Brian Koppelman: How a Hollywood Writer Got Fit at 60, Beat Anxiety & Outworked Resistance

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter. Now
let me say something. It is one thing to get
fit and healthy when you're in your twenties you have
a low stressed job, you have no kids. But it
is a completely other thing when you are in your fifties,
you have kids and you have one of the most
high profile and demanding jobs in the world. But it
turns out today's guest was able to do just that.

(00:40):
I'm going to be talking to Brian Koppleman. Brian is
probably best known for his work in the film industry.
So he wrote the movie Rounders. He also wrote Oceans thirteen,
and he also wrote the television show Billions, which ran
for seven seasons. But when he was in his fifties,
he had this moment on a tennis court in New
York changed everything, a really scary moment, and it kickstarted

(01:03):
him to make some really hard changes. He's completely fixed
his health. He's one of the strongest sixty year olds
I know. And I know this for a fact because
we recently met up in New York City. We went
to the gym, we trained, and this guy is fit
and I love him for it. So we're going to
talk to Brian about a lot of things about getting
fit in his fifties, about what he's learned in the

(01:25):
weight room. We're also going to talk to him about
creativity and writing, how to overcome writer's block, and why
talking to people that you don't know, that you may
not necessarily agree with can be a path to learn
more and think differently. Really, this is just a big
episode about how to live a better life from a
really insightful human being that I love. So with all

(01:47):
that said, we're going to bring in Brian right now. Well,
Brian my man, welcome to the show. I'm psyched we're
doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
I'm so happy to talk to you, man.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I really am, and warmer than when you and I
took our walk in Manhattan a few months ago.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, it is so. You just turned sixty on Monday,
and in honor of that, you posted a video of
yourself with a heavy pack walking upstairs, which I absolutely
approve of. Now I feel like maybe five years ago
this is something you one wouldn't have done, two maybe
couldn't have done. Could you have done it, it would have

(02:25):
been a lot harder.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
I would It's still hard, right, putting a really heavy
pack on it. Going up seven New York City flights
in a building is a challenging thing to do when
you weren't planning for it.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
You didn't.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
But I was just like, yeah, I can just basically
race up these stairs. And three years ago that would
have been if I had to do it, because it
was the only way to get to work. I would
have had to have worked myself up to it. I
definitely couldn't have taken the pack not on my back,

(03:04):
and it would have taken three or four or five
times as long, and I would have been worried about
my heart. And it didn't even think about it, right,
because I'm sixty, I didn't even think about it. Now,
I will say, not thinking about it might not have
been that great because as much as I lift weights
and exercise and throw kettlebells around, walking up all those

(03:24):
flights with a pack that's heavy and not built for
that purpose the next two days, my back was pretty
jacked up. Yeah, and because I'd already I mean, i'd
also done that. I right, I put a barbell on
my back after that, So it was a lot of
stuff in a row. But now we're three days past it,
and I feel great, and I did have the next

(03:45):
day it was like, oh, that was maybe dumb. But
as an exclamation point on the last few years, Michael,
and on the influence that comfort crisis had on me, which,
as you know, hit me, not the beginning of this
kind of move I made into trying to get myself

(04:08):
in much better physical condition. But I think anytime you're
on a long no one knows more about like long
missions than you do. But anytime you're on a long mission,
years long mission, maybe a mission that's like for the
rest of your life, you hope you need things, not
just at the beginning. You need things like stages of

(04:30):
a rocket. You need things to propel you into the
next part, the next phase. And because it's not just
like you have one takeoff and you're going.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
It's like you take off, but then.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know you run out of fuel, or you need
a different kind of fuel, or you need a different
kind of propulsion. And you know, comfort crisis was a
really huge thing and really did.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
At the perfect time for me a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, I appreciate that. Man. I want to get all
into your health transformation. But first, so you grew up
in Long.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Island, yeah, pretty much from age. I was born in Flushing,
Queen's but pretty much my whole life's memories were on
Long Island until I went to college, and then relatively
little Long Island time from college on.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, and then you go to Tufts and so as
I'm researching this episode as a heads up for you,
I knew your background. I didn't know all of your background,
so I'm doing something, I'm like, holy shit, that guy
did this. So a couple things popped up in that,
but one of one of them was that you discovered
Tracy Chapman.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
I mean, it's an incredible thing to have been part
of her rise and to have been a very early
voice advocating for her music and her artistic brilliance. It's
been written about a lot, and I've talked about it
a lot. I was nineteen years old when I first
saw Tracy play talking about a revolution, and.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
It wasn't like a coffee house in Boston, right.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, at the college that both of us went to.
She was two years ahead of me, and it was
kind of the defining thing in my life for a
long period of time.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
It was my.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Entire focus of most of my sophomore junior senior. Most
of my sofmare of my junior and senior year and
led me into this first the first stage of my
career until David and I wrote our first script.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
I would say the lessons that were the most.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Important lessons that I took from that, and these are
broadly applicable to anyone listening is I was young enough
not to believe experts when they told me that I
was wrong, that Tracy's music could appeal to any people

(07:00):
across many different demographics. And for me, I was at nineteen.
I had spent a lifetime in recording studios, even though
I was young, because my dad was in that business,
so I knew about that business. So I had a
certain amount of knowledge, a certain amount of reps thinking
about things like what makes somebody a great songwriter? You know,

(07:21):
what makes a song a great song? What makes an
entertainer incredibly compelling? But I was young and innocent enough
to not think that the monolith of an industry knew better,
because all I thought was, well, if this moves me
to tears and I'm not an easy cry, if this

(07:44):
makes me stay up all night lost in what this
music is, then other people are going to be like me,
and they're going to feel the same way, you know.
And then so I had all these experiences, Michael, where
I would Tracy would perform and an expert from a
New York record company or an LA record company would
come that we'd arrange to come up there, and the

(08:06):
guy would be crying during the concert and say can
I concert?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
You know, she's playing for two hundred people, and say
can I meet her?

Speaker 3 (08:12):
And then I'd walk the guy back to his car
and he would say, you understand, we can't sign her
to like a record deal.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Because even after all that, and I would.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Say, dude, your shirt's covered with the your snot in tears,
and you're just a person.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
And like they go, oh, you don't know how it works.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
You know, their promotion people have to go to radio
stations and you know she's demographically and I was like,
I don't even know that word means. I mean, I did,
I was, but like I.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Was like, did you not just hear those songs?

Speaker 3 (08:44):
And then every step of the way I saw these
experts be wrong and enormously wrong, right wrong in a
way that thirty five years later or more, you know,
she that has another number one record again. She still
has millions and millions and millions and millions of listens.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
A year, but it's her. You know.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
This is the thing that story often when someone's talking
to me but becomes a story about me.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
The story is about Tracy, you know. And it was
always about Tracy. For me.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
It was that I was lucky enough to be in
a position to see her, and I was lucky enough
to have both enough experience and more importantly, enough innocence
that I jumped in fully and made it like my
life's work at that time. Yeah, I got to talk
to her after the Luke Combs grabbing thing. She spoke

(09:37):
for a half hour, and it was really beautiful because
we got to revisit those early days and just talk
about how miraculous and heartwarming it is that the music
still has this level of impact on people.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, so when you're at toss, you're also poker, Right.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
I played poker. I've always played.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, I've played poker since I like I was since
eight years old.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
The tone on that I played poker, that tells us
you played some poker, but where you play you would
play against Harvard kids, right, Well.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, that's funny.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
I just had had dinner with a guy who was
when I was at Harvard then, and I was talking
about going to Yeah, you know Harvard, like in that
social network, you know, they have those things like final clubs,
and I would go. I knew some kids who were there,
and I would go to like one of these final
clubs and play poker. And there's nothing better than taking

(10:37):
a Harvard guy's money at a poker table. I mean,
you just feel like you're doing the Lord's work even
though you're gambling.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, and even if you don't believe in the Lord
all of it. But it was great.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
And then, yeah, that moment Levine and I put that
moment in Rounders we made we made at Princeton because
he was in the a jail in New Jersey and
coming back to New York, so they wouldn't really divert
on their trip up to Boston. But Princeton and those
dining clubs the same thing are close enough. It felt

(11:06):
like the whole idea was just Ivy League douches.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Were you using almost the sense of being underrated as
an advantage? Did you play it? Did you play into that?

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I mean I mean a big difference between rounders and
what I did is there, I didn't even know how
to cheat, and I wouldn't have cheated them because for me,
it was really important as a guy who was at
Tufts and who had really bad ADHD, and it was
very important to me that I tried to match wits
against those guys and prove to myself that I could
come out ahead for real at the poker table. No,

(11:38):
the great thing about Harvard guys at a final club,
I mean, you don't have to do anything for them
to feel like they're better than you.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
You just have to show up. They're always going to
think they're better than you.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
So I just had to show up, and they were like,
first of all, I was from Long Island. That's a
giant strike against me. Yeah, I was at Tufts. That's
another strike against me. I would definitely wasn't dressed the
way that they were dressed. And yeah, I mean I
would play basketball and be in sweats and just come
in the same clothes or whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
That's awesome. What drew you to poker in the first place?
All the way back at eight years old?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Losing, I mean at eight was losing.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
I was in a camp punk and a bunch of
guys knew how to play and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, and when you lose your whole like all.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Your canteen money, like the twenty bucks that's supposed to
buy you candy for the whole summer, and you lost
all that, You're like, that's never I'm not letting that
happen to me again. So I started like reading books
about poker, and my dad he'd liked to gamble some
and he had a poker said at home, like with

(12:44):
those plastic chips in like a wheel, and.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
My gran's had one.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
So I love that, and I like, I think I
came that summer, I learned how to play, and then
I decided I want to try to get decent at it.
I had a little too much gamble in me. Even
when I would play it toughs against some of those guys,
they would win.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
But I.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Always found that game the combination of things, right. You
have to.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
You have to be able to exhibit discipline, you know,
self discipline, and then you have to try to know.
I think like something that's incredibly valuable in life is
to know where you are in the hand, meaning like
where are you situationally right, It's situational awareness.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
But it's more than that.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
It's like being aware of the terrain, but also being
aware of if you have the proper footwear for that terrain.
And so for me, like I'm learning how to watch
everybody else because everyone we're all we all walk around
listen to our own voice all the time. By to poker,

(13:55):
you have to be outwardly directed enough to sort of
try to understand the patterns.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
People think think it's like greeting tells is just one thing,
like you know, oh, does somebody always touch their nose before?
But it's betting patterns, it's rhythms of speech, it's postures.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
First making a.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Determination, does this person have an awareness I'm watching them closely,
and if they do, are they intentionally trying to use
that against me? If they're not, then they're going to
have exhibit their natural tension is going to come out
in some way. Okay, how's that going to come out?
Also if they are trying to influence me, that means something.

(14:33):
So instead of being self absorbed, you are forced to
be aware of these externalities and then you have to
filter them through your prism and you have to be disciplined.
It's really hard to stay disciplined when you've gotten unlucky.
And so for a long you know, I don't play
poker as much anymore. I got a lot of the
benefit out of it that I'm going to get out

(14:53):
of it. And you can't play poker on a Monday
and get to the gym at five am on a Tuesday,
I don't think. And so I've modulated it. But I
still play sometimes, and for a long time I played
once a week with a bunch of friends.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, so you end up writing Rounders. When did you
start working on it? That came out in ninety seven?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, David and I. I walked into a poker club
in New York December fifteenth, nineteen ninety five, ninety six. David,
I started writing it ninety seven. We sold it March third,
nineteen ninety seven, and we went into production December fifteenth.
And I know because exactly two years to the day
of walking into the poker club. But I'll just say,
because I like the theme, Rounders was also rejected by everybody.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
And what do you learn from that?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
I mean, the same Listen, this is what the great
thing is, because the truth is, having the one lesson
is great. But when you have two. Like in many things,
I always I think in terms of I'm not incredibly
numerates like a math guy, but I do think that
one one instance of something is just like a point

(16:02):
on a graph, but when there are two, you can
plot it.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
It's a line and it's a direction.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
And so seeing this experience with Tracy and then with
Rounders where it was really rejected and the same people
who rejected it, these every agency, all the famous agencies,
rejected the script, and then the moment the script sold,
all those same agencies and all those same people agents

(16:27):
called trying to sign David and me off the script,
and I read them all what the bad shit they
said about the script was the first time ten you know,
they all denied it or I didn't really read it,
my assistant did, or my reader or another partner, And
it was like, oh, these people are engaged in a group,
think they are rarely.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Taking a risk.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
They also haven't yet learned to be responsible for their
own decisions or to like most I think people like you, Michael,
And what I try to do is we're all wrong
a lot, like you're wrong all the time totally. But
what I try to do when I'm wrong is take
an inventory. Okay, what did I what patterns or habits

(17:11):
led me to that mistake? What can I change? What
can I learn from this? How can I not make this?
I'm going to make another mistake really soon. You know,
I'm someone who plays I always played sports. So it's
that thing you learn when you're young. Like a tennis
you know, if you hit a ball, if you hit
a servant of the net, you might hit a You

(17:32):
might like if I hit a second serve into a
net and double fault. If I'm going to double fault
the next time, I want it to because I hit
the ball long. I don't want to hit into the
net again. And it's that kind of thing where you
just want to sort of correct for the mistake you
can correct for.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, it's interesting. Something that's helped me too is even
asking in the moment when I have an idea or
a thought, where might I be wrong here? Like when
I'm writing a book and I've got a you know,
a complicated topic and I'm trying to make an argument. Yeah,
I just sit there and go, what's the pushback? What
am I not seeing here? And I mean that's a

(18:09):
it is a harrowing thing to do in many ways,
because you're going you can find some areas, Oh well,
there could be this argument against us, there could be this,
there could be this. But then I always keep in
the back of my mind, which is somewhat anxiety inducing,
there's definitely other ways I might be wrong. But I
think that exercise also helps tighten arguments and the decisions
you end up making.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah, how do you balance that with the the sort
of confidence needed to press ahead? Like, because I don't
you find when you're writing, I'm gonna wonder how do
you how do you how do you balance the need
to move forward with the need to be right?

Speaker 1 (18:45):
I would say for me, I mean, because I'm writing
a lot about health, wellbeing, psychology, I can always find
a million cases where this could be wrong. But what
I try and zoom out on because I'm writing to
the public, I go, does this seem reason and defensible
for most people most of the time? And if I
can say yes to that, I go okay, Because there's

(19:06):
always going to be some person goes, well, I'm the
special case. I'm the one percent of the one hundred people.
But if I go okay, well, that's good. You're special,
but like your ninety nine friends probably fall into this bucket.
So I feel confident saying.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
That, well, yeah, you have an awareness, and I do
think in the world that you are living and engaged with,
there's a people default to tribalism and kind of a
Manichean view even on things like the Turkish get Up.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, and the amount of arguments online about this exercise
that only a handful of strength orcs like you and
I even do is amazing.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
And yeah, and when you see people go this is
the most overrated thing in the world, and then someone
else will go, there's no exercise more important than the
Turkish get up. And you want to think they're both
good faith actors, and so how do two good faith
actors get So what if the answer is just there,
I see, there's some benefits to the Turkish get up,
it might be good to add something else into like,

(20:11):
you know, also, if you're putting something heavy in your
hand and you're trying to stand up anyway, there's benefit.
But if you're looking to you know, build boulder shoulders,
there might be something better. But it seems like in
that space, in that space everybody should always just say
look if you're doing something hard, it's physically hard and taxing,

(20:32):
and you're trying to improve it, it's a good now
within that we can iterate a little bit and make
it slightly more effective. But I guess that doesn't sell
enough books.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Well, there's also the question of I try and look
at who is making the point for and against. Right,
if I talk to, you know, a Russian kettlebell trainer,
they're going to say, to kettle belt, the Turkish get
up with the kettlebell is the greatest thing ever. But
then you're going to have some guys screaming no, it's
completely useless. You look at their background and they're you know,
they're a run coach or something. So it goes Okay, Well,

(21:04):
if I'm a runner, maybe I should listen to this guy.
But if I'm interested in kettle bull work getting stronger,
I should probably listen to this rushing kettlebell guy who's
putting a you know, a kettlebell the size of a
Volvo over there.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yes, I actually think, yeah, I've been. I've been because
of the world we're in. I've been reading a lot
about tribalism, and I just did a really deep dive
and we don't have to get lost in this. But
I know there's something you know about. But I did
a really deep dive on how in nineteen forty seven
the partition happened in India and Pakistan and about the

(21:38):
three way tribal war wars that happened, And honestly, it
gives you an insight into why over something like kettlebells,
because I've noticed these wars online about this, people just
running other people down, cursing them out, like screaming online
and it's like, it seems it's very important. And I'm

(22:01):
curious how you because in what you write about it
is controversial, right. It seems like people in the fitness
wellness space spend a lot of time trying to tell
other people why they're wrong instead of trying to just
find the best answer for them for themselves and sharing
it with a positive spin.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I mean, have you have you thought about that at all?

Speaker 1 (22:23):
I'll tell you what I do on my substack is
a lot of times I just say do more of
what helps you and less of what hurts you. You
can't argue with that. If you do the kettle if
you do the exercise, why and it helps you? Great,
do it more. If you feel like it's not as beneficial,
do it less. It can be that simple, because people
are people are going to be different, right, They're people

(22:45):
who respond differently to different movements based on their anatomy,
based on their training, background, based on all these different things.
But you're coming about India Pakistan reminds me. One of
my best friends is named Matt Sherman. Also some guy
longest serving American in the Iraq and Afghanistan war. And

(23:06):
what happened with the war is, especially with administrations changing,
people coming in and out, the average person is staying
over there for six months a year or something like that.
And he's like, people would have very strong opinions what
we have to do here. But he told me, the
longer I stayed there, the more I realized I have
no clue what's going on. There's just so much background

(23:28):
and history that like, we just don't know. And I think,
I mean, his takeaway was it made me a lot more,
I guess, empathetic, but also willing to be like, we
don't really know.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
One of the best things about being even this happening
when I turned fifty so ten years ago, I became
so much more comfortable saying I don't know, And I
say that as something I've said online, and I say,
it's like, there's so much that there's no good answer for,
so you just try your best within that to make

(24:04):
the micro good answers, good decisions.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Well, I'm thinking that, you know.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
You and I went and we took a walk together
and went and worked out and we were doing we
were next to each other in squad cage, was doing
entirely different workouts, and now all we did was engaged
with curiosity.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Why are you doing that?

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Cool? Are you doing that? That's interesting?

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Like there was no there was not a moment in
real life where one of us was like, oh dude,
why you do it. I didn't say to you, why
are you do Inzurchers? That's so dumb you should do
And you didn't turn to me and go backsquat. You're
still doing backsquats and it's just like no, Like you
were happy that I was putting in hard work and
were standing ready to spot me if I needed help,

(24:43):
and the same with me to you, and it was like, uh,
that's the way in real life people who are engaged
and just trying to improve themselves and their friends are.
But somehow when it gets one ring beyond that in
the public sphere, it turns dark really quickly totally.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
So then you end up doing Oceans thirteen. Did you
feel like the Steaks had raised entirely once you get
all those names on that list and what was that
like for you? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I should say all of this is with my lifelong
best friend and creative partner, David Levine.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
And you guys met when you were like fourteen.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Fourteen and fifteen. Yeah, and so we go through it
all together, all this stuff except Dave's at BRISLI introduced.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
To black belt, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
We know who if it comes down there.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's always been the case, even before he had the
black belt. He was better than me in a fight,
but luckily we never fight, and I always had them
to get my back. We were so excited to be
able to work with Steven Soderberg on that script, and
the opportunity is what we wanted. I remember seeing Ocean's

(25:54):
eleven and the theater with Amy and.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
My wife, and.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Like, gosh, I wish I would have gotten a phone
call to get the chance to convince somebody that they
should let us write that script, David and me. And
so when we got the call that we could get
in a room and pitch Steven and talk to him
about the movie and maybe get a chance to write it.
They're Ocean thirteen. That was the moment because I thought

(26:24):
it was an incredible long shot. I could feel an
instinct that I'm going to the fear of putting in
a ton of work really thinking about that movie and
really thinking about how it sort of all the things
required to make an incredibly compelling case as to why

(26:48):
we should write it. It was an incredible amount of
really hard work and difficult thinking and watching a lot
of movie vis's references, reading a lot of non fiction
books way more than you would think, to understand the
way casinos work, to understand the history of cons like

(27:10):
con artists, not just in the movies but in real life.
And there was this instinct to go have a meeting
because we knew it was a long shot. I remember
walking out the door to go meet with Steven and
my son saying to me, what do you think that
he was very always, very interested in stuff, and he
was like eleven or twelve or thirty, said, what do
you think the chances are and I said, honestly, the
five percent. But I and I think I've I've spoken

(27:32):
to groups of like salespeople, tech, you know, and often
before a meeting where the upside is potentially so huge
but it's a long shot. That's when sometimes we don't
really do the work because we're so scared of of
being disappointed.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
And heartbroken totally.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
But somehow David and I did it all the work,
and I had so much at stake in the meeting
with Steve and he was delightful and the fact that
we were that prepared was immediately apparent because we weren't
pressing or weren't pushing, but like we just had this
domain expertise and he knew our work, so there was that.

(28:14):
And by the end of that meeting he shook our
hands and was like, all right, we're doing this together.
And then yeah, of course we were aware that, like
with everybody else wanting to do it, if the thing
didn't happen, we would have gotten blamed for it, but
we you can't think about that, and we didn't. I'll say,
it was like you're aware of it. There's a difference
being being aware of something being aware of the downsides

(28:37):
and focusing on the downside, like I've heard Alex Haneld
talk about it too, meaning he's aware of the fact
that it'd be bad to fall, but he's not thinking
about that when he's on the mountain right, he's thinking
about going carefully and smartly and using all his expertise
and abilities.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
It's thinking about climbing up. And so no, I wasn't.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
I'll say like that, all the fear was all the fear,
as it always is, was about the emotions I'd feel
and failure. But at an earlier stage it was about
the fear of not getting the opportunity. But once we
got the opportunity, there was no fear.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
It was just like you had to just keep it.
You had to keep going. You know.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
There were many stops along the way where it could
have fallen apart, but we just kept pressing forward. Okay,
someone has notes, they want to change it rat wildly.
Let's get in there and do it. I was never
not aware of what a big opportunity it was. And
I'll say one thing that I think we all do

(29:42):
often is when something good happens, or when something when
you're in the middle.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Of something momentous.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
Often we keep blinders on and we just kind of
move forward because we've trained ourselves that again, that kind
of an awareness something can come with a bunch of emotions.
But when Dave and I walked onto the Warner Brothers
lot the first day that we were all shooting the movie,
we did make it a point. And maybe this is

(30:11):
one of the blessings of having a creative partner, not
going through all of it alone, but we made it
a point to take a breath and say, Okay, we
may never be a part of something like this. Again,
Hollywood may never do something like they're building this giant
casino over there.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
George Clooney is.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Over there, and Brad Pitt's over there, and Matt Damon's
right there, and like, we did have an awareness in
a good way that this was very fortunate thing and
that if we're engaged in all this, there should be
some moments that we breathe it in and accept it

(30:51):
that this is really good and this is fun, and then.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Do the work.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Then forget that, do the work, but have a moment
of grabbing onto it. Because of the time I don't,
and I afterwards I regretted if I didn't, so I've
trained myself to do it.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
You know, do you think writer's block or creativity blocks
are real? I want to hear your opinion. I'll give
you mine.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Well, you got to define real, dude, I'll.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Let you define it. Do that happen? Or is is
what is missing when that happens? I guess is the question?

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Well, my origin story with the writing thing is I
was a blocked writer and it was so painful for me.
It was our first child was born. I had a
good job, but I was sitting in my office with
a stack of demo tapes to listen to. I'd never
smoked cigarette in my life. I was twenty nine, I'd
started smoking cigarettes. I was eating a double cheese burger.

(31:43):
I didn't want to listen to these tapes, and it
was a real moment of crisis. I had this thought
that if I was letting this creative impulse in me die,
and like any other death, it would have toxicity, and
then that the city would ooze out of me onto
the people I loved, and I'd be a bad dad

(32:05):
if I let myself get bitter, not a bad dad.
If I let myself get better and let this sort
of creative impulse.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Die.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
I felt like I just wouldn't be as good a
father as I could be or a husband. I felt
like that bitterness would find a way to fucking ooze around,
you know, and.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
But I couldn't. I was the kind of not the
kind of person.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
I was a person who could write a paragraph or
two or a page that I knew could affect people,
Like I knew I had the word talent is a
weird word, but I knew I had an ability a
skill that with words on a page that was fairly rare.

(32:50):
But I couldn't write more than a page I would
turn never. I had seven incompletes my last semester of
my senior year of college, and I got them done
through the help of friends, you know who, Like one
guy had a first word processor se he's like, I'll
type for you, And another guy made to coffee like
we were just like everybody had a sort of set

(33:12):
up an environment because no one knew what the ADHD
was and there was no scaffolding, there was no sort
of like. I had to invent it for myself. My
friends had to help me invent the scaffolding that said
I started doing David Levine gave me The Artist's Way.
I'd read Tony Robbins Awaken the Giant Within, which helped

(33:35):
me get to this crescendo inside where I realized, Okay,
I have to make a change, but I still didn't
know how. And then Dave gave me Julia Cameron's book
The Artist's Way. And when I started actually doing that program,
really doing a chapter by chapter, really writing the morning pages,
really going and doing the artist date, something broke free

(33:59):
and it enabled me to finally get past this thing
that was holding me back. But it does happen, I think,
and I think the Artists Way works for lots of people,
but something else will work for people. You know. Steve
presfield book War of Art is so great because he

(34:21):
diagnoses resistance, which is his word for this thing that
might kind of manifest as a creative block or a
writer's block. I do think people are in pain, but
it's like asking me if back pain exists or if
slip discs cause back pain. And I think that John
Sarno is mostly right that two percent of the time
it's a real it's a real structural thing, and almost

(34:45):
all the time what it actually is, I'm not talking
about a cute like there is a cute back pain,
Like you know, you throw a rock on your back
and walk up a bunch of flights of stairs, you're
gonna have a couple of days of pain. But in
a prior version of my life that back pain, I
wouldn't have gone a deadlifted a day later, and I
wouldn't be thrown kettlebells around two days later. I would
have said, oh, my back is hurt, and I would
have stayed in bed and I would have taken I

(35:07):
would ask the doctor for cortisone, you know, And and
now I am in a different mode and I think
it's the so so. But but the thing Sarno says
that's really important is the pain is real. Yeah, Like
the pain is legitimate and real. So the pain you
feel when you're a blocked writer, a blocked artist is
a very real pain. And it does seem as bleak

(35:32):
as depression. But I do think that there is a
strategy for you if you're listening to this, And it
might not be the strategy that works for Michael Easter
or for me, or for Seth Godin, but there is
a strategy that will work for you and you can
find it and get to the other side.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
What do you think, I think you're I think you're
totally right there. I think for and I'll give you
my own experience. I've treated the feelings of feeling blocked
whatever you want to call it, as a signal. So
for me, as a writer of nonfiction that usually has
narrative across it, if I'm really struggling and I've put

(36:13):
my butt in the chair, I'm there, I'm doing that work.
It tells me I need to get out in the
world and probably do more reporting. I just don't have
enough material. I'm trying to I'm trying to build a
McMansion with you know, twenty seven sticks. We're gonna need
more wood here, dude. So it to me it's like,
all right, do more research. Maybe you've got to go

(36:35):
to that place you're writing about to try and find
some characters and things like that. So I long story
short as, I treated it as a signal, but something's
missing that I need to go out and find.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well in nonfiction.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
In fiction, you know, writing TV or movies or stories,
maybe that has to do with point of view.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, and that's same information too. Instead of having to
go outside.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Maybe it's having to go inside and do more work
on like what is it that I want to say here?

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Why do I want to tell this story?

Speaker 3 (37:08):
But also sometimes look, I think I might believe a
little more than you that some of this stuff is chemical,
because I am somebody who believes in medical interventions for ADHD.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
I think there are lots of other interventions. Right.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
Sleep is super important, exercise is super important, meditation is
really important, journaling is really important. If you're doing all
those things and you're putting yourself in the seat and
you still can't do the work, talk to a doctor
and maybe for you, adderall works. Maybe for you, Concerto works.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Maybe for you. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
I am absolutely not an expert on what works for
somebody else. But I know for a lot of years
I felt anger and guilt around something like adderall.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
I wouldn't take it. But if I do take it, there's.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
A real chance that I'm better to be around, and
the work is better and I can do it more consistently,
and I've learned not to feel. Now you have to
make sure you're not someone who has an addictive personality,
Like I'll say, I've never taken a higher dose. I've
never you know, I have doctors telling me to take
more all the time, Like no, we knew this prescription.

(38:12):
Everybody's different. I've seen people crunch it up and snort it.
So it depends how manifests for you. I'm really careful
about endorsing it because for lots of people it's a
bad solution, but for lots of people it's a wonderful solution.
And I think our society is, yes, the society medicates
too much. But then the part of society I live
in mostly is like very critical of medical interventions and

(38:38):
views it as a moral weakness. And it has to
do with like a kind of our Puritan streak and
being a get out of pain in a way that
what you're thinking about the weight. If you can get
yourself out of pain in a way that doesn't create
a worse pain like addiction or you know, doing things
that harm your life, do it, you know, as much

(39:00):
as I decry sort of the monolith of experts in general,
a specific expert who you've come to trust and learn about,
who can help you.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
That's a useful thing to find.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
And I agree with you one. I think you made
two really great points. On one hand, I think sometimes
people don't look for other ways of dealing with something
beyond medication that becomes the frontline defense. Maybe that's helpful,

(39:31):
sometimes it's not. But I've also found a lot of
people where they have tried all these things and then
they had resistance to a medication they tried. I have
a family member who also has ADHD. When they went
on medication, it changed their life fundamentally, Like I feel
like right new and so I think that we look

(39:52):
at things as very black and white, and there's different
case studies.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
It's like this sort of how many people frame it
as a moral crisis, the GLP ones, you know, And
it's because again people view this stuff as all or
one solutions, right, But if you're in a crisis and
a combination of GLP one and lifestyle modifications and resistance

(40:19):
training and conditioning will help you total if you can
get yourself out of a metabolic crisis, get yourself out
of a metabolic crisis, you know.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
And it's too look where we are.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
This is why the reason I started reading about historical
tribal conflicts is because I've noticed that in our society
right now, this sort of larger tribalistic impulse. This situation
really has filtered down. We're so used to now turtling

(40:55):
up and having our position and sort of deciding this
is what I believe on the big issues, that it's
come down on every other issue. Now we feel like
we have to argue as though it's the only possible answer.
And I was trying to understand why we're wired this way,
and so I started reading about a lot of different
tribal conflicts throughout his recent history, last hundred years, two

(41:18):
hundred years. And so that's why this bothers me so much.
In the world of wellness and fitness, now, there's a
lot of quacks, there's a lot of bullshit. There are
a lot of people who are bad faith actors. So
but let's take the bad faith. There's tons of bad
faith actors. You know, the people posting I'll just say
this their public service announcement. If you're on Instagram and

(41:40):
someone is showing you a dumbbell complex and they're saying this.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Is a fat burner, it's not right. That's bad faith.
They know it. They're appeeled.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
They're at three percent body fat, and they didn't get
that way just by doing a dumbell complex you can't
spot reduce fat, or they say, you know, do this
and you'll lose belly fat. Just doesn't work, right, But
take the bad faith actors out of it. I think
a lot of good faith people are so used to
being in a posture where they have to be angry,

(42:11):
determined hold the line for their position in the world
that they think that's the same exact thing about where
your hands should be in a fucking lat pulled down,
When the truth is, you're going to get a lot
of benefit if your hands are wide on a lat
pulled down. If you lean back a little bit, you'll
get some benefit. If you don't lean back, you'll get

(42:33):
some benefit. Hell, if you supinate your hands, you get
some benefit. And we're in a world now where nobody
can acknowledge.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
That, right, right, It's like you've you're a hut of
ninety nine point eight percent of people if you just
do the damn exercise in the first place.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah, you're going to get stronger.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
How do you?

Speaker 2 (42:50):
So?

Speaker 1 (42:50):
You do this series on Instagram on your Instagram fade,
which everyone should follow. It's fantastic where the headline is
always screenwriter over here you talk about things you've heard
on the street. How does your environment influence your writing
and thinking?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Oh, it really does. I mean, I love those things.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
They keep me sharp and also I just have always
I mean, it's part of why I became a storyteller. Right,
I'm fascinated by Sometimes I'll walk around with headphones because
I want to hear a podcast or I want to
listen to music. But I make it a point every
day for at least a good period of time when
I'm walking around, to be listening, really, to be listening
to my own voice. Mostly right, I'm just walking around thinking.

(43:29):
I'm not trying to like overhear, but if you're in
your environment and you're alert, I'll just hear a sentence
or a tone of Often it's like I'll just hear
like a certain tone and somebody talking to their phone
or a friend, and I'll just slow down and listen.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
But I can't, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
I'll listen and maybe I'll hear twenty things that could
be one of those. But I don't record it and
then post it unless I think it's like a really
good one that people will be entertained by.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Social media doesn't I don't make my living at all
through social media, So for me, it's just like fun
to share and have that community. And I like engaging,
but I want to try to I want to try
to apply rigor to it, like I just think as
a as a as a an approach, I always want
to try to put a level of rigor. So yeah,

(44:24):
I often it's not the first time I try to
record that thing. Either, I'll record it, I don't get
it exactly right, I'll do it again. And those things
most things are hit and miss. Most things that you
post that I post too, But those things are like
they never missed because I've picked it out, I've curated it,
because I've heard a bunch of stuff, and it has
to really tickle me. I have to really think it's
funny or interesting. And then also sometimes they're too sad,

(44:48):
and I just can tell if that person or someone
in their life saw it, that would be bad. So
never a kid, you know, never someone like I. You know,
I'm I'm careful about it. But look, I think writers,
not all writers, right, but often writers are pretty informed

(45:08):
by their surroundings. For me, it's always the way people spend,
the way people speak has been fascinating to me for
my entire life. Like I could do impressions from a
really young age, I could understand people's I could modulate
my own vocabulary to talk to somebody very quickly, understanding

(45:30):
the limits of their vocabulary. Really interested in word choice
as just a human way before I was a writer,
I was really interested in word choice. And so that's
the thing, Like, those are the things that are kind
of hallmarks in a way if someone wants to write.
And curiosity, Like I'm an incredibly curious person, right, I
spend so much time reading, listening, watching, just for me,

(45:54):
you know, just because that's what makes my brain feel good.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
How did New York City and your interest in people
and their quirks influence billions?

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Well, David and I both He lives in Grantwich and
I live in the city, and we both found ourselves surrounded.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
By these.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
By these people with a certain kind of power. And
then we watched the people around them react to them,
and we watched the outsized way when they were cutting
through water, the size of the wake and then the
clearance people gave that wake, and all that. I think
that we've always studied us and really found compelling people

(46:34):
who mythologize themselves and tell them the world who they
are in a certain way, and about the credulousness of
the world believing them. You know, but I'd say mostly, man,
it just starts with being curious, and it starts with
there's an insular world. We don't really know enough about it.

(46:55):
We see that it's like kind of got some influence,
it's got some kind of hole for some reason.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
We want to know more. So it starts reportorial.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
We like your thing, where we'll go in and well,
who do I know who can get me to be
able to visit a hedge fund?

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (47:14):
I know this guy went to college with this dude.
Hey can I come to Yeah, no one's ever come
to our morning meeting, I know, but you can come.
I'll protect you and it'll never be you in the show.
Oh wow, they said this to each other. Shit, you
write that down, you go have an interview with somebody.
It's the same thing with you know, like everyone wants
talk about themselves, so it's pretty easy to find.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Your way in.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
And then, like you know, you'll sort of understand the world,
start to understand the customs of the world, and then
sometimes it'll stop there.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
I mean, it's like writing a song.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
You get an idea for the beginnings of a chorus,
but sometimes it catches fire and sometimes it doesn't. And
when it catches fire, then you got to go the
whole way. But like you know, and sometimes you go
down a deep like especially, I love learning about things
that are far away from my own experience.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
So lately I've been.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
Like, I read both of Cam Haynes's books, and I
watched a bunch of that stuff, and maybe that'll all
of that knowledge will end up just being like two
lines in an episode of my next show Awesome. But
it's worth it because those two lines will have the
quality of experience behind them. You won't know that watching it.

(48:30):
You'll just know that seems legit. Yeah, But the reason
I'll seem legit is like, I don't know, I spend
fifty hours to find those two lines, and so did Dave.
And then sometimes that'll turn into No, that'll be the
next eighty episodes I make will be all about the
thing that I just studied.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
I just follow my curiosity till the end of it.
And I love learning about people like you know, Cameron
Haynesess his belief system, his family life, his childhood experience.
It's how he spends this tiff. They're all so far
into me. It's like we're in a different species almost.
But you know what closes that gap is like actually
learning about somebody, is actually understanding the way they think.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
And then it's like no, no, no, no, we're completely the same.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Not only were the same species, but if we sat
next to each other without any flags or anybody talking
about politics, and we just ran into each other on
a trail, or we ran into each other somewhere and
I was in you know, I was caught up in
a bush and he needed to like, let you know,
let me out. Because he would do it, and I
would thank him and I'd go get him a bit.
It's like we'd be fine with each other. And that's

(49:35):
really what you end up. You know, my buddy Jocko,
who again we don't have all the same beliefs. And
Jocko early on said he's like, yeah, when I he
said this publicly online to someone about me, He's like, yeah,
I'm not gonna sit with compliment and just talk about politics. Right,
I'm going to talk about led Zeppelin. I'm gonna talk
about led Zepplin and I'm gonna talk about weightlifting and
we're going to be great, And I'm going to talk
about Kevin kids and we're going to that's We're going.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
To start there. And if we start there, then the
rest of it goes to the end.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
If we started that other place, we'll never get to
kids and led Zeppelin.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Right, Totally, I learned. I've learned that in many ways
in my own life. Like I had to did this hike,
and so I had to hitchhike last year around this time,
a bunch of hitchhiking. So you just end up in
these cars with people you don't know him, you don't
know who's pulling over. You get in and you kind
of got to figure out, like, what is this person's vibe?
What are we going to talk about? First of all,

(50:27):
I didn't have a single bad interaction, because you can
always find something to connect about with something that's a second,
we had a kid, uh pull over and give us
a ride, and he was literally part of a polygamist group,
which some watchdogs would call a fundamentalist cult. So we're
sitting there with this polygamis kid and it's like, yeah,

(50:49):
of course, I'm not gonna go, oh, so you're a polygamist.
Huh No, you talk about oh you ranch? Cool? What
are you kind of cattle?

Speaker 2 (50:56):
You run?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
What are you doing this? Then? Amazing kid. I learned
so much from him, and it's like, I would never
find myself having an interesting conversation with that person had
I not gotten out in the world and been willing
to engage at a level where I'm like, what can
I learn from this person? And I'm going to take
them at face value as a good human being.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Yeah, it's really interesting because what happens to us chemically
is you know, you tell me that, and I think
of well, fundamentalism is really bad in all its forms
right now, I'm immediately right my reaction hearing about that,
not meeting the keep from Afar, It's like, well, can
you be a good person and be a fundamentalist polygamist?

(51:34):
I don't know, But you met the person, right and
you engage with the person and you found common ground,
And there's a real value in that because actually you
understand the way someone thinks in that situation and you
can see the.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Humanity in them. And the more we.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Can see the humanity humanity in people whose belief systems
are wildly different from us, the more we can actually
find a language to talk about change, because the problem
is none of us can find the language right now
to talk about change, because we get so angry so quickly.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
So Billions runs seven seasons, and one thing that I
think was new and interesting, especially when it started with
just twenty sixteen, is a lot of the characters meditate,
and that come from your own experience, and what has
that been, Like, what prompted you to meditate in the
first place?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I needed it?

Speaker 3 (52:26):
I mean, sometimes you're lucky enough that you just a
thought shows up and you just know it's true.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
It's like I got to start meditating.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Where did you first hear about it?

Speaker 3 (52:36):
I mean, I first heard about it so long ago,
But I was pretty skeptical because I'm a science person
and I'm not a person of faith in a deity
beyond us and all that stuff. And I think that
often things like cults form around these ideas. I read
David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish and the way

(52:57):
he talked about meditation, and I read some other people's books.
I was always fascinated by Buddhism, but I don't practice
Buddhist meditation, though I read a lot of I read
a lot of.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Books by Buddhists, but.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yeah, I think I was feeling like anxiety and tiredness
and this is the world weariness. This long time ago
now I don't know, fifteen or sixteen years ago, and
a friend connected me with Bob Roth, who kind of
is the person who runs the Transital Meditation organization. It

(53:32):
runs David Lynch Foundation. And I met with Bob and
I he said, to this day, I'm the most I
was the most skeptical not cynical, but skeptical person he's
ever sat with about this. Where I talked about the
history of the allegations about cultism, and I talked about
I'm never going to give you guys money beyond like

(53:53):
paying for a lesson. I'm not going to raise money
for TM like and I said, so you got to
and he's like, you know, I want to just tell you, like,
let me do you want to learn?

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Do you want to learn about this?

Speaker 3 (54:03):
And he taught me to meditate and you know, it's
an hour and then three subsequent hour long sets four
hours total over four days, and.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
It just made my life better.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
So fast, does you have a moment where you realized
it was working.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Very quickly, I realized there's some Look, most things have
no benefits, so when something has some benefit, you're so happy.
You can tell right away, even if the benefits he's
Bob says, people are always worried what if I fall asleep?
And he's like, during meditation, Oh, isn't that great? You
didn't even know you were going to get arrest and
now you got to rest. So like if that was
all it was, was that it was a way to

(54:42):
calm down and take mini nap.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
How great is that?

Speaker 1 (54:45):
It's a win?

Speaker 3 (54:46):
So that but then, yeah, what I saw was and
people always make crazy claims for all this stuff. Nobody's levitating.
I just want to be clear about that. But I
think the physical manifestations of anxiety just dimmed. I'd say
I had like a seventy five or eighty percent reduction

(55:06):
in your stomach fluttering or intrusive thought, like just little things.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
But they add up.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
And so I just was like walked around feeling much
less anxiety ridden and much less churning, and that meaning
doesn't disappear. You know, people often we want some miraculous cure,
like you're a human. There are ecologically valid reasons to
have some anxiety. It's it's useful, but the sort of

(55:37):
nonsense noise of it just really went way down. And
for me, everyone's different from me. TM in particular is
very easy to do, and I look forward to it.
It's not a drag. I know when I close my
eyes for twenty minutes, kind of in twenty minutes from now,

(56:01):
I'm going to feel a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
You do that, then I do.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
I'd say I do it in the morning every single
day of my life, and in the afternoon almost every
day of my life. If I miss an afternoon, hey man,
I've been meditating for sixteen years. I'll just meditate when
I wake up. But I but I am better for
it when I do, and I really want to every day.
You know, no different than extius like honestly, they're all

(56:29):
the same thing. It's all versions of the same thing.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
What prompted you to start exercising tell us? Like I
mean you mentioned when we started, was there a moment
where you go, I got to do this.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
I'm not somebody who's good at making changes very long
before the crisis point, but I am good at recognizing
the crisis point, like, so.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
So what point.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
It's happened a bunch of times where I am able
to recognize, Okay, I'm I'm at a place now where
I better make a change, and I'm once I genuinely
do that. I'm good at making the change, but I'll
put it off as long as I can, really, And
I won't give you the whole story because it's long,

(57:15):
but I would say I for a long time, I
always loved playing sports. I'm lucky that I'm a coordinated person,
like I'm good at I'm good at the I'm good
at some of the things in sports that are hard.
I'm good at shooting a basketball, I'm good at hitting
a tennis ball. I'm good at throwing a spiral and catching.
But I was not ever good. I was always weak

(57:37):
and slow. But I played you know, two varsity sports
in high school. I wasn't the best guy on either team,
but I was on the teams. You know, the teams
were good and I was on them. So I've always
played sports.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
But I was way, way, way, way way.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Out of shape, man and over pandemic. I had just
two months before that changed my diet and started eating
better and started losing some weight. And when I was
and then I a mile away from me during the pandemic,
we were upstate New York. There was a tennis court.

(58:16):
Our son was who's grown with but he was home
with us. He plays tennis like exactly the level I do.
And I had one friend who kind of was in
our little bubble world who was a good tennis player.
I played like every day, and I got good again
at tennis and tennis. I know it sounds that I
get a feet game. You know, it's fucking hard, and
it's an incredible workout and at a good level if

(58:36):
you're four to zer, but like it's at a good
level at tennis.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
You're working very hard.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
So I got in better shape and I was like
I was playing pretty competitively and then started shooting again
after my show, after the they're gonna start gaining weight again,
and I was still playing because I had gotten So
I was playing in a tennis tournament. I'm six feet
and I was about two thirty five but like forty
percent body fat, and I was playing in ninety three

(59:02):
degree heat. I was fifty seven years old and I
was playing against a twenty seven year old kid in
the first round of a tournament at a place outside
of the city. And I won the first set pretty
easily because I was better tennis player, but he was
in much, much, much, much much better shape than I was,
and he won the second set. And it was ninety

(59:24):
three degrees and I was on two different blood pressure
medicines because my blood pressure had gotten too high, and
my doctor put me on two medicines because one wouldn't
handle it. And I think the combination of those things
made it. And the heat that I knew I was
going to faint and I couldn't. And for the first
time in my entire life ever at a sport, I quit.

(59:48):
I shook his hands and I conceded the tennis match.
And before the third set, I always prided myself, like
I'll play five.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
I don't care.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
And I literally was at an Amy had been inside came.
I was in our car, so we were dropping back
from upstate and on the way, I knew I had
this first round of this thing. I was like, all
play this tennis tournament. She was like, great, she's a writer.
She was like, she likes to write in cars. Writers
are all, as you know, we're all strange. We like
to do things in different ways. She loves writing in
a car, so she's like, great, I'll be But she

(01:00:17):
had looked up and she thought I was wobbly and
it was too hot.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
So she was walking up to the court right as.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
She saw me concede and she took me to get
an IV and she was like, this is really bad.
And I called the doc and I was like, you
got to get me off these blood pressure medicines. Seems like, dude, no,
you got to get yourself off the blood pressure medicines. Interesting,
you got to get yourself in shape. You gotta this
is time, this is the moment, and I went. So

(01:00:44):
I went and saw the doctor and he's a great guy,
but he his approach to diet didn't work for me.
He's like a vegan, and I knew that wasn't for me.
I have lots of friends of her vegans. I know
that's not going to work for me. But I found
a doctor in the city and was trying to get
me to go on GLP one's and I really didn't
want to. Again, I felt like morally outraged that discipline

(01:01:06):
alone couldn't do it. And then this doctor said to me. Well,
here's the thing. You can go on a low dose
of a GLP one and it'll give you a kickstart
if you'll commit to weight training. If you commit to
weight training, you will not get skinny fat. Your body
fat will have a chance to change. You won't lose

(01:01:29):
all this muscle you're afraid to lose and you're at
this terrible amount of body fat.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Now it's not healthy for you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
You know, this is really affecting your quality of life
and your mortality. Outlook like this is terrible. Totally give
this a shot. But you must commit to lifting weights
twice a week, resistance training. Because I always did cardioship
I always I did, always do, and I would lie
to them. I would base tell myself, well, look I'm
getting on a bike for a half hour.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
My heart rate's going up. And she said she was great.
She was like, yeah, that's great. You got it. You
must do his business training. Now here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
I had a really and I'm telling this because I
know that someone out there listening has had the experience.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Because I was decent at sports.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Sometimes a gym teacher would like want to get me
strong because they were like, well that guy could play
like he'd be really good on certain teams if he
was strong, you know. And but a guy, this one
gym teacher put me on a universal gym and with
weights at twelve. But I have double jointed should I
have shoulders that don't set up for that. And I
was in terrible pain, which I didn't at the time

(01:02:31):
recognized there's the difference between joint pain and muscle pain.
And I just hated weightlifting and I told myself I'd
never lift, and it wasn't for me, and I just
was in I was in very very bad joint pain,
like horrible joint pain. And so I was like, well, no,
everyone gets different skills, right, I'm lucky. I know I
can hit top spin and I can throw a spiral
and I can catch.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
I'm good.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
I don't care because there's benefits to like having my
arms work the way they do, so I can whip
a ball like so it's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
But it was.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
But somehow the way this doctor said it to me,
I was like, all right, I'll try. And I found
a guy named Ben Foster through my son, who I
found a trainer, and I said, all right, I'll go
to this trainer. Because someone had said, this guy's not
like the kind of people who tried.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
I'd done it a couple of times before.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
This guy's not one of those people who wants to
prove to you how bad you need to train by
making you so sore that you can't get out of
bed for a week. Instead, he went through like the
functional movements with me, showed me what it's and if
a squad seemed too hard, he was like, dude, well
squat in two months.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Don't worry about that. What can we do?

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
Instead of focusing on you can't squat me throw it?
He was like, no, okay, let's build up to that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Do you know what a box squad is? Here?

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Do you know?

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Get sit in the chair and come up like it
was very reasonable and super smart about it, and Michael,
it's that habit thing. I did it three weeks and
all of a sudden, and I have to say my part,
Poor David Levine and my best friend for my whole life,
had been telling me to wait train for thirty years

(01:04:10):
straight and I wouldn't listen. And then suddenly I'm the
biggest prosthetizer for it. But what happened was, you know,
the low dose of GLP one started to take it
started immediately changed my brain in that I understood that,
oh I wasn't a.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Morally weak I actually.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Had become obsessive about this for whether that's because of
how whatever that caused it to begin with. Where I
was when this intervention found me was I was never
going to fix this completely on my own.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
I immediately saw that the my brain was talking to
me in a way.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
I didn't realize that that's what the GLP. You know,
I know, you know, you've studied it all the metabolic things.
But the result of all that is that your brain
is giving you different messages right around food and around
reward centers. And so that showed me progress in that area.
And then the first time I suddenly got a little

(01:05:15):
bit stronger. I just felt different. And then because of
the error we're in now, and because Ben was not
only like a great teacher but also loved my curiosity.
And when I would like come in with hey, I
watched this video and I got this book that says this,
he was like, oh, yeah, I used to do that,

(01:05:36):
let me tell you. And we would talk about it
and put training programs in place, and I started following
them and you know, went through the typical thing people
go through, whether you know you start, you know, you
go through the mark Riptote thing, you go through the
bodybuilding where you know, you do all these different worlds.
I found Dan John's work, which was so incredible. But

(01:05:57):
I just started seeing that I could really change how
I felt. And you know, if you're a man of
that age, like I've never taken I never took a testosterone.
I've never taken a peptide other than a GLP one.
I took creatine. Like all my numbers changed so dramatically,

(01:06:19):
and suddenly I went from I swear to you're not
being able to video of it. I mean I couldn't
deadlift sixty five pounds was like impossible and scary, more
scary than anything else. Like I was so scared about
my back. I couldn't do it to deadlifting three hundred pounds,
you know. And it's like that feeling of being able

(01:06:40):
to put you know, to two point fifteen and back
squat it full, you know, as to grass squats from honestly,
the bar was putting a bar on my back and
squatting as to ground was not possible. Yeah, And it
just shifted everything this is now. You know, it's three

(01:07:01):
years in almost of working out six days or seven
days a week, and obviously, like you just go to
my Instagram at the transit, I don't show like before
pictures because I don't want anyone to be I feel
like I'm saying, if you look like I did in
the beginning, it's bad because everyone's on their own journey.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
But you could just scroll back and you'll.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
See like I was somebody just with no zero muscle
and so weak, and now I'm not streno that. The
problem with living in the world of this, as you know,
is everybody stronger than me. I know I'm weak, but
I also know that I'm really strong for my agent,
for total I am and where I am now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Well, I think it's awesome too, because I feel like
a lot of people to you were what fifty seven
when you started. I feel like a lot of people
at that age would just go, what's the point Now
I'm you know, I'm past fifty five.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Well, people will say you can't build muscle, and yeah,
I can't go I'm not gonna look like Sam Sulik. Ever,
I'm not gonna you know, be Mitchell Hooper with strength.
I'm I'm you know, I would love to deadlift four
h five and I'd love to squat three fifteen. Like
I really don't know if I'll be able to squat
three fifteen because I don't want to gain a lot
of weight to do it. But man, trying to do

(01:08:15):
that in a slow, steady manner, you know. And also
there's so much like the kettle The reason I talk
abou kettlebell so much is I just love what I
love what they allow because you can, like I'm doing
an eight week thing right now where I'm really not
doing bar bells for eight weeks, and it's a great reset.
I can use kettlebells for conditioning and strength, like and

(01:08:37):
you know the kind of thing Dan John or Brett
Jones talks about like iron cardio or the armor building
formula or something. And you do that and you're not
going to lose your strength gains, and you're going to
gain conditioning and you're going to gain muscle, and I'm
gonna come back to barbells fresherre.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
At my age, you do have to iterate.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
At my age, you do have to you know, I
think at my age it's hard to just do three
to five reps and keep trying to just do pure
strength I know I needed to do. Then you need
to walk away from it to come I think for me,
you know, I think that's reasonable and it's also fun
becoming like I cannot tell you how every day. So

(01:09:14):
in this process, Michael, a friend of mine and Amy's
a really incredible guy, gave me a comfort crisis and
he was like, I think you're really I think this
will mean something to you, and adding rocking in, but
more than that, adding an okay at a stage in

(01:09:35):
life where I think the pull toward comfort is really
natural actually and seductive to read about the benefits of
discomfort and I didn't need you know, your book to
tell me to exercise hard, but the idea that to it,

(01:10:00):
it's not a bad thing to walk around in a
state of readiness toward discomfort in a society because you honestly,
we've all gotten a flat tire. And there's a difference
in your mind. If you're somebody who takes walks in
the annoying rain. Sometimes you're just prepared to take the

(01:10:22):
walk in the annoying rain, so you're not also grappling
with that. And I think the value of that is
enormous and has been enormous for me. And I mean,
I just love finding things at my age that still
make me ask myself certain questions. That doesn't mean I
don't want to go spend two weeks at a resort.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
You know, I've.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
If I've worked hard and I have the ability aiman
I can go on a cushy vacation somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
I'm so happy to go do that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
But even if I do that, I'm going to get
in the gym and I'm going to do something really
hard and I'm gonna rock somewhere. And if it sucks out,
I mean I'm going to I don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
And that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
I think of your book all the time, you know,
even if I give me if you go on something
like an electric bike, which is so easy to battle,
but it starts the other day, I got on the
e bike to bike home. The bike home's five miles,
but it's New York City, you're dodgeship, and it was
like out of nowhere, it's hailstorm awesome, And it was

(01:11:30):
hail and I was soaked and I was like, oh
this is awesome. It sucked, you know, I was miserable,
and I immediately flipped it and I was like, what reps.
This is the best reps. Look at the reps I'm getting.
I'm on an e bike, so it's not like I'm
pedaling hard. The pedaling part is handled for me. All
I have to have is like the inner resources to

(01:11:51):
go no, no, I don't need to go pull over
and run inside a bar shivering. And know what I
can do is just be like, look at this, there's
only three And when I saw it's about four people still,
I got all the way to the path on the
west side and they were like the whole way home,
I only ran like four other people still biking, and
I was like, oh, those are my people. And then

(01:12:11):
I also noticed the people working, you know, I noticed
the bike messengers who had to be there right and
had to suffer through it. And I was like, look
at that, like, Okay, they have to suffer through this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
I don't have to. I chose to suffer through this.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
Why Because I'm gonna have to because we all have to,
and I'm gonna be ready to when I have to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
And I got home and how good was that shower?

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
It was awesome when I totally just totally modulates the experience.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
And it was like, it was great. And that's a
result of your book, like a direct result of Andrew
Bach that's his name, is a great guy giving me
this book and saying like, I think you'll get something
out of this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
You know, Well, one thing I love about you is
that you pull from so many different resources. You're just curious,
and you're also not afraid to just reach out to people.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
It's like you hear of a cool trainer, like a
Dan John or whatever. They've got great ideas, like you'll
just send them a message and pick their brain and
it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
But you too, right because when I when I followed you,
you wrote me. You wrote me, and you were like
I used to listen to your podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Yeah, you had said something on a podcast. So I
was like, oh, that's interesting. So I shot you a message.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
Yeah, you shot me a message about the podcast. And
when I went when I went to reach out for you,
it's like, oh, he'd reached out, Like it was great.
Yeah I am. Look, that's what I will say though,
that is like a great kind of mostly unintended consequence
of having gotten to do work that has resonated with
people over the last thirty years.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
Is that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
I know I do have the ability to reach out
and I did it before, right when I went up
to Tracy. Wasn't like I I've always been someone who
did that. But I also know that it's possible to
write somebody and they're going to say what you said,
I like your podcast, or they're going to say I
liked your first movie, or they're going to say I
like your show. And then so I do have like

(01:14:11):
a way to engage in a conversation because I've done
work that also sometimes will resonate with people. But even
when that's not the case, people work so hard on
their stuff. Like if I can send somebody a note
and say your work has an impact, I want to
send that note. And yeah, I want to learn and

(01:14:33):
I want to I also want to help teach people
if I can about stuff that I know, like I love.
We're all human beings and we're all along this path.
And I think you gain I don't know. I think
you just gained so much from interacting with people who
are whose experience is not like yours. And I guess

(01:14:55):
that's really the what do I get at a reading
about Cameron Haynes's life, Right, what I get out of
reading about his life is an understanding of people whose
belief system mirrors his. Well, of course, if he grew
up or I did raise the way I was by
the parents I had and then community I was in, well,
the belief system would look a lot more like my

(01:15:15):
belief system. But that's not the way that that person
was raised. And so if I want to instead of
just thinking like I know better, if I want to
instead think, well, why does another a really smart, rigorous
person think about the world so differently than I do? Well,

(01:15:38):
if I acknowledge that's another set that person's smart, and
if I acknowledge their rigorous then I can't just write
off their belief system.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
I have to instead be curious about it, and I have.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
To instead say like, well, how can I understand it
and not even be there to change it? But if
I understand it, will something shift in me? That then
I can relay back to that person if we ever meet,
and maybe something would shift in them, and maybe we'll
all move toward a place a better understanding. Now that's
very optimistic, but it's easy to be pessimistic. So I

(01:16:09):
want to I'd rather try to queue toward optimism.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
I love it all right. I want to land the
plane with a rapid fire lightning round it. You can
pick three exercises, you can only do those for the
rest of your life. What are you picking?

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
Overhead press backsquat and fuck them all? The Turkish get up?

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
I love it. What is your relationship to the New
York Knicks.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
I mean, as we're talking right now, whenever this episode airs,
We've just vanquished the Hawks of Atlanta and after just
a dreadful second and third game. My first memory is
my dad taking me to the Knicks and I was
four years old, and I love the Knicks. There I

(01:16:59):
bleed our and blue. I wish I didn't, but I do.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Top three TV shows of all time, the Sopranos.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
And mad Men are one and two. I will I
will hear, no.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
I will I will not. I'm on season four of
mad Men, prompted good bye. I didn't lie to you, right,
you didn't lie to me took me. The first season.
I was like, now, let's see how this goes, and
then by the second season, I was like, I'm in awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
The second season is where it really had me too.
I watched the first season because friends told me, and
then once the second season started, I'm on a rocket.
Shit those two and I'm going to tell you a
couple that are in the third slot.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
West Wing.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
Larry Sanders Show is an incredible show, I think, and
I can make an argument for Deadwood too.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
I like it. What's something that's come out in the
past two years that everyone should watch, read, or listen to.
So this could be book music.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
I would say, go listen with Jason II isbell album.
Jason Isbell's last album, Fox in the Snow is just
an incredible record, So I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Go do that. As far as.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Television show, you know, it's a fascinating television show and
gives you a lot of an understanding about the world.
Go watch uh, go watch Unreal, which is the behind
the scenes of the WWE. It's like, I don't watch
any reality television, but I would.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Just I mean, I could, I could.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
I could definitely say, like, you know, a TV series
and Agency is really good. I loved The Crown, but
but Unreal is great because it's layers upon layers of
a work versus a shoot, and they're presenting it as
though it's a shoot, and it mostly is, but they're
always it's always a work also, and so it's really

(01:18:49):
great to get inside of that. And I'm gonna I'm
gonna say I think Dan John's Easy Strength Cominibus is
a great book to read because it's about life as
much as it's about strength training.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
He's fantastic, all right. Ending on that, someone over fifty
listening right now, not as active as they wish they were,
what would you tell them?

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):
Yes, start go get yourself a sixteen Okay, you're gonna
just go get yourself a twelve kg and a sixteen
kg kettlebell and go on Instagram and look up one
bell kettlebell routines and start slowly. Get simple and Sinister

(01:19:33):
by Pavel. Actually it is a great way to start.
And all you have to do is swing the kettlebell
and do some get ups and that'll get you started.
And there's never been a better time to learn about
how to get in shape and move your body. I
will say, you just feel so much better. I feel
so much better, you know, And I would start in
those places.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
I love it. Brian, thanks for coming on the show man.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
This is awesome, Hey man, I hope there's some utility
to it's alway. It's great to see you, Michael, my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
Thanks for checking out the show, and thanks to Brian
for jumping on. Definitely check out his work. Watch Rounders,
watch Oceans thirteen, and watch all seven seasons of Billions.
As a reminder, we are in your feed twice a
week with new episodes dropping all the time, and you
should definitely send us a question that you want me
to answer for our Ask Michael Anything section. You can

(01:20:26):
send them to media at twpct dot com. You can
put them in the comments, and if you want, please
send us a voice memo or a video of yourself
asking the question. We will try to get to as
many as we can do not forget to subscribe. That
is apparently very important, the overlords tell me. And then
to close things out as we always will have fun,

(01:20:48):
don't die.

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