that he goes, oh, maybe I got told the wrong version of history at Harvard.

20:49He had heard the idea of Reconstruction being this sort of Northern sort of invasion, projection, tyranny over the South. Carpetbaggers and scallywags. Yeah, exactly. And then he realizes like my job, like they were doing what I'm having to do now, which is just ask the most basic respect for federal law and federal power, the most basic assurance of constitutional rights for a minority of Americans. and it's escalating so quickly that he's having to use more and more tools out of his toolkits and he just basically realizes that, yeah, our understanding of the Civil War could not have been, and Reconstruction could not have been sort of just more incorrect.

21:36And also like there was, you know, there was no one in charge, Reconstruction needed George Marshall or it needed Douglas MacArthur. Like it needed somebody to come in and be like. It needed federal power that it didn't really have. And just, you know, I saw you had the American Caesar in there. Which I love that book. Oh, it's so good. So do you know, all right, you know about his son, right? Dude, I was just talking to someone about this. He's still alive. No, and he's living in New York City under an assumed name. Actually, it's better. I think I talked about this on podcast recently. No, they found, you know how they found him?

22:11Yeah, because they had to buy him out for a condo. They had to buy him out of a condo. And his name was like, this isn't it, but it was like Bill Smith. Yeah. And they started doing some research and it's, you know, Douglas MacArthur's son. Yes, yes. Whose grandfather was a Civil War hero. Well, his father and grandfather were both generals and both won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Yes. So that, boy, what do you think the Thanksgiving dinner table was like at the MacArthur House? You think these guys weren't just, like it wasn't just one endless awful alpha dog flex arm wrestle? like. Well, I think his mother, he had like the sort of, I think his mother was the driving force of both of their careers from what I've read.

22:53But yeah, like the idea that we think history is so distant to go to Faulkner, right? But in fact, the past isn't even dead, right? And here you have one guy, you could walk by him on the street or entering a bodega in New York City. His grandfather, or his father fought in World War II, World War I, and his grandfather was at the bloody angle or something? No, it's just, no, and like, you know, it's the, you know, like Ross Barnett, who is the governor that Kennedy's talking about most when he talks about all that, was the son of a Confederate veteran. And so like when you have the governor of Mississippi during the civil rights movement being the son of a Confederate veteran, you're just like, what are we even doing here?

23:41Yeah. And like, so that's really interesting. And then, I mean, so I sent a letter to MacArthur's son. Like I found out where – like I pulled some property records and FedExed him a letter. His nice new condo that he bought for a couple million bucks. Yeah. And so I wanted to go talk to him and he obviously never wrote back. Yeah. But like there is a – so the story I want to – like the great story or book or whatever that is – so what's the best way to say this? So I was in Europe during the Euros, the soccer tournament, like whenever, five, four, five, six years ago. And so I was over there for ESPN, which is – it was in France.

24:24And so I was bouncing around France and kind of writing stories. And on June 6th, I wanted to go – To Normandy. To Normandy. And so I was calling all the tour guides, and they said something that I felt like I was the first person in the world who had been told about the canary in the mineshaft. because these guys said to me, this is unbelievable, but this is the first year no veteran is old enough to travel. And it hit me that like this was before Brexit. This was before Trump. This was before – because all those guys are just manifestations of sort of – And I was like, oh, all the people who remember how horrible it is for a world to be at war are dying.

25:04And the moment that the last one dies, we will forget and then we will start the process of doing it again. And so I think there's a really beautiful thing to be done when Mr. MacArthur finally leaves us. Sure. That like he is the last living citizen of an old America. There's something really interesting about that. And just – I was just at the Naval Academy and we were sort of – it was interesting. They were showing me all the – like, you know, when you walk along the streets in London, you see all the mementos of an imperial empire, right? You see like the stuff they stole from Egypt and the stuff – well, you don't really see that in America, right?

25:49Like when you walk down the street in Washington, D.C., you don't see America as a colonial power. But on the grounds of the Naval Academy, you are reminded that we were an imperial power and are an imperial power, right? This is a bell we took from China. Like the US Navy was an imperial power, right? And one of the interesting things about, say, someone like Arthur MacArthur Jr., right? Yeah. I forget what his name is. Arthur MacArthur. Yes. Which is his name. Yes. Probably like the fifth or – Yeah. I'm not making that up. Whatever it is. But he grew up in the Philippines, and not like in the Philippines as an expat, but in the Philippines as the colonial ruler.

26:33As the son of a god. Yeah, basically the prince. You know what I mean? Yeah, like a boy king. Yeah, exactly. And there was a whole generation of American military men who experienced that. MacArthur, Eisenhower, you know, these guys, they ruled the Philippines. And I was talking to some of the people about this. Like, we don't even, when we think about Pearl Harbor, like, if you listen to FDR's famous speech about it, he goes, like, the world was attacked today, right? And he goes, like, the United States was attacked in Pearl Harbor. And he goes, the Philippines was attacked as if these were separate things.

27:12Like it's the US was attacked in the Philippines. The Philippines wasn't attacked as a separate country. The Philippines was attacked as a colonial, we just granted rule, but it was going to be like 10 years before they took back over. But the idea was like America ruled islands in the Pacific as an imperial power. and Arthur MacArthur grew up as the son of that as Douglas MacArthur had grown up in Indian forts on the frontier with his father. And there's something, and I wish I could remember this, you might remember it. There's something really interesting about when Arthur MacArthur decided to drop out of sight.

27:51Yes. And it's like, because he grew up very famous. He was like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's kids of that era. Sure. Like he was in Life Magazine. Like, you know, whatever the version of Us Weekly is, there was this kid wearing his London fog overcoat, you know. And so – Yeah. I mean, just the recipient of hours and hours of propaganda and every newspaper. Yeah, he was the hero of the country. And just his little bitty boy. And so, like, I do – I would love to talk to him about when you give up your name, what do you get and what do you lose? Yeah. You know, I mean, that's inheritance too. I mean, do you know what I mean?

28:32Yeah, of course. That's the – Or just think his father, there's a famous – I forget which journalist said it, but he was with MacArthur when MacArthur returns from Japan. He's been – or returns from Korea. He's been fired. He addresses Congress. There's this – it's kind of like this very moment where a thing has been politicized. and he's definitely in the wrong, but there is a percentage of the political apparatus that wants to use him to their ends. And he basically says, if MacArthur had wanted, he could have overthrown the government. Like a flick of his hand, he could have overthrown the government.

29:11And you're just like, this dude's dad was there on the precipice of being the man on horseback. And we just pretend that never happened. Or because we like - Or that the entire country rests on the knife's edge of one narcissist morals. Yes. But like – Sure. And it's interesting though because of all the stuff you could say about him, when the moment arrived – He didn't. He did the right thing. Yes. Like whatever else – There was a modicum of restraint. But however preening he might – do you have the – like the greatest thing ever is the – let me find the – his speech at West Point. The old soldiers never die.

29:57And the core and the core and the core. Yeah. The language. Do you think he wrote this himself or do you think he had a ghostwriter? I mean, he definitely had publicity men working for him, but he did have a flourish for – he was also part of that old generation of military men where you were trained in rhetoric and he was a good writer. Look, let me find this. All right, I got it right here. All right, so here. The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday.

30:39I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echos, duty, honor, country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the core and the core and the core. That's unbelievable. That could be from Thucydides. You know what I mean?

31:24That's like one of those sort of epic things. The reason he didn't overthrow the country is that in every great person, there is the battle between their angels and demons. And he was vain. He was preening. He was a narcissist. He had a God complex. But he also was the person who was capable of doing that. And when push came to shove, duty, honor, country won. And it's sort of like, you know, it's why we get to – it's why you can have that book over there. Yeah. And do you know what I mean? It's why everybody is gray. Yes. You know, and it's interesting how, you know, Patton died, so he never had to make any of those choices.

32:18Yes. and like I've read a lot about him too and I don't know when if he did I mean you know he wanted to go to Moscow immediately yeah yeah and was like we're gonna have to fight him anyway we're over here with 50 divisions why don't we just do it now well yeah I mean MacArthur is doing that he his his redemption there is impressive and yet he nearly caused World War three. And wanted to. This close, yes. And wanted to. And like, and would have if Truman, by the way, Harry Truman from Independence, Missouri, little old guy. Imagine having to stand down somebody who thinks they're a guy. Oh, it's incredible.

33:00He's the main character. I'm doing this Cardinal Virtue series, and he's the first of the characters that I talk about in that book. Because it's this remarkable thing where basically they take the average American citizen and they give him ultimate power. It is the ultimate test of the American political system. You have a guy who doesn't graduate from college. You have your ordinary veteran. You have the clothing salesman from Independence, Missouri, who is a product of the political machine. I mean, he was known as - Pendergast. If you've ever been to Kansas City, there is - I used to work for the newspaper there.

33:41The majestic steakhouse above it was Pendergrass office. Yeah. I mean, he was seen as a bought and sold politician. Yes. And then he is given all the power in the world. And it's one of these remarkable things where it seems to make the person better than worse. And it's pretty – it is – I think what's interesting, we're talking about a bunch of stuff that I think are some of the greatest. moments in American history that people know nothing about. These are not what we learn about in school. The idea of Reconstruction being the high watermark of what America could have been and fucked up, then conversely, Truman being the president we should celebrate, not Washington or Jefferson or whomever.

34:29What is embodied in, say, the MacArthur's, Like that's three generations of Americans that basically get 80 % of American history between them. You know, these are the things I think that truly help you understand where we are and what's happening and the human experience as a whole. Dude, Arthur MacArthur, if for some crazy reason you're listening to this, I am WrightThompson at gmail.com. and we got to do this book, man, because it's the story of the America that was. I get more of the sense he's listening to sports radio, calling in and yelling at the... Dude, wouldn't that be hilarious if you're up there and there's this guy just motherfucking Aaron Boone, you know, and you don't know, they're like, oh, yeah, this is art from Queens.

35:26That's exactly what it is. That's exactly right. Like one of those people you pass in the streets in New York City and you're like, how do you live here? Yeah. And it's like, because your dad was the greatest general in American history. And somehow that got you a lifetime suite in the Waldorf Astoria. It's like, what? Oh, no. Like Supreme Allied Commander. Yeah. That's a good business card or whatever. But like, that is – God, I'm – Douglas MacArthur is fascinating.

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38:04Well, I think, you know, I was thinking about the through line of your work, and it seems to be about greatness and the complexity and gray that goes into being great or that greatness costs a person, right? I think that's the beautiful title of your book. The cost of Douglas MacArthur's greatness, the cost of his father's greatness is two generations later, wreckage. Like the boy never recovers. Or the cost of his father's greatness was that he built a person who could have overthrown the government. Yes. And like, you know, all of Douglas MacArthur's terrible shit was in response to his father.

38:51Sure. And, you know, like, can you imagine if that's your dad? You know, and like, you know, it's like, I think Robert E. Lee went back to and was the president of Washington and Lee. And I mean, can you imagine having to be a student going to knock on his door? Just how terrifying that would have been. Well, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave this really interesting speech after January 6th where he was like, I saw, he's like, my father was a Nazi. And I saw him after the war and he never recovered. You know, he was like he was a drunk. He was miserable. He beat us. He was living with the moral injury of what he participated in and what his country had done.

39:36Do you think it's that or do you think that he was living with the wholesale rejection of everything he still believed in? I think it's all of that. I think it's all. I think it's first off just seeing the death and destruction on the battlefield. it's probably knowing deep down that you're the bad guy. You know, are we the baddies? You know, you deep down, you go, I don't think we're the good guys here. And also, you got your ass kicked. Yes, all of that. And then so he's talking about just what that does to the subsequent generations. And I think there is something about that in the American story, but then also the Southern American story where you're just having to deal with the moral injury of all of it.

40:21You just can't – you can't escape it. Well, it's like there are – I think if you are a Southerner who thinks the South is all bad, you're kind of an idiot. And if you're a Southerner who thinks the South is all good, you're kind of an idiot. And like the only way to live there – and frankly, it is necessary for both survival but also it's just the most interesting part of being from there is everybody has to sort it out for themselves. And because of inheritances, if there's a through line between the cost of these dreams and Pappy Land, it is the idea of inheritance. Yeah. And like that, you know, I think a lot of people are just prevented by the culture from even starting on the necessary and rewarding work of trying to sort out what it was the hell that happened here.

41:17Does that make sense? It totally does. There's a Seneca quote I love. He says, we don't choose our parents, but we choose whose children we would like to be. Right. And I think what Schwarzenegger was talking about, what the American South struggles with, what all of us struggle with is deciding what path you're going to follow, who you're going to look up, who you're going to say you inherited what from. Because the reality is you inherit a bunch of stuff. And you choose what to give primacy. It's that great – the Bruce Springsteen thing, which we've talked about before. I know. It's in the new book, A Bunch.

41:52I love it so much. Which is, you know, you could either be an ancestor or a ghost. Yes. And like I find that to be so interesting. I mean it's like the – you know, one of the things I wrestle with – one of the things that was interesting about writing Pappy Land was thinking about the decisions my father made. Yeah. Because, you know, I don't want to air too much laundry, but his childhood, his home growing up was a scary place. and in ways that he never said to me. His older brother who has since passed, we were sitting around, Uncle Will, who's in the book, Uncle Will was sitting around dating, but you know I've never been to New York City.

42:34And I was like, what? Yeah. And he was like, I've always wanted to go. I've never been. And my Aunt Becky doesn't really like to travel. And so I was like, well, Will, that is one problem in the world I can fix. Yeah, sure. So we went to New York and like I paid for it. And it was such a treat. And like we stayed at the Mercer. You know, I came down one morning for breakfast and Will Thompson from Bentonia, Mississippi on day four was telling me that's Russell Simmons over there. I'm like, how the fuck do you even know who Russell Simmons is? You know, getting up, going bagels. And his favorite part was riding the subway.

43:07And I asked him, I was like, well, what do you like most about New York City? And he was like, I just love the diversity. And he wasn't using it in a jargon way. He just was talking about the cacophony and he loved it. And, you know, when we went and went and saw Jersey Boys, which was his the music of his 60s. Sure. And then my cousin at the time was living up there and we took him to dinner and we went to Peter Luger's. Yes. And we started drinking martinis. Yeah. And he started telling my cousin and I stories that we had never heard before. Sure. About the their house growing up and what it was really like.

43:43Yeah. And we were just sitting there with our jaws hanging open. Yeah. And my father was the most kind, loving, compassionate, supportive person in the world. And it wasn't until I started, and I write about this in Papyland, but it wasn't until I really understood where he had come from to understand that he had, all he ever told us growing up was how great it was to be a Thompson. And Thompsons don't quit and we're tough. he just edited the inheritance he got and passed on the parts that he found useful. Yeah. And the other ones he just shoved down inside and was the sin eater. Yeah. And like, I had no idea any of that was going on.

44:30Yeah. And like, you know, my wife jokingly calls it eat, pray, love for dads. Yeah. But it is like, you know, but it's the fucking, it's like, it's, it's sorting all of that stuff out. And it's, these are not, these are conscious choices that people make. I've been thinking about that with my own family. My, my, My grandmother was an immigrant from Germany. Her father fought in World War II, not on the right side. And my grandfather on that side was a refugee who ended up in a displaced persons camp in Graz, which is actually where Arnold Schwarzenegger is from. And, you know, they had always presented their story as this kind of sort of like positive American dream version of the story.

45:07And like we, there was never, growing up, never was my childhood or my mother's childhood presented as like the immigrant story. We were just like assimilated Americans. But as I get older, I go, wait, so my grandfather was basically in a concentration camp, came here on a boat, was a German teacher at a high school and had four daughters. Like, their life was terrible. You know what I mean? Like, that was a grinding, brutal, like, subsistence level existence for many, many years. and then when I look at my aunts and my own mother I see now where the trauma of that experience has manifested it in their lives and I just think about how much harder that probably was with the refusal to admit that any of it was happening do you know what I mean?

46:05the pretending that it was all normal and I'm asking this like this is a real question that I don't know the answer to so I'm actually asking you Isn't there something unbelievably noble about being the person in the family tree who just decides that I'm going to fucking eat all this? I guess. Yeah. I mean, there is a sort of a dignity. I'm jumping on this grenade. Yeah. No, there's a dignity, like the quiet lowercase stoicism of suffering for the better life, which is the immigrant experience. But there also, I think, comes along with it trauma that reverberates through future generations. You see this with, say, like children of Holocaust survivors and grandchildren.

46:52Like the trauma goes is also part of the inheritance. And it's probably harder when nobody wants to admit or acknowledge what they've been through. Well, you know, the generation that is fucking up America so much are all the children of the greatest generation. Yes. You know, and a lot of people came home with a lot of scars for something totally separate. I've been reading. That's what I was doing sitting outside on the painted porch was reading after action reports from December, January and February of 1944, 1945 from Europe. And it's the thing I'm working on. And it's just brutal, like day after day.

47:39I mean, like - Have you read Lee Sandlin's book about, or essay on World War II? I have not. And I just saw a Lee Sandlin book out. That book is incredible. But he has his essay I'll send you about World War II. And he says something in there. He's like, they just sent them to Europe and said, you'll either die or come home when it's over. Yeah, there's no like 15 months. Yeah, exactly. And they said, by the way, And then when we're done in Europe, we may send you to the Pacific. They were just people being fed into a meat grinder, basically. And then, sure, it worked out. So we came home and we celebrated it.

48:15But that was equally inhuman and inhumane to what the World War I soldiers went through. But there was this lightness and celebration of it that was probably profoundly disorienting. We were supposed to just come home and everything was fine. Go back to work in a factory. Yeah. And like your parents didn't want to know what you'd seen. Yeah. And like, no, like, you know, I find it like, yeah, there's a whole, I think they only ever talked about it to each other and only when drunk. And there's probably something about why alcohol was so prevalent in society at that time. No, no. I don't think those things are unrelated.

48:57that the only way you could ever do it was around other veterans. I would love to know about the rise of the sort of unofficially all-male hunting camps starting from 1950 to 1980. I would love somebody to do some sort of longitudinal study because I think all that is is PTSD self-medication. Sure. You got to go somewhere where everybody there is going to be a vet. And everybody is shit-faced. And you eat a big steak and play some cards. And then you start talking about the snow and what it felt like. You could probably look at a fair amount of newspaper reports and find that there were a lot of accidents at those hunting camps also.

49:42Oh, yeah. Like the gun went off. Yes. You know, and like I've seen the deer hunter. You know what I mean? Like – But like it's just fascinating the degree to which we don't really even now – A book I want to do is – I want to go everywhere American blood was spilled from 1939 to 1945, but not do histories of it, to write about it now. And to – like what would it be? It would be – I don't know. Have you seen those pictures? I just saw one the other day. It was like Normandy, but it was interspersed with what Normandy looks like now. Yes. So those pictures are incredible. And you would go to all of them and it would be like, you know, the title would be The Last Full Measure and the subhead is American Blood and the Price of Forgetting.

50:37And you just write about what they actually did. The thing that got me thinking about this is I was working on a story and then the pandemic came up and it just grounded all to a halt. But one of the things that happened was one of the characters in the story died in a battle in northern Africa in World War II. And I read this unbelievable detail, which is for years – I'm making this number up, but for five years or a decade after the battle, kids in Algeria would go through the sand and find – and like play on tanks and find – but now it's all gone. And it's all been buried by the desert. And it's like this unbelievable Ozymandias shit, which is that these people went over there and they died and they didn't come home.

51:23And the desert just ate any evidence that they were ever there at all. Sure. And like, that's crazy town to me. Like the idea that the earth is literally erasing. You know, it's not just this entire generation of people is almost dead. But like, how many living World War II veterans do you think there are? This is crazy. This is not at all what I thought we were talking about, but this is fascinating. 10 ,000? 5 ,000? And what do you think it'll be? If it's 5 ,000 today, you think it'll be 2 ,000 in a year? I mean, are we at that time where – There's a really good book called The Last of the Doughboys that you might like.

52:00Oh, I want to read that. That was written in like 2012, like way later than you would think. And he goes around and interviews the last living World War I veterans. Wow. And again, this is in the mid-aughts. And so you – like it goes on longer than you think. But he was basically saying this was the most consequential event in American history. There's thousands of statues. And then literally it was immediately forgotten. So I had a Google alert forever on Richard Cole who was the last surviving Doolittle raider because I just sort of wanted to know when he died because I felt like that was also the end of something.

52:39so it happened uh i think during the pandemic because i want i originally wanted to go to the funeral and write a story for somebody anyway all that's just fascinating to me i don't know how that will ever appear on a much minor more minor scale we're dealing with this this week we're gonna have to put our dog down which we've had for 17 16 17 years and so my my oldest who's six is like taking it super hard. And he's just struggling. It's just hitting him like not just the dog is going to die, but that people die and that nothing is here forever, right? Jesus Christ. And so he's really upset. And there is this idea, I think, of stoicism being uppercase stoicism, lowercase stoicism, the idea of like, it's all right.

53:26Don't worry about it. Try to stuff it down. And we're just, we're sort of letting him process it and talking to him about it. the idea, I think there is this idea, if you don't think about it, if you shove it down, if you pretend it doesn't exist, it goes away. And it doesn't. It stays with you and it explodes out somewhere else. And I think you see this both on an individual level. What are you talking about? That doesn't happen? But generationally, that's also what happens, right? You stuff the stuff down and then it manifests itself in your children, in your children's children, in the things that you get upset about politically, you know, in the causes you support.

54:01There's probably something about, you know, even we were talking about in Mississippi, just like it had both everything to do with race and nothing to do with race, right? Like that it was about just trying to stop time and change, period, because there was some, that's some kind of trauma response to a culture that's fundamentally broken and people who are fundamentally broken. Well, if on one level you know that it's broken, as long as it keeps going, you don't have to address it. It's only when it falls apart that you're going to have some splining to do. There's a postponement of having to have an accounting.

54:49I like that metaphor because I liken it to putting it on a credit card. you're just paying interest. And then eventually you look at the bill and you're like, holy shit, I should have just paid this at the store because now it's 10X. It's going to cost me 10X what it would have cost me originally. And as you defer and delay. And we should have just stayed at the Marriott instead of the Four Seasons. Like I should have just used my points. Like, goddammit, that was so stupid. Like in the moment I was like, you know, my granddad used to say, well, for 10 % more you can go first class. And that, of course, is a lie.

55:22because it's like for three times, 300 % more. Well, think about – you mentioned like what it's like to be Walter – or sorry, MacArthur's son. But also I think about some of the stories in your book. What is it like to be Michael Jordan's son? What's it like to be Earl Woods' son and how that defines a person? Or Ted Williams' daughter. Yes, yes. Who – there's a story in The Cost of These Dreams about Ted Williams' daughter. And one of the things to me that was so fascinating is that you start off being like, aren't they the people who cut off his head and froze it? Yeah. Because like the great detail is that Ted Williams head is.

56:04Resting on an empty can of Bumblebee brand tuna so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the thing, which is fucking crazy. Can you see it? No, I've never seen it. And, but, you know, he was such a, hurt people, hurt people. His mother and his parents were terrible. His mother was so bad that she lived through his entire baseball career. She never saw him play. Her son was Ted Williams. She didn't go to a single game. She dies after he retires. He flies back out to California. He pays for the funeral. She has a very nice funeral. Then he goes to the house and he gets all the family photographs and destroys them.

56:55Just so you know, this is what we're dealing with. So he was a terrible father. And it wasn't until he got really old and needed them and was so old that those old fires just at some point burned out a little. And so they start – Because I put it in the Daily Dad. Like he would write these little notes that he – or his fishing diary. So they gave me access to all of his fishing diaries, which was unbelievable to read. But he – they finally had this father they'd been trying to have their whole lives. And then about six months later, he started getting sick for the first time and started declining.

57:38So by the end of that story, cutting his head off and freezing it and promising to cut their own heads off and freeze them so they could be together in some unseen future. Yeah, keep it going. It actually starts to make a certain amount of sense, which is like the thing I wanted the story to do, which was to take this thing. You don't have to agree with it, and I don't think – I don't even really know. But by the end, you at least understand what was going on. Yeah. Yeah, or the Earl Woods one. And talk about the trauma of war. I mean, like this is a dude who is coming from a segregated America.

58:15He's sent into the meat grinder of Vietnam, does probably unspeakable things. Yeah, like, you know, I've read the Tim O 'Brien story about the high school sweetheart who ends up with a necklace of ears. Yeah, and this is a special forces operator in the jungles of Vietnam. Yeah, there is no law. Yeah. And then he brings that home and he doesn't deal with it. So his son is dealing with it 40 years later. Still. And, you know, there's a great – in Springsteen's book, he said that he would – for years he would, at night, couldn't sleep and he'd find himself driving past the house where he grew up.

58:56Yes, his father's house. Yep. And, you know, he has that song. But one of the great things is his therapist told him that what he was doing by going back there was thinking that one of these times if he went back there, he could change the past. And like – you see that over and over and over again. We're forever called back to the scene of the crime. When he talks about that, that would be another book I'd pick for the story. His biography is incredible or his autobiography is incredible. But he basically says like when you have that kind of person in your house, you can't help as a child but think it has something to do with you.

59:34And so imagine you grow up, your parents are the greatest generation, but they're dealing with the trauma of, yeah, the battles of North Africa or, you know, the Italian peninsula or whatever. um how do you how do you not feel like you're why your dad is so unhappy yeah but no hitler's why your dad is so unhappy yeah i mean that's what's your dad liberated buchenwald that's why your dad is unhappy some part of him never came back yeah uh maybe the best part of him never came back Yeah, so imagine you're Governor Barrett, right? Barnett. Barnett. Your dad committed war crimes in Mississippi or the Battle of Corinth or whatever.

1:00:27Yeah. And that's going to shape how you think about these people who look differently than you, who want equal rights, which you interpret as being a reduction of your rights. You can't look at that objectively. Your brain has been broken. I mean, and when your brain is broken, it can't be – well, I mean, that's a – so let me rephrase that. If your brain has been broken in that way, then how do you fix it? Well, I think that brings us to where we are now. If you have been watching a steady diet of Tucker Carlson or worse, right, and that has broken your brain about what's happening on the border or what – Thank you.

1:01:13gay people want to do. you know, how do you get unbroken? I don't think you can get unbroken. And I think that's the, I was, when I, when I was reading the Walter Lord book, the role, the thing that struck me as most similar to where we are today is this sort of reactionary defiant governor slash local sheriff. Oh yeah. It was like, oh yeah, that's still here. We're fighting about slightly different things. Also kind of fighting about the same thing. But the archetypes are there. Yes. I mean, the specifics change to fit the modern news cycle. But what the fight is actually about is very old and existed before any of us were here and will exist when we're gone.

1:01:57Who are you to tell me what to do? Who are you telling me that I should be ashamed? Who are you telling me that I don't treat people well? Who are you to tell me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And that's why I'm taking over Disney's board. You know what I think? So like, I mean, there's so many examples. Well, one, I mean, one of the things you find is that the accusation is always the confession. That is a life-changing, like a door opening idea for me. Just like anybody who's accusing someone in a screed-like fashion of anything, it is just a confession. Yeah.

1:03:09you know, perhaps future president again, that is - Former, not late. I get what you're saying. I'm sorry. One of the things about the former president is that he is a poor person's idea of what a rich person is like. Right. And like, that's actually really interesting, like separate from - Where - Yeah. For what you think about, like, just the intellectual exercise of thinking about that is really interesting. An insecure person's idea of a confident person. Yeah, a weak person's idea of a strong person. Yeah, an incompetent person's idea of a competent person. It's just as reality TV is what people think reality is, but it isn't.

1:03:54No. That's not how it works. I watched one episode with Sonia. Sonia, I'm sorry for calling you out here. We watched Love is Blind. Yeah. First of all, how is that even fucking legal? Yeah. Like that shit is like, I mean, you know, you can't say fuck on network TV, but you can put that on. Like what? I thought there was a standards department. But like, like you just watch that and you're like, oh, wow. You know, one day when someone writes the downfall of Western civilization, the little funny anecdote at the start of the book is either going to be about love is blind. Or it's going to be about we all paid$500 for phones that we know don't work.

1:04:44Like that's going to be the cute little anecdote about the moment. Like, you know, when an airplane flies into a canyon or mountains, like there's a moment. It's like event horizon. There's a name for it. I can't think of it. But there's a moment where you might have 20 seconds to fly. You might have six minutes to fly. But you can't. The airplane can no longer get out. Oh. So you were dead. You just don't know it. Sure. And like the phone thing is like when I realized like, oh, civilization is over. Like we just – we don't know it. Like this thing won't make a fucking call but I can play. Yeah.

1:05:21You know, I'm really good at – you know. Have you ever gotten so good at a phone game that you really start to worry about yourself? I don't – I can't do any phone games. I don't have any, but I also am just generally terrible at all video games. I feel like I'm about to – you know what? It's like first hit is free. Yeah, yeah. What are you hooking me up? I got this golf game that I'm so good at that I feel like it's embarrassing. Golf – you know what? I'm not giving them free advertising. All right. Don't do it. No. I was talking to a friend about this recently where I was saying like I was thinking about the emotional range required to function in today's world, right?

1:06:08Like all the things you have to be sensitive to, the different kinds of language that you have to know, right? Think about, like I think about the, we're talking about my son and the dog dying, like think about what I am expected to do as a good father by today's definition versus like what my father could have gotten away with versus what his father could have just taken the dog in the backyard and shot it, right? My dad would have had to, hey, we're probably going to put the dog. Me, I have to, right? The emotional range is increasing, right? The emotional requirements. And you just think about the sensitivity that you have to have, the acceptance that you have to have, the tolerance.

1:06:47There's a lot, right? I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's a lot. And you think about what it would feel like to be a person for whom that is too much, right for a person who doesn't have what it takes to function in that world what you would get is anger resentment try to burn it all down ism right if you and if you could look at trump as partly that right what how do you this is a guy who sees things he doesn't like on the internet prints them out writes in them with a sharpie what he doesn't like and then has his assistants mail it to that person, right? Like that's the, that's the, that is to me the embodiment of a person who's just angry that the world operates the way that it does.

1:07:36Well, it's also like, I wonder if, I wonder if the opposite is also true in that you require, the world requires more and more emotional sophistication as the population is emotionally devolving. So one of the things I've noticed doing my weird job, and this is like one of those canary in a mind shaft thing, you knock on doors. Yeah. Sometimes people don't answer their phones, won't answer an email after you've mailed a letter going to knock on your door. Yeah. People used to have the social skills to greet you at the door and then politely, but firmly, like open the glass door, but leave the screen door closed.

1:08:21Say, thank you so much, but I'm really not comfortable. And like people have lost that social skill. I think that partly explains some of these shootings recently. Well, I think it, because one of two things happens. Either they just start screaming immediately and that's just because they have lost the social sophistication required to deal with this non-second interaction. And the other thing is people will just let you in now because they don't know how to not do it. And so like you have an angry, passive aggressive person who just didn't have the social skills to not do this. And it's like I find that fascinating to see because like there are all sorts of ways in which socially we are devolving.

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1:11:12No, that's right. It's not only is the world asking more and more of each and every person, but then it is less and less preparing people for those things. And then so the stakes are rising, but then the competence is either staying the same or atrophying. And that creates a lot of fear, a lot of resentment, a lot of paralyzation. And like you said, like when someone knocks on my door, they may as well be in my house. Like I feel like, where did this come from? What's going on? Because it's not a thing that I have. It rarely happens anymore. Exactly. And like, you know, there's a – because basic – like so like, yeah, the things you're talking about, about, you know, trying to be sensitive about language.

1:12:00So like that really doesn't affect like that's really not asking someone to say enslaved person as opposed to slave is not really asking anything at all of you. And if that suddenly is a line in the sand, it actually has nothing to do with which one of those two words it is. It's like there's something else that I'm not sort of smart enough to totally see and articulate. I just think cumulatively it's a lot, right? So you have to do that. You also have to accept whether your son wants to do ballet or not, right? You have to accept all these things that were different when you were a kid. Like rub some dirt on it and get back out there.

1:12:42Yeah, you just have to do – you're just cumulatively asked to do stuff, right? You have to just think about, okay, in a workplace where everyone is like you, everyone is a white dude who went to college. That is a more comfortable environment than a diverse environment from people from different backgrounds, different countries, different lifestyles, different genders. And suddenly, you're not able to just be yourself. You have to be on behavior, right? And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing. And I feel like I'm good. I can function in that environment. I thrive in that environment.

1:13:18I like it. It's better than the other one. But you realize, especially if someone's older, but also if they came from an environment where they weren't taught the skills, that's overwhelming and stressful. And so I think we're dealing with – doing that emotional work and building up those skills is really hard. And also, like, you want to look at forces and not say this person's good or bad. Because one of the things that's interesting is, like, and this is a stereotype. And, like, this is, I'm speaking concretely about an enormous group of people for whom that's actually, this is, on some level, this is bullshit.

1:14:05But like the people, the generation, it seems that are resisting this were, I mean, threatened within an inch of their lives to conform. Like that was the civic first commandment. Yeah. Thou shalt be like everyone else around us. Sure. And like, I mean, these are every person of authority that they met from the time they were born until ever. So from teachers to priest to Boy Scout leaders to, you know, professors to bosses, every single person was telling them that the first commandment of our civic religion is. Assimilate, be the same. Assimilate, be the same. and so now all of a sudden when you're saying that the first commandment of our civic religion is the exact opposite of that be yourself do what you want you can understand how people just literally like don't don't know how to do it when i think that they also i never thought that's really interesting i think no i think you're totally right and i think you add on top of that like i was so surprised by the reaction to the decision to um forgive a bunch of student loan debt i don't have any student loan debt but like um i don't care if yours gets forgiven so sweat off my back, right?

1:15:30But there is a group of people to whom that feels unfair because they had it and they paid for it. And so like if you go - The obsession with fairness. Yeah. So if you're someone who I had to conform, I didn't get to be myself. I didn't get to do what I wanted. I didn't get what I needed from my parents. And now you're telling me I have to do X, Y, and Z for these people, there's a part, if you are wired in such a way where fairness is how you think about the world, as opposed to just accepting what's happening in the world, you know, there's a part of you that objects to this new world. Even if that new world is better, you just don't like it because you didn't get it.

1:16:14Well, and so, I mean, three things come to mind. I mean, one, you know, of course, the world was fair for you, but not for, you know, you know. But the thing that's also that makes me think about is this idea that like that, you know, one of the things my dad used to say is that, you know, you should always be happy for other people's success. Yeah. Because that has nothing to do with you. Yeah. And like, one of the things that's interesting is like, I don't care. My parents paid for my college. You know, one of the things that, you know, Pappy Lane came out and did well, I didn't spend a penny of any of that money.

1:17:02I just endowed both of my daughter's college funds. So if I literally dropped dead walking out of here, I will have done the same thing for them that was done for me. And like, that was very important to somehow. So like, I felt the thing I owed for having a free education was to give a free education. And like, I felt like, and also I felt like to not do that was to somehow like, let down the work that that had required. But like it is weird when people are upset about – like that's just a weird – I wonder what that is. It's like – I mean is it their – would someone say I don't want my tax dollars?

1:17:45Is that what someone would say? I think it's just an emotional reaction to what sucked for me. Why should it not have to suck for you? it's a very sad way to go through life but i think there's there's an emotional i can emotionally understand it yeah i mean it's just life's too short and like you know do you remember in the great gatsby he opens it with like my father's advice was to always remember that other people haven't had the advantages that you've had so all right i did a story it's not in that book, but I did a story on Coach K last year. I don't know. Time. I don't. Anyway, I don't remember when.

1:18:28It was his last season. Was that last year? Last year. So one of the things that was interesting is I ended up spending all this time with his best friends in the world who are all guys his age who he had gone to school with since elementary school in their, you know, Polish Catholic ghetto. You know what I mean? Like, just was a really, like, in the actual definition of that word. Like it was a really insular world. And so we would go, I went out to dinner with him one night. And one of the things they said that was so interesting was that he was the only one among their friends who followed his dream.

1:19:05Really? And they were all really successful. They'd all done really well in their jobs. They were now retired. And they were so indulgent of their kids wanting to get a master's degree in social work. or one of the kids wanted to be a musician. And like all of the dreams that had been pruned by their responsible, worried immigrant parents who didn't want their children to struggle, they were now in their 60s and 70s or however old they were, 70s, and were looking back at their lives. And all they wanted for their children was for them to not be pruned in this way that they had been pruned. Yeah, there's two responses that a person can have to adversity, right?

1:19:50So if you have a shitty hard life or you go through something, you can go, I want to make it easier for other people, right? I empathize with what it's like to be the underdog, to be struggling, you know, and you seek to make a world that's more fair and just and easy. And then there's often another approach to adversity, which is the opposite. I think it's called the adversity paradox. which is you have to so harden yourself to get through that adversity that it makes you less empathetic, right? Clarence Thomas is a good example of this. You think about what it's like to have grown up where he grew up, what he went through, what America was like, how just fucking smart and ruthless and ambitious he had to be to get to one of nine slots in the most difficult thing there is, right?

1:20:41That can make you really empathetic or it can harden you and make you the opposite of empathetic. I got what's mine. You're almost threatened by the struggle and difficulty of other people because you feel like you have so much that you have to protect to get where you want to go. I had a very weird Clarence Thomas experience. I was doing a story about when Obama was elected about pick up basketball in D.C. as a way of sort of writing about power. And Clarence Thomas, there's a basketball court above the Supreme Court, like directly above the actual courtroom. So he blew out his Achilles playing basketball there.

1:21:21Clarence Thomas. Yes. Yeah. And so I emailed, I think I just emailed press at supremecourt.gov and was like, sure, love to talk to Clarence Thomas about his Achilles. So I am in Memphis shopping with my wife, which is in about an hour, 10 minutes from where we live. And we're at a Best Buy or a Bed Bath & Beyond or some bullshit. And my phone rings. It's 202. And I answer it. And we're like, how is this so-and-so, so-and-so? Please hold for Justice Thomas. Now I got him on the phone. He's telling me all these stories. My wife finishes shopping. Still on the phone with him. get in the car still on the phone with him she's overjoyed oh yeah super happy uh and now i can't get him off the phone yeah and i'm doing all the stuff you do thank you so much for your time i know you're so busy and uh so now we get home i'm still on the phone with clarence thomas can't get him off the phone uh if you pull down into our garage it it drops the signal yeah So now I'm standing at the top of my driveway on the phone with Clarence Thomas.

1:22:30And so finally he's like, well, if you're ever in DC, you should give me a call. And so finally get him off the phone. And then like several months later, I'm there randomly. And I'm like, I'm going to fucking call Clarence Thomas. So I just called his assistant and was like, this is really weird. He told me. And she was like, yes, come on by. So I go and we sit there and we make jokes about betting on football in his office. and then he gets one of his law clerks to take me upstairs to play horse at the court. You saw the court. I played it. We went and played horse. And then – He doesn't seem like he plays a lot of basketball.

1:23:06I think that the Achilles. But like my takeaway was one, it's interesting to come face to face with a human being who you ideologically despise. Sure. Because it becomes a lot more complicated. Yeah. And, but the other thing is like, he just, and if this is wrong and like there's someone listening who really knows him, like, I don't, I mean, this is a little psychobabble, but like, he just seemed lonely. And that speaks to the thing you're talking about is like, you get so hardened, you live in a world that has a population of one. Yeah. I've said this before, but my least favorite quote in the whole world is that idea of if you're not a liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart.

1:23:51And if you're not conservative when you're old, you don't have a brain. I hate this idea that the whole trajectory of your life should be that you become less and less open and less and less interested and less and less community-minded as you go. That your heart should harden and your brain should take over as you get old. Well, because if that were true, then, you know, the arc of the moral universe would bend toward tribalism. And ultimately, my only real responsibility is to protect these. And like, you know, the thing we're talking all through, though, is like that empathy is the key to a happy life.

1:24:33You know, my dad used to say, like, if you're going to kill somebody for revenge, you better dig too gray. And like this idea that like – be empathetic not just because it keeps you on the right side of all this stuff, but just because it makes you happier to not just be walking around enraged all the time. And like – Have you ever read John Fonte? Uh-huh. He's like maybe the great Western like Los Angeles novelist. How do you spell it? Fonte, F-A-N-T-E. He wrote this book called Ask the Dust, which I'll give you. This was a dude, so you want to talk about Hitler. So he publishes this great novel, which is like the great Los Angeles novel.

1:25:17Publishes it in like 1936. Has this small, 1933, this small publisher. And that publisher is called Stackpole and Sons. And shortly after it publishes his book, it publishes an illegal edition of Mein Kampf. Hitler is coming to power as published Mein Kampf. But people don't understand, Hitler was a published author. right and he his publisher in the u.s was houghton mifflin right and so they published their own translation of minecraft and said that basically this guy is a is a gangster and a criminal we're not going to respect his copyright and hitler's agents sue in federal court and he wins and it more or less bankrupts fonte's publisher takes his marketing budget with him the book dies on the vine he ends up making a living as a screenwriter but he doesn't return to being a novelist until the late 1980s as he's dying when Charles Bukowski discovers Ask the Dust in the Los Angeles Public Library.

1:26:14It's one of the great literary stories of all time. Anyways, this dude basically had everything within his grasp and total injustice outside of his control steals it all from him. But he has this great quote. He's like, someone asked him for advice and he said, you just can't become bitter. Bitterness is the death of your artistry. And I think about that all the time. It's the death of all the things that matter in life. And if the ability to not be bitter. Bitterness and paranoia, if you get one or either of those things, like your days of joy feel like to me are over. Yes. And your ability to create, your ability to work well with others, your ability to make good decisions, to be on the right side of issues, that bitterness, it just, it corrupts and fucks with your compass to such a degree that you, I don't know, you look at someone like Rudy Giuliani.

1:27:07How do you go from America's mayor to worse than a laughingstock? Somebody asked me to sign a book for him the other day. Scotch, probably. And I said, not on my life would I inscribe a book to Rudy Giuliani. But you think about how does that happen? That comes, When you look at the people who have really gone astray or spun off the planet, at the root of it, to me, is some grievance. They have a grievance and the grievance leads to drinking, the grievance leads to something. But it's – the sense of having been harmed and of having something taken from you is the ultimate corrupting destructive force that ruins you and turns everything to ash in your mouth.

1:27:56You know, the random fun fact is that, you know, when the Nazis were trying to figure out how to write what became the Nuremberg Laws, they were, you know, they were very into crossing T's and dotting I's. And so they needed a legal and philosophical framework. So they sent a Nazi lawyer to do a study abroad at the University of Arkansas Law School to study the Jim Crow laws to figure out how they could do this. And like, I mean, that, you know, so like the, the Coal Springs Harbor, the, the eugenics research facility that was on Long Island that closed just as World War II was starting. And now they couldn't find the universities to take their archives.

1:28:48Right. And the stuff's crazy. But like the head of the two things are interesting. One, the head of the Coal Springs Laboratory received an honorary doctorate from the University of Nuremberg for his research in eugenics. And the other thing is he recommended the sterilization of lots of people. But one of them was epileptics. And he was an epileptic. and you're just like, oh, this is – you're destroying the world just out of self-loathing, like just the hubris of like – Well, the lost cause is essentially the grievance that something was done to the South as opposed to the South was guilty of a terrible sin.

1:29:36And Hitler's ideology is based on the big lie, the stab in the back that Germany was the victim instead of the perpetrator. Correct. And so much accusation is the confession. Yeah. And so, so much of the people who are now like, let's say anti-cancel culture are, uh, the people who have done something to someone. And instead of saying, I fucked up, I messed up. I didn't get the grace or mercy or clemency that maybe I think I deserve. It's somehow I am the victim. And the interesting thing about cancel culture in that is that as, as, you know, not everybody who's listening to politics are like mine, and I don't even totally know what yours are, although I can kind of guess from the way this conversation has gone.

1:30:25All we have done really is create a system of weakening ourselves. Cause like we can fuck up Aziz Ansari, but we can't do anything about Donald Trump. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Sure, sure. Sure. There's a certain amount of transference there. So it's all a little like, look, sure, you should be empathetic and kind and all of your dealings with people. But it does worry me that at this moment when people who believe in democracy should just be in lockstep with each other, that all we are doing is like, let's get through this. But also – but to your point, I mean the thing about Faulkner saying if we could wait just a little while longer, maybe if you've been waiting a really long time, you don't want to fucking wait anymore and shouldn't have to.

1:31:16Like I do understand that, but it's sort of like – No, it's just a decision that like, look, things are going to happen to you and to people in life. Some of those things are going to be fair. Some of them are going to be unfair. Some of them are your fault. Some are not going to be your fault. Some of them are going to be really tragic. Some of them are just going to be minor. but the stoics talk about this distinction between being harmed and feeling like you've been harmed yes right so what do they say about that he basically says like unless it destroys your character it didn't actually harm you may have taken away stuff that you thought you owned but you don't really that's an illusion we don't own any of the stuff he makes this great marx made this great observation during the antonine plague which i thought a lot about during covet it.

1:31:58He said, there's two types of plagues. There's one that destroys your life and there's one that destroys your character. And so I think for the Stokes, the idea was like, if it fucks with your moral compass, if what happened to you turns you into an asshole, turns you into a bad guy, turns you into the villain, turns you into a hater, a bitter person, then it really did you harm. If it just costs you your job or it costs you this promotion or Then it was unfortunate. It sucked. It was unjust, but it just was. And also the truth, everybody is going to get knocked down by some things. And none of those, for almost everyone, those things will be unfair.

1:32:43Yeah. And like, that is just a thing that happens. And actually, it's just an opportunity to stand up and dust yourself off and just say, we will keep walking. And like, so like there's an interesting, the idea that everything's always going to go your way and that if it doesn't go your way, it is somehow cosmically unfair is like modern narcissism cranked up to 11. It's also a profoundly fragile way to live because stuff is good. Like the only thing for certain is that shit is going to happen to you. And if you take that shit personally and if that shit affects how you see the world or it messes with your values or what tribe you're in or who you support or don't support, you are going to end up very far afield from where you are now and where you want to be because you're not in control.

1:33:35What happens to you is in control. Well, you're also defining yourself in opposition to something, which is you're just fucked from jump. As opposed to I am the cumulative, I'm the culmination of these inheritances. Yeah. That instead now I'm just in the wind. Well, man, I think that's a great place to stop. This was amazing. I love your stuff so much. And will you sign these two for me? I would love to. Do you have a pen? I do have a pen. All right, sweet.

1:34:08thanks 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

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