Chuck Palahniuk (novelist)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Jack Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monica Lily Padman.

[3] Hi.

[4] Wow.

[5] Yeah, I got reverb now.

[6] I like that.

[7] It's such a bummer that the audience doesn't get to see your sweaters every time we do an intro.

[8] Oh, it got cold again in Los Angeles.

[9] We were in a heat wave, and now it's killed again.

[10] Oh, this is a sweater that got ruined that I re -bought.

[11] Oh, great.

[12] And you're going to probably be a little more careful.

[13] careful that you're going to suss out your cleaners a little better.

[14] That's right.

[15] At the same time, you do have to provide content for a very popular show, so I do ask you to keep ruining shit so we can hear more Seinfeld -esque stories.

[16] I can agree to that.

[17] Ironically, there's one in this fact check.

[18] Stay tuned.

[19] It's a textbook, Monty Patty, Seinfeldie fucking story, and it's coming your way.

[20] But before that, we have an incredible writer.

[21] Chuck Palinuk.

[22] Chuck is a best -selling author and a journalist.

[23] Of course, everyone knows Fight Club.

[24] My Lord.

[25] I mean.

[26] What a seminal work in the evening.

[27] young adults that grew up in my era.

[28] Yeah.

[29] Oh, you too.

[30] You weren't even a young adult then.

[31] I mean, Fight Club sort of has transitioned all of time, I think.

[32] He also wrote choke, lullaby, haunted, snuff.

[33] And he has a new book out exclusively on Scrib .com, which I got to just tell you, there's no E in there.

[34] So it's S -C -R -I -B -D .com.

[35] The book is called People, Places, Things, My Human Landmarks.

[36] This is a wonderful conversation.

[37] So good.

[38] Chuck is so fascinating.

[39] It's really nice to have a writer's brains on.

[40] Yes, it's refreshing.

[41] It is.

[42] Please enjoy Chuck Palinuck.

[43] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[44] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[45] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[46] He's an armchair.

[47] We have a bad habit in here.

[48] His are nicotine toothpicks.

[49] Mine are tea tree oil toothpicks.

[50] So yours isn't really a bad habit.

[51] Do they record?

[52] Do they pick up?

[53] I hope not.

[54] Not that we've noticed because as you endeavor upon something, you end up learning stuff.

[55] You just really wouldn't a guess you were going to learn.

[56] One of them being a pretty significant portion of the population has mesophonia.

[57] I would have not thought that.

[58] Do you know misophonia?

[59] That's with asbestos in your lungs, right?

[60] No, that might be a legioner's disease.

[61] I don't know.

[62] Myos.

[63] That's mesothelian.

[64] Mesothelioma.

[65] Yeah, I see that on 60 Minutes advertise it all the time.

[66] They're pushing it hard.

[67] Misophonia is people who have, like, inordinately hard time listening to noises created in the mouth.

[68] So chewing, slurping, gum.

[69] So we try to be careful with mouth sounds on here.

[70] This would be a problem if this toothpick thing is audible.

[71] I don't think it is.

[72] So far no one's commented.

[73] We normally would get called out.

[74] In the Fight Club movie, when Brad Pitt is talking on the phone to everyone, Edward Norton, and he's obviously eating chips while he's doing so.

[75] It's the only thing that kind of saves an otherwise static scene.

[76] And everyone always remarks how disgusting it is to have that chewing sound in that scene.

[77] But otherwise, it's a guy on a public phone standing on the street talking.

[78] But just that one visceral detail completely delivers it.

[79] Well, this is what's known about Brad Pitt.

[80] He loves to eat in movies.

[81] Really?

[82] Yes, watch Ocean's 11.

[83] We'll watch the whole damn franchise.

[84] There is nary a scene with him not eating in it.

[85] It's kind of his go -to.

[86] Well, I could see it as a way of distorting language, because you must get really tired of just delivering clear language all the time.

[87] Yeah.

[88] But imagine what it's like to loop a scene where your character is eating?

[89] No. I can't loop a scene where my character's just sitting in a chair.

[90] It's hard to do.

[91] Talking.

[92] Yeah, it's so challenging.

[93] Oh, boy.

[94] Where would we even begin?

[95] As I learned about the man behind Fight Club, something I've enjoyed for the last 30 years, I guess it's going on.

[96] Ninety -nine, do you write that book?

[97] Unknown.

[98] The book came out in 96.

[99] The movie came out in 99.

[100] Come four years from now, it'll be 30 years.

[101] Yeah, tell me about it.

[102] First and foremost, let's talk about being a diesel mechanic.

[103] Oh, wow.

[104] Because that jumped out at me immediately, A, you know, I own a freight liner chassis.

[105] You're kidding.

[106] No, my bus is on a freight liner chassis.

[107] So is a chassis with a box built on it, or is it a tractor trailer?

[108] It's a chassis that then a motorhome manufacturer builds a coach on top of.

[109] And it's a freight liner, it's not a sterling.

[110] Correct, it's a freight liner.

[111] They're very popular in motorhome chassis.

[112] You know, that must have been something they built out to after I left, because I left in 98.

[113] And what were they making?

[114] At that point, they had just bought Sterling, and they had bought American LaFrance fire engines because our CEO had worked there as a very, very young man. Oh, and it was like a vanity acquisition forum?

[115] He was going to save American LaFrance.

[116] So we were supporting all these different vehicles, and we had bought International Harvester, Well, Freight Lenter had.

[117] But they screwed up and they didn't buy the copyright to the name International Harvester.

[118] So they got all the production facilities and all the engineering and they had to rename it Navistar.

[119] They had to rebrand everything as Navistar.

[120] When was the last time we've heard of Navistar trucks?

[121] I haven't.

[122] But back to International Harvester, they, of course, made the scout back in the day, right?

[123] Yeah.

[124] I could be wrong about this, but I want to say International Harvester was originally started by a husband of a Rockefeller daughter in Chicago.

[125] And he ended up infusing money into this, I believe.

[126] Oh, totally except Chicago, the rest of it, I don't know.

[127] Okay, yeah, yeah.

[128] You're going to have a real goose chase.

[129] You won't even confront this in the fact check, will you?

[130] No, I can't.

[131] Ask me about the McCormick Reaper.

[132] Oh, gosh, I'd love to know about the McCormick Reaper.

[133] Yeah, so would I?

[134] So back then, Freightliner was using Detroit Diesel Motors.

[135] What were you working on?

[136] Well, that's kind of the dirty secret about Class 8 over -the -road tractor trailers, is that they all use the same components.

[137] So Peterbilt and Kenworth and Freightliner, they're all using Cummins engines, Detroit Diesel engines.

[138] Freightliner eventually bought Detroit Diesel.

[139] Oh, they did.

[140] And they just configured them differently.

[141] So they all use basically the same axle components.

[142] And they just put them together and they service them differently and they market them differently.

[143] So how did you learn to work on these?

[144] I lied like crazy.

[145] I graduated with a journalism degree.

[146] Yeah.

[147] Not a good choice.

[148] Yeah, I just want to point out, this was not the route you were on seemingly.

[149] You've gone to college, and then how on earth do you get detoured into diesel mechanics?

[150] My grandfather was a mechanic for Garrett truck lines.

[151] And so it wasn't until I was 20 that I didn't think that every pencil in the world had Garrett truck lines embossed on it.

[152] Right.

[153] Because those are the only pencils we had.

[154] So my grandfather told me a certain amount of BS to deliver, and I went in, and I lied through my teeth and said I'd worked for Garrett truck lines, and they didn't verify.

[155] and they started me where the heaviest components have to be bolted together and thank God I was 24 years old.

[156] If you don't have carpal tunnel going in, it's a fast pass to carpal tunnel.

[157] Oh yeah.

[158] You had some big pneumatic gun you used and you assembled?

[159] That's the least of it.

[160] I've ever heard of a huck bolt.

[161] What is a huck bolt?

[162] A huck bolt is a huge bolt that's ridged around the outside and you insert this bolt which is, oh geez, twice the size of your thumb in thickness and about eight or 10 inches long.

[163] And the huck gun weighs about 45 pounds, maybe 50 pounds.

[164] Yeah.

[165] And so you can place it against your shoulder.

[166] So the butt of the gun is against your belt.

[167] You aim it up in the air and then you drop the huck bolt in it without any components to fasten together.

[168] Yeah.

[169] It will suck the bolt down.

[170] And at the moment that it reaches the bolt's head and it snaps the bolt off, it will shoot the remainder of the bolt, the entire length of the plant, like a half a mile.

[171] Oh.

[172] And so one of the funnest things to do is to huck, hook, hook bolts?

[173] To shoot those huck bolts, the length of the plant and scream incoming.

[174] Yeah.

[175] That was one of many incredibly cruel things we did.

[176] Yeah, but great fun was had during these launching the hucks.

[177] Great cruel fun.

[178] Did you hurt anyone?

[179] You can say it here.

[180] The statute of limitations is certainly ran up.

[181] Not that I know.

[182] Oh, good.

[183] Great answer.

[184] Did you end up writing in some capacity for Freightliner?

[185] I started writing recalls and service bulletins and ultimately service manuals and driver's manuals.

[186] And then I would go out in the field and teach recall procedures at different dealerships.

[187] Do you think you could service my chassis before you leave?

[188] You don't think so.

[189] You didn't bring any lubricants.

[190] You do not want me to.

[191] Things have changed since then.

[192] If I hurt anybody, it was because I didn't really pay attention to my torque specifications.

[193] Well, who does?

[194] Those are suggestions.

[195] Front wheels came off.

[196] Sure, sure.

[197] These things happen.

[198] There's some autobiographical element in Fight Club a little bit.

[199] I guess the one that immediately jumps out at me is the Ed Norton character.

[200] It's funny, right?

[201] We all remember Tyler Durd and Brad Pitt's character, but I'm not sure what Edwards' character's name was.

[202] In the screenplay, he was called Jack.

[203] He didn't have a name in the book.

[204] Okay, then I feel less guilty about this.

[205] Regardless, his character, unnamed, Plona Nongrata, he would attend different 12 -step groups.

[206] No, they were terminal illness support groups for people who are dying.

[207] That's better.

[208] Their support groups.

[209] And you were involved prior to writing the book in hospice care, no?

[210] I was.

[211] I started to volunteer at a hospice where I had no skills whatsoever.

[212] Seemingly the through line.

[213] Do you ever lie your way into surgery?

[214] No, no, but I had to take people to their support groups.

[215] Right.

[216] And then sit there with them so I could take them back.

[217] Or I took a lot of people to see the ocean for the last time.

[218] That was a big thing.

[219] I want to see the ocean one more time.

[220] So it was driving Miss Daisy, but with a 24 -year -old kid.

[221] What's the experiential part of that?

[222] What are you getting out of that?

[223] What were you looking for?

[224] My life was so galactically shitty at that point.

[225] I had enormous school loans.

[226] I had a car I had bought in high school.

[227] It was an old car when I bought it in high school.

[228] I had a degree.

[229] I could not get $5 an hour in journalism.

[230] I had nothing.

[231] All I had was my youth.

[232] But when I went to the support group, and I saw these people who were sometimes my age and they were dying.

[233] I would walk out of there and just the fact that I walked out of there and I was still breathe in air, I felt fantastic.

[234] And I would go to work and I would work that shitty job.

[235] The fact that I could lift heavy things and push heavy things.

[236] Just in comparison, I saw my life was not so bad.

[237] This is a thing that psychologists advise, which is down comparing.

[238] Or it's like, well, these people have the worst case scenario.

[239] So whatever you're doing, it's an improvement.

[240] Whatever you're doing, and also the fact that you're present, it sounds ludicrous, but I was afraid at that age that I wouldn't die right, that when it came time to die, I would mess it up somehow.

[241] What would be a good death?

[242] What would be a bad death?

[243] I couldn't even unpack it in that way.

[244] Okay.

[245] I just had to see what the process of dying was about.

[246] And going there and being in the presence of it on a repeated basis really kind of normalized it and made it a very sort of non -threatening thing, just a comforting, inevitable thing.

[247] Your new, what do we label this?

[248] People places things.

[249] An essay, right?

[250] But it's long.

[251] It's like 25 pages long.

[252] So yeah, so it's somewhere in the middle of something.

[253] It's in on a subscription service called script.

[254] People, places, things.

[255] My Human Landmarks.

[256] Yeah.

[257] What I learned in reading it was you're from Burbank.

[258] Burbank, Washington.

[259] Washington, that's very key.

[260] And so I'm cabling together clues without going onto Google and looking, even though you suggest go to Google Earth and you use it as a verb Google Earthing.

[261] What I'm assuming is it must have been eastern Washington.

[262] So it's like on the other side of the Cascades where it's dry as fuck.

[263] Right.

[264] It's on the Snake River just as the Snake River empties into the Columbia River.

[265] So for folks who have not traveled there, it is a hostile environment.

[266] I mean, it's arid, right?

[267] It's not lush.

[268] It's called the Scablands.

[269] And when they were looking for a place to put the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and build the atomic bombs in World War II, they were looking for the most inhospitable, desolate place in the country, disposable.

[270] And so they chose this huge area because in prehistoric times, enormous ice dams would form and back up lakes in Montana the size of the Great Lakes.

[271] When the dam collapsed, all that water would rush through that area.

[272] And so it removed all the top soil.

[273] It's just windblown sand and exposed bedrock.

[274] Wow.

[275] And then you referenced Sedaris, who we absolutely, absolutely love.

[276] We've had him on a couple times.

[277] Yes.

[278] I'm in the process of wooing him to develop a personal relationship.

[279] We have taken one walk together.

[280] It went pretty well.

[281] He references at one point the boys who had been separated out of class to go attend speech therapy to deal with their lists.

[282] And you basically said you describe yourself as one of these boys.

[283] You were urged by a gym teacher or football coach to use the weight room whenever you wanted and he would even write you a pass.

[284] It said you could be out of class for two hours.

[285] To which your therapist replied, when did he first?

[286] Fuck you.

[287] Because this is very groomy.

[288] It's a little red flaggy, that behavior.

[289] But according to you or maybe your memory, that luckily didn't transpire.

[290] No, no. All the more.

[291] All the more time.

[292] At the time, it was just a really frightening thing to go to the high school to be like a nine -year -old kid sneaking into the high school to use the weight room.

[293] Wait, you were that young when this started?

[294] Yeah, it was fourth or fifth grade.

[295] I thought you were like a ninth grader.

[296] I thought you were maybe like skinny.

[297] and you didn't want to get caught it.

[298] So you were going there as a fucking fourth grade.

[299] Yeah.

[300] Originally, there were like four or five of us who were brought up there and shown how to use the chrome universal equipment with that sparkly red upholstery on it.

[301] Yeah, yeah.

[302] That it would always crack and it would pinch you when you sat on the crack.

[303] Very painful.

[304] But ultimately, it was just me. So it was me sneaking up to the high school, terrified of doing it.

[305] Okay, I've got to recompute a lot of things because you describe this workout facility.

[306] It's like in a dank.

[307] basement virtually.

[308] And you're down there just trying not to get caught, despite having permission.

[309] So I guess when I was in my head and I was like imagining this whole thing, of course, if I have you in high school, it's a much different story I constructed.

[310] Any fourth or fifth grader is going to be terrified that the 17 year old football players are going to come in.

[311] But I had the hunch that you as a high schooler would have been terrified of that as well.

[312] But you kept going, even though you were scared.

[313] I did.

[314] I'm going to out you right now.

[315] We just took a photo with you before we started and he put his arms around us.

[316] Did you feel the strength, both in his hands and I felt he has some great muscles in his back.

[317] Oh, wow, you could feel.

[318] Yeah, I can feel his trapeze.

[319] I took a bunch of free steals.

[320] So one interesting thing I was thinking about with Fight Club is when you look at the power of a bully, when you isolate their actual leverage, their sole leverage is to physically humiliate you in front of other kids.

[321] That's their weapon.

[322] And so in Fight Club, I see kind of a nerdy, lost guy who in some weird way says, I'm going to take the one thing you think.

[323] think I'm afraid of, and I'm going to embrace it, and I'm going to self -inflict it to show you this thing you have that is leverage over me is not fucking leverage, motherfucker.

[324] You sound just like Marilyn Manson.

[325] When he wrote his autobiography, he said, the point of me writing this book is to publicly debase myself so much so that people cannot ever debase me anymore than I have debased myself.

[326] It was a preemptory kind of attack.

[327] Yeah.

[328] I'm not a Scientologist, but I know a lot of Scientologists, they have a practice called bull baiting where you go into a room and people shout abuse at you, close range for a long time until you're no longer reactive to it.

[329] It's a kind of form of psychological flooding.

[330] It almost sounds like submersion therapy a little bit too, right?

[331] Yeah.

[332] And so with Fight Club, it was a way to kind of be with conflict.

[333] in a completely structured, consensual way.

[334] And so I think that's why it was so appealing for people because it was a way for them to sort of put a toe into the water and be present to this thing that they'd been running away from their whole life.

[335] And it's not even aversion to violence.

[336] It's aversion to conflict in general.

[337] So a lot of people from broken homes where mom and dad fought a lot, a lot of people who just have been kind of running from conflict their entire lives, who can't be with tension or suspense.

[338] Yeah.

[339] And boy, you get that with beginning writers.

[340] When I teach writing, it is so hard to get them to create suspension tension because writers, they become writers because they cannot be around conflict.

[341] And the act of writing, you have to create conflict.

[342] So in a way, it is kind of Fight Club on the page where you're in control of it.

[343] But even when they're in control of it, they don't want to create it.

[344] Well, I think what also is happening is they're protecting themselves.

[345] But they're also bringing the aspect of themselves to the fore.

[346] They're manifesting what they would like to become.

[347] You mentioned power as we started into this.

[348] And I'm always fascinated with power, but on a personal level.

[349] You know, Gone with the Wind.

[350] Yeah.

[351] Scarleto -Hera is 16 when the story starts.

[352] And she has to move from a form of power where she has youth and charm and vitality and wealth.

[353] And then as those things go away, she has to find different and different forms of power.

[354] So it's about how at every stage in life, you have to kind of transcend to a different kind of power because you're constantly losing the form of power that you have.

[355] And that's why in so many of my books, it's not about being physically destroyed.

[356] It's about being publicly humiliated.

[357] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[358] People are always afraid of being called out and humiliated because for young people, how they look, how good they look, is the only form of power they have.

[359] Yeah.

[360] So getting disrespected, getting disrespected, getting...

[361] humiliated like you say a bully would do, that is their greatest fear because it's the only form of power they have.

[362] Later on, when they get some money or connections or they get some education, yeah.

[363] Then, yeah, does them all you want.

[364] But when they're young and that's all they have, that's their greatest fear.

[365] And so the job at that point is to write a story in which a young person loses all of their dignity and survives and moves on to something else.

[366] So in choke, in fight club in pretty much all of my books.

[367] The character comes up against young people's worst case scenario and then moves beyond it.

[368] Wait, so you were in therapy in fourth grade then.

[369] It wasn't really therapy.

[370] It was just the football coach came and said, I want Pollanick, I want Dean Walker, I want this kid.

[371] I think it was four or five kids.

[372] I'm going to take you up to the high school and I'm going to teach you how to lift weights.

[373] But do you think he was doing that to train you guys for when you became high schoolers?

[374] Like, why would he do that?

[375] What do you think his motivation was?

[376] I think that, you know, back then they had all this language about he needs a stronger male role model or he needs a father figure.

[377] And so they kind of tried to fix superficial aspects of you because they couldn't fix what they wanted to fix.

[378] So like with the Sedaris essay, they fixed the Lisp.

[379] They took him and put him in speech therapy so he would not Lisp.

[380] And so they took me and Dean.

[381] and the other kids, and they taught us to lift weights, because if the outside looks right, then that's all it matters.

[382] Yeah.

[383] So what would you rank your childhood out of 10 as being joyful?

[384] Boy, I'd say a nine.

[385] A nine.

[386] Yeah.

[387] What were your interests in high school?

[388] Oh, boy, in high school, I started working almost full -time when I was 14.

[389] I was a bus boy and a dishwasher in a truck stop, and I loved that job.

[390] What did you love about it?

[391] My parents worked incredibly hard, and my goal was to work as hard as my parents did.

[392] I just saw that as an honor to work as hard as I could.

[393] And did you cover money like I did?

[394] No, you know, money is such an abstract that it doesn't really occur to me. And I think that's why people become burdened with stuff is because hoarders perceive value in objects as opposed to in currency.

[395] And so the currency has to be translated into objects constantly.

[396] So if anything, I kind of would be a hoarder if I didn't really watch myself.

[397] That's just so interesting because these are like radically different outcomes of a similar situation.

[398] So I think because for my mom, my single mother, money was everything.

[399] I mean, it really was what was on the top of the to -do list at all times because fucking the mortgage was due.

[400] So we coveted it in a way that I don't know how I wouldn't have been infected by.

[401] But even though your family worked a ton and struggled, they didn't fetishize money.

[402] Were you raised in urban environment or country?

[403] Literally the last suburb from Detroit where it then turns to farmland.

[404] So it's like if you went east, everyone there worked in Metro Detroit, but then west of me was farmland.

[405] So it was like a big hillbilly contingency, even though it was in Michigan in a Detroit suburb.

[406] Like everyone is from Appalachia that came up.

[407] We have that pride of culture thing there.

[408] Hillbilly allergy.

[409] Yes, yes.

[410] But I prefer the Gladwell chapter about the culture of pride.

[411] Have you read that?

[412] No, I have not.

[413] It's all about these.

[414] long feuds that have existed in Appalachia, right?

[415] There's thousands of them.

[416] Like, we know the Hatfields of McCoys, but there's been thousands of them, and they go through these court cases where people have gotten off of murdering someone because they called that man's wife a bitch at the grocery store.

[417] Like, people have gotten off on what we would consider crazy crimes.

[418] The explanation of which is everyone that settled Appalachia was from Ireland, Scotland.

[419] They were all herders.

[420] A hurting mentality is one where your boundaries are porous.

[421] You don't have a set farm, and it's in the culture to stand your ground and to fight for your area of grazing.

[422] So that made it to Appalachia.

[423] And then by God, everyone there moved up to Detroit in Ohio in the 30s.

[424] When I read that, I was like, oh, that's exactly where I grew up.

[425] And my only point of reference is Hillbilly Ellery.

[426] He writes a lot about how his relatives, the money instantly is spent on objects.

[427] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[428] Objects are thrown away almost as soon as they're bought.

[429] And where I grew up, there were so few things to desire that we desired really nothing.

[430] And we would look through the Sears Christmas catalog.

[431] And I never wanted anything.

[432] You didn't?

[433] No. And that was the really awkward thing about Christmas, because Christmas and birthdays, these occasions based on the wanting of things and the giving of things, were enormously awkward in my family.

[434] Oh, really?

[435] No one really wanted anything.

[436] Oh.

[437] And so I'd have to go to school and I have to ask my friends, what are you asking for for Christmas?

[438] Oh, my gosh.

[439] To cheat.

[440] They would say electric football.

[441] I didn't even know what electric football.

[442] Do you remember electric football?

[443] No, I don't know what that is.

[444] So you're a little bit older than my brother and I think this is something he needed.

[445] And these little figures just, they went back and forth on this grid and it really did nothing.

[446] Yeah, it was a vibrating metal playing field and they had a little plastic figures.

[447] They just vibrated around.

[448] Exactly.

[449] They just moved around because of the vibration.

[450] It was ridiculous.

[451] Meaningless.

[452] Yeah.

[453] Absolutely.

[454] And I asked for it because I had to ask for something.

[455] And I got electric football and it's like, what do you do from there?

[456] Wow.

[457] So, so you, you You never at school saw somebody's shoes and was like, oh, those are cool shoes, nothing.

[458] Nothing.

[459] Do you think this is for you, nature or nurture?

[460] Boy, I'm always going to argue nature.

[461] Did you not have TV present that was selling you shit all the time?

[462] We did, but my parents would always say all those things you see on TV are for rich people.

[463] And so they never occurred as something you could realistically desire.

[464] But then that is so interesting that you hear that, oh, that's something rich people have, I can't have it.

[465] and then to stop there instead of, so I have to get rich so I can have it, is I feel like what most people have.

[466] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[467] They have the second part of the sentence that you don't, which is unique.

[468] What is the other aspect of desiring things is so that you can sort of signal, status signal in your peer group.

[469] For sure.

[470] And there were people who did bring like single serving chips to school and like, wow, you bought those like Doritos where you have a different packet every day, but that seems so unrealistic.

[471] And to tell the truth, those kids were not the most likable kids.

[472] So there was a stigma attached.

[473] Oh, they were kind of shame for being opulent.

[474] Well, it was like the sumptuary laws.

[475] You know, it's like, ooh.

[476] That's a little indulgent.

[477] That's tacky.

[478] The older I get, the more I realize, there is almost nothing I can buy that will make me feel as good as something I can make.

[479] And I think that was something that that we felt really young as kids that it didn't matter what it was.

[480] If you could go out and pay money for it, it was never going to feel as good as that thing that you made or you achieved that was kind of beyond what you thought you were capable of.

[481] And it was that greater satisfaction that I've been kind of striving for my entire life.

[482] Maybe I'm wrong about this, but that too is just the story of your in group.

[483] So it's like I'm inclined to jump on board with you.

[484] Like I think on the surface I'll go like, yeah, consumerism, obviously it's a way I've built things, and I certainly appreciate them more than the things I bought.

[485] But it's also the story that the disadvantaged group tells themselves so that they too can find pride in esteem in the lot that they've been dealt, which is if they want it, they've got to make it.

[486] And so we just lop on this pride of creation.

[487] But it too is an abstract story.

[488] Do you think one is more objectively pure?

[489] Are they all just stories?

[490] I can only speak from experience.

[491] And I grew up wanting in my 20s to have things.

[492] It was empty.

[493] Well, once I learned how to make things in my 30s and I could actually write a thing, whether or not it's sold, I could write it, I could take it to workshop, and people would be dumbfounded, and I would kind of not know how I had even created this thing.

[494] I have no idea how something like Chapter 6 of Fight Club goes together, which I wrote in an afternoon at my job.

[495] When you were supposed to be talking about Chuck Bolts in your manual.

[496] Right.

[497] And I come up with seven rules because I want to use seven transitional devices in a short story and it comes together in this strange magical way.

[498] I don't know how I do it.

[499] And I think that's why writers become so ritualized and so alcoholic is that you are subject to a process that you don't understand and yet you have to recreate that process over and over.

[500] I'll add as both an addict and a writer as well is that both activities involve loneliness, isolation, warlessness, struggle.

[501] My experience is pitching a movie, working on it for eight months, hating virtually the entire process until I print the thing out.

[502] And then the three different times I print out drafts, I get this elation.

[503] But it's a very bizarre endeavor.

[504] It's very low on pleasure in the present and high on pride of the story you're telling yourself about your life.

[505] I am a writer.

[506] I accomplish this thing.

[507] I saw this through.

[508] Boy, you know, I know writers who see that.

[509] I've got to go down into the coal mine.

[510] I've got to suffer through my thing.

[511] But I'm just the opposite.

[512] It has to be a great time.

[513] It has to be a blast.

[514] Oh, wow.

[515] If you hired me to just write dialogue, I would do it for free.

[516] I'd do it all day long and I'd love it.

[517] But you don't feel burdened by structure or the mechanical components of writing?

[518] No, because I steal.

[519] I'm a journalist.

[520] And I am just so constantly going out into the world and listening for people's stories.

[521] And then people will tell me things I had no idea exist in subcultures or aspects of their lives that are shared by millions of billions of people, but I had no idea they existed.

[522] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[523] We've all been there.

[524] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[525] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[526] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[527] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[528] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[529] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[530] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[531] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[532] What's up, guys?

[533] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[534] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[535] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[536] And I don't mean just friends.

[537] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[538] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[539] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[540] I collect job hazing stories.

[541] My first day at Freightliner, my workstation foreman sent me to another workstation and said, go up there, they borrowed our squeegee sharpener, don't come back without it.

[542] I go up there to the next station.

[543] I say, Dan says you got our squeegee sharpener.

[544] I need to get it back.

[545] and they just tear me a new one and they spit and they swear and they shove me around and they send me to another workstation and I asked for the squeegee sharpener.

[546] I spent the entire eight hours being abused but I learned the entire layout of the plant I meet every foreman I will ever be asked to work for and I find out there is no such thing as a squeegee sharpener.

[547] Uh -huh.

[548] Go to a party, tell a story like that and people will tell you a million stories that are better at TGI Fridays, they give them a broom and they say, after we close, the ceiling fans, they need to be counterwound.

[549] Oh, my God.

[550] So the new hires will stand there with a broom and turn the ceiling fans in the direction that they don't normally go in.

[551] See, I would be using that as an obstacle to weed out dumb employees.

[552] It's so sweet.

[553] It is.

[554] It is.

[555] Everybody has done it.

[556] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[557] And so that's the structuring device, is you feel.

[558] find ways of presenting the same thing in escalating versions.

[559] You just escalate basically the same objects.

[560] You escalate and morph the same gestures and actions to a greater and greater sort of degree until they break down.

[561] That was another thing we did at Freight Lenter, is we had the R &M Center, repairability and maintainability center, where the windshield wipers just go back and forth 10 ,000 billion times until they break.

[562] Yeah.

[563] So that you can look at what broke, where the stress was, static or dynamic stress, and you would just run things faster and slower and endlessly until they break.

[564] And that's what I love to do in fiction.

[565] But also, I think the difference is you're saying, like, well, you're excited because you printed it and you did it, but there was a pressure the whole time.

[566] You've sold it.

[567] Now you have to do it.

[568] And that comes with a different thing than just sitting in the job writing.

[569] Like, if you're doing that, you probably aren't feeling the stress of it.

[570] I think that's a great point.

[571] Back when I was, in my early 20s and I just wrote pros.

[572] I pretty much enjoyed it.

[573] And then, yeah, when I had to fit in a perfect box, it became more of a job.

[574] But I also wrote things on spec that I had that same feeling with like, oh boy, I'm going to eventually have to lift the hood and get after this structure.

[575] Like, I had a blast creating these characters, telling the story.

[576] But I also know that it has to fit in this exact structure.

[577] And that's cumbersome.

[578] Sometimes it's cumbersome, but sometimes it's kind of a deliverance.

[579] Because when you don't have the structure, then it can be even more frightening.

[580] talking to Blockbuster and having to choose a movie.

[581] Yeah, you can start this story with the Big Bang, if you allow yourself.

[582] Exactly, and you can take it all the way to the collapse.

[583] Yeah, yeah.

[584] But writing graphic novels, I love the fact that the structure is so there.

[585] It is these little boxes, and you can't surprise anybody until the bottom right -hand page where you have to have a setup, because as you turn the page, you have the page -turn reveal.

[586] And it is the most structured plotting you will.

[587] will ever come across.

[588] It's enormous pressure.

[589] You have to have a really good setup and pay off every two pages.

[590] But it beats the hell out of having no structure.

[591] That's almost like writing sketch comedy.

[592] Yeah, three pages.

[593] You got it.

[594] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[595] Okay, taking the leverage away from people that have been oppressing you.

[596] Is that a topic that interests you?

[597] Not in the slightest.

[598] It doesn't.

[599] I'm so sorry.

[600] Oh, okay.

[601] So, right, I bet this has been happening forever where people would assume you're kind of an anarchist or punk rock or these things at heart.

[602] Do you know the term absurdist existentialism?

[603] I started looking at what are the books I love.

[604] Do you ever read Nathaniel West's Day of the Locus?

[605] Is it about L .A.?

[606] Downtown L .A.?

[607] Yeah, I have read it.

[608] Yeah.

[609] And it's about working in the movie industry and it has these long rambling, surrealistic passages as the characters walk through the back lot.

[610] And it's also almost identical to the loves of the last tycoon, Fitzgerald's unfinished novel.

[611] And Fitzgerald and Nathaniel West were best friends during that time.

[612] Oh.

[613] In fact, when Fitzgerald died at the age of 41, Nathaniel West was on a hunting trip in Mexico.

[614] And when he heard that his best friend had died, he and his wife came speeding back so fast.

[615] So they wouldn't miss the funeral.

[616] They ran a stop sign and that's how Nathaniel West died.

[617] No. Racing to the funeral of Fitzgerald.

[618] Like two days after Fitzgerald's death.

[619] And oh wow.

[620] Loves of the last tycoon.

[621] is so similar to Dea the Locus that you know that they were writing them and talking to each other about them.

[622] But that book and Geek Love, do you remember Geek Love as a book?

[623] No. Catherine Dunn, it was her huge breakout novel, and it's about a family of circus performers.

[624] Their circus is failing.

[625] So they decide that they're going to conceive children and expose them to pesticides and radiation and have their own family of freaks.

[626] So they give birth to this enormous family of freaks.

[627] It's a noble endeavor.

[628] I'm all in.

[629] It's a cult classic.

[630] I'm ashamed I haven't read it.

[631] When Sony Mehta took over Knoff, it was his book that made his career.

[632] He said, I want to do an amazing book.

[633] It was Geek Love, but also Slaughterhouse Five.

[634] Yeah.

[635] Which jumps back and forth between these three ridiculous plot lines.

[636] And also the books of Tom Robbins.

[637] Oh, I love.

[638] I've read all of them.

[639] And what all these books have in common is that they depict existence as this kind of completely absurd.

[640] bizarre, strange thing that's not sentimentalized.

[641] No. And it's not judged and it's not kind of weighed as oppressed versus oppressor.

[642] It's just everything is messed up and everything is crazy.

[643] Get used to it.

[644] Yeah.

[645] And that's what I come from.

[646] Right.

[647] I think you talk about it in people, places, and things.

[648] But yeah, you talk about Salinger, Heller.

[649] Patrick Dennis.

[650] And Kurt Vonnegut coming out of wartime, an intense wartime.

[651] Yeah.

[652] And the result of all three of those people is this very interesting tone.

[653] And Catch 22 is the epitome of that absurdist existentialism.

[654] Everything is insane and you have no control over it and you could die at any moment.

[655] So what is it about those three?

[656] How on earth do you find that that's who you relate to?

[657] I don't know.

[658] Just for some reason that seemed the most appealing.

[659] My parents fought viciously.

[660] Okay.

[661] They fought so much that my three siblings and I, we would play a game.

[662] called Henry Kissinger, because it was in the late 60s, early 70s.

[663] And when mom and dad were really, really battling, one of us would have to be Henry Kissinger and injure ourselves.

[664] To distract.

[665] Cut ourselves, break a bone, do something really dramatic so that we could draw the focus and be rushed off to the emergency room.

[666] And so someone would throw themselves on the grenade and break up mom and dad's fight and that would be peace.

[667] I'm nervous to ask you.

[668] about this because it feels so intimate and you don't really touch it too deeply in the story.

[669] So I'm inclined to think you don't want to touch it here either, but you're riddled in this essay with fears of crossing bridges, which I assume you are in real life.

[670] I am.

[671] I'm less so now, now that I've kind of come to terms with what that rises from.

[672] In the book, you talk about having a dream where your mother takes you to a bridge and she says, I've rehearsed this and rehearsed this, but didn't have the courage to do it.

[673] My assumption is she wanted to commit like family suicide.

[674] That's what she later admitted to my brother, that she didn't want to be married to my father, but if she killed herself, we would be given to my father's family.

[675] And she was a rational, intelligent, very attractive person.

[676] And yet she still had this impulse and even rehearsed and acted on this impulse, not to its fullest extent, but because she had acted on it enough, she had never forgiven herself because we all grew up to have really fantastic lives.

[677] Right.

[678] It was upon observing how well you four had done that she felt this guilt.

[679] Like, I almost prevented this from happening.

[680] Exactly.

[681] And I want to love my parents for who they were, not just who I thought they were or who I would like them to have been.

[682] Because otherwise, I can't appreciate what they didn't do.

[683] Yes.

[684] I often think of getting this worse version of my parents at times.

[685] And perhaps I got the best version, which is even harder to maybe comprehend.

[686] And if you can be aware of the mistakes that they didn't make, it's more likely that you will not make those same mistakes.

[687] You won't feel so isolated like you're the only one with this impulse.

[688] Wait, so you have no memory of being brought up to the bridge or you do?

[689] I do, but it's one of those memories where you're not sure if the memory is because you were told the story after the fact.

[690] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[691] But I do remember these strange nights being in pajamas and being driven up to the bridgehead and being out there in the wind.

[692] Wow.

[693] But who knows?

[694] okay so my mother also had a couple suicide attempts also did some wake up everybody we're going to do this type of thing which again to your earlier point it's not relative to anything else it's just my singular childhood and only upon becoming an adult and talking to other people starting to think like oh guess that was novel that experience and also it goes back to i'm not the only one that used a broom to turn the fan the wrong way at tgi friday so when you start to take these stories out you've find out that people have the same exact experience a thousand times worse.

[695] And then somebody else has it a thousand times worse than them.

[696] My favorite example is in one of my workshops, a couple of years ago we were talking about a magazine store going out of business.

[697] And I had done a lot of research there and I said how every hour somebody brings in a huge collection of playboys to try to sell them.

[698] And the store will not take them because they say nobody ever throws out a National Geographic or a playboy.

[699] So they have no value.

[700] And one of the students, said, I wonder if that's how the big box of porn in the woods happens.

[701] And everyone in the table, like 20, 30 people, had the same look.

[702] Because they knew?

[703] Every little boy has discovered.

[704] Every little girl, too.

[705] Oh, really?

[706] Well, Monica hasn't.

[707] Oh, bram -blum.

[708] I'm going to hide some in the backyard for you to find.

[709] Boxes, bags, duffel bags, suitcases.

[710] It is almost a universal human experience that no one had ever talked about it.

[711] because they had been so shamed that in that next instant, everyone at the table was talking at the same time.

[712] And that was the whole point of the snowflake analogy in Fight Club.

[713] That sort of imbued feeling of special uniqueness that we get in school kind of isolates us and puts us into our own little bubbles.

[714] And there's a lot more power to be gained from kind of recognizing our commonality rather than that.

[715] And what's really upside down about it is it actually encourages you to isolate something unique about yourself, to feel special and isolate and pretend you're unique in these pathologies and then feel very lonely in them.

[716] So like both things are going to result in loneliness, basically.

[717] Either you're so special in this category or so uniquely flawed in this category, both of you, you're not going to have a community.

[718] And years ago, I wrote a short story about a woman who had lost a great deal of weight and she was very thin and very fit, but she had to carry around a picture of herself as a fat woman Because otherwise, her life wouldn't mean anything.

[719] Her life was so much about having lost the weight.

[720] It was her identity.

[721] And at one point, someone takes the picture and tears it up.

[722] Because then, what are you if you're not that thing you've survived?

[723] It's really scary.

[724] Okay, I got to ask one personal curiosity.

[725] Because when I saw the line in a movie, it was a breakthrough.

[726] I had like a literal breakthrough in understanding myself.

[727] And now that I've come to meet you, I attributed a life that you don't have to, having been the source of it.

[728] I think Pitt's in the bathtub or maybe Norton's in the bathtub.

[729] And one of them says, I think Pitt says, we're a nation of men raised by women.

[730] Maybe the last thing we need is another woman.

[731] Boy, that's the land that got me crucified.

[732] Did it?

[733] The way I interpreted that is all of a sudden, it made me for the very first time take stock of the fact that without exception, every friend I have from my childhood is from a divorce home.

[734] We all found each other.

[735] Like that kind of it escaped me. And then I thought, oh yeah, we were all raised by women and there was no men in the house.

[736] And we fucking craved approval for men, just like unknowingly.

[737] And we found it in each other.

[738] Like that's what we gave each other, this little misfit group of boys raised by women.

[739] So to me, it was an explanation, not an excuse, not a marching orders, not how things should be.

[740] I found it to be revelatory.

[741] There's a misogynist bend to it if you want to interpret it that way, but that's not what I did.

[742] But also, you're getting advice from peers whose experience is really no more than your own.

[743] So it tends to be advice that's really kind of wrongheaded.

[744] Yeah, that's not even evaluating the value of the advice itself.

[745] Yeah, we talk about that all the time with like sex.

[746] That's why you've got to talk to your kids about it because otherwise the kids are teaching the kids and no one knows what they're doing.

[747] Yeah, like what other adults coming into the scenario to educate your children about sex.

[748] Yeah.

[749] That's one of the classic things you go to a party and say, did you get the talk?

[750] Yeah.

[751] My father's version of the talk, he set my brother and I down and he said, don't you ever date, much less marry a redhead?

[752] Perfect.

[753] Sage advice.

[754] If you think nothing else out of this household.

[755] So I've been married to a redhead for 27 years.

[756] Oh, that's great.

[757] That's great.

[758] I love that.

[759] So I guess you're more of a mystery to me after talking to you than you were before, because I would have thought that you had this ire to not be.

[760] dominated by a system that didn't accept you in film and television and societally.

[761] How could it be that clear in front of me yet that's not it, though?

[762] There are things you can do in fiction that are so extraordinary because the cost of production is so cheap and the audience is so small and the audience has to be educated to a certain extent to even read it, much less understand it, the euphemisms, everything.

[763] And so those are the things I want to do because those are the stories that when people tell them to me, I am just downfounded that life is so extreme.

[764] I have a story called guts that I read and people faint.

[765] 67 or 71 where you are?

[766] It's over 200 now.

[767] Oh my God.

[768] Okay.

[769] At the time of publication, it was only 67 or something.

[770] So you continue to read this story is what I now know.

[771] I haven't read it in years.

[772] He begs people to hold their breath while he reads this short story.

[773] The first line is, scared.

[774] Breathe in.

[775] Take in as much breath as you possibly can.

[776] This story will last about as long as you can hold your breath.

[777] So listen as fast as you can.

[778] Oh, tasty.

[779] When I was 13 years old, I had a friend.

[780] And then it just spins into three anecdotes.

[781] And all three of those anecdotes are true stories.

[782] But they are so extreme and they're so heartbreaking that that's the kind of stories I want to tell.

[783] It's never going to be a Netflix thing.

[784] Yeah.

[785] You're not frustrated like I am right now?

[786] No, I love it.

[787] Yeah, because you and I are so different in this capacity.

[788] So for me to feel safe, I need to know.

[789] what kind of person Chuck is.

[790] So like I need to put you in a box, Chuck, that I then can maybe make some predictions of your behavior.

[791] So I'm prepared for it.

[792] Okay.

[793] I see this.

[794] You know what I'm saying?

[795] A lot of temperature taking.

[796] Is mom mad today or is dad mad today?

[797] Exactly.

[798] And so this mild like what could just be if you're the listener, you're like, oh, who gives a shit?

[799] He was wrong about these three assertions.

[800] There's no wrong.

[801] And when people say, what does this mean?

[802] I am never going to say, this means this, because that precludes the reader's interpretation.

[803] Yeah.

[804] And you want the reader to interpret the metaphor and see their own experience in it.

[805] So you don't want to preclude that by giving it your own definition of what's happening.

[806] Exactly.

[807] Yeah.

[808] Yeah.

[809] And so I can understand, like, maybe safeguarding that in the same way, Edward Norton, we had him on, he doesn't do this.

[810] He came from an era where to do this would be to limit how believable you found him in other roles.

[811] Talk about himself.

[812] Hmm.

[813] I just get to know who he is.

[814] It would wrongly inform you when you're trying to watch a character he's creating.

[815] It totally makes sense.

[816] And then I could see as a writer doing that.

[817] And then I'm my own proclivity for wanting to know why I'm interested in anything I'm interested in.

[818] Like, I think it's really easy as a human to go, like, well, I like motorcycles and I like this and I like that.

[819] And then investigation over.

[820] But like, I don't think anyone likes anything unless it serves some comforting aspect in their childhood.

[821] Like, I don't trust that I like one of the things I like.

[822] And I don't trust that I'm writing a book that isn't originating from a chip on my shoulder about something.

[823] What I think is actually happening, it's specific to the writers we have, I think, in here.

[824] You, Cedaris, we had George Saunders.

[825] Like, there's a romanticism you have about them because you grew up wanting to be a writer.

[826] And you read these books.

[827] And it was like, oh, my God.

[828] Like, you've projected so much onto these people, but they're just good.

[829] writers who are people.

[830] I don't buy it.

[831] Oh, Dax.

[832] This is not your turn anymore.

[833] But do you think maybe part of what Dax is doing is he's trying to figure out what the system is?

[834] Because the system is such an unstable thing that has to be reinvented every time.

[835] So if you can figure out how to replicate it, it's not as scary.

[836] Chuck's the captain now.

[837] Uh -oh.

[838] You know that line?

[839] Yeah.

[840] Yeah.

[841] I'm doing the finger thing right now.

[842] Luke in my eyes I don't want to make it just a gender thing but the idea that men tend to systematize things especially autistic men or dyslexic men oh you too are you dyslexic?

[843] I didn't learn how to read until I was like 14 and do you remember the victory when you finally got it right mine came through math but yes I remember the first time I was good at math and then this beautiful teacher Mr. Wood he encouraged me to help the other kids So I transitioned from the dumbest kid in the class I was actually helping.

[844] And that was the breakthrough I needed.

[845] That's why you're a writer because that was such an enormous relief of terror that you are seeking that same enormous relief of terror.

[846] Oh, what a face you've got on right now.

[847] And you both have excellent teeth.

[848] Oh, my gosh.

[849] Especially Monica.

[850] Now, you too.

[851] That was Fengalian.

[852] So, like, he hit us with some shit And then he complimented us in the middle.

[853] And then we're like, our ego pee.

[854] I mean, this is twisted.

[855] I love it.

[856] There's that old saw in prose writing.

[857] If you don't know what happens next, describe the interior of the character's mouth.

[858] Oh.

[859] And so if you go to a visceral thing like that, people are always self -conscious about their mouths.

[860] Okay, so I get that fetish of mine.

[861] I want you to make sense to me. And you don't, which is great.

[862] No, I think you're expecting me to be really complicated.

[863] That's what I'm saying.

[864] I mean, everyone's complicated.

[865] Monica knows.

[866] Here's what I'm saying.

[867] She's been trying to tell you this for years.

[868] Well, and by the way, I do it too.

[869] I'm in my head all day long.

[870] We're both very compulsive, obsessive thinkers, just in case you're going to ever do a biography on either of us.

[871] How have you evolved as a human being in the last 25 years?

[872] And how has that affected your writing for better or for worse?

[873] Oh, Stephen King has been quoted a lot as saying, when he started to write, he was afraid of a lot of things.

[874] and the more he wrote, the more he was afraid of.

[875] Oh, really?

[876] Because when you're a writer, you're always looking for disaster.

[877] You're always thinking, okay, how can this fail?

[878] How can this person turn out to be a psychopath?

[879] You're looking for chaos.

[880] And so when you look for chaos, that's all you see is chaos.

[881] I go to Paris.

[882] I'm so afraid of stepping in the dog poop that's all over Paris.

[883] I never see Paris.

[884] I just see dog poop.

[885] And so I think that I have the Stephen King thing where I am expecting every car to veer into my lane and smash me. I'm expecting anything to go wrong because I have kind of groomed myself.

[886] Well, I don't know if you happen to see this great documentary on HBO's about Bobby Fisher.

[887] And one of the things they got into I found really fascinating was that many of the grandmaster champion chess players have ultimately become paranoid, like pathological level.

[888] And the explanation is your brain, like any other area of your body, if the area of your brain you're using the most, 12 hours a day is the one looking nine steps ahead for casting doom and defeat, that's the part of your brain that works the best.

[889] And when you stop playing chess, that part of your brain man has been doing push -ups for 60 years.

[890] And the other part hasn't.

[891] That's incredible.

[892] And I always wondered about an insurance salesman because they're always saying, okay, this is the thing that will go wrong.

[893] Are you covered for this?

[894] Or you covered for this?

[895] And I have to wonder if that doesn't make them ultimately kind of crazy in that way also.

[896] Oh, yeah.

[897] Well, it's happening here right now with you.

[898] It's like you are a storyteller.

[899] So you need a story right now.

[900] Yeah, I need a conclusion about Chuck.

[901] But that's what your brain looks for because you live in that all day long.

[902] Yeah, and I think that's why I did the tattoo head picture, because when people meet Chuck, they think they're going to meet Tyler Durden.

[903] They think they're going to meet Jack the Ripper.

[904] They think they're going to meet the werewolf.

[905] They think I'm going to be this really crazy masochistic weirdo.

[906] And instead they meet a guy who almost became a priest.

[907] just because I like to listen to people's stories.

[908] And I can be kind of quiet and a good listener and really present.

[909] So I'm just really that.

[910] I'm geeking out right now.

[911] I'm really excited to talk to you.

[912] I wanted to read in your list of people you liked, Raymond Carver.

[913] I loved his style.

[914] But I just want a story that's a little more plotted.

[915] I'm kind of a motion guy.

[916] I want to watch something move across my retina.

[917] I got you.

[918] His is way more slice of life, I guess.

[919] When they reach into that sinkful of dirty dishes, and there's a knife in there and suddenly her hand comes out and it's bleeding.

[920] Just happened to me. See, exactly.

[921] Literally just happened to me like three days ago.

[922] And it's something that's so perfectly set up and it's something so relatable.

[923] And it completely breaks the argument that they're having in that moment and allows him to nurture her.

[924] It's gorgeous.

[925] I'm drawn to the one where the woman lets the vacuum salesman come in just because she's fucking bored.

[926] And there's something about that that I was like, that's how I felt.

[927] I just was like, give me some, please, anything spectacular.

[928] Yeah, I'll let this stranger in my house because there's some element of what could happen now.

[929] And I think I see those same things in Flannery O 'Connor's stories.

[930] Oh, I've not read any Flannery O 'Connor.

[931] The end, when you get to the end of that, you're thinking, I will never write anything as shocking and sad and horrible as the end of that short story.

[932] This is Rapid Fire.

[933] Dotsevsky, like them or not?

[934] Not for you.

[935] No. Okay, great.

[936] Russian authors have so many names.

[937] It's hard.

[938] It's really hard.

[939] Yeah, following the And as a dyslexic, that's what kept me out of brothers Karamazzo.

[940] For some reason, I could read Crime and Punishment.

[941] Raskolnikov is probably the only name we read nonstop.

[942] Right.

[943] And you also can't sub vocalize those names very easily.

[944] And as a dyslexic, if I can't sub vocalize it, yeah, it doesn't occur.

[945] Yeah.

[946] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[947] This has been so fun.

[948] I really want to thank you for being such a mystery and not being any of the things I thought you would be, predicted you'd be, maybe even selfishly want you to be so the world feels more predictable and safe.

[949] I applaud that you're a unicorn marching through it, and I'm grateful for you.

[950] I'm not a unicorn.

[951] I'm a mirror.

[952] Oh.

[953] I like that.

[954] Let's not make a binary.

[955] Let's say you're a unicorn mirror.

[956] Or maybe your horn is this lovely mirror, and as people come to inspect the horn.

[957] He's still doing it.

[958] He's still doing it.

[959] I loved reading.

[960] People places things.

[961] I read it last night in bed.

[962] I'm a slow reader, and I read the whole thing in one night, which is I only say that for other people who are slow readers.

[963] It's a wonderful fun.

[964] easy read?

[965] And there's something in that we have these human landmarks, these people we meet sometimes for only a moment, and they affect who we are for the rest of our lives.

[966] Thank you for bringing this element into it, because it is the beautiful part of the book.

[967] One of my kind of gateway example, it was a student of mine attended bar in Tacoma, Washington.

[968] And he said in Tacoma, whenever people get together, they break the ice and they create community and relationship by each describing their adjacentness to Ted Bundy.

[969] Everyone has a Ted Bundy adjacent relationship.

[970] And that's how they create community.

[971] Yeah.

[972] And so it got me really looking at the people I grew up with and the people in Portland who were kind of local celebrities that nobody else in the world knows about.

[973] And where I grew up was this very small, very old Japanese American man. And he worked for the railroad.

[974] And then when he retired, he just basically walked the back roads and he gave candy to kids.

[975] And so anytime we saw this man who we called Peanuts, because he gave out marshmallow -flavored circus peanuts.

[976] Oh, my gosh.

[977] But we would scream for our parents to stop so that we could get candy from peanuts.

[978] And everyone loved him.

[979] And then much later in life, my father started taking us to these incredible gardens that had been built in these kind of industrial wastelands, Japanese gardens or lily gardens.

[980] And he would explain that peanuts had planted and was maintaining these fantastic...

[981] Oh, my God.

[982] And this is in the desert where it's $118.

[983] degrees.

[984] So the moment you quit watering these things, they're gone.

[985] The moment that peanuts disappeared, all of these beautiful things disappeared.

[986] Right, because you point out all these men who would have otherwise not respected him in any other way, created gardens of their owns.

[987] They tried to replicate what he had done.

[988] Every blue collar union guy went home and planted a Japanese garden and had a pond of koi.

[989] And they all did it wrong, you know.

[990] But they all had an appreciation for this kind of beauty that they would not have had.

[991] They would have just had a patio and a slab of grass.

[992] But no, they had seen what peanuts had done and it had changed their lives.

[993] Oh, my gosh.

[994] That's beautiful.

[995] In addition to the Freightliner history, which I find so fascinating, is having gone to landmark because one of our best friends, Jess, went to a bunch of landmark and he's reported it all to us for free.

[996] And I love every bit of it.

[997] Everything he says I like virtually.

[998] I can't imagine you attend their events anymore.

[999] I really dislike Zoom.

[1000] And I understand that everything Landmark is for the time being gone to Zoom.

[1001] But damn, Landmark got me writing.

[1002] My life changed enormously from the moment I even filled out the form.

[1003] Yeah, like I guess he introduced me to the story you tell yourself.

[1004] Yeah, the racket.

[1005] The story you tell yourself.

[1006] What's objective?

[1007] What's not?

[1008] All this stuff.

[1009] It's really fascinating.

[1010] every time he kind of gives us the reader's digest.

[1011] They've been able to kind of language things that we do intuitively and that we take for granted.

[1012] And you can't really discuss them and be aware of them until you have a language for them.

[1013] And this is all sounding kind of woo -woo and kind of Werner Air Hardy right now.

[1014] I'm sorry.

[1015] But until you have a language for these things, you can't bring them out into the open and explore them.

[1016] How do we feel about Tobias Wolf?

[1017] I love Tobias Wolf.

[1018] Do you ever read Bullet in the brain?

[1019] on the night in question.

[1020] It's the last story in the night on question.

[1021] That is an amazing story.

[1022] He does that checkoff thing with 90 % of the story is all set up, all circumstance and envelope for telling the last little bit.

[1023] Do you remember Leviathan?

[1024] Not by title.

[1025] Four people, two couples doing cocaine.

[1026] And then finally one of them tells the story about how she went whale watching with a very developmentally disabled boy who was also very physically strong.

[1027] And when this enormous whales almost swamped their boat.

[1028] She had to pretend that she was having a fantastically good time to keep this big, strong kid from panicking and jumping out of the boat and dying.

[1029] So much of what Wolf does so beautifully is that he does these enormous, like 30 pages of setup.

[1030] And then the gem is kind of embedded there at the end.

[1031] I'm hungry to read more again.

[1032] That's about the best thing that could happen in one of these interviews.

[1033] I'm getting them Saunders vibes.

[1034] Like you love writing.

[1035] What's interesting is Saundras comes from geology, doesn't he?

[1036] Yeah.

[1037] Yeah.

[1038] He mined in Colorado.

[1039] I think it's interesting that we're both from fields that aren't necessarily creative writing.

[1040] I didn't take any creative writing when I was in college.

[1041] Uh -huh.

[1042] And so I think in a way we're attracted to good stories and that the writing is a little secondary to the quality of the story itself.

[1043] Chuck, this has been wonderful.

[1044] People places things, my human landmarks.

[1045] I really urge people to read it.

[1046] I loved it.

[1047] And I agree with you.

[1048] It makes you go through your own life thinking of people who, like, put you on a path or change your direction without you really thinking about until well after the fact.

[1049] One of our favorite human traditions, right, is like making sense of shit after the fact.

[1050] You don't trust it.

[1051] Maybe it's kind of an American thing.

[1052] We think that we're supposed to kind of invent ourselves.

[1053] And that's not really the case.

[1054] You know, it's nice to kind of recognize where these things come from.

[1055] Yeah.

[1056] You're not a unicorn.

[1057] I'm not a unicorn.

[1058] Monica is not a unicorn.

[1059] You're a beautiful unicorn.

[1060] I felt the definition in the trapezias.

[1061] There's no hiding from those deltoids.

[1062] Chuck has been a blast.

[1063] Thanks so much for coming in, and I hope we get to do this again.

[1064] Thank you.

[1065] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1066] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1067] We're rocking and rolling.

[1068] Okay, great.

[1069] It's not often that we get to watch Wabiwaw break down.

[1070] the Zoom set up from an interview while we do a fact check.

[1071] That is true.

[1072] It kind of feels like drinking some sun tea on your patio while someone mows your lawn.

[1073] There's a bit of guilt.

[1074] But luckily, we're working hard.

[1075] Yes, true, true.

[1076] And it seems the job's pretty much over.

[1077] So now I don't feel terrible.

[1078] About 35 seconds of manual labor there.

[1079] Okay, so we were just talking about the fact that it is 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.

[1080] Today.

[1081] Two, two, two, two, Tuesday.

[1082] Yes.

[1083] Oh, my gosh.

[1084] That's a big, big day.

[1085] It is.

[1086] And you know, I journal every morning.

[1087] So I write all these numbers down on my journal.

[1088] And I woke up at exactly eight.

[1089] Ooh, I guess that was too early.

[1090] I woke up at exactly 8 a .m. Yeah.

[1091] Oh, my gosh.

[1092] So what did we do?

[1093] So you bought some lottery tickets for the team.

[1094] For the team.

[1095] That's right.

[1096] Should we win this enormous jackpot?

[1097] First of all, everyone in America hate our guts, as they should.

[1098] Could you imagine?

[1099] Oh, it'd be shameful.

[1100] Regardless, I like to get titillated too.

[1101] Yeah, sure.

[1102] So should we win this mega, mega millions?

[1103] We're going to split it up.

[1104] Okay.

[1105] And I've never part took in the lottery.

[1106] In the lottery before.

[1107] So do you get your ticket and then you're saying now maybe we can scan these tickets?

[1108] Tomorrow will be.

[1109] be able to scan the barcode with our phone and it'll say like yay you're a billionaire sad face well here's what's happening it i got a hundred i went big that's amazing so they're one dollar each yeah oh i think maybe they're two dollars now fuck it's been decades since i got a lottery ticket fuck i kind of want to count okay one two three four there's five slips and let me see how many One, two, three, four, five, and nine, nine, ten.

[1110] Okay, so they must be two bucks a pop now.

[1111] Okay, okay.

[1112] All right, so we have 50 chances.

[1113] Okay.

[1114] And I'm going to scan this tomorrow night, and one of them's going to say, you're a cabillionaire.

[1115] And I'm going to immediately try to figure out how to not let anyone find out.

[1116] Sure.

[1117] And then for the people that will inadvertently have to find out, because we have private jets and stuff, I'll start building a reason why it wasn't as good as you think, right?

[1118] So the way I think, again, I didn't really know the price, so I could be wrong, but I think you can either get an annuity where it's like they're going to pay you out this 75 mil over the next 20 years, which apparently is a bad idea.

[1119] Or they offer you basically half of it up front.

[1120] So we'll have to explain to everyone like, yeah, we want 100 million, but it's only 50.

[1121] And then we had to pay 25 million in tax.

[1122] So it was really only 25 million.

[1123] And then Robbie will do a sound effect or we'll use that old recorder.

[1124] Yeah.

[1125] And then we'll talk about how much Jets actually cost.

[1126] So really, it's like it's barely even paid for it.

[1127] Before it's all said and done, we're going to get some first class airfare to Paris out of this.

[1128] Yeah.

[1129] That's so ding, ding, ding.

[1130] Because I sent an email to the girls today saying that I am going to book a trip to Paris in August if any of the other ladies wants to join me. Holy smokes.

[1131] Just any plans once you arrive?

[1132] Nope.

[1133] Just I want to go to Paris.

[1134] Yeah.

[1135] You didn't get to go to that flea market when we were there.

[1136] I want to go to the flea market.

[1137] Is that the primary driver?

[1138] No. I just really liked it there.

[1139] And I want to go back and have more cappuccinos and croissants.

[1140] And it'll be my birthday.

[1141] Right.

[1142] You intend to be there on the 24th.

[1143] Yes.

[1144] Yes.

[1145] Yes.

[1146] Okay.

[1147] Okay, so you're going August 24th.

[1148] If anyone wants to have like a bump in like meet cute, I'll be there.

[1149] Paris is the destination.

[1150] Yeah.

[1151] I wonder if you'll run into the same armcherry woman.

[1152] That was fun.

[1153] Yeah.

[1154] I ran into an arm cherry and she stopped me and she said, you know, she said she listened that we had a conversation about being stopped and how I said I didn't mind it.

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] And so she stopped me and said, She loved the show, and then she was like, and you're beautiful.

[1157] And it was really sweet.

[1158] It was so sweet.

[1159] But I was like, oh, no. Now these arm cherries feel like they have to say that to me because I say that I don't feel that.

[1160] And now they've taken it on as their responsibility.

[1161] And I don't want that to be the case.

[1162] Yes, but this is really in keeping with your story, which is you're not beautiful.

[1163] so she was saying that just to make you feel better.

[1164] But in fact, she was seeing you in real life thinking, I can't believe this girl doesn't think she's beautiful.

[1165] It would be my story about the interaction.

[1166] Yeah, there's different ways to look at it.

[1167] There are.

[1168] We're going to have to find her again.

[1169] And then this was funny.

[1170] So that happened, which was lovely.

[1171] And then I went to my line, extremely long line.

[1172] And there were two people behind me, and one of them, the guy tapped on my shoulder and said, are you Monica from Dax's show?

[1173] And I said, yeah.

[1174] Uh -huh.

[1175] Triggering?

[1176] No, no. And he said, my girlfriend, who is there, is such a big fan.

[1177] And she was like, hi.

[1178] And I was like, oh my gosh, hi.

[1179] Thanks for saying hi.

[1180] And that was a nice little interaction.

[1181] And then I tried, there was a very clumsy attempt to be generous.

[1182] Uh -oh.

[1183] But it was - Did you offer to take a picture?

[1184] with them?

[1185] No, no, no, no. When I got up to the counter, I ordered mine and I said, I'd really like to pay for the people behind me as well.

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] And she was like, I don't know how to do that.

[1188] Right.

[1189] And I was like, okay, can you just charge an extra like $25 on mine and then just, you know.

[1190] Yeah, there's squirrel system.

[1191] I can allow that.

[1192] Yeah.

[1193] Or their square space system, whatever.

[1194] I don't want to get in trouble.

[1195] Whatever system there, hopefully square space.

[1196] There's no like just, Square.

[1197] Oh, fuck.

[1198] We just lost two sponsors at once, maybe three.

[1199] Squirrel, definitely left us.

[1200] They do use Square.

[1201] And they built their website on Squarespace.

[1202] It's a beautiful, beautiful world -class designers, templates for everyone.

[1203] Anyway, so she's just looking at the screen and she was just like, I don't know.

[1204] And I was like, okay.

[1205] But then I didn't want to give up on it.

[1206] So then I just said, hey, guys, I really like to get your coffees.

[1207] go ahead.

[1208] I wanted it to be a surprise but just go ahead and order.

[1209] And so they did.

[1210] But then I was like, oh no, they're not going to get what they would have got.

[1211] Yeah, they were going to get like a bag of coffee to go.

[1212] Yes.

[1213] Some memorabilia.

[1214] And I had to, I was like, make sure you get what you were going to get.

[1215] Oh, this is really stressful.

[1216] Again, there's an episode of Seinfeld.

[1217] Oh my gosh.

[1218] Of course we're in a story that's riveting.

[1219] It's so Seinfeld.

[1220] So she did end up getting a croissant after I said, make sure you're going to get what you're going to get.

[1221] you stood for an hour to get.

[1222] Yes.

[1223] Because she was like, oh, did you hear me say that I wanted a croissant?

[1224] I was like, just, I was like, ah, just get it.

[1225] And then they ordered, they were so appreciative.

[1226] It was so sweet.

[1227] They were really lovely.

[1228] And then, but then you didn't have to wait for your coffee.

[1229] Oh, no. You wanted that to be an exit line.

[1230] Hey, I covered that and then you're out.

[1231] And then we all had to kind of stand.

[1232] But I stood a little, well, as I was like, have a great day.

[1233] And then I walked a little bit away.

[1234] Oh, fuck.

[1235] And then looked the other way and then pulled your phone out.

[1236] What's wrong with that?

[1237] This is the only thing that would rival.

[1238] You say goodbye, everyone hugs.

[1239] And then you realize you're all getting on the elevator going down.

[1240] We're all on the sidewalk.

[1241] So I could, like, move.

[1242] I wasn't standing right next to them.

[1243] And I looked away and then I was on my phone.

[1244] And then I was like, oh, they'll call mine.

[1245] And then they'll call hers because they asked her for her name too.

[1246] So I was like, this will be fine.

[1247] but then when they brought it out they said both of our names at the same time so then we both had to approach or had to do it again oh my gosh have a great day oh i appreciate it so much yeah you really made um it's not our anniversary but it's soon and we're going to use this as our anniversary yeah so that was a big event gosh gosh gosh gosh and i was trying to do a good deed and the night before i was talking about good deeds with callie and max Oh, Max was showing off his thighs because I told him that you were a big fan.

[1248] Huge.

[1249] And he liked that.

[1250] Okay, good.

[1251] He got a little self -conscious that they aren't as big as they were when you saw them.

[1252] Oh, okay.

[1253] So you got in his head a little bit.

[1254] Yeah, meat sticks like that take a lot of effort to maintain.

[1255] Sure.

[1256] You got to stay on it.

[1257] He was doing some lunges just to get them all worked up again.

[1258] A little pool pump.

[1259] Yeah.

[1260] Okay.

[1261] But we were talking about good deeds.

[1262] And I was saying, yes, sometimes I like to.

[1263] If I see a meter is out, but there's a car there, sometimes I'll like to just throw them, throw the card in.

[1264] And I said also a good move is if you're leaving, you know, these are karma points, you know.

[1265] If you're leaving, fill up for the next person.

[1266] Great.

[1267] And they were saying, yeah, that's much better because if somebody saw them walking to their car to fill up their meter, they might get anxious that some random person is approaching their car.

[1268] car.

[1269] Okay.

[1270] Oh, okay.

[1271] I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have thought that.

[1272] Oh, wow.

[1273] I wouldn't have seen this erupting that way.

[1274] Yeah.

[1275] But everyone's different.

[1276] A very similar Seinfeldie thing happened to me. So we were in Nashville this weekend.

[1277] I was with my best friend, Houston, Estes, Huey, and he and I ran up to get some food.

[1278] And we were on our way home and it was probably eight or nine on a Sunday night or whatever it was.

[1279] And we got behind a motorist.

[1280] who, by our estimation, was pie -eyed, shit -faced.

[1281] Hammer -cocked, ripped, tore up, blacked out.

[1282] Wasted.

[1283] Mm -hmm.

[1284] People won't like the ethics of this story, but whatever.

[1285] So we started following them.

[1286] Okay.

[1287] Because they turned down this.

[1288] We had the same turn initially, and it was on a bit of a narrow street, and there were many parked cars, and right out of the gates, we thought we, boom, like, oh, we bow, oh!

[1289] And somehow they missed the car.

[1290] But it was millimeters.

[1291] But then it occurred to us because it was kind of an upscale area and they were in a nice car.

[1292] Oh, they think we're following them home to mug them because they picked up the pace a little bit.

[1293] And then like an LAPD, I had to fall back from the pursuit because I didn't want to make them drive more erratically.

[1294] Okay.

[1295] You'll be happy to know that we did follow them long enough for them to bang a left onto a dead end street, presumably their house.

[1296] Okay.

[1297] So they got home, I believe, safe.

[1298] They made it home.

[1299] They could have also been 95 years old.

[1300] They could have had bad night vision.

[1301] We don't know.

[1302] It felt most likely that they were a little tipsy, a little shit -faced.

[1303] That reminded me of walking up to the parking meter.

[1304] Did that feel related?

[1305] Connective tissue?

[1306] Carmel points.

[1307] No, getting nervous that someone's walking up to your car.

[1308] Like, you're going to get mugged, and I realize we made someone nervous on Sunday.

[1309] And you got to, look, I'm not going to stereotype, but you got to be a little careful in those southern states.

[1310] That could be a car owner.

[1311] a gun owner.

[1312] Yeah, gun carrying states that if you get too close, you get to just watch yourself.

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] And, you know, that's the kind of thing I like to get into.

[1315] So I like the raised stakes down there in the South.

[1316] Yeah.

[1317] I personally feel uncomfortable in the dark turning around in someone's driveway when I'm there.

[1318] Just saying.

[1319] Turning around in someone's driveway in the dark.

[1320] Like they're going to think you're an intruder and they're going to run out and start blasting or something.

[1321] It happens.

[1322] It happens.

[1323] One time we were driving back from Florida and my dad was driving.

[1324] We were like on some bizarre off path, something.

[1325] And there were these random houses and he had to turn around.

[1326] Was the shock lost?

[1327] Likely.

[1328] Okay.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] My guess is yes.

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] In his defense, this is pre -nav.

[1333] No, no, this was nav.

[1334] Oh, Jesus.

[1335] He had like the old -fashioned.

[1336] No, I think.

[1337] there was like an insane amount of traffic so it was trying to take us a kind of crazy way back road option yes and then then he got lost doing that and then he pulled in to back out and a light turned on and i got so deeply scared in my body yes yes well here's the tricky thing and again i got to own what i am i'm a gun owner i have a gun i have it in a safe i am but I'm not the person that's like, what are you going to do if someone comes into your house?

[1338] So if you're, you start with you have the gun because you're certain someone's going to come into your house, that's your story.

[1339] This is likely, even though it's very unlikely statistically.

[1340] Again, someone's going to tee bone you at an intersection.

[1341] That's how you're going to die statistically.

[1342] But once it's in your head that you have this thing for that reason, now you look for it.

[1343] Yeah.

[1344] So now you're on kind of high alert all the time.

[1345] Yeah.

[1346] And so, right, that person saw headlights and they were on it.

[1347] Speaking of which, there was a crazy thing.

[1348] Did you hear helicopters last night?

[1349] I didn't hear it.

[1350] Okay.

[1351] You want to hear this update of our neighborhood?

[1352] Yeah.

[1353] The Black Dahlia House.

[1354] What happened?

[1355] Which is the famous Frank Lloyd Wright's son house, the already a history of horrors.

[1356] Yeah.

[1357] There was a home invasion.

[1358] The police were called the burglar.

[1359] would not leave.

[1360] There was a standoff.

[1361] No. Yes, like six houses down.

[1362] So there were four helicopters, LAPD, circling information.

[1363] And then you had a, you know, a smattering of news choppers.

[1364] I'm sure K -KL -9 was up there.

[1365] Maybe Dallas Raines was in the mix.

[1366] I'm not sure.

[1367] Well, because the weather needed to also maybe be reported on.

[1368] I just always like to include him.

[1369] Sure.

[1370] I'm not even sure he's on K -K -K -K -L, but I know K -KL and I know Dallas -Rings.

[1371] Okay.

[1372] So I mentioned them any time I talk about the news.

[1373] Yeah.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] And I went outside to grab some food delivery.

[1376] Okay.

[1377] And when I went out on the street after hearing all these helicopters, you become immune to them in our life because they're always hovering around.

[1378] There were all kinds of people in the street.

[1379] There were flares down there.

[1380] It was very exciting.

[1381] I got excited.

[1382] Of course you did.

[1383] Then Kristen went on the next door, that app that she loves and so many people love to try to get Dietz.

[1384] And we're starting to cobble together what's happening.

[1385] And then fucking K -Cal -9 are one of the.

[1386] these great trusted news sources, started putting some helicopter footage up there.

[1387] And then we learned the actual goings on.

[1388] I don't know how it resolved.

[1389] I never heard gunfire or anything.

[1390] So I probably would have.

[1391] Did you consider walking down there?

[1392] Yes.

[1393] Yeah.

[1394] I did.

[1395] In fact, I was like, I'm going to bring the food inside.

[1396] And then I'm going to get on my grom and zip down there.

[1397] And then I just heard myself explaining to Chris.

[1398] And that's what I was going to do.

[1399] And then I anticipated the very appropriate pushback.

[1400] that would be like, why do you have to get involved with a police standoff?

[1401] And then I skipped it.

[1402] Right.

[1403] Yeah, but God, I wanted to.

[1404] I wanted to be on the scene.

[1405] It was a hook for you.

[1406] It was.

[1407] And I have all these immediate fantasies of heroicism.

[1408] The person's going to jump all the fences, land in my yard.

[1409] I will tackle them.

[1410] I will solve some problem that all these police were stressed by.

[1411] And I will lead them out of my home in makeshift handcuffs.

[1412] Sure.

[1413] Noveltery, proprietary, noveltery.

[1414] Maybe that's the new word.

[1415] Oh, I like that.

[1416] Noveltery.

[1417] Well, I guess I'm happy that you had that spike of adrenaline.

[1418] Yeah, I liked it.

[1419] That's fun.

[1420] Yeah, a little freebie.

[1421] I wonder what happened.

[1422] We'll have to check in.

[1423] Yeah, maybe that'll be an update.

[1424] He was arrested.

[1425] Oh, perfect.

[1426] That's the extent.

[1427] What did any gun play, any fight, any, what time of night was the arrest made?

[1428] The burglar was reported at 7 .35 p .m. Yeah.

[1429] That's about it.

[1430] Oh, okay.

[1431] It doesn't say what time.

[1432] It was a lengthy standoff.

[1433] When I went to bed at 11, I still heard chuppers.

[1434] And also it was eerily warm and humid last night.

[1435] So it felt like a movie set.

[1436] Oh, wow, crazy.

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] That's like the time that Anna and I were at the wine bar and then there was a bomb threat.

[1439] And the line of demarcation kept moving.

[1440] closer and closer and closer.

[1441] So they had to close the wine bar while we were there.

[1442] You were evacuated.

[1443] Yes, correct.

[1444] Oh my God, but there was no bomb.

[1445] Never saw it.

[1446] Never felt it.

[1447] But you don't enjoy that, of course.

[1448] Absolutely not.

[1449] I was very happy that they were shutting down.

[1450] I wanted to go.

[1451] Yeah, the fact that it felt like a movie set to me made it even more exciting.

[1452] Sure.

[1453] Yeah.

[1454] I did have to walk under some tape.

[1455] That felt movie like.

[1456] On the way here?

[1457] No, no, there.

[1458] that day.

[1459] Like it was blocked off.

[1460] So for my car was on the other side of some police tape.

[1461] So I had to walk under the police tape to walk to my car.

[1462] Yeah.

[1463] That felt like a movie.

[1464] Like, you know, and like the detectives like walk under the tape.

[1465] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1466] And they've got their flashlight in one hand.

[1467] They've got their little book that you have or you already have a little bit.

[1468] I have a notebook.

[1469] Yeah.

[1470] That makes me ask you.

[1471] So that was one bomb threat that you had to evacuate for.

[1472] Were there any others?

[1473] Did you ever have any in high school?

[1474] You'd think I'd remember, so probably not.

[1475] Because I'm going to swing this back around to the point I made about the homeowner as a gun owner.

[1476] Okay.

[1477] I've had to evacuate school twice for that.

[1478] Uh -huh.

[1479] And I know many people, like you have one, it's semi -common.

[1480] Right.

[1481] No one owns a hurt locker, a bomb detonation device.

[1482] Yeah, no. Even though they've probably firsthand experience an actual threat of a bomb.

[1483] No one has any protective gear.

[1484] No one has a helmet.

[1485] helmet they put on in their backpack or body armor, right?

[1486] That's true.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] It's kind of interesting.

[1489] Because we have this, we have this, we've talked about it.

[1490] There's this abstract thing that we, we overvalue the things we think we could potentially be victorious over.

[1491] So an assailant, right?

[1492] So of terrorism, right?

[1493] Like terrorism, we'll put all of our resources behind this relatively small amount of casualties, but we will not rally to put the resources around cancer research.

[1494] or heart disease research.

[1495] It's just a hiccup of thinking, because if we value life, we should pull our resources.

[1496] Yeah.

[1497] I think it falls into that.

[1498] Like, a bomb is like, what would I have done?

[1499] I don't know who left the bomb.

[1500] I didn't see someone leave the bomb.

[1501] I can't confront the bomb lever or maker.

[1502] And so you're at peace with it.

[1503] Like, oh, okay, I guess a bomb could go off someday.

[1504] Right.

[1505] But it's all just a hiccup.

[1506] But I wonder if it is actually kind of what you were saying.

[1507] Like, there's no ego.

[1508] right to finding a bomb and calling the police like there is like something valiant about taking down a person or other people yeah i have that fantasy hourly yeah exactly so i wonder if a lot of that is just about like ego and fantasy yeah for me it's i made a pledge no one can overpower me so i have to make good on this pledge yeah but i never like got blown up a few times as a kid and we're like I'm pledging to never get blown up again.

[1509] In my prayer, you know, the prayer I made up that I've been doing since childhood, bombs are involved.

[1510] Oh, they are.

[1511] Don't get abducted, no bombs.

[1512] Bombs are in there.

[1513] Cover a lot of bases.

[1514] But again, you don't do any of the diseases?

[1515] I do.

[1516] You do, okay.

[1517] But I cover them under diseases.

[1518] How far will you go, like monocucle, yokeal, no, no, pneumonia?

[1519] It's the umbrella.

[1520] I don't have to label them all.

[1521] Okay, okay.

[1522] Just premature death by illness.

[1523] Yeah.

[1524] Is that the exact word?

[1525] You're not allowed to tell me. No, I'm not allowed to tell you, but I am telling you the word is diseases.

[1526] Oh, okay.

[1527] They come in pairings, and kidnappers and robbers are the first one.

[1528] I invented this when I was a kid.

[1529] I was going to say it's such an eight -year -old.

[1530] I love it.

[1531] Well, I was.

[1532] I know.

[1533] Oh.

[1534] Diseases and natural disasters.

[1535] Diseases as a natural.

[1536] Okay.

[1537] That's all I'm going to say.

[1538] All right.

[1539] All right.

[1540] You said enough.

[1541] Okay.

[1542] So this is Chuck Palinac.

[1543] That was a very interesting interview.

[1544] It was great.

[1545] Yeah.

[1546] So cool.

[1547] So interesting to see the man behind fight club.

[1548] Like the most iconic movie perhaps ever.

[1549] Also, and I was having a hard time doing it, as you saw.

[1550] And then I was ultimately hoisted by my own patar, which is.

[1551] the easiest artist to separate from the art ever because he doesn't parallel any of the characters or the point of view really yeah that was a real divergence just a storyteller yes it's fascinating it is i found that to be because although that's true in general i feel like like when we did michael pollen he had the vibe of his writing in my opinion yeah yeah so mostly it it does kind of or Isaacson did or some of the, you know.

[1552] George Saunders, though, I would equate more to this.

[1553] Like, when I, when we were going to interview him, I had an idea of what that was going to be because I was like, yeah, like he's going to be really intense and he's going to be.

[1554] He can go dark.

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] But then such a, like a joyful guy that that to me reminded me of Chuck of like, oh, they don't represent their writing.

[1557] in an interesting way.

[1558] I think that shows their brilliance that they can totally disassociate.

[1559] My writing's almost identical to me talking.

[1560] Well, that's your brilliance.

[1561] Well, I don't know that it's brilliant because I can't really make, I can't write like Catch 22.

[1562] I can't make up.

[1563] Well, you don't have to write Catch 22.

[1564] Somebody already wrote that.

[1565] Oh, well, thank God.

[1566] You'll write what you write.

[1567] Okay, we're going to revisit this because we haven't a long time it came up misophonia.

[1568] Yes.

[1569] What percentage of people have it?

[1570] Just checking in.

[1571] Okay, before, while you're checking that, or you already have it.

[1572] I have it, but go.

[1573] Well, I hated to do this because I, you know, I have a policy where I just generally don't correct the girls when they're wrong because it doesn't matter.

[1574] Oh, the kids.

[1575] Yeah, if they go like, do you know that the glaciers, blah, blah, and it's like off a bit, I just roll with it because they're probably never going to repeat it.

[1576] My instinct is to correct them so they will say it right in the future and they probably just won't and it doesn't matter.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] And who wants to have a parent correcting them all the time.

[1579] Right.

[1580] So in general, I try not to do it.

[1581] But she said, mom said she thinks I might have misophonia and I think I might have misophonia.

[1582] And I said, well, here's the problem with that.

[1583] It's genetic.

[1584] And both of us did not have it on the 23 of me. So unless somehow we both had the recessive as well, that seems unlikely.

[1585] I had to say that.

[1586] That's okay.

[1587] Because I didn't want her to create a story in her head that she has misophonia.

[1588] She has an intolerance for people's chewing, yeah, and that it's permanent.

[1589] Right.

[1590] I don't think that's correcting, is it?

[1591] Like, I think if she said, mom might think I have mosophonia, and then you were like, it's misophonia.

[1592] You dumb idiot.

[1593] That seems more like, who cares.

[1594] Yeah, yeah.

[1595] But this seems like she's approaching you and you're just giving her pain.

[1596] Well, she actually seemed more like she was telling me like she discovered she has misoenix.

[1597] so phony, which I was like, I don't want you to, I don't like these permanent declarations.

[1598] Nah.

[1599] Okay.

[1600] So, you can also tell her in case she's wondering, it's incredibly rare.

[1601] Fewer than 200 ,000 cases per year.

[1602] And babies, in babies, it's extremely rare.

[1603] Of course.

[1604] Babies are chill.

[1605] In toddlers, it's also extremely rare.

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] I had a hunch.

[1608] This was a bullshit.

[1609] It is just grumpiness.

[1610] And children, ages 6 to 13.

[1611] Okay, ding, ding, ding.

[1612] Ding, ding.

[1613] Also extremely rare.

[1614] Ooh, dingles.

[1615] Teenagers, 14 to 18.

[1616] Very rare.

[1617] Oh, my God.

[1618] What's Ryan's age?

[1619] I'm waiting for it to get to Ryan.

[1620] We're not there yet.

[1621] Young adults, 19 to 40, rare.

[1622] That's Ryan.

[1623] He's 40.

[1624] Adults 41 to 60.

[1625] Super fucking common.

[1626] What if it flipped?

[1627] Like a light switch.

[1628] Yeah, like the old.

[1629] Order and grumpy you are?

[1630] Yes, yes.

[1631] No, the rest are just rare.

[1632] Oh, okay.

[1633] Okay, medium rare?

[1634] No medium rare.

[1635] So far, no medium rare.

[1636] Okay.

[1637] Any rare to well done?

[1638] Yeah, so babies you can feel good about.

[1639] Chew your ass off.

[1640] Most likely, yeah.

[1641] Slurp, chew, suck on things, pop bubbles.

[1642] They love it all.

[1643] They love it.

[1644] Yeah.

[1645] They love it.

[1646] In fact, one of the great games you do with the babies, you go, you do dumb lip stuff and make a noise.

[1647] And they are trans.

[1648] fit in their face and stuff.

[1649] You spit.

[1650] Poop's your face.

[1651] Baby, we, we, waw, whoa.

[1652] Okay, this is a ding, ding, ding.

[1653] My next fact.

[1654] Not really a fact.

[1655] But we talked about Brad Pitt eating in all of his movies.

[1656] And since I've been watching Moneyball on repeat, he doesn't eat or he might eat, but he drinks a lot in it.

[1657] And he dips a lot in it.

[1658] He's spitting and he's spitting.

[1659] So he's dipping, is my assumption.

[1660] I don't see him put the...

[1661] Or sunflower seeds?

[1662] Maybe, but it's like...

[1663] Well, what was really...

[1664] You know, all the players...

[1665] You watch games from the 80s.

[1666] These guys were chewing on the mound.

[1667] Oh, everywhere.

[1668] Yeah, right.

[1669] And they're spitting everywhere.

[1670] It's a baseball thing.

[1671] But of course, the youth are watching.

[1672] They got rid of that.

[1673] Oh, they did?

[1674] Yeah, you're not allowed to chew tobacco anymore on a baseball field.

[1675] Oh, you're not.

[1676] No, MLB is like, no, thank you.

[1677] For a long time.

[1678] So I think what you'll see now in the...

[1679] dug out is people spitting furiously they just they've they've replaced it with sunflower seeds right rob yeah yeah sunflower seeds are and they'll jam like I think gum in their lips yeah they have to they need an oral fixation right and I've seen this when I've gone to the baseball game the fucking whole bullpen is just ankle high seed shells interesting so maybe Pitsky the pit doctor.

[1680] Pit bull.

[1681] Pity pants.

[1682] Pity party.

[1683] That sounds weird.

[1684] Yeah, if you had like a big parties, fun, sexy party at Pitshouse and you called it a pity party.

[1685] That's nice messages.

[1686] We like that.

[1687] Oh, we like that's right.

[1688] It's great.

[1689] A pity party.

[1690] Oh no. What happened?

[1691] Oh no. I was in order you with Brad Pitt.

[1692] Oh my God.

[1693] Next messages.

[1694] Okay.

[1695] So he was spitting a lot of that.

[1696] Yeah.

[1697] But now I, so I don't know what it was.

[1698] You'll find out tonight.

[1699] Find out in an hour.

[1700] I'm going to look at it even.

[1701] Now I have more reasons to revisit the movie.

[1702] What viewing are you on, do you know?

[1703] Oh, God.

[1704] I wish you kept a little counter of it.

[1705] I should have, I don't know, a lot.

[1706] Okay, we talked about International Harvester.

[1707] We talked about a lot of, like, some car stuff that I didn't understand at all.

[1708] Farming stuff, you know?

[1709] I wasn't going to attempt to do any fact -checking on this because it was really above my head.

[1710] But I think I suggested that the son -in -law of a rock -feller.

[1711] or Rockefeller or some son -in -law, I think.

[1712] Had something to do with it.

[1713] That's the fact I decided to check.

[1714] Oh, great.

[1715] And I found it.

[1716] Oh, wonderful.

[1717] Yes.

[1718] Edith Rockefeller McCormick, daughter of Standard Oil co -founder, John D. Rockefeller, her husband, Harold Fowler McCormick.

[1719] And I think they lived in Chicago.

[1720] That's neither here nor there, but.

[1721] He was the chairman of the board of International Harvester Company.

[1722] Oh, my God.

[1723] Good job.

[1724] I'm really happy I got that because that was obscure.

[1725] It was.

[1726] was impressed that you knew it and I was really proud of myself for seeing this through me too I was not anticipating this is not the kind of one you want to look up no you have zero interest in international harvest or the international scout well and then first I looked up international harvest or I found the people then I tried to look up the people you know it took me a second you had to follow many hyperlinks before you got to eat at Rockefeller but then I felt rewarded yeah yes Chicago born in Chicago okay great died in Beverly Hills, California, 9020.

[1727] 902 .10 .0.

[1728] 90201.

[1729] I know what it's tricky because...

[1730] We're in 90212.

[1731] And 90209 is also Beverly Hills.

[1732] Fuck a duck.

[1733] Yeah.

[1734] Beverly Hills gobbling up all the zip codes.

[1735] Do you think the 902102N0 zip code, the houses are more expensive?

[1736] They probably are.

[1737] So people could say that they live in that area.

[1738] I wonder.

[1739] I only remember our zip code.

[1740] Yeah.

[1741] Just so people know what we talk about.

[1742] our uranized mail is sent to the same building in Beverly Hills.

[1743] And I can only, for years I only remembered that zip code, I would go, oh, it's two more than Beverly Hill, but then 902102 .0.

[1744] Yes.

[1745] You too?

[1746] I remember, I always remember 902102100, but then I remember the last one is two.

[1747] Right, because we don't live there.

[1748] So, like, when it's your real zip code, you can memorize it.

[1749] Yes.

[1750] I got a little upset, grievance.

[1751] Okay.

[1752] Because when I joined with this building, building, yeah.

[1753] Let's just say it, Howard Altman.

[1754] We just love it.

[1755] Yeah, love him.

[1756] Business manager.

[1757] Incredible.

[1758] And Jonathan is mine, and I love Jonathan.

[1759] Yes, and David Jackson and Lori Chimori.

[1760] Yeah, this is a great fucking team over there.

[1761] Okay, so when I first joined the building, my zip code actually was not 90212.

[1762] It was 90209, and I felt less than.

[1763] Yeah.

[1764] But it just changed.

[1765] Also, like, you know, the Beverly Hills is its own city for people who don't know.

[1766] So they give their own tickets and stuff.

[1767] And the tickets are like fancy.

[1768] They like have a fancy print.

[1769] Oh, I didn't notice that.

[1770] I've gotten a couple of those tickets.

[1771] They look fancier than the other L .A. County ones.

[1772] Yeah, they run a tight ship over there.

[1773] In fact, again, back in Nashville with Huey, he has a radar detector.

[1774] And that thing's going off all.

[1775] the fucking time, right?

[1776] And I was saying him, that's right.

[1777] I'm reminded when I go back to Michigan and I drive that, oh, right, most states have speed traps and they have...

[1778] Everywhere, yeah.

[1779] Cops running radar on the side of the road trying to give you a ticket.

[1780] That doesn't exist in L .A. No, it doesn't.

[1781] There's never any, you know, they got bigger fish to fry.

[1782] Thank God.

[1783] My grandma got pulled over once because of one.

[1784] She was not going very...

[1785] She was going like seven over.

[1786] The hot one?

[1787] Yeah.

[1788] She'd get off with her looks.

[1789] No. That guy, was it a blind cop?

[1790] I didn't ask.

[1791] There's, again, a Cedara's story that's really funny.

[1792] And the thing is he likes to learn, like, local laws.

[1793] And one of the things he was a little shocked to find out is that you can be legally blind and have a hunting license in several states.

[1794] Oh, my gosh.

[1795] And some of the states require you to be with someone.

[1796] But Michigan, ding, ding, dang, dang, you don't even need anyone there with you.

[1797] And he said, it does beg the question, how did they get there?

[1798] That is so him.

[1799] Yeah.

[1800] He is the best.

[1801] The needily threads with, like, saying something you're scared.

[1802] Like, you're probably not even allowed to talk about blind people.

[1803] Right.

[1804] Just the fact that he's writing about blind people, you're scared already.

[1805] And then he does manage to make a blind joke, but it's not offensive.

[1806] It's like it's.

[1807] Yeah, because he.

[1808] makes it actually a, you're allowed to laugh about the blind joke.

[1809] The blind hunter.

[1810] Because it's a blind hunter who you know in your head should not be doing that.

[1811] Hunting, yeah.

[1812] Also, this is one of those things.

[1813] There's so many laws that I don't know why they're there.

[1814] There's no single blind hunter.

[1815] I've been in the history of hunting.

[1816] There's not been a single blind, would be a gentleman if it was going to be anyone.

[1817] Probably.

[1818] There's never been a blind.

[1819] gentleman that like got an Uber ride to a field and got out with his shotgun and stuff and then what started listening for a deer it's never happened it must have happened at least once that's another fact adding more facts to my fact um that's it that's that yeah okay well we really enjoyed palin chuck chuck i conflated chuck and palan i like that palan chuck oh what's onomatopoeia Anamatopoeia, the sounds Oh, it's when something is spelled the way it sounds.

[1820] Yeah, like, ping.

[1821] Ping, bang, bang, bang.

[1822] Bang, bang.

[1823] Bang, yeah.

[1824] Brang, bang.

[1825] Okay, so the guy that was in, everyone loves to repeat the guy, Buffalo Bill, from Silence of the Lambs.

[1826] He said a few things, some of them offensive, and he also says, puts the lotion on the, right?

[1827] Puts the lotion on the hand or whatever.

[1828] Do you remember any of this?

[1829] No. It was the bad guy in Silence of the Lambs.

[1830] But I don't remember the lotion on...

[1831] It puts the lotion on the hands.

[1832] Because he's got these people in the pit and he's going to make a dress out of them.

[1833] So he wants them to lotion up.

[1834] Got it.

[1835] Okay.

[1836] Well, he was also in heat, one of my favorite movies.

[1837] He's a detective.

[1838] Okay.

[1839] And he has a moment that's quotable that no one really does.

[1840] It's when El Pacino shows up on scene of the big heist.

[1841] He's like, what happened?

[1842] Tell me what happened.

[1843] and he goes, officer went for his sidearm, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

[1844] Now, I'm such a movie nerd at that age that I know that's Buffalo Bill, and I'm kind of hoping he lets out something.

[1845] So when he does that, I'm immediate rewind.

[1846] Officer went for a service revolver, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

[1847] And then Pacino's like, it's a good location.

[1848] Four freeways, no cameras.

[1849] This guy at the drop of a hat was bang.

[1850] Because who cares?

[1851] You already have three dead bodies.

[1852] What does a fourth make?

[1853] You know all the words.

[1854] That's your goodwill hunting.

[1855] It's, well, thief is my goodwill hunting.

[1856] You know all the words?

[1857] Yeah, I've seen that movie 11 .00 times.

[1858] I've never seen it.

[1859] I would love to see it.

[1860] Well, let's see it.

[1861] Maybe that'll be like a thing I insist people do on my birthday.

[1862] Yeah.

[1863] Oh, that's a great idea.

[1864] All right.

[1865] I love you.

[1866] I love you.

[1867] And sorry, Squarespace and Square.

[1868] And Squirrel.

[1869] And Squirrel.

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