Latest / My Favorite Things / My Favorite Things Episode 14: Scott Kummer

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My Favorite Things Episode 14: Scott Kummer · My Favorite Things

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Scott Coomer, thanks for being here.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Brandon, thanks for having me.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: I was actually thinking about you.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: I did a podcast with someone the other day,
0:09
SPEAKER_01: and it was a person that I don't talk to often,
0:12
SPEAKER_01: but when I do,
0:13
SPEAKER_01: I feel like...
0:14
SPEAKER_01: We're very good friends who just don't keep in touch.
0:17
And it's like,
0:18
I feel like I could just not see you for 15 years and then run
0:20
into you.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: And we would just pick up where we left off.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: You're like one of those people that I always think about,
0:24
SPEAKER_01: like I feel connected to and I enjoy your company.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad I could come on here and talk to you.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm a, just a little bit about me.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm a lawyer, ultra runner.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: I have two different podcasts,
0:36
SPEAKER_01: one about running and one about music,
0:38
SPEAKER_01: and I'm sure we'll get into both of those.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: Dog owner, husband, and a guy that lives on the south side of Chicago.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: So that's just a little bit about me.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of things, and I'm very busy, and I love them all.
0:53
But I'm one of those people that like constantly has lots and
0:56
lots of stuff going on.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's either this or that or this or that.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot of downtime in my world.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Too many side hustles, too much going on.
1:03
But I'm hoping that that's going to change in the near future
1:06
because I'm starting
1:07
SPEAKER_01: to age out of that lifestyle.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I am pessimistic that it will change, but we'll see.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Anything could happen.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
1:17
SPEAKER_00: So as you know,
1:18
SPEAKER_00: this show,
1:20
SPEAKER_00: My Favorite Things,
1:21
is about some of your favorite works of art or creative works
1:26
in life that have
1:27
SPEAKER_00: meant something to you.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: So you sent me your list.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And this one...
1:33
SPEAKER_00: The first one is on cassette, I believe.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Jimi Hendrix plays Monterey live.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes, probably not anymore.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: But Jimi Hendrix plays Monterey.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Where are you at in life?
1:46
SPEAKER_00: How's this tape come into your hands, I guess?
1:48
SPEAKER_00: What year is it?
1:50
SPEAKER_01: So this would be maybe eighth grade, seventh, eighth grade.
1:54
I did a lot of thinking about this because music is such a big
1:58
thing in my life.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: And this is not...
2:03
SPEAKER_01: My favorite tape.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: This isn't the tape that I listen to the most.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: But when I think back to my life, I think about this tape.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: And this tape is a turning point where music becomes about me.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: It becomes something that I'm independently interested in.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Something that I'm choosing.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: And something that I want to know more about.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: And I got this cassette tape.
2:30
And we listened to it quite a bit because we thought Jimi
2:32
Hendrix was cool and
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Purple Haze and we all wanted to smoke pot and be cool.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: There's just something cool about Jimi Hendrix.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: But this album has a live version of Like a Rolling Stone.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: This was recorded live in 1967.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a really great concert recording.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: He does a Star Spangled Banner.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole bunch to it.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: But he plays Like a Rolling Stone.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: And that song captivated me.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: The lyrics.
2:58
And he even says,
2:59
if you ever listen to this,
3:00
he gives a little phrase in the middle.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: He goes, I know I missed a verse.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of left something out of it.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: But I really wanted to know more about the song,
3:09
SPEAKER_01: which led me to Bob Dylan's version of Like a Rolling Stone,
3:13
SPEAKER_01: which then just,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: that was like the first time I was like,
3:17
SPEAKER_01: I listened to something.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: I want to know more about something.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm investigating it.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And I go out and I buy Bob Dylan.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: And then I fall in love with Bob Dylan.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: And then that becomes just a rabbit hole.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: My whole life has been Bob Dylan has been the lyrics of Bob Dylan.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to see him.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: I met him once.
3:32
It's a crazy story where I got to sit on the stage and meet him
3:35
afterward.
3:37
I became just enthused with music,
3:40
learning more about music,
3:42
collecting music.
3:43
I was one of those kids that constantly wanted to get as many
3:46
albums and as many
3:47
SPEAKER_01: tapes as I could.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Learn about stuff.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: And then that leads me to,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: I read the liner notes to Bob Dylan leads me to Jack Kerouac.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Jack Kerouac leads me down a whole road of literature.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Of course, I also learned about drug use.
4:03
I remember a specific moment in high school where I was sitting
4:07
at the desk with
4:07
SPEAKER_01: the on the road on my table.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: And I know I think Andy Pearson talked about it on the road in your show.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: And the teacher came by and he said he pointed to that book and he said,
4:15
SPEAKER_01: kid,
4:16
SPEAKER_01: don't let that shit fuck you up.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: And he was so right because,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: of course,
4:21
I went and I tried drugs and I started drinking and this whole
4:25
lifestyle of the
4:27
SPEAKER_01: guys from the beat generation.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: But all of that is opened up.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: The key to all of that is, what's this Rolling Stones song really about?
4:37
SPEAKER_01: And then...
4:38
SPEAKER_01: It's like a springboard to literature,
4:41
SPEAKER_01: music,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: drug culture,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: the beginning of my spiral into alcoholism and drug addiction,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: like all of that from this one song.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of why it stood out to me.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Wait, so you're in eighth grade.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Did somebody give you this tape?
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Do you buy it at a record store?
4:59
SPEAKER_00: How'd you get it?
5:00
SPEAKER_01: I think I bought it because I don't know if...
5:04
SPEAKER_01: So you remember there was the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High?
5:07
there's a movie after that called the wildlife and it has Chris
5:11
Penn instead of Sean Penn.
5:13
But one of the characters is like,
5:15
he's dreaming about like Vietnam and stuff.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: And there's all this like Jimi Hendrix music in the background.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: And I think because of that, like kind of turned me on to Jimi Hendrix.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: I thought I should get some Jimi Hendrix.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: Cause you know, Hendrix is cool.
5:29
And then I would have bought this tape with my own money from
5:32
the record store back in the day.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: So it was your first Jimi Hendrix that you bought.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: It was one of the first tapes that I bought, period.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: But it was for sure the first time I'd heard Jimi Hendrix.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think I bought it for Purple Haze.
5:47
And I kind of screwed up,
5:48
because in theory,
5:49
I should have bought Are You Experienced?
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Because that would have been the essential Jimi Hendrix record to own.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: But for some reason, maybe this was the one that was there.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: And that was the beginning.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Are you talking to your friends about this album when you listen to it?
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Are you talking to anybody about it?
6:08
SPEAKER_00: We're walking around with the boombox listening to this record together.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: My core group of friends in the eighth grade,
6:17
SPEAKER_01: they all would have known every word to every song on this record.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: We would have heard of this tape.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: We would have listened to it constantly.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: It was a really big deal to us.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Did anybody from that friend group have a similar...
6:32
path as you similar experiences after that like when you think
6:36
about what the tape
6:37
did for you and like that story you just described and where
6:40
you went with it or
6:42
was that but maybe not in a in a is a deeper intellectual way i
6:48
think a lot of them
6:49
that was their their avenue to drugs and alcohol or partying or
6:54
liking you know
6:55
SPEAKER_01: guitar music stuff like that i don't think that they went
6:59
all the way to literature and all of the other things that kind
7:03
of spiraled out of this.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: But I think that there's people that just listen to music.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you meet them all the time.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: They're just like, oh, yeah, that sounds good.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: That's all they know is it sounds good.
7:12
And then there's people that think about the lyrics and think
7:15
about the music and
7:16
SPEAKER_01: think about the influences and how this came about,
7:19
SPEAKER_01: what this influenced.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: And that's the kind of person that I became.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: And that was in part because of this.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that my friends were that way.
7:28
Yeah,
7:29
I think about that as when I've created little pieces of art
7:36
for the internet.
7:37
And I think I realized that people don't necessarily need to
7:41
follow you because you
7:42
SPEAKER_00: did one thing that's good.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And I always...
7:45
compared it to music because i was like yeah some people just
7:47
hear a song and
7:48
they're like yeah it's a good song and they don't they don't
7:51
you and i or people
7:52
like us would probably be say okay well who is that i want to
7:56
find more of their
7:56
music and a lot of people don't it's just kind of a kind of a
7:59
thing well who's that
8:00
i want to know more about him i want all of the books then i
8:03
want to you know i
8:04
want to meet him i want to listen to podcasts about him i want
8:06
to know everything
8:07
and then when i feel exhausted then i can move on to something
8:10
else that's what
8:11
SPEAKER_01: happens when it's something cool like that
8:13
you know yeah yeah is this the first uh is this the first
8:18
creative work where that
8:19
happened to you is this yeah for sure and then the pattern then
8:23
the pattern repeats
8:24
throughout your life yeah i mean there were there were other
8:27
artists that i really
8:28
liked like i i loved prince like probably from like the sixth
8:31
grade on and you know
8:32
i might have deep dived on him later in life but i think this
8:36
was the first like
8:38
path of inquiry that was started by something creative,
8:42
something in the arts.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I ever felt that way from a book or a song or like a movie.
8:47
It was,
8:48
this is like the first thing I can think of where I was just
8:50
like,
8:51
what's going on here?
8:52
SPEAKER_01: I need to understand this.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: And it led to a lot.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:58
Hey,
8:58
Prince,
8:59
just a fellow Midwesterner like me and you,
9:01
you know,
9:03
from Minneapolis.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't think people ever think of Prince as a Midwesterner.
9:07
think they think of him as something else oh for sure midwest
9:10
yeah 100 so you know
9:14
it's funny reading reading your list and like knowing how
9:17
important music is to you
9:19
that's the only music we have on this whole list which is kind
9:22
of fascinating okay
9:24
so number two alcoholics anonymous the big book what what is
9:31
the story behind this
9:32
SPEAKER_00: for you
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Well,
9:35
SPEAKER_01: obviously with my Jimi Hendrix,
9:36
SPEAKER_01: my Bob Dylan,
9:37
SPEAKER_01: my Jack Kerouac and my drugs,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: I was not headed down a very good path.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: and that,
9:43
SPEAKER_01: that path ended pretty quickly,
9:45
SPEAKER_01: uh,
9:46
at the age of 21 where I kind of found myself thinking that
9:50
this alcohol and drug
9:51
SPEAKER_01: usage might not be giving in the way of things,
9:54
SPEAKER_01: but,
9:54
SPEAKER_01: uh,
9:54
SPEAKER_01: it's certainly not helping.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: And maybe I should explore life without drugs and alcohol.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: And, uh,
10:02
SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot real fast.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: You know,
10:05
SPEAKER_01: I learned that I was an alcoholic and a drug addict for sure,
10:07
SPEAKER_01: that it had arrested my development as an adult,
10:11
SPEAKER_01: that I didn't really understand how to live as an adult,
10:15
SPEAKER_01: how to make my own decisions.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I had gone to college and dropped out.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: I had been working in a bar.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: I had been drinking on my job,
10:24
SPEAKER_01: after my job,
10:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:26
SPEAKER_00: like the nights are getting longer,
10:27
SPEAKER_00: the days are getting shorter.
10:30
And so I felt like maybe it was time for me to see if there was
10:35
a change that I could make.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: And I initially did not,
10:40
SPEAKER_01: in connection with quitting drinking,
10:41
SPEAKER_01: I did not embrace AA or this book.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: I just tried not drinking.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: And I was able to do that.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say successfully because I was kind of a wreck,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: but I went a few years without drinking.
10:57
And then I kept having problems in life or coming up against
11:00
limitations or
11:02
SPEAKER_01: emotional,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: instability,
11:04
SPEAKER_01: stuff like that.
11:05
I felt like I didn't,
11:07
you know,
11:07
other people broke up with their girlfriend.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: I had like,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: I was like the say anything breakup scene,
11:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:14
SPEAKER_01: every single girl I ever dated,
11:15
you know,
11:16
SPEAKER_01: other people like everything was just dramatic over the top.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know how to, how to deal with life really.
11:23
And the people that I know that didn't drink or that were
11:26
involved in recovery kept
11:27
SPEAKER_00: saying,
11:27
SPEAKER_01: well,
11:28
SPEAKER_00: that's because you're an alcoholic.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, like you need AA.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: And at the time, you know, I thought AA was so that I wouldn't drink.
11:37
And I was not drinking,
11:38
so I didn't understand what the allure of that was.
11:41
But then I came to learn that a lot of AA,
11:44
now I've been sober for 32 years,
11:46
but
11:47
SPEAKER_01: A lot of that is learning how to live life on life's terms,
11:50
learning how to be a good human and take care of yourself and
11:54
take care of other
11:55
SPEAKER_01: people and be accountable and all of the tenets of that program.
12:01
I am not one of those people that says there's no other way to
12:04
do it or that if
12:05
SPEAKER_01: you're not doing it that way,
12:07
you're doing it wrong because people can get real culty and
12:09
preachy about that.
12:11
But all of the things that I very reluctantly learned by
12:16
reading that book or by
12:17
SPEAKER_01: going to AA meetings or getting a sponsor,
12:19
SPEAKER_01: doing those things,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: all of those things made my life better.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: There's not one thing that anyone ever took me aside and said,
12:27
SPEAKER_01: here's something that people in recovery do.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: And then when I finished it, I was like, well, that was a waste of time.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like that helped.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: And through that, I think I...
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Became the person that I am.
12:40
Because,
12:41
you know,
12:41
part of my story is I had a really messed up childhood.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I had sexual abuse as a child.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, obviously I'm an alcoholic who quits drinking at the age of 21.
12:49
Things weren't going well when you quit drinking that early,
12:52
especially in the Midwest.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: I always joke like,
12:56
SPEAKER_01: like today if I went to an AA meeting,
12:58
SPEAKER_01: there'd be like 17-year-old kids there.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: But in Milwaukee in 1992, AA is like,
13:06
the average age was at that first AA meeting was like 150 and
13:10
they talked about
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Jesus and all those people had like,
13:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:14
SPEAKER_01: like lost a foot or a kidney or family and I didn't fit in,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
13:21
SPEAKER_01: it's,
13:23
it's definitely where I learned how to be a grownup and how to
13:25
have a moral code
13:26
SPEAKER_01: and the difference between right and wrong and building a community and,
13:31
learning how to live life on life's terms and maybe just to
13:35
accept life the way it is.
13:37
And those are all things that have just kind of made me the
13:42
person that I am.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's a lot more to it than not drinking.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: And
13:48
SPEAKER_01: You know,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of people out there that I've talked to that have said,
13:51
SPEAKER_00: I quit,
13:52
SPEAKER_00: but that's not for me.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And I always say,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: but it's there if you ever want it,
13:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:56
SPEAKER_01: and it's something that's still a part of my life.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: And I still I go to those meetings.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: I go to those meetings for two reasons.
14:02
I go to those meetings to tell people that I'm that bad things
14:06
have happened in my
14:06
SPEAKER_01: life and I'm still not drinking.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: or good things have happened in my life, and I'm still not sure.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: Because there's people in there that need to hear that stuff.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: You stop,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: but people still die,
14:16
SPEAKER_01: and you still get fired from your job,
14:18
SPEAKER_01: and you still get divorced.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Bad stuff's going to happen.
14:20
And my problem is I never learned how to deal with that without
14:24
getting high or getting drunk.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's something that I learned in that program.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: So when you decided to quit, you just quit, and that was it.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: And you've never...
14:37
SPEAKER_01: I just quit.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: I went to one meeting and I thought, this is not for me.
14:43
And then I spent about five years not drinking,
14:47
working in bars,
14:49
being a little miserable.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: And then every once in a while,
14:53
SPEAKER_01: when the pain got bad enough,
14:55
SPEAKER_01: I would go to a meeting and it was funny,
14:57
SPEAKER_01: I would go.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know about the stats or the book or anything.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: I would just go there.
15:02
And when I got to talk,
15:03
I would just cry and tell them all my problems and then leave.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: And I never listened to anybody.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: But that was like, that was my system.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: Just go there and like vomit all my emotions and leave.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: And once I finally had,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:15
SPEAKER_01: been around and someone taught me about everything,
15:18
SPEAKER_01: it kind of changed my perspective.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, then eventually, I think it was when I was in law school.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: So getting sober puts me on the path to get my life back together.
15:29
And getting back into college,
15:31
I dropped out of college because I was drinking.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Went back to college,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: graduated college,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: got accepted to law school,
15:39
SPEAKER_01: came to Chicago from Milwaukee to go to law school.
15:41
And then that's kind of when everything just kind of fell apart
15:44
for me because it
15:45
SPEAKER_01: was just so much pressure.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm dealing with really grown up stuff.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm living all alone.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: There's nobody that knows that I don't drink.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to law school, which is kind of a nightmare all by itself.
15:59
And so that's when I said,
16:00
you know what,
16:00
I got to find somebody to help me.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: And I went, found a sponsor, started going to meetings.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'll do whatever you tell me to do.
16:06
And that's,
16:07
that's when I kind of fully embraced the program of recovering.
16:12
So would you say the book was important or is the book more
16:15
like a symbol of all
16:17
SPEAKER_00: the work you did and all the,
16:19
SPEAKER_00: of,
16:19
SPEAKER_00: of just like AA itself and what it did for you?
16:21
SPEAKER_01: I think the book's really important.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it's, it's a really well-written book.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: It's a book that,
16:28
that um people the people that wrote this tried to make an
16:32
organization that that
16:34
no one could screw up try not to bring into controversy they
16:38
have a lot of
16:38
traditions and a lot of rules that are that are really good for
16:42
you know there's a
16:42
reason they've been around as long as they've been around and
16:45
um a lot of the
16:46
things that i didn't know how to do like for example one of the
16:49
things people do is
16:50
pray i'm not really a god guy and i'm not really a praying guy
16:55
and i thought the
16:55
SPEAKER_01: whole thing was really hokey
16:57
SPEAKER_01: But there's a part in this book where it says, here's how you pray.
16:59
And I would just get down on my hands and knees every morning
17:02
and read that part.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it worked or not.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: It was more of just like, this is what we do.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: But I learned prayer from this book.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: I learned how to make amends to people.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: I learned how to...
17:17
SPEAKER_01: do the right thing in the face of problems and adversity.
17:21
A lot of those lessons are in that book and a lot of the rules
17:24
for living,
17:25
SPEAKER_01: or let's just say guides for living,
17:27
SPEAKER_01: because they're mostly suggestions.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of that is in that book.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And I've studied it.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: I studied it with someone that had been around.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: We went chapter by chapter.
17:36
I go to meetings where we read a chapter every week and talk
17:39
about the chapter.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like the Bible, but it's not super religious.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just more
17:46
Here's the story of a whole bunch of people who got drunk and
17:49
how they figured out
17:50
SPEAKER_01: how to get their shit together.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: And maybe you can get your shit together too.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: So I don't want anyone to think that I'm,
17:56
SPEAKER_01: that I'm preaching about this or that this is like,
17:59
SPEAKER_01: this is my religion because sometimes I go six,
18:01
SPEAKER_01: eight months without going to one of those meetings.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I've gone years without picking up that book,
18:06
SPEAKER_01: but it's like a resource that I know is there.
18:08
And I know that it's,
18:10
that's a hundred percent going to help every time I do
18:13
something with it.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd like listening to you talk about it.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, of course, my own journey, sobriety and stuff like that.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: And I was like,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was what caused me to become an accountable person,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: but it was definitely...
18:31
SPEAKER_00: it was definitely when I became accountable.
18:32
So there's,
18:33
there must be,
18:35
must be something there,
18:36
but yeah,
18:36
there's,
18:36
there's a lot in there.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And,
18:38
SPEAKER_00: um,
18:39
SPEAKER_00: I know it's,
18:40
it's a thing that a lot of people embrace and a lot of people
18:43
don't embrace.
18:43
And I'm like,
18:44
you know what,
18:44
man,
18:45
whatever works,
18:46
you know,
18:46
let's just,
18:47
let's just do that.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: If it works and if you're happy and if you're not,
18:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:54
SPEAKER_01: a piece of garbage to the people around you,
18:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't care how you do it.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, it doesn't matter to me.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you picked the book up and flipped through it?
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Well,
19:09
SPEAKER_01: other than today,
19:10
SPEAKER_01: maybe about two or three months ago,
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I was talking to somebody about prayer.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, they were like, how did you deal with the prayer thing?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Because I was a philosophy student.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: I thought I was intellectual.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And now they're telling me to do this spiritual stuff.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And like, how do I do this spiritual stuff?
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And I told them basically that story that I...
19:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, I got up every morning and read the art of that book.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: And,
19:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: part of it was,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:36
SPEAKER_01: when you when you get into the program,
19:37
SPEAKER_01: you get a sponsor.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: The sponsor is just someone that helps you, you know, like your guide.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And my sponsor had his really deep voice.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: He was kind of like, you know, he was an interesting dude.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's just say that.
19:48
And when I would call him for advice,
19:49
he would always ask me if I had made the bed first.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Because that's part of like an orderly life is making your bed.
19:55
And I would be like,
19:56
no,
19:56
I didn't make the bed because I wasn't a bed maker.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think bed making is dumb.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: You just get back in it again.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's the point of making the bed?
20:03
SPEAKER_01: He said, go make the bed and call me if things don't get better.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Then he would ask me if I prayed and I didn't pray.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And he taught me this prayer from this book and said, go pray.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't get better, then you can call me.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And then he would ask me if I went to an AA meeting.
20:17
And I would have to go to an AA meeting and then call them if
20:20
things didn't get better.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Well,
20:21
it didn't take long before I realized that if you get up every
20:23
morning and make the
20:24
SPEAKER_01: bad,
20:25
SPEAKER_01: pray and go to an AA meeting,
20:27
you don't have days where you have to call somebody for advice
20:29
to get you off the
20:30
SPEAKER_01: ceiling.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, like it's a great way to start your day.
20:34
And yeah,
20:35
so that's kind of like part of that story of how I embraced all
20:39
of those concepts.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: I had a guy in my rehab group who said the bed-making thing,
20:47
SPEAKER_00: and I don't know if I had even encountered it in the book at all,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: but I was like,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do that too.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And then through the rest of my life,
20:56
SPEAKER_00: I lived in very small places where if you make the bed,
20:59
SPEAKER_00: you've got a good shelf to put stuff on during the day.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: It's that idea that you can't think your way into acting right,
21:07
SPEAKER_01: but you can act your way into thinking right.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: So you take action and then you start to think the right way.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Hanif Abdurraqib, who's one of my favorite writers.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever read any of his stuff.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: You would probably love his basketball book about,
21:25
SPEAKER_00: about following LeBron James in Ohio when he was growing up,
21:30
SPEAKER_00: but.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: there's a scene where he's like laying on his back.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: He's in jail for a little bit,
21:35
SPEAKER_00: for some reason that he never,
21:38
SPEAKER_00: never says why,
21:38
SPEAKER_00: but he's got like a balled up sock,
21:41
SPEAKER_00: two socks.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And he's just like shooting,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: making the shooting motion in his little cot in this jail,
21:47
SPEAKER_00: which is a,
21:48
SPEAKER_00: I think like sort of a gymnasium at that point.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Um,
21:50
SPEAKER_00: but he has a line in there,
21:52
SPEAKER_00: which I will not be able to say it as beautifully as he does,
21:55
SPEAKER_00: but he's like with repetition,
21:56
SPEAKER_00: with enough repetition,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: anything becomes a religion.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Um,
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of like, wow.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the depth of it is incredible, the way he says it.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: But it's like your routine in those days reminded me of that.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Think until you make it.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: So book number two.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: This is William Storer, the Frank Lloyd Wright catalog.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Where are we?
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Where are we at this?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there we go.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: How old are you when this comes in?
22:30
SPEAKER_01: It's ironic because I went to Frank Lloyd Wright High School.
22:34
And I don't recall even knowing who Frank Lloyd Wright was
22:37
while I was in high school.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: But at some point in life, I started to really appreciate architecture.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: I started to like it.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand it.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: I didn't take drafting.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: I didn't take art.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: I have no artistic ability.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: Nothing in this area in terms of skill sets.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: But I would see buildings.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: And I would think that they were magnificent.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And that to me, it's like an art form that people live in or work in.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: So it's like another whole level.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that's a pretty thing to look at in the wall.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: It's there's a bathroom in this work of art.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: And I started to notice that a lot of the things that I liked were modern
23:21
SPEAKER_01: architecture and then specifically Frank Lloyd Wright.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: And then obviously it kind of triggers that he's from Wisconsin.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I went to Frank Lloyd Wright Middle School or whatever.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: So I decided I would go look at some of these Frank Lloyd Wright books.
23:33
I want to say part of this may have also been cultivated by the
23:37
Anne Rand book,
23:38
SPEAKER_01: The Fountainhead,
23:40
SPEAKER_01: because she interacts with an architect in there.
23:43
And that's a book about an architect that might've had some say
23:47
in all this because
23:48
SPEAKER_01: that was it in this period of life.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: I was reading some of that, uh, in between being, uh,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Not in college and getting back to college.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: That was some literature that I read.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: But I decided to start going and looking at these houses.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: And what this book is, is just a list of the houses.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: And what city they're in.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is 1995.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: There's no internet.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: There's no MapQuest.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: There's no way of knowing where this stuff is.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: I was literally getting the map, trying to find the road...
24:22
And then going to the road and driving up and turn into like a
24:25
treasure hunt.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: But I managed to see about 250 of the 400 houses.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: Did a lot of traveling.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I would go to California.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: I would look at everything in LA.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: I'd go to San Francisco.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: And I spent, you know, years probably from about 92...
24:44
SPEAKER_01: till maybe when I met my wife,
24:47
SPEAKER_01: I was still doing it because on our first date,
24:49
SPEAKER_01: we went and looked at Frank Lloyd Wright houses.
24:51
This was like a thing that if I'm coming to visit you and
24:54
there's a house nearby,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: we're going to go there.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times you just go there and then you see it from the street.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: That's the end of the story.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Like there's not much more to it.
25:03
Other times you go inside or it'd be like a church or some sort
25:06
of a public building.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: They give tours.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: I would go see that.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: But I have just a completely unreasonable
25:15
SPEAKER_01: and unlikely love of modern architecture.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's also funny because when I went to college,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: I was going to do a podcast about this,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: and I may still do it someday.
25:27
When I went to law school,
25:31
I wrote a letter because the Frank Lloyd Wright
25:34
SPEAKER_01: College of architecture isn't like a normal college.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: It's like a fellowship where you go and you live there and you farm.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: And it's like you don't have to have any credentials.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: They just take people based on their story.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to have any expertise.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: It's a very weird school, or at least it was then.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: It's just an eclectic group of people that want to do this.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: I actually wrote a letter to them, which I never sent.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: And the letter basically is just like,
25:58
I don't want to be a lawyer like 50 years old someday wondering
26:02
if I should have
26:02
SPEAKER_01: been an architect.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: I never sent that letter.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: I still have it.
26:07
And I never really explored architecture,
26:09
but I kept this love of architecture.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: So I thought it would be kind of a fun podcast to go through these,
26:14
SPEAKER_01: these houses one by one and just talk about them and,
26:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: like to go to them maybe and talk about,
26:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: what I learned about them and what's near them.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: It's just, I don't have time for another project right now.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: I like started to think and develop it,
26:27
SPEAKER_01: but,
26:28
SPEAKER_01: and it's one of those,
26:29
SPEAKER_01: it's another one of those things where like,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: okay,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: so there's like 500 houses or buildings in this book.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: And if I went and did that,
26:36
there's like maybe 500 people in the world that would think
26:40
that is the...
26:42
SPEAKER_01: I cannot believe someone did this.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Someone needed to do this.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: This is the greatest thing ever.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: But then that's it.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: Nobody else.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Push back on that, dude.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: It's like a classic model for somebody writing a book, you know?
26:58
i read a book by this guy i think it's actually just called
27:00
dishwasher and he
27:01
wanted to wash dishes in all 50 states like in restaurants and
27:04
stuff and honestly
27:06
like one of my favorite adventure books of all time and this
27:08
guy's like sort of um
27:11
a flake and of course he only gets like 30 of them done and
27:14
that's the end of the
27:15
SPEAKER_00: book but like he washes uh dishes on like an offshore oil rig and um
27:22
Oh my gosh,
27:24
it's like a scenic train,
27:26
ski resort,
27:27
fish cannery in Alaska.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: But people do that.
27:32
There's one called Catch,
27:35
where a guy just tries to play catch with people across...
27:39
SPEAKER_00: He ends up playing catch with like...
27:42
SPEAKER_00: I want to say like Bill Clinton or something.
27:45
Anyway,
27:46
it's a pretty classic narrative idea,
27:49
like discovering something through a list.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm for it.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: I can also talk about it.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Quit your job.
27:55
You got to quit your job as a lawyer so you don't become a
27:57
lawyer who wishes you would have...
27:59
you can talk about how to get there and what's near there and
28:02
what to do near there.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: And then maybe if you get halfway through the series,
28:06
SPEAKER_01: then the people might start inviting me into the house.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe PBS picks up the podcast and says,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: there's not a lot of people listening to it,
28:13
SPEAKER_01: but this is the arts.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: So it could still happen.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: It really could.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: I would love to do it.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: This also leads me to
28:23
SPEAKER_01: you know, other architects and other architecture.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: And like me and my wife, we were going to France.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: She,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: she thinks I should,
28:29
SPEAKER_01: I should write a book about this,
28:31
SPEAKER_01: this Lake Boussier,
28:32
SPEAKER_01: this other architect that I like.
28:33
We go there and we look at everything that he ever built and
28:36
we're working our way
28:37
SPEAKER_00: around France to look at all of his buildings.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: We went to the, the, you know, his boyhood home and stuff like that.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And he's another modern architect,
28:44
SPEAKER_00: contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright and another kind of goofball.
28:48
Like all these people like Dylan or Frank Lloyd Wright or Lake
28:52
Boussier and
28:53
They peak when they're in their 20s,
28:55
and then they live to their,
28:56
like,
28:56
90.
28:57
And their whole life,
28:58
they're thought of as,
28:58
like,
28:59
the greatest living whatever.
29:01
It's just,
29:01
you can't help but be a little messed up under those
29:04
circumstances,
29:05
you know?
29:05
SPEAKER_01: For sure.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: So I like the legend and the story behind a lot of these people, too.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Because they're...
29:12
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Camusier are both extremely just
29:15
colorful characters who
29:16
SPEAKER_01: led crazy lives.
29:18
They could write a book about each part of their life and
29:20
probably be,
29:21
like,
29:21
five volumes.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
29:24
I don't think we we I don't think we examine that story enough
29:28
where we like
29:30
SPEAKER_00: athletes included,
29:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:31
SPEAKER_00: professional athletes,
29:32
professional musicians like your your career starts when you're
29:37
like 1920 and then
29:38
SPEAKER_00: you're told you're the greatest for,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: however many years and.
29:43
Professional athletes,
29:44
I think specifically men,
29:45
only interact with men most of the time.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: They're extremely rich.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: They have no idea how to buy an avocado at a supermarket.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And we expect these people to be normal.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: It's like, that's not a good pathway.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are, which is even crazier.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: That's an anomaly, I think.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, like you mentioned LeBron.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: LeBron's been one of the most famous people in the world since he was 17.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: And like...
30:11
SPEAKER_00: there's been no scandal.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: It's like him.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like him and Tom Hanks.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: That's all we got, you know, Ralph Nader.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Ralph.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Ralph Nader.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: like,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: like Chevy,
30:23
they investigated him to try to find dirt on him and they
30:25
couldn't find it.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think about that.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know,
30:30
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like a side note about LeBron.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: So we go to all the Bucs games.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: And one game we got to hand out the game ball at center court.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: We went to the captain's meeting and gave out the game ball.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: And when you do this,
30:44
they take you down on the court and you stand next to the bench
30:48
while the players
30:48
SPEAKER_01: warm up.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: But they tell you, don't talk to anybody.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: Don't yell and don't move.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: Just stand there.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: That's all you can do.
30:54
And so we watched because we wanted to see what it was like
30:58
when other people did it.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: We were very conscious of this.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's very surprising that no one talked to these people.
31:06
You know that they're there for that reason if you're a player
31:09
or if you're on the court.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: And you know that you could just make their day if you would just walk.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: Like if Giannis would have walked up and hugged me,
31:17
SPEAKER_01: my whole life would have been better forever.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: No one ever does that except one person.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: One time, LeBron James.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: He walked up to the family,
31:28
SPEAKER_01: and he gave them both a hug and said hi to them,
31:30
SPEAKER_01: and they went and warmed up.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, that's the kind of person that LeBron is.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: People rag on him all the time.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: People can say whatever they want about him, but that's really nice.
31:40
It's like he realizes everywhere he goes,
31:42
he's living in somebody else's dream.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: And it seems like he never forgets that.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: Boy, that's a great way to put it, man.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, I think you should write the book.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Honestly,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: if you want to do a podcast,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you that transcribing a podcast can equal a book,
32:02
SPEAKER_00: too.
32:03
I mean,
32:03
it can work,
32:05
or it can be a very good first draft,
32:07
or a decent first draft.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, the other part of it is that there are stories about these houses.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: You know,
32:13
SPEAKER_00: that,
32:13
SPEAKER_01: that aren't,
32:14
SPEAKER_01: they're not just the nuts and bolts of the house,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: but it's like,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: who was the,
32:17
SPEAKER_01: who was the person that they was commissioned for?
32:19
SPEAKER_01: What was their story?
32:21
You know,
32:21
what do we know about that relationship between them and the
32:24
architect?
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there are goofy stories of,
32:26
SPEAKER_01: of right going there,
32:27
interacting with the client and having conflict with the client
32:30
and stuff like
32:31
SPEAKER_01: that.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: So there's, there may be stories within the story.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: And then some of them might just be, yeah, it's this house.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows anything, you know, burnt down 10 years later.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And that's the end of the story.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: This episode is 45 seconds long.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: When some of them might be 10 episodes long.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:46
You know,
32:46
there's some iconic buildings that have huge histories behind
32:49
them.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if somebody's done this exact same thing for like train cars.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: I looked,
32:54
SPEAKER_01: I looked,
32:54
SPEAKER_01: I looked all over the podcast app for something architectural,
32:58
SPEAKER_01: Frank Lloyd Wright related.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: No, for trains.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, for trains.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: I feel like train guy is like a thing.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: Like people who are obsessed with trains.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: I know train guy.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
33:10
SPEAKER_01: This guy G.O.D.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Devonica, he is a huge train fanatic.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: He's probably listening right now going, I know all about training.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I,
33:20
SPEAKER_00: I feel like if you ride on an Amtrak train across the country,
33:23
SPEAKER_00: you'll encounter a train guy,
33:25
but I bet there's a train guy who's done a podcast or a book
33:28
about train cars.
33:29
That's a,
33:30
that's a model for,
33:31
for your Frank Lloyd Wright book,
33:34
but who knows?
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
33:37
SPEAKER_00: let's,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: let's move on to your,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: to your fourth,
33:40
SPEAKER_00: also a book,
33:42
SPEAKER_00: uh,
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Kindle mini,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: which I have read too.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Um,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: The Long Run by Mishka Shubale.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Is that how you say his last name?
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Shubale.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Shubale.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Mishka Shubale.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes, because you've met this guy, right?
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm friends with him.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't when I read it.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: No.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: You read it too?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: For some reason, it was highly advertised for a while somehow.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: It was the best-selling Kindle Mini at the time.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: At all time.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: It's a short, short book.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: So this would have been maybe 2011, 2010, right around there.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: I had,
34:31
SPEAKER_01: so I,
34:31
I got into running by a friend of mine in the law firm that was
34:35
an elite marathoner
34:37
SPEAKER_01: and he
34:39
SPEAKER_01: through a course of crazy events,
34:41
SPEAKER_01: I was supposed to run a half marathon with my law firm,
34:43
SPEAKER_01: but my,
34:44
SPEAKER_01: my boss paid me to not run.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of stuck with me that I didn't do this,
34:50
SPEAKER_01: this thing,
34:51
SPEAKER_01: which kind of led me to want to do it even more.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: So I started training and ran my first marathon in 2000.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: 2000.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And then I became like a,
35:05
I want to,
35:05
I want to run out,
35:06
I want to run out sub four hour marathon guy.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: And it did multiple marathons in a year,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: went to the fleet feet,
35:13
SPEAKER_01: ran with those people,
35:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:15
running became this huge part of my life and running friends
35:18
and all that kind of
35:18
SPEAKER_01: stuff.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: And I never got good at it.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: Like ever.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: I,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: I,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: I kept trying to like break four hours in the marathon and I would,
35:26
SPEAKER_01: I would never come close.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: And I kept,
35:28
Kept staying about the same,
35:30
meeting friends,
35:31
but I was always in the back of the pack.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a really fun existence.
35:35
And by about 2008,
35:37
maybe like 15,
35:38
16 marathons into all this,
35:40
I met my wife.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: And you know how it is when you first get married.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: It's really easy to say, well, I don't need to do any of that stuff now.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: So running kind of took a back seat.
35:49
And I had always had in the back of my mind,
35:50
someday I want to get back into running.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Someday I want to run again.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: And I have no idea how I came across this process.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: But I did, and I started to read it.
36:03
And it's basically a book by a guy who was in a punk band and
36:08
decided to get off
36:09
SPEAKER_01: drugs and alcohol.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of does it through running.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: And he tells the story of his first 50 miler.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: And while I'm reading this Kindle mini, I'm thinking...
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe I could run 50 miles.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's the answer.
36:23
Maybe I,
36:23
maybe I can't run faster,
36:24
but I can run further,
36:26
you know,
36:27
and maybe get in shape.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe lose a few pounds.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
36:31
So I get this idea in my head that I'm going to,
36:34
I'm going to run 50 miles.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And,
36:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:38
SPEAKER_01: as,
36:38
SPEAKER_01: as you do,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: all the things we're talking about,
36:40
download all the podcasts and get the books and the magazines
36:43
and join the local
36:44
SPEAKER_01: ultra running group.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: And I want, I want to know everything about ultra running.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: I went to, um,
36:50
SPEAKER_01: The Fleet Feed had Christopher McDougall and Scott Jurek leading a run.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: This was right after Eat and Run had come out.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: So I got to meet both of them and get their books.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And then I read Born to Run and I read Eat and Run.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And next thing you know, I'm all in on this ultra running thing.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's really funny.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: And Mishka Shubali is like a channel marker of my life.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And I talk about this.
37:16
Have you ever met,
37:17
do you ever give a speech to the college class for Emily
37:20
Wainless?
37:21
SPEAKER_01: Do you know who that is?
37:23
There's this woman,
37:24
she's out by you,
37:26
and she teaches a course on ultra running.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: And I give a lecture to the students every year.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: She usually has notorious runners.
37:32
Like she'll have,
37:33
you know,
37:34
famous good runners and like famous people in the sport.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm always the last one.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know why she has me on.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: But the lecture I give them has grown over time too.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: You can change the world unintentionally.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: And I changed the world through ultra running unintentionally.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: And I tell the story and throughout the story,
37:55
I'll mention people like the guy from the law firm that I was
37:58
going to run the half
37:58
SPEAKER_01: marathon with that I didn't.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: She's like, remember him because he's going to come up later.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: Mishka Shubali is one of those people.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm like,
38:05
remember this guy because Mishka wrote this book to just tell
38:11
the story of,
38:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:12
SPEAKER_01: running 50 miles.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: I read this book.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: And as a result of reading this book, I get into ultra running.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: And when I get into ultra running,
38:21
SPEAKER_01: I form the Flatlander Ultra Runners in Chicagoland Ultra Running Group,
38:26
SPEAKER_01: which now is like 2,500 members in Chicago.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: It's been around for 10 years.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: I formed the Ultra Runners in Recovery Group.
38:32
Where all the people that are recovering from drugs and alcohol
38:35
who are in the
38:35
SPEAKER_01: sport kind of get together a little bit.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Somebody tells me to start a podcast,
38:41
SPEAKER_01: a race company,
38:42
SPEAKER_01: just all of the things that have happened,
38:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: and I'm one of those people that every day,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: not every day.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Very often,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: someone says to me,
38:51
SPEAKER_01: you changed my life,
38:52
SPEAKER_01: or I'm different because of something that you did.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Not me specifically,
38:56
but my interview with so-and-so caused them to finally leave
39:00
their husband,
39:01
SPEAKER_01: or finally quit drinking,
39:02
SPEAKER_01: or take their running seriously.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the thing is that impacted them.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: All of this impact.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: And I always say...
39:11
Mishka Shubali has no idea what the trickle-down effect of his
39:15
impact was.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Some slow,
39:19
retired marathon runner in Chicago reads his stupid book and
39:23
then changes thousands
39:25
SPEAKER_01: of people's lives as a result of that.
39:27
And you as a creative person probably think about it sometimes,
39:32
but not enough.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: that everything that we do has that chance.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: It has that opportunity.
39:38
And in my case,
39:40
and probably in Mishka's case as well,
39:43
it's completely accidental.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: I didn't finish reading his book and say, that's it.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to change the world.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to become a race director.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do those things.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: All of it's accidental.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: All of it just kind of falls in my lap.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: But that's the proximate cause.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: And when people say that to me, they'll be like, you know what?
40:01
SPEAKER_01: You changed my life.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm like,
40:03
SPEAKER_01: Michigan Valley changed your life.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: But for that guy, none of this happens.
40:08
And it kind of blows him away because he never went on to run
40:10
beyond the 50.
40:11
And then he sees me run like 100 miles and go do all this other
40:15
crazy running stuff.
40:16
And he's just like,
40:18
I couldn't have inspired you because you did more than I ever
40:20
did.
40:20
And I'm just like,
40:22
you just never know what the effect of what you do is going to
40:25
have
40:27
SPEAKER_01: removed several people from, from what you did.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: And, and that's kind of the, kind of the brilliance of that.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: The long run book is just, I don't read that book.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't learn 50 miles.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Flatlanders doesn't exist.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: Ultra runners in recovery doesn't exist.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: 10 junk miles doesn't exist.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know you.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm not on this podcast.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Like none of those things.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: And in all of those people that I've met that have said,
40:51
as a result of X and X represents something that I've ever done
40:54
in my life,
40:56
SPEAKER_01: they're,
40:56
SPEAKER_01: they're better than,
40:58
SPEAKER_01: That all traces back to that, too.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: I kind of think, isn't that the entire point of art though, right?
41:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like share a story or a thing,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: a thought,
41:10
SPEAKER_00: an idea,
41:11
SPEAKER_00: and then people can do with it what they want,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: like it will affect them.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, but not today.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: Like today art is, I'm going to become famous by doing this art.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to influence people by doing this thing.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: People are intentionally trying to change the,
41:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be a change agent by doing this stuff.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking just accidental, you know?
41:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't set out to do any of this stuff.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: I'd say some people are like that.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: But,
41:38
SPEAKER_00: like,
41:39
SPEAKER_00: let's just,
41:40
SPEAKER_00: for a thought experiment,
41:41
SPEAKER_00: let's just say your races and your podcast are art,
41:46
SPEAKER_00: which they are.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: They are creative works.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
41:50
Creating and directing a race where people run around in
41:53
circles or run around in
41:55
SPEAKER_00: the woods for 12 or 24 hours because you said it would be fun.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: That is a work of art.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: So...
42:02
in that way,
42:03
you gave these people this platform to change their own lives.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: You gave them a reason to do it.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't like you being like, I'm going to influence people.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: You're like, hey, this would be fun.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to create community here.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: I'll see what happens.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: Creating community.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Which I think is not always the intention behind making art.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: No.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, there are many different
42:29
SPEAKER_00: many different reasons for making art,
42:30
SPEAKER_00: but like,
42:31
SPEAKER_00: but I think the story you told is like,
42:33
SPEAKER_00: that's the best case scenario,
42:34
SPEAKER_00: the trickle down.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: And like,
42:37
but I think that you're going to have that regardless of your
42:39
intention for just,
42:41
SPEAKER_01: it's just more mind boggling when,
42:43
SPEAKER_01: when it's not your intention,
42:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:45
SPEAKER_01: like,
42:46
like if you and I write a book about how to give up drugs and
42:49
alcohol and get your,
42:50
SPEAKER_01: get your life together,
42:51
we're not going to be startled when the people that are waiting
42:53
in line to have a
42:54
SPEAKER_01: sign their book say,
42:55
SPEAKER_01: Hey,
42:55
SPEAKER_01: I got my life together,
42:56
SPEAKER_01: you know?
42:57
SPEAKER_01: But,
42:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:58
SPEAKER_01: when so-and-so built this building or when Jimi Hendrix,
43:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:02
SPEAKER_01: sang Like a Rolling Stone at Monterey,
43:04
SPEAKER_01: he wasn't thinking,
43:05
some kid in eighth grade is going to go on a whole journey
43:08
because of this.
43:09
I mean,
43:09
he was just,
43:10
you know,
43:11
like,
43:11
you know,
43:11
it'd be cool to cover Bob Dylan's song,
43:13
you know?
43:14
SPEAKER_00: right?
43:15
SPEAKER_00: Or, uh, you, you like later career, Jack Kerouac at a book signing.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: You're like, Hey, Jack Kerouac, you destroyed my life.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: I did drugs because of you.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Like that's unintentional as well.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: But,
43:26
SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
43:27
SPEAKER_00: I guess I think more in the positive,
43:29
SPEAKER_00: positive sense of it,
43:30
SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
43:31
SPEAKER_00: that's,
43:31
SPEAKER_00: it's really cool.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I always like, you know, people say this book changed my life.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, most books change your life.
43:39
It's just like a little,
43:40
you know,
43:41
you're not,
43:41
you're not doing a 90 degree turn.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Like,
43:44
Most books change your life,
43:45
like just a little angle,
43:47
you know,
43:48
and you're like your path.
43:50
It's the guy that says he decided he was going to go eat a
43:52
double cheeseburger at
43:53
SPEAKER_01: every Wendy's in America because he read your life.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: That's a huge shift.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Big, big turn.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: Big turn.
43:59
SPEAKER_00: You messed that guy up.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Well,
44:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
44:05
SPEAKER_00: that could be a really,
44:06
I actually have a book by somebody who like went to try to eat
44:08
the best hot dogs in
44:09
SPEAKER_00: America.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: It's actually pretty, pretty good book, but like, you know,
44:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: I, I don't know if it's positive.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: That's a, that's a wonderful thing.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Mishka, this is all your fault.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: Which yeah.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Good book.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: 50 pages.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: And like, that's not very long.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: I remember reading it and thinking, how do you get these made?
44:35
SPEAKER_00: And, like, why is this one so, like, successful?
44:38
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's good.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: In the canon of running literature, as said.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: Did you think, like, your...
44:52
I feel like several of these stories have been,
44:54
I am an alcoholic,
44:56
but for something else.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
44:59
SPEAKER_00: You're like...
45:01
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I see this in myself too.
45:03
I wonder if you would go along with the school of thought where
45:05
you're like,
45:06
SPEAKER_00: you go all in,
45:07
SPEAKER_00: you go very,
45:08
SPEAKER_00: very deep and very,
45:09
SPEAKER_00: very hard on things,
45:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:12
SPEAKER_00: the same way you interacted with substances,
45:16
SPEAKER_00: except it's more positive and productive for the rest of your life.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: I think if there was like a semi red,
45:21
SPEAKER_01: like pie chart of things in my life,
45:25
SPEAKER_01: there'd be things I,
45:27
SPEAKER_01: things I don't like that'd be a big chunk of,
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Things I like way too much.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, things I can't do anymore because I like them way too much.
45:39
And then the smallest pie piece would be things I like,
45:43
but I can take them or leave them.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, like there's not a lot of that.
45:48
most things i just you know like i i i listened to the album
45:54
the thousand and one
45:55
albums to listen to before you die i did an album a day talk
45:58
about ultra right one
45:59
of a thousand one albums it took me and it's more than a
46:03
thousand and one it ended
46:04
up being like a thousand one hundred eighty nine so this is
46:08
like a four or five
46:08
SPEAKER_01: year project yeah listening to records and then when it was over i got
46:14
SPEAKER_01: The book, 501 Essential 80s Albums.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: And I started a new one.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm on like number 30 on that, you know?
46:24
SPEAKER_01: But that's just kind of like how I'm wired.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I want to do it.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: I like having these projects.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: 500 Frank Lloyd Wright structures to see before you die.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: That's your book title.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Should we, should we do your last one?
46:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, which is a podcast, I believe more recent.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Alison Rosen is your new best friend.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: Why is this, why is this your fifth one?
46:53
SPEAKER_01: So when I,
46:57
After I read The Long Run and I started The Flatlanders and The
47:00
Ultra Runners and
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Recovery,
47:02
SPEAKER_01: and I got really into ultra running,
47:05
SPEAKER_01: I started listening to podcasts.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: And I was not an Adam Carolla fan.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: I listened to his podcast a handful of times.
47:15
I kind of got tired of it quick because he's got like 10 bits
47:18
and he just kind of
47:19
SPEAKER_01: recycles them,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: you know?
47:20
SPEAKER_01: But he had this girl named Allison Rosen that was his news lady.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: And so she would have like a segment where she read the news.
47:30
And she started her own podcast called Alison Rosen is Your New
47:35
Best Friend,
47:36
SPEAKER_01: which was,
47:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:37
SPEAKER_01: there's like A-list,
47:38
SPEAKER_01: B-list,
47:39
SPEAKER_01: C-list celebrities.
47:40
These are like P-list celebrities who got together once a week
47:46
and they sat around
47:46
SPEAKER_01: a table and talked about their lives.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: They had little inside jokes,
47:50
SPEAKER_01: little segments,
47:52
SPEAKER_01: but it was kind of a show about nothing by people who were
47:56
SPEAKER_01: Not famous.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: And I got hooked into this show.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife got hooked into this show.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: And I remember we were driving in the car one day and she just said,
48:06
SPEAKER_01: why the hell do we care about these people?
48:08
SPEAKER_01: And why did we listen to this show that we did?
48:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, like Jenna's having a baby.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, oh, my God, they're going to do the fruit song now.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: And,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:15
like there was just something about the banter of good friends
48:19
that was comforting
48:20
SPEAKER_01: and that made me feel good.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, that idea festered in my mind.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: And one day when I was running on the trail with this guy,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: Corey Fane,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: who's a local guy,
48:31
SPEAKER_01: I said,
48:32
SPEAKER_01: I thought maybe,
48:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:35
SPEAKER_01: one of the things I love about running long,
48:37
SPEAKER_00: okay?
48:37
SPEAKER_01: Let's say you come here and I say, hey, here's what we're going to do.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: We're going to run the I&M Canal for 50 miles together.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: It's going to take all day.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: We're going to stop at gas stations and fast food restaurants.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's just do it.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: On that run, which probably sucks, we have a lot of conversations, right?
48:54
SPEAKER_01: And the conversations are probably the fun part of it.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, at some point we're doubled over laughing.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: At some point we're arguing.
49:02
But that journey and those conversations,
49:04
that's the fun stuff to ultra running to me.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: That's the glue that binds us.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: And that's sometimes what makes doing these runs fun.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: There are people out there in the middle of Montana or Idaho or whatever.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: They don't have ultra running friends.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: They don't have anybody to train with.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: They just run.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: And that's it.
49:25
And I have this network of people that,
49:29
you know,
49:30
we get together on a Sunday.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Who wants to run 30 miles?
49:32
I got like 20 people that show up and we all go run all day
49:34
together and we have a great time.
49:37
What if I took that friendship aspect and put it into a podcast
49:42
form so that you
49:44
SPEAKER_01: would have running friends when you don't have anyone to run with?
49:48
SPEAKER_01: So that was my idea.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Running friends when you don't have anyone to run with.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: The guy looked at me and he's like, I think that might be a good idea.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Now,
49:59
SPEAKER_00: understand if you listen to running podcasts now,
50:02
SPEAKER_00: running podcasts in 2012,
50:06
there was basically just like three or four of them and they
50:08
were all exactly the
50:09
SPEAKER_01: same.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: You just won the UTMB.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: How did you do it?
50:13
SPEAKER_01: How did you train?
50:14
SPEAKER_01: What nutrition did you use?
50:15
SPEAKER_01: What's next?
50:16
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: There was no long form conversational podcasts or podcasts.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: group gang type discussion podcasts that were funny.
50:26
SPEAKER_01: It was all very just vanilla.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: And so we didn't know what the hell we were doing.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: We went in my basement.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: We had a guy who knew a little bit about tech record it.
50:38
And we just basically did 10 minute segments and we called it
50:41
10 Junk Miles and
50:43
SPEAKER_01: just made it up as we went.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: None of us had any experience.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: None of us knew anything about it.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't know if anybody would listen to it or not.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know if it was good or not.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: We were having fun.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: That was it.
50:56
But it ended up doing exactly what I wanted it to do in that I
51:04
started to get
51:05
SPEAKER_01: emails from people that said,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: thank you.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: You are now my running friends.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: You're the only people I've ever run with.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: You've made doing a 50 miler or 100 miler seem more accessible to me.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, and, and understand we're not in this podcast is gang show format.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: We're not giving you tips on hot ramen.
51:25
We're debating like which nut should get kicked out of the
51:28
deluxe nut mix and which
51:30
SPEAKER_01: nut should be doubled.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're talking about children's cereal.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about just, you know, people's vasectomies.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
51:37
SPEAKER_01: just crazy rant,
51:38
SPEAKER_01: the same crap that you talk about while you're running on the trail,
51:41
SPEAKER_01: right?
51:41
Just whatever comes up,
51:42
we talk about not scripted,
51:44
not planned,
51:45
no production.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: I didn't edit anything.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: I just zip, zip, put it on the internet.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: And then just all of a sudden,
51:53
SPEAKER_01: thousands and thousands of people started listening to this podcast.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I didn't intend for that to happen.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know if anyone was going to listen.
52:02
But as time goes by,
52:03
then I started to add the long form one-on-one interviews that
52:08
I do.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of like what we talked about a little bit earlier,
52:13
SPEAKER_01: like with the athletes,
52:14
SPEAKER_01: like we know about LeBron,
52:16
SPEAKER_01: we know about his sports,
52:17
SPEAKER_01: we know about all that kind of stuff.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: But like,
52:20
SPEAKER_01: What does he do when he's not playing basketball?
52:22
You know,
52:22
like what is there about LeBron that like we would all be very
52:25
surprised to know?
52:26
You know,
52:27
does he have a,
52:28
you know,
52:28
a sailboat collection made out of popsicle sticks?
52:31
You know,
52:31
is he obsessed with,
52:33
you know,
52:34
coming up with new ways to braid his daughter's hair?
52:36
Like there's things about these people that are ultra runners
52:39
that no one ever
52:40
SPEAKER_01: bothers to ask them about because it's just like,
52:41
SPEAKER_01: what kind of gels do you use?
52:42
SPEAKER_01: What kind of shoes do you use?
52:44
SPEAKER_01: What are you running next?
52:45
SPEAKER_01: So I would interview famous or elite people, but more about who you are.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: What was your journey to getting there?
52:52
SPEAKER_01: And it would be,
52:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:54
SPEAKER_01: the average podcast would probably be like 45 minutes to an hour then.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: I would put out these podcasts that are like two and a half hours,
52:59
SPEAKER_01: three hours,
53:00
SPEAKER_01: five hours long talking to one person,
53:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
53:03
SPEAKER_01: and people enjoyed it.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: So those two things kind of went together.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: And now it's, this is our 12th year.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: Six million downloads later,
53:16
SPEAKER_01: all these people that come to me and said to me,
53:19
SPEAKER_01: this matters to me.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: And I remember the moment that we figured out that it matters,
53:24
SPEAKER_01: it was like the end of a show,
53:26
SPEAKER_01: and we read a review by someone.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: And the guy said that he didn't know how he found the show,
53:32
SPEAKER_00: but that he weighed like 500,
53:34
SPEAKER_00: 600 pounds or something.
53:35
And he started walking,
53:37
and he Googled,
53:38
and he found our show,
53:39
and he started listening.
53:39
And he said,
53:40
and now I weigh like 250,
53:44
and I'm going to do my first 50K this weekend.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: And
53:48
SPEAKER_01: And we all started crying.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: We're just like,
53:50
we didn't even think for one second that what we were doing
53:53
could possibly have
53:55
SPEAKER_01: that effect.
53:56
But it's kind of like you and I talked about it a little bit
53:59
when I interviewed you on the show.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: It's like your your toaster oven thing.
54:02
Like you never know what one thing is going to hit somebody,
54:05
either good or bad.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: But,
54:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: every time I do a long form interview,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: there's someone that sends an email that says,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Scotty,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: that's the one.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: That's the one.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: I cried.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: I connected.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: I will never forget it.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: It changed my life.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: Every single time I do one of those,
54:22
SPEAKER_01: I get that kind of feedback,
54:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:24
SPEAKER_01: from at least one person.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: And, yeah.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: And so, and again, now this is something that I didn't set out to do.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Something that I never wanted to be.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to be famous.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: Didn't want to make money.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: Didn't want, you know, like it was just, let's just do this silly thing.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden, all these people listen to it.
54:40
And then the next thing that that causes is that I found this
54:46
trail that I liked.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you know what?
54:47
SPEAKER_01: We should put a race on this trail.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: That'd be kind of fun.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's ever put a race on this trail.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: So I put on a race.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I didn't think about.
54:54
All those people that didn't have any running friends,
54:56
they're all coming to the race.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm their running friend, right?
55:01
SPEAKER_01: And when they got there, they met each other.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: And then they...
55:07
created a community of people from listening to the podcast
55:11
they created their own
55:12
facebook page during the uh pandemic they had a book club they
55:15
had an album club
55:16
SPEAKER_01: they did zoom happy hours
55:18
SPEAKER_01: It took on a life of its own and not as a result of me.
55:22
SPEAKER_01: They connected with each other.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: And then I see people,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: I'd be like,
55:26
SPEAKER_01: like you see,
55:26
like they're at the Berlin Marathon and there's like five
55:30
people with 10 Jump Miles
55:31
SPEAKER_01: shirts running together.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: And they met through the pack.
55:34
These are the people that didn't have anybody to run with who
55:36
met each other.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: And now they're out doing things and they're inspiring other people.
55:41
There's podcasts that have kind of grown out of this,
55:44
other podcasts and other communities.
55:45
and things like that and it's like we talked about again i know
55:48
everybody that
55:49
knows me is like stop talking about this it's the trickle down
55:52
effect of impact
55:53
that you never know it's it's it's i i think about it in it it
55:59
created a shift in
56:00
my life where i shifted from okay like i had a good career i
56:04
still have a good
56:04
career my wife has a great career in terms of like trying to
56:09
you know make it in
56:10
SPEAKER_01: life i've made it in life i'm good okay
56:13
SPEAKER_01: Now I think, what is my metric?
56:14
SPEAKER_01: And my metric is, how can I impact the world around me?
56:19
SPEAKER_01: How can I change the world?
56:21
SPEAKER_01: And what am I doing and how can I do it in a way that changes the world?
56:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's not the obvious one.
56:30
Someone listening to us today and decides,
56:32
I'm going to go change the world too.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about that guy.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: That's a direct person.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: But I'm talking about that story of that guy that weighed 500 pounds.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about his neighbors.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: That's watching him out there running and saying,
56:47
SPEAKER_01: geez,
56:47
SPEAKER_01: if he can get his shit together,
56:48
SPEAKER_01: why can't I?
56:49
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll start running.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: And then he gets, he starts running and his family loves him more.
56:55
SPEAKER_01: He gets healthier.
56:55
SPEAKER_01: He lives longer and his kids get into sports.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: And then someone's inspired by them and someone's inspired by them.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: And they have no idea what the hell 10 junk miles is.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: They've never met me.
57:06
They don't know anything about me,
57:08
but somehow or another,
57:09
it ran downhill all the way to them.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: I think about it and it blows my mind.
57:15
SPEAKER_01: Like to me, that's what life is about.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: That's what I want to do with my life.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: And so Alison Rosen, I've never met.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: I've never talked to you.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: She has no idea.
57:25
SPEAKER_01: But again, she doesn't do her show.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: None of this stuff happens.
57:31
SPEAKER_01: None of those races happen.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all the people that finish, like I put so...
57:35
SPEAKER_01: I put on a race now.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: I put on three races.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: One of them's a hundred miler.
57:38
You know,
57:39
I probably put 2000 people on the trail a year on various races
57:42
that I put on.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm there at the finish line, hugging those people.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: And,
57:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
57:47
SPEAKER_01: maybe one or three people,
57:49
SPEAKER_01: they look at me like,
57:49
SPEAKER_01: who are you and why are you hugging me?
57:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not what I was looking for at the end of this event.
57:54
But then there are people that just collapse in my arms and
57:57
say,
57:57
you don't understand.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: I never would be here if it wasn't for you, you know?
58:02
SPEAKER_01: And I just think that's what I want to do with my life.
58:05
SPEAKER_01: you know?
58:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: And so many,
58:09
SPEAKER_00: like the,
58:09
SPEAKER_00: the extrapolation you were saying is like,
58:12
SPEAKER_00: you don't,
58:13
SPEAKER_00: you're never going to know about 95% of those things or 98% of them,
58:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:17
SPEAKER_00: every once in a while,
58:18
SPEAKER_00: somebody will reach out and send you an email or whatever,
58:21
SPEAKER_00: but like,
58:22
SPEAKER_00: you don't know where all that stuff's going.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: So.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a takeaway.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
58:26
SPEAKER_01: if you're listening to this right now and there's someone,
58:29
SPEAKER_01: and I'm not talking about me and I'm not talking about Brandon,
58:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about
58:32
SPEAKER_01: Somebody in your life that makes a difference,
58:34
SPEAKER_01: that creates something,
58:35
SPEAKER_01: that makes a podcast,
58:36
SPEAKER_01: that painted a picture of that.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is that they do, a teacher that you had, whatever.
58:41
Go tell them,
58:42
you made a difference in my life because I never get tired of
58:45
that.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: And I think more people need to know that.
58:48
And I think that the more we do that,
58:51
people will take more chances to do things.
58:54
SPEAKER_01: They'll feel like what they're doing matters in the world.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't need that to keep doing it.
58:59
SPEAKER_01: Because I know it's happening.
59:01
But I bet there are people that started a podcast and they only
59:03
had like 30 people
59:04
SPEAKER_01: listen and then they gave up.
59:06
SPEAKER_01: But one of those 30 people was all in on that.
59:09
SPEAKER_01: It was going to change their life.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: And they might have done all kinds of things as a result of it.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: So you never know who's listening.
59:15
SPEAKER_01: You never know what impact you can have.
59:17
And that's kind of like the theme when I was talking about
59:20
talking to those college kids.
59:21
SPEAKER_01: I always look at them in the beginning and I say,
59:24
SPEAKER_01: when I was in college,
59:25
SPEAKER_01: what did I need to hear?
59:26
SPEAKER_01: If I could go back to college and have someone tell me something,
59:29
SPEAKER_01: What would I want them to say?
59:31
SPEAKER_01: And it's you can change the world.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: You can totally change the world.
59:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's what I want.
59:39
SPEAKER_01: That's what I want to give to them.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great place to end it, man.
59:47
Or,
59:48
or we go and look up Alison Rosen's email address and write her
59:52
thank you letter for this.
59:54
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: Email.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dude, this is fantastic.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for doing it.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: It's my pleasure.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of times when people didn't want to hear me talk and it's,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: it's nice to be able to,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: but,