#720: Life Lessons from Taylor Swift, Conquering Anxiety, Coaching Teens, Career Reinvention, Supposedly Gay Bulls, Your Shadow Side, and More — Soman Chainani

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/1384a9491f6e2de7

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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now it is seen.
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Me
Summon good sir.
Than me here. This is gonna be fun. So nice to see you.
And it's hard to believe this is
I think our first episode in person. Yeah. Which
I think makes it more real somehow. Makes it more real. Definitely makes it more colorful. But before we get to the colorful. So much inani.
For those who don't know.
Who are you?
I think of myself as a specialist in the teenage mind.
And I access that by being an author of Young Adult Fantasy.
using everything I can about
Connecting
To young people and lovers of fantasy.
Through novels. So that's what I've been doing for the last ten years.
And for people who might want to dig into that further.
Any works you might suggest they start with or check out? Website, anything like that? I wrote a series called The School for Good and Evil for ten years.
There's six books in the series and a Netflix made a movie.
out of it that came out last year. And then
Another book, a little bit for older audiences called Beast and Beauty, which is gonna be a T V show.
Sometime soon. So those are kind of my two main
Things.
We'll link to everything in the show notes, of course. And people should explore your writing. I have explored your writing.
And
We're looking at some of your writing, your handwriting.
On
Cards of various
colors. We have orange. Neatly
lined up in one row. Yellow and then purple.
And this alludes to in a sense your
Beautiful.
Pursuit of symmetry and color and also the format of the show. So I had
Sent you a note about this.
fun experimental format which is five things you're excited about.
five things you've changed your mind about, and then five things that are absurd that you still do or do. And
Tweak that a little bit and we'll see if we get to all of them. The point is really just to provide a a launch pad for conversation, but
I was thinking
In terms of naming.
Five of three is not terribly catchy, but four by four like the piece of wood.
Is kinda catchy, so we could do four
of each of these and then add four people.
you're interested in following or who people should know more about. And you so delightfully put out these cards.
and offered me dealer's choice and there are many things we could go to here.
Yeah.
Give people some
foreshadowing, there's intermittent pop star.
Cross-collar dating. Your bull might be gay.
NYC LA, but we're not gonna start there. We are gonna start with
Follow the flow.
Speaking of catchy.
So what
Just follow the flow man.
It's interesting,'cause every time
I've decided to write a novel, like what my next book is gonna be, and I telegraphed this to my agent and my publisher for a couple of years. When it comes time to write that book.
I'll start it?
But it never ends up being the book.
I write next. Ever.
And what I realise is that
Your conscious mind
Can't actually
solve problems. It can execute. It can
deliver on the promise of something, but what actually is gonna be the next creative force in your life, the next big decision has to come to you naturally. So it's this idea of the decision
coming to you rather than you making it.
And I think especially
in creative work where
Obviously I'm gonna be working two or three years on a novel.
My brain will not let me work on something unless
It decides it. So
I realize more and more as time goes on.
That
I am just the manager.
I'm the manager of the creativity.
I'm not
The actual creator.
The elves are the cre they're gonna tell me what to do.
They're gonna be the ones who tell you what the next book's gonna be. They're the ones who are gonna come up with the chapter titles. Ever they're gonna do everything.
I just have to show up.
I have so many follow up. May I dive in? Please. All right.
So I aspire.
To embrace this. Yeah.
I am like a overcaffein
Swiss.
Manufacturing plant manager with O C D and various other monkish tendencies. Right. So I I think the manager is kind of running the asylum, so to speak. Yes, yes, yes. On my side. And
That doesn't mean I I don't have moments of inspiration, but I justify this by having a schedule and the rules. And I kick out a certain amount over a certain period of time, whatever it might be.
That is a superpower that is also a super weakness, right? In excess. Now on the opposite side of the spectrum.
saw this post on social media. Be careful, folks. It's a jungle out there, but I did see a post that I thought was kinda funny. And we're sitting here in Austin. There's a lot of
con spirituality here. A lot of aspiring shamanes or goddesses running amok and their male equivalents. And this post on social said woman who lives in the moment finds out
That moment is connected to all other moments. And it was like this sad fake onion article about not being able to plan a life. You clearly ship.
In the sense that you publish books. Yeah.
You are very engaged with the world. You're not just
A ship without a sail, without a rudder getting blown.
Everywhere to and fro. So how do you precipitate
Or think about inviting
The muse. Because you could just be waiting for ten, twenty years.
I think what ends up happening.
Is that
I know.
What my conscious mind can do. So for instance.
Every publisher wants me to write.
A fairy tale.
Fantasy next. Because School for Getting Evil was my first. It was
Abnormally successful, therefore I will get paid infinite amount of money, have infinite amount of resources to write a Fairy Tale Fantasy.
I had a fairy tale fantasy that I wanted to do. I wanted to reinvent Neverland, sort of do a Game of Thrones version of Neverland. I had the whole thing planned out.
My conscious brain mapped out over the course of a year and a half.
an entire world. While I was writing school for Gunny Bo I would doodle it in notebooks. I had everything.
Then when it came time to write it.
I wrote the first two chapters.
Went to sleep.
And the next day was like, This is not my next part. And it came from just this
Feeling.
Of which
The only way I can describe it is there was part of me that is like we are not gonna spend two years
Following.
The wrong impulse. Which the wrong impulse was money.
Easy.
Route.
Right.
And instead, this other idea that I've been noodling around and been trying to give away to people for the last five years, I had told everyone this idea, being like someone should do this idea. This idea is super important.
Someone should do this. It's not me. I can't do this. This is too hard.
I just
Woke up and was like, Okay, you know what?
That idea.
Let's try writing it as a short story instead. That idea is so important and no one's done it. Everyone says it can't be done or whatever. So I start working on it.
Give it to my agent. Can you mention the idea or is it still under account?
Soon,'cause we're about to take it out. Meanwhile, my poor agent. He knows that whatever I say the next thing's gonna be and it's not gonna be the next thing.
So I tell him I I'm just gonna try this idea as a short story,'cause you know, we've sold short stories before. He's like, Okay.
While he comes up with his next fairy tale, he will do his short story.
Do the shorts. Must appease the talent. Just waiting for me to come back with Neverland Wonderland. He doesn't care what it is.
Happily ever after princes, princesses.
Yeah. So I start working on this short story.
And I start getting into it. And then I feel that feeling. It's that feeling that I thought was school for good and evil, which is I don't care who reads this, I don't care what happens to this.
This is mine. No one's taking it away from me.
I am doing this.
At the expense of all other things.
I don't care. What are the
Symptoms of that.
Is it you wake up
earlier than normal and that's the first thing you want to do. Is it that
I'm making things up, of course. Is it like uh
giddy feeling that just doesn't occur normally in other circumstances. Like what is the signature of that feeling? It's more like you feel like a cult leader. You're like, this is the thing. Like this is the true way. Yeah. Like like I am this is now my church. People are gonna join, you know, I just need to write the thing that you know like
It becomes your whole personality.
Is it fair to say it's a degree of conviction and confidence that you just couldn't analytically justify?
No, you can't change in fact, it's funny, we took it to my current publisher.
Like ten pages of it and just the general thing of the ideas.
And I've been with them for ten years writing fairy tales.
And
They were like
The idea of me moving into kind of a different age bracket and
This is not fairy tales at all. I mean, this is as far from it as possible.
They wouldn't even entertain the idea. Like wouldn't like wouldn't even go there.
And it still did nothing to shake me whatsoever. You know, like I was just like
And it's funny because my
Parents, my agent, everyone's like
Clearly your second thing should be to capitalize on the
And
Nothing in my body will let me do it.
So
I have been happy as a clam working on this other thing.
And I realize that it comes down to
what you want your life to be. And mine is not getting diminishing returns on
The ghost.
Of a password.
Even for a lot of money.
I remember I believe it was BJ Novak.
who's written a million things, very talented, very funny comedian also said Whenever he says to himself, But the money is so good, that's a flag.
And I'm paraphrasing here, but
In this particular case, so I'm gonna prod a little bit. You can you can refuse. Yeah.
Is it fiction, nonfiction? It's fiction. It's fiction, okay. It's fiction. It's a fiction that I would like to happen.
So it's uh predictive fiction. And
It's so funny,'cause when we announce it, which will be soon enough, all these things that we're gonna talk about today
It's all there. So it's like it's like the usual suspects with Kobayashi in the cup. Wait a minute, everything it's all gonna make sense when we're when we're done. I cannot wait to see how your bull might be gay fits into this. All right. So it seems like follow the flow.
Has been checked. Now that seems to this is fun. I might have people do this, although I'm sure a lot will not be
As enthusiasm as you have very nice handwriting too.
So we've pulled one of the orange cards.
Does this
Purple gives away tie back.
It does to what you were saying. It's the idea of
I get a lot of big ideas.
And I will not write a book until I've had the idea.
For at least three years.
Like it has to stay with me for three years because
It's gonna take me that long to write, promote, take it out.
And I need to be sure that it it's not gonna
Suddenly.
Be a short term relationship.
And it feels also like
It's timeless then. If it lasts three years, it's made it through most of a presidential administration. It's it's made it through all the ups and downs. I feel like
It's gonna last.
And so
First thing I do when I get a big idea that I'm really excited about is I start to tell everybody. I just I'm like someone should do this. I tell all my writer friends, I tell anybody. Sometimes I'll just have meetings with Hollywood companies about
adapting other work or stuff like that. I'm doing it really to be like someone should do this idea. And sometimes it gets picked up and they'll give it to someone else. Or you know, there's many times where I've had ide ideas for something and someone has has kind of done that version of it. But if no one takes it
Then after a few years.
Sometimes it's so strong that that's what I
Do it.
I do know of one other
person in my life. Friend named Kevin Kelly. I don't know if you know this name. Has an amazing
Amish style beard. Despite the fact that he is an incredibly accurate
Futurist predicting he w he's he's more than that, but he's very good at predicting trends and upcoming developments. He tries to give away all of his ideas. Yeah.
And I don't want to speak for him, but in a sense it's in the hopes that other people will do the work. Yes, it's something those ideas. It's totally selfish. It's not a generous thing at all. It's this would be great. Do it for my entertainment. So I can see it realize, you know. Because there's only so many
Things I'm gonna be able to do, but
I'm jealous of songwriters who if they have a great idea, they they make their one song.
You know what I mean? Like this is every time I have a big idea it's
Couple years.
Yeah.
This might seem like a silly question, but how do you distinguish between
Ideas that people won't pick up because they're bad ideas versus ideas people won't pick up because
For whatever reason you are uniquely suited to looking through the prism and seeing something they don't see. You get what I mean, right? If you were like, I'm gonna start a waste management company in Tuscaloosa and people are like, I'm not gonna do that.
That is fundamentally different from
What you're describing. Yeah.
I always say the test is
Can someone else do it?
So that's when I have the idea. I'm always like
Sure someone else can do this.
But then
If they don't, and time goes on and I start to see this is what happened with this idea,'cause when I first had it
A few years ago, I thought I'm I don't know how to do that. It's too hard. It's just not in my wheelhouse.
And as the years went by, little by little I started to be like, Well, what if I
You do this and this plays to my strengths and move this around. And all of a sudden you realize you're ready. You know what I mean? So I think it's about
Like School for an Evil came out at a time where that year
There were eight other books about magic schools because it had been ten years since Harry Potter and it felt like
10 years later, the floodgates open, and everyone was like, now all the narcissists who think they can compete with J.K. Rowling are ready to show their wares. And so
And
Agent was
Frantic, the publisher was nervous.
Everyone was nervous because they were much bigger books. I think Chris Colf, who was on Glee, had one and
Mattel was putting one out called Ever After High, which Ever After High is cool for an evil. Like it just they were so similar. And I was never worried because I'm like mine.
So
Weird.
It's so strange.
It's just so uniquely me. Like I just knew there wasn't gonna be
I'm like maybe mine will be a total flop, but
Whoever reads it will never compare it to any of those others, you know? And that I was confident in. I just have a very strange way of storytelling because it's just mine. I don't know how to follow other people's things.
So number one. We'll catch up over dinner about this, but
I am actually in a very similar position right now. I have a writing project, my first book in six to seven years.
I can't talk about it right now.
And I tried to fucking give it away forever.
And
It didn't work, it didn't work, it didn't work.
And then
A few close friends who knew about it kept asking me for it.
Who I thought were gonna help me do it.
And I was like, Fuck.
Okay, let me take another look at it. And then I took another look at it.
And I was like
Oh.
I think I'm ready.
I wasn't ready.
That's it. You weren't ready. I wasn't ready. But now I looked at it and I was like, Oh, I think I'm ready.
And
That's
Uncanny, first of all. Yeah. And I'm God, I wanna I can't wait until dinner. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so there's that.
Second thing that what you
said reminded me of is there's a very famous
Brazilian jujitsu competitor named Marcelo Garcia. And last I checked, he's nine time, maybe ten time world champion.
And for
At least I would say the better part of a decade. And the sport has evolved a lot. So
Things may have changed, but
He was considered the greatest of all time.
And that was uncontroversial. It was so successful.
He was so uniquely himself.
Some techniques.
He pioneered.
And he would
record a lot of his training footage and practice footage, sparring footage, even when he was
six months away from the world championships and he would make it available online. And people
Found this.
Mystifying.
Because that is very rarely done and
The
Most common response was, Why would you do that? It allows your
competitors to prepare for you. Right. And his response, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close because my friend co-founded uh Jiu-Jitsu School with him, so I got to spend some time around him.
Was
This is my game.
If someone wants to step into my game
Then
I am the best suited so interesting to win my game. Now there are a million different ways that could be confusing, but it's
I found it.
Odd enough that I sat with it.
And
In a sense it's like
By giving away your ideas.
You're using it selfishly, number one, to get more ideas than you could shoulder into the world, hopefully if people pick it up. And then secondly, you're
Filtering to what is uniquely your own
Yeah.
you have this differentiator which is also
Not to view anything zero sum, but a huge competitive advantage.
Well, the other thing that was interesting that helped me the most, and I wish this on every young writer.
Anytime I did something.
For money or something that
Wasn't a hundred percent like me.
That someone hired me to do.
Yeah.
All fell apart.
Like without fail, none of it ever came out.
So
There's not a single thing out there in the world by me.
That was a mercenary job. I mean I took them.
It might
twenties and thirties. It just they never made it there. So I think that was kind of the
the world kinda telling'cause it happened so many times, at least ten times. So after that I just learned.
Like we're not doing this. Like even to the point of
I'll get in trouble for talking about this story.
But who cares? Yeah.
D C Comics hired me to do
A short story for them. And
Everyone in my life.
Every male thought, forget what you've done before. This twenty page thing you're doing for D C comics means you've arrived. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, Okay, thanks.
And so I go through the process with them.
It's a nightmare because
You know, they're making changes to the character, they're just moving things around'cause it's the D C machine or whatever.
And you know, I spent six months on it, obviously doing my own own work at the same time, but going through it.
The whole time I'm thinking.
This is getting further and further away from
Me. You know, to the point of okay, I'll take the check and
Whatever.
And then at the last second, like it all
Fizzle. Like the editorial didn't approve of this and move this, and the whole thing just went poof right as it was about to print. The art was already done, everything's
I remember poor beleaguered agent was like, What?
And I was like
Thank God.
You know, like it kept the theme, that narrative in my life complete.'Cause had that been published, it would have been the first time.
And the fact that it went up.
completely in smoke on its own accord was I think
The universe being like
You are on a frequency and we will help you.
When you get off it.
So as long back to follow the flow, as long as I follow that flow, everything's gonna be okay.
So follow the flow.
Give stories away, right? At first glance it might seem like some kind of poetic artist.
Affect. But it's intensely practical.
Right, like intensely practical. And so what I'm gonna do, just because this is a new game that we're playing, and I wanna take a photograph from the top when we're done with this of these cards.
I'm gonna turn this over.
Right. So I feel like we should go
To a different category, just for the fun of it.
You know what? I feel like I'm burring the lead. So your bull might be gay. What's the story here? And it's in it's in quotation marks, which is uh I told you when we stand out. I told you that none of these are euphemisms, right? None of these are type so this is the story. So
I lived in New York for twenty two years. I now live in St. Louis. I moved there
For love for my partner.
Who is a farmer.
And lives on a goat and cattle farm of his own.
And I go there every weekend and spend, you know, three or four days there.
And so I'm that annoying person who drops in every weekend and has thoughts about what he's been working on all week. So anyway, he's got I think the helicopter part helicopter farmer from the city. You know what you should really do.
That's that's yeah, which he finds very amusing. So he's got
Over a hundred cattle.
And he's got these sixty heifers every year.
That
Get impregnated by one bull.
Right.
And he keeps a bull for
In this case he had a both for four years.
A miss ball.
When I saw it.
I was like
Oh man. Where he walks like
The ground like shakes
The females part, they like bow their head. It's like the Lion King, right? Like his balls are the size of coconuts. Like like what men in Austin, the patriarchy they aspire to here, like that religion that I see men here go for is that bull.
Maybe they need to spend time with Apple and everything will be fine. They need bronze statues in the ball. Yeah. And so
When I you know was with
He was like, The problem is this bull has been here for four years, meaning he's now impregnated not just the heifers, but their daughters, their sisters, their granddaughters. Like the cows don't care. They just, you know. So at some point you need to get a new bull.
So he goes and gets this new ball that he's very excited about.
He comes and brings the bull and the first thing the bull does when it comes to the farm.
Is it like nuzzles up to me and is really nice to me. And it's just this very like sweet ball
And over the next like few weeks, every time I see the ball
He's off like
Picking flowers or like
Hanging out with this little
Orphan male cal and like licking him. The females are literally just staring at him. You know,'cause they're all in heat and nothing's happening. And
I said
Your bull might be gay. And he's like
And this is where it gets interesting,'cause this is this is where it gets interesting. Yeah.
Is where he's like, That's impossible.
He's like
You know, we tested it.
It's sperm it's very healthy, it's it's like it's a good bowl.
And the chance of a b bull being gay and not impregnating these sixty females, he's like it's maybe like point zero five percent.
In my head.
All I'm thinking about is worst case scenario.'Cause
If that ball is gay, that means he not only doesn't get these
60 females pregnant, he loses a season, he loses all the money from the cabs that's coming. And it's a it's literally like a catastrophic thing that can happen to.
And I realized that
People
Entertain worst case scenarios differently.
His is statistically
This
Isn't happening so therefore I'm not gonna prepare for it. I'm not gonna spend a dollar
Preparing.
For that worst case scenario, because statistically it doesn't make sense. All I care about in life is the worst case scenario. So to me, the moment I'm like that bull is gay, all I'm doing is finding all the evidence that it's gay and being like, here's the action plan for the gay bull. We are you know getting every female
pregnancy tested, you're having the vet come out, you're checking the sperm again, you're doing this, yeah, you're bringing out that fancy machine that like triggers them. Like I'm spending in my head, I'm getting them to spend thousands of dollars on this gable to make sure it still gets them pregnant. Like artificial insemination, everything.
And
I realize like it's just a different way that we operate. My entire life
I told my assistant this on day one. I said your job is to always think of the worst case scenario and insur against it. That's your only job. Every day.
What's the worst thing that can happen and make sure it doesn't happen.
And
doesn't think that way'cause he says that costs money.
It just does. You spend too much money on things that
Statistically.
Shouldn't have been.
I thought
There's something profound in that.
So
Your bull might be gay has become the kind of like flag waving motto of the farm because it turns out the bull was not gay. Uh-huh.
It secretly got them all all private when we weren't watching. That's the the funny part. So he was right.
And s therefore it validates, you know, he thinks validates him. But to me
I think I get.
Calmer and more at peace.
When
That worst case scenario is protected against. If this is a
Shorthand, where your partner when you're catastrophizing can say, Sonman.
This may be a your bull might be case scenario.
Are you finding that you can
Use that experience to recalibrate a little bit.
Do you need an external source like your partner to be like
Pat you on the side like a
Sort of over excited horse and be like everything's gonna be okay.
You and I are very similar in this way. I haven't had the the gay bull experience or the thought to be gay bull experience, but you and I have bonded over this worst case scenario.
Catastrophizing. Which
Clearly if it had no utility, we wouldn't use it, but in excess sort of becomes its opposite, right? It's a helpful
tool and then it becomes a hindrance at a certain point.
But see I cheat I
offload it to my assistant. That's his job. Like I literally am like
You're the worst case scenario person. So he's in charge of
Insuring against those things. And now that you know he's been with me a while
In a way, that's become his thing. And he's even more kind of obsessive about predict all those things.
And it's what makes him so amazing, you know, as he's risen in the ranks. So in a way
I'm all lucky.
But I'm not the one saying we're gonna outsource some of your worrying.
I think having a partner
Who has the opposite
Viewpoint.
If I was with someone who also had
The worst case scenario? Dangerous,'cause then you're just
Who's gonna screw in the light bulb when you know you're too busy worrying
All the other things that are never gonna happen, you know, at some point.
Yeah, someone has to take care of
The basic. The counterbalance. Yeah. I think I think counterbalance is the You know the uh the outsourcing your worry to
your assistant and your EA makes me think of this
Chapter which is an excerpt.
that I had in my very first book from A. J. Jacobs. Mm-hmm. I think it was literally called Outsourcing Your Life.
from originally Esquire, I wanna say. And at one point he was trying to see how much he could give his virtual assistant at that point in India. And at one point he realized
AJ is amazing. He's written a lot of great books. Uh my favorite's probably The Year of Living Biblically, but he's written a lot of great books. And
He at one point was really worried about something.
And he just decided as an experiment to see if he could ask his assistant to worry on his behalf if that would make him feel better.
No real solution, no fixing anything. He's just like, would you mind worrying about this on my behalf? And I mean he's a humorist, right? So he does a lot of funny stuff, but he actually found it
Therapeutically valuable.
Just the broad strokes instruction. Could you worry about this so I know someone's worrying about it.
Like I realize it's not productive, but could you worry about it on my behalf?
This will come back up.
Well it's also funny because
I think it's uniquely suited to the young to be able to have that
Mindset.
And I told him, I said, If you can master this thing of
Thinking about the worst case scenarios and everything, that's what I did when I was young and working as assistant. You're gonna be like
A megamogul one day you just will. Cause like that's part of your thinking in a way that it isn't for other people. Well the uh the Andy Grove only the paranoids survive kind of thing. Only the paranoids stay up at night staring at the ceiling too, but there is that question about the assistant
What other instructions have you found or principles make for training in excellent
Assistant. And I'm asking because I'm in the process right now of actually training some new folks on my team. So this is very top of mind for me.
I think
To me the most important thing, especially when you find someone
who just has so much talent and capability.
Like
June has is that
I don't
Give tasks.
I give
Massive
Projects.
But
Are extraordinarily difficult.
What would be an example I think.
Like in the case of DC.
I was like
I don't know anything about
DC Comics.
What am I writing about? What am I gonna do?
What am I writing about? Yeah, what am I doing? Because in this case
It's a general
World that I'm just
I don't know anything.
Oh, you had to work with their characters? Their characters. It's unoriginal. It's working with their characters. So that's where it all went. Oh yeah, you got it. You were I was already you were already in trouble. So in that case, I was like
It's not that I'm looking for a storyline. I'm just looking for
Alright.
Knowing what I'm interested in.
Give me some characters.
from there that are interesting. Give me a world that's interesting. And so rather than it being like
Make me a list of this or something very like task oriented. Procedural.
It'll just be like
Show me something.
And that's kind of like the bigger thing. And then
Giving freedom for him to structure it.
Him to figure out how he's gonna present it.
Him to have investment in it.
So the same thing when we did Beast and Beauty, we were presenting it to the studios to get a buyer for the T V series.
I said, How do we present this?
How do we present the book?
Come up with whatever you think's the best way.
And ultimately he designed this amazing presentation.
And therefore when we sell it, it's easy for me to go to the studio and say
June has to be a producer on it.
Because
he was the one who had the whole presentation. So it's that sort of thing. It's like
I give very once in a while give very few
Task oriented things and more like
Worry about this for me.
All right, I'm gonna ask very maybe boring, maybe interesting. We'll see.
But certainly kind of mundane practical question. Yeah. Do you do all your own inbox management or do you have all your inbox stuff? Yeah, yeah. Now is that a manageable
inbound volume. You've just figured out policies and
Maybe how to hide yourself effectively so that you don't get
An inordinate amount of stuff.
Yeah, I think it's if it's scheduling. I'll pass all that stuff on to him. So he will do it. He's keeping the trains running on time. 100%. But
I still manage my own email inbox. I just I'm sorting stuff over there.
What kind of stuff would you say buckets wise, what kind of stuff does
Does he handle scheduling? Scheduling school visits.
Anything that involves a calendar date.
And also negotiating. That's the the I get asked to speak.
Constantly, whether it's you know, adults looking for a creative spark at a corporation or whether it's schools or whether it's a book festival, it's just you've been through this many, many speaking years. You are a far better speaker and presenter than I am. I don't know.
Yeah. You know what? If they're teenagers, I feel completely at home. Adults sometimes I'm like, Are your minds frozen? Like Is there anything I can do to s whip away that's a calcification on your brain. Sometimes I feel that way.
So his job is to figure out somehow subliminally without making a mess of it is do they have a budget? Like what's the but it's all that's and you have rules or
At least guidelines in place where you're like, Hey, this is the lowest hurdle. Yes, yes. Et cetera. Okay.

Yeah.
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Let's hop to the secret card, which was a last minute
Additional.
And
We can chat about
Any person you think
people should pay attention to or that you're simply paying attention to.
Have you heard of this guy named Christopher Marley?
No.
He
He's an artist.
But his canvas only works with
Preserved.
Animals from strange parts of the earth.
Tell me more.
So
He's almost like Indiana Jones. He works with like
remote tribes in the Amazon. Like he'll just go all over the earth.
to find animals we've never seen before.
And then makes art.
out of them.
Christopher Marley? Christopher Marley.
I have all of his books and I saw an exhibition of his in person and it was the most
inspiring beautiful thing I have ever seen.
That's a strong statement. It is and that's coming from someone who's exposed to art. Like you're exposed to my life. Yeah.
But this is because they're real animals. And so the idea of I spend my life creating fantasies and then to see
That the real world has more fantastical things than you'll ever see.
And
He has just so many great ones where you'll see like he'll just make art out of maybe a thousand butterflies that he's collected, but the colors of the butterflies are you've never seen stuff like this before. It's almost like, you know, when you think of the deep sea fish that you've never seen before, he's finding this up on land. So the beetles, the snakes, the this. But then he has this additional talent.
Uh
Making
the most spectacular art out of it. So that it almost looks if they were
Fake.
It would still be equally impressive.
So that the fact that he's going there, making these relationships, getting animals that
Convincing these tribes to hold on to animals that they find
The whole thing's insane. And the fact that this guy isn't the most famous person in the world to me.
How did you come across
I was from Molly.
North Carolina, we were on a family reunion trip and we went to the museum with my niece and nephew who are teenagers.
And that was the little fun
Thing.
Then I bought all his books, I follow him on Instagram and I just
think it's the most amazing. Yeah. As soon as you look start looking at his art, you're gonna be like
And also, he has a crazy story.
Which is that a photo of them.
Up on the wall, and I was like, That's him? He was a supermodel.

He was a supermodel, just like rugged supermodel, who then
I don't know, used his wealth.
to then like do what he really wanted to do, which was like be Indiana Jones.
And then but the the talent is like insane. Like the way he places everything. I almost want to like pause for a second and show you the art.
Let's do it. Yeah, sure. Let's take a look.
Yeah.
Oh you have to see it.'Cause once you see it you're gonna be like
You're gonna wanna like
Make him your best friend.
Oh wow.
Okay.
Alright.
That's wild.
That's just one.
That is wild and I I realize
That uh we might be able to splice some stuff in from
From Instagram with
credit and everything shown, obviously. If you go back to the grid you'll just see tons of'em.
Oh yeah. Okay. So this is
At Christopher Marley Studio.
Spelled like Bob Marley. Christopher Marley Studio.
Almost sixty thousand followers.
It should be sixty million.
All vertebrates are reclaimed specimens, none are killed for art. That was gonna be one of my questions.
Okay.
Yes. Uh
This is gonna be a thing. And you're right. If there were a game of match

Match the face to this other profession on the other side in column B.
This is not to detract from his work, but I'll be like, Yeah, no. No way.
Maybe he's doing
Jeans commercials.
Maybe he's doing car commercials.
But his artwork is incredible. Okay, we will definitely link to that. Check it out, folks, at Christopher Marley Studio.
Check check, my next follow on Instagram.
Now I'm gonna go
Two
One here that I can't read, which is now pulling my I see.
I thought it was conch and then I was like, Oh, wait a second, that's an A, isn't it? Oh, that's an A coach Alpha.
What or who is Coach Alpha?
Okay, I realize that I can only do
Two jobs in my life. There's only two things I'm good at.
And
There's only one thing I would
like to do as much as I like writing. Mm-hmm. And that
Is
And it's a job that should exist, and it doesn't.
Generation Alpha.
Which is teenagers.
of today. Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah. So after Gen Z going back to Yes. So after Gen Z is generation out. And that's like who are teenagers now.
They're growing up in an impossible situation.
with everything that's happening with the world and the phones getting more d it's just impossible.
And
When I was a tutor, I was a tutor for ten years. And what I loved the most was when
'Cause I could tutor every subject. That was one of my I was such a nerd in school that I just really could tutor any subject. And I loved it when a parent just sort of outsourced their entire child's
Home life.
To me. But I loved it because I could get to the bottom of what
made them tick and what was important and starting to really
Not just
Help them with school.
But get them on a better
Track.
out of their phone. And
stop worry about what everybody else wanted them to be, including their parents, and more focusing on who they actually were.
The mental health crisis
That's affecting almost all teenagers is this sort of existential dread.
I would have loved to if I hadn't become a a writer, and I still feel like this is gonna be part of my life somehow. Is I would love to be kind of be the like Mary Poppins who can go into a house and just be like, Let's get this on track. Like I'll give you an example. In a way that parents can't.
So
The one kid.
was getting off track'cause he was drinking a lot and getting in trouble and all that sort of stuff.
And I noticed that every time I saw him, he was talking about going out partying and at the end of the night
you know, having wrestling matches with all his friends and getting into these sort of physical fights with people. And he was always beating up on his younger brother. They were just
Always physical with a thing.
And one day, like, we're trying to solve all the other stuff.
And the academic stuff. Yeah, just you know, everything else. And I thought to myself
I just said to him, I said.
And his whole goal in life was to be popular and party and all that stuff.
And I said, I don't know if partying is your
goal in reality. I feel like your real goal is that you want to fight.
That's what you actually want to do.
What you really wanna do is not drink and like hang out with your friends. It's you wanna drink so you can beat them up at the end of the night. Every night ended in aggro.

I research. I said there's a UFC gym, like
Four minutes from your house.
Go take a class.
Sixteen year old, go take a class.
Takes a class.
Loves it.
Is now there like three, four times a week.
Having the time of his life.
Drinking went.
Way down.
Everything all got back on track, got a job to fund the UFC.
Everything's fine. Wow.
No more beating up the brothers but I didn't need to. He's getting he can beat up anyone at the end.
But what parents gonna say, Go fight?
Yeah. After school, it's just they're not gonna do it. And so
It's stuff like that, where I just feel like sometimes
Kids need to be seen for who they are, and in order for us to get
out of this crisis, I think.
People are like oh mental health crisis. I feel like there needs to be a third party.
Whether it's
Even as much as like

On any given night.
If you're an alcoholic or you have a drug addiction or whatever, you can just go to an AA meeting and you can have that group experience. And I felt like why isn't there that for
Teenagers. Like this idea that you can just go to a space and meet other teenagers on a given night and have that kind of
place to talk to or experience. And yes, you can do it online, but I just think
The more you get into your phone, the further you often get away from actually who you are and real connection. So I don't know. I have no formal thoughts on how this should happen. I just
Do miss that part of my old job, which was going into the house and helping kids.
Footnote for people who may have missed our earlier conversations. Well into your writing career, correct me if I'm wrong. Fact check, please.
You held on to your tutoring.
Because it s gave you
Safety net, but also I guess the psychological
reassurance of knowing that you didn't have to white knuckle desperately
make the first book that came your way through the writing. And is that a fair description? We don't have to spend too much time on it, but it's it's it's important.
as an example to me because a lot of
Creatives who do really well.
Do not burn the ships behind them. They do not
Block all the exits.
They actually have
Some type of
Back up.
In the form that you did. Hundred percent. Because also it meant that I could take all the risks in my writing. Right. So even now
I know I can do other
jobs. I could go back to tutoring. I could teach at a university. I could work with kids and teenagers in some way. So
I'm happy to
Take the risk on this book instead of chasing the money because
There's no pressure on it. So I think that's the important thing. I feel like if you're writing
With that desperate white knuckle mercenary form money.
It increases the chance that what you're writing
You're trying to fit a mold. Mm-hmm. You know. So Coach Alpha, is this a public attempt to give away an idea? Let's just say you can't get a taker. Let's just say you don't see it.
Would you ever think of doing I know this isn't in person?
But would you ever think of doing
a series of talks and then pulling from that and putting together a course, making lectures available for free. Maybe they're targeted at parents, maybe they're targeted at kids. I mean if this for whatever reason doesn't get takers, right, this coach alpha, because it also requires it's not just an idea that can be executed by anyone.
But to
Underscore something you said.
The third party piece is really important. I can get
Not anyone, but
Almost anyone to change behaviors. Yeah.
Sometimes except for the people closest to me. Right, because to them I'm just Tim.
Do you know what I mean? And uh sometimes you can develop a selective deafness around the people you're closest to, so then uh when you have a third party
Who's credible.
There's a lot of leverage there.
Well even I was thinking about teenagers, right?
Let's say you have
And this I told parents this many times, most of the time they didn't listen.
But it was I gave them the secret.
Which was
When your kid takes initiative and does something
On their own. Like they start making their bed.
Or they start
Working out.
You know, after school.
Do
Not
Mention it.
Don't say
It's great you made the bed, or that's so cool that you're working out.
Do not.
Then it's your thing.
That means every time they're gonna go make the bed.
They're now thinking of your approval.
And little by little it's gonna stop them doing it. Huh. Because it's now become your thing.
Leave it.
It's their thing.
How many kids have you tutored over the years, would you say? Oh
God.
At least a few hundred.
Few hundred. Yeah. Probably a few hundred.
I miss it, but also I got the connection
Through the books. And also what's funny is I started doing writing camps where I got hosted by writing camps. And there was always a curriculum that they wanted us to teach or whatever.
And I would just go in there and do my own thing and the first thing I would
Work on with each kid.
Is
When you write, you need to know what your characters want.
And you need to know at the deepest basis level.
Let's say a character wants to play lacrosse.
He wants to be a champion lacrosse player.
That's where most people will stop.
But
You need to ask, Well, why does he want to be a champion lacrosse player?
In order to want to drink. That's not enough. Yeah, because he wants to fight at the end of the day wanna fight. And why does he want to fight at the end of the day? You have to keep going down until you hit a base level. Like is he trying to save his self esteem? Is he trying to prove something to his family? Like you know, whatever it is. And then on the second day after we work on that with characters, I do that for themselves.
So the teenager I'm like, What do you want? In front of the class. So there's usually twelve people.
And that's when you start to get somewhere.
Because I feel like I could use that exercise now.
But that's how for college essays so my specialty when I was tutoring was college essays. I used to go in there
And help them come up with the perfect
essay topic. I'm all I needed was three days with them and I would spend three days
Asking that question over and over and looking at pieces of their life and us talking about it until we came up with what do you want and why do you want it?
And then
Making the essay from there.
All right.
I'll bite. So what's the next step? Once you go through that exercise.
How do you craft
The narrative.
How do you put it into
as a form.
Is it describing
really what you want? I mean, is that the topic of the essay? Or do you use that as grist for the mill?
It becomes the heart of it.
And then from there you can start to build everything out.
Did you start doing this before you were working on fiction? Or did it happen simultaneously? Simultaneously. Because I as I was working on Scorpion Evil, uh the thing I had to do. And also because I'd come from film school where they drill into you, what does your character want? Why do they want it? And I did that every page of that book, which is why I think it reads quickly because
You just know what everybody wants at any given moment. And I realize that I'm working with these kids and no one knows what
They want. They follow the flow in the wrong direction.
Because the flow is taking them towards anxiety and comparison.
If I spend my life on Instagram and TikTok
I would die.
Because it's just the wrong.
Inputs to make me find my
What I wanna do, you know.
Kajafa.
I love it.
All right.
This is needed. I was very fortunate when I was fifteen, sixteen to have a few mentors, male mentors, figures who
by a hook or crook were able to
help me correct course in a number of ways. If I had not had that input.
I think things could have
Ended.
And I do mean end it in very
sort of terminal way. We should very differently. Talk about another person on my list then. Let's do it.
He just moved to Austin. His name is Mike Regula.
R U G U L A he's an ex Navy SEAL.
And he
is here starting
A company called Course of Action.
Which what I want to do for teenagers.
He's doing for men.
And it's using basic Navy SEAL kind of concepts and training to basically
Get men to both individually and in groups.
look at their lives and make proactive change to become more connected to what they want. So basically
It's every man who feels like they haven't quite found their way back onto a path or they've lost their tribe or anything like that. He's just trying to find a kind of safe space for men to work on, whether it's
The psychological part, the nutrition part, the fitness part, the emotional part.
And in groups.
And I think it's uh it's just so needed.
Especially in this world. So I just think he's someone to look out for. And I think the website is one C O A
One COA for course of action.
We'll find it and we'll link to it as well. How did you
Find Mike or Course of Action.
He was introduced to me through the best story.
The
Boy I was in love with in high school.
was this kid named Noah who I was obsessed with.
And
Of course, you know, he's now married with children, everything like that. Um
Everyone knew this story except him. And then one day someone finally told him, You do realize that someone spent like most of his high school career trying to get your attention. And
He just was like, What? And so then we reconnected, became friends, and he's like, You have to meet
Mike.
Because you know, I don't know what it was. Mike was in New York and he just felt like we would bond and we met and that was that was that was that.
He's just a a special person. And so
I just feel like
We were talking about this, like the same way I feel about
Resuscitating the teenage mind and soul.
He feels about men.
Because I think
He's seen it all, having been an ex EL, for sure.
Check it out.
He's right here. Right here in my hometown.
Mike Regular. And this is actually not the first time I've heard his name.
This rings a bell and I can't play. Oh, he's friends with all your friends.
Oh there we go.

There you go. That's probably why I've heard his name. All right, does anything catch your eye?
That might make for a good next Scooby Snake, conversationally speaking.
We could go to uh you know what here.
How about this? No, that's a good one. All right. Intermittent pop star.
This is in the absurd category. It's in the absurd category,'cause I should not still be doing this. But
In twenty
Seventeen. I went to this book festival for the first time in Charleston called the All Fest. Um
That is like the biggest book festival for teenagers in the country. Okay. Yeah, about twenty thousand kids descend on this thing. Everybody comes there. It's where new projects are it's just a big festival that takes over Charleston.
And to get invited, it means you've officially made it.
And all I ever wanted in my career was to get invited. Because your publisher can't pitch you. It's like um one of these Sun Valley. Yeah, yeah. Must be invited. So I finally get invited. I'm so excited and I go and it's
The best two days of my life. I'm having the most amazing time. And I go to the final show called The SmackDown.
Which they charge like.
twelve dollars to get into it's three thousand people in Charleston music hall it's the most beautiful theater
And the authors participate in this kind of variety show.
And I sit there.
And watch.
The worst show I've ever seen in that.
It is an abomination to make three thousand people sit through that.
The fact that I had to participate in some little part of it. And I remember having this thing.
Secretly thinking.
I'm going to take over this show and turn it into my own private
pop concert and it's gonna be amazing and it's gonna be awesome and it's gonna be like the greatest show on earth. I just remember having this thought. Like it was just like this is my fantasy and it's going to happen. I grew up idolizing, you know this. Uh everyone who knows me knows this, but I should probably say it. I grew up a huge Madonna fan. Like that was my
Oh, I'm sorry, growing up. I'm s obsessed with Taylor Swift. I'm obsessed with anyone who can translate
You know, whatever their talent is and to
Some kind of cool showmanship. Cut to two years later, they were like no one wants to host this show.
Do you wanna host it? And I was like
Did I earn enough cred to be like okay. I said, Sure, as long as I can completely redo it a hundred percent my way.
How did they think to come to you? Had you planted the seed somehow?
Were you like
Not a bad show I could do better on the way out. I didn't say I think I'm a tear in the eye.
I think I said
This could be better.

So we'd love your feedback. I have a few words.
This could be better. Got it. So they came to you. Came to me and then
I
Was like
You know, we're gonna do the variety show. It's gonna be all new games.
And it's gonna start
With an eight song, six costume change dance number.
Dedicated to whatever the themes are in YA. Almost like a version of like Billy Crystal's old Oscar thing, but even more extreme. And so
I don't know what made me do it, but what was interesting is while we started working on it and we got a choreographer and I s I don't know how to dance.
And I started learning these dance steps.
It was that process of training for it, learning how to dance, learning how to do choreography.
Yeah.
Was so
Awesome because it got me out of my head. And I started to fall in love with this process of designing a show, designing things, designing themes. It was a new way of telling a story from beginning to end. How do you all entertain an audience of three thousand people for 10 minutes?
I fell in love with it. And
Had the best time, but then
I think I did it the next year.
I've done it three times and what I've realized is if I do it every two years'cause it's so much work. It's so much money, it's of my own. So much work. So much time. Right in the red column. But
If I do it every two years, that means the year in between, some poor soul has to come and try and it's inevitably a disaster. So then when I come back, I get to I get hero returns.
Every two years.

It's a Julia Roberts strategy when she was a an actress. The reason she had such longevity is she always did one movie where she had her hair red
And Curly and did a rom com and then she would do one when she hacked it off and
played like Frankenstein's like made some crazy indie weird thing.
But because she did it.
Every other movie. Whenever she came back, I was like, Oh, thank God. She's back to back to doing, you know, pretty woman. So
What's been important for me is it's less about
Uh I get more than enough attention for the books and everything. I don't need it's not a Sure it is a narcissistic thing. What am I what am I saying?
By the lie. Terrible. Um
But
I think what I enjoy more than the actual performance is the run-up.
It's the
Day before rehearsals start, I'm always nauseous. I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna go through that whole experience.
Because
It's everything I'm bad at. There's a Japanese word have you heard misogi?
Mogie.
There's a book about this that um to find the happiness. I think Mike was telling me about this. The the Japanese concept that
Once a year or once every two years you have to do something completely out of your comfort zone that is an extended journey.
Hm.
And in doing that you find like new reinvigoration for life. And I think
That's mine. Like every two years to go into this thing where I don't know how it's going to end. I don't know if it's gonna work.
Because always it's more ambitious and more interesting. So it's funny'cause this one was bigger
and crazier. I just did it a couple months ago than anything we'd ever done before.
At the party.
I was like there's no way I know myself I can't top.
That sc what we did.
And someone goes, Well what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna
You gonna sing? And I was like ha ha.
And then I thought.
Huh.
Well.

So you know you don't know I mean I doubt that's what it's gonna be.
It's always like when you think you can't find what the next thing is, it's like what's the next zone of discomfort. So that's the silly thing I still do, but I think it's important for me somehow.
I can't really let go of it.
You know. At this point there's yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
How would your life be different if it were taken away?
If it were just subtracted.
How would your
Experience the rest of the year be different.
If there's an answer to that.
Wouldn't be as fun. There's something
so energizing about
The high stakes nature of
A show. And also my assistant is this amazing dancer and musician. So he's part of it. I have backup dancers and he's one of them. So it's like we are he's almost like we're almost this like ride together where
It can end in super embarrassment'cause you've got
thousands of people with their phones out. Like Yeah. And you're there's no you had to be there. There's
Let me show you what happened.
It's it just it it feels very high stakes and in the moment. So, you know, where writing is never in the moment really,'cause you are constantly revising this is immediate and I just think it's awesome. It's also out of your head, like you mentioned. Yes. Yeah, the dancing that I always feel in incredible shape.
Mentally and physically after
Six weeks of this stuff.
I'm gonna force a segue. We'll see if it's a natural segue, but
Drugs. Yeah.
This is in the this is now this is in the yellow, I believe, change your mind about category.
So I never did drugs growing up. I m maybe did pot once or twice and found it slowed me down to the point of I never wanted to do it again.
And just
Sort of walled that whole

Stuff that other people do.
And then
During Covid I read The Body Keeps the Score.
And you know, I had struggled with some things.
for m my entire life in terms of anxiety and just getting stuck in
Kind of ruts a feeling.
And it was
Twenty twenty one, January, where I just remember talking about follow the flow.
I
Stood up, went to my computer. I remember being in Miami at my parents' house, Googling
Ketamine treatment, New York City. I
Knew nothing about ketamine.
Like.
Nothing.
How was it even in your field? I don't know. I don't know. I just remember going, Can I meet there in New York City
Calling up.
Scheduling the consultation.
And a week later.
I'm back in New York going to meet the doctor and I was like, I don't know if I'm right for this. I don't want anything that will mess with my creativity.
I said the only reason I'm entertaining this idea is because
It's in a doctor's office.
I said I would never do drugs.
On my own because the fear surrounding that of what could happen
And where it's procured from and all that stuff.
Would end up
Infecting the whole experience. And with a doctor's office, you know, I'm entertaining it. I said, but I don't want it to affect my creativity. I don't want it to he's like, it's only gonna make you.
More yourself and more creative.
But he goes these are the three things.
That I think.
make for a good candidate. He's like number one
Have you felt emotionally numb?
for most of your life. And at that point in my life
Absolutely. I think I was in a
Just cycles of numbness.
Mm. Number two was
Did you have a volatile
Childhood.
Where emotions were not
Particularly welcome.
And I was like
Shit.
Hm.
Check. Number three, because this one's the most important.
He's like
Do you know how to have fun?
And I said no.
And I cried.
I remember crying in the office. He's like, Do you know how to have fun?
And it was the first time anyone had asked the question in the right way.
Because I knew the idea fun.
I knew that I should be having fun. I knew how to act like I was having fun.
But I never felt.
Like I was having fun. And he goes, You don't drink? I said, No. And he goes
And I meditate. I was in uh that point four or five years into meditation.
He's like
You're gonna have a very good
response to this. He just like it's like
And so I started ketamine treatments.
At that time I think you do six and twelve days.
And then you go back for a booster. In my case it's every ten weeks and I still go.
It changed my life.
I mean it was like
I feel like a totally different person.
It woke up parts of my brain that I didn't know existed because they had shut off
So early.
But I didn't know they were there.
And then all of a sudden
I started to get glimpses of
what I could be like.
And then it became a question of could I hold on to that? And little by little some people I think get their benefits much quicker.
Or they don't get any benefits at all. I mean it's so individual. In my case
It was almost like a practice. It was like every ten weeks I'd go.
Learn a million things.
Work on those things in between.
Go back.
It almost became like
My version of like the deepest therapy, you know?
It's become a huge
Reason for everything. And I think
It's also allowed me to follow the flow.
More than ever because
The whole
thing of academy treatment is it's a it's a sedative, right? So it puts your brain in such a relaxed state that you have no choice but to follow the flow where it goes. And the flow usually leads you closer to the truth.
So
I don't know. I think it's
For someone who was so anti drugs.
It was the biggest thing that changed my mind about yeah.
In those
Just to establish some.
Basics. With the
Whatever it was, let's call it.
Six sessions in twelve days.
So that loading phase, let's call it. Like induction phase. Those were IV or IV.
I've never done the
micro dosing and the nasal spray and all that sort of stuff. Because again
I don't want to do anything that is me alone.
Mm. Policy. Yeah. I just want to
emphasize how good a decision that is. A lot of friends I know who have embraced more recreational use have become addicted to ketamine. Oh I'm sure it has that potential. Uh and you're also
In a sense
A great
Yeah.
Some people who have a history of alcohol abuse.
Or just use, like extensive use, which
Certainly if you go to New York City and I've spent a lot of time in New York City.
a lot of social life revolves around alcohol. And many people there have switched to ketamine, but it's still a dissociative anesthetic. So in those uncontrolled environments
People can find themselves in a slide that can become very
Precarious, but
In the clinical setting, I also find

on PubMed and elsewhere looking at the rapid antidepressant effects of academy and their different types. For people who might be interested in the potential benefits and risks and science related to this, I did an episode with
Doctor John Crystal of Yale, who did
He was the primary investigator on a lot of the seminal work
Investigating
Cetamine is antidepressant in humans.
and developed some of the early protocols with his fellow researchers and scientists. Which is tricky because
Anytime anybody I talk to people close to me
They're like, Do you recommend it? I'm like no.
And I never recommend it to people. I don't think I've ever recommended it to anyone because I found it
Difficult. It's a journey into
The deepest core of yourself.
It's a lot.
That's a lot of work.
And the meditation background also serves you in a, I would imagine, in a very big way in terms of navigating some of these recesses. What do your
Boosters look like? Is that a single session every and in those single sessions, what does the format look like?
Music, no music.
Visuals. Nothing.
I d and it's alone, there's no therapist after
It's just I do it in silence.
And I just
Follow
The flow wherever it takes me. And it usually takes me on a ride to the m uncomfortable things that I'm not dealing with, then
You know, it's almost like the way I describe it is
Sometimes I feel like what the kinamine's doing is relaxing your brain.
Like pathway by pathway. And whenever it gets somewhere sticky.
That's like shut off where there's a jam?
That's where you're gonna have a little moment.
You know? That's when the traffic helicopters circle the traffic shaft. And then you have to, you know.
But I just think it's over time.
because I've been willing to do the work and sort of be in there.
With it.
It's been
A huge thing and and it meant that I never had to take antidepressants, I never had to take anti
Anxiety medication, things that someone on my profile probably would have needed.
But instead to go
three, four times a year and do these sessions, I think.
And it's also the great thing about it is it's a short half life.
It's over so fast.
So
I think that's what makes it
has been such a huge contributor for me.
How long would you say your active session lasts? One hour.
What up.
Exactly one hour.
And then
Just the process of getting out of your system, you coming back up, all that stuff is probably another
Hour and a half. Mm-hmm. So by the time you're in your Uber home and then you're
You're good to go.
Some interesting applications to treatment resistant depression and chronic pain also. Yeah. I did six infusions several years ago.
And
I came in without any particular acute state of anxiety or depression. So
the people
Working there, the staff and
technicians and MDs and so on were a little mystified. And
I therefore didn't have much in terms of measurable reductions because I wasn't coming in with something too reduced at that point. Yes.
But I left and a few weeks later I realized, Oh my God, that mid back thoracic pain that I have felt every day for several years, I have not felt.
In probably a month.
It's amazing because
Anything that's coming from a place of stress.
But the thing is it could return if you haven't if you don't deal with that psychological stress, it might return. But yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I felt that too. Like if I go in with a lot of muscle soreness, I'll come back out and it's almost like it never happened. So for people who want to learn more
Certainly John Crystal with a K Crystal and Andrew Huberman also recently had an episode related to all things ketamine, which I I'm sure involved a lot of due diligence. So you can check that out.
The double.
This is in the excited about category. What is the double?
I've been thinking about this one a lot.
Which is
There's so much work on your shadow self.
in psychology, right? It's always like, Oh, get control of your shadow self. Your shadow self is, you know.
And the more I I think about it
And the more I've gone through my journeys and and all my kind of evolutions, I'm realizing that
Most of the time.
Your
The shadow self.
You
It's the primary actor. You're the problem.
The better version of yourself.
is actually out there. You're in double, right? And so
I think you have to flip it.
And at any given moment, and it's a good exercise to do all day long, like just a mental thought experiment.
What if I'm the shadow
And there's a better version of myself.
Completely independent human.
outside that door. That could take over this life and completely
handle it with no issues. So it's been something that's if you look at all my fiction, all my fiction is about
Some version of twins. One good, one evil, one this, one that one and it's always I think it's that. It's that
I'm always trying to figure out like
Am I
Who I'm supposed to be.
And I think often psychology will say
Well you have to get control of that shadow.
And sometimes I'm like well no, maybe I just
need to not be here and that the double
be in charge, you know?
And so
I think it's something I'll be exploring in everything I do.
Because it think it's such an important concept that we've reversed it.
And that we shouldn't be afraid of the shadow'cause the shadows actually
Staring back at you. Yeah.

Thought
this concept come up for you?
I have a friend who's calling
Almost all circumstances, certainly compared to me.
Matt Mullenwick. And there have been times when
I have thought to myself, you know, what would Matt Mollenwig do? Like almost like a reminder bracelet some people have for J C and so on. And uh that has been very helpful. When I'm in a situation I feel myself
on the verge of becoming dysregulated, not like Hulk Smash, but just
having some type of rumination or
Tantrum internally that is not helpful.
Pause.
What would that wanna make you do?
And I'm like, you know what he how he would handle this is he would do da da da.
And then sometimes I just do that thing and I'm like, well that wasn't so hard.
So I'm curious if
There are times.
When you feel your lesser self doing something, or I guess in this case your shadow, right? Yeah. Doing something where you're like, What would my double do?
How does it come up?
It came up first because I was gonna be on the Kelly Clarkson show two years ago.
And I'd never been on
Kind of like a T V show like that and
you know, it was the live student audience, it was straight out of Covid. And I was like, I'm I'm just
I'm not ready for it. Like I just don't know how to do this. Did you decide to do that or that been that came suggested to you? Yeah, yeah. So the the publicist was like, We booked your own Kelly and I was like, I don't know. Especially after lockdown and he's just like not ready for it was the fur I think one of the first shows that she had people back.

I remember
in the dressing rooms trying to freak out and panic and I could feel that panic
Rising.
And all of a sudden.
I felt this counter force where I was like
The stressing on my phone, I felt myself like put the phone down.
And I just felt some other presence be like
It's fine. We got this. And I almost remember in that moment being like okay. I just felt it.
Like.
And that was the first time I'd ever felt something like that. Cause I went and I remember sitting on the couch and feeling totally chill.
David Ducovny was next to me. I had grown up watching X Files.
I made a sex joke with him in the first like two seconds of the thing. Like I was just like totally chill.
And I just was like.
But I'm literally watching myself being like, what is happening?
And that was the first time I got a sense of
Await the possibility.
that there's a better version that can handle every situation, you know. And I remember uh the other thing that gave me a clue was Tiger Woods. There was a documentary about Tiger Woods on HBO and they talked about how
His dad taught him kind of
techniques to almost hypnotize himself when he played.
So that his conscious mind wasn't
working. And that's how we dominated all those years.
And I thought that's it. It's almost like
You have to get your conscious brain out of the way because the double, the real version of yourself that knows how to do everything is there somewhere. And the question is, over time, can you make it so they start to integrate?
And an a useful thing that also helped me start to explore it was I started doing
IFS, do you know this? Internal family systems, yeah. I've had the founder.
Dick Schwartz on the podcast.
So I started doing IFS therapy.
Exploring.
Those parts and that's when you really start to
be able to see them in practice and work with them and start to
feel more comfortable letting go and
I think the
Cetamine treatments plus IFS.
Plus Kelly Clarkson.
Plus that Caly Coxon moment was sort of the secret. I think about a few years ago where everything sort of came together.
Personally, do you have thoughts for how you're gonna explore that or implement it? I think comes really it's in therapy and it's in those treatments where
I think
Sometimes what I'll do now is if I go in for a booster or if I go in for IFS, I just think
Okay.
I'm taking myself out of this.
Let's see what comes.
From the other part of myself. You know I mean, like the part that
is the creative force, is the one that has the vision of where I should be going next. The one who knows what next book I should be writing. Like and bidden. Yeah, like I would like
to have a better connection to the thing that is running my life. Which is why we should talk about
QB is next.
Q Bs. QBs. Is this quarterbacks?
It is.
And this is so funny, the most spiritual revelations I've ever had watching a T V show.
I've come watching that Netflix series quarterback.
I haven't seen it, I've only heard of it. It's amazing. It follows Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and
Marcus Mariota for the twenty twenty two season.
I feel like I know you pretty well. How did you end up watching quarterbacks?
Taylor started dating Travis. Then I felt like okay. T Swift is another card. Yeah, we'll get that. So I felt like okay.
you know, I grew up watching a lot of Dolphins games and I actually love football. Like I could watch football all day long. I just
Never really
Got into it.
Reason. You know what I mean? Yeah. There was no team I was rooting for and the Dolphins always sucked for a long time. So Taylor gave me more reason.
And so
I just watched it'cause I'd also been hearing good things and I love sports talks. I just feel like it's the closest thing I can feel to like high performance. You've played a lot of tennis, yeah. Also for people who don't have the background. Mm-hmm.
So I start watching it.
And
I realize that this position of being a quarterback
is the greatest metaphor for what life
Should be.
Because we all think we're the decision makers. This is what we're talking about with follow the flow. We think we're the ones in charge of everything like that. That's not what a quarterback is. Quarterback knows all the possible plays.
The other forces are calling it into his helmet.
He's not even able to talk to the coach. He can't talk back to the coach. It's a one-way system. So literally it's universe telling him what the play is.
So he's hearing like white squall, Madonna Six Wing, whatever. He's like, Okay.
Execute, right?
So that's it. And I feel like that's what life should be.
You're in the flow so much that the orders are coming from outside. Or coming from outside, telling you what the play is. You get the play, you go into the huddle, you communicate the play to your whole team. Now everybody's on the same page as you.
But you've got everyone with you, right? Now you go into the huddle.
The ball is snapped to you.
And now you have to adjust.
Because
The world's gonna react to your play.
And that's where it gets interesting because you have to be so present and in the moment.
That
You can react.
Everyone's focused so much on deciding the play. Don't focus on deciding the play. Once you feel a play, execute it. Just
Go, follow it. And if it busts, whatever, you've got a new play coming.
And so
Each of them is so different. Mahomes is just sort of a
physical freak of nature and so smart and able to
On the fly improvise. And so he's very kind of I think of him as almost pliable. He's very spongy.
You can sort of like
move and adjust at the last minute and he's so sort of confident in that ability.
Kirk Cousins is more like me, where
He's not particularly physically adept.
But he's brainy and nerdy.
And so he where the other quarterbacks are in the gym like doing all their physical training, he's at biofeedback sessions.
'Cause he feels like if he can get his brain to just be
Calm like the calmest in the most
Stressful situations.
It'll tell him what to do.
Roger Federer was similar. He said that every tennis player tenses up.
Right as they're about to hit the ball, because the pressure of hitting the right shot gets them at the last nanosecond. And his job is to stay relaxed. So he has an extra millisecond.
Of
Options.
And so it was just something about that show where I was like
These guys are learning
They don't call the play.
But
They're the executing guys. And I just think like that's why.
Let the place come to you. Let them come through your invisible headset.
Don't question it. You can't talk back to it. Just take the play.
And then execute.
So there was something about that show. I don't know. It did I gotta check it out. Yeah. I gotta check it out. It did something to me at a deep level.
Alright, we're gonna jump straight to T Swift because
Knowing very little about
Tell us.
But
watching uh what was it called Americana, I wanna say a documentary. I have a fascination in the phenomenon of Taylor Swift. And yeah, the re recording of the masters. Like some of these these
Fascinating.
decisions with incredible outcomes. I am very interested, but I know very little. But I do recall
When the whole
Oh.
Cameo came into Taylor's life. Somebody who
is more attuned to all of these pop phenomena.
said
Millions of people.
Swifties are about to become very interested in football.


And that's gonna be it.
Development. Like where does that lead? Okay, so T Swift.
It's funny'cause
I grew up idolizing Madonna.
And I think one of the reasons I was so interested in Madonna was some part of me
Was
kind of pre-adapting her central question of existence to what was going to be my life, which is like how is this sentence gonna end?
Which is
As an artist.
How
D you sustain
A career for a long period of time without it just being a downward
Diminishing returns.
You know.
And what I loved about Madonna was that reinventioning, the ability to completely
Reinvent herself.
Brilliant, brilliant at doing it. She did it for so long, you know, and then now she's in our
close to seventy in her in her like legacy celebration era, you know, she's done in terms of that.
Part.
It's funny because Taylor in a lot of ways follows the same script, which is
Each album.
is a reinvention.
To the point of now when she
She's on tour, it's the Eros tour. It's this idea that like
You're gonna embrace
All the different
parts of me, but they're all very different and they go in different directions.
And
That's part of my identity now, so
Do not expect me to stay in the box for the next thing'cause
That's not what is happening. And that's not what you want. So
I think it's why when I went to write fairy tales, I think the fact that
I am such a
Also that
The reason it's in the absurd column is because I've liked it for so long and now
I'm so used to comparing myself to her when she wasn't even comparing not myself, but like like her moves and things.
But
Now that she's so popular, it's almost more ridiculous when I tell people like
Well, we did both move to Missouri for six foot five aggressively masculine
Athletic men.
Ha ha

So I do feel like a special kinship. Maybe you're light. Maybe you're double as Taylor should be. I got you, babe. For the Kelly Clarston. She's like, We've done this a million times. That would be pretty awesome. Can she deposit some of the funds in
Instead of horning But it is this idea of like how do you make it so not staying in the box?
is your thing. Cause that was Madonna and that's what I want mine to be. And that's why aggressively
I can't be afraid of this next thing when I'm going out with something so different. I'm so excited for you. This was
Not comparing myself to Taylor Swift, nor to you. Different circumstances, different time in life, but
After the four hour work week.
Every pressure, including a lot of internal pressure, but every expectation and pressure was that I was going to do
Something in the same category. Something with the same
Which I did.
Obliquely, but
the four hour work week for fill in the blank, right? Kind of franchise the whole thing, fine splice it.
Milk it for all it's worth. Do the three hour work whatever it might be, but at that point
And you certainly have this optionality.
I pause because the inclination was to rush and whenever that is
The
pressure I tend to hit the brakes. And I'm like, wait a second. This has bought me permission.
To write another book.
This is the time when people are going to be willing to take a gamble because this first one went so bananas.
I can always go back to
The four hour work week. Mm-hmm.
Right, like that that door does not close.
Or it doesn't get locked, at least. Similarly, if you try this new thing.
You will be welcome back with open arms. Julia Roberts with her long red hair and I'm here to write more fairy tales for you. Exactly.
And that's
That's when I went to the four hour body. Totally different category.
a lot of people assumed within publishing totally different readership. Yeah.
But I was like if this works.
If this works, it's not guaranteed to work, but if it works
Then I buy myself permission.
To do.
things that are not within this category.
And I can always go back. I have the optionality of hitting control Z in a sense, you know hitting undo and going back to what I was doing.
But I also think that what was interesting about the four hour
Body is it just
Seems so
It's so funny,'cause that anyone would question that. It just seems so obvious.
'Cause you had presented a hack of
the work life. So then for you to be like I'm now
Presenting a hack of your
Physical existence.
Of course.
Did you feel
Like
This is obvious.
I did. You did. That's the important thing. Yeah. Yeah. I did, including some of my close friends, like
Matt Mullenwick who I mentioned. Yeah. He was like Yeah, of course. Of course. Because he knew that for all the notes and analysis and
so on that I'd put together interviews I conducted for business. Yeah. I had
He knew.
There's no reason why my publishers would know this, although I did tell them. And to their credit, you know, they bit. They were willing to go with for our body, which then
took off and became very successful, but
He knew that I had basically all of my workouts recorded since age sixteen.
Like he knew the extent to which
I
had captured data and experiment on myself.
And to him, he's very productive.
And in Silicon Valley he's like, Yeah, like the productivity stuff.
That's great.
For his
Pure group. He's like they're all
Incredibly good at that.
And they're all incredibly good at
maximizing per hour output. He said what we're not good at
And what we want from you is actually the
More of the physical stuff. Right. So all of them personally were asking me questions about the exercise side. And I was like, Okay.
The same lens, the same framework, the same principles, they can be applied here.
It's so interesting because that's what's so obvious, right? What are people asking you?
What do people ask me?
How do I fix my teenager?
Yeah.
Okay, so that's what I'm gonna write about. Staring you in the face. Staring in the face. Yeah. What is just staring you in the face. All right.
Should we go to another person?
Sure.
I'm really interested in
These two authors.
Who
I just feel like we're in the age of
Hyperproductivity.
The rush of content.
So
You have to put out a book every year. You have to put out
content on Instagram all the time, like this ubiquity of
And I find that the people that
Especially the authors. That we most hold on to and
The ones that were
we start to get obsessed over and in a weird, ironic way are the most popular on TikTok are the ones who release a book like every eight years.
So thinking of Donna Tart
as one author and the other one that sort of goes together with her her name is Hanya and the last name is Yana Gihara.
And Donna Tart wrote Goldfinch, Secret History.
She's only written three books. She writes one every ten years and she's due for
Exactly ten years.
So she did one at twenty nine, thirty nine, forty nine.
And her fifty ninth birthday just passed, so
We should be seeing one any moment.
And then Hanya wrote a little life.
Which?
A Little Life. Yes, which I read. Yanagihara. Yeah. Yeah. She's the editor of the
T magazine for New York Times.
And she wrote this book that is the most immersive committed that's what her and Donna do. Like they spend years and years writing their books and they become these immersive complete experiences to the point of
They just consume you because they're so real.
And
What I find so interesting is Donna Tarte, there's a whole section of TikTok dedicated to her.
Little life.
Ten years later. It's like number twenty on Amazon.
TikTok's obsessed with it.
And it's'cause of the level of commitment.
Of the work.
And that's I think what I aspire to.
Deep down.
is to be able to just be so committed to something.
That you're able to have the time and freedom to spend a very long time on it. So that you can really create
This alternate.

You know, that is undeniable.
It will exist forever because it's that.
Committed.
And so those two authors, I think, are a sign that no matter how addled
or stupid or short term thinking or you know, monkey meme we get.
It doesn't matter, that stuff still holds. Cause they're the two most popular authors on TikTok.
Why do you think they are
And I know that you just
Explained part of
picture in your mind why they are
so popular on TikTok because there are many dedicated authors
But
Just take as a category of profession. Who release books infrequently. Yeah.
Who
H
Supremely good at the craft.
who are not popular on TikTok.
So what do you think it is about these two?
Even if you had to just make stuff up speculating, what do you think it is?
About these two in particular. What else adds to that? It goes with this one. So this is together.
Together with Sally Rooney, who's another author who I'm obsessed with. These three authors are able to access
A certain kind of primal nerve of feeling'cause they're so immersed in it. They're just
There.
That it's
The intensity of reading it.
Just feels higher than anything else.
Yes, you can have someone who spent ten years crafting this like meticulous world and all that sort of stuff. I've I've read plenty of books like that.
But there's something about the ten years that is spent
doing that work we talked about. What does the character want? Why do they want it? Why do they want that? Why do they want that? And they do it.
For every character so that when you're reading it, you're just in this like emotional
soup that is undeniable. It's just so affecting to everybody who reads it. So that there's this category of book that I can recommend to anybody who comes to me and says, What book should I read? I always tell them
Secret History by Donna Tarrant.
Little life.
By Hanya.
Conversations with friends by Sally Rooney. Those are my first three
recommendations and
It doesn't matter. Man, woman, young, old
It always works out.
I have not read.
Any of those three. Well you which one should you start with? Yeah, that's the question. Which one should I start with and why?
Oh boy. They're all so different. It depends on their mood. A little life. Well, you can interrogate my mood then.


Little life is if you
Um
in the mood to be kind of torn apart.
Not right now. Yeah.
So then I I would wait for that one. That one that one will take it takes a it's almost like a hijack. I I'm open to that. Yeah, it's it's an emotional hijack. You will disappear.
I'm open to that, just not right now.
Conversations with friends.
is the most accurate depiction
Of what it's like.
to be I don't know this for sure, but I just mean like what I think.
of what it means to sort of be in a feminine state of mind in your twenties.
It is just
Crystal clear and brilliant writing of the emotions.
Of what it's like to be young.
And so I just think
For anyone who has ever been young.
When you read it.
It takes you it takes you back there and takes over everything. So I think that one
And you'll tear through it in a day and a half because you won't be able to stop.
Secret history is if you just want great
Writing.
And feel like you're in a different world. Cause Donna
Takes her ten years to meticulously create a world that
The characters feel so real that you're there.
So if you're just ready to go somewhere else and disappear for a while.
But without the emotional hijacking.
You go to Donatart. If you want to be emotionally thrown into a well
Uh yeah, and if you wanna just have like the equivalent of a Taylor Swift album in prose that is much more articulate.
You go to Sally Rooney.

Perfect. Alright, where should we go next? Now I I'm enjoying this game'cause as we flip these over
We get to
Get to fewer and fewer options.
These three
Interrelated. Okay. So I'll just
We've got two yellows, which aren't changed.
Mind about
Cross collar dating.
Not sure what that is. Hookups.
Suspecting out that is.
Couple's language. Maybe we should start with cross colour dating then,'cause that's sort of the
Unlocking key. Have you never heard this term?
I've never heard this term. I know what a cross collar throw is in Judo, but I'm guessing this is unrelated. Cross collar.
Dating. Is that like white collar, blue collar? Yes. So it's guessing. Yes, yes, yes. It's and it's been popular now. I've just seen it. There are a lot of columns about this and things like that.
Which is also why when I thought when Taylor started dating Travis, I'm like they're gonna last forever.
Because
They just will. Now watch, I'll I'll not have to eat my words.
But
It's similar to what happened to me, which was I lived in New York for twenty two years. I dated every lawyer, accountant, investment banker
I went through it all.
And it always felt like
Two clouds in the sky and no one
on earth. Like we we were doing jobs that a monkey would not understand. Like could you explain your job to a monkey? Neither of us like oh I write it wasn't gonna work. Yeah. Yeah.

Who like
is just in the earth he can tell you when it's gonna rain. It felt like
It was just such a a match of
Someone who
Has earth energy and someone who has sky energy. Because in Hinduism, that's the balance. It's not masculine, feminine, it's not male, female.
It's sky energy and earth energy.
I'm ashamed and astonished I've never heard this before. Okay, so it's that's the balance you're looking for
And I'm all sky. I'm all what they call Shakti, which is thunder and lightning.
You know, that's me.
So
I need somebody who's like
The guy on the ground holding the kite.
Before it flies on. Yeah.
And so
I just think of like, Oh, what was I doing? I should've known from the start. And I think I started to sense it as time went on that
I needed to be with someone ultra grounded.
And so that's why I think cross colour dating
Works because also you're not in each other's
space. There's no competition. You're not competing for the same
thing. You're not measuring each other against. Maybe you also have different neuroses.
That's it. Yeah. He's thinking about every one of
Does he have enough money to sell this group of calves for that you know, like I'm sure it's
That's my reaction to everything. It's fine. But I can't relate other than be supportive. And that's
You know when he comes to watch me do the dance in Charleston.
He's just like
Yeah.

This is a lot. Not sure what this is, but you do.
Hundred percent.
He calls it the dance of the red shoes. He's like he's off doing his dance of the red shoes. We'll see him when he's done. And that could be anything, you know? So I think that's what it is, you know. And whenever I see like two lawyers together, I'm like, I don't know who's gonna
I don't know. So yeah, worth looking at.
Today I learned cross color dating.
Well actually look, I'll ask a self serving question. So I'm I'm back on
On the singles field, as you know, we've talked about this privately.
So what would that m potentially mean for me? Is it is it more a set of characteristics? Is it profession? I mean I have definitely uh
This is not exactly the same, but I have had enough
Perhaps tiptoing around this to realize like probably not a good idea for me to be with another writer.
You know what I mean? Like
I've taken that parking spot. Yeah.
I
Think that
One is enough.
Agree. I think it's as simple as
It's not so much the collar, it's about
The intensity
Of the commitment.
So
For instance, I'm so committed to my writing career and
the entrepreneurship of my life that it is such a huge part of what I do.
But
You wanna find somebody who has that same commitment to what they do that is in a completely different
Space. So that's why I look at
Taylor and Travis Kelsey because
She is the most
famous pop star in the world. She's always
in the number one position, what man is ever gonna be able to
have that same level intensity.
But
football player playing in the same stadium in front of the same amount of people and she has to be there rooting for them.
It's like
You're each doing your
thing. It's yours. It's not the other person's, but the other person is there to cheerlead.
And I think
That to me is the perfect recipe of where
I think sometimes when you have like even if it's an investment banker and a lawyer
They're similar there's something similar about
It. But if you can find something that's really different.
So that you can just relax and be a cheerleader and feel almost humble.
Like
Coach's basketball.
And w when I go watch the games, it's just fun to watch him coach basketball'cause it has nothing to do with my
Existence. I have nothing to do. You must love that. I'm just thinking of you with the tutoring and all the tennis background.
I was love it.
When he comes to me with all his, you know, this kid, this, what do I say to this kid, this? And I'm just like always asking him questions. Yeah, I love it. It just it's my favorite thing. I'm always asking him more questions about what's happening.
With the drama behind the scenes, you know. Um I'm still thinking of the dance of the red shoes. I may use that with you. That's great. Uh all right, where should we go? Hookups or couple's language. Couple's language is a really quick one, but I think it's really interesting that with couples
I feel like every couple
Oh, this is in the absurd category. Yeah. Just so people know. Mm-hmm.
I w'cause I thought it was just us. We have our own
Language at times, like words we make up.
And things that we have that no one else would understand. And it's almost like
Animals. Like we just came up with our own little like marks and like repeated phrases and repeated thoughts that are just ours. And then I talked to other couples.
And they have it.
two and I was talking to a friend about this where he's like, you know, him and his partner
used to make instead of saying the word program, they used to use like a
British accent for it and say
program or something, you know? And that was how they always said it.
And
Then you know, they broke up and then the new partner
Heard about this somehow.
And start using it.
And he felt this like irrational
Sense of like
Anger. Like aversion to it. Yeah, because it's somebody else's language. And I thought, Oh no, this is a real thing. This is like somehow in our DNA.
to create this private language.
With our
Other
Percent.
I have a million of them, but like
We use the word malinky a lot.
Malinky. Malinky to refer to something that is on its way to being totally
Fight.
But it's not gotten there. It's it's circling the drain.
Oh
Is this an adjective or a noun? Like it's it is a malinky or it is it is malinky. It's adjective. Adjective. So we use we use that a lot. A person could be a malinky, a dish that we're trying to cook could be malinky. So like it just comes up. And so like
We have maybe a hundred of these kind of words, you know, nicknames and things. And so it's just our own little private language.
Hookups.
This is a pretty simple one, but you know, in New York hook up culture was big and
I never really got into it.
I always was more interested in connections and things like that. And
People are like, but it's fun, it's you know, so many hot guys. I mean, New York has
Austin is similar. Everywhere you go, everyone's like supermodel, it's annoying.
What the reason that it stopped me was every time I was like
Okay, you know, you could go hook up with that guy, whatever.
I used to think to myself
Well what's the reason?
And I realised that
It was'cause I was trying to extract something from them. They had this hotness or this thing or this thing that I felt
That by hooking up with them
I would get
And that's when I started thinking about the term hookup.
What is it?
Hook.
Literally like a fish like
hook them and like get this thing. There's no connection needed. You're gonna dispose of them at some point. You know it's gonna succubus. You're just gonna lean over. Breathing their soul. That's it. And I thought to myself their G And in my case
It was obvious'cause it felt like I was going after certain kind of guys that had things that I wanted. And I realized that it was never'cause I liked them, it was'cause I wanted to be them or I wanted this thing that they had physically or something. And it was always like you just want to extract.
And I thought
That can't be good for your soul.
I just thought that can't be good. Because what's gonna happen if you mentally go through with it, yes, you're gonna go, you're gonna extract this thing or try to extract it, you're gonna fail to extract it, and they're gonna leave and you're still not gonna have it.
I mean, New York, as you described it, is just such a hyper kinetic
Environment that I feel like
Whether it's related to hookups or
alcohol or other. Like you need to have some guardrails.
Where I feel like that.
Environment wall.
sort of eat you alive. I think it's funny'cause we can move to to that one now that we're here.
I lived there for twenty two years and
I yeah, would go to
Florida and go
to places that were much slower.
To relax. But I think
with New York and LA what I realized is until you're out of there.
For an extended period of time.
That's when you
Finally get to be yourself.
Because New York and LA and even Chicago and the biggest city, San Francisco
Everything's so reactive.
It's too much stimulus.
Two
Ever process in a way where
You're just alone with your thoughts in a consistent way. So it's not just vacation, but on a
permanent basis. So when I moved to St. Louis,
I didn't have any friends there. I was new to the city. I knew no one is still getting used to it, but it's quiet. Not much is happening.
And
It's for the first time in my life, it was just
Me. And I felt like in those ten months
I have to grow.
I got it. So you had a ten month period.
Where you were there full time. Yeah.
I moved to Saint Louis in end of January.
Of this year.
And then I go to New York, maybe
Three or four days a month.
And in those three or four days when I first started going
I felt like
I'm home.
Right. Thank God.
And each time I went, I started to dread it.
I was still seeing all my friends. I was getting to do all the fun stuff that I get to do in New York whenever I go there, the restaurants, the this, the
But I was just like
I could feel myself be like we're going to war. Like that's what it feels like when you go into
The city again, you know?
And
I just realized.
Especially for
For me where I am at my stage, where I want to commit to
My art and the things I want to do and connection and relationships, especially with this new set of tools that I have post-ketamine, where I feel like I'm finally getting to connect and be in the moment and have fun and be present and slow.
In terms of my experiences.
In New York, it never would have happened.
Do you think you'll have an ebb and flow in that way? You'll have a seasonal relationship to that stuff? Do you think there's a chance that you do?
St. Louis for
A period and then you have sort of a
City period and then uh
Rural period, or do you think? I think what I'm realizing is I'm in the creative zone now where
I'm done with Scorpion Evil and Fairy Tales for a while. I'm making new work. So for the next two years, that's really where I am is the making new work.
Which involves also making a new life, new partner, new city. It's a new chapter. It's a second act.
It looks nothing like my first act. First act was New York, Fairy Tales. I'm now doing something totally different in St. Louis and I don't want a goat firm. So like new album.
So
I don't know what will happen
When I'm done writing and it's time to promote.
Will it be dance of the red shoes again? Let's go to New York and dress up. I think it'll be great. I think it'll be great. Goat farm. Goat farm.
St Louis. What is St Louis like as a city? I haven't spent any time there.
It's quiet. It's
Manageable.
It's a very like family oriented city. People whenever people are like, Oh, I just moved to St. Louis, it's to be in their family. Usually most of the time.
But you're not in the
outer reaches of the Brooks range in Alaska, like a flight from people. You have access to
Everything's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything's there. Restaurants are there. I just think it's a city
That has a lot of potential. It reminds me a little bit of like when I first started to come to Austin.
Eight or nine years ago, I was like, Oh, this place
It's gonna
Go crazy one day when people find out what's here.
Evolving, but there's a lot there where people are gonna be like
Weather's good, people are great, food's good.
Easy to get around, no traffic. It just feels like
It's a sleepy little city that people kinda gave up on.
But
I wouldn't be surprised if it has a has a boom at some point. It's the opposite of a malinky.
Or it is the opposite of Malinky, excuse me. I used it correctly. It's opposite. There's a lot to be said about St. Louis.
And also
I just haven't met that many people, so I'm excited to start, you know.
Making friends. Mm-hmm.
Speaking of Britishisms, when you're mentioning the shared language of program program, I have no idea. Dodgy.
Dogi allergies.
This is in the absurd category on the purple card. This is a good one to end on.
I tell everyone I'm allergic to cranberries and eggplant.
Mm-hmm.
Am I?
The cranberry snake print? Are you? I don't know. I don't know, but I've been saying it for so long.

That I I'm like
Is it true? So the question is, when we are allergic to things.
And I think this gets to a bigger, like more profound question.
Where did that start?
I know that once upon a time I thought cranberries
caused hives or something. And then I ate cranberries. This was probably when I was like a teenager and got like a bad case of hives.
And therefore
I've told people ever since I can't eat cranberries. Mm-hmm.
But it was it could be something else.
Could be something else. Right. And so
This happens I think a lot with
You know, when we were young
I remember first having like peanut butter and things like that and
Oh having weird reactions to it.


But there was no option to stop eating it. There was no
Don't eat the peanut butter.
We'll just keep giving you peanut butter until one day your system gets used to it. So I was just thinking about the fact that
the way that it's easy to
in your mind create these little like zones of
I can't touch a plant. No fly zones. Once upon a time this thing happened. And it makes you start to question
I don't know, deeper no fly zones.
Anyway, that was something that
Cross my mind.
At some point
We need to test the no fly zones. Basically eat cranberry sauce and see what happens.
For the record, if you're working in a restaurant, I tell you I have an eggplant allergy, it's because I ate eggplant my whole life and then one day
Boom, anaphylaxis, full blown, like almost died in a restaurant in San Francisco. It's true. And I went in. Yeah.
That wasn't step one. Step one was
Head st.
Had some whatever it was, swordfish, fine. Vegetables fine.
outside eggplant. Then I had the eggplant and my tongue got really itchy and I was like, Huh.
That's weird.
Yeah. Feels like an allergic reaction. I've never had an allergic reaction, I plan.
So being the
Genius that I am.
And I'm saying that sarcastically. I was like, Well
I'm gonna purchase like an engineer. I wanna figure out can I replicate the bug? Yeah. So I went back the next day.
Pro tip, do not do this. If you have a mild allergic reaction.
Don't do it I'm about to describe. So I went back and I was like, Well
I'll try it again and if my tongue gets itchy.
I'll go have a sleuth testing.
But that's not how allergic reactions work. If you have one allergic reaction that is minor, it can suddenly step function up to something very serious. And that's exactly what happened. So I ate the exact same dish.
I had the allergic reaction, but this time my throat closed down to like the size of a coffee straw.
And it was rush hour.
It was in the mission, certain part of the mission in San Francisco where
There was absolutely no possibility that an ambulance was gonna get to me within thirty minutes. Yeah.
no bodega or anything nearby because I asked the staff, I was like, Do you have any Benadryl? And they were like, No.
Do you have an epi pen? No.
And I was like, Fuck.
Of all the dumb things that I've done in my life.
This is
What's gonna kill me? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
And I just sat there. I that was all I could do and I was like, Well
Freaking out isn't gonna do anything. And I was like, I guess I'm just gonna have to try to breathe very calmly.
And I passed through it.
Therefore.
I've not had much excellent. Now
I will say I went and had extensive, extensive allergy testing done at Stanford with all these top docks.
And at least with the species of eggplant that they used for their various sampling and testing.
No demonstrable allergy to eggplant.
Which raises a bunch of questions. Now one option is it's a different species of eggplant. Okay, possibly, who knows.
The other which is scarier, which a very well known
friend and tech founder who people would recognize brought up was maybe it is a pesticide.
that you are unable to identify.
But that is so psychologically terrifying. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, to me.
that I've doubled down on the eggplant.
And this is why Dodgeology is came into my mind'cause it's like
The fungibility.
Right. It to me when I say dodgy, what I mean is mental.
Uh allergies.
the allergy is compounded sometimes by this extra force. Like when I was on a plane
And they called out, Okay, someone has a peanut allergy, therefore we're not serving peanuts or cashes or whatever it was. Everyone's like, Oh okay. A little grumbling, but whatever.
Next plane, they were like someone has an alcohol allergy.
We are not serving alcohol.
It was like
Saigon. Like everyone.

Mm and me. Everyone's racing for the last helicopter. Do you know what I mean? Like to get off that plane. So it was this sudden thing of okay, what we have to take allergy seriously, but then this one we're not taking seriously. It just comes to me sometimes when I think
It's worth
looking at sort of the mental stress around the allergy.
Also just asking the
thirty thousand foot question, which I'm sure
very competent, qualified people have examined, but
What is going on with all of these
Allergies. That's what I was thinking to myself, like when I was young, I definitely think I had a peanut allergy and
It just I think got used to the discomfort and to the point where the body was finally like
Alright, I guess this is we're doing this. Yeah.
I guess got used to it. And
I don't think that was necessarily the right way to to handle it, but that's what happened before and now
It's different. It is interesting to see on the farm, none of the kids
All the nephews nobody has allergies.
The farm just has so much going on that.
First thing I do with the baby
Put it in the cow pen. Put it into the farm you go.
All right, there's one more thing I can see over there, which is one remaining name.
I think there's one remaining, maybe more than one.
No, there's one that
It's worth talking about, which is
The daughter of a friend who introduced us. How I first met you.
I met you through Brian Copelman, the creator of billions, and I haven't completely independent of the fact that obviously I I know her and I've seen her grow up.
I have my eye on his daughter Anna, who
He's twenty three and
Stand up comedian and writer.
'Cause she is so
Good.
He is very talented.
Skilled kit.
I tutored both of'em too.
No. I did no I did no work with either.
I in terms of working with
Either of them.
There was nothing to be done. These kids came fully formed. Babies just babies. Just sat there and talked to the family and had family dinners and somehow got paid for it. I felt like
They were
The most
Incredible kids. Sam is the older one and will probably be president some day.
And
Anna is just she reminds me of do you know Miranda July?
I do not.
Great name, though. Uh yeah, she is in the early two thousand, late nineties, which is just very prolific and still writes and
Great comedy, great uh just versatile at everything involving writing and performing and and that's Anna. I feel like she can write, she can do stand up, she can write novels. It's just
The voice is so
sharp and interesting and mature at twenty three that I just I'm like, what's gonna happen? So I feel like she's one to
I feel like when I was growing up, people were like, Okay
We don't know what he's gonna do, but he'll do something interesting'cause I was just
Kind of.
Off doing my dance with the red shoes. And I feel like Anna
I feel like the same like something interesting's gonna happen. Cool. Something interesting's gonna happen. So I have my eye on her.
So it's good to end on
On somebody young. Up in summer.
brain always is. I'm looking at youth for
Talent, ambition, and most of all commitment.
What do you think
Brian and his wife have done
To foster some of that. This could be
Nature versus nurture. Who knows? Maybe they're just thoroughbreds. Came from good stock.
But I suspect there's more to it.
Probably a little bit, certainly, at the very least.
What do you think?
I think
They
Encourage their ideas.
I just feel like when they had ideas it was like a it almost felt like an improv house where if one was like
I think I should do this. It would be like yes and like everything was Yes.
No shooting down ideas.
It was just
Go with it. Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks about how
To me the ideal parent sees a kid reaching for an egg.
On the table.
Like a toddler's and he's like, You stop that kid from
Dropping the egg'cause you're afraid of the mess and wasting forty cents on an egg.
You're gonna lose that toddler seeing this
Thing explode.
and leak three different substances in a yoke and a thing and a
How did that thing turn into that? And all of a sudden you have a scientist and a three year old. What else can I drop?
And see what's gonna happen. So he's like that's it. It's just saying yes and
Not giving too much direction. That's what I said about the kid making the bed, the kid
Coming to things on his own terms.
Don't
Comments.
Let them evolve.
Just look at the photo.
No need to add your two cents underneath.
You know what I mean? I do. Someone what fun.
This has been so much fun.
Is there anything else you would like to
Mention. Anything you'd like to point people to? Any closing comments? Anything at all? I think it's just so fun to get to have a conversation with
Such a deep thinker.

Play around. You know what I mean? Like I never get to do this in real life.

Getting to do this is an honor and
I'm just very thankful that you had me.
Oh.
What a pleasure. So fun. I'm looking forward to continuing a dinner. Where can people find you online?
Best place to find me is my website, summonchain.com, S O M A N C H A I N A N I dot com, and then
I don't use Twitter anymore, so Instagram's probably where
You know, I see messages and things like that. Some and C on Instagram. Some and C on Instagram. We'll link to everything in the show notes, folks, so you can find that at Tim.blog slash podcast.
And
Just search Somen. There will not be an overwhelming number of entries. S O M A N. And until next time, as always.
Be a bit kinder than is necessary.
Not only to other people, but to yourself.
And
Thanks for tuning in, everybody.
Talk to you soon.

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