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

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Make this altitude like in one flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So many good sir. Thanks for having me here. This is going to 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 10 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 Neville for 10 years.

There's six books in the series and a Netflix-made movie out of it that came out last year. And then another book a little bit for older audiences called Be Some Beauty, which is going to be a TV 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.

And 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 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 kind of catchy. So we could do four of each of these and then add four people you're interested in. It works for me. Following or who people should know more about. And you so delightfully put out these cards and offered me dealers' choice.

And there are many things we could go to here. Give people some foreshadowing. There's intermittent pop star. Cross-collar dating. Your bull might be gay. NYC LA, but we're not going to start there. We're going to start with follow the flow. Speaking of catchy. So what does follow the flow mean? It's interesting because every time I've decided to write a novel, like what my next book is going to be. And I telegraph 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. Whatever. And what I realize 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 going to 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 going to 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 creator. They're going to tell me what to do. They're going to be the ones

who tell you what the next book is going to be. They're the ones who are going to come up with the chapter titles. They're going to do everything. I just have to show up. I have so many follow-ups. You know, man, I dive in. Please. All right. So I aspire to embrace this. Yeah. I am like a over-caffeinated Swiss manufacturing plant manager with OCD and various other monkish tendencies. Yeah. So I think the manager is kind of running the asylum. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

On my side. And that doesn't mean I don't have moments of inspiration. But I justify this by having a schedule in sohors. Yes. 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. I 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 kind of funny. And we're sitting here in Austin. There's a lot of

conspirituality here. A lot of aspiring shamaness earth goddesses running a monk. Yeah. And their male equivalents. Yeah. 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 infer. So how do you precipitate or think about inviting the muse? Because you could just be waiting for 10, 20 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 Gnival 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 Gnival. 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

work. 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 going to spend two years following the wrong impulse, which the wrong impulse was money, easy route, right? Be easy route. 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 of 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? It's still under now. Yeah. Okay. All right. Soon. Because we're about to take it out. Meanwhile, my poor agent, he knows that whatever I say,

the next thing is going to be in his knock will be the next thing. So I tell him, I'm just going to try this idea as a short story because, 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 short story. Must appease the talent. Yeah. And he's just waiting for me to come back with never land wonderland. He doesn't care what it is. Hopefully ever after, Prince's princesses, you know,

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 felt with school for Geneva, 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 a 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 I am, this is now my church. People are going to join. You know, I just need to write that thing. 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. In fact, it's funny. We took it to my current publisher, like 10 pages of it and just the general thing of the ideas. And I've been with them for 10 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 far from it as possible. They wouldn't even entertain the idea. Like wouldn't even go there. And it still did nothing to shake me whatsoever.

You know, like I was just like, well, and it's funny because my parents, my agent, everyone's like, clearly your second thing should be to capitalize on that and nothing in my body will let me do it. So I've been happy as a clam working on this other thing. And I realized that it comes down to what you want your life to be. And mine is not getting diminishing returns on the ghost of a

past work, 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 going to prod a little bit. You can, you can refuse. Yeah. Is it fiction? Non-fiction? It's fiction. Okay.

It's fiction. It's a fiction that I would like to happen. So it's a predictive fiction. And it's so funny because when we announce it, which will be soon enough, all these things that we're going to talk about today, it's all there. So it's like, it's like the usual suspects with Kobayashi on the cup, wait a minute, everything. It's all going to make sense when we're done. I cannot wait to see how your bowl might be gay if it's 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 enthused as you have very nice handwriting too. So we've pulled one of the orange cards. Does this purple give stories away tie back? It does. It's what you're 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 going to take me that long to write, promote, take it out. And I need to be sure that it's not going to 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 made it through all the ups and downs. I feel like it's going to last. And so first thing I do when I get a big idea that I'm excited about is I start to tell everybody. I just, I'm like someone should do

this. I tell my writer friends. I tell anybody. Sometimes I'll just have meetings with Hollywood companies about adapting to the 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 ideas for something and someone 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 when 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. Heather Jett has an amazing Amish style beard. Despite the fact that he is an incredibly accurate futurist predicting. 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. 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 of implementing those ideas. It's

totally selfish. It's not a generous thing at all. 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 going to be able to do. But I'm jealous of songwriters who, if they have a great idea, they make their one song. You know, I mean, like, this is every time I have a big idea, it's a couple of years, you know, this might seem like a silly question. 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 go at I mean, right? If you were like, I'm going to start a waste management company and Tuscallusa. And I'd be like, no, I'm not going to 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 because when I first had it a few years ago, I thought, 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 could do this and this

place to my strengths and move this around? Then all of a sudden, you realize you're ready. You know what I mean? So I think it's about like school free and evil came out at a time where that year, there were eight other books about magic schools because it had been 10 years since Harry Potter and it felt like 10 years later, the floodgates opened and everyone was like, now all the narcissists who think they can

compete with JK Rowling are ready to show their wares. And so an agent was frantic. The publisher was nervous. Everyone was nervous because there were much bigger books. I think Chris Kulfer, who was on Glee had one and Mattel was putting one out called Ever After High, which Ever After High School for Un evil, like it just, they were so similar. And I was never worried because I'm like,

mine is so weird. It's so strange. It's just so uniquely me. Like I just knew there wasn't going to 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

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 we're going to 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. Yeah, I wasn't ready. That's it. You

are. I wasn't ready. But now I looked at it. I was like, oh, I think I'm ready. And that's uncanny. First of all, and I'm, God, I want to, I can't wait until dinner. Yeah. Anyway, so there's that second thing that what you said reminded me of is there's a very famous Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor named Marcel Garcia. And last I checked, he's nine time, maybe 10 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. You know, 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. And his response, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close because my friend co-founded 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 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, selflessly 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, where you have this differentiator, which is also not to view anything zero some, but a huge competitive advantage. Well, the other thing that was interesting to help me the

most, and I wish this on every young writer. Anytime I did something for money or something that wasn't 100% like me, that someone hired me to do, they 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 in my 20s and 30s. It just, they never made it there. So I think that was kind of the, the world kind of telling, because it happens so many times, at least 10

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? DC 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 20 page thing you're doing for DC Comics means you've arrived. 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 characters. They're just moving things around because it's the DC machine, whatever. And, you know, I spent six months on it, obviously doing my 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 fizzled, 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. I remember poor belecored agent was like, what? And I was like, thank God, you know, like it kept the theme that narrative in my life complete because 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 as I'm 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 want to take a photograph from the top when we're done with this of these cards, I'm gonna turn this over. All 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 burying the lead. So your bull might be gay. What's the story here? It's in quotation marks, which is, I told you when we started, I told you that none of these are euphemisms, right? None of these are types. So this is the story. So I lived in New York for 22 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, a helicopter farmer from the city. The helicopter farmer. Do we remember been anywhere near a farm who has thoughts all the time? You know what you should really do. That's, that's yeah, which he finds very amusing. So he's got

over 100 cattle. And he's got these 60 heifers every year that get impregnated by one bull, right? There's one bull that does all the work. And he keeps a bull for, in this case, he had a bull for four years. A miss bull. When I saw it, I was like, oh man, where he walks like the ground like shakes, the females part, like bow their head. It's like the lion cage, 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 it is that bull. They need to spend time with that bull and everything I'll be fine. They need brown statues. 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 granddaughter, 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 bull 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 it's really nice to me. And it's just this very like sweet bull. And over the next like few weeks, every time I see the bull, he's off like picking flowers or hanging out with this little orphan male calf and like licking him. The females are literally just staring at him, you know, because 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 because this is, this is where it gets interesting. Yeah. He's where he's like, that's impossible. He's like, you know, we tested it. It's firm. It's very healthy. It's like, it's a good bull. And the chance of a little bull being gay and not impregnating these 60 females, he's like, it's maybe like 0.05%.

In my head, all I'm thinking about is worst case scenario because if that bull 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 calves that's coming. And 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 going to prepare for it. I'm not going to 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 this program again, you're doing this, you bring out that fancy machine that like triggers that like, I'm spending in my head, I'm getting them to spend thousands of dollars on this gay bull to make sure it still gets them pregnant. Like artificial insemination

everything. And I realized 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 ensure 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 because he says that costs money. It just does. You spend too much money on things that statistically shouldn't happen. And I thought,

there's something profound in that. So your bull might be gay has become a kind of like bag waving model because it turns out the bull was not gay. It's secretly got them all. I'll private what we were weren't watching. That's the funny part. So he was right. And therefore it validates, you know, he thinks it 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 you're partner when

you're catastrophizing, you can say, so man, this may be a your bull might be gay 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 very similar in this way. I haven't had the gay bull experience where the thought to be gay bull experience. But you and I have bonded over this first 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. Look, I literally I'm like, you're the worst case scenario person. So he's in charge of ensuring against those things. And now that he's been with me a while in a way that's become his thing. And he's even more kind of

obsessive about predicting 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 a little lucky that I'm not the one saying it. You're gonna have a source of some air worrying. I think having a partner who has the opposite viewpoint, if I was with someone who also had the worst case scenario dangerous, because then you're just who's gonna screw in the light bulb when you're too busy worrying. Sure, he gets all the other

things that are never gonna happen. You know, at some point, you know, someone has to take care of the basics. So I can't imagine. Yeah, I think I think can around to them. You know, the the outsourcing you're worried to your assistant or EA makes me think of this chapter, which is an excerpt that I had my very first book from AJ Jacobs. I think it was literally called outsourcing your life from originally S. Quire. I want to 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, age is amazing. It's written a lot of great books. 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 going to be like a mega mogul one day, you just will. Because like, that's part of your thinking in a way that it is. Well, they, the Andy Grove only paranoid survive. Yes, that's the paranoid stab 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 an 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 that

are extraordinarily difficult. What would be an example? An example would be 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 going to do? What am I writing about? What am I doing? Because in this case, it's a general world that I don't know anything. Oh, you had to work with their characters? Their characters. It's not original. It's working with their characters. So that's where it all went wrong. Yeah, you were.

I was already. You were already in trouble. So in that case, I was like, it's something I'm looking for a storyline. I'm just looking for, all right, knowing what I'm interested in. Give me some characters from there that are interesting. Give me a world that's interesting. So rather than it being like, make me a list of this or something very like task going into it. It'll just be like, show me something. That's kind of like the bigger thing. Then giving freedom for him to structure it,

him to figure out how he's going to present it, him to have investment in it. The same thing when we did be some beauty, we were presenting it to the studios to get a buyer for the TV series. I said, how do we present this? How do we present the book? Come up with whatever you think is 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 tasks or into things and more like, worry about this for me. I'm going to ask very maybe boring, maybe interesting, we'll see. But certainly, kind of mundane practical question. Do you do all your own inbox management? Or do you have?

I do all that stuff. I do. All your inboxes. Now, is that a manageable inbound volume? We've just figured out policies and maybe how to hide yourself effectively so they 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. Yes, he's keeping the trends running on time. 100% 100% 100% but I still manage my own email inbox. I just am 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 I get asked to speak constantly, whether it's 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. You are a

far better speaker and presenter than I am. I don't know. You know what, if they're teenagers, I feel completely at home. Adults sometimes I'm like, are your minds frozen? Is there anything I can do to do to a way at the calcification on your brain? Sometimes I feel that way. So he's job is to figure out

somehow subliminally without making a mess of it is do they have a budget like what's it? It's all that you have rules or at least guidelines in place where you're like, hey, this is the lowest hurdle. Yes, etc. Okay. Your bull might be gay. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies

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more, earn more and build long-term wealth. So why wait? Visit Wealthfront.com slash Tim to get started. That's Wealthfront.com slash Tim. This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. Let's hop to the secret card, which was a last-minute edition. 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 is 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 and the Amazon. 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. I mean art is 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, to this. But then he has this additional talent of 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 is insane. And the fact that this guy is in the most famous person in the world to me is shocking. How did you come across? I was in North Carolina. We are 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 them on Instagram and I just think it's the most amazing thing. As soon as you look at it, it's art you're going to 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. This like rugged supermodel who then, I don't know, he used his wealth to then like do what he really wanted to do, which was like the Indiana Jones. And then incredible. But 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 me take a look. You have to see it. Because once you see it, you're going to be like, you're going to want to like make them your best friend. Oh wow. Okay. All right. That's wild. And that's just one. That is wild. And I realize that we might be able to splice some stuff in from from Instagram with credit and everything shown obviously. And if you go back to the great deal, just see tons of them. Oh yeah. Okay. So this is at Christopher Marley studio.

It's spelled like Bob Marley Christopher Marley studio. Almost 60,000 followers. It should be 60 million. All vertebrates are reclaimed specimens. None are killed for art. That was going to be one of my questions. Okay. Yes. All right. This is going to 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. And 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 going to go to one here that I can't read, which is now pulling my eye. See. I thought it was crunch. And then I was like, Oh, wait a second. That's an A. Oh, that's an A. Coach Alpha. What are who is coach Alpha? Okay. I realized 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. 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 the thing. Yeah. So after we're going back to A. Yes. So after Gen Z is generation. 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. It's just impossible. And when I was a tutor, I was a tutor for 10 years. And what I loved the most was when, because 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 take. 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 worrying 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 writer.

And I still feel like this is going to 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

because 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, 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 this 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 should set to him. I said, at his whole goal of life was to be popular and party and all that stuff. And I said, I don't know if harding 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 want to do is not drink and like hang out with your friends. It's you want to drink so you can beat them up at the end of the night. Every night ended

in aggro. And so I said, I research. I said, there's a UFC gym like four minutes from your house. Go take a class. 16 year old, go take a class. Take a class. Love's it. Is now there like three, four times a week, having the time of his life, drinking went way down. Everything will go back on track, got a job to fund the UFC thing. Everything's fine. Wow. No more beating up the brother if I didn't need to. He's getting you can beat up anyone. Just need to know it. But what

parents going to say go fight after school? It just don't go 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 teen groups, like I was just thinking about the fact that on any given night, if you're an alcoholic or you have a drug addiction or whatever,

you can just go to an AAMD 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, click me from wrong. In fact, Jackson, please. You held on to your tutoring because it 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 bug that came your way through the writing. Is that a

fair description? We don't have to spend too much time on it, but 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 backup in the form that you did. 100% 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 for money, it increases the chance that what you're writing, you're trying to get a mold. So Coach Alfa, 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 the targeted parents, maybe the targeted kids. I mean, if this for whatever reason doesn't get takers, maybe this coach Alfa, 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. You know what I mean? And sometimes you can develop a selective deafness around the people you're closest to. So then 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 is like a total parents' misdemeanors, 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 was 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 going to go make the bed, they're now thinking of your approval. And little by little, it's going to stop them doing it.

Because it's now become your thing. Leave it. It's their thing. How many kids have you tutored over the years? When you said, Oh, God, at least a few hundred. Two 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, I was about 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. That's 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 do so? Why does he

want to drink? That's not enough. Yeah, because he wants to fight at the end of the night. 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 himself? It seems he's 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, you know, what do you want? In front of the class, so there's usually 12 people.

And that's when you start to get somewhere. Because, you 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. And 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 essay 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 as I was working on School for Gnival, the thing I had to think about it. 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 realized 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 want to do. You know, Coach Alpha, I love it. All right. This is needed. I was very fortunate when I was 15, 16, I 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 ended in very sort of terminal way. We should talk about another person on my list then. Let's do it. You just moved Austin. His name is Mike Reggula, R-E-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 down 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 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 COA, one COA for course of action. We'll find it and we'll link to 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 his kid named Noah, who I was obsessed with. And of course he's now married with children and everything like that. 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 to 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 he's just a special person. And so I just feel like we're 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 a next seal 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 please. Oh, he's friends with all your friends. Oh, there we go. There you go. That's probably why I heard his name. All right. Does anything catch your eye that might make for a good next Scooby snack conversationally speaking? We could go to... You know what here? How about this? That's a good one. All right. Intermittent pop star.

This is in the absurd category. I said absurd category because I should not still be doing this. But in 2017, I went to this book festival for the first time in Charleston called The All Fest. That is like the biggest book festival for teenagers in the country. Yeah, about 20,000 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 you're publisher can't pitch you. It's like one of these sun valley. Yeah, you must be invited. I 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 $12 to get into. It's 3,000 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 my life. It is an abomination to make 3,000 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 going to be amazing. And it's going to be awesome. And it's going to 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 everyone who knows me knows this, but I should probably say it. I grew up a huge Madonna fan. Like that was my pop star growing up. I'm obsessed with Taylor Swift. I'm obsessed with anyone who can translate, you know, whatever their talent is into some kind of cool showmanship. Cut to two years later,

they were like, no one wants to host this show. Do you want to host it? And I was like, did I learn enough credit to be like, okay, I said, sure, as long as I can completely redo it, 100% my way. How did they think to come to you? Had you planted the seeds somehow? Were you like, not a bad show I could do better on the way out? I didn't say I. I think I said, I think I said, I think I said, this could be better. So when we do love your feedback.

Yeah, I think this could be better. So they came to me. And then I was like, you know, we're going to do the variety show. It's going to be all new games. And it's going to 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 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, that 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 entertain an audience of 3000 people for 10 minutes? I fell in love

with it and I 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, because it's so much work. It's so much money. It's my own. It's so much work. So much time right in the red column. Just throwing money on fire. 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 it. I get to it. Every two years.

It's a Julia Roberts strategy when she was 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, you know, I'm crazy in the weird thing. But because she did it every other movie, whenever she came back, I was like,

oh, thank God. She backed it back to doing, you know, pretty woman. So what's been important for me is it's less about, you get more than enough attention for the books that everything I don't need. It's not a, it's sure it is a narcissistic thing. What am I saying? What am I saying? What am I saying? You such a lie. I don't lie. Terrible. But I think what I enjoy more than the actual performance is the run-up. It's the day before rehearsal start. I'm always nauseous.

I don't want to do it. I don't want to go through that whole experience because it's everything I'm bad at. There's a Japanese word. Have you heard Miss Sogi? Miss Sogi. There's a book about this. Then I have to look it up to find the happiness. I think Mike was telling me about this. 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. 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 going to work because always it's more ambitious and more interesting. So it's funny because this one was bigger and crazier. I just did it a couple of 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 skit what we did. And someone goes, what are you going to do now?

Are you going to sing? And I was like, haha. And then I thought, huh? Well. So, you know, I mean, I doubt that's what's going to be. But 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, I mean, I guess for you. 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 backup dancers. And he's one of them. So it's like, we're almost like, we're on this ride together where it can end in super embarrassment because you've got thousands of

people with their phones out. Like, yeah. There's no you had to be there. Let me show you what happened. It feels very high stakes in the moment. So, you know, we're writing is never in the moment, really? Because you were constantly revising. This is immediate. And I just think it's awesome. It's also out of your head. Like you mentioned. Yes. The dancing that I always feel in incredible shape, mentally and physically after six weeks of this stuff. I'm going to 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. Yeah. category. So I never did drugs going up. I mean, maybe did pop 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 thing off as 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 from my entire life in

terms of anxiety and just getting stuck in kind of ruts of feeling. And it was 2021, January, where I just remember talking about follow the flow. I stood up, went to my computer, remember being in Miami and my parents house, googling ketamine treatment, New York City. I knew nothing about ketamine. Like nothing. How is it even in your field? I don't just popped into that. I don't know. I just remember going to ketamine 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 going to 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. Number two was, did you have a volatile childhood where emotions were not

particularly welcome? And I was like, check. Check. The number three goes, 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 I was the first time anyone had asked the question in the right way because I knew the idea of 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 that point four or five years into meditation. He's like, you're going to have a very good response. He just like, and so I started ketamine treatments at that time. I think you do six and 12 days. And then you go back for a booster. In my case, it's every 10 weeks. And I still go and I changed my life. I mean, it was like, I feel like a totally different person. Because what it did is it woke up parts of my brain that I didn't know existed

because they had shut off so early that 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 10 weeks I'd go learn a million things, work on those things in between, go back. And it also 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 a ketamine 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 I've changed my mind. Yeah. In those just to establish some basics with the whatever it was, let's call it six sessions in 12 days. So that loading phase, let's call it induction phase. Those were IV or IV 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. I always

don't get a great 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. And you're also in a sense a great candidate slash profile because you don't have any history of alcohol use. 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 anesthetics. 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 ketamine to be incredibly interesting. There's a lot of research people can find on PubMed and elsewhere looking at the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine 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 Dr. John Crystal of Yale who did he was the primary investigator on a lot of the seminal work investigating ketamine as antidepressant in humans and developed some of the early protocols with his fellow researchers and scientists, which is tricky because I didn't have anybody I

talked to people close to me that 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. It's a lot of work. And the meditation background also serves you. And 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? And in those single sessions,

what does the format look like? Music, no music, visual snow, nothing. 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 uncomfortable things that I'm not dealing with. And you know, it's almost like the way I describe it is sometimes I feel like what the ketamine is 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 going to have a little moment. That's when the traffic helicopter circle the traffic jam. 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 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, one hour, 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. So by the time you're in your Uber home and then 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 to reduce at that point. Yes. But I left in a few weeks later, I realized, oh my God, that mid-back thoracic pain that I 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 have it. If you don't deal with that psychological stress in my return. But 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 I never have that. So for people who want to learn more, certainly John Crystal with a K crystal and Andrew Huberyn also recently had an episode related to all things. I mean, I'm sure I'm involved a lot of new diligence. So you can check that out. The double. This is in the excited about category. What is the double? Super excited about. 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, and the more I think about it and the more I've gone through my journeys and all my kind of evolutions, I'm realizing that most of the time you're the shadow self. You, it's you, 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 if you look at all my fiction, all my fiction is about some version of twins, one good, one evil, one this, one that, 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, we have to get control of that shadow. And sometimes I'm like, well, no, maybe I just need to not be here and let the double be in charge, you know? And so I think it's something I'll be exploring and 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 because the shadow is actually staring at the back. So when does this

thought, this concept come up for you? I have a friend who's calling in almost all circumstances, certainly compared to me, Matt Mullenweg. And there have been times when I have thought to myself, you know, what would Matt Mullenweg do? Like almost like a reminder bracelet because he's a lab for JC and so on. And 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. I'm like, pause. What would Matt Mullenweg do? And then I'm like, you know what he, how he would handle this is he would do, 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 you're less yourself doing something or I guess in this case, you're 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 going to be on the Kelly Clarkson show two years ago. And I'd never been on kind of like a TV show like that. And you know, it was live-sudenty audience. It was straight out of COVID. And I was like, 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. So the publicist was like, we booked your own Kelly and I was like, I don't know, especially after

lockdown. And I was just like, not ready for it. It was the for I think one of the first shows that she had people back. I remember in the dressing room, starting to freak out on panic and I could feel that panic rising. Then 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.

And that was the first time I'd ever felt something like that because I went and remember sitting on the couch and feeling totally chill. David Dukovny was next to me. I had grown up watching ex files. I made a sex joke with him in the first like two seconds of the thing. I was just like totally chill. And I just was like, what? I'm literally watching myself. What is happening? And that was the first time I got a sense of, oh, wait, the possibility that there's a better

version that can handle every situation. And I remember the other thing that gave me a clue was Tiger Woods. It 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 he 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 a useful thing that also helped me start to explore it was I started doing IFS. You know, the external family systems. Yeah, I've had the founder Dixwards on the podcast. Oh, no way. 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 ketamine treatments plus IFS plus Kelly Clarkson plus that Kelly Clarkson 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 going to 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 I'm bitten. 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 QBs next. QBs. QBs is this quarterbacks? It is. And this is so funny. The most spiritual revelations I've ever had watching a TV show have come watching that Netflix series quarterback. Oh, I haven't seen I've only heard of it. It's amazing. It follows Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariotta for the 2022 season. I feel like I know you pretty well. How did you end up watching Crittabax? Taylor started dating Travis. Then I felt like okay, T-Swift is

another car. Yeah, we'll get there. 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 because I didn't have a reason. You know what I mean? I was no team I was rooting for in the dolphins always sucked for a long time. So Taylor gave me more reason. And so I just watched it because I'd also been hearing good things and I love sports stocks. I just

feel like it's the closest thing I can feel to like high performance. You played a lot of tennis. Yeah, also if we really don't have the background. So I start watching it. And I realized 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 where we're talking about 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 squalm, 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.

Orders are 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 pages. 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 going to 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 to what's

going to happen. 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 buss, whatever, you got a new play coming. And so each one is so different. My home 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. He can sort of like move and adjust at the last minute. And he's so

sort of confident in that ability. Correct cousins is more like me where he's not particularly physically adept. But he's brainy and nerdy. And so where the other quarterbacks are in the gym like doing all their physical training, he's at biofeedback sessions because 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? Is

there about to hit the ball? Because the pressure of hitting the right shot gets them at the last and then a second. And his job is to stay relaxed. So he has an extra millisecond of options. And so I was just something about that show where I was like these guys have learning. They don't call the play, but they're the executing guys. And I just think like that's like 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. I got to check it out. Yeah. I got to check it out. It did something to it. We had a deep level. All right. We're going to jump straight to T Swift because knowing very little about Taylor Swift, but watching what was called the Americana documentary. I have a fascination in the phenomenon of Taylor Swift's and 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 football came into Taylor's life, somebody who is more tuned to all of these pop phenomena said millions of people, Swifties, are about to become very interested in football. And that's going to be a curious development. Where does that lead? Okay. So T Swift.

It's funny because 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 art. I need you to be on the platform. I was just sitting to get ahead. Which is as an artist, how do you sustain a career for a long period of time without it just being a downward diminishing returns? And what I loved about Madonna was that reinventioning

the ability to completely reinvent herself. And really, really ended doing it. And she did it for so long. And then now she's in her close to 70 and in her legacy celebration era, 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's on tour, it's the eros tour. It's this idea that like you're going to 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 because that's not what is happening. And that's not what you want. So I think it's why when I went to write fairytales, I think the fact that I am such a

also 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 that now that she's so popular, it's almost more ridiculous when I tell people like what we did both move to Missouri for six foot five aggressively masculine athletic men. So I do feel like a special kinship. Maybe you're light. Maybe you're a double established. I wonder

about that. I had a one of the ketamine treatments like that. I got you babe for the Kelly Clarkson. She's like we've done this a million times. Oh yeah, I would be pretty awesome. Can she deposit some of that fun? But it is this idea of like how do you make it so not staying in the box is your thing because that was my honestly 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 Nortiu, 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 brand, which I did obliquely, but the four hour work week four film the blank,

right? kind of franchise the whole thing find splice it, milk it for all its worth. Do the three hour work week 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 then I wait a second. This is 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, right? Like 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. It's surely Robert's with her long words. That's right. I'll hear it 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 is 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, 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 seemed so it's so funny because

that anyone would question that. It just seemed so obvious because 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. I did. Including some of my close friends like Matt Mollemite, who I mentioned, 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, I had he knew there's no reason why my publishers know this, although I did tell them. And to their credit, you know, they bit, right, they were willing to go with the four hour body, which then took off and became very successful. But he knew that I had basically all of my workouts recorded since age 16. Like he knew the extent to

which I had captured data and experimented on myself. And to him, he's very productive. And in Silicon Valley, he's like, yeah, like the productivity stuff. That's great. He's like, but for his peer group, he's like, they're all incredibly good at that. 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. 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 so obvious, right? What are people asking you? What do people ask me? How do I fix my teenager? Yeah. Okay. So what's what I'm going to write about? What's staring you in the face? What's staring your face? Yeah. What is just staring in the face? All right. Should we go to another person? Sure. We're really interested in these two authors who

I just feel like we're in the age of hyper productivity, 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 told on to and the ones that were we start to get obsessed over and in a weird, ironic way are the most popular antique talk or the ones

who release a book like every eight years. So the he have Donna Tart as one author and the other one that sort of goes together with her, her name is Hania and the last name is Yana Ghihara and Donna Tart wrote Goldfinch, Secret History. She's only written three books. She writes one every 10 years and she's due for exactly 10 years. So she did one at 29, 39, 49 and her 59 birthday just passed. So we should be seeing one any moment. And then Hania wrote a little life, which a little life. Yes,

which I read Yana Ghihara. Yeah. Yeah. She's the editor of the tea 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 Tart, there's a whole section of TikTok dedicated to her. Little life, 10 years later, it's like

number 20 on Amazon TikTok's obsessed with it. And it's because 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 thing, you know, that is undeniable. It will exist forever because it's that committed. And so those two authors, I think, are assigned that no matter how

adult or stupid or short-term thinking or, you know, monkey meme we get, it doesn't matter. That stuff still holds because 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, let's just take as a category of profession who release books infrequently, who are 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, which is a feeling. Together with Sally Rooney, who is another author for I'm obsessed with, these three authors are able to access a certain kind of primal nerve of feeling because 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 10 years crafting this meticulous world and all that sort of stuff. I've read plenty of books like that. But there's something about the 10 years that is spent doing that work we talked about. What does a character want? Why do they want it? Why do they want that? Why do they want that? They do it for every character so that when you're reading it, you're just in this emotional soup

that is undeniable. It's just so affecting to everybody who reads it. So there's this category of book that I can recommend to anybody who comes to me and says, what books should I read? I always tell them Secret History by Donna Tart, Little Life by Hania, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Those are my first three recommendations. It doesn't matter. Man, woman, young, old, it always works out. I have not read any of those three. Which one should you start with? That's the question.

Which one should I start with and why? Oh boy. They're also different. It depends on their mood. Little Life. You're going to tear it up my mood then. Little Life is if you are in the mood to be kind of torn apart. Not right now. Yeah. So then I would wait for that one. That one will take it. It's almost like a hijack. I'm open to that. Yeah. It's an emotional hijack. You will disappear. I'm open to that. Just now, 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 20s. It is just crystal clear and brilliant writing of the emotions of what it's like to be young. I just think for anyone who has ever been young, when you read it, it takes you back. It takes over everything. I think that one, and you'll tear through it in a day and a half because you won't be able to stop.

Seek our history as if you just want great writing and feel like you're in a different world. Because Donna takes her 10 years to take us to 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 Donna Tart. If you want to be emotionally thrown into a well, honey, and if you want to just have like the equivalent of a Taylor Swift album in

prose that is much more articulate, you go to the Sally Reign. Perfect. All right, where should we go next? Now I'm enjoying this game because as we flip these over, we get to get to fewer and fewer options. These three interrelated aren't going to all go together. 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 what that is. Couples, language. Maybe we should start with cross collar dating,

and because that's sort of the unlocking key. Have you never heard this term? I've never heard this term. I know it across color 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

your last forever because they just will now watch. 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 22 years. I did it 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 were doing jobs that a monkey would not understand. Like, who'd you explain your job to a monkey? And neither. Like, oh, I write, it wasn't going to work.

Yeah. Yeah. So then when I met who like is just in the earth, he can tell you when it's going to rain, it felt like it was just such 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. Yeah. So 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 off. And so I just think of like, what was I doing? I should have known from the start. And I think I started to sense it as time went on that I needed to view with somewhat ultra grounded. And so that's why I think cross color 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. It's maybe also different neuroses. That's it. Just probably good. Yeah. He's thinking about every one of s***s and neuroses is about does he have enough money to sell this group of calves for that? You know, like I'm sure it'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, this is a lot. Not sure what this is. But you do.

A hundred percent. He calls it the dance of the red shoes as a metaphor in general. 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 it. You know, so I think that's what it is. You know, and whatever I see, like two lawyers together, I'm like, I don't know who is going to, I don't know. So yeah, worth looking at. Today, I learned cross-collar dating. Well, actually, look, all I've got to self-serving

questions. So I'm back on one of the singles' fields. As you know, we've talked about this privately. So what would that potentially mean for me? Is it more a set of characteristics? Is it profession? I mean, I have definitely, this is not exactly the same, but I have had enough, perhaps, tiptoeing around this to realize I 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. I agree. I think it's as simple as it's not as much the collar. It's about the intensity of the commitment to what it is. 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, that you want to 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 going to 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, 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 coaches basketball. And when I go watch the games, it's just fun to watch them coach basketball because

it has nothing to do with my existence. I have nothing to know that part. You must love that. I'm just thinking of you with the tutoring and all the tennis background. I was loving. And 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 questions. I love it. It's just it's my favorite thing. I'm always asking more questions about what's happening with the drama behind the scenes, you know.

I'm still thinking of the dance of the red shoes. I may use that with you. That's great. All right. Where should we go? Hookups or couples language? Well, couples languages are really quick one. But I think it's really interesting that with couples, I think every couple, this isn't the absurd category. It's just so people know. Because I thought it was just us. We have our own language at times. It's 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 parks and like repeated phrases and repeated thoughts that are just stars. And then I talked to other couples and they have it too. 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. And that was how they always said it. And then they broke up and then the new partner heard about this somehow and started using it. And he felt this like a rational sense of anger or 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 person. And 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 fucked. But it's not gotten there. It's circling the drain. This is an adjective or a noun. Like it is a Malinky or it is. It is Malinky. It's adjective. So we use that a lot. A person could be a Malinky, a dish that we're trying to cook could be. 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, hookup 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. But the reason that it stopped me was every time I was like, okay, you know, you could go hookup with that guy.

Whatever. I used to think to myself, well, what's the reason? And I realized that it was because I was trying to extract something from them. They had this hotness or this thing or the thing that I felt that by hooking out with them, I would get. And that's when I started thinking about the term hookup. What is it? Hook. It's like you're trying to like literally like a fish like hook them and like get

this thing. There's no connection needed. You're going to dispose of them at some point. You know it's going to suck you this. You're just going to leave it over breath in their soul. That's it. And I thought to myself, they're cheap. And in my case, it was obvious because it felt like I was going after certain kind of guys that had things that I wanted. And I realized it was never because I liked them. It was because 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 going to happen if you mentally go through with it? Yes, you're going to go. You're going to extract this thing or try to extract it. You're going to fail to extract it and they're going to leave and you're still not going to 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 guard rails where I feel like that environment will sort of eat you alive. I think it's funny because we can move to another one here. I lived there for 22 years and I 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 to 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. And when I move 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 10 months, I had to grow. I got it. So you had a 10 month period where you were there full time. Yeah. I moved to St. 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. Like thank God. At each time I went, I started to dread it. I was still seeing all my friends. I was going to do all the fun stuff that I get to do in New York, whenever I go there, the restaurants, but this, but I was just like, I could feel myself be like,

we're going to war. Like that. But it feels like when you go into the city again, you know, and I just realize, especially for me, where I am at my stage, where I want to commit to my part 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 say a Lewis for a period and then you have sort of a city period and then a 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 school for getting 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 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 to go firm. It's a 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. Of course it will be. I think it'll be great. I think it'll be great. You see, you have a go farm. Go farm. St. Louis. What does St. Louis like? Is it 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 our family usually most of the time. But you're not in the outer reaches of the Brooks Range in Alaska.

Like a slight from people. You have access to. Oh yeah. Everything's there. 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 is gonna go crazy one day when people find out what's here. St. Louis isn't quite at that level. Like it's I feel like it's evolving. But there's a lot there where people are going to be like

whether's good, people are great, foods good, easy to get around, no traffic. It just feels like it's a sleepy little city that people kind of gave up on. But I wouldn't be surprised if it has a boom at some point. It's the opposite of a Malenky. His opposite of Malenky. Excuse me. Yeah, I'm really. It's obviously 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. Speaking of

Britishism's when you're mentioning the shared language of program program. I have no idea. Dodgy. Dodgy allergies. This is in the absurd category on the purple cards. This is a good one to end on. I tell everyone I'm allergic to cranberries in eggplant. Am I allergic to cranberries in eggplant? I don't know. I don't know, but I've been saying it for so long. That I'm like, is it true? So the question is, well, 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 have told people ever since I can eat cranberries. But it was because it could be something else. It could be something else. Right. And so this happens, I think a lot with, you know, when we were young, I remember first

having peanut butter and things like that and having weird reactions to it. It makes me feel weird. But there was no option to stop eating it. There was no, don't eat the peanut butter. It was like, well, just keep your 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 eggplant. No, once upon a time, this thing happened. And it makes you

start to question, I don't know, deeper, no fly zones. So anyway, that was something that crossed my mind. At some point, we need to test the no fly zones. Basically eat cranberry sauces. For the record, if you're working in a restaurant, I tell you I have an eggplant allergy. It's because I eggplant my whole life. And then one day, boom, anaphylax is full blown, like almost dyed in a restaurant in San Francisco. It's true. And I went in, yeah, that wasn't step one.

Step one was head stitch, had some whatever was swordfish fine vegetables fine outside of eggplant. Then I had the eggplant and my tongue got really itchy. And I was like, that's weird. Yeah. Feels like an allergic reaction. I've never had an allergic reaction eggplant. So being the genius that I am and I'm saying that sarcastically, I was like, well, I'm going to purchase like an engineer. I want to figure out, can I replicate the bug? So I went back to the next day.

Pro tip, do not do this. If you have a mild allergic reaction, don't do it on the back to describe. So I'm back and I was like, well, I'll try it again. And if my tongue gets itchy, I'll go have a slough test. But that's not how allergic reactions were. If you have one allergic reaction that is minor, it can suddenly step function up. So that's exactly what happened. So I ate the exact same dish. I had the allergic reaction, but this time I throw 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, San Francisco where there was absolutely no possibility that an ambulance was going to get to me within 30 minutes. No bodega or anything nearby because I asked the staff, I was like, do you have any bedded drill? They're like, no, do you have an happy pen? No. And I was like, fuck, of all the dumb things that I've done in my life. This is what's going to kill me really. And I just sat there.

That was all I could do. And I was like, well, freaking out isn't going to do anything. And I was like, I guess I'm just going to have to try to breathe very calmly. And I passed through it. Therefore, I've not had much eggplant. Now, I will say I went and had extensive, extensive allergy testing done at Stanford with all these top docs. And at least with the species of egg plant that they used for their various sampling and testing, no demonstrable allergy eggplant,

which raises a bunch of questions. Now, one option is it's different species of eggplant. Okay, possibly who knows? The other which is scarier, which a very well-known friend and tech founder, who people who recognized brought up was, maybe it is a pesticide that you are unable to identify. Oh shoot. But that is so psychologically terrifying. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because anything can happen, play that I've doubled down on the eggplant. And this is why dodgy

allergies came to my mind because it's like the fungibility. It's like an avoid eggplant. Right. It to me, when I say dodgy, what I mean is mental allergies in the sense of 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 cashews or whatever it was. Everyone's like, okay, little grumbling, but whatever. Next plane, they were like, someone has an alcohol allergy.

We are not serving alcohol. It was like, say, gone. Like, I really, nearly. Everyone's bracing for the last helicopter. You're going to be like to get off that plane. So it was a sudden thing about, okay, we have to take out actually 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 30,000 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 see in 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, all right, I guess this is we're doing this. And just I guess got used to it. And I don't think

that was necessarily the right way 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 is just so much going on that interesting. The first thing I do with a baby, put it in the cow pen, 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 is worth talking about, which is the daughter of a friend who introduced us. How I first met you. I met you through Brian Coleman, the creator of billions. And I haven't fully independent of the fact that obviously I know where an obsceneer grow up. I have my eye on his daughter Anna, who is 23 and stand up comedian and writer, because she is so good. He is very talented skilled kids. I tutored both of them just a little. I didn't know I did no work with either. I'll take his

customer 15% in terms of working with either of them. There was nothing to be done. These kids came for reform, 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 someday. Anna is just, she reminds me of Dino Miranda, July. I do not.

Great name though. Yeah, she is in the early 2000s, late 90s, which is just very prolific and still writes and great comedy, great, just versatile at everything involving writing and performing. 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. I'm 23 that I just am like, what's going to

have? So I feel like she's wanting to keep it on to keep it on. I feel like when I was going out, people were like, okay, we don't know what he's going to do, but he'll do something interesting because 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 is going to happen. Oh, something interesting is going to happen. So I have my own her. It's a good to end on on somebody young. That's where I think my 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 too foster some of that. This could be nature versus nurture. Who knows? Maybe they're just thurberids. Can't 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 encouraged their ideas. I just feel like when they had ideas, it was like, 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. And he's like, you stop that kid from dropping the egg because you're afraid of the mess and wasting 40 cents on an

egg. You're going to lose that toddler seeing this thing explode and leak three different substances in a yoke and a thing. And how did that thing turn into that? And all of a sudden, you have a scientist in a three year old. What else can I drop and see what's going to happen? So he's like, that's it. It's just saying yes and not giving too much direction. That's why I said about the kid making the bed, the kid coming to things on his own terms. Don't comment. Let them evolve.

Just look at the photo. No need to add your two cents underneath. You know what I mean? I do. So 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 and to be able to play around. You know what I mean? Yeah. I never get to do this in real life. So I feel like getting to do this is an honor. And

I'm just very thankful that you had me. What a pleasure. So fun. I'm looking forward to continuing it dinner. Where can people find you online? Best place to find me is my website, somenchainonnie.com, SOMAN, CHANNANI.com. And then I don't use Twitter anymore. So Instagram probably where, you know, I see messages and things like that. SomenC on Instagram. SomenC on Instagram. We'll link to everything in the show notes, folks. So you can find that at TimedUpLogSlush podcast.

And just search somen. There will not be an overwhelming number of entries, SOMAN. 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. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun

before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles on reading, books on reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of

tech tricks and so on. It gets sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts, guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them. And then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash friday. Type that into your browser tim.blog slash friday. Drop in your email,

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