The Karol Markowicz Show: There is Always Time: Pursuing Goals and Dreams with Rob Long

Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco Wood Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Rob Long.

Rob is a.

Writer and producer and co founder of Ricochet. He also does a weekly podcast called Martini Shot.

Hi, Rob, so coort to have you on.

Happy to be here. Are you in Florida right now? I am beloved Florida.

My beloved Florida. I am. It's so good. I you know, I.

Was thinking, we've only met once.

I believe, and it was at a Reason party shortly before I left for Florida.

I pretty sure.

Yeah, And everybody got COVID after that party.

It was like a super spreader event.

It was a super spreader event.

I didn't get it because I don't get COVID.

I was born in Russia.

We don't do that kind of thing.

Yeah, I don't know what. I don't think.

I mean, I did get it eventually, but I don't think I got it there. Now does sound like a very Reason event for all party in New York.

Right, which was like, you know, the time that everybody was getting it was.

It December twenty twenty. Oh, then forget I didn't get it.

I got it in December twenty twenty we did was that where I got it. I would just I would just start sending nasty messages to Nick Leespie, who accused me once of giving it to him, which oh.

Really, oh no, yeah, he definitely got it during that party. Yeah, I remember that. I was very excited to meet you. I had been a longtime fan. I'm actually, I would say, even more of a fan.

Of yours now than I was previously.

You're so I got What have I done? Yes?

Yes, your sub stack is so good?

Oh pa, thank you.

I don't know.

I sign up for a lot of substacks kind of because I like the people and to be nice. But like I get them and they're like, hey, all right, I guess I don't know, But yours, I like, I look forward to it and there it's always super interesting and hilarious and I just love them.

My trick was just really not a trick.

My trick is to use material I've already it's kind of somewhat written, and then rewrite it and also make sure I send it out early Saturday morning.

My theory is on Saturday mornings.

I mean, I mean, I'm not up at five fifty or whenever I send it but it's enough time.

People are like, oh, I'll read this, you know.

Oh, are you just like tricking me into reading it? Is that what's going on here?

No, I'm just I'm just telling you.

I have a you have a whole thing.

Right.

If I didn't realize that it's every Saturday. If you ask me, like, what day does Rob Long send his you know, sub stack out, I wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, Saturdays.

But I get it.

You've totally hooked me on Saturday morning reading Rob Long.

Yeah.

You don't get many you don't get many emails anyway on Saturdays. But it's AO and it's like, you know, it's as oh, it's a three minute read.

You're like, I got three minutes.

Yes, I do have three minutes.

So how did you get into screenwriting?

And I guess I should note you are well known for being a writer on the hit show Cheers.

Yeah, that was kind of my first big gig and Pat harme my most famous gig. Depending on who you are and how old you are you used to be. I tell people I wrote for that show. They would say, oh, that was my favorite show, or that is my favorite show. That was my favorite show, And then it became the well that was my we used to watch that. I used to watch that with my family every Thursday night.

Banker like everybody else in my college class.

And I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer, although I did have the l SAT prep book in my right by my bed as I was in LA trying to break into show business.

So who among us did not have being a lawyer as a backup plan?

Yeah, you know, it's like and I like to make fun of lawyers, but the truth is that like the you know, think, I think of all the people that didn't become lawyers, and then you realize that the ones who really became lawyers, of the like psychopaths, they're the ones who like made it through. Yeah, So I so I was in a writing class in college and the guy teaching and said, oh, you should, you should go to film school. Okay, I'll do that. I mean, I'm

And I went to UH.

I once went to UCLA Film School for screenwriting after college, and I did that about a year and then I figured it.

The town out really and it was really a trade school.

And once you figure out, okay, I need an agent and here's what I got to do to get an agent, then you're just you're on. And I think it does not I should say to cautionary note to any young people listening who may want to do this. It does not work that way anymore. But back then it was kind of a wide open town.

It was really kind of fun.

What's different now.

Uh, so many more people want to be so many more people want to do that job, and they know how to do that job now every every I mean I think there's a I taught a class at NYU one semester here in New York, and the freshmen in my class, my writing class, we're smarter about the business of show business than I think really I was for ten years of being in it.

When I was in it.

Yeah, it's just and of course we have so much media now, which is destroyed our country, but we have tons of it. You know, everybody's got a TV show, but there's nine thousand channels of stuff, and they all need people to write it for now anyway, And it seems to seem to people for a long time like it's an incredibly fun job, which it really is.

Yeah, but that time is really gone.

Now it's over supply and nobody's working and everybody's cutting back, and whatever I tell people, I can always tell I can always what I would tell people that way way, show business is right now. The people in the entertainment industry always sort.

Of nod, yeah, you know, it's really rough. People not inn the entertainment industry always say yeah, crime me a river. I don't care about you guys. And I kind of like I'm on both sides of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oversupply, cause let's econ one on one, you know, so oversupply clauses that.

That I ask all of my guests is do you feel like you've made it?

No?

No, not, I mean no, But I also don't know what that means anymore. I think as you get older, I think if you're lucky, your definition of that changes. When I was younger, I thought, oh, I know what I want, you know, I want to just have a fancy car, drive run away and be a big shot and get a table into the restaurant. And then when you get that, you think, well, okay, now it's like that old Peggy Lee song.

Is that all there is? You know? You think that you know?

And they've done studies sort of mid life studies or mid to you know, you know, they always say that, you know, your middle aged crisis or something breakdown, and it usually comes from the two things that happen at the same time, which is that you're old enough to realize that you're.

That you don't have unlimited time, right, and you're also old enough to realize that the things that are really important making it you haven't been paying attention to.

I think that's and if you're lucky, you know, you realize that and then you kind of like maybe make some mid course corrections in your life or something.

And if you're unlucky, you so double down.

And now I definitely I really need car.

I got the wrong spouse. I got to change out this whole thing, you know, right.

Which is wrong restaurants restaurants, Well, I think that happens, like people think wherever they are, like, there's got to be I mean, a friend of mine told me this great story.

He was like working as a young guy and he's in the George H. W. Bush administration, right.

Very very accomplished, a bunch of people running that administration like a big deal, and he was called into the Oval Office, right center of power in the world. All of the most powerful people in the world are pretty much right there, and he's like, you know, he's in his twenties, early twenties, and he's got this book, and he's got this briefing thing, and he's been told to say this and this and this, and everything's highlighted.

And he's there and comes in, he sits down.

He comes in and he stands there and I Bush, his Bush, the first president. Bush was incredibly, incredibly generous, elegant, lovely man. He said, Dave, you gotta sit down and sit down, you kidd you don't stand Hits got a briefing book and they start talking. His boss starts talking, and Bush starts raised his hand, and he says he has a couple of questions before they are going, and then the conversation.

Just me andrews it's just these old.

Dudes, Yeah, just talking, yeah.

And just shooting it.

And then finally he realizes, oh my god, I thought there was a room where things happen, and there isn't. It's just a room a bunch of old dudes. Yes, their afternoon away. So I kind of feel like, you know, that's it's a great lesson to learn.

You know this.

I always felt like that's what that's what was happening at the White House.

Yeah, I always.

Imagined it was old dudes blessing the night away.

I'm surprised to learn there's more.

Guess be true.

Look at the world the way the world is. I guess that's probably true anyway. So I can't feel you ever make it. I think you just kind of you know, you're once you're in a room, you realize, oh my god, this is like if you ever met a really rich guy, really want to make a really rich guy miserable, just start talking about somebody who's a little bit.

I like that.

I'm gonna definitely try that the next time.

I'm in a room with some rich guys.

Oh yeah, they hate it. They hate it. They'll spend a lot of time trying to explain to you why that guy is not really that rich. I don't know, he's pretty rich. It's pretty big. Try it. It's worth it. It's worth it for those of us who are not really rich. So are very few. We have very few benefits.

That's why if you weren't a writer, what would have been planned be for Rob Long?

God, I don't know.

I don't know what I would have done. I think I think I would have been some kind of like horrible.

I would have been a lawyer, probably horribly bored now furious lawyer. I don't think I would have been very happy.

I'd have been one of those terrible lawyers, you know, and like they're the lawyers and they have a mystery novel somewhere they're writing, right, and they don't think they're John Grisham and they're not.

You know.

That would have been Yeah, well, I'm glad you didn't have to take the l SAT path that things worked out.

I took the l SAT though.

I was like, yeah, my husband was my best friend at the time, and he was like, do not be a lawyer.

I don't know any happy lawyers don't do it.

And so he really he really changed the course of my life because I was like, yeah, you're right, I shouldn't do this. Yeah, but I think about plan b's, you know, like what what the other options out there could be?

Thankfully not not being a lawyer.

But you know, so I feel like we sometimes have an idea that like, Okay, you make this decision. I don't know how old you are in your twenties or this this is what you're going to be, so you're that now yeah, forever.

But kind of sometimes how it works, like it's you know.

I think sometime how we choose to make it Yeah, But I don't think it has to be that way. You can, you know, you can.

We have a lot of I think, a lot of set you know, life, a lot of internally maintained and directed objectives and rules that we think we need to follow.

Yeah, and I don't think we do. I mean there's someone.

I guess, Yeah, we probably don't, but it feels like you do.

I my first job out of college, I was a pharmaceutical paralegal, and literally I did things like I would have to like look at giant things of documents and make sure that they were labeled numbered correctly, like one, two, three, like monkey work totally. But then my second job, like when I wanted to leave there, I was a pharmaceutical paralegal and I couldn't become a different kind of paralegal at like you know, age twenty one, it was like, no, no, you are in this.

Field and we need you.

Yeah, we need to make make sure that the pages are labeled correctly.

In the pharmaceutical world.

You can't go into that like finance world with your paralegaling.

Okay, but you did though, because you know I did.

But I but I have to say I made the most expensive mistake of my life. I went to graduate school because I thought to change my life, to change my career, I needed more school. That's I mean again, I'm an immigrant like that, that's that's sort of.

What I want. The ideas that I was raised with.

It's like, you know, keep going to school, you know, if you want to do something, to go to school for it.

Yeah, we're lied to.

I don't know, well, I don't know know if it's like I just I think it's maybe an unfortunate truth, but we should probably all push.

Back on it hard.

Yeah, the idea, I don't know. I think we had this first of all, with there's too many credentials. We all have too many credentials, and the credentials don't make you happy anyway, so they just kind of like give you the make it so that no one can sue you, or you can't be fired or I don't know whatever, people trust you somehow.

Yeah, so I'm not quite. I mean that would be a nice thing.

That for us to a culture to get away from Zeta had to be credential to do everything. Definitely, I mean, my god, you have to, Like I'm going to get this wrong, but I mean, you know, those women who do eyebrow threading, they have to go to school for something stupid. The stupidest thing ever, is it's easier to be a you know, a daycare employee than it is to be a barber, right, I mean.

What's more important your haircut are the kids?

You know?

I'm unsure me too, Like, yeah, listen, my haircut is actually really important.

That's a reflection of you actually, So yeah, you're right. Your kids can have to learn to fend from themselves anyway.

It'll be fine, you know, it'll be fine.

Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Do you have things that you worry about culturally? Like, what would you say is our largest cultural problem?

Yeah? I mean I don't know what I don't worry about because you get to be a certain point, you're like, boa, what's that going to do?

Be worrying about it? And also things tend to work out. I mean, such a ridiculous thing. I don't think that we I don't think that we are smart enough in America. I think that we're getting dumb and we're letting ourselves get dumb. Yeah, and I and I mean that in a in a broad way. I just think that we're not We don't know enough about science. We don't know enough about statistics.

Well, yeah, for sure.

We don't know enough about the physical world. And I don't mean we I mean me, I don't mean we know we know. Depending on how old you are, you can name the entire cast of Bewitched, including the two Darren's. If you're my age, you know that is, and you can probably you know, name this all of the tracks in order of you know, Taylor Swift's You know.

I can probably do that.

My daughter is a big Swift Ye.

Yeah, I mean like, which is fine.

It's just that there's other stuff like I I you, I'm sort of right wing myself, so I'm like, I surprised. A friend of mine. Uh, this comes from a family business here in on Long Island and they make Geiger counters and nuclear stuff detectors.

They've done for years.

And he remembers as a kid being woken up at like three in the morning by the state police and they're like flights, flashing the house and knocking on the door and they're trying it.

They're waking up, waking up the family, waking up with their dad because they needed him, wow, to go to three Mile Island.

I thought he was in trouble.

No, well that's what he was. An emergency call, like we need all of you when you open up your thing, we need your factory, we need to get all this stuff. We gotta go to the three Island because I just have the three Round Island disaster, right, And I said, wow, so amazing, and he goes, yeah, well here's what's even more amazing. People forget there was no disaster. M there there was no leak.

There was there was.

I thought was I don't know enough about it.

Neither.

They thought there was and checked it out, and it's like, no, we're fine. Everything worked. And yet that moment managed to change everything, the whole perception of nuclear power in America. It ended the nuclear power initiatives everywhere. Yeah, and made us more reliant on foreign oil. So if you connected the dots, you could say, okay, so because we are too dumb to understand the complicated stuff about it, which is not even that complicate about nuclear power, we believe

Yeah, but.

You know, a standard view.

I don't think that that's I mean, you know, there's some fringe views now that have other ideas. I mean, I think we once knew that, you know, nineteen terrorists, a lot of them were Saudi's, blew planes into our buildings, and.

That's how nine to eleven happened.

But yeah, and I'm guilty of that.

Like, Okay, I wish I should know that, like we should. We should all. I think we have this idea that as as civilization progresses and as things get, as we move forward, things certain things should be easier. And I think, no, there's more to know.

You have to know more, right, Like a problem with school these days is not hard enough because the kids need to know.

Agree, I so agree.

There's you know, in New York where we lived, there was this whole culture of gifted and talented education and you had to really fight to get your kids into it. And I was like, how don't necessarily think my kids are gifted or talented. I just want them to work hard, Like why does it have to be a test or whatever? Why can't I just be like I opt into giving them the hardest work you have available, and that'll be that.

But you couldn't do that because you know obviously.

Yeah, it is funny.

I mean I'm actually going back to I mean I should say, but I'm going back to school.

I'm starting school again.

Oh wow.

Yeah, I am going to Princeton Theological Seminary. I'm going to get an m div I want to be an ordained episcopal minister if you can believe it. Wow, Because like I said with my friends, like if you think I'm insufferable, now, yeah, wait until I have a collar. But you know, I go and look, it's a great place, but it's a it's a it's school. Now I'm in a school in decades and decades and there's just a lot of support now and Princeton.

Yeah, moving to Princeton in a week.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Uh.

And but the amount of what I've discovered at schools now, Like I mean, I know this is a special kind of school, but there's a lot of counseling available and study help available, and there's like all this stuff available.

It's very huggy.

Now, yeah, I'm very huggy. There wasn't when I was you know, I don't know what. I don't know what it would happen if you were at a mental health problem when I was in college. I think you just they just assumed you did anyway, So hey, good luck with that once you get more sleep, you know, that would I think that would have been the solution.

That's amazing.

What made you do that, well, you know, it's like the same whole thing.

Like you get to a certain age of like, Okay, let's I've been writing about stuff for a long time, actually write about.

Bigger stuff, think about bigger stuff. It's also kind of maybe another problem I think with our culture is that we have a very we we've isolated the big questions like faith or lack of faith and put them off.

Okay, on one day a week, I'll think about that stuff. Right, just comes over here in this department of the bookstore, and I'm not sure that's great. And I'm I'm in a Episcopal Piscopalian, which is about the grooviest, you know,

Right as? I don't know, you know, a little.

Era Episcopalians, though we don't we don't even think we're like, we actually redefine the word sin.

Just so you know that's how good we are.

I'm going to I'm going to use the word groovy, just homage to you.

I actually just remembered that at the COVID Libertarian Party you were excuse me, you were with Andrew Claven. Oh yeah, well, I feel like talks about this kind of stuff a lot like faith in your everyday life.

Yeah.

I mean, Drew is an old friend of mine, and he is incredibly thoughtful. He wrote a wonderful book about it about his conversion, and Drew is like, is the first person to uh, you know, in the crew that play the Crucible. You know, it'll be Drew who points at me and screams, you know, blasphemer. You know he will like that, he said, he will gladly light the pyre under me when they stay for heresy.

That's kind of sweet. Thing to do like only a friend would, but he does. He believes that it's a part of your fabric of what we're doing here. And I think we look. I mean, people go around saying.

Oh, I don't know, you know, I'm an atheist Dominique. You know, maybe I think atheism is a form of faith, by the way.

Agree, yeah, it's religion, religion.

Yeah, yeah, And I think you know, people will been to yoga class lately, like people are chanting and doing stuff and drinking you know, special tea and lighting Palo Santo.

And yeah, and you know there.

Or meditating or doing all sorts of things that I mean, there's a hunger, like you can't lose the human beings are never going to involve past the awe of what it.

Is to be a human being. It's like we can't and if we do that, I think we're losing everything. I mean, I was in.

I was in Peru last week, of all places, and there was a moment it was kind of cloudy. But there's one moment we haven't a little Peru. It was in the in the jungle in the Amazon Park and the night sky clears and it's.

And there's no moon so it's dark, but you see all of the stars. We don't see them in the city. Really, you got to go to a they called Dark Skies Parkers, and we just see them all. When you see them all you're like, oh, I get it, I get it. I get why the Greeks wrote about all this stuff. I get why they invented all these gods. I get it. Like if you see this show every single night, every single night, better than Cheers, Well, I don't know, that's a good question.

Well it's free or it's free, but that we just were just because we have cities and yeah, that kind of thing.

We don't see that not that often. But when you see it, you think, oh, okay.

Yeah, I think that those moments where you know, you feel the whole world.

I don't know.

It's been a year definitely of coming back to religion for me, I know for a lot of other people.

I can't wait to hear about your journey at Princeton. I think that's like a really amazing thing to do.

Well, I'm excited.

I mean I'm excited and also weirdly terrified because it's I mean, I just was looking I just putting my schedule together and like I had to. You have to register for classes right like on your little they have apps now for that, and then and then it instantly populates with the curriculum and like this, I have a paper due. I'm already I'm already nervous about the paper

I'm like too old.

To see student's.

Exactly what because.

I'm like, I wait a minute, I'm a little too old to be taking your stupid tests. Be the cranky old man in every class.

I love it, Rob Long, You're so awesome. I've enjoyed this conversation so much. And here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.

I'll tell you this.

This is what I try to say to myself all the time, and it is true, even though it feels like it's not true.

You should just remember that there is so much time. Just remind yourself there is so much time left.

I love that because I always feel like I'm running out of time.

It's over, It's over, It's totally over.

Yeah, Thank you so much, Rob Long, catch him everywhere.

He's so amazing.

Definitely subscribe to his substack because I think that that's like.

An underrated just piece of genius.

Listen to his show Martini Shot, and catch him anywhere that you find his writing.

Thank you, Ray was a lot of fun.

It really was.

Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco which shows subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.