Welcome, welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dax shepherd, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. We recently heard. So funny. We heard this. Nev Campbell, after being on the fact check, decided to check out the show, and she went to listen to it, like, three different times. And it happened to be episodes where I introduced us as Dan Rather and miniature mouse.

Yes.

And she was like, oh, I guess this isn't the.

This isn't the right thing.

And it never occurred to me that someone actually might be on their first listen.

I love that.

And go, oh, I got the wrong podcast. This is Dan Rather's podcast. And, boy, his voice is different.

No. Dax shepherd and Monica Padman, aka dan.

Rather, Duchess of Duluth. Today's guest is James Patterson. He's one of the world's best selling authors. Hundreds of millions of books. It's very prolific, very prolific, very successful. His books include along came a spider, the angel experiment, school's out forever, 10th anniversary, the people versus Alex cross. A bunch of movies have been made out of his books, and he has a new book out right now, which is super interesting because, in a way, it is co authored with Michael Crichton. Yeah, because this is a book that Michael Crichton was writing on, and James was brought in by Michael's wife to finish it and bring it to fruition. It's called eruption, and it's a very crichtonesque story about a huge volcano on the big island of Hawaii and a military secret that this will expose. Eruption. Out now, please enjoy James Patterson.

He's an object.

How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

Welcome. Maggie Dash.

Nice to meet you. I'm a little irreverent, so I joke a lot, and you can just tell me to shut the fuck up.

You're in a very safe space for irreverence. I would say that's our goal, our reigning tone here. So many drinks. Where will I start? How long are you in town for?

Just today and tomorrow. We're doing a thing with Sherri Crichton, Michael Crichton's widow. Cause I have the book coming out.

Eruption.

Eruption. So we're doing that Sunday morning cb's thing.

Oh, you are?

And they're gonna shoot. It's actually a pretty cool story because she was pregnant with her son when Michael died.

Oh, you're kidding.

No, no, no.

In 2008, he died.

I don't know exactly.

I do.

I just researched, like, 1314 years ago, saw his son, he never met his son. And this. Well, whatever. Tell me when we're ready.

Oh, we're going.

We're going. Oh, my God. We started.

Do you feel bamboozled?

Yeah. No. So we're gonna do that thing. Okay, fine.

We have a saying in here.

Real trick.

No, it's not Robert Durr style. It's not like the jinx, where you're mic'd and you'll be in the bathroom and admit to some murders. You must have watched the jinx in 2015.

I did not.

Oh, you did.

I'm aware of it, but I did not.

And, you know, he didn't know he was mic'd.

I do know that.

Okay, what do you watch if you're not watching the jinx, which all of America watch?

Like slow horses.

Okay. You love slow horses.

I love slow horses.

Right.

My wife and I. I'm always bad when I'm trying to remember, like, what do we watch? A series will grab us. What was the Englishman? The gentleman.

Oh, I liked that one.

That was fun.

It was fun.

Have you watched the horses?

I watched the first episode.

First episode is not typical of the show.

Interesting. Okay.

Because it's all about that one british actor, Gary Oldman. And once he gets going, he's great.

He's one of the greatest.

I mean, it's really engaging and wonderful and off the wall. It's a great character. So we like that.

Are you more prone to watch nonfiction or fiction?

Fiction. I did the Epstein thing. Filthy rich. And it's a four hour. I mean, Netflix is amazing. 110 million people saw that in the first ten days.

I was one of them.

I'm bored by it. I want an hour. Oh, I don't want the 4 hours. Sort of give it to me a little tighter.

You're locked into the formatting of your brain and documented to be this length.

I don't criticize other people. It's just. That's my style, which just tends to be very tight.

Some paragraphs could be a single sentence.

Yes, absolutely. Actually, I'm doing a book now, and I think it's a good thing to do. It's about how to be a better dad. And that is single sentences. Because I want dads to feel very comfortable reading it. I want it in their style. I want it to get to things quickly for them. Because not all dads, but a lot of dads, they don't really have anybody to talk to about it. They feel like they're alone. They either don't think they're friends or want to talk about it, or they're embarrassed to bring up the stuff. And this thing sort of gets at them, and it ranges from not being afraid to say, I love you. Some dads are cool with that, and a lot of them aren't too.

Hugging your son's 26.

Jack is 26. But my memory of my own father. I'm sure this isn't accurate, but the only time I remember him hugging me was on his deathbed.

Oh, wow.

Oh, really? And I didn't want that to be the thing with our son Jack. So when he was a kid, every single day, and to this day, if he comes home, he gets a hug. That's a deal.

Well, okay. You were born in 1949. 47.

47. Thank you for that.

I shaved two years off for you.

That's cool. The two years are cool. Speaking of that, we had the british publisher over, and I love her, she's a really, really nice person. And we go out to dinner and she goes, James, how old are you? And I said, 77. You said, oh, my God, I didn't even think you were 70. Is that great or what?

It is, it is.

And I said, I will never leave your publishing house. I will always be with you and.

James, isn't it funny to watch how you evolve? Because I'm imagining that if you tried to forecast a day when being mistaken for 70 would be great news. It makes you recognize, like, oh, yeah, we're here now, where I'd be delighted that you thought I was 70.

Yeah, I know. Well, it happens. I can remember when Jack was little kid, I had Jack when I was 49 or 50, and my beard was coming in white, and I wanted to cut down a number of people that would ask me if I was his grandfather. So I shaved the beard.

Yeah. So by conventional standards, I was late into the game. Our first kid we had, I was 38, and then I was 40. I have enormous gratitude for having done it later because of the patience required.

Yeah. The big pro for us is, look at that point, we're financially fine. That's huge, because the finances, I think of all the things that screw people up and make it hard.

I would imagine, too, the attention that you're paying to climbing the mountain. You've climbed the mountain at least far enough that you can focus.

Yeah, I never worried too much about climbing the mountain, has never really been a problem with me. I just don't think about it. I just do. Shit.

Well, whether you thought about it or not, you definitely.

It was there.

Climbed a couple different areas.

Still climbing? Yeah, my grandmother's line. Hungry dogs run faster.

Yes.

That's a good one that's good.

But starving dogs run a little slow. They're malnourished, so you gotta. Okay, back to the patience element. Well, let me ask you, because maybe I'm assuming incorrectly, I would imagine for you at 51, you aren't as singularly focused on it.

Or maybe were you singularly focused on my career and stuff?

Yes. Yes.

To me, it's always been, you do your work and then you come home, the work just isn't there. I've always been, okay, I'm doing something else now. And my priorities, certainly all the way through the marriage, have been sue. And my joke about sue, if Sue ever leaves me, I'm going with her.

Right.

The truer thing about sue is every once in a while, there come a couple hours when I can't stand her.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

But there's never a day when I'm not in love with her. And that's accurate.

Yeah, that's lovely.

And it's lucky.

At the apex of your output, what was the hour allotment in a day.

That went towards in the beginning? I'm working in advertising.

Right. You do 25 years, but I've been.

Clean for over 25 years now. But I really like to think about those days. And that was the real balancing act. I would figure out a way to carve out a couple of hours, like lunchtime. I would shut my door and write for half an hour.

Can't be a coincidence. You retire from the advertising job in maybe 96, you get married in 97. Some space was made when you stepped down from that CEO role.

I was with a woman for seven years. She developed a brain tumor and died. You know, not selective memory, but it just was a wonderful, wonderful relationship. At a certain point, it occurred to me that the best thing that ever been in my life, I hadn't tried to do that again. Maybe I was afraid. Who knows what the scars are.

What was the gap between the passing of her and then when you were ready again?

Over ten years. And during that period, I went from being a copywriter to running shit and doing a lot of whatever it was and writing books.

Once you were liberated from the advertising job and you were just writing, I like that.

Liberated from the job thing. Yeah, that's right. That's true.

How many hours a day were you actively writing and or brainstorming?

Now I get to that. But first of all, I do it seven days a week. I still do. I don't think about the hours, but basically I will get in sometime early in the morning, eight or 09:00 write for the morning for the most part. Write some more in the afternoon. I don't do x number of words, which some people do. I write with Mike Lupica sometimes, and Mike was a sports writer for a long time. He'd have to do these thousand words a day thing, and that's still his thing. So he'll just do 1000 words.

Obviously, when you're writing a column, you know the words. You gotta do it while you're doing 1500 words.

I've just kind of never been that way. I just do it.

Is there a time in the evening where you generally are like, okay, that's that. I'm shutting this down.

Mostly, yeah. But occasionally I want to go up for another hour or so, but there's no pressure on it. I don't feel any pressure.

I read a New Yorker article about how hard it is to pin down your approach to writing, and I'm now finding it real time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I wonder, do you have a reluctant.

I just don't have it.

Okay. But, James, is it that you literally can't figure that out or think about it or you're just really reluctant to.

I can't figure it out.

Your brain doesn't work that way.

I think about it that way. That's one of the interesting things about journalists. And they think that you're going to think the way they think. And I don't. And I don't praise myself for that. I don't pat myself in the back, but, no, I just don't process stuff the way most people do.

I guess I would feel a little worried if I figured it out, it might go away. I mean, that's my own.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

You guys have spent too much time with shrinks.

Yeah, that's right. Over therapy.

Well, no, I'm a writer, and I'm obsessed, as most writers are, with process. The hardest part of writing is starting to write. You agree?

Not for me. I love it. I outline and outlines. There's never any pressure. You just kind of keep writing shit down. Eventually, I'm going to organize all the bullets, all the thoughts, all the possible scenes, the chapters.

Okay. Pause right there because that's fascinating. So is it just freeform, conscious of the bullet points? This could happen, and I want this happen. There's scene here, and I can see this. I can see that.

Yes. Well, the first thing I'll do is there's some concept that I'm kind of excited about doing. I'm actually out here because we're in the process of selling this. Sherry Crichton, michael Crichton's widow. Michael did Jurassic park and Westworld and, er, and all that stuff. He died 1314 years ago, and his widow came to me and she said michael had started this project. It was a pet project. He'd been messing with it because he loved Hawaii for a long time and would you be interested in finishing it? And I said, I don't know. Let me read what he wrote. And I was a big fan of his. I'd read certainly all of his fiction, and I read it and I went, yes, for a lot of reasons. One, I love his stuff and that would be an honor for me. Two, I've never written anything with a lot of science in it, so that would be a nice challenge that I think I'd like to take on. And third, in what he had written, it had these two steamroller ideas that worked together. One was this volcano, which threatened to literally destroy the island of Hawaii, for real, the biggest volcano maybe in history.

And secondly, there was something on the island in terms of there was this toxic waste there that the military had left and if that got out, had the potential to destroy the world. So here are these two things, and they're working in concert. And I said, yes, I want to do this for all those reasons. I also want to know how the hell it ends.

Right.

I got to figure this out because that wasn't there.

Yeah. So he left behind a partial manuscript and a ton of notes.

Notes, yes. A lot of research.

And what was the total of that?

There was a fair amount of material. There was a lot of research. Most of the research that he had done had to do with what he had already written. So I had to go get another researcher, my own researcher, Elizabeth, from Alaska. And she. She's a teacher at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She's the best. Because I would say, what about this? And she'd say, I don't think that could happen. And then the next day she'd go, I can make that work. Yeah.

It's set on the big island of Hawaii. There's an enormous volcano that has the potential to flush.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's something worse than a volcano there, and that's pure Crichton. And I loved it. The other challenge, which I didn't really think about at the time, I wanted people to read this and really not know where Michael stopped and I started also that it would feel like it had some organic unity to it, which I think it does?

Yes.

And this isn't Michael's voice, but I think it reads like a book that he might have written.

Well, let me ask you this. Michael Crichton was defined by his incredible, comprehensive knowledge of science. Be it archeologically or medically. He really had a pretty keen scientific mind. Obviously, the writing doesn't intimidate you. But did the technical savvy intimidate you at all?

No, because I thought I could research it. There are certain things that I look at and go, like Tom Clancy. I couldn't do that. I don't know how general think in general, how they talk, how generals think in general. There's a sense. The dialog. I just don't quite get it. I couldn't do it. I can write a love story. I couldn't write a romance novel. I'm not putting them down. I just don't quite understand them.

The mechanics.

And there's certain other things where I go, like, I think I can do that. So I thought I could do this.

When you're reading, do you tend to read fiction or nonfiction?

Both, actually. I'm reading, which I hadn't read before, travels, which is Michael's. It's a book about his years in Harvard medical school. Michael Crichton. And then the way he sort of used travels as, I guess, therapy. He would go to these places and really stretch, stretch, stretch in terms of what he could do, what he couldn't do, what he could be frightened of, what would scare the hell out of him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's interesting to me.

Very alpha energy, him. Like a go. Tackle everything. Devour. Can we start at the beginning a little bit in Newburgh?

Sure.

New York?

Newburgh?

Yeah, Newburgh. How far out of the city is that?

Newburgh's about 60 miles north of New York City. People always go, oh, you're from New York? Upstate New York is not like New York. The way people think of upstate. It's more like Michigan. It's a lot of farms.

And dad was an insurance broker.

He sold insurance. An interesting dude. He grew up in the Newburgh poor house. His father just took off. So my father grew up in, literally the poorhouse. And his mother was a charwoman.

What's that?

They're like, clean the bathrooms, clean the kitchen, that kind of thing. And for that, they got a room in the basement. And he was lucky in that the people who ran it really loved him. And they took care of him. And then eventually they helped him get a scholarship to Hamilton, which is a very good school. But he had no confidence in himself.

What his potential shortcomings as a father were. Obviously, he's taking a guess at it now.

Totally good human being, smart guy. But he didn't have the confidence. He came out of Hamlet. It's a really good school. And then he started driving a bread truck. And he drove a bread truck for six, seven years. He could be very engaging. No reason other than just a lack of confidence.

Did you have siblings?

Yeah, three sisters.

Three sisters. Were they older or younger?

All younger. All pains in the asses. Ok, sure, sure. In case you're listening.

Yeah.

I hate you all. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

Would you be in high school at the same time as all of them?

No, because the catholic school I went to was all black boys.

Okay.

The oldest was three years younger, and then they went down to ten years younger, the youngest.

And what was your relationship with your dad like?

Mixed bag. He was a tough guy. He wasn't very loving.

No hugs, as you've said.

No hugs. Yeah, he was a good human being. He just was tough. Big drinker. Okay, great. Unfortunately. And mother, you know, it's interesting in reading this Triton book travels he talks about with his family, his father, if he got at 98, they'd say, why didn't you get 100? My family was the same old.

Really? What kind of boy were you in school?

Smart, but no interest in any of it. I just wanted to get out of Newburgh.

Okay, you were hot to get out of there.

Get me out of here. Not that it's a bad city, but I just. No, I don't want to do this and I don't want to raise that.

Okay. In the catholic school, how did you get on there?

Smart and a good jock.

You were athletic.

Here's my highlight reel. Nine holes in one and I could dunk in high school. Now, I don't know which one you find more unbelievable.

The nine holes in one.

Really?

Yeah, for sure. That sounds like Kim Jong un's kind of record at golf.

My wife has six.

Oh, she's six.

My wife is a jock. She's a four time all american swimmer, so she's a legit jock.

Okay, great. So Jack had a real chance.

He's a pretty good tennis player. He had no interest in athletics at all, which is fine. And our thing was always just open doors, that's all. And we never pushed him. And he's a bright dude, but it was never like with me. I'm supposed to be first in my class. That was a deal.

Okay, so you go to Manhattan College, you get a ba, and then you go to Vanderbilt for your masters. What did you think of Nashville?

Well, it was a whole different thing then. One, they loved me because I was, like, a northerner, and it was so cool. And I must know all this stuff because I went to school in New York City, and in those days, it was just beginning, and down there, it wasn't as bad with dope. So I walk across the campus, like, smoking weed and stuff. They wouldn't even know the smell because.

They weren't even hip to it.

Yeah, it was whatever it was, I really enjoyed it there a lot. I didn't want to leave, but it was there in Vietnam, and they had the lottery. It was on television. Myself and some of my friends, we went to this bar, and we watched, and this is life and death now. You could get in the army and go, and next thing you know, you're in the jungle.

Yeah. Yeah.

And they would do, like, january 1, and they'd give the number on my March 22, it was 265, and they thought the draft wouldn't go past 70 or so, so I'm basically out. But to do that, I had to leave school. Not immediately, but at the end of that year. Otherwise, you got thrown into the lottery. The next year, you might not have a 265. You might be number three or whatever the hell it is. And that's why I left Vanderbilt. I had a fellowship to stay there through the doctor. I also, at that point, said, yeah, I don't really want to do this. I don't want to teach English, but I did want to write, and I had the bug, and I was very lucky, because one of the professors I had there, I'm like, this long haired whatever, and he was very, very conservative, but he really liked my writing, and he was the first one that really said, no, no, no, no. You have something.

Yes. When did you first, though, start writing?

Family moves up to Massachusetts. That's when I got the job at mcLean, the mental hospital. I didn't know if I mentioned that before. That was interesting, too. Like, James Taylor was there as a patient. Yeah. And this is before he was famous. Whoa. But they had a coffee shop, and he would sing at the coffee shop, like, three times a week. So he would be like, right where you are. That close. And he'd be singing, and he'd already written fire and rain and sweet baby James and some of that stuff, and you go like, wow, this guy's really good. One of his brothers, Liv, was there and his sister Kate. So the three of them, they were all there. Actually, I'm not sure if they were there the first year that he was. He was only there for the one year, and then he went off, and within a year or two, the Beatles had found him. He was one of the first that they recorded apple records, and he became this monster hit.

Now, I know he wrestled with addiction. Is that why he was in there to begin with? Because they didn't know what to do with us back then?

I don't know the whole thing. I think that was a piece of it. I don't want to analyze this whole deal, but, yeah, there was more than that.

I know he's an ex junkie, so I know when a junkie's in a mental war, that's typically why they're there.

I don't think that was the main problem. I think there were other things that.

He was working through and his family was in it.

Well, I think the father was a shrink.

Oh, wow.

I think he taught at North Carolina.

Well, that's a biography I want to read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At any rate, when I was in high school, in catholic school, they just gave us a lot of stuff we didn't want to read. I wasn't a big reader, but all of a sudden when I'm there, I fall in love with it. I work a lot of overtime shifts, and I would go into Cambridge, like, three times a week. And it was all serious stuff, the classics, classics and then stuff that wasn't necessarily classics, but turned me on. Like, there was two books, Mister Bridge and Misses Bridge, and it was these short chapters and very witty. And Jersey Kaczynski was another one. Steps.

Did you ever read Buchanan?

Yeah, a little bit. Not exactly my thing.

Not your cup of tea?

I was never an alcohol. Well, I didn't want to be an alcoholic because of my family. Not that you get the choice, necessarily.

I didn't want to be one either, but it happened anyway.

It just scared the shit out of me. I just didn't want to do that. I didn't want that to run my life. And it worked for me. Even smoking.

You never did either?

No. And they were doing like, three packs a day, both of them.

And also writers over index, for sure.

It's smoking.

Never fucked with it.

My grandmother was the hungry dogs run faster. She was the strongest influence, and she said, you can do whatever you want to do. You're not gonna play in the NBA, so forget that one. But you can do most of the stuff that you wanna do? Smoking is a dirty habit. Smoking is a dirty habit. Smoking. You know, whatever. Yeah, I got it. Smoking is a dirty habit. So she helped a lot. Okay.

So you have your master's in literature and English and you get out of grad school and you immediately go to work for this agency.

Yeah, I'm living at that point in this little hotel room in the Washington Jefferson hotel, which is still there, I believe. And this room that I'm in is about like this third of the attic. Oh, no, nothing. And it has about maybe eleven foot ceilings. And that's creepy wallpaper. No, it gets creepy.

You're in a silo at that.

There's wallpaper with these little pendants. You can imagine, there must be 5000 of these little pendants.

Oh, jeez.

Oh, no, it gets worse. Somebody has penciled an x into every.

Pendant for previous inmate.

Yep. Out the one of the windows. It didn't say Jesus says, but it was something like that that blinked all day. It was a church. And I said, said, I have to get out of here. I have to get a job. And I had no money. I had whatever I had saved from the mental hospital work. I had no training, no anything about advertising. I had a friend who knew somebody. So I went in and met this woman, Penny Hawkeye. This was a J. Walter Thompson, which was big, but she wasn't. She was kind of neat. And she's running around in bare feet and she's got a Vietcong flag on the wall. And I'm going, oh, okay, maybe. And she said, well, you need a book. I said, well, what's a book? She showed me some portfolios. So I went back to the Washington Jefferson hotel and my best friend, his wife, could draw. So I literally put together a book in ten days of fake advertisements that.

You had come up with.

I went back and they hired me.

Do you still have that book?

No.

Wouldn't that be great to have?

Probably not.

That'd be a great comic book.

I remember some of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be kind of cool.

It would. Okay, so you got the job and then you remained there for 25 years and you rose to CEO.

I did. CEO. Of North America.

Of North America. So what? That was an english ad agency, I'm guessing.

Where did it come from originally? I don't even remember.

Yeah. Just if you were North America, that begs a question. But under your time there, could this be true or is this apocryphal that you may have penned or come up with the jingle for I'm a toys r us kid.

I did the line. I did not do the jingle.

Do you know when I read that?

That's huge.

I got the best for so much less. You really flip your lips. I don't think you under. Well, maybe you do understand. For anyone born post 75, that song might be more seared in our brains.

Than my friend Linda Kaplan wrote the song in the joke. She's great.

What a hit.

Wow.

I think, in general, these big corporations come to an ad agency, and they want something creative and wonderful.

Yeah.

And then they're presented with that, and then they're terrified, and they want to lean back on whatever worked for them 15 years ago.

It's a mixed bag part of it, and it shouldn't happen this way because they should at least figure this out. It's very hard for a lot of people, even people who think they're creative, to look at a raw idea. I mean, look at Hollywood. You sit there and you go, like, really? I just had a thing. I don't get too much into it because I don't want to expose these people, but the notes come in, and they're all about how you need all this backstory. In this first episode of the same girl. What? Are you fucking me?

Yeah.

Really? Girl in the dragon tattoo. I don't want to know all her backstory. Eventually, at some point, I'd like to know how the hell she became. I don't want it right in the beginning. I just want to watch this person. Okay. She's doing.

I want to leave with some questions.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And that's what keeps me going. I want to know. Okay. What the hell? So that advice is the worst. Unfortunately, there's just a lot of that. And you know what it is. And I run into it out here a bit. Everybody runs into it in certain places. I run into it in publishing. And the line I have for it is, is they're not stupid. They're just stupid.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of intuitive. Okay. So I can definitely imagine with your creative spirit that you would have been a great copywriter. But were you surprised that you had managerial skills? Obviously, I think to rise to the.

CEO position, I didn't want to do any of it, except that every time I took a job on the way up, I would go, like, wow, I now have to listen to myself instead of that asshole I used to have to listen to. I'm overstating it. But, yes, it was one more person I didn't have to listen to. And then eventually it just comes down to the clients, and some of the clients are quite good. Some of them get it, and that's what it's supposed to be. It's not that they have to agree with you about everything, but. Okay, I can see where this could be cool, but it's not for us. That's fine.

And over this 25 year run, what ones pop out to you that you're most proud of?

I mean, the toys r us thing is fun. We did some fun things for Kodak because that was mainly memories. I remember we did one with Mike Tyson. It was fun to do where he was remembering. It was kind of cool because you don't think of him as being a very emotional. He's a very emotional guy.

Yeah. Now we know.

And at that point, sentimental, not as much. And the other thing about it is you're going out and you're doing little movies and music sessions. So for half an hour, you have Tina Turner. I forget some of the others, but there were some. They just liked to work. So they would come in and do music sessions in New York. The crazy thing in that business, all of a sudden, they'd have, like, 10 seconds in the commercial, where in would come, like, nine violinists from the great, and they're gone. That was fun. Can you guys stay for a little longer and play a little bit more? Yeah.

Yeah.

So there were fun things about the actual. The actual making of the films could be interesting. And you get to come out here. Yeah, a lot of field trips. You get to stay at a nice hotel.

You got a Spence account.

You get to drive a convertible. Instead of being in a little cubicle, you're in a New York. No.

If I had not landed in show business, I think my second pick would have been advertising. You get to dabble in a lot of creative stuff, meet a lot of people, take a lot of field trips. There's different elements. It stays pretty novel and interesting.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more armchair expertise, if you dare. You're writing the whole time. Your first book you published is 76, but you remain in that job for another 20 years while you're already publishing books.

It was comfortable. I didn't want to screw it up. It was like, I don't have any pressure. Initially, it wasn't like I was making a fortune writing.

Right? Well, not till along came a spider is the first of that. So Alex Cross is a series that you wrote 30 books, 30 plays. The first big one being along came a spider. But Alex Cross is in, though. The very first book, the Thomas Berryman number.

No, that's its own Thomas.

So Alex Cross is invented for. Along came a spider.

Yes. And that was the first hit.

Big hit.

Hit of any size.

Yeah. And you had been at it for 20 years.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm wondering, had you adjusted your expectations?

I just kind of sat down and I said, okay, let's get real here. Here. What do you do? Well, what don't you do so well? You know, I always say, like, everything but the kitchen sink. I said, no, fuck it. We're going to put the kitchen sink in, too. We're going to just drive this thing through. We're going to start it with a foot to the accelerator, and we're going to do that for the whole book. And the major breakthrough there for me was I sat down. I wasn't planning to do this, but I wrote like a 360 page outline. Whoa. I read it through and I said, shit, man. This is the book. Not exactly. I added maybe 100 pages or so, and that's where the short chapters and the colloquial style came from. And it would be shame if everybody wrote that way and they don't. But that colloquial, the way we tell stories to one another, if we're decent at it, we leave out a lot of shit. Elmore Leonard, somebody asked him, when did you? Cause he didn't start out with hits either. And he said, when I started to make money and get good at it, I started leaving at the parts that people skim.

Aha.

And that's a piece of it, too.

All right, so from 93 until now, you create a number of series with an impossible amount of books in each series. You've had 114 New York Times bestsellers. And you have the record for the. That's true.

She says it's higher.

Okay, great. And a record for the most New York Times number one bestsellers, 67 books at number one.

Wow.

You sold 400 million books. And I'm curious, so if we look at your career and we try to define the unique aspects of it, has anyone done the number of books in all these different series?

I think the breadth is something that's very unusual. You've got a lot of murder mysteries. The kid stuff is generally funny. How old are your kids?

Nine and eleven. Okay, so this would be the maximum ride.

Jackie. Haha, if they don't like Jackie Haha.

Take them to a psychologist.

No, don't do that. But Jackie, haha, maximum ride is, I think, a lot of fun for kids. Middle school, the worst years of my life.

Okay. So in the Alex cross series, which two of the memorable ones from that is, along came Spider and then kiss the girls, then women's murder club. 24 books in that series. The Michael Bennett series.

A few. Yeah.

16 books in that series. The private series. 15 books in that one. Maximum ride. Eleven books. All these crazy.

I'm sorry. Yeah, you're right. That's why I'm on the couch. I'm sick. Please help me.

It's an impossible output. Quickly, what was it like seeing a movie version of these books you wrote?

Mixed bag.

Yeah.

I bet Morgan Freeman can't argue with that stories. Okay. The new Alex cross series on Emma with Aldous Hods. That's good. That's the first one where I really can look at and go like, yep. It's edgier. It's more realistic about police work. I really like the way that turned out and some of the other things. As I said, this documentary, the Idaho murders, I'm not sure when that's going to come out, but it's really well done. Kiss the girls along came a spider. They have their moments. And Morgan's great. There's one that we're doing now. We just sold it. Renee Zellwanger is attached. This is for a series?

Well, you didn't go all the way through with Bukowski, but there is a great book called Hollywood where it's him telling the experience of having one of his books turned into the movie barfly. And I think it's such an interesting.

Mickey Roark is that.

Yeah. Mickey Rourke. And I think it's gotta be such an interesting experience for a writer, because in some ways, it represents the theoretical finish line for something like, well, this thing really was a hit because now it's become a movie.

I'm not gonna go there with it because they're separate. The book is a book and they can't mess with it. And I always loved the idea that the movie's even better. The movie's as good or something like that. And I hadn't had that experience yet.

Yeah. Were you friends with Michael Crichton? Did you ever talk to him? Never met him.

No. Because I don't like tall people. I don't like you that much. Because you're like, what, six three?

I have the same issue. I want to be the tallest person in the room.

And Michael's six nine.

He was six nine?

Yeah.

Whoa. Cause I'm curious. If he didn't like the movie version of his books, then I would argue no one could.

I think he did I think he did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Now with this enormous success, 400 million books sold. I'm sure it's north of that at this point.

I see. It's still the pieces to have created cross initially women's murder club. Okay, sure. Some of standalones. The one I mentioned with Renee Zellinger. The idea of it, I think is pretty cool. It's a trilogy. Twelve months to live, the following year. Sounds like a joke. Eight months to live. The following year, book, four months to live, she gets a death sentence. And Jane effing Smith is what I wanted to call it. And the publisher's. I don't know about that. So it's twelve months to live, but it's good. You want them all to be good and they're not the kids stuff, as they say, deci haha, your kids.

Okay, let me know.

I want to hear. And put them on the thing and they can each have 30 seconds apiece to go. Like, you know what, Patterson is a jerk and Jackie. Haha. Isn't that good.

They occasionally make an appearance. So that's not right.

Okay, all right.

But the reason I bring up the success is it's an interesting experience to transition from an underdog to one of the legendary, most successful. And tell me what comes with that.

I still feel the underdog part of it.

In your heart, you still identify as an underdog.

Yeah, I go to England. And you? Oh James, you're terrific out here. Not so much. So I'm still an underdog out here.

But you've taken a lot of ridicule. You know where it's going?

Oh yeah.

Stephen King has said some.

He only said one particularly bad thing. He said I'm a terrible writer.

Extremely nice.

That's not nice.

That's not nice.

But here's my question.

Yeah, that's bad. When I say nice things about him.

I know it's kind of a classy way.

That's okay. It's cool. I believe it. If I didn't like his stuff, I'd say, you know, from one terrible writer to another. But he actually is good.

Right. Well, listen, what I want to know is envy's a given. It's going to exist in any domain. Do you think it's uniquely rough in the literary world?

It's certainly a deal. I think it's a deal anywhere. Here's Taylor Swift. Boom. All of a sudden people are banging her. Here's Eilish. I mean, people are banging her around. It seems you get to a certain point, people just want to knock you down again? The jealousy that's been banging around for sure. I did write. I don't know if you write about this. That's where the big number comes from. I did all these novellas. One year, I did about 40 of them, and one of them was the murderous Stephen King.

Right.

But the reality of it is, he's the hero in it.

He didn't die.

He doesn't get killed. But his people came and he said, oh, you don't understand. Because Tabitha was attacked in the house once. I'm going like, that means he should stop writing because they hacked her based on his books, not based on Michael, which hasn't been out. And little brown burned 100,000 copies. Anyway, they said, okay, fine, we won't do it. It's okay. It's cool.

I'm only curious. It would hurt my feelings greatly that because I have done well at something, now, all of a sudden, I have a lot of detractors. I'm very sensitive. That would be really hard for me. And I'd feel like, why do you care what I'm doing?

I try to avoid it for the most part. I think right in the beginning, the king thing bothered me. I thought, that's just silly. If you read my autobiography, you go like, no, this guy's not a terrible writer. That's hard to make my life interesting. I dare Stephen King to write my autobiography and do a better job than I did.

Well, I do think when peers are critical of you, it's more hurtful.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, if another actor says, I'm a terrible actor, that's more hurtful than someone who's not in the trade.

At any rate, as I said in the beginning, people write stuff, and you go, yeah, they got a point there. My strength is probably. I keep the pages turning. It's probably my weakness. I always had this theory, greatest strength is greatest weakness. I should dig deeper. One of the things about the Crichton book is he digs, so I had to dig.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're a challenge.

And did you like digging, or did it feel really slow?

Fuck digging. Yeah, it was a little slow, but it was okay. And that's why I don't really like the nonfiction so much. Series of nonfiction, which I love, and I do with a friend of mine, Matt Eversman. Matt was the actual sergeant who was portrayed in Blackhawk down. He was a real guy, and he and I become good friends in Florida. And he did a documentary with another friend of mine, and I saw him doing the interviews, and he could get people to talk about combat in a way. You go like, wow. Because he's been through it. And the title came to me, walking my combat boots. He did most of the interviews. We did about 150 interviews. Nobody wants to read 50 pages interviews, but we took them. So for each one was like four to six pages or so. And you get a feeling for that person who had been in combat, and then one or two of their stories. And our mission for the book was that if you've been in combat, you'd say, Everson and Patterson got it right. And how could we not? Because it's just basically. And then if you're one of these people, that bullshit that you understand stuff that you don't like.

A lot of people talk about the military. They don't have a clue, right. You read this and say, okay, I really didn't have any idea. And I remember talking to Matt, and I said to him at one point, I said, you know, I really understand the military electronics. I never did. And a couple weeks later, I apologize. I said, you know, I really don't understand it because I have never shot at another human being and I've never been shot at. So I don't really understand it. I understand it better than I did, but I don't really understand. And then we did ER nurses, and that's another one. People think they understand nurses. Even if you have an ER nurse in your family, they probably won't talk about what they do because it's just mind blowing.

Yeah. They're my favorite people to talk to because they have the best stories.

Oh, my God.

And they're completely desensitized by everything.

Yeah. And Matt did most of the interviews. He said, I can only do one a day. This is a guy who's been through hell.

Yeah.

He said, you know, it's just too much now.

When did you get the idea to start collaborating on books?

I was with a friend that we'd gone golfing, and I had this thought run through my brain about a golf novel. In advertising, you collaborate.

Yeah. Yeah.

You tend to be with another writer or usually an art director. And I said, let's try to do it together. Do a little golf novel. It was short. Miracle on the 17th green. You know, it turned out pretty good, and that's where it came from. The thing about collaboration is really. And people go, how can at work? Well, shit, almost every television show out here, you get a writers room. You put like, six, seven, eight writers in a room, and they collaborate. And a lot of times theyll collaborate on the same 60 page script. Its not as foreign as people think it is.

Some people, again, I think dealing with some envy, have been critical of the collaboration. But I guess I would point out youve also written a book with Bill Clinton and youve written a book with Dolly Parton. And my hunch is you did most of the writing, but you shared credit equally. So it feels like perhaps, from your.

Point of view, why should they be criticizing anyway? Fuck them. Seriously, what's the deal? The Sistine Chapel is about 20 great painters. I'm sorry, is that a bad thing? If we're gonna save this frigging world, and I don't know that we will, but if we're gonna do it, it's gonna be because we learned to collaborate. You know, here's the vaccine. Unbelievable. Whatever you think of the vaccine, in a year, they did it. This is unthinkable. And that, to me, brings joy, except it also brings hopelessness because we didn't learn anything right. And now we go back to, let's not collaborate anymore. So I'm a big fan of collaboration, but nobody should make fun of it. What's the point?

Well, I think the people who are being critical, they're imagining the worst case scenario, which is you had nothing to do with a book and you put your name on it and claimed to be the writer.

Anybody that is involved with, I mean, Maggie, who's here, it don't work that way.

I'm not accusing you of that. No, I'm just saying I like it.

I think it's ego less to collaborate, especially when you're at the level.

I just think it's just a thing in life. So what? It's fine. You don't have to do it that way, but don't make fun of it. It's a way. And it happens to work for me. Actually, the great thing about the Clinton and the Dolly collaborations is we really become good friends with Clinton. We share Christmas, birthday presents, shit like that. He sent me a humanoid one year and I called him up. I said, you know, I don't smoke. I said, so do I put bubble gum or chocolate cigars in here? He said, oh, at our age, bubble gum, because you got to exercise your gums. So it's that spirit of Dolly. The first year we were together, she called up and she sang happy birthday over the phone. And what I wanted to say was, dolly, I'm going to hang up now. I want you to call again. You're going to get voiced and I want you to sing it again. But I didn't have the nerve to do that. But she still calls up my birthday this year. She called again. She didn't sing, but she, you know, happy birthday. And that's really the precious thing.

And also being in their lives, and this is another one with jealousy, whatever the hell it is, the craziness of the world. People have these things about the Clintons, and they think they understand who they are. And the first time my wife sue and I were ever out to dinner with them, and we lived close together in upstate when we're up there in the summers. Anyway, the first time we were out, it was about a three hour meal, a little restaurant. Four or five times during the meal, they were holding hands under the table. People don't think of them that way. So whatever. I mean, it's a complicated thing, but it's not what people think it is. It's human beings. If we just get back to that. I know the Clintons, I know the trumps, I know the bushes, I don't know the Obamas, but I know a lot of them. And I'm not going to defend any of them, but, I mean, they're human beings, right?

Real life human beings.

Most of them are.

There might be an Android in there in the mix. As a kid who grew up in a blue collar and very modest up, you must have had the same fantasies I had about having money. I was very actively imagining what my first thing was.

And I remember, I don't know how old I was, 1011. And I found out that the millionaire who owned the New York Daily News, his last name was Patterson, and I had a fantasy that he was going to show up one day and claim that I was his son and bestowed and take me back to his mansion.

Okay, so of the fantasies which under delivered and which thing have you gotten great joy out of?

I tend to just look this way. I don't have.

You don't reflect.

I can think of.

Was the autobiography the hardest thing to write?

It wound up to be the most joyful thing to write. Initially, it was like, oh, I don't know if this is a good idea. And I did it during COVID I don't think I would have done it if not for Covid. I just had an awful lot of time. So it started out a daunting task, and then I took a lot of joy out of doing it. And the other thing, I mean, when they sent out for the quotes, they're not like the usual kind of, you know, bull. And I didn't know. I mean, I know Clinton, he gave as a quote, but for the most part, and I don't know, Ron Howard, the quotes are like, really touching. Wow. You know, real quotes.

Yeah.

Damn, I'm good. So thank you, Stephen King.

Well, I think of all the collaborations, this one has got to be the most unique in so many ways for eruption because you're collaborating with someone who passed in 2008.

The responsibility there to me was I knew how important it was to sherry. Sue and I had dinner with her and her mother four or five times already, and I knew it was special.

It's rumored she had met with a lot of different writers.

She hasn't fessed that up to me.

So I think it's flattering the notion that maybe she met with a lot of writers and for whatever reason, she felt safest with you taking it on.

I'm going to get her on that tomorrow. I'm going to find out exactly.

Yeah. Poke around, see who else she met with.

Yeah.

Okay. So eruption comes out soon. What still keeps you passionate to work?

That the next one will be the best or one of the best. That was the thing with eruption. And then I mentioned is twelve months to live and eight months, I think that really turned out great. And the relationship with Lupic is terrific. I mean, he's become one of my best friends. This is the craziness. So Mike and I are on tour with that book. We're at the Jersey Shore and it's an awful day. It's raining and it's cold, and Sue's with us and they're going, let's go out for a walk. I'm going, really? All right, fine. So we're going to go out for a walk. We're going to go from this little hotel, and we're going to walk to the beach, and we go to about 150 yards. I go, no, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going back to the little hotel. I'm already soaking wet. I'm going back to the hotel and there's this little old guy riding a bicycle into the wind in the rain, and he's going by me. Word pops into my brain. I go into the hotel and I write a five page outline for a new novel.

Just from seeing the guy, just from.

That one word, which I won't tell you. And that's a novel that Mike and I are doing now. So I am doing a thing on your couch, and that will be, I.

Can'T wait to read it. You famously have a basket of ideas on your desk.

The clever title, ideas on it.

It says, ideas on the basket.

Yeah.

And there are, I imagine, hundreds of ideas.

That is correct.

And they've been accumulating over the years.

Yeah, I should sort through them a bit, but I don't.

And how often do you go digging?

Every time I'm thinking about a new book, I'll go through and I'll jot down. This is still interesting. And the thing with, for me, the ideas, one is, I'd like to do this. I'm really interested. But then the other tricks is, okay, here's the initial idea. I had to give a speech at the appeals court in Washington, DC, and there's like 900 lawyers in the room for lunch. So I get up there and I go, you know, I'm looking at this room. I could write a hell of a thriller about you guys. And I said, the opening scene, these marshals come bursting into all these stories, and they go, you're all under arrest. That's pretty cool, right? However, if I was thinking of it as a project now, okay, does this go anywhere? What's the middle? How does it maintain itself? And is there an ending? And the reality of it is, no, that's kind of fun. Good opening scene, but that's the thing about it. Can I continue with it? And an awful lot of books, you go, oh, this is kind of cool. And then it just kind of marches in place. And that's one of the things, even with the co writers, when they send in pages, I want to go, yeah, you're the best.

This is terrific. And a lot of times it's like, whoa, it's lost the voice. And all these have a voice. Hopefully they do, but we've lost a voice. Or it's going sideways. Now, there's a lot of artier stuff that goes sideways, and that's the beauty of it. It just goes sideways. And that's great. That's a point, but that's not what I do.

Right.

We're going this way. We might do a little, but it's pretty linear. It's going forward, and that's what I'm doing.

Do you generally get the idea of a scene that intrigues you and build around it, or do you get more of the idea of a full story you want to tell?

It won't be the full story, but it could be the makings of. I'll give you an example. No, I won't give you this one because somebody will steal it. I actually like this book, and it didn't do as well as I thought it would have called Woman of God. And it opens with a pope has died, and all the cardinals are going into the little room, and there's a rumor out there that a woman is being considered. One of the things people don't know about the catholic church is, in theory, anybody who is Catholic could become the next pope. I mean, not likely, but a woman's being considered. Okay, well, what the hell is this all about? And then we go back and we trace this woman from when she was a medical doctor, and we're still going, how the hell would it ultimately get to the point where she could be considered as the next pope? And what it's about? I was just talking to somebody from the church. It was a reporter from Rome. It was about the Crichton novel. He asked me if I was Catholic. I said, yeah. I said, what I want the pope to do, and this is what the book was really about, is I.

I want the pope, one, to say that priests can get married, and secondly, that women can be priests. You want to save souls. That will save an awful lot of souls, and it will turn around the church in the United States, etcetera. That's all the dude has to do.

Not unforeseeable. He's on quite a trajectory.

I haven't seen that as part of.

He's the most provocative pope I'm aware of. So who knows? You may see that in your life.

But anyway, so there was that notion, and to me, the hook of, how the hell would a woman get to be? I want to see what she does.

I got to figure this out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, eruption is out. June and third. Very exciting to think of a collaboration between you and Michael Crichton.

The other weird thing which I like about this thing is the idea of getting to read another Crichton. I've read all of his stuff. It's like, man, I would love to hear that there's another Hitchcock.

Yeah.

You know, or that Jack Nicholson is going to do one more where he's actually going to. You know, I know you're not a.

Bukowski fan, but I'm an enormous one. So I have intentionally left out a single book of his I've not read because I don't want to be alive knowing I finished them all. I need to know that there's still one waiting for me. All right, so, yes, you've kind of given your yourself the craig.

Well, that's like when I was in grad school, somebody I was with said that everybody should read Henry James before they die. Preferably just before they die.

Probably on their deathbed. Well, James, thank you so much for coming in to tell us about this. I doubt we'll ever talk to somebody with a more successful writing career than yours. It's almost beyond comprehension.

I sure don't understand.

Over a hundred New York Times bestseller.

Oh, this is great.

Great meeting you. Thanks so much for putting us on your busy schedule, everyone. Check out eruption on June 3. Be well. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Stay tuned to hear Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong.

That's okay, though.

We all make mistakes. You know, it's so funny. The mouse we catch humanely. We use a trap where we can release the mouse into your backyard. As I told you, we're did.

Yeah.

I don't have that same feeling about a rat that's living in the yard.

Oh, no.

Yeah, I kind of want to murder the rat. Is that bad?

I think.

Should we have rats? Should we?

What's the difference? They're basically the exact same.

I know. They are calling out that this feels absurdity.

This feels like sort of weird racism.

No, I'm not gonna let this be racism species.

No, no, I just mean, like, we've decided one is bad.

Sure. Same one spread the bubonic plague. But maybe mice did, too, a long time ago.

Yeah, no one talked about the mice, but they've done bad stuff.

I wonder if biologically or zoologily, there's even the difference. They're just different sizes. We call one a mouse and one a rat. They gotta be the same thing, right?

I think they're the same with, like, one or two differences, like the pigeon and the dove. You know, those are the same bird.

Sure.

Different colors.

Speaking of which, we saw brown doves or brown pigeons in Lisbon.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. And Lincoln was very drawn to them, and they were. They were very handsome.

Yeah. They're doves. They're just brown or pigeon black.

No. Cause there were black pigeons.

Right, but I'm saying, like, the reason we, like, we. We find pigeons disgusting, like, as they.

Cause they're always picking out trash cans and stuff.

Right, but doves are the same bird.

No, I know. I know, but they're all white. White privilege.

It's white privilege.

I know. They should be considered cousins. Rat and the mice.

Yeah.

Oh. Rats have 21 pairs of chromosomes, and mice have 20 chromosomal pairs, but they're both descended from a single ancestor species.

Okay, I feel weird that you put me in a position to defend rats.

I know. I'm kind of shocked and feel a bit betrayed.

I hate rats, but I also hate mice.

What if one ran out? So for people who don't know, I was putting trash in the trash can and I was barefoot and this fucking rat ran out from under the trash can and it was inches from my toes. My gross, mangled toes.

Yeah. I hate that. Do you think that maybe I was right about saying I thought I saw a mouserat run under the attic and you were like, are you sure it wasn't a lizard? It was a lizard.

Well, now I got more information that would definitely bolster your argument. So my gym is done.

Yeah.

So I'm moving stuff out of the old gym. Black mole paradise. Rip, rip. I'm gonna take some equipment and some of the rubber flooring, whatever, and then I move the treadmill out of there. Well, when we move the treadmill out of there, rats. Tons of rats.

Poop, dax.

So that really does bode well. I know. I'm living like. I'm living in a ratio.

Yeah, no wonder you're coughing.

Yeah. Runny nose. I'm probably allergic to these rat turds that were everywhere. I know, it's disgusting. I hate it. And I. I don't. And I don't feel protective of rats.

It could have been mice turds.

I think it was rat turds. Good size.

Oh, yeah.

What's funny is like, we moved it. I was like, oh, wow, that's clearly rubber has come off the tread as it moves. Those are chunks of rubber. Yeah. And Kristen was like, no, no, those are. That's feces. That's rat feces. I know. I gotta start killing them, right? I can't. I can't. I can't be hosting a rat.

Why don't you put some sanctuary out or something?

What's that gonna do?

Like, I think there's spray. Like, rat raid. There has to be the equivalent of raid for rats.

You know what? Surely someone's upset that I'm entertaining the idea of killing the rats. But if my dogs killed them, that people would be fine with that. What I need to do is get whiskey out in the yard more. He's a rat dog. That's the kind of dog he is. Even with his three legs, I bet he could make quick work of this rat.

Well, I feel validated. It's definitely a rat mouse that I saw.

Yeah. But, you know, the problem is I had never seen a rat. I've seen a lizard come out of there a bunch of times. I don't mind lizards being there at all. And your eyes are. They suck. Okay.

I just wish you'd trust me once or twice.

Well, could it be about something that doesn't involve your eyesight? It feels like a lot to ask.

No, because it was more a feeling I had.

Okay. It was an intuition.

Good instincts.

Okay. All right.

So you gotta trust.

Well, I'm really sorry I didn't jump on it. Suddenly, I didn't believe you. I just was like. I bet it was the lizard.

Yeah, that means you didn't believe me. But also, I was leaning towards.

Towards a lizard, is what it was.

Also, the reason you should trust me and believe me, is because I could have saved you, like, half of that rat poop. This was a long time ago that.

I said that, but what, again, what would I do? I'm going to get a humane rat trap and release that in your backyard. Here's your options. Snakes. Get some snakes. I need to get a snake.

Rat spray. There's got to be some.

There's no such thing as rat spray, Momica.

Of course there is.

Eric would be using it. Eric? His house is overrun. He has a rat sanctuary. He has an infestation.

Stop.

I think in rat station there's rodent repellent.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm sure it works great.

I'm sure it works better than doing nothing. All to say, I don't know, but I don't think killing is good. I don't want to talk about it.

Okay, great. I got a fun update for the people who listened to the Chris Pine episode and really liked the kind of burgeoning friendship that was developing real time. And I guess people were shipping us.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And I want.

How come no one was shipping me and him? Well, because he's a attractive single man.

There were people in the. The problem is, ever since you talked about ghosting, I know everyone. Oh, my God. Yeah. The comment section is just like, one after another. Every guy. Like, the timeline doesn't even work.

It's hard.

Like, I want to tell people, like, how could this be the person?

I prefer it that way, that they are figuring it out really.

Right. You know who they think it is the most? Jake Gyllenhaal. They're like. And I think that's because they have. They're so against him from the Taylor Swift song that they're like, of course he did that.

Well, they might be, but also, Jake is very kind to me in every time we interview him. Like, he does include me a lot.

Yeah. So I don't know why that, but.

Jake is in a relationship for people who is?

It's not Jake, but for the folks that were shipping. Chris and I, we went to the motorcycle track on Saturday. It was really fun. He showed up at 730. We hopped in the truck.

Did you hug?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Did you kiss?

No, not when I saw him. Not when I greeted him.

Okay.

All right. I don't want to ruin the end of the story. This is how much fun we were having. I think this is a testament how much fun we were having. I was telling some story while driving up the five, and I'm supposed to get off the 14 and take the 14 to the racetrack. And by the way, I've never missed an exit. I'm a navigator.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, like, this story crescendos and we're both having a.

You're telling it or I'm telling a.

Story, which is why I was distracted.

Got it.

And the story concludes. And I look up and I'm looking at Six Flags, and I go, oh. I realize. I'm like, oh, my God, dude. I fucking didn't get off on the 14.

Were you embarrassed?

Yes, of course. This is. My whole ego is driving and navigating. So he goes, I'll just turn around. And I go, well, I go, actually think from here there might be a road that will take us diagonal back to the 14. So I open up Google maps, I put in the racetrack, and it takes us on a thing. Well, about midway through, like, oh, we're never getting to the highway. We're taking, like, back roads to the racetrack.

Okay.

Which is fine. We're in canyons and stuff. Again. More time to chat. And when we arrive, I look at what time we got there. I'm like, oh, that's a bummer. That set us back about 20 minutes, right? My blunder. But then Steve de Castro got there after us. Steve's always very early to the track. This man loves waking up at five in the morning. So he gets there and I'm like, wow, that was an uncharacteristically late arrival for you. And he goes, how long it take you? The fucking. There was two accidents on the 14 it took. We were sitting for two and a half hours. I was like, oh, my God. What a blessing.

Yeah.

So fucking passing that exit saved us like an hour and ten minutes in the car, and we had a more scenic. Lovely. So I guess that's the kind of kismet nature to the trip.

That's great.

And we rode all day. It was really fun. Had a great day riding. He got his knee down for the first time. It was a big day in any aspiring motorcyclist life.

Wow.

And then the ride home. We just had so much fun. Chitchat. I really enjoyed the date.

Nice.

Yeah, it was great.

Oh, my God.

What?

So I learned about a new game.

Okay.

Kind of. It's very, very similar to two of our previous games, one being the game we used to play where I was like, I think you're either sexy, cute, and then there was one or pretty. Remember we used to play this?

No. How does it go?

It was a huge game for us.

Sorry. Well, just remind me a little bit more and I bet it'll come to me.

Well, that's it.

So give me an example, though. So you will, what? Say someone's name?

No, it wasn't. Okay. It wasn't really a game. It was a theory. It was like, I think people are either. Oh, I think you can only be two of them. The three.

Oh, okay.

Sexy, cute, or pretty.

So every boy is, by defacto, sexy and cute. They can't be pretty.

Of course. Brad Pitt's so pretty.

Okay, great counterpoint.

Okay.

Johnny Depp and his pine's pretty.

Pretty. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So we used to play that. You forgot.

Okay.

I don't remember if that's exactly what it was, but it's something like that.

Okay.

But I think it was. You're one of them. And if you can be sexy and cute, that was like a big. A big deal.

Yeah, it's. It's probably the most. It's dangerous combination.

It's a coveted combat.

Yeah.

It could be considered deadly. Yes.

Launch a million ships.

But I also had a friend hang that was like a new friend hang this weekend.

A date?

Yes, a date. We were chatting about all kinds of things, and she told me that her friends. Well, Jed invented this. Jed? Oh, friend of the pod.

Jedi.

Jenkins, you are either cool, hot. I have to look it up.

Oh, wow. You wrote it in a folder or.

I think we texted about it.

Okay. I want some follow up texting. That's a really great song.

I know there are people who you hang out with and you feel like you have known them a long time.

Yep. Yep.

Which is always fun. Okay. TBD. There's a third one, and then the game is you place people in the categories. It's like best boy, cool guy, sexy man.

Okay, sounds like it.

Yeah, it's like that. And then she was saying there was a person. I'm not gonna say who it is.

But do I know them?

Yeah. Oh, who, bizarrely, is none of them interesting? Yes.

Yes. Yeah, for sure.

Correct.

That's right.

It's a fun game. Do we want to play?

Sure, but how do we do it? Walk us through it.

I think maybe we say a person and then we categorize them.

Okay, but we don't know the third option.

I'm gonna have to wait till that comes.

Okay, so this is a TBD and we'll play the game TBD.

Oh, my God. Generous Sally's face. Facetiming me. Sally from Argent. I'll pick up. Hi, you're on air.

First time caller. Where you calling from?

Sally from Argent is facetiming.

But Argent's not a city.

I know. You are super red. Is it time sensitive?

That's not time sensitive.

Oh, you thought I was doing poorly.

I thought you were in crisis. And so I was like, I'm just here eating chocolate, having caffeinated, so it.

Feels like the perfect time to call.

Okay, well, I'll call you back. Sorry, never got happy.

Recording.

Bye. You guys buy suits? Oh, I wore Argent to the. My interview with Jason when I interviewed Jason.

Oh, okay.

And it was a pink suit. It was so, so cute. And I got a lot, lot of compliments.

I bet you did.

Pink is fun.

It's a blast.

Yeah. Oh, funny. Oh, cool, hot, funny.

Mmm, cool, hot funny.

It's more like, what's your order? Some people are nothing. Some people are only ones.

Some people are two, would you say? I think we would agree on what my order is. Oh, not my order, but the top two. Two for sure. We would go funny and cool. Rob. Oh, my God.

You.

You were gonna go on? No, I wrote it down. I thought you were asking me to pick mine or agree to yours. I was, like, looking at Monica when I'm talking about fucking cars. You're who?

He didn't know. I know what happened. He didn't know if he was supposed to answer for himself or if he was supposed to answer about you.

About me, of course.

Yeah.

I don't.

Well, but let's just. Because here's what I'm curious about.

Yeah.

Which one's higher, funny or cool?

Well, to me, I know it's hard. I want them all.

And there's a. It's overlap. This is like the DSM and trying to label, like.

But that's why it's a fun game.

Yeah.

Yeah, it has to be hard.

But I'm wondering if my defining characteristic is being funny or being cool.

Funny.

Okay. I guess I was flattering myself there for a second.

Well, you are cool.

But you know what's funny, though? And I guess I'm grateful for it because, you know, so much of your identity is all just what happened to you when you were young. And you're stuck with it.

Well, not necessarily, but.

But you know what I'm saying. You're trying to overcome it nonstop. Like, I was dyslexic, so I'm constantly triggered if someone think some dumb. Yeah, but lucky for me, there was upside, which was 6th and 7th grade. I was super cool. Like, the boys thought I was so fucking cool because I skateboarded it. I was into punk rock, and no one else was.

Yeah.

So the cool thing for me that came before funny, but it's.

It's so young.

It went away in high school.

But I just do put a lot of value on, like, cool. No, on, like, pre high school times.

Yeah. Cause I didn't like high school. So if I'm gonna select which one I like, select.

It's like a lot happens past adolescence.

Right.

And, like, mostly you're formed past that.

Although I was already through adolescence in junior high. Anyways. Bogged down. Yeah.

Okay. I think I would say your. Yours is tricky. You're all three. Congratulations.

Thank you. I would have never made you say it, but I would that I'm asking.

I think I honestly would order you funny. Hot, cool. But the hot and cool are just a margin.

If there's any chance that I'm hot, it's just cause I'm cool.

No, that's not true. But I know what you mean. Those are informing each other. They're informing each other. Complimentary. Okay, now let's do Rob.

Great. That smile is so cute. Well, Rob is funny. He's made some of my favorite jokes. Yeah, the one that always comes to mind, of course, is that was uncommon.

I know you love. That's your favorite joke of all time.

It's in the top four jokes.

If we're picking one. I would say Rob's cool.

Okay. And I might say he's hot. I'm always overwhelmed with how good looking Rob is.

But Rob's cool. He, like, listens to cool music.

Yeah. He's a hipster, right.

Goes to the cool restaurant, eats cool.

Bagels, drinks cool coffee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for me, I would say hangs.

Out with rock stars.

Yeah. Came my turn.

Okay. Hot, cool, funny, funny.

Third.

Well, I was trying to give you the order I thought you'd want just be. And then you were offended. Wouldn't you want funny to be third?

It's not. I want real.

Just hold on.

No.

Would you want funny to be third?

No.

You wouldn't?

No.

That's such a healthy self esteem.

Funny is everything.

Funny is money. That's what they say in film and television.

Funny is, to me, ultimately, the most important thing.

Well, certainly that's why all these things are context specific for a long term relationship. Yeah. For a fun night out on the town. Not necessarily. These. They're different. They're weighted differently, but it's just who I am.

It's not who I wanna be or who I wish I was. It's who I am.

Okay, then I'm gonna.

But do it. Don't try to flatter me. Tell me the truth. I'll close my eyes.

Oh, okay. I'll go funny, hot, cool.

Okay.

Yeah.

What would you say, Rob? That's the same really cool third.

No matter what, there's no permutation where she's not offended. I was flattered. Like, just if. Even if all three of those are in play, I actually don't care what order they're in.

I know my real order. Oh, it's your real funny, cool hot that is. I'm. I am cool. People think I'm cool.

You guys, do you think the pink.

More people think I'm cool than think I'm hot. That's true.

How do you know that that's true?

Like, you read an analog info.

Okay.

The pink suit is. Is cool.

It is. It's not hot. See, I don't know how you're knowing the difference between if everyone's coming to you and going, like, wow, you look great. What a cool outfit. I don't know.

Cause they just said, what a cool outfit.

But because they can't say you look hot.

Why can't they?

It's off the table these days. Cause you guys ruined it for everyone.

Oh, fuck you. Oh, my God. No, I know me of those. I think cool is above, and I like. I'm okay with. That's fine.

Okay.

I like being cool. See, this is a. This is cool. Not hot.

Shoot that over. I can't see that shit.

Okay, I sent. I sent it.

Oh, here we go.

Look at me. Not the girl in the back.

Oh, wait. Let me see the girl in the back. Now is the first thing I want to see. You're going for cool instead of hot, right? Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's a cool outfit. That is not a hot outfit. Outfit will be, like, low cut, okay? It is kind of.

It is completely low cut. It's also a midriff.

But it's a sweater. It's not a midriff.

Well, it's tucked in. It looked like a midriff for a second, but. But it is, in fact, a very low cut. It's a button up, and it's sweater. Sweater. Yeah, but it's down, and there's cleavage and. What are you talking about?

Barely cleavage.

Okay. So, you know.

Okay.

Anyway, this works on a lot of.

Levels, but Rob said it before you said it, so he can't unsay it.

Well, then that's his opinion, that Rob voted.

That's true.

For cool. I mean, I also said, I think you're going for cooler more than you're. Like, you're gonna put a tight, short dress on.

100%.

Listen, if I see. So let's take you out.

I'm going for cool. I'm not going.

I want to take you. You out of this so it's not personalized it. And keep it from being workplace sexual harassment.

Okay.

I see a gal like this with those knockers in a low cut thing, I'm thinking hot, not cool. It could also be cool, but definitely hots on the top.

But you're only saying because my boobs are big.

Well, yeah. Which is a fucking part of hotness. Like, what? No, but I'm not. Well, cool now is part of hotness, too. Like. Yes.

Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah. Go on.

No, no, I. A woman that's traditionally hot. Yeah. At, like, a club. Is not necessarily hot to me.

Right.

Either. Right. I'd rather like a cooler, hipster looking. Sure. But then a little bit of. What's this going on? That's. That's really where you go. What's going on here? We've got a very low cut, button up sweater.

Very low.

Well, the listeners probably getting so annoying because they can't see this picture. But is it on your instagram?

It was on stories.

Oh. More frustrating.

But I agree with Rob that I think the classic version of.

Let me just. Let's break this down for a second. If you. If I'm in a. A suit and I. And it's. It's very tight, and you can see my hog running down my leg.

That's not hot. But that's like, what's he doing? Why is he doing that?

Well, okay, yeah. This is complicated. You have to assume that, like, I don't know when it's an accident. But the point is, is you're evaluating the off the outfit, but then you also are met with this huge body.

The body?

Yeah, the huge hog. And so hotness is on the mind now because you're seeing a sex organ.

I know what you mean. I know you mean, but. Okay, hold on. It's more essence. Like, my essence is cooler rather than hot. That's by design. I am not walking around.

How can you? I just bumped into you without any pants on.

Yeah, that was later that day. I wasn't.

And then you'll be in, like, a see through tank top with suspenders. Like, you're. I don't know what you think.

See through tank.

Whenever you wore the suspenders, it's like.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's like. It's almost a Halloween outfit.

Hey, that's cool. Suspenders.

Okay.

And it's hot. I mean, it's both. Yeah, they're mixy matchy. But I'm just saying, there are some people, like Emily. Rada Jakowski is hot first. I have actually heard she's pretty. She's friends with Amy Schumer. Okay, but all to say, I think you'd most likely rank her as hot first.

Right.

This is, like, a very not 2024 game to play. But I.

It's making me nervous as all hell. I've been nervous since it started.

I do think it's. It's just.

It's great at dinner. Big time. Cause then you can let her rip.

I'm letting her rip. But what is your preferred or for you?

For me?

Yeah.

Sexy and hot. I've said this a million times.

Really, though?

Yes, because that's what I haven't had, so that's what I want.

But don't you think. Aren't you over it? I'm over it like that. Maybe for a long time in life, yes. But no. Why?

Well, again, I have the luxury of I am funny, so I don't have to. Like, when I.

You have to imagine that you then don't have that.

Well, then we don't have a career.

Exactly. That's my.

Obviously, I'm not trading it for that. Yeah, but what I'm telling you is, if I have my pick of what a girl said about me after meeting me, I would want an order for her to go. He was so hot. And then the rest.

Yeah.

Now, I wouldn't really make that trade because I make my living not being hot.

Yes.

And I want to continue to make my living.

Yes.

And I'm sure I married because I wasn't hot. I was funny.

Exactly.

And my kids like me. Cause I'm funny. And not hot. Yes. So I get it, but I'm just being dead honest with you. If I meet someone and they walked away and they got to only say one adjective about me to their friend, I, in my vanity, would want that. They said I was hot. But again, I've already been validated for being funny, so I don't really crave it. Don't you feel the same?

I used to, but I really don't think I'm really putting myself. I'm really trying to think, like, if also, though.

So again, this is where our dynamic is literally, literally diametrically opposed, which is you're looking for a partnership. So in that case, you do want the person you're meeting that likes you to think you're funny because that's a sustainable and long term thing. I've been in a relationship for 17 years, so the thing that seems exciting to me is someone just thinks I'm hot and is attracted to me.

Yeah. Would you also like if they were attracted to you for being funny or. No. You don't care about that?

Well, again, I don't. I think that's the only reason people have been attracted to me. So I don't. I have a very interesting relationship with that.

Right.

You're craving novelty at this point. Yes, I'm craving novelty. I'm craving the thing I didn't have, which is like people turning their head, coming, giving me their know, the shit I see happen to Charlie in real life, which seems very exciting. But also people, women sending drinks over to him and stuff. They don't know. They haven't even talked to him. They don't know if he's funny or smart or anything.

Yeah. Does not sound. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, he'd probably pick something different too.

Exactly. Yeah. It's like, whatever you have, blah, blah, blah.

Yes.

If someone's super hot, they'd rather be funny. You see hot guys try to be funny all the time.

Yeah. I think I've grown.

Congratulations.

I really do.

Yeah. I don't know why that's good, by the way. It's the appropriate thing for you to do because it's where you have more confidence.

Yeah.

And if what you hope is that people think you are funny, you know pretty damn well you can deliver that.

I mean, I guess I. I guess the highest compliment is sort of sexy because that, that's all of it. Like, I don't think you can be sexy without having the other parts. Sexy is like hot and cool kind of, and funny. Like, I think for me, that's what? I think?

Sure.

Smart. Yeah. Wow.

Okay.

We did a masterclass on this.

Okay. A couple facts. Is the Washington Jefferson hotel still there? Yes.

Oh, great. They made it.

James Taylor and the mental hospital.

Yeah.

Went. And then his family, like some family members, went as well. It says during high school, his family began to unravel. His dad was an alcoholic. He was admitted to the McLean psychiatric hospital at 16 with what we now probably would call depression and anxiety, staying there for nine months. Two of his siblings followed him there.

Nine months at 16. That's very, very intense.

Yeah, I know. He said, when I jumped the tracks and went to McClain, it's like they thought. Yeah, that's right. We need this help. It became an option. Yeah.

Wow.

And then he was an addict. Publicly.

Yeah. He was a heroin addict, right?

Yeah, I think so. Okay. I wanted to look up how the Vietnam, the lottery, how it worked. Okay, I'm gonna read.

Do it.

Okay. In principle, the function of the first draft was to select dates within a calendar year at random, with men whose birthdays matched those dates being drafted according to the sequence. The dates were selected. The 366 days of the year, including February 29, were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules, which were then mixed in a shoebox and then placed in a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened. The first date drawn was September 14. All registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number one. The next numbers drawn corresponded to April 24, December 30, February 14, October 18, and so forth. The last number drawn corresponded to June 8. All men of draft age born January 1, 1944, to December 31, 1940. 1950 who shared a birthday would be called to serve at once. The first 195 birthdays drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn. The last of these was September 24.

You know, it's a weird outcome of that no one even probably thought about is, like, they would all be deployed ultimately, and they'd all have their birthday at the same day. You'd probably be in a platoon with, like, nine other guys with your birthday.

Yeah. Weird.

But, you know, this is such a sidebar, but when I was on synced and we were talking about the roman empire, and I was saying, like, yeah, men are gonna be fascinated with all war stuff because it's a real thing. It was researching somebody recently and. Or maybe it was even doing. Finding my roots. And I really. I'm the first generation that wasn't drafted in a long time because my dad was drafted. My grandpa was drafted for World War two. The great grandpa was drafted for world War one. So it's like three generations in a row you could expect to be drafted. It's almost a miracle I wasn't ever drafted in my lifetime. Or that there wasn't a draft in our lifetime that was standard.

Yeah. That is weird.

Yeah. That's 5 seconds ago.

Yeah. Okay. He said 20 people painted. The Sistine Chapel says, prior to Michelangelo's contribution, the walls were painted by several leading artists of the late 15th century, including Sandro Botticelli.

Botticelli.

Domenico Giraldeo.

Giraldi.

Chocolates, Ghirardelli, Pietro Perugino. And then after the ceiling was painted, Raphael created a set of large tapestries to cover the lower portion of the wall so it doesn't say exactly how many.

Okay.

Okay. And the last thing is, I don't wanna grow a bomb. Toys ruckus. The guy with million toys of toys. The rest that I can play with. I don't wanna grow up. I'm a toy. Just kiss. I got the best for so much as you really flip the lid.

From bikes to train to video games.

It'S the biggest toy store there is. She wish I don't want to grow up cause, baby, if I did, I couldn't be a toys rusket. More gay, more toys. Oh, boy. I wanna be a toys r us kid.

Oh, that takes me back to such deep cravings. It's anti buddhist. I was just. See those commercials? And crazy. I love that they went with kids that couldn't even sing the song. That's such a cute touch. Like they're barely getting through that.

It's true.

Jamming up some words.

I love that he came up with that. It's a good nugget.

Right? Although he did not the jingle, just the line. Yeah, I don't want to still. Oh, yeah.

He made it clear.

Collaborative.

Okay, well, that's all.

Oh, well, that was fun.

Feel free to play that game in your life.

Yes.

At your parties.

You haven't copyrighted it. You're not going to be seeking any kind of damages if people use it without licensing it.

I didn't end it.

You're giving it to the world.

Well, maybe you did it.

Well, yeah, I guess.

No, if you want to play the first game, I did invent that.

That's right. That's what I was more referencing. Jedediah. You'll have to reach out to him on twitter and or instagram to find out if you have permission.

Okay.

All right. Love.